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May 1, 2026 — 5:00am
The Liberal Party may have a new face doing its polling ahead of the Farrer byelection, but if some of the numbers being bandied about in conservative political circles are any indicator, opposition leader Angus Taylor may be headed for a familiar result.
The party has brought in the erstwhile Peter Dutton adviser Michael Horner to do some polling work for the party ahead of the May 9 byelection, according to sources familiar with the arrangement, after Horner opened his research firm Fox and Hedgehog in the middle of last year.
But to say that confidence in Coalition circles looking ahead to Farrer is low would be generous.
There have been anecdotal reports of the Liberal candidate, Raissa Butkowski, polling in the low teens and falling. A crop of published polls, meanwhile, favour One Nation candidate David Farley as the front-runner to win the seat, where the Libs also face competition from the independent candidate Michelle Milthorpe, who has also been polling pretty well.
All told, Horner seems pretty relaxed about it all. Maybe even a little resigned to the looming prospect of another Liberal Party fizzer. How else to interpret the man being on a trip to Japan to ride the Shimanami Kaido bike route just days out from polling day?
Horner declined to discuss his work for the Libs when reached by CBD earlier this week while on the trail. He said he wasn’t in a position to offer any cycling tips, either, given the 70-kilometre scenic route has been a lot harder than he thought it’d be. Liberal HQ didn’t respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
Horner comes into the gig well-liked and with a decent (if short) track record, following the heat directed at the party’s former pollsters, Freshwater Strategy, which came under fire for overestimating the Liberal vote in its polling ahead of the last federal election.
Last we’d heard about the Liberal Party polling situation, HQ had started to think about who they’d get to replace Dr Mike Turner’s Freshwater in preparation for a formal tender process. The party at the time had recently sounded out Leanne White, who runs the firm Insightfully, over her interest in the gig.
But as things stand it looks like Taylor and the increasingly niche party he leads have other things to worry about.
Barnaby Joyce hitches another ride with Air Gina
A day after One Nation leader Pauline Hanson revealed she had been gifted a “sexy” private plane by Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, it turns out her high-profile party colleague Barnaby Joyce has continued to notch up points with Air Gina.
An update to Joyce’s Parliamentary Register of Interests filed on Wednesday noted that the former deputy prime minister had taken a flight provided by Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd from Brisbane to Sydney on April 13 at “no cost to taxpayer”.
CBD put in a quick call to Joyce to clarify if his ride was on a private plane or was a ticket on a commercial flight paid for by the mining giant controlled by Rinehart.
“It was on Hancock’s plane,” Joyce helpfully replied. Thank you, Barnaby.
It is not the first time this year Joyce has enjoyed a lift from on a plane owned by Rinehart’s Hancock empire. He declared on January 12 that he had taken a return flight two days earlier provided by Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd from Sunshine Coast airport to Mount Isa airport with Hanson to meet with flood-hit communities.
It has been a big week for One Nation and planes. On Wednesday, Hanson gushed in a post on X about receiving a Cirrus G7 plane to jet around on for her One Nation activities, which a spokesperson for Rinehart confirmed to this masthead had been donated by one of her businesses. Planes of that type regularly sell for more than $1.5 million.
All for a good cause? Vinnies gets in on pokies proceeds
The hotel industry’s Hotels Have Hearts gala dinner has become a major fundraising event for hoteliers across the state, where they get together to raise cash for the great work that the St Vincent de Paul Society NSW does across the community.
After a two-year hiatus, the gala returned to Sydney’s Fullerton Hotel on Wednesday evening to raise money for charity. And what better way to raise money for the charity’s efforts, which at a national level include staunch advocacy against online gambling advertising, than to give the people what they want?
Among the goodies that went under the hammer on Wednesday night, CBD hears, were none other than a couple of poker machines, which we hear raised in the order of $25,000 a pop.
A dinner donated by the archbishop also went up for auction, we’re told, as well as dinners with Justin Hemmes and the pub baron Arthur Laundy, who we hear was at the event. A 2GB advertising package was also thrown in, we hear. NSW Governor Margaret Beazley and Gaming Minister David Harris were among the guests, and Harris even got up to say a few words for good measure.
The night, we hear, was a hoot. No official word yet on how much was raised throughout the evening, but one person in the room reckons it was in excess of $1.2 million. Vinnies Australia deferred questions to its NSW council, which deferred questions to the Hotels Have Hearts Committee.
But it looks like Vinnies’ anti-gambling advocacy doesn’t preclude the charity in NSW from raising funds off the gambling industry. Is that the definition of a broad church?
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