We’re probably due a Resolve Strategic poll in the coming week, and Newspoll’s quarterly aggregates with state-level results and other breakdowns will likely be upon us shortly. For now, there’s the following poll-wise:
• A JWS Research poll finds 46% intending to vote yes in the Indigenous Voice referendum against 43% for no, with 11% uncommitted. Even allowing for small samples, the state breakdowns have unintuitive results, showing clear leads for yes in Western Australia and no in New South Wales, and statistical ties in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. The poll was conducted from June 2 to 6 from a sample of 1122. This comes attached to the pollster’s quarterly True Issues survey on issue salience, which as you might expect finds housing and interest rates continuing to track upwards while hospitals, health care and ageing continues to decline from its pandemic-era highs. Thirty-seven per cent rate the government’s performance as very good or good compared with 23% for poor or very poor, both results unchanged on last time.
• The weekly federal voting intention numbers from Roy Morgan have Labor’s two-party lead steady at 57-43, which is presumably influenced by a change in preference flows, because the primary votes have Labor up one to 37.5%, the Coalition down two to 32% and the Greens steady on 13%.
Other news:
• A paper by Matthew Taylor for conservative think tank the Centre for Independent Studies reached the headline-grabbing conclusion that the Coalition stands to lose the next six federal elections if present generational trends continue to play out uninterrupted. While the paper finds evidence that Generation X (born 1965 to 1980) is following the previously established trend towards conservatism as it ages, its analysis of Australian Election Study survey data paints a distinctly unpromising picture for the Coalition among Millennials (born 1981 to 1995) and especially Generation Z (after 1995). The former started from a lower base of Coalition support than previous generations and is showing only tentative movement to conservatism with the onset of middle age (more discernible is movement from the Greens to Labor). The starting point for Gen Z was lower still and has, from an admittedly shallow pool of data, since collapsed altogether, to the extent that Coalition support is now 25% lower than for the population as a whole — although the movement has been to the none-of-the-above category rather than Labor.
• Matthew Killoran of the Courier-Mail reports that right-wing Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick faces four preselection challengers for his third position on the Senate ticket at the Liberal National Party’s state conference next weekend. In addition to those already reported — Nelson Savanh of strategic communications firm Michelson Alexander and private investment fund director Stuart Fraser — are Mitchell Dickens, a former staffer to Rennick and party operative based on the Sunshine Coast, and Sophia Li, a former political adviser who has made a few guest appearances on Amanda Stoker’s program on Sky News. Incumbent Paul Scarr is also under challenge for his top position from Li and Fiona Ward, who was recently overlooked for the Fadden by-election, but is not reckoned to be in any trouble.
• Following earlier reports of a challenge from Mary Aldred, the Sentinel Times reports South Gippsland mayor Nathan Hersey will also run for preselection against Russell Broadbent, the 72-year-old Liberal member for the Victorian seat of Monash.
Either way, it is rather jarring to have your grandmother who patiently taught you how to play card games turn out 15 years later to randomly explode if the news was accidentally left on to air Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s musings to scream “COMMUNIST TRAITOR! SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM NOW!!”
It’s why I have a rather low opinion about Sky News After Dark, she constantly watched them once they were made free-to-air in Regional Victoria and pretty much drained her of whatever decency she had left at that stage. That they continue to be able to do that to other peoples’ grandparents to this day without punishment or indeed opposition makes me disgusted.
”Somewhere in Melbourne a handsome, swashbuckling hero emerges to bring down the megalomaniacal Littlefinger.”
Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird? It’s a plane? It’s Super Nath!
Over the last several years my daughter bought me three books on Keating and Hawke.
The first I pretended to read but when she bought me the second one I had to explain to her that because I lived and breathed that era, that there was little or nothing new in them for me to read.
After she gave me the third book , she explained that she was on the publisher’s prerelease list and
was sent the books automatically at no charge.
At least that may me feel better for not reading them.
My late uncle was a commissioned office in the WA Police. At his funeral one of his former colleagues said in his eulogy that the then new Commissioner, Brian Bull, had appointed my uncle to internal investigations because he was known as the only honest cop in the force. That would likely have been in the mid eighties.
My uncle’s then son in law was one of the drug squad detectives investigating Kizon. I understand from media reports they were ordered to abandon their investigations by a more senior officer.
Kirsdarke. Heartily agree with you about SAD. It is atrocious stuff. Hopefully, it is closed down or defanged when the Old Man finally carks it.
Team Katich says:
Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 10:21 pm
I have only read one book about a politician. Watson on Keating. Riveting from start to finish. There hasn’t been a politician worthy of a book since.
His travel book (trains in the US) was good too although not as good as Theroux.
Want to read that one on LBJ – heard great things. But no time.. Be great if they made a tv miniseries on it.
**********
The great thing about Watson’s book is it shows the chaos, contingency and working with what you’ve got of a political office/party or campaign. Not the normal “I thought of A, then I did B and C and then D happened” of most political memoirs.
If you mean Robert Caro’s biography of LBJ, it is a great, if unfinished, portrait of the man and his impact, but it couldn’t possibly be turned into a TV series. Its strength is the thousands of details embedded in a driving narrative.
I have both the Watson and the O’Brien books on Keating (rather neatly encapsulating the differences between an unauthorised, if friendly, biography and a very authorised sort of biography), I have Bill Clinton’s mammoth autobiography, I have the late great Peter Andren’s autobiography. Not sure I have much else in the way of recent political biography on my shelves. It tends to be older (JFK and earlier). Tons of genre fiction for me also, I’m afraid, and older classics, and books on scientific areas I’m interested in. Despite having given away loads of books with every house move in my life I think my wife would still like me to clear more room in the storage under the stairs by giving away yet more old books… and that’s despite the fact I’ve barely had a new paper book in the past 5 years or more apart from presents from other people (E. G. I have Richard Osman’s Thursday Night Murder Club series on the shelf because I was given them, but Becky Chambers’ excellent Wayfarers series exists purely on the tablet).
Seeing that the conversation has turned to Bill Shorten, my latest insider intelligence, is that Billy is hanging in there waiting for his turn to come again.
At 56, he is still a young man by political standards considering McMahon was 63 and Turnbull was 60 on becoming PMs.
TK,
“Want to read that one on LBJ – heard great things. But no time.. Be great if they made a tv miniseries on it.”
Audiobooks. In the car. On foot. Painting the laundry. In the garden. Etc.
98.6 @ #1008 Tuesday, July 4th, 2023 – 11:01 pm
Can you tell your insider to tell him he’s dreamin’?
Steve777 @ #986 Tuesday, July 4th, 2023 – 8:39 pm
And clouds. 😐
98.6 says:
Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 11:01 pm
Seeing that the conversation has turned to Bill Shorten, my latest insider intelligence, is that Billy is hanging in there waiting for his turn to come again.
At 56, he is still a young man by political standards considering McMahon was 63 and Turnbull was 60 on becoming PMs.
————————————————————-
In 2004, Latham forced Howard to abolish the extraordinarily generous pollies super scheme – if you were elected prior to 2004, and went for your third term you got 2/3s of your last salary for life – indexed!
We all thought it was a great move at the time, but it is why bill and the liar from the shire are hanging around.
Bill knows he is (unfairly) unelectable. He knows his time has come and gone. Marketing boy does not have that level of insight. I would not be at all surprised if that mofo thinks he can be PM again. It is god’s will, after all.
Evening all again. Enjoying catching up on the conversation about political books.
Kirsdarke
You are right about Sky After Dark. I think it is so bad now it and those who watch it are irredeemable. Yet it might have reached the point it helps Labor indirectly. Any criticisms from it wash off neutrals as entirely partisan. Further, SkyAD is so obviously biased and hateful I think it puts many neutrals off aligning with the Liberal party. Also it drives the parliamentary Liberals further right by both embracing them and promoting nonsense at the same time.
When I look at many of the Teals and their revulsion of the divisive politics of the far right, I often wonder how many might have joined the Liberals under Hewson or Fraser. Of course that is a long time ago, but that is perhaps the point. Murdoch and Sky have been driving the Liberals further and further right for 30 years, so that a whole generation of new voters have been deterred from identifying with them.
Without a Federal government or states to channel revenue into the Murdoch News delusionverse via government advertising and payoffs, sorry grants, I wonder if even Murdoch will reach the point where he cuts his losses on Sky and the Australian?
I guess I’m the only one with all 6 volumes of Manning Clark’s ‘A History of Australia’, in hardcover. I mean, you have to start at the beginning, if you want to talk books on Australian politics.
Someone on Ebay didn’t know the value of that lot, either. 😉
Cat
“ Can you tell your insider to tell him he’s dreamin’?”
Thank dog. Anyone who suggested to me shifting any of Labor’s current leadership team now they are travelling so well (Albo, Chalmers, Marles, Plibersek and Wong), should be either shot or forced to join the Nationals.
Shorten is doing a good job getting to the bottom of the NDIS / Robodebt mess, but he got two goes already, and there are too many other better options now. I’d back Chalmers as the next best option, unless his profile and popularity in Qld is much less than how he comes across here.
Socrates @ #1015 Tuesday, July 4th, 2023 – 11:22 pm
Absolutely. Not to mention the younger generation female Ministers, like Clare O’Neil and Annika Wells. However, it’s definitely Jim Chalmers turn next, after the PM decides to hang up his boots. Unless something goes catastrophically wrong with the economy. I mean, Labor’s aim is to win more seats in Queensland. 😉
Bill Shorten should be happy he ended up a Minister again and didn’t end his political life in the Opposition.
Regarding future Prime Ministerial aspirants, maybe they could take some comfort from precedent. Just fifteen of Australia’s thirty-one Prime Ministers served more than three years.
Nath 7.27pm
“Speaking of which. Does anyone know the name of a book published in the 70s or early 80s involving a military coup in Australia. I read it a long time ago at age 13 or something and can’t recall the title.”
You should have been rote learning your Latin verbs and not attempting to read Harold Robbins by torchlight and damaging your eyesight.
‘Ocean temperatures around Australia last month were the hottest for any June on record …’
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/05/ocean-temperatures-around-australia-the-hottest-for-any-june-as-un-declares-an-el-nino
New thread.
i dont understand whiy naf is focusing on shortin he will serve a couple more terms and then retire most likely to a dipllomatic post surely tania plibersek will retire soon she has little left to offer