I wonder if no Newspoll is bad news for the pollsters and those who own them. This must be the first Monday in living memory (well, since anyone started paying attention to this stuff before last year’s campaign) when there hasn’t been an early release of selected Newspoll numbers. It couldn’t possibly be because the numbers don’t show any leadership bounce for Malcolm Turnbull, could it? [Update: Or could it be because NSW had a public holiday yesterday?] After all, last week’s Morgan face to face poll showed a straight swap of primary vote from the Coalition to Labor - 1.5%, with Labor on 57.5% 2PP. And ACNielsen and Newspoll a fortnight ago showed a very poor bounce by historical standards for the Opposition.
No doubt we’ll find out.
Malcolm Turnbull has been playing a dangerous game on interest rates. For a start, finding a single point of differentiation with Labor on the financial turbulence in calling for the banks to deliver the full .5% cut expected from the Reserve tomorrow trashes his “bipartisan” message articulated so recently. With banks falling over all round the world, the government’s argument that conditions have changed is going to find a fair bit of receptivity around the shop. Turnbull realised two weeks ago that bipartisanship was a good message in the midst of perceived chaos, at a time when people don’t really want to hear disagreement from political leaders. That’s gone now. Now, a lot of people might not remember his incoherent critique of the federal budget back in May when he was Shadow Treasurer (and the government’s budget strategy is looking a lot more clever five months down the track than reaction suggested at the time), but with both economic news in the foreground and his leadership itself big news, a lot more voters will be switched in to what he has to say than usual.
He may have figured that he had to go populist to avoid the “merchant banker” thing. That may be short-sighted.
If incidentally, there is no Turnbull bounce, it’ll be interesting to see if the usual suspects attribute that to voters flocking to the government at a time of economic uncertainty. There’d be truth in that, but if the assumption is that politics is not dynamic and there’s an underlying trend to the Liberals being masked by the crisis, that would be quite wrong.
Update: New post on recent developments.
Let’s say there is x per cent of voters who switched from the Coalition last year due to WorkChoices. The Liberals’ getting a new leader, or even a newer, new leader, won’t bring those voters back. Once bitten, thrice shy.
…. careful now, you’ll be getting LP another black mark in Christian K’s Big Book of Blogging Sins, for an offence under the “Prone to Conspiracy Theories” act.
Kim, what parts of the the government’s budget ’strategy’ are looking cleverer now than before? Please tell me you don’t mean the tax cuts.
Re: incoherency of Turnbull’s critique, my recollection is that he simply said that increasing spending by billions (quite apart from the tax cuts) was hardly consistent with Rudd/Swan/Tanner’s anti-inflation message. I don’t know the figures, so perhaps that critique was factually wrong. But if so, coherently wrong, I’d suggest.
I think you are right about the populism though. Turnbull’s line on the banks is appalling, and one that will very probably come back to haunt him.
BBB
But, Kim, isn’t demanding the full 0.5% cut be passed on by banks, the correct progressive thing to do?
“It couldn’t possibly be because the numbers don’t show any leadership bounce for Malcolm Turnbull, could it?”
Possibly. Monday was a public holiday so that might have something to do with it as well.
Ah, but not in Queensland, Geoff!
I note that Possum didn’t realise that either:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2008/10/07/the-jaundiced-view-intrade-polling-confluence/
I thought that The Australian was supposed to be a national newspaper!
Paulus @ 4, no, why?
BBB @ 3 - Turnbull first criticised the government for not cutting enough, and thus having an even bigger surplus, then turned around and said the surplus was too big.
And yes, I think creating extra demand in the consumer sector through tax cuts is something you might do when a recession on the horizon. And maintaining a substantial surplus gives you flexibility to increase government spending in order to stimulate the economy when needed.
heh! I have trouble keeping up with Qld holidays let alone Mexican ones. That would be a good enough reason to postpone it for a week - most pollsters don’t touch public holidays with a barge poll unless they really have to. There was no Essential Report from EMC yesterday either.
Yep, I went looking - in vain - for the Essential Research poll last night too Poss! What can we do with the Southerners and their strange ways - don’t they realise which bit of the country is the “heart of the nation” these days!
They’re just not coping well with their new fringe status! Today we have poll strikes - what next, mango and pineapple boycotts?
Poor form Mexicans!
You insensitive clod! My aunt happens to be Mexican!
*/slashdot joke*
“Paulus @ 4, no, why?”
Oh, come on, Kim, you’re being disingenuous!
Corporate profiteering vs mortgage relief to ordinary struggling households — do I have to spell it out?
If Bob Brown had made the same appeal to banks, you’d be 100% behind it.
If not 200%!
One percent rate cut! I thought they might go for something a bit stronger than half a percent. No excuses now for the banks…. they’ll have to pass a fair bit on. [Apologies for all the technical finance/economics jargon.]
Paulus, eek, on other threads I get pinged as an ALP fan… now I’m a starry-eyed follower of Bob Brown?
Obvs a higher cost of funds for banks makes a difference.
yeah, Good luck to Talcum trying on some populist “full cut” routine as the punters soak in an unexpected 0.8% break.
Dont waste yer time mate.
Oh, and incidentally, wasnt it scumbags like YOU at, oh I dunno, say, MACQUARIE BANK who drove cutting edge low equity dodgy-arsed banking on this side of the Pacific rim?
Woops…cant mention that. ‘Talking down AU institutions’ etc.
nflation does not matter.
Neo-liberal idiotology does not matter (except it got us into this mess).
Gradualism does not matter
The economy, pretty much Worldwide (US, UK, EU, Australia, NZ plus a lot of others) is now in cardiac arrest.
There is Worldwide credit freeze. No one is lending to another, especially banks are not lending to each other (which is an interesting counterpoint to all the “Oz banks are safe nonsense” …. they don’t think each other are safe, neither does anyone else in the World).
Now for the hard facts. Oz needs to import external money every day to survive. We have a current account deficit (forget the trade deficit this is the one that matters) in the $70B+ a year level.
To buy oil, to buy food, to buy cars, to buy computers, to buy .. you get the idea. We have to borrow money every day. We also have to borrow to pay the interest on our existing debts.
That inflow has stopped. We have about 4-12 weeks left unless things change. At that point our ’safe’ banks will have to stop new loans and call in existing loans (maybe your and mine mortgages) to survive. The Govt will have to bail them out (then again Dudd who knows?) but the Govt does not have the the money to do it (technically there actually is way but they will never do it)!
At that point the economy collapses as overdrafts disappear, corporate loans don’t get rolled over, people get turfed out of their houses .. in simple terms companies cannot (maybe even State and the Federal Govt) cannot pay wages. The country runs out of money.
Tick, tic, tick until Oz collapses and quite possibly defaults unless urgent, brutal action is taken. A 1% cut is not enough (3% maybe).
When I say brutal, I mean brutal. Guarantee all deposits, Nationalise at least 1 bank, nationalise super savings. Issue $300-$500B in 10 year Govt bonds and order the super funds to take it up. Pull all overseas investment money back into Oz, especially all the super fund money invested overseas. Print money like all hell and spend it.
As that hiker did a while ago, take your knife out and saw off your own arm to survive …. or die.
Update: New post on recent developments.
Woah steady on OldSkeptic - if you think the world’s about to end economically, I can’t help wondering if some of your skepticism has been drowned under that flagon of McWilliams sherry that old people tend to keep hanging around.
To call your vision the worst case scenario is like calling Ghandi a little bit peckish. I’m not saying that we can all relax, but I think the doom-saying is a little premature.