ACNielsen: 56-44

After giving Labor its worst poll result of the Rudd government era a month ago, ACNielsen has now returned to the field. This month’s survey has Labor’s lead up from 52-48 to 56-44, from primary votes of 46 per cent for Labor (up five) and 39 per cent for the Coalition (down three). Remarkably, both leaders’ approval ratings are up 10 points, Kevin Rudd’s to a personal best 71 per cent and Malcolm Turnbull’s to 55 per cent. However, Rudd has blown out to big lead on preferred leader, 64 per cent (up eight) to 26 per cent (down seven). Further detail on attitudes to the financial crisis from Michelle Grattan at The Age.

UPDATE: The weekly Essential Research survey has an unusually sharp two-point move in favour of Labor, who now lead 59-41 on two-party preferred. Kevin Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister has also blown out to 55-20 from 45-25 a month ago. Interestingly, respondents are more confident the economy can withstand the financial crisis than they were a week ago. Also included are questions on the government stimulus package, the emissions trading scheme and more.

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.

1,812 comments on “ACNielsen: 56-44”

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  1. I don’t have a formed opinion on the net filter issue, but a couple of thoughts immediately come to mind:

    – many parents couldn’t install or disable a net filter to save their lives, or even work out if this had been done by their kids
    – I wouldn’t be so sure (as some here are) that Labor is on a loser with this. A significant minority of the population (I imagine) hardly use the Internet and I’d think that group would be heavily in favour of the Govt “doing something” about this problem
    – it would be interesting to know how many of those on here, who’ve been moralising about bad parents not stopping their kids accessing this stuff, actually themselves have kids in the relevant age group. I do, and I’m always pretty loath to run with the “bad parents” theme, on any topic.

    Having said that, I don’t like censorship, and anyone with half a brain would have to be wary of any proposal put up by Stephen Conroy.

  2. HAHAHA.

    This is absolute gold.

    http://news.smh.com.au/national/rudd-still-has-massive-lead-new-poll-20081027-59oe.html

    [Polling from Essential Media Communications shows Mr Rudd’s approval rating has risen eight per cent to 66 per cent in the last month as the financial crisis moved from an international news story to a domestic threat.]

    Ok good start. So what figure does the SMH use for Turnbull? The Liberal primary? The poor 2PP? His approval rating? His preferred PM rating? None of the above!

    [The news is less impressive for Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull as 32 per cent of those polled did not even have an opinion on how the former merchant banker was travelling.]

    Oh dear lord.

  3. I don’t think they’d necessarily be onto a loser politically but it is the wrong policy position to make, which is more important than winning or losing an election.

    Not to mention the chances for abuse of executive power that could arise from it. As the ACMA blacklist is an executive action, there is nothing stopping them from putting whatever they choose onto the blacklist. This allows governments to choose what we have access to and what we don’t have access to. Once you start allowing the banning of certain things (e.g. online gambling websites, pro-euthanasia websites) it is a slippery slope into the banning of more and more things.

    Anyone with even the slightest of liberal intentions should see that this is giving the state far too much power.

  4. about time the OO got a serve on media watch- much overdue. they did however run the Bishop plagiarism story on the front page today, so someone stuffed up!!

  5. Bank on banking: I seem to recall persons putting super in banks were punished under Howard/ Costello, in the form of 100% being assessed as ‘assets’ for pensions, versus 50% if it was placed in some dubious super fund pre-July 07.

    So, effectively, Howard/Costello forced retirees into gambling their hard-earned on the sharemarkets – and now look!

  6. [- many parents couldn’t install or disable a net filter to save their lives, or even work out if this had been done by their kids]

    Then why don’t they use one of the ISP’s that offers ISP level internet filtering?

  9. Oz,

    They don’t know what an ISP is, for starters!

    The PB commentariat (or sections thereof) are missing a key point here: many people literally do not understand issues like this. Naturally such people are going to be massively under-represented on any blog, cause they wouldn’t know how to blog.

    It’s a toughie, I reckon.

  11. [. As the ACMA blacklist is an executive action, there is nothing stopping them from putting whatever they choose onto the blacklist.]

    Mark Newtown, head of ISP Internode, raised a very good point. This “blacklist” is going to be the most prolific document in history. Every ISP is going to have a copy, plus politicians, plus beaurecrats, plus technicians. It’s going to get leaked. And what if someone points out that “Hey, this is like a shopping list of illegal material/child porn/whatever.”

  12. [They don’t know what an ISP is, for starters!]
    Many parents probably don’t know how to start their kid’s favourite computer game. Should we ban all computer games?

    There’s too much state paternalism here for my liking.

  14. [The PB commentariat (or sections thereof) are missing a key point here: many people literally do not understand issues like this.]

    It is not a toughie at all. If such idiots are on the internet and are letting their kids go on the internet, unparented, then there are more serious issues surrounding education that need to be addressed before jumping to the China extreme.

    If you don’t want your kids seeing porn then MAKE AN EFFORT TO STOP THEM. Don’t sit there and go “Yeah I dunno what a “filter” is. I dunno what an “ISP” is, even though I had to ring them up to get my connection, I pay them a bill every month and I call them when things go wrong”.

  15. No 1761

    Mark has summarised his points quite well:

    [The arguments against it are clear:

    * there’s no problem to solve because actual illegal material on the Internet is so rare that nobody ever finds it;
    * even if there was a problem to solve, there’s no public demand to solve it;
    * even if there was a public demand to solve it, none of the proposed solutions will be effective;
    * even if they were effective, they’ll slow down Internet access and reduce Internet reliability;
    * even if the proposed solutions had perfect performance and reliability, none of them are affordable;
    * even if they were affordable, they’ll be implemented terribly by the same class of bureaucrats that decided Haneef was a terrorist and Hanson was a pornographer, and will consequently be overbroad and subject to political manipulation;
    * even if they were implemented perfectly, the blacklist will leak, be published on the Internet, fall into the hands of nefarious individuals, and consequently ENABLE CHILD ABUSE; and
    * there’s no possibility that the blacklist won’t leak. It might take a month, a year, five years, ten years, or 2 hours. But it will leak. Pressing it into service will be like setting a ticking time bomb, and when it happens there’ll be a thronging multitude of bastards just like me pointing at Conroy and saying, “I told you so, you delusional pillock!”]

    http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1075390&p=38#r753

  16. SO,
    I hear what you’re saying, but don’t forget we’re talking about protecting children.

    We make parents have seat belts in their cars, and fine the driver (ie normally the parent) if the kids aren’t wearing them, even if the parents themselves are too dopey to understand the point of seat belts.

    This is not an easy issue.

  17. Oz,

    You see this in very black and white terms, but I don’t. And don’t forget, either, kids are not little angels who never try to circumvent Mum and Dad’s wishes.

    The real world has lots of shades of grey.

  19. [And don’t forget, either, kids are not little angels who never try to circumvent Mum and Dad’s wishes.]

    Yet for some reason you think they won’t be able circumvent this idea? When kids in China and Iran circumvent every single day? When kids in schools around Australia are circumventing every single day?

  20. [and will consequently be overbroad and subject to political manipulation;]
    And this is the worst outcome of any classification or censorship system, it gets opened up to political manipulation. This ultimately means the system is no longer based on stopping children from being harmed by media (and it potentially altering their behaviour so that they harm others) and converts it to a system where moralists start stopping adults from having the right to access whatever legal media they want to.

  21. No 1766

    Yes, but your analogy fails. Seat belts are proven to save lives in traffic accidents.

    There is no evidentiary basis in saying that compulsorily filtering the internet will minimise paedophilia. But there is a wide body of evidence proving that compulsory filters significantly hinder performance and lead to a high instance of false positives.

  22. I don’t know if kids will be able to circumvent this, or not.
    If you are right and they can, then I agree the whole thing is utterly pointless.

  23. It is in the guise of protecting children, but as you can see from Xenophon’s proposed amendments, it will extend far beyond the ‘protection of children’ potentially. I don’t see how the banning of online gambling could be couched as protecting children.

  24. I believe some of you are over-estimating the average parent’s computer illiteracy. The internet isn’t new anymore. Most parents of young children are about my age, and there aren’t too many people in my peer group who can’t tell you what an ISP is.

  25. [We make parents have seat belts in their cars, and fine the driver (ie normally the parent) if the kids aren’t wearing them, even if the parents themselves are too dopey to understand the point of seat belts.]
    We have a classification system that makes it illegal for some films to be sold or rented to people under the age of 18. However that doesn’t stop SOME parents from allowing their 16 year old children from letting them watch R18+ classified films.

    You can’t police absolutely every aspect of human behavior. If you try to do it you end up abusing the rights of other law abiding adults.

  27. [I don’t know if kids will be able to circumvent this, or not.
    If you are right and they can, then I agree the whole thing is utterly pointless.]

    Dyno,

    http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/privacy/story/0,10801,110141,00.html

    http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/08/cccs-freedom-stick-circumvents-chinas-firewall-just-in-time/

    http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/online/features/openvpn_counters_censorship

    [ * Using proxy servers outside China
    * Onion routing services, such as Tor
    * Web sites that convert HTML into images, such as Picidae
    ]

    Or simply tunnel through using VPN.

  32. [Pardon the silly question, but when will this net filter bill hit the Senate?]

    There isn’t any legislation, they are still conducting trials.

  34. Oz @ 1777,
    That post might as well have been written in Swahili for all it meant to me, so I guess that must make me one of the idiots you referred to at 1764.
    Nevertheless I gather you’re saying that it’s pretty easy to get around a net filter.

  35. No 1777

    If there was ever a case for sacking Conjob, it’d be the ease with which children could circumvent the Great Firewall of China: Australian Edition.

  36. Yep, I’m with Shows On and ltep on this.

    Parents should install the computer in a place where they are always around, like the family room or lounge room.

    The responsibility ultimately lies with the parents. It’s no different to their childrens diet I reckon.

  37. [That post might as well have been written in Swahili for all it meant to me, so I guess that must make me one of the idiots you referred to at 1764.
    Nevertheless I gather you’re saying that it’s pretty easy to get around a net filter.]

    Dyno, we were talking about kids having access to these things. I don’t know how old you are but I don’t think you’re a kid. Trust me, kids know alllll about these things. They already use them to bypass the security filters in schools. The same methods can be used to bypass any ISP level filters.

  38. 1779 – William is right – most parent of young kids are in their 20s and 30s – ie have been growing up with computers.

    The computer in the family room is the best first strategy.

    GP is right about one thing: if there is an 86% drop in speed, the idea will die a very quick death.

  39. I have a grand-stepson kid. Nice kid but too worldlywise. We had him to stay with us with our grandson and found him getting up at 2.00 a.m. and trawling porn sites on the web. Of course, being oldies we had no idea how he did it.

    Had to get our son up to put fix it. The grandstepson doesn’t want to come up anymore. Pity.

  42. The Simpsons provides sage advice on censorship. When Bart and Lisa go to a horror movie, Lisa can’t watch during a scary bit and covers her eyes. She asks Bart to tell here when she can open them again. Bart waits a while and then tells her to open them, just in time for Lisa to see the monster decapitate the lovers in the car.

    Bart wisely explains his actions thus:

    [“If you don’t watch the violence, you’ll never become desensitized to it!” ]

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