Elsewhere:

• Previously believed bound for marginal Macarthur, Labor MP Chris Hayes has now been offered safe Fowler to compensate for Reid MP Laurie Ferguson’s accommodation in his existing seat of Werriwa. This is despite the fact that Ferguson wanted Fowler while Hayes preferred to remain in Werriwa, which was impossible because Fowler’s Right-controlled branches did not want Ferguson on their turf. The arrangement is a win for Julia Gillard and the “soft Left” over Anthony Albanese and the “hard Left”, which wanted Werriwa to go to Damien Ogden of the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union. However, the drama may not be over yet: also out in the cold is Ed Husic of the Communications Electrial and Plumbing Union, whom the Right still wishes to accommodate. Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports talk he might replace Roger Price in Chifley. Macarthur presumably available again to its candidate from 2007, Nick Bleasdale.

• Jennie George has announced she will retire at the next election, opening up a preselection contest in her seat of Throsby. A factional deal in place since 1997 has given Throsby to the hard Left and Fowler to the Right; Alex Arnold of the Illawarra Mercury reports the Left has everything in place to deliver the seat to Stephen Jones of the Community and Public Sector Union. The Mercury’s Brett Cox reports “no love lost between factions over the issue, with the Left accusing the Right of a behind the scenes campaign to oust Ms George and discredit Mr Jones’ links to the region”. Local Australian Workers Union branch secretary Andy Gillespie has labelled the Right dissidents “hypocrites”, as they had acquiesced in the imposition Lylea McMahon in the state seat of Shellharbour.

• The Liberal preselection for Bennelong looms as a contest between former tennis star John Alexander and Mark Chan, a 25-year-old manager for GE Capital whose Chinese background is being sold as an asset in the seat. Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports the party has brought the preselection process forward so it can capitalise on Alexander’s exposure over summer as a tennis commentator. This would seem to suggest he is considered the front-runner.

• Saffron Howden of the Northern Star reports Pottsville pharmacist Tania Murdock is the “likely Nationals candidate” for Richmond. Tweed councillor Joan van Lieshout is considered a likely Liberal candidate.

• After a state and federal political career stretching back to 1965, Tasmanian Liberal MP Michael Hodgman has announced he will not contest the March state election due to ill health. Despite being 71 and suffering emphysema, Hodgman had remained on the six-person Liberal line-up for Denison when it was finalised last month. The party will now have to find a replacement candidate, and enter the election without a sitting member in the division. Among those who missed out at preselection was Hobart alderman and regular independent candidate Marti Zucco.

This is about finding new ways to enforce a law that can’t be enforced effectively at the moment. But if you listen to Rees, you’d think it was for The Kids. Rees pointedly referred to the Board of Studies as one of the agencies that would be compulsorily providing personal information to the Electoral Commission. It’s characteristic of this shabby government that it would use an educational body as a means of law enforcement.

It’s disappointing to see the allegedly progressive GetUp mob not merely endorsing this shameful encroachment on basic rights but calling for it to be universal. Director Simon Sheik wants it to be applied at the Commonwealth level. “Australia has a proud tradition of compulsory voting and citizens have a responsibility as well as a right to vote to make sure that our parliaments are truly representative.”

Rubbish. Compulsory voting is a blatant encroachment on basic rights and the Rees government is now using its citizens’ private information, never intended for the purpose, to enforce it.

Nicht so schnell, responds Peter Brent at Mumble:

At the last federal election, some 340,000 people unsuccessfully attempted a declaration vote for the House of Representatives. Most failed because their enrolment details were not up to date or they had dropped off the roll. An unknown number of others would have simply turned around and walked out upon discovering they were not on the roll for their electorate. Many people (particularly young ‘uns) believe “the government” already automatically updates their enrolment. Read for example this amusing letter an elector fired off to the Australian Electoral Commission after receiving an enrolment form. Keane writes, chillingly, that “Citizens wouldn’t be given any say in this use of their confidential data. There’ll be no opting out. You may think you’re just paying your car rego but in fact you’ll be handing information to the Electoral Commission. You will have no choice.” Stock up on the ammo and canned food!

But Big Brother is already here. The AEC (which currently maintains the electoral rolls for federal and state elections) has been getting this info from government agencies for almost a decade.

Indeed, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that “the idea for automatic enrolment should be credited to the academic and blogger Peter Brent, who raised the reform last year in a discussion paper for the Democratic Audit of Australia”. Here’s what I said about the matter a few days ago, which I buried in an already overlong post:

The New South Wales government has introduced an interesting piece of legislation into the upper house entitled the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Amendment (Automatic Enrolment) Bill. Some highlights:

• Information provided by government agencies will be used to automatically enrol voters and update enrolment details. The Electoral Commissioner will be empowered to demand information from public servants, universities, police officers, local councils and water and electricity providers. Drivers licence details are likely to provide rich pickings, while the Board of Studies will be able to ensure high school students are on the roll before they turn 18. Prospective enrollees will be contacted (perhaps only by email or SMS) and given seven days to provide a reason why they shouldn’t be enrolled. The government has good reason to believe reluctant voters lean to the left, but one wonders how popular the measure will make it among those who preferred to remain off the roll. Arguing that all participation is good participation, GetUp! wants the federal government to follow suit, while VexNews reckons it’s “a trend likely to catch on with Labor governments in other states”. Indeed, its operation exclusive to New South Wales would create difficulties: federal enrolment and roll-keeping would have to be decoupled, and voters would still have to enrol federally in the traditional fashion. Bernard Keane at Crikey calls the measure a “shameful encroachment on basic rights”, and it is indeed striking how often the bill thumbs its nose at the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act. David Walsh in comments correctly observes that automatic enrolment is a logical corollary to compulsory voting: personally, I’m in favour of neither.

• It is proposed that registered parties and independent MPs be provided on request with “the names and the addresses of electors who voted (other than silent electors and itinerant electors), whether they voted personally or by post and, if they voted at a polling place for the district for which the electors were enrolled, the location of that polling place”. This puts into the shade the South Australian government’s recent effort to allow access to voters’ date-of-birth details, which they were unable to get through the upper house.

• Besides that, the bill contains some commendable measures, in particular allowing voters to enrol and cast provisional votes on polling day.

• Essential Research’s two-party figure has lurched from 59-41 to 55-45, the lowest lead for Labor in its 18 months of operation. These figures combine two weeks of polling, suggesting a particularly sharp drop was recorded in the most recent survey. Further questions in the survey focus on issues of national importance, party best able to handle various economic issues (Coalition leads Labor on “government debt” by 24 points), importance of a national broadband network (high) and who should run it (the feds or failing that Telstra), which kinds of organisations are the most influential (media and the banks) and whether emissions trading scheme legislation should be delayed until after Copenhagen (slight lean to yes).

• Full results from Saturday’s Newspoll survey of marginal Queensland seats here. Labor holds remarkably consistent 3 to 4 per cent leads across all of them, including three they hold, two they don’t and one (Dickson) which the redistribution has changed from Liberal to notional Labor.

• The Greens have published a Galaxy survey on attitudes to climate change, the dubiousness of which is explored by Andrew Norton.

• Kirsty Needham of the Sydney Morning Herald reports Werriwa MP Chris Hayes has received support from the state secretaries of the Right faction Transport Workers Union and Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association. A deal at federal level gives Werriwa to the Left in exchange for a clear run for the Right in fowler, leaving Hayes to contest marginal Macarthur.

• Alex Easton of the Northern Star names Tweed mayor Joan van Lieshout as a potential Liberal candidate for (federal) Richmond.

UPDATE: Morgan’s poll release informs us that this is one of those occasions where Morgan also unloads a mid-week poll conducted on the back of an unrelated survey. This one has Labor’s lead at just 52-48 – but the sample is only 573. The sample size of the face-to-face poll turns out to have been 874.

UPDATE 2: Jamie Walker and Lenore Taylor of The Weekend Australian inform us of a Newspoll survey of 1847 voters conducted this week across six Queensland marginal seats: “the Brisbane-based Liberal seats of Bowman and Dickson, Labor-held Longman to the north of the capital, Flynn and Dawson in central Queensland, also with the ALP, and the Liberal electorate of Herbert, centred on Townsville”. What we really need here is a table, but between them the reports inform us that:

• Support for Labor “has lifted 2.9 per cent since Mr Rudd was elected two years ago, against 6.2 per cent Australia-wide”.

• Two-party support for Labor in Dawson in Flynn has increased almost 3 per cent since the election, despite hostility in those electorates towards emissions trading.

• Satisfaction with Kevin Rudd’s performance as Prime Minister ranged between 46 per cent in Flynn and 61 per cent in Herbert, and averaged 54 per cent.

• “Mr Turnbull’s best results were in Bowman, in Brisbane’s east, and Herbert, where he scored 38 per cent approval; his worst was 27 per cent in Longman, lost to Labor at the last election by former Howard government minister Mal Brough. Satisfaction with the Opposition Leader averaged out at 34 per cent.”

• Preferred prime minister reflected the national situation, with Rudd leading 63-22.

• Overall, “only 26 per cent of voters across the electorates like what (Rudd) is doing with Telstra, only 27 per cent think he is doing a good job with asylum-seekers and 56 per cent think he’s being too soft on them”; however, “sixty-one per cent of voters in the six electorates thought Labor was doing a good job in handling interest rates”.

Other news:

• The Mercury reports former state Labor MP Kathryn Hay has pulled out of her comeback bid in Bass citing health problems. However, her media statement has made a point of telling us she “did not rule out” standing for Labor again, prompting suggestions she might yet seek to replace Jodie Campbell in the federal seat. Alison Andrews of the Launceston Examiner says Hay’s exit “provides the opportunity for newly elected Launceston City Council alderman Rob Soward to rethink trying for state politics”, after he failed to win one of the six positions in the recent preselection vote. For what it’s worth, a commenter on the Mercury article said he had it “on very good authority that Lisa Singh is also looking to jump the sinking Bartlett ship with an eye on Duncan Kerr’s Federal Denison seat”.

• Peter van Onselen in The Australian reports that Labor’s preselection politburo wishes to install social worker Louise Durack as its candidate against Liberal front-bencher Michael Keenan in the Perth seat of Stirling, which has a notional margin of 1.3 per cent after minor redistribution adjustments. Durack failed to carry the highly marginal new seat of Ocean Reef at the September 2008 state election. Another aspirant, Balcatta Senior High School chairwoman Janet Pettigrew, is reportedly being pressured to withdraw.

• James Massola of the Canberra Times reports the ACT Greens are likely to preselect Sue Ellerman for Canberra and Indra Esguerra for Fraser on Monday, but the more interesting question of their Senate candidate will not be resolved for a few more weeks.

• George Megalogenis of The Australian observes that “safe Liberal electorates have borne the brunt of the Rudd government’s clampdown on family payments”. All of the 15 electorates identified as most heavily affected are Liberal seats, including Wentworth, Curtin, North Sydney and Warringah.

• Andrew Crook of Crikey reports the Prime Minister is weighing up whether to stick with Belinda Neal in Robertson or “install a political cleanskin untainted by the saga surrounding the notorious events at Iguana Joe’s”. The opinion of local branch members is unlikely to have much to do with it.

Based on the electorate breakdowns (notwithstanding that these are extremely small samples), the poll points to a result of 2-2-1 in every electorate except Braddon, which would go 3-2 in favour of Liberal, for a total result of Liberal 11, Labor 10 and Greens four.

Newspoll should have conducted another poll as soon as possible when they saw the dramatic change in their results – and if different, released the data to correct the misconceptions caused by their “rogue” poll … A statistical analysis of the data reported on Australians’ attitudes to “boat people” issues – specifically the breakdown by “Political support” – suggests the ALP vote in that poll was very strong. The percentage supporting each political party clearly should have been released. Polls and their publishers should not seek to set the agenda by selectively releasing polling data. Polls and their publishers are powerful but with that power comes responsibility.

Queried by Andrew Crook of Crikey, The Australian’s editor Chris Mitchell explained that “even Crikey” should be able to understand that a non-fortnightly set of voting intention figures would cause a disturbance in the force. Mitchell further invoked a Beatles-and-the-Stones style arrangement between Newspoll and Nielsen in which they have agreed not to step on each other’s releases. Yet just one month ago, on the same day that Nielsen produced its regular monthly poll, The Australian published a “special Newspoll survey” on the Liberal leadership in between its regular fortnightly polls, and was not in the least bit shy about informing us that the sample produced the same 58-42 split in favour of Labor as recorded the previous week. In fairness, it should be noted that Crikey “understands that on Sunday morning, Newspoll chief Martin O’Shannessy contacted his Nielsen counterpart John Stirton and agreed not to release the two-party preferred vote to The Australian”.

My own concern with all this is that I was hoping for a new poll result to hang my regular set of electoral updates off, and didn’t get one. Here they are:

• The saga surrounding the YouTube Downfall parody aimed at Mitchell MP Alex Hawke over his feud with former Right ally and state upper house MP David Clarke has lifted a rock on preselection manoeuvres for safe Liberal state seats. Hawke-Hitler is portrayed in the video castigating himself for having backed Hills Shire councillor Andrew Jefferies to depose incumbent Wayne Merton in Baulkham Hills. The Clarke forces have been hoping the seat might instead go to Damien Tudehope, who has a not inconsiderable public profile as spokesman for the NSW Family Association – and whose son Thomas has just resigned as Malcolm Turnbull’s media adviser after being linked to the aforesaid YouTube video. The infamous episode where 40 Clarke supporters showed up at a Young Liberal branch meeting at Hawke’s office, prompting Hawke’s staff to call the police, reportedly occurred as part of efforts to secure Baulkham Hills for Tudehope. In Castle Hill, Clarke faction operative Dominic Perrottet (whose brother Charles has just resigned as Clarke’s chief-of-staff after he too was linked to the YouTube video) has been plotting to depose incumbent Michael Richardson. On the other side of the pendulum, Hawke is apparently backing another ally, state Young Liberals president Scott Farlow, for the seat of Drummoyne (which Labor’s Angela D’Amore holds by a margin of 7.6 per cent), while Clarke man Kevin Conolly hopes to again contest Riverstone, where he ran against Labor’s John Aquilina in 2007.

• Stephanie Peatling of the Sydney Morning Herald reveals the identity of the abortive Right challenger to Philip Ruddock in Berowra: Richard Quinn, a Hunters Hill councillor. A Ruddock supporter specifically identifies Quinn’s backers as “the Taliban faction”, meaning the forces associated with David Clarke. Quinn has “now expressed interest in Bennelong”, which would put him up against former tennis player and unsuccessful Bradfield preselection aspirant John Alexander, plus another previously unheralded entrant in “businessman Mark Chan”.

• Lisa Carty of the Sydney Morning Herald explains Labor’s recent western Sydney preselection shenanigans in terms of a deal in which the Right will retain its hold on Fowler following Julia Irwin’s retirement at the next election, despite the numbers in local branches being finely poised between the two factions. The Right’s favoured candidate for Fowler is Ed Husic of the Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union, who was defeated by Louise Markus when he ran in Greenway at the 2004 election. In return for not pursuing a claim in Fowler, the Left will be awarded Werriwa at the expense of Right incumbent Chris Hayes. However, state secretary Matt Thistlethwaite is quoted in the article saying there is “no deal to shift (Hayes) to Macarthur”. That hasn’t stopped an avalanche of reports about whether Werriwa will go to Reid MP Laurie Ferguson, as proposed by Julia Gillard and the soft Left, or Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union organiser Damien Ogden, the candidate of Anthony Albanese and the hard Left.

• Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald reports claims Labor internal polling of 650 voters in Robertson shows Belinda Neal set to be dumped by a swing of “about 20 per cent”, although this has naturally been denied by state secretary Matt Thistlethwaite. The report also quotes Labor sources suggesting recent talk of a run for the premiership by her husband John Della Bosca has been raised for use as a “bargaining chip” to protect Neal’s position.

• The Queensland Liberal National Party has preselected Hajnal Ban, Logan councillor, Nationals candidate for Forde in 2007 and recipient of an eye-watering Russian surgical procedure to lengthen her legs, as its candidate for the new Gold Coast hinterland seat of Wright. Unsuccessful candidates included Cameron Thompson, the former Liberal member for
Blair (who was presumably handicapped by an understanding that the seat was the domain of the Nationals), and Gold Coast councillor and former children’s television presenter Bob La Castra.

• Former Senator, one-time Democrats leader and blogosphere identity Andrew Bartlett will run for the Greens at the federal election in Brisbane, which Labor’s Arch Bevis holds with a diminished post-redistribution margin against the LNP of 3.8 per cent. Antony Green explains why he won’t win.

• Peter Kennedy of the ABC reports Labor preselection nominations for Canning, Cowan and Swan will close on December 1, and candidates will be chosen by mid-December.

• The Macquarie Street blog of Poll Bludger regular Oz informs us that NSW upper house MP Gordon Moyes, long estranged from the Christian Democratic Party from which he was elected, has announced he is joining Family First.

• Steven Wardill of the Courier-Mail reports that Anna Bligh will respond to the state’s review on accountability by moving to impose a $1000 cap on political donations unless the federal government does likewise before July 2010, as well as imposing a ban on “success fees” to lobbyists.

As the effort to persuade the 78 Sri Lankans on the Oceanic Viking to disembark in Indonesia continues, 47 per cent of Australians disapprove of how the Prime Minister is handling the asylum-seeker issue; 45 per cent approve … Nearly two-thirds of Coalition voters disapproved, compared with one-third of Labor voters and just over half the Greens supporters … just 13 per cent thought the Government’s asylum-seeker policy was too harsh; 37 per cent said it was about right. Only 6 per cent of Coalition voters and 14 per cent of ALP voters said the policies were too hard. Labor voters were more than twice as likely to rate the policies too soft as too harsh. Nearly four in 10 Greens voters said they were too harsh.

UPDATE: The Australian offers results from that follow-up Newspoll we’ve been hearing about, but at this stage at least there are no figures on voting intention. It instead focuses on attitudes to asylum seeker policy, with results that largely echo those of last week’s Essential Research survey: 53 per cent disapprove of the government’s handling of the issue against 31 per cent approve, but only 22 per cent believe the Coalition would do a better job against 21 per cent for Labor. Forty-six per cent believe the government’s response has been too soft against 16 per cent too hard.

UPDATE 2: Essential Research: 59-41, i.e. unchanged on the last few weeks. However, Rudd’s approval ratings have taken a hit. Further questions on interest rates and yet another one on whether the government’s asylum seeker policies are tough, weak or just right.

Other news:

• Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports Julia Gillard hopes to save “soft Left” colleague Laurie Ferguson by moving him to Werriwa, whose member Chris Hayes would have to make do with Macarthur – in turn cutting loose Nick Bleasdale, the candidate from 2007 who appeared lined up for another shot. It appears Hayes will suffer that fate in any case, as it has been agreed Werriwa should go to the Left. However, Anthony Albanese’s “hard Left” wants it to go to Damien Ogden, an LHMU organiser who defeated incumbent Ken McDonnell for preselection in Sutherland Shire Council’s “E” ward before last year’s elections, but ultimately failed to win the seat. Hayes is understandably not keen, and is calling for the matter to be determined by the local branches – as Ferguson did last week when his ambition was to stay on in redrawn Reid at the expense of John Murphy. That appears to be off the table because the seat is reserved for the Right. Importantly, Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports the Prime Minister is also of a mind to throw Ferguson a lifeline.

• VexNews tells of a further brush fire in Macquarie, to be vacated at the election by Bob Debus. According to VexNews, Debus and the hard Left would have the national executive decide the issue in favour of Susan Templeman, principal of Templeman Consulting, who sells herself as “one of the country’s leading media trainers and coaches”. However, local branches favour Debus antagonist Adam Searle, a “soft Left” member whose designs on Debus’s old state seat of Blue Mountains were thwarted by Debus’s recruitment of Phil Koperberg. When Debus agreed to make life easier for the Prime Minister by relinquishing his position in the ministry in June, Glenn Milne in The Australian reported talk he had done so on the condition that he get to choose his successor in Macquarie.

• The Australian reports Warren Entsch will try to win Leichhardt back for the LNP at the next election. Entsch retired before the last election, and Labor demolished the 10.3 per cent margin he had built up with a 14.3 per cent swing. He floated the possibility of running for Cairns or Barron River at the March state election, but thought better of it. Teresa Gambaro, who lost Petrie at the election, plans to nominate for Brisbane, where the redistribution has cut Labor’s margin from 6.8 per cent to 3.8 per cent. UPDATE: AAP has reported Gambaro has indeed been preselected (thanks to LTEP in comments).

• Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports a preselection challenge from the Right to Philip Ruddock in Berowra has been withdrawn. The identity of the challenger is not offered.

It’s a very different story from Essential Research, which has Labor’s lead steady at 59-41. Supplementary questions show mixed messages on asylum seekers: one shows support for a tough line and an apparent belief that the Rudd government is delivering, but 55 per cent rate its handling of the issue “not so good/poor” against 36 per cent “excellent/good”. Significantly, a further question shows people do not think the Liberals would do any better.

UPDATE: Newspoll history records six reversals of comparable size. The poll of 6-8 November 1992 saw a 46-54 Labor deficit turn into a 54-46 lead, for what looked to be no readily obvious reason at the time. On 20-22 August 1993, immediately after John Dawkins’ horror post-election budget, the Coalition’s lead went from 51-49 to 60-40. On 23-25 September 1994, Labor went from 57-43 ahead to 51-49 behind in what looked like a correction following two consecutive horror surveys for Alexander Downer. When John Howard took over from him at the end of January 1995, the next survey of 10-12 February saw Labor’s 54-46 lead turn into a 53-47 deficit. The poll immediately after the 1998 election saw the Coalition turn a 53-47 deficit at the last (evidently inaccurate) pre-election poll into a 54-46 lead. Finally, on 28-30 May 2004, Labor under Mark Latham suffered a short-lived slump from 53-47 ahead to 54-46 behind.