Author: William Bowe

A recent flurry of opinion polling today reaches a climax with results from ACNielsen and, unexpectedly, Newspoll, which normally reports on Tuesday. The former rains on the recent Coalition polling parade somewhat with a survey of 1403 voters showing no change in the primary vote situation from last month: Labor on 48 per cent, Coalition on 39 per cent. Nonetheless, the two-party result has narrowed just slightly, from 58-42 to 57-43, while Kevin Rudd’s preferred prime minister lead is down from 51-43 to 48-42. Bryan Palmer’s newly updated graphs can be viewed here.

Newspoll offers a similar result, with Labor leading 56-44 on two-party preferred. However, it’s better news for the Coalition in relative terms – the previous Newspoll three weeks ago had Labor with a quirky-looking lead of 60-40. The Coalition primary vote is up from 35 per cent to 39 per cent; Labor’s is down from 52 per cent to 46 per cent; Kevin Rudd’s preferred prime minister lead is down from 47-38 to 46-40.

Better results for Labor in a poll today in Launceston’s Sunday Examiner by EMRS, who surveyed 200 voters in each of Tasmania’s five seats (hat tip to Stuart in comments). The small samples mean that the individual results can be taken with a grain of salt, but the overall picture gels with last week’s assessment from Christian Kerr in Crikey:

Providing the countrywide polling shows Rudd at, say, 52 two party preferred or above on election eve, all five Tasmanian seats will return Labor candidates, Crikey is told. Despite what might be written about pulp mills; Harry Quick, Kevin Harkins and the ETU and Telstra job losses, there are no local issues or strong enough candidates from either side to buck a general mood to change government. Braddon is held by the Lib’s Mark Barker with a paper-thin 1.1%. With any swing to Labor, he will lose. Franklin, we’re told, remains a Labor win under almost any scenario. Labor’s Electrical Trades Union candidate, Kevin Harkins, may be a dill, but he is getting lots of publicity from his close links to the Labor black-listed Dean Mighell. The Liberal candidate, Vanessa Goodwin, has some profile from the state election where she just failed to get a seat, but does not garner broad support. Bass remains the most likely Liberal hold, but hard to see this happening if Rudd remains 52% of the two party preferred. Liberal member Michael Ferguson, Barker a beneficiary of Mark Latham’s forestry policy, has maintained a reasonably high profile, but Labor’s Jodie Campbell is equally well known as Launceston deputy mayor. Both Ferguson and Campbell are similar in that they tend to polarise opinion: people either like them or hate them, which should cancel things out. The Telstra call centre closure won’t help Ferguson, but people are still going to vote more for whether they want a change of government or not, rather than local issues. A general mood towards Rudd should push Campbell over the line, we’re told.

The following table shows EMRS’s two-party and primary vote figures after distribution of the undecided, of which there were rather few.

Andrew Landeryou reports that Alex Hawke, 29-year-old warlord of the Christian Right, has had a landslide win in today’s Liberal preselection for Mitchell. Sitting member Alan Cadman, a man old enough to be Hawke’s grandfather, withdrew yesterday rather than face a defeat everyone knew to be inevitable.

Hawke has worked in the past for federal MPs Ross Cameron and Helen Coonan, but is most closely associated with his current employer, state upper house MP David Clarke (UPDATE: “Anon” in comments tells us Hawke now works for Hawkesbury MP Ray Williams). The pair have become synonymous with the growing influence of religious conservatism in the party, although Clarke is a Catholic and Hawke a member of Hillsong church (UPDATE: it turns out he is actually an Anglican, but one who also makes his present felt at Hillsong). Their first enterprise was a Right takeover of the Young Liberals after a long period of Left control, which led Hawke to the positions of state president in 2002 and national president in 2005. The pair were later held responsible for a series of preselection challenges against Left MPs, which succeeded in ousting state upper house members John Ryan and Patricia Forsythe. Hawke made no apologies for his aggressive pursuit of ideological opponents, suggesting that they “choose the Greens, Labor or the Democrats” instead. However, his biggest claim to fame was his purported role in the demise of John Brogden. Speaking at the press conference called to announce his resignation, Brogden accused Hawke of “pushing” stories about his misbehaviour, and said he should “take a long hard look at himself”.

Hawke’s nomination met powerful opposition from former premier Nick Greiner, monarchist and former Australian Broadcasting Authority chairman David Flint, and former chief-of-staff to the prime minister Arthur Sinodinos, and his success to overcoming them is further testimony to his obvious political skills. However, it’s equally clear that his ideological dogmatism and factional divisiveness will open a new line of attack for the opposition.

UPDATE: The Sydney Morning Herald reports Hawke “won on the first ballot by 107 votes to 81”. Still to come from the NSW Liberal Party are preselection votes for Cook next Saturday, and the Senate the Saturday after.

UPDATE 2: In other NSW Liberal preselection news, Bronwyn Bishop has gone untroubled in Mackellar. The Sydney Morning Herald reports she “waltzed back into the job with 70 votes, ahead of councillor and News Ltd subeditor Maureen Shelley on 17, and businessman Don Wormald, who polled just three votes”.

UPDATE 3: There seems to be a consensus that the Sydney Morning Herald’s figures are wrong. For one thing, there were only 120 voters; Western Suburbs Magpies in commentstells us that “about 60% represent the local branches weighted to the membership of each branch”, “18 votes or so represent the state executive” and “30 votes represent the State Council (attempting to get balance from the broader party organisation). Local Fairfax paper the Hills News reports the margin was in fact 81-20.

We still need Newspoll to seal the deal, but it does seem that normality has returned to the opinion poll landscape: we are seeing Labor with slight to moderate leads plus a few per cent extra from Roy Morgan, just like old times. As it does each Friday, Morgan has published a telephone survey from 614 responses (slightly higher than usual), which shows Labor down from 46 per cent to 43.5 per cent on the primary vote – 3.5 per cent lower than any Morgan result since January. However, the Coalition haven’t budged from 40 per cent. The remainder has gone to minor parties and returned as preferences, leaving the two-party preferred result steady at 55-45.

More good news for the Howard government from Patterson Market Research’s Westpoll, published in today’s West Australian. Surveys of three marginal seats, each from a sample of more than 400, show the Liberals set to maintain their tenuous hold on Stirling and Hasluck (which were won from Labor in 2004 with respective margins of 2.0 per cent and 1.8 per cent), and gain Cowan (which retiring Labor member Graham Edwards held in 2004 by 0.8 per cent after a 4.8 per cent swing).

In order to spread the comments load, I have hived off those parts of Idle Speculation relating to individual seats from the poll results summary:

• The Liberals’ preselection vote for the blue-ribbon north Sydney seat of Mitchell will be held on Saturday. Sixty-nine year old incumbent Alan Cadman is running again, but only the most sentimental of local branch members doubt that he is past his use-by date. Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports that observers predict he “could score as few as 10 preselection votes out of a total of 120 if he contests a ballot”. Excitingly, the front-runner would seem to be Cadman’s Right faction colleague, Alex Hawke, the staffer for controversial state upper house warlord David Clarke who was widely blamed/credited with the machinations behind John Brogden’s demise. This not surprisingly displeases the Left, who are backing Australian Hotels Association executive David Elliott. Sunday’s Sun-Herald reported that Elliott has the backing of Nick Greiner along with two identities not normally associated with the Left, David Flint and former prime ministerial chief-of-staff Arthur Sinodinos. Also in the field is Paul Blanch, a Killara lawyer and Bathurst grazier.

• Another Liberal in a safe seat who faces a challenge on Saturday is Bronwyn Bishop in Mackellar, although Michelle Grattan reports she is “expected to have the numbers to hold”. Her challenger is Maureen Shelley, convenor of the Office of Film and Literature Classification’s review board. Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald reports that Liberal preselectors have received a leaflet which criticises Shelley for “having a son from a previous marriage who has been jailed for a criminal offence”, and for allowing “films with ‘real sex, filth and violence’ to be screened in Australia”.

• The Coalition Senate ticket is yet to be formalised, but is reportedly a done deal with Helen Coonan in first place, John “Wacka” Williams in the Nationals’ mandated second place (he previously defeated the incumbent Sandy MacDonald for the party’s preselection) and Left faction incumbent Marise Payne in precarious third. The Prime Minister has reportedly used his influence to protect Payne’s position, resulting in the withdrawal of Right faction challenger Scot Macdonald.

• Also looming is the preselection to replace the retiring Bruce Baird in the safe southern Sydney seat of Cook. Michelle Grattan reports that the field includes “managing director of Tourism Australia, Scott Morrison, who was also NSW Liberal director and is current favourite for the seat; Optus executive Paul Fletcher; PBL executive David Coleman; barrister Mark Speakman; and Peter Tynan, recently returned from working as a consultant in the US, who comes from a prominent business family in the Sutherland Shire”, along with a “dark horse” – businessman Michael Towke, a former ALP member who has “signed up a big contingent of new members to the Miranda branch”.

• Also still in play for the NSW Liberals are the somewhat less attractive prospects of Parramatta, notionally a marginal Liberal seat following the redistribution, and Lindsay, held by the retiring Jackie Kelly with a diminished post-redistribution margin. The front-runner in Parramatta is reportedly navy pilot Tim Bolitho; Penrith councillor Mark Davies is reportedly set to replace Kelly.

• Labor’s South Australian Senate ticket has been finalised, with Don Farrell of the Right faction Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association in first place, Left faction incumbent Penny Wong in second and journalist Cath Perry taking third with the backing of the Left faction Amalgamated Metal Workers Union. The other incumbent, Linda Kirk, was dumped by her erstwhile backers in the Right to make way for Farrell.

• The South Australian Liberal Party’s has rejected Maria Kourtesis’s appeal against her defeat by Mary Jo Fisher, of the rival Right faction, in the vote to succeed retiring Senator Amanda Vanstone. Greg Kelton of The Advertiser reports Kourtesis blamed her loss on “a vicious campaign aimed at her Greek heritage and a rumour of being ineligible to stand”. Fisher will serve out the rest of Vanstone’s term, which expires in 2011.

• Glenn Milne’s Monday column in The Australian was devoted to an unhealthy prognosis for Malcolm Turnbull in Wentworth. This was based on the detailed assessment of former NSW Labor stategist Shane Easson, which can be read at Mumble. Also worth noting at Mumble are Peter Brent’s observations from June 8 about the effect changed electoral laws will have in Wentworth.

• Speaking of changed electoral laws, a challenge to the one that disenfranchises those serving jail sentences came before the High Court yesterday. The challenge has been brought by Vickie Lee Roach, an indigenous woman serving a sentence at Dame Phyllis Frost women’s prison in Victoria, with the support of former Federal Court judge Ron Merkel. At issue is that perennial constitutional hot potato, the precise meaning of the requirement that parliament be “directly chosen by the people”.

• Dig the redesigned Australian Electoral Commission site, which has dispensed with the stupid “what, who, why, when, how” (WTF?) categorisations. In other AEC news, the organisation is being agreeably assertive in raising awareness about the new deadlines for enrolment, as you can probably see if you look at the top right of this page. Clicking on Ads by Google is now officially good for democracy.

After a gruelling two-and-a-half years refereeing Australia’s rowdiest non-parliamentary slanging match, Bryan Palmer has exited the battlefield. That just leaves one psephological punter mug enough to operate a comments facility. For anyone out there who wants to argue the toss about recent opinion polls, the following have come through since the last episode of Idle Speculation two very long weeks ago:

• Roy Morgan yesterday released a survey of 556 voters which has Labor at 46 per cent on the primary vote and 55 per cent on two-party preferred. These are the softest figures Morgan has produced for Labor since January. There’s also a bunch of attitudinal guff that has the Prime Minister doing quite a bit worse on every measure than when these questions were last asked a month before the 2004 election. A possibly interesting exception is, “Who would be best for minimising the tax you pay?”

• Speaking of attitudinal guff, Galaxy‘s venture on to this turf last week raised a few eyebrows, including those of polling mavens Irving Saulwick and Denis Muller. Writing in Crikey on Tuesday, Saulwick and Muller described the wording of one of Galaxy’s questions – “Which of the following concerns, if any, do you have about the prospect of Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party running the Australian economy?” – as a “disgrace”. Nonetheless, there does not seem any particular reason to be dubious about its finding that Labor had very modest leads of 1 per cent on the primary vote and 4 per cent on two-party preferred.

• Monday brought another poll from Galaxy, this time of 800 voters in Queensland. It showed that Labor’s lead had narrowed from 7 per cent to 1 per cent since its last such poll in February, and from 55-45 to 52-48 on two-party preferred.

• A Westpoll survey of 408 voters in Saturday’s West Australian produced a very encouraging result for the Coalition, who led 50 per cent to 38 per cent on the primary vote and 56.3-43.7 on two-party preferred. That amounts to a 0.9 per cent swing to the Coalition from 2004.

• Since Westpoll escapes notice on the eastern seaboard, I might also note Tuesday’s poll of state voting intention, which I gather was from the same sample as the federal poll. It has Labor up to 42 per cent from 41 per cent in April, the Coalition up from 38 per cent to 40 per cent, and Labor’s two-party lead narrowing from 54.5-45.5 to 52.3-47.7.