Category: Victorian Politics

The Poll Bludger’s insufficiently proof-read upper house election guide is now available for viewing. It will be cleaned up and maybe expanded a little in due course. I will also be back in the land of regular internet access tomorrow, so campaign developments in the final week will be covered in a more timely fashion than they have been of late.

Today’s ACNielsen poll in The Age tells of a Liberal revival in more believable terms than yesterday’s effort in the Sunday Herald-Sun. The survey of 1018 respondents has Labor leading the Coalition 41 per cent to 40 per cent on the primary vote, with the Greens on 12 per cent and Labor leading 54-46 on two-party preferred. This points to a 4 per cent swing which, if evenly distributed, would cost Labor seven of the 62 seats it currently holds in the 88-seat lower house. Voters are now forming opinions of Ted Baillieu, most of them favourable: his approval rating is up from 40 per cent to 49 per cent from three weeks ago, with disapproval also up from 30 per cent to 37 per cent and the uncommitted down from 29 per cent to 14 per cent.

Another headline-grabber in today’s Age is a report that "the Greens are on the cusp of defeating Health Minister Bronwyn Pike and winning their first seat in Victoria’s lower house, according to Labor Party polling". According to the report, the poll has the Greens primary vote in Pike’s seat of Melbourne at an improbable 40 per cent, compared with 23.3 per cent at the 2002 election, with Labor down from 46.7 per cent to 41 per cent and the Liberals down from 20.1 per cent to 21 per cent to 16 per cent.

Remarkable poll results from McNair Ingenuity Research in today’s Sunday Herald-Sun give the Coalition a commanding primary vote lead of 46 per cent to 39 per cent one week out from the Victorian election. From this it is somehow inferred that Labor still holds a 50.5-49.5 lead on two-party preferred, suggesting an extraordinary 77 per cent of minor party and independent preferences will go to Labor. McNair managing director Matt Balogh reckons the figures "may reverse on the day a little bit", a clear indication that he himself does not believe them. The sample size is an almost but not quite respectable 609.

The big news from yesterday’s deadline for registration of how-to-vote cards was the Liberals’ change of heart regarding the Greens, whom they now propose to put ahead of Labor in seats including Melbourne (which the Greens came within 1.9 per cent of winning in 2002), Richmond (3.1 per cent), Northcote (7.9 per cent) and Brunswick. Throughout the week, the party’s website carried a how to vote card that had the Greens last in every seat other than the aforementioned, where voters were instructed to make up their own minds. The Poll Bludger can only speculate as to what prompted the change of heart; the most intriguing possibility is that the Liberals have ratted on a deal which gave Labor the better half of the bargain, in exchange for an alternative arrangement with the Greens. The Age plays up the impact of the Greens’ decision to distribute split tickets in Morwell (4.9 per cent), South Barwon (5.0 per cent), Ripon (7.4 per cent), Ballarat East (7.6 per cent), Mitcham (7.7 per cent), Monbulk (8.3 per cent), Ballarat West (9.0 per cent), Bendigo West (16.0 per cent) and Footscray (24.9 per cent), although this is only to be of consequence where the result is extremely close. The real dividend for the Liberals is that Labor resources will be diverted to once safe inner-city seats. Duncan Hughes of the Australian Financial Review reminds us that "parties can register any number of cards to be distributed on polling day, which means haggling between parties can continue until the eve of the poll", although last-minute indecision would presumably carry political costs.

In other news, the Geelong Advertiser today follows up on its South Barwon survey of October 16 with a second poll, albeit of only 254 respondents (of whom 67 are reported as undecided). It nonetheless backs up the thrust of the earlier poll in having Liberal candidate Michael King leading Labor incumbent Michael Crutchfield 49 per cent to 38 per cent after distribution of the undecided.

The Victorian election campaign has been surprisingly poorly served for opinion polls; apart from last week’s obligatory Newspoll, there have only been the three electorate-level polls conducted by the Geelong Advertiser for South Barwon, Bellarine and Lara. Roy Morgan has today unveiled a "qualitative survey of 251 Victorian electors", but it gives no figures on voting intention and is really just a bloated vox-pop. To add insult to injury, the newspapers have been bereft of leaked internal polling, and light on for off-the-record assessments by party strategists. The Poll Bludger will accordingly need more time for field work before adding his eagerly awaited predictions to the election guide. As for the upper house guide that was promised by Tuesday, it really is nearing fruition now and will be posted some time this weekend.

One more Campaign Update for the election guide:

Hastings (Labor 0.9%): Last weekend, Steve Bracks announced that commercial net fishing in Westernport Bay would come to an end if Labor was re-elected. Thomas Hunter of Crikey reports: "It appears to be another big win for Rex Hunt – who joined Bracks to make the announcement – and the recreational fishing lobby. Commercial fishing operators well remember what happened in 2002 when a fortnight before the election Bracks, again flanked by Hunt, made the same commitment for the Lake Tyers and Mallacoota fisheries. Sure enough, those commercial fisheries disappeared shortly after the election". Commercial fishing lobby group the Blue Wedge has accused the government of using the proposal to buy the support of recreational fishing groups for the Port Phillip Bay channel deepening project – a hot issue on the Port Phillip Bay side of the Mornington Peninsula, particularly in the marginal Liberal seat of Nepean.

The Poll Bludger’s visit to Melbourne is not off to a good start, for reasons you need not concern yourselves with; suffice to say that the weather hasn’t helped. There has been a good deal more heat on the electoral front, mostly generated by the Labor and Liberal parties’ stimulating preference tactics. Matthew Murphy and Farrah Tomazin of The Age report that Nationals are "planning an anti-Liberal advertising assault throughout country Victoria; no word yet on whether they are going so far as to withhold preference recommendations from the Liberals. That will become clear after tomorrow’s noon deadline for the registration of how-to-vote cards. If there has been a deal, Labor would seem to have the better half of it: not only are they a chance of maintaining control of the upper house, but they will be relieved of the necessity to devote campaign resources to holding off Greens challenges in the inner city; by contrast, the Coalition parties will be turning their efforts against each other.

Further local developments to be added to the election guide when I can get a reliable internet connection:

Cranbourne (Labor 10.8%): Glenn Osborne of the Cranbourne Leader provides a useful summary of the public transport auction for this area in Melbourne’s outer east, in which the Liberals appear to be placing the higher bids: "The Liberals have offered a $6 million rail link to Cranbourne East, and while Labor has not committed to that project, it has promised a $25 million upgrade of the Dandenong rail corridor to improve service frequency on the Cranbourne and Berwick-Pakenham lines. The Liberals also promised to build a rail overpass or underpass at Clyde Rd and duplicate the missing 900m stretch between Kangan Drive and Berwick for $25 million. Labor says it can’t be done at that price and has instead pledged to upgrade the intersection with lights at Enterprise Ave. Labor also says it will provide extra bus services for Cranbourne and Narre Warren. Casey residents, with high numbers of under-driving age residents, would benefit from the increased frequency of buses from Frankston to Cranbourne West (route 791), Berwick to Narre Warren circle (route 840) and Cranbourne to Narre Warren South (route 841)".

Doncaster (Liberal 0.8%): and Box Hill (Liberal 1.1%): Labor has declined to match a Liberal promise to spend $35 million extending the number 48 tram route a further four kilometres from Balwyn North to Doncaster. Michael Howard of the Manningham Leader reports a claim from Transport Minister Peter Batchelor that the line would "cause traffic congestion on Doncaster Road, would be unable to make regular stops due to the road’s gradient and would actually cost as much as $60 million to construct". The latter claim has been rejected by the Public Transport Users’ Association. The government has also rejected local calls for a train line to be built to Doncaster, instead having committed to an $80 million upgrade of bus services.

Morwell (Labor 4.9%): Labor’s Traralgon branch secretary Lisa Proctor, a former Latrobe councillor and unsuccessful preselection contestant at the 2002 election, has quit the party along with three other "senior members" of the branch and will run against Brendan Jenkins as an independent, directing preferences against him. Local unrest also worked against Jenkins in 2002 when Brad Platschinda, a CFMEU-backed timber worker campaigning against the Bracks government’s logging policies, polled 14.7 per cent and contributed to an unusual 4.4 per cent swing to the Liberals.

Albert Park (Labor 12.5%): Deputy Premier John Thwaites’ seat of Albert Park is not itself an electoral hot-spot, but it is home to St Kilda’s Palace nightclub and Palais theatre, ownership of which has reverted to the government following a ruling yesterday in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The government hopes to use the land for a $100 million redevelopment of an area that also includes Luna Park and the Esplanade Hotel; however, the owners are considering an appeal. The Liberals have promised to re-start the tender process for the project if elected.

Macedon (Labor 9.3%): Among the independent candidates fielded against Labor member Joanne Duncan is Dave Barry, a Sunbury police officer unhappy with understaffing at Sunbury area police stations. Wayne Flower of the Herald-Sun reports that Barry rang 3AW to tackle Steve Bracks over the issue, claiming "numbers were being distorted by inner-city stations, which had retained higher police numbers despite a downward trend in crime figures".

Monbulk (Labor 8.3%): The Liberals have promised to commit $22 million to building a bypass around the town centre of Belgrave, which Labor has criticised on the grounds that it would deprive the main street of business and require construction of an "ugly" bridge. Ellen Whinnett of the Herald-Sun reports that "the announcement brings to $909 million the amount of money promised by the Liberals for upgrading roads across Victoria".

South Barwon (Labor 5.0%): Labor was shedding support locally due to its plans to end the Geelong ring road at a T-junction in Waurn Ponds, feeding 30,000 vehicles a day into one set of traffic lights. It has now promised to commit an extra $62.5 million to creating a continous link to Angelsea Road via a two kilometre overpass even if the federal government does not agree to provide funding.

Yan Yean (Labor 9.5%): Labor campaign promises in this area have included a 112-bed "medi-hotel", a new mental health team and expanded chemotherapy services at the Northern Hospital in Epping, along with a $10.5 million expansion of the TAFE campus at Epping. The Liberals have promised to spend $12 million extending the Epping rail line to South Morang.

Hastings (Labor 0.2%): and Tarneit (Labor 17.4%): Hastings and Werribee have been mooted by the Liberals as possible sites for its centrepiece water policy, a $400 million desalination plant.

Talk of a Labor-Liberal deal to shaft the Nationals and the Greens on preferences was ridiculed in some circles, and Labor’s upper house tickets did indeed suggest that the Liberals had some other motive in putting the Greens behind Labor. However, Labor’s lower house how-to-vote cards have now been unveiled and they indeed point to the nightmare scenario for the Nationals: in contrast to their upper house tickets, Labor has put the Liberals ahead of the Nationals in every seat where it’s likely to matter. Earlier speculation about such a scenario suggested it would almost certainly deliver the Nationals-held seats of Shepparton and Rodney to the Liberals, and would put Swan Hill, Lowan and party leader Peter Ryan’s seat of Gippsland South at varying degrees of risk. Only Benalla and Murray Valley look safe for them, as Labor are sure to run second and thus their preferences will not be distributed.

The Liberal how-to-vote cards for the lower house are now available for viewing on the party website. As in the upper house, the Greens and other parties of the left are last – except in the vital inner-city seats of Melbourne, Richmond, Northcote and Brunswick, where supporters are advised: "Place number 1 in the box for the Liberal Candidate. Then number all of the remaining boxes from 2 to 5 in the order of your choice". While this is a little better for the Greens than a straighforward recommendation that they be put last, it will still reduce their flow of preferences compared with 2002, which probably ends the threat to the Labor sitting members – of whom the most senior and most endangered was Health Minister Bronwyn Pike in Melbourne.