Federal Politics 2019-2022 – Page 19

Legal matters

A look at a proposed electoral law overhaul that focuses largely on issues of specific concern to the Coalition.

The government introduced four electoral reform bills to parliament yesterday. Antony Green offers a good overview that notes what’s missing from the recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters’ inquiry into the 2019 election: the particularly contentions measures of voter identification and optional preferential voting, and arrangements for handling an election during the pandemic, which will presumably have to follow at a later time.

To summarise:

• The most striking is a bill to triple the number of members required of a registered political party to 1500 and to disallow the registration of parties whose names contain, with limited exceptions, words already used in the name of a pre-existing party. The former requirement does not affect the significant exception that exists for parties with seats in parliament, as applies to Katter’s Australian Party, the Centre Alliance and the Jacqui Lambie Network (Antony Green notes it also helped Fraser Anning’s Conservative National Party to both register and blag free ABC air time before the last election, not that this proved notably helpful to them). Parties will have three months after the passage of the bill to either pass muster or face deregistration, in which case they will not be identified on ballot papers or eligible for public funding. This would appear to be one in the eye for the Liberal Democrats, who this week confirmed Campbell Newman as their Senate candidate in Queensland.

• A bill encompassing “counting, scrutiny and operational efficiencies” gives effect to JSCEM’s recommendation that the pre-poll voting period should be cut from three weeks to two, which the Coalition, Labor and Greens members were all on board with. It also allows for pre-poll votes to be pre-processed in the two hours before polls close so the actual counting of the votes can begin without delay, which should address an issue of recent election nights in which election day booths are mostly in by 8pm but pre-poll voting centres often aren’t until 11pm to midnight. Similarly, the bill allows for postal votes to be pre-processed so more of them can be counted on Sunday.

• An “electoral offences and preventing multiple voting” bill includes a measure to prevent those suspected of multiple voting from persisting in doing so, and one to target behaviour the Liberal Party has complained of being subjected to by GetUp! activists, specifically “violence, obscene or discriminatory abuse, property damage and harassment or stalking”. Former electoral administrator Michael Maley wonders if the latter measure might capture heckling or asking difficult questions; electoral law expert Graham Orr notes it brings the activities of FriendlyJordies to mind.

• A bill to lower the threshold for which third parties campaigning at elections will have to register as political campaigners, requiring them to file annual financial disclosure returns. The current six-figure threshold does seem on the high side, but the cause of “public confidence in Australia’s political processes” would surely be better served by lowering the threshold for declaring donations to political parties.

Other news:

• The Australian Electoral Commission has published the full panoply of reports and data relevant to the now finalised federal redistributions of Victoria and Western Australia. Antony Green has worked his estimated margins into a finalised 2022 federal election pendulum.

• Rachel Siewert, Greens Senator for Western Australia, announced on social media this week that she will resign her position in the Senate next month. This will allow the party’s preselected lead Senate candidate, Dorinda Cox, to build her profile ahead of next year’s election, a common practice for the Greens.

Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor

Labor maintains its solid two-party lead in Newspoll as Scott Morrison slides into net negative personal ratings.

The latest Newspoll from The Australian finds Labor retaining its 53-47 two-party lead from three weeks ago, with both major parties steady on 39% of the primary vote, the Greens up one to 11% and One Nation steady on 3%. Scott Morrison has fallen into net negative approval for the first time since March last year, being down four points on approval to 47% and up the same amount on disapproval to 49%. Anthony Albanese is steady on both approval and disapproval at 38% and 46% respectively, and has narrowed Morrison’s lead on preferred prime minister from 51-33 to 49-36.

Also included are ratings for Scott Morrison’s handling of coronavirus in general, on which his good rating is down four points since last time to 48% and his poor rating is up four to 49%, and of the vaccine rollout in particular, on which he is down two to 38% and up two to 59%. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1527.

Morgan: 53.5-46.5 to Labor

Labor scores its biggest two-party poll lead of the term from Roy Morgan, which records a particularly big blowout in Victoria.

Roy Morgan published results on Wednesday of its latest federal voting intention polling, as it does from time to time, in this case combining surveys conducted over the past two weekends from 2709 respondents. This shows Labor with its biggest lead of the term, from this or any other pollster: 53.5-46.5, out from 52.5-47.5 in the poll it published in mid-July. The Coalition and Labor are tied at 37% on the primary vote, respectively being down two and steady, while the Greens are up a point to 12.5% and One Nation is steady on 3%. These numbers have ticked the BludgerTrack poll aggregate a further 0.4% to Labor, who are now credited with a lead 52.4-47.6.

State breakdowns of the two-party vote are provided, showing Labor leading 51-49 in New South Wales (for a swing in their favour of about 3% compared with the 2019 election), 59.5-40.5 in Victoria (a swing of about 6.5%, and three points stronger for Labor than the previous poll), 55.5-44.5 in South Australia (a swing of about 5%) and 54-46 in Tasmania (a 2% swing to the Liberals, although the sample size here is particularly flimsy), while the Coalition leads 52-48 in Queensland (a swing to Labor of about 6.5%) and 51.5-48.5 in Western Australia (a swing of about 4%, which is a fair bit more modest than other polling from WA recently).

Essential Research: leadership ratings and COVID management

Downward motion for Anthony Albanese and the Berejiklian goverment in the latest Essential poll.

First up, note that below this post is a review of recent happenings in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany by Adrian Beaumont.

Now to the fortnightly Essential Research poll, which includes the pollster’s monthly leadership ratings. Scott Morrison’s position has not further declined since last month, with his approval down one to 50% and disapproval steady on 40%. However, Anthony Albanese, who has long done relatively well out of this pollster in consistently recording net positive ratings, has taken a seven-point tumble on approval to 34%, while his disapproval is up three to 38%. The change on preferred prime minister is more modest, with Morrison’s lead out from 46-28 to 45-26. The effects of all this on the BludgerTrack trends can be observed here.

The stabilisation in Morrison’s personal ratings are not matched in the regular question on the government’s response to COVID-19, which has approached net negative territory for the first time with an eight-point drop in good to 38% and a four-point rise in poor to 35%. The Berejiklian government’s good rating of 47% is down seven points on what was already its worst result last month; the Victorian government is up five to 54%; and the Queensland government is down two to 60%. The Western Australian and South Australian ratings of 82% and 73% are off unreliably small samples, but both are well in line with their long-term averages.

Respondents in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia were asked about the lockdowns in their states, the survey period having begun before the Queensland lockdown. Fifty per cent of New South Wales respondents felt the government had not locked down hard enough, compared with 11% for too hard and 39% for about right. By contrast, 71% of Victorian and 85% of South Australian respondents felt their governments had it about right. However, there is some evidence of a shift in attitudes in Victoria in that more felt the lockdown too harsh (23%) than not harsh enough (6%). The respective results in South Australia were 6% and 9%, a difference well within the margin of error.

The poll sample had two bob each way on lockdown support: 47% believed the federal government was doing enough compared with 37% for not enough and 6% for too much, yet 66% supported the return of JobKeeper with only 11% opposed. The lockdown protests of the weekend before last had 18% support with 67% opposed (which is at least more favourable than the numbers reported from New South Wales by Utting Research). The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1057.

Heart of the nation

Clive Palmer set to try again, plus stuff you’d probably already figured about election timing and the mood of voters in Melbourne.

Three items to get the ball rolling on a new week, all of which happen to be from The Australian:

• The paper reported on Friday that yet another election campaign looks set to be blighted by a Clive Palmer advertising blitz. However, whereas his efforts before the 2019 federal election were directed entirely at Labor, this time Palmer also hopes to settle scores with Peter Dutton in the campaign for his seat of Dickson, after Dutton last week spearheaded a purge of Palmer allies at the top level of the Liberal National Party organisation.

• Plans for a November federal election have been “shelved to get the government’s vaccine rollout back on track”, with the government now “actively considering whether to repeat the 2019 strategy and hold an April budget in the run-up to an electoral showdown with Labor”.

• Also today, focus group research of voters in outer Melbourne by Redbridge has detected a “perceived bias towards NSW” on the part of the Morrison government, together with “a rejuvenation of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ standing”. Redbridge has also detected “voter hesitancy about the Prime Minister” in western Sydney.

Family First the second

Fragmentation on the right continues apace, with even former Labor folk now joining in. Also: a new poll records a big thumbs-down for the weekend’s lockdown protests.

Miscellaneous developments of the week so far:

• Former South Australian state Labor MPs Tom Kenyon and Jack Snelling have quit their former party over “moves to restrict religious freedom” and announced their intention to reactivate the Family First party and field candidates at the state election next March. The original Family First was folded into Australian Conservatives when Cory Bernardi joined it in 2016 and wound up at his behest after its failure at the 2019 federal election. Kenyon and Snelling have long been associated with the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association sub-faction of the Right, which is in turn associated with Catholicism and social conservatism, and includes among its number the party’s state leader, Peter Malinauskas. Paul Starick of The Advertiser reports this has the approval of party co-founder Andrew Evans; presumably this explains it obtaining the old party’s database of 6000 supporters, as reported by David Penberthy of The Australian. Whereas the old party consistently directed preferences to the Liberals, Snelling has ruled out preference deals with either major party.

• In other party split news, Peta Credlin writes in The Australian that Ross Cameron, who held Parramatta for the Liberals from 1996 to 2004 but is these days noted as a staple of Sky News after dark, “could head the Liberal Democrats’ NSW Senate ticket”. Earlier reportage on the matter said only that Cameron was involved with the party’s strategy and candidate recruitment.

• Tom Richardson of InDaily reports Matt Burnell, an official with the Right faction Transport Workers Union, has been confirmed as Labor’s candidate for its safe northern Adelaide seat of Spence, which will be vacated with Nick Champion’s move to state politics. Burnell reportedly scored 88 union delegate votes and 68 state conference delegate votes, each amounting to a third of the total, to just two and seven respectively for rival candidate Alice Dawkins, daughter of Keating government Treasurer John Dawkins. The rank-and-file membership ballot that made up the remaining third went 140-42 to Burnell.

• Peter Law of The West Australian reports that first-term Liberal MP Vince Connelly, whose seat of Stirling is being abolished, “looks certain to contest Cowan, which is held by Labor’s Anne Aly”. By my reckoning, the seat has a post-redistribution margin of 1.5%, making it a seemingly unlikely prospect for the Liberals at a time when polls are pointing to a Labor swing in the state upwards of 10%.

• Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review reports a poll conducted on Monday by Utting Research from 1600 respondents in New South Wales found only 7% supported Saturday’s lockdown protests, with fully 83% opposed. The poll also suggested Scott Morrison’s standing is continuing to tumble, with 37% satisfied and 57% dissatisfied (the state breakdown in last fortnight’s Resolve Strategic poll had it at 46% apiece). By contrast, Gladys Berejiklian maintained 56% approval and 33% disapproval, while the state’s chief health officer, Kerry Chant, recorded 70% approval.

• Emma Dawson, the executive director of the Per Capita think tank who appeared set to ran as Labor’s candidate against Adam Bandt in Melbourne, has announced her withdrawal. Dawson said this was for “personal and professional reasons”, although it followed shortly upon her criticism of Labor’s announcement that it would not rescind tax cuts for high income earners if elected.

• Craig Emerson on election timing in the Financial Review:

The December quarter national accounts are scheduled for release on March 2, 2022. Morrison might feel confident that the economy will bounce back in the December quarter from the September quarter’s negative result. But would it be wise to take a chance on a double-dip recession being announced during a federal election campaign? That would be a catastrophe for the Morrison government: marked down for its refusal to accept responsibility for quarantine, presiding over the slowest vaccine rollout in the Western world, and forfeiting any claim to be superior economic managers … But an April or May election would face the same risks, since the March quarter national accounts would not be released until after the election must be held … A late-February election might be the best bet, though the federal campaign would overlap with that of the South Australian state election scheduled for March 19.

Hello Newman

An eventful weekend bequeaths Queensland a by-election result and an unexpected new Senate election candidate.

I had a piece yesterday on Campbell Newman’s break with the Liberal National Party and plans to run for the Senate in Crikey, which I believe has its paywall down for a limited time only. The upshot is that Newman’s anti-lockdown message may struggle to gain traction in a state that hasn’t had many of them; that he is unlikely to benefit the conservative cause even if he wins; and that his presence on the ballot paper could even contribute to a seat currently held by the Liberal National Party (specifically Amanda Stoker) or Pauline Hanson instead going to Labor or the Greens.

The article includes a reference to a poll conducted by Ipsos in June from a sample of 500 Queensland respondents for conservative podcast host Damian Coory, who published approval ratings for state political figures among its small sample of 173 LNP voters. Newman was credited with an approval rating of nearly 60%, substantially higher than any of his four successors as party leader, which may have encouraged him in his present course. Newman has also maintained high name recognition, with only around 20% of respondents uncommitted, compared with around 40% for Lawrence Springborg and Deb Frecklington and 60% for David Crisafulli, who replaced Frecklington after the election defeat in October.

Rightly or wrongly, some media accounts have tied Newman’s abandonment of the LNP to a crisis in the party that was laid bare by Saturday’s Stretton by-election, which delivered it an unimpressive swing of 1.6%. My live results display for the by-election continues to be updated here, if on a somewhat irregular basis. The Electoral Commission of Queensland helpfully publishes preference flows by candidate, which may be of some interest: these show that preferences of the Informed Medical Options Party broke 60-40 to the LNP, while the Greens went 82-18 to Labor and Animal Justice went 56-44.

Elsewhere, Antony Green offers his estimated new margins for the finalised federal redistribution of Victoria.

Morgan: 52.5-47.5 to Labor

Another poll showing federal Labor with a lead fuelled by big swings in Queensland and Western Australia.

Roy Morgan maintained its erratic ways on Friday by publishing results from its regularly conducted federal polling for the first time in a month, which is likely to be the last federal voting intention poll for over a fortnight. The results are broadly in line with polling elsewhere in showing Labor with a lead of 52.5-47.5, from primary votes of Coalition 39%, Labor 37%, Greens 11.5% and One Nation 3%.

The state breakdowns are also fairly similar to the last Newspoll quarterly aggregate, showing Labor with leads of 50.5-49.5 in New South Wales (a swing of a bit over 2% from the 2019 election, half a point more than Newspoll), 56-44 in Victoria (a swing of nearly 3%, compared with next to no change in Newspoll), 52.5-47.5 in Western Australia (an 8% swing, half a point less than Newspoll), 51-49 in South Australia (next to no swing, compared with around 3% in Newspoll) and 58-42 from the small Tasmanian sample (a 2% swing), while the Coalition leads 51.5-48.5 in Queensland (a 7% swing, 1.5% more than Newspoll).

The poll was conducted by phone and online from a sample of 2737 over the last two weekends.