BludgerTrack: 51.1-48.9 to Labor

Malcolm Turnbull’s personal ratings lose their lustre, but the poll trend records no change on voting intention. Also featured: preselection action from Labor in the ACT and the Liberals in Tasmania.

BludgerTrack has been updated this week with new results from Newspoll and Essential Research, both of which provided leadership ratings as well as voting intention, and a Queensland-only federal poll result from YouGov Galaxy. None of this has made any difference to the two-party preferred reading, although both parties are down on the primary vote and One Nation is up. On the seat projection, the Coalition gains a seat in Victoria and loses one in New South Wales, with no change anywhere else. However, conspicuously poor personal ratings for Malcolm Turnbull from Newspoll have knocked the edge off his surge in the BludgerTrack trend. Full results from the link below.

Now on to two areas of intense preselection activity this week, involving Labor in the Australian Capital Territory and Liberal in Tasmania.

The former produced an unexpected turn this week when Gai Brodtmann, who has held the seat of Canberra for Labor since 2010, announced she would not seek another term. This leaves the Territory’s vigorous Labor branch with three situations vacant: the lower house seats of Canberra and Bean, and the Senate seat that was vacated by Section 44 casualty Katy Gallagher in May and filled by David Smith.

Smith is now seeking preselection in Bean, which early appeared to be lined up for Brodtmann. Sally Whyte of Fairfax reports Smith has been formally endorsed by the Right, which appears to consider that the Right-aligned Brodtmann should be replaced with one of their own. However, the Left is throwing its weight behind Louise Crossman, manager at the Justice and Community Safety Directorate and former federal staffer and CFMEU industrial officer. Also in the field are Taimus Werner-Gibbings, factionally unaligned staffer to Lisa Singh (and formerly Andrew Leigh), and Gail Morgan, business management consultant and former campaign manager to Brodtmann.

Apparently in retaliation to the Left’s intrusion in Bean, the Right is sponsoring a challenge to Left-aligned Katy Gallagher for the Senate seat, in the person of Victoria Robertson, chief-of-staff to Gai Brodtmann. The race for the Canberra preselection was covered here last week; only the lower house seat of Fenner will be defended by a sitting member, in this case Andrew Leigh.

The news from Tasmania relates to Senate preselection for the Liberals, who are in the happy seat of having a likely Senate seat to spare thanks to the vagaries of the Section 44 affair. When the Senate was carved into short-term and long-term seats after the 2016 double dissolution, the Liberals originally got two seats with six-year terms and two with three-year terms, based on the order of election in which the twelve Senators were elected. However, in the recount after Jacqui Lambie’s disqualification, her party won its seat at a later point in the count, and the Liberals gained a third six-year term at their expense. Given the likelihood of their winning two seats, this means their four seats will likely become five after the election.

Eight candidates have nominated for Liberal preselection, with top position reportedly likely to go to Richard Colbeck, the only one out of the party’s four incumbents required to face the voters. Colbeck initially failed to win in 2016 from his fifth place on the Liberal ticket, to which he was demoted after heading the ticket in 2013. This resulted from a purge of Malcolm Turnbull loyalists led by conservative powerbroker Senator Eric Abetz, and inspired a surge of below-the-line votes for Colbeck, though not enough for him to overhaul the top four candidates. As fate would have it though, number five effectively became number four in the recount held after Section 44 prompted the resignation of Stephen Parry in November last year.

Assuming Colbeck takes top place, that will leave a further seven candidates chasing number two, plus the outside chance offered by number three. A newly confirmed starter is Brett Whiteley, who held a state seat for Braddon from 2002 until his defeat in 2010, gained the federal seat for the Liberals at the 2013 election, lost it at the 2016 election, and failed to win it back at last month’s by-election. But with the party under pressure to balance its all-male parliamentary contingent, he seems likely to struggle against Claire Chandler, risk advisory manager at Deloitte Australia and former electorate officer to David Bushby, who reportedly has the backing of Eric Abetz. Also in the field are Tanya Denison, a Hobart alderman; Wendy Summers, political staffer and the sister of David Bushby; Stacey Sheehan, Davenport Chamber of Commerce and Industry president; Kent Townsend, whom I take to be a developer from Launceston; and Craig Brakey, an Ulverstone businessman.

Finally, two other bits of polling I missed:

• Last week I noted Greenpeace had published a ReachTEL poll that included Victorian state voting intention numbers. I missed the more interesting fact that they also had one on federal voting intention from a sample of 3999. It’s getting on a bit now, having been conducted on July 30, but let it be noted that Labor led 52-48, from primary votes of Coalition 36.9%, Labor 35.0%, Greens 12.0% and One Nation 8.1% (after exclusion of 5.2% undecided.

• The Courier-Mail had further results from last week’s YouGov Galaxy poll which, despite the newspaper’s best efforts to give an impression to the contrary, found respondents strongly opposed to the company tax cuts. Only 16% registered support for tax cuts for businesses with more than $50 million turnover, which the government has tried and failed to pass through the Senate. Twelve per cent favoured a response that excluded banks from the cuts, and 56% were opposed altogether.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,332 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.1-48.9 to Labor”

Comments Page 23 of 27
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  2. “Running to the G-G seems the best option” (J-numbers). Please, Malcum, pleeeeease! Put yourself and the rest of us out of your/our misery!

  5. I just don’t see where the numbers are to even make a half-hearted shot across the bow a viable option.

    Rational brain says you’re right.

    But Rudd proved you don’t need to have a majority that wants you as leader. Just a majority that are prepared to give in to make the destruction stop. Abbott won’t even delude himself about being PM again. He’ll be perfectly happy so long as Trumble is destroyed. So all it will need is 43 Libs that can agree on a replacement to put an end to the loons civil war.

    Both sides are talking up their position. But only one side benefits from the continuing talk.

  8. Simon² Katich® @ #1055 Sunday, August 19th, 2018 – 4:21 pm

    Malcolm Turnbull has outlined further changes to his national energy policy. The Prime Minister used facebook to reveal a plan to impose default energy prices on power companies, and imposing tough penalties on providers which don’t bring costs down.

    Oh FFS. I give up.
    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    Isn’t pretty much all of that antithetical to his party’s entire economic platform of laissez-faire capitalism? If you’re going to go that far, you might as well just renationalize the energy grid.

    Seriously, can we renationalize the energy grid?

  10. Seems like Labor and Turnbull are on NEG unity ticket

    How’s that possible, when no one has any idea, least of all Malcolm, what the final NEG will look like?

    Anything that appeases the Coalition troglodytes, which could only be something even weaker than last week’s version, would be unacceptable.

  13. ratsak @ #1104 Sunday, August 19th, 2018 – 5:39 pm

    I just don’t see where the numbers are to even make a half-hearted shot across the bow a viable option.

    Rational brain says you’re right.

    But Rudd proved you don’t need to have a majority that wants you as leader. Just a majority that are prepared to give in to make the destruction stop. Abbott won’t even delude himself about being PM again. He’ll be perfectly happy so long as Trumble is destroyed. So all it will need is 43 Libs that can agree on a replacement to put an end to the loons civil war.

    Both sides are talking up their position. But only one side benefits from the continuing talk.

    Accurate assessment. Abbott will tear down his own Govt just as Rudd did.

  14. Is there anywhere I can get latex Peter Dutton masks made in time for Halloween?

    Why settle for just the mask when you can get the full Dutton body suit with bonus Tony Abbott…

  19. Bevan Shields tweets

    Tonight’s cabinet dinner has moved from The Lodge to inside Parliament House. I believe there were some concerns about cabinet ministers having to walk/be driven through an expected media pack outside the PM’s home #auspol

    Wow what a bunch of snowflakes.

  20. Eryk Bagshaw tweets

    Cabinet Minister Christopher Pyne arriving in Canberra. “There are some people who don’t support the current leader and that is quite obvious. We have the right policy mix and if we are united we will win the next election.” #auspol

  21. guytaur @ #1119 Sunday, August 19th, 2018 – 5:50 pm

    Bevan Shields tweets

    Tonight’s cabinet dinner has moved from The Lodge to inside Parliament House. I believe there were some concerns about cabinet ministers having to walk/be driven through an expected media pack outside the PM’s home #auspol

    Wow what a bunch of snowflakes.

    I hope they remember to use the plastic cutlery 🙂

  24. Over two nights in May 1991, the band were filmed live and released the video Incontinent in Ten Continents (1991). These performances were the last for guitarist Leek Van Vlalen.

    I like them

  27. Don’t forget -tonight at 8.30 Rake turns up in Canberra as a Senator! Not as crazy a scenario as some of the real-life results recently.

  34. The funniest thing today was Phil Coorey, trying to weave a thread of logic through all the backflips, contradictions and non sequiters.

    My rule is this: anyone left at Fairfax now, who has survbived all the cuts in the Politics Department, is a Turnbull Tool.

    And that goes for Debbie Snow too, who I knew well at university, and in whom I am quite disappointed.

  38. I’m not sure what Menzies House is doing rolling out the RexBot to post stupid on this blog? They must be running interference for the shitshow unfolding within the ‘Turnbull Government’..

  40. guytaur @ #1136 Sunday, August 19th, 2018 – 6:18 pm

    The 7 News take

    .@MalcolmTurnbull is holding a crisis meeting of his Cabinet tonight in what’s being widely acknowledged as a bid to hang onto his job. @telester
    #auspol #7News https://twitter.com/7NewsSydney/status/1031092650454052864/video/1

    Simpler way to do it: “Look, if I’m not leader then I’m voting with Labor for the remainder of the term, so it’s have me as leader or lose government altogether”. Of course, doing that requires actually possessing a spine.

  44. AR

    With any luck Turnbull losing being PM will mean he takes his bat and ball and goes home by resigning from Parliament.

    Cat say hello to pigeons. 🙂

  45. The WA loon leader reacts to Lucien Aye’s latest Reset Brainfart ™

    “On 6PR, Andrew Hastie says he wants to see new NEG in writing: “I’m always circumspect about announcements without seeing the detail. I’ve spoken to the PM. He’s listening. I’m acting in good faith. This is not about creating problems for the Govt. This is a matter of principle.”

  47. ar

    Electricity utilities were in the hands of States, rather than the Commonwealth. In that sense, the sector has never been “nationalised”.

    The Commonwealth has the power to forcibly acquire anything it wants “on just terms”. But it cannot simply seize things and take them into public possession unless, maybe, it were doing so under its Defence or Foreign Affairs powers. It would face legal challenges to acts of appropriation, no doubt.

    WA’s electricity assets are largely in State hands, though the Court government sold the gas network.

  48. And the NSW Chapter of the loons has been on SkyFoxNews peddling misinformation…

    .@CraigKellyMP explains the National Energy Guarantee (NEG):

    “It’s an Emissions Intensity Scheme. What it effectively does is set an emissions threshold for the generation of electricity in the nation.”

    #StopTheNEG #BringBackAbbott #Outsiders #libspill #auspol

  49. Whoever thought up Lucien Aye has obviously struck something that has taken hold and isn’t likely to let go – like #weatheronPB. 😆

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