Ms CARTER - 2000-05-09
Is the Chief Minister aware of any polling currently being conducted by the CLP?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I can answer the new member’s question very quickly, and that is that there is no polling being conducted by the CLP. The Labor Party is conducting push-polling in Darwin at the moment ...
Mr STIRLING: A point of order, Mr Speaker! If you make an allegation like that, bring on a motion.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is no point of order.
Mr BURKE: May I say what a pleasure it is to take a question from the new member for Port Darwin, a member who conducted a superb campaign in winning the seat of Port Darwin, and did it in such a way that she has put the jitters right up the Labor Party. Not only in terms of not winning that seat, but also in terms of the fact that they have to ...
Mr STIRLING: A point of order, Mr Speaker! I’m not sure what the Port Darwin by-election has to do with whether or not the CLP is polling, which is the question. He answered it when he said: ‘No, we’re not polling’. Sit down.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Chief Minister has, as you all know, some leeway in answering the question, and I’ll hear the answer.
Mr BURKE: With some patience exhibited by the members opposite, I will get to the point that has been raised in the question.
The Leader of the Opposition has a major problem on her hands with the loss of the seat of Port Darwin, because it was a seat ...
Ms Martin: We never had a seat in Port Darwin, get real.
Mr BURKE: Do you want to argue that fine point? It was a seat that the Leader of the Opposition went confidently to the electorate to win. So confident, that her photograph appeared next to the candidate. The Leader of the Opposition so dominated that campaign that the actual Labor Party candidate was unknown in that electorate. If you had polled that electorate you would have known that your candidate, for all of his efforts, was unknown.
Worse than that, the Leader of the Opposition and her party, both in the Northern Territory and federally, decided that mandatory sentencing was an issue that was opposed by Territorians, and using the death of the poor young fellow at Don Dale they made mandatory sentencing the issue, such that when the Port Darwin by-election was called it was inevitably the issue. The result of that by-election, whilst the Labor Party will never admit it, was absolutely astounding …
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr BURKE: … to the point that I graciously accepted the accolades of members of the Liberal Party at the National Convention for that, because they are politicians and accept the fact and acknowledged the astounding win it was. What we had was, the Leader of the Opposition putting her ego on the line in front of Territorians. An ego that is so big she was so confident it would survive and win that particular by-election. The result was plain to see. In the last general election ...
Mr Stirling: What’s this got to do with parliament.
Mr Balch: You are about to find out.
Mr BURKE: In the last general election in 1997 in the Northern Territory, the Labor Party in the seat of Port Darwin achieved 25.6% of the vote. Now ...
Mr STIRLING: Point of order, Mr Speaker. There is still no relevance to the question.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is no point of order. The Chief Minister is, I understand, attempting to answer a question that he was asked and I would like to hear the answer.
Mr BURKE: In the last general election in 1977 in the seat of Port Darwin, the Labor Party mustered 25.6% of the vote. With the Leader of the Opposition’s ego on the line, in a by-election, in a climate where the CLP government had won 3 by-elections out of the last 16 by-elections contested, you would have expected them to do a bit better. The Labor Party primary vote in that by-election was 26.3%, not even a 1% increase in the primary vote from the last general election. Now any political analyst would tell you that that is an astoundingly atrocious result.
Worse than that, we had a disaffected – so called – Susan Bradley, independent candidate, disaffected Labor, stand up there and say: ‘I will give Labor the flick. I am an independent, I am standing here on my own terms, except, I support mandatory sentencing’. She made that very clear. ‘I support mandatory sentencing’. There was 16% of that electorate who could not bring themselves to vote Labor but were prepared to vote for a disaffected Labor candidate simply because she supported the stance on mandatory sentencing. What has happened to my mind, and any analyst’s mind, the support of mandatory sentencing in the Northern Territory is clear. To my mind the support of mandatory sentencing, once understood nationally, is clear, yet Miss Ego over here can’t accept the fact ...
Ms Martin: Point of order, Mr Speaker.
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Order! The Chief Minister should refer to the member by her title.
Mr BURKE: The egotistical member for Fannie Bay can’t accept that simple fact. So what you do is you try and change the electorate’s opinion. And you do that by a thing called push polling. Push polling is a method you use to implant a thought in a person’s mind. It has been roundly criticised by the same members opposite as a despicable technique that has been used by the CLP in the 1994 election, which I, as Chief Minister, deny. Now, it won’t stop the Leader of the Opposition because I have received calls to my office from members of the public who ring me, who have said to me that they are being contacted by a Western Australian pollster - the name I have is Upping Market Research, it may not be the correct name. I wonder if it’s the same pollster who engaged in push polling in the 1994 election for the Labor Party in Aboriginal areas, and these are the way we ask the questions ...
Mr STIRLING: Point of order, Mr Speaker. If he wants to make these sorts of allegations, bring forward the evidence, bring on a substantive motion. It was the CLP that push polled.
Mr Lugg interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Order! The matter has been debated a number of times. You have been quite free in your accusations and I am prepared to accept the same level of debate in this particular matter.
Mr BURKE: Mr Speaker, I take a little while to get to my point because I want to make the point to the general public how morally decrepit this mob are. This is the mob - the shadow attorney-general is going to stand up here and ask questions about the appointment of the Chief Magistrate on some point of my morals. This is the same guy who gets $140 000 a year ...
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr BURKE: ... and lives in a Housing Commission home in Nhulunbuy and then admits his guilt by having to move out when he gets it put on him. He will come up here ...
Mrs HICKEY: Point of order, Mr Speaker! My colleague, the Deputy Leader, has mentioned this on a couple of occasions. Really the Chief Minister is straying so far from the point as to make the question nonsensical. Can you at least direct him to hurry up with his answer?
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Chief Minister is responding to interjection. If there was less interjection I am sure we would hear the answer.
Mr BURKE: Mr Speaker, I make the point in terms of how morally decrepit this lot are, because they are big on saying how bad push-polling is, how terrible push-polling is, and any political party that uses push-polling is somehow terrible. Can’t use the word corrupt - they get very sensitive when I use the word corrupt nowadays.
Anyway, they were suggesting that any party that used push-polling was morally corrupt to say the least. These are the sorts of questions that are being asked of the electorate. Now remember, when you use push-polling you plant an idea in a person’s head. First of all in this push-polling you ask for the eldest female in the household, so you are targeting the female audience. This is how the questioning goes: ‘Are you generally satisfied or dissatisfied with the Northern Territory government? If there was a Territory election today would you vote ALP, CLP or some other party? Do you oppose or support mandatory sentencing?’ Pretty straight forward. Then we go: ‘I am now going to read you some statements and would like to know if you agree or disagree with these statements: Mandatory sentencing hasn’t worked. Crime is on the increase. While you feel unsafe in your home the CLP has only one shot at the locker, mandatory sentencing. Mandatory sentencing is not perfect. Clare Martin has the team and a real policy featuring 6 points to tackle crime problems’. We could get onto that one soon if you like. We could get onto your law and order policies soon if you like. ‘In 26 years the CLP has had enough time to tackle crime.’
Mr Speaker, this is push polling, plain and simple at its basis. You put the idea in a person’s mind with the suggestion that you ask them a question. I just believe it indicates the level to which the ALP will go to try and change an opinion in the community. It also indicates the level of desperation that they feel in terms of how they would go at an election. The level of desperation in terms of what the public’s opinion may be on mandatory sentencing certainly indicates that whenever they stand in this House and talk about push polling, you look in your own house first.
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I can answer the new member’s question very quickly, and that is that there is no polling being conducted by the CLP. The Labor Party is conducting push-polling in Darwin at the moment ...
Mr STIRLING: A point of order, Mr Speaker! If you make an allegation like that, bring on a motion.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is no point of order.
Mr BURKE: May I say what a pleasure it is to take a question from the new member for Port Darwin, a member who conducted a superb campaign in winning the seat of Port Darwin, and did it in such a way that she has put the jitters right up the Labor Party. Not only in terms of not winning that seat, but also in terms of the fact that they have to ...
Mr STIRLING: A point of order, Mr Speaker! I’m not sure what the Port Darwin by-election has to do with whether or not the CLP is polling, which is the question. He answered it when he said: ‘No, we’re not polling’. Sit down.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Chief Minister has, as you all know, some leeway in answering the question, and I’ll hear the answer.
Mr BURKE: With some patience exhibited by the members opposite, I will get to the point that has been raised in the question.
The Leader of the Opposition has a major problem on her hands with the loss of the seat of Port Darwin, because it was a seat ...
Ms Martin: We never had a seat in Port Darwin, get real.
Mr BURKE: Do you want to argue that fine point? It was a seat that the Leader of the Opposition went confidently to the electorate to win. So confident, that her photograph appeared next to the candidate. The Leader of the Opposition so dominated that campaign that the actual Labor Party candidate was unknown in that electorate. If you had polled that electorate you would have known that your candidate, for all of his efforts, was unknown.
Worse than that, the Leader of the Opposition and her party, both in the Northern Territory and federally, decided that mandatory sentencing was an issue that was opposed by Territorians, and using the death of the poor young fellow at Don Dale they made mandatory sentencing the issue, such that when the Port Darwin by-election was called it was inevitably the issue. The result of that by-election, whilst the Labor Party will never admit it, was absolutely astounding …
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr BURKE: … to the point that I graciously accepted the accolades of members of the Liberal Party at the National Convention for that, because they are politicians and accept the fact and acknowledged the astounding win it was. What we had was, the Leader of the Opposition putting her ego on the line in front of Territorians. An ego that is so big she was so confident it would survive and win that particular by-election. The result was plain to see. In the last general election ...
Mr Stirling: What’s this got to do with parliament.
Mr Balch: You are about to find out.
Mr BURKE: In the last general election in 1997 in the Northern Territory, the Labor Party in the seat of Port Darwin achieved 25.6% of the vote. Now ...
Mr STIRLING: Point of order, Mr Speaker. There is still no relevance to the question.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is no point of order. The Chief Minister is, I understand, attempting to answer a question that he was asked and I would like to hear the answer.
Mr BURKE: In the last general election in 1977 in the seat of Port Darwin, the Labor Party mustered 25.6% of the vote. With the Leader of the Opposition’s ego on the line, in a by-election, in a climate where the CLP government had won 3 by-elections out of the last 16 by-elections contested, you would have expected them to do a bit better. The Labor Party primary vote in that by-election was 26.3%, not even a 1% increase in the primary vote from the last general election. Now any political analyst would tell you that that is an astoundingly atrocious result.
Worse than that, we had a disaffected – so called – Susan Bradley, independent candidate, disaffected Labor, stand up there and say: ‘I will give Labor the flick. I am an independent, I am standing here on my own terms, except, I support mandatory sentencing’. She made that very clear. ‘I support mandatory sentencing’. There was 16% of that electorate who could not bring themselves to vote Labor but were prepared to vote for a disaffected Labor candidate simply because she supported the stance on mandatory sentencing. What has happened to my mind, and any analyst’s mind, the support of mandatory sentencing in the Northern Territory is clear. To my mind the support of mandatory sentencing, once understood nationally, is clear, yet Miss Ego over here can’t accept the fact ...
Ms Martin: Point of order, Mr Speaker.
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Order! The Chief Minister should refer to the member by her title.
Mr BURKE: The egotistical member for Fannie Bay can’t accept that simple fact. So what you do is you try and change the electorate’s opinion. And you do that by a thing called push polling. Push polling is a method you use to implant a thought in a person’s mind. It has been roundly criticised by the same members opposite as a despicable technique that has been used by the CLP in the 1994 election, which I, as Chief Minister, deny. Now, it won’t stop the Leader of the Opposition because I have received calls to my office from members of the public who ring me, who have said to me that they are being contacted by a Western Australian pollster - the name I have is Upping Market Research, it may not be the correct name. I wonder if it’s the same pollster who engaged in push polling in the 1994 election for the Labor Party in Aboriginal areas, and these are the way we ask the questions ...
Mr STIRLING: Point of order, Mr Speaker. If he wants to make these sorts of allegations, bring forward the evidence, bring on a substantive motion. It was the CLP that push polled.
Mr Lugg interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Order! The matter has been debated a number of times. You have been quite free in your accusations and I am prepared to accept the same level of debate in this particular matter.
Mr BURKE: Mr Speaker, I take a little while to get to my point because I want to make the point to the general public how morally decrepit this mob are. This is the mob - the shadow attorney-general is going to stand up here and ask questions about the appointment of the Chief Magistrate on some point of my morals. This is the same guy who gets $140 000 a year ...
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr BURKE: ... and lives in a Housing Commission home in Nhulunbuy and then admits his guilt by having to move out when he gets it put on him. He will come up here ...
Mrs HICKEY: Point of order, Mr Speaker! My colleague, the Deputy Leader, has mentioned this on a couple of occasions. Really the Chief Minister is straying so far from the point as to make the question nonsensical. Can you at least direct him to hurry up with his answer?
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Chief Minister is responding to interjection. If there was less interjection I am sure we would hear the answer.
Mr BURKE: Mr Speaker, I make the point in terms of how morally decrepit this lot are, because they are big on saying how bad push-polling is, how terrible push-polling is, and any political party that uses push-polling is somehow terrible. Can’t use the word corrupt - they get very sensitive when I use the word corrupt nowadays.
Anyway, they were suggesting that any party that used push-polling was morally corrupt to say the least. These are the sorts of questions that are being asked of the electorate. Now remember, when you use push-polling you plant an idea in a person’s head. First of all in this push-polling you ask for the eldest female in the household, so you are targeting the female audience. This is how the questioning goes: ‘Are you generally satisfied or dissatisfied with the Northern Territory government? If there was a Territory election today would you vote ALP, CLP or some other party? Do you oppose or support mandatory sentencing?’ Pretty straight forward. Then we go: ‘I am now going to read you some statements and would like to know if you agree or disagree with these statements: Mandatory sentencing hasn’t worked. Crime is on the increase. While you feel unsafe in your home the CLP has only one shot at the locker, mandatory sentencing. Mandatory sentencing is not perfect. Clare Martin has the team and a real policy featuring 6 points to tackle crime problems’. We could get onto that one soon if you like. We could get onto your law and order policies soon if you like. ‘In 26 years the CLP has had enough time to tackle crime.’
Mr Speaker, this is push polling, plain and simple at its basis. You put the idea in a person’s mind with the suggestion that you ask them a question. I just believe it indicates the level to which the ALP will go to try and change an opinion in the community. It also indicates the level of desperation that they feel in terms of how they would go at an election. The level of desperation in terms of what the public’s opinion may be on mandatory sentencing certainly indicates that whenever they stand in this House and talk about push polling, you look in your own house first.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016