As reported in various News Limited papers, a Galaxy poll conducted over the weekend shows Labor suffering a 2 per cent drop in the primary vote since the previous poll four weeks ago, and a slight narrowing of their two-party lead. Curiously, Galaxy’s figure of 10 per cent for the Greens is at least double what Newspoll has given them in the past four months. Also included are figures on Liberal leadership preference which indicate voters are least unlikely to vote Coalition if John Howard remains Prime Minister. The following table shows two-party and primary vote results from Galaxy’s national federal polls this year:
| TWO-PARTY | PRIMARY | ||||
| ALP | LNP | ALP | LNP | ||
| July 30 | 54 | 46 | 44 | 41 | |
| July 2 | 55 | 45 | 46 | 41 | |
| June 4 | 53 | 47 | 44 | 42 | |
| May 14 | 57 | 43 | 49 | 39 | |
| April 23 | 58 | 42 | 49 | 37 | |
434 Comments
This poll is right on the money, I’d say – Galaxy being the most accurate of all the pollsters – and gives the Coalition plenty of time to strengthen its primary vote before the election. It also demonstrates yet again why the PM is the best person to lead the Government to the election, despite all the squealing from ignoramuses like Andrew Bolt.
This Galaxy is not much use. You have to ask why Galaxy is consistently below all the other polls and also question the very odd June 4th Poll that saved Howard’s bacon.
We have a Newspoll last week at 55/45. a Morgan phone poll with an emphatic 59/41 and we are supposed to believe the last 7 days have been so wonderful for the government that they have picked up 3-6% . Clearly rediculous. The Morgan polls have proven accurate this year in State elections.
Where on earth are Galaxy polling Liberal safe seats? Pardon my cynicism, but I will wait for tomorrows? ACNeilsen. If there is again significant differnce Galaxy will have to assess the mix of areas they choose for polling. If they are in the same ball park then I will believe the gap has closed.
Newspoll 20/22 July
TPP 55/45
Primary 47/40
ACNeilsen 12/14 July
TPP 58/42
Primary 49/39
Morgan Phone Poll 25/26 July
TPP 59/41
Primary 48/35
Kina, Taking into account margin of error this poll is quite consistent with the other polls. Newspoll and Morgan (F2F) were 55/45. Acnielsen was 56/44 using the same, less volatile preference distribution method as the other pollsters. It’s the Morgan phone poll which looks a bit out of place.
As for the June 4 Galaxy, Rouge polls do happen. It’s a reality of polling, not some great conspiracy on the part of the polling company. I really can’t see why you persist with this fanciful assertion. I guess the 60/40 rouge Newspoll a few weeks back indicates Newspoll is barracking for Labor?
I do agree however that Galaxy is slightly understating the Labor primary. However, if you look at their predictions for the Greens, it is as William states about double that of the other pollsters. The coalition is not the beneficiary of the lower ALP vote, the Greens are. Hence there is little impact on the TPP figure.
A lot of partisan ‘anaylsis’ of the polls lately. I’m not sure what the point is? You are only deluding yourselves. Throw away the rose coloured glasses. (This applies to both sides of the political divide)
Steven Kaye Says:
July 30th, 2007 at 2:13 am
It also demonstrates yet again why the PM is the best person to lead the Government to the election….
Steven, on what grounds does this poll demonstrate the PM as the best person to lead the Govt to the next election ?
William ^^ noted that
” Also included are figures on Liberal leadership preference which indicate voters are least unlikely to vote Coalition if John Howard remains Prime Minister”.
How is JWH the best person if the poll indicates he the least likely Liberal leadership person least likely to attract votes for the Coalition ?
Your logic escapes me.
This result is exactly as I expected and as foreshadowed by Galaxy principal, David Briggs, last week when he stated that recent polls had been overestimating Labor’s vote by about 2%.
If you are the least likely person in the Coalition leadership to attract votes for your party are you not the WORST person to have in that position ?
Misread William: apologies Steven and William. DOHH.
James there is some partisan analysis of the polls evident at any place you want to debate politics and the polls as indicators of election forecasting.
I admit I dont pay much attention to Galaxy polls unless you put them against others like ACNeisen and Morgan.
However, most here that I have read in the last 6 months don’t have that awful tendency to dismiss a poll completely when it brings bad news for the team they support or make outlandish predictions when a poll brings good news for the team they personally support.
What gets alot of attention more so than the poll figures themselves are-
(a) The way the figures are interpreted by media, particularly in The Australian;
(b) The ‘news’ the poll brings- Often headlines put a positive twist on the results according to the writers political bent or what some call editorial directives;
(c) The effect the polls are expected to have on the tactics used by the contesting parties.
For example, not so long ago there was speculation in the papers that Costello could/ought to be made leader of the Coalition before the election because some back benchers were getting narky about consistently poor poll results for the Coalition.
This set off a debate in this blog about whether or not Costello could/should/would get someone to ‘tap Howard on the shoulder’.
I think your view that most in here are wearing “rose coloured glasses” and “deluding yourselves” is over the top and could only be directed at a small percentage of contributors to this blog.
James said ‘Rouge polls do happen’. Only in France!
The primary vote gap between Labor and Coal is 3 pts in Galaxy, 7 pts in Newspoll, 10 pts in AC Nielson and 13 pts in the latest Morgan phone poll. I would have expected the Haneef affair to do damage to the Coal; this seemed to be the case in the Morgan phone. Will have to wait until Friday for Morgan F2F; the last Morgan F2F seemed to be overly Coal favourable, so will expect a correction.
This may be a drift back from Labor to the Greens following the policy announcement in Tas?
How many people do Galaxy poll? 1000 or more(like Newspoll and AC Nielsen)?
The Haneef stuff probably helps the Government. Even after the charges against him were dropped on Friday, the majority of callers to radio talkback were still branding the guy as an Islamic terrorist. Demonisation of Muslims is still a powerful electoral tool for Howard and his mates.
I’ll say again, in a time of supposed economic prosperity and a media concentration on national security, it’s remarkable the ALP has any sort of lead in the polls, whether it’s 8 points or 12 points.
A drift to the Greens meanings very little in the grand scheme of things; they will overwhelmingly preference back to Labor because Greens voters are fundamentally amongst the one-third of the electorate who are Howard-haters.
This poll, which comes from the most accurate pollster last Federal election, shows that there is real movement back to the Government, and that we are well on track for a fifth Howard Government.
Happy birthday, Mr Howard!
Why well back on track? Just because there was swing to the Coalition from the last poll doesn’t mean there will be a swing in the next poll :S What’s to say the swing won’t go back to Labor?
Galaxy’s major party primaries have been outstanding at elections for some years now.
But they do appear to be tracking somewhat to the right of Newspoll and ACN. Curious.
Nostrodamus and Steven Kaye getting carried away by a 1% swing to the Coalition? Hilarious! 54 – 46 would be a 7% swing to the ALP(2PP), an election winning lead.
The SMH letters page is full of vile against Howard and Andrews, the like of which I haven’t seen in previous election years. However, the SMH is read mostly by people in safe Liberal electorates on Sydney’s North Shore and in the Eastern Suburbs, so all that probably doesn’t mean anything.
Evan you are right about the readership of the SMH. However, I have noticed in recent weeks that The Daily Telegraph and the Mx (the rail commuters’ paper) have been running more favourable headlines and stories for the Australian Labor Party. This is important if you subscribe to the view (as I do) that they are the “newspapers” more likely to reinforce perceptions about the ALP among low involvement voters.
Looking at the summary of Galaxy results since April shows why the trend is more important than poll by poll fluctuations.
Apart from the odd looking 53-47 on June 4 there has been a 1% move to the Government per month. Individually these movements have all been within the margin for error and so have tended to be dismissed. However when taken together they represent a 4% movement which is of course significant, in fact more significant than a movement of 4% from one month to the next such as happened in June because that carries with it the suspicion of being a rogue.
If you look at the last three Nielsen polls there has been little volatility or movement in their figures.
http://au.acnielsen.com/reports/documents/ACNielsenPoll1998_000.pdf
In my opinion that is about the lay of the land give or take a couple of points. Plenty of jumping around from poll to poll but overall not much change in the political enviroment.
I am a little suspicous of Galaxys figures due to the rogue a couple of months ago and David Briggs suggestion last week that he was getting it right while the others were overstating the Labor vote. Sounded a bit Gary Morgan 2001 to me.
Maybe this topic has been covered elsewhere (and if so, I apologise) but to what extent do opinion polls influence people’s perception of a government/opposition.
Certainly, opinion polls – properly conducted – reflect public intention on any given day but does anyone know of any studies on the _affect_ of opinion polls on public perception? (For instance: Opposition down 3%… Joe Blow thinks ‘well maybe there is something wrong with the Opposition’ and henceforth… regards the Opposition with more suspicion…)
I’ve always thought that there is this dual action of opinion polls… and I’m wondering anyone else has any thoughts regarding this issue?
At the risk of sounding a little like Donny R, there are things we know and things we don’t know.
1. We don’t know what the election result will be, no-one does, not Michael Kroger, not Rod Cameron, not David Briggs, not Gary Morgan, not the bookmakers, not even Mark Textor.
2. We don’t know what the true voting intention of the electorate is, whether it was last month, last week or next week, no-one does (see above).
We find out the answer to the first question on the night of the election.
We can estimate the answer to the second question by asking a sample of people; which is all that polls are; responses from samples of the population. It’s probably most useful to think of the polling data, as just that, data. Try to ignore the events of the week and all the media analysis and just focus on the figures and analyse those.
It’s baseless to say one agency is “more accurate” than another, especially when looking at polls this far out, but even with the election eve polls that are
conducted. I would suggest the “bragging rights” are more a result of good luck than anything else.
It’s equally baseless to dismiss polls out of hand, as they’re all simply the responses of samples of the population and should all be accepted as such.
No-one knows why Morgan’s telephone poll conducted on Wed and Thurs last week gave the primary votes as ALP 48 L/NP 35 (margin of error 4%) and Galaxy’s telephone poll conducted on Thur, Fri and Sat gave the primary votes as ALP 44 L/NP 41 (margin of error 3%), they are just what they found.
The best we can do is look at all the data that is published and hopefully the accumulated knowledge provided by the information will get us as close to the truth as we can reasonably expect to get.
These two polls combined (1600 sample) tell us that the primary votes are:
ALP 46 Coalition 38 TPP 55.3/44.7 (@58% flow to ALP)
The last two series of polls from each of the pollsters, (8 polls in all – includes one morgan face to face and one phone poll) 10,000 sample.
ALP 47.2 Coalition 39.5 TPP 54.9/45.1 (@ 58% flow to ALP)
That’s as good as we can expect.
My numbers agree Aristotle – 55/45 approximately based on recent polls.
Whether or not there has been movement since early June is slightly more difficult to say now, but I would certainly want to see such movement in ACN next month before making a call in favour of it.
Let’s put it all in perspective: the polls seem to be quibbling over whether the Government gets six types of piss thumped out of it, or five.
Well the punters have shifted very firmly in favor of KR. It is getting to look like 60/40!! Some weeks ago disappointed Howard supporters claimed the betting odds as more reliable than polls. Perhaps they are!!!
Of all the analysis Ive heard over the past couple of months – yours is simply the best Lefty.
Remember, you cant get analysis without getting a little anal.
See… I got to thinking during that period where Newspoll didn’t come out regular as clockwork… (which is incidently how I came across this site – trying to find out what happened to it)… what would the political world look like without opinion polls. Certainly, the pundits and commentators wouldn’t have those easy observational pieces on the ‘latest trends’… it would be an interesting moment. It sort of underlined to me how important opinion polls are in politics. It underlined that generative function of opinion polls. That opinion polls don’t simply reflect but affect the perception of the political landscape. In a world without opinion polls… would Beazley still be leader of the ALP?
Once again, sorry if these observations have been made a thousand times before or is off-topic or just plain dull to boot! Just curious about the opinions of a group of ppl who have clearly put quite a lot more thought into opinion polls than myself.
I think this is shaping up to be a rather normal Election year, let go back to March-May when the ALP were ahead 60-40 we all knew that the gap would narrow and sure enough that is what has happened across all Four polling companies to different decease.
The biggest swing has been from Galaxy while Morgan has seen the smallest.
Looking at Bryan OzPolitics graphs in every Election year shown we have seen a improvement in the Government’s position during June and July, this as again occurred but the different is the ALP have maintained a bigger lead, both in 2001 & 2004 the ALP vote appears to have hit the skids during August-September.
Even in 1996 the then Government appeared to improve its position in the months just before that Election, I recall Andrew Robb saying after the 96 Election that even during the campaign the Liberals were not convinced they would win.
I think we all agreed back in March-May that the real test for Rudd was how he handled things post Budget and the Campaign, there is no doubt the Liberals are in trouble and its heartland is peeved, the question is will they go to Rudd on Election day.
When reading a summary of polling trends (I can’t recall if it was Morgan,Newspoll or Possium) but it appears those whom are planning to vote for Family First are more inclined to place Rudd ahead of Howard than 6 months ago.
I’m still tipping an ALP victory but and while the Polls are screaming landslide when I look at the pendulum I’m struggling to see the ALP winning more than 80 seats unless its a real bloodbath.
The evidence from Morgan phone poll and the marginal seats survey in Adelaide is that the govt is not going well at all. Marginal seat polling will generally reflect the statewide trend. As to public opinion on Haneef, I don’t think the govt would have released him had they not been feeling real heat over this issue. I also think Labor would have continued its me-too approach, rather than calling for an inquiry; presumably, both parties’ polling is telling them that Haneef is a negative for the govt.
Actually, Lefty (10.35), much as I approve of your sentiment, the polls aren’t saying that at all. If the election was held tomorrow, maybe the size of the government loss would be all that’s left to debate. But the election will probably be mid November. What the polls are telling us – and we have to look at moving averages, not individual results – is that there is a very slow trend back to the government amongst an electorate that was, back in March, pretty seriously pissed off with them.
Is the trend enough? Will Howard’s majority buffer him from a big swing, as it did in 1998? Will there be an external jolt to panic the horses, as there was in 2001? Or will the dirt unit find a weakness in the ALP team, as it did in 2004? Time is running down and the swing back is not strong, but there’s plenty of nail-biting ahead.
Personally, I believe the government was on the nose early in the year because of the IR hubris beautifully underlined by WorkChoices. And I am sure the ACTU/ALP IR campaign will be ramping up again very soon with lots of fresh new evidence of bastardry and wage slashing amongst the young and defenceless. I’m looking forward to it.
John Rocket, a more eloquent poster than me once wrote that changing government is about ’shifting the mysterious tide of hearts and minds’. So many factors are in play and there are so many levels of political engagement out there. You are right – polls are part of the mix and help to set the tone of the political narrative the two sides attempt to spin. Are they more important than the other intangibles… the too-hard handshake, the birthday cake confusions? It’s a mystery all right.
Does the Poll Bludger have a prediction for this election? I’m just curious.
The smartest thing anyone has said in the above discussion is that the Haneef affair has been a net plus for Howard. The elite media has been full of elite outrage. But even a badly botched and transparently political prosecution of a Muslim with links to terrorists serves to remind the floaters of why they voted for Howard in the past. The election may well turn on whether the floaters dislike WorkChoices or Muslims more.
The Greens are sniping at Labor again. An opinion piece in The Age wonders wether “Labor’s agressive stance against the Greens” can last.
Regarding Haneef, the PM this morning is strongly supporting Kevin Andrews and has rubbished claims the Government is distancing itself from the Minister. In defence of the AFP’s and the Government’s handling of the affair, he said that it’s “better to be safe than sorry”, which I reckon is a sentiment shared by the majority of the community. I don’t think this going to concern anyone other than the usual Howard-haters.
Also, did anyone see Tony Abbott on Insiders yesterday? It was a very relaxed performance and he confidently predicted a Coalition win, saying that the “dark corners” of Rudd’s character would soon be exposed. This might have been a reference to a certain story that’s being put together at a certain news organisation, a story that will destroy Kevin Rudd once it’s made public (probably some time during the election campaign).
I agree with Adam… mostly. The Haneef debacle is a ‘dog-whistle’ issue, and the response will from the ‘floaters’ will depends on the kind of ‘floater’. In the cushy suburbs of Brisbane, where Beattie performs well but Latham and Beazley bombed, I suspect many floaters will be outraged. But in the regional and outer metropolitan seats, the Haneef may help Howard mine a rich vein of xenophobia.
Still, I reckon Howard has to be careful. If you’ve ever taken a stroll through the ‘burbs of Bennelong, you’ll know what I mean. The electorate of Bennelong has received a huge influx of fairly affluent Asians (Koreans, Hong Kong Chinese, some Indians) over the past 10+ years, so the old migrant-bashing ploy won’t work so well. The biggest swing against Howard in the last election came in the Epping booth, where the influx of Asian migrants is especially strong.
Adam,
If Haneef gets his visa back after 8 August, and sues the govt for compensation &/or defamation, will that still be a net plus for Howard?
Steven Kaye Says:
July 30th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Also, did anyone see Tony Abbott on Insiders yesterday? It was a very relaxed performance and he confidently predicted a Coalition win, saying that the “dark corners†of Rudd’s character would soon be exposed.
Once again you are looking through rose coloured glasses.I saw that interview as well and Abbott said a lot about nothing,was umming and arring as usual and was spinning the Coalition line.They,( the Coalition ),are bereft of ideas,have nothing to offer this country,and they have tried to smear Mr Rudd since Dec last year.Hasn’t worked so far won’t work this time either.The Haneef debacle is another example of why they don’t & won’t be in government after the election.
Adam, I guess given you’re speculating about the ‘unwashed masses’ – I’ll throw in my own observation. One, I’m in far western NSW, guess that’s regional enough. I also have a couple of acquaintances I catch up with occasionally and with whom I have a ‘political’ chat… (they probably hate me for this… but usually play along!). My own little attempt at qualitative research!
Anyway, this couple are pretty right-wing… the ‘One Nation’ end of the Liberal Party… they supported Hicks being incarcerated without trial… they supported the hanging of that fellow in Singapore nearly two years ago… they would like to see the Bali 9 hanged as well… you get the idea. I expected them to be fully behind Howard on the Haneef issue, but surprisingly they weren’t. The whole thing sounded suspicious to them. They didn’t think it was being handled fairly. They weren’t more supportive of Mr. Howard. This response did shock me and I think that many – not just the elite – think that something very disturbing happened with Dr. Haneef.
Maybe it’s a case of that sense of fairness overcoming the xenophobia. We’ll see… but (based on my sample of two!) I don’t think it’s playing out quite as simply as the ‘dog-whistle’ interpretation you’ve put forward.
As for trends, well, am I reading the same poll?
Seems to me galaxy suggests the coalition primary hasn’t moved zip in two months, and nor has the 2PP.
The only thing I read there is a minor move from ALP to Green primary, and a coalition comeback that stalled in early June.
And Galaxy is their best poll.
Tick tock…
Yep, it looks like the Libs’ dirty tricks bag is is just about empty.
Although John at the moment has the thing upside down and is furiously shaking it to see if there is anything left in the bottom of the bag.
The thing about the Haneef issue, is that even if he is guilty of something more than simply wanting to go home quickly … it should still reflect badly on this government. Not only because they botched the case against him, but also because it’s clear that anybody can get into this country on a 457 visa, with scarcely a security check.
Results from opinion polls commissioned by newspapers are merely make-news. I’d be much more comfortable if newspapers and other media outlets were not allowed to comment on polls they had commissioned themselves, only on polls commissioned by others. I appreciate that perhaps some outlets might not commission some polls but this is a price I am prepared to pay. Bearing in mind that political questions are added to surveys that would’ve been conducted anyway, the polling companies themselves would not suffer greatly.
That Guy, you have to stop thinking like someone who reads The Age and watches/listens to the ABC. Think like someone who gets all their news from half paying attention to the 6pm news and flicking through the Herald-Sun (insert your state equivalent). They are the people who decide elections. They’ve never heard of a 457 visa and they don’t care about the rule of law or civil liberties. All that will have got through to them is that Howard has locked up a Muslim guy with a beard whose cousin is a terrorist – which is in fact an accurate summary of what has happened. The great majority of them will think this was a good thing to do, and will accept Howard’s “better safe than sorry” line. Anything that reminds the voters of Muslim guys with beards is a plus for Howard, since Muslim guys with beards are about as popular as Patterson’s curse and Howard wants to keep them out of the country.
I think the Haneef affair will be long forgotten by election time. I don’t think it has played as badly for the government as some. There are many who agree with the “better safe than sorry” view.
Looks like the market has not dropped significantly today and may have shrugged off the bad news from the US. The fundamentals in Australia are very strong and the price earnings ratios are really not excessive.
What’s good for investors may be bad news for John Howard. It means the Reserve Bank is more likely to raise interest rates.
That is what may put Kevin Rudd over the line.
The latest Galaxy poll may reflect the dissillusionment with Labor over the forest decision. The Greens polling is predictably up. It may indeed be 10%. It was never going to be as low as 5%.
As one writer in the Herald said, I’d like to vote for Kevin Rudd. Please give me a reason.
There’s really so little differentiation between Labor and the Coalition.
Labor cannot win in any case without Green preferences and just what incentive has Kevin Rudd given to Green voters to give their preferences to him?
The old growth forests, whether in Tasmania, WA, Vic or elsewhere are extremely close to the hearts of green voters – those who vote for The Greens and those who vote for other parties.
Yes some Green voters could never in a fit give their preferences to John Howard but others, especially small g green voters could do so even if only to teach Kevin Rudd that they can’t be taken for granted.
It looks at this stage, if we are to take an average of the polls and how they are moving, that Labor will still win but it certainly won’t be a landslide.
There obviously won’t be a change of leadership now in spite of the Morgan poll showing Turnbull level pegging with Howard.
If the Galaxy poll had shown a significant trend to Labor, anything like the Morgan poll, then it may well have been on.
The closer it gets, the less likely, notwithstanding Andrew Bolt!
My view is the forest decision did a lot of damage to Labor who may well be saved by an interest rate increase.
Adam, I suspect you’re right to a point. I do watch abc, read the age, and avoid the editorials in the Adelaide Advertiser like the plague.
I can see the sense in your theory that the Haneef case will lift Howard’s rating among bogans in marginal seats.
But there must be some reason the government was so eager to give him permission to go back to India, despite him still being “under investigation”. There’s also reports that they even made a lame attempt to gag him from speaking to the media.
And at this stage it looks like young Dr Haneef is going on the warpath to clear his name. And why wouldn’t he?
For starters, he’s coming back to Australia on 8 August to appeal the cancellation of his visa. If he’s successful, wouldn’t surprise me at all if he then sues for defamation, or some sort of compensation.
Looks to me like this thing is still playing out. Far too early to say that it’s a “net plus”.
Richard Jones, there’s been no change in Galaxy’s results for the Green vote. It’s been at 9-10 in all five of their polls this year.
The Green vote for the other pollsters has been, Nielsen 7-8, Newspoll 3-6, and Morgan 5.5-9.
what do people here think about Government’s position on Kevin Andrews? is it worse to keep him in the Minsitry, or lose a Cabinet Minister this close to an election?
It would be better for Labor if the focus on public debate was on the areas where the govt is seen by voters as performing poorly, ir, environment, health, education etc. etc. These are hard work for journalists to analyse (and less relevant to well-paid journos anyway), it is easier to write entirely accurate articles on the govt’s dodgy behaviour.
How large is the population of people in Australia from the Indian Sub continent and where do they live.
.
I’m told by a friend from that group, that the Indian community is outraged and very worried
There are certainly many evidences in my suburb of a substantial “Indian” community here in Melbourne.
Sorry to pour rain on the Lefties parade but did anyone take note of the Queensland Sunday Mail’s Survey? 10,500 Queenslanders posted back a “Your Say” survey and the Coalitions Primary Vote was 43% to Labors 38% and The Man of Steel was Preferred PM. These Surveys have been fairly accurate in previous years and 10,500 punters is better than the Galaxy’s 800 Punters. Voting Conservative is like Masturbating; we all do it but don’t brag about it. I am 100% confident that the Howard Government will be re-elected, there is no reason to kick this Government out. This victory will be the Sweetest of them all, one for the true believers. So Says Snoopy. http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,22149755-5007190,00.html
Am I the only one who noticed it but Tony Abbott had a sly little dig at Rudd on insiders yesterday. this from the Insiders transcript:
“But you can’t go with the Prime Minister and the Premiers simultaneously when they’re on different tracks. It’s like being a Catholic and Anglican, which is another particular issue where Kevin seems to have trouble deciding where he really is.”
He really is a pernicious git.
PS* As for the Morons defendant Dr Death 2 please go away. This guy is related to the Terrorists in the UK (Who are also Doctors) , gave his sim card to one of them and bought a one way ticked out of Australia when it happened and possibly other stuff that has not been released. If the AFP did not detain him and something happened the same idiots would be saying that the Government was asleep at the wheel and spent too much time worrying about Iraq and not the Terrorists. After all the recent Terrorists attacks Muslims must be prepared to be Investigated, detained and deported if they want they want to work or visit our Great Nation. So Says Snoopy.
The Courier Mail write in poll coming on top of the stunning Galaxy figures drives yet another yet a nail into the ALP coffin.
However like the undead, the ALP will not be truly disposed of until the voters drive a stake through its heart on polling day.
It is a real outlier. Is this another dodgy Galaxy poll?
You just wait Lefties, once the election is called Howard will get at least a 3-4% swing towards him and based on Galaxy’s figures that would put it an almost 50-50 contest and in that situation the Government would be returned.
Dont you understand how devastating the Libs campaign is going to be it is going to crush Krudd on his lack of experience, chuck in an interest rate rise and the Libs can point and say do you really want KR and Swan to run things can they do it better than Howard and Costello NO….
Morgan and AC should be ignored no matter who they said was winning Coalition or ALP it would be bogus they are not credible pollsters the only ones worth taking a look at is Galaxy and Newspoll. And Snoopy is right, how many people would admit face to face they vote for a conservative party not many but many do it and will continue to do it. You lefties are waiting on 7% swings in Queensland and that wouldn’t even be enough to win half a dozen seats let alone the 10 Krudd needs to win because the Coalition is miles ahead in many of its Lib/Nat seats.
Also no swing is uniform and might I add if Krudd loses just a few seats and they are gone except if there is a landslide , which is doubtful. Rudd will almost certainly be without Swan and Cowan in WA which breaks even the Libs losing Braddon and Bass in TAS, so their pick ups will be for naught!
Despite what many leftwingers think the next 3 years of Australian politics will go as follows, Howard wins with a small 3-4 seat majority, Costello takes over in 2008 and Rudd wins by a landslide in 2010. Its that simple…
*rolls eyes* – the stupidity of people who don’t understand the worthlessness of self-selected media “polls.” Have a look at “Your say” in The Age – wholly predictable “left” answers to every question, because that’s who reads The Age. A poll in a right-wing tabloid will get the exact opposite result. Net significance: nil. Do I really need to explain this?
On the Sunday Mail survey:
(a) Self-selection bias. Goes without saying.
(b) Sounds like the poll was “Preferred prime minister”, not voting intention.
(c) The Sunday Mail is useful for lining budgies’ cages, but not much else.
Snoopy (July 30th at 3:39 pm),
Sorry to rain on your self-delusional masturbate-a-thon, but the ’survey’ that you point out is biased, just as similar surveys in the Fairfax press are biased towards Labor. These ’surveys’ are often subject to tampering by political party youth-wings.
A much better indicator is the betting market. I point you towards Sportingbet:
http://www.sportingbetdecider.com/
The weight of money taken for the federal election favours the ALP by 67% to 33%. The current odds are $2.30 for the Coalition and $1.60 for the ALP.
Hard-earned shekels speak louder than silly ’surveys’ and push-polls.
You are right about Conservative voters being wankers though.
Richard Jones – Labor does not particularly need a Green preference deal (as most Green voters will preference Labor anyway), and this idea that the bulk of the nation really cares about Tassie forests (or indeed about anything in Tassie – there is a good reason that many maps leave the island off!) is ridiculous. The forestry issue is a side one, politically speaking (though no less important for that), the bulk of swinging voters will vote of one or more of the main issues: the economy, the cost of living, WorkChoices, national security, and possibly global warming. Anyone who thinks otherwise probably suffers from a spot of tunnel vision about their particular hobby horse.
I must admit to getting a little frustrated with the Greens’ apparent attempt recently to run the Ralph Nader line (basically that Libs and Labor are all the same, so don’t vote for either). Talk about masochism, anyone would think that the Greens would be more comfortable under a re-elected Howard government.
Snoopy – I think you’re a terrorist. Prove you are not.
Hans, Ich denke Ich der General Wenck sehen kann!!!
Endlich!
Ja ja! Ich auch Herr Oberleutnant!!!
Er kommt sofort, mit dieser Courier-mail einschreibenpoll Panzergruppen!
To: Down and Out of Sà i Gòn, the question was, “Who will you vote for at the Federal Election?” and “Who do you prefer as PM?”. To Fagin or Fagot? The Sunday Mail is Queensland’s only Newspaper and cannot be manipulated by Youth Wings of Political Parties and if it did it would be manipulated by Left Wing Idiots who are the ones that always try and cheat the system. To Glen, you are right mate, the Looney Soy Latte Left can’t handle the thought of Howard being re-elected but he will cruise to victory and your analysis is pretty good and don’t forget the country seat being vacated by an independent that will 100% go to the Nats so Labor need to win 17 and this is unachievable in this climate. There are no baseball bats, no anger in the community (only the Soy Latte Community) Howard’s approval rating is strong, his preferred PM ratings are strong, the Economy is Strong, Punters are just flirting with Dudd at the moment and have been sucked into his “Sound Bites” on the nightly news. But as Glen says, wait for Howard to unleash the Beast, Coalition Campaign Ads are always Crackers, Dudd has been in Parliament for less time than Learner Latham and has never been in Government also wait for the Business Community to spend Millions to support the IR Laws. Glen, I do not agree with you on everything, I think the Government will only lose a few seats, maybe 6 and I think it is way to earlier to call 2010. So Says Snoopy.
My instincts agree with Adam on this one – any mention of Muslim terrorism would be a plus for the government.
Interestingly, though every single person I’ve spoken to about this case has criticised the govt handling of it. This includes plenty of people from regional areas and die hard conservative supporters in my family – they all loved Tampa, supported Iraq (initially) etc. Words like fiasco, debacle and joke bobbed up pretty regularly. It doesn’t seem to be playing out as I expected it might.
Had a family gathering yesterday, the die-hard Liberals there were (mostly) pretty unhappy with the government – some are even considering voting for Rudd. My uncle who has never voted Labor in his life described the government as flailing around looking for something to attack Kevin Rudd with rather than governing. He said he was considering changing. I suspect that he will stick with the tried and true in the end but it was a real insight into the disillusion with the govt from a traditional supporter.
The Greens represent realism, that being policies that actually fix problems…Labor currently represents very little… and yes i do not want Howard reelected but the way the Labor Party is going about its policies in the run up to the election it is beginning to fall on its sword and the polls slips is evidence. In speaking to people whom i do alot of in my employment, many are telling me that their is very little difference between the parties.. now i know myself that their is but the way Labor is conducting its current approach many people will start seeing that whilst everything is going okay economically then why change?
In regards to the realism stuff i talk about Housing and Climate Change policy Labor approach on Housing is summits and inquiries and more inquiries whilst the rich through negative gearing and capital tax deductions on investments get richer… and on climate change clean coal… get real… what is the bet they will eventually agree to nuclear power as an option… and where has the party been regarding Dr Haneef? not a whisper… talk about gutless…
William, I think you need a new filter, one that prevents posts in foreign languages. This way, we wouldn’t be subjected to the rantings of people like “Last words from the Bunker”, and Steven Kaye.
Hugo, I assure you I am not a Terrorists, I do will not die in the name of Allah, nor will would I murder innocent people. The question really is, “why do the left always stand up for these killers?, why do they call Howard a Terrorist and call the Terrorists heroes? So Says Snoopy.
Yes, I agree, things couldn’t possibly be going better for Howard.
Only 10 points behind in actual polls, and outright winner of the prestigious Courier-Mail lucky-dip!
Yes perhaps you are right Snoopy by 2010 Malcolm Turnbull may be leader against Dillard who stabbed Rudd in the back after he lost the election lol. I cant see Labor winning 16 or 17 seats…2007 will be like 1998 a tough close election but the Man of Steel winning once again!
When you look at the ALP federally all you can do is laugh you cant take them seriously and they are fully of people who are as useful as tits on a bull, point in case Wayne Swan…need i say more!
I mean can you walk up to your average punter and say name 4 members of Labor’s front bench without naming Garret or Gillard they couldnt do it why?? Because they are nobodies who have no experience whatsoever….the ALP are a long way of having the experienced team necessary to govern and if they are elected in 2007 highly unlikely as it is they’ll be worse than Whitlam, God even Whitlam had more leadership experience than Krudd!!!!
As mentioned previously, an ALP-Green deal is not just about Greens getting enough votes to win a Senate seat: its also about the ALP protecting its primary. Consider the impact in a range of inner-city seats, all safely ALP held. If enough ALP voters decide that they don’t wish to vote ALP 1 (because the ALP does a deal with FFP, burns forests or whatever) the Greens may get past the Libs. Lib voters may decide they don’t want an ALP person in the seat (because the ALP is the alternative Govt, not the Greens), or the Liberal Party itself may decide that the ALP needs to lose a few HoR seats to push it into minority Govt and so issues an HTV preferencing the Greens. Lib voters, dutiful and obediant as they are, follow their HTV and it elects a Green MHR.
Further, these same Green voters (say 1-3% state-wide) decide to do the same in the Senate, thus shoring up a Green senator. With each vote now worth $2.10 they could also lose quite a few $thou in electoral funding. A Green MHR presents them with a wedge in the HoR’s and may undermine the ALP’s ability to put forward their own agenda (especially in a tight or hung parliament).
All very painful. A better scenario is a to give the Greens a few prefernces, keep you votes (and poach what you can from conservative voters of the FFP/Lib types). Thee FFP MAY be able to influence their own vote (of which I’m not convinced), but unless the ALP gets a guarantee in respect of the Senate voting intentions (including preference allocations of FFP), it could simply be creating more problems for itself in the future.
That said, the other scenario to consider is the one already canvassed here of Rudd does whatever it takes win this election, and then runs a double-D in 18 months to hopefully capitalise on any favourable winds (and incumbency) to secure a more pliant Senate.
And lets not get confused with Nader-comments. Federal elections can’t work like the US (or even NSW or Qld), so a voter must allocate a preference. Greens have for a very long time said that Libs & ALP are closer on more issues than they are apart, but that doesn’t mean they’re about to go voting for Howard
Ihren papieren bitte?
Halt!
Feur!
Snoopy:
Yes, yes, the ALP and their supporters hate freedom, eat babies and are all terrorist supporters.
By all means continue with your meaningless drivel as all it does is show everyone how arrogant, out of touch and stupid anyone who still votes for Howard really is.
especially with the green-Liberal deal in victoria.
Mike Moore in Stuipid White Men talks about how he thought it was a mistake for nader to campaign in Florida as itwasa swing state and that taking votes off of gore there would only help Bush. Nader went anyway
The real danger to the ALP from the greens is when the ALP is in government
K David, I can assure you that if there is a green-liberal deal in Vic then its something that the Greens don’t know about.
The Greens were elected for their policies, if the ALP propose something the Greens oppose, of course the two parties are going to side together to shoot it down. That is the whole idea.
Stunkrat, lucky for me I can read German, the piece was a sarky crack at the Courier-Mail poll and the poster. Babelfish might give you a readable translation.
Matt, disapproving of a govt action and voting for the opposition as a result are two different things. Which is not to say it can’t happen.
Forest people, I love trees and am an advocate of planting lots of ‘em (to replace cleared ones) but I can tell you as “fact” that while forests are very important in a couple of contexts they are unimportant in a political context — no-one is going to vote based primarily on forest policy. Please get over it.
Getting back to actual polls, OzPolitic’s aggregate polling is flawed as it includes 3 Morgan F2F polls in June and only 1 in July; as this poll is generally 2% more pro-Labor than phone polls, it skews the June average. Here’s a revised analysis that only uses phone polls with sample sizes > 1000 (averaging Morgan phone). Only primary votes here.
June:
Galaxy 44-42 Labor
Morgan ph avg 45-40
News 46-39
ACN 48-39
Avg for June 45.8-40 Labor
July
Galaxy1 46-41
News1 48-39
ACN 49-39
News2 47-40
Morgan ph avg 48-36
Galaxy2 44-41
Avg for July: 47-39.3 Labor
So it appears Labor’s primary is up 1%, the Coal is down 1% in July vs June. Whatever preference flows you use, this is a Labor Landslide.
Please explain what policies the Greens have that will wreak havoc on average battling australians.. please explain Nathan i would love to hear what they are.. The Labor party is now a party which has policies which help the rich get richer… but only at slower pace compared to Howards handouts…
And on the betting front in Solomon, the local rag (NT News, page 6) is reporting that Tollner is rapidly falling way behind, currently on $2.40, while the Labor candidate, Hale, is on $1.50, with 60 percent of the money going on Hale. Tollner is quoted as saying he has “no idea” why he is doing so poorly with the bookies.
Labor needs to win 16 seats, not 17 as Snoopy says (he is far from alone in this error – I had to correct a senior MP about it the other day). There are 150 seats. 150 / 2 = 75, so 76 is a majority. Labor currently holds 60 seats. 60 +16 = 76. QED.
The error arises from the belief that Andren’s retirement will hand Calare back to the Nats. Maybe it will (and maybe it won’t), but that doesn’t change the above arithmetic. What it does is increase the number of seats Howard can afford to lose before indendents will hold the balance of power from 12 to 13. If they win Calare but lose 12 to Labor, they will have 76. If they lose 13, 14 or 15 we will have a hung parliament. If they lose 16 Labor wins.
Interesting speculation on the possible bias of Galaxy:
http://howardout.blogspot.com/2007/06/tale-of-two-polls.html
Caveat: I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the content in the link.
Snoopy, I take it then that the last 6 months of polls, that have the ALP rusted onto a 2PP 55-57% range, is ‘just a flesh wound’.
And let me guess, your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries?
With consistent poll results like these, and Howard flailing away for wedges Rudd wont take, I have no need to fart in your general direction.
Just on the Haneef thing and how it plays in the wider community: apparently a lot of people (mostly older I suppose) don’t really know much about SIM card etiquette etc. Speaking to a family member yesterday, I was told that the Haneef case was botched because he was guilty but the evidence was compromised, which made it impossible to charge him. Now that’s ridiculous to my way of thinking, but the argument hinged on the “Why else would he give someone a SIM card?” argument. I know there are reasons for it, but many don’t.
It’s just an example of how most people will come to their own conclusions based on how much they understand about the case. This particular family member has leant to the left recently, but his automatic assumption was that because Haneef was arrested, he must be suspect. The ‘where there’s smoke there’s fire’ approach. He does live in a safe National seat, so maybe his viewpoint is coloured a bit by what he’s hearing up there.
That’s one reason why I think the Haneef saga won’t hurt the Government, though. Entrenched views.
Adam, actually Labor will inevitably form government with a gain of 15 seats.
Not majority government, but frankly a win is a win. Ask Bracks or Beattie.
“Labor’s primary is up 1%, the Coal is down 1% in July vs June. ”
On these figures Howard is home and hosed and Krudd and his stalinist henchpersons are toast.
RE THE HANEEF SAGA
there was a reason to question this chap based on information related to UK
events BUT there appears to to be no basis to charge him
NOR can I see a basis for MR Andrews’ ministerial decision to effectively
over ride the legal process
if the extra information Mr Andrews has is released then why wasn’t this
released earlier ?
I suggest the Government was simply playing politics of the wost kind
I agree that if we have a hung parliament Windsor and Katter are more likely than not to support a Rudd government. Windsor and the Nats detest each other. Katter is mad so who knows what he would do but he would probably go along with Windsor. And as I’ve said before, the Nats are no shoo-in to win Calare, with a strong independent running in Gavin Priestley, the former NSW regional Telstra head.
STROP IS BACK–
First order of the day is to add Snoopy, Glen and Edward St John to my iggy bin (ignore).
SNOOPY for this homophobic pearler–
Snoopy Says:
July 30th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
To: Down and Out of Sà i Gòn………………..To Fagin or Fagot?
GLEN for his inoffensive yet delusional view that only 2 of the pollsters are right (because they tend to tell a better story for the Coalition these days) and the others are wrong (because they don’t) –
” Morgan and AC should be ignored no matter who they said was winning Coalition or ALP it would be bogus they are not credible pollsters the only ones worth taking a look at is Galaxy and Newspoll “.
EDWARD ST JOHN because he had a ‘brain freeze’ yesterday and decided to spend his Sunday Morning by stealing my ID and posting a serious of fake STROP posts- Amusing for some, childish to me and others. Here is a sample-
STROP Says:
July 29th, 2007 at 8:35 am
I think your right, we better get our two personalities under control before it is too late …. where is my medication.
NOTE: This was actually written by the commenter normally known as Edward St John, who needs to wake up to himself – PB.
If indeed I had a mental health issue requiring medication I would be offended by this idiots comments. Instead I was not offended, more surprised at how childish and immature Edward St John can be.
As William noted, he has apologised so lets move on. I just feel I had the right of reply of at some level. Its done now , so I move on. Normal transmission from Strop to follow; Thank you to those who supported me.
In a hung parliament, you’d think the Independents would most likely support whichever of Labor / Coalition held the closest to 76 seats.
Whatever happens Costello will never be PM.
If the Liberals win they wont want him leading into the next election. Better to put in Turnbull, give him 3 years expeirence and of course there will be some other egos.
Exactly, and if Labor won 15 seats they would have 75 to the Coalition’s 73. In these circumstances they would surely support Labor rather than make it 75-75.
Katter is a wild child. I don’t see him voting for Labor’s side of the floor- Does he have any history of doing this ?
Anyway, if it comes down to Katter and the other Indy holding the balance of power per se the (expected but not fixed in stone) DD will sort that mess out, or won’t it ?
I think Snoopy was typing his posting with one hand.
Which way would Preistley swing Adam ? He is a conservative is he not ?
I don’t mind having people on here with opposing views (all welcome) but why do they have to be so bloody obnoxious while expressing them?
There won’t be a hung parliament. Labor will be lucky to pick up even 7 or 8 seats this election. Then we will have to see when Dillard finally stabs Krudd in the back and who will lead the ALP to their sixth consecutive loss in 2010. The polls’ trend shows that the ALP has lost about half their lead since their peak in March, and it is about the same time between now and then and now and when the election is called. Once the election is called Howard can expect another 4-5% 2pp bounce as people will continue to go with the trusted option. That puts the Howard Government in a pretty much winning position……. and how is Labor going to find the 17 ridings they need to win the election when they are going to actually LOSE ridings in WA and Victoria? Remember no-one here has seriously thought about LABOR marginals, just like last time… a swag of them are just waiting to be lost……..
Nostradamus,
You are entitled to your views on who you think will win of course but you do have an obligation to get basic facts correct. Please no more about Labor needing 17 seats when it is 16 seats. This point is dead and buried.(see Adam above at 6:02 for explanation)
Nostradamus Says:
July 30th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
“The polls’ trend shows that the ALP has lost about half their lead since their peak in March”.
Again, delusional Nostra. Howard may yet win, but I won’t because he reads your advise on the state of play in the electorate.
Nostrodamus, getting a little too overconfident and cocky?
If Rudd lost badly and stepped down, the next leader of the ALP would be Bill Shorten: there’s no way Gillard will ever get it.
Try again…
She is from the left, the ALP leader always requires support from the right. I can’t see enough right votes supporting her, so she will never be leader.
Fools, I didn’t say that Dillard would ever be ALP leader; I said one would wonder WHEN Dillard would stabb Krudd in the back and WHO would lead the ALP to their sixth consecutive loss, be it Shorten or Swan or whoever. Maybe you should get better reading glasses….. Even Shorten’s attempts to turn the ALP into a “centrist Bliarite” party may not be enough to save their skin. Perhaps they’ll simply wither away as far as a political force goes.
And, quite frankly, 16/17 seats makes no difference because they [ALP] aren’t going to get anywhere near that.
Just a thought on the haneef thing….alot of comments today on whether the “botched job” counts for or against the goverment.
I’m no expert but I see three phases here
1) Detain a man for questioning as long as legally possible if there is the slightest whif of terrorism connections. THis part seems to have been done well and competently.
2) Don’t allow a man to hold a current visa if you know he’s got an link to active terrorists. THis also seems to have been done well.
3) Charge a man if there is a reasonable chance of conviction. THis appears to have been utterly and comprehensively messed up. The man is innocent until proven otherwise!!!!!
BY my reckoning its 2 out of 3 for the good guys. I think punters will be outraged at the sheer incometence of the charge sheet issues and still want a returned governement.
Sometime during 2006 the conservative leaning Herald Sun had one of those questionnaires about politics and many other issues. Thousands of people filled them in and the results were published. Based on those results you could have sworn Bracks was going to lose the up coming election. He only achieved the second best result in Victorian political history. So much for such surveys.
anyway some observations
Strop
well written and actually says alot re politics at the moment
In this microsm the emphasis seems to be
1.reasoned debate re J-HO destroying trust etc in the Gvt (well done leftoids)
2.Unreasoned personal attacks akin to a Melbourne Monsignor on crack (not so well done rightoids)
The reason J-HO is gone is simple TRUST
quite a simple concept “hard to gain,easy to lose-never forgotten”
Game Over Rightoids time for reconstruction and recrimination
On Haneef-
Tampa: no impact on the election despite some very public outrage. Why? Howard played the race and territorial sovereignty cards (winners with the general electorate). The old ‘yellow peril’/ ‘reds under the bed’ mythology worked wonders.
911 and Bali : Big winners for the Coalition on Australian ’security’ issues and the terror of Terrorists. No, no: Im not suggesting JWH had anything to do with those awful events: only that the electorate are very reluctant to change leadership in a time of war or terrorist threats.
Haneef: Howard (almost blatantly) turned it into a political football and tried to create a ‘national security’ wedge between the Coalition and Rudd by almost begging him (see Andrew’s media releases) to openly oppose the Government on the issue.
Now the event is (almost) over, Rudd comes out and supports an ‘inquiry’ into the way the whole thing was handled.
There has to be a scape-goat found and banished to political and/or career oblivion. Howard will find one and invite the nation to a public hanging if he thinks it will win him some brownie points with the electorate and maintains the terrorism-muslim-threat to national security-patriotism connection in the heads of the ’swingers’.
In my opinion it is a gamble, but it has steered votes away from Labor in recent elections- The question is how cynical about JWH have the swingers become ? I think it should (ethically speaking) be a vote loser for JWH but Tampa tells me that counts for nothing at the election box.
Mr Squiggle, it is with some sadness that I have to agree. Regardless of the stuff-ups, the Haneef affair will probably not shift many votes. In an ideal world, it should shift a lot because the government’s role in it has been bloody despicable, but unfortunately, I think a lot of people don’t pay too much attention to the details and many of these will simply feel reassured that the government seems to be tough on terrorism, even if a tad too tough.
Issues of justice, deceit, and common decency will be lost in the ether, except of course for those who pay close attention to politics and/or care about the “means” and not just the “ends”.
But because the government stuffed it up by overplaying the wedge (and detaining an innocent man!) and because the general public is more cynical about Howard’s actions these days, this affair is by no means another Tampa. It will strengthen some elements of the redneck vote and a few floaters will gravitate towards the government and that will be about it. In other words, a slight improvement, if any at all, for the coalition, and probably no improvement.
As for the latest polls, there doesn’t seem to be any real change since June, but there has certainly been a small shift back to the government since the extremes we saw in March (i.e., 61-39). It doesn’t look great for Howard. He is living on borrowed time now.
But frankly, I find it hard to believe that even 46% of people would actually contemplate on voting for such an inept and deceitful government. The mind boggles.
Some say that voting for JWH is a vote for the devil,
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Rudd-given-better-chance-in-heaven-poll/2007/07/30/1185647820238.html
Well,if we go by this poll he may well join him!
Listen to commercial talkback radio in Sydney: Muslim bashing is alive and well. This ain’t a vote loser for Howard. The racist bigots who supported him over the Tampa will lap this up too. And, the progressives upset with Howard and Andrews were always Labor voters.
Haneef isn’t a vote changing issue: no wonder Rudd would rather talk about housing affordability.
Nostradamus, what would you say are the chances of the Coalition increasing its 16 seat majority this year?
ALP needs only 15 seats to form government because one of the independents would become speaker. If the ALP had 75 seats and say both independents decided to support the government and given the coalition would have to supply a speaker or one of the independents became speaker then the ALP would always have numbers to defeat the Coalition. So for those that say the ALP needs 16 it doesn’t 15 will do the trick whereas if the Coalition had 73 plus 2 independents there are reliant on their support to defeat ALP legislation.
Snoopy Says:
July 30th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Hugo, I assure you I am not a Terrorists, I do will not die in the name of Allah, nor will would I murder innocent people. The question really is, “why do the left always stand up for these killers?, why do they call Howard a Terrorist and call the Terrorists heroes? So Says Snoopy.
Snoopy, I didn’t realise that the only terrorists were those that followed Allah – idiot! Terrorists come from all religions!
Trevor you are correct re the ALP requiring 15 seats. Bryan at OzPolitics showed this to be the case a couple of months ago, for the same reasons you’ve put forward.
I think if this Haneef business goes on much longer, the outrage of the media, and the elites will filter down. It has to.
Why did the government allow Haneef to leave the country, even though he was allegedly “still under investigation”?
Why did they try to make his passage back to India conditional upon him not speaking to the media?
Am I the only person here who smells panic?
A hung parliament would be a disaster for the country because Krudd wouldnt control the Senate either, the last thing we want is a parliament that cant do anything of real substance.
All of the left wingers have failed to realize a few small factors that stand in the way of the ALP getting elected in November:
1. Rudd has been opposition leader for less than 1 year, no Australian politician has been elected PM with so few years in any leadership role and with so little leadership experience. Krudd has never had to make a tough decision in his life except whether or not to have dinner or lunch with Brian Burke…
2. The Australian economy is soundly chugging along and governments do not lose when they have not fluffed the economy up to high hell and Howard and Costello have a good story to tell. Regardless what the media tells you there is no stress in the housing market on rents and prices i mean if that were the case why has consumer spending gone up that doesnt look like stress to me…
3. Labor has 23 marginals just as the Coalition has and if the ALP loses 2 or 3 of them as they are almost certain to do then the election is OVER. The ALP are heading towards a pumping in WA with Cowan and Swan likely to fall and marginal electorates in Holt and Issacs likely to come close in Victoria. Also Krudd has said he needs 10 extra seats in QLD even with a swing of 5 or 6% he would get less than 5 seats as most Liberal/Nat seats in QLD are held between 7-9%. Also the new seat of Flynn in QLD is going to the Nats as is Calare which adds one extra seat to Coalition before we even start going.
Face it Krudd will do better than Big Kim but it wont change the result Howard’s number 5 by probably 5 seats in the HofR.
Yep, they ain’t finished yet. In fact it will get worse. I’m pretty sure no matter how hard I try to make myself feel good about it.
This isn’t great news.
It means to me the election will be very close. (which usually means Labor will lose) I don’t want that. I want a devastating rejection of this Gov . I wont get it.
I might, just possibly get a win.
But lets face it, this is Australia ,
Black fella’a drinking, pissin away the dole and bashin the kids, White guys doing the same but with Winnie Reds in their shoulder sleeve, drinkin “rum an cokes” when they should be out lookin for work (Ye’s, I’d hire them in my small snack bar, how about you)?towel heads with their “cousins” blowin up airports.
“Lawyers in everything”.
Na, Australian swingers will never fall for that !.. LMFAO
All is lost. .
“sigh”
face it. a trend is a trend, spin it anyway you like..
Go die in whatever way suits you
I see the headlines now.
“Rudd, almost made it but…” Johnny bets the odds!!!!!!!,
*bites her tongue at the blatant stupidity*
Glen
1. Didn’t Bob Hawke go almost straight from the ACTU to preselection, by-election, then government in a radically short time?
2. The government droning on about the economy hasn’t helped them so far. And anyway, isn’t an interest rate rise imminent?
3. You say that if the ALP loses 2 marginals “the election is OVER”. What if they gain even more?
The fact you are reverting to personal attacks demonstrates that you are just here trolling.
Glen where and where did Rudd say he needs 10 seats in QLD ?
” Also Krudd has said he needs 10 extra seats in QLD…{.
I say that is more delusional B.S unless you can provide evidence to support this claim which you typically fail to do. Go ahead, show me the evidence that Rudd said that.
STROP,
How often have you responded to a post from someone you have said you are going to ignore in order to tell us again that you will ignore them?
An habitual name caller. Right wing as they come.
jasmine_Anadyr .
What? u think this isn’t how many “Aussies” think?.. my god. you should have been in my house 2hrs ago.
Believe me, not only is that what they think
but….
Thats what they said
In case you didn’t “get it”. I’m NOT for that type of thinking. DUH! Jesus, HFDCUB
Tonight, in my house. Surrounded by Eden-Monaro voters. I was expressing my own views, It turns out (diametrically opposed to theirs) and this is what they said!!!
Thats what pissed em off and made them say what they truly thought
Who opened the cage tonight?
My first & likely only contribution to this fine site is to suggest that it is best to just ignore Glen. His tedious, scripted baiting (& the inevitable responses) contributed no small part in the demise of comments at OzPolitics & the formula hasn’t much changed here. It’s not entirely surprising that he tends to show up around the blogs when talkback either isn’t on or isn’t focused on Federal politics.
That Guy i suppose you failed to read what i wrote as most left wingers do, i said any leadership position. While Hawke may have been opposition leader for less time than Krudd he was ACTU head for decades which im sure made him make tough decisions something Krudd has never had to do in his entire life.
Do you seriously think Labor can win between 20 and 25 seats because that’s what you are suggesting and its a load of bull butter the Federal ALP are a joke and once the election is called and people have to make a good hard choice about who has the experience to run the country it aint Rudd.
STROP i said Rudd and the media have said he needs 10 seats in QLD extra to have a chance and he cant do it unless its an across the board landslide which is highly unlikely.
If you guys were students of history which you plainly arent you are forgetting the 1969 election. The economic times were good but people thought they liked the young inexperience opposition leader and Whitlam led all the way in the polls to election-day and lost by a whisker. The parallels are salient with 1969 when Gorton held off the ALP by a few seats to then have such a slim majority McMahon lost in 1972, and i hate to break it to you STROP but Howard aint no Big Ears McMahon.
Also unlike in 1972 where the ALP needed less than 5 seats to win the election whereas Krudd in 2007 needs more than 15 seats to win outright now cmon get serious…Everything and I mean everything would have to go right for him to win on election night and that’s not going to happen.
Australians dont like change and are by and large conservative whether they admit it or not and unless the economy goes into deficit and unemployment gets into the double digits like under Keating i cannot seeing people risk the economy on Rudd and Swan.
Hi Noocat and Jasmine,
Thoughts aplenty just now- Jasmine- you should say something instead of biting down on your tongue, you will get too many scars!!
Noocat – I saw the tony abbott interview on Insiders, referred to earlier in this blog-chain. He articualted something for me that has been brewing as a half thought for a while but it has never quite formed.
Kevin Rein and ALP have obviously been running dead on issues where the Libs have a natural consitituancy. Sooner or later it will catch up with them. ON Tasmania, the Greens have caught him out. Then on Haneef, the Doctor’s wives come to understand what Mr Rein stands for. “why did Kevin agree with John Boy?”
And now, on Insiders, Tony says it straight to my face – “Someday, Mr Squiggle, Kevin Rein is going to have to make a decision”
I wonder if the Galxay poll is really an outsider? I think soem of the legitimate arguments against Mr Rein are starting to bite
Glen,
Yes, Flynn is notionally National but don’t forget you have lost Gwydir in NSW.
Err, Mebbe I need to apologise, I’m not sure but here goes.
jasmine_Anadyr .
If you weren’t having a go at me then, I am so very sorry. I just came of the back of that conversation with the aforementioned “ppl” and as soon as I refreshed I saw your reply.
After 2hrs of attack I was in “combat mode”.
But…
after re-reading your post, I slowed down abit and thought… err. mebbe she wasn’t going after you at all. mebbe she was kinda aggreing with my outrage at my recent house-guest language..
if it’s the latter then I am a truly very srry for my response..
If not then I’m not
Yes but we are getting Calare in NSW +1 Nats thankyou very much Martin J
Dear Glen,
Calare was previously a non Labor seat so it makes no difference to the number of seats Labor requires . Again please see Adam’s post at 6:02.
How many times does this have to be explained to some people. Labor holds 60 seats irrespective of who holds Calare. 60 + 16 = 76 = majority.
Got it, Glen?
The first cracks are showing in Labor’s ability to run Australia’s economy, when they cant even get their figures straight on two bits of policy…
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22154632-12332,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22157363-601,00.html
Costello has found out Labor’s first stumble of the campaign as they got their sums wrong because 150,000 new houses would be built over the next five years, which is three times the number set out in Rudd’s $500m housing policy. That worked out to $645 a house, instead of Labor’s wild claims that its policy would magically cut costs by about $20,000 per home.
The ALP is also under pressure to explain how it would fill a $500million funding hole that would be created by its plan to compensate universities for the scrapping of full-fee-paying courses, some how or another Wayne Swan has to find half a billion to cover up Smith’s mistake what a joke!
How typical of just about every ALP policy announcement…
Fraudband – stealing money from the future fund
Garrett mixing up doubling with extending the rebate on solar panels for houses
The Federal ALP are an absolute joke of a party…enough said.
“better safe than sorryâ€.
When you say, “Better safe than sorry,” you mean that it is better to use some extra time, energy, and effort to be careful than to take risks without doing harm or cause unnecessary PANIC.
Interestingly this phrase was used in this context:
Better safe than sorry | NEWS.com.au
IF you get into strife overseas, who should you turn to for assistance? Greg Roberts offers some official answers, as well as safety tips.
http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,23483,20323797-36335,00.html
Glen, I think you actually make some salient points (and if Rudd is to go on and become PM by year’s end, it would be quite an historic result), but you need to tone down the vitreolic manner in which you make them if you want “left wingers” (and other straw men) to bother reading them. Your posts (and this could be directed at several other posters as well) come over as a bit of a rant and I find myself getting bored with them pretty quickly. You guys do have something to add to sites like this, so tone it down a bit, and we’ll all get on better. It’s not like any of us are likely to change anyone else’s minds with what we post – we’re all partisans here, so don’t take things so seriously.
Adam, I know that you like to keep your site uncluttered, but would there be any chance of a page which listed when and how the pages were substantially updated?
And, will be there be a list of the electorates that have polling booth maps?
Cheers
The polls Glen, looks at the polls (even 55-45 2PP) Glen says it is not stretching reality at all to find 16 seats for Labor at the 2007 Election
TASMANIA
Bass(1.1), Braddon (2.6)
SA
Wakefield (0.7), Kingston (0.1), Makin (0.9) -watch Boothby and Sturt;
NSW
Eden Monara (3.3), Dobell (4.8), Lindsay (2.9), Macquarie (0.5 ALP) -watch Bennelong, Page, Wentworth, Paterson, Robertson.
QLD
Blair (5.7), Bonner (0.6), Herbert (5.4), Longman (6.6), Moreton (2.8) – watch Bowman, Flynn, Petrie.
VICTORIA
Corangamite (5.3) – watch Deakin, Dunkley, Latrobe, McEwen, McMillan;
WA
Hasluck (1.8) Stirling (2.0)
NT
- watch Solomon (2.8)
This is a conservative speculation on seats Labor should win in 2007- enough (16) without the ‘watch’ seats I have nominated and WITHOUT a 2PP swing of more than 5.0 in most of them.
Labor does not have to win 10 seats in QLD to win Government: that is a rediculous claim. Any losses in WA (Swan et al) or Victoria (Isaacs, Holt et al) could be offset by gains in the ‘watch’ seats I have listed.
Im not saying Labor WILL win the election: What I am saying is Labor does not HAVE to win 10 seats in QLD to win Government.
STROP i said Rudd and the media have said he needs 10 seats in QLD extra to have a chance and he cant do it unless its an across the board landslide which is highly unlikely.
The “media” are not Rudd Glen. Show me where Rudd said it.
Snoopy (4.39) – you’ve missed my point. Can you PROVE that you’re a terrorist? That is in essence the standard that you are applying to our mutual friend Dr Haneef. Now in reality of course, I don’t know the man any better than you do. He may well be Osasma bin Laden’s right hand man. But then, for all I know, you might be, and quite frankly, your over the top denials of my accusation is pretty suspicious. You can expect a call from the AFP shortly.
You are correct Hugo, but as you can imagine being a centre-right supporter on internet blogs can be like the 300 spartans fighting against hundreds of thousands of persians but i take your point.
The funny thing is both sides are preaching to the converted but hey one way or another one side will win in November and we’ll have to live with that. I’d like predictions on the leaderships of both parties if the Coalition survives or if Labor wins??
Id say Costello would resign i cannot seeing him want to be Opposition leader so it would have to come down to Malcolm Turnbull.
Will Mark Vaile stay on as leader of the Nats, they were going to suffer without Ando…
I wonder if Gillard would stab Rudd in the back after all if Rudd lost it wouldnt be by much even so i doubt she’d do it but Rudd would be in a tight situation.
Snoopy (4.39) – you’ve missed my point. Can you PROVE that you’re not a terrorist? That is in essence the standard that you are applying to our mutual friend Dr Haneef. Now in reality of course, I don’t know the man any better than you do. He may well be Osasma bin Laden’s right hand man. But then, for all I know, you might be, and quite frankly, your over the top denials of my accusation is pretty suspicious. You can expect a call from the AFP shortly.
Chris Curtis Says:
July 30th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
STROP,
How often have you responded to a post from someone you have said you are going to ignore in order to tell us again that you will ignore them?
Fair enough Chris. I WILL stop it – BUT its ohh so tempting to get stuck into idiot comments and FALSE claims. Laughin.
STROP chill out what you are ignorant about is the fact that swings are NEVER uniform, get your facts straight as you fail to notice how many seats Labor hold that are marginal as well…
Swan 0.1%
Cowan 0.8%
Richmond 1.5%
Holt 1.5%
Issacs 1.5%
Ballarat 2.2%
Chisholm 2.7%
Need i say more STROP Rudd could lose any of these seats and he’ll be in trouble…thanks to the unlovable John Brumby being the new Premier in Victoria there should be a swing to the Libs which could gain some seats as we should in WA as well Hasluck and Stirling should not even be in your columns i mean seriously the ALP are not going to get a swing to them in WA.
Labor isn’t unloved in Victoria nor is Brumby. He has been credited as being a very good treasurer. Please supply the data for your comments. Are you in Victoria? By your comments I’d guess not.
Labor does not have to win 10 seats in QLD to win Government: that is a rediculous claim. Any losses in WA (Swan et al) or Victoria (Isaacs, Holt et al) could be offset by gains in the ‘watch’ seats I have listed.
Where is that ^^ ignoring Labor Marginals Glen – And again, where did Rudd say he needs 10 seats in QLD ? No more from me_ I think Ive made my point.
Labor did suffer albeit a small swing against it in the 2006 State election, and with the ‘popular’ Bracks standing down and the loser and hardman taking up leadership positions within the State ALP Government i think the Liberals have a chance in some of those marginals…let’s face it the more time Labor has to spend defending their marginals the better for Howard and yes i am Victorian Gary. I am in Melbourne Ports the electorate that would be Liberal if 10% of people didnt vote for the Greens oh well stuck with Danby again…
Rudd will lose the election if he goes small target which is his plan i mean he’s not taking a tax policy to the election the ALP are a joke seriously…
So the Galaxy poll is a good sign for the coalition? The primary vote of the coalition stayed on a low 41%, Labor dropped 2% which went straight to the greens which flow back to Labor. The summation in the Herald Sun states that after preferences Labor would achieve a 7% swing. A fantastic poll for the Coalition for sure.
Gary,Strop
Do you believe labor is coming off a fairly low base (2004) and consequently can logically only improve-regardless of polls?
That’s strange – Howard went small target in ‘96. Why is it bad for Rudd yet it worked well for Howard back then?
Glen – thanks for taking my gratuitous advice in the spirit it was intended.
Post-election leadership speculation:
Labor – if Rudd wins, he’ll be PM for at least five years, quite probably longer. If he loses, it will depend on the margin – if it’s a close loss, he’s probably secure, if he loses badly, he’ll have a year or so to show some progress. What would save Rudd in the short term is a lack a clear alternative. There are a few who might be leadership material, but no one of them stands out. My guess at the moment that Rudd is pretty safe in the leadership until Shorten has been around for a few years. Of course, if Rudd has a post-election meltdown a la Latham, things would probably change more quickly, but that’s not likely.
Liberal – If Howard wins, he goes down in history in the Tory Pantheon alongside Menzies. You would have to think he’d retire at some time in the coming term, though the old bugger could start to think he’s invincible and hang on. I guess we could expect a handover to Costello in early 2009, though a contest post-Howard is not out of the question.
If Howard loses, his legacy will be very different, and we can expect a fair bit of infighting among the Libs, as usually happens to parties that lose office after a long stretch. This will be exagerated in this instance because the Liberal Party has been dominated by one man for so long. If the Libs lose office, they will be a pretty parlous state, as they would be in office precisely nowhere. It’s conceivable that the Right might be about to undergo one of its periodic realignings (eg 1909, 1917, 1931, 1944), and the Liberal Party may need to re-emerge in a different giuse to regain office.
In this scenario, being leader might be a bit of poison chalice. Frankly I’d be surprised if Costello hung around too long in the event of a loss, but if not him, then who? Nelson? Abbott? People keep mentioning Turnbull, but that’s just because of name recognition. I’m not convinced he’s got enough of the common touch to be a successful party leader. It’s hard to say who would end up leading the Libs to the 2010 election.
The Nats will continue to decline along with the rural sector generally (at least as far as population, and therefore representation, goes), and as usual it won’t much matter who their leader is.
Bob Brown will be re-elected and he will remain leader of the Greens until the end of his term (in 2014), by which you’d think he’d retire (he’s currently 63). How the Greens survive without him is for another debate.
Glen, gone off Nelson, have you?
Labor wont get a 7% swing uniform geepers i mean Howard in his landslide only got a 6% and that was because people were waiting with cricket bats for Keating they wont be waiting for Howard he just isnt hated like Keating was and Gary you cant seriously think Labor will remain this far ahead when the election is called???
If the polls are between 47-9/51-3 then the Coalition will win, if they are more than 55-45 then the Coalition will probably lose…
Nelson is still a chance Amber but because we have so much leadership talent in our party unlike yours we can pick and chose between many candidates if we lose…Costello, Turnbull, Downer, Nelson, Bishop….
Who does Labor have???
Gillard……………………………………that’s it and it aint a great 2nd choice lol!
Absolutely, but there is improvement and IMPROVEMENT and what we are seeing is massive improvement. The danger signs for the coalition took place some time back when Rudd took over as leader. The massive shift in the polls back then and their subsequent consistency in the face of some, what would normally be, vote changing issues, must really be worrying the coalition. To me this shows a desire to get rid of this government.
The problem with that theory Glen is that you think the Coalition will win the election campaign. I don’t. I don’t see what the government will win it on.
Glen, which party are you a member of?
I have to agree that there are no guarantees that the ALP will hold richmond i think 1.5% been among the bigger margins since the 80s
I had been talking to some (very) conservative friends from Eden Monaro over the weekend. Posters who have claimed that any mention of Dr Haneef was an alarm bell on terrorism and thus a plus for the coalition are correct it seems, but only to a point. The important consideration is that he is a Doctor. Drs are held in high regard in the bush, and country people often have to rely on imported Drs from Asia as their only medical practicioners and so have come to know and appreciate them. They dont fear them. They can put a face to him. Muslim refugees and terrorists are on the other hand faceless and therefore easier to fear and despise. Most conservatives dont believe that the rule of law should apply to them, but perhaps might apply to a Doctor.
I believe that the Govt got Haneef out of sight as soon as they did because he was about to become a minus for them because he had acquired a public face. The racist scum who fill the talkback airwaves are mainly urban rednecks and their vote is mostly not up for grabs. Country conservatives generally have an opinion based on a moral bedrock. Victimising a good Dr for too long could be a bad move.
Downer is a no hoper. He is constantly angry lately and comes over as nasty.
Gary
Therefore the inherent swing in the electorate means that all factors being equal labor should gain back its “heartland” seats scared off by tampa,911 etc.I hope our rightoid friends understand that and stop this rubbish about labor having seats at risk
Further the polls measure satisfaction not intention-this point is lost on both leftoids and rightoids-and the electorates mood does not always signal its voting intention
Glen, re Victoria I think you are forgetting too that new leaders have a honeymoon period, which can last a couple of months or more.
That’s true gusface. So those talking about trends back to the government can’t have it both ways can they? Either the polls do show what is going to happen ie a trend to the future election (one way or another) or they only show what has happened and what is happening now.
I will say this though the polls have PREDICTED election results pretty closely in the past. So how does that tally with the “no predicitive quality in the polls” statement?
Gary
well said
Care to explain the betting market v polls as for some time the symmetry has eluded me
Michael, re your comments above. I’ll see what I can do about some kind of “recent updates” page. I’ll also create a page giving direct access to the booth-maps when I’ve done the 16 most marginal government seats. So far I’ve done 13 and I’m working on Eden-Monaro (which has 70 booths). This exercise is very good for my geography – who knows where Quaama is?
Folks, all this repetitive political sledging rapidly gets very boring and I for one no longer read most of it. There are other sites for this kind of argument for those who enjoy it.
Those who bet follow the polls. That one is simple. They know they can lose there money. Punters are prepared to take a chance. Not being a punter myself I don’t really understand why you would bet on elections or football.
Hugo I’m not suggesting that the vast majority of voters are affected by the forest issue but I am suggesting that a significant middle-of-the-road minority do care enough about the forest issue and other environmental issues to change their vote. The Democrats vote was like this. They were achieving 8 per cents and these votes went somewhere. There’d be a good three or four per cent who vote primarily on the environment and they don’t all vote for The Greens. Many of these middle-of-the-road voters regard some of The Greens policies are far too left or radical for them. These are the voters Kevin Rudd is losing. He is siding firmly with the CFMEU – the ones who so bitterly opposed the environment movement on forests in NSW and other states. Kevin Rudd is appearing about as green as Michael Costa, the NSW heavyweight right wing Treasurer. He was a member of the parliamentary committee I chaired and demonstrated that he was appallingly anti-green.
Aristotle, I take your point that The Greens vote with Galaxy has remained about the same. I didn’t check back. Nevertheless I do think that those greens who went over to Labor at the beginning of the year will go back to The Greens and they won’t all be preferencing Labor. Don’t be surprised if Malcolm Turnbull gives them new reasons to preference Liberals by outflanking Kevin Rudd on the environment. Kevin Rudd has made a serious error but perhaps he is just showing his true colours – dark brown. I feel sorry for Peter Garrett.
Glen,
I think you’ll find the Victorian seats you identify as possible Liberals gains are no hope. Chisholm, Isaacs, Holt and Ballarat. Victoria is the ALP’s strongest state, if they didn’t lose those seats with Mark Latham as leader they’re certainly not going to lose them with Kevin Rudd.
If you don’t believe me check the bookies’ odds.
Richmond won’t move back to the government. The polls are indicating that NSW could be a wasteland for the government. The latest Newspoll breakdown had the ALP on 63% TPP.
The government’s only hope is to snag a couple of WA seats, but they will have to hold their own marginals in the process. A big task!
Rudd did the right thing with the forestry policy. What should he have done, kept Latham’s policy and had the same result as 2004?
Just on Richmond, there has be an increase in population, mainly middle class green type voters and a re-distribution. The real ALP margin is currently more like 2.5-3%.
There’s almost zero chance that the ALP will lose. That’s why the voting on this seat quickly made ALP the firm favourite.
A key Liberal told me the other day he thought Janelle Saffin would win Page as well.
I’ve just come on board for today, and I haven’t looked any further than 10:30ish than when Lefty E summed it all up. Laugh out loud loud loud and roll on the floor and under the table and annoy the neighbours. Spot bloody on. That said, still bracing for the minute possibility of a Coalition win, but this is probably just a Pavlovian response deriving from Kim Beasley.
10:30am that is
Gary, Kevin Rudd crippled one of his star candidates. Peter Garrett has now lost all credibility especially amongst young voters – remember them?
He should have allowed Peter to speak out on his own portfolio areas as Malcolm Turnbull is allowed to. He could at the very least have stayed equivocal – especially on the pulp mill for heaven’s sake.
It’s midnight and I’m about to turn into a pumpkin. Goodnight.
Richard you may or may not be correct on this but have you seen polling on this that I haven’t?
Garrett should never, NEVER had the environment portfolio: talk about an albatross. I mean, how stupid – the guy has stated his position for years and years on the environment, and those views in no way aligned with the Labor platform. He would be far more useful in Immigration or … well… that’s it…. Immigration. A good humane portfolio which doesn’t open up a problematic no-nukes, tall-trees debate. Unless we suddenly get an influx of refugees packing a home made bomb made of uranium and non-recycled paper.
gusface Says:
July 30th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Gary,Strop
Do you believe labor is coming off a fairly low base (2004) and consequently can logically only improve-regardless of polls?
Gus- not really.
Anything is possible, regardless of a ‘low base’ as you put it.
Hawke stuck it to the Coalition in 1983 and Howard returned the favour in 1996, taking 29 seats from Labor. 16 of them remain with the Coalition-
Eden Monaro (NSW) 3.3 Gilmore (NSW) 9.5 Hughes (NSW) 8.8 Lindsay (NSW) 2.9 Macarthur (NSW) 11.1 Macquarie (NSW) 0.5 (Notional ALP)
Page (NSW) 5.5 Robertson (NSW) 6.9 Dunkley (VIC) 9.4 McEwen (VIC) 6.4
Makin (SA) 0.9 Forde (QLD) 13.0 Herbert (QLD) 6.1 Leichardt (QLD) 10.3
Moreton (QLD) 2.8 Petrie (QLD) 7.9
History says in 1998 Labor lost Kalgoorlie (WA) 6.3, but won back 14 seats (net) from the Coalition. Half the damage done in 1996 was recovered at the next election , so the ‘low base’ upward ‘adjustment’ to Labor was evident.
In 2001, Labor lost 5 seats to the Coalition (Dobell (NSW) 4.8; Paterson (NSW) 6.8;Canning (WA) 9.5; Dickson (QLD) 9.1 Ryan (QLD) 10.4)
but won 3 for a net loss of 2 seats, going backwards.
In 2004, Labor went backwards again, losing nine seats to the Coalition [Greenway (NSW) 11.0 McMillan (VIC) 5.0 Kingston (SA) 0.1 Hasluck (WA) 1.8 Stirling (WA) 2.0 Bonner (QLD) 0.6 Bowman (QLD) 8.9 Bass (TAS) 2.6
Braddon (TAS) 1.1]
The net result after four elections is Labor holding only 60 of 150 seats in the HOR and needing a net gain of 16 seats to win the 2007 Election.
Losing those 9 seats in 2004 pushed Labor back into what I would call a ‘low base’ position from which a 1998 type of ‘low base’ upward adjustment to Labor could happen again.
Is that the only outcome possible, an improvement for Labor coming off a low (2004) base ? No, the polls indicating a strong 2PP swing to Labor in QLD and SA (at least) WILL decide this election, so the polls matter.
But history writes its own trends and Labor might go backwards again. Why not ?
The polls currently say Labor is in an upward direction in 2007, but who knows really. I guess I was ticked with suggestions that Labor needs to win 10 seats in QLD and wanted to point out the seats outside of QLD that are very winnable for Labor.
I also wonder if they could set it off with a SIM card???
I think people need to stop counting their chickens before they have hatched. The bottom line is this: At the MOMENT, Howard is on course for an electoral defeat. Whether that actually happens or if it does, then by what margin, who can really say? We don’t know what issues will be coming up over the next few weeks let alone the next few months, any of which could help or hinder Howard.
But one VERY important feature of this year’s polling (heads up Glen and Nostra) is that Labor has sustained a very high primary voting intention for an historically very long period. We haven’t seen anything like it for many, many years. It is exceptional. And it is still continuing.
What this tells me is that a high proportion of Labor’s support is not soft. In fact, it is the Liberal/National vote that seems softest, down to about 36%, because beyond that point, these people were saying they might vote Labor back in March when we were seeing TPP figures of 39-61. Those who Howard has managed to reclaim might very quickly turn on him again if provoked in the right way.
The remarkable consistency in the polls might also suggest that a lot of people are ignoring Howard or viewing him with such high levels of cynicism that it is going to take a monumental effort of the grandest proportions to really capture a sizable chunk of the vote. Does Howard really have it in him? He has made some pretty big stuff-ups this year, which wouldn’t be giving me much confidence if I were a Liberal party supporter. In fact, I’d be VERY worried.
Matt Price reverts to satire! I wonder if his editors will pull the article:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22162518-12854,00.html
Mr Cusack – are you perchance related to Alex White’s successor-crony Josh Cusack at the nasty little organisation called UMSU (formerly MUSU) at Melbourne University? They’ll be gone in a few years, glory glory VSU!!!
In terms of your argument about doctors: Australia is short on doctors for now – but there are soon going to be more graduates, some of them rural bonded, and we will have more than enough doctors that we have trained ourselves in a decade’s time. As for Haneef, a terrorist is a terrorist, just as a murderer is a murderer and a paedophile a sex monster, there’s no denying around that. They may be doctors or lawyers or charity workers in their everyday Muggle lives, as if they are going to publicly show their Evil tendencies.
I would rather DIE than be risk being treated by a “doctor” who’s also a Terrorist. It would be treason to my Country to dishonour myself to that level. Who’s to say that I wouldn’t be poisoned, ahem, under the name of Euthanasia? Besides, I’d be very careful about going to ANY doctor who’s received their training in the Third World, they just don’t have the educational structure for me to trust their clinical competence. And they do not know the niceties and nuances of OUR culture, or BEDSIDE MANNER.
And despite all of this Krudd caves into the lemures of the civil liberties movement and asks for a departmental review. A vote for Krudd is a vote for the terrorists. Simple as that.
Stuart at 11:55pm made favourable reference to Lefty E’s decrying of my earlier post pointing out a trend in the Galaxy figures.
Look, I am as passionate as the next person in wanting Howard removed but look at the figures.
TWO-PARTY
ALP LNP
July 30 54 46
July 2 55 45
June 4 53 47
May 14 57 43
April 23 58 42
Take out the June 4 figure which we all regard as an outlier and there is a steady movement of 1% per month to the LNP. I have to say that the trend makes me uneasy and hopefully it will not continue but no amount of wishing is going to make it an “unfact”
For the polls vs betting markets debate
Sportingbet has laid out odds on 40 marginals. Portlandbet has odds on all seats. Here are some of the big differences
Stirling Sportingbet – $1.65 (ALP) vs $2.25 (Lib)
Portlandbet – $1.90 (ALP) vs $1.80 (Lib)
Swan Sportingbet – $1.50 (ALP) vs $2.40 (Lib)
Portlandbet – $1.90 (ALP) vs $1.82 (Lib)
Blair Sportingbet – $1.40 (ALP) vs $2.70 (Lib)
Portlandbet – $1.88 (ALP) vs $1.83 (Lib)
Apparently, a bet for $10,000 has come in for Sharryn Jackson in Hasluck (at $1.75), while in Stirling there is a $3000 bet on Michael Keenan while his opponent, Peter Tinley, has attracted a $7000 bet and a few $2000 and $3000 (see today’s West Australian).
Both still have Howard short-priced favourite to win Bennelong, but both also have Dave Tollner losing Solomon.
The big move against Thompson in Blair is apparently due to the Ipswich motorway issue, which Labor says is playing big time. George Newhouse is a $3 outsider with both agencies in Wentworth against Turnbull. Then again, Labor is $1.10 on Sportingbet ($1.24 with Portlandbet) to reclaim Kingston. You can get $3.55 on Portland with Kym Richardson, and $4.50 with Sportingbet.
You really are a nasty little racist peice of shit aren’t you, Nostradamus?
“Glen Says:
July 30th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
You are correct Hugo, but as you can imagine being a centre-right supporter on internet blogs can be like the 300 spartans fighting against hundreds of thousands of persians but i take your point.”
Don’t invoke the name of the Spartans and their heroic efforts at Thermopylae to justify your diatribe.
We should ignore Nostrodamus: he’s a nasty right wing troll, who comes on this board to bait and cause trouble.
Glen: the ALP will lose seats in Victoria? I doubt it. However, I’m not sure if they’ll win any more off the Liberals in that state, it’ll require a 5% swing at least to gain Deakin and Corrangamite.
Harry Quick campaigning for the Liberal candidate in Franklin today? WTF?
I sadly have much work to wade thru and there are a number of posts above, my my apologies if I offended you. Chances are though if my post could offend you, it wasn’t aimed at you.
Trev said in response to Snoops “Terrorists come from all religions!”
Too right we have just passed the 61st anniversary of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when ninety-one people were killed when a gang of terrorists dressed as Arabs let off a bomb in the basement. Of course these fine fellows are now widely regarded as freedom fighters.
In both north and southern Ireland terrorist attacks were often carried out by people who strongly professed adherence to one branch of Christianity or other.
I could go on.
Terrorism is not, nor hjas it ever been, an exclusive religious exercise; perhaps reading up on groups like the Tamil Tigers will correct this silly viewpoint.
Aristotle (July 31 at 8:49am), you are too easily offended. None of us really know whether the political leanings of the 300 Spartans were predominantly to the left or the right. Probably a mixture of both is my guess because Sparta was an authoritarian city-state, with a system of government that those at the extremes of the left and the right would be quite comfortable with.
I am reposting a post from yesterday regarding all phone polls in June and July. This shows that there is in fact a trend to Labor in the phone polls in July vs June.
Getting back to actual polls, OzPolitic’s aggregate polling is flawed as it includes 3 Morgan F2F polls in June and only 1 in July; as this poll is generally 2% more pro-Labor than phone polls, it skews the June average. Here’s a revised analysis that only uses phone polls with sample sizes > 1000 (averaging Morgan phone). Only primary votes here.
June:
Galaxy 44-42 Labor
Morgan ph avg 44-40
News 46-39
ACN 48-39
Avg for June: 45.5-40.0 Labor
July
Galaxy1 46-41
News1 48-39
ACN 49-39
News2 47-40
Morgan ph avg 48-36
Galaxy2 44-41
Avg for July: 47.0-39.3 Labor
So it appears Labor’s primary is up 1.5%, the Coal is down 1% in July vs June. Whatever preference flows you use, this is a Labor Landslide.
As to Haneef, why would the govt have let him go back to India if he wasn’t hurting them? Why would Labor have dropped its me-tooism on Haneef and demanded an inquiry? When you’re in front in the polls, there’s no need to take risks. I’m sure both parties’ internal polls are telling them Haneef’s a negative for the govt. Sky News phone-in polls, which are usually very pro-govt, have supported Haneef.
That phone poll average analysis above shows that, on Labor’s primary, Galaxy is a big outlier. On the Coal primary, Morgan ph is a big outlier in July, though not in June.
So the bookies don’t get Maxine much chance of bumping off Howard in Bennelong? It’s the seat next to mine(Berowra). I know quite a few folk from Bennelong, who tell me Howard is very much on the nose there.
I don’t think she will win it at the general election. But if she gets to run again after Howard retires she will win the seat then.
Referring to the June-July analysis the June averages for Labor are dragged down by the Galaxy figures of 44-42 which were generally regarded as being somewhat dubious. Given that there were only 3 other polls in June the effect of this poll on the average is significant.
David Charles, I appreciate your interest. But it’s not a issue of offence, nor of left or right, but rather of ensuring that the honour and dignity displayed at Thermopylae is not soiled by associating it with the dishonourable and undignified conduct that passes for political discourse.
For other interested parties,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae
Martin J Says:
July 31st, 2007 at 6:25 am
Raw data is gold. Modifying it is not a Good Thing, the data is what it is.
We could hypothesise that the “plateau” of April/May dropped to a new “plateau” of June-July. Same data, different conclusion, different implications.
On the Galaxy figures previously quoted we should note that in April and begining of May Galaxy agreed with primary vote levels all the other polls -but since early May Galaxy figures have significantly disconnected with the others on the level of primary votes. Something has happened in the way Galaxy is polling or where they are polling. I have no faith in them at all.
Galaxy
TWO-PARTY
ALP LNP
July 30 54 46
July 2 55 45
June 4 53 47
May 14 57 43
April 23 58 42
One of the biggest factors in polling that is not discussed is the weighting factor applied to simulate populations. Because this weighting (done by every polling agency) is different from agency to agency, we get big discepancies. Does anyone know what sort of weighting would be used and what sort of affects it can have?
Martin J, with a 4 poll avg, each individual poll has an 0.25 weighting. Thus, if you say that the June Galaxy was in fact something like 45-41 Labor, that increases Labor’s primary for June avg by 0.25, and decreases Coal primary for June by the same amount. The June avg would then be 45.8-39.8 Labor, hardly different to my figures.
Evan, trolling is an art form where everyone is in on the joke apart from the hapless individual(s). Nos is no troll, he is a shit-stirrer pure and simple.
Lord D, I believe that history has shown that many Australians have racist tendencies and I believe that Haneef is a positive for the govt. The only negative for the govt in this affair is the buffoon named Andrews.
Re Coalition primary, check out Bryan’s moving averages chart at Oz Politics to give you an overview of the sorts of results produced by the various pollsters:
http://www.ozpolitics.info/guide/elections/fed2007/polls2007/#coalition
On both Labor and Coal primary, there is a big difference in Galaxy’s last 3 results vs other pollsters. The Green vote is also very high in the Morgan ph poll, but comes at the expense of the Coal not Labor in that poll.
Does anyone know what the NSW Libs decided last night about Mr el-Taouk? I can’t see anything in the press about it.
Maybe they worked out that el-Taouk is a scary sounding name and Andrews has detained him.
Adam
a few small reports note that the decision has been postponed again:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/towkes-fate-will-be-a-test-of-pms-sway-over-right-wing/2007/07/30/1185647827130.html
I guess they still don’t know what to do
Ah, here we are:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22162539-11949,00.html
They dodged a decision again. Howard is supporting Towke – he must be mad. It’s hard to imagine a worse candidate for a seat with Cook’s demographics.
Rudd is right on the edge of starting to lose significant Greens preferences, in my opinion. His recent policy announcements, and the fact that the CFMEU are in bed with Gunns, is starting to make him look like a clone of Howard from the perspective of a genuine progressive or left-winger.
He had better come up with a particularly convincing bone to toss them soon, or there may be some pretty vindictive preferencing come election time. The media and many here rest on the assumption that Greens voters will basically predictably preference the ALP – but if the primary vote is 10% Green, say, and 20-30% of those decide to ‘punish’ Rudd, that’s a 2-3% change in the final TPP, more than enough to lose an election (and much more important than two Tasmanian seats, Kev).
I would suggest something concrete, like a sane reform of our anti-terror laws, for instance, is needed to protect Rudd from losing votes on the left. But knowing Labor they’ll carry on with their usual assumptions, catering to the right and losing to a government that’s further to the right…
Adam. If you are still looking for Quaama, it is an ex dairying town north of Bega and just off the Princes hwy. Now home to hobby farmers, sea/tree changers and artists/crafts people with a few residual farming descendants of the dairy farmers. It is one of those areas that is moving away from the Nats into a liberal Libs vs left Lab contest.
People on this blog are too hard on Nostradamus. Check out Quatrain 76 in Century X at nostradamus.org
76.
The great Senate will ordain the triumph
For one who afterwards will be vanquished, driven out:
At the sound of the trumpet of his adherents there will be
Put up for sale their possessions, enemies expelled.
Obviously the real Nostra was anticipating the Coalition Senate majority 2004 (with the passage of Workchoices) and then the 2007 Ruddslide.
Not only does the real Nostra give us the election result but the number of the quatrain tells us the size of the working majority Rudd needs (not even Nostradamus was prepared to predict Bob Katter as Speaker) but as the saying goes it is not all over until the adherents trumpet (so be careful what you trumpet for Glen and Steven K).
On a more serious note, there has been a thread of opinion at times that a later election will favour Howard (e.g, Bryan’s graphs at Ozpolitics). What are people’s thoughts about the prospect of the discipline of Coalition MPs cracking the longer the run of bad polls goes on? Leaving aside Wilson Tuckey and some anonymous comments they have been holding together very well.
Mike, it was a rhetorical question. Google Earth enables me to find every hamlet and every street address in Australia in seconds. I wouldn’t be able to do these maps without it. Eden-Monaro map here:
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/2007seats/edenmonaro.shtml
Are you a descendent of the late great John Joseph Cusack, first Labor member for Eden-Monaro (1929-31)?
Patrick, feel free to vote for the Socialist Allience and give your second preference to the Liberals. That’ll make Rudd sit up and take notice. You seem to forget that Latham tried a “tack to the left” last time, and for every Green preference he got (which he would have got anyway), he lost two votes to the Libs, which is why we now have to spend money winning back Bass and Braddon.
Patrick, the Greens think they have more influence on elections than they actually do. In ‘04, Bob Brown kept going on about how the Greens were going to get about 10%+; they got 7.5%. That was absolutely pathetic considering the collapse in both the Labor and Democrat votes.
Unfortunately for that analysis, Latham’s alleged ‘tack’ was mostly in the minds of the media and did not contain too much in the way of actual policy.
In any event, I think it is necessary to distinguish ‘progressive’ from ‘left’ in this context. I don’t necessarily want to beat up private schools and give their money to public schools, but I do expect a modern, small-l liberal approach to social and environmental policy from an allegedly centre-left party.
And I am not talking about “the Greens” the party machine, I am talking about thinking people who are likely to vote Green.
Nor am I suggesting a wholesale move to the left in any event – just some kind of effort to distinguish Labor as a party of social justice and progressive thinking and reassure those of us who are assuming that Kev’s current plan is to mimic Howard until he gets into power, then do some actual good.
It’s been mentioned by various commentators here before, that looking for trends and trying to graph trend lines is fraught with difficulty and can very easily lead to drawing incorrect conclusions. This example below indicates this clearly.
In late Jan 1995 when John Howard came to the Coalition leadership, the Feb Newspoll figures immediately shifted from the figures Downer registered, to show the primary votes as ALP 39.5 Coalition 46.5. In March they changed again to show ALP 36 Coalition 52.5, it was an obvious endorsement of the Coalition and a rejection of the ALP.
But from those respective highs and lows, by August, the Coalition vote had dropped to 46 and the ALP vote had increased to 41. Keating looked set to repeat his claw back as he had done in 1993. ALP spirits lifted and Coalition spirits were dashed.
Drawing a trend line indicated that the Coalition vote was decreasing at 1.3% per month and the ALP vote was climbing at 1% per month. Continuing that trend showed clearly that by the time of the election, March 1996, the Coalition would have decreased to 38.2% and the ALP would have climbed to 47%.
These primary vote predictions were pretty accurate, with one exception; it was the Coalition who achieved 47% and the ALP 38.7%, nothing like what the trend lines indicated, but actually within 1% of the first polls in Feb 1995, Coalition 46.5%, ALP 39.5%. Looks like the first impressions were actually firm impressions.
Poll comparison for this election:
Newspoll
Dec 2006 ALP 46 Coalition 39
July 2007 ALP 47.5 Coalition 39.5
Nielsen
Dec 2006 ALP 48 Coalition 39
July 2007 ALP 49 Coalition 39
Newspoll
July 1995 ALP 39.3 Coalition 47.7
July 2007 ALP 47.5 Coalition 39.5
There’s a pattern here, but I just can’t put my finger on it.
These polls are all crap. There is only one poll that counts, as we all know, (after all, if you believed the opnion polls, Kim Beazley would have been PM for much of the past decade, with Mark Latham occupying that position over the last three years), and the Man of Steel consistently wins that one – not surprising given that he has delivered the strongest economy and the strongest foreign policy for the past 30 years! I predict that the Man of Steel will smash that little cockroach Kevin Dudd and easily get re-elected – as he deserves. So says Cerdic Conan.
I think how Latham did it was as significant as what he did. I suspect the Forestry policy needn’t have ended up being the debacle it was. It was reasonable policy and did involve chucking a lot of money at the local industry. However a better sell locally obviously required a *lot* of spadework that wasn’t done and releasing it so late just gave Howard a massive tactical advantage.
I think Patrick Bateman has it right. There are many green minded people who vote for major parties too. I know many non-left progressives who are now in a quandary. They are at the margins between Liberal and Labor. They are not left of Labor but they are left of current Liberal in the environmental sense. Many of these are fiscal conservatives and they certainly are not class warriors. These are the ones that Kevin Rudd had a chance of gaining but may now lose as a result of his me-tooism and his appalling forest announcements.
Patrick, in an election campaign, how things look in the media is what counts. As Martin says, the forests policy was done late in the campaign precisely to get a big media splash close to the election. And while it went over very well in places like Melbourne Ports where I live, it was a dud in Ruralia, where we lost two seats and failed to win others, such as Eden-Monaro, that we should have won. Rudd is far too clever to fall into that trap again. In fact on the evidence so far, Rudd is far too clever to fall into ANY traps whatever, whomsoever they are laid by.
Rudd’s ‘public interest’ environmental policies are not going to cost him many if any lower house votes.
What they *may* do is drag the ALP’s Senate primary vote down, and hence bring into play more possibilities for the Greens.
Another part of Mark Lathams forestry policy was that he was too close to the Greens. At times in the forest,it seemed like a Bob – Mark love fest. Surely it can’t be too much to ask the ALP, or the Libs for that matter to come up with a sustainable forestry policy that treats timber as a high value material for high value uses rather than 400 year old trees being pulped for photocopy or toilet paper. It would probably help the Libs also if the Forestry minister wasn’t from Tasmania.
Cerdic Conan – we both know if the polls were tracking well for the coalition you’d be all over them, extolling their virtues. What a joke.
Dudes enough about the forests and other distractions
the real issues are
1.how many lies this week by J-HO and co
2.how many attempted wedges this week by J-HO and co
3.how many people with a shred of decency in all conscience support the Liberal Gvt
4.How many asians in J-HO’s seat are going to think “me next”
5.how many damascenes (sorry richard) are going to hit the blogs extolling J-HO’s steady hand and the “me-tooism” of the nice calm and honourable Mr Rudd (gee he would have made a good old time Lib )
*sighs*
Actually, I think the Latham forest policy was a reasonable policy, especially in relation to the money that was going to go Tas in form of industry adjustment ($800m) compared to Howard’s $80m. yes, people would have lost jobs, but you could paid them to stay (hell paid them for the rest of their lives even if they did get other work), or better still built whole new industries. But leaving it so late was the mistake IMHO. At the time, we knew the ALP might find it tricky to sell in Tas and couldn’t understand why it was left so late – there were always going to be issues with selling it in Tas, but that was just going to take work (which I note Harry Quick would not have put in…). Given so preferences were at stake (at least, perceived that way) it would have been simple to get it out of the way in the first weeks of the campaign, sell it as a solution (an ‘end to forest pain’), and then get on with the rest of the campaign. I always suspected that the Forestry division of the CFMEU had just said no-way, even if you gave them the money, so it was about managing them, but ultimately that failed too.
But hindsight has a 20/20 vision. Rudd’s decision to ditch the old forest policy is a calculated gamble I for one had thought had been made long ago (perhaps just to be announced now…). The ramifications I suspect wont be as significant as some are making out, although as Richard Jones notes above may cause some blue-ribbon Lib seats to stay that way (here I’m thinking Sydney North Shore…).
What I DO find disturbing is the lack of policy differentiation between ALP & Coalition. IMHO, while honing down policy targets to just a few key areas may be both an example of agenda setting and minimising risk, if electors find their is so little to seperate the parties they may simply decide to stay with what they know. Add in Howard & Costello’s attacks on economic management to undermine elector confidence and you begin to see a Coalition resurgence.
Still, I am not a party strategist, so what would I know.
I agree with Martin B (2:34pm), as much as I dislike Rudd’s forestry policy stunt, I don’t think it will make a whole lot of difference in the lower house. Indeed, it may actually work to the Greens’ advantage by increasing their suppport in the senate.
I agree, and with reference to this remark by Adam:
I am deeply concerned that Rudd is being too clever by half, and never nailing his colours to the flag on any significant issue ahead of time. Case in point is Haneef, which was an absolutely golden opportunity for Labor to both stand up for some of its key principles (equality before the law; human rights; independence of the courts; etc) and also score some serious points with the electorate. Instead the issue will damage the govt somewhat but not actively make the ALP look good – if anything it has damaged them slightly too. If they’d started with a principled stance from day one instead of darting around like a hare trying to avoid the wedge (tailed eagle?) then they would have come out smelling of roses.
Excellent point, and let’s hope it is so – it’s easy to forget that in the past a Senate majority for the government has been a rare thing, and that the current situation is the exception, not the rule.
Getting into govt is not the same thing as being in govt or being re-elected.
Patrick, when you’re ahead you absolutely DON’T take risks. Labor coming out strong on Haneef would have been absolutely dumb!! If evidence had later come out saying Haneef was guilty, the govt would have had an absolute field day, rubbishing Labor for being soft on terror. Now that WOULD have been a real disaster.
If the issue has backfired on the govt, only media and loony lefties will give a damn that Labor hasn’t opposed it. To most people, the govt is responsible for poor decisions, and it doesn’t matter whether the opposition opposes or supports them.
Patrick, the Haneef thing won’t damage Rudd at all. He has strenuously advocated an approach “based on the info handed to us”. If that info was scurrilous in any way, then both barrels would be let rip at the government. In my opinion, it is why,Andrews is holding his “secret info” to himself now. An inquiry wont see the light of day.
Rudd played it smart and learnt from Tampa. Imagine if the ALP had cried foul over this and the evidence pointed out to be true? That would have been electoral suicide and kissed goodbye to this election. So he let it through to the keeper. Maybe a bit of tsk tsk ing in the far left, but overall, no real loss. But smart play nevertheless.
I agree with Stewart J and believe Rudd is falling into the smaller target syndrome that Beazely had. But this may simply be holding his position until the campaign begins where the differentiation will in full swing.
There’s a little too much rose-coloured glass interpretation of Labor’s 2004 forestry policy going on.
Early in the last campaign, Howard used a small state park in Page as a backdrop to a press conference, where a journo asked the PM whether he had feelings on the issue of native forests. His answer suggested the coalition was going to make a big policy shift to win back doctors-wives votes in leafy suburbs in Melbourne and Sydney.
That set the hares running in the ALP on what it had to do on forests. Howard kept holding out, holding out, and eventually forced Latham into his “secret” trip to Hobart where he announced his policy to a group of journalists and almost no one else. Two days later, Howard flew into Launceston, got the unions onside, and won Braddon and Bass.
In politics, as the PM says, perception is everything.
Aristotle (31 July 2:10pm). I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Good grief, so we’re all going to preference against Rudd now? For what, to teach him a lesson? To teach Labor a lesson? It may surprise some of you to realise that Rudd and Howard are trying to appeal to the same apolitical swinging voters, none of whom will be paying much attention to anything yet. That’s why Howard is trying to wedge Labor so consistently – among some swinging voters, such an event may well be the first time they engage in this election, and if Howard can paint Labor as “soft on terrorism”, “pro-paedophile (in Ab communities)” or “bad for the economy”, then he has the election won. Rudd, thankfully, is not biting, and the frustration of the government is palpable.
I, like everyone else on the Left, will have to see the odd sacred cow slaughtered in order to have the feast. Once Rudd is safely in the Lodge, however, then it’s open season, and all criticisms will be fair enough. But for the moment, please remember that Howard is the enemy for now – we can all beat up on Rudd when it might do some good, but while Labor’s in Opposition, there’s not much point.
It is interesting to note that Rudd seems quite aware of what Howard is trying to do, yet apparently the “Howard-haters” have no idea.
Patrick Bateman Says:
July 31st, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Rudd is right on the edge of starting to lose significant Greens preferences, in my opinion….He had better come up with a particularly convincing bone to toss them soon, or there may be some pretty vindictive preferencing come election time.
Patrick you would have to concede that Latham’s Foresty Policy did him no favours come election day- so much for courting Green preferences.
At worst, so I am told, the Greens in Tassie will offer a split ticket on preferences and the voters can flip the (environmentally freindly) bit of paper over and follow the dots as they see fit. The Green-Labor preference deal negotiations in NSW haven’t struck sand, yet.
As for tossing the Greens a bone, as you aptly put it, I am sure Rudd has yet to be announced left leaning policies that will temper an Green “vindictive preferencing”.
Enough on the Greens already: Give them 8 percent of the primary vote and move on- normal Green preferencing trends expected here.
Rudd’s strategy is quite clear – neutralise the stuff the government is trying to run on (including Haneef), while talking a lot about the stuff HE wants to get out to the electorate (housing affordability, climate change, Iraq). It means he has been setting the agenda and looking like a credible alternative PM, while the government has been visibly floundering.
If you’re on the left end of politics and don’t like it, what are you going to do? Hope that Howard wins the election? Hugo’s got it about right, I think.
Federal / State relations as an issue is now in upside down bizarro world. Howard is trying to gain control of everything, whereas Rudd is looking at making it easier for state governments to do what they want with money. The parties seem to have the complete opposite positions to what they held in the 70s and 80s.
I, like everyone else on the Left, will have to see the odd sacred cow slaughtered in order to have the feast. Once Rudd is safely in the Lodge, however, then it’s open season, and all criticisms will be fair enough. But for the moment, please remember that Howard is the enemy for now – we can all beat up on Rudd when it might do some good, but while Labor’s in Opposition, there’s not much point.
It is interesting to note that Rudd seems quite aware of what Howard is trying to do, yet apparently the “Howard-haters†have no idea.
Nice summary.
David Charles, I was pointing out the folly of trying to extrapolate trends from polling data.
There has been much discussion about the “trend” back to the Govt since March and if this trend continues to the end of the year then the Coalition will be returned.
The comparison to 1995 shows exactly the same situation and the trend readings then, at similar periods in the electoral cycle, would have predicted an ALP victory. But that obviously didn’t happen.
Far more accurate was the polling done in the first month of John Howard’s leadership in 1995, the voters looked at him and said “you’ll do”. Their initial impressions stuck and didn’t alter when it came to actually voting.
Who let Sir Dick Onan in – the GG must have shut down their blogging again and he’s drifted over.
Gusface, I may be obtuse but I don’t understand your allusion to damascenes. I have never seen it used in that context.
StewartJ, Bob Carr was very courageous on preserving old growth forests. He took on the CFMEU and we now have all the significant old growth protected. The industry continues and a large amount of public money was used in re-structuring. There is now peace in the forests.
Bob Carr, as Neville Wran before him, both actually cared about the old forests. Bob used to go bush walking with Milo Dunphy.
Neville assessed that his save-the-rainforests decision was the best thing he ever did. It was a tough battle but he didn’t lose an election over it. He went from strength to strength until Barry Unworth, the “killer in the cardigan” took over and underestimated the passion and strength of the gun owners as well as the “it’s time” factor.
When Don Dunstan decriminalised marijuana in South Australia he went on to win with an increased majority.
Bob, Neville and Don all believed in these issues and acted accordingly.
Certainly Kevin Rudd is smart not allowing himself to be wedged but he is being too rigid and fixed. It doesn’t apply to every issue.
He needs to be even smarter. He should allow himself to be wedged on issues where he will actually gain.
He has to also appear as a man of conviction and principles and not just a nice guy who cares for the battlers.
That move by John Howard to pretend he was going to make an announcement about saving the forests and then send Mark Latham off to beat him to the punch was politics at its very best. It was a superb wedge.
Expect John Howard and his team to attempt something similar a week or two before the election. This time he might do exactly the opposite.
He might make Kevin Rudd appear to be a red-neck.
Gary Bruce, I don’t have any actual polling. It was anecdotal but I believe it is correct. Check the new boundaries of Richmond.
Richard
The reference to damascenes refers to the shameless ways some pretend to be for a change in Gvt and generally providing reasonable analysis until bam suddenly kevin rudd is the devil incarnate and only J-HO can save our souls.
richard i generally liked your commentary but this tosh re the forests and greens etc is pure distraction from the main game
Exterminating the rodent and his faeceal policies and clique IS the only game in town
Anything else smacks of toadyism (that is if you have a social conscience/sense of fairness of course)
I disagree. Demanding some kind of principled line now is essential if we are going to demand it later. I reject the equation that taking a consistent, principled line equals electoral destruction. Rudd needs support and unity now, he will not need it if he wins a landslide victory.
You watch. It’ll be done as you suggest, and a Labor government will be run by a feral combination of the Catholic right and the far right unions, with all of the sick free-market, big government, nanny state rubbish we see from “Labor” in the UK.
As for all the reference to “the far left” (and similar) in this thread, the left of the ALP makes up nearly half of the party – so on current polling they are representing a solid 25% of the electorate, more if you add in the Greens voters. This is the eternal curse of Australian politics though -there is no genuine progressive party which is taken seriously, and the current duopoly will use their entrenched power to keep it so (case in point, the ALP attacking the Greens rather than the Liberals).
Oh, and one further comment: everyone seems to completely overlook the other alternative when it comes to “the wedge”. When an issue presents itself, here are the options:
1. avoid the issue and shadow the government (i.e. small target stuff)
2. shilly shally and change positions (i.e. get wedged)
this is the binary choice perceived by many people, including it seems Labor and most of you here, but what about
3. take an actual consistent and intellectually sound position and stick to it, and defend it with well presented and reasoned arguments?
There is a difference between 2 and 3. And surely you would have to admit that option 3 is what many ordinary people think is missing from modern politics, and is what Rudd seems hell bent on giving up out of paranoia that ‘the master’ is going to wedge him.
This just in: you can’t be wedged if you only have one, consistent, position.
gusface, thanks for that explanation. I don’t qualify as a damascene then.
The main game is won by a lot of small pieces moving about the board. In this game right now, neither side can afford to sacrifice even a pawn.
Pawns can become queens after all. A king cannot win the game alone.
You never win a game of chess by being rigid, thinking you can move in one direction regardless of your opponent.
Just as the gun owners tossed out Barry Unsworth so can those who are as passionate about old growth forests deny Kevin Rudd victory. It is a vital part of the main game. He has failed to see this.
Patrick, if Rudd plays the left card – he loses the election. There are far more centrist-leaning middle Australia that Labor needs to win over to get over the line. The white collar, mortgage wielding “battlers” that so embraced Howard in 2001 and 2004 is the battleground Labor party needs to play with otherwise they are doomed.
Politics has little room for principles I’m afraid – ask JWH about his White Australia principles. Personally, I’m all for them, but they only count when you are in office, not in Opposition.
Rudd is more pragmatic – he knows that he cannot afford to play the policies that he knows the Labor left wants to play due to the small target syndrome engulfing Opposition parties. He needs to win office first. He, and the entire Labor movement for that matter, cannot afford the Coalition win as that will give Howard a mandate to do what he likes with Workchoices and kill off the union movement that the ALP need. So we have a tiptoe effect in play.
See off the Coalition first by playing to middle Australia, then start to re-build the nation.
Patrick Bateman: “I reject the equation that taking a consistent, principled line equals electoral destruction.”
Adam Carr: “The fatal precipice is always to the Left”
Patrick, i refer you to the 1983 British election for why your views are foolish.
Maybe so Grooski, but what if Kevin Rudd actually is an anti-green hard-line conservative? Would we want to vote in a Tony Blair?
Peter,
It is a favourite myth that UK Labour’s 1983 was a principled forthright manifesto. Actually it was an incoherent mess that pretty accurately reflected the party at that time.
Now Andrews is accusing Haneef of knowing about the bomb plot:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22166534-29277,00.html
If that’s the case, why was he allowed to leave the country? Surely having pre-existing knowledge of a terrorist attack counts as aiding terrorism.
And another question, if Haneef really was associated with his cousins who are likely to be found guilty of terrorist offences, why was Haneef allowed into Australia in the first place?
Patrick, bit naiive when the other party and/or the media misrepresent the first party’s position. Reality is not always pretty.
Patrick, even if it’s true that the left makes up nearly half of the ALP, it does not necessarily follow that its opinions are representive of nearly half of the people who vote for the ALP. That logic is faulty.
It is a safe prediction that a Labor Government will disappoint, at least in part, at least some Labor supporters–not because of anything Kevin Rudd is or isn’t doing, but because this has been true of Labor Governments since they first started being elected. I think this is just in the nature of things. Sorry.
I hope everyone is listening to PM, vindicating Rudd’s decision not to get to close to Haneef
Richard, do you honestly believe that the minority Centre-Right would hold off a rampant Left in the ALP should Rudd actually prove to be Howard’s shadow?
I can name several faction heads and that would have the balls to make sure that he keeps his place – including the Deputy Leader.
This is the beauty of the factionalised Labor party – the more dominant faction will always see its policies given more weight than others. I don’t believe Rudd has the authority in the party of a Hawke to override this. If a faction war ever started, Rudd would be swallowed whole.
There is hope for a Lefty voice yet Patrick, but we must be clever about it.
Andrews has released phone and chat-room transcripts showing that Haneef knew his cousins were involved in the UK bomb plot, and was warned by his brother to leave the country because the use of his SIM card had been discovered, and to use his new baby as a pretext for leaving.
“Rampant left”? “Faction war”? What year are we in? The factions are a hollow shell. Look how the left rolled over with Garrett.
So why didn’t we deport him to the U.K. so he could be charged with assisting terrorism?
As always with this government I would be waiting to see the context of these conversations before jumping either way. Rudd has done the right thing though politically in letting this issue run its course. Speaking of context this information released tonight shows Andrew’s strange press release on friday in a different light. They were obviously desperate to get Rudd to bite on this issue. They got plenty of tiddlers but the big one eluded them again.
Factions tend to follow a leader until they are in power Shrike. The factions are still very much alive and well in the ALP, just dulled over years of Opposition and muted to allow the party to appear unified.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22166791-2,00.html
Ok. I’d like to hear Haneef’s explanation of this convo.
Well, I must say that Haneef doesn’t look squeaky clean anymore but is that a good thing for the government or the ADF? Due to bungling a man very possibly connected to terrorism has been set free.
Andrews and Howard should be careful of the way they play political games with security, if it is percieved that they are playing with information for political purposes they will lose trust over their ability and willingness to handle security for Australians not just the liberal party.
Viewed purely as a political question, this largely lets Andrews off the hook and vindicates Rudd’s decision largely to support the government on Haneef. The floating voters will now be convinced that Haneef had some connection to the UK bombers, and they may well be right.
As a matter of law, Andrews doesn’t have to meet the standard of proof of a criminal court in deciding whether to revoke a visa – all he has to do is form an opinion about whether the person is desirable to have in the country or not. On this evidence, it seems he was correct. (That doesn’t excuse his bizarre attack on Rudd and Gillard for supporting him.)
re Haneef saga
does anyone have a link to what Mr Andrews released?
why is whatever released only part of what is available?
what language were conversations in?
were they translated correctly?
Does any of this prove links to terrorism?
why is this info being released now and not earlier?
There is one thing for sure, the government’s focus groups must have shown the Haneef affair was going against them badly for Andrews to release this information.
The problem is that, according to the polls, Labor IS losing ground and the Coalition is picking up some ground. The government’s had a pretty awful past couple of weeks (the Costello comments i Howard’s book, Haneef, etc), yet why have they seemingly picked up ground then? If the government can increase its poll numbers despite having a leader being called a “terrible economic manager” etc, then come election time, I’ll be scared to see who the electorate will vote for. After 11 years of Howard, it seems that voters are very politically immature and swimming in right-wing politics, so I have to say that despite the positive poll results for a couple of months for Labor, I’m still fairly pessimistic and predict a Coalition win by a thin margin. If that happens, then I’ll just become a really apathetic person and stay away from politics for a while just so I don’t have an early coronary.
You’ll find the conversation here.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22163726-601,00.html
Andy which polls are you refering too?
Totally off topic but does anyone know roughly when a DD would be called if Labor wins but with a really hostile senate, say Coal. having exactly 50% of seats? The 2001 senators go on until umm.. June, right? So must proceedings wait until then? Then they must allow three months for a bill (IR) to be blocked three times so then a sept., oct. or nov. DD. Does this sound about right or could it be much later or even earlier?
I think it is less aimed at the electorate which are probably generally content with Howard’s ‘better safe than sorry’ line, but more aimed at the legal profession who have been calling for Andrews scalp (instead of Keelty or the DPP).
It now puts the ball squarely back in the AFP and DPP’s court.
Gary Bruce,
I still think it shows this government as being completely and utterly hopeless on the issue of security. I have always believed that the security services, being behind the cloak of national security, are also beyond accountability. And conservative governments have even less incentive to make them perform than Labor governments.
However most of the media outrage so far has not been inspired by their incompetence. It’s been inspired by the perception that they are persecuting someone who may in fact be innocent. I think a lot of the bad press they’ve received so far will abate. Which, on the whole, can’t be bad for the government.
Picking up ground within the M of E is not a problem. The coalition are also “picking up” a small amount of ground from a very low base. The last point to be made why assume this as a trend. Afterall most would argue these polls don’t predict the future don’t they?
All in all I think Rudd played a smart dead hand on the Haneef issue. Andrew’s, on the other hand, keeps on fudging the reasons for his existence and JWH has scored some kudos for playing hard ball with any (alleged) threat of Terrorism
National security-muslims-terrorism-patriotic values= retaining votes. How many ? Who knows. I call it a 0-0 draw in election strategy terms.
Gary, according to the above Galaxy Polls, the Primary Vote and TPP vote for the ALP has declined over the year while the Coalition has gained some ground. It’s understandable that maybe 58 TPP is a little colourful, but it’s declined over the months nonetheless. I would have expected that the Costello revelations would have impacted the poll results at least a bit but it’s had the opposite effect. (When not taking into account the Morgan Phone Poll, etc).
The fact that the Opposition supported the government can’t be a bad thing for them either.
I was talking to a divisional returning officer the other day.
She said that they were having real problems with renting premises for polling booths. Some owners were asking very rents for the day and demanding that security be hired. This seems to be outside the AEC’s budget.
Anyone heard anything on this in their areas?
So basing it on one type of poll then Andy? Not a good idea. By the way that poll has gone up and down re Labor’s primary vote.
Aristotle, thank you for your elucidation. Perhaps then we don’t need any more opinion polls between now and the poll which counts. Maybe all of us should put down the binoculars and call it for Kevin.
ACNielsen when ?
My other points still stand re polls.
Politically speaking, that conversation, if it (or how it it has been presented) is true, I think the heat will be off the government, and the fact that he’s out of the country now means that the story will probably die a death in a week or two. I suspect it’s already influenced those who are likely to be influenced by it, and any further revelations will probably just harden views either way.
I think it’s a points decision for the government, but Labor hasn’t really lost much skin over it. Both sides have probably got something out of it, and it’s possible the flak Rudd has got from his left flank has made him look more “independent”, and so a winner on that score too.
But this is a reminder for the Left that such an issue could easily blow up during the election campaign, and it’s hard to imagine the government and the AFP bungling it so badly again (though that’s possible). Whether we like it or not, this kind of issue is a hot button in the community (rightly or wrongly), and it’s clearly something that works for the government and the Right generally. (I guess when “no compassion” is called for, you go for a conservative!)
Labor needs to have a strategy for this, and looking at the wash-up from the Haneef affair (though one suspects there are a few surprises to come), it’s clear that Rudd has taken the only course open to him. If he opposes anything the government does, Labor will be painted as “weak on terrorism”, and if that happens during the campaign (and it will), the whole effect is magnified. The terror card can trump all, in which case it doesn’t really matter what Rudd’s forestry policy is.
AcNielsen is usually due in the middle of each month.
I’m with the Piping Shrike on factions in the ALP. Not only are they a hollow shell and devoid of some quality leadership. A Prime Minister (Labor or Liberal) always has more clout than any Opposition Leader, even in the shadows of a looming winnable election!
All this is unlikely to stop the Liberals reminding the public that factions and god-forbid “union bosses” are pulling the strings. But then again, the Liberals will tell you there are no factions in the Liberal Party, except for in Cook, or Qld, or SA, or Vic, or WA……..
Agree with all posts critical of Patrick Bateman’s misguided analysis!
Thinking back over Rudd’s (public) performance over the last, what 7-8 months I can’t recall him scoring an ‘own goal’ yet.
Moreover, the Coalition’s attempts to find some mud to toss at him that sticks have failed, to date.
He seems ‘untouchable’ at the moment. Costello, Andrews, Abbott and others have tried thier hardest to discredit him without much tangible success.
This makes me speculate on what Rudd could be tripped up on. Costello is itching for him to come out with a taxation policy, something, anything, they can poke fun at or use to discredit his credentials. Nothing so far.
Latham was easy pickings and scored a few own goals pre election: my most apparent memory was the bully in the school yard handshake at the radio station. What could Rudd do or not do to make a mess of things ?
Saw on the TV tonight the member for Franklin with my minister (Centrelink) Joe Hockey at the launch of the Coalition’s campaign. Harry Quick needs to be sorted out, and quick.
WTF is he doing ? I know he has a beef with the union dude who was pre-selected to take over from him but public dissent taken to the extreme being willing (at least) to be perceived as “endorsing” the other team’s candidate is outragous. The margin is 7.6 percent but stranger things have happened is Tasmania.
JWH will milk this cow for all its worth, despite the equally stupid public mess being played out over Cook in NSW which still hasn’t been settled yet.
The Thing that I found interesting about the Adelaide Advertiser poll of federal voting intention in the marginal seats of Kingston and Wakefield apart from the Numbers showing Labor’s support on a two-party-preferred basis remains extremely strong at 57 per cent to 43 in Kingston and 58 to 42 in Wakefield. Is that in Kingston, 85 per cent of ALP supporters said it was unlikely they would change their vote, while 18 per cent of Liberal supporters said changing their votes was either very likely or quite likely.
Perhaps it’s the Lib vote thats soft and the movement back to the libs since March could soon move back to Labor
Arbie Jay Says:
July 31st, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Maybe they worked out that el-Taouk is a scary sounding name and Andrews has detained him.
Good one Arbie.
Anyone willing to make some state by state senate predictions? They are pretty tough and of course highly speculative and require a good disclaimer but how does QLD: 3-Labor, 2-Liberal and 1-National senator sound?
“Better safe than sorry” is code for “Presumed guilty until proven innocent”.
Molotov did you read about the joint Senate ticket deal JWH was trying to get up at the State Liberal_National conference last weekend in QLD.
According to the Courier Mail, the mail is that Qld National Party President Bruce McIvor threatened to resign, unhappy with JWHs edict (via Senator Bosswell, Jeff Seeney and Warren Truss) that a joint Senate Ticket be formed for QLD at the 2007 Federal Election.
The ‘in principle agreement’ would see Senator Boswell take the third senate nominee position and no Liberal candidate standing in the new seat of Flynn (7.9) and Kennedy (10.5) which has belonged to maverick Bob Katter as a National (1993-2001) and then as an Independent.
No big favours won for the Nationals in Kennedy, but Flynn is a seat the Coalition are counting on winning and they are very worried it will go to Labor with the big pro-Rudd swing on up here in sunny Queensland.
If this ‘deal’ gets up it would support your Liberal 2- Nationals 1 speculation.
Im not sure about Labor taking 3 though.
Bob Brown was up here in June trying to wrangle a Greens-Labor preference deal which would give his Green candidate a shot at the (expected) seat which is supposedly ‘up for grabs’ at the expense of the Democrats IF for some reason Labor fails to take 3 seats on it’s own quota.
Still, the National-Liberal ‘deal’ proposal is reported in the media to be meeting strong resistance from National Party people. Who knows.
You would expect Labor to improve its Senate result from 2004 (31.6%: 2.2 quotas) in QLD on current poll trends, enough to win a third Senate seat with Green preference support.
According, to Adam (link below), the Green candidate would have to improve thier primary vote substantially or gain preferences from the Liberals to gain a seat.
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/senate3.shtml
Hanson is back in the game to put a spanner in the works again, but her influence is expected to be far less potent than in previous elections.
Thanks STROP,
Are there any seats yet that both the Liberals and the Nationals have declaired they are running in yet?
Was Fielding a fluke or could FF pick up a seat VIC with just around 2%ish again%? What % would they need in SA?
The Senate is rarly mentioned on this site. Is this because until preferences are known its too hard to predict? Did anyone here forecast FF in VIC, 4 coal. in Qld or no green in NSW last time and was not at all surprised?
Have a look at this site
http://www.greenswatch.com/default.aspx
David Charles from this distance, that’s exactly how it appears for 1995/6, but of course at the time, no-one saw it that way. It’s always crystal clear after the event.
[Have a look at this site
http://www.greenswatch.com/default.aspx
It looks like it is registered to someone in Pitt Street, Sydney. It looks like a made up phone number.
Registrant Contact:
GreensWatch
Green Swatch ()
+61.240044004
Fax: none
Pitt St
Sydney, 2001
AU
James, that site is ludicrous propoganda and deserves no attention.
Not too shabby numbers for the government in the Galaxy, 41% of the primary vote. They would need to get around 43-44% to win the election.
Yay! Another YouTube announcement from Howard tomorrow:
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,22168765-5006301,00.html
What will it be about, housing affordability? Free webcams?
To contact any Greens Watch member by email:
editor@greenswatch.com
Or ring the Greenswatch Hotline on:
0412 365 549
Sounds like a job for REPEATED-PRANK-CALL-MAN!!!!
In Queensland it could more like 3 Labor and 3 Liberals voted to the Senate. The National Party vote has been declining for years.
[The National Party vote has been declining for years.] But it seems to be going straight across to the Liberals.
OCT. 13 looking less and less likely.
molotov
It may be propaganda or may not that in the eyes of the reader, but it freedom of speech
James I agree, I was just pushing my own agenda.
the senate should go
ALP Lib NAT Greens
vic 3 3
nsw 3 3
queenland 3 2 1
wa 2 3 1
sa 3 3
tas 2 3 1
nt 1 1
act 1 1
Or That
Labor 18
Libs 19
Nat 1
Greens 2
Did someone say …..
Pauline Hanson
http://www.101usesforajohnhoward.com/2006/12/20/59-pauline-hanson
Not so shore i agree with you James on NSW. I would suggest the Greens will win at the expence of Labor
Apparently the government’s polling shows the Haneef affair is playing well for them. I can’t say I’m too surprised, if talkback radio is any indication – fear of terrorism and Muslims is alive and well, and it works for Howard, at least shores up his support amongst Liberal voters in marginal seats.
Why did Kevin Andrews let Haneef leave the country, if he’s a suspicious character? Maybe they wanted to avoid a Hicks situation?
Harry Quick – no doubt he’ll get expelled from the ALP.
Rudd would be wise to disendorse Harkness(the union guy) and find a new candidate for Franklin, but the hard heads in the Labor Party probably think the seat is safe enough for them.
That’s the sad and sick thing as far as I’m concerned. If they’re really concerned about terrorists, they should be angry that the investigation and was so badly mishandled by the AFP, and tainted by government interference.
Wow. I guess this means the government is probably monitoring IM conversations. Haneef talking with a relative in India were spied on, UK not involved in it at all. I guess Echelon does work after all!
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/boothmaps.shtml
Andrews has no concept of his role and its like watching a bureaucrat dissect his morning teacake -what a lightweight-
I’m not going to explain again why the Greens won’t pick up Senate seats even if they double their vote… Figure it our for yourselves
Dembo I assume Haneef’s computers were seized and studied carefully after the arrest… the chat programs I’ve been known to use keep a log of conversations, unless you carefully find the ‘disable log’ box to tick. Perhaps he is a sloppy terrorist supporter. His second cousins certainly made sloppy terrorists.
If he did have knowledge of the planned attacks in the UK, why did the case against him fail? Why did we let him leave the country? Why wasn’t he deported to the U.K.
What Andrews released today jsut raises more questions.
I was very interested in some earlier blogs on the topic of Kevin Rein’s practice of running neutal on issues where John Boy is streets ahead (eg post by Patrick Bateman at 3:03 pm today).
I saw Tony “left ear” Abbott interviewed on the Insiders and had one of those epiphany moments when a politician articulates a point that up until that point has only been half formed my own head.
If Kevin rein continues to run dead on issues where John-boy is strong, he will be held to account by various sectors of the voting population. Tasmanian trees and Haneef charge sheet, the longer this list of issues grows, the more that minor party voters are going to re-consider their preferences. Basically, one day, Kevin Rein is going to have to make a decision, and if that day doesn’t happen before election day, then as voters we are all to blame. I hate to say it, but I’m beginning to understand who straps on the plastic in the Rein household!
Does Kevin Rudd have a tax policy?
No of course not.
Do i think that Kevin Rudd has a so very little leadership experience?
Obviously.
Does Kevin Rudd have the ticker to the Prime Minister of Australia and make tough decisions in the national interest?
Unlikely very unlikely.
Do i think Kevin Rudd should stop answering his own bull butter questions and face some real media scrutiny?
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dembo
Of course Echelon works it is run by the Defence Signals Directorate and it is an amazing piece of technology. The civil libertarians would go ape if they knew just how much information Echelon could pick up…
Rudd has not “run dead” on either issue. On trees, he supports the forest agreement between the Tasmanian Labor government, the timber industry and the forestry union. On Haneef, he supported the government’s actions. You may disagree with his positions but you can’t accuse him of not taking one.
What you guys really want is for Rudd to take “left” positions so Howard has wedge him and scuttle back into office. But he’s too smart for that, so nyah nyah nyah.
Adam.
Apologies. I was being a bit of a smartar** re local knowledge. I have seen your Eden-Monaro map and I am very interested in it.
Yes, I am related (distantly) to JJ Cusack. His was the first funeral I can remember going to. My father was a veteran and was very proud of JJ’s anti conscription stance during WW1.
Adam sez “I’m not going to explain again why the Greens won’t pick up Senate seats even if they double their vote”
Jeez mate that’s a bit harsh. To say that we can go to bed early and not agonise over the later upper house results especially after a few astringent reds celebrating that near miss in takes all the fun out of an election.
Leave us some of our hope maaaaaaaaaaaaaate.
Mike, do you live in Eden-Monaro? What is your impression of Nairn v Kelly so far?
that should have read:
“near miss in name of electorate takes all the fun out”
Jeez I definitely typed in greater than and less than around “name of electorate” – this blog has some sort of html removal thingy
This site uses regular html. To italicise something, type
<i>something</i>
Rudd’s doing ok at avoiding potholes, and frustrating some in the govt in the process.
greenswatch.com
Registrant Contact:
GreensWatch
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+61.240044004
Fax: none
Pitt St
Sydney, 2001
AU
Administrative Contact:
GreensWatch
Green Swatch (Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com)
+61.240044004
Fax: none
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Sydney, 2001
AU
Technical Contact:
GreensWatch
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+61.240044004
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Hiding behind a fictitious address etc. – courageous and brave aren’t they?
If the Greens doubled there vote in Vic, NSW and then they would be over a quota in each of those states and therefore pick up seats.
Tom sez: “If the Greens doubled there vote in Vic, NSW and then they would be over a quota in each of those states and therefore pick up seats.”
yes but Adam always has a little trouble with numbers – especially later in the evening (if you gets my drift) so we try to humour him.
I was exaggerating slightly. I meant they could poll substantially better than in 2004 and still not win seats. If both Labor and the Coalition poll three quotas, there will 14% of the vote left, and the Greens could get all of it and still not win. Garrett got 10% in NSW in 1984 and didn’t get up.
Adam. No, I’m next door in Canberra. I do spend a lot of time in E.Monaro because we have a house at the coast in the family. Also many friends, colleagues and rello’s in E Monaro. I have not met Kelly, but have talked to some who have and they are universally impressed. Looks impressive, speaks impressively, thinks impressively as one lady put it.
I have met Nairn, he seemed like a nice enough bloke, a bit distracted seeming in conversation and uninvolved. I dont think he has a personal vote as such, but does have a recognition factor. The Govt has spent a s**tload of money in the electorate, most of it announced several times over. The big ticket item is the Defence Operations office out near Bungendore, a dormitory “village” about 25 K out of Qbn. This is a bit of a two edged sword for him, as he (and JWH) has made a big song and dance over it. When completed it will increase exponentially the traffic on a goat track Hwy out from Canberra and Qbn which is frequently the subject of bitter blame shifting between NSW and Fed Govts, much to the disgust of people in Canberra, the south coast, (including Gilmore and E Monaro electorates) and all the towns between. This traffic increase does not thrill any voters and may cause something of a backlash if given some additional publicity and the later the election the worse it will be as summer traffic wreaks its damage. Also Bungendore, once a small village is now a macmanshioned dormitory suburb of about 5k plus and many inhabitants dont like the change imposed on them nor the water problems the population increase brings. The obvious first intention of the Govt was to implant a couple of thousand conservatively voting servicemen and women in the electorate. Most of them will in fact probably live in Canberra for the educational, employment and cultural opportunities for their spouses and kids.
Rudds timber policies will have a huge effect in the southern end of the electorate around Bombala and down to Eden and back up along the coast.
The coastal area is remorselessly moving in the ALP’ favour as it becomes deaths waiting room for public servants from Canberra and increasingly the destination of tree/sea changers of an arty crafty bent.(see Quaama!).
I dont know whats happening in the new part of the electorate around Tumut, Batlow, Tumbarumba etc., although the timber industry is enormous in that area.
Whether Kelly wins or not, he seems a very good candidate and should be persevered with, perhaps in a better electorate if necessary.
Nairn on the other hand is a bit of a hack. If he loses, he will probably disappear from sight, mostly unlamented. If he wins it will be a drovers dog victory.
I have met Kelly a few times and I agree he is an impressive candidate (I am of course biased). If the Libs try to get to the right of him on security issues they will fall off the planet. I think Labor will poll better in the Tumut area now that it is in a seat where Labor has a chance of winning. At present I expect Kelly to win.
I expect Kelly to win. My very unscientific method is based on the fact that of about a dozen people who have told me that they will change their vote this election, all favour the ALP.
This does not of course take into account the new part of the electorate, nor the effect of builders, professionals etc moving into McMansions in the semi rural developments surrounding Queanbeyan. Who knows the voting intentions of people of such strange aesthetic tastes.
Looking at the map – what is it about Captain’s Flat and Major’s Creek that makes them so strong for Labor?
I dont know Majors Ck so well, but because of it’s history it is probably in the same boat as “the Flat”.
The Flat was a notable mining town with a strong union presence until into the sixties, and when the mine finally closed that ethos remained as a strong characteristic of the remnant population.There was a Workers Club in operation until only ten or so years ago. Subsequently it became a dormitory village for Cbr/Qbn and seemed to attract many blue collar tree changers, perhaps for it’s history. Certainly it was an area that was notable for cheap(ish) real estate long after other similar villages had gone up-market and had become expensive. (exorbitantly so in the case of some villages). There was also a fair amount of work there in remedial work on the mine workings which were for many years leaching poison and heavy metals into the headwaters of the Molonglo River. There is/was a sawmill at the town and extensive forestry in the district.
More recently it has attracted an arts/craft crowd in addition to the blue collar people and has not generally attracted the McMansion crowd to the same extent. The areas on the Qbn/ Flat road where more elaborate housing on acreage has evolved as big properties have been broken up would probably vote in Qbn in lieu of journeying on out to the Flat.
Hey, The Australian is pinching my lines now <pout>
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22168310-16741,00.html
I object to the use of bufoon to describe Mr Andrews. To me that word implies a degree of amusing incompetence. It is the correct word to use in a description of Downer, and perhaps Nelson.
The dour imbecility of Andrews requires a different adjective. Any suggestions?
All this is a strange reminder of the perverse nature of Australians. We would never accept the crass incompetence and boorishness of our Ministers of the Crown in sportspersons who had been selected to represent us, yet Downer has sailed through 11 years as Foreign Minister relatively unscathed.
Remarkable!
Amber Dekstris Says:
August 1st, 2007 at 3:12 am
Hey, The Australian is pinching my lines now
After failing on the introduction of Work Choices, Mr Andrews has reinforced our view that he is a political buffoon
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22168310-16741,00.html
Looks like someone wants a scape goat and Andrew’s fits the bill beautifully. He has two strikes (WorkChoices/Haneef) at least…is he out ?
Peter Garrett didn’t win in 84 on 10% because the ALP directed preferences to the Democrats – to Colin Mason, who was elected on a smaller percentage.
Andy of course the polls were always going to close towards the election.
Kevin Rudd was correct months ago when he said it was going to be extremely close. He knew that those polls at the time were absolutely not indicative of the final result.
The polls are now much closer to the final result which will be, let’s say, between 50-50 and 52.5 Labor and 47.5 Coalition.
It will be indeed very close and every electorate is precious, hence the ALP anger at Harry Quick.
What we may well find is the tail will flick upward or downwards at the very end, in the last twenty four hours. That is when the election is really decided.
Of course the Haneef affair was going to run OK for the Government, even with gross bungling. People are afraid, especially those in the backblocks going about their daily business. They don’t follow and agonise over every detail. All they see is Muslim doctors involved in a terror attack in the UK and a related Muslim doctor arrested right here. He must be a terrorist they think otherwise he wouldn’t have been arrested.
Nevertheless the Haneef affair will be long gone by election time. Although another may one be concocted or exaggerated.
John Howard is currently fretting over the very real possibility of an interest rate increase – making the “dream of home ownership” impossible for so many young people. That rate increase will have far more impact than the relatively abstract Haneef affair.
A rate increase would be a godsend for Labor no matter how John Howard will try to spin it to blame the states or say how great the economy is going and that’s why we had to have a rate increase. Bit like the recession we had to have.
John Howard’s promises at the last election will be demonstrated by Labor to be just another lie and a really serious lie at that, affecting very many so called “Howard’s battlers”.
Richard Jones, you metioned the ALP anger at Harry Quick, I agree but it will be a lot more than just anger. The ALP can be party of real haters and families can carry grudges over generations. Sometimes I wonder if it’s not a pre-requisite of joining the party.
I remember Paul Keating’s words as clearly as if it was yesterday, when he was contributing to the condolence motion for the death of Sir John Kerr:
“those who cross the Labor Party are marked by the crosses it leaves on them.”
Now Quick isn’t Kerr, and the circumstances are different, but if the ALP loses the election by the seat of Franklin, look out Harry!
1. You can’t read, I never advocated a wholesale move to the left, only that Rudd (a) does need to make at least a token effort to mollify the left and (b) does need to start taking a position (other than the Government’s position, Adam) on some issues.
2. If my analysis is misguided, why is Rudd gradually losing ground to the government over the last couple of months? Don’t you think some strong, principled policies and positions would help maintain brand differentiation and stop the votes leaking away?
3. On the Haneef issue and the new revelations, I love how one-dimensional a lot of the thinking is. The ALP could easily have taken a position that was founded on principle and was consistent whether or not Haneef was/is implicated in any terrorist activities.
4. A lot of the thinking on this blog is deeply cynical and depressing and one of the primary problems with the state of Australian politics. You people honestly and actively believe that a politician “can’t afford” to take a principled, independent line on important issues. How sad is that?
Yes, Patrick, you’re right to despair at the cynicism which runs through politics – it would be nice if politics was purely a contest between ideas. However, don’t be fooled that there was ever some sort of “golden age” of political integrity – politicians have always been cynical bastards, despite the often rosey-eyed view of leaders past. You cab be sure that they weighed their actions for the political impact on their opponents.
Fact is, that is how politics works. We are talking about the battle for power, after all, so it’s inevitable that a fair dollop of cynicism and self-interest permeates the process. It’s not pretty, but that’s the system we have to deal with, regardless of one’s political allegiances. To bemoan it is to bemoan the rain – it might make you feel better, but it’s not going to change anything.
However, it’s good that you still care enough about this sort of stuff – I’m pleased that you haven’t become a bitter and cynical fixer like me.
My uncle, who resides in Eden Monaro, has always voted Liberal, but this time, he’s going to vote Labor, mainly because he likes Kevin Rudd.
Thoughts on Harry Quick: obviously being very petulant, because he wanted his mate endorsed as candidate. Going out and campaigning with the Liberal candidate – Labor supporters in that seat wouldn’t be too happy, they’ll see it as a mark of betrayal. I doubt it’d force too many people to magically vote Liberal. Loathsome as he is, Kevin Harkins probably doesn’t have too much to worry about, but I wouldn’t rule out Rudd getting nervous and dumping the bloke.
Howard’s Youtube Devonport Hospital announcement today: obviously designed to hold on to Braddon. I wonder how many people, other than journos, are desperate enough to watch that one? 10 maybe at most?
re “me-tooism”
Ross Gittens has an interesting article in todays SMH on one of the few policy differentiations between ALP & Coalition, after leading in with a comment on Rudd’s “me-tooism”:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/fewer-eggs-in-labors-basket/2007/07/31/1185647900795.html
The broader implication of course is that Rudd & the ALP are fighting the election on a narrow base (as opposed to Beazley’s small target), which has further implications as pressure is brought to bear on those policies being campaigned on. WorkChoices does appear to be the solid winner, but with climate change I wouldn’t be surprised by a Howard rabbit-out-of-the-hat on climate change post-APEC (following a meeting of the Asia Pacific Partnership [AP6] at APEC perhaps?). This begins a slide to an election battle on who to trust to keep you safe (across the gamut of ’security’ issues), and that favours incumbency – Howard.
I agree with Patrick in respect of the need to begin to take principled stands – as much as to stake out real territory as to re-educate the public after 11 years of culture wars, further neo-liberal economic reform, and rampant individualism.
As to Adam’s comment regarding the Green’s doubling their vote and not winning, the salient point is that scenario is always a reality – nothing is certain until you poll 14.3%. This election poses real problems for Greens because of the (likely) high ALP vote – meaning either the Green are fighting it out for the 6th spot with the ALP or the ALP over-quota will be too little (and with a limited flow from conservative parties, including the Democrats who will do a deal with FFP again). And then there is the PHON scenario, where the Greens are placed last on Group Voting Tickets and locked out…
If the recent N.S.W state election results were replicated in a Federal election, the ALP would gain from the Coalition Lindsay, Eden Monaro, Patterson and Dobell, and retain Parramatta.
Interesting Newspoll yesterday showing Alan Carpenter and his state Labor government in WA well ahead of the Libs.
However, as we’re so often told, people will vote for Howard federally, but support a Labor state government.
And, John Watkins easily holds the state seat of Ryde for the ALP, which covers a lot of Bennelong.
Patrick, I think you’re missing an important point. Sure, Rudd can take principled stands on stuff like Haneef. The problem is that in doing so, he is giving oxygen to the government’s agenda. Rudd does not want to campaign on this stuff, he wants to campaign on issues where he judges that he can swing votes his way. This is not cynicism, it’s political strategy. You may feel that his arguing about the Haneef case will swing votes his way, but I doubt that he agrees with you.
With respect to the “me-tooism” we haven’t started the campaign proper yet, and all this stuff will be forgotten in the run up to the election. That’s when it counts, and that’s when Rudd will roll out the policies. Why do it now and give Howard time to fight it? Rudd knows how Howard works, and he’s playing a long game.
wrt Haneef I think Rudd could be getting a bit more mileage out of it. It seems pretty obvious that the govt esp Andrews has screwed up big time. Rudd should point out that if Haneef is a terrorist, why was he allowed to go home? If he’s not, why was his visa withheld etc? Howard says it’s better to be safe than sorry. That, sadly sums up this odious little man’s politics completely. Unfortunately, it really resonates with a segment of our society. Ben Franklin said “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
Sigh!
Rudd has differences on climate change, Workchoices and Iraq. Labor is perceived as the best party for education and health. Rudd is playing it smart and safe by refusing to engage on issues where the govt is strong. As to Haneef, even Andrew Bolt thinks the govt hasn’t done a good job:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22168347-5000117,00.html
On the other hand, Denis Shanahan should just go and join the Liberal party. We know you want to, Denis:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22169376-5013404,00.html
What is interesting is how the major issues of the campaign – economy, IR, climate have disappeared in favour of emblematic ones. Terrorism vs civil liberties beat-up; ALP rehashing Latham style critique of junk-food ads. (I say ‘beat-up’ because truly this is a storm in a teacup: ludicrously botched car attacks on the other side of the world, and keystone law enforcement over the left-behind SIM card of a doctor in Queensland who the UK police aren’t interested in).
Anyway, the fascination with emblematic issues helps the drift back to the government.
An interest rate rise will surely snap the media and political class back to the more compelling issues.
Good news for Labor in South Australia. Despite a lot of bad publicity for the Rann Government recently, a poll in The Advertiser today has 2PP support for that government at 61 cent – up 5 per cent since the 2006 election. The Rudd flood is surely a major factor in this remarkable result. Translated to the federal scene, these figures would not only see Labor winning Kingston, Wakefield, Makin, Boothby and Sturt but also Mayo and Grey. The Liberals would hold one seat in SA – Barker.
Patrick, there are more votes for the ALP towards the right than the principled left. I think Rudd’s made an assessment that there are more soft Liberal voters are up for grabs than so-called principled Green/Labor voters thinking about voting for Howard. Politics is about perception, but it’s also about numbers!
I think you miss the point of those crrrrazy civil libertarians – it’s not the severity of the alleged acts, it’s the arbitrary and opaque exercise of unchecked executive power that is a concern.
I accept that, although I would argue quite strongly that progressive social policy appeals equally to small-l liberal Coalition voters (of whom there are actually many) and traditional left wingers.
There’s a fundamental disconnect in much of the analysis I read where the obvious ideological link between free-market conservative ideas and individual freedoms is ignored. At its extreme this combination is libertarianism, but I believe that many people would happily accept a “free market, free people” platform. But this is one of the areas that Labor is too chickensh*t to tread in for fear of the wedge bogeyman…
Anyway back to Haneef: what the heck would be wrong with Labor saying “yes we need these laws, but we clearly need far better judicial and parliamentary oversight of such matters, and this *&^# up just highlights that”, for instance? Many people on the left/progressive/civil libertarian sides would be happy just to see that increased powers are being matched by increased oversight, and it rises above the irrelevant question of Haneef’s guilt or innocence. Principled, practical, sane, likely to resonate. Back it up with an actual policy, and you’re there. It’s not so hard.
Every second of air time and inch of print devoted to Haneef is a gain for Howard. All the punters see of it is “Howard tough on MGB*”. The whole argument about the rights and wrongs of Haneef’s treatment, while important of itself, is an argument within the elite (that’s us). Politically, Rudd wants this issue gone, and focus returned to WorkChoices and other issues he is on the right side of. For Rudd to buy into this argument is just playing Howard’s game. Sorry, highly-principled lefties and Liberal gutter-feeders, but Rudd is too smart for that.
*MGB: Muslim guy with beard
Yep, I accept that reasoning and I sincerely hope that this is all we have here. But there have been enough little incidents now that it’s natural that some progressives are starting to worry about just what we might be voting for with KR…
So now Howard wants to take control of one hospital. This is Mr States Righter at work. The states should offer him the running of the health system. He would run a mile. Another ploy.
I wonder why a terrorist sympathiser, assistant, admirer, call him what you will would ring Scotland yard a number of times? Andrews didn’t mention that did he? Laurie Oakes has Andrews pegged right.
There ain’t no votes in sticking up for Mohammed Haneef. The progressives/Lefties calling for Rudd to make some sort of stand on this are already Labor voters/Howard haters. Despite the protestations of Phillip Adams, it’d be electoral suicide for Kev to suddenly start defending the rights of a suspected Muslim terrorist. I wish the whole thing would go away, and if interest rates go up next week, as predicted, Howard won’t be looking quite so smug and cocky.
Mike Cusack said @ 3:31: “….We would never accept the crass incompetence and boorishness of our Ministers of the Crown in sportspersons who had been selected to represent us, yet Downer has sailed through 11 years as Foreign Minister relatively unscathed.
Remarkable!
I so agree, Mike. Does anyone share my frustration that a man with such little character and even less competence as Dolly Downer can achieve high office for so long while saying so little of any consequence?
The man is a buffoon and a windbag with a pumped up opinion of himself with his Oxford accent and his dandy, patrician air. He has never had, nor uttered, an original thought and you get the impression he couldn’t even dress himself without seeking the advice of his minders.
After his comical stint as Opposition Leader and his lazy efforts in government, why is he still in the exalted position of Foreign Minister? Why is he still in cabinet? Why is he still considered a possible successor to the rodent? He would be God’s gift to St. Kevin if he is the successor.
It seems young Alex modelled his career on one Chauncey Gardiner, but Peter Sellers was so much more compelling sans Dolly’s wind, whinge, whine and fishnets.
He keeps his position because behind his Bertie Wooster front he is a very smart politician and a ruthless right-wing ideologue. He is very close to the PM, who also feels endebted to him for letting him be leader again in 1994.
This Haneef story is fast becoming the Kevin Andrews story, that is a danger to Howard, not Rudd.
The Australian’s editorial is amazing. Have they ditched their support for the government? Kevin Andrews is certainly not flavour of the month.
It is not so much the print media but the radio that Howard is using – even Laws looking as though he was going to lean against Andrews suddenly remembered is mate Howard and leaned back the other way.
I think these issues, thought to be against Labor’s best interest electorally, are good indicators of how strong the anti government vote is. If the polls swing to the government on any or all of these issues then the anti government vote was and is soft. If not then the government is in heaps. I’m tipping the latter.
Looks like the bears have emerged from their dens again this morning and are playing havoc with the markets. Macquarie Bank is not doing at all well. Depending on how this plays out in the next week it may influence the Reserve Bank to hold off on interest rates. Frankly I doubt it. There’s more and more news coming in, the trade blowout for example and increased spending, which will force the RBA to act.
You’d be game to buy Macquarie Bank in the near future which may mean the bears will maul it even worse and make a fortune when they pick up the pieces when covering their short contracts.
The market is a skittish as a kitten on a hot plate and will probably remain so now. The advice from brokers at the weekend to sell and hold on to cash is looking wise.
Doesn’t do anything for John Howard’s image on “management” of the economy.
Howard’s election tactics are very obvious: he’s running not only against Kevin Rudd, but also every state and territory government, all of which happen to under Labor control. What’s next? The Federal Government takes over more hospitals, which happen to be in marginal Coalition seats?
And, of course there’s more use of the national security card/Muslim bashing to come, with the able assistance of Howard’s rightwing shock jock radio mates.
How on earth can Rudd win, with all this against him?
I’ll be very surprised if there isn’t some swing back to the Coalition in next week’s polls.
Evan – I think it’s important to remember that 98% of the country are far more interested in whether Souths make the semis (or whether Geelong can finally break through) than they are in anything that we all like to blather about.
The polls basically haven’t moved for 6 months. It’s like the punters are looking for a reason to vote against Howard (as they have since, I think, around 2001, but particularly so since WorkChoices), and they made a gut judgement about Rudd early in the year – that is, that “he’s good enough”. Among the 25% of voters who actually change they way they vote from one election to the next, most of them aren’t really paying attention, and won’t do till the last few days of the campaign.
So the government may well gain a point or two in the polls next week, or they may not. The differences between polls is so small as to mean nothing. It looks as though the government has gained 1-1.5% since March, but Labor’s primary vote hasn’t moved that much, maybe it’s dropped by a similar amount. At that rate, Howard will be back in front by Easter next year, but I’m not sure he has that long….
Evan Says:
August 1st, 2007 at 4:18 pm
“I’ll be very surprised if there isn’t some swing back to the Coalition in next week’s polls.”
If there is an interest rise next week,Howard will be in a lot of trouble,when this is added to the rising cost of peoples weekly budgets,food,fuel,etc.It may well have the effect of neutralizing any govt gains made by playing the terror card.
The Govt Gazette is also calling Andrews a buffoon,saying he stuffed up the introduction of WorkChoices and now his sloppy handling of Haneef,and should be replaced.This election still has a long way to go.has a long way to go.
This is going to be an election that will be talked about for years.
Can anybody explain to me how to quote somebody else’s comment in my comment? Thanks.
J-D highlight the text you wish to quote,right click with your mouse and choose copy.In the space where we put our comments,right click and choose paste.
Hugo, I’ve got to stop listening to Alan Jones and Ray Hadley(2GB very much the mouthpiece now of the Liberal Party).
If there is no marked improvement in the polls for the Coalition soon from the focus on terrorism/national security, Howard is stuffed!
The terrorism card is their last hope!
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_blockquote.asp
I don’t agree with those who think that the Haneef affair will be a plus for the government, just because the anti-Muslim crowd have been foaming loud and hard on talkback. Those people are not going to vote for Labor anyway, so no significant number of votes have been lost.
With respect to the “me-tooism†we haven’t started the campaign proper yet, and all this stuff will be forgotten in the run up to the election. That’s when it counts, and that’s when Rudd will roll out the policies. Why do it now and give Howard time to fight it? Rudd knows how Howard works, and he’s playing a long game.
Rob
Agree with that. Those on the left criticising Rudd (sometimes fairly), should be a bit more patient.
That Guy, thanks for the very useful HTML tags link.
I think the electoral impact is changing.
There was a modest boost for the government on Haneef’s detention as it looked at least to be doing something. The release probably did not have much impact as most agreed with Howard’s ‘better safe than sorry’ line.
The row has really been within the establishment especially the legal profession and the media. But it is going on so long, and the government is managing it so badly, that eventually people may think that whatever the merits of the Haneef case, the government is losing its grip.
Further to the Haneef saga and the increasingly pushy attitude of the Executive to the Constitution, we have the Jack Thomas control order decision coming down tomorrow morning (and no doubt further non-position-taking from the Rudder). I have written a piece up here on the subject (from a legal perspective) – will we see the High Court start to rein in the Executive, or continue along the path it started down with the migration decisions it made earlier this decade?
I’m anticipating a status quo result next week on Newspoll. Haneef issue has become chatter amongst the engaged (lawyers, media, libertarians etc), but I believe most punters go for the better safe than sorry view of life.
The only place they’re feeling sorry at the moment is at the petrol bowser – prices in suburbs of Perth hit $1.32 today.
Northern suburbs of Perth is a long way away from Devonport, but I’ll be interested to see how the Hospital intervention plays out??
Is JWH going to spot visit every Coalition marginal and throw a bucket load of money at it and use it as a carrot (unlike Costello’s election grab bag which punters with or without JWH in the lodge come Xmas) to save some seats ? Very tacky, but probably a smart move tactically speaking.
It would be very transparent if he did it so blatantly as he has in Tassie with the Hospital revival- Interesting times ahead with this grab bag of goodies the Coalition has to toss about thanks to the x billion dollar surplus he and Costello have put away for these very rainy days. Smart man JWH.
I never understood why Costello is giving the punters ‘rewards’ for ’sound economic management’ BEFORE the election. It would have been smarter to ‘promise’ them to the electorate conditional upon the Coalition getting voted in again. Will JWH make that error: I doubt it.
A bold and brilliant move today from Mr Howard in Tasmania – now I hope he goes the whole hog and simply abolishes the States, junking all those corrupt Labor regimes in the process. The move left them furious, Rudd confused, and his friends in the media like Jim Middleton practically soiling themselves. What fun!
Strop
The hospital intervention will be interesting, the states have offered to Abbott and Howard on previous occasions that the Federal govt take over full responsiblity for the health system but his has been refused or ignored. Similar with water, Beatie and Bracks asked for money to buy out Cubby and fund pipelines but this was refused until Howard did his uncosted water plan.
The other question with the hospital take over is will he put the staff there on Work Choices, Howard and Hockey have been extolling the virtues of it and now have a chance to implement it in the Tassy hospital they have just taken over. Or will they leave the union agreements in place? Do they realise that there are “union bosses” in the Tassie hospital, will they terminate them as private industry is doing.
I think all the noise will probably help Howard – all those timid ones scared of their shadow and no brain of their own, you will be surprised how many of them there are – Howards new happy WorkSlaves.
They should put out a collection of Downer’s little gems like there is for Keating. Keating was impressive Downer sickeningly childlike.
Steven Kaye, you alluded to a story brewing in the press about Rudd’s “darker side” earlier this week. Care to elaborate? You got me curious.
What’s the bet interest rates go up 0.50% next week, rather than 2 small rate rises. The Reserve Bank might anticipate a snap election and roll two rate rises into one.
As for today’s Tassie hospital news, it looks shifty. Nakedly opportunistic, cynical, insincere and spontaneous. The PM didn’t even know how much it would cost.
How will this go down in other marginal seats?
Neil
Be interesting to see if Abbott will allow abortions in the Tassie hospital or insist they not be carried out, he should have the power to do this seeing as how it will be direct federal funding. The catholic hospitals are allowed to refuse the service and Abbotts views on the matter are quite clear.
A-C, Steven knows nothing. He is referring to a rumour published in Crikey about a month ago that some SMH journalist was sitting on a hot story about Kevin Rudd that would ‘blow him out of the water’. (They definitely used the term ‘journalist’, so it can’t be Miranda Devine.) The story was being sat on until the election is announced, to maximise damage. Nice ethics, eh?
A few days later another rumour was published, this time allegedly from the partner of the journalist in question. They said they had seen the story, and it was of roughly equal weight to Burkegate/Reingate. And we all know how well those worked ‘blowing Kev out of the water’.
But Steven Kaye’s chief charm is his undentable optimism. Hours of fun for the kids, blogging is the winner here today.
Arbie,
The point I make is how many votes will the Tassie pork barrelling cost the government in other marginal seats that are also crying out for more money in their hospitals. Consider these: Parramatta, Solomon, Paterson, Dobell, Eden-Monaro, Hinkler.
Forget SA, that looks like a wipeout. The PM won’t waste his time there.
People will ask the eternal question – “what about us!”. Resentment and envy are powerful political repellants in an election year.
Neil
Howard has an electoral war chest of 10 billion, he can spend 100 million per seat across 100 seats, whether Costello will try to reign in this spending will be of interest.
Costello will let Howard spent the entire surplus if he wants to, because Pete mistakenly thinks he’ll be Prime Minister in 6-12 months time.
Newsflash for you Costello: the big boss will shaft you, and install Abbott or Turnball as his successor instead.
I get the impression Steven Kaye and the Liberal Party dirt unit has spent a good 9 months trying to dig up something to bury Rudd with, not with any success so far.
Great news coverage for Howard tonight full of working people cheering him… Where on earth was the union standing up for the hospital workers? People who undoubt will be shafted with IR Laws…
God the unions are hopeless in this country… pathetic with lame leaders and useless apartchiks thinking of themselves not the workers.. Even more in Tasmania the unions down their are just incredible … CFMEU on the one hand support Howard on forestry policy and the other say nothing about the industrial relations laws incredible…
Is Marky Marky really Mark Latham??
Marky Marky: I found that stuff from Tasmania today sickening.
How gullible and stupid are those idiots in Davenport. Howard is selling them a load of crap, but they all fall for it.
I guess we can cut Braddon off Labor’s list of hopeful seat gains.
You gotta hand it to the rodent, he’s a slippery customer, but a smart one too.
No unfortunately not… but loved his book though the best political book i have read … don’t agree with him on some of economic views but honesty and candor superb.. and hypocrisy of many of Labors’ members amazing… and the Media who trashed his book so true a bunch of tossers…
I liked Latham, and proudly voted for him too. The bloke was done in by his bitch of an ex-wife and some disgruntled former colleagues from Liverpool Council.
There ain’t much love in the Labor Party either for Kevin. A lot of them are holding their tongues right now because they think they’re going to win.
Devonport actually but who cares… Yep gullible and stupid no they all just want to be celebrities that the gist of it get on tv for fame.. but their again where are the groups telling these people about what the Howard Government is doing to them.. Where are the people who actually represent them..
About the seat i still Labor will win it may be difficult without Green preferences however and the party has itself to blame their.. nonetheless come election time i think the party will win it. One other thing why do i continuously see liberal party ministers on tv and very few of Labors shadow ministers other than Gillard and Rudd are they that hopeless?
Yes very smart.. trieing very hard to rattle the cage and cause rats in the ranks… he is trieing every little way to split the Labor party and all of it is not about running the country its about politics and winning .. absolutely pathetic vision and way to develop policy…
Most of Rudd’s shadow ministry is completely useless. Wayne Swan, Julia Gillard, Simon Crean, Robert McClelland – I rest my case.
Garrett, Tony Burke, Craig Emerson – perhaps the only vaguely talented ones out of the bunch. It’s a great pity they couldn’t get Bill Shorten into parliament early, he’d be a great addition to the team.
It’ll be a very presidential style ALP election campaign, just Rudd himself, and Peter Beattie too, who seems to have become the Labor attack dog in recent days.
Yes very smart.. trieing very hard to rattle the cage and cause rats in the ranks… he is trieing every little way to split the Labor party and all of it is not about running the country its about politics and winning .. absolutely pathetic vision and way to develop policy…
True, but it’s worked for the rodent before, so why change the strategy?
Mark Latham is an absolute joke of a person: after his disastrous campaign in 2004 he descended into personal bitterness and thus sought, through his publications, to do as much damage to the organisation (the ALP) which provided him with his livelihood as possible by attacking it. I have no sympathy for Latham, who would have made the worst PM in the Western World (although the Australian population is not as stupid to make such an idiotic collective decision), but I have no sympathy for the ALP either, whether through the damage the former has caused it or otherwise. They remain a collection on sniping, infighting hacks, without the credentials to lead Oceania’s leading nation.
Peter Costello said John Howard is an absolute joke of a person: after his disastrous campaign in 2007 he descended into personal bitterness and thus sought, through his publications, to do as much damage to the organisation (the Liberal Party) which provided him with his livelihood as possible by attacking it. I have no sympathy for Howard, who has made the worst PM in the Western World (although the Australian population is not as stupid to make such an idiotic collective decision), but I have no sympathy for the Liberal Party either, whether through the damage the former has caused it or otherwise. They remain a collection on sniping, infighting hacks, without the credentials to lead Oceania’s leading nation.
Nostradamus, Latham was a monster, but you know something? He was still smarter and more principled than Kevin Rudd, who is a power-hungry shell of a man.
Meanwhile, as marky mark pointed out, a beaming PM got some great coverage down in Tasmania today, surrounded by hordes of welcoming Devonport locals. Then there was Tony Abbott on the 7:30 Report, cheerfully batting away Kerry O’Brien’s bilious questions. A good day.
Nostradamus, Costello is a monster, but you know something? He is still smarter and more principled than John Howard, who is a power-hungry shell of a man.
Meanwhile, as marky mark pointed out, a sneaky,tricky,lying PM got some great coverage down in Tasmania today, surrounded by hordes of Devonport rent a crowd locals. Then there was Tony Abbott on the 7:30 Report, cheerfully lying away as always to Kerry O’Brien’s in depth questions. A good day for Mr Rudd.
By the way, the PM has finally discovered MySpace, having recently put up his own page. As of yesterday, he had 12,762 friends; Rudd only has 10,242.
I suspect given the chance Costello actually might be the only minister to have a care.
Steven Kaye, that’s not an official John Howard MySpace page, it’s a sendup or a satirical Howard MySpace page – read the comments.
There’s an official Liberal Party MySpace page, on which Howard has only 8 friends(last time I looked).
Will Howard take over every hospital in rural Australia? As virtually none of them are in marginal Coaltion electorates, I doubt it.
The wall to wall coverage of the Haneef teacup is perfect for the government.
Next Galaxy poll 53-47, but I wonder if it will be the first at that level?
It is more than likely the next newspoll will be around 53-47 and galaxy at 52-48 and as usual AC and Morgan will have Labor at 60-40…
I have a question to all the Rudd supporters…How can you honestly vote for a Party that doesnt intend to have a tax policy for the election???
What a palpable performance by Dillard on Lateline ohhhh dont get revenge Unions if we win the election just because we are destroying the one watchdog that has kept you in check for all these years what a joke!
I’d have to say the seat of Franklin is a possibility now that Harkins in a complete Union thug who in their right minds would want him as their local member i mean seriously, i think with Quick’s help the 7% margin could be breached…
Partisan politics aside, I think the next election will be very close. Whichever way you analyse the polls, its hard to see Labor winning less than about 10-12 seats. So then it comes down to whether the ALP can hold its marginals as well and whether Labor can get bigger swings in the areas it needs to. I can only speak from an SA perspective, and in my opinion Labor will win all 3 marginals (whilst holding its own), with Makin being the most difficult. Boothby will almost certainly fall, but Sturt will go down to the wire but most probably stay Liberal.
Rudd said all along that the election would be 51-49 either way. While he had political reasons for saying that, there was and is an element of truth to it as well. Customers lie, and some of the 60% 2PP who said they were intending to vote Labor will not vote Labor on the day. I’ve never been comfortable with the landslide theory and am sticking with “comfortable”.
I think we’re going through a “phoney war” period at the moment. Howard is firing shots because he has to. Rudd is withholding fire because he can.
Glen – Palpable: adjective: capable of being perceived by the senses or the mind; especially capable of being handled or touched or felt (Example: “A barely palpable dust”).
So yes, I did perceive Gillard on Lateline last night, though I could just as easily have watched her. It sounds like you are trying to say something negative, but I’m not sure what.
As to your more substantive posts, I thought Gillard came over pretty well last night – she is a good media performer on te whole. For the record Labor is not “destroying the watchdog” of the buidling industry, and the ABCC will remain in place until 2010. Leaving aside the coercive, confrontational and politicised nature of this body, it only came into being in late 2005, so to argue that it’s kept the peace for “years” is nothing but hyperbole.
I must say, I constantly amused by this idea that a Labor government will be in the thrall of the unions. Listen up people: Labor governments have always dudded the union movement. This is as true of Federal Labor governments as it is of the current (and past) state governents. I can guarantee that most of the union movement will be disillusioned with Rudd Labor by late next year. So let’s put that straw man to bed, could we?
Hugo said: “I can guarantee that most of the union movement will be disillusioned with Rudd Labor by late next year.”
Well, yes, because they’ll still be in Opposition. That’s if there still is a Rudd Labor, of course; or a union movement, for that matter.
Hugo there is a difference, the ALP is made up of 100% union members and 70% of their front bench are Union ex-officials i mean seriously they should be called the Union Party and the Liberal/National Party should be called either the United Australia Party as the right-wingers of the 1930s or the Conservative Party so says Glen.
Glen,
The oft repeated 70% front benchers being Union officials is a myth. Repetition doesn’t make it true. You’ll find the figure is below 50%.
Labor is – hang on – a party of labour? Why didn’t anyone tell me! Who’s have thought an organisation called the Australian Labor Party would have had anything to do trade unions?
And I’m sure that the Liberal Party is a misnomer (not terribly liberal, you know, in the way that the rest of the world understands the word), and the National Party represents only a small section of the nation. So at least the ALP is not guilty of false advertising!
Hugo said: “I can guarantee that most of the union movement will be disillusioned with Rudd Labor by late next year.â€
There won’t be a Rudd Labor late next year. When Krudd loses the election the machine of hacks that is the ALP, with Dillard/Dullard as one of its key members, will have him blasted out of the leadership by Australia Day next year. (Can’t wait for Howard’s glorious address to the nation while Labor searches for another leader!) They will put up Bill Shorten – short on experience and short on substance – because they have no-one else to turn to. Exhume Crean, perhaps?
As for the union movement all that will be left of them is the militant ultra-left who will be disillusioned with any ALP leader because they want to introduce Communism to Oz. They should just be ignored because that’s what they deserve.
The good thing though is that we will all be more prosperous and have more in our pockets to enjoy ourselves and also be safer from the Terrorists because Howard is going to be re-elected comfortably.
Nostradamus, have you ever thought that the polls might be scientifically rigorous and an accurate reflection of the electorates’s thinking at this time. Howard and crew may very well be on the nose because they refuse to listen much less understand the feelings of their constituency. Please consider that The Libs are on the way out and no amount of sticking your fingers in your ears and loudly proclaiming “I’m not listening”, can disguise the looming reality that this current Government is on it’s last legs.
So says the Growler.
How pleasant this blog site reads when I ignore Nostradamus, Snoopy, Glen, Steven Kaye and others, all of whom I suspect are aliases of 2-3 people at most. Nostradamus and Steven Kaye are here at the same time-coincidence ? Snoopy and Ced are here at the same time-coincidence ? I dont think so.
It’s a shame thier frequent mass posting bombardment has put some people of coming here anymore. William should permanently ban some of these serial offenders to protect this site from becoming another casualty of pointless political point-scoring and dribble.
G’day STROP: It’s up to William what he does with this board.
I can happily ignore Nostrodamus and his various aliases.
What did you all think of Rudd interviewed by Kerry tonight on 7.30 Report? He did OK, O’Brien actually has been far harder recently on Coalition ministers.
ABC NEWS tonight: lots of other hospitals have asked the Commonwealth Government to take their ownership, but Abbott’s response is a big fat NO, the Devenport Hospital takeover is just a one off. In other words, because you aren’t in a marginal Liberal seat, we’ll leave you under the control of state governments.
More cynical pork barrelling and a short term fix from Howard, just to save the hide of a dud Tasmanian Liberal MP, who according to the last poll I saw for Braddon, was headed for a landslide defeat.
Evan the real point that everybody is overlooking is this, sure it is a marginal Liberal held seat yes so some cynicism is warranted but what you and STROP and the rest don’t realize is this….
We live in Australia the best country in the world and yet we have regional communities without top class hospitals that run a variety of roles beyond just emergencies. That we live in a country that can’t even provide this is a shame on us all.
The fact is with all these new hospitals coming into the spotlight just goes to show how well the State Labor Governments are handling health especially in regional Australia and this is what it would be like if Rudd ever got in. The State ALP Governments have failed Australians they are rolling in GST money and yet they keep downsizing hospitals crikey what is going on here i mean any Labor supporters should be ashamed that they have been responsible for ruining our health system by under funding it and discriminating against Australians in regional areas.
The real eye opener is that the State Labor Governments have let all Australians down and it should be addressed by them ASAP! Shows how well the ALP would do if they won in November, they’d be worse than Whitlam!
Are you for real? Unbelievable have you not heard of Private Health Insurance Federal Government Subsidy.. Some 3 Billion and more of money which should be going to public hospitals but is feeding the rich- giving them a handout to take out private health insurance.. oh and its the State Governments fault give this money to the public health system and you would not have many of rural hospitals in distress… Additionally you dill… the hospital in Tasmania was privatised by the LIBERAL PARTY IN 1994 and it was so unsuccessful the Labor State government had to take control of it.. but its the Labor Governments fault.. Moreover please tell me where you the get trained doctors for rural areas when the Federal Government and the AMA refuses to allow for increases in training places for these people.. Moreover what doctors would want to come here after the disgraceful way we just treated DR Haneef.. Please get your facts right you turkey…
Glen,
The question is how best to deliver services to the community.
The Tassie Government made a “tough” decision to close certain services at the Mersey Hospital in the attempt to provide an overall better service to the wider community within the area.
Everyone included in the process, Doctors, economists, politicians of all sides etc. have ticked the Tassie government’s solution.
If you think contacting Canberra to get your cataracts fixed is the ultimate answer to all ills, then it is a pretty stupid question.
What must Costello be thinking!
The person who wrote the report into the Tasmanian health system decided there were not enough people in the area to support the two hospitals. Hence the decision to rationalise them and move some services from Mersey to Burnie. On the surface you would have to say that is a legitimate decision by the state govt in which case blaming the state govt for something is disingenuous.
Hey guys,
As a former Braddon resident, I feel I can add to the debate.
The north-west coast of Tassie has two cities, in Devonport and Burnie, and a series of towns which, in the main, hug the coastline. Population growth over the years, and out love of coastal views, has had the effect of joining all of these towns/cities into one long strip of development. Through this runs a major and beautifully maintained highway, thanks to buckets of federal cash that is thrown at the region every election year or so.
Because of the amalgamating effect of population growth, the region should be seen as ONE elongated city of less than 200,000 people.
Devonport has region’s major airport (Burnie does not have one, but there is a small airport in the nearby town of Wynyard) while Burnie, about 45km away, has the region’s major hospital, which was built in the 1990s (I think).
The Mersey community hospital, which is the recipient of this election years’ bucket of cash, has always been kinda superflous to need. Not that the Devonport locals would admit to that – no – they bitch, scrap and moan in a bid to keep their local services … which you would expect.
But the fact is, a population of less than 200,000 people doesn’t need two major hospitals, with 24-hour emergency wards … just like they don’t need two major airports!
P.S. My parents live there, I grew up there, I’ve been to both hospitals, I know the locals, I know what I’m talking about.
Well summed up but you see Mr Howard doesn’t know what Economies of Scale means…
I’ll say it again – one group has played the Haneef affair as opportunistic zealots. And it is not the government so much as the media.
Yesterday, 60 point type on teh Courier-Mail’s page one about ‘al Qaeda’ links.
Today, we learn, buried in an ABC online sotry, that ‘A senior Indian police officer dismissed a report that Dr Haneef had alleged links with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network as false. But Bangalore’s Joint Police Commissioner, Gopal Hosur, said that was not true.’
Where is the retraction or accountability. If electoral politics is a sad game in Australia, the structure and behaviour of the media is the primary reason – politicians and the electoral system come second.
Apparently Costello privately is furious about Howard’s intervention to save the Mersey Hospital – he can see once again his beloved budget surplus is getting frittered away, so the rodent and Janette can keep Kirribilli House for another 3 years, and still no dinner invite for Pete and Tanya.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/doctor-quits-mersey-in-protest-at-takeover/2007/08/02/1185648061389.html
well that didn’t take long to turn to sh*t did it…
oh and…
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/08/03/1185648104778.html
latest morgan poll 55-45
no change
borrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnng
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2007/4192/
The latest Morgan poll has the Coalition at 40.5% and Labor at 47%. Adjusting for the usual Morgan face-to-face screwiness, you’ve got the Government at 45.5% and Labor at 42%. Excellent. When even Morgan has the Government above 40%, you know they’re in good shape.
Unfortunately, yes, things are looking better for the govt, though Morgan also reported that 49%, down 6, now think Australia is going in the right direction. 58%, up 6, now expect Labor to win; this is in line with the bookies.
wow thats some creative number crunching mate.
*rolls eyes*
Lord D explain to me again how things are looking better for the government in reference to this poll.
For the last two weeks the issues have been fought on the so called coalition strong points and thre’s no change. Have we reached bedrock?
I love a bit of comedy when each poll is released. Thanks Steve.
Steven Kaye Says:
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Bryan Palmer’s chart of four pollsters does not support Steve’s figure of 45.5% for the Coalition
http://www.ozpolitics.info/guide/elections/fed2007/polls2007/#coalition
Nor does it support Steve’s figure of 42% for Labor
http://www.ozpolitics.info/guide/elections/fed2007/polls2007/#labor
Amber,
Give up. Facts aren’t going to persuade these prats.
Thanks Guys -
this is much more fun than The`Age or Crikey. Most of the comments are informative and interesting. And then there is the Absolute Hoot Factor reading the Liberal party stooge/s trying to put a spin on the fact that Howard and his crew are finished.
Thank God.