Morgan: 62.5-37.5

Roy Morgan’s fourth published poll of the Rudd era has produced a result similar to the first two, after a slight improvement for the Coalition at the third. Labor’s two-party lead has increased to 62.5-37.5 from 60-40 at the previous face-to-face poll; their primary vote is up from 49 per cent to 54 per cent, with the Coalition down from 36 per cent to 33 per cent.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

681 comments on “Morgan: 62.5-37.5”

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  1. as a matter of interest how many members of the Howard gvt left/resigned/sacked for whatever reasons
    the only one i seem to remember was santoro (was he facing criminal charges?)

  2. 549

    Re ‘Former Ministers come clean over Howard government mistakes’

    I think the greatest part of that article was near the end

    “Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson was interviewed for the program but does not appear.”

    Poor guy….he can’t even get noticed slagging off howard….

  5. Can anyone beleive that the Libs want people to get upset because Rudd didn’t have dinner with Burke, 2005? Do they actually want people to take them seriously?

    And how about Hockey’s admittance that most Govt members didn’t realise that workers could be worse off under Workchoices? Exactly how out of touch can you get?

  6. 550 – gusface
    Reith, Vanstone, Hollingsworth are 3 names that come to mind.
    I’m sure there are many more.

    Typically though Howard would keep his ministers on, no matter how corrupt or incompetent they were.

    Who remembers yet another of Howard’s broken promises on the Ministerial Code?

  7. re: tonight’s 4 corners- Howard will deserve a fair share of the blame but he should not be a scapegoat. The others were to gutless to force him to go

  8. 554
    Liz Says
    Re Joe and workNOchoices

    Interesting that Joe and his mates are happier to run with the “We were too stupid, lazy, ignorant, incompetent and out of touch” excuse for not understanding what they were doing than to admit they deliberately with foresight set out to screw the unions and workers [the blatantly obvious reasons].

  9. The trickle down effect is a very smart thing to say, technically some can trickle down,…but as capitalism is winner takes all it accumulates in the business elites and everybody else gets to pick up the shit down below.

    Which flies in the face of reality. I again quote Saunders:

    he way this has enhanced people’s capacity to lead a good life can be seen in the spectacular reduction in levels of global poverty, brought about by the spread of capitalism on a world scale. In 1820, 85% of the world’s population lived on today’s equivalent of less than a dollar per day. By 1950, this proportion had fallen to 50%. Today it is down to 20%. World poverty has fallen more in the last fifty years than it did in the previous five hundred.(11) This dramatic reduction in human misery and despair owes nothing to aging rockstars demanding that we ‘make poverty history.’ It is due to the spread of global capitalism.

    Capitalism has also made it possible for many more people to live on Earth and to survive for longer than ever before. In 1900, the average life expectancy in the ‘less developed countries’ was just thirty years. By 1960, this had risen to forty-six years. By 1998, it was sixty-five years. To put this extraordinary achievement into perspective, the average life expectancy in the poorest countries at the end of the twentieth century was fifteen years longer than the average life expectancy in the richest country in the world—Britain—at the start of that century.

    By perpetually raising productivity, capitalism has not only driven down poverty rates and raised life expectancy, it has also released much of humanity from the crushing burden of physical labour, freeing us to pursue ‘higher’ objectives instead. What Clive Hamilton airily dismisses as a ‘growth fetish’ has resulted in one hour of work today delivering twenty-five times more value than it did in 1850. This has freed huge chunks of our time for leisure, art, sport, learning, and other ‘soul-enriching’ pursuits. Despite all the exaggerated talk of an ‘imbalance’ between work and family life, the average Australian today spends a much greater proportion of his or her lifetime free of work than they would had they belonged to any previous generation in history.

    You can’t simply dismiss the wealth generating power of capitalism, bird. It flies in the face of reality.

    The difference between the “trickle down” effect and social democracy is that everybody gets a fairer piece of the pie

    By fairer piece of the pie, you mean state pensions which simply promulgate a welfare mentality, lack of self-esteem and the erosion of self-responsibility. Socialism revels in constricting society into a state of mediocrity, where talent is held back because it would be unfair to those untalented. Where free enterprise is seen as an avenue of exploitation rather than a vehicle of wealth generation for all.

    The very fact that some people exhibit overzealous greed and wont for power, does not mean that capitalism should be dismantled in favour of some vague notion of fairness.

  10. No 556

    I would have to agree with that assessment. No-one was willing enough to challenge Howard, perhaps out of sheer respect or simple lack of conviction.

    At the same time, the suggestions that Howard should have resigned mere weeks before the election are and were absurd.

  11. 559 – Howard said he would step down when his party wanted him too.

    He lied about that too and its all coming out tonight.

    Lack of conviction from the Liberals and personal selfishness from Howard has relegated them to opposition for a looooong time.

    Not to mention abysmal policies.

  12. No 560

    Yes, but the party failed to mount a candidate to challenge him. There were murmurs about a “smooth transition” to Costello, but neither Costello or anyone else were effective in accruing party support.

    Costello himself has revealed even prior to tonight’s documentary that he didn’t have the numbers for a challenge.

  14. It all comes down to:
    1. Howard lying to Costello that he would pass him leadership in 1 and a half terms.
    2. Howard lying to his party that he would pass on the leadership when it was in the best interests of the party.
    3. The Liberal party for failing to have the conviction to remove a leader that specialised in deceit.

  16. 561 [he didn’t have the numbers for a challenge.]

    Indeed he never even had the numbers to get a bounce out of last year’s budget.

  18. From the link by John of Melbourne @ 542 –
    “It received two referrals from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) in 2007 but only one – relating to election funding totalling some $300,000 for the 2004 federal poll – was investigated with no evidence of wrongdoing disclosed.”

    Wonder what evidence they may have uncovered if they’d check out the other referral? Seems a mite too ‘cute’!

    Can I assume, for example, that if I rob a bank the cops will only investigate how quickly I drove during the getaway?

  19. John@564
    from article
    “This reflected the power situation: Costello had neither the numbers to force Howard out nor the ability to persuade him. The Liberal Party’s tragic mishandling of the leadership issue over the 2004-06 term is that Howard stayed too long but his deputy never found the mechanism to remove him, by charm or threat. ”

    excellent euphemism- ‘mechanism ‘

    though showing some “mechanism” just dont sound right 🙂

  20. GP, I think Saunders ought to define what he means by ‘capitalsm’ and you should define what you mean by ‘socialism’.

    And are you arguing for the abolition of pensions? Why and on what grounds? Because they encourage mediocrity? Talk about moral conceit! I don’t think my mother would take kindly to being called mediocre just because she gets a pension of $11.00 per fortnight after a lifetime of hard work, enterprise, constant thrift and proud self-reliance.

    You really are an idiot, GP.

  22. Well I waited patiently during Question Time for Brendon’s supposed grilling and asking tough questions of Ruddy… i’m still waiting..did I miss something?
    talk about wet lettuce
    Nev Wran has nothing on Rudd in the teflon stakes!

  23. No 564

    Yes, I advocate for the abolition of pensions for all able-bodied citizens. Pensions are only sufficient to support the genuinely disabled.

  24. GP, points well made… in a similar vein –

    http://www.reason.com/news/show/124913.html

    Trashing capitalism seems a fairly unsubtle argument… I look at it in the sense that we try and ‘harness capitalism’ in an attempt to mitigate it’s exploitative nature, but we must also be mindful that ‘harnessing’ does slow down the capitalist beast… a double edged sword.

    Hmmm… forgive the mixed metaphor…

  28. Have to admit, Swan was hopeless today. The one bright thing about the affair is that it’s Bolt who is predicting his demise. A Bolt prediction of political death is practically the Kiss Of Life.

  29. I heard a high ranking police officer from the US once, talking on the radio.
    He said he was initially surprised at the number of people on pensions in Australia.
    He then said that he was even more surprised by the low crime rates, and said that if making it (relatively) easy for people to go on pensions kept them from stealing, that he was all for it.
    It costs the same in one day to keep someone in prison as it does to pay them a pension for a fortnight – so even if getting the pension keeps one person in ten from turning to crime, it’s more than paying its way.
    And yes, I suppose I should get my 70 year old mother, who has spent her whole life working for the community, out there scrubbing floors or something, instead of bludging off the public purse. Probably do her good, give her new interests and let her meet new people…

  30. yes zoom….but make sure your mother gets no overtime or penalty rates. Considering her age, sick pay should also be out of the question. She will then be anything but mediocre and GP will be able to enjoy his selnse of moral superiority.

  31. JOM, this is a first- I AGREE WITH YOU!! An excellent article by Paul Kelly. Howard didnt have the guts to resign, didnt really want to stay but wanted to make it look like he was pushed. What a pathetic excuse for a man/ leader

  32. Thanks for the blurb from Peter Saunders – its interesting but it does not tell the whole story that there is an extreme income disparity – my point is GP, that for most people, integrating the right with the left is a preferable way – socialism is wrong but so is the other end of the spectrum, which you advocate – and eventually it will be seen as this – when multinationals go to 3rd word countries, then typically do anything to stop them collecting bargaining , exactly what the libs have done, crush the wages of the poor, so its a race to the bottom of the barrell – vis a vis a 300 billion dollar profit margin. You could easily let those people collectively bargain with or without a union – 99% goes back to western corp interests for a very small % of pop and 1% goes to the many…

    its not what Peter says, its what he does not say….

  33. Andrew, I agree with you on everything but the last sentence. 🙂 I suppose letting go of power is a hard thing not many of us will get the chance to experience.

  34. GP:

    The other thing is that personal responsibility is based on how much money you earn so people move into 3 spheres across the social structures – eg: safety net health care – whereas universal health care and public education gives more equitable outcomes which can sit alongside private enterprise..

    Once again, you refer to socialism, when there are many positions you can take before you get to that……..

    In reference to pensions, my grandmother really needed her pension – otherwise she would of starved….

    To everyone else in this blog, I am kind of glad that GP does not give an inch on neoliberalism – socialists/marxists and maoists of the 1950’s thought the problem was with everyone else’s values…so I will let history take its course on this one..
    GP always has comebacks!!

  36. You are a generous blogger, bird. But it does seem a waste to indulge his attention-seeking pseudo-analysis by taking it seriously.

  37. blind optimist, you are right…I have a development degree from UNSW –

    GP is a right wing communist (or socialist) …it seems that some people need to be extreme and mutually exclusive to one side of the political spectrum. Quite a few people who were marxists now have the same views as GP. When they go, they have to throw out the baby with the bathwater!!

    But Blind optimist, you seem nice!! (hey do you live in sydney?)

  39. Thank you, bird. I like the way you warble too. (I live in Perth, studied development economics at Murdoch some time ago.)

  40. [Thank you, bird. I like the way you warble too. (I live in Perth, studied development economics at Murdoch some time ago.)]

    And in local Liberal News, Paul Omodei didn’t have the numbers to be elected to the Upper House, and may decide to resign for the Libs and contest Warren-Blackwood as an independent.

  41. Anybody who thought that it didnt matter about how badly Swan’s parliamentary performances were had better have watched Question Time today pure comedy to have a Treasurer that doesn’t understand basic economic concepts is just a joke! I almost felt sorry for him…almost!

    For a possible DD Election i say bring it on! The ALP never passed our policies until we had control of the Senate…so Laborites deal with it! We’ll continue to block it on the basis that it is a rushed job and destroys individual agreements under Pre-2005 AWAs.

  42. The Libs didn’t lay a glove on Rudd today re Burke. Any bets on how long this saga will run now? I’m thinking all of the talk tomorrow will involve the goings on of the past government, leaving Brian Burke in its wake.

  43. No 582

    Thanks for the blurb from Peter Saunders – its interesting but it does not tell the whole story that there is an extreme income disparity

    Capitalism does not serve to equalise the income spectrum because by doing that it restricts talent, reduces incentives to work and cancels notions of self-responsibility. That is the essence of socialism: promoting the victory of mediocrity over talent.

    You constantly criticise “multinational corporations” and the “elite few” and yet fail to realise that without the entrepreneurial risk undertaken by such entities, there would be no jobs and absurdly high unemployment.

    Multinational corporations have helped bring millions out of poverty. You see it as exploitation, which is patently ridiculous when you consider that without the jobs they provide, these people would be starving and unable to support themselves.

    No 579

    And yes, I suppose I should get my 70 year old mother, who has spent her whole life working for the community, out there scrubbing floors or something, instead of bludging off the public purse. Probably do her good, give her new interests and let her meet new people…

    People should provide for their own retirements. The sooner people realise that the government is not their to sustain life but to enable free will, the better our society will be.

    That is why Keating’s superannuation policy, and Howard’s subsequent improvements to it, is so vital for our future fiscal viability.

  45. blind optimist, you are right…I have a development degree from UNSW –

    GP is a right wing communist (or socialist) …it seems that some people need to be extreme and mutually exclusive to one side of the political spectrum. Quite a few people who were marxists now have the same views as GP. When they go, they have to throw out the baby with the bathwater!!

    What contradictory rubbish are you on about. I consider myself to be a libertarian mainly because the more I read about the philosophy of freedom, the more it makes sense. Senator Ron Paul is a brilliant exponent of this thinking as are Hayek and Friedman.

    The only communists and socialists here are those which believe the government should nanny society from birth to death, that all decisions should seek their moral permission and that all free enterprise is exploitative.

    I tend to like Andrew Norton’s summation of Clive Hamilton’s illogical eruption in Growth Fetish:

    Economic prosperity remains a vital component-though no more than a component-of personal and social well-being. Going for growth in Australia isn’t a ‘fetish’. It is an aversion to the consequences of economic decline, of which we were so harshly reminded only a little more than a decade ago.

  47. The garbage of Peter Saunder’s ‘capitalism’ vs ‘socialism’ views include others even invoking Jesus & the apostles as ‘capitalism’ supporters.

    Environmentalists total lack scientific evidence & are an impediment to capitalism

    The subtext which Saunders & the extreme right lack the courage to articulate
    is capitalism should be pure from any regulation , public purpose or social justice

    Whenever challenged the extreme Conservatives cho0se diversion rather than interllectual defence.
    The US the beacon of unrestrained capitalism is the consequence

  48. While I didn’t see today’s Question Time, and while I would prefer Tanner over Swan, I suspect as long as the over all Government policy is sound Swan will survive.

  49. If there are any Croweaters out there, I read today that we are truly blessed in this state. The Hon Kate Ellis, Minister for Youth and Sport, has a new adviser Ms Mia Handshin.

  50. No 597

    LOL Ron, you once criticised me for providing no evidence to underpin my arguments, yet you are hypocritically dismissing mine and Saunders’ arguments on the basis of unsubstantiated, undefined and ultimately irrelevant concerns.

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