Essential Research: 58-42

No Newspoll this week, but the always dependable Essential Research weekly survey shows Labor’s lead stuck at 58-42. Also featured are prime ministerial approval ratings (56 per cent for, 31 per cent against) and questions on the Productivity Commission’s maternity leave recommendations (trending negative), party leaders’ responses to the financial crisis and government plans to tackle climate change (don’t go far enough).

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.

361 comments on “Essential Research: 58-42”

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  1. With all due respect to JQ an “unlimited” Govt guarantee of bank funds is crazy. Govt. takes all the risk- banks take all the profit.

    Rudd is saying to ” working families, pensioners and carers 🙂 ” don’t worry about your nest egg, we will look after it.

    Turnbull cannot win the politics of this, that is why he is – Dumb, dumb, dumb.

  2. The born-to-rule have a real problem with democracy.

    Andrew Robb, before the election, claiming 13 Labor candidates were ineligible to stand – Failed.

    Piers Akerman with his wHeiner Affair fantasy of government removal – Failed.

    [guy writes in to today’s “Advertiser” … went on to say that the we ask labour to step down]

    Bzzzt – Failed.

    What next, formally revoke the election result, send in the brown-shirts to round up the PM and cabinet and imprison them?

  3. Today Tonight baboon to Costello: “If Labor were to stand down tomorrow and hand you control of the economy, could you give a guarantee, could you guarantee the Australian public that you’d fix it – say in six months?”

    Costello to baboon: “Oh sh*t yes! What sort of monkey are you! Give me those levers and I’ll promise you the world.”

  4. Inner Westie, Are you saying that someone on Today Tonight actually, really asked that question of Costello, and that he actually really guaranteed he could fix (whatever that means) the economy?

  6. You really had to hear Costello on Byners show as the callers rang in and congratulated him on his wonderful job as Treasurer. Full of smugness, did it all by himself. Not a word about the advice he was given.

  7. Yes, Ken Henry (above all) knew it was a one man show. His job was merely to rock the hammock with one hand and whiz up colourful Excel charts with the other.

  9. Inner Westie, I’ve got to admit you really had me going there, but what with the Rainmaker claiming credit, well some, a bit, “it wouldn’t have happened without me, me, me, wonderful me” for the banks interest rate decision, I was prepared to entertain the possibility that madness was spreading.

  10. When Costello became treasurer he set up an inquiry – The Wallis Inquiry – into prudential regulation.

    But thats OK cause Lib inquiries = Good. Labor inquiries = Bad.

  11. We could have yet another name for Turnbull,
    Kath
    from Kath & Kim, seeing as he loves everyone to “look at moi, look at moi”

  14. Does anyone know why there’s no Morgan today on Oz? It seems a bit odd that the only Morgan would be on N.Z. Not that I’m wanting to downplay the N.Z. outcome, or anything.
    Oh, bugger, la Trioli is on the Teev. Geez, she annoys me. Opininated, without facts or evidence to back up her assertions.

  15. ruawake @ 251 –

    Rudd is saying to ” working families, pensioners and carers ” don’t worry about your nest egg, we will look after it.

    Short of there having been a run on banks that I’m unaware of, maybe he would have been better saying nothing because it undermines the message about our banks being different to all those going belly-up elsewhere and safer than houses.

    Just had a call from my motherpartner-in-law, who is normally switched on and not prone to panic, now worried about what to do with the few thousand over the $20K in her bank account. Should she follow Malcolm Fraser’s advice and stick it under the mattress with the Reds?

    Thing is she’d only rang me on Wednesday and then she didn’t have a care in the world about the economic meltdown. In fact she only called to tell me about a funny incident at the butcher. She was buying fillet at nearly $30/KG and another OAP gave her a tongue in cheek finger waving admonishment for not eating dog food in solidarity with the Wrinklihood. Apparently, there were several OAPers having a good laugh about the absurdity of it all.

  17. Just thinking about the companies that manufacture Whiskas and Pal. Are they listed? If so, I wonder how their shares are performing amongst all this turmoil?

  18. Eh? Did I hear Greg Hunt just say on Lateline:

    [Malcolm Turnbull was designed, built and constructed for this moment in history]

    WTF? Is this man drunk?

  20. I thought the other thing Hunt said about the Rainmaker was funnier.

    “The public has responded extremely well to Malcolm”.

    Oh yeah, Greg? Which polls show that?

  24. Remember, he said that Nelson would be leader during the next election weeks before he was kicked out and admitted he had bad judgement. So why should be accept his judgement on Malcolm?

  25. But “this moment in history”? Surely that’s piling it on a bit thick? Does Hunt realise who is Prime Minister? Who is in government? (hint: it’s not Turnbull or the Libs)

  26. Yes if Howard had been relected he would have sorted out Wall Street by now…. We wouldn’t even have this financial crisis if the Liberals were in government. You know its true.

  28. The way the Libs are talking, they remind me of the White Russian refugees in Pais during the twenties: still waiting (some of them at tables) for the proletariat to come to its senses and bring back the Tsar.

    I mean, Hunt’s effort tonight was truly cringeworthy. I still wonder that the ABC gives them equal time, scrupulously.

  30. I just had a quick scan through the comments in Shannahans’ last two blogs.

    Two things that stood out for me were that Hunt tonight sprouted almost word for word what Shannahan had written in today’s blog and also that the regular RWDB’s just “cut & paste” the same comment from blog to blog.

    If there’s not some co-ordinated, organised, arrangement between the likes of Shannahan and Liberal Party operatives, then I would be very surprised indeed.

    There is a definite pattern in the various articles/opinion pieces and the “talking point memo bites” which come up in Question Time and in media interviews of Liberal Front Bencher’s as well as the comments sections of these pieces.

  32. I thought the likes of Turnbull were the people who caused this problem.

    I guess the first thing Turnbull should do is stand up and admit guilt and apologise to Australians and then admit he knows nothing about the economy or finance – unless he wants to say merchant bankers deliberately helped trashed the world economy.

    Malcolm is part of the problem – not the solution.

  33. Seriously, the irony of turning to a merchant banker in times this these cannot be lost on the Australia people.

    GIVE US A POLL ALREADY.

  34. {Seriously, the irony of turning to a merchant banker in times this these cannot be lost on the Australia people.}

    Many Australians would not know the details I think. Labor would have to impress two facts onto the people if it wants to capitalise (pun) on this situation:

    1) Point out that bankers and their ilk are the people who have / are trashing the world economy.

    2) Point out that Malcolm is a former merchant banker.

    This dual message would have to be reiterated and reinforced as much as necessary till it permeates the national awareness.

    Then let the public draw their own conclusion…

  35. Shaun Carney is starting to notice Turnbull’s rainmaking tactics, too:

    [Leader Malcolm Turnbull appeared to be claiming that he actually runs Australia’s monetary policy …]

    Couple this with Hunt from last night’s Lateline – Turnbull “… was was designed, built and constructed for this moment in history” –
    and we have the seeds of the predicted political implosion of Turnbull: a man who just doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut and has an overblown image of his own relevance. Unseemly in a man.. unforgiveable in a senior politician.

    Carney also alludes to second-stringer Hockey’s attacks on the Reserve Bank… handy to bash our economic regulator at a time like this, wouldn’t you say? Hockey’s claim is that they are weak and easily influenced by government sound bites, and took the bait on inflation by pushing up rates earlier this year (i.e. a century ago by today’s economic clock). I’m not sure what they were supposed to do. Maybe issue a statement in February saying, “The whole world will melt down in September-October. What’s the point in doing anything? So people, let’s party on inflation. It’s Götterdämmerung no matter what we do”. That would have made the punters sit up and think.

    We also had Hunt setting out the Opposition’s (the Opposition’s!) “three point plan” for economic salvation: another $6 billion to shore up mortgages; unlimited guarantees on depositors’ funds and a buy-up of shares. Why eat a ham sandwich, when you have the whole hog? Presumably Rudd will have to find the money minus the alcopops tax (Bundy-Rum drinkers are people too, you know), minus several billions dollars spent willy-nilly on shutting up a few pensioners and professional talk-back whingers, as well as any other Budget cuts and/or extra pork-barrel expenditures the Libs and the certifiably insane Fielding have in mind if the government shows weakness and gives in on their current “demands” (unlikely, at this stage, I’d say).

    Meanwhile, that stunned look Julie Bishop has been practising for so long has now found its perfect destiny. We have an alternative Treasurer who appears to be more alternative than Treasurer. Have we heard a peep out of Julie in the past weeks that goes much beyond something you could read in chapter 1 of Economics For Dummies?

    The Messiah is dead. Long live the Messiah. First we had Old Coconut, the Father Of The Nation, who would save us, Robin Hood-like, by stealing from the poor and giving to the undecided in marginal electorates. Then we had Costello, the world’s Greatest Treasurer, choking on the cake when he finally had a chance to gobble it up all to himself. He finally wrote a book, you could even say the book on a variety of subjects including selective memory, self-aggrandisement, passing the buck and sheer gutless terror at failing once he had no-one to prop him up. Nelson came and went, chucked into the deep political waters off Sydney Heads with an Early Kooka wired around his ankles, to make sure he didn’t come back to the surface too quickly. Thank Nick “The Assassin” Minchin for that.

    And now the Rainmaker. Pointing to the sky and telling us that he personally stood up for the Battlers and opened the clouds just a little (although we’ll never know for sure which cloud was his). If he can do it once, he can do it again. If the government buys a few shares, or chips in a few extra dollars to the non-banks, expect Malcolm to tell us it would have been less but for his relentless campaigning. Oh, and yes, bugger the Surplus. When all this clears up he’ll be pointing out for sure that Rudd wrecked Howard’s. That’s the way of all Labor governments, and largely, in the pointing-out, of all conservatives.

    These so-called “conservatives” (a word that stems from a desire to conserve the best of our institutions and traditions) are once again becoming the wreckers. They are sowing discontent and mischief, acting as if Sub-Prime was the kind of thing whose course could – and should – have been predicted down to the last cliched “Black Monday… Tuesday… Wednesday… Thursday… Friday” headline, the last strangled cry of a day trader on the ASX, or the last teardrop of a retiree with nothing else to do but watch from the gallery and get on the telly doing it. They are sobotaging the Budget, gumming up the works in the Senate, attacking institutions like the Banks that have given them so much in the past. They are suddenly the anti-capitalists, touting nationalisation and unnecessary bail-outs of successful companies as if doing so won’t excite questions from the curious as to whether our economy is as sound as Rudd makes it out to be. Oh well, “In confusion is profit”.

    Somewhere in there there’ll be a quote that Turnbull trots out proving he was right all along, that he predicted the lot of it. That’s how Rainmakers work: they drop the promises that didn’t quite work out and move onto the punters who got the winning tips. There are less of them, of course, each round, as the con man’s premeditated ambiguity continuously halves the pot. But the ones remaining – be they two or even one per cent – become rusted-on. Hey, when you start out the scam with nothing, anything above zero is a bonus, right? Hey, these are desperate times. Nick Minchin is alrwady un-twisting another coat hanger.

    Once a spiv always a spiv. The Rainmaker, like the shark that he really is, has to keep swimming, has to keep oxygen moving across the gills, finding new saps to buy his infallible system of backing every horse in the race… or else he sinks to the bottom and drowns in his own element. Malcolm Turnbull, the man for “this moment in history”, may have just found the ultimate limit of his talents. Brainstorming with bagels around a teak desk on the fiftieth floor of a CBD phallic symbol is one thing, but when you’re messing around with a real economy there can be serious consequences. We’re seeing him and his party renounce just about everything they stand for as “conservatives”, and I doubt that’ll be forgotten when the dust settles after this sorry mess. And it will settle.

  42. An extremely long bow, the different electoral system makes it hard to compare plus the fact that he’s making his comments entirely from a narrowing in the betting markets, (from $10 to $5… which still isn’t great for the Liberals!).

  43. I’m not sure is up with Kev, he is being all too nice at the moment. You can bet Howard in the same circumstance would be using the situation to the hilt to excuse all sorts statements, actions and policies as well as denigrate the opposition – deserve it or not.

    He would be ripping into the Labor party no matter what it said. And here we have Turnbull and Co being inappropriate and populist and Kev and Co letting them off without the sound public smack around the ears.

    This should be an opportunity for Kev to go all out to drive home with rhetoric his policies in the Senate, especially the infrastructure bill he wants to get through. He should be building the momentum now for it and building the narrative which is really sticking out like dogs.

    The narrative is building a stronger Australia, for beyond the global and resources boom and the basis is the wasted decade of Howard and Costello who blow hundreds of billions of dollars. The wasted decade that put Australia at risk. He really should be hammering all this stuff home whilst taking the lead on the current economic environment, tax reforms, pensions etc…ie the whole financial economic box and dice. Simply overwhelming the Opposition and taking strong control of the narrative.

  44. He should also be doing more public profile things not only to demonstrate that Labor is the government but to reassure the public that everything is under strong control. Such as calling in the heads of all the banks etc. Having a broadcast to the nation to reassure them and inform them and so on. It is important that he puts himself right out in front as the powerful figure with the matter in hand. IMHO

  46. Thomas Paine… it’s quite simple. Howard was in for a long time and got used to how to play the politics to pressure the Opposition. The Government at the moment have no clue and are tactically weak.

  47. Rudd is playing a deliberate game, he will not even mention Turnbull by name. Have you noticed he says things like “Others have suggested…” ?

    This is designed to deprive the Opposition of oxygen – Judging by the polls it is working.

  48. The opposite applies to Julie Bishop.

    [Julie Bishop blunders in misquoting Kevin Rudd]

    JULIE Bishop has blunted the Opposition’s attack on the Government’s handling of the global financial crisis with another gaffe.

    The Opposition Treasury spokeswoman took aim at Kevin Rudd for using “intemperate” language to describe the crisis on ABC radio yesterday, but she was firing at phantoms.

    “He says he hopes we don’t go into a depression, although the IMF says the risk of a global depression is nearly nil, so there’s no need for the Prime Minister to be even using the words ‘Great Depression’,” Ms Bishop said. “I urge him to be more measured.”

    Transcripts of the Prime Minister’s speeches and interviews since the credit crunch indicate he has never invoked the Great Depression and used the words only twice while carefully paraphrasing IMF remarks.

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24479124-5013871,00.html

  50. Yes that is a good tactic – never give your opponent free credibility by implying he is worthy to be in the debate. Thus never use their name if possible. That is a tactic. Labor needs to get onto the strategy – because it get the public behind them and thus make it harder for the opposition to oppose actions and also this is a prime opportunity for Labor to take control of the narrative and also build the ‘impression’ of solid economic credibility.

    This is really a gift gilt edged opportunity – as dreadful as it is.

    We certainly do not want the Liberal party in at the next election as you can imagine they would use the same narrative to implement super workchoices etc.

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