Oz Politics Blog

From Newspoll … a survey of 1200 people to see if the nation knows the name of its Governor General (aka, the head of state according to some monarchists).

Eighty-one per cent did not know. Five per cent named the wrong person. Fourteen per cent mentioned the word ‘Jeffery’, as in Major General Michael Jeffery.

Interestingly, these results were an improvement on a similar survey in 2003, when eighty-seven per cent did not know. Six per cent named the wrong person. And seven per cent mentioned the word ‘Jeffery’.

Today’s Australian reported the latest Newspoll. The headline prediction was a national two-party preferred vote of 51 per cent for Labor and 49 per cent for the Coalition.

The Coalition primary vote prediction was 41 per cent (unchanged on the previous fortnight). The Labor primary vote prediction was 39 per cent (up two points on the previous fortnight, but down two points on the fortnight before that). The Greens primary vote prediction was 7 per cent (down two points).

The Labor leadership speculation over the past fortnight saw Beazley slump in the beauty contest polling. His approval rating was 28 per cent (down six points). His disapproval rating was 58 per cent (up eight points). While Labor’s primary vote prediction in the previous Newspoll appears to have been an outlier, the latest attitudinal polling suggests a significant softness in Beazley’s support base.

Newspoll examined leadership alternatives.

According to the latest Newspoll survey, conducted exclusively for The Australian last weekend, a new leadership team of Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard has an almost two-to-one advantage over Mr Beazley and his deputy, Jenny Macklin, at 52 per cent to 27 per cent.

Mr Rudd, who has built his public profile during the months of the Cole commission of inquiry into kickbacks to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, is the most popular choice as leader of the party at 28 per cent, up six points since August.

Ms Gillard is close behind at 27per cent, virtually the same as August, while Mr Beazley trails in third place at 24 per cent, down six points.

…

Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard had a clear advantage over the Beazley-Macklin team in every demographic group and among both Coalition and Labor voters.

The Rudd-Gillard team’s biggest lead was among people aged more than 50 and Coalition voters, 56 to 24 per cent, and the Beazley-Macklin team’s strongest area was among those aged between 18 and 34; 30 per cent compared with 48 for the Rudd team.

For me the last paragraph was the most significant. The over-fifties is the demographic Labor needs to win, if they are to win government.

The usual opinion poll graphs are here. I will have the latest graphs up in an hour or so. You may need to hit the refresh or reload button on your browser to see the latest graphs (including the above graph).

Much has been written about the Prime Minister’s embrace of things green following the release of the Stern Report in the United Kingdom. Clearly the debate has benefited the Greens in the opinion polling (as can be seen in the next graph).

Interestingly, though, it did not translate into additional votes for the Greens in yesterday’s Victorian election. It will be interesting to see if (a) the Green’s Federal polling boost is sustainable, and (b) if it translates into Green primary votes at the next Federal election.

Let’s speculate as to why the Prime Minister has taken on a green hue. I suspect Andrew Bolt had it right on the Insiders this morning. Bolt argued that the Prime Minister was on a hiding to nothing being seen to oppose the environment, so he sought to change the terms of the debate: At what price are you willing to go green and how green are you prepared to go?

In popular mindset, the green recipe is to introduce disincentives on high greenhouse gas energy sources (eg. impose a carbon tax), provide incentives for electricity generation from alternative sources (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, etc.), and introduce overall demand reduction measures.

There is little argument from anyone on encouraging demand reduction through, for example, better housing design, or a policy of turning the lights off overnight in city buildings. However, there is no stomach among politicians to use rationing to deal with growing demand. Can you imagine the outrage if politicians handled power shortages in the same way they handle water shortages: to tell the people living in even numbered residences that they can only use electricity on the even days of the month.

A carbon tax and encouraging alternatives are just as vexed. For starters, a carbon tax hits the mum and dad punters with higher electricity and petrol costs, it is a tax on industry and would slow the economy, and it would hit the hip pocket with higher costs on all manufactured goods. It is not an electoral winning strategy.

Alternative power sources have their own problems. Typically, they are either not reliable over the 24 hour cycle, significantly more costly than the carboniferous coal, not suited to Australia’s conditions and/or they cannot be scaled to match demand over the next 50 years. Put bluntly, they are not competitive with Australia’s substantial cheap coal reserves, without taxing individuals and industry.

Rather than an unfocused debate around the problem, the Prime Minister is seeking to shift the debate to the difficulties of finding a solution if we wish to maintain our high energy lifestyle. The Prime Minister appears to be arguing that if the greenhouse scenario is a disaster, and a carbon tax is the appropriate response, then nuclear power generation is both economically feasible and a sensible response to our electricity needs.

It is a discussion that wedges the Greens and Labor in their opposition to nuclear, and their absence of fully developed, sustainable and costed alternatives that are competitive. It is a tighter wedge for Labor than the Greens. Unlike the Greens, Labor actually wants to win government and so it does not want to be tarred with higher taxes and crack-pot energy ideas. While John Howard was not in the green camp, all Labor had to do was repeat its broad green policy commitment. Now Howard is in the green camp, political differentiation requires Labor to articulate strategies and not just broad policy positions on the environment.

I suspect the Prime Minister will keep the nuclear option on the table without actually embracing it - the Switkowsky report certainly gives the Prime Minister a lot of wriggle room in this regard. At the same time he will seek to force Labor and the Greens beyond platitudes to articulate specific (non nuclear) strategies that can be costed and critiqued. This tactic is likely to end in a stalemate that sees the coal-fired status quo continue unchallenged.

In summary: The Prime Minister is cactus if he does not recognise the general concerns in the public about green issues. He expects Labor and the Greens to be cactus if they are forced to say what they will actually do. It should be an interesting debate.

The latest Morgan poll of 2186 voters over the weekends of 11-12 and 18-19 November predicted a national two party preferred vote of 53 per cent for Labor and 47 per cent for the Coalition. The primary vote predictions were 40.5 per cent each for Labor and the Coalition.

Gary Morgan’s take on the latest poll:

“Despite the ‘beat-up’ over Kim Beazley’s leadership, the Federal Opposition gained 0.5% on a two-party preferred basis over the past fortnight, extending their lead to six percentage points.

“If an election had been held during the last fortnight the ALP would have won.”

It will probably take me a week or so to get the usual charts updated. I am in the process of giving Microsoft the flick from my PC. I have replaced Windows with Ubuntu Linux. Most things have transferred without problem (surprisingly easy in fact). My only difficulty is deciding which spreadsheet package to use (with a good charting set of options). The choices seem to be: openoffice.org, koffice and gnumeric, If anyone out there has expertise with these products and can recommend the best option, please let me know.

Since everyone wants to discuss Iraq, and who knew what when and why it matters (or not), let’s do it here.

Just for the fun of it, AWB and the Cole inquiry are on topic.

Hell, you can even chat about nuclear energy and carbon trading. the Victorian election, Beazley’s longevity, other people’s woes, or the use of a generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model to predict election outcomes.

All I ask is that you play the ball and not the person.