UPDATE: The Australian reports Malcolm Turnbull’s preferred prime minister rating has hit a new low of 16 per cent (down three), to Kevin Rudd’s 66 per cent (up two). Also featured is a question on the timing of an emissions trading scheme which finds 45 per cent believe the government should delay its legislation until “learning what other countries commit to at the Copenhagen climate conference in December”, compared with 41 per cent who believe legislation should proceed now. The Australian argues that the latter measure amounts to a 20 per cent drop in support for unilateral action since last September. However, the alternative answer in the earlier poll proposed that the scheme should proceed “only if other countries also introduce such schemes”, suggesting a longer delay than the less-than-five-months proposed by its counterpart in the current poll, and placing greater weight on the possibility a scheme might not proceed at all.

UPDATE 2: Peter Brent at Mumble has complete responses on the ETS questions.

Elsewhere:

• The latest weekly Essential Research survey has Labor’s lead up from 56-44 to 57-43. Also featured are questions on which party is better for handling various issues, which finds the Liberals have gone backwards since June 1; the government’s handling of relations with various countries; how safe respondents would feel visiting various countries; and Australia’s top security threat. More from Possum.

• The normally arcane topic of electoral reform has gone mainstream over the course of the past day’s news cycle, albeit in the questionable guise of optional voting rights for 16-year-olds. Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig has said the issue will be raised in the second of the government’s two green papers on electoral reform due later this year, the first of which dealt with campaign funding and expenditure issues and was published last December. The Greens are understandably enthusiastic, the Liberals equally understandably less so. Ben Raue spoke in favour on ABC News Radio earlier today, and further comments at The Tally Room.

• Advocates for retaining the existing Royal Adelaide Hospital site are rumoured to be seeking the requisite number of signatures (only 150 under the relatively lax provisions of the South Australian Electoral Act) to register their own political party in time for next year’s state election. Labor might like to recall that the two surprise defeats that cost their Western Australian counterparts government last year, Mount Lawley and Morley, were respectively in close and reasonably close proximity of Royal Perth Hospital, where a similar controversy was unfolding. Equivalent electorates in South Australia might be Adelaide (margin 10.2 per cent, but traditionally a swinging seat) and Norwood (4.2 per cent).

• AAP reports that Labor is seeking a candidate with “green credentials” – a “Kerryn Phelps-style figure”, to be precise – to take on Malcolm Turnbull in Wentworth.

• After being cleared last week on a rape charge, Victorian Northern Metropolitan Labor MLC Theo Theophanous has made life easier for his party by announcing he will quit politics at next year’s election.

• The Geelong Advertiser reports that two candidates have emerged for Liberal preselection in South Barwon, which Labor’s Michael Crutchfield gained in the 2002 landslide and retained by 2.4 per cent in 2006, despite hostile press from the aforementioned Advertiser. The candidates are Ron Humphrey, who lost his Surf Coast Shire Council seat at last year’s elections and was an unsuccessful contestant for preselection in 2006, and Andrew Katos, who represents Deakin ward on Greater Geelong City Council.

• The Victorian Parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee is conducting an inquiry into last year’s Kororoit by-election, after the Electoral Commission’s report expressed concern that no action could be taken against an ALP pamphlet which claimed a vote for independent candidate Les Twentyman was “a vote for the Liberals”. For what it’s worth, I have my doubts as to whether it’s feasible or desirable to regulate election rhetoric in the manner proposed.

• The Launceston Examiner reports that school teacher Rob Soward has lost Labor’s game of musical chairs in Bass, where seven candidates were chasing six positions on the ticket for next year’s state election. The lucky winners were incumbent Michelle O’Byrne, former member Kathryn Hay, Beaconsfield mine disaster survivor Brant Webb, Winnaleah District High School principal Brian Wightman, CFMEU forests division secretary Scott McLean and North Tasmanian Development consultant Michelle Cripps.

• Legendary Clerk of the Senate Harry Evans, retiring after 40 years, reviews the evolution of parliament during his tenure in an article for Crikey.

• A self-explanatory new book entitled Australia: The State of Democracy, edited by Marian Sawer, Norman Abjorensen and Phil Larkin for the Democratic Audit of Australia, is now available through Federation Press. The introduction can be read here.

UPDATE: Roy Morgan has joined in on the action with a small sample (546) phone poll including questions on leadership approval, which Morgan doesn’t normally do. It finds Malcolm Turnbull’s approval rating down to 25 per cent from 43 per cent in May, with his disapproval up a breathtaking 33.5 per cent to 62.5 per cent. Kevin Rudd’s approval rating on 63 per cent, up from 57.5 per cent in May, with his disapproval rating down from 33.5 per cent to 29 per cent. Labor holds leads of 56-44 on two-party preferred and 46 per cent to 39 per cent on the primary vote, which is actually quite mild by Morgan standards. Newspoll has also published its quarterly geographic and demographic breakdowns of recent polling by state, age, sex, and capitals/non-capitals.

Apart from that:

• Robert Taylor of The West Australian reports that Labor preselections for some highly winnable Liberal-held seats in Perth appear to be ”stitched up”. In the only two seats in the country which the Coalition gained from Labor in 2007, Cowan and Swan, those respectively named are Wanneroo mayor Jon Kelly and Slater & Gordon lawyer Tim Hammond. Kelly is interesting, as he ran as an independent against state Labor MP Margaret Quirk in Girrawheen at the 2005 election after a split in the Right faction. In Stirling, where decorated Iraq war veteran Peter Tinley failed to unseat current Shadow Workplace Relations Minister Michael Keenan in 2007, the nod is apparently set to be given to Karen Brown, former deputy editor of The West Australian and current chief-of-staff to Eric Ripper. Brown famously failed to win the new notionally Labor seat of Mount Lawley at the state election last September after suffering an 8 per cent swing, which many blamed on Alan Carpenter’s insistence that local member Bob Kucera make way for Brown. Peter Tinley is said to be holding out for a safe seat or a Senate position, and the unlikelihood of either suggests he will not be a starter at the next election. In Hasluck, which Sharryn Jackson recovered for Labor in 2007 after a term in the wilderness, Liberals are said by Taylor to be “working behind the scenes” to secure the endorsement of Mike Dean, who last week stepped down from his high-profile position as president of the Police Union.

• The ABC reports that Kathryn Hay will seek Labor preselection for Bass at next year’s state election. Hay is a former Miss Tasmania who became Tasmania’s first Aboriginal MP when elected at the age of 27 in 2002. After surprising everybody by dropping out at the 2006 election, Hay ran as an independent against Ivan Dean in the upper house seat of Windermere in May, and did very well to finish within 5 per cent of victory on the final count. With incumbent Jim Cox retiring, Michelle O’Byrne a sure bet for re-election, and Labor looking certain to win a second seat but very unlikely to pick up a third, the battle for the second seat is looking like a tussle between Hay, Beaconsfield mine disaster survivor Brant Webb, CFMEU forests division secretary Scott McLean (who famously came out in support of John Howard at the 2004 federal election) and Winnaleah school principal Brian Wightman, with only the latter looking an obvious also-ran.

• Rick Wallace of The Australian reports that George Seitz, western Melbourne Labor Right potentate and state Keilor MP, proposes to publish a “warts and all” account of his career in politics. Seitz is being forced out after nearly three decades in parliament due to a Victorian Ombudsman’s report which probed into the involvement of various state MPs in goings-on at Brimbank City Council. The aforementioned Wallace article is worth reading for a broader overview of the episode’s far-reaching impact on the Victorian ALP.

• Andrew Landeryou at VexNews reports that the closure of nominations has brought no challenges to sitting federal Liberal MPs in Victoria – including Kevin Andrews in Menzies, who was believed to be under threat from former Peter Reith staffer Ian Hanke.

• Nick in comments informs us that according to a Channel Nine news report, Labor polling has it trailing the Coalition 57-43 on NSW state voting intention.