Newspoll: 58-42

The Australian reports Labor’s lead in the latest fortnightly Newspoll is up from 56-44 to 58-42. Kevin Rudd’s preferred prime minister rating is up two points to 67 per cent, and Malcolm Turnbull’s is down two to 18 per cent. More to follow.

UPDATE: Graphic here. Rudd has exchanged five points of disapproval (down to 21 per cent) for five of approval (up to 68 per cent), while Turnbull’s disapproval exceeds his approval for the first time (42 per cent to 39 per cent). Also featured are questions on foreign ownership of Australian mineral companies (it’s bad).

Elsewhere:

• The weekly Essential Research survey has Labor’s lead steady at 63-37. The other questions relate to Australia’s international relations, in particular Kevin Rudd’s handling thereof (67 per cent approve), the state of our relations with China and the United States, and the countries respondents feel “are most like Australians in their attitudes and the way they see the world”.

• Perth’s ABC TV news yesterday reported that litigious Queensland mining billionaire Clive Palmer plans to bankroll a campaign by the WA Nationals to win a Senate seat at the next federal election – something they haven’t succeeded in doing since 1975. No word on who the candidate might be. Former Deputy Premier Hendy Cowan didn’t have any luck in 2001, but he did have Graeme Campbell/One Nation to contend with on that occasion. Their subsequent efforts have been half-hearted.

• The ABC reports the WA Nationals are insisting on a precisely fixed date for the state’s elections, contrary to Premier Colin Barnett’s policy of allowing flexibility in the timing of elections in February or March “in case of natural disasters”.

• In yet more Western Australian news, Antony Green has a page up on the state’s May 16 daylight savings referendum. The Poll Bludger’s page on the concurrent Fremantle by-election is in business here.

• The Victorian Parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee will conduct an inquiry into whether the Electoral Act should be amended to expand the scope of the provision prohibiting misleading electoral material. At present this refers expressly to material “likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of the vote”, and is thus narrowly concerned with matters such as how-to-vote cards that deceive voters into backing the wrong party. The Victorian Electoral Commission rejected a complaint from independent Kororoit by-election candidate Les Twentyman about a Labor pamphlet stating that “a vote for Les Twentyman is a vote for the Liberals”, but its report on the by-election suggested parliament consider addressing “an undesirable trend for candidates to take advantage or build on community misunderstandings of preferential voting with confusing statements”.

• Ben Raue at the Tally Room has started an election wiki.

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.

1,460 comments on “Newspoll: 58-42”

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  1. I know others have already commented on Robert Mayne’s article in The Australian today, it’s about time that The Australian was counterbalanced with more commentators from the centre of politics.

    love this bit – ” For the IPA, Henry Ergas published a critical account of the Rudd essay while mentioning the central issue – the derivatives explosion – only in passing. Nor has any plausible alternative account of the global financial crisis so far been published by any member of the Australian Right.

    The attack on Rudd has been relentless. This newspaper, for example, has published 44 articles revealing hostility towards The Monthly essay and one that is broadly supportive. Why is all this worth saying?

    Albrechtsen’s present obsessive and ill-tempered attack on Rudd is very revealing”

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25299902-7583,00.html

    This broadband infrastructure should have been built years ago. Howard was lazy and old fashioned when it came to infrastructure building or even maintenance. I glad the government are taking the initiative and building it themselves. This will be a win win for government investment and private investors. Everybody wants faster broadband, I hope the pricing will come down, like it is overseas.

  2. Yo ho ho,

    [
    all this cheerleading for Rudd is making me feel a little dirty.
    ]

    ??? who did you vote for in the election?

  3. Having worked on government tender processes, I presume the government (or its commercial adviser) would have built a Public Sector Comparator to determine the cost of the government building the network. They would have done this before the tenders went out.

    I presume that the government has evaluated the cost of each of the proposals and found that the PSC is cheaper than the lot of them…

  5. [??? who did you vote for in the election?]

    To be honest, I voted green. Not because I associate with them, but because I’m probably a little more ‘left’ than the ALP.

    [You must be new here…]

    Not new, just a little more discerning than your average bludger….

  6. Recall the government never actually had a tender process. It simply issued a request for proposal for a network that achieved it’s election promise of 12mbit/s to 98% of the population using FTTN.

    I find it a bit strange that they’re saying “None of the proposals we received did 100mbit FTTH cheap enough” considering none of them did 100mbit FTTH at all.

    Building the network won’t be a big difficulty, it will be what happens after. The government’s planning to sell it off, which it did with Telstra, which was a stupid move. It would be slightly less stupid if they made sure the network was separated from any retail business and open access.

  7. Swing Lowe

    Exactly right about the PSC. The trouble is in the past, if you assumed a convenient discount rate and/or financial risk assumption, you could manipulate the answer very easily.

  8. Well they’re looking at regulatory reform, goodo.

    http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_business/funding_programs__and__support/national_broadband_network/regulatory_reform_for_21st_century_broadband

    The other (big) issue with broadband in Australia is the cost of sending/receiving international data, which is like 99% of the data we access. This translates into relatively high costs per GB. If you take an average 10gb a month plan, on 100mbps you’ll eat through that in 16 minutes.

  9. Socrates,

    From my knowledge, the Department of Finance insists that other Departments use a 10% discount rate. I don’t know why they use it – it just seems to be an arbitrary number they’ve picked from the sky (although I’m sure they can justify it in some way…)

  10. Oz 154,

    Far from it …… I know @ Glen, GP and the obvious ones. And you know what side of the fence I fall on I think. Don’t think you or I know e v e r y o n e. Any comment of the nature of that one that I commented on is enough to make me say “hmm, probably didn’t vote Labor (but I don’t have enough other information to decide where to place this bloke on the political spectrum)”

    I’ve been around since early to mid 2007. Think a little bit before you hit the “post” button.

  11. Swing Lowe

    Discount rates are based on estimates of long term real interest rates. In the past I have seen rates varying from 4% to 12.5% used. Testing a range of rates of 6%, 8% and 10% used to be common. The higher the rate used, the greater the bias to short term benefits.

  12. Yo ho ho,

    [
    Not new, just a little more discerning than your average bludger….
    ]

    Thanks mate 🙂 …… you took my comment how it was intended, I just wanted information 😉 …. Cheers 🙂

  14. I think it’s fair to call this blog “Labor-friendly”.

    The fact that the Oz has already labelled us as this should not detract from its appropriateness.

  15. Re the earlier discussion: I’m sure economic historians have been wondering how to approach the “Hitler question” ever since the GFC broke. Because it is an undeniable fact that Germany, having experienced the deepest plunge into depression of any European country as a result of Bruning’s deflationary policies, made the most rapid recovery of any European country to full employment under Hitler’s regime. Germany had full employment by 1937, while Britain and the US still had unemployment rates over 10%. This was because Hitler provided a massive keynesian stimulus, first through “make work” programs like building the autobahns, then and more importantly through his crash re-armament program, coupled with the reintroduction of conscription. The fact that he did these things out of evil motives makes no difference to that fact. Keynesian stimulus works – whether the stimulus is building school halls or building the Luftwaffe makes no difference. As Keynes himself said, paying men to dig holes then fill them in again would have the same effect. Pointing out this fact does not make one an apologist for Hitler, any more than pointing out that there was no unemployment at all in the USSR in the 1930s, because everyone was working for the state one way or another (even those in labour camps) makes one an apologist for Stalin.

    In this sense we can say that the NBN is the autobahn of the 21st century.

  16. [In this sense we can say that the NBN is the autobahn of the 21st century.]

    Ah, yes – I can see the government using this slogan in its next advertising campaign… 🙂

  17. Like Yo Ho Ho I plead guilty to having a political view slightly to the right of Labor, even though I regard my small-L liberal views as a centrist position. No doubt thats a hanging offence to the extreme right. So I support Labor over Liberal most of the time, although like severl others here I am quite prepared to criticise Labor where I disagree (eg the too weak ETS).

  19. [Like Yo Ho Ho I plead guilty to having a political view slightly to the right of Labor, even though I regard my small-L liberal views as a centrist position. No doubt thats a hanging offence to the extreme right. So I support Labor over Liberal most of the time, although like severl others here I am quite prepared to criticise Labor where I disagree (eg the too weak ETS).]

    And that’s why the coalition is doomed to opposition and why Labor has spent more time federally in power than the coalition since it adopted centrist economic policies. Middle of the road wins.

  20. Adam

    Didn’t Hitler also stop married women from working to become baby-factories for the Party and therefore remove them from the figures of the unemployed?

  21. I agree with GG @ 95. They will dump Turnbull appoint Hockey to reduce the loses. They will lose 10+ seats regardless though. Cossie will go to treasurer. Next term half way through Hockey will step down become deputy and let Cossie take the rains- they will do it ithout a spill thus gaining credibility as a united party- we all love each other etc. Bishop will get a front bench but lose the deputy. Turnbull will get a front bench but then ow out of politics.

  22. Unsurprisingly, industry loves this move.

    What they’re doing is very clever. With FTTN you were pretty much going to hijack the existing network and leave every telco’s existing infrastructure stranded. This way you’re building a completely new network, letting anyone get on board whilst at the same time leaving the existing one untouched.

  24. Just to add to the comments last night about the most marginal seats for both sides (yes, I realise this is somewhat pointless pre-redistribution, but just for the info).

    Liberal Seats:
    McEwen, Bowman 50.0%
    Swan 50.1% *(the WA redistribution has made this a notionally Labor seat at 50.6%)
    Herbert 50.2% LaTrobe 50.5% Macarthur 50.7% Sturt 50.9% Cowper 51.2% Stirling 51.3% Paterson 51.5% Cowan, Hinkler 51.7% Hughes 52.2%

    ALP Seats:
    Robertson (Belinda Neal) 50.1 Flynn, Solomon 50.2 Corangamite 50.9
    Bass 51.0 Hasluck 51.3 Deakin, Bennelong 51.4 Petrie 52.1 Page 52.4

  25. Diogenes, yes. But the female labour force participation was fairly low anyway, so I don’t think that made a huge difference. And yes, before anyone else says so, he also drove about half a million Jews, socialists etc out of their jobs. But they were mainly business and professional people so that in a country of 80 million people it didn’t make much difference to the core problem – unemployed male, blue-collar workers. What solved that problem was drafting them all into either the army or the munitions factories. In 1933 Germany had no submaries, no tanks and no modern aircraft. Six years later they had enough of all three to launch a world war and nearly win it. These feats of production required massive conscription of labour. All those workers and soldiers were paid, and they spent their incomes on the things they had gone without during the depression – food, clothing, household goods. This in turn stimulated agriculture and domestic consumer production, so that by 1939 there was too much money chasing too few goods. In 1938 Germany had the highest standard of living of any major European country. After that it began to decline again, because consumer production was choked off and rationing introduced to devote all resources to armaments.

  27. [ALP Seats:
    Robertson (Belinda Neal) 50.1 Flynn, Solomon 50.2 Corangamite 50.9
    Bass 51.0 Hasluck 51.3 Deakin, Bennelong 51.4 Petrie 52.1 Page 52.4]

    of those 10 I think at least half (if not 7-8) will go to the Liberals

    [Liberal Seats:
    McEwen, Bowman 50.0%
    Swan 50.1% *(the WA redistribution has made this a notionally Labor seat at 50.6%)
    Herbert 50.2% LaTrobe 50.5% Macarthur 50.7% Sturt 50.9% Cowper 51.2% Stirling 51.3% Paterson 51.5% Cowan, Hinkler 51.7% Hughes 52.2%]

    of those 13 seats , I think Labor will only pick up 3

  28. Centaur009,

    If the swing to the ALP is big enough, Labor will hold Robertson. While Neal isn’t the greatest MP, Robertson is a much more naturally Labor area than (say) Dawson, where Bidgood could be under a much greater threat, particularly if Barnaby Joyce decides he wants to move to the Lower House.

  29. Centaur and Gus,

    I think the NSW redistribution will have a big impact on Macarthur and Hughes particularly, as this area of South-West Sydney is (I think) most likely to get ripped up and re-drawn.

  31. DaveM,

    Actually, the most under-quota seat in NSW is Lowe. So it’s the most likely to get ripped up or shifted.

    Of course, this will almost certainly flow through to Macarthur and Hughes. One would expect Hughes to get more Labor-friendly (there are Labor areas to the North, West and South of it), while Macarthur is likely to get more Liberal-friendly (if it expands to the South or West).

  32. Right you are, SL.

    A few years on, it appears the same regions will be the interesting ones: Western Sydney, the Central Coast, the Gold Coast/Brisbane corridor.

  33. [A few years on, it appears the same regions will be the interesting ones: Western Sydney, the Central Coast, the Gold Coast/Brisbane corridor.]

    Euphemistically “howards battlers”

    NB: A very fickle bunch who can turn on a 5c piece

  34. Surely they would consider a new candidate in Robertson? Putting the scandals aside, what hs Neal actually done in Canberra? A cleanskin candidate would at east signal to the electorate that Labor didn’t take them for granted. I think there is a job entitlement mentality in the Labor machine that has to be quashed, whether you are in the NSW Right faction or not. Taxpayers don’t owe you a job for life. If you chose a political career you take the risk if you fail to behave appropriately. Mike Kaiser was another case in point.

  35. Hi Adam,

    Re: #175

    Where did Hitler get the money to finance the Keynsian project of putting the masses to armament manufacture? Did he borrow it, print it, or was it in reserve from the 1920s boom?

  36. This is a very interesting moe in the US by Obama – taking on the efence industry establishment!
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/07/2536802.htm

    Good luck to him. It is time someone admitted that the biggest cause of global arms races is the United States. Their navy is particularly excessive – they have kept building new nuclear powered aircraft carriers even since the cold war ended. Who on earth will they fight? They must have more than the rest of the world combined.

  37. Disendorsing Neal will be a lot harder than it would be for other candidate (for obvious reasons). There would have to be a major factional deal to pull it off (such as ensuring that the seat lost in NSW was held by the NSW Left).

  38. Soc
    whilst both 184 and 186 were revealing perhaps what you left out has made it more appealing

    [A cleanskin candidate would at east signal ]

    [This is a very interesting moe in the US by Obama – taking on the efence industry ]

    🙂

  39. [Disendorsing Neal will be a lot harder than it would be for other candidate (for obvious reasons).]

    Like the fact that her husband is a major powerbroker in the NSW right?

    Yes, it won’t be easy at all to disendorse her.

  40. Adam 175

    I’m no expert on this topic but I thought the Nazis fist got the German economy going agina by public works spending and then switched more to armaments later. In fact, I recall reading that Hitlerr actualy started the war too early, and Speer was gearing the economy up for full war production around 1941/42.

    Either way, Schacht borrowed a lot to finance it, and paid back the Versailles debt with now devalued script. They put in price controls to stop inflation (so much for free markets always being the solution!)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany

  42. Socrates, a combination of borrowing, compulsory savings and cutting off imports. Hitler neither knew nor cared much about finance, he just told Hjalmar Schacht to pay for it somehow in the short term, because once he had conquered Europe all economic problems could be solved. That’s why he had to go to war when he did, because Germany’s financial position was unsustainable, which was why Schacht resigned as President of the Reichbank in 1939. That of course is why the exact path followed by Hitler (or Stalin for that matter) is not really the point – no-one is suggesting copying either of their methods. The point is that keynesian stimulus works, no matter who applies it or what they apply it to, or how they finance it.

  43. [Typing was never my forte Gus ]

    In no way am I being critical, just having fun at the “hidden meanings”

    ps I luv the [efence industry] – sorta like the effluent that cause offence

  44. Adam 192

    Agreed. The policy position is very obvious – be a Keynesian when times are bad, then be a fiscal conservative and pay it back with surpluses when times are good. You’d think the Liberals would get it after 75 years.

  46. [Key facts of national broadband network:

    – Government rejects five private sector bidders.
    – Government to establish private company to build network over seven to eight years.
    – Private sector investment in new company capped at 49 per cent.
    – Government to sell its holding in the new company within five years of network being operational.
    – The company to invest $43 billion in the single largest national infrastructure project in Australian history.
    – Network will connect 90 per cent of homes, schools and workplaces with optical fibre broadband services at speeds up to 100 megabits per second, 100 times faster than now.
    – All others to be connected via wireless and satellite technologies offering speeds of 12 megabits per second.
    – Government investment of $4.7 billion to be funded through Building Australia Fund.
    – Government will launch implementation study with rollout planned for early 2010.]

    http://business.smh.com.au/business/broadband-facts-20090407-9vae.html

    This is HUGE, politically, technically and business-wise. More later. Adios Telstra, adios Amigos. Adios last mile copper. Adios Malcolm.

  48. Swing Lowe
    I have never understood why Dawson is supposed to be such bad territorty for Labor. I know state levels are not the best indication of intentions but Labor has never lost Mackay i believe. They still hold Witsunday in their 5th term. Bunerkins margin for the LNP isn’t that big. Bidgood may a little weird but is that enough?

  49. [This is HUGE, politically, technically and business-wise. More later. Adios Telstra, adios Amigos. Adios last mile copper. Adios Malcolm.]

    Finns

    Malcolm will spin it that now Rudd can get his orders that much faster from his masters in China.

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