Midweek miscellany: Morgan poll, redistributions, Liberal Senate preselections (open thread)

Morgan finds the Coalition with its nose in front; latest redistribution machinations; and Liberal Senate preselections in NSW and Tasmania.

The only new poll for the week is the the weekly Roy Morgan federal poll, which for the second time in recent months credits the Coalition with a two-party preferred lead. In this case it’s by the barest margin of 50.5-49.5, compared with 50-50 last week. The poll is also the first for the term with Labor’s primary vote below 30%, having fallen half a point from last week to 29.5%, with the Coalition up half to 37% and the Greens up half to 13.5%. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1401.

Further:

• The Age/Herald had further results from last week’s Resolve Strategic poll on Sunday, showing 48% support for constitutional recognition of Indigenous people as the first inhabitants of Australia, an even 40% for and against a legislated voice, 33% support for a Commonwealth treaty with 37% opposed, and 35% support for the Makarrata Commission for truth-telling with 31% opposed.

Public suggestions have been published for the Western Australian federal redistribution, with both major parties’ new submissions concurring with the conventional wisdom that the state’s new seat will need to be in Perth’s eastern suburbs. Labor proposes a seat called Farmer in honour of local football legend Graham “Polly” Farmer taking out a large part of the current seat of Hasluck, which would deeper into suburbia in the west. The Liberals propose a seat of Court in honour of two of the party’s past premiers, which would likewise take a large chunk of Hasluck, but extend instead beyond the metropolitan area in the conservative territory of the Avon Valley. The deadline for submission for Victoria’s federal redistribution is on Friday, to be published next Wednesday. The finalisation of Western Australia’s state redistribution is also due “no later” than December 1.

• Two Liberal Senate preselections will be held on the weekend, one being to fill the vacancy created by Marise Payne’s retirement in New South Wales. Moderate-aligned former state government minister Andrew Constance is routinely invoked as the front-runner, but Peter Dutton is supporting conservative former ACT Senator Zed Seselja, and Monica Tudehope, former deputy chief-of-staff to Dominic Perrottet and daughter of Finance Minister Damien Tudehope, has support from Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black. Also in the field are former parliamentarians Dave Sharma and Lou Amato, NSW RSL president James Brown, and Lowy Institute research fellow Jess Collins.

• A vote of 67 preselectors on Saturday will determine the Tasmanian Liberals’ Senate ticket, in which conservative-backed Clarence mayor Brendan Blomeley hopes to wrest the second position from moderate incumbent Richard Colbeck. Conservative incumbent Claire Chandler appears assured of top position, with another conservative, Simon Behrakis, a possibility for the usually unfruitful third position. UPDATE: Informed local observer Kevin Bonham notes in comments that Simon Behrakis has filled a vacancy in state parliament, and is presumably no longer in the running.

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.

1,252 comments on “Midweek miscellany: Morgan poll, redistributions, Liberal Senate preselections (open thread)”

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  1. Fess

    It depends on who they put up..

    The vote, though, was complicated by support for former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet’s one-time chief policy advisor, Monica Tudehope.

    Tudehope, the daughter of former NSW finance minister and upper house MP Damien Tudehope, was supported by Perrottet, who released a video in the lead-up to the vote calling her the party’s “future”

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/dave-sharma-s-shock-preselection-win-secures-liberal-senate-spot-20231126-p5emus.html

  2. Confessionssays:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 5:34 pm
    A white male winning preselection for the Liberal party? Now there’s fresh news.
    —————
    I know you don’t mean it this way but that sort of comment is both racist and sexist.

    The first step to stopping racism and sexism is to take a zero tolerance to it.

  3. So what is Dom Perrotet up to now? If scuttlebut is to be believed, he is joining a political consultancy with another recently departed former premier.

  4. sprocket_ says:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 5:45 pm

    nath is a savant on ethnic heritage – and he is right on Dave Sharma. Another product of the Indian diaspora created by the British Empire
    ________
    I recently discovered I am 1% Jewish according to my Ancestry.com DNA test.

  5. Fess, you are right – the Liberals ‘woman problem’ will persist as long as they keep selecting men in safe positions.

    If they had quotas like Labor, the retirement of Marise Payne would only have female contenders to select from. Not so.

  6. sprocket_ says:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 6:20 pm

    nath, on 23andme I scored 2% Asiatic/Mongol
    ________
    nice. A little bit of the old Genghis no doubt.

  7. sprocket:

    Yep, quotas are the only way to get more women into the partyroom. We keep hearing from Liberals that they preselect on merit, yet all we see are has-been also-rans like Seselja, Constance and now Sharma.

  8. sprocket_says:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 6:18 pm
    Fess, you are right – the Liberals ‘woman problem’ will persist as long as they keep selecting men in safe positions.

    If they had quotas like Labor, the retirement of Marise Payne would only have female contenders to select from. Not so.
    —————-
    Erin Moran or Charlotte Mortlock might have been good choices.

  9. Michaelia Cash, with bright blue contact lenses and bright red lipstick, on the news with a complaint about the new terrorism laws to be introduced into parliament this week, saying two totally disingenuous things about them:
    1. ‘Why did the government leaver it till the last week of parliament?’
    What’s that got to do with thje price of eggs!?!
    2. ‘The devil will be in the detail.’

    Meaningless pap, simply meant as earworms.

  10. Ven says Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 9:46 am


    UK’s flagship post-Brexit trade deal worth even less than previously thought, OBR says: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/25/uks-flagship-post-brexit-trade-deal-worth-even-less-than-previously-thought-obr-says

    Oh! What a surprise or not!!
    Remember it was negotiated by BoJo. Policy, smolicy, Pfft.
    Brexit has been an all-round disaster. When you do something just to get into power at the expense of the country it always backfires.

    I would imagine that most of the people who voted to leave wouldn’t give a rat’s bottom about a free trade deal. If anything, they would be more likely to oppose it.

  11. The Liberals have to preselect more women but Jewish Australians are a minority group and the Liberals lost Aston with a woman from a minority background.

    And? A woman lost her seat therefore it’s crickets for women forfrickinever?!

    Seriously?!

  12. Mexicanbeemersays:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 6:09 pm
    Confessionssays:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 5:34 pm
    A white male winning preselection for the Liberal party? Now there’s fresh news.
    —————
    I know you don’t mean it this way but that sort of comment is both racist and sexist.

    The first step to stopping racism and sexism is to take a zero tolerance to it.

    I agree with you on that MB. It does sound a bit that way. There are certainly better ways of expressing it.

  13. nath says:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 6:17 pm
    ________
    “I recently discovered I am 1% Jewish according to my Ancestry.com DNA test.”

    Intrigued. Is Jewish a unique DNA?..And the other 99%?
    Anything else interesting?

  14. Confessions @ #983 Sunday, November 26th, 2023 – 6:30 pm

    The Liberals have to preselect more women but Jewish Australians are a minority group and the Liberals lost Aston with a woman from a minority background.

    And? A woman lost her seat therefore it’s crickets for women forfrickinever?!

    Seriously?!

    Katie Allen, who has been chosen to run in Higgins again against Michelle Ananda Raj, is one of only a few Liberal Moderate females who have been preselected I can think of.

  15. PaulTu says:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 6:33 pm

    nath says:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 6:17 pm
    ________
    “I recently discovered I am 1% Jewish according to my Ancestry.com DNA test.”

    Intrigued. Is Jewish a unique DNA?..And the other 99%?
    Anything else interesting?
    _____________
    I assume there are all kinds of ethnic DNA markers. I assume the Jewish DNA comes through a German great great grandfather from Prussia.

  16. sprocket__

    nath, on 23andme I scored 2% Asiatic/Mongol

    All that raping and pillaging across Europe left its mark..

    Did you mention a Hungarian connection in your family?

  17. Confessionssays:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 6:30 pm
    The Liberals have to preselect more women but Jewish Australians are a minority group and the Liberals lost Aston with a woman from a minority background.

    And? A woman lost her seat therefore it’s crickets for women forfrickinever?!

    Seriously?!
    ————-
    The Liberals have to pick more women since they don’t win elections without first winning the women vote and Howard had a strong group of women MPs.

  18. C@tmomma @ #1171 Sunday, November 26th, 2023 – 6:33 pm

    Confessions @ #983 Sunday, November 26th, 2023 – 6:30 pm

    The Liberals have to preselect more women but Jewish Australians are a minority group and the Liberals lost Aston with a woman from a minority background.

    And? A woman lost her seat therefore it’s crickets for women forfrickinever?!

    Seriously?!

    Katie Allen, who has been chosen to run in Higgins again against Michelle Ananda Raj, is one of only a few Liberal Moderate females who have been preselected I can think of.

    C@t:

    It’s dire really. And while their politics are not my politics it can’t be left to one side of politics to do the heavy lifting on gender in our parliament.

  19. From C@t earlier in the day

    meher baba,
    I get where you’re coming from but I need to lay out the fact that as more has become known about ASD, finer degrees of suffering have been delineated. To the extent that, it’s absolutely believable to hear that some of the most creative geniuses on the planet could be said to have suffered, are suffering, from ASD. Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates for 3. Though ‘suffering’ is probably a word that is too extreme when you consider that they have built highly successful lives and businesses. However, at the other end of the ‘spectrum’ there are people, who my son has looked after, that are non-verbal, one was even stationary, in that he got up every day and stood in the one place all day until he went to bed again, and just stared out the window while he was awake. And there are an infinite number of gradations between those two extremes. So, some need very little looking after and their families simply need a break during the week, whereas others have to be taken away from their families and put in secure homes, because they need specialist care 24/7 and it’s just about impossible for those families to cope with doing it. Hell, it’s hard work for the Disability Carers, who are trained to do it!

    You can’t read about it in a dry textbook because that just doesn’t cover the unique abnormalities of each individual with ASD. So, what is needed at the end of the day is specialist knowledge and specialist care, in a ‘spectrum’ unique to each individual.

    Brilliantly explained C@t. A relative of mine has a child who is suffering from FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder) and is on the NDIS. As the name suggests, it is a condition that is caused by exposure to alcohol in the womb and cannot be cured. It too presents in multiple layers of abnormality, some of them very similar to autism and can only be diagnosed and dealt with by the appropriate specialists, if the child is to have anything approaching a ‘normal’ fulfilling life. It would be an absolute tragedy to deny them that opportunity.

  20. Greg Mirabella stood aside from the Victorian Liberal Party presidency to concentrate on winning the third senate spot. The fact that he missed out on pre-selection must come as a major blow. The ability of the Liberals to win that 3rd spot largely depends on what happens with the right wing minor parties. If they continue to be a rag tag mix of groups then the LNP’s chance are probably higher than if there was a single RW alternative to emerge.

  21. Has Sinn Féin’s day passed? (Noting their motto is Tiocfaidh ár lá “our day will come”)

    After an expansive budget but before the rioting:
    Sinn Féin 29% -3
    Fianna Fáil 16 +1
    Fine Gael 20 =
    Independents 13 +1
    Labour 4 – 1
    Greens 4 =
    Social Democrats 6 =
    People Before Profit 3 =
    Aontú 2 =
    Others 3 +2

    How will the rioting play out?
    My reading of today’s media is that general lawlessness on Dublin’s streets is being emphasised rather than the racist/immigration undertones. The Civil War parties will be adept at running on law and order but it would be very amusing to see Sinn Féin give it a go.

  22. A four-day truce between Israel and Hamas has been condemned by speakers at a pro-Palestine rally in Melbourne on Sunday and described as falling short of addressing the long-running plight of Palestinians living under occupation in Gaza.

    As some Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners were released as part of the truce agreement over the weekend, at least 10,000 people gathered in Melbourne’s CBD for the seventh consecutive Free Palestine rally, where speakers criticised the temporary ceasefire.

    Federal independent senator Lidia Thorpe tearfully told the crowd that 30,000 of her constituents had contacted her about the war in Gaza, wanting the government to act.

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/we-know-your-pain-thorpe-addresses-free-palestine-crowds-in-melbourne-20231126-p5emu0.html

    Nice that Thorpe has been able to move on from the referendum. What Voice? What Treaty?

  23. I think I need a good lie down. On Insiders this morning James Campbell went against the conservative barrows being repeated by some on the couch (community opposition to transmission lines and nuclear power). Some of his earlier contributions went a bit beyond the pale though.

  24. Andrew Constance biggest claim to fame was he denounced the Morrisons government inaction over the Black Summer bushfires. So it looks hypocritical to continually want to join what is left of that team.

  25. Seselja is now in a very embarrassing position (if a person like him can ever feel embarrassed). He very publicly announced that he was leaving the ACT for regional NSW – which turned out to be Queanbeyan across the border.

    The ACT Liberals, especially the opposition leader Elizabeth Lee, will be very nervous if Seselja somehow returns as party strongman. Lee had a bit of a respite following the party conference last week where moderates replaced hard -righters in some positions. Nonetheless the position of chairperson (held by a Seselja ally) has not yet been filled as the more moderate candidate had to leave due to a personal emergency.

  26. D&M

    Sadly, no Hungarian.

    My great grandfather on my mother’s side was Prussian – born in Riga, which up to 1866 was part of the nascent Empire (if only they had been more colonialist 🙂

    A polyglot of DNA with any Central European

  27. Observing that the Victorian Liberals pre-selected a white male is neither sexist nor racist.

    It is a fact.

    The LNP have a women problem.

    They also have an odd definition of moderate! Someone who votes with Barnaby Joyce, Pauline Hanson and Genghis Khan on every issue every time is far from moderate.

  28. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/mirabella-beaten-by-former-preacher-in-senate-preselection-battle-20231126-p5emu4.html

    Mirabella beaten by former preacher in Senate preselection battle
    By Broede Carmody
    November 26, 2023 — 6.27pm

    Greg Mirabella has failed in his preselection bid to return to the Senate after lingering resentments from his time as Liberal Party president splintered the conservative vote.

    Mirabella was beaten by Kyle Hoppitt, a 41-year-old small business owner and former Baptist preacher, during a ballot of grassroots members and party officials in Melbourne’s northern suburbs on Sunday.

    The vote, which was held at the Moonee Valley Racecourse and ran for more than three hours, had shaped up as a de facto contest between state Opposition Leader John Pesutto and federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. But in the end, neither of the leaders’ candidates emerged successful.

    Mirabella was Dutton’s pick to replace David Van as No.3 on the Liberal Party’s Victorian Senate ticket at the next election, due by 2025, while Pesutto had endorsed the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s first female president, Karen Sobels. The businesswoman did not make the final round, which led to Hoppitt receiving about 187 votes to Mirabella’s 173, according to two Liberal sources with knowledge of the vote.

    Van was elected to the Senate in 2019, when Victoria elected three Liberal senators, but now sits on the crossbench following allegations of inappropriate behaviour – including towards independent senator Lidia Thorpe and former Liberal senator Amanda Stoker. His term is due to expire in 2025. The crossbencher says the allegations against him are “simply not true”.

  29. MABWMsays:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 7:12 pm
    Observing that the Victorian Liberals pre-selected a white male is neither sexist nor racist.

    It is a fact.
    ——————-
    legally speaking it could be racist and sexist if said in a negative way but knew Fessy wasn’t doing that.

  30. The vote, which was held at the Moonee Valley Racecourse and ran for more than three hours, had shaped up as a de facto contest between state Opposition Leader John Pesutto and federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. But in the end, neither of the leaders’ candidates emerged successful.

    So, 2/2 failures for Dutton today!?! He really has lost control of his party. 😀

  31. Bystander,
    Interesting that you mention FASD. My mind always turns to it as the explanation for Indigenous Youth running amok in Alice Springs and Queensland. Yet all we hear are simplistic condemnations from the likes of Dutton and the Coalition mouthpieces like Mundine and Price.

  32. D&M

    I got to visit Budapest in 2019 – wonderful city, definitely a highlight of Europe. Love the old metro and the baths.

    But the language had me stumped. No Slavic whatsoever could I detect, so gave up and spoke English.

  33. “Mirabella was Dutton’s pick to replace David Van as No.3 on the Liberal Party’s Victorian Senate ticket at the next election …”

    A bit presumptuous in expecting to win a third seat?

  34. sprocket_ @ #1009 Sunday, November 26th, 2023 – 7:22 pm

    C@t, it would appear that the Southern States are telling the QLD copper ariviste to get back in his lane

    Rather. The religious wingnuts know he’s not one of them, and the Moderates know he’s definitely not one of them.

    Actually, Dark Horse Dave Sharma was probably the best of a bad bunch for the Liberals to settle on in NSW. He’s a chameleon, so, should the Moderates take back control (if they have any sense in the Liberal Party they’ll go Tealish), he’ll be perfectly positioned to shine. 🙂

  35. C@t: “He’s a chameleon …”

    Indeed! Let’s sing along now …

    “Sharma, Sharma, Sharma, Sharma
    Sharma Chameleon …”

  36. Pueo:

    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 3:48 pm

    [‘I seem to recall there were some Bludgers interested in Richard III and the mystery of the Princes.

    There is a very interesting looking doco on SBS 8:25 this evening.’]

    Thanks. I have more than a passing interest in Richard III, and the plight of the two princes, as does laughton. I’ll tune in.

  37. Oliver Sutton says:
    Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 7:31 pm
    C@t: “He’s a chameleon …”

    Indeed! Let’s sing along now …

    “Sharma, Sharma, Sharma, Sharma
    Sharma Chameleon …”

    ______________

    Post of the day! 🙂

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