Oz Politics Blog

Remember the 1988 Kirribilli pact between Hawke and Keating? Well Costello’s unwillingness to deny a leadership transition deal with Howard has set fresh speculation running. According to the Tiser, a key exchange between Costello and a journalist went as follows.

“Can I just ask you a plain simple question? Is there an understanding between you and Mr Howard as to his departure?” a reporter asked at a press conference in the Solomon Islands.

“Look, these things have worked in the interests of the Australian people and the Liberal Party and the people concerned and there is no point in speculating on it,” Mr Costello said.

The SMH reported this exchange,

Asked if voters had a right to know whether there was a deal, Mr Costello said “voters get the right to vote”.

“They will get the right to vote on who they want to run the country. They will have plenty of information at the time of the election,” he said.

However, the SMH also reported

Mr Howard has emphatically ruled out ever doing such a deal. Yesterday he referred to quotes he had made during an interview in March to celebrate his 10 years in office, when he said Mr Keating and Mr Hawke had no right to make the Kirribilli pact.

“The prime ministership of Australia is not mine to confer on somebody else,” Mr Howard said. “If I decided at some time in the future that I was going to go, then the Liberal Party will decide my successor and not me.

Confirming the Prime Minister’s denial, the Australian referred to Howard’s May 2004 comments: “There are no deals, and that’s been my position all along and it will remain my position.”

My assessment: There is no deal. Costello is using ambiguity to hype his profile and promote the notion of an orderly transfer in the near future. It is a risky strategy. It may backfire, cementing the Prime Minister in position for another election.

Update 8 July 2006: This exchange on last night’s Lateline has stirred the pot without actually adding much clarity.

GRAHAME MORRIS: I don’t know. The Prime Minister said “no deal”. But, look, it’s not hard to work out. I don’t know why journos don’t believe it. But somewhere around November, the Prime Minister will focus on this and then the country and the party and, you know, the PM’s family and Peter Costello, everyone will know somewhere around Christmas time. But why on Earth would the Prime Minister focus on it now when he doesn’t have to? And you can just tell, the minute he starts focusing on, “Am I coming or going?” you will know from his body language. So he’s sort of made the conscious decision - wait until November and then he will have a think about it.

MAXINE MCKEW: What is significant about November? Are you giving us all a hint there?

GRAHAME MORRIS: No, nothing…

MAXINE MCKEW: Oh, come on!

GRAHAME MORRIS: Except that you would announce it - if you were going to announce it, you’d announce it somewhere over that silly season and Christmas and, if he chose to stay, that means there’s nine months to an election to get organised and, if he chooses to go, that’s nine months for the new leader to get organised with his team, and I think that’s plenty of time.

MAXINE MCKEW: You’ve said in the past to us on this program you believe that the Prime Minister still has not made up his mind. Do you still think that’s the case?

GRAHAME MORRIS: Genuinely, that is right. Look, Maxine, you will know it. He’s fairly transparent in his body language and the minute he’s coming or the minute he’s going you will be able to tell, and that’s why I suspect November, December is why he’s decided, “Then I’ll focus on it and I’ll let everyone know.”

According to the latest research note from the Parliamentary Library, backbenchers in the Federal Parliament receive an annual salary of $118,950 from 1 July 2006. That was a 7.01 per cent increase on the 2005-06 salary.

Commonwealth parliamentarians are the nation’s highest paid. Backbenchers in the Tasmanian Parliament are the nation’s lowest paid. They receive only $94,689 per year.

The ozpolitics blog site typically gets between 500 and 1000 spam comments a day (indeed, two arrived in the short time it took to write this post). It takes a fairly sophisticated bit of software to delete the bad and keep the good. In recent weeks I have noticed that too many good comments have been gobbled up as spam. Sorry about that.

I am trying a new spam management system called Akismet. I will test it for a while to see if it lets spam comments through or if it annihilates the genuine.

Your patience at this time is appreciated.

The latest Newspoll results are out, and they look bad for the government. Labor is in an election winning position on 53 per cent of the predicted national, two-party preferred vote. The Coalition has 47 per cent.

In terms of the primary vote predictions, Labor has 41 per cent (up 3 on the previous Newspoll), the Coalition 40 per cent (down 3), and the Greens 5 per cent (down 2).

The headline in the Australian is: IR delivers Labor big poll lead. I am not so sure. If you look at the next graph you can see an enormous level of volatility in the recent polls: up one poll down the next. However, the trend movement over the period looks fairly flat, albeit sloping gently away from the Coalition.

With the heightened volatility, it is difficult to tell whether these results presage a genuine drop in the Coalition’s fortunes and an increase in Labor’s, or whether the next poll will have Howard well ahead. What is noise and what is signal?

The increased volatility in the Newspoll series appears to have commenced with the Work Choices legislation in Q4 2005, and suggests an underlying softening in Howard’s support base. The other evidence of softening is the satisfaction and dissatisfaction ratings for Howard. These have been roughly equal since Q4 2005. In today’s figures, Howard’s dissatisfaction rating exceeds his satisfaction rating for the first time in a while.

The usual opinion poll graphs are here. You may need to hit the refresh or reload button on your browser to see the latest graphs.

Republican fervour has gripped the land of the long white cloud. Well, perhaps not. But if New Zealand Greens MP Keith Locke gets his way, New Zealand will have a referendum on replacing the Queen with an elected Head of State.

Keith’s private member’s Bill — the Head of State (Referenda) Bill — proposes a referendum with three options.

1. Keep the status quo;
2. Have a Head of state elected by the House of Representatives; or
3. Have a Head of state elected by popular vote.

If either of the last two options were chosen, the Bill would abolish the monarchy.

The only problem is getting the NZ Parliament to consider the Bill. The process for getting a private member’s bill debated involves a fair degree of luck.

Bills that affect public policy but are not part of the Government’s legislative programme can be introduced by members other than Ministers. However, the House has limited time to consider such bills. To keep the number of Members’ bills within the ability of the House to consider them, there is a ballot for their introduction. No more than four can be before the House for first reading at one time. Each time a place becomes available, a ballot is held. There may be some 40 draft bills in any such ballot. Each member can have no more than one bill in each ballot.

Keith has had his Bill in the ballot since 2001. It could be a long wait. Still, with New Zealand’s German-style Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system, it has a better chance than a similar Bill in Australia would.

If you want to find out more, click here for headofstate.org.nz.