South Australian Politics – Page 18

Morgan: 58.5-41.5

Hard to say what to make of a poll conducted last weekend in the present fluid circumstances, but the latest Morgan face-to-face poll suggests the Oceanic Viking issue was washing out of the system even before the Liberal Party went into its present meltdown. Labor is up three points on the primary vote to 48 per cent while the Coalition is down one to 35.5 per cent. The Greens are steady on 9 per cent; most of the balance comes from Family First, which has corrected from 3 per cent to 1.5 per cent after an aberrant result last week. Labor’s lead on two-party preferred is up from 56.5-43.5 to 58.5-41.5. Elsewhere:

• Antony Green’s blog has been a hive of activity recently. Of particular interest is his latest post, in which he departs his comfort zone to assert we can expect a by-election in Wentworth if the Liberal leadership saga plays out as presently expected. Also featured is an epic account of the bureaucratic nightmare involved in the enrolment of young voters, apropos the NSW government’s plans to introduce automatic enrolment.

• Peter Kennedy of the ABC reports the resurgent WA Nationals have chosen John McCourt to head their Senate ticket. The party made a big fanfare of its Senate hopes at its state conference earlier this year, promising a campaign heavily funded by unpleasant Queensland mining billionaire Clive Palmer.

• The Advertiser tells us it has seen internal party polling (we are not told which party’s) which shows the Liberals were building a head of steam even before the past week’s unpleasantness. The Liberal primary vote across selected marginal seats (again we are not told which ones, which makes the figures hard to read) is said to have been 39 per cent to Labor’s 31 per cent (the undecided were presumably not distributed), with the Liberals leading 52-48 on two-party preferred.

• Jeff Whalley of the Geelong Advertiser reports Kurt Reiter, managing director of IT consultancy Digital Quay, has been preselected to run against Labor’s Lisa Neville in the state seat of Bellarine.

• Nino Bucci of the Bendigo Advertiser reports Anita Donlon, founder of the “Independent Musos Network” (can’t say I’ve met too many Liberal-voting “independent musos” in my time), and Michael Langdon, former Australian Technical college principal, are jockeying for Liberal preselection in Bendigo West and Bendigo East respectively. An announcement will be made next week.

• Western Australia’s Willagee state by-election, held to replace former Premier Alan Carpenter, will be held tomorrow. Notwithstanding that these are not the happiest of times for state Labor, their candidate Peter Tinley should have no trouble seeing off a Green, an ex-Green independent and the Christian Democratic Party. I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to say the most interesting thing about the by-election has been the Poll Bludger comments thread. Those wishing to discuss the by-election are invited to do so there; live coverage will as always be available here from the close of polling booths tomorrow.

Essential Research: 55-45

The latest weekly Essential Research survey has Labor’s two-party lead steady on 55-45 after the previous week’s sharp drop from 59-41. Further questions probe “firmness of vote” (slightly stronger among Coalition voters); satisfaction with Labor and Coalition positions on asylum seekers, climate change, the economy and things in general; relative impact thereof in determining vote choice; and party with which respondents most closely identify (37 per cent Labor, 31 per cent Coalition).

Other news:

• The Mike Rann situation is sufficiently volatile that alternative leadership scenarios are being discussed. Writing in Crikey, Hendrik Gout of Adelaide’s Independent Weekly indicates Treasurer and Deputy Premier Kevin Foley may have ruled himself out with his recent revelations of personal problems: a deal between Left and Right could instead see the job go to Patrick Conlon of the Left.

• George Megalogenis of The Australian probes recent Newspoll data for trends since the start of the Oceanic Viking saga:

In the three Newspolls that followed, Rudd shed a little more skin each time. By last weekend, the score was 56 per cent to 34 per cent. In other words, his net rating—the gap between those who like and loathe him—had almost halved from plus 43 per cent to plus 22 per cent. Scary stuff until you consider the unpublished splits for Labor and Coalition voters. Rudd’s net rating among Labor voters has barely moved. It was plus 84 per cent six weeks ago, now it is plus 81 per cent. All the loathing has been on the Coalition side. His net rating among those who were already voting Liberal or National was minus 13 per cent six weeks ago; now it is minus 38 per cent. Incidentally, Greens voters are also down on Rudd, with his net rating crashing from plus 60 per cent to plus 18 per cent in the same period. This isn’t the first time Rudd has antagonised people other than Labor voters. The same ripple of disrespect was detected after Labor’s first two budgets, in May last year and again this year. He arouses the enemy when he is forced to defend a specific policy.

• A Galaxy poll commissioned by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry finds “nearly six in 10” respondents believe an emissions trading scheme would cost jobs and force up electricity prices, and 54 per cent believe legislation should be delayed until after Copenhagen.

• Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports the Right is expected to throw its weight behind Adam Searle, Blue Mountains mayor and member of the “soft Left”, in the battle to succeed the retiring Bob Debus in his federal seat of Macquarie. Debus and the hard Left want the seat to go to Susan Templeman, with Debus in particular having a long record of conflict with Searle.

• Salusinszky also reports state party secretary and rising Left figure Luke Foley has denied suggestions he might seek to fill a casual vacancy created by the expected departure of the Right’s Henry Tsang from the state upper house later this year. The Right would have the seat go to Shaoquett Moselmane, a Rockdale councillor and Lebanese community leader who has in the past sought to unseat Frank Sartor from Rockdale.

• The NSW Liberals have eyebrow-raisingly preselected Chris Spence, former One Nation candidate and president of its national youth wing, in the highly winnable state seat of The Entrance. Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald reports Spence worked for David Oldfield in his time as a state MP, and is currently a staffer to Terrigal MP Chris Hartcher. Spence also took statutory declarations in his capacity as a justice of the peace from Iguanas staff who complained about John Della Bosca and Belinda Neal. He describes his past involvement with One Nation as “a mistake”.

• The ABC further reports local mayor Chris Holstein, who ran unsuccessfully in 2007, has been endorsed as the Liberal candidate for Gosford.

• The ABC reports four candidates have nominated for Liberal preselection in Bennelong, with Steven Foley and Melanie Matthewson joining the previously discussed John Alexander and Mark Chan.

• The Manly Daily reports Bronwyn Bishop has not been opposed for preselection in Mackellar.

Morgan: 60-40

Roy Morgan has simultaneously unloaded two sets of polling figures, as it does from time to time. The regular fortnightly face-to-face poll, conducted over the previous two weekends from a sample of 1684, has Labor’s lead nudging up to 60-40 compared with 59.5-40.5 at the previous such poll. Both major parties are down 1.5 per cent on the primary vote – Labor to 49.5 per cent, the Coalition to 34 per cent – while the Greens are up from 7.5 per cent to 9 per cent. There is also a phone poll of 695 respondents conducted mid-week, which finds a slight majority favouring “maintaining a balanced budget” over vaguely defined alternative economic objectives. The poll has Labor’s lead on voting intention at 58-42 on two-party preferred and 46.5-37 on the primary vote. The Greens are on 10.5 per cent.

Plenty happening on the electoral front, not least the finalisation of the federal redistribution for Queensland. This offers a few surprises, and may be a rare occasion where a major party’s submission has actually had an effect. Two changes in particular were broadly in line with the wishes of the Liberal National Party, which marshalled a considerable weight of media commentary to argue that the Coalition had been hard done by. As always, Antony Green has crunched the numbers: all estimated margins quoted herein are his.

• Most interestingly, the changes to Dickson that sent Peter Dutton scurrying for refuge have been partly reversed. As the LNP submission requested, the electorate has recovered the rural area along Dayboro Road and Woodford Road that it was set to lose to Longman. However, only a small concession was made to the LNP’s request that the troublesome Kallangur area be kept out of the electorate. The electoral impact is accordingly slight, clipping the notional Labor margin from 1.3 per cent to 1.0 per cent. Peter Dutton is nonetheless sufficiently encouraged that he’s indicating he might yet stand and fight – or less charitably, he’s found a pretext to get out of the corner he had backed himself into. Labor has received a corresponding boost in its marginal seat of Longman, where Jon Sullivan’s margin has been cut from 3.6 per cent at the election to 1.7 per cent, instead of the originally proposed 1.4 per cent.

• Major changes to Petrie and Wayne Swan’s seat of Lilley have largely been reversed. It had been proposed to eliminate Petrie’s southern dog-leg by adding coastal areas from Shorncliffe and Deagon north to Brighton from Lilley, which would be compensated with Petrie’s southern leg of suburbs from Carseldine south to Stafford Heights. The revised boundaries have eliminated the former transfer and limited the latter to south of Bridgeman Downs. Where the original proposal gave Labor equally comfortable margins in both, the revision gives Wayne Swan 8.8 per cent while reducing Yvette D’Ath to an uncomfortable 4.2 per cent. Retaining Shorncliffe, Deagon and Brighton in Lilley had been advocated in the LNP submission. Almost-local observer Possum concurs, saying the revised boundaries better serve local communities of interest.

• South of Brisbane and inland of the Gold Coast, changes have been made to the boundary between Forde and the new electorate of Wright, with a view to consolidating the rural identity of the latter. Forde gains suburban Boronia Heights and loses an area of hinterland further south, extending from suburban Logan Village to rural Jimboomba. Labor’s margin in Forde has increased from 2.4 per cent to 3.4 per cent, and the Coalition’s in Wright is up from 3.8 per cent to 4.8 per cent.

• Little remains of a proposed northward shift of the boundary between Kennedy and Leichhardt from the Mitchell River to the limits of Tablelands Regional council. Kennedy will now only gain an area around Mount Molloy, 150 kilometres north-west of Cairns. Its boundary with Dawson has also been tidied through the expansion of a transfer from Dawson south of Townsville, aligning it with the Burdekin River. None of the three seats’ margins has changed.

• Moreton gains a park and golf course from Oxley in the west and loses part of Underwood to Rankin in the south-east, with negligible impact on their margins.

• Maranoa has gained the area around Wandoan from Flynn, making the boundary conform with Western Downs Regional Council. This boosts Labor’s margin in Flynn from 2.0 per cent to 2.3 per cent, compared with 0.2 per cent at the election.

• Three minor adjustments have been made to the boundary between the safe Liberal Sunshine Coast seats of Fisher and Fairfax, allowing the entirety of Montville to remain in Fisher.

• Ryan has taken a sliver of inner city Toowong from Brisbane.

Other news:

• The Financial Review’s Mark Skulley reported on Wednesday that the federal government was moving quickly to get its electoral reform package into shape. Labor is said to be offering a deal: if the Liberals drop their opposition to slashing the threshold for public disclosure of donations (which the Coalition and Steve Fielding voted down in March), the government will include union affiliation fees in a ban on donations from corporations, third parties and associated entities. Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald says the New South Wales branch of the ALP alone receives $1.3 million in revenue a year from the fees, which unions must pay to send delegates to party conferences. According to Skulley, many union leaders fear a Rudd plot to “Blairise” the party by weakening union ties, with Coorey naming the ACTU and Victorian unions as “most hostile”. It is further reported that the parties propose to cover the foregone revenue by hiking the rate of public funding. VexNews “understands” that an increase from $2.24 per vote to $10 is on the cards, potentially increasing the total payout from $49 million to $200 million. The site says Westpac currently has a formal claim over Labor’s public funding payout after the next election, as the party is currently $8 million in debt. The Liberals are said to be keen because they’re having understandable trouble raising funds at the moment. A further amendment proposes to restrict political advertising by third parties. As well as being stimulating politically, some of these moves might be difficult constitutionally.

• A proposed referendum on reform to the South Australian Legislative Council has been voted down in said chamber. The referendum would have been an all-or-nothing vote to change terms from a staggered eight years to an unstaggered four, reduce its membership from 22 to 16, allow a deliberative rather than a casting vote for the President and establish a double dissolution mechanism to resolve deadlocks. Another bill amending the Electoral Act has been passed, although it will not take effect until after the March election. A number of its measures bring the state act into line with the Commonwealth Electoral Act: party names like “Liberals for Forests” have been banned, provisions have been made for enrolment of homeless voters, and MPs will be able to access constituents’ dates of birth on the electoral roll (brace yourselves for presumptuous birthday greetings in the mail). The number of members required of a registered party has been increased from 150 to 200: if you’re wondering why they bothered, the idea was to hike it to 500 to make life difficult for the putative Save the Royal Adelaide Hospital party, but the government agreed to a half-measure that wouldn’t threaten the Nationals. Misleading advertising has also been introduced as grounds for declaring a result void if on the balance of probabilities it affected the result. The Council voted down attempts to ban “corflute” advertising on road sides and overturn the state’s unique requirement that how-to-vote cards be displayed in each polling compartment.

• Deborah Morris of the Hastings Leader reports Helen Constas, chief executive of the Peninsula Community Legal Centre, has been preselected as Labor’s candidate for the south-eastern Melbourne federal seat of Dunkley, where Liberal member Bruce Billson’s margin was cut from 9.3 per cent to 4.0 per cent at the 2007 election. Constas was said to have had “a convincing win in the local ballot”. UPDATE: Andrew Crook of Crikey details Constas’s preselection as a win for the left born of disunity between the Bill Shorten and Stephen Conroy forces of the Right; Right faction sources respond at VexNews.

• The ABC reports that Nationals members in the state electorate of Dubbo have voted not to abandon their preselection privileges by being the guinea pig in the state party’s proposed open primary experiment. There is reportedly a more welcoming mood in Port Macquarie, which like Dubbo is a former Nationals seat that has now had consecutive independent members.

Advertiser: 55-45 to Labor in SA

The Advertiser has published an in-house poll from a modest 475 respondents to gauge the electoral impact of recent events surrounding Mike Rann. The answer would appear to be, not much: Labor maintains a commanding 55-45 lead on two-party preferred, and leads on the primary vote 43.2 per cent to 38.6 per cent after distribution of the undecided. This compares with 56-44 in a poll which escaped my notice when it was published in the Sunday Mail a month ago. Eighty-seven per cent of respondents said “the circumstances surrounding the recent assault” would have no bearing on their vote; 8 per cent said they would be less likely to vote Labor, while 3 per cent said more likely.

Who’s the least unfairest of them all

No proper Roy Morgan poll this week, but they do provide results on preferred Labor and Liberal leaders. Kevin Rudd scores a surprisingly modest 51 per cent as Labor leader, weighed down by contrary Liberals and a telling preference for Julia Gillard among the small sample of Greens supporters. Among Labor supporters, his rating is 70 per cent. Joe Hockey leads a crowded Liberal field with 30 per cent (up five since July), while Malcolm Turnbull is second on 21 per cent. Possum weighs in with a post on the various Liberal leadership polls conducted since the 2007 election. A separate Morgan release puts Rudd and Turnbull head to head, finding little change since July.

Elsewhere:

• Liberal MP Fran Bailey has announced she will not contest her Victorian federal seat of McEwen at the next election. Bailey retained the seat in 2007 by a court-determined margin of just 27 votes, but the Liberals would have hoped her local popularity in the wake of the February bushfires might help her hold on at the next election. As it stands, the Liberal preselection is unlikely to be keenly sought. Labor’s candidate from 2007, former state upper house MP Rob Mitchell, was said by Rick Wallace of The Australian to maintain “strong local numbers”. However, the Labor national executive’s suspension of the preselection process a fortnight ago has prompted talk its newly acquired powers might be used to install a candidate of its own choice. Rick Wallace subsequently reported that Andrew MacLeod, a “former soldier and UN disaster expert”, had also emerged as a contestant (UPDATE: Greensborough Growler informs me he was also Labor’s candidate in 2001).

• Linda Silmaris of the Daily Telegraph reports senior Labor sources say it is now unlikely Belinda Neal will be forced out of Robertson, an outcome so very recently seen as a foregone conclusion.

• Alex Easton of The Northern Star reports local Nationals are hoping Stuart George, Richmond Valley councillor and son of state Lismore MP Thomas George, will be the party’s candidate for the federal seat of Page. Labor’s Janelle Saffin won the seat in 2007 on the retirement of Nationals incumbent Ian Causley with a margin of 2.4 per cent, picking up a 7.8 per cent swing. The redistribution proposal shaves 0.2 per cent off the Labor margin.

• Robert Ellicott, architect of the Coalition’s constitutional strategy in 1975, has written an article for The Australian in which he muses on the prospect of a Governor-General refusing a Prime Minister’s request for a double dissolution. This has prompted a most informative discussion in comments.

• The Australian Electoral Commission has released approximate figures on the age breakdown of the 1.2 million Australians not on the electoral roll, which progressively falls from 30 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 to 4 per cent of those aged over 65.

• The New South Wales Greens have listed nominees for state upper preselection and the vacancy to be created by Lee Rhiannon’s bid for the Senate. Both incumbents due for re-election, Ian Cohen and Sylvia Hale, are retiring. High-profile Byron Shire mayor Jan Barham is reportedly well-placed for a spot, being an ally of the locally based Cohen.

• The Australian Democrats have lost their last remaining parliamentary member after South Australian upper house MP David Winderlich quit to sit as an independent. The party is now registered only in South Australia and New South Wales.

• Keep following the by-election action on the regularly updated threads for Bradfield, Higgins and Willagee.

ACNielsen: 55-45

The latest monthly ACNielsen survey of 1400 respondents (conducted from Thursday to Saturday) shows Labor’s two-party lead down slightly from 56-44 to 55-45. This seems a fairly conservative return on the changes in the primary vote: Labor down two points to 44 per cent, the Coalition up two to 40 per cent. Malcolm Turnbull also scores relatively well on personal ratings, his approval up four to 35 per cent and his disapproval down five to 55 per cent. However, Kevin Rudd’s approval is also up two points to 70 per cent, and his lead as preferred prime minister is up from 67-24 to 69-23. Rudd’s disapproval rating is up one point to 25 per cent.

Further afield:

• Courtesy of comprehensive coverage at Andrew Landeryou’s VexNews we learn the Liberal preselection vote to succeed David Hawker in Wannon has been won by Daniel Tehan, deputy director of the Victorian Liberal Party and son of the late Kennett government minister Marie Tehan. The other candidate who made it through to the final round was Stephen Mitchell, founder of natural gas explorer Molopo Australia. David Clark, Elizabeth Matuschka, Hugh Koch and Katrina Rainsford were eliminated after the first round, followed by Simon Price and Rod Nockles, then Louise Staley, then Matt Makin.

• Labor veteran Duncan Kerr has announced he will not contest his Hobart seat of Denison at the next federal election. Misha Schubert of The Age reports this has come as a surprise, such that “when news broke yesterday, there was no obvious successor staking a public claim”. It is widely noted that Kerr leaves his seat with a margin of 15.6 per cent after gaining it from the Liberals in 1987, though it probably wouldn’t do to put this entirely down to candidate factors. Early preselection contenders identified by Michael Stedman of The Mercury are George Williams, constitutional lawyer and “Kerr associate”, Jonathan Jackson, son of former state attorney-general Judy Jackson, and Rebecca White, staffer to Kerr and a state candidate for Lyons. However, state secretary John Dowling sounds confident none of the 27 state election candidates will be contesting preselection.

• With Peter Dutton confirming his intention to jump ship from notionally Labor Dickson in northern Brisbane to safe Liberal McPherson on the Gold Coast, Labor’s narrowly unsuccessful candidate for Dickson in 2007, Fiona McNamara, has signalled her intention to again seek preselection.

• Paige Taylor of The Australian reports former WA Premier Alan Carpenter is “preparing to leave parliament”, and “could quit his seat of Willagee before the next state election, due in 2012”. Although a neighbour of the seat of Fremantle which gave the Greens their breakthrough lower house win in May, Willagee is genuinely unloseable for Labor. The front-runner to succeed Carpenter would appear to be Dave Kelly, state secretary of the Left faction Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, who wisely held back when Fremantle became available.

• The bill for a referendum to amend South Australia’s Constitution discussed in the previous post passed the House of Assembly on the second try, after embarrassing failure on the first. However, Attorney-General Michael Atkinson openly admits he does not expect it to be passed in the upper house. The Liberals have spoken in favour of four-year Council terms and a double dissolution mechanism, but against cutting Council numbers, giving the Council President a deliberative vote, and in particular the plan to combine the measures into a single referendum question. The Legislative Council is also debating the Electoral (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill, which proposes to ban registered political parties using the name of “a prominent public body” (plainly aimed at the Save the Royal Adelaide Hospital Group), increase fines for electoral offences by as much as 400 per cent, require that redistributions commence 24 months after an election as opposed to the current three, increase the number of members required of a registered political party from 150 to 500 (in line with most other states), introduce compulsory enrolment (surprised they didn’t have this already) and ban third parties from producing how-to-vote cards.

• Former NSW Rural Fire Services chief Phil Koperberg, who replaced Bob Debus as Labor member for Blue Mountains at the 2007 state election, is making noises which are generally being interpreted as meaning he will quit politics, either at or before the next election. According to the ABC, Koperberg says he is “not cut out for the nature of partisan or party politics and I find myself doing and saying things I would rather not do, which my conscience would have me to otherwise”, and that he is considering his future in the “medium to long-term”. Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald reports Koperberg “has told journalists, colleagues and even Coalition MPs several times in the past two years that he was thinking of quitting before the next election”.

• Via Democratic Audit, the House Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee is conducting an inquiry into the effectiveness of the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984.

UPDATE: The weekly Essential Research has Labor down a little after last week’s spike, from 61-39 to 59-41. Not sure why, but the usual suite of further questions is not included this time.

A sense of proportion

Despite finding “increasing comfort” that the current system is working, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key says he will honour a promise to hold a referendum into the country’s MMP (mixed-member proportional) electoral system. The National Party went to the last election promising a choice between retaining MMP and having a second referendum, at which the choice would be between MMP and “another electoral system or systems”. However, the options currently under discussion include one to resolve the matter in one go by asking both whether MMP should be abolished, and what if anything should replace it. Key earlier said he favoured replacing MMP with a “single-member supplementary” system that would tilt the playing field in the major parties’ favour. Where currently the 50 “top-up members” are added to the 70 constituency seats in such a way as to produce a proportional result, single-member supplementary would simply add a proportional 50 to a non-proportional, major party-dominated 70. By my reckoning, that would have cut non-major party representation in the MMP era by about 30 per cent, producing majority Labour government after the 1999 election and majority National government in 2008, but hung parliaments in 1996, 2002 and 2005.

Closer to home, a bill for a referendum to “reform” the South Australian Legislative Council is currently before the chamber itself. As Dean Jaensch writes in The Advertiser, the referendum would offer four proposals: changing Council terms from a staggered eight years to an unstaggered four; a double dissolution mechanism to resolve legislative deadlocks; cutting Council numbers from 22 to 16; and a deliberative rather than casting vote for the President. However, it proposes to offer them on an all-or-nothing basis, which would certainly be a recipe for defeat at a federal referendum. The first and third would be popular enough in their own right, although a term reduction would mean a lower quota for election and an entree to micro-parties, and 16 members would make it impossible to sustain a satisfactory committee system. In any event, the bill will first have to negotiate the Council itself, which is unlikely to be accommodating. The cut in numbers offers nothing to the minor parties, which stand to win fewer seats, or to the Liberals, who would be more likely to face a Labor-Greens majority.

What is not proposed is that the Council be abolished, which has long been advocated by The Advertiser. The paper’s editorial yesterday begrudgingly acknowledged the upper house’s value as “the primary, although not exclusive, means by which minor parties and independents have had a democratic voice”, which it said might be accommodated by changes to the lower house electoral system. Presumably such changes would have to be minor: in 2005 the paper argued that advocates of “checks and balances, particularly in the form of minor parties and independents” were suffering a “fundamental misunderstanding of the strength of our democratic system” (i.e. the staging of regular elections, which in South Australia as in New South Wales are held at fixed four-year intervals). That would leave some kind of mixed system, perhaps along the lines proposed in New Zealand.

UPDATE: Embarrassment for the Rann government as its upper house reform bill fails to pass the lower house. As a constitutional amendment, the bill requires the support of an absolute majority of all sitting members, and the conjunction of a parliamentary wine club meeting and an apparent error by the Speaker in neglecting to call for the bill to be read a second time meant it could only muster 23. Significantly, Karlene Maywald (Nationals member for Chaffey and Rann cabinet member) and Rory McEwen (independent member for Mount Gambier and former Rann cabinet member) both voted against. The Opposition reportedly says the bill cannot be reintroduced before the next election, though I can’t imagine why that might be. The government insists it will be passed through the house in very short order.

Newspoll: 55-45

The Australian reports that the latest fortnightly Newspoll has Labor’s lead at 55-45, down from 57-43 at the previous two polls. Labor’s primary vote is down one point to 44 per cent and the Coalition’s is up one point to 38 per cent. Malcolm Turnbull’s approval rating is up four points to 30 per cent. More to follow. UPDATE: Graphic here. Turnbull’s approval is the only leadership measure that has moved noticeably.

The weekly Essential Research survey has Labor’s lead steady at 58-42. Also featured: support for an ETS-driven early election continues to fall; confidence in the economy continues to rise; there is no one widely held view on who should be our next US Ambassador; and two-thirds agree that “the Liberals are just not prepared at the moment to take on the difficult task of governing Australia”.

Also:

• The Gold Coast News reports that Peter Dutton faces “an ugly pre-election battle” if he wishes to move from notionally Labor Dickson to the safe Liberal Gold Coast seat of McPherson, to be vacated by the retirement of Margaret May. Rival candidates include federal divisional council chair Karen Andrews, a “close ally” of May; Dr Richard Stuckey, husband of Jann Stuckey, state front-bencher and member for the local seat of Currumbin; and Michael Hart, who unsuccessfully contested the state seat of Burleigh at the last two state elections.

• For the second election in a row, Dennis Jensen will represent the Liberals in their safe Perth seat of Tangney despite having lost the initial preselection vote. The West Australian reports that Jensen won a State Council vote over the initially successful candidate, Glenn Piggott, by no less a margin than 76 votes to five. This result was foreshadowed a month ago by a commenter on this site travelling under the name of Matt Brown’s Imaginary Friend (Matt Brown being the initial victor of the 2007 preselection), who wrote: “Council knows that if Jensen (is) dumped, the Libs’ chances of holding the marginals will dive because campaign funds will be so stretched, adverse publicity will have (a) ripple effect, and Tangney itself could be lost to Jensen if (he) stood as an independent, whether to him or even to the ALP if he did the obvious and swapped preferences with them”.

• Saturday’s Weekend Australian featured a post-redistribution proposal Mackerras pendulum, which you can see at Mumble. The accompanying article takes aim at the assertion of Peter van Onselen and others that the redistributions of New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia collectively constitute a “Ruddymander”.

• Simon Benson of The Daily Telegraph reports that the tensions over the New South Wales Labor leadership could be coming to the boil:

With the various warring factions in the Labor party room unable to decide on who would be a replacement, Mr Rees was said to be considering acting before he gets chopped. Sources confirmed he was using threats of a reshuffle to axe “trouble-making” ministers, a veiled reference to Health Minister John Della Bosca, if sniping about his leadership continued. The internal malaise in the Government has become so bad that very few MPs believe the current situation can continue. Mr Rees is also reported to have told those closest to him that his position was untenable if the plotting against him could not be arrested. Another Labor source said Labor powerbrokers including national secretary Karl Bitar were considering tapping Mr Rees on the shoulder next week if they could convince Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt to take over. It is understood Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is also being drafted into the soap opera with sources claiming his Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese has directly lobbied Mr Rudd to support a move to install Ms Tebbutt, who is Mr Albanese’s wife.

John Della Bosca today added fuel to the fire by declaring it was “no state secret” that it was constitutionally possible for an upper house MP such as himself to be Premier. However, Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald reports focus group research shows “many people still think (Rees) should be given time to make a go of the job”, and gives an insight into the public view of Della Bosca, Tebbutt and other sometimes-mentioned leadership prospects, Kristina Keneally, John Robertson and Frank Sartor.

• The ABC reports that the member for the Nationals member for the Victorian state seat of Murray Valley, Ken Jasper, will retire at the next election. Jasper is 71 years old and has held the seat since 1976. I must confess the seat does not loom large in my consciousness, but my election guide entry tells me the Nationals are “concerned at their ability to hold the seat without him”. Jasper nonetheless held the seat in 2006 with 50.9 per cent of the vote against the Liberal candidate’s 21.9 per cent.

• The Victorian Greens have preselected for the highly winnable state seat of Melbourne a barrister and former president of Liberty Victoria, Brian Walters, ahead of Moonee Valley councillor Rose Iser.

Lots more information on various Greens preselections from Ben Raue of The Tally Room:

• Raue appears to have the inside dope on the state upper house preselection in South Australia, declaring former Democrat and current state party convenor Tammy Jennings the “clear frontrunner” for the lucrative top spot (he earlier named SA Farmers Federation chief executive Carol Vincent, former convenor and unsuccessful 1997 lead candidate Paul Petit and unheralded Mark Andrew as the other candidates).

• Raue also names preselection candidates for the Queensland Senate: Larissa Waters (the 2007 candidate, who also ran for Mount Coot-tha at the March state election), “perennial candidates” Libby Connors and Jenny Stirling, and 2009 Sunnybank candidate Matthew Ryan-Sykes.

• Raue names Emma Henley and Peter Campbell as candidates for the Victorian upper house region of Eastern Metropolitan.

• In the Tasmanian state seat of Braddon, Paul O’Halloran has apparently been chosen to “lead the ticket”, to the extent that that means anything under Robson rotation. Braddon is the only one of the five divisions currently without a Greens member.

Antony Green corner:

• In comments on this site, Antony discusses the prospects of a Victorian redistribution before the next federal election:

A Victorian redistribution is due because the boundaries from the last redistribution were gazetted on 29 January 2003. A re-draw starts seven years later, the end of January 2010. A redistribution is not required in the last 12 months before the House expires. The current House first sat on 12 February 2008 so it expires 11 February 2011. This means there is an unfortunate two week gap that will force a redistribution. If the Victorian boundaries had been gazetted two weeks later in 2003, or if the Rudd government had re-called parliament in December 2007, the redistribution would be deferred. Unfortunately, the Electoral Act is very prescriptive on dates so it appears the redistribution will have to take place, unless the act is changed.

• Two posts on his blog relate to the slow decline of the Nationals, one directly, the other with reference to the relative decline of rural population.

• Also featured is a post comparing the current position of the state Labor government in New South Wales with that of the Unsworth government as it drifted to the abyss in 1988.