Newspoll: 52-48 to Coalition

GhostWhoVotes reports the latest Newspoll has the Coalition with a 52-48 lead, unchanged on a fortnight ago. More to follow.

UPDATE: The Australian reports Julia Gillard’s preferred prime minister rating is at an equal low of 49 per cent, down four points on last time, while Tony Abbott is up two to 34 per cent.

UPDATE 2: Graphic here. Labor is up a point on the primary vote to 34 per cent, the Coalition is steady on 43 per cent and the Greens are down a point to 13 per cent. Gillard’s personal ratings are now worse than Abbott’s: she is at at 41 per cent on both approval (down three) and disapproval (up four), while Tony Abbott is up three on approval to 44 per cent and down four on disapproval to 42 per cent.

Other matters of note:

• The Prime Minister has announced a panel will be established to consider a referendum question on constitutional recognition of Aborigines. The panel is to report by December next year, and it is currently suggested a referendum will follow at some point within three years. While logic might dictate that it be held simultaneously with the next election, the possibility that election day referendums might act as a drag on the vote of the incumbent has been noted by Peter Brent at Mumble. The panel will have to consider whether the recognition should involve a largely symbolic preamble, or substantive change to the body of the constitution. A 2008 parliamentary inquiry report identified two expressly discriminatory provisions that should be reviewed with any consideration of a preamble. One was the redundant section 25, which requires that population figures used to determine the states’ House of Representatives seat allocations exclude any races disqualified from voting under state law – something now forbidden under the Racial Discrimination Act. The other is section 51(xxvi), empowering the federal government to make laws for “the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws” – from which the words “other than the aboriginal race in any state” were excised by the 1967 referendum. This came under the microscope during the Hindmarsh Island Bridge case of 1998, when the federal government argued that it was not for the High Court to distinguish between permissible positive laws under the section and impermissible negative ones. The court was unable to reach a majority ruling, and constitutional law expert Anne Twomey argues the distinction would likely prove highly vexed in any case. A number of options were canvassed for replacing the existing provision with “a new legislative power in Indigenous affairs subject to the rule of non-discrimination on the grounds of race”, none of which strike me as being terribly promising from an electoral point of view. The same goes for any number of more radical suggestions for constitutional recognition, such as George Williams’ call for constitutional recognition of agreements reached between indigenous people and the various tiers of government, or Professor Kim Rubenstein’s “special Indigenous executive council” empowered to seek explanations from parliament regarding legislation that did not meet its approval.

• Mal Brough has declared an interest in Liberal National Party endorsement for the Sunshine Coast seat of Fisher, incumbent Peter Slipper having most likely signed his political death warrant by accepting Labor’s backing for the deputy speaker position. Brough, who lost his seat of Longman at the 2007 election (Wyatt Roy recovered it for the LNP on August 21), turned his back on the LNP after unsuccessfully resisting the merger as state president of the Liberal Party, believing the terms to have been unduly favourable to the Nationals.

• Some subjects for further investigation, courtesy of events in the mother country. Firstly, Britain’s High Court has overturned the election of Brown government Immigration Minister Phil Woolas for falsely claiming that his narrowly unsuccessful Liberal Democrat opponent had been courting Islamic extremists. Woolas also faces possible criminal charges, and has been barred from standing for public office for three years. Andrew Bolt reproduces one of the offending publications, and argues – rightly in my view – that the presence or otherwise of Woolas in parliament should be decided by voters rather than courts. The episode stands in stark contrast to Australian practice, where the only substantial sanctions on misleading publications in election campaigns require that the deception be “in relation to the casting of a vote” – for example, through the distribution of misleading how-to-vote cards. The Labor-Greens agreement reached after the August 21 election obliged the government to seek to address this by establishing a “truth in advertising” offence in the Electoral Act.

• Secondly, the Court of European Rights has ruled Britain must grant the right to vote to prisoners, who have been denied it since the Reform Act of 1867. Parliament must now decide whether to thumb its nose at the court. There are echoes here of our own High Court’s 2007 ruling that overturned a Howard government move to extend the existing ban on prisoners serving terms of longer than three years to all prisoners regardless.

• Some Christmas gift ideas for the election wonk in your life. Courtesy of the Federation Press comes Professor Graeme Orr’s The Law of Politics: Elections, Parties and Money in Australia, “the first dedicated monograph on the law on democratic politics in Australia”. And from the Cambridge University Press comes Sally Young’s How Australia Decides: Election Reporting and the Media, a “four-year empirical study” offering “the only systematic, historical and in-depth analysis of Australian election reporting”.

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.

4,327 comments on “Newspoll: 52-48 to Coalition”

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  2. Going by Coory’s comment, he and Oakes might have been together when they were provided the information.

    I know, two journos in a bar is a far fetched landscape, but stranger things have happened.

  3. [vic, yes I saw that. It was a facsinating interview. I was quite surprised when Oakes described how much some pollies say in front of staff such as cleaners etc.]
    Kroger spreading malicious gossip about Oakes is payback for daring to say he thought Gillard has the potential to be a great leader. 😆

  6. [The Finnigans
    Posted Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 8:50 pm | Permalink

    STOP THE BOATS FROM IRELAND!!!!!]

    Wahhhhhh what about my Guinness??????????

  7. A cracker of a doco on Dateline SBS on the Bali 2. The families are the real victims. Sukumaran’s sister had to give up study because the pressure was too much for her.

    Chan found God, good for him and Sukumaran found teaching. why, why, why?

  13. Jules was looking really confident in the press conference & in the other scenes they showed on ABCNews 24 from the APEC summit.

    It was also good to see the “real Julia” back 🙂 in that segment they showed on Insiders … where she asked the press crew about which of them had said “thank you Mr President”.

  15. Bemused
    On ABC website.
    But look at the opening lines. Opposition says……………………

    Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has urged the Federal Government to keep the nation’s population growth at sustainable levels, despite a report saying strong immigration growth is almost inevitable.

    During the federal election, both major parties stressed that immigration levels should be controlled and shied away from a population estimate of 36 million people by 2050.

    But Fairfax newspapers are reporting information from a Treasury briefing sent to Ms Gillard after the election showing strong population growth is “probably inescapable” and even the figure of 36 million is only achievable by factoring a significant reduction in migrant intake.

    The briefing warns that strong economic growth will drive demand for higher immigration, but Mr Morrison has told the ABC’s Insiders program the Coalition stands by its position.

    “What the Australian people have said to us pretty clearly is… unless the infrastructure gets delivered then the population pressures are compounding the problem, not making it easier,” he said.

    “The Coalition always said there would be population growth. We weren’t in the zero population growth camp at any time. We said there needs to be sustainable population growth.

    “We said we would get [migration] down to 170,000 net in our first term and the Government said they were going to achieve that as well actually.”

    Mr Morrison also says the Coalition will not necessarily support the Government’s response to the High Court decision on asylum seekers.

    The court ruled that asylum seekers held in offshore detention centres, such as Christmas Island, should not be prevented from accessing the Australian justice system.

    Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says the Government may respond by making the review system more robust.

    But Mr Morrison says the Government should re-open the detention centre on Nauru instead.

    “We want to see them deal in introducing policies that have been proven and have worked in the past and we want to see them restored,” he said.

    “If the Government is not prepared to do that, then they should take nothing for granted from the Coalition in terms of how we might receive any of their proposed changes.”

  16. Wow!
    [Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says the Government may respond by making the review system more robust.]
    Almost two lines from the minister! 😡

  18. Perhaps a little off topic, but I’m sure I read either here or in the SMH or The Age a month or so ago, that Christine Nixon is on the short list to be the next Victorian Governor.

    Any further info on that one?

  20. feeney @ 4019

    Perhaps a little off topic, but I’m sure I read either here or in the SMH or The Age a month or so ago, that Christine Nixon is on the short list to be the next Victorian Governor.

    Any further info on that one?

    I have not heard anything about it and am sure that if there was such a proposal it would attract plenty of comment. Many people in Victoria would be appalled.

  23. Yes, it would be a hard sell by any stretch, even taking into account her great work as Reconstruction Commissioner.

    I am confident of reading it somewhere, but it was stamped on straight away. It was probably put around by that scumbag Kroger or some of his grubby friends.

    At least Nixon achieved much as Victorian Police Commissioner. Kroger has always been a slimebag with a smart alec attitude to anyone with a different point of view. What caused Howes to choose Kroger to launch his book is beyond me. Perhaps I have just answered my own question – two peas in a pod etc!!!

  25. Diog

    what people forget – and I’m not sure the RC took into account – was that Vic had experienced major fires in 2003 and 2006 and coped with them quite well.

    These fires burned for well over three weeks (in just our area; they continued burning elsewhere). Both were reckoned to be worse than 1939 (depends on how you measure these things) and covered quite extensive areas of the state. Luckily, there was very little loss of life.

    With that experience behind you – and Nixon was certainly Commissioner for at least one of those fires, if not both – taking time out on one day (and again, remember, there were already major fires which had been burning for days) for r & r would seem quite reasonable.

    It’s only in retrospect, knowing that these fires on that day were a different beast altogether (and, as I’ve outlined, the ‘official’ idea of what was happening was flawed – at 6 pm that evening, for example, I don’t think that anyone official knew of fires at Kinglake or Marysville) that these actions seem incomprehensible.

    And sorry, comparing fires in Victoria with fires in any other state, let alone America, shows a basic lack of understanding of conditions here.

    Fiz

    no, I’m not a Bright person (oooh look, I made a pun), but certainly in the area for both of those fires…and the 1993 and 1998 floods!

    In both 2003 and 6 had occasions where I breathed a sigh of relief because the fires were heading away from us, then had to do a doubletake because that meant they were heading straight for Bright!

  26. feeney

    I have said it previously, but Howes is 29 years old. I daresay he is lacking any wisdom. Kroger on the other hand is exactly what you say, a scumbag 🙂

  29. [victoriaPosted Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 10:03 pm | Permalinkzoomster
    well said.
    ]

    Indeed – comparing how a Doctor would handle n emegency and how a police commisioner would illustrates how Dio was WAY out of depth, and relying on a media who were dtermined to smear Nixon just bexcause she wasn’t a Victorian.

  32. Frank Calabrese

    Nixon had made many enemies in the police force. The organisation had many ambitious egos in the nest. They had their knives out for Nixon for quite some time.

  33. Frank @ 4030

    relying on a media who were dtermined to smear Nixon just bexcause she wasn’t a Victorian.

    If you believe that you have lost the plot.

  35. [bemusedPosted Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 10:09 pm | PermalinkFrank @ 4030
    relying on a media who were dtermined to smear Nixon just bexcause she wasn’t a Victorian.
    If you believe that you have lost the plot.
    ]

    See Victoria’s post @4033.

  36. Victoria @ 4033

    I have to agree with you there. I would also say that in some respects they were far worse than Nixon.

    The Victoria Police Force has yet to shed it’s habit of administering copper jacketed lead to people with mental health issues and I still suspect a fair amount of corruption has yet to be uncovered.

  38. [And sorry, comparing fires in Victoria with fires in any other state, let alone America, shows a basic lack of understanding of conditions here.]

    Yes. The conditions are much worse in the US than in Australia.

  40. zoomster

    Yes, I witnessed a doozy on that day. It was like a special effects scene in a Harry Potter movie of those characters known as dementors stalking the sky.

  41. [bemusedPosted Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 10:14 pm | PermalinkFrank @ 4036
    See Victoria’s post @4033.
    What, the one I agreed with
    ]

    Yes, and especially the bit about Nixom making enemies – and that includes members of the Victorian Media .

  46. [DiogenesPosted Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 10:19 pm | PermalinkI was guided by the evidence given at Royal Commission. And I think the RC got it right.
    ]

    And most at thne RC were there to settle scores – and you fell for it like the sucker you always are.

  47. [Every time anything bad happens in this country, you and your ilk always use us poor elderly welsh bungy jumping cleaners with plumbing problems as scapegoats.]

    STOP GUSFACE AND DEPORT HIM TO NAURU!!!!

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