The Poll Bludger

• The Liberal candidate for the central Tasmanian seat of Lyons, Ben Quin, has quit the party in protest over the government’s green light for the Tamar Valley pulp mill, and will run as an independent. Matthew Denholm of The Australian reports concurrence among the major parties that he will “attract only a handful of votes”. Quin was once a member of the Greens, which he later explained as a principled reaction to the joint Labor and Liberal effort in 1998 to shaft the party through changes to the state electoral system. The Liberal Party has acted quickly to install a new candidate, “transport company businessman” Geoff Page, whose father Graeme was a state MP of 20 years.

• Quin’s announcement comes off the back of Glenn Milne‘s assessment he had “badly misjudged the mood of Tasmanians” in opposing the mill. Milne quotes Liberal internal polling of 300 voters in Lyons, conducted on September 14 and 15, showing the Liberal primary vote slumping to 30 per cent from 42 per cent in 2004. By contrast, “the polling showed the vote of Liberal candidates in all other seats in Tasmania improving”. Milne observes that the August poll by EMRS also showed an improvement for the Coalition in all seats except Lyons (although this outfit’s 200-sample surveys need to be treated with caution).

• Sue Neales of The Mercury (article apparently unavailable online) sees things very differently, saying there is “little doubt” the announcement has cooked the goose of Michael Ferguson, Liberal member for Bass. This assessment is largely based on a poll conducted by Melbourne company MarketMetrics on behalf of the Wilderness Society, which showed 27 per cent of Bass voters would be more likely to vote Liberal if Malcolm Turnbull rejected the mill, while only 6 per cent said they would be more likely to do so if he approved it. Neales also quotes University of Tasmania academic Richard Herr suggesting the Greens might receive enough of a surge to deliver a seat to their second Senate candidate, Andrew Wilkie.

• Tamar Valley vigneron and anti-mill campaigner Peter Whish-Wilson is reportedly considering running as an independent in Bass, having been approached by mill opponents seeking a candidate who could garner protest votes from those unwilling to back the Greens. Whish-Wilson is described by Matthew Denholm of The Australian as “an economist, entrepreneur and Surfrider activist from a well-known family”.

• Despite its likely negligible impact, there was much reporting on the Tasmanian Greens’ announcement preferences would not be directed to Labor. What is not clear, at least to me, is whether they also plan to lodge two tickets for the Senate, so that above-the-line voters’ preferences divide evenly between Labor and Liberal.

• Former Sydney deputy lord mayor Dixie Coulton will run in Wentworth as the candidate of the Climate Change Coalition, which was founded by Patrice Newell, organic farmer and partner of Phillip Adams. Coulton was once a colleague of Lucy Turnbull, former lord mayor and wife of Malcolm, in the council’s Living Sydney party. She left the group in 2003, saying it had become “tainted” by association with Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party, and announced she would run against Lucy Turnbull at the following year’s lord mayoral election. Turnbull ultimately declined to run and the election was won by Clover Moore, state independent member for Bligh (now Sydney).

Tasmanian reader Blackbird informs us that according to the ABC news (which goes to air earlier in Tasmania because daylight saving has already begun there), tomorrow’s ACNielsen poll will show Labor with a two-party lead of 56-44, down from 57-43 last month. More details to follow.

UPDATE: Labor’s primary vote is down two points from last month to 47 per cent, while the Coalition is up one to 40 per cent. There were further attitudinal questions which you can read all about at The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.

The West Australian today carries its monthly Westpoll survey of around 400 voters, which shows Labor’s two-party lead in WA increasing to 53-47 from 51.6-48.4 last month. Compared with the 2004 election results, this points to a swing to Labor of 8.4 per cent – which would shift Stirling, Hasluck and Kalgoorlie and endanger Canning (which most reckon more likely to fall than Kalgoorlie, despite the margins). However, Kevin Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister has narrowed from 47-41 to 45-43. No primary vote figures are provided.

Hat tip to Barry.

Nobody believed the size of Labor’s lead in last week’s Morgan poll, but it’s now widened further, from 60.5-39.5 to 61-39. Both parties are down fractionally on the primary vote, Labor from 54 per cent to 53.5 per cent and the Coalition from 36 per cent to 35.5 per cent. For what it’s worth, the balance has gone to the Australian Democrats, up from 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent. This was a face-to-face poll with 894 respondents.

After last week’s surprising poll from Boothby, today’s Adelaide Advertiser brings us a survey of 622 voters from Christopher Pyne’s seat of Sturt which is more in line with market expectations. It shows Pyne with a two-party lead of 52-48, pointing to a swing of around 5 per cent. Pyne is given a primary vote lead over Labor candidate Mia Handshin of 44 per cent to 35 per cent.

Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald informs us that Labor internal polling conducted a fortnight ago points to an unlikely sounding 13 per cent swing in North Sydney, enough to tip Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey out of his blue-ribbon seat. This might easily be dismissed as a Labor diversionary tactic, but the report also refers to “suggestions in the Liberal Party in recent weeks” that Hockey might be in trouble. I was about to protest that such talk is familiar from the 2004 election, but Coorey’s source again pre-empts me: Hockey really had been struggling going into that campaign, but “Mark Latham’s attack on private schools helped revive his fortunes”.

• Today’s Hobart Mercury reports on a poll of the northern Tasmanian seats of Bass and Braddon, conducted by Melbourne company MarketMetrics on behalf of the Wilderness Society. From a sample of 492, it is said to show Labor on 61 per cent of the vote across the two seats, although it is not clear if this is primary or two-party preferred. In Bass, 27 per cent of respondents said they will be more likely to vote Liberal if Malcolm Turnbull rejects the Tamar Valley pulp mill proposal, while only 6 per cent said they will be more likely to do so if he approves it.

• Labor has been very slightly embarrassed by the emergence of a university newspaper article by Dominic Rose, its play-dead 20-year-old candidate for Wilson Tuckey’s seat of O’Connor. Writing earlier this year in the student organ of the most august University of Western Australia, Rose expressed concern that Kevin Rudd came over as a “filthy Liberal” who seemed insufficiently enthusiastic about “killing capitalist pig dogs and establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat”. The comments seem to have been made in a spirit of undergraduate humour, and the kid proved quite adept at batting off deliveries from press gallery hard-nose Samantha Maiden of The Australian.

• The Financial Review’s Rear Window column notes that retiring MPs’ parliamentary offices are being stripped by renovators, “which should be a firm indicator that no more sitting weeks are contemplated”. In the Poll Bludger’s experience, it doesn’t usually pay to read too much into this kind of thing. The report further notes: “The smart money yesterday was still on the Prime Minister calling the election on or before October 13 – just as NSW school holidays end – for an election on either November 10 or 17, through the bookies still favour November 24. If Howard were to leave it until October 14, he would have to answer to taxpayers, with pollies incurring expenses for an unnecessary flight to Canberra for a non-existent sitting week”.

• John Ferguson of the Herald Sun brings us the unsurprising news that “a marathon election campaign aimed at destroying Labor leader Kevin Rudd’s credibility is being backed by senior Liberal strategists”. A six-week campaign is apparently favoured, which would mean November 17 if it was called this weekend – which, Ferguson tells us, is what Labor “privately believes” will happen. The Prime Minister will say no more than that it will be “held some day between now and early December”.

• Crikey yesterday reported a rumour that Bowman MP Andrew Laming, who was recently cleared by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions over the “printgate” affair, might yet be bumped aside by the Liberals before the election. It was said that his replacement would be Peter Dowling, a Redland Shire councillor.

• The following sentence unaccountably interrupts a piece on political blogging by good egg Dennis Atkins of the Courier-Mail: “Forget the hype, it is not going to be called for at least 12 days, probably 17”.

• This might not sound too promising, but SportingBet has produced a remarkably attractive and comprehensive election form guide covering all marginal seats.

After a century as one of the nation’s most predictable seats, Wentworth entered the national spotlight in 2004 and again looms as one of the most intriguing contests of the coming election. Created at federation, Wentworth originally covered the entire coast from Port Jackson to Botany Bay, before assuming more familiar dimensions in 1913. It now takes in the mouth of Sydney Harbour and its southern shore from Watsons Bay and Vaucluse west to Potts Point, along with a stretch of coast running south through Bondi to Clovelly, and the northern part of Randwick. The wealth of the harbourside suburbs has made this a classic blue-ribbon seat, which has been held by conservatives of one kind or another since federation. Recent Liberal members have included Robert Ellicott (1974 to 1981), the Shadow Attorney-General who played a crucial tactical role in the Whitlam dismissal; Peter Coleman (1981 to 1987), conservative intellectual and father-in-law of Peter Costello; John Hewson (1987 to 1996), disappointing Liberal Opposition Leader; and Andrew Thomson (1996 to 2001), disappointing member for Wentworth.

Thomson was defeated for preselection ahead of the 2001 election by barrister Peter King, who in turn died by the sword in 2004 when Malcolm Turnbull (right) marshalled his considerable resources against him. Turnbull had been spoken of as a potential prime minister since coming to fame as a young lawyer in the early 1980s, when he succeeded in blocking the British government’s attempts to suppress former MI5 agent Peter Wright’s memoirs in the Spycatcher trial. In the 1990s he emerged as the chairman of the Australian Republican Movement, adding conservative leavening to a favoured project of the then Labor Prime Minister. He meanwhile made his fortune firstly in legal partnership with Gough Whitlam’s son Nicholas and later as a merchant banker, establishing business connections that contributed to his fundraising success as Liberal Party federal treasurer from 2002. Despite lingering resentment over Turnbull’s description of John Howard as “the man who broke the nation’s heart” on the night of the republic referendum, Turnbull’s move against King won at least the tacit support of the Prime Minister, who in normal circumstances could be relied upon to support sitting members. Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen’s recent biography reports that Howard “believed that a failed preselection bid for Wentworth held the distinct possibility that Turnbull would quit party politics altogether and step down as treasurer, deterring donors from putting their hands in their pockets”. After much “recruitment” to local party branches by both sides, Turnbull won the preselection vote by 88 votes to 70.

King subsequently refused to rule out running as an independent, eventually announcing he would do so at a press conference on Bondi Beach in the first week of the campaign. Despite vigorous campaigning attended by intense publicity, King recorded only 18.0 per cent of the vote and finished well behind Labor’s David Patch on 26.3 per cent. While Turnbull’s 41.8 per cent was well down on the 52.1 per cent King recorded as Liberal candidate in 2001, it converted into an unembarrassing 2.3 per cent two-party swing after distribution of King’s preferences. The swing nonetheless contributed to a long-term trend in the seat which made it appear of dubious long-term worth to Turnbull even before the recent redistribution. As noted in an analysis by former Labor staffer Shane Easson, the electorate was going through a relative population decline that had forced it to expand in area at six successive redistributions since 1955 (the most significant change coming in 1993 with the abolition of Phillip, which previously separated Wentworth from Kingsford-Smith). There were only two directions in which it could grow: into safe Labor Kingsford-Smith to the south, or even safer Labor Sydney to the west. Furthermore, the latter would be the more obviously appealing option for the boundaries commissioners, as Kingsford-Smith was shaped by the constraints of the ocean and Botany Bay. When the latest population calculations dictated that New South Wales lose a seat at the coming election, the result was predictable: Wentworth shouldered its share of the burden by absorbing an inner-city area noted for post-materialism and a high gay population. This area, which included the balance of Paddington, the harbour shore around Potts Point and most of Woolloomooloo and Darlinghurst, sliced the Liberal margin from 5.6 per cent to a decidedly uncomfortable 2.6 per cent.

Like no other electorate bar Bennelong, Wentworth has seen national issues assume local significance in recent months. Turnbull won promotion first to parliamentary secretary with responsibility for water in September 2006 and then to Environment and Water Resources Minister four months later, confronting him with issues of great sensitivity in his own seat. The most significant example has been the recent controversy surrounding Gunns Limited’s proposed Tamar Valley pulp mill in northern Tasmania, which was contentiously fast-tracked by Paul Lennon’s state Labor government. A campaign for Turnbull to intervene has won the support of celebrities including Cate Blanchett, Bryan Brown and Rebecca Gibney, along with businessman and prime ministerial confidant Geoffrey Cousins. In mid-September, Cousins embarrassed Turnbull by taking out advertisements in the local Wentworth Courier which asked: “Is Mr Turnbull the Minister For the Environment or the Minister Against the Environment?” Turnbull has said he will reach his verdict this week, and that he will follow the recommendation of the government’s chief scientist.

Turnbull’s other major source of publicity in recent weeks has been his role in the recent burst of leadership speculation. On September 11, Sky News reported that both Turnbull and Alexander Downer believed John Howard should no longer lead the Liberal Party. Amid speculation that Howard might be about to stand aside, Kerry-Anne Walsh of the Sun-Herald wrote of a “wild scenario doing the rounds” in which Turnbull would take the job if Costello proved reluctant to do so within weeks of an election. Subsequent reports spoke of Turnbull persuading a majority of Cabinet members that Howard should go, but of the idea meeting firm resistance from both the party room and the Prime Minister himself. Later in the day, Howard could be seen apparently chastising Turnbull on the floor of parliament. Two weeks later Turnbull was forced to rule out a future challenge to Peter Costello for the Liberal leadership, after earlier refusing to answer questions on the issue.

While Turnbull will be in real trouble if the anti-government swing is as much as current opinion polls indicate, there is reason to believe he has more padding than the notional margin suggests. In his aforementioned study, Shane Easson calculates an effective Liberal margin of 4.5 per cent after allowing for such influences as the “Peter King effect” and “potential Turnbull personal vote”. Figures from the 2004 election exaggerate the Liberals’ weakness in the newly added areas, due to the party’s lack of effort here at previous elections. In an electorate such as Sydney, the optimal strategy for the Liberals is to “play dead” in the hope that they might finish behind the Greens, who could then potentially defeat Labor with their preferences. This time around, these areas will be facing the full force of Turnbull’s well-oiled campaign machine. Furthermore, as noted by Russell Skelton of The Age, the electorate is not suffering the soft housing prices that are biting in more suburban seats like Bennelong. Some sources have suggested the party has greater fears for Howard’s seat than Turnbull’s, although reports of internal polling have painted a mixed picture. In August, Labor was variously said to have a lead on the primary vote of 47-42 and 44-42. Neither gels with a September report from the Sydney Morning Herald which had sources from both major parties speaking of 20 per cent support for the Greens (who have nominated mental health nurse Susan Jarnason). Conversely, The Australian quoted a “senior Liberal source” in late September saying Turnbull was “not in trouble”, and should thus approve the Tamar Valley pulp mill to shore up the Liberal member in Bass.

Labor’s candidate is George Newhouse (left), human rights lawyer and until recently mayor of Waverley. Newhouse’s legal clients have included Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon, the victims of high-profile Department of Immigration bungles that respectively saw them deported and detained for nearly a year. He is also a figurehead of the electorate’s prominent Jewish community, which accounts for 14.1 per cent of its population against 0.4 per cent nationally. The community is particularly concentrated in the electorate’s north-east, accounting for 49.4 per cent of residents of Dover Heights. Newhouse was head-hunted by Kevin Rudd and installed as candidate by the party’s national executive, after the April national conference empowered it to avert faction-driven preselection stoushes by directly choosing candidates for 25 sensitive seats.