ACNielsen: 55-45

The latest monthly ACNielsen survey of 1400 respondents (conducted from Thursday to Saturday) shows Labor’s two-party lead down slightly from 56-44 to 55-45. This seems a fairly conservative return on the changes in the primary vote: Labor down two points to 44 per cent, the Coalition up two to 40 per cent. Malcolm Turnbull also scores relatively well on personal ratings, his approval up four to 35 per cent and his disapproval down five to 55 per cent. However, Kevin Rudd’s approval is also up two points to 70 per cent, and his lead as preferred prime minister is up from 67-24 to 69-23. Rudd’s disapproval rating is up one point to 25 per cent.

Further afield:

• Courtesy of comprehensive coverage at Andrew Landeryou’s VexNews we learn the Liberal preselection vote to succeed David Hawker in Wannon has been won by Daniel Tehan, deputy director of the Victorian Liberal Party and son of the late Kennett government minister Marie Tehan. The other candidate who made it through to the final round was Stephen Mitchell, founder of natural gas explorer Molopo Australia. David Clark, Elizabeth Matuschka, Hugh Koch and Katrina Rainsford were eliminated after the first round, followed by Simon Price and Rod Nockles, then Louise Staley, then Matt Makin.

• Labor veteran Duncan Kerr has announced he will not contest his Hobart seat of Denison at the next federal election. Misha Schubert of The Age reports this has come as a surprise, such that “when news broke yesterday, there was no obvious successor staking a public claim”. It is widely noted that Kerr leaves his seat with a margin of 15.6 per cent after gaining it from the Liberals in 1987, though it probably wouldn’t do to put this entirely down to candidate factors. Early preselection contenders identified by Michael Stedman of The Mercury are George Williams, constitutional lawyer and “Kerr associate”, Jonathan Jackson, son of former state attorney-general Judy Jackson, and Rebecca White, staffer to Kerr and a state candidate for Lyons. However, state secretary John Dowling sounds confident none of the 27 state election candidates will be contesting preselection.

• With Peter Dutton confirming his intention to jump ship from notionally Labor Dickson in northern Brisbane to safe Liberal McPherson on the Gold Coast, Labor’s narrowly unsuccessful candidate for Dickson in 2007, Fiona McNamara, has signalled her intention to again seek preselection.

• Paige Taylor of The Australian reports former WA Premier Alan Carpenter is “preparing to leave parliament”, and “could quit his seat of Willagee before the next state election, due in 2012”. Although a neighbour of the seat of Fremantle which gave the Greens their breakthrough lower house win in May, Willagee is genuinely unloseable for Labor. The front-runner to succeed Carpenter would appear to be Dave Kelly, state secretary of the Left faction Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, who wisely held back when Fremantle became available.

• The bill for a referendum to amend South Australia’s Constitution discussed in the previous post passed the House of Assembly on the second try, after embarrassing failure on the first. However, Attorney-General Michael Atkinson openly admits he does not expect it to be passed in the upper house. The Liberals have spoken in favour of four-year Council terms and a double dissolution mechanism, but against cutting Council numbers, giving the Council President a deliberative vote, and in particular the plan to combine the measures into a single referendum question. The Legislative Council is also debating the Electoral (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill, which proposes to ban registered political parties using the name of “a prominent public body” (plainly aimed at the Save the Royal Adelaide Hospital Group), increase fines for electoral offences by as much as 400 per cent, require that redistributions commence 24 months after an election as opposed to the current three, increase the number of members required of a registered political party from 150 to 500 (in line with most other states), introduce compulsory enrolment (surprised they didn’t have this already) and ban third parties from producing how-to-vote cards.

• Former NSW Rural Fire Services chief Phil Koperberg, who replaced Bob Debus as Labor member for Blue Mountains at the 2007 state election, is making noises which are generally being interpreted as meaning he will quit politics, either at or before the next election. According to the ABC, Koperberg says he is “not cut out for the nature of partisan or party politics and I find myself doing and saying things I would rather not do, which my conscience would have me to otherwise”, and that he is considering his future in the “medium to long-term”. Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald reports Koperberg “has told journalists, colleagues and even Coalition MPs several times in the past two years that he was thinking of quitting before the next election”.

• Via Democratic Audit, the House Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee is conducting an inquiry into the effectiveness of the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984.

UPDATE: The weekly Essential Research has Labor down a little after last week’s spike, from 61-39 to 59-41. Not sure why, but the usual suite of further questions is not included this time.

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.

2,703 comments on “ACNielsen: 55-45”

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  3. Just imagine the panic when there was a polio outbreak. I can’t imagine our current health system being able to cope with ventilating thousand of kids in isolation wards. The whole health system would fall apart.

    [Fifty years ago polio was every parent’s greatest dread. It’s difficult now to imagine the fear that swept through Australian communities each time there was another epidemic. Thousands of children spent months in special isolation wards, unable to breathe outside the “iron lungs” that kept them alive.]

    http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Memories-of-polio-and-those-who-wrestled-with-it/2004/12/06/1102182223039.html

  5. Diogenes,

    If there were a polio outbreak that could affect us how much warning would we have and what contingencies are in place (efficacy and speed)?

  6. [If there were a polio outbreak that could affect us how much warning would we have and what contingencies are in place (efficacy and speed)?]
    Um, give everyone the polio vaccine.

  11. vp

    There hasn’t been a polio case in Australia since 1986. With the level of immunisation we have now, the herd immunity is so high an outbreak couldn’t happen.

  13. scorpio,

    I was just having a scan at Julie Bishop’s blog and have come to the conclusion that there is no way that they were written by her.
    Would be interested in another opinion!

    To my (very) untutored eye, they look rather as if they began with a list of bullet points, which were then expanded without altering the structure much. The course of the latest few pieces is, I think, obvious from the start; even if we didn’t know they were from Julie’s blog.

    So, if they were not by Julie, I do detect her unsubtle and lightweight imprint upon them. A staffer could have been given a clear brief to finish off- as there’s not enough in them to warrant someone coming back for further advice.

  16. [Next: hooping cough?]
    Well this seems to be an increasing problem thanks to anti-vaccine nutters.

    Apparently the polio vaccination rate in the UK is now at just 80%, which is the lowest rate since the vaccine was introduced.

  19. Kersebleptes,

    Thanks for that. When I read them, I was struck by how different they seemed to the usual run of the mill quotes and QT/Parliamentary discussion by Bishop.

    I would love a second opinion by Pete Van Onselen!!!

  20. The earlier exchanges about circadian rhytms refer, I go to bed and, usually, am awake for two or three more hours. Tonight, I’ll watch the cricket until the (not) bitter end, get three hours sleep and be alert (sort of) for the rest of the day. Then …

  21. [Plans for the Traveston Crossing Dam on the Mary River, near Gympie, will soon be before federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

    The state government argues the controversial dam is essential to securing the area’s future drinking water, but protesters say the survival of rare lungfish, a turtle and a cod are at stake.]

    I wondered why it was so quiet here today with very few greenies posting. They are all up in Gympie protesting Anna’s dam!!!

    http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/traveston-crossing-dam-protests-continue-20090920-fwko.html

  22. scorpio,

    But what if someone else handles her everyday conversation for her?

    Get a regular QT watcher (or rather, someone who listens to Julie Bishop in QT, a slightly bigger ask)) to have a look at it.

  23. Some years ago I had depression for a period of about two years that came out of nowhere for no discernible reason. But it is something you would swap two broken legs, arms and jaw for and still think yourself much better off. You constantly obsess about suicide as a way to end a difficult to describe chronic extreme mental misery. The only thing that has ever come to close to it is when I had (again for no apparent reason apart from specialist guesses) chronic extreme nausea for nine straight months.

    The black dog is very black where just being alive is suffering. Anybody with this condition has my sympathy.

  25. Thomas Paine,

    Yeah. It’s like swimming in Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania. You could be one metre under or one hundred, but from neither depth can you see the sun, things are so opaque.

    In some ways, it’s scarier afterwards- when people can clearly see how utterly skewed their perceptions & analytical faculties were. The thought of a relapse is awful.

    Nine months?!? How did they keep you fed? Not drips, surely?

  27. The nausea episode was worse for the fact I never threw up – I spent 9 months like a person with a hang-over staring down the toilet bowl, waiting for it. It was 9 months staring at the floor or sleeping if possible, lost 9kg by the end of it all.

    I live fear of either of those things coming back!

  29. TP, it sounds similar to my brother. He got some sort of virus in the balance part of the middle ear. He suffered extreme vertigo, vision problems and severe nausea for many months.

    Couldn’t drive a car and it almost cost him his job because of the lengthy time off needed to recover.

  38. [For me, there is no more powerful way to achieve that goal than to fashion an education system in which economic and family circumstances do not dictate whether a child has the opportunity to excel and to shape their own life course. Unfortunately, that is still a radical aim, but it is also an intensely practical one. In pursuing it I am inspired by my Welsh forebear, Nye Bevan, who never gave up either his determination to improve the plight of working people or his pragmatism about how to achieve that goal.]

    Julia gets all Bolshy. Not a bad inspiration either.

    Now Julia, if you8 really believe that, FIX the school funding formulae and stop all this national testing and school rankings nonsense.

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26100893-7583,00.html

  39. I resent how Gillard uses the term “working people” with the implication that those in better financial circumstances don’t work. Shame on her.

  41. Shorter Glenn Milne:

    [Labor may have won the election, but that does not necessarily give them right to govern.]

    Even shorter Glenn Milne:

    [Nothing should change.]

  42. [I resent how Gillard uses the term “working people” with the implication that those in better financial circumstances don’t work. Shame on her.]

    It’s the modern term for working classes. Get off your pedestal GP. You’re just like the Liberals – taking up the fight to Labor on the stuff that doesn’t actually matter. Get some policies.

  43. Bob, “working classes” is also ridiculous. The clear implication is that wealthier people don’t work, which is a complete nonsense.

  44. 2692

    There are wealthy people who don`t work and live off their income from their wealth/investments. Many of them do but not all. Some live of inheritances (money they did not earn).

  45. Do any NSW Liberals despair that it takes a bloody awful Labor Party in NSW for the Liberals to win an election, rather than Labor just being on the nose and the Liberals actually inspiring the electorate? Rudd Labor did it in 2007, how hard can it be?

    Totally inept. It’s obscene.

  46. Tom, that is true, I am not discounting the fact that such people do exist, but the vast majority of people who can work, do work. That some earn higher wages does not mean that they don’t work, but of course the socialists will complain that earning higher wages is a disgusting outcome.

  47. [the socialists will complain that earning higher wages is a disgusting outcome.]

    Rubbish. I don’t think anyone would describe earning a higher wage as disgusting.

  48. 2696

    There are a few of those left but there used to be more. Each according to ability, each according to need and all that. The points of contention these days are whether the size of the gap is correct and whether it is reward for doing extra reward for doing extra good.

  49. [Bob, “working classes” is also ridiculous. The clear implication is that wealthier people don’t work, which is a complete nonsense.]
    Good to see the Right insisting on its own brand of political correctness.

  50. I also disagree with “the gap” conception, because fundamental to the term is that everyone should be paid the same which is an idiotic Marxist concept long since disproved.

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