Morgan 56.5-43.5

The latest fortnightly Morgan poll has Labor’s two party lead down from 57.5-42.5 to 56.5-43.5. Labor’s primary vote lead over the Coalition is 46.5 per cent (up 0.5 per cent) to 37.5 per cent (up 1.5 per cent). Morgan also brings us qualitative research on voters’ “concerns” with the way the parties and leaders are going about their business. More attitudinal gear this week from Newspoll, whose thrice-yearly survey on issues and the parties best equipped to tackle them was published in The Australian on Wednesday

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.

402 comments on “Morgan 56.5-43.5”

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  1. ltep, your hero is saying sorry, fair dinkum.

    If he dosen’t he is a WEAK WEAK WEAK coward!

    And that’s the way he will be remembered.

  5. In all fairness and if the were anything but Liberal Party mouthpieces the Murdoch media should have condemned John Howard with the utmost severity for his unprovoked attack on Obama and the US Democratic party.

    Here we had the leader of a democratic country, a US ally, getting himself directly involved in the US Presidential election, supporting one side. It was a gross abuse of the position of PM and really should have resulted in Howard’s resignation. This was Howard and the Liberal party putting party ideology before the well being of Australia and before democracy. It was a shameful action.

    Luckily for Howard the Liberal party didn’t get reelected and we didn’t have to suffer the utter shame of our PM having to get down on all fours to apologise and beg forgiveness.

    If the Murdoch media and ABC go on about a non-leak created using their own straw with such vigor when they rightly know that it is fake, they should not have passed Howard’s disgraceful effort by.

    I think this latest episode, if confirmation was ever needed, demonstrates the Murdoch media and ABC are not much more than operational arms of the Liberal Party with the over arching purpose of undermining Labor and getting the LNP reelected.

  6. There latest effort will most likely set up a gigantic sense of cognitive dissonance in the general public who now know Rudd well enough that he wouldn’t be doing such things.

    The cognitive dissonance will create that sense of disbelief in the story but also serve to highlight Rudd’s strong international performance and standing.

    I can understand the strategy of the Murdoch media here, to try and attack and undermine a Rudd strength, his high profile international skills and standing. These were the same guys who tried to undermine Rudd’s visit to ground zero in the USA during the economic crisis.

  7. TP, I reckon we have suffered utter shame of our PM getting down on all fours and sucking upto Bush. I reckon even the Dubya administration was a bit embarrassed by it. 😉

  9. Now that is my point.

    If Howard was not sucking up to Bush and was acting in the best interests of our alliance, he must apologise to Obama for the same reason.

  12. steve please, I am trying to forget about yeasterday. I had Barbaricus going for a fortune in the Mackinnon Stks. I still haven’t had any sleep over it. 🙁

    I reckon Mad Rush and C’est La Guerre are the go for Tuesday.

  13. would you mob here, who are supposedly about the most cued in and attune mob, in relation to the political system, please take a moment to consider, i.e., think about, the implications of people not trusting the ABC in the event of a major disaster. That’s what Uhlmann is doing, for me, at least. I’m certainly capable of discriminating between reports on political events and events that have to do with coordinating responses to disasters, but not everyone is. Conflate rubbish political reporting with the brand, and the brand is tarnished.

  14. I know, Howard tended to be a pushover, anything to be in the same room, with or without dignity or integrity.

    We have seen a bit of slash and burn tactics from the Murdoch media, ABC and Liberal party. At a time when confidence was the major currency they all decided to trade in confusion and uncertainty. This group certainly does not have the interests of Australians at heart if it is in opposition to an opportunity to support the Liberal party.

    They seem to be getting worse and moved to use fabricated events to run their campaigns.

    These people should be asking themselves that if the Turnbull Opposition is so hopeless that it needs them to continually attack the Govt and fabricate stories for them to even seem slightly relevant then, shouldn’t they be worried by their total incompetence?

    It can get to a stage that a continual campaign against the government for no legitimate reason can be harmful to the country.

  15. Harry its back off googles top stories (only 27 refs -the latest 5 being from a single agency france press reference run thru the international channel).

    I think constant vigilence is the key re the MSM beatups-catch em soon enough and they die out-bit like stopping cockroaches breeding.

    btw the usual suspects were involved in this latest smear-the abc just added fuel to a dying fire.

  18. [Nonsense. The Government, or the Parliament as a whole, represents the people of Australia.]

    However, it is not the Australian people. If the Government wanted to apologise on behalf of the Australian people, as they could have according to you, they would have. But they did not. Move on.

  20. GP

    I hav said Howard has nothing to appologise for for damaging th US Alliance because th US Alliance was not damaged

    I would place Howards comments commenting on another Coutries Eections as ill judged and woiuld same of rudd if he was still PM in 2012 and adversely commented on th Republican candidate (Iwould however like to know th full context of his remarks & lead up questons as his comment was ususual anyway)

    However disagree ver Aborigines apology Believe it was needed not as an appology for what we hav done but what predecessors hav not done enough of as a symbolic line in sand so th Aborigines themselves were still aggrieved there had been no recognition of past errors with th implication reel or otherwise that past policys were ok when they were not by all governemtns

  22. No 270

    Yes in hindsight Howard’s comments regarding Obama were inappropriate. But his foreign policy approach back then was a joke – it appears more refined with Biden – the insufferable windbag – at his side.

  32. For one i agree with my collegue across the aisle – this will just restore the “good old days” of student unions being able to run far left wing campagins supporting Hamas and the PLO (among others) and day trips to dention centres

  33. No 282

    Exactly right. For goodness sake, Ellis is so dimwitted on this issue that she’s let herself be consumed by the silly begging of the NUS. If students want child care and advocacy, they can pay for it themselves. I simply cannot fathom why other students, who are already on minimal incomes as it is, should have to subsidise services they will rarely make use of.

    When compulsory student unionism was abolished, there was a collective sigh of relief from the silent majority of students who attended university to get their degree and get into the workforce. No longer did they have to spend hundreds of dollars to subsidise services they never use or subscribe to extreme political ideologies with which they did not agree. When unions finally had to work to accrue new members under the VSU regime, the consequently low membership take-up proved that the majority of the student body does not get any value from union services.

    But lo and behold, the Minister for “Umming and Arrring” has reinstated CSU by another name: compulsory amenities fee; a fee which student unions will almost certainly squander and misuse. I hope the Coalition & the independents block this nonsensical attempt to reinstate compulsory communism.

    Note to william: I know you dislike the “c” word, but frankly there’s no other appropriate word.

  34. Garrett sells out soul again by killing the National Academy of Music…by fax:

    [From South Melbourne Town Hall, the academy provides exceptional musicians with a valuable link between their education and its application in the wider professional world. The minister’s reasoning — “ANAM no longer represents the most efficient way of delivering support for elite classical music training” — used deadening language to sound the death knell for this unique institution. Simon Rattle, chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, has called ANAM “the envy of anywhere in the world”.]

    http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/to-be-elite-is-not-the-same-as-being-elitist-20081102-5gbw.html?page=-1

  35. GP I agree with you on VSU/CSU. Student unions are essentially useless and, as with any other union, should be able to think of ways to get students to join voluntarily if their services are so great.

    I’ve yet to see a compelling reason to reinstate CSU and given that Barnaby Joyce is one of its main proponents that’s telling you something.

  36. The OO is beginning to fall into a pattern of adding a negative story about the bank guarantee to the last paragraph of every story. They could just as easily have pointed out that many funds remain frozen from well before the guarantee began.

    [“Of course, there have been interest rate reductions outside of the official interest rate reductions and the banks have indicated that in large part it’s due to the confidence that’s been restored in Australian banking due to our bank guarantee.”

    Future Fund chairman David Murray today rejected suggestions the $63 billion fund could help bail out troubled mortgage-based investment funds.

    Many funds remain frozen after investors started moving their assets to banks covered by the Government’s bank deposits guarantee.]

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24592617-12377,00.html

  38. GP is quite right in opposing an apology. An apology without compensation is nothing.

    First, a few word about our ‘settlers’. (You might have missed some of the following in what passes for history in Australian schools.)

    The ignoble savages who invaded a little over two centuries ago belonged to a nation with the following characteristics. They whipped people to death, more or less. They hung people for the theft of not very much. They exiled individuals for life for even less (splitting families as they did so). The age of consent was 12 – a nation of paedophiles? Misogyny was deep-seated – women with a vote? They worked half-starved children to early deaths in the coal mines, the dark satanic mills, the chimneys, the brothels and the workhouses. There were mass rapes by their armies when they stormed cities. They were out-and-out religious bigots – their constitution still prohibits a catholic as head of state. They bought and sold rotten boroughs in a so-called democracy. Not that democracy mattered at all in the continent when the ignoble savages arrived. They arrived with appropriate military forces and a military commander. The ignoble savages were by far and away the world’s biggest slave traders. The system of government was so thoroughly corrupt that 25% of the naval vote was defrauded or just plain stolen. Naturally, if they saw something elsewhere in the world that they wanted, they took it. They thieved whole nations and lands on a grand, global, scale. If the owners objected, they murdered them. Their museums and galleries are full of the plunder still. They were prepared to use rum as a currency. They ran the original drug cartel, were major international drug traffickers, and went to war (with China) when it had the gall to object to the trade. Above all, these noble savages, and their modern day apologists, excelled, and continue to excel, at hypocrisy.

    These were our ‘settlers’. The modern apologists of the ignoble savages would have us believe that the ‘settlers’ behaved just like today’s middle class folk from Toorak and the North Shore!

    While they mucked around with their governance arrangements over the two hundred years, the ignoble savages’ theft of the continent was actually quite slow-moving. The large-scale land theft and shooting part of the invasion ended when the ignoble savages murdered a large group of men and women in the Coniston Massacre of 1927. (The shooting part of the invasion by the ignoble savages might have lasted into the 1930’s in Arnhemland were it not for the intervention of Thompson.) The Occupation phase staggers on, with the need for the Northern Territory intervention, and its efficacy, being the latest examples. Over all this hovers the gloss of holier-than-thou, pseudo-Christian claptrap. It is a characteristic of the hypocrisy of apologists for the ignoble savages that they routinely blame others for the results of the theft and the thuggery. The apologists pay some people to make up the righteous-sounding words, which other people then religiously report in the media. Sophistry in the service of the ignoble savages. The apologists do an excellent line in confected outrage at what the victims do to each other. This shifts any notion of responsibility from the ignoble savages, you see. The apologists are not stupid.

    The apologists for the ignoble savages have a mortal dread of the truth about the past; they distort it assiduously and with great cleverness; and, in so doing, they distort the truth about the present. Which is their point.

    Disputation about an apology is just a continuation of the pious hand-wringing that has been a hallmark of the apologists, the ignoble savages themselves, the plunderers of a continent, and the receivers of stolen goods for over two centuries. Whinging about the cost of social security payments (the hypocritical gall!), is like whinging about paying a thousandth of a cent in the dollar for a continent. The apologists encourage that sort of thing. There is nothing in Australia like the hurt of those citizens who are led to believe that somebody might be getting something ‘more’ than they are for ‘nothing’. Artful dodge by the apologists.

    Let’s take a step beyond the hand-wringing, the whinging and the hypocrisy. Let’s forget about the apology. Let’s forget about checking our navels to see whether we should say sorry or not – for, amongst the apologists, who really cares? They enjoy playing with the discussion, practising their righteous hypocrisy, the one consistent element of their ‘civilisation’ for two hundred years. They enjoy playing the history game. Let’s leave the ignoble savages behind. Let’s leave the remaining apologists in our midst behind. Let’s make them irrelevant. Let’s put them all where they belong – in the past, with their their precious debating points and their hypocrisy, their sophistry and their distortions.

    The truth is blindingly obvious to any reasonable, decent person. Justice stares us in the face. It is time to start arranging for proper compensation. This would mean that Australians have finally made the full transition from the ignoble savages who arrived two hundred years ago, to the decent people we mostly are, and could fully be. We will finally have decided that it is we, now, who make us what we are. We have some unfinished business. Let’s just finish it.

  39. Boerwar @ 288, are we talking about Britain in the 18th Century or Australia’s reaping of oil royalties from East Timor and the use of Nauru in the 21st Century?

    Tom.

  40. Boerwar that’s one extensive post!

    I don’t agree with you that an apology without compensation is meaningless but I support the establishment of compensation funds.

  41. It appears I was wrong. Now Alan Jones is resurrecting the story by interviewing Bolt, Bolt of all people is telling us that Rudd has leaked the story and also it’s not the first time this has happened. These people just don’t give up, they are impossible. Now he (Bolt) is saying all journalists are to blame for a cover up by not asking Rudd about the phone call.
    Rudd is being accused of delusions of grandeur.
    Bolt is adamant that our Kev is not to be trusted and is sooooo arrogant.

  42. One could go on about La Stupenda’s article in this morning’s Herald. But one will list only a few highlights.

    The intro starts thus:

    [As the financial crisis deepens and frozen funds prove troublesome, the ‘R’ word still threatens, Michelle Grattan.]

    Full marks for originality of expression there, and it just gets worse. Interest rates are tipped to fall on Melbourne Cup Day, but punters will be asking themselves:

    […that’s good if it’s right. But will I keep my job? Because when things get really tough, for quite a lot of people loss of employment becomes more of a threat to the mortgage than the level of interest rates.

    Australia’s economic debate is now whether we can do what many countries have not been able to – avoid recession.]

    “Many countries”? Let’s turn down the hyperbole and make that “some”. We wouldn’t want to spread doom and gloom, Michelle. And these snippets:

    [The Government is deeply worried…… NSW “had a shocking month”,….. As the economic crisis deepens worldwide…. the state of the much-diminished surplus…. whether the budget is likely to go into the red in 2009-10….. The Government is spending half this financial year’s surplus on its cash-splash….. It will be a moment of truth for the Government….. Rudd is desperate to keep “ahead of the curve”…..The mortgage fund crisis has turned into a nightmare for the Government….. it struggled with how to find a way to free up the mega-billions frozen in these funds….. arrangements to let people in “hardship” take out money…]

    “Mega billions” “Mega” meaning “million”, that would make “mega billions”, awww, about a thousand trillion dollars. I knew the funds were pretty rich, but not that rich.

    The whole article is a lazy, by-the-numbers, piece of trite doom-saying, par for the course for this old boiler, well past here prime. I honestly don’t know why some here regrad her pieces as good journalism. A school-kid in a Year 7 composition class could do better. This article tells us nothing new, and does that poorly.

    But after spreading all this misery, Michelle tells us what she thinks is the problem:

    [There’s the trouble. Confidence is the elusive medicine that’s desperately needed. But with so much gloom pouring in from overseas, it is hard to see confidence being buoyed in Australia, whatever the Government says and does.]

    Gloom? From Overseas? Try a little closer to home, old girl.

  43. GP – why is it obscene on one hand for students to pay for services they might not use but OK for the taxpayer to fund an elite musical school for musicians most taxpayers wouldn’t pay to hear play?

    Rock musicians don’t seem to need government handouts, so why are classical musicians different?

    If classical music is worth listening to and developing, then its supporters will fund it themselves.

    Old forms of art shouldn’t be propped up in the name of sentiment. We don’t fund people to paint in the Classical style for the sake of it – we recognise that art hs moved on. Music has too.

  46. The new government plan is not CSU but it’s stupid.

    Universities will be able to force students to pay $250 to run services like clubs, student papers, sports etc. but instead of that being run by the democratically elected union, it will be run by the bureaucrats in the chancellery.

  48. The Bush beat up is part o0f an ongoing campaign to try and tie the worst of Howard and co characteristics to Rudd.

    The so-called phone call mirrors the Costello disclosure of his private conversation with Greenspan. Costello denied he had disclosed any information which prompted about a dozen journos to play the tape back of him disclosing the info he said he never had.

    The petrol and grocery prices so called promises mirrors Howards litany of broken promises.

    The Heiner incident tries to mirror Howards failings, his close friendship with Pell and Hollingsworth, his blanket pardon for any past wrongs and any implied cover up.

    The campaign for an increase in the pension is to paint Rudd as mean spirited for denying any increase. Howard was famously portrayed as mean spirited by his own.

    The butler story is to paint him as out of touch, as Howard was accused of.

    Rudd as a control freak mirrors Howard as not listening to other opinions and making all decisions.

    Rudd rushing into decisions without planning mirrors Howards unplanned and uncosted NT intervention and the Murray water rescue.

    Next cab off the rank will be tying the infrastructure rebuilding program to Howards regional rorts.

    And I expect there will be some sort of whispering campaign for a Pru parallel.

  49. [Apart from the fact that most student unions are useless.]

    I would suggest that has more to do with them being factional playgrounds for the ALP than any problem with having democratic, student run organisations.

  50. Oz 296

    Yes that is a dumb government decision – univesity administrations are the last people you would give the student money too. Most are the last refuges of 90s style management control freaks who have mostly been booted out of private and public service organisations. In my experience most are appallingly unaccountable and often inefficient. I don’t know an Australian academic who doesn’t despair of their own adminstrators (high level – this is not a rant against those doing the support jobs). At Adelaide Uni the administrators outnumber the academic staff, yet whenever there is a funding shortage (i.e. every year) the talk is always of what lecturing positions to cut. They even sent a directive around that lecturers had to refer to adminstration as the “professional staff” not administrators or support!! (talk about insecurity).

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