Poll Roundup: More Trouble For Coalition

2PP Aggregate: 53.4 to Labor (+0.6 in one week, +1.6 in four weeks, highest since start of March)
Labor would win election "held now" comfortably

After four and a half months in which voting intention hardly moved, we've finally got some real action. In the last week we saw expense claims by all sides of politics come under scrutiny following the scandal that brought down former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop.  Although Labor (and especially Tony Burke) looks far from spotless in this, the government seems to be taking all the heat.

Not too much else happened in the issue mix except that Australia's men's cricket team was dismissed for a ludicrous 60 runs and soon after that surrendered The Ashes.  As there is ample evidence that sporting results can affect electoral outcomes, it stands to reason that extremely bad sporting results that are harmful to national pride might slightly impair government polling.  Especially if they undermine this sort of thing:

(More likely, Australia actually started winning at cricket in Nov 2013 mainly because they were playing at home.)

Poll Roundup: Bad Bishop Off The Board

2PP Aggregate: 52.8 to ALP (+0.2 since last week, highest for 14 weeks)
Labor would win election "held now" with small to modest majority

It's been a week for obvious chess analogies.  In the wake of the richly deserved end of a dreadful appointment, commenters have been scrambling to decide whether Bronwyn Bishop was "captured", "sacrificed" or "gambited".  However, I'm here to do more justice to this theme.  Chess players are well aware of the concept of a Bad Bishop - a piece that is unable to develop and interact with the opposition properly, stuck behind its own lines mingling with its own pieces all game.  Heck. I've had some that have spent the first 28 moves chatting to their king and queen in the party room, and now, every time this happens to me again, I'll be unable to look at the damn thing stuck there on c8 without thinking "Bronwyn".   Some bishops are even so bad that we just call them big pawns.

Poll Roundup: Chopper Plus TURC Equals Zero

2PP Aggregate 52.4 to ALP (+0.5 in a week, -0.1 since two weeks ago)
Labor would very probably win election "held now" with small majority

This fortnight's polling has reflected a mixed news cycle for the major parties.  The first half was dominated by Bill Shorten's mildly embarrassing appearance at the Royal Commission into trade unions, and a leak of internal ALP discussions about carbon pricing.  The second half was dominated by an expenses scandal involving speaker Bronwyn Bishop, initially covering her unnecessary helicopter trip to a golf course for a party event, and also extending into aspects of her overseas travel and other expenses.

None of these things are anywhere near as large movers of voting intention as some people might expect, but that doesn't mean they have no impact at all.  While the various moves in the polls over the last week might just have been random fluctuations, they are fully consistent with the Coalition having made small gains with Labor in the spotlight but then lost them all as the Bishop scandal extended to messy recriminations between Bishop and Joe Hockey.  Hockey's misfortune was to be the first frontbencher to say what the Coalition generally including PM Abbott are now admitting: that the Speaker's behaviour has hurt them.  Bishop's response of dredging up Hockey's past gaffes was a remarkably dumb case of shooting the messenger.

Why Was A Press Release About Peter Slipper Deleted From The Liberal Party Website?

Advance Summary

1. This post examines claims that a 2012 press release about former Speaker Peter Slipper was deleted from the Liberal Party website "overnight" on the night of 17 July.

2. This post finds that all press releases from July 2010 to December 2012, not just those mentioning Peter Slipper, were recently deleted.

3. Google cache evidence suggests that while the mass deletion of press releases clearly occurred in the last 11 days, it probably predates the Bronwyn Bishop expenses scandal.

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A topic of discussion today on Twitter has been a claim that a press release about Peter Slipper was deleted.  This forms a minor part of the ongoing Bronwyn Bishop expenses scandal, which in recent days has significantly deprived the government of the friendly media cycle they enjoyed when news was dominated by Bill Shorten's TURC appearance and a leak of internal Labor carbon pricing discussions.

The topic appears to have first arisen in this tweet by a sparsely active but well-established (ie it didn't just spring up overnight, and appears genuine) Twitter account:

Click here for link to original tweet.