Two Victorian state polls have come down the pipe over the past few days, from Roy Morgan and Essential Research. The latter also came through with a New South Wales result, which I’ll cover when I do a big post on pre-election developments in that state in a day or two. The Victorian results ran as follows:
• The Roy Morgan poll has Labor leading 58-42, with both major parties notably low on the primary vote — Labor on 36.5%, the Coalition on 29% and the Greens on 14%, with 20.5% scattered among a wide array of response options. Respondents were also asked to explain why they had chosen the way they did, with the accompanying release offering a wide selection of highlights. However, the poll is not as fresh as it might be, having been conducted from a sample of 1407 in “mid-August”. Like Morgan’s federal polling, it was conducted online and by telephone, whereas its earlier Victorian state polling — the most recent of which was conducted from August 11 to 13, seemingly only a few days before this one, and had Labor leading 60.5-39.5 — was conducted by SMS.
• An Essential Research online poll for The Guardian had Labor on 35.3%, the Coalition on 32.2% and the Greens on 10.2%, without distributing an undecided component of 11.9%. I would make that out to be a Labor lead of around 56-44. This poll was conducted online from August 31 to September 7 from a modest sample of 536. The poll also found 44% supportive and 25% opposed to construction of stage one of the Suburban Rail Loop, on which the Liberals will halt production to redirect funding to health.
Further state election news:
• John Ferguson of The Australian reported on September 3 that Liberal research showed more than a quarter of Victorian voters were “’hard’ undecideds”; that Daniel Andrews has a negative 15 per cent approval rating in “key seats”; and that the Liberals had gained traction with its message that it will prioritise fixing problems in the health system.
• The Herald Sun reports the United Firefighters Union will spend $1 million campaigning on behalf of candidates “who support firefighters” and against Labor candidates who it deems not to represent the party’s values. It is unclear who the former might be, but the inclusion of Richmond and Northcote on the list of likely seats suggests Greens, while Melton and Werribee suggests independents. However, it’s less clear how anyone other than the Liberals might benefit in Ashwood, Box Hill, Ringwood and Jacinta Allan’s seat of Bendigo East, or what might be accomplished in Thomastown or Tarneit. Also on the agenda are the upper house regions of Western Metropolitan, Northern Metropolitan and Northern Victoria.
Independent candidates latest:
• Melissa Lowe, manager of student equity at Swinburne University, was formally announced on September 1 as a candidate for Hawthorn, where former Liberal member John Pesutto will attempt to recover the seat he lost to Labor’s John Kennedy in 2018. The launch was attended by Climate 200 convenor Simon Holmes a Court, and her campaign will be managed by Brett Hodgson, who performed the same role for Monique Ryan in Kooyong.
• Sophie Torney, described in The Age as a “project manager with a background in computer science”, will run in Kew with the support of Kew Independents, an “offshoot of the Voices of Kooyong movement” that provided support for Monique Ryan.
• Carol Altmann, a former journalist for The Australian, will run against Liberal member Roma Britnell in South-West Coast. The Age reports Altmann has “built a following after raising integrity issues in Warrnambool institutions through her website The Terrier”, and “many local observers” believe she was instrumental in all seven Warrnambool councillors being voted out in 2020, including her Labor opponent Kylie Gaston.
• South Melbourne Market stallholder Georgie Dragwidge will run in Albert Park, which is being vacated by the retirement of Labor’s Martin Foley, and Daniel Andrews will face independent competition in Mulgrave from Ian Cook, who is pursuing legal action over the forced closure of his catering business due to what he claims was a slug being planted by a council health inspector.
Can we please keep this thread for discussion Victorian state politics. The general discussion thread continues here.
Bringing back lobster man paid off big then?
Perhaps the slug man will make his slimy way to Parliament?
Nothing is done till it is done.
Kos samaras of Redbridge has done polling of young victorians. 3 out of 5 are not voting for the major parties at all.
Citizen
The slug story is big amongst the fiberal luvvies here in victoria. Of course the Herald Sun and their journos have carried on about it for years.
One journo has even done a podcast.
It is kinda wacky stuff.
Today’s history lesson is brought to you by Victorian opposition leader Matthew Guy https://twitter.com/PRGuy17/status/1569635677599600642
Oh dear was King Arthur even a real person?
This election is going to have a fair chunk about the suburban rail loop and the stops at Cheltenham, Clayton, Monash, Glen Waverley, Burwood, Box Hill.
Seats along this alignment and estimated margin:
Clarinda ALP 14.9%
Mordialloc ALP 13.4%
Bentleigh ALP 11.4%
Oakleigh ALP 16.0%
Mulgrave ALP 15.8%
It therefore seems like the LNP play is to try to attack the red wall in the west of Melbourne. Given that Mordialloc and Bentleigh were in their 2004 path to victory, I can’t see them wrestling those seats back any time soon, but I can see them losing Glen Waverley, Sandringham and even the notionally Liberal Bayswater.
Baffling tactic there by the Libs.
Essentially give up on “must win” marginal ALP seats (Ashwood & Box Hill) and hand Labor a couple of marginal LIB seats (Sandringham & Glen Waverley) and focus their attention instead on a region that Labor holds by 15-25% margins across the board.
It may be a two election strategy where they have written off 2022 and chosen to focus on reducing the Labor heartland so there’s more marginal/winnable territory in 2026, but if they’re banking on anti-Dan / anti-lockdown sentiment to cut into those margins in the outer suburbs, well in 4 years time Dan may have already passed the torch and the lockdowns will be a distant memory so they’ll likely swing back to Labor anyway.
“Election losing machine” is certainly an apt description of the Victorian Liberals.
I’m old enough to remember the days when Labor was considered unelectable in Victoria, with no Labor government having ever gone full-term or even anywhere close. These days, anyone under the age of about forty thinks of Victoria as Labor heartland.
The turnaround really is mind-boggling.
I think the Vic Libs strategy of having anti-Dan/ anti-lockdowns/ anti-mandate rhetoric would rather eat up the federal UAP/ONP/LDP vote rather than the federal ALP votes. One factor could be thelat unlike the Fed Libs, the Vic Libs sympathy to the “freedom” rallies.
There are plenty of Teal T-shirt’s evident across Kew
I anticipate another loss for the Liberal Party
The question is, given the loss of “blue ribbon” seats to Independents, how can they win government?
By taking seats in the West (noting Costello running that the mooted rail services to the West Labor campaigned on are not yet operational – such projects do take time including for community consultation)
So the Libs are going to tear up stage 1 of a rail system from the south east to the west via Doncaster then criticise
Totally contradictory
But desperate people do desperate things
Wherever you go around Melbourne there is significant infrastructure work both rail and roads (even in Liberal seats!!!)
Kos is pushing his own barrow as he is heavily involved in organising “teals”. Plus given that 35% in the Morgan of the overall is not voting for a major party, for young people to be somewhere near 60% is perhaps not surprising.
It really depends too what he defines as a “young person”.
Suburban rail loop route provides safe convenient public transport access to Monash & Deakin universities
Those two university campuses are certainly rail blackspots.
The big issue with all the modelling for rail loop is based on pre-COVID predictions. Nobody is exactly sure how much demand will exist post pandemic.
With so much relentless and highly focused negative propaganda of the MSM and Liberals (both state and feds) against the Victorian ALP and their leader Daniel Andrews, the polls results show that Victorians have largely been able to De-Moronise themselves and have become resistant to propaganda that aims at pushing them to vote against their own interests.
This speaks extremely well of the political maturity of the People of Victoria!!
The My Father Died and I blame Dan commercial spoken by a man who is of an age when undertakers are making final measurements is also rather comical.
The Hun is also trying to publish a daily article about the health system failing. They will chase every ambulance, answer ever 000 call and ignore everyone else who is fit an healthy. People are dying every day don’t you know…
@Alpo455pm
Agree there. This election will certainly reveal how much stock Victorians put in their Merdeoch news media. If the poll reports are on the ball, then the Libs will have to take stock of their ingrained belief that the Merdeoch media is a useful ally. With about 6 weeks or so to go, chances are voters are sick of political media anyway.
Meanwhile, up here in the Sunshine State, Nine, Seven and the Curious Snail are beavering away on their joint attack against Anna’s Government. Only problem is, the next election is about 2 years away. One would have to wonder how long they can keep the attack up before people just tune out. As it is, the Snail is much diminished in its readership numbers and influence, being held afloat only by good weekend numbers.
So, is the Liberals much- loved media firing blanks these days?
A blast from the past:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2006-09-01/parties-open-fire-with-new-qld-election-ads/1253588
The media is currently unbearable due to Royal coverage, then there will Grand Final coverage, so it is not going to be easy to get a story out for a couple of weeks. Then 8 weeks until election, one of which is basically taken out by the Melbourne Cup. So the time available to make a splash is limited; there are 73 days until the election but only about 50 are going to be useful if you are trying to get coverage.
I read that the Victorian parliament’s Hansard has recorded Matthew Guy speaking of “King Alfred” in his speech welcoming the accession of Charles III, not “King Arthur”, as he actually said.
Guy may have made a slip when speaking; we can all do that, mixing up names, forgetting little things and so on.
But Hansard is supposed to be a record of what MPs said, not what they thought they said or wanted to instead say. If a pollie wants to correct the record, let them do so with a little note in the margins of Hansard. They shouldn’t be allowed to effectively bowdlerise their own words.
A similar thing happened in 1996, when newly-elected MP Pauline Hanson in her inaugural speech vastly exaggerated the population sizes of neighbouring Asian countries, which she claimed were threatening to overwhelm Australia.
Hansard later printed Hanson’s speech with the correct population figures, prompting Gerard Henderson of all people to remark that Hansard could no longer claim to be an accurate record of what was said in parliament.
The Essential poll looks OK to me. Maybe a little bit more to the Libs so 4,% two p.p. Has to be some backlash against the Government and Dan Andrews.
”
EightESsays:
Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 11:09 am
I’m old enough to remember the days when Labor was considered unelectable in Victoria, with no Labor government having ever gone full-term or even anywhere close. These days, anyone under the age of about forty thinks of Victoria as Labor heartland.
The turnaround really is mind-boggling.
”
According to John Howard, Victoria is Massachusetts of Australia. 🙂
When I visited Melbourne earlier this year, for the first time in two decades I actually thought I was in a bizarro Alabama, i.e
a one party State with a love of authoritianism, of the woke kind, but with a nasty right wing undercurrent as well.
Maybe it was the first 10 minutes of the News which was about some convicted police killer being set free after 20 years on appeal. But all from the police viewpoint, not the wronged innocent. But then on to inner city restaurants and venues where the people docilely lined up for admittance.
Glad to get back to the Deep North which, at least under a Labor Government, is reasonably laid back nowadays.
EightES & Ven,
Victoria in the 60s & 70s was led by trendy small ‘l’ libs like Dick Hamer. Opposing them was an ALP led by a cabal of Marxists from outside parliament like Bill Hartley & George Crawford and by dopes such as Clyde Holding and Frank Wilkes from within it. Labor was simply unelectable. I should know, coz I was one of the Marxist dickheads, though I was of an impressionable age back then. However, the capital ‘L’ Libs today are a pale imitation of their glory days. They are under the spell of another cabal of god-botherers and fast-buck spivs and are just as unelectable as Labor used to be. In contrast, Vic Labor today is hardly a party run by its members, but it’s much more professional and much more in tune with public sentiment thanks partly to reforms forced upon it by Gough. Labor simply has stolen the middle ground from beneath the Libs’ mucky white shoes.
“Gettysburg1863 says:
Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 5:22 pm”…
I am currently based in Qld too and although the federal election was a disappointment for Labor in this state, the Greens did exceedingly well. So, it looks like that Qld is also slowly moving in the Progressive direction federally which, remarkably, it means matching the well-entrenched trend to vote for the Progressives (the ALP in this case) at the state level. The MSM have been throwing everything at Anna, but you are right, the next state election is too far away, and in any event the available opinion polls for 2022 give 2PP results for the ALP of 52% and 50%… The relentless attack against the ALP doesn’t seem to be as effective as the LNP are hoping for.
I think the replacement of Frank Wilkes was an absolute turning point in Labor politics. I remember it well; the first time a sitting (but amazingly dull) leader was replaced by a perceived ‘winner’. Then came Burke in WA doing the same thing and of course Bob Hawke. Thereafter, dud leaders no longer had tenure.
Bill Hartley was at least sincere, if nothing else. I think he died in semi poverty back in WA, still as a ratbag.
The Courier Mail’s problem is they have have begun relentlessly attacking Palaszczuk from pretty much the moment it seemed like she might actually have a chance at ousting Campbell Newman, and have not let up since. The consequence is that they now suffer from a serious case of “boy who cried wolf.”
HIT,
Baghdad Bill Hartley travelled so far to the left throughout his political life that he fell off this flat Earth of ours. It was a long journey from WA Young Libs to Saddam’s chief apologist in Oz. He had eyes so piercing and mesmerising you just knew he was off the planet. It partly explains why he had such a fanatical following. He could cast a hypnotic spell over people. Still, I have never known anyone to match Bob Hawke intellectually like he could. Some of their policy debates on the Middle East were legendary. More than anyone else, Bill was responsible for Labor’s ‘even-handed’ policy there that more-or-less still exists today.
I only know three people that read the Courier Mail, they are life long Liberal voters and would never vote any other way. They all thought Climate change was bullshite (although one of them is starting to realise that perhaps it’s not, given he lives on Bribie island not believing in Climate change is not a long term option).
They both obsess with China and hate Labor with a passion. Two are also fans of Fox New, Bolt, Credlin and the whole RWNJ ecosystem and think Covid is a Chinese plot and the vaccine for Covid is worse than the disease.
Bizarrely one (who is my sister in law) thinks Trans in sport is simply an attempt to disempower women but also thinks that repealing Roe vs Wade in the US is OK.
The fundamental problem the Vic Liberals have in running a “people died under Dan” campaign is that they wanted to “let it rip” and spent all pandemic whining about golf courses not being open and other minutiae and everybody knows it. More people would have died under them. That’s why despite the debacle of Victoria’s 2nd wave the Liberal numbers remained in the toilet and they chucked O’Brien overboard (only to replace him with Guy which made no sense at all).
@Historyintime – I wouldn’t judge Victoria by its commercial news stations which are the same as everywhere else.
Also the news story to which you refer is a rare one where you should not feel bad for the guy who was in jail before acquittal – pretty gobsmacked he got acquitted on the appeal (and note that he pleaded guilty to all the armed robberies and would have spent a lot of time in jail regardless). The police probably did some dodgy stuff because it was the 90s and they were pursuing cop killers, but the accused and the other guy (who admits to his part in it) were on tape talking about the killings in ways that make it very hard to believe they weren’t both there, ditto the ballistics with the two cops shot with two different guns from different angles. It was a shocking crime at the time, two police gunned down pursuing a pair of armed robbers who were terrorising local restaurants at the time. Roberts admits to having been one of the robbers, his entire defence is it was only his partner there when the cops pulled him over and that the guy apparently pulled a diving shooting gun-changing move out of a John Woo movie to match the ballistics report….
Our esteemed media here in victoria make a habit of omitting the fact that we have the best performing economy in the country.
And guess who ranks almost last?
Goldensmaug
Unfortunately, there are a lot more like them.
@Arky: “The fundamental problem the Vic Liberals have in running a “people died under Dan” campaign is that they wanted to “let it rip” and spent all pandemic whining about golf courses not being open and other minutiae and everybody knows it. More people would have died under them.”
You’re exactly right.
It’s such a dumb strategy because they spent two years saying we should not have been locking down, we should not have been enforcing vaccine mandates, etc. All that was done to protect the health system and minimise pressure on it.
Now they are running a campaign entirely focused on the health system being under pressure under Labor. Firstly, everybody knows that the main cause of the issues is staff shortages due to Covid, and it’s being experienced nationally (not just here). And most importantly, everybody knows the system would have been under a lot MORE pressure if the Liberal Party had been in power letting the virus rip.
On top of that, healthcare has always been a perceived strength of Labor, and the Liberals have a record of making cuts to Medicare, closing hospitals, etc. You really have to question how they could possibly be this bad at formulating a campaign strategy?
I would really love to see some ads by healthcare/nursing unions supporting Labor, because that would really take the wind out of the Liberals’ sails. I don’t think there are any nurses out there who would be thinking “Things would be so much better under a Liberal government, if only Matthew Guy was our Premier and we had no lockdowns, the health system would be fine..”
Blaming the media has become a bad habit.
The level crossing removals, metro tunnel and north east link are all huge infrastructure projects.
Think of all the materials, contractors, machinery, personnel including engineers etc.
Not forgetting the community who see and experience real change from these projects.
Particularly, the level crossing removals.
66 done and counting.
Also next year kindergarten is free. Normally cost is in excess of 2000. Another winner for vic state govt.
I don’t like focusing on a government giving away free this-or-that or bonus payments for whatever.
Elections should be about ideas and policies and issues of what’s right and wrong, not about showbags of giveaways.
The Age has also just reported a 10.6% decrease in crime over the last 12 months too.
It does indicate that some of that reduction is due to the removal of CHO orders; but also burglaries, robberies, drug offences, weapon offences, theft etc are all down and the number of ‘victims of crime’ is the lowest it has been since 2005.
Of course, The Age who for some reason have been on an anti-Dan crusade have headlined the article “Blackmail in Victoria spikes”, choosing the one oddly random crime that did increase to focus on!
In any case, a law & order campaign is definitely not on the cards for the Liberals this year.
@EightES: “Elections should be about ideas and policies and issues of what’s right and wrong, not about showbags of giveaways.”
That’s exactly right and is why Labor are so far in front.
It should be contested on who has the most progressive vision for the future, things like building infrastructure for the next generation, bold social reforms that ensure laws and civil rights are in line with 21st century values and not 20th century or religious values, economic reforms that favour those with less power over those with more (eg. Rental reforms favouring tenants), etc.
When Victorian Labor’s agenda since 2014 is looked at as a whole, it is really remarkable. Our state has led the way in a lot of areas and it’s something to be proud of. When you consider that the Liberals opposed nearly every one of those measures – even if they promise to not scrap them now – they don’t have a great track record as a party who could be trusted to keep the state progressing at the rate it has been.
That said, I wouldn’t class free kindergarten as a showbag of giveaways. It’s an economic policy designed to address the gender pay gap, increase productivity and give women more options to get back into the workforce earlier and with more hours, as well as being proven to be critical for the development of kids.
EightES says:
Thursday, September 15, 2022 at 11:08 am
I don’t like focusing on a government giving away free this-or-that or bonus payments for whatever.
Elections should be about ideas and policies and issues of what’s right and wrong, not about showbags of giveaways.
———————————————-
The Andrews government like all governments has its pet areas and favorite groups but there are areas where its performance hasn’t been as good and the day will come when it has to make unpopular decisions.
I agree Labor is miles ahead of the Liberals on the issues which matter. That’s why I don’t like (in my opinion) distractions along the lines of what free stuff we can get.
“Mexicanbeemer says:
Thursday, September 15, 2022 at 10:37 am
Blaming the media has become a bad habit.”…
The habit will be gone the day when the media say that “A” should/must win and “B” should/must lose an election, but the contrary happens. Then, we know that the media have lost their power of control over the mind of enough voters, and therefore can’t dictate the results of elections.
We may be getting close to that day…..
Alpo
The habit will be gone the day when the media say that “A” should/must win and “B” should/must lose an election, but the contrary happens. Then, we know that the media have lost their power of control over the mind of enough voters, and therefore can’t dictate the results of elections.
We may be getting close to that day…..
———————————
That happens a lot and the ALP has dominated Victorian politics since 1982 without a friendly media.
The media campaign against Labor in 2018 was one of the most fierce I’ve ever seen. Every news outlet banging on about a “crime wave” in every bulletin. Every detail of branch stacking, red shirts, etc all over every front page. Completely biased reporting of the CFA saga for 4 years. “Shopping lists” of what Victoria could have done with the $1.2b it cost to cancel East-West Link. It was relentless.
Yet Labor still won in a landslide. Victoria is probably the state where Murdoch in particular has the least impact in the country, and 3AW doesn’t seem to have anywhere near the influence over Melbourne politics that 2GB does over Sydney politics either.
Crime is down across the board in Victoria over the past 12 months — including in the affluent bayside suburb of Brighton where influencer Rebecca Judd claimed a crime wave was being driven by “rapes, bashings and home invasions”.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/crime-statistics-reveal-drop-in-overall-crime-despite-crime-wave-claims/news-story/426b6ece1baf5e380c7dd46af5e00ff3
More here https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/
Historyintime says:
Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 8:17 pm
When I visited Melbourne earlier this year, for the first time in two decades I actually thought I was in a bizarro Alabama, i.e
…
Glad to get back to the Deep North which, at least under a Labor Government, is reasonably laid back nowadays.
—
Cool story champ. None of that happened.
Somethinglikethat
Agreed.
Melbourne is a lot of things, but bizarro Alabama aint one of them. Lol!
EightES says:
Thursday, September 15, 2022 at 11:59 am
I agree Labor is miles ahead of the Liberals on the issues which matter.
—
Corrected: the issues that matter to you.
As someone who lives in Footscray, I’m aware of burning issues across the wider western metro area. I’m personally unaffected by them, as Footscray is completely integrated into the city, but millions are. And it’s these transport-related issues which will surely harm the govt. Sadly for them they’re all self-inflicted.
* When the Melbourne Airport Rail Link was announced, the centrepiece was to be a rebuilt Sunshine Station or “superhub”. It was big selling point of the route they chose. A one-stop-shop for Vline and Metro passengers, akin to the best rail interchanges overseas. They’ve subsequently walked back from that, and the upgrades to Sunshine are laughable now. Half of the new stations built as part of level crossing removals are more impressive and functional. And there’s a lot of anger over that. A big community group has formed over this issue, and they’re pissed off.
* Similarly, the govt engaged the council there (Brimbank) to put together a development plan on how the s0-called superhub could integrate with the ongoing development in Sunshine. Those plans critically included a rebuilt Albion station (which essentially forms the northern end of the Sunshine centre). What the locals are getting there is a joke. Zero upgrades. A concrete flyover, passing metres within heritage structures.
* Any party, news outlet or candidate who isn’t Labor is able to highlight the difference in how the west is funded relative to other parts of Melbourne. While Albion (almost crumbling into the ground) is left untouched, at the same time they announce architect designed new stations at Narre Warren, Pakenham, Ringwood East etc. It’s needed in those communities too, but again the anger is palpable in the west. And will hurt the govt at the ballot box. They really dropped the ball.
* To compound all of this, the Age has run a few pieces highlighting the lack of any progress on the big news story of the last election, the Western Rail Plan. Upgrades and electrification of lines, new stations – none of that has happened, and when pressed the govt deflects. It’s not good enough, and the govt would deserve to lose seats right across the growing west for that reason alone.