Newspoll: 53-47

The latest fortnightly Newspoll has given the Coalition its best result since the election of the Rudd government, with Labor’s lead at 53-47 – its narrowest since the 52-48 election eve survey, and essentially the same as the actual 52.7-48.3 result. Labor’s primary vote is down two points to 41 per cent, the equal worst result since Kevin Rudd became leader (the other occasion being October last year, shortly after Malcolm Turnbull assumed the Liberal leadership) and solidly below the 43.3 per cent election result. The Coalition primary vote is 40 per cent, the first time this figure has had a four in front of it since the election.

A somewhat different story from Essential Research, which for the second week in a row finds Labor gaining a point on two-party preferred, their lead now at 57-43. Also featured: perceptions of the government’s handling of the financial crisis (good), expectations of Australia’s economic performance over the coming year (mixed but somewhat optimistic), reaction to Joel Fitzgibbon’s resignation (muted), whether the Greens should support the emissions trading scheme legislation (yes, sort of), whether unions should campaign for more industrial relations reforms (ditto), and whether the government is doing enough to support working people (lineball).

UPDATE: Newspoll graphic here. Explanations for Labor’s decline evidently can’t be laid at the feet of the Prime Minister, who has gained two points on approval (58 per cent) and dropped two on disapproval (31 per cent). Interestingly, Malcolm Turnbull’s ratings have continued to rebound: his approval is up a handsome four points to 44 per cent while his disapproval is down three to 37 per cent, his best set of figures since early February. Preferred leader is basically unchanged with Rudd on 57 per cent and Turnbull on 25 per cent (up one).

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.

3,568 thoughts on “Newspoll: 53-47”

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  3. In case you need a quick refresher on the near-universal perceptions of car-salesmen integrity please see the following link:

    Around the same mark as Journalists 🙂

  4. Glen what is the point of trying to protect a seriously trouble Liberal Party now? The best thing that could happen to them and maybe the only way they will become an ‘honest’ party about policy and helping the people, is if they get a severe spanking and clearing out.

    Really you should be hoping for Turnbull to get his bottom spanked and the whole lot of them to learn some lessons. The days of Howard tactics are gone.

  8. wow Onselen filed it Friday evening. Way to keep up with events Sunday Times

    No doubt written post Senate Inquiry, but prior to Saturday’s turn of events and with no opportunity by Van Onsolen to update it.

  13. Ahh,

    It seems it is not liking Sat u r day (the words with spaces), possibly due to that four letter word being also used as an insult.

  15. One interesting thing that Van Onselen said was this.

    Also, the alleged email between Charlton and Grech called for action on behalf of the Prime Minister. Grech claims he didn’t follow up the email, or even reply to it. That seems unlikely. If a prime minister asks an official to jump, they usually ask “How high?”

    Further evidence that the e-mail is fake and he is surely convinced, being a Lib and all!

  16. Thomas Paine
    The Govt can make reference to a pattern of Liberal Party behavior across the country on using faked documents.

    …

    Put it all together it is a very damning picture of the whole Liberal Party and their base tactics.

    No one is suggesting that any member of the Parliamentary Liberal Party manufactured this evidence are they? I see nothing but cheap opportunism from the opposition benches. Machiavellian schemes to remove Malcolm are just fantasy. I’d bet William’s hat on it!

    More likely, a red herring thrown into a smoke screen to distract attention from the issues that the opposition had been running with over the last four months or so.

    As was expessed previously follow the money, or failing that look at what has changed. How long had the opposition been sitting on this? Why did they use it now?

  18. It seems it is not liking Sat u r day (the words with spaces), possibly due to that four letter word being also used as an insult.

    hahahahaha that’s a classic 😀

  19. I am really looking forward to Julia on Insiders

    If she brings all her skill to bear, she could change the course of this debate

    on the other hand, if she ever wanted Treasury, this is her chance

  22. No one is suggesting that any member of the Parliamentary Liberal Party manufactured this evidence are they?

    MHS’s Libs didn’t manufacture evidence either. Didn’t help him much.

  23. No one is suggesting that any member of the Parliamentary Liberal Party manufactured this evidence are they?

    You would think they are not that stupid, though a decade of the Howard govt has put them in a different reality. However you would think if they were to do something like that you get a staffer or a close journo supporter to do it for you.

    Though I have seen the theory mentioned a few times that Turnbull has been set up by his own people.

  24. Do I want to know what Van Onsolen has to say, since he is becoming like a Bolt or Ackerman Ackerman of late.

    He said Swan must resign. What a shock.

    Channelling Glen!

  25. I am with someone who said earlier that Rudd needs to get his message sorted now for Parliament next week. He needs to be sharp, direct very clear words and message with no PS speak. He needs to bite hard and bite deep and be relentless all week.

    In fact the matter could go Gillard, Swan, Tanner and then Rudd to administer the coup de grâce to the party and its leader.

  30. 2. Responding to Mr Rudd’s latest smear, I note that I have never claimed to be in possession of this email and, as it happens, even the Charlton file note (which is both inaccurate and incomplete) does not suggest I did.

    Actually Malcolm, I believe he claimed that your party was in possession of the emails. Otherwise, what was Senator Abetz reading out in the hearing yesterday? The Friday Crossword?

  31. Dario
    MHS’s Libs didn’t manufacture evidence either. Didn’t help him much.

    I wasn’t defending the motives – just the wherewithal.

    Thomas Paine
    Though I have seen the theory mentioned a few times that Turnbull has been set up by his own people.

    And that is what I was referring to. Fanciful stuff. This is from the same people that pined for Peter Costello to lead them after they’d kicked him in the guts.

    My opinion is that they treat the voter as a gullible mark.

    I doubt they’d treat their own the same way.

  33. #3530

    Why, thank you Frank, that’s very nice of you

    However, Piers can spell poperyly..you should be able to spot the difference between us

  34. Turnbull should go on if he’s got any balls…and get stuck into Swanny!

    Glen, Turnball is only good at bullying and intimidating people!
    Swan/Gillard/Tanner will destroy him next week, Rudd will play the statesman.

  35. Been out and about in non political company getting the feel for pandemics, ute gate and sauce gate. General feeling seems to be the press really have Lost it.

    Whats the definition of a pandemic?
    An epidemic with a press secretary.

  36. Further to my earlier quote from Peter Van O, this bit from Grech fits and really undermines his faulty recollective capacities.

    Also, the alleged email between Charlton and Grech called for action on behalf of the Prime Minister. Grech claims he didn’t follow up the email, or even reply to it. That seems unlikely. If a prime minister asks an official to jump, they usually ask “How high?”

    But Grech had a different recollection. He couldn’t find an email, or a note to back up his belief, and possibly he had imagined it — but his contention, nonetheless, was that it was the Prime Minister’s office that made the first approach. “My understanding is that the initial contact I had with respect to John Grant was from the Prime Minister’s office,” Grech said in a voice tight with strain, and bowed his head.

    http://www.theage.com.au/national/nervous-man-who-came-in-from-cold-20090619-cr9g.html

  37. pined for Peter Costello to lead them after they’d kicked him in the guts.

    Originally tried to kick him in the “Nuts” but found he didn’t have any!

  38. Just a couple of questions here. I thjought I knew a bit about MS Office but…

    1. Can you send an email direct to a fax machine using Outlook? I assume you can, but just wanted to check.

    2. Wasn’t it Thomas who said he was forwarding the email exchange to Swan (rather than Grech doing so by hitting “Reply All”)?

    Perhaps I’m not reading Swan’s statement right?

  39. I found this very interesting reading. For those who didn’t bother to check the link, a little bit from it to whet your appetite.

    T WAS dark at 5.46am, and cold in Canberra, the overnight temperature hovering below zero. But Godwin Grech, a senior Treasury official, was wide awake, extremely stressed, and about to hit “send” on his computer.

    Grech in a long email accounted for several conversations with a journalist during the previous 24 hours to his boss Ken Henry and to senior staff in the office of his political master, Treasurer Wayne Swan.

    He detailed the conversations, suggesting he had done his best to put the journalist off but not entirely succeeded, and he told them two other pertinent things.

    The first was he was “very annoyed at having ended up as a piece of political meat in what is a grossly overblown issue” — that issue being whether or not Kevin Rudd (that would be the Prime Minister) had used his influence to extract a favour for a Brisbane mate.

    The second fact could not have been clearer to his bosses at Treasury, and to Swan’s chief of staff, Chris Barrett, from the moment the sun cut through the winter gloom yesterday.

    Grech would front a Senate inquiry later in the day and as an official of the Commonwealth he would not be telling lies: “At Estimates today, I plan on playing it with a straight bat and saying it as I understand the true facts to be.”

    Hours later, a shaking and distressed Grech fronted the inquiry as scheduled and produced the information the Opposition had been seeking.

    Kevin Rudd had told Parliament that neither he nor anyone in his office had lobbied on behalf of John Grant.

    But Grech had a different recollection. He couldn’t find an email, or a note to back up his belief, and possibly he had imagined it — but his contention, nonetheless, was that it was the Prime Minister’s office that made the first approach. “My understanding is that the initial contact I had with respect to John Grant was from the Prime Minister’s office,” Grech said in a voice tight with strain, and bowed his head.

    Once the hearing ended, the shattered Treasury man tried to make a dignified retreat, and was chased by shouting reporters into a lift and out the ministerial entrance.

    http://www.theage.com.au/national/nervous-man-who-came-in-from-cold-20090619-cr9g.html

  40. Originally tried to kick him in the “Nuts” but found he didn’t have any!

    That’s below the belt scorpio!

    Apologies to those who have a well developed sense of humour

  42. Attorney-General Robert McClelland said he had received advice from his department “in relation to a very serious allegation that a false email, which purports to relate to the performance of functions by a Commonwealth public official, may have been created and distributed”.

    http://www.theage.com.au/national/utegate-pm-calls-in-police-20090620-cryr.html

    2. Wasn’t it Thomas who said he was forwarding the email exchange to Swan (rather than Grech doing so by hitting “Reply All”)?

    Yes, Thomas said this.

  43. Can you send an email direct to a fax machine using Outlook? I assume you can, but just wanted to check.

    Pretty sure you can if it is one of those multi-modal, printer, copier, scanner & fax machines.

  45. Flaneur –

    Yes, where did it originate? The Libs have ‘known’ the ‘sender’ and ‘recipient’ of the ’email’ for weeks, if not months. It generated questions in QT from Turnbull week before last (I think), mention by Hockey of Grech in an interview with Oakes weeks ago (per ruawake), and Turnbull’s ‘advice’ at the ball to Charlton on Wednesday. So where did that text Abetz read out come from? It can’t be from an outsider, because they wouldn’t have had been able to make it seem authentic. So, if the author was not in the LNP itself, it was a public servant with Lib sympathies. Can’t see any other possibility. Where else?

    As the the beer recipe:
    Of course, of course – make mine a double malt! Clearly you have in me a man who has not mashed his own. I’m just a kit hack. I defer to your royal, ancient and artisan’s knowledge. But more malt means a stronger brew. I do remember that from my brewing days past.

  48. Unfortunately of late The Age has also become more like News Ltd.

    They basically have the same facts we do so their opinion of how and what happened is no more valid than ours, unless they happen to be operating with a partisan agenda.

  49. An email sent to a fax machine isn’t really a fax…

    its just an email that is printed in hard copy by a fax/printer/scanner

  50. A FORMER ASIO spy has revealed he was made to snoop on prominent Australians, including former ACTU chief Jennie George.

    Thomas Shepherd said he believed that in the 1970s and ’80s, ASIO compiled dossiers on hundreds of leading Australians, including Bob Hawke, Gough Whitlam and Peter Garrett.

    He said the list of those being watched included judges, entertainers and business figures.

    http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25664655-662,00.html

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