Belly,
Yes, one should be carefull about disclosing personal details on sites such as this. I have said i would like to meet you one day and have a beer, that still holds, and if so the contact would be done through Graham Young, which would give you the opportunity to say yay or nay. I certainly would not just lob on your doorstep, even if I could find you.

Believe it or not, there are things with the previous government i am not happy about. I think Abbott lacks personal appeal and I am not happy about his role in the persecution of Pauline Hanson. The collusion between both major parties was most unfair. Their Immigration was far too high, their support for multiculturalism took too long to wane, took too long to stop the boats from coming and did nothing to stop the immigration of those groups that cannot or will not integrate into our society. To conceed anything about AGW is a failure.

These are important issues for me and apply equally to both major parties. No time at all for Oakeshott or the Greens.

Back atcha, Shadow Minister.

>>Pericles, I am surprised at you. Normally you engage your brain before posting<<

I think you may be allowing your partisanship to overcome your perception.

>>...the poll was conducted by an independent research company that stands by its reputation.<<

That's just it, you see.

If the poll had been conducted by Newspoll, or Galaxy, or Roy Morgan, or Ipsos, or Nielsen, or even Ipsos/Iview, the whiff of collusion-to-make-a-political-point would be absent. Those folk have national reputations at stake.

Instead, an already hopelessly compromised "news source" employs a firm whose primary product is pre-recorded marketing messages.

I'm surprised you cannot make the connection.

Banjo all understood, mid next year, all being well, I will revisit the southern highlands of my youth.
We may yet get that beer.
It is in our DNA, all of us in the end,to be who we are.
I can not agree with some of your list and can not stop agreeing with others.
We,you and I inhabit middle Australia,so many do not understand that, from both sides of a fence only in our minds most find that fence as home.
Not the next paddock.
We all should be pleased with that.
I ask nothing of my opponents here except this.
Turn around, take the briefest of looks, at Tony Abbott, and those few, that is their number, who prop him up.
Look too at the policy's and at times lack of them.

Pericles,

It is the first time I have caught you in a lie.

You said "a firm whose primary product is pre-recorded marketing messages."

Please refer to the other polling done by Reachtel, and you will see that your statement is pure BS.

http://www.reachtel.com.au/category/tags/market-research

That Reachtel is not as big as Newspoll and Galaxy, does not mean that they are Mickey Mouse or unprincipled as you are implying. Your logic is twisted by your partisan views.

That's rich, Shadow Minister. Even for you.

>>Pericles, It is the first time I have caught you in a lie. You said "a firm whose primary product is pre-recorded marketing messages."<<

Which just happens to be the unvarnished truth.

Here is their own description of what they do:

"ReachTEL provides voice broadcasting, SMS broadcasting and email broadcasting services"

That is called direct marketing. They have automated the process of calling you while you are eating your dinner, and instead of a call-centre in Mumbai asking you to change phone companies, you hear an automated message.

Here's their submission to ACMA, on the topic of what they call “robo calls”:

http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib312161/ifc18-2011_reach_tel.pdf

It's their primary product, just like I said.

>>Please refer to the other polling done by Reachtel, and you will see that your statement is pure BS.<<

Ok, let's see.

They have done some surveys of their own, in electorates of their choosing. As they say on their web site:

"Like any new technology, it can sometimes be hard to convince people to give it a go over more "tried and tested" methods. We often find this is the case with our voice broadcast technology. What better way to demonstrate the technology than some political polling."

And as they said in March, after the NSW Election, for which they placed "literally millions of phone calls".

"People were sceptical about the accuracy of the platform and we set out to prove ourselves... If you are interested in running a political poll or general market research simply pick up the phone..."

They have done some robo-polls "in conjunction with" Channel Ten, predominantly the George Negus programme. It doesn't say "sponsored by Channel Ten", so it is possible they do it just for the publicity it gives them.

They have "teamed up" with a hospitality organization, Dickson Wohlsen, to robo-poll people about gambling.

Let's face it, they don't exactly have a long queue of customers for their automated, voice-message, push-a-button-to-say-yes surveys, do they?

It's just possible that The Port Paper "survey" was their first paying gig.

If indeed they were paid for it.

Still a lie Pericles,

Automated polling is worlds apart for "pre recorded marketing messages". It is like calling Newspoll telemarketers.

For short 1 minute polling, the automated system appears to have no significant difference in accuracy, and is vastly cheaper than using people. The previous political polling they performed was for self advertising purposes and produced results very closely mirroring similar polling done by the big companies. I would imagine that corporate clients would not appreciate having their market surveys published.

What I don't get is that because Reachtel is a small company, you automatically assume that they would sell out their reputation by deliberately skewing results.

Even if the accuracy was a bit rough, whether RO's polling dropped by 70% or 50%, he is politically a dead man walking.