In recognition of the quickening tempo as the federal election draws nearer (let’s continue to presume it will indeed be on September 14), my mid-week update to the BludgerTrack 2013 poll aggregate will henceforth get its own thread. This means that in the normal course of things there will be three more-or-less evenly spaced federal politics post a week: one hanging off the main poll release on Sunday or Monday, the regular “Seat of the Week” on Friday or Saturday, and the BludgerTrack update in between.
The latest update throws the latest results from Nielsen and Essential Research into the mix, producing little change after the slight recovery for Labor last week. However, the state relativities have changed slightly with the addition of data from Nielsen, one of only two pollsters which provides state breakdowns with any consistency. The swing recorded for New South Wales is now higher than for Victoria, as most commentary suggests it should be. As noted in the previous post, the weekly Morgan result is being excluded from the calculation for the time being until there is enough data from its new “multi-mode” methodology to allow for a credible bias measure to be determined with reference to the overall polling trend.
Other news:
• Four nominees have emerged for the Labor preselection in the Sydney seat of Barton, to be vacated upon the retirement of former Attorney-General Robert McClelland. They do not include former NSW Premier Morris Iemma, who may have had his factional association with Eddie Obeid to consider, together with the extreme difficulty any Labor candidate will face defending the seat. Paul Osborne of The Australian reports the contest is effectively between Shane O’Brien, Rockdale mayor and NSW Public Service Association assisant secretary; Kirsten Andrews, “former state and federal ministerial adviser”; and Steve McMahon, former Hurstville mayor who “made a name for himself when he sold the mayoral car to build a children’s playground”. O’Brien is “widely seen as the frontrunner”; Another nominee, state upper house MP and former Rockdale mayor Shaoquett Moselmane, withdrew his nomination after two days, choosing instead to make headlines with a parliamentary attack on Israel. Murray Trembath of the St George & Sutherland Shire Leader earlier reported that Moselmane’s run was thought to be “a lever to seek a more secure position on Labor’s upper house ticket for the next election”. The Liberals have endorsed Nick Varvaris, accountant and mayor of Kogarah.
• A day after the Financial Review reported he had received assistance from Eddie Obeid as he sought to enter parliament in 1999, independent state MP Richard Torbay has dropped a bombshell by announcing his withdrawal as Nationals candidate for Tony Windsor’s seat of New England. The Nationals’ state chairman, Niall Blair, confirmed Torbay was asked to stand aside after the party received unspecified information “of which we were not previously aware”. Barnaby Joyce has expressed interest in the past in using the seat for a long-desired move to the lower house, and there were immediate suggestions he might take Torbay’s place.
• Troy Bramston of The Australian reports Tim Watts, Telstra executive and former adviser to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and former Victorian Premier John Brumby, is the front-runner to succeed Nicola Roxon as Labor candidate for the safe western Melbourne seat of Gellibrand.
• With John Forrest bowing out at as member at the next election, the Nationals preselection for Mallee has attracted 10 candidates. Those named in an ABC report are Horsham farmer Russell McKenzie, former Victorian Farmers Federation president Andrew Broad, Buloke Shire mayor Reid Mather and Swan Hill deputy mayor Greg Cruickshank. Liberal party sources quoted by Terry Sim of the Weekly Times said the Liberals were “unlikely to field a candidate”. Labor has endorsed Lydia Senior, chief executive of the Lower Murray Medicare Local.
• Megan Gorrey of the Campbelltown Macarthur Advertiser reports Laurie Ferguson effortlessly saw off a preselection challenge from Damian Ogden, by a margin of 132 to 11.
• Legislation which completed its passage through federal parliament earlier in the month has raised the bar for prospective election candidates by increasing nomination deposits (from $500 to $1000 for the House of Representatives and $1000 to $2000 for the Senate) and requiring of independent candidates more supporting signatures on nomination forms.
Top End corner:
• The Northern Territory had a change of Chief Minister last week, with Adam Giles emerging as the first indigenous leader of an Australian government. Terry Mills, whom Giles ousted as leader just seven months after he led the Country Liberal Party to victory at the polls, was informed of his ill fortune by text message while on government business in Japan.
The present leadership crisis began a fortnight ago when deputy leader Robyn Lambley stood aside for Giles with a view to healing a long-standing rift, only for Giles to up the ante by indicating he would move to replace Mills as leader unless further conditions were met. In this he had hoped for support from Alison Anderson, the most senior of the CLP’s complement of indigenous MPs, but she instead publicly blasted Giles for refusal to accept the deputy leadership and threatened to take her “bush coalition” of four MPs (the cohesiveness of which is disputed) to the cross-benches or even into coalition with Labor. The turmoil coincided with the period of a Newspoll survey for the Northern Territory News targeting 437 respondents in the CLP-held seats of Sanderson, Blain and Brennan, which showed a 22% against the CLP on the primary vote and 14% on two-party preferred. Mills’s personal ratings were at 26% approval and 67% disapproval, compared with 39% and 38% for Opposition Leader Delia Lawrie (whom Mills nonetheless led 38-37 as preferred Chief Minister).
The situation was transformed the following week when Anderson and the bush MPs were persuaded to put the previous week’s acrimony behind them and throw their support behind Giles, with Anderson telling Amos Aikman of The Australian the decision was made to forestall a rival challenger she declined to identify. The victory for the Giles camp was confirmed when his key supporter, Fong Lim MP and former federal Solomon MP David Tollner, was installed as deputy leader and Treasurer. Mills meanwhile is widely expected to head for the exit in fairly short order, promising to initiate a challenging by-election in his seat of Blain.
• All of which nicely leads into my belated results summary for last month’s Wanguri by-election, which delivered a bloody nose for the CLP and a morale-boosting result for Labor, which had suffered a 7.7% swing in the seat when Paul Henderson contested it as Chief Minister at the election on August 25.
WANGURI BY-ELECTION, NORTHERN TERRITORY February 16, 2013 Votes % Swing 2PP % Swing Nicole Manison (ALP) 2,428 65.2% +8.2% 2,585 69.4% +12.4% Rhianna Harker (CLP) 1,059 28.4% -14.6% 1,139 30.6% -12.4% Peter Rudge (Independent) 237 6.4% Formal 3,724 96.4% -1.6% Informal 86 3.6% +1.6% Enrolment/Turnout 4,984 77.5% -11.6%
Bollocks compact. The govt, regardless of colour, has about $350 billion to spend on their programs. So I ask again, where are the policies?
Barnaby Joyce with his hand on the tiller? No thanks.
Yeah, all go from here:
“The Piping Shrike @Piping_Shrike
Clear air … united team …. fresh start … policies … Tony Abbott … stuff.”
Henry – 2 words – Structural Deficit
I hereby predict the Gillard camp will blame Rudd destablisation and yesterday’s event for ongoing bad polls for at least the next four weeks.
[Barnaby Joyce is not coherent. He is thought disordered, in that his thoughts do not logically connect to one another. That is usually a sign of psychosis, or intoxication, or disturbed mental processes. Just sayin…]
Andrew,
I wonder is Barnaby of the pentecostalist bent and just can’t help speaking in tongues.
The spill is dead, but someone over there has forgotten to turn off the TP Random Rudd Opinion Generator.
The Northeast/ southwest divide is an issue:
The basic divide in Australia
The AFL states full of proper socialists, AFL and civilization vs the Rugby states, with their clubs and corruption
My lasting recent impression of Barnaby Joyce is on that program, Kitchen Cabinet, where Annabel Crabbe was tucking into her vegetarian meal, and Barnaby was ripping into a steak, entirely oblivious. I can’t shake that image from my mind.
Compact- howard was the master of that.
Had to sell everything to cover it. And still ran a stre=structural deficit!
alias working hard hope they paying double time…oh they don’t do that do you?
I stand by this slogan, with copyright of course:
“@JaundicedV
@clintonducas @Piping_Shrike
New Slogan: Fighting for Modern AWU Families that Shoppie”
12:06am · 23 Mar 13 · TweetDeck
Try as i might Kinkajou, I can’t actually understand the series of letters and spaces in @6310 that purports to be a sentence.
“the spill is dead” and so is the ALP. It’s more interested in winning internal wars than winning elections
alias@6304
I’ve read some dumb comments in my time but not many with this particular brand of naivete.
Everyone on the Right is saying just that at the moment. It’s kinda common knowledge.
If you have any particular predictions about what colour the sky will be tomorrow, or the Pope’s religion, don’t hold back now.
Yes Centaur009, I suspect there is much truth in what you say.
Today’s purge will just reinforce in the minds of vast numbers of Australians, as they settle into the weekend, that yesterday’s farce has given way to bloodletting on a massive scale and that Julia Gillard is thereby weakened and diminished.
Hope it’s not true but I’ll bet it is.
alias,
We already have. You really believe that what happened yesterday would improve their polling? Or are you arguing that now that people know that JG will be leading the party until the election, they can’t possibly list their preference with a left-of-centre party? I hereby predict that you will continue to blame everything of the PM, no matter how long the bow.
What leaves me speechless is your seeming belief that people destabilising the ALP would somehow improve their polling. You were actually arguing not that long ago that they go through it again. Everyone agrees the next Newspoll will be terrible for Labor, because of the events this week. It will take time and effort to recover, which you don’t want the ALP to do (make a serious effort, I mean, to be clear). I doubt that will stop you saying that the Newspoll after that and the Nielsen are similarly disconnected from this weeks events, and therefore all her fault. You were pretty quick to poo poo the last Newspoll, I might add.
something to ponder in your time off comrade
alias to centaur…cant you guys just talk ( he’s probably at the next desk)
Bugler..
I try to keep track of events here, while attending to other entirely unrelated duties, but I hadn’t quite realised that anyone here had conceded there is four weeks worth of bad polling in the offing.
Is that so? That’s either very clever forward tactics, or a reflection of that utter gloom that has enveloped the party, once last night’s lamentable revelry died down.
alias,
[Today’s purge will just reinforce in the minds of vast numbers of Australians, as they settle into the weekend, that yesterday’s farce has given way to bloodletting on a massive scale and that Julia Gillard is thereby weakened and diminished.]
That’s pathetic, even for you. It was Rudd’s forces that attempted to cut down Gillard and most of her front bench. That isn’t bloodletting? It wouldn’t have happened if they had done their jobs rather than obsessing over petty factional squabbles. She would have been “diminished” if she kept them on. She seems to have refused the resignations of at least two of the Rudd group. Cushioning it with ” I hope its not true” doesn’t cut it. The disunity has to end, that is the only way Labor can win.
and there were parties yesterday- they were guzzling that champagne down like they’ld won the war!!! defeated the enemy they roared
Has anyone linked to Mike Carlton yet? Reckless charge of the Labor brigade
Carlton pretty much nails it as usual.
[Thursday’s sound and fury in Canberra changed only one thing. A government that was on the ropes now has the smell of death to it.
The chaos of this week, including the humiliating extinction of the media “reforms”, reminds me of Labor’s dark days of 1975. Not the famous dismissal itself, but the relentless collapse of good governance that went before. It recalls the farce of Gough Whitlam’s energy minister Rex Connor sleeping by his office telex machine each night in the vain hope that a shadowy Pakistani spiv would come up with a loan of 4 billion dodgy petrodollars. That was a government on the edge of the abyss and so, now, is this one. The odour rises.
That bizarre non-ballot for the leadership leaves Labor and the caucus more split than ever. It is an iron law of Australian politics that the people will not elect a party to govern the nation when it cannot govern itself. The Liberals learnt that the hard way in the 1980s when John Howard and Andrew Peacock pirouetted in and out of the revolving door. This lesson will be beaten into Labor in September, with those proverbial baseball bats.
It should have been, could have been, so different. When Julia Gillard took over from Kevin Rudd, I wrote here that I thought she’d be “stonkingly good at the job”. In so many ways she has been. Her worst enemies would concede that she is as tough as steel. Against all the odds, she bolted together a minority government. She can boast a string of good Labor policy initiatives, such as the national broadband network, the disability insurance scheme and the Gonski education reforms. Despite the howls of the Tories, the economy is indeed the envy of the developed world.
But Gillard’s grasp of electoral strategy is abysmal and her failure to carry the people with her is complete. To wage war on every media baron in the nation, just six months from an election, was reckless bravado. When your reforms look like they were banged together on the back of a restaurant menu, and you blindside the crossbenchers whose support is crucial, it ranks right up there with the charge of the Light Brigade. The crowning folly was to throw out an ultimatum saying there would be no “bartering” and to demand that the bills should be rammed through Parliament in a week. Stephen Conroy, too, bears a heavy responsibility for this debacle.
So, gentle reader, we get Tony Abbott in The Lodge next spring, probably with Barnaby Joyce as his deputy, although not everyone is rejoicing at the thought of barmy Barnaby replacing Tony Windsor as the member for New England. A reader there sent me an email within minutes of the news getting out.
“We are all horrified at the prospect of having Barnaby Joyce up here anywhere near Armidale,” he wrote. “It was bad enough when he was a bouncer at the New England Hotel years ago. He was out of his depth then.”]
So there it is you Gillardistas, the future is spelt out for you. And it all began back in the first half of 2010.
May Shorten, Feeney, Conroy, Arbib, Howes and all the rest of that scummy lot rot in hell. 😡
Bugler .. As another poster observed sagely earlier tonight, it is hardly treason or treachery to try to find a pathway to victory in September, given Labor’s utterly diabolical present position. In many ways it is treachourous to fail to seek alternatives the might offer the prospect of victory.
Internal Wars today, elections tomorrow.
hey cen how many bottles did you have?
but labor can’t win bugler (sound horn)
say “kevin rudd is a” into a new nexus tablet and it come up with this
Kevin Rudd threatens legal action after claims Liberals used him as ‘double agent’
by: By Claire Harvey
From: The Sunday Telegraph
August 01, 2010 12:00AM
Rudd “used to embarrass Labor figures”
“He was incredibly unprincipled” – Downer
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/features/federal-election/liberals-used-kevin-rudd-as-a-leaking-double-agent/story-e6frfllr-1225899470933#ixzz2OH5sQiPs
Yes Bemused, I’d say Carlton has got it in one there, and very ably expressed it is too, sad to observe.
Theres a nice scene in Enemy at the gates where the actual Stalinists ( the real ones) station machine guns behind their forces to prevent retreat.
Almost that time here
alias,
The ABC has a whole section of its website titled “Labor in Crisis”. It does not take a tactical genius to figure out that it is going to be an ugly few weeks for the ALP. It could get as bad as it did in 2011 and 2012 at its height. This is the very early year crisis I was beginning to think wouldn’t happen. Why Labor feels the need to get themselves in these messes I have no idea, it was totally avoidable and inexcusable. When they had a primary vote of 38 they should have shut-up and helped work it higher. It was the definition of self-obsession not to. They will not be judged well for that.
The PM’s standing will be less easy to guage. As leader of the party she would take some flack, I’d imagine. Her resolve and handling of the issue may stem that, but likely not.
centaur009@6313
I’ll just file that with all the “Gillard’s Gorn” announcements.
We have one side of politics a party that trumpets its own stability as if that was some sort of good for the country. They’re so proud of it that they’ve offered nothing else – no policy, no direction, no ideas. And a leader who can barely read from his own pre-written speeches, much less think on his feet. And a front bench full of the biggest dumb-arses you’re likely to see in one place. Not one of them on top of his or her own portfolio. But stable as you like.
On the other side we have a party which has suffered from internal turmoil, a hostile press and an opposition which has been in sloganeering mode for three years, and having to deal with a minority government situation as well. This party has delivered an economy which is the envy of the world, and any number of progressive policies**.
** for those on the right, this is your cue to snort and whinny about “surplus” or “mining tax”. You’ve got your attack lines sorted out by now, I’m sure. If any of you are holding electricity bills, now’s a good time to wave them about.
Anyone planning to vote for a party because they represent “stability” is a rolled-gold idiot. “Stability” will have no effect on your day-to-day lives. Policies will. Simple as that.
Oh, there is Alexander Downer, deeply embarrassed by Rudd’s nailing of him in the AWB scandal, seeking payback.
Vicious Downer.
By the by, just wait to see some of Downer’s lying mates get “jobs for the boys” come September. For one, Innes Willox, Downer’s former chief of staff, who took the rap in the AWB inquiry, is bound to get a plum foreign posting, to come on top of the cosy Los Angeles consul job he got under Howard. Watch this space.
none kinkajou, Conroy was buying, can’t throw your hand in with the devil, goes against my principles
As fitzgibbon said rudd was the only chance of winning the election
No, no. everything’s fine. Yes, the polls will drop, sure they will, by a point or two, for a few weeks, but once the fact that the sky hasn’t fallen in over the carbon price… er, give me a minute… er…
[Yes Bemused, I’d say Carlton has got it in one there, and very ably expressed it is too, sad to observe.]
Yes, and he is right to point out that Gillard has had some good policy wins.
But what Gillard and her factional supporters don’t seem to understand is that nearly all of those policies will just be ripped up if Labor can’t win the next election.
WHERE IS GG ??????????????
___________
He always without fail has some “happy talk” on Julia and the future
Has he taken to the drink?
Is he hiding under the bed
has even he abandoned the cause ???
ShowsOn@6335
Hi Shows, good to see you fighting the good fight tonight against the morons. Sorry I haven’t been around to assist, but alias does a good job too.
Not sure they will shows on, they will say too hard tinker around the edges. Kind of like the Vic libs- who embraced Myki with open arms, together with roll out of the digital power meters and the desal plant.
what’s with the if…surely you don’t think ALP has any chance
Oh, I give up. You guys clearly have no intention of doing the sensible thing. You are going to blame everything on Gillard, because you don’t have the guts to admit the failures of your own leading lights. It is clear Carlton and others want Rudd’s cheerleaders to keep undermining everything the Government does, keep leaking, keep trying to paralyse the Government. This obsession will be the death of this Government, mark my words. It was meant to be put to bed yesterday, but like last year, you won’t let it go.
I think Carlton is wrong, responsibility lies with more than a few convenient whipping horses. (Bemused conveniently ignoring, yet again, that most of the momentum behind this ridiculous attempt to rip the Government apart was as a result of figures from the Victorian and NSW Right factions, but never mind, just blame Feeney in his tenuous position as 3rd on the Senate ticket over those like Marles and Bemused’s MP on huge margins)
It is all well and good to criticise things in hindsight, less easy to do them when you’re at the centre of the action. Carlton could criticise the hysteria surrounding it, or the farce Rudd’s supporters put in place, but no, he blames Gillard.
deblonay@6336
He was around earlier today snapping and snarling like a rabid dog.
He really should give up the bottle.
Well, stop whinging and get working.
JV,
[No, no. everything’s fine. Yes, the polls will drop, sure they will, by a point or two, for a few weeks, but once the fact that the sky hasn’t fallen in over the carbon price… er, give me a minute… er…]
I said nothing of the kind, and neither has anyone else. If you’re going to mock people, use their real opinions rather than trying to make yourself look good by fighting your own sock-puppet.
I was being realistic. There is a lot to do. The fact that you and others are hoping the ALP obsesses over itself and engages in a war with itself makes me glad you have no influence over the Government.
Bugler@6339
Bugler, you have been taken in by a lot of the rubbish here.
No-one undermines the govt. anywhere near as much as Gillard and her cronies with their idiotic behaviour and lack of political nous.
The Victorian Right, including Shorten and Conroy provides much of Gillard’s support.
[Hi Shows, good to see you fighting the good fight tonight against the morons. Sorry I haven’t been around to assist, but alias does a good job too.]
It’s OK. I have just been throwing in some home truths between Lionel Richie songs.
What dancing on the ceiling?
Showon,
You might have been throwing something, but it wasn’t home-truths.
So why does shorten hate rudd so much?
(Breaks vow never to post here despite daily visits) I would hate to be in the trenches or on the barricades or picket lines with half the defeatists on this site. Anyone who doesn’t STFU and spend the next six months fighting the Tories might as well join the LNP now. Get a bit of this into yer, boyo’s. Welshmen, much like Gillard, will not yield. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfqgsA2McdA
Bemused,
Sure, whatever. A small minority of MPs undermining the Government’s entire agenda good, Gillard bad. Why? Because… Shorton! Conroy! I agree Swan should go, but it seems you have been swallowing a lot of rubbish as well, and not just recently. You can’t even face that this farce was entirely brought about by the people you want to promote.
Bugler
No mocking. If I did that I should be castigated by The Master. I wasn’t replying to you at all. I was making an ‘at large’ remark.