Federal election plus five weeks

An already strong result for government in the Senate may be about to get even better, as Cory Bernardi eyes the exit. And yet more on the great pollster failure.

I had a paywalled article in Crikey on the conclusion of the Senate election result, which among other things had this to say:

The Coalition went into the election with 31 senators out of 76 and comes out with 35 — and may be about to go one better if there is anything behind suggestions that Cory Bernardi is set to rejoin the Liberal Party. That would leave the government needing the support of only three crossbenchers to win contested votes.

That could be achieved with the two votes of the Centre Alliance plus that of Jacqui Lambie, who is newly restored to the Senate after falling victim to the Section 44 imbroglio in late 2017. Lambie appears to be co-operating closely with the Centre Alliance, having long enjoyed a warm relationship with the party’s founder Nick Xenophon.

Such a voting bloc would relieve the Morrison government of the need to dirty its hands in dealing with One Nation — though it could certainly do that any time the Centre Alliance members felt inspired to take liberal positions on such issues as asylum seekers and expansion of the national security state.

Since then, talk of Cory Bernardi rejoining the Liberal Party has moved on to suggestions he will leave parliament altogether, creating a casual vacancy that would stand to be filled by the Liberal Party. Bernardi announced he would deregister his Australian Conservatives party on Thursday following its failure to make an impression at the election, and told Sky News the next day that it “might be best for me to leave parliament in the next six months”, although he also said he was “unresolved”. Paul Starick of The Advertiser reports that sources on both sides of the SA Liberal Party’s factional divide say the front-runner would be Georgina Downer, daughter of the former Foreign Minister and twice-unsuccessful lower house candidate for Mayo. The party’s Senate tickets usually pair moderate and Right faction members in the top two positions, and Downer would take a place for the Right that was filled in 2016 by Bernardi, with the other incumbent up for re-election in 2022 being moderate-aligned Simon Birmingham.

In other news, Simon Jackman and Luke Mansillo of the University of Sydney have posted slides from a detailed conference presentation on the great opinion poll failure. Once you get past the technical detail on the first few slides, this shows trend measures that attempt to ascertain the true underlying position throughout the parliamentary term, based on both polling and the actual results from both 2016 and 2019. This suggests the Coalition had its nose in front in Malcolm Turnbull’s last months, and that Labor only led by around 51-49 after he was dumped. An improving trend for the Coalition began in December and accelerated during the April-May campaign period. Also included is an analysis of pollster herding effects, which were particularly pronounced for the Coalition primary vote during the campaign period. Labor and Greens primary vote readings were more dispersed, in large part due to Ipsos’s pecularity of having low primary votes for Labor (accurately, as it turned out) and high ones for the Greens (rather less so).

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.

1,716 comments on “Federal election plus five weeks”

Comments Page 4 of 35
1 … 3 4 5 … 35

  1. lizzie says:
    Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 11:24 am
    briefly

    The voters that moved in the election, by very substantial margins, moved to the Right on jobs and the cost of living.
    The Coal promises on both were just hot air. Wouldn’t it be more productive for Labor to attack the Libs on those two subjects, You know, like a real Opposition?

    Absolutely correct. We have to campaign on jobs, the cost-of-living, income security, economic stability, social services/health/education…..as well as the environment.

    This is enough for any self-respecting Opposition to be going on with. Unless we do this we will lose. That is to say, we will continue to lose. We have won just 1 election in the last 8. We won in 2007 only to see the government fail before our eyes. The last time we elected a strong and successful Labor Government was in the 1980s. A lot of voters were not even born then. Time is running out for Labor….and it is on the side of the Reactionaries.

  2. I will be away for a few days so one ,more comment on transport before I go – trackless trams. See
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Rail_Rapid_Transit

    I have said before they are a scam. That may have been too harsh. But they are certainly overhyped and the reality is far less than claimed. They are a big bus similar to what is proposed for the Brisbane “Metro” (i.e. busway). Like Brisbane Metro there are many problems. After two years of promotion there is one small pilot project in Zhuzhou, the city that makes them. Nobody else has bought them, even in China, the world’s most active PT market. As an engineer I still cannot find out how much one weighs. (The claimed figure is impossible). Their capacity is much less than claimed (less than a Melbourne E class tram) and their cost much higher than claimed. They need a wider than average lane (3.83 metres) that rules them out for most narrow roads in Australian inner cities. Outer suburban they may be OK. Their autonomous guidance system does not work yet. I think a fair description of them would be “a large, articulated bus proposal still under development”.

  3. We have to campaign on jobs, the cost-of-living, income security, economic stability, social services/health/education…..as well as the environment.
    ____________
    Wow what a revolutionary plan Briefly. Campaign on the things you’ve always campaigned on. Brilliant!

  4. guytaur, you call for Labor to elevate fear in the minds of the community. The Greens and the Liberals manufacture fear on an industrial scale. It works for them. Labor had some success using fear in 2016. But I reckon voters who are afraid on economic issues will vote for the Right. They’ve done it many times. They just did it again.

    Labor have to be very careful with fear. This time the elevation of fear drove voters to the National Socialist/ON flag.

    I’m very serious about this. I know about racism, persecution, dispossession, exile, the theft of children, the politics of blame and punishment, the political use of shame and humiliation. These are the weapons of choice of the Right. They are getting stronger. They just had a very good win. Labor has not had such low support since the phase in Australian history prior to WW1.

    I am absolutely serious when I say we are fucked.

    We absolutely must get our shit together.

  5. BB

    This also applies to inheritors – their children – who would like to see those nest eggs preserved as much as possible… for them.

    And in spades for the Boomers. Waay back Howard considered people paying part of their aged care with money from the family home. It was hilarious reading the convolutions people were getting into arguing how awful it was as it always, between the lines, came down to them not getting it all when their parents died.Howard soon realised it was a ‘3rd rail’ for the grasperationals.

  6. briefly

    You keep punching left and demonising the Greens and ignoring the demons on your right and you keep losing. Just as Nath has pointed out. Doing the same thing has proven you lose elections doing it.

  7. A long read, but interesting discussion on DV and possible forward action.

    Women, Ms Gillespie said, were suddenly calling in to say that awareness campaigns were making their abusers more volatile: “Can you get them to stop the ad on TV”, they’d beg, “Can you ask them to stop talking about family violence? Because every time he sees that ad he goes nuts.”

    And that, Hill says, is the predicament — the “cruel twist” — we now face in 2019.

    “The increased attention on men’s violence” — once again amplified, this time by the #MeToo movement — “may actually be making perpetrators more dangerous,” she writes in See What You Made Me Do, her gripping new book about power, control and domestic abuse.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-23/jess-hill-domestic-violence-cruel-twist-abusive-men/11188842

  8. In April Briefly was calling the election as a generational rout of the Liberals. He was as wrong then as he is now with all his doom and gloom. He’s just always wrong. The same loose wires that caused his over-confidence are also causing this funk. He should do as Geroge Costanza did, which is to do the opposite of whatever he is thinking, because after a life of bad decisions, George accepted that whatever his thinking was, the opposite of that was invariably the correct path.

  9. Socrates says:
    Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 11:40 am

    I will be away for a few days so one ,more comment on transport before I go – trackless trams. I have said before they are a scam. That may have been too harsh.

    I’ve had some strong advice that they work….great ride, cheap to construct, suitable for the sprawl, will reduce commuter traffic, congestion, fully electric with on-board batteries….should be positive for urban economies….

    I’m interested to hear the sceptic’s view too.

    We have plenty of road reserves in Perth that would be ample for TT….could serve about 2/3 of the population…

  10. guytaur, the fallacy in your thinking is to suppose the Greens are Left. They’re not. They are an anti-worker outfit. They politically exploit working people all the time.

  11. especially considering the amount of times Briefly has said he has been homeless. To lose shelter once is unfortunate, to continue to find oneself bereft of a roof is, to misquote a famous personage, rather careless. If Briefly had done the opposite of those life choices, perhaps he would not have ended up on the steets so often.

  12. briefly

    The fallacy in your thinking is that demonising the Greens is a good thing. Every time you do this you feed the climate deniers the Greens are extremist tropes. You are doing the work of the climate deniers.

  13. I do not demonise the Greens. It is correct to describe them as Labor’s foes. They describe themselves that way. That does not make them demons. They hope to defeat Labor and prevent Labor from achieving office. They say so themselves. They have never denied it. It’s purely commonsense to make this observation…that is, to make a true statement about them. This is not demonising the Greens. It’s dealing with the objective reality.

  15. briefly

    You do exactly that. You demonise the Greens all the time. You turn issue based discussion into we can’t discuss that because the Greens might be for it into a Greens are bad for even mentioning a topic and how dare they be a party competing for votes.

    Its what you do.

  17. Nath, I do not know who you are. Nor do you know who I am. However, I entreat you to not blame a person for being homeless on more than one occasion in their life. It is repugnant!

  18. guytaur says:
    Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 12:01 pm
    briefly

    You do exactly that. You demonise the Greens all the time. You turn issue based discussion into we can’t discuss that because the Greens might be for it into a Greens are bad for even mentioning a topic and how dare they be a party competing for votes.

    This is characteristically wrong. I do not try to censor discussion. I do not lament the competition from the Greens. I accept it and respond to it. We have to defeat them precisely because of it.

  19. lizzie:

    I posted an article the other day positing that family and domestic violence by men is a gateway to political extremism. Very interesting.

  22. briefly
    “I’ve had some strong advice that they work….great ride, cheap to construct, suitable for the sprawl, will reduce commuter traffic, congestion, fully electric with on-board batteries….should be positive for urban economies….”

    That is simply too good to be true. I am aware of Peter Newman’s claims. Peter has seen the pilot system but he is a planner not an engineer, who has never designed or costed anything.

    As a minimum, the claim “cheap to construct” is BS. Electric buses are heavier than the diesels they replace, because the batteries (2+ tonnes) are heavier than a fuel tank (3/4 tonne for 600 litre). A bus that size will be no lighter than a tram, and will require a full depth asphalt or concrete road pavement to run on. Plus the running lane will be wider. The cost will be at least as high as a conventional busway. Compared to the Adelaide O-Bahn extension that probably means $50+ million per kilometre. They quote a cost of $5 million per kilometre in China. Nonsense. We can’t even build a single disabled access stop for that, if 30 metres long with comms and ITS. I am all for PT investment, but seriously, this is salesmanship. One thing though – the ride is good. that has been confirmed.
    Have a good day all.

  25. Lurking in the shadows
    says:
    Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 12:03 pm
    Nath, I do not know who you are. Nor do you know who I am. However, I entreat you to not blame a person for being homeless on more than one occasion in their life. It is repugnant!
    ______________________________
    I only have sympathy for the homeless. But a person who believes they have all the political answers, and who prescribes a mantra of doom can quite often be found on the streets. Often it is accompanied by a religious theme too.

  26. OK, here’s a policy to toss around.

    Assumption: many families who are accessing childcare are doing so because their mortgage repayments means it’s imperative they both work. In reality, they would prefer if one or both parents could spend more time at home with their young children.

    So —

    1. Structure bank loans (underwritten by the government) which allows a reduction of payments for a specified period (say, five years), linked to children’s ages.

    and/or

    2. Using the money which otherwise would go to childcare (for an equivalent family) as an underwriting fund, subsidise mortgage payments for a specified period (similar to HECS – to be paid back once the home is sold or added to the length of the mortgage).

    Meanwhile —

    A. Provide meaningful training for re entry into the workforce;

    And/or

    B. Encourage employers to employ people who have been out of the workforce with traineeships.

  28. AR

    Your reply to me is rubbish.

    1. You have clearly not read all my relevant posts, in which I have written thus : “crime” . Perhaps you just don’t understand the difference between writing c-r-i-m-e and “crime”.

    2. McManus spoke to Setka, Albanese did not. She demonstrated due diligence. He shot his mouth off.

    3. Who said that bad mouthing Ms Batty is a crime. Not me.

    4. The requirement for due process or natural justice is not confined to criminal matters. The definition goes something like “when some decision is capable of disadvantage get a person, they must be given opportunity to (a) be told what the matter is about and (b) be given the opportunity to reply”. The need for actual evidence at a prima facie level, is implicit in this.

    If he is expelled from the ALP, Setka will have the opportunity to take the matter to a tribunal.

    Either way, the whole thing is a mess and totally out of Albanese’s control. It’ll now either go quietly away if Labor and the MSM back off, or develop into a worse mess.

  29. Give us a break Briefly…………for the last 4-5 weeks we have had nothing but a litany of misery-guts comments from you. Along with Negative Nath and one or two others, this blog has become nothing more than an on-line dirge.
    I don’t know how old you are, but I remember 23 years with no Federal Labor government, I also remember when there was not one Labor administration anywhere in Oz and that old goat Charlie Court was gloating about the soon-to-be demised Labor party.
    I wish you and your continuous flow of bitter and gloom-laden comments would take a long walk off Busselton jetty.
    As an instance of just how misguided your comments are, it has been my observation that a whole heap of Green voters were former Labor voters – they feeling that Labor was not doing enough for the environment. These people would not vote Liberal in a fit. As well, your comments about defeating the Greens will sure as hell ensure Labor will never form government again as the vote for the Greens was more than double that of the Nationals.
    It is laughable that Labor somehow expect to take on the Greens and every party to the right of politics and expect to win.
    For goodness sake, attack the reactionary forces you claim are the ruin of this country rather than be like the hound which sits on a thorn, howls for attention but is too stupid to move from the thorn.

  30. Victoria

    Yes, I too have info on good authority.

    A friend whose cousin lives in Melbourne has told me that the cousin was talking to his best mate’s mother who is a cleaner at the building next door to the CFMMEU office. A fellow cleaner who actually cleans the CFMMEU office reports that a clerical person in the office told her that she reckons Setka did bad mouth Ms Batty.

    You now the pack drill …… no names, no numbers …… nod nod, wink wink.

  31. So now psyclaw admits that John Setka DID denigrate/’bad mouth’ Rosie Batty! Sheesh! Talk about crab-walking away from your original position at a million miles per hour!

    Anthony Albanese has NOT made a mess of this. His actions have been sure-footed and correct. Just admit that you were wrong, psyclaw, from the get-go with your stand on this.

  32. I am not defending Setka, just talking about processes.

    There is a huge difference between saying something in what you believe to be a private setting – and meetings can be that – and saying something in public.

    If you say something amongst ‘friends’ or fellow workmates which they find inacceptable then the internal processes of that organisation should come into force (whether it’s simply someone saying, “That’s unacceptable, mate” or the whole kaboodle of counselling etc.

    For an outsider, who isn’t part of that organisation, wasn’t in the room, etc to decide that what you’ve said is unacceptable for THEIR organisation isn’t good process.

  34. BB

    I like the idea. It would be good for Labor and the Greens to do out of government what they do in government. Learn practical ways to work together.

    However its not going to happen while Labor holds inner city seats. The Greens need those Labor does for its high profile leaders like Albanese. Maybe if they were not so high profile and Albo and Plibersek could move then Labor could in a formal coalition let the Greens have those and just win others elsewhere.

    Its not going to happen much as I think it would be great for progressive politics to heal that rift.

  36. zoomster

    Not competing in other inner city seats.

    However as I said its unlikely to happen. Precisely because the perception of what is needed for Labor is different for what is needed for the Greens. Even though letting the Greens have those seats would not mean less chance of government with Greens in a formal coalition.

  37. Not competing in other inner city seats.

    Which will occur when hell freezes over. The Greens will have had the scent of blood in their nostrils and they will want to replace Labor ultimately. As their founder and spiritual leader, Bob Brown, stated.

  38. Cat

    You conveniently ignore Bob Brown saying he would welcome the demise of the Greens if Labor took up the Green issues.

    Way to demonise. This is exactly the problem with the bickering on the left. Cherry picking to make a partisan point in a very narrow way. Rather than look at the big picture.

    This after I have just stated I think its not going to happen.

  39. guytaur @ #188 Sunday, June 23rd, 2019 – 1:03 pm

    Cat

    You conveniently ignore Bob Brown saying he would welcome the demise of the Greens if Labor took up the Green issues.

    Way to demonise. This is exactly the problem with the bickering on the left. Cherry picking to make a partisan point in a very narrow way. Rather than look at the big picture.

    And there’s your problem, guytaur. You are too one-eyed for The Greens these days. AS IF Labor are going to ‘take up Greens issues’. Why should The Greens demise occur then if Labor has become The Greens? The Greens would simply want to go on to bigger and better things in their eyes.

    Not. Going. To. Happen.

    Labor will never kowtow to The Greens. Labor gets families in the Exurbs. The Greens drive past them in their EVs on the way to a destructive date with continuing irrelevance to the lives of ordinary people.

  40. Cat

    The fact you talk about kowtowing to the Greens rather than addressing the increased chances of winning government says it all.

    Voters in inner city areas would vote Green. Labor can much more easily than the Greens win seats elsewhere. Not having to divert resources would be to Labor’s benefit and would increase chance of being the government.

    Thats the big picture. However you have your we are not going to kowtow to the Greens and keep losing elections with infighting benefiting the right attitude instead.

    Again before your response I said its not going to happen.

  41. lizzie
    Thanks for the link.
    I see that ‘Lang lang’ is listed as being in potential trouble from rising sea levels within the next couple of decades.
    I assume poor science reportage.
    Lang Lang township is on a hill and will not be affected by salt water intrusion for some centuries to come.
    It has a somewhat geographically dissociated holiday area around the erstwhile Lang Lang Jetty that is low lying and would be threatened by quite small rises in sea level. It is currently reinforced in various ways.
    The low-lying coastline to the north of where the jetty used to be has been eroding for over fifty years – probably because of changes to WesternPort’s seabed arising from the arrival of huge masses of silt, death of seagrass beds, and the clearance of mangroves. The silt and the seagrass death is probably linked and is a direct result of the clearing of South Gippsland’s mountain ash forests and to the drainage of the Great Kooweerup Swamp which used to filter much of the water flowing out of the Lang Lang and Bunyip rivers. The mangroves were harvested for potash production and and/or cleared to provide views for holiday people in holiday houses.
    Quite a large area to area north and north-west from the site of the Lang Lang jetty is protected from storm surges /tidal surges by a system of levee banks.

  42. – – Absolutely correct. We have to campaign on jobs, the cost-of-living, income security, economic stability, social services/health/education…..as well as the environment. – –
    Not to mention good governance, probity, corruption.

    It is essential the ALP stand their ground on their Environment policies. Especially around climate change and the EPA. That doesnt mean you have to campaign so hard on it you end up making it ‘you are either for it or against us’ campaign. When you campaign like that it allows the Right to work up their tribal/cultural grandstanding. It allows them to enthuse and anger their base who end up voting via crowd behaviour.

    Yet I still find you overly pessimistic briefly. Pollster error had a role to play in the bad decisions made in ALP campaign and policy tactics. And you cant underestimate the problems of a leader unable to cut through the bias in the media. You say the ALP have won 1 of 8 elections. You are being selective.
    1983-1996 ALP 13 years
    1996-2007 LNP 11 years
    2007-2013 ALP 6 years
    20013-??? LNP 9+ years

    Either 2013 or 2019 are aberrations – sort of – to be analysed and worked on. But not one to despair over.

  43. Boerwar

    The clearance of “dirty mangroves” up the coast pleases tidy minded councillors, who rarely understand the consequences.

  44. lizzie
    I know some folk who raise and plant mangroves seedlings. They reckon they have a bugger of a time stopping local homeowners from going out and pulling out the plants.
    That said, the area of mangrove recolonization is growing.
    The changes in distribution of seagrass over the past half century is far more complicated.
    Still, bores that drilled down into the ancient sediments in the Koo Wee Rup swamp routinely picked up marine worm casts and the like.
    It might all be going back to the future…

  45. Some areas ‘get’ mangroves. Some of the fishing towns in Northern NSW get it and now protect their mangroves. I had to work through one in the early 2000’s and I was not allowed to break a branch!

  48. Voters in inner city areas would vote Green. Labor can much more easily than the Greens win seats elsewhere.

    wRONg.

    In the electorate of Sydney:

    Tanya Plibersek (MP) ALP
    Vote:68.7% 65,110
    +3.4%

    Matthew Thompson The Greens
    Vote:18.1% 17,134
    -0.7%

    You might have voted for Matthew Thompson but 0.7% of former Greens voters in the inner city seat of Sydney, switched their vote, probably to Labor, from the 2016 election.

    Without looking it up I think the same applied to Grayndler in 2019.

    Labor aren’t going to give those seats up just to appease The Greens.

  50. Cat

    In the big scheme of things who cares if they are Green or Labor seats if you are in government. Thats the point you are wailing about. No big picture from you and looking at the fact voters in those areas would vote Green. We know this from voters in the area views if Labor was not running.

    My comments have nothing to do with “appeasing” “kowtowing” or any other adjective you want to make. Its about whats more likely to have a progressive government than not.

    As I have said to you its not going to happen and on that we both agree so I don’t know why you have such a bee in your bonnet over this hypothetical.

Comments Page 4 of 35
1 … 3 4 5 … 35

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *