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 comments on “Newspoll: 55-45”

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  2. 2301

    Well this post has been going a week (less six and a half hours). It has got so quite that you are the first poster for an hour and a half.

  3. Meanwhile, the Women’s Weekly opt in poll has a landslide result in favour of the Ruddster (well, in favour of Mr Darcy…..)

    Tried to buy the Women’s Weekly (which normally sits on the newsagents’ shelves like a stale christmas cake for the full month after publication) on the weekend. Mrs Trubbell particularly wanted to see what her heroines Therese and Quentin had to say and how the WW presented them. Couldn’t find a copy in several shopping centres and five supermarkets visited. “Flying off the shelves – more coming – they are doing a big extra print run” was what we were told at various shops.

    Anyway, finally found one at a SebunErebun. Very, very positive and affirming stories about both women. Tear to the eye stuff. Read it if you can.

  5. The girls want to have a drink with Ruddy?

    http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26006049-29277,00.html

    [ MOST people would rather sit down over a glass of wine with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd than their partner.

    But even the PM can’t beat actor Hugh Jackman, who has topped a poll as the drinking buddy of choice.

    A survey of more than 1200 people found model Jennifer Hawkins came second – although she was much more popular among men than women.

    Mr Rudd came third, rating more highly among women wine-drinkers than the men.

    He was followed by comedian Rove and actress Nicole Kidman.

    “Partner” came in 6th place, just ahead of TV veteran Bert Newton.

    The poll was commissioned by wine company Lindemans. ]

  6. From Crikey.

    [ACCC head warns News and Fairfax over cartel risk, by Andrew Dodd – The head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has warned Australia’s newspaper companies that they should be very careful about behaving like a cartel as they plan ways to make money from the internet and recover from their financial difficulties.

    Graeme Samuel issued the advice following last week’s comments by Fairfax chief executive Brian McCarthy, who announced that he would like to hold talks with rival News Limited about ways in which the two businesses could maximise profits from their respective online operations.

    Mr McCarthy told The Age “If there’s opportunities to engage with News Limited we would like to look at those as an option.”

    At the time Samuel commented that Australia’s largest newspaper publishers would “be better to talk to us, of maybe just talk to their lawyers, before they talk to each other”.]

    i alerted this from way back when Rupe first floated the idea of charging for the online contents. I am glad that ACCC has got its ears in the right place and doing the right thing for the punters.

    The champions of free market competition forming a cartel? Surely not.

  7. mexicanbeemer,

    [scorpio!!
    I am curious when you ask people the question about where did Kane get his wife what is their response?]

    I can only remember three. (1) is that there were already people on the earth before Adam & Eve, ie dark skin people which leans towards evolution and away from A&E being the “first” and goes against Genesis.
    (2) That Abel had a child with his mother which doesn’t make sense.
    (3) That Adam & Eve had more children including girls that weren’t mentioned in Genesis and Kane took one of these for his wife. The problem with this is, why would she be living in the land of Nod and not with her parents, Adam & Eve.

    There were others even more far fetched and implausible and the more they try and explain it, the more tied up in knots they seem to get.

    There are two versions of the Lords Prayer in the Gospels also. Mathew & John I think.

  8. Well, who wouldn’t rather have a drink with the PM than their partner. You can have a drink with your partner any night.

    Having said that, any given night I would choose Miss Coffee over Burt Newton too.

  9. [I can only remember three.]

    99% of Christians that I know would give you the simple answer that they don’t think Genesis is to be taken literally.

  10. [99% of Christians that I know would give you the simple answer that they don’t think Genesis is to be taken literally.]

    At least 7 or 8 Catholic Priests have said that very dame thing to me in response to the Genesis question!!!

  12. Dyno

    How do you reconcile the four different Christ stories in Matthew, Mark , Luke, and John? They don’t agree on where Jesus was born.

  14. [99% of Christians that I know would give you the simple answer that they don’t think Genesis is to be taken literally.]
    So why take any of the bible literally then?
    [They don’t agree on where Jesus was born.]
    Also, Luke and Matthew don’t agree on WHEN Jesus was born.

  15. In Jewish lore (remember that the OT is their book and also that not all bits of it have found their way into Christian versions) there were non human beings on earth before Adam – jinns and the like.

    In fact, Adam supposedly had children by one of these, Lilith, before Eve’s creation.

    So there were, in fact, plenty of ‘women’ for Cain to marry.

    Not being up on Jewish mythology, I’m not sure whether or not the Creation myth of Adam and Eve is only meant to apply to the Jews – that is, they are descendants of Adam but others aren’t necessarily.

    Remember they are very exclusive – Jahweh was their God and only theirs, and it is effort to extend him to non Jewish people which is one of the reasons Jews don’t accept Christianity.

    So it would be quite logical for the Creation myth to be about the creation of the Jewish people rather than about people in general.

  16. 2314
    The Bible isn’t meant to be literally true. Christ stressed repeatedly that he was speaking in parables – when he talked of turning ploughs into swords, for example, he was speaking figuratively. Apparently this is even more obvious in the original texts and doesn’t translate as well in ours.

    Many of our confusions with the Bible result from mistranslations or the kind of misunderstandings evitable when taking a story from one culture and putting it into the language of another.

    Apparently, for example, Jesus has quite a dry sense of humour, which is obvious in the original Aramaic but doesn’t translate well – remember we get our Bible from Aramaic people recording events in Greek, which were then translated into Latin and then English. There’s bound to be lots of errors along the way.

  17. [there were non human beings on earth before Adam – jinns and the like.

    In fact, Adam supposedly had children by one of these, Lilith, before Eve’s creation.]
    Wow, that makes $cientology seem completely straight forward.
    [Remember they are very exclusive – Jahweh was their God and only theirs, ]
    I thought god in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the same entity? Judaism and Islam just doesn’t think Jesus was the son of god. Islam thinks the only true prophet is Muhammad.

  18. Reckon we’re hanging out for a new poll if all this religious talk is anything to go by.

    Matthew, Mark , Luke, and John
    Hold the horse ’till I get on 🙂

    Was there an Essential out this arvo?

  19. [I thought god in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the same entity?]

    Yes, but he was the Jew’s god first. The Jews still see themselves (and there’s plenty of textual references in the OT to support their viewpoint) as the only true people of their exclusive God, Jahweh. They do not acknowledge Jesus or Mohammed as anything more than, at most, minor prophets.

    Jesus caused great controversy by his statements that God was not only the God of the Jews but of all men, and that’s part of the reason why the Jewish people were happy to vote for him to be crucified.

  24. [The Bible isn’t meant to be literally true. Christ stressed repeatedly that he was speaking in parables ]
    So when christ says repeatedly that he was speaking in parables, how do we know that THAT wasn’t just a parable?
    [Many of our confusions with the Bible result from mistranslations or the kind of misunderstandings evitable when taking a story from one culture and putting it into the language of another.]
    Do you mean all translations are in effect mistranslations? Vladimir Nabokov translated many of his own novels, is there any reason for us to be suspicious of his own translations of his own books?
    [Apparently, for example, Jesus has quite a dry sense of humour, which is obvious in the original Aramaic but doesn’t translate well]
    How do you know there is a disparity in the meaning between the Aramaic and English versions unless someone pointed this out during translation?
    [There’s bound to be lots of errors along the way.]
    That doesn’t need to be the case. Any good translator takes all the complexity in translating into account by researching how terms were used at the time.

    I think the reason a clearer understanding of the bible in its historical context can’t be achieved is because people will reject certain translations for purely ideological reasons. They want the bible to say, for example, that homosexuals are effectively subhuman, so they will stick to any translation or interpretation of the bible that says that is the case.

  31. More Labor voters approve fo the Gorgon gas deal than Coalition voters:
    [Labor and Coalition voters were more likely to approve of the Australia/China gas agreement (72% Labor, 62% Coalition).]
    I wonder why that is so? Are Coalition types annoyed that the agreement was reached under a Labor government?

  32. Back to Jim Jones, he definitely wasn’t religious. He was quite nuts though with grandiose delusions and thought he was the reincarnation of lots of famous people including Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha and Lenin.

    [By the early 1970s, Jones began deriding traditional Christianity as “fly away religion,” rejecting the Bible as being white men’s’ justification to subordinate women and subjugate people of color and stating that it spoke of a “Sky God” who was no God at all. Jones authored a booklet titled “The Letter Killeth,” criticizing the Bible.

    By the Spring of 1976, Jones began openly admitting even to outsiders that he was an atheist.]

    There’s a great book by Deborah Layton called Seductive Poison about the People’s Temple. She escaped just before it all went to hell.

  33. There are some quite good (and surprisingly interesting) books on the difficulties of translating the Bible.

    Firstly, you have to remember the vast amount of material there is to start with. The Jewish Talmud is where most of the OT comes from, but there’s a lot in the Talmud which isn’t in the OT. The New Testament was similarly pruned down, with some Christian denominations even today accepting some material that others don’t. (The most obvious example is the ‘Apocrypha’, a whole series of ‘books’ excluded from our NT).

    For centuries, the Bible was exclusively either in Greek or Latin and thus inaccessible to the average person. It was obviously easier for the average monk to transcribe existing Greek/Latin versions rather than learning a whole new language and going back to the originals. By the time there was any interest in doing this, much of the original material was lost.

    There are fragments, and our modern Bibles tend to be cobbled together versions of the best of the old translations, so one bit will have been translated from one language and another from another, depending on which is the best surviving text.

    My favorite Bible translation story dates from when the Bible was first translated into English and printed in large runs. It was banned in England and had to be smuggled in (I think from Amsterdam). One bishop vowed that he would burn any copies of the English version that came his way – so the publishers immediately put out a special edition, just so that he could burn it.

    Classic capitalism in action!

  35. 2323

    Surnames usually start with capital letters. Are you trying to be the vanguard of further informalisation of the English Language? Like Frank is with attempting to be the vanguard of the gender neutral Mr (see various posts in the 1900s on this thread).

  37. Being a Proddy, the Apocrypha hasn’t come my way…I picked up my knowledge about it in the gutter.

    My understanding is that’s its full of stories of an infant Jesus making clay birds and then breathing life into them etc.

  38. Zoomster

    I had heard that each of the Apostles had written a large amount but when they put the Bible together they only included the four ‘popular’ Apostles work: Matty, Marky, Lukey, and Johnny.

  39. For the interests of full disclosure, former Proddy, now cheerful atheist.

    I did go to Theology lectures, but unlike Tony Abbott, I didn’t inhale.

  41. Greensborough Growler @2296
    [By that criteria we’re all malleable to some extent; whether it be law and order, faith, membership of a political party or being married.]
    I think you are conflating the moral acceptance of legitimate authority with the acceptance of an absolute moral authority.

    You can get messed up doing both, but only one of these will get you into Jonestown.

  44. 2342

    I was replying to a particular post which has a number. This is especially useful when replying to a post that is not the most recent post by a person.

  48. [Back to Jim Jones, he definitely wasn’t religious.]
    What? All religions have a conception of an after life, Jones told all his followers to commit suicide so they could reach a utopian afterlife.

    Of course he was nuts, but he realised that appealing to the religious belief of people was the easiest way to control their behaviour. Whether that makes Jones a religious leader or a pseudo-religious leader is irrelevant.

  49. A couple of those ER questions should have had a ‘Don’t Care’ option in the answers. Particularly the one about the LNP split. Oh, and the one about Ponting.

  50. Tom, the reason it is better to use names rather than numbers is that we may not all be seeing the same numbers if a post in in moderation.
    That, and plain good manners.

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