Newspoll: 55-45

The Australian reports that the latest fortnightly Newspoll has Labor’s lead at 55-45, down from 57-43 at the previous two polls. Labor’s primary vote is down one point to 44 per cent and the Coalition’s is up one point to 38 per cent. Malcolm Turnbull’s approval rating is up four points to 30 per cent. More to follow. UPDATE: Graphic here. Turnbull’s approval is the only leadership measure that has moved noticeably.

The weekly Essential Research survey has Labor’s lead steady at 58-42. Also featured: support for an ETS-driven early election continues to fall; confidence in the economy continues to rise; there is no one widely held view on who should be our next US Ambassador; and two-thirds agree that “the Liberals are just not prepared at the moment to take on the difficult task of governing Australia”.

Also:

• The Gold Coast News reports that Peter Dutton faces “an ugly pre-election battle” if he wishes to move from notionally Labor Dickson to the safe Liberal Gold Coast seat of McPherson, to be vacated by the retirement of Margaret May. Rival candidates include federal divisional council chair Karen Andrews, a “close ally” of May; Dr Richard Stuckey, husband of Jann Stuckey, state front-bencher and member for the local seat of Currumbin; and Michael Hart, who unsuccessfully contested the state seat of Burleigh at the last two state elections.

• For the second election in a row, Dennis Jensen will represent the Liberals in their safe Perth seat of Tangney despite having lost the initial preselection vote. The West Australian reports that Jensen won a State Council vote over the initially successful candidate, Glenn Piggott, by no less a margin than 76 votes to five. This result was foreshadowed a month ago by a commenter on this site travelling under the name of Matt Brown’s Imaginary Friend (Matt Brown being the initial victor of the 2007 preselection), who wrote: “Council knows that if Jensen (is) dumped, the Libs’ chances of holding the marginals will dive because campaign funds will be so stretched, adverse publicity will have (a) ripple effect, and Tangney itself could be lost to Jensen if (he) stood as an independent, whether to him or even to the ALP if he did the obvious and swapped preferences with them”.

• Saturday’s Weekend Australian featured a post-redistribution proposal Mackerras pendulum, which you can see at Mumble. The accompanying article takes aim at the assertion of Peter van Onselen and others that the redistributions of New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia collectively constitute a “Ruddymander”.

• Simon Benson of The Daily Telegraph reports that the tensions over the New South Wales Labor leadership could be coming to the boil:

With the various warring factions in the Labor party room unable to decide on who would be a replacement, Mr Rees was said to be considering acting before he gets chopped. Sources confirmed he was using threats of a reshuffle to axe “trouble-making” ministers, a veiled reference to Health Minister John Della Bosca, if sniping about his leadership continued. The internal malaise in the Government has become so bad that very few MPs believe the current situation can continue. Mr Rees is also reported to have told those closest to him that his position was untenable if the plotting against him could not be arrested. Another Labor source said Labor powerbrokers including national secretary Karl Bitar were considering tapping Mr Rees on the shoulder next week if they could convince Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt to take over. It is understood Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is also being drafted into the soap opera with sources claiming his Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese has directly lobbied Mr Rudd to support a move to install Ms Tebbutt, who is Mr Albanese’s wife.

John Della Bosca today added fuel to the fire by declaring it was “no state secret” that it was constitutionally possible for an upper house MP such as himself to be Premier. However, Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald reports focus group research shows “many people still think (Rees) should be given time to make a go of the job”, and gives an insight into the public view of Della Bosca, Tebbutt and other sometimes-mentioned leadership prospects, Kristina Keneally, John Robertson and Frank Sartor.

• The ABC reports that the member for the Nationals member for the Victorian state seat of Murray Valley, Ken Jasper, will retire at the next election. Jasper is 71 years old and has held the seat since 1976. I must confess the seat does not loom large in my consciousness, but my election guide entry tells me the Nationals are “concerned at their ability to hold the seat without him”. Jasper nonetheless held the seat in 2006 with 50.9 per cent of the vote against the Liberal candidate’s 21.9 per cent.

• The Victorian Greens have preselected for the highly winnable state seat of Melbourne a barrister and former president of Liberty Victoria, Brian Walters, ahead of Moonee Valley councillor Rose Iser.

Lots more information on various Greens preselections from Ben Raue of The Tally Room:

• Raue appears to have the inside dope on the state upper house preselection in South Australia, declaring former Democrat and current state party convenor Tammy Jennings the “clear frontrunner” for the lucrative top spot (he earlier named SA Farmers Federation chief executive Carol Vincent, former convenor and unsuccessful 1997 lead candidate Paul Petit and unheralded Mark Andrew as the other candidates).

• Raue also names preselection candidates for the Queensland Senate: Larissa Waters (the 2007 candidate, who also ran for Mount Coot-tha at the March state election), “perennial candidates” Libby Connors and Jenny Stirling, and 2009 Sunnybank candidate Matthew Ryan-Sykes.

• Raue names Emma Henley and Peter Campbell as candidates for the Victorian upper house region of Eastern Metropolitan.

• In the Tasmanian state seat of Braddon, Paul O’Halloran has apparently been chosen to “lead the ticket”, to the extent that that means anything under Robson rotation. Braddon is the only one of the five divisions currently without a Greens member.

Antony Green corner:

• In comments on this site, Antony discusses the prospects of a Victorian redistribution before the next federal election:

A Victorian redistribution is due because the boundaries from the last redistribution were gazetted on 29 January 2003. A re-draw starts seven years later, the end of January 2010. A redistribution is not required in the last 12 months before the House expires. The current House first sat on 12 February 2008 so it expires 11 February 2011. This means there is an unfortunate two week gap that will force a redistribution. If the Victorian boundaries had been gazetted two weeks later in 2003, or if the Rudd government had re-called parliament in December 2007, the redistribution would be deferred. Unfortunately, the Electoral Act is very prescriptive on dates so it appears the redistribution will have to take place, unless the act is changed.

• Two posts on his blog relate to the slow decline of the Nationals, one directly, the other with reference to the relative decline of rural population.

• Also featured is a post comparing the current position of the state Labor government in New South Wales with that of the Unsworth government as it drifted to the abyss in 1988.

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.

2,352 thoughts on “Newspoll: 55-45”

Comments Page 2 of 48
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  4. Talk about legal artificiality! One cannot take drugs without having first possessed them.

    I believe you only get a fine for posessing a small amount of drugs. It’s easy to write a ticket for finding drugs. Testing them for drugs is too resource-intensive.

  5. Generic Heffalump, explain this bit of WA Liberal Lunacy.

    WA Police has been ordered by the State Government to cut almost 140 cars from its fleet in a move the police union says will reduce patrols, increase response times and put lives at risk.

    Police executive director Greg Italiano said WA Police had asked Treasury to be exempted from fleet cuts but was told it would have to slash its fleet of 1380 vehicles by 10 per cent.

    It is understood the cuts are part of the 3 per cent Budget reductions the Government has demanded from each department.

    Mr Italiano said police were trying to evaluate the impact of the order and were “already under cost pressure from existing fleet related costs”.

    “We will endeavour to meet the savings targets without impacting on operational vehicles, however, as the great majority of our fleet leasing cost – 90 per cent – comes from police operational areas, it is going to be a significant challenge,” he said.

    Mr Italiano said no decision had been made on how the cut would be applied or if any districts would be exempt. Police had already increased the number of four cylinder cars in its fleet to 30 per cent, up from 14.6 per cent two years ago, at the request of the Government.

    Union president Russell Armstrong said the decision was the most “outrageous and ill conceived” Government policy ever directed at WA Police. It would be a huge setback for policing in WA and make it impossible for the force to serve the community properly.

    “Even if you cut every non-operational police car, I don’t think that would make the 10 per cent cut,” Mr Armstrong said. “There is no doubt that this will result in far fewer police cars patrolling our streets and reacting to crime.

    “Obviously the response times will increase dramatically. That is a shocking outcome for the community and just an outrageous situation.

    “Police are trying to tackle violence across our State in places like Northbridge but now they aren’t going to have enough vehicles to do that.

    “This will put the safety of the public at risk because police will not be able to respond to incidents in time.”

    http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/5854873/anger-at-order-to-cut-140-cop-cars/

  6. To those who didn’t think it was the incredible organisational effort that the Greens put in to Fremantle that won it – when was the last time a by-election saw a voter turnout increase from the previous election? 😀

  7. To those who didn’t think it was the incredible organisational effort that the Greens put in to Fremantle that won it – when was the last time a by-election saw a voter turnout increase from the previous election? 😀

    Have you considered that the reason may also be due to a Referrendum being held on the same day ?

  8. According to Skynooooows in a great fanfare:

    Turnbull’s PPM climbs and closing the gap with Rudd. I suppose if you are at the bottom of the pit, 1% can be classified as “climb”

  9. The Finnigans

    I suppose if you are at the bottom of the pit, 1% can be classified as “climb”

    Turnbull has early this morning released the following graphical representation of the steep growth in his support level over the past week, prepared by his wife Lucy and the fat advisor from the information provided by the Newspoll:

  11. Re Drug Crimes in Oz: my brother got busted having a quiet smoke, by an off-duty copper, in Grafton in 1988. Because he had finished the joint, the cops said there was not enough “substance” remaining for them to test, so he was charged with “self-administration of a controlled substance” and fined $400. The law may have changed by now, one hopes.

  12. Not a good poll, not a bad poll – just another poll.
    All this heady stuff from the mainstream media about ups and downs between the margins of error is ridiculous.

  15. bob1234
    Posted Monday, August 24, 2009 at 2:27 pm | Permalink
    Commonwealth Newspoll tonight. I wonder what it will say?

    Greens maintaining their new high of 10%+

    ….which has now changed to ~10 and a pretence that nothing else has ever been said.

  16. CIA torture abuses seem to have been even more widespread than reported. .

    Among the new disclosures was that the CIA in at least one 2002 instance employed a method known as “pressure points” — wrapping hands around a prisoner’s carotid artery. The interrogator “watched his eyes to the point that the detainee would nod and start to pass out” before being shaken awake, the report stated.

    Charming.
    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cia-report25-2009aug25,0,4353125.story

  17. http://www.smh.com.au/national/turnbull-readies-for-last-stand-20090824-ewl9.html

    reassert his leadership … promoting the NSW senators Marise Payne and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, and some or all of the backbenchers Alex Hawke, Jamie Briggs, Simon Birmingham and Scott Ryan

    Promoting people such as Fierravanti-Wells, Hawke and Briggs wouldn’t be “asserting” his leadership. It would be a sop to the right-wing of the party. Considering how tenuous is his support with the right, sopping to them would be a sign of leadership weakness.

    A leader concerned about party relevance and getting back to the centre (where voters live) would be neutering the radical right, not building up its influence.

  18. dave

    Coorey makes a good point here about Rudd and Wong not making much of an effort to sell the CPRS. I can’t understand their reasoning. I know they aren’t great salesmen and it’s a fairly dry policy but the importance is huge. The only people we hear from are the special-interest groups.

    Had John Howard presided over such a process the white paper would not have been published 10 days before Christmas. He would also have spent the next days, if not weeks, relentlessly doing talkback radio, breakfast and evening television interviews, and whatever else to explain the scheme to the public and impress on it why it was essential. Heaven forbid, there might even have been an ”education campaign”.

    When the legislation went belly-up in the Senate the week before last, there was hardly a public outcry either way.

  19. From The Australian’s “cut and paste” a year ago, as linked by William last night:

    Climate is the new communism and could split the ALP
    July 02, 2008
    Gerard Henderson, in The Sydney Morning Herald, on discord between inner city and suburbs over global warming

    THERE is a potential division in Labor on any emission trading scheme between its inner-city tertiary educated
    green-voting base and its suburban and regional supporters who are employed in manufacturing and mineral industries.

    A year later, which party is splitting apart over climate change, Gerard? Clue: it’s not Labor.

  20. Regarding the poll, I find it surprising Turnbull is doing this well. This would suggest a pretty big MOE factor to me, given that there is no obvioud reason for peopel to switch to Turnbull in the past week.

    Maybe the stories about his Labor seeking past being leaked have evoked some pitty for him? thats the only reason I can see why polls would shift in his favour.

  21. Socrates

    looks like an outlier poll to me. If there isn’t an obvious reason for a swing to the Libs (and Malcolm) then it’s unlikely that one’s happened.

  22. Turnbull took a dive in the wake of Utegate part 1, bounced back a bit, dived again when Utegate resurfaced and has now bounced up again, possibly influenced by the Libs actually have a policy (any policy) on an ETS. In Hollowmen terms I think that means the dives are just blips, not dips and he should recover a little more, but not a lot more.

  23. According to Michelle Grattan this morning the poll was taken before the Turnbull-ALP stories ran, so that’s not a factor. It’s just a recovery to his standard “poor” showing after his Grech-induced “abysmal” showing of the last poll.

  26. People should stop trying to link daily events with polls. Most people polled would not have even heard/absorbed the Turnbull ALP story. More of the same Coalition obliteration numbers…

  27. I have a feeling that the Turnbull-is-a-closet-lefty stories won’t make much of an impact on voters. People have largely made up their minds about Turnbull on the basis of his performance in the job he’s doing now. In the end, who cares about his pedigree? For those who dislike Turnbull, these stories will confirm what they already believe about him. For those who still think he is doing a reasonable job, tales about what might or might not have passed between Turnbull and Bob Hawke a decade ago are not going to make much difference.

    I also think the slight drift back to the LNP is consistent with the fall in the numbers of people supporting the immediate passage of the CPRS/ETS bill and the rise in the numbers not wanting a DD on the issue. The Libs have managed to have a small bet each way on CPRS/ETS, and it must be registering with some voters. The Government are going to have to work much harder to sell the virtues of their bill or they will lose again in November.

  35. If I were a Lib, I’d be taking some small solace from the Newspoll numbers, even allowing for margins of error and the usual oscillations. Their numbers did not get worse or remain as bad as they had been, they got better. Turnbull’s stunt with his “model” worked for a day or so – long enough to get through a tumultuous week. The lines being run by the Opposition are simple enough to communicate: the ETS is a job-killing new tax that won’t achieve anything other than the export of jobs and emissions; CPRS is something that might not be necessary, but if it is, then the country should wait to see what the big emitters do; the Government’s CPRS is “the wrong” scheme.

    The Government had better figure out how to handle this imho….

  36. It actually broke a year ago, but no-one ran with it then. It’s running now because the anti-Turnbull Libs are spoon-feeding it to the press.
    I agree that this is too esoteric an issue to register with floating voters. This rise in Turnbull’s numbers, if it’s real, is just a recovery from “extremely bad” to “very bad” following the fading of emailgate from the public mind.

    My prediction has been all along and is still: There will be a deal on the ETS, with a few token concessions from Rudd which Turnbull will gratefully accept. There will be a Senate revolt but not enough to defeat the bill.

  37. TTFAB, the G’s have to decide if they want a CPRS or not. If they don’t want one, they should vote with the LNP. By opposing the CPRS bill, you are helping the right-wing wackaloon figures in the LNP cement their control and helping deliver a Senate defeat to Labor. Is this what you want? A hard-right LNP? It is what you are going to get.

  39. # 85 Psephos Posted Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 11:14 am “….My prediction has been all along and is still: There will be a deal on the ETS, with a few token concessions from Rudd which Turnbull will gratefully accept. There will be a Senate revolt but not enough to defeat the bill…..”

    Psephos I hope you’re right. I can see it playing differently….the LNP party-room will decide not to vote for the ETS for several reasons. First and foremost, the denialist numbers favour this outcome; second, it is the only position the LNP can take which will provide a basis for internal unity; third, they will be able to persuade themselves that it is a politically smart thing to do – they will see this position as one they can sell to their own base and take to the wider electorate.

    The Libs have been angling from the very outset to oppose the ETS. Doubtless, there has been and will continue to be a struggle over this inside the party, but the right-wingers will come out on top. Doubtless, many of them would even prefer to fight a DD on this than swallow their pride and submit to Labor.

    The minor players – F, X and G – are making this outcome more likely by increasing the disadvantage faced by Labor in the Senate.

    We should also remember, the LNP have no difficulty using the Senate to obstruct Labor. It is their favoured gambit when in Opposition, contemptible scoundrels that they are indubitably are!

  40. There will be a Senate revolt but not enough to defeat the bill.

    The only question is if the Senate revolt will be big enough to defeat Turnbull’s leadership.

  41. 87

    The defeat of the CPRS would probably cause a DD giving the Greens the balance of power in the Senate over a year earlier. A hard right Coalition would be less likely to do deals with the ALP and so the Greens would be in a better negotiating position for the CPRS and other things. It would also probably keep the Coalition out for longer.

  42. Turnbull points out something that I’ve mentioned on many occasions to my playmates on Bolt’s blog; Howie supported a CPRS. They just hate it when you mention it. Most flatly refuse to believe that Howie ever said it.

    “Those people who say an emissions trading scheme is an anathema must have been asleep during the last term of the Howard Government,” he said.

    “Not only did we establish an emissions trading scheme, which is a market-based way of putting a price on carbon, we commenced legislating for it.

    “It remains our policy.”

    http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25978605-5005962,00.html

  43. If the Coalition lost a D.D. election over the CPRS, they would be idiots if they again blocked the bills once the new parliament takes over.

  44. 93

    I don`t think that the Government would hold a DD soon after a DD. Anyway the government could just hold a joint sitting where it would have a majority and then make regulations that either the Greens or Coalition can support.

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