Gorgeous George

The previous thread on Tuesday’s Newspoll result took a turn to matters constitutional. What’s it all about? Beats the hell out of me. The important thing is that esteemed constitutional authority George Williams has put his two cents in, and anything he has to say deserves a better fate than delayed moderation and position 484 in a thread that should have been put out of its misery days ago. So here it is:

In answer to Fulvio’s question re State taxing powers, the Constitution was meant to secure the States’ financial position and independence. At federation in 1901, it was the States and not the Commonwealth that levied income tax. However, the demands of two world wars and changes to the economy, as well as some canny manoeuvring by the Commonwealth, have left the States with no revenue from income taxation.

The High Court decisions in the Uniform Tax Cases of 1942 and 1957 upheld a Commonwealth takeover of the income tax system. Not only that, the decisions also gave a wide interpretation to the ability of the Commonwealth to attach conditions to money granted to the States. Section 96 of the Constitution allows the Commonwealth to make grants on “such terms and conditions” as it thinks fit.

The States today could levy income tax, but it would be in addition to federal tax and so it would mean taxing people twice. The Commonwealth could even insist that its share is collected first. As a result, the States have turned to new sources of taxation, such as on gambling. Hence the rise of casinos …

Morgan: 59-41

Today’s Roy Morgan phone poll of 572 voters has Labor leading 59-41 – a 1.5 per cent shift in Labor’s favour from the last phone poll two weeks ago, which complicates the picture presented by last week’s face-to-face poll showing a shift back to the Coalition. Respondents were asked how they would vote if alternative leaders were in place, which provides good news for Malcolm Turnbull and bad news for Peter Costello. Morgan’s report includes a quote from our friend Possum Comitatus, who a few weeks ago put in a rare good word for the agency’s recent record.

A by-election called Alice: form guide

The tea leaves will not be easy to read, but tomorrow’s Northern Territory by-election for the Alice Springs seat of Greatorex might be of broader interest as a test of the federal government’s intervention into Aboriginal communities. Here as elsewhere in Alice Springs, voters who were happy to back Labor at federal level have traditionally refused to touch the territory party with a barge pole, and there is little question that racial issues have played a role here. Labor nonetheless made a concerted bid to defeat sitting member Richard Lim at the 2005 election, fielding an extremely high-profile candidate in Alice Springs mayor Fran Kilgariff. They succeeded in narrowing the margin from 9.0 per cent to 1.5 per cent, but Lim nonetheless emerged as one of only four surviving Country Liberal Party members in a chamber of 25. After 13 years in parliament, Lim announced late last month that he was standing aside due to ill health in his family.

In Kilgariff’s absence, a correction in the CLP’s favour should have been expected even without taking into account the Martin government’s recent humiliation at the hands of the feds. With the party’s stocks further boosted by a high-profile candidate, the stage appeared set for a swing to the CLP that would no doubt have been over-interpreted as a pointer to the federal election. However, the waters may have been muddied by the emergence of an independent candidate whom local observers reckon to be in with a real chance. Should that come off, the parliament will have three CLP members and three independents. This will make it possible for the independents to band together and demand half the public funding available to the official opposition for “parliamentary running costs”, said by the Northern Territory News to total $900,000 a year.

The candidates in ballot paper order:

Jo Nixon (Labor). An audiologist by trade, Nixon is apparently known locally as “organiser of the annual Beanie Festival&#148, which the ABC describes as “increasingly famous”.

Paul Herrick (Independent). Until he quit the job to focus on his campaign, Herrick was the territory’s deputy chief fire officer with specific responsibility for the “southern region”. He has lived in the electorate for 16 years, competed in four Sydney to Hobart and two Melbourne to Hobart yacht races, and can boast involvement with “AFL Central Australia, Centralian Senior Secondary College Council, Rugby League Referees Association and the Alice Springs Cycling Club” (list compiled by the Centralian Advocate). Herrick is being heavily backed by Loraine Braham, the independent member for the north-western Alice Springs seat of Braitling.

Matt Conlan (CLP). Conlan is described by the Northern Territory News as “the Centralian John Laws”, which if accurate would surely make him a hard man to beat. He has nonetheless been targeted over the short term of his residence in Alice Springs. Nick Calacouras of the Northern Territory News describes him as a “radio shock jock”, while contentious Poll Bludger commenter Isabella calls him a “vocal critic of Labor’s soft touch when it comes to out of control Aboriginal crime in the town”. Conlan nonetheless describes his radio program as “non-political”. The Northern Territory News reports he won preselection unopposed after two unidentified rivals withdrew. Those mentioned as potential nominees had included Alice Springs alderman David Koch, former CLP president Jenny Mostran and Alice Springs businessman David Douglas.

Jane Clark (Greens). An Alice Springs alderman, Clark initially sought Labor preselection, seeking and receiving Greens endorsement when this fell through. It had earlier been reported that the Greens were not planning on running.

Tune into the Poll Bludger from early tomorrow evening for half-arsed live commentary.

Crikey election bonanza

At the risk of turning this site into Amazon.com, a plug is in order for Crikey’s multi-media election blitz. Readers are invited to inspect my own contribution to the project at the Crikey website: 33 sets of marginal seat maps displaying booth-level two-party and swing results from 2004, as previewed earlier on this site’s long-lost Seat of the Week series (to be reactivated any day now, I swear). Next week sees the Crikey Guide to the 2007 Federal Election hit the bookstores, courtesy of the good people at Penguin Books. Edited by Christian Kerr, the book promises to “lift the lid on the political issues set to dominate the election while explaining the significance of polling, campaign styles, new media, the press gallery, lobbyists and more”, featuring contributions from “political luminaries including Malcolm Fraser, Fred Chaney, Barnaby Joyce and more”. “And more” includes Peter Brent of Mumble, who offers a chapter on opinion polls (and Andrew Denton, who writes the foreword). All this for the low low price of $19.95.

Green is good

Gasp in awe at Antony Green’s gargantuan online compendium of New South Wales election results, the product of many months’ labour in conjunction with the state’s Department of Lands. Featured are district-level results going right back to the very beginning (1856), including all by-elections. What a Poll Bludger wouldn’t give for such a resource in every other state. You might care to begin your browsing with the Prime Minister’s near-successful bid for the state seat of Drummoyne in 1968, which escaped my notice when I was compiling my state election guide. It appears that only the donkey vote stood between Mr Howard and a no doubt very stimulating career in state politics.

If you’re really keen – and why wouldn’t you be? – you can splash out $85 on the accompanying Electoral Atlas of New South Wales 1856-2006, co-edited with Eamonn Clifford and David Clune. As well as featuring boundary maps for every election, it “maps historical curiosities such as the Sydney Hamlets, the non-contiguous boroughs and the extensive pastoral districts of the 1850s, the multi-Members electorates of the 1880s and the experimental proportional representation of the 1920s, the maladjustment caused by country weightings and the emergence of one-vote, one-value electorates that we have today&#148. Some idea of this product’s magnificence can be gleaned from the images available on the Wikipedia entry. In comments, Antony tells us he is “still working on the project to put all the old NSW maps on the web, on a site to be combined with all the results”.

Newspoll: 55-45

Details at 11. Thanks as always to the Poll Bludger’s eastern states army of fast-typing Lateline watchers.

UPDATE: That’s Labor on 56, I should stress. In case you were wondering.

UPDATE 2: The Australian reports that Labor’s primary vote is down one point and the Coalition’s up one, to 47 per cent and 40 per cent. Rudd’s preferred leader rating has widened from 43-42 to 43-40. Respondents were asked how a Peter Costello leadership would affect their vote – 22 per cent said it would make them much less likely to vote Coalition and 7 per cent somewhat less likely, with only 8 per cent saying more likely.

UPDATE 3: Note the new headline. I’m sure this isn’t the first time Lateline’s scoop Newspoll figures differed slightly from what was then published.

Flatliners

Reuters has just issued its semi-regular Poll Trend, a weighted composite of results from Morgan, Newspoll and ACNielsen (but not Galaxy, which has been kinder to the Coalition in recent months). Their current figure has Labor ahead 57.3-42.7; the long-term trend looks a little something like this:

Despite Monday’s ACNielsen, that much-touted trend towards the Prime Minister as preferred leader is evident in other polls: