Two bits of private polling to have emerged over the past day:
• The Advertiser reports a uComms poll for the SA Forest Products Association finds Labor with a 55-45 lead in the Adelaide seat of Boothby, held by the Liberals on a margin of 1.4% and to be vacated with the retirement of Nicolle Flint. The primary votes are Liberal 32.6%, Labor 31.7%, Greens 10.5% and independent Jo Dyer 5.5% – an element of the remainder would have been undecided and posed a forced-response follow-up, for which the results are not provided. Respondent-allocated preferences among the independents and minor parties flowed over 70% to Labor. The automated phone poll was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday from a sample of 810.
• The Canberra Times reports a Redbridge poll of the Australian Capital Territory Senate race for Climate 200 had Labor Senator Katy Gallagher on 27% (down from 39.3% in 2019), Liberal Senator Zed Seselja on 25% (down from 32.4%), independent David Pocock on 21%, the Greens on 11% (down from 17.7%), independent Kim Rubenstein on 6% and the United Australia Party on 6% (up from 2.3%). These figures suggest Seselja would lose his seat to Pocock, although the fall in the Labor vote is enough to suggest that any combination of two out of Gallagher, Seselja and Pocock is possible. The automated phone poll was conducted on April 23 and 24 from a sample of 1064.
The Age/Herald had a report yesterday based on a combination of the last two Resolve Strategic federal polls, allowing journalist David Crowe to analyse New South Wales, Victorian and Queensland breakdowns from plausibly large sample size (though only as high as 509 in the case of Queensland). However, since breakdowns for these states are published with each monthly poll, it’s old news as far as I’m concerned.
In other electoral news, today is the day of Tasmania’s periodic Legislative Council elections, which this year encompass the Hobart seat of Elwick, which seems likely to be retained for Labor by Josh Willie; the north-eastern rural seat of McIntyre, where long-serving independent Tania Rattray might or might not be troubled by independent rival David Downie; and what is technically a by-election in Huon, covering the towns south of Hobart, resulting from the resignation of Labor-turned-independent member Bastian Seidel. The latter would seem to be a competitive race involving Labor, Liberal and three other candidates, and constitutes an electoral test of sorts for the state’s new Premier, Jeremy Rockliff. This site will feature live commentary of some description from 6pm.
Been There @ #649 Saturday, May 7th, 2022 – 9:24 pm
And Bluepill was suggesting Unions had done little for workers that were not members.
Imagine a building industry like Qatar. 🙁
Something different to break things up.
Done on the space station, brilliant in my opinion!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo
This campaign is underwhelming so far, and nothing’s likely to change in 2 weeks to make it less meh or change the result. The main reason for change is that Morrison and the LNP is both untrustworthy and hopeless and the need for a Federal ICAC in response. Not a high bar for Labor to jump over. My prediction is Labor 80, LNP 60, Others 11
Why don’t GG and Mavis both STFU and come back when each is sober.
It’s Time
You first!
GlenO @ #637 Saturday, May 7th, 2022 – 10:41 pm
There is an argument that a conservative govts under stress are better placed to implement reform. The reforms will be waved through by the progressive side of politics and the media will cheer them on. Gun reform after Port Arthur is a case in point. I’m not sure, that if the ALP has been in power, they would have had such a smooth path.
A LNP govt requiring the teals might be a good thing in the long term. But let’s get a good ALP govt in for a couple of terms to lay the groundwork (FICAC).
Barney in Tanjung Bunga @ #651 Saturday, May 7th, 2022 – 11:47 pm
It is the usual tactic of employers and Arbitration Commissions to provide the improved pay and conditions that are achieved by unions to all employees. So the non-union employees receive all the benefits won by unions and their members without being members. The technical term is parasites. If union gained improvements were restricted to only union members you would see a sudden increase in union membership.
mj
Sure looks that way. Six week campaign doesn’t help an unpopular incumbent.
I had a ‘bracket’ like that on my hopefuls list – it will be interesting if early in the night it is obvious that some of those independents have won (which it may be just looking at the primaries for Liberal, Independent, Labor, Green – sometimes these seats are called early if most are preferencing against the Liberal member). Because if a few of them go – almost certainly no chance of Coalition majority.
I’m not sure John Howard saying “If you vote these independents in in OUR seats the government will fall” was such a good idea for the Coalition – probably gives waverers all the more reason to do it!
Greensborough Growler @ #655 Sunday, May 8th, 2022 – 12:00 am
Take some responsibility.
It’s Time,
You first!
Greensborough Growler @ #660 Sunday, May 8th, 2022 – 12:07 am
Piss off and go to bed before you have more to see forgiveness for.
It’s Time,
You first!
The blog has been going along quite smoothly then the usual protagonists start their usual shite. Sheesh.
Nath @9:02
“That’s why my anti-shorten campaign was so memorable for everyone. I was constantly innovating.”
OMG!!!!
I try to ignore Nath, but this piece of purblind stupidity is beyond the pale!
please be aware that your repetitious outpourings of bile did not strike this member of ‘everyone’ as innovating, but more like the impotent wailings of a rejected lover!
I apologise to ‘everyone’ for posting such a negative comment, but some times such maudlin drivel causes me to feel physically ill.
Regardless of whether there’s a minority government or a hung parliament or a coalition or PR or anything, Greens will only be able to influence the government if a majority of the parliament thinks that a majority of Australians will return them. If the Labor party makes 75 seats and the Greens say “implement these policies of ours” which the Labor party thinks are suicide, the Labor party will have to consider “if we implement this policy, will we be able to carry the median voter at the next election? or will we just get fewer people writing 1 or 2 against our name with greater enthusiasm?”. The advantage of a multi-party system or independents is that majorities which exist in the community but which are excluded by the alignments of the big parties become possible in parliament. It isn’t that policies which don’t have a majority become possible. In anyone’s book, that would be a disadvantage.
BTW. Resuming discussion from the morning. I don’t think a balanced parliament can lead to PR in Australia. It’s never happened before. In general, parliaments adopt PR because a majority of the parliament thinks PR would be in their own interest, not because the balance of power thinks so. Canada regularly has hung parliaments but they can never get it through. When New Zealand got PR, it’s because yet another majority government won off the back of a minority of the vote, and the government couldn’t resist the demand of the voters. When the Netherlands got PR, it’s because the conservative parties were worried that Social Democrats would win every election now that poor people could vote, so they wanted to protect their interest. Likewise, when the Senate got PR, it’s because Labor wanted to protect their members even if they couldn’t save their majority. There’s just so many ways for the majority of the government to tell the crossbenchers that it’s all too hard. Oh we’ve got so many things we need to do between ICAC and climate change and priority and priority, oh, the Senate will become useless, oh, the constitution would need be changed to fill vacancies under PR, oh excuse excuse excuse.
To say nothing of the fact that a balance of power held by independents will not be interested in protecting the place of parties. Their entire appeal is that they aren’t parties, so they aren’t going to ask a major party to give party leaders more power. They will have the advantage of having been elected on the existing rules. They aren’t going to waste everything they’ve learnt about campaigning by throwing away the system that made it work and adopting a different system.
Moreover, after the election, it’s very likely that most people will be represented by someone they liked better than the alternative thanks to preferential voting. So after the election, the community will be more-or-less sated and there won’t be the kind of demand there was in NZ under FPTP reverse majorities. Actually, PR is more likely to come about if the government majority is returned on 49% of the 2PP than if we get a minority government. I’ll go so far as to say, very much more likely.
(As for me, I still don’t think now is the right time to change systems. People are excited by the idea of holding someone to account. Asking them to substitute that for deciding which organisation – that doesn’t listen to them and that they’re not a member of and which is barely accountable to them – they want to represent them in parliament is not going to be that exciting. I think if you asked them, more people would want a plausible independent candidate than the party of their first preference to be represented proportionately.)
Sunday, May 8, 2022 at 12:04 am
mj
Sure looks that way. Six week campaign doesn’t help an unpopular incumbent.
I had a ‘bracket’ like that on my hopefuls list – it will be interesting if early in the night it is obvious that some of those independents have won (which it may be just looking at the primaries for Liberal, Independent, Labor, Green – sometimes these seats are called early if most are preferencing against the Liberal member). Because if a few of them go – almost certainly no chance of Coalition majority.
I’m not sure John Howard saying “If you vote these independents in in OUR seats the government will fall” was such a good idea for the Coalition – probably gives waverers all the more reason to do it!
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Rocket this election has perhaps the most interesting side plot of any election I can remember in terms of wondering how well the teals will actually do in these traditionally dyed in the wool seats
Conventional wisdom suggests that Wentworth and Goldstein are likely pickups. Kooyong and North Sydney are in the 50/50 category. You then have Curtin and Mackellar seen as reasonably possible though not favoured to change. It wouldn’t surprise me that all these seats are lost except for North Sydney as Trent Zimmermann is the most believably moderate MP in the entire LNP caucus.
Labor questions why it wasn’t invited to meet with Solomons minister
“Anthony Albanese has questioned why Labor wasn’t invited to meet with Foreign Minister Marise Payne and her Solomon Islands counterpart, given the government is in caretaker mode.” https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/labor-questions-why-it-wasn-t-invited-to-meet-with-solomons-minister-20220507-p5ajdu.html
It would appear that Slomo’s government has NFI what caretaker conventions mean. BTW, LNP election campaign costs such as travel are still being paid by the taxpayer until Slomo’s official campaign launch.
@MJ
The inflation that came out of the huge spike in oil prices in the early seventies broke down the post war Keynesian consensus and led directly to the rise of Thatcher Reagen,Hawke, Keating, Lange, Douglas all that crowd.
Who knows what this current outbreak might bring.Quite possibly Trump part 2 in the USA among other things.
Work To Rule @ #656 Sunday, May 8th, 2022 – 12:03 am
That’s certainly an interesting hypothesis. But it does rely on the assumption that the critical property is “conservative”.
I do agree that, had Labor been in power in 1996, it’s much more likely that the Coalition would have fought against the resulting gun control legislation, which would then have resulted in the issue being a much bigger one for a much longer period of time, with rollbacks of gun control laws, etc, whenever the Coalition gained power.
But I also think that trends in voter views are such that Labor is going to end up being the right-wing party, and thanks to Labor’s history, this will make the process much smoother. I see this election as the great reckoning for the Liberal party – they have the internal forces, thanks to Morrison, and the external forces, thanks to the Teals, and the circumstances, with a perfect storm of FICAC, climate change, and economic troubles that can be traced directly to them, that are likely to tear the party apart.
GlenO says:
Sunday, May 8, 2022 at 12:53 am
….But I also think that trends in voter views are such that Labor is going to end up being the right-wing party, and thanks to Labor’s history, this will make the process much smoother…..
…………….
I really wish your optimism was right and that I lived in such a progressive society that Labor was on the right of the national political spectrum, but this morning I read both the article by John Hewson and the responses to that article. If John Hewson can be positioned (along with the voices/teal candidates) as the ‘sensible centre’ then our current political spectrum is wayyy more right shifted than you seem to think.
But I hope you’re right. Utopia’s are always worth aiming for – even if we can’t get them, the struggle to improve is important in itself.
Voodoo Blues says:
Sunday, May 8, 2022 at 12:50 am
@MJ
The inflation that came out of the huge spike in oil prices in the early seventies broke down the post war Keynesian consensus and led directly to the rise of Thatcher Reagen,Hawke, Keating, Lange, Douglas all that crowd.
Who knows what this current outbreak might bring.Quite possibly Trump part 2 in the USA among other things.
Inflation in commodities in the 70s was general. That is, it was not confined to and did not originate with oil. The increase in the oil price was an example of inflation. It was not the cause of the inflation. The proximate cause was the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary order, which led to a radical depreciation of the USD and an increase in the nominal prices of USD counterweights – other currencies and commodities, which were (and remain) denominated in USD.
The Bretton Woods system was always bound to collapse at some point. The impetus at that time was the effect of spending by the US to prosecute its war in VietNam, which had been highly inflationary and had led to irresistible pressure on the US budget and on the USD.
@andrewmck
Hewson was hardly a “wet” on economics the centre of gravity has shifted way to the right over the last forty years with Labor playing a big role in that.
The question remains could a party take a progressive tax policy to a federal election in 21st century Australia and win?
If the answer is no then lack of revenue will slowly bleed the welfare state to death.I will be convinced our politics is shifting leftward if Labor take a progressive tax policy to the election in 2025 and win.
Voodoo Blues says:
The question remains could a party take a progressive tax policy to a federal election in 21st century Australia and win?
If the answer is no then lack of revenue will slowly bleed the welfare state to death.I will be convinced our politics is shifting leftward if Labor take a progressive tax policy to the election in 2025 and win.
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It wont because the government does not raise taxes to fund the welfare state but it does use some of its revenue on its spending plans but that is not the main reason for taxes.
Lyons was always in the possibles list for Coalition, it becomes a probable after Mitchell’s text.
Bert
” The blog has been going along quite smothly then the usual protagonist start the usual shite. Sheesh”
Says the most pig ignorant poster on Poll Bludger.
A contributor from the right would have been kicked off PB’s if they hade made the same type of vile comments you have made in the past.
Unfathomably lack of self awareness.
New thread.
Hello Guy.
My thoughts entirely regarding this tired, dull and boring daily Labor vs Green ritual.
However, I would draw a huge distinction at calling it a debate.
I would prefer to post and read posts concerning actual real time political discussion.