Newspoll: 57-43

From Peter Brent at Mumble comes news that the latest fortnightly Newspoll has Labor’s two-party lead at 57-43 – up from 55-45 last time – with Labor’s primary vote on 46 per cent (up three), the Coalition on 38 per cent (down one) and the Greens on 9 per cent (down two). More to follow.

UPDATE: The Australian reports Malcolm Turnbull’s preferred prime minister rating has hit a new low of 16 per cent (down three), to Kevin Rudd’s 66 per cent (up two). Also featured is a question on the timing of an emissions trading scheme which finds 45 per cent believe the government should delay its legislation until “learning what other countries commit to at the Copenhagen climate conference in December”, compared with 41 per cent who believe legislation should proceed now. The Australian argues that the latter measure amounts to a 20 per cent drop in support for unilateral action since last September. However, the alternative answer in the earlier poll proposed that the scheme should proceed “only if other countries also introduce such schemes”, suggesting a longer delay than the less-than-five-months proposed by its counterpart in the current poll, and placing greater weight on the possibility a scheme might not proceed at all.

UPDATE 2: Peter Brent at Mumble has complete responses on the ETS questions.

Elsewhere:

• The latest weekly Essential Research survey has Labor’s lead up from 56-44 to 57-43. Also featured are questions on which party is better for handling various issues, which finds the Liberals have gone backwards since June 1; the government’s handling of relations with various countries; how safe respondents would feel visiting various countries; and Australia’s top security threat. More from Possum.

• The normally arcane topic of electoral reform has gone mainstream over the course of the past day’s news cycle, albeit in the questionable guise of optional voting rights for 16-year-olds. Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig has said the issue will be raised in the second of the government’s two green papers on electoral reform due later this year, the first of which dealt with campaign funding and expenditure issues and was published last December. The Greens are understandably enthusiastic, the Liberals equally understandably less so. Ben Raue spoke in favour on ABC News Radio earlier today, and further comments at The Tally Room.

• Advocates for retaining the existing Royal Adelaide Hospital site are rumoured to be seeking the requisite number of signatures (only 150 under the relatively lax provisions of the South Australian Electoral Act) to register their own political party in time for next year’s state election. Labor might like to recall that the two surprise defeats that cost their Western Australian counterparts government last year, Mount Lawley and Morley, were respectively in close and reasonably close proximity of Royal Perth Hospital, where a similar controversy was unfolding. Equivalent electorates in South Australia might be Adelaide (margin 10.2 per cent, but traditionally a swinging seat) and Norwood (4.2 per cent).

• AAP reports that Labor is seeking a candidate with “green credentials” – a “Kerryn Phelps-style figure”, to be precise – to take on Malcolm Turnbull in Wentworth.

• After being cleared last week on a rape charge, Victorian Northern Metropolitan Labor MLC Theo Theophanous has made life easier for his party by announcing he will quit politics at next year’s election.

• The Geelong Advertiser reports that two candidates have emerged for Liberal preselection in South Barwon, which Labor’s Michael Crutchfield gained in the 2002 landslide and retained by 2.4 per cent in 2006, despite hostile press from the aforementioned Advertiser. The candidates are Ron Humphrey, who lost his Surf Coast Shire Council seat at last year’s elections and was an unsuccessful contestant for preselection in 2006, and Andrew Katos, who represents Deakin ward on Greater Geelong City Council.

• The Victorian Parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee is conducting an inquiry into last year’s Kororoit by-election, after the Electoral Commission’s report expressed concern that no action could be taken against an ALP pamphlet which claimed a vote for independent candidate Les Twentyman was “a vote for the Liberals”. For what it’s worth, I have my doubts as to whether it’s feasible or desirable to regulate election rhetoric in the manner proposed.

• The Launceston Examiner reports that school teacher Rob Soward has lost Labor’s game of musical chairs in Bass, where seven candidates were chasing six positions on the ticket for next year’s state election. The lucky winners were incumbent Michelle O’Byrne, former member Kathryn Hay, Beaconsfield mine disaster survivor Brant Webb, Winnaleah District High School principal Brian Wightman, CFMEU forests division secretary Scott McLean and North Tasmanian Development consultant Michelle Cripps.

• Legendary Clerk of the Senate Harry Evans, retiring after 40 years, reviews the evolution of parliament during his tenure in an article for Crikey.

• A self-explanatory new book entitled Australia: The State of Democracy, edited by Marian Sawer, Norman Abjorensen and Phil Larkin for the Democratic Audit of Australia, is now available through Federation Press. The introduction can be read here.

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.

1,148 comments on “Newspoll: 57-43”

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  1. [I wonder if his pride will get the better of him and he decides to quit rather than face the probability of a landslide defeat.]

    Lawyers know when to quit. Turnbull must realise he’s toast when they lose the election. Why hang around for the humiliation? Shake hands with the client, see him off to the cells, hand him the bill and off to dinner at Primo’s. That’s the lawyerly way of fleeing the scene.

    Until the Libs come to grips with the fact that anger and self-centered bravura do not endear them to the punters they’ll stay in opposition. The tiring, weekly parade of faux Rudd-centered scandals they trot out have done them no good at all, and will not until they have policies that acknowledge the mistakes of their past and until they have party unity. It’s insulting that they actually seem to believe the public will elect them without these two essential political planks. They seem to believe that they don’t need need new policies as the old ones are just fine, at the same time as they renounce them one by one. They appear to believe that the public would want a headless chook stuffed with old sawdust as the governing party in preference to Labor which has saved the country from the worst of the GFC and is actually committed to carrying out its election promises as best as can be expected, given the unforseen circumstances of the past 2 years.

    Turnbull will bolt. Why should he stay with this bunch of losers. The man is a winner, is used to winning. If I had $50 million I’d be off to enjoy it in ways which do not involve repeatedly bashing my head against a brick wall and then being mocked for it. He should cut and run. Give it up. Go to Tuscany or wherever he goes to. I think he will do exactly this, and pretty soon, within six months.

    No-one can recover from 16%.

  2. [It is defined very simply, it is 1.5% of taxable income.]
    Sorry, you misinterpreted me.

    I meant that the levy itself’s is not prone to abuse as per your:

    [but think of the 30% private health insurance rebate, effectively what that does is give people who have private health insurance some of their Medicare levy back. Which in my opinion is wrong]

    Also that it perhaps needs indexing?

  3. [Jesus tap Dancing Christ on a Cracker.]
    And yet Alex Hawke counts as one of the “soft right”:
    [The leading soft right figures include the party state president, Nick Campbell, and the federal MP Alex Hawke.]

  5. Not to worry, in WA our glorious Leader want to import Chinese to work in the steel mill he wants the Chinese to build at Oakagee,says someone, “What if they cant speak English” says Col that might be a problem, but we can fix that by having Chinese supervisors.
    After that I fell about laughing,I though we closed the mills down in NSW,now Col wants to reopen them up north,mind you Col is the Liberal party in WA.
    Then we have the health minister saying if Rudd wants to take over the hospital system we will fight it in the high court,funny when Howard was in Power and started to centralize things there was a deathly silence from the WA Libs

  6. *Back from an excellent dinner in downtown Siem Reap.

    The Libs have three safe seats (so far) to fill for the next election, and their choices so far are Josh Frydenberg (a banker) for Kooyong, and Kelly O’Dwyer (a banker and lawyer) for Higgins. In Bradfield the choice seems to be between a former prime mininsterial staffer and a Murdoch press editor. Talk about broadening the political gene pool. Let us never again hear sanctimonous tripe about the backgrounds of Labor MPs.

  7. And over in the ME, its still a mexican standoff, sort of
    [JERUSALEM — Tensions between Israel and the United States over Iran bubbled up in high-level talks Monday in which Defense Minister Ehud Barak bluntly told U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that “no option” should be ruled out.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office subsequently described the talks as occurring “in a highly positive atmosphere.”

    But before that, the two sides seemed to differ pointedly over a potential military strike to thwart Tehran’s progress on the nuclear front.]

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ik3FeeyI7bBJ_dR-u6FLPnuMbb0gD99MQGCO0

  8. Psephos
    “*Back from an excellent dinner in downtown Siem Reap.”
    Didn’t go to an Indian restaurant by any chance did you?

  14. In relation to Siev 36, the NT police are probably still interviewing dingoes of interest and any hapless mothers who happened to be on the boat and who are not media savvy.

  18. ABC News breakfast doesn’t bother discussing Turnballs disastrous Newspoll Result, rather discusses doggy hair styling during newspaper discussing section, marvellous!

  20. Didn’t they view Turnbull’s first tilt at the leadership post 2007: He said we have to have 0% emissions by 2050, period.

  21. Turnbull was a better investment banker than lawyer where he made his fortune by putting together and cutting commercial deals.

    One thing that he will learn about the commercial deals is that you gotta have the right branding. If the branding is farq so is the deal.

    Well, his own branding is farq as reflected by his 16% and summed up perfectly by Wilson Tuckey: “Arrogant and Inexperience”. The punters, like the elephants, do have long memory.

    Next!!

  22. [Let us never again hear sanctimonous tripe about the backgrounds of Labor MPs.]

    Oh no. You’re not getting away with that one!

    ‘Bludgers who are not affiliated with any Party can criticise both Labor and Liberal for their narrow gene pools.

  23. The bidding process for building the New RAH has a problem. The Health Dept had the USB stolen with all the costings on it. Of course the bidder who ended up with it wouldn’t use it to win a contract worth billions of dollars. Would they?

    [BIDDERS for the state’s $1.7 billion hospital project will be asked to “promise” not to use confidential cost information lost almost two months ago if they find it.

    An internal inquiry later revealed it also held the public sector comparator – effectively how much the Government was willing to pay for the hospital. A bidder armed with the costings could tailor their bid to beat the government price – assuring themselves of a winning bid.

    Opposition finance spokesman Rob Lucas said the loss of the USB stick was “a major scandal brewing” and promises not to use the information were “frankly laughable”.]

    http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25844364-5006301,00.html

  24. The other issue about the Lib candidates is that they all worked as political advisors. It seems you can’t make to the big show in the Parliamentary Liberal Party without having worked in a political office.

    Labor at least has made some recent attempts to broaden the gene pool through the likes of Garrett, McKew and Dreyfuss. All outsiders parachuted in to safe or winnable seats.

    Could be another reason why the Libs are so out of touch with the electorate.

  25. I thought I heard Abbott say he would like to increase the pension age to 70. I noticed not once did he mention Superannuation as an alternative to living off the tax payer. He never mentioned anything about increasing the compulsory Superannuation levy from 9% to 15% to remove the taxpayer burden. The self funded retired would then be a productive personal both when they are saving via Superannuation and when they are spending non Government tax dollars.
    Also I noticed this morning Dutton continues to push the broken promise line re Health Care.

  26. Diogenes @ 119 Posted

    “Let us never again hear sanctimonous tripe about the backgrounds of Labor MPs.”

    Oh no. You’re not getting away with that one!

    Bankers are the new Union Bosses?

  27. It doesn’t make sense to me that the states are so reluctant to give up control of hospitals. State governments across the country get the blame for long waiting lists, emergency patients being kept waiting for hours on trolleys, ambulances having to call around to find an emergency dept that’s not full, and just about anything else wrong with the health system. Are Brumby and the other premiers masochists to want this to continue? I thought they wouldn’t be able to flick it all off to the federal government fast enough.

  28. I complained about this yesterday and now I have proof! The States close beds and divert the money into more administrators.

    [The problem is not that hospitals are underfunded. Over the past decade, real expenditure on public hospitals increased by 64 per cent to top $27 billion in 2006-07. The real problem is that not enough of the money gets through to the frontlines. Between 1996 and 2006 the number of acute public hospital beds fell by 18 per cent per 1000. But between 2001 and 2006, the number of administrators increased by 69 per cent.]

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25843610-7583,00.html

  32. 112/115
    [Lawyers and bankers have had more life experience than career trade unionists.]
    [What I said is the irrefutable truth.]

    What a load of arrogant and arrant nonsense.

    I am reminded of Sarah Palin’s assertion that being Mayor of Wasilla had more responsibilities and outputs than Barack Obama’s role as a “community organiser”. Given that Wasilla had, say 4000 people, and the role of Mayor in the local government structures they have in many US states is particularly limited, such a statement demonstrates amazing ignorance.
    I am not a fan of trade unions but I would be happy to match things like the difference made to people’s lives, people skills, hard working ability, for a good union organiser vs. Denis Denuto/Malcolm Turnbull/John Howard garden varierty solicitor any day of the week.

  33. Diogs,

    The nice thing about you not being rusted on about anything in particular is that we can marvel as you change your passionate opinion when the wind changes.

  35. GG

    I am rusted on to Enlightenment values. If there was and Enlightened Sceptics Party, I’d join. 😀

    I hope you’ve finished that book. Are IFRs the answer? The book I read said reprocessing could do similar things in terms of waste and stretching out the uranium sources.

    Did you know that nuclear fuel from Soviet warheads provides the power for one in ten US light bulbs?

  37. Diogenes,

    IFRS is a definite maybe.

    The question is how is the issue sensibly debated. You saw the misleading/dishonest assertions of our Greens friends regarding the decision to open the new mine over the weekend. Fear is still a trump card of the anti nuclear protagonists. However, we also do need some counter arguments to measure it against. (Not just the No nukes is good nukes). It is a big change and we need to examine all aspects. I’m simply not qualified to be across all the detail but am willing to listen and learn.

    The question is long term will IFRS nuclear facilitate a transition to renewables in a timely, inexpensive and safe way.

    I’m still curious why the US Government ended the experiment in the 90s.

  38. [Fear is still a trump card of the anti nuclear protagonists. However, we also do need some counter arguments to measure it against. (Not just the No nukes is good nukes). It is a big change and we need to examine all aspects]

    Perhaps via referenda??

    [I’m still curious why the US Government ended the experiment in the 90s.]

    Cost V dubious outcome??

  40. Frank re post 36 perth got a 6 % swing and there were big swings in all booth’s apart from highgate which stayed strong to labor and will keep the state seat of perth in labor’s hands for a very long time.

  41. #136
    GP, that’s a completely unsupported assertion. It hasn’t been tried, but it does seem logical and efficient to have one system rather than many. Anyway, my post concerned why the premiers want to keep control, not whether relinquishing it would work.

  42. [Centralising healthcare bureaucracy in Canberra will scarcely solve the problems of the health system.]

    Why not?

    You favour more of the same, perhaps?

  43. From ABC, AM this morning!

    [TONY EASTLEY: The bad news doesn’t end there of course for the Leader of the Coalition?

    SABRA LANE: No, Tony, it doesn’t. A fortnight ago, the Opposition was optimistic as Mr Turnbull recorded a slight increase in his Newspoll ratings. But now support for him as preferred prime minister has dropped to just 16 per cent. Mr Rudd is now a clear 50 points ahead on 66 per cent.

    Mr Turnbull’s actually in a worse position than what Brendan Nelson was when he lost the leadership of the party last September. While Dr Nelson also had a preferred prime minister rating of 16 per cent, Mr Rudd wasn’t 50 points clear at the time. Not surprisingly, Mr Turnbull’s keeping quiet on that this morning; he’s declined an invitation to speak with AM on that.]

    http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2009/s2638269.htm

  44. GP,

    I agree with you.

    The notion for Rudd and the Feds to take over all healthcare is an “if all else fails” proposition.

  46. This just shows how much in a fantasy world these people are still in!

    [Mr Abbott says there are lots of great Liberal leaders who initially struggled in opinion polls.

    “I can think of Jeff Kennett, I can think of John Howard; they all have bad periods in the polls,” he said.

    “In the end, come election time, people will judge the Government and its record; they will judge us and our proposals and I think we have got every chance of winning.”

    Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton says the polls will improve when voters realise Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has broken a promise to fix the health system.

    “If people start to see the fraud that is this Prime Minister, particularly in relation to health, the numbers will turn around,” he predicted.]

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/28/2638344.htm?section=australia

  47. No 138

    I can’t understand why the people of the North Shore want RNS controlled by a bunch of faceless bureaucrats in Canberra rather than a local board that is well-versed in local needs and issues. Same goes for any other hospital. Super bureaucracies would simply result in more inertia and waste.

  48. I sometimes wonder… if there was irrefutable evidence that a large asteroid was going to hit the Earth in 20 years time, would we have the same bunch of deniers saying we should wait to see what other countries were doing, or trotting out the “jobs will be lost” argument etc. etc.?

    To me it seems that we cannot afford NOT to go to Copenhagen with something in place. We will have absolutely no persuasive power at all with other countries in the negotiations if we arrive at Copenhagen empty-handed. We’ll just be good old, same old Climate Change Denying Australia, same leopard, same spots… a laughing stock with no influence.

    Turnbull is right (yes, perhaps for the wrong reasons) to urge his party to pass the bill now with a modicum of face-saving “negotiations” in the lead up to the Senate vote. We cannot go to Copenhagen with nothing. Laws can be changed, amended, altered afterwards, but we must have something in place by then.

    I disagree that the ETS is why Turnbull has lost more traction with the electorate, down to 16%. If anything, the Newspoll figures show he is basically in tune with the people on this, in that most want action of some kind. The timing is really a quibble.

    The reason he’s done so badly in the Newspoll lies elsewhere: his megaphone ranting on Stern Hu, for example. Or maybe it’s just that the people have made their decision post the Godwin Grech fiasco and feel pretty good about it, upon reflection and watching how Turnbull has dealt with other issues since. He cannot unify his party, he shouts when speaking softly called for. He is not a politician fit to be Prime Minister, and his party is still believing that anger over the last election win win them back to power.

    Why would anyone vote FOR them? Or their leader? Those who discount recent events, still believing the Libs have been right on everything (and Labor wrong) and that Turnbull and his party has handled the issues perfectly are very much in the monority. This is the price of their denial of the bleedin’ obvious. The Australian people simply don’t want the Liberals in the state they’re in at the moment.

  49. #140 Re: AM report on Newspoll
    The 2PP has become nothing more than an aside, or not mentioned at all, these days. It’s all about the leaders’ ratings. The ABC radio news I heard this morning was the same – all about Turnbull and no 2PP. The 2PP is always the most important figure and the first I want to know. At least the Poll Bludger has got it right.

    GP, you can have a local board that reports to Canberra.

  50. Gusface

    [ Fear is still a trump card of the anti nuclear protagonists. However, we also do need some counter arguments to measure it against. (Not just the No nukes is good nukes). It is a big change and we need to examine all aspects

    Perhaps via referenda??

    I’m still curious why the US Government ended the experiment in the 90s.

    Cost V dubious outcome??]

    Those are both excellent points. Once the ETS is up and running and we know what the targets are and what CO2 will cost, it would be a fair thing to have a referendum IMHO.

    I haven’t read the IFR book but the decision for the US to pull the plug on the experiment was very weird. They have had a lot of scientific advice that IFRs were safer (minimal waste), cheaper (once developed) and would burn uranium for thousands of years without running out.

    John Kerry lobbied to can it. He said it was a threat to non-proliferation treaties. The Americans are really bizarre on reprocessing. They’ve left themselves with all this dangerous waste no-one wants because they won’t reprocess like France. Their fear of terrorism with nukes paralyses them.

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