Week zero plus one

As the Liberal party room prepares to anoint Peter Dutton as Opposition Leader, the first poll of the new term suggests he has his work cut out for him, in Western Australia at least.

This is one of three new posts I have on offer, providing a thread for general discussion. The other two featured below deal with the ongoing counting for the House of Representatives, with Labor’s potential parliamentary majority remaining up in the air, and the race for the Senate, in which I expect Labor and the Greens to account for half the seats between them, but with a number of outcomes depending on complex flows of preferences.

Election results aside, the main item of news to relate is that the Liberal and Nationals party rooms will hold their first meetings to sort out party leadership positions. Peter Dutton and Sussan Ley will be confirmed as Liberal leader and deputy leader unopposed, but a contested vote looms for the Nationals, in which David Littleproud and Darren Chester will seek to depose Barnaby Joyce. In Joyce’s favour is the fact that the Nationals retained all their seats at the election; in Littleproud’s is the fact that Joyce had a lot to do with the Liberals losing so many of theirs, leaving the Nationals in opposition; Chester I’m guessing is a dark horse.

Thanks to The West Australian, Peter Dutton can be welcomed to the opposition leadership with the first published opinion poll of the new era, conducted on Thursday by Painted Dog Research from a sample of 1354 Western Australian respondents. It finds only 19% rating Peter Dutton a “suitable candidate” to lead the party, compared with 58% who registered a view to the contrary. Dutton’s positive ratings were 16% among women and 23% among men.

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.

3,139 comments on “Week zero plus one”

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  1. sprocket_
    Those statisics tell me people are misreading the result by putting it down to demographic change when its not about demographic change at all but about the Liberal party becoming discounted from its urbane base and the wants of capital. If the ALP can avoid being sucked into the false narrative about demographic change then the ALP could unite labour and capital cementing itself into government for a long time.

  2. C@tmomma

    Sure, Labor could get legislation passed with the support of the Coalition in the Senate, but is that likely to be a common occurrence under a Dutton-led opposition? I suppose Labor could legislate modest carbon targets in the house and get it over the line in the senate with the support of moderate Libs and JLN? Or negotiate something more ambitious with the Greens and Teals and have it passed easily in the house and with the Greens & Pocock in the senate. It will be interesting to see which way they go.

  3. “ I’m in Ocean shores NSW at the moment where sky tv is on free to air. Is this part of the strategy to get an audience out here in the regions and create resentment of the city elites? ”

    Yes. Rudd has highlighted this strategy as part of his Murdoch Royal Commission campaign. Of note if Murdoch acquiring – then shuttering – all regional Queensland newspapers but simultaneously launching the SkyNews for free service across regional Queensland. The Foxification of the rump of Australia’s demography.

  4. This from an article, i saw online.
    Hear hear

    ——

    Americans live in a country where little kids practice their own deaths, over and over again, and then the day comes that it’s not practice anymore.

    This is ritual slaughter of children at this point. But to whom, and for what?

    America’s leaders. My friends, it has to be said, and it has to be said out loud, by everyone capable of thinking left — America’s leaders are monsters and idiots.

  5. From BK’s dawn patrol.

    “Given the strong links between economics and politics, does it surprise anyone that as the two sides of politics – the “duopoly” of Labor and the Coalition – become more similar more people set up fringe parties, and more people vote for them?”, asks Ross Gittins.
    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/why-the-political-duopoly-is-losing-market-share-20220527-p5aoxp.html
    ——————————————————-
    Same old same old brain dead mantra. No difference between Labor and the Coalition? FMD.

    These guys never rest. What Gittins COULD do is to explain how the Greens will FIND $173 BILLION IN TAXES, SAVE THE PLANET, STOP EXTINCTIONS, SAVE THE REEF, SHUT DOWN THE OIL, GAS, COAL, URANIUM, COTTON, ALMOND industries, REDUCE AIRPORT NOISE and MAKE EVERYTHING FREE FOR EVERYBODY EXCEPT BILLIONAIRES.

  6. There is one useful thing about Gittins’ so-called ‘insight’.
    The ‘duopoly’ could usefully do a preference swap and wipe out fringe ratbags like the Nationals and the Greens.

  7. C@T

    “ I just want to know the HOW, will The Greens deliver on their promises to inner city Brisbane?”

    That is a very good question indeed, quite intriguing, I too look forward to this resolution (not holding my breath I have to tell you).

  8. Morrison was outed for incompetency.
    The liberals were outed for refusing to engage with the voters with the issues that matter.
    The Greens surfed the election on the Teals and Brisbane was the unexpected prize.
    In the lucky country everyone wants the prize, some are more wanting than others.
    “Paradigm” may have been used previously but it exists now.
    Telling the story of how things will work out generally and specifically for those who’ve voted for change will reveal itself in time.
    The nation seems a happier place for the election result.
    Fingers crossed!

  9. bug1 says:
    Monday, May 30, 2022 at 7:45 am
    “Coalition MP Stuart Robert warns Labor’s spending will put Australia’s triple-A credit rating at risk.” – AFR

    “I guess Stuart Robert is going to be the new Shadow Treasurer, he was assistant”

    I might’ve thought it was the Coalition’s trillion dollar debt that was the major cause of the problem. Silly Stuart for overlooking this.

  10. max says:
    Monday, May 30, 2022 at 7:30 am

    So we’re seeing a similar phenomenon to the US and other Western democracies where right wing parties increasingly derive their support from lower income and lower education white voters.

    I haven’t seen any convincing explanation of why that should be so. In the past elections have often tended to appeal to voters’ economic self interest and in this era we have much larger numbers of lower income voters apparently voting contrary to those interests.
    —————
    Think about the explanation in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This election was like all other elections where voters focused on their economic self interest and that goes someway to explaining why the wealthier areas went against the Liberals because the Liberals were not catering to what they wanted and wealthier people also expect certain behavior that they were not seeing in the Morrison government.

  11. These woke latte-sipping elites that the LNP and Murdoch media like to rave on about are in actuality just inner-city dwellers trying to get on with their busy lives. And there are millions of them. And when they decide enough is enough they can crush the extreme right and stomp them into the dirt as they did just over a week ago.

  12. Terminator: it’s not FTA in Brisbane. We get Newcastle tv up here in Ocean shores ( goodnight big dog!!!) Thanks BK for the marvellous wrap up. I think the next election will be ( all going well) Albo being the consensus, bringing people together candidate vs Dutton who will make use of John Howards old dog whistle, prosecute an anti woke agenda which will attempt to surgically divide various groups for political advantage. The Murdochcracy will again be a big supporter of these causes unless something changes like the old fella drops his bundle and the son sells the newspapers. But I reckon barring some really disastrous event that can be pinned on Labor, stitching together a coalition of disaffected regional people pissed off about various issues including transexual athletes – wtf? (even with Murdochcracy support) will be harder and less popular than the consensus approach.

  13. The reason why woke latte-sipping elites works politically is because when advocates are busy celebrating their causes they ignore the disadvantaged and can be discriminatory in how they go about getting results and that turns people off.

  14. Ven

    FWIW, I live in Dickson and I never heard the word/name Deves mentioned among even my diehard, SkyNews-watching Lib neighbours.

  15. So the Victorian Liberals are in such a sorry state that we have a serving lower house Lib MP calling for the abandonment of his very own constituents? This is simply extraordinary. Is there any precedent for comments like this?


  16. The Lorax says:
    Monday, May 30, 2022 at 8:42 am

    ….
    It will be interesting to see which way they go.

    That applies to all the groups, Labor, Liberal, Teal and Green. It is going to be an interesting three years. Are the Liberals and Greens going to try and keep the last 10 years going?

  17. Boerwar @ #56 Monday, May 30th, 2022 – 8:50 am

    From BK’s dawn patrol.

    “Given the strong links between economics and politics, does it surprise anyone that as the two sides of politics – the “duopoly” of Labor and the Coalition – become more similar more people set up fringe parties, and more people vote for them?”, asks Ross Gittins.
    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/why-the-political-duopoly-is-losing-market-share-20220527-p5aoxp.html
    ——————————————————-
    Same old same old brain dead mantra. No difference between Labor and the Coalition? FMD.

    These guys never rest. What Gittins COULD do is to explain how the Greens will FIND $173 BILLION IN TAXES, SAVE THE PLANET, STOP EXTINCTIONS, SAVE THE REEF, SHUT DOWN THE OIL, GAS, COAL, URANIUM, COTTON, ALMOND industries, REDUCE AIRPORT NOISE and MAKE EVERYTHING FREE FOR EVERYBODY EXCEPT BILLIONAIRES.

    I agree. When I read that headline all I could do was think, I thought Ross Gittins was better than this?

  18. I have free-to-air Sky here, it lies dormant although I did flip it on for five minutes just to see some dietary-challenged mentally unstable bloke ranting on about the ‘Resistance’. It must have been a segment on WWII history I guess.

  19. C@tmommasays:
    Monday, May 30, 2022 at 8:16 am
    Ven @ 8.08am,
    Good analysis about Tassie and the NT. Probably applies to Queensland as well. It didn’t budge, except to The Greens in the inner city over localised issues.

    The Liberals certainly got slammed in inner city well to do electorates losing two seats and Labor lost one as well (Griffith). However, Labor was able to claw back votes in 9 Coalition seats in QLD, 7 of them to marginal status ahead of the next election. The 2PP is not finalized but on my most recent look at the AEC Labor has improved in all these seats.

    Dickson (1.9) Swing – 2.7
    Flynn (2.6) Swing – 6.1
    Leichhardt (3.4) Swing- 0.8
    Longman (3.2) Swing-0.1
    Bonner (3.7) Swing – 3.7
    Petrie (4.5) Swing -3.9
    Forde (4.7) Swing -3.9
    Bowman (5.5) Swing -4.7
    Capricornia (5.5) Swing – 6.9

    Labor also improved their PV lead in Blair (+4.3%), Lilley (+6.8%), Moreton (+2.8%), Oxley (+3.6%) and Rankin (+3.1%).

    Putting aside the loss of Griffith to a brilliant grass roots campaign to the Greens, the Labor v Coalition battle in Queensland improved significantly at this election. It was always going to take two elections to recover the hiding Labor got in Queensland in 2019. I give Labor a tick for this election in Queensland despite the bar being pretty low.

    Losing Griffith was not great for Labor, but the swing against Labor in these key seats in 2019 has been fundamentally reversed in 2022.

  20. Cronus @ #67 Monday, May 30th, 2022 – 9:07 am

    Ven

    FWIW, I live in Dickson and I never heard the word/name Deves mentioned among even my diehard, SkyNews-watching Lib neighbours.

    It wasn’t meant for them. It seems to have worked a treat, if the numbers are to be believed, in Tassie and Regional Queensland. It was also intended to break down the red wall in Western Sydney and it appears to have had some effect in Werriwa, where there are a lot of religious conservatives.


  21. Mexicanbeemer says:
    Monday, May 30, 2022 at 9:07 am

    The reason why woke latte-sipping elites works politically is because when advocates are busy celebrating their causes they ignore the disadvantaged and can be discriminatory in how they go about getting results and that turns people off.

    And who are the woke you talk about here? What are the issues you are talking about here? The whole woke thing is nonsense imported fort he USA. The biggest nonsense of all was thinking transgender kids was an election issue.

  22. “Women will be promoted to key roles across the federal government in a series of Labor factional meetings today that are expected to confirm Clare O’Neil from Victoria and Jenny McAllister from NSW as likely cabinet ministers, write David Crowe and Lisa Visentin”
    _____________________
    Here we go again the bloody factions.
    I wonder who will be this terms Joe Ludwig. ?
    A Minister way out of thier depth, and only a Minister because of thier faction.

  23. @ Mexicanbeemer

    Surely the lesson to be learnt from this election is that attacking the inner-city residents doesn’t work, not in Australia at least. That’s what I glean from it.

  24. poroti
    Paywalled for me, unfortunately.

    At least in this phase of Putin’s War, artillery dominance is decided whether Russia or Ukraine is advancing.

    I am sure that Jordan Steele-John, the Greens’ Spokesperson for Disarmament, when he is not barracking for China’s dominance in the Pacific, will take note and go to the Greens’ national policy committee to urge the Greens to stop their Light Mobile Force travesty.

    Unfortunately, the Comrades’ ideological bosom buddies run the Greens so that will not be happening any time soon.

  25. Further to the announcement the demerger proposal at AGL won’t be going ahead, the chairman Peter Botten and CEO Graeme Hunt have confirmed they are stepping down from their positions.
    It’s carnage!

  26. Bellweather
    It wasn’t just the inner city that swung. Menzies and Moore wouldn’t be classed as inner city and they nearly went to the ALP but totally agree the Liberals thirty years of cultural wars has to end or its in for a long time in opposition.

  27. Taylormade @ #76 Monday, May 30th, 2022 – 9:12 am

    “Women will be promoted to key roles across the federal government in a series of Labor factional meetings today that are expected to confirm Clare O’Neil from Victoria and Jenny McAllister from NSW as likely cabinet ministers, write David Crowe and Lisa Visentin”
    _____________________
    Here we go again the bloody factions.
    I wonder who will be this terms Joe Ludwig. ?
    A Minister way out of thier depth, and only a Minister because of thier faction.

    After the nation just got rid of an incompetent PRIME MINSTER, you come up with this!?!

    Not to mention the venal Liberal and Nationals Ministers that we are no longer blighted with. You’ve got a hide as thick as Jessie, TaylorMade!

  28. This government is fair dinkum Aussie. The previous government was a hostage to Trumpism-lite and various bizarre imported cultural tropes.

  29. In what other country than the USA is ‘gunshot’ the leading cause of death in Under 16s I wonder?

    None I suspect.

    And to the ‘right’ this is apparently OK…..


  30. Boerwar says:
    Monday, May 30, 2022 at 8:53 am

    There is one useful thing about Gittins’ so-called ‘insight’.
    The ‘duopoly’ could usefully do a preference swap and wipe out fringe ratbags like the Nationals and the Greens.

    One small problem. The Nationals are now the senior partner. The last act is for the Liberals to be absorbed into the National Party across the nation.

    Dutton being from Queensland is a member of the LNP, a party formed because of the Liberal collapse in that state years ago. The takeover is near complete. The Liberals are now a limping corps. There is no party left for Labor to preference.

  31. c@t: “Read the excerpt from the Ryan Lizza article in Politico that I put up earlier and get back to me.”

    Yes, transgender, especially as the issue is taught in schools, has been on the agenda of the US Right for a few years now But you will note that Lizza noted that Trump only got to it about an hour into his speech. It is potentially helpful in swinging the votes of normally Democrat-leaning, Christian African-Americans and Latino voters (or “Latinx” if you prefer the most politically-correct, but linguistically rather clumsy, term).

    However, unlike Australian elections, the key to victory in US elections is not winning over the voters in the middle so much as getting your base to come out and vote. And it will be the usual suite of issues (God, guns, abortion, the border) that will primarily get the base out in 2022 and for a Trump run in 2024. Along with, to the shame of anyone who goes along with it, the nonsense about the 2020 election being stolen.

    Morrison’s strategy with Deves was very much directed at the non-Anglo swinging voters in the suburbs: which makes much more sense in a system with compulsory voting than it would in the US . It didn’t work, I suspect because enough voters out there felt more strongly about how sick they were of Morrison than by any concerns about transgender issues. And Labor and even the Greens remained extremely disciplined and restrained in their responses and didn’t mount any sort of significant counter-offensive on the issue.

    Bottom line: Trump and others will continue to use the transgender issue to bait the Democrats, but I think it will remain a second or third order issue.


  32. Mexicanbeemer says:
    Monday, May 30, 2022 at 9:15 am

    Frednk
    I know its an Americanism but was explaining why it gets traction.

    Where do you think it got traction? Are you claiming climate change and federal ICAC are woke issues?

  33. Thanks for the roundup BK. On this one:

    “A Home Affairs contractor alleged to have illegally sent a trove of high-level documents to an unsecured location has been allowed to continue working on classified projects within the public service. The man, who is believed to have sent hundreds of sensitive documents from Department of Home Affairs projects to his personal email address in a serious breach of security protocols, later won a project within the Foreign Affairs Department, The Canberra Times understands.”
    https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7754414/home-affairs-intel-bungle-hushed-up-sources-say/?cs=14329

    Very suspicious. When I worked as a Federeal PS this was absolutely a sacking offense for PS officers. Yet a contractor just gets another gig! Who knows whom in this case?

  34. C@T

    “ It wasn’t meant for them. It seems to have worked a treat, if the numbers are to be believed, in Tassie and Regional Queensland. It was also intended to break down the red wall in Western Sydney and it appears to have had some effect in Werriwa, where there are a lot of religious conservatives.”

    Agreed, and Dickson as a generalisation is a fairly ethnically homogeneous area (though no doubt will change over time) and unsurprisingly typical of the Dutton-types. It has been conservative but less stridently religious. The swing away though is encouraging, there is at least some hope.

  35. I am betting Dutton will put petrol on the culture wars and history wars and “woke” wars to appeal to populist social conservatives in the outer metropolitan and regional electorates He will appeal to homophobic white trash, uneducated people who don’t give a damn about climate change, play spot-the-aussie on trains and buses and believe Corona Virus either fake or a Chinese plot to take over the world. He will go full on Trumpian and put a large photo of Deeves on his office wall when he becomes LOTO because his wife demanded he remove from their house. May he long continue to be LOTO !!

  36. BK says:
    Monday, May 30, 2022 at 9:16 am
    “Further to the announcement the demerger proposal at AGL won’t be going ahead, the chairman Peter Botten and CEO Graeme Hunt have confirmed they are stepping down from their positions.
    It’s carnage!”

    Excellent news. I’m rooting for Cannon-Brookes on the AGL issue.

  37. Frednk
    Where do you think it got traction? Are you claiming climate change and federal ICAC are woke issues?
    —————————–
    The Liberals have been in government for all but three years since 1996 and their whole agenda has been around fighting culture wars and to be woke is to be aware of racism so no they are not woke issues but the dumb right is painting them that way.

  38. @frednk

    Yes, will the Greens oppose Labor’s climate legislation in both houses because it doesn’t go far enough (in their opinion) and repeat the CPRS fiasco? Will Dutton go hard against all climate policy like Abbott, or will he soften the LNP’s position and allow moderate Libs to vote for Labor’s climate bills?

    Interesting times. My personal view is that Labor’s 43% target will be very difficult to achieve in reality, and the Greens and Teals targets (while closer to what the science requires) are wildly unrealistic. 2030 is only 7.5 years away.

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