None of the major opinion pollsters have anything to report today, but there’s a strong chance Roy Morgan will come through today, it being five weeks since their last result (UPDATE: Not so – so it looks like it’s actually a few weeks away). DemosAU continues to eke out results from a poll of 1079 respondents conducted July 31, last week reporting that 45% supported the government’s plan to increase the tax rate on superannuation earnings for balances over $3 million, with 33% opposed. Other than that:
• Nine Newspapers reports Special Minister of State Don Farrell has directed the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to inquire into fixed four-year terms, increasing the size of parliament, aggressive election campaign tactics, and funding of third-party campaigners. Four-year terms would require a referendum, and an earlier effort to that effect in 1988 was heavily defeated. One sticking point among many was that Senate terms would have become tied to those of the House, thereby undoing the intricate formula of staggered and fixed Senate terms that the small states insisted on during the federation debates of the 1890s. While not requiring a referendum, increasing the size of parliament is complicated by the Constitution’s “nexus” clause, which requires that the House be twice the size of the Senate. This means increases cannot occur in small increments: there would realistically have to be an increase from 12 Senate seats per state to 14, meaning 24 extra seats in the House even if the territories’ Senate representation was not increased, which presumably it would be. The Nine report says this could be “countered by phasing in the new electorates over a longer time frame” – I can only think this might mean a transitional term in which the Senate would have 13 members and the House would gain its required extra members over two terms.
• The focus of the JSCEM inquiry on election campaign tactics would seem to have been inspired by the activities of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, the fringe religious organisation formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren. Its involvement in the Liberal campaign was the subject of an exposé on Saturday by Michael Bachelard of Nine Newspapers.
• Sarah Ison of The Australian reports Mark Dreyfus, having been dumped as Attorney-General after the election, is expected to announce his retirement in the coming months, citing one Labor source saying it will be as soon as next month. The party’s national secretary, Paul Erickson, has been mentioned as a possible successor in Dreyfus’s Melbourne seat of Isaacs, which would mean the Left taking a seat currently held by the Right. The Right faction Australian Workers Union, with which Dreyfus is associated, favours Steve Michelson, founder and director of communications firm Banksia Strategic Partners and a former adviser to Bill Shorten.
• Adelaide’s Sunday Mail reports Liberal sources saying they believe Tony Pasin will be challenged for preselection in Barker by Nicolle Flint, who held Boothby from 2016 to 2022 and failed in a comeback attempt in May. David Penberthy of The Australian reported a fortnight ago that Flint had been at loggerheads with Pasin and hard right ally Alex Antic, giving rise to rival conservative sub-factions respectively identified as “the prayer group” and “the coalition of the disaffected”. The catalysts were the Antic-Pasin faction’s refusal to back Flint as candidate for Boothby and traditional conservatives for state council; Antic deposing Anne Rushton at the top of the Senate ticket for the election in May; and concerns sitting conservative MPs would be targeted for preselection (the latter perhaps referring to the Sunday Mail report’s suggestion that Heidi Girolamo and Ben Hood may face challenges for the top positions on the state upper house ticket).
• Weeks after taking up his seat in the Senate, New South Wales One Nation Senator Warwick Stacey announced his resignation in mid-August citing “personal health issues”. Rhianna Down of The Australian reports “speculation Senator Hanson could replace Senator Stacey with her daughter Lee Hanson or long-term One Nation staffer James Ashby”. There has been no further reportage on the matter so far as I’m aware.
Pegasus says:
Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 6:59 pm
62% first preferences for Lib-Lab. The trend for the major parties continues.
Yes. This will soon enough break around 45/15 Labor/Reactionary. The reactionaries and their substitutes, allies, reserves, auxiliaries, interns and scouts constitute the Balkans of Australian politics.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that there is one party that’s fit to govern this country…to defend the tenets of parliamentary democracy, economic development and inclusive social justice. This is, of course, Labor. Voters obviously get that. And opposing Labor there are various clans and tribes of opportunists, misfits and ratbags who put themselves forward as agents of change. These imposters have one thing in common: the despise Labor. This is their primary motive. They hope to parlay hatred into power. They have absolutely no hope of success.