Save the date

Confusion surrounding the likely date of the New South Wales state by-elections, to add to that we already have about the federal election.

This coming Monday is the last date on which an election can be called for this year, specifically for the December 11 date spruiked recently by Anthony Albanese, which few if any still expect. The parlour game thus seems likely to move on now to the alternative scenarios of March and May. A complication in the former case is a South Australian state election set in the normal course of events for the third Saturday in March, i.e. March 19. If I understand the situation correctly, the South Australian government will have the discretion to delay the election by up to three weeks if a federal election is called before February 19 for a date in March.

Here’s what we do know:

• Max Maddison of The Australian reports grumbling within the New South Wales Liberal Party over its failure to have finalised candidates in the important seats of Dobell, Warringah and Gilmore. The report cites Liberal sources, no doubt with an interest in the matter, accusing Alex Hawke of using his clout on state executive to delay proceedings to the advantage of candidates of his centre right faction. “Other senior Liberal sources” contend the problem is “a lack of quality candidates and impending local government elections”. Prospective nominees for Dobell include former test cricketer Nathan Bracken, along with Michael Feneley, a cardiologist who has twice run unsuccessfully in Kingsford Smith, and Jemima Gleeson, owner of a chain of coffee shops.

• Further on Gilmore, the ever-readable Niki Savva reported in her Age/Herald column a fortnight ago that “speculation is rife” that Andrew Constance will not in fact proceed with his bid for preselection, just as he withdrew from contention Eden-Monaro ahead of last year’s by-election. If so, that would seemingly leave the path clear for Shoalhaven Heads lawyer Paul Ell, who is reckoned a formidable opponent to Constance in any case.

• Labor has not been breaking its back to get candidates in place in New South Wales either, with still no sign of progress in the crucial western Sydney fringe seat of Lindsay. However, candidates have recently been confirmed in two Liberal marginals: Zhi Soon, an education policy adviser and former diplomat, in Banks, and Sally Sitou, a University of Sydney doctoral candidate and one-time ministerial staffer, in Reid.

• In Victoria, Labor’s candidate in La Trobe will be Abhimanyu Kumar, owner of a local home building company.

• In an article by Jason Campbell of the Herald Sun, JWS Research says rising poll numbers for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party are being driven by “skilled labourers and lower-end middle-management”, supplementing an existing support base that had largely been limited to people over 65. Maleness and low education remain common threads.

• An article on the voter identification laws by Graeme Orr of the University of Queensland in The Conversation makes a point I had not previously heard noted: that those who lodge a declaration vote in lieu of providing identification will have no way of knowing if their vote was ultimately admitted to the count. This stands in contrast to some American states, where those who cast the equivalent of postal or absent votes can track their progress online.

New South Wales by-election latest:

• It is now clear that the by-elections will not be held simultaneously with the December 4 local government elections as initially anticipated. The Guardian reports that the state’s electoral commissioner, John Schmidt, told a parliamentary committee hearing yesterday that “it wouldn’t be possible or sensible to try and aim earlier than the middle of February”, in part because the government’s “piecemeal funding” of his agency had left it with inadequate cybersecurity standards.

• Labor has announced it will field a candidate in Bega, making it the only one of the five looming by-elections in which the Coalition and Labor are both confirmed starters. James O’Doherty of the Daily Telegraph (who I hope got paid extra for pointing out that “Labor has chosen to contest the seat despite Leader Chris Minns last month criticising the looming by-election as expensive and unnecessary”) reports nominees for Liberal preselection will include Eurobodalla Shire mayor Liz Innes and, possibly, Bega Valley Shire councillor Mitchell Nadin.

• Anton Rose of Inner West Courier reports Liberal hopes in Jodi McKay’s seat of Strathfield are not high, particularly if Burwood mayor John Faker emerges as the Labor candidate, and that the party would “not be mounting a vigorous campaign”. One prospective Liberal nominee is said to be Natalie Baini, a sports administrator who was said earlier in the year to planning a preselection against Fiona Martin in the federal seat of Reid.

Poll news:

• A Redbridge Group poll conducted for Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200 non-profit group records Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s primary vote as having slumped from 49.4% in his blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Kooyong to 38%. With the Greens on 15%, well short of the heights achieved with Julian Burnside as candidate in 2019, such a result would put Frydenberg under pressure from Labor on 31%. Around half of the balance is attributed to the United Australia Party, which seems doubtful in an electorate such as Kooyong. The objective of the poll was to test the waters for a Zali Steggall-like independent challenge, and responses to some rather leading questions indicated that such a candidate would indeed be competitive or better. The survey was conducted from October 16 to 18 by automated phone polling from a sample of 1017.

• Liberal-aligned think tank the Blueprint Institute has results from a YouGov poll on attitudes towards carbon emissions policy, conducted in nine regional electorates from September 28 to October 12 with samples of around 415 each. In spite of everything, these show large majorities in favour of both halving emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050 even in such electorates as Hunter and Capricornia. Even among coal workers (sub-sample size unclear), the results are 63% and 64% respectively.

• The Australia Institute has published its annual Climate of the Nation survey, based on a poll of 2626 respondents conducted by YouGov in August.

• It took me a while to update BludgerTrack with last week’s Resolve Strategic and Roy Morgan results, but now that it’s done, I can exclusively reveal that they made very little difference. Labor is currently credited with a two-party lead of 53.8-46.2.

Also:

• Antony Green has published his analysis of the finalised Victorian state redistribution.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

2,799 comments on “Save the date”

Comments Page 7 of 56
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  2. Sydney’s Inner West Light Rail will be shut down for 18 months after extensive cracks were fund in all 12 trams that operate on the line.
    ______
    A pinnacle of design and development!

  4. BK

    “A pinnacle of design and development!”

    CAF Urbos LRVs are run reliably all over the world, including on the Canberra LRT with no problem. I have seen some in France with over a half million km each still running fine.

    This sounds suspiciously like incompetent or absent wheel or track maintenance. Why the whole lot? Even on a fatigue failure basis, you would expect some to crack but not all.

    There is a dearth of rail engineering skills in Australia.

  6. There is a dearth of rail engineering skills in Australia.
    _______
    Socrates
    . . . that there once was.
    There must be a single design or manufacturing issue or a grossly miscalculated duty cycle assumption.

  8. I have no experience in marketing or political messaging.
    I wonder how a ALP subliminal message to small l Libs along the lines of this would work…” you might not vote ALP but vote to get a change of govt for one or two terms just so we can clean out those who’ve taken over the party who have turned it into something unrecognizable to what Menzies envisioned”

  9. ‘The last time Labor was in government federally it was at the Greens’ pleasure. We propped up the Gillard gov and kept them in power while Labor spent three years at war with themselves.’

    It was a minority government with the balance of power with other independents (Windsor, Oakshott etc). It wasn’t just the Greens by themselves. Your statement is misleading. Labor did a deal with the Greens and the polling went south immediately and never recovered. It was hard lesson for the party to learn, but Labor governs alone or not all if it wants to sustain a government for a couple of terms.

  11. BK
    The CAF Urbos is a family of trams, streetcars, and light rail vehicles built by CAF. The Basque manufacturer CAF previously manufactured locomotives, passenger cars, regional, and underground trains.

    FOLLOWING protracted negotiations, CAF has agreed to conduct remedial work at its own cost on 19 23.6m-long three-section Urbos LRVs operated in the French city of Besançon, after cracks were discovered in the bodies of the low-floor vehicles in December 2017.

    Similar problems were subsequently identified in CAF Urbos LRVs used in Belgrade. Work will commence in the spring, with each vehicle spending a month out of service. CAF’s staff from its Bagnères-de-Bigorre plant in southwest France, which built the LRVs, will carry out the work in Besançon.

  13. The only thing that can save the NSW Government is that the majority of disruption is in Labor and Green-held seats. But for a Government that has run on modernizing infrastructure, particularly rail, having a train line out for 18 months will be seen by many as incompetent, whatever the reason for it. It’s the nature of the electorate.

  14. Their ferries are a shambles. Their light rail is a shambles. Horses in a national park are a shambles. Their grants processes are a shambles. Their Covid management was a shambles. Building construction code adherence is a shambles. The stadium destruction is a shambles. Leadership stability is a shambles.
    ——————————
    EVERY.SINGLE.THING

  15. A video of Prime Minister Scott Morrison slipping up at a COP26 address about climate change in Glasgow has gone viral on Chinese social media website Weibo.

    Key points:
    Scott Morrison accidentally said “China” instead of “climate change” during a speech in Glasgow
    A hashtag about the gaffe has attracted millions of clicks on Chinese social media Weibo
    The Prime Minister was previously attacked by netizens for demanding an apology from a Chinese official
    Mr Morrison mistakenly said in the speech on Tuesday “global momentum to tackle China”, when he instead meant to say “climate change”.

    …
    In a subsequent opinion piece from Guancha.com, the state media outlet took aim at the Prime Minister’s accidental remarks and Australia’s climate policy.

    “He doesn’t have a passion to protect the environment but does have anti-China passion under the name of protecting environment,” the opinion piece said.

    “This episode is the actual reflection of his mind.”

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-05/scott-morrison-cop26-gaffe-goes-viral-on-weibo/100597142?

  17. singing bloos @ #298 Friday, November 5th, 2021 – 5:25 pm

    Firefox says:
    Friday, November 5, 2021 at 5:05 pm

    The first Federal Minister for the Environment was Moss Cass, appointed by Gough. The first West Australian Minister for the environment was appointed by John Tonkin. Labor has a long heritage on environmental action.

    Labor has a long heritage of remaining completely fucking stum about their achievements.
    The list of firsts from Labor governments is long, really long.
    Without barely 39 years since federation of Labor governments we’d be swinging from the trees.
    Do you think the average voter knows this?
    Why?

  18. Their ferries are a shambles. Their light rail is a shambles. Horses in a national park are a shambles. Their grants processes are a shambles. Their Covid management was a shambles. Building construction code adherence is a shambles. The stadium destruction is a shambles. Leadership stability is a shambles.

    Yeah, but…
    Imagine how much more expensive it would have been to build it properly, locally, the first time.

  21. I’ve suggested it before.
    A campaign ad which lists the things Labor governments have done scrolling into the distance a la the opening titles from Star Wars (1977) running the entire campaign would be a genuine eye-opener for a huge number of voters which just might give them pause to think about their vote.
    I can hear it now….’Gee, I never knew that,…or that, or,’

  22. Labor seems to be planning a campaign around manufacturing and self-sufficiency, which is something a lot of voters can get behind. Numerous focus groups mention this as an issue, as well as climate change.

    Is it any wonder they lost on a platform of increased wealth redistribution? Not that I’m against that, but many are.

    Finally an election fought on the issues Labor excels at?

  26. Sydney’s Inner West Light Rail will be shut down for 18 months after extensive cracks were fund in all 12 trams that operate on the line.
    ______
    A pinnacle of design and development!

    It serves the inner west, we don’t vote Liberal so don’t count.

  27. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you Phil Coorey, the ever loyal servant of Morrison, bitterly criticising Turnbull and Rudd.

    He’s just salty for not winning the office sweep.

  29. Mundo

    Actually a pretty sensible idea. Basically all the major achievements have come under Labor.

    Superannuation, paid parental leave, Medicare, the NDIS, the Fair Work Commission, the world’s best GFC response, the first budget surplus in Australian history, enterprise bargaining, eliminating trade tariffs, ending conscription etc

  30. China burns over half of the world’s coal fired power generation. And increasing.
    China would do well to dwell on the impacts on rice production, on coastal flooding, on extreme weather events, on global fisheries, and on the disruption to summer glacial meltwater irrigation production instead of leaping on the gaff of a political hack.

  31. Socratessays:
    Friday, November 5, 2021 at 5:19 pm

    SA Transport are out of control on this project. The Liberal appointed DIT DG (from NSW) brought in a NSW tunnnel “expert” to run this project. This completely ignores the cost overruns and toll forecasting disasters that befell several Sydney road tunnel projects.
    ________________
    Be thankful they did not get any experts over from Victoria thats all i can say. Especially anyone involved in the West Gate Tunnel project.

  32. Boerwar @ #330 Friday, November 5th, 2021 – 6:31 pm

    China burns over half of the world’s coal fired power generation. And increasing.
    China would do well to dwell on the impacts on rice production, on coastal flooding, on extreme weather events, on global fisheries, and on the disruption to summer glacial meltwater irrigation production instead of leaping on the gaff of a political hack.

    China produces over half of the world’s manufactured goods.

    China would do well to stop doing that, and allow stupid countries like Australia that abandoned manufacturing and now depend on China to make all their goodies for them revert to a hunter-gatherer level economy.

  33. bakunin says:
    Friday, November 5, 2021 at 6:27 pm

    C@t,

    False flag? Labor climate policy must be a real stinker.
    ____________
    I predict it will be slightly better than the Coalition’s. the width of cigarette paper’s difference perhaps.

  34. Australia is the largest coal exporter country in the world.

    Australia would do well to dwell on the impacts on agriculture, on flooding, on extreme weather events, on the coral before trying to say other countries should stop using coal

  35. In fact the current NSW Government has made it its mission to dump on the inner west of Sydney.

    – massive road developments in areas that would make for excellent urban renewal

    – throwing height limits & development standards to the wind

    – aircraft terminal sized fish markets (read retail development) on precious harbour foreshore

    – trashing existing social housing

    on & on & on.

  36. So soon!

    Nici Lindsay@nicilind
    ·
    35m
    Just got robo-surveyed on Tim Smith, Frydenberg and voting intentions by Community Engagement.

  38. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you Australia’s angriest journalist: Phil “The-Woman-Who-Saved-Australia” Coorey…

  39. My “One of Chile’s finest and most detailed private model railway layouts in HO scale” video on you tube was interrupted by a 16 minute 34 second Clive Palmer video.

  40. hazza4257 @ #329 Friday, November 5th, 2021 – 6:29 pm

    Mundo

    Actually a pretty sensible idea. Basically all the major achievements have come under Labor.

    Superannuation, paid parental leave, Medicare, the NDIS, the Fair Work Commission, the world’s best GFC response, the first budget surplus in Australian history, enterprise bargaining, eliminating trade tariffs, ending conscription etc

    NBN (the proper one) PBS, first minister for multiculturism, the aged pension, widows pension, single mother’s benefit, first minster for women, establishment of womens’ refuges, paid parental leave, universal access to higher education, it goes on and on and on….it’s amazing how much of what we take for granted as being Australia came from Labor governments.

  41. I think this is a good definition of SfM: defined more by his absence than presence. Except of course this week when he’d wish he was absent.

    Morrison may not share Donald Trump’s lurid style, but with Joe Biden in the White House, the Australian prime minister’s political formula has resulted in his country replacing the US as the standout climate laggard of the rich world. That it took one of the world’s most affluent democracies – and the Western country with the highest carbon emissions per capita – so long to commit to net zero makes a mockery of international efforts to share the burden of decarbonisation justly. Vietnam, despite its poor economic status, made the same commitment recently.

    It gets worse. The “plan” for net zero published by Morrison is a joke. “It has nothing in it at all,” says Marc Stears, director of the Sydney Policy Lab: “It really just is ‘some technology will come along’. I can’t think of many political leaders who would be comfortable with such emptiness.” At the time of writing, the Australian government is still sticking to a goal of reducing emissions merely by 26-28 per cent under 2005 levels by 2030, far below equivalent targets set by the US, UK or EU.

    “He is defined more by absence than by presence,” says Kelly of Morrison’s record. That absence – of ambition, of action, of urgency – defines Australia’s climate policies. This absence also slows wider global efforts to combat climate change. At the G20 summit on 31 October it was Morrison who pushed to dilute language in the communiqué pledging to phase out coal power. When the Cop26 summit enters its final stages next week, Australia’s foot-dragging will be a standing rebuke to wider rich-world efforts to persuade developing economies that it is fair for them also to contribute to faster emissions reductions. Australia is the weakest link in those collective efforts.

    https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2021/11/australias-scott-morrison-is-proof-danger-lies-in-the-hollow-politics-of-the-status-quo

  42. hazza4257 @ #321 Friday, November 5th, 2021 – 6:17 pm

    Labor seems to be planning a campaign around manufacturing and self-sufficiency, which is something a lot of voters can get behind. Numerous focus groups mention this as an issue, as well as climate change.

    Is it any wonder they lost on a platform of increased wealth redistribution? Not that I’m against that, but many are.

    Finally an election fought on the issues Labor excels at?

    I’m going to find the Coalition attacks on this interesting as it is also a policy that the Republicans in the US are embracing:

    The failure of the nation’s productive capacity to keep up with its needs was not inevitable. It was a choice. Over the last 30 years, experts and politicians in Washington from both parties helped build a global economic system that prioritized the free flow of capital over the wages of American workers, and the free flow of goods over the resiliency of our nation’s supply chains. We liberalized and expanded trade relations with China under the delusion that it could be influenced into becoming a peace-loving democracy. We ceded more and more of our national sovereignty to multinational organizations like the World Trade Organization, and supported China’s membership to that body.

    The consequences of these bad policies have been disastrous. They’ve created trade patterns that have helped multinational corporations boost their profits by exploiting cheap labor abroad and offshoring America’s industrial commons and the capabilities of its manufacturing sector. As a result, thousands of factories have shuttered, millions of jobs have been shipped overseas and the economic security of the United States is now more vulnerable to unpredictable crises like global pandemics, and America is dangerously dependent on the productive capacity of China, our chief adversary. These policies were sold to us as a path to greater wealth, but they’ve made us weaker and more vulnerable.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/opinion/hawley-supply-chain-trade-policy.html

    (Just substitute Australia for the US).

  47. Pick the good bits out of this:
    Ben Chifley’s Government oversaw the creation of the Commonwealth Employment Service, the introduction of federal funds to the States for public housing construction and the Acoustic Laboratories Act, passed in 1948, which established the Commonwealth Acoustic Laboratories to undertake scientific investigations into hearing and problems associated with noise as it affects individuals.[31][52][53][54] Although it failed in its attempts to establish a national health service, the Chifley Government was successful in making arrangements with the states to upgrade the quality and availability of hospital treatment. The Mental Institutions Benefits Act (1948) paid the states a benefit equal to the charges upon the relatives of mental hospital patients, in return for free treatment. This legislation marked the entry of the Commonwealth into mental health funding.[55] The achievements of both Chifley’s government and those of the previous Curtin Government in expanding Australia’s social welfare services (as characterised by a tenfold increase in commonwealth expenditure on social provision between 1941 and 1949) were brought together under the Social Services Consolidation Act of 1947, which consolidated the various social services benefits, liberalised some existing social security provisions, and increased the rates of various benefits.[56][42][57]

    Among the government’s other legislative achievements included the establishment of a separate Australian citizenship in 1948 and the founding of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Science and education was expanded under the Chiifley Government, with the reorganisation and enlargement of the CSIRO and the passing of the Australian National University Act which provided post-graduate facilities in Australia and augmented the supply of staff for universities.[58][59] Tertiary education extensively benefitted through the establishment of the Australian National University and the Commonwealth Education Office.[21]

    The establishment of the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme to provide ex-servicemen with the opportunity to complete or undertake a university education, with an interim five-year scholars established to encourage other able students to attend universities. This was alongside annual grants to universities to provide the necessary staff and accommodation for the influx of assisted students and ex-servicemen.[59] In addition, returned soldiers were also provided with a war gratuity and entitlement to special unemployment allowances, loans, vocational training, and preference in employment for seven years.[60]

    The creation of the Dairy Industry Fund was established in July 1948 with the purpose of stabilising returns from exports, and again the same year unmatched grants to the States were introduced to assist them in expanding their agricultural extension activities.[61][62] The establishment of a Coal Industry Tribunal and a Joint Coal Board (both in 1946) also brought significant gains for miners; and life insurance came to be comprehensively regulated.

    Chifley in the 1940s
    Among the Chifley Labor Government’s legislation was the post-war immigration scheme, the establishment of Australian citizenship, the beginning of construction of the Snowy Mountains Scheme,[63] the nationalisation of Qantas in 1947 and establishment of Trans Australia Airlines in 1946, improvements in social services,[63] the creation of the Commonwealth Employment Service,[31] the introduction of federal funds to the States for public housing construction,[52] the establishment of a Universities Commission for the expansion of university education,[64] the introduction of a Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and free hospital ward treatment,[31] the reorganisation and enlargement of the CSIRO, and the establishment of a civilian rehabilitation service.[57]

    As noted by one historian, Chifley’s government “balanced economic development and welfare support with restraint and regulation and provided the framework for Australia’s post-war economic prosperity.”[58]

  49. New study proposes expansion of the universe directly impacts black hole growth
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211103200439.htm

    “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory mentioned, which states that this has already happened.” — HHGTTG.

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