Morgan: 58.5-41.5

The latest Roy Morgan face-to-face poll has Labor’s two-party lead up to 58.5-41.5 from 56.5-43.5 a fortnight ago. Labor is up 2.5 per cent on the primary vote to 49 per cent, the Coalition is down 1.5 per cent to 36 per cent and the Greens are steady on 8.5 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.

655 comments on “Morgan: 58.5-41.5”

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  2. GB,

    Good point, and in fact tonight is the first time I’ve posted about phonegate – at all.

    Nevertheless the constant denial by some posters that Rudd is capable of doing wrong does grate a bit, and I just wanted to lend some moral support to ltep in the face of certain others, who believe that by screwing their eyes tightly shut, they can make the obvious go away.

  5. Dyno

    “Why hasn’t he denied having anything to do with it, then?”

    Dyno as i posted a few days ago , because there is an element of truth in it , Mitchel I understand was “in th building” that nite for after dinner drinks

    Typical backgrounding for journos with abit of skiting …th skiting was not clever re Rudd’s “winning” over bush on a G20 vs a G7

    What ADDITIONALY has occurred and been senstionalized is solely th remark..”whats th G20″ It has been denied by Rudd and Bush

    In any event , even a possible Bush “sarcasm” about th G20’s importance vs th G7 in a debate with Rudd can get innoicently or deliberately get lost in “translation” in skitting subsequently over after dinner drinks I suspect IF Bush alluded this way it was a Bush debating point of releative G7/G20 impoortance , rather than bush not knowing what th G20 was

    Its precisely why ANY backgrounding always should be controlled and clinically described to avoid what has been blown up

  9. Seems to me (as someone who didn’t vote for Rudd) that the 1% of the public who care will take the following from this:

    – Bush is an arrogant fool, or a moron, or possibly both
    – Rudd is clever but can be a bit of a smartarse at times
    – The Liberals are so out of touch it’s not funny
    – The press are A grade d1ckheads.

    All conclusions I have some sympathy with.

  12. Dyno

    Agree with 1/ , 3/ and 4/

    With 2/ , it may well be simply a debating matter connotation of similar words spoken , which Rudd and Bush hav corectly called th moronic inference false , and your ‘smartar.se reference may apply to a skitting drinking staffer or over partisan disengenuous 00 journo

  13. Rudd saying that Bush did not know what the G20 was, to make himself look better oppossed to Bush – is too childish.

    I do believe that Bush said it but in his own particular way! I also think Abbott let it slip on Lateline?

    Well that’s my last post on phonegate.

  14. Poor old Bush gets snubbed when he arrives in Australia for APEC (because Howard apparently saw him as an electoral liability and went to a rugby function instead) .. has Osama Bin Laden drive right up to his hotel – and if that wasn’t bad enough he now has the Australian media insisting that he didn’t know what the G20 is.
    George has probably wiped Austria right off his holiday list.

  15. Isn’t the irony of this that most Australians and Americans probably don’t know what the G20 is anyway”

    A start would be accepting there ar 20 reps there

  16. sorry Boerwar, visitors, Lord Downer is off fixing the world problems and inflicting himself on the poor natives of Cypress, poor buggas.

  20. Just who is designing the Murdoch ABC LNP strategy?

    They might be able to attack Rudd with continual misinformation and beat ups like these but unless there is a suitable alternative it won’t matter. And as far as I can see Turnbull isn’t progressing anywhere.

    You would think that if Turnbull was going to make headway it would be in a honeymoon period and in increments thereafter. Cannot see any evidence of that and in fact the evidence seems to be that Turnbull is just confirming type in the public’s eyes and, Rudd seems to be solidifying his position as best choice for PM.

    If we were to ask the public what the Liberal Party and Turnbull stand for or what their position was on major issues they wouldn’t have a clue. They don’t have any policies, platforms or consistent positions. Maybe because they don’t want to come out too soon, they don’t know what their platform is or they are unable to design anything because of the tension between hard right and the others. I am sure they will come out with something eventually but it maybe hamstrung by having to satisfy the wrong parts of the party.

    There is one thing that stands out about the Labor party both before and after the election. Solidarity and relative consistency. The LNP seem to be higgelty piggelty because all they are doing is playing politics. Labor is about governing the country, Turnbull and the LNP are about the search for power.

  24. [The whole subject of the liquidity trap has a sort of Alice-through-the-looking-glass quality. Virtues like saving, or a central bank known to be strongly committed to price stability, become vices; to get out of the trap a country must loosen its belt, persuade its citizens to forget about the future, and convince the private sector that the government and central bank aren’t as serious and austere as they seem. ]
    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/macro-policy-in-a-liquidity-trap-wonkish/#more-1037

  25. Abbott thinks they are still sleep walking.

    It is amazing that Abbott and Co still cannot fathom why they got dumped. They think they have been charmed out of office by a smooth Rudd.

    They ignore the fact that people wont swap sides unless the side they are on is uncomfortable. Fear of change I believe is a greater force and needs some sort of dissatisfaction to get someone to change their minds. That fear was calmed a little by a buoyant economy and Rudd looking like a safe pair of hands, but there still needed to be a reason to change.

    Why did people change in such large numbers if they were feeling safe and comfortable with their life? This is what Abbott and Co refuse to look at or don’t want to look at, they feel that the denial position of ‘we were a good government’ is the better position.

    They were not a good government. They were a nasty government that people endured because irrational fears and because of the economy and the possibility that it actually might be the government that was responsible for it. But it became obvious that the booming economy was not the result of government action but the global economy and more particularly the resources boom. The rise of interest rates people probably didn’t blame Howard too much for but it did demonstrate that nobody was really in control of the economy. Rudd showing himself to be safe pair of hands meant that people need not worry too much about the economy.

    This let Rudd campaign in areas that Howard had totally neglected for ages. Health, Education, Infrastructure, kitchen table economics, housing affordability also Iraq and Howard’s close association with Bush. Not to mention those things the public had hitherto endured – Iraq, AWB, Ethanol, Fear campaigns and so forth. And the last straw that made it all inevitable – Workchoices.

    Abbott should realise that once the smoke and mirrors of the economy was revealed they were seen to have no clothes and in fact were a fairly distasteful bunch. Abbott and CO should also realise that like the USA, Australians have probably moved a reasonable amount to the left, especially in response to the GFC which many would blame right wing politics for.

    Nobody is sleepwalking Mr Abbott except you, Minchin and Bishop and Howard.

  26. Garry Bruce #517 , think you rolled over tooo easily to Dyno’s 4 My #512 gav Dyno Ko’s on 3 points and a more likely scenario on his point 2/ , seeing I only buy an element of truth in 00 story and not th whole hoax , and voters don’t care anyway

    Thomas Paine #512 , give credit where its due , Howard did not leave a econamy basket case otherwise th GFC would see us blown over Similar point on Rudds win , it was only a margin of 2.7% for a theory draw and W/C and Steven’s Sept/October interst rises may hav been all th differnce

  27. Gusface @408:

    [William
    any response to your call for RWB debate on this site.]

    No, but that’s hardly a surprise. If such a person is to go toe to toe with Adam, they will need some sort of professional connection with what goes on in parliament, and to my knowledge we don’t have anybody who fits the bill.

  28. Just when you think that the shenanigans of the NSW Government could not get more disturbingly ridiculous, Nathan Rees pulls a rabbit out of his hat:

    Illegal brothel operates above Premier’s office

    [AN ILLEGAL brothel is operating in rooms above Premier Nathan Rees’s Sydney electorate office.

    When Mr Rees moved his electorate office to Best Road, Seven Hills, on September 5, he moved below the Tiantian Chinese Massage Shop.

    The business describes itself as a therapeutic massage centre but when The Sun-Herald visited twice last week it was offered sexual services starting at $20.

    Two of the parlour’s clients confirmed they had sex above Mr Rees’s office for $50.]

    http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rees-below-a-brothel/2008/11/15/1226318995677.html

  30. Thomas Paine @ 525

    Abbott is a bit thick, so I wouldn’t be too concerned about what he says, which is generally far too much for the good of his party. I wouldn’t be too concerned about what he thinks, which is generally not too good for his party either, because what he thinks keeps escaping through his mouth. He still thinks that the best one word description of Howard is ‘magnificent’. LOL.

    The Liberals got pretty used to not being allowed to think when Howard was around, and it looks like Turnbull has backed his colleagues into a similar corner.

    What would interest me very much is whether Abbott is an outlier, or whether he is close to the heart of where the Liberal Party Room is at right now.

  31. Vera @ 402

    Sarkosy can more or less say what he likes about Bush because the french electorate hates Bush with a passion. More than 90% of them supported Obama’s candidature. Every time S gets stuck into Bush the french journos enjoy it. They will never forgive what the US did in mocking the french war record when France opposed the Iraq war.
    On Georgia, Bush bumbled terribly, as per usual. Sarkosy helped the Russians solidify what they wanted. Double negative for the west. The fact that Sarkosy is prepared to brag about it makes it all the more disturbing. But he will not get any curry from journos in France for taking it up to Bush – even if they should be saying, hey, wait a minute…

  32. Judith 472,

    The aliens wouldn’t take Michin and Downer back. They’ve morphed into something unrecognizable from their original form 😀

  33. Just noticing this “Bush shuns Rudd” business…

    The OO’s article yesterday said “It was our story and you’re all jealous… and you stuffed it up to boot,” to the rest of the media.

    Meanwhile the public shows a monumental indifference to the Phonegate story by kicking the poll numbers up to a new level.

    Several of the non-News commentators are starting to say, “Hey, wait a minute, this nothing story could do some damage to our economic prospects, and perhaps even at the G20.”

    Now we have second stringers writing up an indifferent handshake as if it’s battleships in an artillery duel.

    I detect an element of sheer bloody-mindedness here. It appears that some are determined to press the cultural cringe (whereby if even a lame duck President is curt to us we have to grovel) for all it’s worth. And the handshake story doesn’t need Chris Mitchell to give it the OK. It’s their own story now. Fifteen seconds of video is enough in this hothouse atmosphere of media wars to keep the story alive and take it to the next level.

  35. Juliem, the aliens dont want those two and even the weirdest of us croweaters have got over them so i guess their race has run, now if only my fellow citizens can bypass Christopher Whine! against all odds i still have faith in my compatriots.

  36. BB, I don’t think you are taking the phone thing seriously enough. Bush went to war in Iraq for even less reason than a leaked telephone call, so Australians can thank their lucky stars that he hasn’t got time to mount an invasion of Australia. As for the OO virtually daring Bush to invade Australia with its provocative, in depth, investigative journalism, how unpatriotic can they be?
    It is good that the MSM and its scatterbrained, celebrity-paradigmed, wannabes focus on really important things. Otherwise they would have to think about silly little things like job disappearing, companies folding, factories closing, ships swinging at anchor, and cranes hanging motionless against city skylines.
    But really, getting some proportion into things, and if I have my sums right, which does not always happen, and happy to be corrected: the G20 represents about 85% of the world’s GDP. Australia represents a bit over 1%. That is how important Australia is. That is how important Rudd is. Not. No-one much on the other side of the girt by sea bit actually gives much of a stuff about anything that happens in Australia.
    In the scale of things, Australia is worth a polite, quick handshake, nothing more, nothing less. The POTUS wanted the G20 rather than the G7 so that the US could head off the EU’s attempt to reset Bretton Woods. This will happen eventually, but the US would like to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. Having lots of G20 bit players like Rudd hanging around a G20 meeting will help ensure that there will be no major focus on Bretton Woods. Phone call, schmone call.

  37. Sorry if I’m ruining anyone’s Sunday morning, but Pies is on about the “Heiner Affair again in the sunday Telegraph.

    Now he says that Michael Jeffries (ex. GG) while in office requested Rudd to set up an investigation in the HA, and that Rudd – in a clear and contemptuous breach of protocol – ignored the GG’s “advice”. Pies’ source on matters of protocol is none other than Sir David Smith, the rat who read out the proclamation appointing Fraser as PM on the steps of Parliament House when Whitlam was sacked. “In his first public statement on the matter, ” (there may be more???). The Queen also got a copy of the “advice”. Smith has said Rudd’s action (or actually, inaction) was “a gross dereliction of duty on the part of a responsible government”. Well, a Labor PM will take a lot of notice of Sir David Smith, has-been equerry to John Kerr. I’m sure of that.

    Pies also has Quentin Bryce in on the conspiracy because she sacked the toady who looked after Jeffries ties and underpants, in favour of a toady of her own choosing.

    Gotta give the Fat Man credit: he doesn’t let go. Once again Pies’ theme emerges: you just can’t trust the Labor types – “oafs” and “barbarians” from a recent column of his – to not try to steal the silverware. Now they’ve insulted the Queen. Where will it end?

    http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24656295-5001031,00.html

  39. The peculiar thing about this story, and maybe I’ve got things back to front, but doesn’t the GG act on the advice of the Parliament, or the Government, or something? Since when did PMs have to act on GG’s advices?

  40. I just threw up watching Insiders.

    Barry, Fran Kelly, George Megalogenis and Malcolm Farr…

    All stepping over each other to describe the enormous ramifications of George Bush apparently throwing a little tantrum at Rudd.

  41. It’s the Cultural Cringe, Bunyip journalism. The same bunch of tossers were telling us a couple of months ago that Rudd was wasting too much time on overseas trips. They’ll do anything to put him down. They grudgingly admit this trip is necessary, so they try to ruin the basis of it: it won’t work because Rudd got the freeze-out from Bush.

    They are so damn parochial.

  42. Ah Tanner, good on you.

    Shut down the issue and hammered John Howard and the Libs regarding the REAL US PRESIDENT who people ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT.

    Not a lame duck dropkick who’s leaving in a few weeks.

  43. Laurie Oakes interviewing Julie Bishop on ch9, Julie started on about phonegate and Laurie used it to nail her to the wall about Howard’s comments on Obama, she wouldnt repudiate them but did a lot of skirting around and fancy footwork to try and get out of it, Laurie pointed out just how bad it would be if Howard was in power now, she claimed it wasnt so bad because Obama wasnt the presidential nominee when the remarks were made, Laurie then went on about her own credibility and Shanahans article about her, she tried to deflect it with a remark about Rudd’s credability– it didnt work, Laurie was very polite but didnt let her get away with anything.

  44. If Fran Kelly’s plonking condescension re. that handshake is anything to go by, expect her interviews with Howard tomorrow night to be fluff-ball underarms.

    The sight of these nobodies determining the proper diplomatic protocols and setting themselves up as expert body-language commentators – and not commenting on the G20 (as if it’s the world leaders’ meeting that’s the sideshow) – is truly nausea-inducing.

    As I said above, there has been so much condemnation of the journalistic response to this nothing issue, that I believe they’ve got on their high-horses and are determined to keep it going, out of spite, if for no other reason.

    Fran Kelly used to be feisty in her early years on ABC Radio. But now she’s “come out” she seems to have become as matronly as her confidant, La Stupenda.

  45. Apparently Fran Kelly rubs shoulders with the giants of industry.

    It’s a bit sad seeing second rate journo’s like Fran Kelly pretending their economic experts and telling the government what they should do.

  46. Oh for gods sake.

    Now they’re showing a handshake Bush gave Rudd not so long ago, after his press confidence. and he was all smiles and pats on the back.

    I wonder what that means, you hacks.

  47. thanks for the link BB but i think i’ll give it a miss, every time i visit the cane toad or his pal Bolt i feel as if i need a good hot bath and scrub, we’re trying to save water here so i’ve decided to do my duty by the state and avoid a second bath this norning.

  49. Can’t believe (well yes I can) how long insiders went on about the Rudd-Bush handshake… only to then right at the end, show a shot of the second handshake between the two with both leaders beaming (of course Fran Kelly pipes up – “the point had been made”).

    Serioulsy does Kelly even watch parliament? She claimed Rudd was miffed “his old mate from Sunrise” Hockey had a go at him with the “war on everything” question. Ignored that Rudd even found the funny side to it, and also ignored that Rudd has killed Hockey all year (it certainly wasn’t the first time Joe has “had a go” at Rudd).

    It was the first time Joe had landed a punch; mostly Rudd loves Hockey’s questions – I think he just feels comfortable going against the guy.

    They usually show clips from Sunday or Meet the Press… interesting that they didn’t bother showing Julie Bishop avoid saying anything about Howard/Obama.

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