Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 18^th, 2015 at 11:52am:


Why not? Doubleplusgood is always happy to give credit to the cream in the Labor Party. He's most consistent this way.

____ wrote on Sep 18^th, 2015 at 12:06pm:


So you are unhappy the Green vote is crashing along with the Labor vote?

mariacostel wrote on Sep 18^th, 2015 at 12:19pm:



From a record high to a 3 point higher position than last election ... nice deflection attempt not. So why are the coalition not calling a DD today ... they haven't read your fax message yet?

sir prince duke alevine wrote on Sep 18^th, 2015 at 12:46pm:


It is still a little over 3 days and an 8 point turnaround to a comfortable winning position. From here the future for Labor looks ever bleaker. Imagine how bad it will be for Labor when the government starts making new policies and pushing them through.

Get used to yet another term of the Liberal government.

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 18^th, 2015 at 1:02pm:


Keep crying monk. Not so jovial now, are you?

I cannot believe the amount of circlejerking from the Coalition supporters about one single opinion poll. In the week that Turnbull replaces the abysmal Abbott, of course the opinion polls are going to swing towards the Coalition. How could they not? Abbott was one of the worst Prime Ministers this country has ever seen and he had to go. The government was chaotic and dysfunctional with Abbott in charge and any change had to be an improvement.

It is especially amusing how the usual suspects are predicting massive and unrealistic surges of support that is yet to occur. What's Turnbull going to do to earn that?

Turnbull is enjoying a polling honeymoon, but all such polling honeymoons must come to an end. If Turnbull starts being a disappointment on policies, it's going to end sooner than one might expect. I would wait and see how Turnbull performs.

The real test of Turnbull's leadership is how well he does in the next month.

A Cabinet reshuffle will be announced next week. He's doing well if he has the courage to dump deadwood Ministers such as Dutton and Kevin Andrews, and Hockey is removed from any financial portfolio. His choices have to be sensible though. There was talk of putting Pyne into the Defence portfolio; that's such a poor fit that I consider that unlikely.

The policy portfolio has similar deadwood of unpopular policies such as university fee deregulation, making young people wait for income support without any evidence to back this up, the so-called "Direct Action" waste of money and other such nonsense. If Turnbull doesn't repudiate these crocked policies, the Abbott-Turnbull government isn't going to be in the lead for long.

Bam wrote on Sep 18^th, 2015 at 1:36pm:


If it is premature to call victory then it is equally premature to call a mere 4 days as the end of the honeymoon. At this rate, the Coalition are COMFORTABLY in the lead and likely to extend it. Given the utter dross that Labor has on offer the chance of a fightback from them is nil.

I still predict a December early election with the off-chance of a Double Dissolution.

mariacostel wrote on Sep 18^th, 2015 at 3:11pm:

Which I haven't done. It should be obvious that I'm more in the wait-and-see camp.

mariacostel wrote on Sep 18^th, 2015 at 3:11pm:

51-49 on one poll and 50-50 on another is not a comfortable lead. That's hung Parliament territory.

mariacostel wrote on Sep 18^th, 2015 at 3:11pm:

There has been nothing so far to indicate this. Turnbull's already demonstrated weakness by retaining unpopular Coalition policies. If the Abbott-led Coalition's poor standing in the polls had a policy component to it, Turnbull's standing is not going to improve much, if at all.

mariacostel wrote on Sep 18^th, 2015 at 3:11pm:

The two opinion polls that have come out have been 50-50 and a narrow Coalition lead of 51-49. It is far too early to be making predictions of this kind, and it has a distinct air of wishful thinking.

When Napthine replaced the disappointing Baillieu in Victoria, Napthine recorded a similar bounce in the polls. He got to 50-50 in the April 2013 Newspoll and was in front 51-49 in the June 2013 Newspoll. He lost the election.

It is rash to be making predictions in the honeymoon stage with Turnbull in the job less than a week. It would take two or three months before the polls settle down and we can be confident. Even Abbott retained a poll lead for two months before the polling went sour for the Coalition.

mariacostel wrote on Sep 18^th, 2015 at 3:11pm:

I don't know where you're getting this "still predicting a December election" rubbish from. You were predicting a July election two or three days ago.