Monday miscellany: youth polling, preselections, Werribee by-election latest (open thread)

A late vacancy arises in a safe Labor seat, expectations management sets in ahead of Saturday’s Victorian by-elections, and more besides.

The campaign for the Western Australian election on March 8 formally commences this week with the issuing of the writs, there are two interesting Victorian state by-elections on Saturday (more on one of them below), and there will shortly be a New South Wales state by-election to contend with in Port Macquarie following retirement announcement from Nationals-turned-Liberal member Leslie Williams. That’s to say nothing of the small matter of a looming federal election, for which April 12 is generally considered the most likely date, particularly after last week’s inflation numbers shortened the odds on an interest rate cut later this month.

Also of note:

• The Financial Review this week had polling data for the 18-to-34 cohort broken down by gender, combined from Freshwater Strategy’s monthly polling in November, December and January. Presumably inspired by the stark divide in voting and ideology that’s opened up between young men and women in the United States, the results find the phenomenon to be relatively subdued here: the big difference was that support for the Greens was at 32% among young women and 20% among young men, with both major parties scoring higher among men (Labor 36%, Coalition 32%) than women (Labor 32%, Coalition 25%). Kos Samaras of RedBridge Group calculates two-party Labor leads of 67-33 among the women and 59-41 among the men. Anthony Albanese led Peter Dutton as preferred prime minister by 58-27 among the women and 55-37 among the men, but both leaders scored much worse among women than men on net approval.

• 7News has a new election prediction model, in which political science academics Simon Jackman and Luke Mansillo were involved. Mansillo was also involved in The Guardian’s tracker, but this one is quite different: whereas The Guardian’s model goes far beyond any poll result in crediting the Coalition with a commanding 53.1-46.9 lead, the 7News model has it at 51-49. Mansillo is quoted saying the mode leans just slightly in favour of Labor forming government because of an inefficiently distributed Coalition swing, leaving them set to run up margins in already safe rural and regional seats.

• Labor’s Stephen Jones announced last week that he will not seek re-election in his Illawarra region seat of Whitlam. Ronald Mizen of the Financial Review reports the only known contender for Labor preselection is Keely O’Brien, general manger of corporate affairs for the Council of Australian Life Insurers. However, O’Brien is of the Right and the consensus appears to be that the Right will not formally oppose the national executive ratifying the nominee of Jones’s own Left faction. The report further relates that an informal deal reserves Whitlam to the Left and the state seat of Shoalhaven to the Right, but some consider the Right is owed a seat after Anthony Albanese imposed Ashvini Ambihaipahar of the Left in Barton.

• The South Australian Liberal Party has chosen Leah Blyth, education executive and state party president, to fill the Senate vacancy created by Simon Birmingham’s retirement, replacing a moderate with a conservative. Brad Crouch of The Advertiser reports Blyth won the party ballot with 119 votes to 71 for lawyer Sam Hooper and 11 for Adelaide councillor Henry Davis. As Birmingham was re-elected in 2022, Blyth will not be required to contest the coming election.

• A party vote to disendorse Jacob Vadakkedathu as the Liberals’ Australian Capital Territory Senate candidate over branch stacking allegations was defeated on Saturday. X account Preselection Updates relates the margin was 109 votes to 74.

• Patrick Durkin of the Financial Review (no link available at present) reports Labor polling shows Saturday’s by-election in Werribee “could be as close as 48-52” in favour of the government, suggesting a 9% Liberal swing. However, Liberals “denied the race was that close” and said a 5% swing would be a good result. Chip Le Grand of The Age also cites a Liberal source talking down the party’s chances by citing a “missed opportunity” to win over the local Indian community by preselecting local businessman Rajan Chopra, instead choosing 63-year-old real estate agent Steve Murphy.

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.

1,574 comments on “Monday miscellany: youth polling, preselections, Werribee by-election latest (open thread)”

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  1. I recall at the very beginning of covid in early 2020, someone in here commented to the effect of “this virus will affect us in ways we’ve yet to realise”
    How right they were – the impact on culture and conspiratorial thought, the breaking of people’s brains and how it all fed into the rise of facism.

  2. @BSA:

    “I got onto a John Anderson site by mistake. I was lured by some git saying if the Poms hadn’t colonised Australia it would’ve been the Frogs, it was going to happen. I thought that was a realistic enough statement but it just turned into a glorification of everything us whites have done for the indinenous folks.”

    ______

    This was my response to that particular video, posted in the comments section:

    “Sickening, patronising and downright disgraceful arguments being peddled by two old stale pale males. European colonialisation wasn’t inevitable. ‘If not Britain, then someone else would have done it’ is risible bullshit. The Dutch ‘got here’ (the West Coast of Australia) two centuries before and didn’t colonise the place. Whilst the French were exploring the South Pacific there is no indication that they would have had any other interest – or the means – to do anything other than establish a military garrison … against the British! Besides which, although not the norm there ARE at least a dozen instances whereby a ‘third world’ or at least a non European country was NOT colonised by anyone but allowed to embrace the modern world on their own terms (or something approximating that) once ‘first contact’ had been established. The settlement at Sydney Cove and the appropriation of a continent by stealth thereafter deprived the existing occupants that right. As does the ongoing denials and deprivations today.

    Now we have the Mauri as the potential boogie man that the noble sons of Albion ‘saved’ the poor ignorant and backward aboriginals from. FFS! The Mauri were seafarers. Invaders in relatively small numbers and without European weapons. How exactly would they have gone about subjugating a hardened people with populations much bigger than any invading Mauri & used to the uniqueness of Australian conditions? The Mauri verses Pemuway’s kin? Yeah. nah.”

  3. Dave

    As I mentioned, north east link is on my doorstep. The disruptions have been intense and the whole area has been turned upside down.

    I would have preferred the other proposed route to have been chosen.

    Which east west link are you referring to?

  4. Heather Cox Richardson writing for her Letters From an American Substack about the Republican majorities of the 119th United States Congress abandoning their constitutional duties.

    I’m going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change.

    But they are not doing that.

    Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes. […]

    …permitting a private citizen to override the will of our representatives in Congress destroys the U.S. Constitution. It also makes Congress itself superfluous. And it takes the minority rule Republicans have come to embrace to the logical end of putting government power in the hands of one man.

  5. Bizzcan, no point except for being able to maintain a shred of our national dignity and commitment to any possibility of an international ‘rules based order’. In declining to provide any response the prime minister provides tacit endorsement of the trump regime’s plans to illegally occupy so far 3 sovereign states. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept and all that.

  6. Don’t you people of the extreme left worry, in three years, my views will be median and mainstream.

    On Easter 2028,
    – Dutton will be Prime Minister of Australia
    – Trump will be the US President (or Vance if he passes)
    – Nigel Farage will be the Prime Minister of UK
    – Marine Le Pen will be President of France
    – The Conservatives will have a massive majority in Canada

    Let’s see who’s advocating for a two-state solution then!

  7. sprocket_says:
    Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 1:42 pm
    _____________________________
    Sprocket I thought we had come to an understanding about your wild predictions. You know how much distress and embarrasment some of your whoppers have cost you in the past – yet you seem to have fallen off the wagon again.

  8. ScromoIIsays:
    Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 1:36 pm
    Can’t wait for Penny Wong to not be foreign minister anymore. She is the most incompetent person in that post since time immemorial. Not difficult to see why: she is the ultimate epitome of DEI.
    ______________________
    You aren’t even equal to Penny Wong’s shoe laces. I think Penny Wong and Julie Bishop are/were excellent Foreign Ministers and only a stooge would think otherwise.

  9. Victoriasays:
    Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 1:44 pm
    Dave

    As I mentioned, north east link is on my doorstep. The disruptions have been intense and the whole area has been turned upside down.

    I would have preferred the other proposed route to have been chosen.

    Which east west link are you referring to?

    The one that didn’t stack up and had a cost-benefit ratio of 0.5.

  10. OFTT – Are London Bobbies the world’s largest snowflakes or what? I can’t believe that the British Prosecution service bothered with the Sam Kerr case.

  11. banquo911 @1.44pm:

    maintain a shred of our national dignity

    “National Dignity” is not worth anything. The world is as it is and you’re saying we should performatively express outrage, achieving nothing except maybe retribution, for “national dignity”. Please. I hope you were wearing an Australian Flag draped across your shoulders while you typed that.

    and commitment to any possibility of an international ‘rules based order’

    Clearly an international ‘rules based order’ is dead. Trump’s re-election and subsequent behaviour the last nail in the coffin. There is absolutely no point in dying on that hill.

    The best we can do now is to foster functional relationships with those countries that we feasibly can (whether we like them or not), try to avoid inflaming dysfunctional relationships that we have no choice but to engage with, and maintain as much trust in our word on the world stage as we can.

    That is not served making pointless (worse than pointless) gestures.

  12. ‘banquo911 says:
    Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 1:44 pm

    Bizzcan, no point except for being able to maintain a shred of our national dignity and commitment to any possibility of an international ‘rules based order’. In declining to provide any response the prime minister provides tacit endorsement of the trump regime’s plans to illegally occupy so far 3 sovereign states. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept and all that.’
    =====================
    The first thing to note is that the presser was about yet another Albanese Government health initiative – a massive boost to hospital funding. The NT which has Australia’s worst health outcomes, will get a 30% increase in hospital funding.

    As usual, it was good to see Bludgers swing in behind yet another progressive act by the Albanese Government.

    Yeah. Nah. Total silence.

    I can see why some Australian political elements want to stoke up a stand up fight with the United States. They have always hated the United States. If they manage to provoke a destructive breakdown in relations, excellent. And if they manage to destroy a Labor Government in the process, so much the better.

    Unfortunately, you are lying here. Your lie is an important lie. I imagine you will be wanting to repeat it so it is time to put your lie to bed.

    Albanese very, very sensibly stated that he was not going to give a daily running commentary on Trump’s statements du jour. That is a sane Prime Minister dealing sanely with an insane POTUS. Of course ratbags on the far right and the far left want insanity and chaos. So, sure enough, there were journalist players running their destructive lines.

    There was no tacit support by Albanese for anyting at all.

    Albanese stated clearly and postively, that Australia, on a bipartisanship basis, supports a two-state solution. Australia supports aid for Gaza. Australia supports the ceasefire. Australia supports peace.

  13. I tipped this earlier today regarding Iran….

    Donald Trump
    If Iran attempts assassination, ‘they get obliterated’: President Trump
    ‘There won’t be anything left,’ President Trump noted
    Alexandra Koch By Alexandra Koch Fox News
    Published February 4, 2025 5:09pm EST

    President Donald Trump sends strong message to Iran
    President Donald Trump said on Tuesday if Iran carries out his assassination, advisers will ensure that country is “obliterated.”
    While signing an executive order imposing maximum pressure on Tehran, the president said he left instructions if something were to happen to him.
    “That would be a terrible thing for them to do,” Trump said. “If they did that, they would be obliterated. That would be the end. … There won’t be anything left.”

    Hmmm Iran over to you?

  14. The first thing to note is that the presser was about yet another Albanese Government health initiative – a massive boost to hospital funding

    The money comes from the NDIS cuts and cost shifting to the states.

  15. Rex

    So the extra tax on super balances over $3m is up for debate this week – should help fund the welfare system. You’d be supportive no doubt.

  16. “OFTT – Are London Bobbies the world’s largest snowflakes or what? I can’t believe that the British Prosecution service bothered with the Sam Kerr case.”

    _____

    What I find staggering (although I had a similar situation regarding a client and Albury Police a few years ago) was that neither the police on scene (PC Lovell in particular) or the CPS did anything about what on its face (having now heard a reasonable amount of the evidence in the case) was a pretty straight forward case of a criminally unlawful detention and subsequent terrorisation of two intoxicated hence vulnerable young women at the hands of a London Cabbie who simply took the law into his own hands for up to 20 minutes when he got upset that Kerr had done a chunder out of window (presumably soiling the cab to some degree). His apparent crime carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment in NSW and I assume similar stiff tariffs in the UK.

    IMO, Lowell’s blatant disregard of their immediate complaint, his half hour plus ‘white-splaining’ and general disregard before Kerr lost it raises real questions as to his continuing suitability as a police officer anywhere outside Dutton’s Qld Police Force circa 1990.

    Also, CPS: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

  17. Does Albanese say whether Australia supports the maintenance of our very special and important relationship with the US? Does Albanese say if there are any limits to that support? Does Albanese think that Australia supports the US following international law? Does Albanese thinks Australia should follow international law?

    There isn’t any lie here dude. There is an entire planet of countries that aren’t the USA, and aren’t run by fascist dictator wannabes and their oligarchs. Does Albanese think that Australia should foster relationships with those countries that more closely share our values, or does he think that Australia should deepen ties with the USA? The options are getting pretty darn close to mutually exclusive.

    As to it being performative, it certainly isn’t. Australia and the USA have a military alliance which has typically seen Australia participate in US led combat ‘initiatives’ that have been incongruent with international law – is it performative to contribute our military personnel and assets to a US led incursion into Gaza, Mexico, Greenland or Canada? Some of these are outlandish propositions, others less so. I don’t think Albanese is equipped to answer them either way.

  18. Sprocket

    Better to properly tax the fossil fuel cartel to help fund welfare.

    Raiding peoples retirement Super and removing an incentive to save for retirement is wrong.

  19. Albo’s media deadbeat to Trump’s announcement was well done.

    The cabinet needs to reassess Australia’s alliances and Defence strategy.

  20. Thank the gods we have a political leader who is prepared to courageously play a straight bat on questions of morality. A lesser, weaker person might have committed a monumental international faux pas by coming straight out and saying ethnic cleansing is wrong.

  21. There was no tacit support by Albanese for anyting at all.

    Albanese stated clearly and postively, that Australia, on a bipartisanship basis, supports a two-state solution. Australia supports aid for Gaza. Australia supports the ceasefire. Australia supports peace.

    Also, what the Prime Minister said in his final remarks was that he was not there to give a hot take to Trump’s Gaza brainfart meant to drag the Attention Economy in his direction for the day, as per standard operating procedure. Which has the unthinking members of the Heart On Their Sleeves Left, like Sohar and banquo911, duly finding a way to criticise the government because they don’t take Trump’s bait when he throws chum into the water, like they immediately do as the most easily-manipulated, mindless goldfish that they are.

    Instead the Prime Minister stated that he and his government will follow proper parliamentary process and consider the US President’s remarks thoughtfully, and, in the fullness of time they will convey their position to the media and the nation.

  22. banquo911 says:
    Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 2:06 pm

    ….

    There isn’t any lie here dude.
    …’
    ====================
    Oh, yes there was.

  23. AM

    Sometimes knee jerk outrage is counterproductive. But that won’t stop those who have no prospect of government from seeking publicity.

  24. Liberals start with anti-semitism in QT.

    It is their safe ground after getting smashed on free bosses lunches yesterday.

    We all know how fundamentally the Liberals and the Nationals and Black Gangs Dutton are against racism of any sort.

  25. Boerwar @ #1231 Wednesday, February 5th, 2025 – 2:16 pm

    Liberals start with anti-semitism in QT.

    It is their safe ground after getting smashed on free bosses lunches yesterday.

    We all know how fundamentally the Liberals and the Nationals and Black Gangs Dutton are against racism of any sort.

    Does that mean Dutton has given up on winning Muslim plurality seats from Labor?

  26. The dopey bastards want the Prime Minister to give a 24/7 running commentary on what Trump shouts Panama, Greenland, Canada, Ukraine, the Riviera, Mexico, Gaza… whatever.

  27. C@t

    Do you think Albo should have blurted out ‘shirtfronting’ Trump?

    Or called for an international squad to go into Washington to get to the bottom of the issue?

    If only we had unhinged Liberal PMs like Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison to respond to the foreign affairs issue of the day.

  28. Who saw this coming?

    A list from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement of people with “final orders of removal” includes some 350 migrants from Fiji, 150 from Tonga and 57 people from Samoa, among others.

    It should be noted, though, that not all of the people with orders to leave have been convicted of serious crimes. Many have simply overstayed their visas or may have only committed a minor infraction. Most want to turn their lives around.

    I’m still waiting for Peter Thiel, Elon and Melania and her Birthright Citizenship baby, Barron, to be deported. 😉

  29. sprocket_ @ #1235 Wednesday, February 5th, 2025 – 2:19 pm

    C@t

    Do you think Albo should have blurted out ‘shirtfronting’ Trump?

    Or called for an international squad to go into Washington to get to the bottom of the issue?

    If only we had unhinged Liberal PMs like Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison to respond to the foreign affairs issue of the day.

    Where’s James Paterson when you need him? David Cameron is just too bland! 😆

  30. 77 million voted for Trump, including the majority of Palestinian Americans in Michigan, no sympathy for them now if they’re complaining that the Trump administration is too pro Israeli.
    As for the 2 state solution, forget it, it ain’t happening, ever.

  31. Can anyone really see America committing troops to go into Gaza and try and depopulate it? The Israelis have been trying for 15 months to occupy it, suffered over 400 dead and thousands wounded. Hamas was not supported by any Arab country in the conflict (Iran is not Arab) but an ethnic cleansing occupation might actually force their hands.
    The American public is hardly going to accept it, congress is probably not going to authorise it (The Republicans have a tiny majority in the house and only a small one in the Senate and some of those are very isolationist). Trump was supposedly the “No War” candidate.

  32. banquo911 @2.06pm –

    Does Albanese say whether Australia supports the maintenance of our very special and important relationship with the US? Does Albanese say if there are any limits to that support? Does Albanese think that Australia supports the US following international law? Does Albanese thinks Australia should follow international law?

    Albanese made the very important point that he and the government won’t be making comments about every Trump bit of ‘flood the zone’ shit. That is the only thing the government can sensibly do, and I support the government being sensible.

    Of course we have a ‘special and important relationship’ with the US – that’s the result of decades of forces acting upon us, and certainly the fact that the US is now a roaring dumpster fire is just making that ‘special and important relationship’ beyond fraught. I wish Australia would chart a substantially more independent foreign policy in general, but specifically with regards the USA; that’s simply not possible in the moment, and there is clearly a lot of cultural and institutional weight behind NOT moving away, and that is unfortunate.

    Irrespective, hypotheticals about what ‘limits’ there are on that relationship, or following international law, are pointless. We’ll have to deal with each situation, and each stress point, as it comes along. Why make statements about how Trump should follow international law when (a) that will only invite retribution if Trump and his croneys pay attention to it at all, and (b) there’s SFA we can do about whether the USA follows international law.

    International law, as part of a ‘rules based order’ is as close to dead as can be. If China and the USA have no intention of genuinely partaking (and I fully appreciate that the USA has been hypocritical about this for many decades before Trump came along), then ‘international law’ becomes an exercise in voluntary virtual signalling and nothing more because there is no effective enforcement, and no will to make it enforceable. I wish it were not so, and yet that is where we are.

    There is an entire planet of countries that aren’t the USA, and aren’t run by fascist dictator wannabes and their oligarchs.

    I don’t think you’ve been paying attention to what has been happening in the world over the last decade or so. The number of countries that you could point to who would genuinely back objective enforcement of international law is measurable in handfuls these days. If the 150 least powerful countries all ganged up (which they simply cannot bring themselves to do anyway), it would not worry China, the USA, Russia, etc, in the slightest.

    I was a 20-something in the 90s and I thought at the time that we were entering an era where the UN, international law, genuine social and economic progress across the world was inevitable, sensible, obvious. I have been sorely disabused of that notion of late. But this is not about you or I, you are critiquing the government of the day for recognizing the world as it is now and trying to deal with it in the best way possible for our national interest. That’s exactly what they should be doing.

    is it performative to contribute our military personnel and assets to a US led incursion into Gaza, Mexico, Greenland or Canada? Some of these are outlandish propositions, others less so. I don’t think Albanese is equipped to answer them either way.

    Again, no sensible government is going to answer hypotheticals like these. There is nothing to be served by making a big deal out of a variety of prospects, most of which will probably not happen. And if they do look like happening for real we will have to deal with them then. We are not in a position to be intimidating to wag our finger and say “don’t even think about this or that” to Donald J Trump. Avoid inflaming the situation. Respond as sensibly as we can, and only as much as we have to.

    As to whether Albanese is equipped to answer those questions – firstly I’m glad he’s not answering those hypotheticals as outlined above, but secondly I’m no fan of Albo, and I’ve said that before on here. I don’t rate him as a politician or leader. And yet, of all the things to criticize him over, not rising to this Trump-bait is precisely the right thing to do.

  33. 12% increase in hospital funding by the Albanese Government.

    Let’s hear it from the all the pseudo Progressives who slag Labor on a daily basis….

    Yeah, nah.

    Dutton must be going to cut health spending. It’s in his genes.

  34. The antis-semitic line from the Liberals has turned to horse dung.

    It turns out they have NOT requested a security briefing on the caravan with anti-semitic messages and loaded with explosives.

    In other words, the Liberals don’t want to know anything serious.

    They just want to play politics.

  35. dave @ #1207 Wednesday, February 5th, 2025 – 1:20 pm

    ScromoIIsays:
    Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 1:36 pm
    Can’t wait for Penny Wong to not be foreign minister anymore. She is the most incompetent person in that post since time immemorial. Not difficult to see why: she is the ultimate epitome of DEI.
    ______________________
    You aren’t even equal to Penny Wong’s shoe laces. I think Penny Wong and Julie Bishop are/were excellent Foreign Ministers and only a stooge would think otherwise.

    The basis of Scromo’s entire objection is she’s a gay Asian women. It’s purely identity politics. When they complain about DEI or that kind of shit, they’re not really objecting to the idea that people who aren’t straight white men getting an unfair advantage in the name of political correctness or whatever the charge is. What they object to is those people existing at all.

    Wong, regardless of what you think of her views or her performance as Foreign Minister has been a Senator since 2001. She entered back in the time when it was much more of a boy’s club and a lot of stuff decried as “wokeness” and diversity inclusion wasn’t a thing. She has over 20 years federal political experience, including in senior government roles. If she were a white man, there would be no doubt she is qualified for the role, even if (again) one doesn’t agree with her performance in the role.

  36. The ABC’s head of content fired journalist Antoinette Lattouf as quickly as he could, to “try and beat the story” being published in The Australian.

    Not much consideration of the public interest, or even the ABC Charter, going on here https://www.theage.com.au/business/companies/antoinette-lattouf-v-abc-live-updates-david-anderson-set-to-be-cross-examined-as-unfair-dismissal-case-resumes-in-federal-court-20250205-p5l9nl.html?post=p585qv#p585qv

    https://bsky.app/profile/beneltham.bsky.social/post/3lhfk5bebr22g

    Awful gross rubbish from ABC management.

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