Essential Research: 59-41

The first poll of the year comes from Essential Research, and it shows Labor’s two party lead up from 58-42 in mid-December to 59-41. Also featured: leadership approval (Rudd steady since late October, Turnbull up five points), economic expectations, ranking of issue importance and the conflict in Gaza.

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.

397 comments on “Essential Research: 59-41”

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  1. Howies gone,
    and the polls are full of bullbutter,
    Joyce is making a play
    and Talcum seems irrelevant

    Labortime and the feeling is easy
    (to the tune of “summertime”)

    Glen
    I feel your pain 🙂

  2. Enemy Marsupial

    hav you any more up to date Essential polls than th 1950’s
    .

    vera
    Posted Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 12:58 pm | Permalink

    “G’day Ron
    think we’ll stick with clueless”

    As usual vera you ar right , and watchg this new tech skill from you link thanks 🙂

  3. Finns i am happy to live with some shame…but i still dislike Essential Research…

    Oh and Gus Howie is and forever shall be known as a better PM than Whitlam and he has to go at number 3…..

    Menzies
    Curtin
    Howard
    Lyons
    Hawke
    Chifley
    Fraser
    Gorton
    McMahon
    Keating

    ect…

    Whitlam was a dud of a politicians and a PM…yes he did make some good reforms but he couldnt manage government and he couldnt manage his own Party infact Whitlam would be known as one of the worst ALP PMs had it not been for Kerr…

  4. Glen surely even you dont believe your own bull butter spin. I just wonder what it will take for you and your fellow tories to start believing opinion polls?? Rudd’s re-election for a second term, a third term??? Surely you can hide your head in the sand for only so long.. what is it.. 2 1/2 years now of consistently bad polls. Pretending the polls are wrong wont get you back into power, which suits me fine.

  5. Surely Keating and his deregulation of the economy in the early 1990s has to make himself rank higher than both Gorton and McMahon – both of whom did practically nothing in their terms…

  6. Perhaps SL but

    Keating did that as Treasurer he did bugger all except Superannuation…and the damage he did to the economy was more than enough to put him way down the list…

    The polls arent wrong Andrew we are not popular atm but we arent that unpopular…

  7. [Keating did that as Treasurer he did bugger all except Superannuation…]

    I dont understand why people continually forget that Keating actually implemented in 1993 what was at the time the largest industrial relations reform package in Australian history and which laid the foundation for wage rises to move with productivity growth ever since.

    Where do we all think enterprise bargaining came from?

  10. If it weren’t for Whitlam we’d have godawful health and education. People complain now, try the American system.

    Thank god for Whitlam.

  11. [He sold those off because he was running budget deficits…]

    AH!

    So it’s bad when Labor does it, but good when the Liberals do it?

    Quick question – Do you think Howard could have gotten surplus’ without selling off public assets? Bear in mind that these surplus’ were in the single and double digits and some of the asset sales were in the triple digits.

  12. Glen you know it is deceit to blame unemployment on the government in a market controlled economy, especially since Keating’s IR reforms.

    It continues to surprise me that it is the Liberals that blame unemployment on the government when it is Liberals who proclaim to know more about the economy and how it works. Can’t have it both ways you know.

    😀

  13. We were selling them in principle not for a cash grab Oz…

    Possibly but who knows Labor left an initial 10b budget deficit not to mention net debt so it was lucky we had surplus’s at all…

    It is not deciet when Labor didnt change anything until the 1993 reforms…they had power to make the market employ more people but this took them 10 years to do!

    I know Governments dont create jobs but they can creat the market environment in which unemployment can be reduced.

  15. That list is not genuine…after all where is Joe Lyons??? The guy won 3 elections during the 30s and was a very popular PM and yet supposedly McMahon is better than someone who brought us out of the great depression…

  17. [We were selling them in principle not for a cash grab Oz…]

    Privatising Tesltra “as is” for no other reason than the “principle” of it makes that catastrophe even worse (if something can possibly be worse than the most negligent, incompetent, productivity and growth destroying piece of arsehattery in any western nation in 30 years and the most perverse privatisation in history)

    So what you’re really telling us Glen is that Howard screwed up Australian telecommunications for 2 decades because of the principle of the matter?

    He didn’t separate the infrastructure from the retail components in the privatisation and left us with an uncontrollable, price gouging, productivity destroying monopolist not simply to get the cash premium of selling a monopoly, but Howard actually did it purely on principle?

    Christ – that makes Howard an even bigger tool than my already dismally low opinion of the little vandal.

  18. [Keating did that as Treasurer he did bugger all except Superannuation]

    Not to mention the musical!!!! PJK, a great composer as well as a great manager of the Ramrods!!!!

  19. [We were selling them in principle not for a cash grab Oz…]

    A candid admission, well done. Nothing to do about service delivery or balancing the budget or about what’s best for Australians. No, much of the country was sold down the river because the Liberals felt icky about all Australians owning and running critical services.

  20. I hardly think owning Qanatas and the Commonwealth Bank are critical services…

    Having a Government owned telecommunications monopoly isnt good for anybody Oz just so you know.

    PJK didnt win the Presidential Medal of Freedom lol!

    Also PJK did lose big time to Howie so that is quite a bit of shame Keating has had to burden himself with for all these years especially considering how popular Howard became until his last term…

  21. Rate PM’s from 1940 on how they change australia , not there term or popularity

    1/ CURTIN ………oz “invaded”/threatened , war time great leader
    2/ WHITLAM…… socialy/equity changed oz forever , Medibank , Schools etc
    3/ HAWKE………financial deregulation & Accords (laid base of later 90’s growth
    4/ KEATING…….employemtn part deregulation to some decentralised + net , Supa
    5/ HOWARD..open market deregulation (inequitable & standard for macro settings
    6/ MENZIES..modest , gav stability to countrys institutions postwar , failed oz ww2
    7/ FRASER…….made inflaton/ecom understood by oz , but didn’t follow his words
    8/ CHIFLEY….a “true believer” but PM at wong time , oz suffering war post probs
    9/ GORTON….intent fine , leader , lacked exp and cunning , wasted
    10/HOLT……..well intentioned but soft leader , all th way with LBJ a terrible legacy
    11/ MCMAHON…quite able aminastraor , not qual for PM , too distrustful of own

    RUDD , probably somewhere in 4/ 5/ or 6/ but will need to deliver Schools revolution/IT and/or CC results

  22. Menzies won elections but didn’t do much–I remember 20% inflation and credit squeezes! No 9 on the list. Howard similar but divided the country–and lost own seat! #10

    Whitlam did a lot but only lasted 3 years, won 2 elections. In second five.

    Keating gave us our modern economy but only lasted 1 election as PM–doesn’t rate that high.

    Billy Hughes lasted 8 years as PM, made Aust. an independent nation so has to be in first 10 tho he was a maggot.

    Curtin, WWII PM and stood up to Rooseveld & Churchill together and separately (and the conservative hangers on like Stanley Bruce) and had our diggers from ME sent to Aust to go to Kokoda Track and eventually push Japs out of PNG.

    While Curtin was doing this also steering through a hostile Senate economic reforms (to give birth just after WWII to the RBA) as well as planning the post war migrant intake and projects like the Snowy that employed them and the demobilised returning soldiers.

    No further reforms to our economy untill Treasurer Keating! Imagine that, 1949-83 no reforms made!!!

    howard as Treasurer and PM was dreadful!

  23. As long as the Coalition continue to believe that Howard won elections because he was popular rather than the usual state of affairs in Australian politics for the last 25 years – incumbents win because of a powerful lack of viable alternatives – history (and long term governments) will continue to repeat itself.

  25. “I hardly think owning Qanatas and the Commonwealth Bank are critical services…”

    I dunno about Qantas, but I think recent crises have shown that a state run financial institution is a very good idea. Of course you neglect a swathe of other privatisations including health. Not critical? Can’t imagine what is more critical.

    “Having a Government owned telecommunications monopoly isnt good for anybody Oz just so you know.”

    I think you have zero knowledge of Australian telecommunications and the telecommunications industry in general, so I’m going to call BS on that. First point to make, monopolies are not ideal in most circumstances. There is a need for monopolies in a number of circumstances, particularly in the ownership of fixed line network infrastructure, particularly in a country the size of Australia. It doesn’t make sense for every company to lay it’s own cable down every street and in every town. So the best compromise is a well regulated monopoly on the infrastructure side. The best way to regulate a company to insure that it acts in the best interests of all Australians is for it to be *owned by all Australians*. By selling it, what Howard did was create a private monopoly, with a pathetic regulation framework. That’s even more abhorrent than a public monopoly.

    Comparable countries consistently ranked above Australia in terms of price and speed have structurally separated entities owning the infrastructure. What they don’t have is an enshrined private monopoly thanks to Howard.

  26. One of Whitlam’s great achievements was the Trade Practices Act. This really pissed off the merchant classes.

    Can anyone think of, any major consumer protection reforms, introduced by the Liberal Party?

  30. Ronster

    I notice that George W has come out swinging and lashed the “elites and opiners” who have pointed out that not only did he get everything wRONg, but he was warned by us liberals that he what he was planning to do was wRONg. I seem to recall a few pundits here who were wRONg about Obama vs Billary, who didn’t learn from that and went on to be wRONg about Obama vs McCain. And they even used the phrase “elites” to describe the wRONg positions the liberal progressives took.

    Oh, how sweet a good, long memory is! I’m looking forward to the 20th January for the Change We Can Believe In! 😀

  32. 80 Diog

    And wasn’t that similar to Howard & his ministers lashing the “chattering classes” and “elites” etc.

    To my mind one of the major achievements of the 2020 conference was to say “intelligence, intellect and debate are welcome once again.”

  33. The Whitlam Government (1972-75) introduced the Trade Practices Act and slashed tariffs. It established a comprehensive national health care system with Medibank and opened the door to State-funding for non-Government schools based on need. It brought the vote to 18 year olds, made university education free and replaced adversarial divorce laws. It recognised that national governments have a critical role to play in urban planning, development and renewal. It established diplomatic and trade relations with China and ratified international human rights treaties

    http://www.whitlam.org/whitlam/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=51&Itemid=74

    Confirmed JM ? 🙂

  34. And abolished the iniquitous conscription laws of the previous Liberal Government which sent unprepared, mostly reluctant young Australians (over 500 of them) to die for the glory of the United States of Utopia, and the belligerence of cowardly politicians.

  35. Ruawake…two words sum of Whitlams incompetence.

    Tirath Khemlani

    Also having two senior ministers mislead Parliament doesnt look good either!

    Whitlam also did nothing about the Indonesian Invasion of East Timor…

    Not to mention the high unemployment, inflation and bank interest rates that were common place during his leadership of the Nation…

    Whitlam was saved from being a disgrace by Kerr, without his dismissal Whitlam would be just another failed ALP PM like Keating…

  36. Glen

    Stop re-writing history.

    From Whitlam’s 1972 policy speech.

    “Do you believe that Australia can afford another three years like the last twenty
    months? Are you prepared to maintain at the head of your affairs a coalition which has
    lurched into crisis after crisis, embarrassment piled on embarrassment week after week? Will
    you accept another three years of waiting for next week’s crisis, next week’s blunder? Will
    you again entrust the nation’s economy to the men who deliberately, but needlessly, created
    Australia’s worst unemployment for ten years? Or to the same men who have presided over
    the worst inflation for twenty years?

    http://bancroft.uws.edu.au:20018/cgi-bin/Pdisplay.cgi/TMP.objres.6553.pdf?type=application/pdf&path=/m1/encompass/repowpmdb/clipboard/.outgoing/TMP.objres.6553.pdf&fileaddr=137.154.156.22&fileport=20042

    How many ministers resigned during Howard’s first term?

    I was on the steps of P-House when “nothing can save the GG” was said. Kerr was wrong – legally and ethically (don’t quote Barwick at me).

  37. Jovial, yes Whitlam did reduce tarrifs and made television,whitegoods and cars more accessable and affordable to the public.
    Ron re the PM listing. The best post you have written.

  39. Glen also

    Unemployment under Whitlam was only just surpassed by the Rudd Govt in Feb at 3.9%. 😛

    Unemployment is the same now as when Howie left office.

  41. It was large considering we just about had full employment under Menzies…

    I still contend that Whitlam would be just about one of the worst PMs we have had had it not been for Kerr who made a martyr of him for the Left.

  42. A pendantic point.

    When referring to colour TV in Australia it was agreed to be spelt Color.

    I saw the first thing to be “recorded” in Color, the 1973 Melbourne Cup, although it was broadcast in B&W – the joys of working at a TV station. 🙂

  43. My Best PM list;

    1. Curtin
    2. ?
    3. Keating
    4. Whitlam–introduced TPA & slashed tariffs. won 2 elections, incl a first-ever DD
    5. Billy Hughes, PM 1915-23. Maggot. Made Australia an independent nation (from a quick google)
    6. ?
    7. ?
    8. ?
    9. Menzies
    10. Howard–didn’t do much, divisive, lost his seat in general election

  45. All those superfluous ‘u’s make me sick.

    A corruption of English to frenchify it. Stuff the French!

    Color, flavor, neighbor etc!

    And the season after summer used to be called Fall.

  49. The only thing I will give Howard credit for is the introduction of a Consumption tax -even if he deliberately understated and failed to compensate people for it’s introduction. 🙁

  50. Why when the make lists they have it only for 20th C some people in the 19th C did more than those in the 20th!

    Ruawake what about Gun Laws and cleaning up the Waterfront?

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