Big shock from Newspoll: Labor’s two-party lead has slumped from 59-41 to 52-48, their smallest lead since the last poll prior to the 2007 election. The shift on preferred prime minister is much more modest, Kevin Rudd’s lead slipping from 65-19 to 63-19. It’s apparently also been reported both sides have shifted seven points on the primary vote, which would mean they are level on 41 per cent. More to follow. UPDATE: Graphic here. Rudd has had four points transfer from approve (59 per cent) to disapprove (32 per cent); Turnbull’s approval is steady on 32 per cent and his disapproval is down three to 51 percent.
It’s a very different story from Essential Research, which has Labor’s lead steady at 59-41. Supplementary questions show mixed messages on asylum seekers: one shows support for a tough line and an apparent belief that the Rudd government is delivering, but 55 per cent rate its handling of the issue “not so good/poor” against 36 per cent “excellent/good”. Significantly, a further question shows people do not think the Liberals would do any better.
UPDATE: Newspoll history records six reversals of comparable size. The poll of 6-8 November 1992 saw a 46-54 Labor deficit turn into a 54-46 lead, for what looked to be no readily obvious reason at the time. On 20-22 August 1993, immediately after John Dawkins’ horror post-election budget, the Coalition’s lead went from 51-49 to 60-40. On 23-25 September 1994, Labor went from 57-43 ahead to 51-49 behind in what looked like a correction following two consecutive horror surveys for Alexander Downer. When John Howard took over from him at the end of January 1995, the next survey of 10-12 February saw Labor’s 54-46 lead turn into a 53-47 deficit. The poll immediately after the 1998 election saw the Coalition turn a 53-47 deficit at the last (evidently inaccurate) pre-election poll into a 54-46 lead. Finally, on 28-30 May 2004, Labor under Mark Latham suffered a short-lived slump from 53-47 ahead to 54-46 behind.
Views about Bob Ellis aside, his point about the magnitude of the supposed change is well made
[Sometimes, not often mind you, the ALP won’t be able to find a compromise with either the Liberals or the Greens.]
THM
Exactly my point. It puts the Govt in a much better negotiating position than the current one.
[It puts the Govt in a much better negotiating position than the current one.]
Two minors and an independent is a record BOP situation.
[Two minors…]
I keep forgetting Feilding is representing a party – I thought he was using the ‘”royal” We. 🙂
Andrew
[So: eight hundred thousand Australian voters changed from Labor to Liberal this last fortnight, it seems. Have you met any of these people? Are you one? Your mother? Your nephew? Funny about that. Me neither]
[Views about Bob Ellis aside, his point about the magnitude of the supposed change is well made]
So you’re not joking. Hmmm.
[Views about Bob Ellis aside, his point about the magnitude of the supposed change is well made]
And I might grant that some value if he hadn’t backed it up with his recycled claptrap about Newspoll only having a CEO so it can rig results, conducting three separate surveys until it gets the answer it wants and serving some non-defined interest of Rupert Murdoch’s. Would Ellis care to explain all the other Newspoll results of the last three years, all but two of which have put Labor’s 2PP vote higher than it was at the 2007 election?
Interesting developments on international climate negotiations.
A provision in the draft negotiating text ensuring the protection of native forests, which are great carbon sinks, was deleted at the negotiations in Bangkok last month.
The EU, who together with some African nations, advocated for its removal now claim it was an accident and want it back in.
The current negotiations in Barcelona wrap up on Friday and it’s the last chance to put new clauses in. After Barcelona finishes up, phrases will only be able to be removed, not added.
Bob1234
[ Isn’t it interesting THM that some Green parties are actually right-wing? ]
Some Green Parties are at the political Centre, such as in Eastern Europe, and others can be rather Left-Wing.
The international organisation of Green parties is the Global Greens, the equivelant of the ALP is the Socialist International (even though some ALPers here refuse to accept that the ALP was ever socialist).
In order to join the Global Greens a party must agree to the charter of the Global Greens ( http://www.global.greens.org.au/Charter2001.pdf ). No Right-Wing Party could really accept some of the stuff in there. A Right-Wing Party name might include the word “green” but that doesn’t make them “Green”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvijas_Zala_Partija Latvia was the first country to have a Green head of government.
The Mexican Greens are corrupt, pro-capital punishment, jerks and will probably be kicked out of the Global Greens.
[Would Ellis care to explain all the other Newspoll results of the last three years, all but two of which have put Labor’s 2PP vote higher than it was at the 2007 election?]
He’s been in the job two years and its 2001 all over again? (I say this in terms of issues)
THM, check the Canadian Greens 🙂
What the hell! This thread was opened on Monday and with the Cup carnival this week I had completely, like many thousand other Australians, switched off politics.
52/48. What is going on? Bloody Greens, Take them back to Sri Lanka pronto so we can get this off the headlines and poll numbers back to around the 57/43 where it should be.
Oz, on that same issue, check out this article if you haven’t already seen the link over at LP:
‘Why African countries are boycotting climate change talks’
http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/11/03/why-african-countries-are-boycotting-climate-change-talks/
http://www.politicalcompass.org/canada2008
Like I said, some Greens are from the political Centre – I don’t know of any particularly Right-Wing ones. According to this the Canadian Greens couldn’t get much closer to the Centre and would appear to be to the Left of the ALP (although thats kinda compairing apples with oranges).
I’d probably vote for the NDP.
Yeah the Africa thing is disappointing, if not really unexpected.
It’s interesting that forest protection is not getting much press compared to the Africa walkout. The latter is essentially a negotiating tactic and it’s working. The former may only be a 10 word phrase but it’s essential to any remotely successful agreement. 20% of CO2 emissions are from deforestation.
Newspoll does its stuff and publishes its results. There is a marging of error and as Possum says “Statistical Variation”.
It is not Newspoll’s fault if people read stuff into their findings.
The last “rogue” I can remember was during APEC before the election. This sent the Coalition into leadership hysteria, although it was not repeated at the next poll from memory.
Oz, the two issues may be inter-related if this quote from that story is a guide:
[“Every country needs to develop, to improve the lot of their own people, and that means we have to industrialize, and then to consume, and consumption leads to emissions,” says Mr. Alusa.]
If the EU is now backing away from their compromise on forest protection – which may have been made in recognition of the development needs of the African nations who also backed the removal of the clause – this may simply be more grist to the North-South mill.
When will the next federal poll from any of the main polling companies come out?
Pitty about GP’s departure, as far as I know he was the only other young PBer. Still he misbehaved terribly.
OZ
which countries would you say are “the good guys” in these negotiations? Would you say that the EU is usually better than us but maybe not as good as some of the developing countries?
I hope that the recent Newspoll is not an outer. At least it will pour cold water on the flame wars towards the Greens incited by a couple of right wing Labor hacks here. After all, Labor will need all the Greens preferences it can get if the last Newspoll is a sign of things to come. Hopefully the natural synergy I believe in between Labor & the Greens will develop.
I partially heard on ABC radio that some pre-Copenhagen meeting with African country delegates brokered by Rudd & UK ended with the Africans walking out because they believed the targets espoused by Rudd & UK were too low. They wanted 40% reduction of GHG by 2020.
Morgan often switches from fortnightly to weekly when there’s a newsworthy reason to. Normally it combines two weekends’ worth of face-to-face polling then publishes the result, but after the Utegate issue emerged (i.e. before it became apparent it was a Coalition own goal) it jumped in with only one weekend’s worth of data. Note that it today published consumer confidence figures based on 1130 face-to-face interviews conducted on the weekend – a more than respectable sample size if it decides to go tomorrow.
How about this scenario in six months time, after the next budget?
The asylum seekers will be off the radar (pun not intended), the CPRS will be there in the background. What the Opposers will be doing is wailing about how the “tough” budget is bad for Australia, working families, small business and so on; and they’ll carry on about how interest “hikes” are hurting Australia, working families, small business …. They may even be baying for an election, whether Kevin Rudd can call a double dissolution election or not, to give THE PEOPLE their inalienable right to show much they dislike the Rudd government. Kevin Rudd will then wait till about August, when the Oppos have run out of puff, to call an election, double dissolution if available.
Poll Bludgers will be reborn.
[“Every country needs to develop, to improve the lot of their own people, and that means we have to industrialize, and then to consume, and consumption leads to emissions,” says Mr. Alusa.]
This is a huge dilemma – or course Mr. Alusa is correct. How can we tell African countries they cannot do what we have already done?
[After all, Labor will need all the Greens preferences it can get if the last Newspoll is a sign of things to come.]
The Greens, except for Bob Brown and Christine Milne, also need Labor preferences to get elected. 🙂
[It is not Newspoll’s fault if people read stuff into their findings.]
True. All the same, it’s hardly sagacious for the Newpoll chief to go on Skynews, like he did after every poll during the ’07 election to, in fact, read stuff into their findings. If pollsters want to be seen as objective and neutral, then they shouldn’t be commenting on the implications or relative significance of various aspects of their polling results.
Gary Morgan was also culpable of this on his website.
No doubt the asylum seeker issue will go off the radar during the summer months, but by the same token, seasonal factors suggest it might be expected to re-emerge around the middle of next year. That is exactly when Rudd would want to call a double dissolution, if that’s what he’s of a mind to do – after the mid-year point that would require the start of the term to be backdated almost a full year, but more than six months before the expiry of the term, after which he’s not allowed to do it.
It’s 52/48 with Rudd being genuinely tough but humane on border protection. Imagine if Rudd was as soft as the Greens would like, which would give the MSM and the Coalition some real ammunition to attack?
Holy Skyland! The Liberals would hit the front!
Vote1Maxine
It is in the interests of the Greens for the Liberals to get a real thumping! Although it will make it harder for us to win lower house seats this will be more than made up for by making it easier for us to win senate seats. If it is obvious that the ALP will win the election then the campaign will switch attention to the senate race: this will mean more publicity. The NDP got air time because it was obvious that Hawke would win.
Besides the Liberals are tied to an obsolete would view (crush the worker, destroy the environment, ignore the effects of ecology on the economy untill your unsustainable habits have destroyed our economy) – we want them out of the picture. We want the Liberal Party to collapse, no symapthy.
THM- I’m always perplexed by the attitude of the Greens. They want to improve the environment, they recognise that they must be active politically to do this, but they don’t want to be in government?
It’s simply illogical. BoP situations, especially ones where the Greens hold power, cannot be relied on and, at best, deliver you a camel rather than a horse, because you end up with a compromise.
So why DON’T the Greens go all out and aim for government? Isn’t the environment really that important, after all?
I notice you haven’t been able to point to a single initiative the Greens have been successful in having implemented. The ALP, on the other hand, can point to a plethora of environmental issues which have been addressed because, with their ranks, are people who are environmentally aware and can argue the case.
Believe me, I’m not politically naive. I know how hard it is to get policy up – some of the initiatives I’ve worked on have taken me a decade to get there.
I’m also not politically naive enough to believe that dangling preferences in front of the majors is enough either.
I mean, blind freddy – and certain the poll aware types on this site! – know how the Green vote splits.
What I resent (I accept it, but I resent it, all the same) is that the ALP, in getting environmental issues up, gets attacked for ‘saving the environment to appease the Greens’ when the Greens are actually missing in action on these issues.
I’ve used examples of this before, notably cattle on the High Plains, wind farms and the Barmah forest. Labor lost political skin on some of these issues (two seats lost partly because of the HP decision) – the Greens were silent on them. Yet the Greens get the credit for initiatives they had nothing to do with and Labor gets accused of only making these decisions to please the Greens!
Today there was an attack on the Victorian government over the removal of cattle from the Barmah forest in the media. Speakers: government representative, representative of the group agitating to have cattle put back in the forest. Callers: agitators wanting cattle back in the forest. Not a Green in sight. Yet this is one of the biggies environmentally in Victoria.
Anyway, would be interested to know why the Greens don’t want to be in government and how they are going to save the world in the meantime.
Oh, and I have no objections to the Greens existing, I just wish they’d do a better job.
And I can’t see why accepting that we need them to govern means we have to ignore it when they make points which are silly or illogical.
So, for the record: yes, Labor will need the Greens in the Senate (all things going as expected) after the next election.
No, that doesn’t mean that they – or their supporters – should be above criticism because of this, just as being an ALP member doesn’t mean I support everything Labor does.
[How can we tell African countries they cannot do what we have already done?]
Because what we did is about to destroy the planet.
We can’t stop non-Annex 1 countries from developing but that doesn’t mean we have to lock them into the polluting path that we followed and has led us to this situation.
The policy solution to this dilemma is to provide aid, both in terms of finance and technology, to developing countries to allow them to grow and develop sustainably. Australia is yet to declare it’s hand on finance and technology transfer. The fact that we don’t even meet our Millennium Goal target for international aid doesn’t bode well.
Heysen Molotov,
In terms of targets and finance, the EU (and most member countries) have outstripped Australia. They’re also taking a lead role in attempting to negotiate and compromise, but still get a strong deal.
This is in contrast to the Umbrella Group, which Australia chairs. This bloc has been silent on many issues, mainly because of the weak policies of most of its members, or advocating against other developed countries who have put forward stronger policies. It was at a meeting with the Umbrella Group where the African countries walked out.
Zoomster
I told you, the Greens do want to be in government, thats what we are campaigning for: to be in government so we can impliment sound policy. If you are suggesting that the Greens members should infiltrate the ALP then I ask again, if such a model is possible then why isn’t it operating ANYWHERE?
Willam wrote:
[Would Ellis care to explain all the other Newspoll results of the last three years, all but two of which have put Labor’s 2PP vote higher than it was at the 2007 election?]
While not revealing my own opinion, I’m sure Bob Ellis would say, “They saved this rort up for a big occasion. If they did it every time, then it’d be obvious. Subtlety is the key.”
That’s what I think Bob Ellis would say.
This is the same Bob Ellis who thinks that Labor lost the 2004 election because his column in the Courier-Mail was scrapped.
I don’t doubt Kevin Rudd would call a double dissoultion election, if available, if the Senate dynamics were right.
As usual, Antony has all the electoral possibilities up his sleeve, aka blog.
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2009/02/an-early-federa.html
ruawake
[ The Greens, except for Bob Brown and Christine Milne, also need Labor preferences to get elected. ]
The ALP will put the Greens above the Liberals no matter what. It is possible that we could see a repeat of the Fielding episode but it is unlikely. The Greens could give the ALP nuthin’ and you’d still put us above the only other serious challenger.
Oz
Tim Flannery has written an article at the NYRB reviewing recent books by and about Lovelock, Gaia and the Medea Hypothesis (which is the opposite of Gaia Theory). It’s very interesting.
I haven’t read Lovelock’s latest book but he says global temperature will increase by about 9 degrees within the next few decades and almost wipe out the human race. We can’t really change it and we should concentrate on adapting.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23387
Cheers OZ
🙂
Darn you Umbrella Group!!
I have some sympathy for Bob Ellis after he was done over by Abbott and Costello for Goodbye Jerusalem.
Heysen Molotov,
In Senate races in most states, The Greens main opposition isn’t the Liberals but the potential for major party preferences to elect random minor party candidates. Like Fielding and the DLP in Victoria.
[I have some sympathy for Bob Ellis after he was done over by Abbott and Costello for Goodbye Jerusalem.]
Great – so disgusting defamatory lies are hunky dory if they’re directed at somebody you don’t like.
Bought a copy of Al Gore’s “Our choice: a plan to solve the climate crisis”. Looking forward to a good read.
THM @ 681
[If you are suggesting that the Greens members should infiltrate the ALP then I ask again, if such a model is possible then why isn’t it operating ANYWHERE?]
No, I’m suggesting that people who really care about the environment, think that change is urgent and needs to happen now, would be better off in the ALP.
There’s quite a few of us in there.
I’m not patient enough to wait another ten years to be in a position where I can influence policy. I want to do it now.
Of course, if you think all these urgent issues can wait ten years, keep doing what you’re doing.
William,
No, it pained me that politicians resorted to defamatory proceedings. They throw enough dirt themselves under parliamentary privilege.
Thanks for the link Diogenes.
I don’t know what science Lovelock is citing in particular, but it’s not outside the range of possibility. Once you reach a certain temperature increase it may as well be 100 degrees, because of the impact it will have on us.
The other thing about forest protection is that it’s absolutely critical to saving the climate. So if it’s not put in tomorrow we can with certainty say that we’re all dead.
Tanya Costello and Margaret Abbott are politicians?
The publisgers accepted that it was defamatory. Therefore, without having read the book, so do I.
The action was brought by Tony and Margaret and Peter and Tanya.
[Of course, if you think all these urgent issues can wait ten years, keep doing what you’re doing.]
Obviously a party that puts forward a policy which won’t see emissions reductions in Australia by at least 2030 really cares about the urgent issues.
Essentially what you’re asking, in NSW for example, is for people who care about the environment and want change to join a party that is about to build two new coal fired powerstations, spends more paying rating agencies than on renewable energy, is about to allow hunting in national parks and has completely stuffed public transport.
Good plan.
[Would Ellis care to explain all the other Newspoll results of the last three years, all but two of which have put Labor’s 2PP vote higher than it was at the 2007 election?]
Now William, you of all people should realise that in Bob’s opinion, that is just the normal order of things and any thing else, say a 52 or 53 to Labor is an aberration! 😉
Zoomster
[ No, I’m suggesting that people who really care about the environment, think that change is urgent and needs to happen now, would be better off in the ALP.
There’s quite a few of us in there.
I’m not patient enough to wait another ten years to be in a position where I can influence policy. I want to do it now.
Of course, if you think all these urgent issues can wait ten years, keep doing what you’re doing. ]
Is that a typo? Should the first word be ‘yes’ because that would make more sence in its context? It very much sounds to me like you are suggesting that the environmental movement enters the ALP.
Look I don’t care whether the Greens form government or whether the ALP adopts ‘green’ policies and forms government but the current ALP is FAR from green, they are currently the ‘badies’ and so campaigning for them is not doing any good, it is counter-productive. Like I said, if infiltration by the environmental movement into one of the old parties worked, then it would be commonplace overseas. It is not.