Further Friday free-for-all

Amid an otherwise quiet week for polling, a privately conducted ReachTEL poll offers further evidence the Liberals are on shaky ground in Wentworth.

It’s been a quiet week on the poll front, and indeed it’s worth noting that polling generally is thinner on the ground than it used to be – the once weekly Essential Research series went fortnightly at the start of the year, neither Sky News nor Seven has been treating us to federal ReachTEL polls like they used to, and even the Fairfax-Ipsos poll has pared back its sample sizes in recent times from 1400 to 1200. I suspect we won’t be getting the normally-fortnightly Newspoll on Sunday night either, as these are usually timed to coincide with the resumption of parliament, for which we will have to wait another week. I can at least relate the following:

• The Guardian has results from a ReachTEL poll of Wentworth conducted for independent candidate Licia Heath, conducted last Thursday from a sample of 727. After exclusion of the 5.6% undecided the results are Dave Sharma (Liberal) 43.0%; Tim Murray (Labor) 20.7%; Kerryn Phelps (independent) 17.9%; Licia Heath (independent) 10.0% and Dominic Wy Kanak (Greens) 6.6%. The poll also comes with a 51-49 Liberal-versus-Labor two-party result, but this a) assumes Tim Murray would not be overtaken by Kerryn Phelps after allocation of preferences, and b) credits Labor with over three-quarters of independent and minor party preferences, which seems highly implausible. The poll also reportedly finds “as many as 52% of people said high-profile independent candidate Kerryn Phelps’ decision to preference the Liberals made it less likely they would give her their vote”, but this would seem to be a complex issue given Phelps’s flip-flop on the subject.

• The Guardian also has results of polling by ReachTEL for the Australian Education Union on the federal goverment’s funding deal for Catholic and independent schools, conducted last Thursday from a sample of 1261 respondents in Corangamite, Dunkley, Forde, Capricornia, Flynn, Gilmore, Robertson and Banks. The report dwells too much on what the small sub-sample of undecided voters thought, but it does at least relate that 38.6% of all respondents said the deal made them less likely to vote Liberal.

• Back to Wentworth, I had a paywalled article on the subject in Crikey, and took part in a mostly Wentworth-related podcast yesterday with Ben Raue of The Tally Room, along with Georgia Tkachuk of Collins Gartrell, which you can access below.

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.

1,606 comments on “Further Friday free-for-all”

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  1. Astrobleme

    I don’t know if you’re being deliberately twee or whether you simply don’t understand the difference between resettling refugees – that is, allowing them into your country as full citizens, with all of the rights that implies – and allowing them to live in a camp in your country on the condition that this is a temporary state and without any intention of that being permanent.

    More refugees from those Jordan camps end up in Australia than Jordan resettles – in the period between 2004-16, Jordan resettled a total of 9 refugees. Australia took nearly 160,000.

    https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/getfacts/statistics/intl/resettlement/

  3. ar
    Continuing from my 5:04pm post
    There is a saying “you can only take horse to the pond/water”. It is up to the horse to drink the water from that pond.
    The Russians pointed the horse to the pond, which was filled with all sorts of unhealthy things but it was Fox and Murdoch who took the horse the pond. As soon as the horse reached the water it lapped up that harmful water like it was excelsior.

  4. What if the Yolngu peoples of Arnhem land wanted to form a independent nation client to China?
    How would the Russian react if the Koryaks or Dagestani wanted to succeed and align with Japan or Iran?
    What if Guildford wanted to succeed and align with ISIL?

  6. Astrobleme: “This is typical bait and switch. Don’t be a moron. The key thing here is that Australia’s refugee ‘problem’ is tiny and that for all this bloviating crap about the hordes ready to travel to Australia, there just isn’t. It’s all crap.”

    It depends on what you mean by “hordes”. In the three years 1999-2001 there were slighty more than 12,000 unauthorised boat arrivals, plus more who drowned at sea. Then, post the Pacific Solution, there were 449 in the seven years 2002 to 2008. Then, after Rudd said it was all about push factors rather than pull factors, and effectively threw open the borders, there were 51,637 in the five years 2009-2013, plus hundreds if not thousands more who drowned at sea. I would consider more than 50,000 in five years to be quite a lot, if not perhaps a “horde” under your definition.

    I take the view that any loosening of the current arrangements will bring back the tens of thousands of unauthorised arrivals. I conclude, on the basis of the evidence of the past and also what immigration officials are saying, that it’s not about “push” factors at all. Rudd Labor were wrong in 2008, and it did them enormous damage with the electorate. If Shorten Labor are silly enough to flirt with this again, they’ll face the same backlash from the electorate.

    People who would are opposed to a hard line on unauthorised boat arrivals can “bloviate” (your term) all they like, but what I have expressed above are the ongoing policy and electoral realities on the issue. I think the Greens, the church people and other fans of open borders should get over it and move on to issues where they are likely to be able to make a difference.

  8. Simon Katich:”What if the Yolngu peoples of Arnhem land wanted to form a independent nation client to China?How would the Russian react if the Koryaks or Dagestani wanted to succeed and align with Japan or Iran? What if Guildford wanted to succeed and align with ISIL?

    All a worry, although – if Guildford did secede and the Leagues club were taken from us – we’d still have Rooty Hill RSL and the Panthers club.

  13. I repeat: I am happy to take hordes, although I find it passing strange that when I argue we can take a lot more people into Australia I get shouted down by the same people who seem to be pushing for taking unlimited numbers of refugees.

    I am also happy for the UNHCR to tell Australia where those hordes should come from.

    My personal preference is that those hordes reduce the numbers in the camps, where refugees whose claims to asylum were assessed years ago are still waiting for a home to go to.

  14. Stalin, the worst dictator of Soviet Union, was from Georgia.

    If Cormann becomes PM we invade Belgium.

    we’d still have Rooty Hill RSL

    A special place indeed. I spent a week there one afternoon.

  15. I am reminded of “Life of Brian”

    “Which queue are you in?”

    “Executions”

    “You are in the wrong queue, you should be in that one”

    “Sorry, thank you”.

    Shifts to the execution queue from the stoning queue.

    The thing is, why are there refugees in the first instance?

    So first things first.

    So many generalizations framed for purpose.

    “Banks are bastards”

    But Banks are the people who work in banks and many of them do a damn fine job.

    Then there are others.

  16. Simon

    Each of those events would be disturbing to someone or other but by and large i support separatist movements.

    You cannot force mergers of peoples.

    Of course it is complicated and there could be problems but where there is an obvious ethic/language or religious domination in a region they should have the right to go their separate ways.
    To give some current examples

    Yes there should be Kurdistan
    Yes Scotland and Catalonia should secede if supported by a vote
    East Ukraine should have the right to secede
    Texas and California if they so choose
    WA and Tasmania

    Such changes could be supervised by the UN and be managed in a stepwise fashion. First devolving local government functions, then state type of functions. THEN have a referendum. If there is a 60% vote then separation it is. If 40% then it is stay. Between 40-60 % there should be a vote every 5 years..

  18. You cannot force mergers of peoples.

    It is not merging of peoples. Ethnic purity is not a prerequisite to a successful state. There is in fact much evidence to suggest the best performing states and regions are ones with diversity of ethnicity and culture.

    Ethnically pure states, other than long past traditional societies, island nations and maybe Japan and Korea, rarely exists.

  20. Hundreds of mountain goats are being given an airlift on their way out of a national park in the US state of Washington after developing a taste for human urine.

    Billy Goat Grylls has questions to answer.

  21. William, I think using single seat polls to inform my expectations seriously exposes me to the risk of “garbage in garbage out”! So, I prefer to (a) judge how much “more Liberal (or Labor)” a seat is than the state as a whole, then (b) judge how far the state as a whole currently leans Labor or Liberal (for which polling data is much richer than for individual seats).

    For (b), I’m content to just use your BludgerTracker. Thank you for that resource!

    For (a), we have hard data in the form of election results, but data which is muddied by the fact that a TPP in a seat with an incumbent running always includes a personal vote. I haven’t adequately considered the various measures of personal vote, so I must be content with judgements like “if personal vote in Wentworth in 2007 was X, then Wentworth was Y% more Liberal than NSW in 2007”.

    In 2007, MT’s TCP in Wentworth was 7.53% higher than the Coalition’s TPP across NSW. So, if MT’s personal vote in Wentworth in 2007 was 5%, then Wentworth was 2.53% more Liberal than NSW in 2007. If it hasn’t become more Liberal relative to NSW since then, independently of candidate, then with the Coalition TPP across NSW being 47.6% now (from BludgerTracker), in Wentworth the Liberal TPP should be 50.1%. If MT’s personal vote in 2007 was lower, the current Lib TPP should be higher, and vice versa.

    William, have you or anyone else you’re aware of estimated what MT’s personal vote in Wentworth was in 2007?

  22. Simon

    Name an ethnically mixed state that works well. I am not talking about when there is migration and once culture is absorbed but when the individuals are tied to a piece of land.

    I think it is rather “green like’ ie seeing the world through rose tinted glasses.

    India is the closest I can think of but even there there is religious tension.

  24. So, after today’s PB conference on solving the refugee, boats and sea borders problem what solution have we come up with?

  31. Stalin from Georgia, Hitler from Austria, Napolean from Corsica – supposedly Julius Ceasar from one of the Roman provinces it is believed – all ‘outsiders’ who became dictators of a larger metropolitan area. I gather PhD theses have been written on this topic.


  32. Puffytmd says:
    Friday, October 5, 2018 at 6:24 pm

    So, after today’s PB conference on solving the refugee, boats and sea borders problem what solution have we come up with?

    Have another beer. When the Liberals and the Greens are pissed we can close the bar.

  33. dtt, I think expecting a full reordering of the existing sovereign ordering of states to be ‘green like’.

    The current system of Sovereign states is messy. Any ordering of the globe is messy. But we have had globalisation for well over 2 thousand years so the idea of putting borders around geographic areas of ethnically pure peoples, occupying lands to the exclusion of others…. tell him he’s dreamin’.

    As for ethnically mixed states that ‘work well’, that of course depends on your definition of ‘working well’. Hobbes may say that all of them are doing better than the alternative.

  37. What Alan Jones wants, Alan Jones gets…

    Breaking: Gladys Berejiklian has instructed the Sydney Opera House to allow its sails to be lit up with colours, numbers and a trophy to promote next Saturday’s Everest horse race, against the wishes of the Opera House boss’ wishes

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/gladys-berejiklian-hands-racing-nsw-alan-jones-victory-in-opera-house-battle-20181005-p50837.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter

  38. late riser

    ‘Rangers used tranquiliser darts and net guns to capture the animals from rocky ridges and slopes within the Olympic National Park, located about 160 kilometres west of Seattle.’

    Is that a euphemism? The Pacific Ocean is 160 km west of Seattle.

  42. Boerwar @ #489 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 6:49 pm

    late riser

    ‘Rangers used tranquiliser darts and net guns to capture the animals from rocky ridges and slopes within the Olympic National Park, located about 160 kilometres west of Seattle.’

    Is that a euphemism? The Pacific Ocean is 160 km west of Seattle.

    Not to my knowledge, but it could be. 😉 Did you have something in mind? (Maybe a lazy editor slipped in an extra 100.)

  45. Name an ethnically mixed state that works well.

    Alright. I will stick my neck out. I am no expert in some of this history… so happy to be corrected…

    England. Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Celts, Romans… They did/do OK.

    The US. Worlds most powerful superpower in history.

    The Soviet Union. Collapsed, yes, but probs not due to the ethnic diversity. And they were pretty successful at one stage.

    Russia. Long ago lost their ethnic purity. From Viking Rus, to Slavs, Avars, Tartars to who knows how many different ethnicities now fill the Russian state.

    Byzantium.

    Ancient Greece and Macedonia.

  46. Sprocket_

    Must be wonderful for a pollie. Get caught ripping off your employer (stealing ?) a ‘whoops’, pay back the money and keep your job.

  50. So if they choose option 1, do they go into detention in the meantime?

    Yes. But as any competent politician would be at pains to point out, *not* indefinitely. Their waiting time would be entirely predictable and known in advance. And they get to freely choose whether they’re willing to do that time in order to reach Australia or if they’d rather just go somewhere else.

    And if they choose option 2, do they go into detention in the meantime?

    Nope, there should be no substantial meantime in that scenario. Our partners have to be willing to accept refugees on an immediate basis, predicated solely upon Australia’s assessment of their status.

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