Phony war communiques

A pre-campaign assembly of polling and scuttlebutt about the respective parties’ prospects for an election that must surely be called very soon.

The window for a May 11 election has passed, which would seem to narrow it down to May 18 or May 25, with the former seeming more likely given concerns expressed in the past about the latter. Some details on where things may or may not stand:

• Roy Morgan has published its weekly face-to-face poll result, normally available only to subscribers, but occasionally sent out in the wild when its proprietor has a point to make. This time, it’s that the government’s position has improved post-budget, with the Labor lead not at 52.5-47.5, from 55-45 last week (it may be observed that the organisation wasn’t duly excited by any of the results that got Labor to that position in the first place). On the primary vote, the Coalition was up 2.5% to 37%, Labor down 1.5% to 35%, the Greens up 1% to 13.5% (Morgan sharing Ipsos’s apparent skew to the Greens) and One Nation up half a point to 4%. The poll was conducted on the weekend from a face-to-face sample of 829 respondents.

• Michael Koziol of the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the weekend of Liberal polling that was “diabolically bad” for Tony Abbott in Warringah. Abbott’s primary vote is said to be down 12% on his 51.6% in 2016, which would indeed leave him a fair way short of competitive. Nonetheless, Liberal sources quoted by Koziol were optimistic Abbott would hang on, in part because of “a $1 million war chest from fundraising and his Advance Australia lobby group allies”. Whether that confidence remains intact now they have had a look at how Advance Australia plans on spending that money is not yet known.

• Other than that, the Liberals appear upbeat about their prospects in New South Wales. The Sydney Morning Herald reports optimism Kerryn Phelps’s win in Wentworth will prove to have been a one-off, now that voters there have vented their spleen about the removal of Malcolm Turnbull. Furthermore, the Sydney Morning Herald report says the Liberals believe they are in front in Lindsay – a claim that is both corroborated by Labor sources, and fleshed out in a report yesterday by Andrew Clennell of The Australian, which says the party’s polling credits them with a lead of 53-47. Clennell’s Liberal sources were particularly bullish, claiming leads in Dobell – on which Koziol’s source was more circumspect – and also to have the lead in their existing seats of Reid, Gilmore and Robertson. A Nationals source cited in Clennell’s report believes the party to be “marginally ahead” in their Mid North Coast seat of Page.

• Nonetheless, Labor is reportedly hopeful of maintaining the status quo in New South Wales, considering that Gilmore or Reid might balance a loss in Lindsay (apparently not rating a mention is Banks, which I for one would have thought vulnerable). Beyond New South Wales, Labor “believes it will win at least nine – and probably more – elsewhere”. Ben Packham of The Australian reported on the week end that Labor feels too secure in Victoria to devote resources to any of its own seats, and will target five held by the Coalition with “full field” campaigns: Dunkley, Corangamite, La Trobe, Chisholm and Deakin.

• The Australian reports Nick Xenophon’s Centre Alliance will only field candidates in Mayo, which is held for the party by Rebekha Sharkie, along with Grey and Barker, where they have respectively endorsed Andrea Broadfoot and Kelly Gladigau. The party’s predecessor, the Nick Xenophon Team, polled 21.3% across South Australia in 2016, and finished second in Grey, Barker and Port Adelaide (the latter now abolished).

• Jamie Walker of The Australian notes that Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party, which has endorsed candidates in more seats than any party other than Labor, has nonetheless left open its Queensland Senate ticket and the Townsville-based seat of Herbert. Palmer earlier maintained he would run in Herbert, but few now expect that to happen, given the certainty he would fail there.

• There’s a redistribution in train in the Northern Territory, which Ben Raue at The Tally Room is on top of if you’re interested.

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.

740 comments on “Phony war communiques”

Comments Page 11 of 15
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  1. I got a weird nights sleep last night and later discovered why . Yep, Scomo was down here in Tasmania again pork barrelling Bass and Braddon again. Fake promises for health and Head Space (again). Funny that Head Space is also in Hobart (Independent electorate) but they get donuts.

    Dosen’t matter because the voters are used to the Coalition coming to the apple Isle, promising the world, and forgetting you the moment they get back on the plane. The more they do it, the more cynical even hard set Liberal voters become down here. That’s why they currently have 0 HOR members in Tassie

  2. “Being a christian surely Morrison won’t be calling the election during these 4 days good Friday 19th , easter saturday 20th , easter sunday 21th , easter Monday 22th”

    Easter Monday has no religious significance. We just need it because Jesus chose to rise on a Sunday (although some fundamentalists say it was another day). Catholics accord significance to Easter Saturday but I don’t think Evangelicals do. On Sunday Scott will be in church praying for some boats arrivals.

    So if the election is not this coming weekend it will be over Easter.

  4. New Republic @ #494 Wednesday, April 10th, 2019 – 7:17 pm

    I’m not convinced there is merit for counselling in domestic violence cases unless there is some form of intervention for the aggressor to get them to a state where they are ready to participate meaningfully in the counselling.

    —
    My experience as a counsellor/social worker tells me anecdotally that the best you can hope for it is to provide counselling to the perpetrator AFTER the relationship is over in the faint hope he/she wont do the same thing to their next relationship partner. Beyond that, is it winding dressing for Court cases and settlement proceedings.

  5. You would not believe what happened to me this week.
    On Friday evening I arrived home after a hard week’s yakka and some prick had stolen my weekend. No Saturday. No Sunday.
    So, straight back to work on Monday.
    But it went downhill from there.
    While I was at work on Monday, some prick stole me fourbyfour.

  7. Harry “Snapper” Organs @ #498 Wednesday, April 10th, 2019 – 7:21 pm

    I’m a clinical family therapist and I’m telling you right now it would be absolutely contraindicated to do counselling with the couple if there is a history of family violence, unless there were a lot of other interventions beforehand, and maybe not even then.
    I really hate how the COALition are lining up sinecures for their buddies and I wonder how on earth Labor can unwind some if not all of this.

    —

    Well said. Totally right on the money.

  8. Greetings from my new nbn internet connection. A Telstra technician was dispatched this morning to fix the buffering Node, and tonight: Node no longer buffering and the modem now works. Initial impressions are that it has a similar speed to what I had before, but the real test will come with watching movies and videos.

  9. But the really, really hard thing was this.
    My standard of living has been going down for years.
    The cost of living has gone up and up and up.
    My wages have been going down.
    And that is if some prick doesn’t indulge in pinching some of me hard-earned.
    Of course the same pricks stole my Super, my working conditions and my job security.
    And of course these same pricks stole my penalty rates.

    So now I don’t know what to think. Should I go after the bastards who stole my ute and my weekend? Or the bastards who are slowly but surely wrecking my life and that of my family?

  10. Confessions @ #508 Wednesday, April 10th, 2019 – 7:32 pm

    Greetings from my new nbn internet connection. A Telstra technician was dispatched this morning to fix the buffering Node, and tonight: Node no longer buffering and the modem now works. Initial impressions are that it has a similar speed to what I had before, but the real test will come with watching movies and videos.

    If you like numbers you could also try a speed test.
    https://www.speedtest.net/

  12. That Ucomm story is as interesting as the knowledge that Newspoll does work for Murdoch.

    Seriously – the ABC seems to have a form of Stockholm syndrome – doing the coalition’s bidding Even though they’ve bled them to the bone.

  16. Late Riser:

    Thanks for that, I was about to ask the PB brains trust for a link to speed test site. It would seem it is fractionally faster than what I had on ADSL 17Mbps download (vs 12Mbps on ADSL) and 4Mbps upload (vs about 1Mbps on old service).

  18. confessions
    Run this and you will quickly see what speeds your are pulling.
    https://www.speedtest.net/

    Choose a server that is NOT near you, those wont give indicative results about your effective speeds (unless you happen live near the major datacenters)

    Try a server in the US, or Europe, to really lament about our internet. But that’s more a problem with international routing.

    Generally, testing speed to an ISP hosted speedtest node that is within 100ms from you is useless.

  19. But 5G technology definitely appears to be very viable for an average user who doesn’t want a home phone/landline.

    Again, you are simply wrong.

  20. EB I’m in Victoria and with a number of colleagues have written and published on our work on sexual, physical and emotional abuse. You can find these in the Journal of Family Therapy, available online.


  25. Bucephalus says:
    Wednesday, April 10, 2019 at 6:48 pm

    Cud, I don’t recall that ever being said about 4G or 2G. But 5G technology definitely appears to be very viable for an average user who doesn’t want a home phone/landline.

    5G needs a cell every block; for most, it is not going to happen.

  26. The next election will be held on 2rd November 2019 and the Abbott and Turnbull and Morrison government will be returned with a big majority and our great country will be still in save hands..

    God help us if the ALP win that election as our borders will be opened up again and the budget will be back in the red in no time.

    The people smugglers trade will start again under ALP and they will spend like drunken sailors again so our budget will be in the red again

  27. “Firefox
    How are the costings for the UBI coming along?
    Any day now?”

    It’s telling that you seem to care more about the budget bottom line than you do about lifting people out of poverty. Typical right wing neoliberal thinking.

    But since you care more about the cost than helping people, maybe you should have done some Googling to find out what the Greens have proposed. The NSW Greens announced a UBI trial during the state election campaign that was fully costed. $55m over three years for 800 people to receive $700 a fortnight. A very small price to pay to help those most in need. The UBI would also replace many current Centrelink payments, so it’s a change in the way support is delivered, not an extra payment on top of Newstart. But I guess you’d rather give the big end of town tax breaks and keep the masses enslaved with the con of trickle down economics.

    In future, please do some research first before asking people to do it for you.

    NSW Greens UBI policy announcement: https://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/5942513/greens-plan-to-introduce-700-fortnightly-payment-trial-for-south-nowra-residents/

  28. I’d rather eat dog vomit than go to Las Vegas but it’s OK to stick a Vegas styled casino monster erection right on the waterfront in Sydney. No wonder NSW could sink Labor’s lead in the coming election. Geed, greed, greed.

  31. Just tried the speedtest.net thingy. (The Hills Shire Sydney-cable/bigpond). Result:
    9ms Ping; 93.9 mb/s download, 5.19 mb/s upload.
    Don’t tell Telstra.

  32. “The next election will be held on 2rd November 2019 and the Abbott and Turnbull and Morrison government will be returned with a big majority and our great country will be still in save hands..”

    Are you ok? You’ve cut and pasted this same paragraph about five times already today. You love the Libs. We get it lol.

  36. a r

    “By 2023, for instance, there are expected to be roughly 1.3 billion global subscribers to these high-speed mobile networks, according to CCS Insight, a technology research company.

    More than half of those users, or roughly 720 million subscribers, will be in China, while a further 220 million people will be signed up in the U.S”

    But they clearly don’t know what they are talking about. Apparently.

  37. “Wow I just changed the server to Adelaide and got a whopping 23Mbps download.”
    Which is useless, because noone hosts services in Adelaide lol.
    Apart from maybe some private business ‘on-site’ servers

  38. ABC TV News “can reveal” – in the first episode of its crack investigative series that uncovers the seamy side to the election – that polling company Ucomm is owned by “two unions”, confusing the ACTU with being “a union”. The ACTU is a “council” not a union.

    But anyway, after a lot of creepy, underexposed shots of documents, guilty-looking mug shots and close-ups of serious young journalists looking earnest, the report states thare’s no law against unions owning polling companies. Who knew?

    And here’s the kicker, we’re told it’s OK to own a polling company as long as you disclose who owns it.

    “Look up the ASIC register!” I hear youse say. Well, the ABC did. And guess what? All directorships and shareholdings are RIGHT THERE FOR EVERYONE TO SEE.

    But apparently – shock, horror – there’s no mention of who owns Ucomm on Ucomm’s web site. Just like Newspoll and Reachtel, I guess, but hey, UNIONS BOO!

    Seriously, this is so much bullshit by the ABC. Let’s put it this way: on the day I see “Sir” Lynton Crosby taken apart in prime time television, the Lib Dirt Unit named and exposed, or a timeslot devoted to how Lachlan Murdoch has set out to rape democracy on three connbents, complete with scary graphics, nodding journo heads and scratchily reproduced documents filling the screen, I might take notice.

    But until then… argofuckyourselves ABC News.

  39. @Bucephalus

    China is a terrible example considering their great firewall.
    Annnnd still doesnt stop it being a red herring scam proposed as a solution by conservative technophobes.

    China has quite sophisticated fiber networks, particularly in its tech hubs (obviously)

  40. Zeh @ #62 Wednesday, April 10th, 2019 – 6:00 pm

    “Wow I just changed the server to Adelaide and got a whopping 23Mbps download.”
    Which is useless, because noone hosts services in Adelaide lol.
    Apart from maybe some private business ‘on-site’ servers

    I tried a server in Bali and got substantially lower speeds, lower even than in Perth.

  41. “FF
    So, how are the costings for the UBI going?”

    You’d be better off on Twitter mate. Trolls like you who lack the ability to come up with a substantial argument are a dime a dozen there.

  42. It seems like a lifetime ago, perhaps it was. Internet was still a funny word you had to stop for. I wrote a little program to randomly pull text from a database and post it at the bottom of a web page. It was good text. The page was a good page. Somewhere there’s a page with Wayne’s name on it.

  45. @Confessions
    Try one in LA
    Likely a frequent destination for most services. (Google DNS for example)
    The CDN and proxy environment has definitely improved however, speeding up a lot of online content for us locally, and datacenters in Melbourne and Sydney are helping. But our international pipes are still rubbish


  48. Bucephalus says:
    Wednesday, April 10, 2019 at 7:59 pm

    a r

    “By 2023, for instance, there are expected to be roughly 1.3 billion global subscribers to these high-speed mobile networks, according to CCS Insight, a technology research company.

    More than half of those users, or roughly 720 million subscribers, will be in China, while a further 220 million people will be signed up in the U.S”
    …

    Chine has a lot of city blocks with a lot of people. Australia has a few. It is a technology unsuited to what the country is.

  49. Confessions, please tell me if this is patronising. I don’t mean to be. But the speed you get from a server to your computer will depend on where the server is and how it is connected via the “internet” to you. A nearby server should give you better speed because there are less bottlenecks. But not always. The point that Zeh I think is making is that your useful speed will depend on where the stuff you want is, not where any test server is. So once you know where the stuff is that you want, then testing a server that is also in that area will give you a more meaningful number. But what you’ve established at least is that your “raw” speed is reasonable. So that’s encouraging.

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