The Australian reports Newspoll has Labor ahead 63-37 on two-party preferred, with Brendan Nelson’s preferred Prime Minister rating down a further 2 per cent from last fortnight’s headline-grabbing 9 per cent. More to follow.
UPDATE: Two-party records on the Newspoll site only go back to January 1996 (the company goes back to 1985); before tonight the best result was Labor’s 61-39 from 16-18 March 2007, the top six all coming from Rudd’s killer run from March to October last year. The Coalition’s best result was 56.5-43.5 from 5-7 October 2001.
UPDATE 2: Graphic here. Kevin Rudd’s approval rating is at 69 per cent, up 1 per cent to beat the record he set a fortnight ago. John Howard’s best ratings were 67 per cent from 10-12 May 1996, and 65 per cent recorded in the aftermath of the Bali bombing on 1-3 November 2002. Pollsters other than Newspoll had Bob Hawke over 70 per cent in 1983-84. I have derived two-party figures for Newspoll from 1985 to 1995 using preference distributions from the preceding election, and none comes close to 63-37. The Coalition’s best result was 59.9-40.1 from 20-22 August 1993, immediately following John Dawkins’ horror post-election budget. Labor’s was 58.0-42.0 from 12-14 June 1987, at the onset of the campaign for the July 11 election.
UPDATE 3: Rather embarrassingly, this post originally claimed Brendan Nelson’s approval rating was 7 per cent. This figure is in fact his preferred prime minister rating. Nelson’s approval rating is 29 per cent, which is not much to write home about but nowhere near the record-setting level of his preferred PM rating.
Now the Liberals have two lameduck Leaders, Nelson and the friend of all seniors with a mortgage, Queensland Liberal Leader, McArdle.
Perhaps Federally they could have a fortnightly lucky dip to determine which of the non-lame can lead for that fortnight. Similar to what they have in Queensland Liberal Leadership circles but a bit more structured.
Steve 3 years is a long time. Anything can happen!
Maybe the Governor of NSW will sack the Iemma government… lol
152 JoM, with Nelson a fortnight is a long time and drift of support in each successive Newspoll is happening!
It was also a ‘long time’ from the point that Rudd assumed the ALP leadership, and people assured us Howard would come back. At what point does Aquaman consider a return unfeasable for this term – 1% 2PP per month?
Marius Benson put the ‘buyers pride’ argument to the head of newspoll for the reason for ALP popularity and he pointed out out is could quite easily turned to ‘buyers remorse’. At some point some of those buyers could become brand centric – they did for the last 12 years.
Steve I see your point but at this stage of the election cycle IMHO it doesn’t matter. A few more interest rate rises and problems with health will see the Coalition’s stocks improve. Can this poll really be taken at face value? After last years election I don’t think so.
Steve says “Tassieannie, handcuffs, shackles, whips,straitjackets, imprisonment, mental health orders, or perhaps some form of blackmail are the only options I can see.”
Careful Steve, I reckon some of them would probably enjoy the whip etc.
All polls are important to professional politicians JoM despite the spin about the only poll they believe in is election day. What this and every other poll tells us is that Nelson is gone. He can hang on for an hour, day, month, year, till the next election, for the next decade etc. but in politics nothing changes till someone taps him on the shoulder and tells him the game is up. Costello failed to do it. Howard hung on far past his use-by date.
So far Turnbull has failed to do it and Nelson has hung on past his use-by date. If it takes Turnbull twelve years to learn to tap, that’s ok by me but in no way can it be good for the Liberal Party. A quick change is a good change when things are hopeless and heading away from where you need to be going.
Wins are created over time from heading towards goals not by spearing in the opposite direction. What Nelson is doing is ensuring a big loss. He is not capable of anything else on these figures and wishful thinking is not a substitute for leadership.
The head of newpoll prefaced his comments on the 2pp result with (paraphrasing) “I’m sure we wouldn’t see these figures reproduced if there actuall was an election” – so what the hell are they really polling – gives me the shits every time they say it. Either change you polling method, its name or whatever, but don’t present it as an apple when you know it’s an orange.
Steve all good points but reform of the party first then new leadership.
158 It is just straight political dishonesty, onimond, from a group of people who eat and breathe polls but are incapable of giving an assessment that is plain to everybody in Australia including the people who were polled.
Howard huggers were waiting for the magical budget bounce, the narrowing and all sorts of voodoo based conspiracy theories that was going to defy what the polls were telling them and give us an upset Tory win last year. Nothing has changed, their delusion knows no bounds and all have some timeframe where the magic elixir will be found to cure their ills.
It didn’t happen last year, won’t happen this year. Pure fantasy created to hide an unpalatable truth.
JoM, back to front I’m afraid, it’s the leadership that transforms the party. Without the leadership and someone to drive the change, it will never happen.
Steve, Simon Crean drove through changes and his leadership did not last.
111 Arbie Jay – wishful thinking at its best.
162 All successful pollies drive through change JoM. It’s just that some changes aren’t enough to win elections or win increasing support.
Nelson has driven through change too but the unedifying spectacle of their behaviour in Parliament is the opposite of the images that he needs to get support.
The trick is to do things that people want, need and support not change into something that disgusts or irks them as Howard did with workchoices.
Onimod 140
Regarding importing builders and standards from Europe – absolutely on the standards bit. Australia badly needs uniform building codes, and ones that are toughened up at that, to meet energy and environmental objectives. We tend to build large, low quality houses here. A few years ago I worked with a Danish trained engineer and he pointed out to me how many of the residential apartments being built in Brisbane woudl be illegal in Denmark due to inadequate noise and heat insulation.
Regarding the newspolls and various excuses for the low LNP vote, this is why I would love to see a breakdowm by policy issue. I don’t think this is a honeymoon – it is a reaction by voters with mortgages to what has been happening to interest rates. Most people realise now that this was at least in part due to Howard’s last big spending budget. I remember Possum’s analysis of correlation betwen interest rates and voting before the last election. Since then we have had more interest rate rises adn even more time for the message to sink in. In that context this result is not a surprise (except Brendan07).
As a matter of interest, 159 John, what reforms to the party took place before Howard took over the Libs and won in 1996. I seem to recall chanages of leadership on a regular basis and a waiting around for Labor to become unpopular but I can’t recall the party being reformed before Howard took over.
166 Gary, why would the Liberals even be considering reform of the party when they can all just sit around, waiting for the next interest rate rise, waiting for the next budget, waiting for the next favorable Newspoll, waiting for the next leader to emerge, waiting for the next 100 days of the Nelson Opposition, waiting for the next election, waiting for…
Since the election the Liberals have become a policy vacuum, having tossed out their old ones, and appear to be passionate about only one issue – having to sit in parliament on Fridays. I’m not convinced that this is the right approach to win back public support.
Garry Bruce maybe it just semed that way as Howard was in his assendency.
The media’s political correspondents know absolutely nothing about politics many of them state that Nelson’s approval rating is 7% when it is actually his PPM rating and let us not forget that Nelson’s approval rating at 29% is higher than Simon Crean’s 26% in 2003.
If Nelson does not last this year, i do not believe that Turnbull will want the job and i think it will go to the Deputy Leader, Julie Bishop…because Turnbull doesnt want to be a permanent Opp Leader he wants to be Prime Minister.
Costello will be back in 2012 🙂
170 Hope $weets have got a job as junior barrister for him in the meantime. He is showing a distinct lack of interest in the Liberal leadership and the parliament is sending him to sleep lately.
Steve, Costello is recharging his batteries after being Australias’ greatest Treasurer for 11.5yrs 🙂
“Besides, this far away from an election the averge voter doesn’t care or probably know who Breandan Nelson is.”
This excuse from Liberal Party supporters has been bandied about a lot lately. Let me just say that it is lame, lame, lame. If Nelson’s poor personal rating was simply owing to people not knowing who he is, then why has it continued to drop?
While not everyone in the country follows politics and not everyone will know who Nelson is, the reality is that a lot would, mainly courtesy of the stolen generation apology and all the massive media coverage of it.
But the difficult truth for some Liberal stalwarts is that Nelson messed up the stolen generation apology. It was an attempt at trying to please both the moderates and the extremists in his party, and in doing so, he relinquished his leadership. Couple this with continued and intentional parliamentary misbehaviour (a truly DUMB strategy), the fevered vascillations over WorkChoices, and attempts at trying to deny that inflation is a problem, and you clearly have a leader who is hopeless, ineffective, weak, and now, impotent.
This is what the public see and it is reflected in the worst polls that the Liberals have ever had.
And on top of all this, the opposition still looks like they are stuck in the past, using the same old tactics, just waiting for either a new opportunity to mount yet another scare campaign or for Labor to slip up. No direction of their own. Nothing positive to offer. No hope. No inspiration. In fact, there’s really not much life in them at all.
I want to see a Liberal Party supporter actually admit that Nelson is not turning out to be a great leader for the party, instead of just making the same old excuses and living in the same old patterns of denial that lost them the election in the first place. If the same thing was happening on the other side of politics, many Labor supporters would be out there arguing a case for change. I guess this is one of the biggest differences between the supporters of the two main parties – the conservative mindset doesn’t tolerate change very well, so they end up resorting to denial and pithy excuses for leaving things the way they are, no matter how bad things get!
169 [i do not believe that Turnbull will want the job]
Glen, good idea let’s put Julie Bishop through the Parliamentary Leadership mincer before Turnbull . Bring it on. I’m in the anyone but Nelson camp myself. He’s not even competitive enough to be any fun. I personally like to see four or five leaders spat out each term the Tories are in Opposition.
JoM
I have a piece of paper in my wallet that says “Courage ~ 1/Self-importance”.
168 John – You’ve just confirmed how important the leadership is to the Liberal Party in particular and why they need to get that right otherwise reform will not take place. Leadership first, then reform.
If Libs keep Nelson as their leader I predict that my local member Kate Ellis will be our PM in 2019 (after Julia of course) and ALP will be in government at least until 2022.
“Nelson’s approval rating at 29% is higher than Simon Crean’s 26% in 2003.” Ah, that makes it all better. No problem then.
174
steve – well lets not forget the ALP had 5 leadership changes in 10.5 years and we’ve had our first to Nelson, 4 to go i suppose.
But i hardly think it is fair to blame Nelson for all our woes, the problems with the Party go further than Nelson right now. I have alot of admiration for the way Nelson has conducted himself during one of the worst times in Tory politics in Australia.
179 I have a lot of admiration for the way the Liberal Party conducts itself on Friday mornings in Parliament during the Nelson reign. Good work! compliments where due, these Newspoll records are hard earned by the whole team and not just Nelson.
Some conservative TB’s here seem to forget why they lost the election and seriously believe that all they have to do is wait a couple of years and they will be back into government again. It wasn’t a mistake by the people. They didn’t like many of the major policies of the Liberal Party, so much so the Libs have dumped them themselves.
3 years is not a long time and memories aren’t that short. Do you really believe that because the Libs have said “oops we got that wrong, sorry” people are going to go “that’s ok we want you back now because after all you’re the natural party of government”?
These poll figures are not as they are because Rudd is Rudd. They are like this because the government is doing what people agreed last election should be done. Consequently this government will be rewarded with trust for some time to come. Certainly longer than just 3 years. It won’t last but that’s not what I am contending here.
So combining the memory of the last few years with what the present government is doing now makes for a massive contrast in style and substance, something the electorate are obviously embracing with glee and something they won’t forget in a hurry.
Glen, Nelson is a nice guy generally, and under different circumstances, he might have been a little more popular, but his leadership abilities are woeful. When you are going through “one of the worst times in Tory politics…”, then you need solid leadership, someone who is able to really clean out and reform the party, make tough decisions, and generally fix all the damage from the Howard years. You don’t do that by encouraging the party to deliberately run amok in parliament or vascillating over something as crucial as WorkChoices, just to name a few.
It is the Liberal Party’s inability to enact much needed change that led to them not replacing Howard. It is this same inability that led to them putting Nelson in change – they thought they could still carry on as normal, knowing that Nelson wouldn’t actually take charge and steer the ship in a direction of real change. Turnbull offered change and he was rejected.
You are quite correct, Hass @ 106. Don’t know what came over me. Now corrected.
Nelson has apologised and scraped workchoices (core policies dumped) so i hardly think the Liberal Party of November 2007 is the same Liberal Party of Feb 2008. Infact by doing these things one could say we’ve started to listen to middle Australia.
Turnbull wouldnt have made things any better, being in opposition means defining yourself different to the Government and Turnbull’s views are mostly a reflection of the Government.
185 Glen – just an aside, were you arguing against Workchoices last year?
185 [i hardly think the Liberal Party of November 2007 is the same Liberal Party of Feb 2008.]
I must agree with you once again Glen, Newspoll is definitely showing them to be a far more unpopular party.
“i hardly think the Liberal Party of November 2007 is the same Liberal Party of Feb 2008.” In fact it could be said to be more like the Labor Party, only nowhere near as popular. People obviously prefer the original and frown on the wannabe.
The only real mystery about the decline of the Liberal Party is why it took until 2007 for people to realise how appalling they were.
The same thing is happeneing in the US where the once revered (God knows why) George W Moron has been seen for what he is and all conservatives -including Hillary Clibnton are wearing the backlash.
Conservatives here have no hope until they are no longer associated with the former discredited regime. I’m not kidding when I say they need to start again. Turnbull is the only sitting member that could move forward, and only because he is a relative newcomer. The rest are toast.
A record current account deficit announed today ($24 Bn for the month, with total foreign debt exceeding $600 Bn for the first time). That makes it London to a brick interest rates will go up again. I still don’t think Australia will go into recession in the short term (the US is a goner) but growth will slow a lot.
Turnbull would have the numbers already. Nelson just pipped him for the leadership,
and I’m sure acouple of backbenchers are already regretting their vote.
But what would be the point of changing Lib leaders now? It would just emphasise that the party wasn’t united. The Opposition needs a long period of talking to the electorate and formulating new policies, before anyone is going to pay it any attention. The coalition could do worse than follow John Brumby’s blueprint for returning to government in Victoria. Even though Brumby himself didn’t survive quite long enough in the leadership, his policies and tactics outsmarted Kennett, and picked up where the disenchatment was in the electorate. Bracks played a major role in formulating the policies, and so was very capable of selling them and implementing them.
I actually agree with Glen (!) that Nelson really hasn’t done much wrong, given his difficult position. I heard Nelson do a half-hour interview on ABCMelbourne radio just after the apology, and he had every difficult issue thrown at him. He kept calm and affable, showed a bit of humour, and tried to give thoughtful answer to questions. While I think Turnbull would be a better leader, there’s no point changing until the party works out what policies its leader will be promoting. Just bagging the government doesn’t work for an Opposition, if the Government itself is popular.
189 Jen, Turnbull is being reserved for when the ship turns around, when people have forgotten what the Liberal Party stand for, when recession bites and angry people are marching in the street demanding change or when hell freezes over, … or he just retires to the backbench like Costello did.
188 “it could be said to be more like the Labor Party”
Gary, you are right, it is pretty easy to be like the Labor Party and the two parties are hardly very different .. its mainly about who gets the spoils.
I think the Libs solution is to actually join the ALP (their natural brother and sisters)….. then we can have a more stable one party state rather than the relative messy (pretend) two party state.
#190
The trade deficit must be partly attributable to the rising dollar, making imports cheaper and exports more expensive. And the slump in the services sector no doubt is at least partly due to a falloff in tourism, for the same reason.
Increasing interest rates as a response to a worsening trade deficit would only push the $A higher, compounding the problem. One of the reasons for China’s export success (apart from low wages and workplace standards) is the level of its currency, which is kept artifically low by the government.
A falling $A would help mining, where demand remains very high but returns are falling because of currency levels. It would also help agriculture, where prices for commodities like wheat are skyrocketing, and there’s great potential for a trade recovery as the drought ends. A falling $A would also help save what little manufacturing we have left, and hopefully stem the flow of some Asian imports.
It seems to me that the Reserve Bank has pushed interest rates a little too high today, and in trying to soften the housing market will really hurt our exports.
Steve, Turnbull will bide his time until that opportunity to rule is upon him.
He is a man of great ambition with a green touch of megalomania….could effect radical change possibly.
182 Steve –
at this point i’m going for when hell feezes over unless something drastic happens – like the second coming.
I think Neslon is probably a nicer guy than some of the hard right wingers, but he is a useless leader.
And if I was Malcolm I wouldn’t touch the leadershiop witha bargepole. In fairness Downer, Abbott, Costello, Ruddock et al should all be held to account for the disgraceful decisions of the past government, so why would a cleanskin take it on when he will have to take the rap as the others scuttle away from the sinking ship?
195 Yes Ogmios but the Liberal Party fed us that line with Costello for decades too. I’ll believe it when I see it. The Liberals are past masters at offering change at some ill defined time in the future but never getting around to actually doing it.
No 191
I agree Antonio.
Steve, you would be correct in Costello’s case, but Turnbull would annoint himself the king of the cleanskins and mould the party to his own ideology….history repeating?
The most likely scenario for Liberal leadership change will go something like this:
1. just let Nelson stay until the 2008 budget.
2. Just let him stay till the end of 2008
3. just let him stay till the 2009 budget
4. He’s done the heavy lifting, just let him stay till the election
5. Nobody can bring down a Government in one term, just let him stay till the next election.
6. We are used to him as permanent Opposition Leader let him have the job for life.