With just 31 days left to go:
• Two pieces of polling intelligence have emerged today on what appears to be a widening electoral gender gap. The Australian reports the weekend’s 55-45 Newspoll had Labor leading 44 per cent to 33 per cent on the primary vote among women, but trailing 39 per cent to 42 per cent among men. We are also told that the gender gap in Tony Abbott’s personal rating is now at nine points, up from four in April. As George Megalogenis noted last week, this is likely to hit the Liberals in seats with a high concentration of working women, of which Cameron Stewart of The Australian identifies four: Bennelong, Franklin, Brisbane and Deakin. The Herald-Sun also reports that the weekend’s 50-50 Galaxy poll had Julia Gillard’s preferred prime minister lead at 58-31 among women and 51-40 among men.
• The Herald Sun further informs us that 59 per cent of respondents from the Galaxy survey supported a levy on bank profits similar to that of the mining tax, not that either party is advocating such a thing. Only 28 per cent of respondents said they were opposed.
• Leisa Scott of the Courier-Mail reports that Jen Sackley, unsuccessful LNP preselection hopeful for Leichhardt, will run as an independent. Sackley has complained of a “bullying culture” in the party, and proclaimed Labor’s Leichhardt MP Jim Turnour to be of superior “stature” to Warren Entsch, the former Liberal member who is coming out of retirement to run again for the LNP.
• Possum calculates the electoral impact of Labor’s decision to lock in an election date that gave voters only one weekday to get their enrolment in order. This is found to be in the order of fractions of 0.1 per cent, but might be a bit higher in seats with a particularly high concentration of young voters. The most marginal of these are identified as Melbourne, Ryan, Swan, Herbert, Macarthur, Solomon and Cowan.
• Verona Burgess of the Australian Financial Review notes the electoral impact of public service cuts not just on the Australian Capital Territory, where they might make life difficult for Liberal Senator Gary Humphries, but also in Eden-Monaro. As well as housing many of Canberra’s public servants in Queanbeyan, the famous bellwether electorate also encompasses Batemans Bay on the south coast, which Burgess tells us is known as “little Canberra-by-the-sea” due to its concentration of public agencies.
• Three cheers to Matthew Landauer of the Open Australia Foundation for instigating the most excellent ElectionLeaflets.org.au site, a repository for user-contributed scans and photos of electoral material.
lefty e@1100
You have fallen for the Beatup, like a Good little Green who hates there ALP anyway.
It’s got Chris Barrie’s dirty mitts all over it, and he has form.
Chris Barrie jumped onboard, Frank, sure. He does have form.
But where’s the new allegation from? Who’s the ‘cabinet source’?
Lefty E
“Mr Rudd showed a casual disregard for the national security committee”
seeing those meetings held on specific DATES ,
where ar dates he missed ?
how many meetings ?
what was Rudd doing if missing ( like in USA) ?
did Report say Julia as D PM chairing ie it was under 2nd highest in land ?
(guarantee she was)
now without that specific info (tht leakers easily can provide IF smear is true , then leekers is crap and story a unproveable beatup !!
Don’t we have 2 opposition leaders at the moment? Isn’t it traditional to trash the guy you replaced?
lefty e@1102
Think about it, it could be some lowly staffer with a grudge – possibly someone who was formerly working for Howard and employed by the Public Service rather than by the Ministers themselves.
Agree Ron – totally. And dont get me wrong – if its true, full credit to Rudd to failing to unstintingly flatter the self-important fantasies of war-gamers dealing with the host of non-threats arrayed against us.
But as you say – this ‘non-attendance’ might all be perfectly legit.
So who’s doing the leaking against Rudd? And why?
Could be Frank. But Toolman say “cabinet source”, Burke doesnt deny it came from ALP when put to him.
Suffice to say, Id be pretty unimpressed if I was Gillard. She doesnt need this during an election campaign any more than Rudd.
lefty e@1106
Chris Barrie – Payback for Children overboard – and remember who the Shadow FM was at the time ? 🙂
[It’s got Chris Barrie’s dirty mitts all over it, and he has form.]
Rimmer was the leaker? (Sorry the geek in me had to make the joke)
Here we go:
love the storm in a teacup. Hmmm… let’s see if we can use the flaws of a former Labor PM to slime the current one. This is just as convoluted as trying to make the Hawke/Keating tiff look bad on Gillard. It just goes to show how desperate and in terminal decline this opposition is.
New thread.