Category: Queensland Politics

Galaxy: 59-41 to LNP in Queensland

The Sunday Mail reports a Galaxy survey of 800 respondents conducted on Thursday and Friday shows a further plunge in support for the Bligh government. Unfortunately, the poll was clearly commissioned to take advantage of a horror week for the government, which is great for generating a headline but very poor form if you’re trying to objectively measure how an election might play out. This is the second time Galaxy has taken the field in Queensland in little over a month, which is entirely unprecedented outside of an election campaign. Even so, there’s no avoiding the fact that therese are disastrous figures for Labor: the LNP’s two-party lead has opened up to 59-41, compared with 55-45 in last month’s survey and 50.5-49.5 in Labor’s favour at the election. Labor’s primary vote has sunk from 42.2 per cent at the election to 36 per cent at the last poll to a New South Wales-esque 30 per cent at the current poll, while the LNP has gone from 41.6 per cent to 47 per cent to 48 per cent. The Greens have absorbed a solid chunk of the disaffected Labor vote, up to 12 per cent from 8.4 per cent at the election.

Anna Bligh’s personal ratings are equally worrying for the government: her approval rating is 33 per cent, compared with 50 per cent at the election and 44 per cent for Peter Beattie shortly before his retirement, while her disapproval is at 64 per cent. Further questions elicited predictable responses on corruption issues, with 68 per cent expressing support for Tony Fitzgerald’s recently expressed opinions on the government. Fifty-six per cent backed a ban on political donations, and 86 per cent said they opposed the government’s plan to sell state-owned assets. For all that, the poll provides a disappointment for LNP leader John-Paul Langbroek, whose approval rating has fallen to 34 per cent from 42 per cent in the previous poll. His disapproval rating is 36 per cent.

Galaxy: 55-45 to LNP in Queensland

Shades of the aftermath of the 1993 federal budget in Queensland, where the first state poll conducted in the wake of the government’s announcement of asset sales and abolition of the petrol subsidy has seen a plunge in support for Anna Bligh’s government. The Galaxy survey of 800 respondents shows the LNP opening up a 55-45 lead, compared with Labor’s 50.5-49.5 election result in March and the 51-49 LNP lead in the final Galaxy poll of the campaign. The LNP leads on the primary vote 47 per cent to 36 per cent, compared with 41.6 per cent and 42.2 per cent at the election. Further questions on attitudes to the asset sales and petrol subsidy produced predictably negative responses.

Morgan: 57-43

The latest Roy Morgan face-to-face poll has Labor’s two-party lead at 57-43, down from 58-42 a fortnight ago. On the primary vote, Labor is down 0.5 per cent to 48.5 per cent, the Coalition is up 2 per cent to 38 per cent and the Greens are down 1 per cent to 7 per cent.

In other news, it’s all happening in Victoria:

• Peter Costello’s surprise announcement that he will not contest the next election has raised the flag on another epic Victorian Liberal preselection stoush in his Melbourne seat of Higgins, which housed successive Liberal prime ministers in Harold Holt and John Gorton. Furthermore, Costello has raised the possibility of an early departure and a by-election, “if it’s in the party’s interest”. Immediately prior to Costello’s announcement, Institute of Public Affairs executive director John Roskam signalled his intention to run if Costello stood aside, after earlier testing the waters in Kooyong (see below). However, Peter van Onselen in The Australian reports that Costello has resolved to oppose Roskam due to equivocal comments he made to David Penberthy of The Punch about Costello’s future value in politics. Van Onselen further reports widespread displeasure at this and other remarks seen to be in breach of Liberal rules that preselection aspirations are not to be discussed with the media. Costello reportedly wishes for the seat to go to a former staffer, Kelly O’Dwyer. It had earlier been reported that O’Dwyer might depose incumbent Ted Baillieu loyalist Andrew McIntosh in the state seat of Kew. The other big name in the Higgins mix is Mal Brough, who has moved to Melbourne and is said to be hopeful of a return to politics that doesn’t involve further dirtying his hands in the morass of the Queensland Liberal National Party. However, Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports party sources say he has “no chance”. Also mentioned are former state party director Julian Sheezel, who was said to be backed by Costello but opposed by Michael Kroger when talk of Costello’s departure was in the air after the election, Jason Aldworth, a former banking colleague of Michael Kroger and more recently a consultant for Crosby Textor; and, intriguingly, Tom Elliott, hedge fund manager and son of John, who memorably sought to depose Roger Shipton as member for this very seat in pursuit of his prime ministerial ambitions.

• Merchant banker Josh Frydenberg has won the hotly contested preselection to succeed Petro Georgiou as the Liberal candidate for Kooyong. Andrew Landeryou at VexNews reports that Frydenberg won the second round ballot over industrial relations lawyer John Pesutto by 283 votes to 239 after all other contenders were excluded in the first round. The result is a defeat for Ted Baillieu, whose power base had pursued various stratagems designed to thwart Frydenberg, the preferred candidate of the rival Kroger faction.

• The ALP national executive’s role in Victorian state preselections has been further expanded following John Brumby’s decision to refer to the body all state upper house preselections for next year’s election. Labor insiders quoted by David Rood of The Age relate that the decision will “all but end” the career of Theo Theophanous, who faces a vigorously contested rape charge and was recently among those named adversely in the state Ombudsman’s report into Brimbank City Council. This week the national executive acted as expected in relation to a number of lower house preselections referred to it in the wake of the latter imbroglio, selecting former Trades Hall Council deputy secretary (and wife of New South Wales Senator Steve Hutchins) Natalie Sykes-Hutchins to replace George Seitz in Keilor and confirming incumbents Telmo Languiller, Rob Hulls, Marsha Thomson and Marlene Kairouz in Derrimut, Niddrie, Footscray and Kororoit. It has also been confirmed that Victorian Planning Minister Justin Madden will seek to move to the lower house by nominating for preselection in Essendon, to be vacated by the retiring Judy Maddigan. In his absence, the national executive has chosen incumbents Martin Pakula, Khalil Eideh and Bob Smith to head the ticket in Western Metropolitan (Smith currently represents South-Eastern Metropolitan).

• Helen Shardey, Victorian Shadow Health Minister and member for Caulfield, has indicated she will stand down at the next election. It had been reported she faced a preselection challenge from David Southwick, previously unsuccessful in the federal seat of Melbourne Ports in 2004 and for the state upper house Southern Metropolitan in 2006.

• Andrew Landeryou at VexNews reports that former Liberal MP Phil Barresi, whom he describes as a “factionally unenthusiastic Krogerite”, has been given the green light to attempt to recover the seat of Deakin which he held from 1996 until his defeat in 2007. Barresi reportedly won on the first round over eccentric perennial Ken Aldred, who was dumped in favour of Barresi in 1996 after peddling weird conspiracy theories, and one Deanna Ryall. Perhaps Barresi is encouraged by the precedent of 1984, when the Liberals unexpectedly recovered the seat (with some help from a redistribution) after losing it when the Hawke government was elected in 1983.

Elsewhere:

• Glenn Milne in The Australian reports on the Labor succession in the federal seat of Macquarie, which will be vacated at the next election by Bob Debus. As Milne tells it, Debus or his supporters put it about that his recent decision to withdraw from the ministry and bow out at the next election, which helped the Prime Minister no end as he sought to construct a new cabinet in the wake of Joel Fitzgibbon’s resignation, was conditional upon Debus being given the right to anoint his own successor. This was hotly disputed by Right powerbrokers who are bitterly opposed to Debus’s objective of freezing out industrial barrister Adam Searle, a Left faction colleague but personal rival.

• Two new goodies from Antony Green. An extensive paper for the New South Wales Parliamentary Library provides all manner of detail on the state’s Legislative Council election in 2007, while an accompanying blog post scrutinises the performance of the optional preferential above-the-line voting system introduced after the 1999 election produced a tablecloth-sized ballot paper and elected candidates from groupings that would be flattered by the “micro-party” designation. He further discusses the potential for such a system to resolve the issues which saw Steve Fielding elected to the Senate in 2004. For the more casual election enthusiast, a new 2010federal election calculator allows you set the two-party result to taste to find out the seat outcome in the event of a uniform swing. It turns out a 50-50 result would give the Coalition exactly half the seats and presumably allow it to govern with support of the three independents. Labor loses its majority at 50.8 per cent.

• Queensland independent MP Peter Wellington has introduced a private member’s bill providing for fixed three-year terms, with an escape clause if a new government cannot be formed in the wake of no-confidence motion and a provision allowing for a five-week postponement if there is a clash with a federal election or a “widespread natural disaster”. The major parties both support fixed four-year terms, which unlike Wellington’s proposal would require a referendum. Negotiations for such a referendum broke down last year when then Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg insisted on further unrelated reforms, but his successor John-Paul Langbroek has foreshadowed a more “flexible” approach in future discussions with the government.

• Christian Kerr of The Australian evaluates the Australian political blogosphere.

UPDATE: Thanks to Rebecca in comments for bringing my attention to the fact that Allison Ritchie, Labor member for the Tasmanian Legislative Council district of Pembroke, yesterday announced she would quit parliament after enduring a storm of controversy over her appointment of family members on her staff. This will presumably result in a by-election shortly in Pembroke, where Ritchie defeated an independent incumbent in 2001 and won re-election in 2007. The Electoral Act allows the government enormous latitude on the timing of such a by-election, so I’ll hold off on giving it its own post until its intentions become clearer. Ritchie claims to have been the victim of a plot from within her own party, which presumably explains why she has decided to go now rather than wait for the more convenient juncture of early next year, when a by-election could be held with the state election in March or the annual periodical upper house elections in May.

Reuters Poll Trend: 56.6-43.4

Reuters Poll Trend is back in business, presumably resuming its old methods of providing a weighted aggregate of results from Newspoll, Morgan and ACNielsen. As such it tells us nothing we didn’t already know, but its trend line is a handy thing to have. The current finding combines three weeks of results and has Labor’s two-party lead at 56.6-43.4, down from 57.3-42.7 previously.

Couple of legal matters to attend to:

• A legal challenge is proceeding against Labor’s 74-vote win in the seat of Chatsworth at the March 21 Queensland election. The LNP cites incidents of double voting and a strong overall result for Labor on absent votes as evidence of fraud. I’ve got a hat waiting to be eaten if the challenge is upheld.

• Gary Clark, husband of the former Lindsay MP Jackie Kelly, has been given the maximum fine of $1100 and ordered to pay more than $2000 in costs for his role in the distribution of fake pamphlets purporting to be from the “Islamic Australia Federation” in the week before the federal election. The ABC reports Magistrate Geoff Bradd aptly observing it was “difficult to think of a worst case of breaching the electoral act”, for which the penalties would seem to need strengthening.

• Note posts below on the latest state Newspoll results for Western Australia and South Australia.

Itchy trigger fingers

Seems Morgan are having one of their occasional weeks off. Plenty of federal preselection action to report, as the parties prepare contingencies for a potential early election:

• The Australian’s Michael Owen reports South Australian Labor is finalising its federal preselections, which “senior factional figures” link to a potential early election. Mia Handshin is keen to run again, either in a second tilt at Sturt or where Nicole Cornes failed in Boothby. Cornes herself has found an interesting new line of work as an industrial officer for the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, but is “unlikely to win preselection”. A “senior ALP figure” nonetheless claims she is a genuine future prospect. Owen also reckons Labor Senator Dana Wortley faces electoral oblivion through “moves to relegate her to an unwinnable third spot”, although it was from that unwinnable position that she actually won her seat in 2004.

• Institute of Public Affairs director John Roskam has withdrawn from the contest to succeed Petrio Georgiou as Liberal candidate for Kooyong. He has thrown his support behind industrial relations lawyer John Pesutto, who looms as a threat to merchant banker Josh Frydenberg’s long-held designs on the seat. Rick Wallace of The Australian reports Pesutto also has the support of Ted Baillieu, who angered the Frydenberg camp by attending a function they “claim was to support Mr Pesutto”. Wallace also notes the June preselection will be “one of the first carried out under the Liberal Party’s new constitution, which empowers all eligible members within a seat to vote instead of only specially chosen delegates”. Andrew Landeryou at VexNews is told that “many of them … will be swinging votes with a history of supporting Baillieu/Petro or at least having a significant amount of affection for them or an in-built objection to the recruiting enthusiasms of Joshua”.

• Another interesting preselection for the Victorian Liberals looms in the eastern suburbs seat of Deakin, where two former members are hoping to make a comeback. One is Phil Barresi, who lost the seat to Labor’s Mike Symon in 2007. The other is Ken Aldred, whose eccentric reign extended from 1990 until his preselection defeat by Barresi in 1996. Aldred won a preselection ballot in Holt ahead of the 2007 election, but it was overturned by wiser heads in the party. Rounding out the field of known contenders is Deanna Ryall, a “local businesswoman”. Labor holds the seat with a margin of 1.4 per cent.

• New Queensland Opposition Leader John-Paul Langbroek foreshadows a more “flexible” approach than his predecessor in negotiating fixed four-year terms, improving the prospects for a referendum on the matter during the current term. Langbroek says it is not a priority, but Anna Bligh has apparently put the matter “on the agenda”. A referendum in 1991 for unfixed four-year terms was defeated with a 51.2 per cent no vote.

• Antony Green on the slow death of the election night tally room:

The next South Australian election will be the first conducted without a tallyroom. Both Victoria and NSW have also decided not to hold tallyroms at state elections due in November 2010 and March 2011. These state decisions may yet play a part in deciding whether free to air broadcasters attend the next Federal tallyroom. There were serious noise problems in the tallyroom in 2007, Sky News already bases its coverage from studio, and hosting from a studio would save the ABC and other free-to-air broadcasters considerable amounts of money and allow greater use of studio technology.

• I am maintaining elsewhere progressively updated posts on two looming electoral events: the May 16 Fremantle by-election and May 2 Tasmanian upper house elections.

Morgan: 61-39

The latest weekly Roy Morgan face-to-face poll has Labor’s two-party lead unchanged at 61-39, although its primary vote is down 1.5 per cent to 51.5 per cent while the Coalition is unchanged on 33.5 per cent. The slack has been taken up by Family First and independent/others.

Elsewhere:

• The Central Midlands & Coastal Advocate reports that Liberal Kalgoorlie MP Barry Haase has been making himself known in the areas of O’Connor which will be in the new seat of Durack under the radically redrawn boundaries. Despite being 75 years old, Wilson Tuckey has reportedly been taking an interest in the city of Kalgoorlie, which along with the southern coast from Albany to Esperance and areas of the South West will constitute the redrawn O’Connor.

• Liberal National Party candidate Andrea Caltabiano is launching a challenge against her 74-vote defeat by Labor’s Steve Kilburn in Chatsworth at the March 21 Queensland election. Claimed irregularities include double voting, particularly by candidates who lodged absent votes, and voters being wrongly removed from the roll.

• The Australasian Study of Parliament Group Queensland Chapter is holding a “behind the scenes review of the Queensland 2009 State Election” at the George Street parliamentary annexe from 6pm on Monday, Apirl 27. Star attractions are Antony Green, Treasurer Andrew Fraser, Keating government Attorney-General Michael Lavarch and Lawrence Springborg’s former chief-of-staff Paul Turner. RSVP by Monday to Erin Pasley, who can be reached at Erin-DOT-Paisley-AT-parliament-DOT-qld-DOT-gov-DOT-AU or on 3406 7931.

• No, I haven’t forgotten the May 2 Tasmanian Legislative Council elections – I will have a post up when I get time. In the meantime, Antony Green outlines the candidates.

NOTE: I am leaving open the previous thread for those who wish to continue the discussion, if that’s the right word, about asylum seekers, indigenous affairs, racism and the rest. This thread is for pretty much anything else.

Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor in Queensland

A very well timed Newspoll survey of 752 respondents shows Anna Bligh’s Labor government looking well placed with a 53-47 lead on two-party preferred – although this may be based on an unduly generous preference estimate. On the primary vote, Labor holds a narrow lead of 43 per cent to 42 per cent. This marks a correction from an aberrant looking result in the last quarter of 2008, when Labor led 45 per cent to 37 per cent (57-43 on two-party preferred). Normally Newspoll’s Queensland surveys are quarterly, with samples of over 1000 – obviously this one been cut short and rushed into service.