Details here. More to follow.
UPDATE: Pardon my tardiness. Newspoll has Labor down two points on the primary vote to 40 per cent, the Coalition up four to 42 per cent and the Greens steady on 12 per cent, all of which conforms better with long-term trends than last week’s result. However, the changes in personal ratings are significant enough to be a worry for Labor: Julia Gillard’s approval rating is down seven to 41 per cent and her disapproval up eight to 37 per cent. Tony Abbott’s approval is up four points to 40 per cent and his disapproval down five to 46 per cent, and he has narrowed the gap on preferred prime minister from 57-26 to 50-34.
We also have a 52-48 result this morning from Galaxy, with primary vote figures that differ from Newspoll’s in that Labor is two points lower on 38 per cent and the Greens three points higher on 15 per cent, with the Coalition on 41 per cent. Also this morning comes a Patterson Market Research poll from Eden-Monaro which has Labor with a thumping 61-39 two-party lead from primary votes of 53 per cent for Labor member Mike Kelly, 36 per cent for Liberal candidate 36 per cent and 9 per cent for the Greens. This comes from Patterson’s usual small sample of a bit over 400, resulting in a margin of error of about 5 per cent. Essential Research should be along shortly.
UPDATE 2: Essential Research is unchanged from last week, with Labor’s two-party lead at 55-45. As in Newspoll, Julia Gillard’s personal ratings are down, approval three points to 49 per cent and disapproval up three to 33 per cent. A move like this in the first week of an election campaign would be a concern for Labor: it’s tempting to link it to “moving forward” overkill. However, Tony Abbott does even worse: approval down five to 35 per cent, disapproval up two to 46 per cent. Preferred prime minister is basically unchanged, Gillard up one to 51 per cent and Abbott down one to 26 per cent. Also covered are interest in watching the debate, interest in the election generally, and – interestingly – whether Peter Costello would have made a better Liberal leader than Tony Abbott, which gives 45 per cent yes and 26 per cent no.
1589
I am not saying that an act of Parliament that defines marriage as between a man and a woman is invalid but that Hyde vs Hyde says that the definition of marriage in Christendom is between one man and one woman and that as a consiquence of section 116 Australia is not in Christendom.
eden monaro every govt of the day since 1972
” And give the Libs and MSM more time to do the dirt on her. No thanks.”
Obviously you have an affinity with the hedgehog – might have also given her time to build up authority.
blackburn, Macarthur was a bellwether from 1949 to 2004, with Pat Farmer narrowly holding on in 2007.
consiquence is when you mix the quinces with the quences
😉
[Obviously you have an affinity with the hedgehog – might have also given her time to build up authority.]
What you don’t seem to get is that much of Australia has such an affinity, including the Liberal party who pride themselves on it.
Itep , quite right , one difference between Macarthur and Denison / EM is that Macarthur has moved around a bit – in started in Campbelltown, moved down to Wollongong for a while and then has moved back again. The other two have had remarkably similar boundaries through their history.
btw
pls use echidna
hedgehog aint exactly native
🙁
i know a joke about a hedgehog but its very rude
Stu
Ive seen many a republican joke about hedgehogs dating back to billy
just saying
i bet its not as rude as mine
Gusface@1608
You mean like Kenny Kidna ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dHQDezlXPcdna ? 🙂
stu
betcha they are
😉
frank
just fighting the good fight against globalisation of political puns
Gary
And in respect to Gusface, we will now refer to the curling echidna – much of politics does not have an affinity – too many heroics would lead to histrionics but there is a time and a place. You mention the Libs – John Howard was the echidna on the apology to the stolen generation but put his head above the parapet on the GST and on Workchoices (and look what happended there!). Generally , conservatives will be less heroic, that is the nature of conservatism, maintaining the status quo.
… much of politics DOES have an affinity ..
BBS
True
one thing that howie did achieve was a perception of conviction
politics is as much achievement as it is attainment
jg is for the former ta the latter
methinks
Ahh the OO in Fine Form:
Or maybe Knuckles the Echidna…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvRU5aFcbHc
Wow, Frank. All of those news headlines appear to be the OO projecting the Liberals’ biggest faults onto Labor…
To Speak of Pebbles@1620
and it gets worse on Their ABC:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/27/2964933.htm
btw
the real bellweather this election is herbert
EM is already over the 5%+ mark
Yes, but it does go to the ridiculousness of the premise. The Liberal Party members who were voted in back in 2007 – and the senators too – all went to that election with a climate change policy substantially the same as the one that was put to the parliament last year. Howard took one to that election. If you want to look at it that way, they have a perfect right to have that policy passed. The “representative people’s council” failed them on that issue.
But it doesn’t work that way. You vote for a party because you agree with them on balance, across a range of issues. Some of which you agree with, some of which you don’t. That’s why the notion that they are a representative people’s council on a single issue is so silly.
Ten Late News on Today’s event’s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9qXxHF4E_4
Jesus, why doesn’t Abbott just come out already and say that his immigration criteria means “Whites, yes. Non-whites, no.”
Alternative headline for that news story: “Abbott terrorises child in playground.”
Hmm:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/gillard-turns-to-rudds-mental-health-nemesis/story-fn59niix-1225897210394
The sad thing about a lot of the vitriol and negativity about the current labor party strategy is that I think there’s a good chance the Australian political landscape will ultimately benefit.
The labor party appears to have decided as a strategy to stop trying to cover what could be considered core greens party policy. Rudd tried to appeal to everyone, and as per the ‘try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one’ he suffered because of it. Julia is not making that mistake – she is very definitively trying to take the centre.
The upshot of that is that those of us who demand more attention be paid to environmental issues no longer really have a choice between the Greens and Labor – I’ll be voting Greens, and many others will as well. The Labor party is (now) not even trying to compete for that 12-15% of the vote.
I see that as a good thing going forward – the Labor party can build it’s 40% of the vote in the centre, the Greens keep their 15% on the Left. The conservatives can keep their 40-45%. The Greens get their wish of being (one possible) balance of power, with the flipside being that they will also be subjected to more serious media scrutiny since some genuine power will be in their grasp. Labor and Greens can provide a solid centre/left majority, along with the Labor-Conservative centre/right majority that has always been present, and the newer and more exotic Greens-Conservative potential majority. Labor strategy might actually be providing the foundation for genuine, long-term, 3-party politics in this country. I’m sure this horrifies many in the labor party, but I think the labor hardheads just recognise that it is no longer possible for them to cover the far left through to the centre right without sacrificing their ability to be an effective political party.
The current alternative, as being vehemently espoused by Greens/Labor Lefties here is for the Labor party to focus its platform firmly on the same ground as the Greens party, ie to compete directly with the Greens on policy grounds. That might feel good, but what that would mean in effect is Labor cannibalizing that 12-15% to try to pick up what would otherwise be Greens primary votes while alienating conservative leaning Labor voters – basically they would be wilfully reducing the potential centre/left majority down to the point where it may not be a majority anymore (at which point they are genuinely at risk of not forming government).
So if the choice is between abandoning the far left to capture the centre and opening up much more stable long term political alliance possibilities vs continuing to try to poach Greens voters at the expense of limiting their broad middle-of-the-road appeal, I think it’s a no-brainer why they’ve made the strategic choices they have made.
As for whether that means JG and the labor party are ‘in denial’ over CC – we don’t know. JG has said she will prosecute the case for a carbon price, and has laid out her much-mocked plan for how she is proposing to make that case via the citizens assembly. What will that end up meaning? Who knows. All we can say is that she has made a perfect space in 2012 for a tough climate change policy as well as a perfect space for resurrecting the weak CPRS or in fact doing nothing. I think she is genuine in what she has said, and indeed that going through the motions of the citizens assembly will provide the political narrative that opens the possibility for doing something real.
I’m still voting Greens this election because it’s too important not to apply as much pressure as possible, and the Labor party has (over the last few weeks) apparently opened the door and said ‘go right ahead don’t let us stop you’. Julia has talked specifically about a carbon price in the next parliament, and for now I have no reason to believe her to not be genuine, so I’ll give the labor party my preferences over the conservatives. I’d urge others to do the same.
Anyone got a link to the Greens economic modelling on a go-it-alone 25-40% carbon reduction scheme for Australia?
Interesting perspective, Jackol. The prefs deal is the one big tick I do give Gillard over Rudd – at least she talked to Bob Brown.
The thing that bugs me these days about the ALP is not their electoralism , but their lack of it, baulking at things with clear majority support: the ALP now has a quite senseless conservatism to it, and it doesnt help their chances. I miss the ALPs old naked, realist electoralism. Richo, Keating etc. I really do! They would have smelt blood when Abbott took Turnbull by one vote.
The modern ALP just got… scared.
I guess Howard really messed them up. Going so low at the dark heart of the electorate’s fears. Its like the ALP has still got post-traumatic stress disorder.
Hopefully the coming win win get them over it. We need them – as they will need the Greens – to reform what has to be reformed in this country.
Ahh, more cheap unqualified staff which benefits Margie:
Hmm:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/7650964/gillard-returning-to-brisbane/
Ahh the Curious Snail:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/rudd-shows-hes-still-a-one-man-band/story-fn5z3z83-1225897185777
New thread.