Via Lateline (which will not be broadcast for another two hours in the Poll Bludger’s remote western outpost), Blair in comments informs us that Newspoll has jumped on the 61-39 bandwagon set in train by ACNielsen and Morgan. An appropriate note on which to open another exciting new instalment of Idle Speculation.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
Idle speculation: 61-39 edition
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214 Comments
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This is a common line of tripe in the tory press, and I suppose it’s no surprise that Edward echoes it here. Politics is a profession, and people who want a career in politics naturally set out to do the necessary apprenticeship to learn the trade before they put themselves forward for
preselection. In the ALP there are three career paths – through the party secretariats, through MPs offices, and through the unions. The Liberals have the first two but not the third. Where do you think Minchin and Robb came from? The Liberals also have old-school-tie networks in business and the professions, particlarly the bar. Criticising career politicians for being career politicians is like criticising barristers for not being astronauts. I don’t think a party which can produce and repeatedly promote someone like Santoro is in any position to be sanctimonious by the way.
These are the pre-Latham margins :
Blair 1.1%
Herbert 1.4%
Longman 1.5%
Moreton 1.2%
Petrie 3.5%
Add Bonner which will change hands with a sneeze and you have 6 with or without Lamming’s seat of Bowman.
Given that Rudd is a conservative queenslander I think it’s safe to assume that those that voted for Beazley in 01 would come back to Rudd. Meaning the amount of votes he has to turn is actually deceptively small.
Well said Adam .. though Labor also has a healthy representation on the bar. I think a law degree is also a natural precursor to politics .. the “law”, really, being simply an independant judicial wing of government.
Still .. law degree or not, everyone still has to prove themselves in front of the rank and file members for a particular seat to win pre selection (did someone mention democracy?)
Adam,
I am sure the Soviet nomenklatura had similar views about career paths too!
And hey it cant be bad because the other side is so much badder. How very relativistic! Are there no absolute truths left Adam?
ok .. caveat to the above .. you might get an easier ride through pre-selection of your Maxine Mekew or Peter Garret
or if you are functionally literate
You haven’t tried going for Labor pre-selection and lost the ballot by any chance have you Edward?
Lol, nah i dont think you can peg me in that box.
BTW does the union bureacractic Party still have preselection ballots? I thought everything was more of a Leninist organised flavour without the messiness of internal democracy in the ALP.
Yes you see Labor can’t win whatever we do. If we recruit our MPs from the labour movement, we are accused of promoting hacks and logs, while if we recruit outside the labour movement we are accused of celebrity hunting. Where would have us find our MPs, Edward? In the Melbourne Club? This is just routine Tony Abbot propaganda bullshit and quite frankly we ignore it, so Edward should save his keystrokes.
To get to the point of substance, the core members of a Rudd government will be Rudd, Swan, Gillard, Tanner, Garrett, Roxon, M Ferguson, Evans, Conroy, McClelland and Smith. All are perfectly competent and will be perfectly good ministers. Macklin, Emerson, Plibersek, Wong, Ludwig, Burke, Bevis and Bowen are also perfectly sound. There will be a few duds in the tail, as there are in all ministries, certainly in Howard’s. But that won’t matter much. As Jim Hackett once said, “don’t worry old boy, they do all the numbers for you.”
Is Bob McMullan still around?
ahh thats right .. Federal/State relations .. he’s also a competent minister with alot of experience
Well said, Adam – I would hope that the more right leaning contributors to this log might do better than resorting to tired old propaganda.
Lets take a look at the Howard government inner sanctum:
Howard – lived at home till 32, in parliament three years later, has spent his whole life being a political operative
Downer – son of a VERY privileged diplomatic dynasty (I mean, how many of us have Canberra suburbs named after anyone in their family?)
Abbott – Attended Riverview (expensive private school), & Syd Uni, student politician, trained to be a priest.
Costello – student politician, barrister.
Hmmm, can’t see too many “ordinary” Australians in there.
This is not to comment on their competence or otherwise, but to point out that it’s very easy to pigeonhole any of the main parties.
Yes McMullan is there too. I would also bring back Duncan Kerr, but I doubt that will happen. PLUS from Vic we will have Shorten, Dreyfus, Marles and Jacinta Collins arriving, and probably Feeney too – all very good prospects. I don’t know as much about new talent from other states.
Yes Rodney Cavalier and John Button – extreme right wing former Labor Ministers who have made exactly the same point about how incestuous and narrowly based the ALP is !
Embittered has-beens always say stuff like that. In Button’s case his whole vastly over-rated career was driven by colossal conceit and vanity so I am not terribly interested in his opinions.
Perhaps Labor should adopt the preselection processes of the Liberal Party, Edward? So that we too can have Noel Chrichton-Browne, Santo Santoro, Pauline Hanson and Ken Aldred as candidates? I can hardly wait.
The “team so far” in WA. http://www.wa.alp.org.au/about/upcomingcampaigns/federal.php
Peter Tinley for one is a good candidate I believe? Iraq vet even?
Why don’t we just say that there are not many regular workers/min wage/majority of Austrian type people in either party, and leave it at that?
The systems sucks but the people who run the system love it, so unless there is a coup, its gonna stay.
I mean one of the Vic Green MPs was/is a secretary in one of the unions. The Greens don’t get many from there but some.
The point is, if you want to do something political, there is activism (union, environmentalist, etc) or being rich and/or famous.
Did I miss a path?
Dave said
The systems sucks but the people who run the system love it, so unless there is a coup, its gonna stay.
exactly
I mean one of the Vic Green MPs was/is a secretary in one of the unions. The Greens don’t get many from there but some.
thats a growing trend
Why don’t we just say that there are not many regular workers/min wage/majority of Austrian type people in either party, and leave it at that?
What i have been saying all the long. I am a left unionist ordinary worker and Green candidate, The LABOR party choses someone that cannot relate to the ordinary person but with the ALP tribe mentality she will win and nothing in Kingston will change. Although i might not agree with the political positions of many Independents i have to admire those electorates brave and smart enough to see outside the tribes and look at the individual . Most independents work harder and have a huge following EG. Bob Such member for Fisher in SA
And what is your evidence that Amanda Rishworth cannot relate to the ordinary person? Do you think the good folk of Noarlunga are more likely to agree with her mild social democratic views or your 1970s-leftovers Marxoid views?
I don’t see why any swing from the Coalition to Labor should sweep Katter up in the tide.
I assume you have only listed Leichhardt and Forde because the sitting members are retiring? The other seat that looks like a ‘reach’ is Ryan, although to be fair the electorate has shown its willingness to turn around big margins to protest against the Howard Government before.
Thanks for the response. Can I trouble you for a wider assessment of which seats you think the ALP should be looking at in other states?
Adam, the assumption is based on the fact that I can’t think of a single ALP or Coalition member at any level who can relate to ordinary people.
Bill never actually said that people in Kingston would relate to him, just that he is an ordinary worker.
Adam you seem to have Marxaphobia. But you need not worry i am neither a Marxist, Maoist or Communist. I am a Unionist and Green if my views of the world ills worry you than can you please show us how the ALP will help the destitute, the pensioner , the unemployed etc. The people in Kingston that struggle day to day to survive where overjoyed at the prospect of broadband coverage. I struggle to pay for dial up.
I think the Liberal majority in Leichhardt is greatly inflated by Entsch’s personal popularity – he is certainly a member who can relate to local people, Dave (what an idiotic comment by the way – have you ever actually watched a competent politician campaign?). Forde is suburbanising rapidly and will be at risk if there is a big swing.
Charlie, outside Qld, if the current polls are even half accurate, Labor is looking at three gains in SA (Kingston, Makin and Wakefield), maybe two in Tas (Bass and Braddon, though these are parochial seats and hard to predict), Solomon in the NT (where we have found a candidate who is an even bigger ocker than Tollner), at least four in NSW (Parramatta, Lindsay, Eden-Monaro and Dobell), maybe more (Page, Robertson, plus of course Wentworth and Bennelong, although I rather doubt this), and maybe even something in Vic (Deakin perhaps). WA is too hard to call at present. We could lose two, we could win four (Stirling, Hasluck, Canning, Kalgoorlie). But seven months out all this is very tentative.
What about a few of the ‘fairly safe’ seats – let’s say Paterson, Hughes, Cowper, Boothby, Sturt, McMillan, Corangamite, La Trobe and Gippsland?
In Victoria the ALP should be able to get back McMillan, lost in 2004.
Deakin and Latrobe are possibles, with Corangamite and McEwen if the swing is really on.
But of course Victoria’s coming off a historically high base, so probably best to just put us down for one; two if we *really* have to
(Of course McMillan, lost at the last, was notionally Liberal after the restiribution, so not *really* lost but YKWIM…)
Yes but Zahra had some personal vote in the Valley which will now be lost. I think there would have to be a very big statewide swing before McMillan became a real prospect. I think Deakin and Corangamite are better chances, especially with a better candidate in Corangamite instead of McMullin.
Adam says
Labor is looking at three gains in SA (Kingston, Makin and Wakefield),
I would say Boothby is a real chance
Yes, CZ was a popular local member.
Still, it has to be a better proposition than La Trobe, and the sitting members in McEwen and Gippsland seem (to me as an outsider) more entrenched.
In any case, the bottom line is still that one, two at the outside from Victoria is the best to hope for for the ALP.
Martin B,
I’m speaking from memory – a highly unreliable resource for an old bloke – but I think you’ll find that Victoria is coming off a low base. Labor’s vote in 2004 in Victoria was its second worst since 1977 (1990 in the wake of the financial disasters attributed to the Cain Government was the only other worse result for Labor in that lengthy period). It’s very rare in recent history for Victoria not to have a 2PP Labor majority, and it looks very likely to occur this time, with the possibility that it will be big. If so, the fact that there are no seats on the pendulum at less than 5% is unlikely to protect Government candidates.
I don’t have 2PP figures for individual States to hand (Adam you quoted Queensland 2004 2PP figures, in a post to-day; can you point us to your source for 2PPs by individual State?)
sa 3-4 nsw 4 tas 2 nt 1 vic 1 wa say 2 how many in qld? how many to have a 2-3 seat majority?
Was speaking to one of my clients today and in general conversation said that he has been disappointed that Howard didn’t go last year and whilst he has voted Liberal more often than ALP (and has voted Lib since Howard won in 1996), he won’t be voting for the Libs whilst Howard is at the helm. Stated he was told old, has become arrogant and should have retired. He also stated that Howard and the Liberal Party had misread the 2004 result, it wasn’t a vote for Howard but a vote against Latham!
Interesting discussion but backs up what the electorate is thinking.
Don’t compare this year to 2001 or 2004 – the difference in 2007 is that Howard is now 7 years older (68yo) and he should have stepped down for the greater good of the Liberal party. He hasn’t and it will in all likelihood cost the the Coalition government. Simple as that.
Labor can’t win McMillan, I mean they preselected Ian Maxfield’s wife, and Ian was caned in Narracan in the state election. His name is NOT popular.
Broadbent is a perennial one term wonder but he’s been loud this term so he should have built the profile to hold it.
On Leichhardt I think there is a real chance the National Party will gain that seat.
who is this candidate in McMillan?
ah Christine Maxfield – thanks Google
Oh, well, if there’s a dud preselected that obviously doesn’t help. My comments were in ignorance of preselections.
Peter:
Sorry, my comment was ill advised. The ALP primary vote in 2004 was terrible and the 2PP was certainly down from the previous couple of elections.
However, despite this they held all of their seats (except McMillan ‘lost at the redistribution’). In terms of number of seats won you have to go back to 1987 to get a better result for the ALP.
So it’s certainly not a historically high base. But in relative terms, the seats held compared to the 2PP vote (let alone the primary!) is as good as it’s been in recent history.
So the end result, as discussed above, is that there are few Liberal seats in Victoria in the winnable range.
And it’s not just that a 5+% swing is needed, it’s that a few of those Lib/Nats in that 5-10% zones are popular members who will get a personal vote (McEwen, Gippsland, Higgins – though don’t ask me why…).
So if you think Bruce Bilson will get a 9.4% swing against him in Dunkley, that’s one thing, otherwise I think it’s the seats discussed above: Deakin, Corangamite, La Trobe and McMillan (if Christine is not as bad as George thinks
. Maybe Gippsland.
Labor’s big problem has been changing leaders repeatedly while in opposition, choosing a loony and then going to a staid repeat candidate who represented the last of a long dead ministry which didn’t appeal to a modern electorate. Hopefully, with Rudd, Labor has broken the cycle.
I think it will be time to talk about if the Labor vote has peaked when the 2PP is 63-37 in Labor’s favour. I just wanted to be first to say this. I’m not saying this level will hold up for the election, but Kevin’s cunning combination of conceding on Telstra and converting fraudband to broadband should be worth another two per cent.
Any predictions on Kevin’s next left-field throw?
Bill,
If the ordinary people did not want the Labor’s chosen candidates (or the Liberal ones for that matter), they wouldn’t vote for them. But they just keep on doing so. It’s frustrating for third parties, but that’s the way it is.
Quiz question: What is the false statement in the opening section of Fran Bailey’s website?
http://www.franbaileymp.com/about%20fran/biography/biography.htm
And just to fully correct my mistatement, apart from 1990, Labor’s 2PP in Victoria in 2004 was it’s lowest since 1977
Yet they still held a majority of seats…
Labor is very lucky with the current boundaries in Victoria. The commissioners would have been quite entitled to create two ultra-safe Labor seats in the corridor of suburbs running from Oakleigh to Dandenong. Instead they split it up so that it makes one fairly safe seat (Hotham), and provides enough votes to tip Isaacs, Bruce, Chisholm and Holt to Labor by small margins. Also Danby keeps Melbourne Ports Labor by winning Jewish votes in Caulfield. Plus we have good local members holding down Ballarat and Bendigo.
“Quiz question: What is the false statement in the opening section of Fran Bailey’s website?”
My suggestion: Fran claims to be “the first woman from any political party to represent a rural electorate”.
I’m not sure of the Federal Parliament but certainly in state parliaments there have been women representing rural electorates. Just to give one Valerie Callister was elected to represent the seat of Morwell in Victoria’s LA in 1981.
I’m sorry if what i posted was too long. Just thought the comments where interesting
Well, I think it’s clear she means in federal parliament. Also Morwell is hardly “rural.” Try again.
Just in case anyone’s confused, what Bill Weller has just referred to is not actually there.
Oh, and of course federally Enid Lyon’s seat was what is now Braddon. That’s fairly rural.
Well maybe, but there is a more clear-cut false statement
“Also Morwell is hardly “rural.†”
I don’t think someone who represents Hurstbridge, Warburton, Healesville and Craigieburn (until the redistribution) can get too pernickity about what’s *really* rural :-p
OK time’s up.
“the first Victorian woman to be elected to the House of Representatives”
Anyone remember Joan Child? Helen Mayer? Doris Blackburn?
Really Fran.
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