Poll positioning

Fraught preselections aplenty as the major parties get their houses in order ahead of a looming federal election.

Kicking off a federal election year with an overdue accumulation of preselection news, going back to late November:

• Liberal Party conservative Craig Kelly was last month saved from factional moderate Kent Johns’ preselection challenge in his southern Sydney seat of Hughes, which was widely reported as having decisive support in local party branches. This followed the state executive’s acquiescence to Scott Morrison’s demand that it rubber-stamp preselections for all sitting members of the House of Representatives, also confirming the positions of Jason Falinski in Mackellar, John Alexander in Bennelong and Lucy Wicks in Robertson. Kelly had threatened a week earlier to move to the cross bench if dumped, presumably with a view to contesting the seat as an independent. Malcolm Turnbull stirred the pot by calling on the executive to defy Morrison, noting there had been “such a long debate in the New South Wales Liberal Party about the importance of grass roots membership involvement”. This referred to preselection reforms that had given Johns the edge over Kelly, which had been championed by conservatives and resisted by moderates. Turnbull’s critics noted he raised no concerns when the executive of the Victorian branch guaranteed sitting members’ preselections shortly before he was dumped as Prime Minister.

• The intervention that saved Craig Kelly applied only to lower house members, and was thus of no use to another beleaguered conservative, Senator Jim Molan, who had been relegated a week earlier to the unwinnable fourth position on the Coalition’s ticket. Hollie Hughes and Andrew Bragg were chosen for the top two positions, with the third reserved to the Nationals (who have chosen Perin Davey, owner of a communications consultancy, to succeed retiring incumbent John “Wacka” Williams). Despite anger at the outcome from conservatives in the party and the media, Scott Morrison declined to intervene. Morrison told 2GB that conservatives themselves were to blame for Molan’s defeat in the preselection ballot, as there was “a whole bunch of people in the very conservative part of our party who didn’t show up”.

• Labor’s national executive has chosen Diane Beamer, a former state government minister who held the seats of Badgerys Creek and Mulgoa from 1995 to 2011, to replace Emma Husar in Lindsay. The move scotched Husar’s effort to recant her earlier decision to vacate the seat, after she became embroiled in accusations of bullying and sexual harassment in August. Husar is now suing Buzzfeed over its reporting of the allegations, and is reportedly considering running as an independent. The Liberals have preselected Melissa McIntosh, communications manager for the not-for-profit Wentworth Community Housing.

• The misadventures of Nationals MP Andrew Broad have created an opening in his seat of Mallee, which has been in National/Country Party hands since its creation in 1949, although the Liberals have been competitive when past vacancies have given them the opportunity to contest it. The present status on suggestions the seat will be contested for the Liberals by Peta Credlin, who was raised locally in Wycheproof, is that she is “being encouraged”. There appears to be a view in the Nationals that the position should go to a woman, with Rachel Baxendale of The Australian identifying three potential nominees – Anne Mansell, chief executive of Dried Fruits Australia; Caroline Welsh, chair of the Birchip Cropping Group; and Tanya Chapman, former chair of Citrus Australia – in addition to confirmed starter Anne Warner, a social worker.

• Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie yesterday scotched suggestions that she might run in Mallee. The view is that she is positioning herself to succeeding Cathy McGowan in Indi if she decides not to recontest, having recently relocated her electorate office from Bendigo to one of Indi’s main population centres, Wodonga. The Liberals last month preselected Steven Martin, a Wodonga-based engineer.

• Grant Schultz, Milton real estate agent and son of former Hume MP Alby Schultz, has been preselected as Liberal candidate for Gilmore on New South Wales’ south coast, which the party holds on a delicate margin of 0.7%. The seat is to be vacated by Ann Sudmalis, whose preselection Schultz was preparing to challenge when she announced her retirement in September. It was reported in the South Coast Register that Joanna Gash, who held the seat from 1996 to 2013 and is now the mayor of Shoalhaven (UPDATE: Turns out Gash ceased to be so as of the 2016 election, and is now merely a councillor), declared herself “pissed off” at the local party’s endorsement of Schultz, which passed by forty votes to nine.

• Hawkesbury councillor Sarah Richards has been preselected as the Liberal candidate in Macquarie, where Labor’s Susan Templeman unseated Liberal member Louise Markus in 2016.

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.

3,175 comments on “Poll positioning”

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  1. Warren speaks directly to people – as Trump did.

    She is a helluva lot smarter than Trump.

    I like her a lot BUT I think the American people wil go for someone who is more traditional – moderate male – because the Trump experiment in outlandish ness hasn’t worked.

    A bit like here in Oz with Shorten being seen as personally unremarkable by the media – America will probably head the same way.

    Safe and inoffensive rather than a strong personality. Whether O’Rourke fits that mould I don’t know … I suspect we need to wait until we see more of the field before predicting the place-getters … early betting rarely scores a win.

    Just my opinion.

  2. Morning all.

    Trump runs face first into his own border wall. If this whole saga hadn’t involved the govt shutting down and people being without pay over the festive period, it would be amusing to watch.

    The disconnect is at the heart of the dilemma facing Mr. Trump as he labors to find a way out of an impasse that has shuttered large parts of the government and cost 800,000 federal employees their pay. Having spent more than four years — first as a candidate and then as president — whipping his core supporters into a frenzy over the idea of building a border wall, Mr. Trump finds himself in a political box of his own making.

    In transforming the wall into a powerful emblem of his anti-immigration message, Mr. Trump has made the proposal politically untouchable for Democrats, who have steadfastly refused to fund it, complicating the chances of any compromise.

    “As a messaging strategy, it was pretty successful,” Mr. Krikorian said. “The problem is, you got elected; now what do you do? Having made it his signature issue, Trump handed the Democrats a weapon against him.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/us/politics/donald-trump-border-wall.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

  3. guytaur,
    I understand your position. My comments are generally general in nature but my support, in principle, of Beto O’Rourke is genuine. Of course anything can happen between now and the 2020 POTUS election, most especially considering the likely Russian influenced and directed ‘Bernie Bros’ (Sanders’ campaign manager is Tad Devine who has very close links to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian spy and American infiltrator), who have already begun their disinformation campaign about Beto O’Rourke and his Texas Congressional voting history, misconstruing it for their own advantage.

  4. Fess

    As I said yesterday, it would be helpful if some decent journo did some investigative work to ascertain who in Trumps circle benefits from the border wall.
    Trump doesn’t care about immigration. It is simply the red meat he throws to his base.
    For Trump it is all about the money

  5. There was an article I posted the other day that listed the pros and cons of an Elizabeth Warren candidacy. I will find it again and repost as it makes some good points.

  6. https://www.smh.com.au/national/we-re-full-thousands-turned-away-from-iconic-nsw-tourist-spot-20190103-p50ph3.html

    Hyams beach is nice, but so is just about every other beach in Jervis Bay. The whole “whitest sands in the world” could easily apply to the whole bay – visibly at least there is no difference between the sand at Hyams and across the bay at Callala Beach. Hyams is also difficult to get to and the streets in the village are pokey at the best of times. Furthermore, with the summer prevailing north easterly winds all that fine sand has a tendency of ending up in your eyes and face. Unpleasant. In short, the place is overrated with much better visiting options close by. I’d recommend the little beach at Callala Bay or half moon bay – if you are happy to drive on a well graded dirt track for 6km to get there. Currrawong is another great option, as is the pub at Huskisson for a lunch after a beach sojourn (thee are three really nice little beach options at Husky as well). I haven’t even touched the surface of the great alternatives to Hyams in the shoalhaven.

  7. C@t

    I really hope the egoist Bernie Sanders keeps the f away this time round. I have had enough of his spoiling and double speak

  8. guytaur

    I know she doesn’t want to run, and I can understand why, but wouldn’t it be beautiful to see a President descended from the African slaves forcibly brought to America, a country where their Declaration of Independence began (seemingly without a hint of irony) with

    “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…”

  9. Cat

    I am not for Warren. I am not for any candidate. I understand your enthusiasm for O Rourke.

    He did do an outstanding job in Texas that cannot be doubted.
    In my opinion at this stage he does look like a front runner in the field.

  10. ‘fess,
    Did you see the Trump press conference yesterday? A journo pointed out that all the Trump Administration employees would be getting a $10000 pay rise beginning January 1, while all other federal employees were getting no pay at all, so what did he think about taking the $10000 away from them? Trump, in his slimy way, said ‘Yes, I will think about it.’ Not, I will do it, just he will think about doing it. Then he won’t. Of course.

  11. WeWantPaul @ #1531 Saturday, January 5th, 2019 – 11:11 pm

    I’m fine with the house / senate nexus being broken, so long as the DD and joint sitting provisions are removed. WA, SA, Tas and Qld would be insane to let the nexus be broken and the DD joint sitting provisions stay the same.

    You’re not a a supporter of the DD or Joint Sitting provisions?

  13. Vic:

    According to that article the build the wall rhetoric was simply a mnemonic device Trump’s advisors used to keep him on message because he is prone to wandering off script and they didn’t want any mishaps when he started talking about immigration. They felt the border wall played to his boasts about building things, while providing a simple message even a dunce like Trump couldn’t stuff up.

  14. A_E

    We have never been to any of them, but I have heard the same thing before – that all the beaches are equally beautiful. A case of a ‘meme’ being too successful for Hyams Beach maybe?

    And NSW managed to get Jervis Bay back from the ACT ‘splitters’ didn’t they?

  16. Yes I did see that.

    Federal agencies have been told to suspend pay raises for top Trump administration officials after an uproar from critics who said it was unseemly to reward top political appointees while hundreds of thousands of workers are going without pay during the partial government shutdown.

    The raises had been set to go into effect on Sunday, after a long-standing pay freeze for senior officials lapsed.

    The turnabout on the pay hike came late Friday in a memo from Margaret Weichert, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management. The pay freeze for senior officials, she said, should be extended.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/05/amid-backlash-trump-administration-seeks-halt-raises-top-officials/?utm_term=.5fc5a2b89861

  17. guytaur,
    President Obama also won because he was half White and his mother and grandparents came from ultra Conservative Kansas. It played a part. For every RW trip to Kenya to display his African family, there was a pushback by the Dems with a story about his Mom and grandparents. You don’t have to like it, but it was that little bit extra that got a ‘Black Man’ over the line. Plus President Obama is a brilliant orator, inspiration and author. One out of the box.

  19. By the Way

    Yesterday was to me a coming together of progressives in Australia.

    Greens Labor and anyone else I missed rejecting fascism. From Kevin Rudd reminding us rightly who is calling the shots with his accurate attack on Murdoch (no matter what you think of his motives) to the groups on St Kilda beach being large enough police had to protect the Nazis from the picnic and singalong protestors.

    We are finally seeing the linking of the dog whistling to the racism in the public narrative.
    Yes Labor that means calling the plight of AS like that of concentration camps is not a Green narrative and an anti Labor one.

    Howard started the LNP on this road and the chickens are coming home to roost as the moderates become independents winning seats like Wentworth. Thats how extreme the modern LNP has become and Dutton and Morrison are birds of a feather in this. Its why I see a leadership change coming.

    The LNP have to do something drastic to distance themselves from those Nazis on the beach.

    Rocket

    Yep agreed. Today I think Bill Shorten is going to be scathing of the LNP when he does his presser. I just think he is working out what is over reach. Tim Watts has already laid down a marker for Labor.

  21. The loveliest photo I saw from Nancy Pelosi taking the Speakers’ gavel was after she asked her grandchildren and other Members’ children to come up to the podium with her. They were all shapes, sizes and colours, baldly demonstrating the multicultural diversity of America and the tide that Trump is trying to hold back, King Canute like:

  24. No obvious anti Labor stories in today’s Telecrap. They must be taking a breather. The lead story is about some couple I’ve never heard of splitting up. The rest is sport, crime (not the sort that’s Labor’s fault) and celebrity trivia.

  25. lizzie @ #1545 Sunday, January 6th, 2019 – 5:19 am

    I don’t quite understand how $27m only provides 41 nurses.

    I can’t speak for this specific situation. More generally, with health professionals like nurses, doctors, physiotherapists etc there is a fair bit that goes on in the background to ensure that they are effective in their roles.

  26. Cat

    Trump can’t win appealing to his base. Any “moderate” establishment GOP politician will lose the Trump voters.

    The Democrats don’t need one out of the box to win. This is the best chance they have of doing what their base wants and win.

    Too many are ignoring the fact that the big damage for the GOP is still to come. Mueller alone is going to do major damage to the GOP and maybe force an impeachment from laying out the evidence.
    80% of the Democratic base wants impeachment. Nancy Pelosi is aware of this.

    Muller evidence from what I have seen from court filings is too great to avoid impeachment votes for the GOP Senate just as with Nixon. That evidence may be even big enough to see Pelosi in the White House.

    That means those voting reforms of nation wide voter registration a public holiday for election day etc with HR1 bill could just get through post Trump.

    That how uncertain the politics are and why I am not predicting who the Democratic Candidate will be. It could be President Pelosi going into the Primaries too if impeachment happens.

  28. Fess

    Trump is a lot of nasty things but he has employed a strategy through out his life that has worked.
    He may have met his match in special counsel Mueller.
    Yet he still the president who I suspect is waiting for a deal for immunity for him to go quietly.
    Otherwise he will tear the joint down
    Underestimating him is the biggest mistake people have made.
    Any other president who may have said even a tenth of what he has, would have been out the door ages ago.

  29. poroti @ #1561 Sunday, January 6th, 2019 – 5:46 am

    DTT

    Warren seems to be catching the same bus Bernie S took…………….

    “In her New Years Eve announcement forming an exploratory committee for the presidency, Sen. Elizabeth Warren made a great point: “Right now, Washington works great for the wealthy and the well-connected. It’s just not working for anyone else.”
    In case you missed that, she pointedly did not say “the economy isn’t working well” or such, as we’ve all heard numerous politicos say countless times.

    She rather said the opposite of that – repeatedly: “The way I see it right now, Washington works great for giant drug companies, but just not for people who are trying to get a prescription filled. Washington works great for for-profit colleges and student loan outfits, but not for young people who are getting crushed by student loan debt. And you could keep going through the list. The problem we have got right now in Washington is that it works great for those who’ve got money to buy influence.”
    https://original.antiwar.com/shusseini/2019/01/04/elizabeth-warren-pierces-through-rhetoric-on-economy-muddles-on-foreign-policy/

    So where is it that you think she is wrong in what she’s said? If you changed the issues from American to Australian issues you could say much the same about Canberra.

  31. The US may have entered a “post-truth” era, but Australia has not. Researchers who asked people in the US their views on politicians who frequently bend the truth found that fact-checking had little impact, whereas for Australians it did change their political opinions.

    The findings in Australia are positive and encouraging, says team member Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Bristol in the UK. They suggest fact-checking is a genuine counter to politicians who regularly make false statements.

    “People like a politician less if they find out they have been lied to a lot,” says Lewandowsky. “It’s a reasonably large effect.”

    But when the team did a follow-up study in the US, the size of the effect was ten times smaller. “We have a lot of information now suggesting American voters don’t really care about facts, in the sense that if you tell them a politician is dishonest it doesn’t really seem to matter,” says Lewandowsky.
    …
    The team did not investigate the reasons for this difference, but they speculate that it has to do with the far more polarised nature of political culture in the US.

    In Australia, voting is compulsory and there is a preferential voting system. “There are buffers against extremism in the Australian system that don’t exist in the US,” says Lewandowsky.

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2189545-australians-care-if-politicians-tell-lies-but-people-in-the-us-dont/

  32. guytaur @ #1631 Sunday, January 6th, 2019 – 6:54 am

    Cat

    No idea. Its my assumption he is doing a presser. I just don’t see Labor ignoring yesterday.

    Why get in the way of the Government’s verbal gymnastics.

    They helped to create the “black gangs” meme.

    Now they are in a position where they need to condemn people protesting against “black gangs”. 🙂

  34. If (and it’s a big if) Trump is impeached I cannot see him being convicted – Republicans will be needed in the Senate for that and there’s no evidence any of them would do this. I’m inclined to agree with Bill Maher: Trump will go at a time of his choosing and not before.

    That said, it is good to see Mueller’s term extended but I’d like to see Congress enact provisions that protect his inquiry from the White House.

  36. Andrew_Earlwood

    If we go to Hyams, we go to the boat ramp or Chinaman’s. But we much prefer beaches such as Blenheim or Murray’s.

  37. Victoria

    There is a lot of myth about Trump being the Teflon President because of the 2016 election.

    There was a failure of accountability in that campaign.

    As Lizzie just posted fact checking not a big deal in the US. Emotion rules more.

    So the Democrats need emotion to win. Thats why they are doing oversight big time.

    Just one committee is demanding Ten Trump tax returns be made public. They have subpoena power.
    It may just be grandstanding rhetoric to get legislation passed to require tax disclosure of future candidates.

    However either way thats a win on the emotion front for getting voter turnout.

  38. Barney

    Racism and its support needs to be called out.
    See the Auschwitz Museum on this.

    Its a standard no political party in Australia should accept. Wishy washy both sides statements won’t cut it either.

  39. Fess

    I would rather Trump resign and face the consequences of what he has done.
    I’m not keen on impeachment.
    He is a puppet doing the bidding of the puppet masters.
    Allowing the elite to hijack democracy in a wholesale fashion in return for enormous personal wealth.

  40. poroti @ #1580 Sunday, January 6th, 2019 – 6:22 am

    C@tmomma

    She was saved by not being a chap 🙂 As for ” I definitely don’t base my support on …… how wealthy their family was, , ” yet it seems OK to slag off Coalition pollies for their ‘privileged’ private schooling and well to do back ground ? I do however think such a background can on some occasions be a valid basis for criticism.

    At the start of last year (2017) we hired a graduate at work who lives (with his parents) in one of the wealthiest suburbs in Perth, went to school at one of the wealthiest private schools and studied at the most prestigious university in the state.

    Most of the employees where I work are at the opposite end of the social and economic scale to the graduate I get considerable schadenfreude from seeing the graduate dealing with the workforce and the issues that they have.

  41. All great options Zoomster (not that I’ve been to all of them). When we have the grandkids and we are visiting friends with kids we like to go to the inlet at Moona Moona creek just south of Huskisson village. We also hire a beach house at Callala Beach for a long weekend in early December.

  42. guytaur @ #1642 Sunday, January 6th, 2019 – 7:08 am

    Barney

    Racism and its support needs to be called out.
    See the Auschwitz Museum on this.

    Its a standard no political party in Australia should accept. Wishy washy both sides statements won’t cut it either.

    I think the media has done a good job highlighting what it is.

    Labor coming in now in any major way would leave room for deflection away from the issue.

  43. Confessions @ #1602 Sunday, January 6th, 2019 – 7:22 am

    Morning all.

    Trump runs face first into his own border wall. If this whole saga hadn’t involved the govt shutting down and people being without pay over the festive period, it would be amusing to watch.

    The disconnect is at the heart of the dilemma facing Mr. Trump as he labors to find a way out of an impasse that has shuttered large parts of the government and cost 800,000 federal employees their pay. Having spent more than four years — first as a candidate and then as president — whipping his core supporters into a frenzy over the idea of building a border wall, Mr. Trump finds himself in a political box of his own making.

    In transforming the wall into a powerful emblem of his anti-immigration message, Mr. Trump has made the proposal politically untouchable for Democrats, who have steadfastly refused to fund it, complicating the chances of any compromise.

    “As a messaging strategy, it was pretty successful,” Mr. Krikorian said. “The problem is, you got elected; now what do you do? Having made it his signature issue, Trump handed the Democrats a weapon against him.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/us/politics/donald-trump-border-wall.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

    He’s supposed to be the worlds best deal maker, and Americans were going to get tired of all the winning. I wonder why the Democracts don’t beat him with a stick over that?

  44. Barney

    Thats accepting a political standard. Labor can directly link Dutton and others talking Melbourne Gangs to Nazis. TimWatts Labor MP has already done one tweet on this.

    This like supporting unions on penalty rates is one area I see no advantage to Labor in ignoring.

  45. Vic:

    I agree. Sadly I think impeachment has come to represent a partisan political tool rather than a genuine measure available to the Congress to hold the President to account.

  46. grimace:

    Plus he promised that Mexico would pay for the wall, so the obvious retort to his demands is to ask why does he need funding from the US govt for it?

  48. ScoMo is striding the fence, here. On a second reading he seems to be including the anti-Nazis (anti-racists) in the “racial protests” basket. 🙁

    I thank Vic police for their efforts dealing with the ugly racial protests we saw in St Kilda yesterday. Intolerance does not make Australia stronger.

  49. Barney

    All Labor has to do is say why is the LNP not condemning the terrosim of this far right Nazi Group. Where is the terror laws being applied?
    etc etc.

    Thats called putting the boot in. It also undoes a lot of the coming campaign rhetoric the LNP will rely on with their fear of terror union criminal thugs etc campaign.

  50. I am especially disheartened that our Prime Minister has not come out today and condemned the fascists at the rally yesterday who painted swastikas on a nearby Nursing Home which contained Holocaust Survivors!

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