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.
Mrs & Mr Wilma Slurrie@WilmaSlurrie
1h1 hour ago
How to solve the #NEG problem:
Stop using hand dryers.
Turn off the air conditioner.
Don’t have dozens of chargeable devices.
Have only one TV (not tuned to Sky).
Turn off building lights at night.
Unplug Turnbull.
Who is this Wilma Slurrie person? I’ve seen her (his?) tweets posted here previously so presumably s/he is a person of authority?
As was evident last election, Shorten does not gear up until the fight is actually on – he doesn’t waste his energy, or the electorate’s goodwill, by brow-beating them outside the actual election period.
I think there is a phenomenon at work with the electorate (pollees at least) at the moment, and that is an issue is less dramatic/appears less dire, the second time around.
When ALP went through its leadership ructions the electorate was suitably appalled … this time around, the electorate has been partially inoculated against reacting so strongly. Some react by voting elsewhere, rather than with the opposition (like Rex continually exhorts) however, I think Trump/Anning/Leyenholm/Palmer et al will perhaps make sensible people think twice about that tactic.
I am hoping so, anyway.
Re Nuclear power vs renewables
It takes 5 to 7 years to build a nuclear power plant, lets ignore waste disposal for now.
It takes 11 months to lay out a solar power farm.
the maintenance crew are fat lambs that are sent to market each year and a new flock introduced to eat the grass
Elon Musk installed the Hornbrook battery farm in 100 days
Peoples what are we waiting for??
You have created a monster. You know that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJefPK_UkdM
Confessions
Wilma Slurrie is a person of biting wit
Late Riser says:
Saturday, August 18, 2018 at 3:36 pm
We should be further along than we are but like someone said about planting trees, if it is going to take 100 years to grow that tree you better plant it today.
___________________
It takes about ten years for a walnut tree to start producing reasonable harvests.
Don’t plant one now, and in ten years time you still won’t have walnuts.
@Peg
Greens attacking Labor
*Shock Horror*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRWCK9zGynA
boomy1, no worries. Love that guy.
Best time to plant a tree is 30 years ago. Next best time is now.
I live in the Chisholm electorate and was amazed to see a large bright yellow billboard featuring Clive Palmer on the side of a building in Box Hill – “Make Australia Great”.
How very Trumpian.
Boerwar says:
Saturday, August 18, 2018 at 3:53 pm
a-e
Hang on, hang on… are you on my side or not? It looks to me like you are arguing desperately for nuclear power. It is difficult to imagine even a worst case nuclear accident that kills all life in the oceans. And that is possibly where we are headed with global warming.
______________________
Not so.
If you are talking about temperature increase, it is only in the upper layers.
There is a staggering amount of thermal mass in the oceans. The fish below 100 metres will never know that we have extinguished ourselves.
E. G. Theodore,
Just had my belly laugh of the day!
George Christensen: ‘You can’t put pig on a lipstick’
I gather this is some sort of deviancy we have yet to hear about?
Me too .
Confessions says:
Saturday, August 18, 2018 at 3:59 pm
FWIW PvO has written today that Abbott would rather bring down the govt than risk the possibility of Turnbull leading the party to a re-election victory. It’s all about Tone’s chances of becoming leader again, apparently.
_________________________
Always was, always will be. He reminds me of Don Quixote.
Murphy in the Guardian manages to write 979 words on the NEG, that manages to use the word “Labor” just once.
And there is the problem with Murphy, in a nutshell.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2018/aug/18/all-eyes-on-dutton-as-conservatives-fuel-coalitions-crisis-of-confidence
while we are about it
Werewolves of London
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpYBT0XyvA
Yass.
don, do you mean Tony or PvO is the windmill guy? For mine, either works.
I used to say the chances of Abbott becoming Prime Minister were zero. I was wrong.
But miracles only ever happen once.
He’ll never do it again.
Doctors, dentists, engineers and scientists don’t consider lawyers to be the smartest people in the room.
BushfireBill. 100% agree. With those werewolves howling in my ears, I did a quick review of KM’s articles over the last 14 days. Just once in 14 articles did she look at Labor wrt the NEG.
Fri 17 Aug 2018 04.00 AEST — “Neg: Labor warns it will not back taxpayer support for new coal-fired power”
I prefer to think about Tony Abbott along these lines:
In my opinion it was the worst song sort that Warren Zevon ever did. It made him famous but he had lot’s better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0J3ossUzhU
boomy1 @ #5017 Saturday, August 18th, 2018 – 6:00 pm
So Toady Rabbott is an Excitable Boy, but Bill is a Headless Thompson Gunner? (love that song).
don
Acidification.
I actually thought I was the smartest person in the room for deciding NOT to do Law. 🙂
There are lawyers and lawyers.
boomy1, now you’ve done hurt me. Terrible song. Stop. Now…please…
What is the bet tomorrow on Insiders time is taken out from talking about ReefGat, the NEG and polling for some new ALP/Union misdemeanor to be revealed.
Perhaps something new from Victoria or the Canberra preselections.
Or possibly the CFMEU charge.
Heroic efforts will be made to make the issue appear significant and ominous.
What did I say? Qlders are not sending us their best people!
WeWantPaul @ #253 Saturday, August 18th, 2018 – 4:43 pm
Nope. But we could reduce their volume. Start handing out extra ballots to smarter voters. Every person starts with one, and then for each standard deviation their IQ exceeds 100, they get one extra.
In my opinion. YES.
Confessions, you win!
But Bill is going to win. I can’t imagine anything else.
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner from Zevon’s last performance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhRRWwH3Fro
this version has Warren in better voice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRWCK9zGynA
@ billie:
“I reckon Malcay should go for broke and call a general election on Monday and bring the whole Liberal Party down with him”
3 years ago I thought that Abbott was going to do the same thing, but he allowed parliament to reconvene – that brought the LP party room and Malcay rolled him. Given the absolute shambles that Malcay has left energy policy in, I can’t see him avoiding bringing the party room together this Tuesday. Things are moving so fast that that could prove instantly fatal …
Let’s see how this dude passes the pub test,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSc46sEZdl4
Insiders doesn’t seem to have a message about the panel this week.
lizzie @ #345 Saturday, August 18th, 2018 – 4:40 pm
Lately their info comes out Sunday morning re the panel composition .
Great song, but crap video. Try this instead:
https://youtu.be/wT9XlQi0yew
fess
Perhaps they’re having more difficulty finding starters!!
Boerwar says:
Saturday, August 18, 2018 at 2:43 pm
I am all for building some nuclear power stations as an emergency decarbonization bridging element. There are significant risks but the risks are as nothing compared with the risks of Global Warming.
We could have them up and running within five years and close all coal fired power stations as soon as nuclear power comes on stream.
__________________
I call bullshit.
Just how long would it take to choose a site, and get approval for that site?
Five years? Ten years?
Let’s suppose we were going to build a nuclear power plant at Jervis Bay. How long do you think the approval process would take? Factor in local opposition.
Or on Sydney Harbour. Or Port Phillip Bay.
After approval of the site, how long would it take to design the reactor to be optimum for the given site, just below Malcolm’s Point Piper residence?
Five years? Good luck with that.
How long do you think the time would be before the first pour of concrete? Factor in local opposition, as people realise what is happening over the back fence.
So, you’ve poured the concrete foundations. How long before the first criticality? Five years? In your dreams.
I call bullshit.
lizzie:
Esp of the panel members willing to be the coalition ‘balance’. There can’t be too many of those around before you hit the Chris Kenny and Miranda Devine types.
Murphy in a nutshell
I keep hoping, for the good of the country, that we boot them.
don @ #345 Saturday, August 18th, 2018 – 6:43 pm
Total fucking steaming pile of putrid bullshit to be precise.
May not be so much the panel, but the interviewee.
There must be all of 1,000 at the olympic Stadium to watch All Blacksferns demolish the Wallarooos.. maybe renovating the stadium for $100 million will bring more spectators..
A smaller ground should have been selected for the match
https://twitter.com/AllBlacks/status/1030733154175266816