Tips and rumours

From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

Vote for me. Please. Tasmanian Labor Senator Lisa Singh is distributing her own personalised flyers in her home state, asking to “re-elect Lisa Singh to the Senate”. It is highly unusual for a senator to ask to be re-elected in this way, as parties usually campaign for above-the-line votes for the party, with the order of the candidates decided by the party. Singh was relegated to the unwinnable sixth place by the Labor Party in May this year, after being demoted to fourth place last year before a double dissolution election was announced.

Last year Singh blamed factional deals for her low place on the Senate ballot paper. She is an unaligned member of the Left faction.

The pamphlet details Singh and Labor’s policy positions, including on Medicare, climate change and education. Singh says, “If re-elected to the Senate, I will continue to fight for what makes our Tasmanian community thrive and prosper, where no one is left behind”.

Earlier in the election campaign, Crikey reported that Singh had been increasingly visible in Tasmania during the campaign, with a tipster saying:

“I’ve received a postal vote application from her, she has corflute signs with her name and picture around the area and there is a big LED billboard on corner of Elizabeth and Federal St, North Hobart with her name and picture.”

“I’ve only seen her signs around, nothing from any other ALP candidates, not even for the lower house candidate for Denison, who has the best chance of beating Wilkie. Nor even general ALP voting signs.”

Australians (would) vote for Clinton. They’re not our fights, but Australians have views on two matters our Anglophone cousins are wrestling with currently. According to today’s Essential Report, 38% of Australian voters think Britons should vote for the UK to remain in the European Union when they go to the polls on Thursday, while 22% support Brexit; 40% profess no opinion. Labor and Coalition voters feel almost exactly the same way (41%/42% remain), while Greens voters are just a little more enthusiastic (46% want the UK to stay). Looking across the Atlantic, Donald Trump is polling about as favourably among Australians as he is in the US: Australians back Hillary Clinton 71% to 15%. The best Trump can do is 19% among Liberal voters and 20% among “other” voters”.

Media diversity: both Blair and Devine. The Daily Telegraph has made an art of its outrageous front covers, with photoshops of politicians a regular occurrence. Editor Chris Dore has explained to Media Week why there’s so much focus on the front cover at the Sydney tabloid:

“‘I brought a different sort of outlook to The Courier and wanted to really turn the dial up,’ Dore explained. ‘That’s what I did in terms of owning the tabloid tradition. The Courier was a little bit stuck between a broadsheet, a compact or tabloid. What I brought to it was a clear approach, which was “We are a tabloid.”

‘This is also exactly what I’ve brought to The Telegraph. The page one strategy is really critical to me.

‘The front pages that really have an impact are the ones that get picked up.’

Speaking about his strategy for producing a compelling front page, Dore revealed: ‘It’s about making timeless front pages.’

He explained: ‘People are getting their news in many different ways during the day. We have a lot of exclusive stories on our front pages where we will be revealing something. The reality of the media landscape now is that we will publish that front page, and then the radio networks and television networks will report on it. The Daily Mail will steal it and publish it.

‘What is important for us is to present those front pages in a way that if you come across our newspaper at midday — and you have already heard about what’s going on — you will see a front page that is so compelling with a clever headline that you are still compelled to pick it up.

‘It’s not a new thing to have a compelling front page, but you have to come up with a way that the front page will last beyond the first news bulletin of the morning.’”

In a defensive interview, that talked up print, attacked Twitter and defended the paper’s political stances, Dore also said that the paper had a broad range of commentators:

“‘We have a wide and varied selection of columnists. We have Miranda Devine and Tim Blair, as well as Mark Latham and Cate McGregor. The breadth of our commentators across the political spectrum is unrivalled — yet no one really sees that.'”

So broad.

Danby’s preferences not shared in Melbourne Ports. Labor MP Michael Danby wears his disdain for the Greens like a badge of honour, but new ReachTEL polling reveals that it could hurt him at the polls. The poll of 818 residents of Melbourne Ports, commissioned by the Greens, shows Danby’s primary vote is as low as 23.7%, with the Liberals at 44.7% of voters, and the Greens at 20.2%.

The poll also reveals that voters aren’t so keen on Danby’s decision to go it alone and preference the Liberals above the Greens. The Labor MP has been handing out separate “how to vote” cards, authorised by him personally, instead of the ones authorised at Labor HQ. From the sample group, 36.4% said they were now less likely to vote for him, while 29.7% declared themselves to be more likely. The decision to vote for Danby was unchanged for 33.9%. For voters that had said they would plan on voting Labor, 47.9% said they would be less likely to vote for Danby, and among undecided voters 31.7% said it made them less likely to vote Labor. Of course, it is a Greens-commissioned survey and has a small sample size.

In the last federal election, Labor’s Greens preference helped Danby to return to Parliament.

Think of the children! With just two weeks to go until the election, fringe groups are now targeting voters at pre-poll venues, with an organisation calling themselves Kids Rights handing out a flyer in a Victorian electorate saying “Same Sex ‘Marriage’ has consequences for all”. It claims that same sex marriage and anti discrimination laws will result in “extreme sex education”, “freedom of speech lost” and “gender ideology imposed”. The flyer directs people to the Australian Family Association’s website and to the “Kids Rights” website, which attacks the Safe Schools program. The flyer carries an authorisation from Patrick Shea of Inverloch in Gippsland, who has not returned Crikey‘s phone call.

The Australian Christian Lobby has also been targeting Labor over issues relating to same sex marriage and gender issues for children — it’s last four media releases were aimed at the ALP.

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