The eagerly awaited pre-spill Newspoll concurs with Galaxy in having Labor’s two-party lead at 57-43, from primary votes of 35% for the Coalition, 41% for Labor and 12% for the Greens. The Coalition result is down three points on the last Newspoll of December 12-14, and one point lower than Galaxy; Labor’s is up two, and two points lower than Galaxy; and the Greens’ is steady, and one point higher than Galaxy. The previous Newspoll result was 54-46 on two-party preferred. Phillip Hudson’s paywalled report on the Newspoll result in The Australian can be read here; the tables are featured on The Australian’s website here.
Tony Abbott’s personal ratings are 24% satisfied and 68% dissatisfied, for a net satisfaction rating of minus 44%. In a history going back to 1985, the only occasions when Newspoll produced a worse result for a Prime Minister were when Julia Gillard recorded minus 45% in the poll of September 2-4, 2011, and in four polls under Paul Keating from August to October in 1993. Alexander Downer had two worse results as Opposition Leader near the end of his tenure in December 1994, and Andrew Peacock matched it in a poll conducted during the 1990 election campaign. Bill Shorten leads Abbott as preferred prime minister by 48-30, up from 44-37 last time, a result surpassed only by a 20% lead for Alexander Downer over Paul Keating during the former’s short-lived honeymoon period in July 1994. Shorten is up five on approval to 42% and down three on disapproval to 40%.
Head-to-head questions on the Liberal leadership find Malcolm Turnbull favoured over Abbott by 64-25 and Julie Bishop favoured 59-27, while Turnbull is favoured over Bishop by 49-38. The poll was conducted from Friday to today from a sample of 1178.
UPDATE: To follow today’s action as it unfolds, you could do quite a lot worse than to tune in to Crikey’s Liberal leadership spill live blog.
Kakuru I am having a great day, a leadership spill is great entertainment. Seeing the Liberals squirm and try and defend the indefensible is great. They have made a mess of things and continue to do so. They can pretend all is well but they are rotten, they have no unity, no confidence in their leader and he will soon be replaced. All great entertainment.
Edi_Mahin@897
The stink of
Labortory bias in these comments extremely strong.dave, LOL. I have never voted liberal in my life and I never will.
[army in the seige situation. Way too machismo and trigger happy and wannabee warriors]
From some limited knowledge, that’s not an accurate characterization of the Special Ops guys.
bemused
I hope those questions will be answered at the inquest. I suppose we have very few armed hostage sieges so we don’t have much expertise meaning we need to learn as much as possible from this one.
[why were none of the offers of reputable members of the Islamic community to assist not taken up]
What an excellent question. That hadn’t crossed my mind at all yet it is such an obvious thing to consider especially if such offers of help were presented.
Trouble ahead for Mike
Mr Baird has announced that if reelected on March 28 he will privatise transmission company Transgrid and 50.4 per cent of distribution businesses Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy via a 99 year lease.
But a Fairfax/Ipsos poll reveals fewer than one in four voters – or 23 per cent – support the partial privatisation of the electricity “poles and wires”.
This is a six per cent drop in support since the question was asked in the November Fairfax/Ipsos poll taken shortly before Mr Baird outlined the infrastructure that would be funded by his plan.
In that video Guytaur linked, did I think what Scott Morrisson said??
http://youtu.be/PnQLPR6tlDc?t=8m48s
Some unparliamentary language.
The British SAS certainly get involved in civilian hostage situations.
MTBW @ 908, your best post yet!
@ 906
They did request help from the Islamic community.
They asked a community representative to urgently supply an ISIS flag, in order to satisfy one of the demands from the perpetrator.
Then, when that community representative started calling people who she considered may have had such a flag, they tracked the numbers called, and investigated those people after the event for possible terrorist sympathies. The community representative (a moderate voice) has now been cut off from the community as a result of those investigations.
I think it’s now too late for Malcolm Turnbull.
In a “My God! We need a new leader tomorrow! Who have we got?” the Liberals might have reluctantly accepted him.
Now Abbott’s days are numbered, and surely even the most ideologically encumbered (I’m looking at you, Bernardi) can recognise this, the Loony Right are going to look around to find someone Who Isn’t Malcolm to groom for the job.
They’ve got at least a month to do this (and, if they have the sense to do it, can drag it out longer).
Bishop doesn’t appear to be a real contender.
Following LNP debacle in Vic & Qld federal Labor should drive home the link between Jo, Tony & IPA & privatisation of public assets.
It’s only a transfer mechanism form the tax payer to the pin striped financial spivs… of which Mike Baird is a Gold Card member.
That speech from Shorten is the best I’ve ever heard from him. Beautifully done.
Here’s the link again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnQLPR6tlDc&feature=youtu.be
It seems like Morrisson says “you $%^#head” but it is not completely clear. Filthy language is unneeded and should have no place in a chamber meant to be making good decisions for the country and leading the country well. It is just stupid schoolboy stuff which has no place in government.
Diogenes@905
You mean you want more sieges so we can have more experience???
We are supposed to have training exercises to prepare for such situations and we do also communicate with overseas agencies and learn from them.
No two situations will be identical so there is no template to follow exactly.
So far the Coroner seems to have done OK.
zoomster
We may get Wyatt Roy yet 😉
Tom Hawkins@906
There were at least two that have received publicity and I would be surprised if there weren’t more.
Diogenes@905
Not much doubt there is a on call capacity these days to respond to such situations and that may be rotated around the SAS, the Special Forces Battalion and Police Special Squads etc.
Its true they haven’t been required much so far. Touch wood.
But they are regularly out and about training. They keep my part of Sydney awake regularly very very late at night.
@ 913
Morrison is the Right’s “Plan B”.
But it’s a crazy plan. He’s like a concentrated version of Tony.
I can just see the reaction if they announce their new leader: “Tony 2.0 – just like the old one, but more so”.
ltep
Has anyone ever told you nobody likes a smart arse? 😆
AJH@912
That was obviously not a request made in good faith and has proven to be counter productive.
The morons behind that exercise should be sacked after being made to apologise.
Edi_Mahin@916
I agree with your sentiments here.
39 members of the Lib partyroom voted for a spill of the leadership ..even though there was no challenger
So, 39 Libs wanted anyone but Abbott.. hardly a vote of confidence I’m thinking!!
zoomster@913
Not sure which Bishop you are referring to there, but with these maddies, Bronny has got to be in with a show. 😛
[Morrison is the Right’s “Plan B”.]
I may be a little unhinged, but can someone sensible (and polite) tell me why Robb isnt a contender for Plan B?
Diogenes
I’d say a key difference is the police will likely have more training in siege/hostage negotiations . SAS would have bucket loads of training for the actual going in for the rescue but hostage/siege negotiation likely not so much.
[We may get Wyatt Roy yet :wink:]
We may get to see the Wyatt Roy sex tapes yet.. 🙂
[I may be a little unhinged, but can someone sensible (and polite) tell me why Robb isnt a contender for Plan B?]
He’s too old, too ratty, and hasn’t been seen to be doing much lately.
David Carson
[How do you vote informal in a simple yes/no situation?]
Kevin Andrews voted for Julie Gillard.
markjs I am not sure that analysis is quite correct. I think there was three groups in the meeting. The Abbott supporters, the Turnbull supporters and the somebody else supporters. The 39 are the Turnbull supporters, it was there chance, delaying serves them no purpose. However there would have been those who wanted someone else who would have voted for Abbott to allow time for that someone else to get enough support to challenge for the leader. Abbott will go sometime but who will replace him is unclear. I doubt it will be Turnbull, he will never get the numbers, but as soon as someone else gains momentum it will be time for Abbott to be kick out of office.
cud chewer@930
Oh… I thought it was just that he had too much charisma. 👿
markjs 925
Yes in boxing parlance –
At Festival Hall today “Strong Plans” Tony Abbott, also known as “The Mad Monk” won a fairly close points decision against – drum roll please –
NO-ONE!
Yes, he triumphed in an otherwise empty ring in a thriller!
Zoomster @ 913,
Agree, Turnbull will never be acceptable to party. The hunt is of for someone to groom as Tony’s replacement. Turnbull should have done a Don Chip and formed his own socially moderate and economically extremist party. Bit late for that now.
guytaur
Posted Monday, February 9, 2015 at 3:52 pm | PERMALINK
@abcnews: Video: @billshortenmp labels @TurnbullMalcolm Zorro, Hamlet as he moves no confidence motion against @TonyAbbottMHR: http://t.co/VgqwRaTx8U
Thanks Guytaur scrolling through PB(mainly TBA) and found this put it on twitter going mad at the moment
Fran
do you think they marked their ballot
“it makes no difference”
Did anyone else see some of Uhlmann & Cormann on abc24?
It seems that from today the govt is going to get down to do the job they were elected to do (now add all the clichés) plus making a strong economy and looking after families.
Afterwards (he could hardly get a word in during the i.v.) Uhlmann said to camera wtte, “at least Matthias Cormann says all the same things in private that he says in public, and that’s pretty rare for a politician”.
Is Cormann married? Just thinking of the breakfast table conversation.
battle is taking place between the right-wing conservatives and the moderates in the Liberal Party, which could decide their future leadership, writes Paula Matthewson.
Having seen off internal critics this morning by garnering enough votes to defeat the spill motion, Prime Minister Tony Abbott must now deal with the ramifications of the vote itself.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-09/matthewson-the-liberal-rebellion-is-far-from-over/6079646
@ 937
They marked the ballot “PASS”.
Which is almost as nihilistic.
Presumably tomorrow’s “normal” weekly Liberal Partyroom meeting is still on? Does anyone know? That will be a fun meeting.
cud,
63 is old for an Australian PM. But too old?
He is very ratty.
The Libs think a lot of the FTAs (SFA’s).
RR..
I can’t recall a spill motion without a challenger before ..very damaging for both Abbott & the Libs.. Seems a bit self-destructive..
The biggest loser out of today is Turnbull, the best he can hope for now is to be a very short term PM who stands on the deck of ship as it disappears below the waves at the next election.
Scott Morrison.
Coz one unpalatable hard right bully-boy PM just isn’t enough to convince the voters. Takes a brace of them to properly season that electoral stew.
markjs
As Shorten said “a debacle”
Edi_Mahan
[markjs I am not sure that analysis is quite correct. I think there was three groups in the meeting. The Abbott supporters, the Turnbull supporters and the somebody else supporters. The 39 are the Turnbull supporters, it was there chance, delaying serves them no purpose. ]
The thing that you’re overlooking is that this was NOT a free vote. The ministry and whips were duty-bound to vote against the spill. We don’t know how many frontbenchers would have voted for the spill, if it had been a free vote.
Abbott went into the spill motion with 35+ votes in the bag. He coerced and cajoled the frontbench into lockstep with the leadership. After all that, all he could manage was 61. Pathetic.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-09/business-groups-and-unions-both-call-for-government-change-of-d/6080632
[It has not changed its leader, but business groups and unions are calling on the Federal Government to change direction and soon.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) said it wants to see the Government work as a team to deal with the economy.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is asking the Government to come up with what it calls a solid plan for jobs and growth.
The leadership tensions in Canberra have further undermined business confidence already shaken by the power of minor parties and independents in the Senate and the stalled federal budget.]
[Now Abbott’s days are numbered, and surely even the most ideologically encumbered (I’m looking at you, Bernardi) can recognise this, the Loony Right are going to look around to find someone Who Isn’t Malcolm to groom for the job.
They’ve got at least a month to do this (and, if they have the sense to do it, can drag it out longer).
Bishop doesn’t appear to be a real contender.]
my sense is that you’re right Zoom. but who will they go to? – Morrison?
if they did, it would not amaze me if turnbull was installed at the last moment before the election – I think morrison would be a disaster – he’s madder than abbott, nastier, and not nearly at hiding it, and not as good a communicator/liar (& despite what you think of abbott, this is his one attribute – he is good with words, dumbing things down to the level of the average tabloid reader and inciting and exploiting fears and bigotries – Goebbels had the same skills.
I hope they go to morrison for two reasons:
1. the far right will burn another of their ‘stars’
2. they’ll lose the election
the party needs root and branch reform – preferably one that does psychological testing of candidates to screen out sociopaths.
Edi_Mahin@932
If there’s any truth to this, then the non-Abbott, non-Turnbull camp is holding back from a spill just to prevent Turnbull from winning, and will try again when they can convince more members from the other camps into joining them.