Seat of the week: Canberra

The Liberals once won the seat covering the southern half of the national capital at a by-election during the terminal phase of the Keating government, but they wouldn’t be holding their breath waiting for it to happen again.

Red and blue numbers respectively indicate two-party majorities for Labor and Liberal. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

The electorate of Canberra covers the southern half of the national capital together with the bulk of the Australian Capital Territory’s undeveloped remainder, with northern Canberra accommodated by the seat of Fraser. Both seats were created when the territory was first divided into two electorates in 1974. The Australian Capital Territory had been a single electorate since the expansion of parliament in 1949, but its member only obtained full voting rights in 1968. A third electorate of Namadgi was created for the 1996 election, accommodating Tuggeranong and its surrounds in Canberra’s far south, which pushed the Canberra electorate north of Lake Burley Griffin to include the city’s centre and inner north. However, the previous order was reinstated when the seat entitlement slipped back to two at the 1998 election, in large part due to Howard government cutbacks to the federal public service. The two ACT electorates presently have enrolments of around 140,000 voters each, compared with a national average of around 105,000.

The Australian Capital Territory electorate was won by an independent at its first election in 1949, but was held by Labor after 1951. Kep Enderby came to the seat at a 1970 by-election and carried over to Canberra in 1974, succeeding Lionel Murphy as Attorney-General upon his appointment to the High Court in early 1975. Enderby was then dumped by a 10.4% swing to the Liberals at the December 1975 election, and for the next two terms the seat was held for the Liberals by John Haslem. The seat’s natural Labor inclination finally reasserted itself in 1980 with the election of Ros Kelly, who served in the Hawke-Keating ministries from 1987 until she fell victim to the still notorious “sports rorts” affair in 1994. Kelly’s indulgent departure from parliament a year later was followed by a disastrous by-election result for Labor, with Liberal candidate Brendan Smyth gaining the seat off a 16.2% swing.

Smyth unsuccessfully contested the new seat of Namadgi at the 1996 election, and Canberra was easily won for Labor by Bob McMullan, who had served the ACT as a Senator since 1988. The reassertion of the old boundaries in 1998 prompted McMullan to move to Fraser, the Labor margin in the redrawn Canberra being 5.1% lower than the one he had secured on the short-lived boundaries in 1996. Canberra went to Annette Ellis, who had entered parliament as the member for Namadgi in 1996, while Fraser MP Steve Darvagel agreed to go quietly after a brief parliamentary career that began when he succeeded John Langmore at a by-election in February 1997. Ellis added 7.2% to an existing 2.3% margin at the 1998 election, since which time the seat has returned fairly consistent results with Labor margins ranging from a low of 7.0% in 2013 to a high of 11.8% in 2007.

Both Ellis and McMullan announced they would not seek another term six months out from the August 2010 election. Large fields of preselection contestants emerged for the two seats, with the front-runner in Canberra initially thought to be Michael Cooney, chief-of-staff to ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr and a former adviser to opposition leaders Mark Latham and Kim Beazley. However, Cooney shortly withdrew amid suggestions Kevin Rudd was ready to use national executive intervention to block him. The eventual winner was Gai Brodtmann, a former DFAT public servant who had established a local communications consultancy with her husband, senior ABC reporter Chris Uhlmann. Together with Andrew Leigh’s win in Fraser, Brodtmann’s preselection was seen as a rebuff to local factional powerbrokers who had pursued a deal in which the Left was to support Mary Wood, adviser to Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek and member of the Centre Coalition (Right), which the Right was to reciprocate in Fraser by backing Nick Martin, the party’s assistant national secretary and a member of the Left. However, Brodtmann was able to build a cross-factional support base of sufficient breadth to prevail over Wood by 123 votes to 109. Following the 2013 election defeat she was promoted to shadow parliamentary secretary in the defence portfolio.

Galaxy: 52-48 to federal Coalition in Queensland

A Galaxy poll of federal voting intention in Queensland has a somewhat less bruising result for the Abbott government than it has lately been accustomed to, as Campbell Newman’s state government girds itself for a difficult by-election.

Galaxy has produced a poll of federal voting intention in Queensland shows the Coalition leading 52-48, representing a swing to Labor since the election of 5%, with further detail presumably forthcoming courtesy of the Courier-Mail. UPDATE: The primary votes are 33% for Labor (steady since February, as is the two-party result), 41% for the Coalition (steady), 7% for the Greens (steady) and 12% for Palmer United (up one). The poll also has a surprisingly high 48% in support of the GP co-payment with 50% opposed, 46% and 48% for increasing the GST, and 25% and 72% for raising the pension age to 70.

In other Queensland news, it today emerged that a state by-election looms in the inner Brisbane seat of Stafford following the resignation of Liberal National Party member Chris Davis. This neatly coincides with a ReachTEL automated phone poll of 687 residents in the electorate, which did not canvass voting intention, but found Davis’s recent dissident activity had made him considerably more popular in the electorate than the Premier. The poll also furnishes rare data on opinion concerning campaign finance laws, finding 60% opposition to the government’s removal of caps on political donations with only 22% in support.

BludgerTrack: 54.2-45.8 to Labor

As you may have guessed in advance, this week’s poll aggregate finds the pace of Labor’s recent breakthrough quickening after a disastrous reception to the government’s first budget, as Bill Shorten surges to a handy lead as preferred prime minister.

Post-budget polling has emphatically confirmed a second major shift in public opinion since the election, the first being a strikingly early dip in the new government’s fortunes in November, leaving the opposition with a narrow lead when the dust had settled. With every pollster but ReachTEL having produced results in the wake of last Tuesday’s budget, the latest landslip looks even bigger than the first, and it sends the Coalition into territory that was all too familiar to Labor during its tumultuous second term in office. The damage was done by Newspoll, Nielsen and Morgan, with a small amount of the edge taken off by more moderate results from Galaxy and Essential Research. Even so, Labor now has a lead on the primary vote for the first time since BludgerTrack opened for business in late 2012, even taking into account that the Greens have retained a healthy share of the vote, perhaps finding a new equilibrium with their head just above double figures. Also continuing to make hay out of the exodus from the Coalition is the Palmer United Party, which this week reaches a new high of 7.0%.

No less spectacular is the latest update on leadership ratings, for which near-identical sets of data have emerged this week courtesy of Newspoll and Nielsen. The slump in Tony Abbott’s standing which had become evident over the previous fortnight has continued apace, to the extent that I have had to increase the range of the y-axis on the net satisfaction chart to accommodate it. This puts Abbott at a level Julia Gillard would only have known in a particularly bad week. Even more encouragingly for Labor, Bill Shorten’s ratings are on an upward swing, putting him back into net positive territory after three months below par. What had previously been a steady narrowing trend in Tony Abbott’s lead on preferred prime minister has sharply accelerated, to the extent of putting Shorten substantially ahead – an uncommon achievement for an Opposition Leader.

The state projections this week see the distinction in state swings even out, most notably in the case of Queensland where the swing to Labor got out of hand for a few weeks there. A considerable influence here was the latest Nielsen breakdown, which provided the first presentable set of figures I had seen for the Coalition in Queensland for some time. This may suggest that the budget backlash in that state was muted by the fact that Labor had less slack to take up, although there is no doubt also a large element of the statistical noise to which state breakdowns are inevitably prone. The upshot is that the Coalition’s position on the Queensland seat projection actually improves by four seats this week, testament in part to the state’s super-abundance of marginal seats. Offsetting this are bumper gains for Labor in other states – four seats in New South Wales, putting Bennelong, Gilmore and Macquarie on the table in addition to all the seats lost in September; three in marginals-starved Victoria, adding Casey and Dunkley to the more familiar targets of Corangamite, Deakin and La Trobe; and one each in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.

In other BludgerTrack news, you now have the chance to put Labor’s poll surge in somewhat broader perspective thanks to the retrospective poll tracking displayed on the sidebar, which at present encompasses the previous three terms, with plans to go back to the start of the Howard era in due course. For this you can think the sleuth work of Kevin Bonham, who has provided me with Nielsen data going back to 1996. Taking into account the more readily accessible archives of Newspoll and Morgan, this should eventually give me three pollsters to play with over the totality of the intended period. For the time being, the display encompasses the familiar poll aggregate from the previous term; the first term of the Rudd-Gillard government, which also includes Essential Research and a smattering of Galaxy to supplement the three aforementioned pollsters; and the Howard government’s final term in office.

EMRS: Liberal 48, Labor 25, Greens 21 in Tasmania

The first Tasmanian state poll since Will Hodgman’s March election victory shows a big rise in support for the Greens, although it’s not clear how meaningful that is.

The new Tasmanian Liberal government’s first opinion poll, part of EMRS’s regular series of 1000-sample polling, has the Liberals at 48%, down slightly on the 51.2% recorded at their landslide win in March. Labor too is down slightly, from 27.3% to 25% – although this makes way for a 21% result for the Greens, who polled only 13.8% at the election, and whose vote tends to get inflated in EMRS polling. Apparently Bryan Green leads the Labor Party now (apologies to my Tasmanian readers that I don’t take a greater interest in their affairs), and his debut rating on preferred premier is 22% to 54% for the recently triumphant incumbent Will Hodgman. For a much better performed perspective on the poll, you can’t do any better than Kevin Bonham.

Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

This week’s Essential Research records a somewhat less allergic reaction to the budget than the other pollsters, and shows little change on voting intention.

Essential Research displays its trademark stability this week by failing to record the big shift evident from the other pollsters, with two-party preferred steady at 52-48 and Labor up only one point on the primary vote to 40%, with the Coalition steady on 40%, the Greens down one to 8% and Palmer United steady on 5%. The results on the budget are also somewhat less spectacular than those seen elsewhere, with 30% approval and 52% disapproval, and 40% deeming it good for the economy overall against 32% for bad – quite a bit different from the 39% and 48% registered by Newspoll. The budget was deemed bad for working people by 59% and good by 14%; bad for those on low incomes by 66% and good by 11%; bad for families by 62% and good by 11%; bad for older Australians by 66% and good by 10%; bad for younger Australians by 55% and good by 16%; but good for people who well off by 45% and bad by 16%.

Response was also sought in relation to particular budget measures, of which the least popular was the raise in the pension age (61% opposition, 17% support), followed by deregulation of university fees (58% opposition, 17% support). Opinion was evenly balanced on making Newstart recipients wait six months (41% opposition, 39% support), while there was a net positive response to making graduates pay HELP loans more quickly (53% support, 23% opposition). Cuts to foreign aid had 64% supportive and 13% opposed, while those to the ABC had 27% supportive and 41% opposed. Fifty-six per cent believed there was a “budget emergency” against 32% who did not, but only 24% believed the budget addressed it, against 56% who did not.

The other relative latecomer to the budget poll party was yesterday’s fortnightly Morgan face-to-face plus SMS result, which was more in line with other polls in having Labor up 1.5% to 38.5%, the Coalition down 2.5% to 35%, the Greens steady on 12%, and Palmer up a point to 6.5%. Whereas Morgan polls usually combine two weekends of polling, this one was entirely from Saturday and Saturday, so all the responses are post-budget and the sample is somewhat smaller than usual. On two-party preferred, Labor’s lead was up from 53.5-46.5 to 56.5-43.5 on 2013 election preferences, and 55-45 to 57.5-42.5 on respondent-allocated preferences.

Nielsen: 56-44 to Labor; Newspoll: 55-45

The hostile reaction to the government’s first budget comes into sharper focus with two bruising new opinion poll results, both of which show Bill Shorten opening up a big lead as preferred prime minister.

UPDATE (Morgan): The fortnightly Morgan face-to-face plus SMS result sings from the same song sheet, with Labor up 1.5% to 38.5%, the Coalition down 2.5% to 35%, the Greens steady on 12%, and Palmer up a point to 6.5%. Whereas Morgan polls usually combine two weekends of polling, this one is entirely from Saturday and Saturday, so all the responses are post-budget and the sample is somewhat smaller than usual. On two-party preferred, Labor’s lead is up from 53.5-46.5 to 56.5-43.5 on 2013 election preferences, and 55-45 to 57.5-42.5 on respondent-allocated preferences.

After a relatively mild result from yesterday’s Galaxy poll, in which the government may have benefited slightly from an earlier polling period (Wednesday to Friday, the budget having been brought down on Tuesday night), two big name pollsters deliver horror results for the Coalition:

• Newspoll, conducted from Friday to Sunday, has Labor’s two-party lead out from 53-47 to 55-45, from primary votes of 38% for Labor (up four), 36% for the Coalition (down two), 11% for the Greens (down three) and 15% for others (up one). Worse still for the Coalition are the leadership ratings, which have Tony Abbott down five on approval to 30% and up four on disapproval to 60%, while Bill Shorten leaps seven points on approval to 42% and drops two on disapproval to 39%. Shorten has opened up a big lead of 44-34 as preferred prime minister, after Abbott led 40-38 a fortnight ago. The Australian’s report here.

• Even worse for the Coalition is the monthly Nielsen result in the Fairfax papers. Conducted from Thursday to Saturday, it shows Labor’s lead out to 56-44 from 52-48 a month ago. The primary votes are 40% for Labor (up six), 35% for the Coalition (down five), 14% for the Greens (down three from am implausible result last time, but still very strong) and 6% for Palmer United (up two). Tony Abbott sinks nine points on approval to 34% and adds twelve on disapproval to 62%, whereas Bill Shorten is up four to 47% and down two to 39%, and shoots to a 51-40 lead as preferred prime minister after trailing 45-44 last time.

The leadership ratings in particular invite comparison with Julia Gillard’s low points. While Abbott still has a way to go before matching the worst of Gillard’s ratings in Newspoll, his present net approval rating of 28% in Nielsen was exceeded by Gillard on only two occasions, in September and October of 2011, and equalled in July 2011. Gillard’s final result before she lost the leadership in June 2013 was 36% approval and 61% disapproval. Abbott himself scored fractionally worse figures as Opposition Leader in December 2012, of 34% approval and 63% disapproval.

Both pollsters also have results gauging reaction to the budget, with Nielsen finding 63% considering it unfair against 33% for fair. The deficit levy finds support, with 50% in favour and 37% against, but there’s a surprisingly narrow majority of 49% to 46% in favour of abolishing the carbon tax. The poll finds predictably strong opposition to the notion of increasing the GST, with 30% for and 66% against.

Newspoll’s results on budget reaction are particularly illuminating, as it has been asking the same three questions after every budget since 1988. Forty-eight per cent rate this budget as bad for the economy versus 39% for good, with 4% opting for neither; 69% say it will leave them worse off, compared with just 5% for better off and 20% for neither; and 39% believed that Labor would have done a better job, with 46% saying they wouldn’t have.

The latter result can be put into context with the following chart, showing the positive result minus the negative result for the equivalent question going back to 1988, with Labor budgets in red and Coalition budgets in blue. This shows that the only budget to record a net result in favour of yes was in 1993, when the Keating government followed its surprise election win by breaking its L-A-W tax cuts promise. As such, the slight net negative result for this budget is an historically weak one for the government – particularly when taking into account an apparent tendency for governments to perform strongly on this measure when newly elected, and decline thereafter. This takes a good deal of gloss off the consolation the Coalition might have taken in the result being better than the last three for the previous government.

The next chart plots the result for each budget on “impact on own financial position” along the x-axis and impact on the economy along the y, with the current result indicated in red. This shows a clear association between the two results, demonstrating that people generally decide whether a budget is good or bad, and deem it equally so for both themselves and the economy. To the limited extent that variability exists, there does appear to be at least some constituency for the view that the pain inflicted in the current budget will be good for the economy – whereas the trendline indicates that the minus 64% rating on own financial position could be expected to associate with 24.5% on the economy, the latter figure in fact comes in at a relatively presentable minus 9%. Nonetheless, the outstanding fact to emerge from the chart is that the budget inhabits a zone of extreme unpopularity with only 1993 to keep it company. The budget the government might have been hoping to emulate, Peter Costello’s cost-cutting debut of 1996, had a plus 37% rating on the economy despite a minus 21% rating on personal financial situation.

Finally, a table showing the net result for all three measures at each budget, with averages by party at the bottom. This shows that despite the current results, Coalition budgets tend to be better received than Labor ones, with the gap being wider on impact on the economy. Partly this is down to historical circumstance – Labor was marked down for the recession-era budgets of the early 1990s, while the Howard government made political hay out of the revenue boom in its later years in office (though obviously not to the extent of saving them from the electoral cycle in 2007). However, it also reflects the tendency for the Coalition to outperform Labor in “best party to manage the economy” polling, a point illustrated by the averages for “would the opposition have delivered a better budget”. For more context on the individual budgets, here’s a very helpful resource from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Galaxy: 53-47 to Labor

The first poll since the budget finds it to have been the worst-received budget since 1993, although the Coalition’s position on voting intention is no worse than it was already.

The Sunday News Limited tabloids have published the first poll since the budget, courtesy of Galaxy. Details from the reporting are sketchy, but it is presumably a phone-plus-online poll of around 1400 respondents, assuming it followed the same routine as the previous Galaxy poll a fortnight ago. Two-party preferred is at 53-47 in favour of Labor, up from 52-48, from primary votes of 38% for the Coalition (down one), 38% for Labor (up one) and a new high of 8% for Palmer United (up two). No result is available as yet for the Greens. (UPDATE: GhostWhoVotes relates that the Greens are down a point to 10%, and that the poll was conducted from Wednesday to Friday from a sample of 1399.)

With regards to the budget, only 41% rate it as good for the economy versus 46% for not good, while fully 74% say they expect to be worse off against only 11% for better off. The former set of numbers are in stark contrast to the Howard government’s first tough budget after it came to power in 1996, which according to Newspoll was rated good for the economy by 59% and bad by only 22%, with 6% opting for neither good nor bad (an option not available from Galaxy). The only other budget since 1995 to have scored a net negative rating from Newspoll on this measure was last year’s, at 35% for good, 37% for bad and 7% for neither).

The results on impact on respondents’ financial position resemble Newspoll’s findings for the politically disastrous budget that John Dawkins brought down after Labor’s election victory in 1993, which had 4% for better off, 74% for worse off and 17% for no change (the latter option again not available from Galaxy). However, whereas the results from 1993 were accompanied by a collapse in support for the Keating government, this poll has two-party preferred unchanged on pre-budget polling.

Seats of the week: Fadden and Moncrieff

This week’s Seat of the Week double-up accounts for the northern two-third of the Gold Coast, served by Liberal National Party members Stuart Robert and Steven Ciobo.

Fadden

Teal and red numbers respectively indicate booths with two-party majorities for the LNP and Labor. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

Fadden covers the northern part of the Gold Coast municipality, from Gaven and Labrador in the south through Coomera, Pimpama and Ormeau to Logan River in the north, with the Pacific Motorway forming most of its western boundary. This area’s intensive population growth has caused the electorate to be progressively drawn into the Gold Coast since its creation in 1977, at which time it contained none of its present territory, instead covering outer southern Brisbane and the Gold Coast’s rural hinterland. The redistribution caused by the expansion of parliament in 1984 drew it into Brisbane, extending as far northwards as Salisbury and Rochedale, with the Logan River as its southern boundary. It first infringed upon the Gold Coast when it acquired Coomera at the 1996 election, the migration being completed with the exchange of Redland Bay in the north for Southport in the south at the 2004 election. The ongoing population explosion caused it to shed nearly 14,000 voters inland of its current boundary at the most recent Queensland redistribution before the 2010 election.

With the exception of 1983, Fadden in its various guises has been won at every election by the conservatives, meaning the the Liberal Party prior to the 2010 merger and the Liberal National Party thereafter. The inaugural member was Don Cameron, who had held Griffith for the Liberals since 1966. The 1975-engorged margin was whittled away at the 1977 and 1980 elections, then overturned with David Beddall’s victory for Labor with the election of the Hawke government. Cameron returned to parliament a year later at a by-election caused by Jim Killen’s retirement in Moreton, which became the third seat he represented. The 1984 redistribution made Fadden notionally Liberal, causing David Beddall to jump ship for Rankin. The seat was then won for the Liberals by David Jull, who had held the seat of Bowman from 1975 until his defeat in 1983. Jull’s margins were less than 5% until 1996, but generally well into double digits thereafter.

Jull was succeeded on his retirement at the 2007 election by Stuart Robert, a former army intelligence officer. Robert was said to have played a role in “rounding up support” for Tony Abbott ahead of his challenge to Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership in December 2009, and was elevated afterwards to shadow parliamentary secretary in the defence portfolio. He was further promoted after the 2010 election to the outer shadow ministry portfolio of defence science, technology and personnel, which was rebadged as Assistant Defence Minister following the 2013 election victory.

Moncrieff

Teal numbers indicate two-party majority for the LNP. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

Moncrieff covers the central Gold Coast from Miami north through Surfers Paradise to Nerang Head, and inland to Nerang and Highland Park. The seat was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984, previous to which the entirety of the Gold Coast had been accommodated by McPherson since 1949, and by Moreton beforehand. Moncrieff originally extended deep into rural territory at Beaudesert, before assuming its current coastal orientation with Beaudesert’s transfer to Forde in 1996. Prior to Moncrieff’s creation the entirety of the Gold Coast had been accommodated by McPherson, which had itself been created with the previous expansion of parliament in 1949. The Gold Coast had originally been contained within the electorate of Moreton, which has since migrated into Brisbane’s southern suburbs. The area has had conservative representation without interruption since 1906, with McPherson passing from Country Party to Liberal Party control in 1972, and Moncrieff being in Liberal and more recently Liberal National Party hands since its creation.

Steven Ciobo assumed the seat at the 2001 election after the retirement of its inaugural member, Kathy Sullivan, who had previously been a Senator since 1974, establishing what remains a record as the longest serving female member of federal parliament. Ciobo emerged through Liberal ranks as a member of the Right faction, associated with former ministers Santo Santoro and Warwick Parer and state party powerbroker Michael Caltabiano. He rose to the shadow ministry in the small business portfolio after the defeat of the Howard government, which was elevated to a shadow cabinet position when Malcolm Turnbull ascended to the leadership in September 2008. However, he was demoted to the outer shadow ministry portfolios of tourism, arts, youth and sport when Tony Abbott became leader in December 2009 and relegated to the back bench after the August 2010 election, which was generally reckoned to be a consequence of his support for Turnbull. Following the 2013 election victory he won promotion to parliamentary secretary to the Treasurer.