Affairs of state

One finely crafted electoral news item for every state (and territory) that is or might ever conceivably have been part of our great nation.

A bone for every dog in the federation kennel:

New South Wales

Gladys Berejiklian has backed a move for the Liberal Party to desist from endorsing or financially supporting candidates in local government elections, reportedly to distance the state government from adverse findings arising from Independent Commission Against Corruption investigations into a number of councils. Many in the party are displeased with the idea, including a source cited by Linda Silmalis of the Daily Telegraph, who predicted “world war three” because many MPs relied on councillors to organise their numbers at preselections.

Victoria

The second biggest story in the politics of Victoria over the past fortnight has been the expose of the activities of Liberal Party operator Marcus Bastiaan by the Nine newspaper-and-television news complex, a neat counterpoint to its similar revelations involving Labor powerbroker Adem Somyurek in June. The revelations have been embarrassing or worse for federal MPs Michael Sukkar and Kevin Andrews, with the former appearing to have directed the latter’s electorate office staff to spend work time on party factional activities.

Together with then state party president Michael Kroger, Bastiaan was instrumental in establishing a conservative ascendancy with help from Bastiaan’s recruitment of members from Mormon churches and the Indian community. Having installed ally Nick Demiris as campaign director, Bastiaan’s fingerprints were on the party’s stridently conservative campaign at the 2018 state election, which yielded the loss of 11 lower house Coalition seats. Religious conservatives led by Karina Okotel, now a federal party vice-president, then split from the Bastiaan network, complaining their numbers had been used to buttress more secular conservatives.

The Age’s report noted that “in the days leading up to the publication of this investigation, News Corporation mastheads have run stories attacking factional opponents of Mr Bastiaan and Mr Sukkar”. Presumably related to this was a report on Okotel’s own party activities in The Australian last weekend, which was long on emotive adjectives but short on tangible allegations of wrongdoing, beyond her having formed an alliance with factional moderates after the split.

Queensland

There are now less than two months to go until the October 31 election, which is already awash with Clive Palmer’s trademark yellow advertising targeting Labor. Thanks the state’s commendable law requiring that donations be publicly disclosed within seven days (or 24 hours in the last week of an election campaign), as compared with over a year after the election at federal level (where only donations upwards of $14,000 need to be disclosed at all, compared with $1000 in Queensland), we are aware that Palmer’s companies have donated more than $80,000 to his United Australia Party. Liberal National Party sources cited by The Guardian say a preference deal has already been struck with Palmer’s outfit, although others in the party are said to be “furious” and “concerned” at the prospect of being tarred with Palmer’s brush.

Western Australia

I have nothing to relate here, which is worth noting in and itself, because the near total absence of voting intention polling from the state since Mark McGowan’s government came to power in 2017 is without modern historical precedent. This reflects the demise of the aggregated state polling that Newspoll used to provide on a quarterly basis in the smaller states (bi-monthly in the larger ones), and an apparent lack of interest in voting intention polling on behalf of the local monopoly newspaper, which offers only attitudinal polling from local market research outfit Painted Dog Research.

The one and only media poll of the term was this one from YouGov Galaxy in the Sunday Times in mid-2018, showing Labor with a lead of 54-46, slightly below the 55.5-44.5 blowout it recorded in 2017. With Newspoll having recorded Mark McGowan’s approval rating at 88% in late June, it can be stated with confidence that the gap would be quite a bit wider than that if a poll were conducted now. The West Australian reported in late July that Utting Research, which has conducted much of Labor’s internal polling over the years, had Labor leading 66-34, which would not sound too far-fetched to anyone in tune with the public mood at present. The next election is to be held on March 13.

South Australia

I have been delinquent in not covering the publication of the state’s draft redistribution a fortnight ago, but Ben Raue at The Tally Room has it covered here and here, complete with easily navigable maps.

These are the first boundaries drawn since the commissioners were liberated from the “fairness provision” which directed them to shoot for boundaries that would deliver a majority to the party with the largest two-party vote. This proved easier said than done, with three of Labor’s four election wins from 2002 and 2014 being achieved without it. The commissioners used the wriggle room allowed them in the legislation to essentially not even try in 2014, before bending other backwards to tilt the playing field to the Liberals in 2018, who duly won a modest majority from 51.9%.

By the Boundaries Commission’s own reckoning, there would have been no difference to the outcome of the 2018 election if it had held under the proposed new boundaries. Nonetheless, the Liberals have weakened in three seats where they are left with new margins of inside 1%: Elder, where their margin is slashed from 4.5% to 0.1%; Newland, down from 2.1% to 0.4%; and Adelaide, down from 1.1% to 0.7%. Their only notable compensation is an increase in their margin in King from 0.8% to 1.5%, and a cut in Labor’s margin in Badcoe from 5.6% to 2.0%.

Tasmania

Local pollster EMRS has published its quarterly state voting intention poll, which reflects Newspoll in finding voters to be over the moon with Premier Peter Gutwein, who came to the job just in time for COVID-19 to hit the fan when Will Hodgman retired in January. Over three polls, the Liberal vote has progressed from 43% to 52% to 54%; Labor has gone from 34% to 28% to 24%; and the Greens have gone from 12% to 10% and back again. Gutwein now leads Labor’s Rebecca White by 70% to 23% as preferred premier, out from 63-26 last time (and 41-39 to White on Gutwein’s debut in March). The poll was conducted by phone from August 18 to 24.

Northern Territory

With the last dregs of counting being conducted from now through Friday, fully our of the 25 seats in the Northern Territory remain in doubt following the election the Saturday before last, with current margins ranging from seven to 18 votes. However, the actual election result is well and truly done and dusted, with Labor having 13 seats in the bag. You can follow the action on my dedicated post, which includes live updating of results.

Australian Capital Territory

Not that I have anything particular to say about it at this point, but the Australian Capital Territory is the next cab off the election rank with polling day on October 17, a fortnight before Queensland.

New Zealand

Do Kiwi nationalists complain of being treated like the seventh state in Australia? Well, they can now, as I have a new Roy Morgan poll to relate ahead of their election which will, like that of the ACT, be held on October 17, with the originally anticipated date of September 19 being pushed back due to its recent COVID-19 flare-up. If this poll is any guide, this may have knocked a coat of paint off Labour without in any way endangering Jacinda Ardern’s government.

Labour is now at 48%, down from 53.5% last month, with National up two to 28.5%. The Greens are up from 8% to 11.5%, and do notably better out of this poll series than rivals Colmar Brunton and Reid Research, which show them struggling to keep their head above the 5% threshold that guarantees them seats in parliment under the country’s mixed-member proportional representation system. New Zealand First remain well below it at 2.5%, albeit that this is up a point on last month, while the free-market liberal ACT New Zealand party is clear of it on 6%, down half a point. The poll was conducted by phone from a sample of 897 “during August”.

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.

1,590 comments on “Affairs of state”

Comments Page 6 of 32
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  2. Barney in Tanjung Bunga @ #233 Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020 – 12:14 pm

    Player One @ #216 Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020 – 9:54 am

    From the Guardin live blog:

    Australia officially in recession for first time in 29 years

    The GDP number has landed down under and it’s ugly – the Australian economy shrank 7% in the second quarter of the year. It is the biggest contraction ever experienced and is higher than forecast by the treasury (it had pencilled in 6%). The previous biggest fall on record had been 2% in June 1974.

    No surprise, but it must be stressed that the first quarter was largely before the pandemic hit.

    Yes, but the media don’t like to point that one out.

    It was the virus wot did it, guv!

  3. Tesla then committed to boosting its size by an extra 50 per cent to 150 megawatts or 194 megawatt hours against a backdrop of South Australia’s ambition to hit a target of net 100 per cent renewables by 2030. The battery was the world’s largest for several years but a new Californian 250MW facility now holds bragging rights.

    Great. Can Tesla now reduce the price of their batteries to what they were before the SA gov subsidy started?

    Their share price is at record highs. Surely they dont need to be skimming extra cream off their battery sales.

  4. Anthony Galloway
    @Gallo_Ways
    Thousands more Australians registered as wanting to come home over past two weeks
    Thousands more Australians stuck overseas, DFAT confirms
    About 20,000 Australians stranded overseas now want to come home, thousands more than two weeks ago, as the government weighs up measures to bring citizens back.
    smh.com.au
    12:30 PM · Sep 2, 2020·Twitter Web App

  6. Malcolm Turnbull????????
    Talk about rewriting history!

    Ha! Yes. I missed that in the post. WTF?

    The name must be on my automatic skim list.

  7. Non @ #224 Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020 – 12:05 pm

    WA is one of the world’s great gas provinces. But that is not enough for us. We also want change and we will get it, notwithstanding the opposition of the Liberals and their sidekicks.

    We eagerly await this popular uprising by the New Progressives of the west.

    How many federal seats do you think the LNP will lose over there? All of them by the sounds of it. Fantastic!

    Meanwhile, in the real world….

  8. They have no shame. Absolutely none.

    Stephen Spencer
    @sspencer_63
    ·
    2h
    Extreme? The same laws every other state has? But doesn’t need parliamentary review to implement? What an embarrassing take.
    Quote Tweet

    Matt Bach MP
    @bach_mp
    · 3h
    Shattered that we could not defeat Labor’s extreme State of Emergency laws last night.

    Labor got the numbers (just, 20-19) after doing secret deals with the Greens and two other cross benchers.

    We should never forget this outrageous affront to our democracy.

    #springst
    Show this thread

  12. Interesting that the contraction in the June quarter was biggest in NSW which just pipped Victoria.

    So, if the government goes for the “ it is all the fault of that socialist state Victoria “ then it will be very interesting. NSW must be run by a closet socialist government itself one could argue.

  14. Spray @ #256 Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020 – 12:44 pm

    Non @ #224 Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020 – 12:05 pm

    WA is one of the world’s great gas provinces. But that is not enough for us. We also want change and we will get it, notwithstanding the opposition of the Liberals and their sidekicks.

    We eagerly await this popular uprising by the New Progressives of the west.

    How many federal seats do you think the LNP will lose over there? All of them by the sounds of it. Fantastic!

    Meanwhile, in the real world….

    Briefly likes making elaborate excuses for climate inaction.

  17. This Adam Creighton from the Oz has shown himself to be a truly nasty piece of excrement

    Chris Edmond
    @chrisedmond
    ·
    3h
    To be absolutely clear, this from Adam is literal *misinformation* circulated by conspiracy theorists and widely debunked. That he keeps repeating this lazy misinformation when a moment’s research would expose it tells you everything you need to know.

    https://washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/31/trump-tweet-coronavirus-death-toll/?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social
    Quote Tweet

    Adam Creighton
    @Adam_Creighton
    · 17h
    Replying to @LaTrioli
    https://cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
    I directly quoted the CDC website from their 26 August update.
    “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned”.
    How is that wrong?

  18. Chris Edmond
    @chrisedmond
    Can we now put the whole Sweden thing to bed?

    Swedish GDP in the quarter to June 2020 fell by 8.3%. According to the national accounts just released, Australian GDP over the same period fell by 7.0%. Better (less bad) economic outcomes and far far better health outcomes.
    11:59 AM · Sep 2, 2020·Twitter Web App
    126
    Retweets
    8
    Quote Tweets
    290
    Likes

  19. Fberg, is just reeling out numbers.
    This will work. The CPG don’t have the smarts or will to challenge these numbers effectively. Or talk about what they mean long term.

  22. Swedish GDP in the quarter to June 2020 fell by 8.3%.

    They left their borders open didnt they?

    Be great for someone to delve into the plus and minus of our international border closures on Australian GDP. International Tourism is a small but significant part of our GDP. However, I think I read that Australians spend more OS than international visitors spend here. Tradies in residential renos are telling me clients (with jobs) have wads cash to spend on their house renos as they are not spending it in NZ, Bali etc.

  24. The Treasurer lost control of the flow of slides there for a moment and had a “WTF does that one represent?” moment reminiscent of one of my powerpoint presentations.


  26. Taylormade says:
    Wednesday, September 2, 2020 at 1:04 pm

    Doyley.
    Sept qtr will provide a better comparison between Vic and Nsw.

    As the quarter just released had little to do with the Victorian 2nd wave, yet the federal government carried on about the Victorian lock down pretty must shows you what the federal government is little focused on reality wouldn’t you say?

    Do you support these clowns because it is your job or are you in an alternate universe?

  27. Shane Wright, Michael Pascoe and Ross Gittins will do a fair analysis of the numbers, even if Scott Morrecession and Josh Frydebudget won’t.

  28. It appears the government is going to with the “ job maker” bullshit as the plan for recovery.

    What are the details of jobmaker sector by sector ?

    What are the policies in each sector that will drive recovery and create jobs ?

    How much will be budgeted by the government for jobmaker ?

    Has any aspect of jobmaker been implemented to date ?

    If so, how much has already been expended on jobmaker ?

    If not, when are you going to pull the finger out and start ?

    So much to answer.

  29. Jeebus. A B rated poll in Michigan shows Hawkins getting 1%. About the same as Stein got in 2016.

    I have no ‘blog acceptable’ words for this.

  33. A minor miracle. Power’s back on, hooked up again, because the guys were “just down at the corner”. One of them was a tubby Welshman whose accent I found hard to understand. Charming, though.

  36. ‘Morrecession and Frydebudget’
    Classic.
    Get it out there folks.

    Yeah, you know what’s really going to propel Labor into government at the next election? Cringey portmanteaus.

  37. Lizzie,
    No one was impressed by josh, There was a good question.
    To get back to surplus / normal. We required 1% above trend growth for 5 years. That hasn’t happened since the 60’s.

    And then josh said their response will be ‘job maker’

    So there’s a gap. Time for labor and the greens to remind everyone they’d be building a nature of the future to get us out of this hole.

  38. It appears the government is going to with the “ job maker” bullshit as the plan for recovery.

    Jobkeeper was blunt and needed restructuring months ago. Part time staff found themselves earning the same as full time staff while working half the hours. A monumental waste of money considering how many people were being laid off around the place. That money could have gone into far more targetted projects that would indeed have created jobs. Or allowed the feds to keep jobseeker higher for longer.

    And dont get me started on the useless joke homebuilder program.

  39. Morrison is deliberately lying in the house of reps claiming that the recession was caused by the corona virus

    Not by the incompetence before the corona virus by Morrison and his cronies

    Morrison is now bellowing , this is where Labor needs someone like Senator Carr in the house to counter the bellowing

  40. Here is an article on Swedish efforts.

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2251615-is-swedens-coronavirus-strategy-a-cautionary-tale-or-a-success-story/

    I have lived there. I rate counties from ordered to chaotic. Sweden is ordered, Italy is towards the chaotic end and in my view Australia is in the middle.

    In Sweden if there is a don’t walk sign and no cars, all the pedestrians wait. In Italy if there is a walk sign take care, the cars don’t stop. In Australia the cars stop but the pedestrians decide if it safe based on the cars present and sign state.

    You don’t need a lock down to get Swedes to stay home.

    The outcomes in my view reflect my chaotic index better than the actions taken by the government.
    You saw that in Melbourne, isolation and thus movement was falling well before the lockdown.

    Three counties I have been to that score low on my chaotic index ( all I like but I would never live there) are Sweden, Singapore and Japan all have brought it under control in one way or another.

  41. AFL grand final will be at the GABBA on 24th October, 2020

    As a cricket fan who has endured many different years of people complaining if the cricket broadcast schedule even slightly spills into March because it’s “intruding” in on footy season, let me just say this: WAAAAAAH! THAT’S CRICKET SEASON!

  42. It is not incorrect to say Victoria is dragging the national economy down because it is. You cannot place restrictions on the second largest city and expect no impact on the data.

  43. Tesla has been spruiking September 22 as ‘Battery Day’ – with updates on their latest battery technology to be announced after the AGM. Rumours and tech talk suggest things like progress on output / weight ratios (400 Whrs/kilo on the horizon, the current Tesla 3 runs at 260 Eh/kg) something critical for battery powered planes, and the fabled million-mile battery, etc

    It’s all grist to the share price mill.

    Live streamed
    https://www.tesla.com/en_au/2020shareholdermeeting

  44. Rational Leftist says:
    Wednesday, September 2, 2020 at 2:05 pm

    AFL grand final will be at the GABBA on 24th October, 2020

    As a cricket fan who has endured many different years of people complaining if the cricket broadcast schedule even slightly spills into March because it’s “intruding” in on footy season, let me just say this: WAAAAAAH! THAT’S CRICKET SEASON!

    ——————————————
    Lets just hope there isn’t a Brisbane style downpour because the footballers wont know what has hit them.

  47. Rational Leftist @ #284 Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020 – 2:01 pm

    ‘Morrecession and Frydebudget’
    Classic.
    Get it out there folks.

    Yeah, you know what’s really going to propel Labor into government at the next election? Cringey portmanteaus.

    No what’s going to propel Labor into government is dismantling the myth around the coalition’s economic credentials and that includes anything which causes people to question and doubt, anything which gives people pause to think, gee, I didn’t realise/know that…..eg, was Australia heading for recession before Covid?
    In other words, it can’t hurt.
    It might not be as effective as ‘Electricity Bill’ or ‘Kevin o’Lemon’ but it’s a start.
    Timid is as timid does.

  50. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/02/joe-bidens-bold-climate-policies-would-leave-australia-behind

    This month the US Democrats wrapped up polling in Pennsylvania, a north-east industrial state that four years ago went to Donald Trump by 44,000 votes. Among other things the polling found that voters didn’t like Trump’s deregulation of methane. Voters supported a phasing out of fossil fuels.

    This is happy news for Democrats given that Biden has already committed to impose “aggressive new methane limits” on gas and oil operations by presidential executive action on day one of his presidency. This was set out in his clean energy and environmental justice plan. It embraces decarbonisation as part of an economic rebuild.

    During the primaries he spoke about $1.7tn over 10 years. But in a 14 July landmark speech he crammed $2tn into a mere four years, pitched in terms of more “high paying union jobs” generated in a swiftly decarbonising economy.

    Canberra needs to catch up with this because it threatens to leave us at odds with an American administration defining itself through climate diplomacy, something Biden signalled with a Foreign Affairs article in March.

    Albanese needs to detach Labor from Fitzgibbons fossil fuel cartel and end the Green wedge.

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