Only the two weekly pollsters have reported national results this week, which have done nothing to interfere with what appears to be a post-budget uptick for Labor. This results in a 0.3% two-party gain to add to the 0.5% shift last week, translating into a gain of two on the seat projection (one from New South Wales and one from Western Australia). The Queensland Galaxy poll has translated into a relative 0.5% shift away from Labor in that state, which was mostly cancelled out by the change in the national result. Full details on the sidebar.
Preselection news:
• The Queensland LNP has chosen party treasurer Barry O’Sullivan to fill the Senate vacancy created by Barnaby Joyce’s bid for Tony Windsor’s lower house seat of New England. Barry O’Sullivan was chosen ahead of 11 other candidates, including Larry Anthony, Howard government minister and former member for Richmond; tourism executive Mary Carroll; Western Downs mayor Ray Brown; and Toowoomba doctor and social conservative David van Gend. O’Sullivan made the news in 2011 when a recording emerged of him using forthright language in dealing with a disendorsed state election candidate.
• NineMSN reports the long-delayed local preselection ballot for the Illawarra seat of Throsby, where Labor incumbent Stephen Jones faces a challenge from local Right faction operative John Rumble, will be held on June 15.
• AAP reports Emma McBride, Wyong Hospital executive and daughter of former local state MP Grant McBride, has withdrawn from the Labor preselection to choose a successor to Craig Thomson in Dobell. The report says contenders “could” include Wyong Shire councillor Lisa Matthews and David Mehan, a local union official who challenged Thomson for preselection at the 2010 election.
Other news:
• New campaign finance legislation to be introduced by the government shortly is proving a source of contention on two fronts. A plan for parties to receive “administrative funding” set according to their share of the vote, at an overall cost of around $13 million a year, has met a predictably hostile response in the media and is unlikely to be going down well with the public (a similar measure was axed in Queensland last year as part of the Newman government’s savings drive). There has also reportedly been furious opposition in caucus, notably from Senator John Faulkner, to a watering down of long-delayed plans to revise the threshold for disclosure of political donations. This was hiked from $1500 to an indexed $10,000 (now over $12,000) by the Howard government in 2005. Legislation introduced by the Rudd government in 2008, and reaffirmed as part of the minority government agreements with independents and Greens after the 2010 election, sought to bring it back down to $1000. Now the government proposes the threshold be set at $5000, a total presumably reached in negotiation with the Liberals. A government source quoted by Tom Dusevic of The Australian says a $5000 threshold will capture 60% of donations, whereas a $1000 threshold would have captured 80%. Bernard Keane of Crikey the new bill will also leave open the loophole that allows undisclosed donations below the threshold to be made to each state and territory party branch, which was to have been dealt with under earlier versions of the bill.
• Financial consultants Pottinger have produced a Bayesian model for predicting the election result which incorporates historical results and betting markets as well as polling over the current term. It projects “a central 2PP outcome for the ALP of 47.2%, with a 95% confidence interval of about 43.8% to 50.2%”, and gives the Coalition a 93.6% chance of winning the election against 1.9% for Labor, with a 4.5% chance of a hung parliament.
Battle Turkeys
I am a kiwi who has had Maori Whānau since the 1840’s. For over thirty years I’ve been here bitching to Australians about their racism.
leone:
You make some very solid points, as usual.
Out of the Gillard/Rudd camps, who would control the numbers post Liberal Victory?….
Post Liberal victory will it really matter? Neither of them will hang around for another 10 years for another shot. Rudd will head off to the UN and Gillard will spend her time avoiding sandwiches.
Nemspy@2835
There’s actually far more evidence to suggest that it’s the Libs rule under which we all suffer
[Silky38
Posted Friday, May 31, 2013 at 9:03 pm | PERMALINK
Post Liberal victory will it really matter? Neither of them will hang around for another 10 years for another shot. Rudd will head off to the UN and Gillard will spend her time avoiding sandwiches.]
I think Rudd will hang around. If Abbott is as bad as he is being made out to be, popular Rudd has a real shot to at the DD election or the normal election in three years time.
Because 41% of ALP MPs voted against SSM now doesn’t mean that 41% will vote against SSM for all time.
As Zoomster points out, opening up this issue to a conscience vote means there is every opportunity and reason to find out what your local MP thinks and lobby them. If this is an important issue to you as a voter you can use it to decide your vote for your local MP.
And it’s interesting that Kevin Bonham tries to tie it to the leader’s attitude. It’s a very small sample size of cases, and are you really trying to make the case that because Julia Gillard professes to not support SSM that 30% of ALP MPs vote against their conscience to kiss arse or something? I don’t buy that. I do buy that the ALP is split on this issue (hence why they couldn’t get past making it a conscience-vote issue).
That the ALP has a strong socially conservative wing is not news.
The other 2 examples in the NZ and the UK passed with conscience votes; it doesn’t strike me as unreasonable to assume that we will get there eventually, unless there is an argument that Australian politics is just so different that party line votes are required here on the issue where they haven’t been needed elsewhere.
This is funny blog.
Lets not care about what happens during the week – lets talk about Rudd.
Nemspy
And you’re doing differently … how?
On the very same page:
Well I guess PB really does work that way after all, for everyone! 🙂
[Gillard has only allowed the conscience vote because she knows it has absolutely no hope of passing.]
Are you saying you want a compulsory SSM vote?
I don’t think that’s going to happen.
I think I gleaned somewhere you’re gay Nemmy, so SSM is probably important to you. But for the main population, SSM is a non-event. Sure most people are in favour of it, but it’s not of primary importance.
Out of the few thousand or so people polled over it I’d bet that it was the first time 3/4 of them had ever given the subject that much thought, either pro or con.
It’s an incredibly boring subject to most people, including gays, I’d venture.
I was going to say sometimes I don’t know how people manage to keep a straight face, but then I can’t see your faces and for all I know they’re not straight.
@2858
yeah!, pop will eat itself.
And, of course, after this election (whether Labor is elected or not) support for ssm becomes binding on all Labor MPs.
[And, of course, after this election (whether Labor is elected or not) support for ssm becomes binding on all Labor MPs.]
Still an incredibly boring subject. Much more important things in today’s Australia.
I’m suprised there isn’t a stronger campaign to just get rid of marriage.
No marriage – no issue.
…which means if you want ssm to get up, you should be hoping for a Labor victory. If Labor wins in September, it would be possible we’d have ssm legislated by the end of the year.
INDONESIA’S ambassador to Australia has ruled out agreeing to the coalition’s boat turnback policy, declaring no such collaboration will occur.
Ambassador Nadjib Riphat Kesoema said Indonesia would welcome Tony Abbott or whoever leads Australia after the September election.
But he said asylum seeker boats should be turned back to other countries, not to Indonesia.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national-news/federal-election/indonesia-won8217t-agree-to-coalition-policy-to-turn-asylum-seeker-boats-around-ambassador-says/story-fnho52ip-1226654686379#ixzz2UrtjXR91
zoom, Labor are deliberately choosing to put the Liberals in power and that makes Tony Abbott and no SSM for the next decade or so their fault.
@Zoomster/2866
Is there Parliament sitting at the end of the year?
Just in case you’re wondering, my face was totally straight @ 2868.
There is a sitting at the end of the year after Abbott becomes PM.
@Silky38/2871
Sitting on his arse?
zoid
don’t know, but it’s not uncommon for Parliament to sit in October/November (and I think December on occasion).
I said ‘possible’.
grey
[
@2858
yeah!, pop will eat itself.]
Vote 1 ….. 🙂
[POP WILL EAT ITSELF – EVERYTHINGS COOL ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glvqWJtwa_M
[There is a sitting at the end of the year after Abbott becomes PM.]
And then Silky woke up. It had all been a daydream.
Just had a funny thought. What if there was another huing parliament?
Even funnier: what if it was Abbott’s turn as PM?
Chortling now.
@BB/2876
Dangerous thought there BB, perhaps good for the NBN though…
z
[And, of course, after this election (whether Labor is elected or not) support for ssm becomes binding on all Labor MPs.]
I didn’t know that. Is that party policy? I thought it would still be a conscience vote.
Dio, it’s been mentioned before.
BB
[Just had a funny thought. What if there was another huing parliament?
Even funnier: what if it was Abbott’s turn as PM?]
It’s almost impossible that there would be another hung parlt as there will probably only be one indie, maybe two.
Dio
it was a conscience vote this time around because Labor had gone into the 2010 campaign saying there wouldn’t be a vote on ssm — so the objection was that it would be breaking an election commitment.
z
[it was a conscience vote this time around because Labor had gone into the 2010 campaign saying there wouldn’t be a vote on ssm — so the objection was that it would be breaking an election commitment.]
Very good. So if Abbott agrees to a conscience vote after the election some time, Labor will all vote for SSM and it will pass.
Abbott needs to be hammered into making some equivocal statement about SSM before the election.
There won’t be a hung parliament next time.
December 2011
LABOR has amended its official policy platform to advocate same-sex marriage, but the party’s MPs will be allowed a conscience vote on the issue in the federal parliaments.
Re. a second hung parliament… the thought of Abbott promising a triumphant return to Howardism, should he be elected in 2016 would be highly amusing.
Indeed, promising a return to Howardism in 2013 is pretty funny as well.
Actually, when I come to think of it, the prancing, poncing Abbott is a comedy riot all to himself.
He has a nanny, Peta Credlin, look after him. He has a mad uncle Rupert do all his policy. His wife still does his ironing (she must adore him so much). And he has to surround himself with thugs who threaten anyone who baulks at his inanities.
He’s hated by the people, and always has been (at least Julia was liked once upon a time). He can’t handle pressure, can’t answer questions and can’t control his temper without popping a vein in his forehead.
Speaking of foreheads, he’s botoxed to the max, sports a toupee or a comb-over, walks with a simian gait, and likes to play dress-ups as a fireman, a life saver and sometimes as a fish-gutter.
He is a total front man. It’s written all over him and I really do think his puppet masters must despair of him sometimes.
He got rolled by his party several times in the past few weeks and the only original idea he’s ever had is the dud PPL scheme that even his own side doesn’t want because the idea’s so stupid.
Yet, with his protectors, he manages to keep a lead in the polls.
This is despite never authoring any legislation, never winning a vote on the floor of the house and despite being up against a smart-aleck woman who makes a fool of him – and his shills – at every opportunity.
The two people he most needed to support him, the Independents, saw that he was a liar and a braggart and shunned him. He betrayed Peter Reith and Joe Hockey (the latter on dozens of occasions), and can’t even stick to a written agreement for more than four days, he’s so pathetically scared of failing to be seen as a good bloke.
Every day his attempts to control his anger and the urge to hit someone take more and more out of him. His spiritual mentor is a protector of rapists and child molestors. His media protector presides over a criminal enterprise that boasts about its ability to buy governments.
He’s never accomplished anything or won any contest that wasn’t rigged in his favour.
I think that’s funny. I think it’s funnier that anyone can believe he’ll ever be elected to be Prime Minister.
Bushfire Bill
Posted Friday, May 31, 2013 at 10:02 pm | Permalink
*2885
excellent piece
[Bushfire Bill
Posted Friday, May 31, 2013 at 10:02 pm | Permalink
*2885
excellent piece]
Funny thing was, I wasn’t exaggerating.
[ Gillard has only allowed the conscience vote because she knows it has absolutely no hope of passing. It’s a cheap way to have her cake and eat it too. ]
Don’t be such a dope. The vote would succeed – with Gillard’s blessing – if the LNP would allow their members to vote with their conscience. They do not.
Claiming this is somehow Gillard’s fault, and not One Trick Pony’s, takes a kind of mental gymnastics that only you conservatives seem to be able to achieve.
BB – as always you say it as it is, keep up the good work.
Dio
Is the following equivocal enough for you?
“I don’t think anyone should expect that this is necessarily going to come up in the next Parliament”
“It will ultimately be a matter for the post-election party room if it comes up, but I am strongly opposed to any change and I imagine that a strong majority in the Coalition party room will remain opposed to any change.”
Abbott has left the door open to a conscience vote after the election.
[A later vote means that it is more likely opposition leader Tony Abbott will allow his MPs a free conscience vote on marriage equality. He said that a conscience vote is a matter for the party room to decide after the election, whether he is in government or not.]
[He said that a conscience vote is a matter for the party room to decide after the election]
Why after the election?
What difference does it make?
[ Abbott has left the door open to a conscience vote after the election. ]
Abbott doesn’t give a fuck what happens after the elections … as long as he’s in the Lodge.
The man’s a fruit loop and could only have stayed as LOTO this long because Murdoch has propped him up from the start with ever more ridiculous claims about his supposed character.
You ony had to look at Simon Benson’s piece in the DT this afternoon – where he described a policy that had been negotiated over years by both sides of politics, by the most senior people (one of them Abbott’s self-styled “Ideological Mother”, Bronwyn Bishop), and then signed and sealed by Abbott with two of the most precious things a politician can ever possess: his word and his signature.
Yet Benson, a Murdoch arse-licker extraordinaire, calle dthis policy “Gillard’s” policy!
Right there is all you need to know: something that Abbott had not only been a part of, but, it seems, had been the main instigator of on his own side of politics, was allowed to slide out of any blame or responsibility for the policy, his name completely erased from history as far as it was concerned.
All we got was some smartarsed comment about how Gillard was inept because she should have realized Abbott would welch on the deal.
Maybe that’s impressive to some, but to me bragging about how sneaky and dishonourable a political leader can be, as some kind of badge of honour, as if that’s why he’s so clever, is a sign of sociopathic dementia.
These are the people who are backing Abbott. Well, not backing him personally, or with any particular love for the man, because who could?
They are backing him as a useful idiot, on notice that just as they have created him, they can destroy him. He’s nothing more than a Front Man for them.
@Dio/2891
After means zero.
Like everything else Liberals do.
Dio, TA did leave it somewhat ambiguous and rummel was saying the exact same thing you were saying right up until what I quoted :P.
@ 2896 that is “did initially leave it”
If you dont like Liberal Policy just make a few phone calls to backbenchers and Abbott will change it.
Then next week people who disagree with the “new” policy can make phone calls and Abbott will change it again.
fess
[Why after the election?
What difference does it make?]
Presumably similar reason Labor is changing its policy after the election. Something about sticking with their policy taken to the last election.
It hasn’t stopped either side tossing out oodles of things they took to the last election.
Basically it’s an excuse for delaying.
Abbotts policy positions and agreements are almost like Melbourne weather.
If you don tlike it just wait 30 mins and it will change