Not surprisingly, given the mini-crisis surrounding Howard’s leadership, the Newspoll released yesterday, with the two party preferred position for Labor shifting from 59-41 to 55-45 was big news. But was there really any news, or just the usual random fluctuation. The ABC News on Monday night made it sound huge, describing it as the government cutting Labor’s lead by 8 per cent. On the other hand, if you started with the view that the true position was 57-43, neither this poll nor the last one would lead you to change this view. Two percentage points is well inside the usual allowance for sampling error in polls with a typical sample size of a bit over 1000. So, you might say, it’s all just a beatup.

Comparing the two polls gives a somewhat different answer, which my son Daniel kindly computed for me. Given two polls with 1000 respondents, and the stated results, you can reject, at the 5 per cent confidence level but not at the 1 per cent level, the null hypothesis that they are from the same population. That’s because, given no underlying change in the population, the chance of two variations in opposite directions is smaller than the chance of each variation considered separately.

But that doesn’t end the problems. If you run polls every fortnight, you’re bound, sooner or later to get two samples in a row that deviate in opposite directions, producing a big apparent swing.

FWIW, looking at the Newspoll results since July, I see no reason to think there’s been any real movement in either direction. Aggregating all the polls, and reducing the sampling error accordingly, I’d put the Newspoll 2PP vote somewhere in the range 56-57. The other polls seem to be much the same.

The real problem, though, is non-sampling error. If the question being asked doesn’t match up to the way people are actually going to vote, all of these statistical considerations count for nothing.

As I foreshadowed, my Fin column last week gave John Howard some unsolicited advice on how to deal himself back into the electoral game; namely ratify Kyoto. Of course, he’s done nothing of the kind, but still I was surprised by the lameness of his latest offering, a retro stunt involving hospital-based training for nurses. With this and the Merseyside fiasco a month or so ago, Howard seems determined to discredit himself with anyone who takes health policy seriously.

Anyway, I think Howard would still benefit by breaking with Bush and ratifying Kyoto. As my piece concludes “If Howard won’t take this step, it’s good evidence that he is, as both internal and external critics have claimed, out of touch and out of ideas.
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As the Liberal party meeting begins it looks unlikely that Howard will go, but not beyond the realms of possibility. If Costello stands up and demands the job, he will probably get it. And Howard might just decide to pack in the whole sorry crew. However, neither of these scenarios looks likely.

I have a trivial and selfish reason for hoping Howard stays at least until tomorrow. My Fin column, due out tomorrow, gives Howard some unsolicited advice and will have to be rewritten if there is a new PM.

Looking at today’s news, it’s pretty clear that the Prime Ministership is Peter Costello’s for the asking. We have two senior ministers, Downer and Turnbull giving non-denial denials to claims that they want Howard out. That means there have to be enough numbers for a serious challenge. That in turn means that Howard’s position is untenable, if such a challenge is made. Howard might win a party-room vote, but he would be doomed at the election even if he did. By contrast, Costello would have a chance. The remorseless logic of game theory now implies that anyone who cares about keeping their seat should support the challenger, and try to force Howard to bow out gracefully.

But Howard has made it clear he won’t do this in the absence of an overt challenge from Costello. He judges, on the basis of past experience that Costello won’t have the bottle*, and that facing the challenge down gives him a chance to present himself as a strong leader in the contest with Rudd.

* I had various thoughts about the origin of this term for nerve/guts. A quick search of the Internet found support for all my ideas and quite a few I hadn’t thought of. It looks as if it will remain a mystery.

Quite a few people have pointed out that, while the betting markets have now caught up with the opinion polls in making Labor hot favorites to win the election, seat by seat markets while shortening suggest a very tight outcome. The question that doesn’t seem to have been asked (not aloud at any rate) is whether there is (or was) an arbitrage opportunity here. That is, if you backed the Liberals to win the election, while backing Labor in all the marginal seats needed to win, could you make a “Dutch book” against the bookies and guarantee a net gain no matter what happened (within reason – you would still lose if Labor got in by winning lots of supposedly ultra-safe seats while losing in the marginals).

Looking at the movements in seat prices, I suspect this was a real possibility not long ago, and that alert punters have exploited it, closing the gap. But this is definitely a case for Andrew Leigh.

Update As you might expect, I’m not the first to have asked this question. Here’s John Barrdear asking and Simon Jackman answering (a bit obscurely – I think he’s assuming a uniform swing, but I’m not sure). I’m still keen to discover Andrew’s thoughts on all this.

Immediate further update No need to worry. They’ve stopped taking bets

A few thoughts, not well organised, which I may update

* Labor has now changed leaders in five states, twice as a result of illness and three times because of a voluntary decision to retire, with no sign of any damage as a result. Such a string of smooth transitions is almost unprecedented in Australian political history where the rule is that all careers end in failure (defeat by the electorate or by a party rival, or resignation in disgrace)

* Following from the previous point, if the Federal Libs get the drubbing predicted by the opinion polls and Rudd doesn’t run rapidly into disaster, Labor will be established as the natural party of government. It’s hard to see how the Liberals, for whom success is the main raison d’etre could survive this for long

* I imagine Beattie’s departure will take the sting out of the council amalgamations issue in Queensland, which will be a gift to Kevin Rudd in a couple of marginal seats such as Herbert.

* Obviously, this has contributed to the pressure on Howard to follow Beattie’s example. I can’t see him caving in to this, nor can I see a last-minute switch to Costello doing the government any good. On the other hand, the way things are going, this is Costello’s last chance to be PM, if only for six weeks or so.

Ken Parish has written in with some comments on whether the requirement to acquire land on just terms applies in the Territories (short answer: probably not). It’s crossposted at Club Troppo.

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One of the striking features of the government’s intervention in Aboriginal communities, embodied in the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 was how rapidly the ostensible motive of intervening to tackle social problems, most notably child abuse, was swallowed by the ideological push to refashion property rights, taking over land owned by Aboriginal communities, with the presumed goal of turning it into individualised private property

A question that’s come up a couple of times and to which I haven’t seen an answer is how this squares with the Constitutional requirement for “just terms” in acquisition of land and other property, and also the statutory requirements of the Lands Acquisition Act (unless these have been overridden by the latest legislation). Is there anyone with a legal background who can comment on this?

Update Several commenters suggest that the focus on the land grab is a reflection of the left’s concern with process issues or political advantage, and a lack of concern about child abuse. So it was striking to read in yesterday’s Crikey a pice by Anna Lamboys saying that that with half of the government’s six-month time frame completed, there are now some figures on
(a) the number of arrests for child sex abuse laid as a result of the intervention
(b) the number of referrals to child protection authorities
Results are over the fold
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I was going to write a post about the Socratic forum, but Sam Clifford has done it. Here’s his summary of my piece.

John Quiggin illustrated the States-Canberra issue with the analogy of a dysfunctional household in which dad earns the money and mum spends it (this is the GST). Dad is in charge of things like keeping the house safe whereas mum is responsible for raising the kids and cooking the food that dad provides. While I don’t agree with this traditionalist view of the home (c. 1950s) it’s plain to see that it’s an adequate representation of the situation. Dad gets in mum’s way from time to time, telling the kids that they can have ice-cream (or an amalgamation plebiscite) after mum’s said no. What is needed, Quiggin argues, is a clearer division of tasks and the allocation of funding based on who needs to do what. If mum needs some money to buy new shoes for the kids, dad shouldn’t be whining about the fact that his tie’s not ironed.

That was a bit lighthearted, but Charles Sampford gave a more serious presentation of the underlying viewpoint. It’s based on the principle of subsidiarity, that is that responsibility for government functions should be at a level as close as possible to the people it serves, consistent with effective provision of the service concerned. See also Mark at LP, who takes a similar view.

I’ve been thoroughly underwhelmed by the undeclared election campaign over the last couple of months. Labor has been moving towards the kind of small target strategy that performed so well in 2001. Meanwhile, Howard’s complete conversion to pork-barrel politics has now acquired the label “aspirational nationalism”, which is appropriate enough given that the term “aspirational” appears to mean “a shallow person with no ethical values who splashes money about without any clear sense of priorities”.

So I’m pleased to see Rudd taking a step back towards sensible policy with his proposal for a complete Federal takeover of the public hospital sector to be implemented if co-operative Federalism fails to produce an agreed national reform plan. Unlike Howard’s various ad hoc grabs for power, this would actually lead to a more sensible alignment of political power and responsibilty.