Hello Newman

An eventful weekend bequeaths Queensland a by-election result and an unexpected new Senate election candidate.

I had a piece yesterday on Campbell Newman’s break with the Liberal National Party and plans to run for the Senate in Crikey, which I believe has its paywall down for a limited time only. The upshot is that Newman’s anti-lockdown message may struggle to gain traction in a state that hasn’t had many of them; that he is unlikely to benefit the conservative cause even if he wins; and that his presence on the ballot paper could even contribute to a seat currently held by the Liberal National Party (specifically Amanda Stoker) or Pauline Hanson instead going to Labor or the Greens.

The article includes a reference to a poll conducted by Ipsos in June from a sample of 500 Queensland respondents for conservative podcast host Damian Coory, who published approval ratings for state political figures among its small sample of 173 LNP voters. Newman was credited with an approval rating of nearly 60%, substantially higher than any of his four successors as party leader, which may have encouraged him in his present course. Newman has also maintained high name recognition, with only around 20% of respondents uncommitted, compared with around 40% for Lawrence Springborg and Deb Frecklington and 60% for David Crisafulli, who replaced Frecklington after the election defeat in October.

Rightly or wrongly, some media accounts have tied Newman’s abandonment of the LNP to a crisis in the party that was laid bare by Saturday’s Stretton by-election, which delivered it an unimpressive swing of 1.6%. My live results display for the by-election continues to be updated here, if on a somewhat irregular basis. The Electoral Commission of Queensland helpfully publishes preference flows by candidate, which may be of some interest: these show that preferences of the Informed Medical Options Party broke 60-40 to the LNP, while the Greens went 82-18 to Labor and Animal Justice went 56-44.

Elsewhere, Antony Green offers his estimated new margins for the finalised federal redistribution of Victoria.

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.

1,319 comments on “Hello Newman”

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  1. hazza4257 @ #1117 Wednesday, July 28th, 2021 – 5:43 pm

    WTR

    “It really only the pesky success of Victoria and SA that is making them look bad.”

    I wouldn’t call it pesky success. They had a very quick response and a strict lockdown (as SA always does, and VIC has adopted lately) whereas NSW had the complete opposite.

    True, SA and Vic have been outstandingly successful. The “pesky” was the presumed view from within the NSW bunker. I have not heard Gladys praising their success.

  2. “its going to be a great spring in Sydney”

    Yeah, apart from tens to hundreds of thousands of covid cases…
    Lars the Liberal apologist as usual not connected to reality.

  3. “ Then AE clubbed me with Recon, Larse, michael for posting that.”

    And rightly so, Ven.

    Despite the failures of Morrison on quarantine and vaccine rollouts, when ‘The woman who saved Australia’ really was the in the captain’s chair to make a difference she failed. She refused to go into lockdown for up to a week too late because of her pride and hubris.

    Sydney’s current lockdown is totally on her because if she had gone into a proper lockdown at any stage before Wednesday 23 June (and preferably by the end of previous weekend, if not even earlier) the lockdown would be over by now.

    Gladys is popular because no one in the MSM has held her to account ever since she became Premier. When the previous three opposition leaders tried the MSM campaigned against them, or in Jodi’s case, simply removed her efforts from the record. Now we have the most incipient opposition leader ever, who is determined to give Gladbags a 100% free kick. So no wonder as bare majority of the public still think she’s ok (although mercifully that number is dropping, despite the MSM’s best efforts).

    The Light rail disaster, native vegetation clearing, Brumbies, public service cuts, ‘asset recycling’, privatising natural monopolies on an unprecedented scale, a ‘servant-leader’ for. Business (and only business, aka property developers and banksters), Daryl (and THAT is back on before ICAC it seems – see tonight’s 7:30 report), allowing, indeed promoting the cruise industry, to operate from Sydney Ports for 6 weeks after the Diamond Princess disaster (and covid being declared as pandemic) until March 15 (and allowing the Ruby Princess to sail twice from Sydney in that period) and the list goes on.

    And apparently the pile on was over the top.

    No. It. Isn’t.

    She is the worst public leader in my lifetime. Incompetent, ‘corrupt adjacent’ (in my opinion) at the very least. Smug and arrogant, whose hubris got in the way of doing what needed to be done in the middle of June. Just her latest fuckup in a 10 year rolling omnishambles of a career. Worse than Joh. At least he was competent with his corruption. Mainly.

  6. Lockdowns may soon be a thing of the past, however if Australia manages to vaccinate 80% of the entire population (including children) there will be 5 million people unvaccinated of which 0.5% to 1.5% will succumb to the virus and many more who will require long term healthcare. There is no return to a pre-covid time and anyone selling that idea is doing the public a disservice. The ~1000 people Australia lost to covid in 2020/2021 is going to be dwarfed by the numbers that are coming in the not too distant future.

  7. Samra

    Yes and 1 percent of 5 million people is 50,000 people. That’s all the deaths yet to happen. The only unknown is the time scale. On the other hand, if we get true herd immunity, this won’t happen. The virus will be a nuisance but it will cause only small clusters and then fizzle (with a combination of vaccination and public health response).

    Yet, we have a Federal government keen to “let it rip” as soon as possible, without first there being a chance to understand the parameters of herd immunity. And a state government that pretends to want to get us back to zero, but all its actions are pointing towards total failure and explosive growth of infections.

  9. Smoko has no say over what the premiers do regarding roadmaps. The states will decide.

    He’s looking rather irrelevant lately, isn’t he?

    Just judging by ABC TV News, Morrison usually doesn’t appear until the “Other Events Of Today” section, about 15 minutes in.

    There he is, with his new hair-do, waffling on about vaccines and dimensionless numbers (millions, billions), issuing empty threats and challenges, to a press gaggle (when you zoom the camera out to wide angle) consisting of half a dozen bored journos, a Bunnings pergola for the rain, and attendant, equally bored, camera crews.

    He should be thankful: Gladys is taking the heat off him.

  11. SMH.. In full terror mode..

    A whopping 47 Woolworths supermarkets on NSW COVID-19 exposure site list
    Forty-seven Woolworths supermarkets and 21 Coles locations feature on NSW Health’s growing COVID-19 exposure site list, a data analysis shows.

    About 24 per cent – that is, 112 of 467 – of the exposure sites are supermarkets or grocers…….

    On Wednesday night, NSW Health issued an alert for three more Woolworths supermarkets – in Liverpool, Ingleburn and Springfarm.

  14. Sceptic

    That’s hardly surprising that supermarkets constitute a decent fraction of exposure sites. What I don’t get though is Gladys claiming that her gold standard contact tracing isn’t under-resourced and isn’t getting hopelessly bogged down. After all, a supermarket exposure site is going to generate thousands of phone calls by itself. How big a building do they have to house those contact tracers?

  15. I’m reflecting on what a bunch of professional 5 Alarm Fire! scvaremongers conservative politicians and their enablers in the pentacostal community are as I watch the Olympics and there is absolutely no mention of ‘Transgender Athletes’.

  16. Griff

    It surprises me that Gladys and Kerry and friends haven’t spent time at their new conferences touting click and collect and home delivery. I remember these services being quickly adopted in the first wave. Have we forgotten?

  17. steve davis at 7:32 pm

    Smoko has no say over what the premiers do regarding roadmaps. The states will decide.

    It’s all sorted, while they do that Scotty said he’d be looking after the ‘Horizons’, even got a ‘uniform’ in to help him out.

  18. Cud,
    Weren’t Victoria and SA sending some of their contact tracers to help NSW? Maybe that’s not even enough to get on top of the job at hand?

  21. cud chewer,

    Kerry Chant has mentioned click and collect a few times. But it isn’t a serious consideration by the public like it was last year. It definitely limited supermarket exposure sites in Victoria for instance. Work colleagues express how they look for excuses to visit the supermarket once a day for mental health. Retail therapy indeed!

  23. C@t

    I thought I heard that too. Not so much physically sending, but offering services.
    But, no idea what the real story is and not heard a journo ask the obvious question either.

  24. From the SMH..

    A whopping 47 Woolworths supermarkets on NSW COVID-19 exposure site list
    Forty-seven Woolworths supermarkets and 21 Coles locations feature on NSW Health’s growing COVID-19 exposure site list, a data analysis shows.

  25. Cud Chewer @ #1122 Wednesday, July 28th, 2021 – 5:50 pm

    WTR

    When the cases edge up in NSW (we’ve been given no good reason why this won’t continue) and subsequentlly contact tracing falls off a cliff, the virus will quadruple per week. Tens of thousands of cases per day to follow.

    In other words its not where we are, but where we are headed. 🙁

    My guess is more along the optimistic tragetory in https://chrisbillington.net/COVID_NSW.html analysis with a combination of vaccines, better weather, panic increases in restrictions having the outbreak bumble along in the hundreds and getting under control in October/November. But idk

  27. Griff

    Exactly. Far too many people are going to retail sites and not following the rules. They’re going for social contact as well.

    Which is why from the word go, Kerry should have come out said “its ok to talk to people, but only outdoors and with a mask”. That might have taken the pressure off indoors venues.

  28. Wonder what the people in NSW think about Morrison promising everyone will be vaccinated by Xmas, and it is a ‘gold medal challenge’ for everyone to go out and get a jab.

    Getting traction?

  29. WTR

    The most optimistic reading of his figures is that it might be possible to bring cases down to zero by October/November. What’s the odds of Gladys extending the lockdown that far? Not good.

  30. work to rule,

    Decent plots at that site. And it demonstrates the Reff being below one in Fairfield which is important. The restrictions in Fairfield worked. They just didn’t restrict sufficiently outside the two LGA’s. Covid-19 still spreading in areas with less restriction. That is my concern. NSW is taking a gamble that the 8 LGA’s with increased resctriction have ring-fenced the major spread, that the restrictions are sufficiently decreasing mobility and that external seeding will be mopped up with effective contact tracing. Multiple educated guesses. It didn’t work when the virus decamped from the Eastern suburbs and travelled to the South West. Then again when it shifted West. Third time lucky perhaps?

  31. sprocket_

    We have moved from 38th in the field to 37th out of 38. By what rules will we get a gold medal?

    Most of the posts defending the rollout describe a competition to avoid the wooden spoon 😉

  32. sprocket

    It’ll be forgotten along with Scomo’s “early mark” and a thousand other bullshit utterances.

    In the very likely event that Gladys loses control, totally, then what Scomo does or says is irrelevant. The virus will spread through a largely unvaccinated population, because there just isn’t enough time for vaccination to reach the stage where it has any real effect.

    Even if everyone in Sydney had their first dose by August (as suggested by Kerry) – and this is logistically nearly impossible – the first dose confers only 30% protection. And that’s 2 weeks after you’ve had it. AND quite likely its a lot slower for Astra Zeneca and guess what these imbeciles are promoting?

    An emergency mass vaccination of Sydney would at the end of August have at best a very marginal effect on the reinfection rate. It would certainly be better than nothing in terms of death toll, but the reality here is that the only sane and moral thing to do right now is to harden the lockdown further.

  33. https://youtu.be/L-6JtWRVxHQ

    Funny thing: when Arthur was a coming big wheel in the bar association a few years ago now, he hosted a CDP lecture in the Bar Common Room by Ian Temby, QC on professional relationships and ethical standards. Amongst other things Saint Ian opined that a barrister should never have a sexual relationship with a client, even a former client, in his view that was professional misconduct and a barrister comporting themselves thus should have their ticket punched. Even for cases where the lawyer-client relationship had ceased by the time the shagging started. Make of that what you will.

  34. Bill Bowtell AO
    @billbowtell
    ·
    3h
    Chris Billington demonstrates that vaccination alone cannot restore Covid Zero within 4-8 weeks nor can present lockdown (not Vic Stage 4). Whatever the words, actions of NSW Govt only consistent with moving Sydney to “live with COVID’ outcome.

  35. Griff

    Their ring fencing isn’t working. Its just dragging things out. Its pretty predictable what happens next. More suburbs dragged into the ring fence.. Till eventually you rediscover the latte line.

    https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/social-affairs/imaginary-line-exposing-real-sydney-divide

    People in the more affluent suburbs are more easily able to adapt, are less likely to be in occupations that require physical presence, etc etc..

    And its generating a sense of complacency in other suburbs and this will eventually backfire. The way to do this would have been to have consistent rules across all of Sydney. Including sensible distance limits – magically it all goes back to melbourne having done it right.

  36. Speaking of Gladys and her boyfriends, the 7.30 report has this expose..

    ‘On the same day he was feted in New South Wales Parliament as “the greatest Member for Wagga Wagga in the history of the state”, Daryl Maguire received a private warning from his secret partner, Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

    Mr Maguire, an enterprising parliamentary secretary and self-confessed “door opener”, was desperately in debt and his political career was about to collapse in scandal.

    On May 3, 2018, just before Question Time, he called his girlfriend about an opportunity post politics with a long-term Chinese-Australian business associate, Jimmy Liu.

    Anti-corruption investigators intercepted the call at 1:21pm.

    “I’ll tell you tonight,” Mr Maguire told Ms Berejiklian. “Jimmy’s made me an offer.”

    “Right, well, you stay away,” Ms Berejiklian responded. “Stay away please.”

    That afternoon, the Premier watched as her Treasurer Dominic Perrotet lauded Mr Maguire, telling Parliament: “long may he reign in Wagga Wagga.”

    But that 19-year reign would soon be cut short by a rolling corruption scandal that would eventually embroil her.

    Ms Berejiklian’s long-term relationship with Mr Maguire was revealed to a stunned public late last year in an explosive Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) inquiry.’

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-28/how-nsw-mp-daryl-maguire-helped-jimmy-liu-s-companies/100297392

  37. Sceptic

    Bowtell is dead right. I just wish there would be some more independent modelling getting into the media because there’s so many people in Sydney willing to believe that Gladys/Kerry are still trying to go for zero. Perhaps the alternative is too scary for them to be thinkable.

    I just wonder what else can go wrong, enough, to shock Kerry into having a fair dinkum lockdown?

    Also, the “live with covid” is polite words for catastrophe. Its not a few hundred cases a day.. or a few thousands.. its the virus uncontrollably sweeping through the population. This is not living with covid. This is accepting carnage. Again, there are people still willing to wrongheadedly think that there’s a “happy medium”..

  38. I noticed on the news tonight that there was one LGA between, I think it was, Canterbury-Bankstown and the one around Hurstville (St George?) and all I could think to myself was, how long before that one goes down like a domino as well?

  41. Emma Alberici quoting SfM….
    @albericie
    Going for Gold because it’s important to note that the sooner we get there the sooner we get there Sports medal

    Has that have a go to get a go ring about it… he shouldn’t give up his day job for one in advertising

  42. Agreed cud chewer!

    I am an optimist and hope for the best. Just maybe we are lucky this time. But I have the luxury of being an optimist because I am not making the decisions. I just wish the NSW crisis cabinet wouldn’t be so happy go lucky 🙁

  45. cud chewer,

    Dr Kerry Chant doesn’t make the decisions in NSW to be fair. It gets taken into the NSW crisis cabinet, discussed for hours and then if the health advice going in looks the same as the decisions coming out, I would be very surprised indeed.

  46. “ On May 3, 2018, just before Question Time, he called his girlfriend about an opportunity post politics with a long-term Chinese-Australian business associate, Jimmy Liu.

    Anti-corruption investigators intercepted the call at 1:21pm.”

    Nearly 11 months before the 2019 election, yet the voting public didn’t hear a word of THAT from anyone when they cast a vote. They heard all about Daley’s word salad brain fart at the Katoomba ‘politics in the pub’ event though.

    A chance to drown the ‘Saint Glad, the immaculate saviour of the Universe’ media meme before it even got started. Missed.

  47. sprocket_,
    Gladys has already done the Trumpy thing of sloughing off Daryl like last year’s ‘coffee boy’. How long before it’s, ‘Darryl who?’ 🙄

  48. Hello bludgers. Without wanting to interrupt the dissection of the outbreak of Hubris21 in NSW, I wanted to mention a different topic – sea level rise.

    (Warning to LNP-leaning bludgers – fact based physical science content ahead)

    When Al Gore raised sea level rise in his movie Inconvenient Truth, he was ridiculed by professional liars working for big oil. Even people concerned about climate change have tried to downplay this topic because they don’t want to scare people to the point of giving up on climate change action. So it has been downplayed.

    But as surely as a puddle of water follows leaving ice out in the sun, sea level rise is already happening and rapidly accelerating each year. Even if the Paris accord succeeds in limiting warming to +1.5C, it will continue for longer than this century. It has profound implications for planning of infrastructure and even coastal cities.

    I have been reading a book that lays out very clearly and rationally the sea level rise certain and possible within this century, and its implications. It explains the science, but you don’t need to be a scientist to read it. Author John Englander is a geologist and oceanographer and eminent in this field. In his previous book he accurately predicted the flooding that would occur from storms like Hurricane Sandy hitting New York. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand the science and consequences.
    https://www.booktopia.com.au/moving-to-higher-ground-englander/book/9781733499903.html

    Perfect for Sydney lockdown! I’m going back to reading it. Evening all. Chin up, Sydney bludgers.

  50. Griff

    There are obviously more stringent lockdowns possible. Has Kerry at the very least provided advise as to the options? I’m not even sure she has done even this. At least not judging by her public utterances. Are they even relying upon modelling? Kerry hasn’t mentioned modelling – at least not lately. I’d have thought modelling was of the essence.

    Not that the media helps. Not one journo has stood up and said “show us your modelling”. Compare and contrast to the media in Victoria last year where the modelling was released in full detail and scrutinised.

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