Important Questions?

The wonderful thing about the Internet / Web 2.0 or what ever that there is an answer to any question ... including "Can a Jedi lightsaber cut through Superman?"

The answer can be found here

I didn't win...

In 2007 I failed to achieve the aim of my mid-life crisis by winning the SCC "C" grade competition. Instead I came second. At the end of year combined awards and Christmas party I picked up my first cycling award from former discovery pro and club member Matt White.

Why I ride! Enjoy

First Howard V. Rudd deabte of the election

Last night I went along to one of the host churches to hear both John Howard and Kevin Rudd court the Christian vote in a webcast for up to 100,000 people gathered in churches across the country. The event was effectively the first leaders debate of the 2007 Federal Election campaign.

The webcast from the National Press Club entitled "2007 Make it Count" was organised by the Australian Christian Lobby.

Bottom line John Howard carried the evening by:

1) appealing to the belief among Christians that they are an oppressed minority under threat from an increasingly secular society;

2) reinforcing his conservative credentials and the fact the Liberal National Party coalition is the natural home of the Christian lobby; and

3) announcing a $189 million program to address internet porn.

On the other hand Kevin Rudd appeared to be both nervous and tired after the week in Parliament. His address compared poorly, for example, to his speech last year to CASE at New College at the University of New South Wales on politics & Christianity when he shared the platform with John Anderson before he became ALP leader.

The other major strategic error in Rudd's speech was that he addressed the audience in the watching churches, over the heads of the 'heavies" in the National Press Club as voters first and Christians second. Those 100,000 across Australia were motivated as Christians to leave their homes and go to a church or meeting hall to watch.

This would be disappointing for the ALP as Rudd had an opportunity to neutralise faith as a issue - there appeared to be a fair amount of good will in the audience before he started. I thought the applause at the beginning was heartier than at the conclusion but that could reflect the hour or the tougher questions he received from the audience.

Sydney Cycling Club has new kit

The Clubs new kit has arrived.

2007 Federal Election Briefing #4

Overview

• The Coalition fight back may or may not have started but the ALP led by Kevin would’ve still won during June.

The Last Month

Has the PM and the Coalition turned the corner and begun the fight back? And has Kevin Rudd's cart begun to wobble with one to many unforced errors from the Union “bruvvas”?

The Liberal Party Federal Council meeting in Sydney during June had a much bigger impact than the Federal Budget. The morale of Liberal MPs and party activists were in particular lifted, admittedly of a low base. By the way the Council meeting had none of the buzz of the earlier ALP National Conference.

As expected the Prime Minister announced that the Coalition would implement a greenhouse gas Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) beginning in 2012, two years after the ALP ETS. The Coalition’s embrace of a market solution (but not the Kyoto Protocol) to climate change has seemingly neutered an ALP point of difference. On the other hand the message from the Council meeting that only the Federal Coalition can be trusted with the economics of implementing as ETS has not caught fire with voters. The extravagant claim that Peter Garrent’s supposed aspirational greenhouse gas reduction target would create the “Garret recession” also has apparently failed to gain traction.

While media and political commentary about climate change has diminished, this is unlikely to continue to the election campaign, if only because former Vice-President Al Gore is visiting Australia again.

Interestingly there would appear to now be another climate change political party, Conservatives for Climate and Environment (www.cfce.org.au) to challenge Patricia Newell’s Climate Change Coalition. Will CFCE become another Liberals for Forests which had such an impact in WA?

Whilst the Unions and in particular Union officials have created problems for Kevin Rudd, not reflected in the recent polls by the way, the PM has declared a national emergency in regard to child sexual abuse in remote indigenous communities in the Northern Territory also yet to be reflected in the published opinion polls. The “black UN helicopters” types all rushed to proclaim this emergency as this campaigns “Tampa”.

Also this month a poll of Senate voting intentions was released by GetUp (GetUp.org.au is an independent movement to build a progressive Australia modelled on the US Moveon.org).

Senate Voting Intention	Galaxy Survey Jun-07	Election Results 2004	Election Results 2001
ALP	38	35	34
Liberal / National Party	34	45	42
The Greens	13	8	5
The Democrats	1	2	7
Other Parties or Candidates	13	12	12

The results should be taken with a large grain of salt if only because the poll was used to launch a campaign by GetUp to remove the Coalition’s control of the Senate (Media Release available here http://www.getup.org.au/files/media/senatepressrelease.pdf) and voters rarely only think about the Senate so is the response real or a polling construct? As Poll Bludger commented the only really interesting fact is the collapse of the Coalition vote.

Newspoll – is it important?

The regular fortnightly Newspoll (www.newspoll.com.au) of voting intention is a staple of the Australian political and electoral landscape, and always has an impact in Parliament House, Canberra. Why is that?

Firstly, NewsPoll (and the other published polls) are all MPs and most Ministers (and their Shadows) have access to. They don't see internal party polling unless the Party Secretary shows them for some of nefarious purpose (see Leadership challenges). Usually not even the Party Leader sees all the polling. Only the Party Secretary and the Party's pollster know all about the polling. Internal party polling results and reports are distributed on a strict “needs to know basis”. This polling vacuum is filled by Newspoll and all the other public opinion polls.

Of course all the other electoral stakeholders and election junkies also have to rely only on the published polls as well.

Newspoll is important because firstly it’s national, and is commissioned by The Australian, the national newspaper and it appears each fortnight. Secondly, because the poll has the reputation of being reasonably accurate – this is of course contested by other pollsters including the new kid on the block Galaxy Research (www.galaxyresearch.com.au).

So remember, ALP and Coalition backbenchers are no more informed than you are on the polling and its implications.

Secondly, the trends are the important thing to track in any “horse race” poll, not the results. I suggest there is to much focus on the numbers each fortnight this far out from the election. In fact the coverage is a campaign tool being used to generate media coverage to create name recognition with voters. If there was no Newspoll, Denis Shannahan might have to find another story, and besides polling is a cheap regular story to fill in the gaps between the advertisements in The Australian.

The debate on the release of early polling is not unique to Australia; see the following story from the New York Times “The Limits of Early Polling” by Rrobin Tonner (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/us/politics/20web-toner.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print )

Thirdly, the Newspoll methodolgy can be criticised for at least one methodolical choice and that is to exclude voters who are “uncommitted” or “refused” from the survey. In other words the June 15-17^th poll is not of all voters but of 94% of voters (4% “uncommitted” and 2% “refused” were excluded). The support for the Coalition, ALP, Greens and Others are overstated by adding up to 100%. In the US, it would be expected that the majority of the “uncommitted” and “refused” would support the challenger, not the incumbent Government (it’s known as the Incumbent Rule). The exclusion is noted in the fine print by Newspoll but is another reason care should always be taken with individual polls, let alone the issue of margin of error. These differences in polling methodology and reporting (which include question design and degree of push) are known as “House Effects” and also add a margin of error and difference between polls.

Fourthly, another criticism not just of Newspoll but all published Australian opinion polls is the absence of a Right Track/Wrong Track question. In the US all major polls ask questions similar to "Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?" (This example is from the Newsweek Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. June 18-19, 2007. N=1,001 adults nationwide. MoE ± 4. http://www.pollingreport.com/right.htm ). As rule of thumb in the US incumbents are at risk once Wrong Track is higher than Right Track. In Australia there is only the Leaders performance question which is also tracked in the US. President George W. Bush has just crashed through 30% approval.

I'd suggest that if we had Right Track/Wrong Track results over time to add to the “horse race” and leaders’ performance results, the election picture would probably currently be a lot clearer.

Federal Division of Makin (SA) - Profile

SA Divisions	Margin %	Liberal Party Candidate	ALP Candidate
Kingston	0.1	Kym Richardson, MP	Amanda Rushworth
Wakefield	0.7	David Fawcett, MP	Nick Champion
Makin	1.0	Bob Day	Tony Zappia

There are three key Coalition marginal Divisions (all less than one per cent) in South Australia which the ALP must pick up. Makin is in the north eastern outer suburbs of Adelaide that abuts the foothills of the Adelaide Hills. It includes the suburbs of Tea Tree Gully, Modbury, Salisbury Heights and Para Hills.

Thanks to The Australian and the ABS, Census 2006 profiles for all the Federal electoral Divisions is now available.

Electorate by Numbers	Division of Makin	Ranking (Out of 150)
Household income weekly median	$911	64
Paying off home	42.2%	19
Renters	18.6%	134
McMansions	23.6%	94
Couples with dependent children	46.1%	62
Single parents	15.8%	83
Never known recession	31.0%	66
Grey voters	33.3%	79
Ethnicity	46.5%	57

It is known as a mortgage belt seat (ranked 19 out of 150), with a large proportion of the population in the area paying off home loans. It was won by Draper at the 1996 election when the Howard Liberal government was elected with a two party preferred margin of 4.8 percent, which was reduced to 4.6 percent at the 1998 election, then 3.8 percent at the 2001 election, then to only one percent at the 2004 election.

The Division of Makin will be an open seat with the retirement of the sitting Liberal member Trish Draper. Makin was created in 1984 and was held for the ALP by Peter Duncan until he was defeated by Trish Draper in 1996.

Interesting both major party candidates for the 2007 Election can claim to be successful businessmen.

The Liberal Party candidate is Bob Day, a businessman and a long term resident of the area. He is one of Australia’s leading home builders and business leaders having recently completed a term as National President of the Housing Industry Association.

Tony Zappia was the ALP candidate for Makin in the 2004 election when he reduced the margin to 1%. He is a former Australian national power lifting champion and has been Mayor of the City of Salisbury since 1997. Like all ALP candidates he spent 5 years as a political adviser before owning and operating his own gym. He lives in the region with his family.

The Greens candidate will be Graham Smith, who stood for the State seat of Newland within the Division at the 2006 SA election. In addition Family First who polled 4.9% in 2004, out polling the Greens, can be expected to stand especially as it is the heartland of the party in SA. Preferences from both are highly likely to be critical to which major party candidate is successful.

Opinion Polls

Thanks to Newspoll

The appearance of a swing back to the Government in mid-June exited the commentariat, but the ALP remains in a landslide winning position.

Thanks to Newspoll

Thanks to Newspoll

Given the increasing presidential nature of Federal Election campaigns, the PM’s satisfaction and trustworthiness ratings as reported by Newspoll should be of concern. Kevin Rudd is more trusted and his satisfaction rating remains in the sixties while the PM’s rating remains flat in the mid-forties. Also more Australians (but less than 50%) continue to think Kevin Rudd would make a better PM than John Howard.

Betting Markets

The following chart shows the combined betting markets probability of a Coalition win as at 1 July 2007. Punters are either in agreement with the opinion polls or reflecting the impact of the polls showing a narrowing of the margin of the loss by the Coalition.

Thanks to ozpolitics blog.

2007 Federal Election Briefing #3

Overview

• Echoes of the dying days of the Keating Government are beginning to emerge for the Howard led Federal Coalition Government with diverging elite and populist opinion.
• Gamblers are saying the Federal Election result will be closer than the opinion polls are predicting and on their previous track record they can’t be dismissed. They are however tipping the ALP to win.
• Maxine McKew will not defeat the PM and consign him to a historical footnote as the second PM to loose his seat thanks to IR reform.

Impact of the Federal Budget 2007 & ALP National Conference - Sydney 27-29 April

Two of the four key political events of the first half of 2007 have now come and gone. With the Budget and the ALP National Conference behind us there remains the Liberal Party Federal Council on June 1-3 in Sydney and the report of the PM’s Task Group on Emissions Trading due the day before.

Despite the acres of newsprint and electronic commentary nothing has changed. All opinion polls have the ALP maintaining a steady commanding lead over the Coalition. As bad as things are for John Howard they are worse for Senator Bob Brown and the Greens who seem to be irrelevant to the ongoing phoney election campaign. The Greens vote is trending down. The apparent fall in Greens and Independent vote should be worrying the Coalition as it probably means voters who were undecided are deciding. If the Coalition is to claw back the ALP it needs voters to remain undecided.

There are two possible explanations. Either the voters aren’t listening to the PM or their betters or they are and are still supporting Kevin Rudd and the ALP. Does 2007 represent another occasion when elite opinion and popular support diverged? Last time the elites supported Keating but Howard surfed the wave of popular concern into Government to the rage of the elites.

I suggest they are listening and ignoring elite opinion, evidenced by the dropping Green vote, as voters make a decision rather than have a “bet each way” by saying they’d vote for the Greens or Others.

In the US the Democratic/Progressive blogsphere has been angrily savaging MSM (main stream media) and the pundits/commentators/reporters who appear in and on it and who are themselves personalities for demanding the American people follow their opinions and attitudes – in particular on Irag and the Bush presidency. Has the situation now arrived in Australia where Dennis Shanahan, Paul Kelly, Greg Sheridan and Allen Mitchell will be called to account by an angry blogsphere? Has the PM begun listening to much to Canberra opinion and not the battlers? Has he like Keating become remote and will the proposed $500,000 dinner room extensions revealed in Senate Estimates by the ruthless inquisitor Senator Faulkner come back to haunt him?

The astounding thing is the absence of a backlash in the opinion polls against the ALP IR policy, the flop of the Government “Fairness Test” and the missing Budget bounce. Voters thought it was the best budget on record – 60% thought it would be good for the Australian economy. In the Newspoll survey 36% said they’d be better off, the highest number ever but still 31% said Kevin Rudd would have delivered a better budget. The Gillard/Rudd IR package was also twice as appealing as the Coalitions “Fairness Test”. For all that it had seemingly no impact on voting intentions.

Betting Markets - better than opinion polls?

In recent election campaigns, opinion polls have not been the only tool for attempting to predict the result - the profile of betting markets has steadily increased with both academic research and media coverage.

The ozpolitics blog provides a regular update on the Australian betting market for the forthcoming 2007 Federal Election averaging the odds from CentreBet IASBet , SportingBet , SportsBet and SportsAcumen. The Australian online bookies are tipping a much closer result than the opinion polls. Interestingly the betting markets didn’t dismiss the ALP IR policy and the Federal Budget and the odds of a Coalition win shortened and since lengthened. To follow the betting market visit http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/category/betting-market/ Bryan updates his charts regularly (Chart below is at 8:25 am Thursday 24 May)

(Thanks to ozpolitics)

The underlying assumption of following betting markets to pick election results is that of the wisdom of crowds is more accurate than a small sample of the total population - investors/gamblers assimilate information faster, and because real money is involved make more rational decisions. For example in 2004 gamblers were never seduced by Latham and the Coalition remained the favourite to win throughout the whole election campaign.

Two young Australian economists have studied both the 2001 and 2004 Federal Elections, including the “horse race” poll (i.e. which party is going to win) and a sample of marginal seats on which bets were taken. The results show that the betting markets tracked the performance of each campaign on a daily basis more accurately, picked the winner and the overwhelming majority of winners in marginal seats. The predictions of the betting markets were more accurate than the opinion polls or pundits (i.e. elite opinion from the Canberra Parliamentary Press Gallery).

Copies of the 2004 report by Andrew Leigh and Justin Wolfers is available at http://econrsss.anu.edu.au/~aleigh/pdf/ElectionForecasting2005.pdf

Federal Division of Bennelong - Profile

According to the Malcolm Mackerras Pendulum, Bennelong is a marginal seat that the ALP needs to win to gain Government.

The member for Bennelong is The Hon. John Howard, Prime Minister and the second longest serving member of the House of Representatives. He is being challenged by the ALP’s star recruit Maxine McKew, a former high profile ABC reporter. The margin after the 2004 election and the redistribution is 4.3%, as the seat has continued to become less safe at each election caused by changes in both boundaries and residents' voting habits.

Bennelong is based in Northern Sydney, including the suburbs of Eastwood, Epping and Ryde, and has been held by the Liberal Party since its creation in 1949. In that time it has had only two members. John Howard has held the seat for the last 33 years.

Several opinion polls have been published recently that suggest Ms McKew could win (including one questionable one by IPSOS). The betting markets have a whole different perspective. Centrebet gives Maxine McKew only a 30% chance of winning the seat for example.

Of course the election she has to win, after a brave showing at the Federal Election, is the by-election when John Howard resigns following either his defeat or the crowning of Peter Costello as the new Prime Minister by a victorious Liberal Party.

Maxine McKew’s campaign creates a number of strategic issues for the PM, especially as the campaign will demand he spend a great deal of time in Queensland, SA and WA defending marginal seats. He will have to find the time to campaign in his own seat which will be a serious distraction. The response by the Liberal Party seems to be to campaign hard now, spending up big in local advertising for example to ensure the PM can campaign in the marginal’s during the last 33 days.

It would be an appalling historical (if unlikely) footnote to be the second PM to lose his seat - the first was the Tory Stanley “Spats” Bruce in 1929 as a result of seeking to abolish the federal system of industrial arbitration.

ALP Industrial Relations Policy - a King without clothes

Have spent that last three days (27-29 April) at the ALP National Conference in Sydney. The big issues were John Howard is a clever but old politician; climate change is the biggest threat to Australia and only the Rudd led ALP can fix it; and the Coalition Government's "WorkChoices" legislation will be abolished the first opportunity a Federal ALP Government gets.

It was also an appalling display of the fact business can't count numbers despite being financially numerate.

In summary, the response to the ALP industrial relations policy promise to abolish "WorkChoices" and AWAs can be summed up as:

• the ALP and Unions will abolish "WorkChoices" as soon as elected - Conference & Union delegates response was yippee;
• for business leaders abolishing "WorkChoices" and AWAs will result in the sky falling and the end of civilization; and
• for John Howard it means the return of the "Union Bosses" controlling the ALP.

All three positions based upon a myth of which it is in none of their interests to refute - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (if elected at the next FederalElection) will not decide how much if any of "WorkChoices" is abolished. Neither Sharan Burrow not Greg Combet of the ACTU decide how much if any of "WorkChoices" is abolished.

The Leader of the Coalition Opposition will decide if any or all of "WorkChoices" is abolished.

The ALP will not have the votes in the Senate even with the Greens and Family First. The Coalition only need to win 3 Senate seats in 5 States, 2 in one State and one each in the Territories to control the Senate and to block ALP legislation.

The ACTU will have to fight two elections to abolish "WorkChoices". The next one and then the Double Dissolution election in 2009 or 2010. I hope they are saving their pennies.

Here's a challenge for John Howard - will he promise Australia (like Paul Keating did) that if Kevin Rudd and the ALP are elected the Coalition will allow the ALP to dismantle "WorkChoices"? That should motivate the business lobbys to campaign! Of course he won't do any such thing - nor will Peter Costello if he's leading the Coalition in Opposition - not after his history at Dollar Sweets etc.

Electoral needs will always trump sound policy (and logic).

I look forward to Julia and Kevin explaining to the "loony left" - listen we tried but we can't abolish AWAs. Just like Howard had to tell the media owners when he couldn't get media law reform through the Senate the first time.

Hope the Western Australian mining industry can count numbers?