Tony Abbott new Liberal leader - APEC leaders worried.

APEC leaders have expressed their concern about Australia hosting the APEC summit under a Tony Abbott Prime Ministership. Here's why...

Tony Abbot quits, Malcolm Turnbull doomed.

UPDATE: 9:45pm - Judith Adams and David Bushby have resigned as whips.

Breaking News: 5:30pm - Tony Abbot has quit the shadow treasury in response to Malcom Turnbull's deal with the Government on the ETS. Mr Abbot has quit so he can cross the floor and vote against the legislation. He is expected to put himself up for leader in a vote with Tony Smith as his deputy. Fellow shadmow minister Sophie Mirabella has also resigned while the Liberal Ledaer in the senate Eric Abetz is also expected to resign.

This is the end of Turnbull's reign as Liberal Party leader. He won't be able to recover from this. As mentioned earlier Abbot is expected to put his hand up but I don't know why anyone would to lead the Libs to the next election, they will lose in a landslide.

A ridiculous survey by the CDP in Bradfield.

Take a look at this pile of horse manure. Sure the statements may not be "necessarily the policies of any party" but jeez, just look at the weighted questions and blatant racism. If the CDP ever wants to be taken seriously they need to stop this sort of nonsense.

CDP standing 9 candiates at the Bradfield by-election.

The Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group) has pulled one of the stupidest stunts of recent times and decided to stand 9 candidates at the upcoming Bradfield by-election. Antony Green has commented on it and CDP candidate James Whitehall has had the following to say 

Antony, in response to several posts regarding the number of candidates fielded by the CDP. The CDP believes that the people of Bradfield should have the right to choose the candidate that they want. Traditionally, the major parties enter into a pre-selection process whereby many candidates (often more than the number of CDP candidates in this by election) vie for ‘pre-selection’. This process involves significant consideration of the various factions and inter-factions within the party with a result that the pre-selected candidate is selected by the final equilibrium of all factional forces, and not necessarily by their overall suitability to the role. The voters can then only vote for this single ‘pre selected’ candidate, and are denied choice. This is the case for the single liberal candidate. The CDP believes that the people of Bradfield should do the choosing, and not the factions. As such, we have not pre-selected our candidates. Each candidate contests the seat on their own merit giving the people of Bradfield a richer pool to choose from, and placing into their hands a freedom from internal party prejudices and skewed priorities.

I attempted to post the following on Antony's blog but some some strange error

Using Jame's Whitehall's logic we could have 50 people on a ballot paper. 10+ from the Libs, 10+ from Labor 5-10 from the Greens, 5-10 from CDP plus the Independents. To James - would you like to stand there (sometimes in 40 degree heat) and number 50 candidates hoping you don't accidentally make a mistake? What a load of rubbish this whole thing is, we would have a 20% informal vote rate and a lower turnout if this was to happen.

EDIT: Got the comment posted.

Essential Research. Labor leads 60-40.

The latest Essential Reserach survey is great news for the Rudd Labor government. The 2PP vote has Labor leading 60%-40% up from 58-42 in the last survey. The promary votes are Labor 51%, Coaltion 33%, Greens 8%, Independent/Others 6% and Family First 2%.

Repsondents were split 39%-39% on whether the Libs/Nats should stay as a Coaliton with 21% undecided.

In other results 62% of respondents approve of the the $20 billion gas deal agreed to with China and 59% of people thought Ricky Ponting should stay on as Captain of the Australian Cricket Team.

These results and more here

Random seat changes:NSW

I've decided to do a report on some random seat changes in NSw that are of interest to me (either seats I know about because they are close to me or seats that may have a bearing on the next election)

Chifley (my seat): Gains: Shanes Park, Marsden Park and Colebee from Greenway (small, rural Liberal-voting suburbs.) Losses: A bit of Blacktown to Greenway.

Greenway: Back to being a small Blacktown seat instead of a huge Hawkesbury seat.
Gains: A bit of Blacktown from Greenway. Seven Hills, Kings Langley, Lalor Park and a bit more from Parramatta. Losses: Heaps in the Hawkesbury area including Richmond and Windsor to Macquarie.

Macarthur: Gains: Warragamba and Badgery Creeks from Fowler. A small amount of Campbelltown from Werriwa. Losses: Oak, Picton and some more small suburbs to Hume.

Kingsford-Smith: Losses: Subrubs in The City of Sydney council area to Sydney.

Watson, Barton and Banks: Change a fair bit and take in St George.

Bennelong, Bradfield, Mackellar, Wentoworth, North Sydney, Dobell, Robertson and Granydler are pretty much unchanged

Federal Seat Changes.

As a result of new boundaries in some states and by elections the notional seat count is now: ALP 88 (up from 83), LIB 50 (down from 55), NAT 9 (down from 10) and IND 3 (up from 2).

State-by-state
NSW (loss of 1 seat) : The safe Labor seat of Reid held by Laurie Ferguson has been abolished.

The marginal Liberal seats of Gilmore, Macarthur and Greenway held by Joanna Gash, Pat Farmer and Louise Markus respectively become marginal Labor seats.

The Safe Labor seat of Macquarie held by Bob Debus now becomes a marginal Labor seat with a margin of just .1%

The safe Nationals seat of Calare held by John Cobb is now a marginal Nationals seat.

Not much happening in other states besides Swan (WA) held by Steve Irons becomes a marginal Labor seat again and Herbert (QLD) held by Peter Lindsay going from marginal Liberal to marginal Labor.

(Please keep in mind these are draft changes and final changes may change the notional margins again.)

With thanks to Antony Green for going through the AEC report and doing an analysis for us.

Andrew Robb as next Liberal Party leader?

That's the latest coming out of Canberra. It might work for a while but he won't win the next election. In fact nobody in the Coalition can barring a major stuff-up from Rudd and Co. I can't see anyone challenging Turnbull until after the election loss and he may in fact resign after the loss.

Turnbull claws back a little bit of ground.

Malcolm Turnbull has clawed back a little bit of public support in the past 2 weeks according to the latest Newspoll conducted for The Australian. The bad news for Mr Turnbull is he trails both Peter Costello and Joe Hockey as preferred Liberal leader. Costello got 36% of the vote with Abbot on 20%, Turnbull on 16% and Tony Abbot on 10%.

The Coalition has jumped 2% on primary votes to trail Labour 43%(steady)-39%. The 2PP has stayed at 55%-45%, a swing of 2.3% to Labor on the 2007 election. If this result was repeated on election day Labor would pick up around 14 extra seats (assuming a universal swing)

Been away for a while.

Will try to post again starting now. Also I'm now on twitter - www.twitter.com/australiavotes