The BludgerTrack poll aggregate this week records a correction after what was probably an Ipsos-driven overshoot last week, with a milder result from Newspoll drawing the Coalition two-party lead back 0.7%, and moving the seat projection two points in favour of Labor, with gains in New South Wales and Victoria. However, Newspoll’s leadership ratings have added further distance between Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten on both net approval and preferred prime minister, although Shorten’s own net approval rating comes in slightly higher than last week’s.
Preselection news:
• The ABC reports on friction within the Bill Shorten-Stephen Conroy axis of the Victorian Right over the preselection in the Melbourne seat of Wills, which is to be vacated at the next election with the retirement of Kelvin Thomson. Conroy is backing Mehmet Tillem, his former chief-of-staff and briefly a Senator, who now works for Victorian Small Business Minister Philip Dalidakis. However, Shorten is pushing for the seat to go to a woman, perhaps motivated by concern about the rising strength of the Greens. The Greens outpolled the Liberals to finish second at the 2013 election, but would need a 15.2% swing againt Labor to win the seat. A meeting of Labor’s administrative committee tonight will determine when the vote is to be held, with the ABC reporting that the Conroy forces favour an earlier-than-expected vote before Christmas. The ABC further reports that Moreland councillor and former mayor Meaghan Hopper is a confirmed starter, along with the previously reported Joshua Funder, a funds manager and former Yarra councillor.
• Eric Abetz and Stephen Parry retained first and second position on the Tasmanian Liberal Senate ticket in a preselection vote held on Saturday. The difficult but winnable third position goes to Jonathon Duniam, deputy chief-of-staff to Premier Will Hodgman. Blair Richards of The Mercury reports that Sally Chandler, who narrowly failed to win a seat from number three in 2013, declined to accept the unwinnable fourth position, amid complaints that the Tasmanian Liberals have not had a woman in federal parliament in 20 years.
• A leading Labor preselection candidate for the seat of Robertson, Anne Charlton, has revealed to preselectors that she was addicted to heroin and “in trouble with the law” at the age of 16. Charlton is now chief-of-staff to Deb O’Neill, who held Robertson from 2010 until her defeat in 2013, and has since found a place in the Senate. Labor’s preselection field will also include Belinda Neal, the seat’s controversial member from 2007 to 2010, when she was defeated for preselection by O’Neill.
All the polls are bad for Shorten.
“@AusConservation: We’d like to acknowledge @billshortenmp & @RichardDiNatale who are in the crowd today at the #peoplesclimate march Melbourne.”
FalconWA
[. Surely no one is arguing that we make the level of the speeding fine different for different levels of income]
I am. Good idea.
[Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
Most of Scandinavia determines fines based on income. Could such a system work in the U.S.?
….because in Finland, some traffic fines, as well as fines for shoplifting and violating securities-exchange laws, are assessed based on earnings]
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/
There are worse traits than being naive.
@GetUp: You look incredible, Melbourne. #peoplesclimate https://t.co/WixModXiO3
He must surely accept the people have made up their minds about him.
He must do the right thing….
Round and round and round we go.
Darn@745
So how many letters do you now post?
I can’t recall sending anything by mail since my last lot of Christmas cards!
Therein lies the problem. The volume of mail is just not sufficient to support the postal service we once had.
We might lament it, but that’s the harsh reality.
What would your solution be?
http://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/bhp-leads-asx-down-as-slater–gordon-crashes-20151126-gl9evc.html
Oh whoops so sorry I called TPOF silly. How very unkind of me!
davidwh@754
I know I have been naive at times.
Apparently no one cares about Slipper’s diaries.
dtt
[especially after the unremitting campaing of peronal denigrastion that started a week or so after his knifing. ]
Just give me one piece of evidence for this. Just one.
The Labor party as a whole treated Rudd with extreme respect right up until he challenged a year later. That was part of the problem, because it meant that people didn’t understand why he had to go and made up their own reasons to fill the vacuum.
When the real reasons came out, their opinions were already fixed, and they wouldn’t accept them.
K17, 720
Pyne was attacking it, maybe Turnbull is outsourcing the attack job
Airlines
[maybe Turnbull is outsourcing the attack job]
Isn’t he on his way to Malta?
Maybe he is using Maltesers?
davidwh
[Maybe he is using Maltesers?]
Asleep on the couch?
The Credlin slogan ‘the faceless men’ really was a political stroke of genius.
It has destroyed Bill Shorten.
Chinese stockmarket down 5.5% today on a fresh regulatory crackdown and falling industrial profits.
dwh
[Apparently no one cares about Slipper’s diaries.]
And nobody cares about the sanctity of the coin toss in cricket.
This place has gone to the dogs.
Rex Douglas@768
Those words go back to Alan Reid in the early sixties.
Agree Simon. No coin toss and pink balls. Outrageous.
bemused
Maybe so, but since Credlins parrot started using the slogan the public bought it.
Shorten is unable to get rid of the stink.
Rex D
You’re not TBA in disguise, are you?
The rat should never have been given the leadership in the first place.
His character was known, yet the ALP caucus chose him when dumping Beazley.
Zoomster
Are you for real!!
The airbrushing of Rudd out of the speech in 2011 was an obvious case and was a big factor in the 2012 challenge. Even you cannot deny that one,
Thewhole rudd disfunctional, worked too hard, poor relations with colleagues, did not speak to people office blocakge stuff started in about the second week. It was bloody stupid.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/powerful-men-who-made-and-broke-pm/story-e6freuy9-1225884032336
From today’s Reachtell poll
“Tony Abbott’s principal perceived strength over Malcolm Turnbull – his uncompromising approach to national security – is an illusion, according to a surprise national poll.
Three-quarters of people “feel safer” with Prime Minister Turnbull as leader, the Seven-ReachTel poll found.”
Abbott & his three supporters must be seething.
[He must surely accept the people have made up their minds about him.
He must do the right thing….]
BS
Rex
They replaced Rudd with Gillard who had been the chief numbers person for the dumping of Beazley. Your point holds little water.
daretotread@776
Even on the night of the coup there was the nauseating, gloating Paul Howes on TV.
Barry Cassidy’s perspective from his column today
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-27/cassidy-rethinking-the-conventional-wisdom-about-political-coups/6977346
Rudd was not cut down because of poor opinion polls. He was sacked because he ran a dysfunctional government; he gave power to staff ahead of elected MPs; and he treated too many people with disdain and contempt.
As one senator told me at the time, had he simply ignored his backbench he might have survived. But he chose to abuse them as well.
None of this is exaggerated. Never before, with just the whiff of a challenge, have the numbers tumbled so quickly.
It was a testament to his style – and a measure of the resentment towards him – that Gillard backers confidently predicted on the night that if Rudd allowed it to go to a party room vote, Gillard would have captured perhaps 80 of the 112 eligible votes.
Some will always argue that the people decide the prime ministership and only they can take it away. But they don’t choose the leader, and under the Australian system, they never will. The electorate votes for local candidates. That decision is heavily influenced by who leads the major parties, but that’s all. It is the purview of the party room to decide the leadership.
Rudd was replaced because the system had broken down. He tried to govern in a way that threatened time-honoured processes.
Whether or not he could have gone on and won an election is almost beside the point. But I would argue his situation was rapidly deteriorating and was likely to get worse.
lizzie
The public want an alternative ALP leader. It’s plain to see.
Rex D
Yes, right now they ‘want’ Turnbull.
max@781
The whole point of an ambush is to catch your opponent off-guard and have the advantage of surprise.
It worked.
When Turnbull starts actually doing something ‘courageous’ politically I’ll start taking notice of the polls. At the moment “he is all things to all people” (thanks Albo).
[The public want an alternative ALP leader. It’s plain to see.]
It wouldn’t matter who you had as Labor leader at the moment. As Lizzie says, they want Turnbull.
I think that jesus could schedule his 2nd Coming and take over the Labor leadership now and it wouldn’t make much difference to the Coalition’s numbers. People think that it’s Malcolm Turnbull that can walk on water! 😀
Btw, are there tables available for that Reachtel poll?
lizzie@774
I’ve thought the same.
[It is a “nonsense” to claim deep emissions cuts would smash the economy while ignoring the economic cost of floods, heatwaves, and other climate change fallout, an expert says, as the Turnbull government and industry attacked Labor’s plan to dramatically slash greenhouse gas pollution.
…
“It’s a nonsense to say this will cost us money in order to reach a 45 per cent target without saying how much that saves by doing nothing about climate change,” Professor Baldwin said, pointing to predictions of extreme weather, lost agricultural production, increased health problems and infrastructure failure.]
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/nonsense-attacks-on-labors-climate-plan-ignore-cost-of-doing-nothing-expert-20151127-gl9oid.html
New thread.
Bill Shortens ratings are 26% approval/57% disapproval, according to Newspoll.
The public want an alternative ALP leader. It’s plain to see.
Compact Crank
Posted Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:27 pm | PERMALINK
[First it was the 50% renewables “not a promise just an aspiration”.]
[Now they think people will believe a +40% cut in emissions.]
[Clearly the ALP is more scared of bleeding votes to the Greens than trying to win the Centre and Government.]
The Labor Party is not bleeding votes to the Greens, the Greens are bleeding votes to the Liberals.
How a person could be in possession of a brain so dull, and lacking in fundamental synaptic response, that it could, in a heartbeat flick a switch from socialist environmentalism to neo-conservative, ultra-capitalist is beyond my ability to comprehend.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/29/labor-chides-600000-salary-of-new-part-time-windfarm-commissioner
Same shit lame ass goverment.