The Australian reports Newspoll has Labor’s two-party lead at 52-48, down from 53-47 and back to where it was a fortnight before, although both parties are up a point on the primary vote – Labor to 40 per cent and the Coalition to 41 per cent. Dennis Shanahan reports this is because “a slump in support for the Greens detracted from Labor’s second preferences”. More later.
UPDATE: Full results here, including nifty Flash display of results. Greens down three to 9 per cent. Tony Abbott is up three points on preferred prime minister to 30 per cent – the first time in the Rudd era it’s had a three in front of it, as noted in comments – while Rudd is steady on 55 per cent. Abbott’s also up four points on approval to 48 per cent, though disapproval is also up one to 38 per cent. Rudd has recovered a point from last fortnight’s approval low of 50 per cent, with disapproval steady on 40 per cent.
Today’s Essential Research has Labor’s lead at a new low of 53-47, down from 54-46 last week and 55-45 a week before. A question gauging Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott’s attributes records little change since December, while other questions find hostility towards population growth and support for means testing the private health insurance rebate.
Have I got news for you. From New South Wales:
• Simon Benson of the Daily Telegraph reports Labor’s national executive is expected to abandon plans to impose its preferred candidate to succeed Bob Debus in Macquarie, instead allowing the matter to be decided by a rank-and-file ballot. This is a win for the Anthony Albanese Left over the Mark Arbib Right, as it is believed the former’s preferred candidate, Susan Templeman, has the numbers in the local branches. A national executive imposition would have installed Blue Mountains mayor Adam Searle, who in the past has been identified with the “soft Left” but is evidently backed in the current instance by the Right. Searle was previously thwarted in his bid to succeed Debus as state member for Blue Mountains when Debus drafted Phil Koperberg. Benson paints Templeman and Robertson nominee Deb O’Neill as part of a move to follow the Howard-era Liberal strategy of having marginal seats contested by “soccer mums” rather than professional politicians.
• Labor Right faction convenor Matt Thistlethwaite will quit his position as New South Wales party secretary after the federal election and seek preselection for the Senate. Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports Thistlethwaite’s current position has become untenable after he lost the confidence of Luke Foley, deputy secretary and member of the Left, plus many on the Right when he “moved against Mr Rees last December but then backed NSW Environment Minister Frank Sartor for the premiership rather than the eventual winner, Kristina Keneally”. He will be succeeded in his current position by 27-year-old Sam Dastyari, a protéegé of Employment Participation Minister and Right faction heavyweight Mark Arbib. The evident certainty that Thistlethwaite will secure second postion on the Senate ticket behind John Faulkner means Graeme Wedderburn will not get the Senate seat he was promised when lured from the private sector to serve as chief-of-staff to Nathan Rees. In either event, the seat was to come at the expense of one of two incumbents: Steve Hutchins or Michael Forshaw.
• Labor sources tell Imre Salusinszky of The Australian that Robertson MP Belinda Neal has suffered a blow in her bid to survive Saturday’s preselection challenge from academic Deborah O’Neill, as 2005 attendance and membership records from the Woy Woy branch cannot be located. The branch is considered loyal to Neal, and the records are necessary to establish that members have attended meetings for at least four years, as required of preselectors by party rules. The sources say this could cost her up to 40 votes in a ballot of about 150 preselectors.
• Belinda Scott of the Central Coast Advocate reports Labor’s unsuccessful candidate for Cowper in 1998 and 2007, training consultant Paul Sefky, has expressed interest in running again. Sefky appears to harbour a grudge against the paper for its reporting of the manner in which he replaced local area health service worker John Fitzroy as candidate two months out from the 2007 election.
• Ben Smee of the Newcastle Herald reports Health Services Union organiser and former ambulance officer Jim Arneman has won Labor preselection for Paterson unopposed. Arneman was also the candidate in 2007, when he fell 1.5 per cent short of toppling Liberal incumbent Bob Baldwin. The redistribution cut the margin to 0.4 per cent.
• State upper house member Robyn Parker has been confirmed as Liberal candidate for the lower house seat of Maitland. Michelle Harris of the Newcastle Herald reports rival candidates Bob Geoghegan and Stephen Mudd, of Maitland City Council, and Brad Luke, of Newcastle City Council, withdrew ahead of the preselection meeting last Saturday. Maitland mayor Peter Blackmore says he will decide soon whether to run again as an independent, after falling 2.0 per cent short of toppling the now retiring Labor member Frank Terenzini.
• Reporting in the aftermath of last week’s preselection win by upper house member David Clarke against challenger David Elliott, Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald said Elliott’s supporters were aggrieved at moderate elements, in particular Fahey government minister Michael Photios, for encouraging him to stay in the race so as to give the faction leverage in other preselection battles. Such leverage was used to secure preselection for Greg Pearce in the upper house and Robyn Parker in Maitland, in exchange for moderate support for Clarke at the expense of Elliott.
From Queensland:
• Nathan Paull of the Townsville Bulletin reports the Labor preselection for Herbert will be determined in the normal fashion, by a ballot divided between rank-and-file members and a central electoral committee, apparently following the intervention of Right faction powerbroker Bill Ludwig. This comes as a blow to former mayor Tony Mooney, who has the backing of the Prime Minister and was looking set to take the position on the intervention of the national executive. Emma Chalmers of the Courier-Mail reports Townsville councillor Jenny Hill is “believed to have more backers” in the local party than Mooney. John Anderson of the Townsville Bulletin reports that the Left has been directed (by whom he does not say) to fall in behind Mooney, despite the faction’s long-standing antagonism towards him. The candidate from 2007, local McDonald’s franchisor George Colbran, is yet to decide whether to nominate.
• The Whitsunday Times reports former Whitsunday Shire councillor Louise Mahony has expressed an interest in Labor preselection for Dawson, which James Bidgood is vacating after one term as member for health reasons. Whitsunday Regional Mayor Mike Brunker has ruled himself out. The Liberal National Party endorsed Mackay regional councillor George Christensen in November.
• An “LNP insider” tells Russel Guse of the Central Telegraph that Ken O’Dowd, owner of Busteed Building Supplies in Gladstone, is expected to be a candidate for preselection in Flynn, following the withdrawal last month of Colin Bourke for “personal reasons”.
• Emma Chalmers of the Courier-Mail reports Labor preselection in Ryan loom as a contest between Steven Miles and Martin Hanson of the Right, the latter being favoured by Rudd but the former apparently having the edge in the branches.
From the Australian Capital Territory:
• James Massola of the Canberra Times rpeorts Jenny Hargreaves, a public servant with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and wife of former ACT minister John Hargreaves, is considered likely to win the Centre Coalition faction’s endorsement for Labor preselection in Canberra. His rivals are Michael Cooney, chief-of-staff to ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr, and Gai Brodtmann, who runs communications firm Brodtmann & Uhlmann Communications and is married to ABC reporter Chris Uhlmann. Massola says Hargreaves is a friend of the present incumbent, Annette Ellis, and is believed to be close to securing her endorsement. CFMEU industrial officer Louise Crossman has won the endorsement from the Left, and David Garner and Brendan Long are the main competitors for the endorsement of the Right, but it is the Centre Coalition which is believed likely to be decisive. Massola reports Hargreaves’ nomination points to a breakdown in relations between John Hargreaves and Andrew Barr, who are both figures in the Centre Coalition.
• In the ACT’s other seat of Fraser, to be vacated by Bob McMullan, Nick Martin is said to be the favourite after winning endorsement from the Left; George Williams has the backing of Labor Unity (not to mention Malcolm Fraser); and David Peebles and Chris Sant are the front-runners for the Centre Coalition. The preselection for both seats is likely to be determined in late April.
From Victoria:
• After a traumatic final term in parliament, ALP Victorian upper house member for Northern Metropolitan Theo Theophanous has made a surprise decision to quit parliament nine months before the election. His vacancy will be filled by Nathan Murphy, plumbers’ union official and ally of Bill Shorten, who had already been preselected for the election.
4,092 Comments
Pages: « 1 … 78 79 80 81 [82] Show All
Zoomster, comment numbering goes out of whack when a comment gets released from moderation.
Scorps, clue, then?
I haven’t been on the computer for a long time, due to a 15 year old boy playing some fantasy war game who would not be moved, so I’ve only scanned the last few pages.
I’d hate to offend you without good cause, but I can’t see how I can rectify things when I have no idea what you’re referring to.
Gary Bruce looks at it the wrong way.
Before the mea culpa there was plausible deniability, very plausible, as figures started to come out showing the stimulus scheme was actually safer than the old scheme.
After the mea culpa there was sno such plausible deniability.
“It was always going to be so”… so easy to rewrite history… from just two weeks ago! I seem to remember many contributors here sounding prepared to go down in a ditch to defend Garrett as unfairly persecuted (I was one of them, and still am).
To toss scraps to the media bottom feeders who thrive on and originate these phoney bootstrappers is a big mistake at any time. To have done so when the wind was going out of their sails is just dopey.
OMG! That’s my position too.
We may be able to get by without it over the next decade, but remember, our aim is to cut by 80% on 2000 levels by 2050!
Rather thgan read “all” the posts on these threads, I think I should do what quite a few others do and just jump in every now again and pick on part of an issue that looks like it could allow for a good old shot, totally out of context and sit back and watch the reaction.
It’s the modus operandi of quite a few here at times.
Sure makes for interesting reading, especially when attacking you own side and watching them try and justify themselves with something they didn’t even mean to infer at all!
A bit like the Journos who treat politics as sport, I suppose!
BB – talking to a couple of guys at the soccer club today, who said the apology was a mistake (they’ll still vote Labor though).
The feel they gave me was that the govt’s travelling OK, and this was a temporary glitch.
Both also volunteered that they no longer get their news from the papers (although one said he still read the OO).
Scorps
will you get over this? I DID read all the posts, but I didn’t read them in depth. I thought I had answered the one you refer to, but now the numbering has changed I don’t know which one this was.
You are obviously determined to sulk at me, rather than give me a chance to read the post you refer to and see if your claims are warranted. I’m quite capable of apologising if I’ve got it wrong, as I have done in the past, but you don’t seem to want to give me even that chance.
I don’t know why you are in such a strange and unreasonable mood.
If you want to be offended, go right ahead.
The problem was it was always going to be thus, whether Rudd apologised or not. If you’re fixing a problem surely a problem exists.
It was better for the government to be seen to have a heart than to be seen as shifty, avoiding the issue.
Having said all of that surely the proof of the pudding will be in the eating ie when the next lot of polls come out.
Scorps
I am now going to bed. Thus a failure to respond to anything you’ve said over the next eight hours is not a deliberate insult, but an absence of presence.
Good night, sleep well, I think you need it.
zoomster,
In reply to your;
Shows
The greens may be the ones to suffer most from a nuclear debate as data starts making certain options redundant.
Taking a worst case scenario, I would prefer to go to hell in a handbasket.
The average person does not go into such detail. They go on perception. The perception was that something was wrong with the program that the government initiated and ran.
Yeah, Thanks a lot!
GB, you still don’t geddit!
“A problem” doth not a “fiasco” make. Why confes to a fiasco when all you’ve got is a problem? He’d already taken Garrett off the case. He should have left well enough alone.
Many I spoke to down at the local village shops were already starting to make jokes about the Insulgate accusations, as in, “It’s going to rain today… I blame Peter Garrett” (laughter all around).
And I live in leafy Beecroft, Sydney, a bluer than blue suburb in Ruddock’s electorate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZKo95nJjzk
LOLCOPTER
Jon Stewart summarises the Health Care summit:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-february-25-2010/bipartisan-health-care-reform-summit-2010
BB we’ll see who is right soon enough. I get what you’re saying, I just don’t agree with it.
I’m not so sure. There is still a solid 1/4 – 1/3 block of voters that is VERY anti-nuclear. If Labor moderates its position slightly, then that could send some voters to the Greens because they would likely remain the only completely anti-nuclear party (I mean they are even opposed to mining Uranium!)
What I don’t understand is that the coal and coal power generation industries have made billions of dollars mining and burning coal, yet now they are relying on government hand outs to develop clean coal tech!
On the other side is the gas industry which in practice is only half as bad as coal, yet it is being sold to us as if it is a perfect CO2 cutting solution, even though with gas we would have no chance of hitting an 80% cut by 2050 (which is what all the major developed economies including us wanted to announce at Copenhagen).
So we have two fossil fuel industries just selling us an absolute line.
And now the perception is that there was a problem and the government admitted that it was its fault. And this perception of failure in implementation can be revived on cue whenever the opposition chants “can’t run insulation, can’t run (insert next government program here)”.
Shows
nuclear presented as a “last resort scenario” would garner a lot more support than as an add on to renewables
the debate outside australia seems to be firming on the “last resort option’
What makes you think people don’t just like people to admit there was a problem and that they’re fixing it? Continuing to deny something once people have already made up their minds is an exercise in futility which can only lose you more support.
Exactly.
Well Obama is doing both, $60 billion invested in renewables and he wants $58 billion of loan gaurantees for nuclear.
Bushfire Bill,
I live in a fairly strong Labor electorate but it still has a soft vote (held by the LNP until 1998) and quite a number of those “soft” voters swung back against the Government after the mea culpa as I outlined earlier.
They are going to be hard to win back now and I won’t be bothered to try myself as I will only alienate myself with them.
The Labor machine will have to do it itself now because my credibility has been shot and I have to live here and get along with these people on a daily basis.
It had been going well prior to Rudd’s blunder and they were coming around well.
If Rudd thought he could get a bounce like Beattie used to, he went about it the wrong way. Beattie used apologies well by not having it directed at “himself”! He always apologised on behalf of the “system” or for others blunders, never accepting the blame directly at himself.
That is the big difference and why Rudd’s mea culpa failed! He’s gonna wear it now!
GB wrote:
Variety is the spice of life. At least we can disagree without calling each other names.
But I have to take issue with Itep:
Apologists for the apology (can there be such a thing?) keep saying Rudd admitted there was “a problem”. We all knew that.
But Rudd is being taken to have admitted to a complete “fiasco”. Which is an order of magnitude greater than “a problem”.
Nothing good – e.g. the 99.9% success rate – about this scheme has survived. Customers who were satisfied beofre are now worried their houses will go up in smoke. he Insulation stimulus package is now officially pictured as a total stuff-up from start to finish. It’s part of the media room furniture now, thanks to an unnecessary apology for a crime not committed.
That’s the point.
Rudd had already demoted Garrett. He should have left it at that. The whole thing was running out of steam.
“You got ta know when to fold ‘em,” indeed.
How do you know this Scorp? Have you or an organisation polled them?
That’s a pretty big thing for me to do, be critical of Rudd, because I don’t think “anyone” will find a similar criticism made by me for the past three years.
Predictions on the Best Picture Oscar for tomorrow?
My head says The Hurt Locker but my heart says Avatar.
The footage of Turnbull demanding that Rudd and Swan resign.
BB
Fair enough
I still think Rudd didnt “cave in”, more moved the battle to a field of his choosing not the MSM’s
No Gary, I am more than well known here and am very involved in the community here and am in regular contact with many people here.
They all know my political colours (been a booth captain & scrutineer at the largest booth in the electorate for 20 years) through my work and political activism, so there tends to be a lot of political interaction in my life here!
I’m not so solid. I’ve always had a leery brain cell tucked up the back somewhere about the man. I’ll vote for his government, as the alternative is so far removed from electable in my mind as to be in a different galaxy.
Many of youse will know me as a strident media critic. Call me “stung” from Dismissal days, when Murdoch went apeshit for the first time. I could see it then and I can see it now. No good will come of pandering to these Murdoch-employed, squid-brained cynics. He’s wrecked politics in the US. Wrecked it in the UK. And wrecked it here.
The only way to stop the bastards is total war. No more mucking about. No quarter. Bury them and their kingmaking delusions.
4081 – Fair enough. Have they indicated to you that they will vote for Abbott. If so what was it about the apology that has shifted them?
Gus, how can you say that when he legitimized all their fairy tales about Insulation? They came into the tent to surrender, but Rudd put his hand up and said, “No wait. I surrender.”
Bushfire
We as a people have come along way in a short time
Yes?
Why blow it on an all out assault, better to erode than evict:
One battle at a time
bushfire
when your figures start haemorraghing then you know some shite bigger than you is afoot
Fight it and weary the Agenda and destroy the reform process
or shift to a “strong suit” and regroup?
your choice?
I agree 100% with BB. If there was a fiasco (and there wasnt) Rudd should have sacked Garrett at the time. He defended him, then reduced his responsibilities then apologised. Rudd did what it had not done in the 3 1/2 years he has been leader- gave in to the rabid MSM.
What did it show them? If they are hysterical enough, they win. And what does the voter see? Gee, it must have been a stuff up, Rudd said sorry.
Rudd obviously made the call tactically to do his mea culpa to clear the air for his health announcement. I still think it was the wrong call.
Bushfire Bill,
It always surprises me when people here dismiss the role Murdoch and Packer played in Keating’s defeat.
Because Keating wouldn’t play ball with their battle to control Fairfax and relax the media laws to suit them, they absolutely slaughtered him daily for twelve months.
Every night we say the debt truck with its electronic counter spinning wildly and pictures of it in the papers and totally feral media coverage.
I remember well the attack on Whitlam. It was relentless for a while. They are not going to give Rudd any quarter from now on.
I bet there is less than one in a hundred Labor media releases covered now. Rudd is going to have to work bloody hard to get “his” message out from here-on!
I would say Labor’s polling may have been saying otherwise.
Scorps
How many insualtion stories do you think the media would have manufactured if rudd kept garrett
0
10
100
That’s not because of the apology that was happening before hand. Once they got there boy Abbott in.
New thread.
Pages: « 1 … 78 79 80 81 [82] Show All