The latest Essential Research survey has the two parties locked together on 50-50, suggesting Labor has not received a dividend from its success in forming a minority government. The more recent part of the rolling two-week survey was conducted from last Tuesday, when the rural independents’ made their announcements, until yesterday, and it has dragged Labor down from the 51-49 recorded in the previous survey. However, the primary vote figures suggest there is unlikely to have been much in it either way: the Coalition is up a point to 44 per cent and Labor steady on 39 per cent, with the Greens down a point to 10 per cent. Approval or disapproval of the independents’ decision was predictably split on party lines, for a total of 41 per cent approve and 45 per cent disapprove. Respondents were asked to rate the performance of the parties since the election and for some reason the Coalition rated better than Labor, recording a net positive rating of 9 per cent compared with 4 per cent for Labor. However, Julia Gillard was thought to have shown “more leadership abilities during the period since the election” than Tony Abbott, 47 per cent to 35 per cent. Forty-five per cent of respondents rated the increased strength of the Greens as good for Australia against 38 per cent bad, which goes against other polling conducted earlier. Conversely, 44 per cent agree the independents will hold too much power, with only 36 per cent disagreeing.
Elsewhere:
• Anna Bligh has raised the prospect of a return to compulsory preferential voting in Queensland, with The Australian reporting the matter is likely to be considered by a (Labor-dominated) parliamentary committee. Bligh notes concerns that the operation of different systems at state and federal level causes confusion and a higher informal vote, and it is indeed the case that the optional preferential states of New South Wales and Queensland generally have a slightly higher informal rate at federal elections than other states. However, that hasn’t been the case this time – in Queensland the informal vote was 5.45 per cent, against 5.55 per cent nationally (the national total admittedly having been pulled up by a 6.82 per cent rate in New South Wales). It is clear that Labor’s sudden enthusiasm for compulsory preferential in Queensland is due to their parlous electoral position, and the very high likelihood they will bleed votes to the Greens that might not return to them, as they mostly did at the federal election. As an opponent of electoral compulsion in all its forms, I would much sooner the confusion be resolved by a move to optional preferential voting at federal level – though Labor is most unlikely to be keen on this, as it would have cost them three seats at the federal election. UPDATE: As Kevin Bonham correctly notes in comments, it would also have saved them Denison. Note that Peter Brent at Mumble has expressed sentiments almost identical to my own.
• A by-election looms in the Western Australian state seat of Armadale, which Alannah MacTiernan vacated to make her failed run for Canning. Armadale is Labor’s safest seat, and the by-election will not be contested by the Liberals. Labor’s candidate is Tony Buti, a law professor at the University of Western Australia. Also in the field are Owen Davies for the Greens, Jamie van Burgel for the Christian Democratic Party and independent John D. Tucak, who polled 298 votes as an upper house candidate in 2008. The by-election will be held on October 2.
• Another by-election following from the federal election is for the Brisbane City Council ward of Walter Taylor, vacated by newly elected Ryan MP Jane Prentice. Emma Chalmers of the Courier-Mail reported on August 18 that even before his defeat in Ryan, dumped Liberal Michael Johnson was sizing up the seat. The Liberal National Party will hold its preselection tomorrow. The by-election will be held on October 23.
People are pretty grumpy then. Who would have thought? 😉
You very rarely see that level of ‘strongly disapprove’ and ‘very bad’ in an opinion poll.
[Respondents were asked to rate the performance of the parties since the election and for some reason the Coalition rated better than Labor, recording a net positive rating of 9 per cent compared with 4 per cent for Labor.]
Were they comparing the same two parties I saw?
What, apart from whinge and attack the indies, have the coalition done to be rated as performing better? Sometimes you wonder at the perceptions people have.
So basically, more people prefer JG, but would still vote 50:50 and those that would vote coalition are really, really, really grumpy.
GLENDA KORPORAAL’S article in the Ugly Australian on Julia’s handbags. I’ve cut and pasted so that you don’t need to give the Ugly any hits.
Julia enjoys the high life free of old bags
• Glenda Korporaal
• From: The Australian
• September 09, 2010 12:00AM
JULIA Gillard may have chosen a dress for her first visit to the Governor-General as the newly elected Prime Minister of Australia, instead of her traditionally efficient power pants suit.
But she continues to show her superwoman characteristics by walking into events sans handbag.
Google Julia and handbag and you get references to the official first partner, Tim.
While the rest of us who apparently hold up half the world struggle to fish out our mobile phones from overstuffed handbags, our Julia strides the corridors of power hands free.
Even the Queen and Margaret Thatcher tote the inevitable handbag, carefully matching the shoes. But Julia positively glides around, confirming her superwoman status by operating without the usual female props.
Mega-handbags worth hundreds of dollars may have become fashionable but Julia manages to get through life without ready access to the travelling office the rest of us could not live without.
There is an air of royalty about her that assumes someone else is following along answering the phone, parking the car, taking notes and paying for whatever needs to be paid for.
The typical overstuffed female journalist’s handbag can also include notepads, tape recorders, mobiles, printouts of the latest assignments and contact books.
And that’s without having kids in tow. While one does not want to do a Bill Heffernan here given Gillard’s historic achievements, it is certain our first female Prime Minister has never had to go through the tote-bag-as-mobile-nursery routine that is the lot of mothers of young children. Getting out the door involves an Everest-like expedition preparation with a hold-all crammed with baby wipes, bottles, nappies, clothes, snacks, Panadol and toys.
Maybe life inside the hallowed halls of Parliament House allows for a different lifestyle from the rest of us, one in which handbags can be left safely in a secure office.
One day, I did get a glimpse of the real Julia. The camera had caught her standing outside the door of her home in Altona in Melbourne, fishing her house keys out of a large black bag.
A ha! I thought, she is real. But it was only a passing glimpse. Hands-free superwoman is the perpetual public persona.
Maybe there is a lesson for us all. Hold on. I’ve just got to fish that ringing phone from the bottom of my bag.
It makes you wonder why the electorate even bothered to toss Howard out.
confessions, I was just going to say the same thing. Perhaps they would prefer that Julia led the Coalition?? Doesn’t give me much faith in polls (never had much). OTOH, perhaps they’re just responding to the amount of air time given to Julia + Coalition whingers. That wouldaccount for it.
[What, apart from whinge and attack the indies, have the coalition done to be rated as performing better? Sometimes you wonder at the perceptions people have.]
Two explanations
1) The coalition were in the media – the ALP was not – people approve of the one that they see.
2) The coalition was doing a very good job of being an opposition (making stupid comments) and people were rating them as an opposition. That is people approved of their being the opposition. 🙂
So far, people haven’t really had a reason to change their vote from the election. None at all. Now, it’s game on. Labor has to start delivering, in spades.
rosa, I was quite disgusted with that article. It played to so many dogwhistles against a female PM.
I think Kohler has nailed it in one sentence as my hopes for a vaguegly decent JG govt coninute to fade
[Now there is to be a tax summit at which the most important indirect taxes — GST and resources rent tax — won’t be discussed, workplace relations has been downgraded and lumped with education (or rather ‘skills’), the focus of climate change policy will apparently be the protection of coal industry jobs, and infrastructure, including the NBN, is all about promoting equality between urban and regional areas.]
Combets comments on climate change are particulalry chilling.
Looks like a slightly skewed sample , with views strongly coloured by the events of the week. Interesting to see only 75% of Libs/Nat supporters approving of Abbott’s performance. I wonder how much damage his failure to deliver on a negotiated minority government has done to the halo that he seemed to acquire from the election result itself amongst the party faithful?
Is there a small chance all these frigging pollsters will wander off to Siberia now?
Huge New York Times Article on Rupert’s Wiretapping scandal.
You’ll have to sign in, but it’s pretty painless
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-t.html
blue_green let’s take a more charitable view of the comments on coal and climate change.
The first thing a good negotiator does is to calm the combatants down. Easy, boy, no growling, no-one’s going to hurt you.
Then you slo-o-wly introduce the changes, accompanied by soothing sounds.
After all, he has a reputation as a top negotiator (and that’s how I’d approach it 🙂 )
This poll result is not surprising. The nation is really divided right now. It wasn’t going to magically go away as soon as a winner was chosen. Government has just gone back to normal mode. Give it a month or two of governing before the polls are in a slightly better position.
The opposition are carrying on like Australia is now under control of a dictatorship and they’re the rebels. (Except it’s more like one of those nasty militia rebels that want to overthrow a democratically elected government to impose an extremist totalitarian regime) whether this sinks in or not has yet to be known. While, of course, the government need to refute it at every opportunity, it’d bloody be nice if the media didn’t just echo these ridiculously hyperbolic lines.
blue-green
Combet’s comments look terrible when looked at in isolation but in the context they are not as bad. I don’t think he’s said that coal jobs are more important to him than climate change. Yet.
It’s not a great start but I’m waiting to see if he joins Ferguson as a denialist. His actions will be what we judge him by.
Not sure what people expected. What has labor done, except crawl back into office. People are with-holding judgment. Labor has to show its alliance will work.
lizzie:
The problem, as blue_green pointed out, is that anyone being honest about taking action on climate change has to be upfront that the structural change required must result in jobs being lost in some industries, particularly in coal.
Sure, negotiators need to ease people into it, but outright denial isn’t progressing the debate anywhere useful.
[Now there is to be a tax summit at which the most important indirect taxes — GST and resources rent tax — won’t be discussed, workplace relations has been downgraded and lumped with education (or rather ‘skills’), the focus of climate change policy will apparently be the protection of coal industry jobs, and infrastructure, including the NBN, is all about promoting equality between urban and regional areas.]
FFS – they haven’t even been sworn in yet.
What exactly would you like them to do on workplace relatons – was repealing workchoices and modern awards not enough
[Labor has to start delivering, in spades.]
Agreed. Perhaps things will become clearer to people when parliament returns.
[ It makes you wonder why the electorate even bothered to toss Howard out. ]
Got sick of the sound of his voice and the site of his ugly mug on the TV night after night I suspect.
Jackol and BG
I think the context of Combet’s answer was that he was queried whether he shared the Greens long-term objective of shutting down the coal-industry. He obviously said he wasn’t going to do that.
[What, apart from whinge and attack the indies, have the coalition done to be rated as performing better? Sometimes you wonder at the perceptions people have.]
They created a talking point that if the indies chose Labor they were betraying their constituents. They were unchallenged. They created a talking point they they creamed Labor in the popular vote – which counts apparently (except in 1998 of course and, technically, this year) – which was dutifully echoed by the media. Now they’re playing the illegitimate government which has no right to be there and will collapse in no time if an ALP member gets killed (HINT) – after which, a by-election could occur and return a Liberal, in which case the House could elect Abbott a PM. (In such an event, not only will a minority government be legitimate again, it’ll have a limitless mandate and critics should “get over it” and accept that Abbott is PM!)
[The problem, as blue_green pointed out, is that anyone being honest about taking action on climate change has to be upfront that the structural change required must result in jobs being lost in some industries, particularly in coal.
Sure, negotiators need to ease people into it, but outright denial isn’t progressing the debate anywhere useful.]
f its progressing the debate to a start then it is useful.
Given Combet’s record of accomplishment I’ll back him over blue-green’s analysis
[What, apart from whinge and attack the indies, have the coalition done to be rated as performing better? Sometimes you wonder at the perceptions people have.]
The Libs are good at getting their concepts to stick. It’s why I was ranting about the govt disappearing and not responding to the ‘illegitimate’ rubbish. It seeps into the public’s perception of the govt – just like in the last term.
Again I ask – who is in charge of govt media strategy? Because they’re not doing a very good job.
Diogenes
[I’m waiting to see if he joins Ferguson as a denialist. His actions will be what we judge him by.]
That’s what’s worrying me the most.
Fiz
I disagree. For example, they could have ranted about the media bias all though the campaign and the post-election but that would have only lost more votes.
instead they waited until the PM was clearly in charge, then waited for BB to go out on a limb and then softly said -you need to look at yourself – and its working. Journalists are reporting that and thinking it through.
this is another example of where a direct attack would have just bred more resistance,
[As an opponent of electoral compulsion in all its forms, I would much sooner the confusion be resolved by a move to optional preferential voting at federal level – though Labor is most unlikely to be keen on this, as it would have cost them three seats at the federal election.]
Which ones, William? Peter Brent argues that OPV would have cost Gillard Government over at Mumble but I have reservations about taking a result obtained under one system and then saying what it would have been under a different one.
I made the following reply over at Mumble. Apologies in advance for its length. Peter “yellow carded” me for it there. Can’t say I blame him! 😉
“No. We can’t assume that Abbott would have won easily in such circumstances. If OPV had been in place various possibilities exist.
Firstly, everything I have heard from scrutineers after recent elections indicates that a disproportionate number of current informal votes in which only one box is marked would actually favour Labor. This may well have helped Labor in those seats in Qld and NSW where Labor suffered most in this election.
Secondly Greens voters for the most part are a fairly well educated bunch, most of them are aware that The Greens are unlikely to win government in their own right in the foreseeable future, and most of them, I suspect, have strong views about whether, in such circumstances, they would prefer an Abbott or Gillard government. They would , for the most part, have managed to get at least as far as a number 2 on their H of R ballot papers! In Canberra where the Greens provided an “open” how to vote card (rather than directing preferences) Labor received around 80% of Greens prefs. Even with OPV I suspect they would have received most of them.
Then there is the issue of different voter response under different systems. Quite a lot of potential “protest voters” already get put off (incorrectly , of course) voting for the Greens and stick with their “regular” party because they believe that their second preference will somehow be less valuable than their first, even in seats which the Greens have no hope of winning. I live in McEwen, where the margins were very tight in this election, and I was surprised at the number of conversations I had with intelligent, educated, people who were going to vote Labor first this time around because they ‘didn’t want to risk Abbott getting in’, even though they would otherwise have lodged a protest vote against labor policies on climate change and asylum seekers by voting Green. Such factors, I suspect, would be even stronger in an election fought under an OPV system. I’m sure that the major parties would have tried even harder to stoke concerns about such things, with the potential for a significant increase in Labor first preference votes at the expense of The Greens.
Then, of course, one also needs to consider the consequences in terms of the other minor parties, FF, Liberal Democrats, Christian Democrats, etc etc. While not accounting for as large a slab of votes as the Greens, these parties generally send their preferences to the Coalition. One suspects that the Libs would actually lose a fair number of these votes if OPV was in place, given the general demographic and educational profile of such voters.
Finally, of course, in a situation where OPV is in place there are things that the parties themselves can do to make its impact less injurious to their chances. They can engage in alliances or coalitions, and indulge in strategies to avoid “vote splitting” by choosing the seats in which a particular party will stand strategically. They can adopt advertising strategies which seek to maximise the preferential vote return , etc etc. In some ways it seems to me that you are saying that if the election had been fought on the existing system, but counted using an OPV approach, then Abbott would have won. This may or may not be true (and wouldn’t we need to at least know how many Greens voters would have availed themselves of a vote without giving preferences to even know if this was true?).
But we really know nothing about what would have happened if the election itself had been fought under OPV. It would then have been quite a different ballgame”
Agreed, Fiz. Who IS in charge of media strategy?
TSOP: It is very frustrating that simplistic falsehoods are going unchallenged. Perhaps instead of attacking the media, the PM should be shooting down the opposition memes.
Someone here asked about Glenda K – she was a finance journo for quite a while in the SMH, and she was generally pretty good.
I don’t know when she jumped ship to the OO.
[As an opponent of electoral compulsion in all its forms, I would much sooner the confusion be resolved by a move to optional preferential voting at federal level – though Labor is most unlikely to be keen on this, as it would have cost them three seats at the federal election.]
It also would have saved them Denison I think, not that they deserved to have it saved.
I also support OPV at federal level – not in the belief that it creates better electoral outcomes (I actually think it doesn’t) but in the view that people should be allowed to express their preference in a partial form and still have it counted if they want to. And I don’t support electoral compulsion of any kind either except that I think there is some case for compulsory enrolment.
[ GLENDA KORPORAAL’S article in the Ugly Australian on Julia’s handbags. I’ve cut and pasted so that you don’t need to give the Ugly any hits. ]
And to think a living, breathing tree gave its life so that this could be published…
BLUE – GREEN, Of course Kohler wants the Mining Tax discussed at the summit. He’s a mining company shill. He wants it put back onto the table and argued to death.
So we should be very thankful it’s NOT going to the summit.
[I’m waiting to see if he joins Ferguson as a denialist. His actions will be what we judge him by.]
I am informed by sources ( 😉 ) that Emerson, the new trade minister is also in the heavily sceptical camp.
Rod, it’s pretty clear based on the exhaustion rate in New South Wales and Queensland that OPV would have cost Labor Robertson, Corangamite and La Trobe.
rosa
[So we should be very thankful it’s NOT going to the summit.]
I thought Swan was non-commital.
Fiz
[Again I ask – who is in charge of govt media strategy? Because they’re not doing a very good job.]
Its not so much the media strategy I am worried about. Its more that when they open their mouths they have very little to say. (Other than Combet’s choice words).
[I am informed by sources that Emerson, the new trade minister is also in the heavily sceptical camp.]
Bugg*r
[blue_green
Posted Monday, September 13, 2010 at 1:44 pm | link 12
I think Kohler has nailed it in one sentence as my hopes for a vaguegly decent JG govt coninute to fade]
Since when has Kohler been anything but a self proclaimed expert in all things that have an effect on his bank balance?
I have never trusted him, I expect he starts everyday with… ‘all for me and none for you, sod the workers and the lower and middle class’ A right wink wanger, who writes whatever suits his current agenda.
bg
[I am informed by sources ( 😉 ) that Emerson, the new trade minister is also in the heavily sceptical camp. ]
I think only one member of Cabinet has a science degree so it’s hardly surprising they only have a poor understanding of climate science and it’s ramifications. Compare that to how many have law degrees with an IR bent.
DIOG – You could be right. But according to what I read in the AFR the other day, Argus is expected to report towards the end of this year and then they expect legislation some time next year. Really, on the mining tax, the govt has no choice, because no tax, no regional fund, which will truly piss off the independents.
Good Grief, Truthy has been given his own Minister. Talk about squeaky wheels.
AustralianLabor Senator Jan McLucas appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Queensland and Parliamentary Secretary… http://dlvr.it/58LDb #AusLabor about 1 hour ago via dlvr.it
They’ve all got PHDs in political expediency.
Diog
[I think only one member of Cabinet has a science degree so it’s hardly surprising they only have a poor understanding of climate science and it’s ramifications. Compare that to how many have law degrees with an IR bent.]
That’s why the ALP are so poor on tertiary ed. Its all about degree factories.
They used to understand when Barry Jones was around.
Diogenes:
I thought Swan had ruled out sending the MRRT to the tax summit. This was supposedly crack number 1 last week with Windsor.
[ Combets comments on climate change are particulalry chilling. ]
The idea that you can just wind up the coal industry overnight is pie in the sky stuff. You simply can’t and any government that tried would be slaughtered at the ballot box. In that context the position taken by Combet is a pragmatic one.
Jon – that would be the Blue end of Blue_Green speaking.