The Poll Bludger

• 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.

Booth-level two-party vote from 2004, with colour coding showing suburban average weekly household income. The electorate-wide average household income figure is $1609, compared with a national average of $1027. The only suburb below the national average is Rushcutters Bay, immediately west of Darling Point.

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.

Booth-level two-party swings from 2004, with colour coding showing suburbs’ percentage of dwellings being purchased. All suburbs are below the national average of 32.2 per cent on the latter count.

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.

The Australian today brings us a second round of figures from the weekend Newspoll survey. It shows that in spite of everything, the Prime Minister is rated the leader “more capable of handling Australia’s economy” by 48 per cent to Kevin Rudd’s 33 per cent, while Peter Costello leads Wayne Swan as “most capable of managing Australia’s economy as federal treasurer” by 53 per cent to 21 per cent. The Prime Minister is also rated the leader “most capable of keeping interest rates lower”, although his lead over Rudd has narrowed since last month.

Newspoll has been sprung on us a day early, showing Labor’s two-party lead widening to 56-44 from 55-45 a fortnight ago. Labor’s primary vote is up from 47 per cent to 48 per cent, and the Coalition’s is down from 41 per cent to 39 per cent. Kevin Rudd has taken a slight hit on his satisfaction rating, down from 65 per cent to 62 per cent.

• Glenn Milne identifies three election date options for the Prime Minister: “go to Yarralumla next weekend for a six-week campaign and a November 17 poll”, “wait another week after that and run to November 24”, or “let Parliament resume its scheduled sittings from October 15 to 25 then go to a December 1 poll”.

• Dennis Shanahan of The Australian summarises recent reports of internal party polling thus:

There have been reports ALP polling shows Labor can win 10 seats in NSW, including the seat of Eden-Monaro, which has changed hands with government since 1972. Equally ostensibly secret polling names unlikely seats in Melbourne, such as Goldstein, falling to Labor and seats in Adelaide such as Boothby and Sturt being added to the three more marginal seats of Makin, Wakefield and Kingston, in South Australia. In the Northern Territory Solomon is assumed to be gone, as are Bass and Braddon in Tasmania … Recently the Sydney Daily Telegraph reported on its front page: “Labor is set to secure such a massive swing in NSW that the Liberals have formally surrendered all hope of winning a single new seat anywhere in this state at the federal election. As Kevin Rudd arrived in Sydney last night to base himself locally for the next three days, Labor polling shows 10 NSW seats could fall its way.” The Australian reported on its front page: “Labor is headed for a landslide victory in the crucial federal bellwether seat of Eden-Monaro, according to leaked ALP research. The polling, obtained by The Australian, found the count would not even go to preferences, with Labor candidate Mike Kelly attracting 51 per cent of the primary vote over Special Minister of State Gary Nairn on 39 per cent”. The Melbourne Herald-Sun reported ALP polling showing that Labor “has dramatically expanded the number of target seats it hopes to win, with ALP elders declaring even previously rock-solid Coalition fortresses now in play”, including Goldstein, which is held by more than 10per cent.

• Friday’s West Australian (no link available) reports “growing concern within the Liberal Party that it may lose the blue-ribbon WA seat of Forrest at the coming election – not to Labor but to an Independent with a high profile”:

Noel Brunning, a former newsreader with Prime TVs Golden West News, is believed to be picking up strong interest among the voters despite his stop-start campaign. Internal Liberal Party polling is believed to have shown that Mr Brunning, 40, has a higher recognition in southern WA than either the Liberal candidate Nola Marino or Labor’s Peter MacFarlane. Forrest is being vacated by former minister Geoff Prosser at the next election and although the margin is a comfortable 10.5 per cent, the retirement of Mr Prosser after 20 years means the contest will be much closer. Not helping the Liberals campaign is the fact that the preselectors preferred candidate, Busselton Shire councillor Philippa Reid, withdrew from the contest late last year citing concern her involvement in Corruption and Crime Commission hearings into the $330 million Canal Rocks development would damage the party. Cr Reid’s relationship with divisive former Liberal powerbroker Noel Crichton-Browne was also causing concern within the party.

• After last week’s bad Boothby opinion poll and excruciating radio interview, John Wiseman of The Australian reports that Labor “closed ranks behind its South Australian glamour candidate Nicole Cornes yesterday, scotching suggestions that she might have booted an own goal with her latest media gaffe”. It now seems I might have been too quick to dismiss the poll’s finding that Cornes was doing particularly badly among women voters. While I don’t imagine he has too many fans among this site’s readership, Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun might have been on to something here:

I suspect it’s because they’ve never liked women who just get by on looks. It seems an insult to clever women and a threat not just to the plain. Cornes’ status as a second wife only speaks to that distrust and contempt.

• A $5 billion federal government roads package to be unveiled this week will reportedly include plans for a $2 billion upgrade of the Bruce Highway from Brisbane to Cairns, and a $1 billion upgrade of the Pacific Highway from Sydney to Brisbane. The latter is of significance to the sensitive north coast seats of Page, Cowper and Paterson, while the Bruce Highway funding targets Hinkler, Flynn, Herbert and Leichhardt. As noted this morning by Barrie Cassidy on Insiders, this has prompted newspapers in Melbourne and Adelaide to complain the southern states have been “snubbed”.

• The Griffith University’s regular VAMPIRE (“vulnerability assessment for mortgage, petrol and inflation risks and expenditure”) study has identified what the Financial Review describes as “11 marginal and fairly safe Liberal seats in which more than half of all households are facing petrol and mortgage stress”: Moreton, Bonner, Lindsay, Macquarie, Deakin, La Trobe, Wakefield, Makin, Kingston, Hasluck and Stirling.

• The last Brisbane Liberal remaining under the cloud of the “printgate” affair, Bowman MP Andrew Laming, has been cleared by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

• The High Court has published the ruling that struck down legislation removing the right to vote from all prisoners in full-time custody.

• Having noted similar long-term trends, I thought it might be interesting to compare aggregated polling figures from Australia and New Zealand since the end of last year. New Zealand figures are a rough average of Roy Morgan and DigiPoll, Australia’s are from Reuters Poll Trend plus a September figure from Bryan Palmer.

Today’s Roy Morgan poll suggests that voters have, er, reacted sympathetically to Kevin Rudd’s tax gaffe. Or perhaps been driven insane by the onslaught of government advertising on television. Either way, they’ve published a headline figure of 54 per cent for Labor’s primary vote, which seems to have been enough to have caused their server to crash. More details as they come to hand.

UPDATE: Crikey email reports a two-party split of 60.5-39.5. The Coalition primary vote is down from 39.5 per cent to 36 per cent (for those interested, the Nationals vote is down from 3 per cent to 2.5 per cent). Labor’s primary vote in the previous survey was 49.5 per cent. This was a face-to-face survey with a sample of 972.

The north-eastern Adelaide electorate of Makin was created in 1984 from an area that had mostly formed the southern end of Bonython, a seat made safe for Labor by Elizabeth to the north-east (until its abolition at the 2004 election). Makin currently extends from Para Hills and Walkley Heights near the city to Tea Tree Gully and Greenwith at the limits of the metropolitan area. As my swing and vote result maps for Crikey demonstrate, Labor rules the roost as far east as Salisbury East and Modbury North, beyond which are suburbs with somewhat higher incomes. Census data prepared by George Megalogenis of The Australian shows the seat to be highly sensitive to interest rates, coming nineteenth on the ranking of electorates with the most mortgage payers and ninth on “couple families with dependent children paying off home”. However, it also ranks in the lowest quarter on mortgage burden (“median repayment divided by median income”) and the lowest third on “median household income for those paying off their homes”.

Makin was narrowly held for Labor from 1984 to 1996 by Peter Duncan, a former Attorney-General in Don Dunstan’s state government. A 4.8 per cent swing put Duncan on the Keating government casualty list at the 1996 election, and he was recently back in the news after being charged with fraudulently obtaining government grants for his plastics recycling company. His Liberal successor was former nurse Trish Draper, who emerged as a prime ministerial favourite after strong performances at the next two elections. The swing to Labor in 1998 was just 0.2 per cent, and she bettered her 1996 margin when she picked up a 3.0 per cent swing in 2001. Draper hit serious trouble in the lead-up to the 2004 election when it emerged she had taken a boyfriend on a study trip to Europe at taxpayers’ expense. This was in breach of rules limiting the benefit to spouses, and she was required to pay back nearly $10,000. Draper subsequently suffered a swing in every booth in the electorate, a trend that failed to carry over into neighbouring seats (with the exception of Adelaide, where Trish Worth was defeated by a 1.9 per cent swing). She nonetheless retained the seat with her margin cut from 3.8 per cent to 0.9 per cent, compared with a small statewide swing to the Liberals.

When Draper announced her intention to retire in July 2006, citing an illness in the family, Housing Industry Association national president Bob Day (right) immediately emerged as the preselection front-runner. Described in The Australian as a multi-millionaire housing tycoon, Day’s Home Australia owns brand names including “Homestead Homes in SA, Collier Homes in WA, Ashford Homes in Victoria, Newstart Homes in Qld and Huxley Homes in NSW”. No alternative candidates to Day were mentioned in the media, and he was unopposed when nominations closed in August 2006. Kim Wheatley of The Advertiser reported in March that Day had already spent no less than $100,000 on his own campaign, which encompassed “mini-rulers, notepads, calendars, newsletters and eight-page glossy brochures” along with half-page advertisements in local newspapers. Later reports spoke of thousands of personalised postage stamps produced for Day by Australia Post at 90 cents a pop, as well as dog jackets labelled “Bob Day for Makin”. He would thus have particular cause to have felt miffed by this week’s reports that the Liberal hierarchy has begged Draper to reverse her decision to retire, believing a sitting member would be better placed to retain the seat.

Labor has again nominated its candidate from 2004, former weightlifting champion Tony Zappia (left), who has been mayor of Salisbury since 1997 and was a councillor for many years beforehand. Zappia was widely reckoned to have been hard done by when he lost the 2001 preselection to the Right’s Julie Woodman, essentially due to his factional non-alignment. A repeat performance appeared to be on the cards at the 2004 election, when the factions cut a three-way deal that was to deliver Hindmarsh to Steve Georganas of the “soft Left”, Adelaide to Kate Ellis of the Right and Makin to Dana Wortley of the “hard Left”. The nomination of Wortley was to serve the purposes of soft Left warlord Nick Bolkus, as it would allow the party’s affirmative action target to be met without costing him his seat in the Senate. However, the arrangement displeased local branches as well as party hard-heads who were concerned that the crucial marginal seat should be contested by the most appealing candidate. Premier Mike Rann prevailed upon Wortley’s backers to throw their weight behind Zappia, and Bolkus shifted his focus to having the party loosely interpret its affirmative action requirement. His problem appeared solved when another Senator, Geoff Buckland, announced his retirement and backed former state deputy leader Annette Hurley to replace him. Perversely, Bolkus then decided that he too would call it a day, leading to suggestions he had only been holding on to thwart the ambitions of state minister Patrick Conlon (the member for Elder).

Although he failed to win the seat, Zappia’s creditable performance in 2004 prompted ongoing speculation that a parliamentary career still awaited him. It was suggested that state front-benchers Lea Stevens and Trish White might be persuaded to retire at last year’s election so their seats of Little Para or Taylor could be made available, but both stood firm. Zappia then emerged as the logical candidate for the looming Makin preselection, but The Australian’s Michelle Wiese Brockman reported that he was again “battling to win backing to stand from factional leaders”. Writing in the City Messenger newspaper, Christian Kerr noted talk that the Left and the Right might reach a deal to back Zappia, in which he would “vote with the Left in party forums in SA and with the Right in Canberra”. If that fell through, the nomination might instead go to his Salisbury Council colleague Chad Buchanan. Subsequent reports suggested that Zappia indeed secured cross-factional backing, and he has since aligned himself with the Left. Zappia suffered an embarrassment in March when it emerged he had provided a reference for Hells Angels bikie Terry John McKelliff, a client at his fitness centre who was later convicted of drug trafficking. There were some suggestions Zappia might have to stand aside in light of the precedent of Kelvin Thomson, who had recently quit the front bench for providing a reference to Melbourne gangland figure Tony Mokbel.

Adelaide’s Advertiser newspaper today carries a slightly curious poll of voting intention in Boothby, held for the Liberals by Andrew Southcott on a margin of 5.4 per cent. Conducted by phone from a sample of 649, it shows Southcott leading Labor candidate Nicole Cornes by an improbable 49 per cent to 32 per cent after distribution of the undecided. No two-party result is provided, but commenter Matthew Sykes has transcribed the paper’s large volume of generally unilluminating data from the poll throughout the previous comments thread. No doubt the Advertiser’s pollsters do their best, but my mind is drawn back to the final week of the state election campaign last March, when it ran a poll showing the Liberals neck-and-neck in Norwood and set to retain Hartley. Labor went on to win the seats with respective margins of 4.2 per cent and 4.6 per cent.