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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  1. Julia is laughing at Rabbott. She is going for him.
    That trip overseas must have really have driven home to Julia that she really is the leader of this country.

  8. [Julia accuses Rabbott of behaving like a 2yr-old having a tantrum after not winning election, WOO-HOO. Go Jules!!!!]

    That’s more like it PM!

    BTW – what was the division that was lost by the Govt.

  9. She had a meeting with Barack Obama and comes back home and what does she see sitting opposite her? A grub not good enough to shine Obama’s shoes.

  10. [I am disappointed that you appear to counsel fatalism. Don’t do anything we might make it worse!]

    No, it is not really simply “fatalism” , bemused (though I grant you there are inevitably bits of this involved in any situation where forces are beyond our power to control) . It is rather that it worries me that sometimes when people , for example, see an example of something that “worked” for one group in one situation they attempt to apply it to the entirety. ” Jo Blow”, the local CFA guy or copper, for example, may be a hero because he got people out in difficult circumstances, and rightly so, but if things had gone wrong and he had unknowingly led them to their deaths because another tongue of the fire had hit the road he was leading them down then it is another story.

    I just think we need to be very careful when we make decisions about what sort of “doing something” is actually likely to be “better” or “worse” in circumstances where chance plays such a major role.

  15. ROFL Julia, “Did they forget to have the tactics meeting this morning.”
    Puerile nonsense, she calls it.

    BOATPHONE!

  16. Finally, she is putting the finger on the fact that the opposition do not have a single policy – apart from saying ‘no’, that is!

  18. “The opposition will play cheap politics, that’s what they do.”
    Julia must have had her weetbix this morning.

  20. I love the fact that she is identifying that we are performing well compared to the pressures being experienced around the world.

  23. Just wound the Tivo back to watch the start of Question Time and saw Abbott making comments about Ang San Suu Kyi. I wonder who it was that blew his nose vociferously about 4 times as he was making his concluding remarks.
    *ppppppbbbbbbfffffffsssttt* *ppppppbbbbbbfffffffsssttt* *ppppppbbbbbbfffffffsssttt*

  24. BH

    I am not sure, but I think the division had something to do with Hockey continuing his debate about the Taxpayer getting a detailed list of what their taxes are spent on, and a personal thankyou??

  25. “As Americans lose their jobs, they lose their homes.” Julia injects some reality into the debate and talks about the 375,000 jobs the Labor government has created. And she keeps mentioning the leaders she met and the talks she had.

    And the opposition comes back with…… “Stop the boats.”

  26. [Today’s Essential Report still has Labor trailing on the 2PP vote, 49-51, despite a slight drop in the Coalition’s primary vote and a lift in the Greens’ vote. Labor is on 39%, the Coalition on 45% and the Greens on 10%, up from 8% last week.]

    Today’s Crikey.

  27. Rod Hagen @ 4261

    I just think we need to be very careful when we make decisions about what sort of “doing something” is actually likely to be “better” or “worse” in circumstances where chance plays such a major role.

    A key sentence with which I agree.

    Those on the ground will always have to make tactical decision but this is best done under overall strategic guidance. Some of this can be worked out in advance e.g. ‘safer places’, some will be decisions made as events unfold e.g. where to direct any reserve or interstate firefighters, where can aerial resources be best deployed.

    Decision making at the top requires good intelligence to get an overall picture to guide decision making. e.g. don’t ignore the best resources available for predicting the direction of a fire. At one stage neither Ms Nixon, Mr Walshe, or Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana were present in the emergency co-ordination centre. The leadership was ‘missing in action’.

  28. [I am not sure, but I think the division had something to do with Hockey continuing his debate about the Taxpayer getting a detailed list of what their taxes are spent on, and a personal thankyou??]

    Government won division 71-70 to adjourn debate

  31. spur212@4223,

    With respect, I think you might have overestimated the importance of Australia on the world stage. I find it difficult to believe that whatever we do in Australia might have any material impact on policy making in the US. With the Republicans seemingly in ascendency, I really cannot see any meaningful change in US policy in combating Global Warming in the short term. Additionally, unlike Australia, US economy is still on its knees. Any climate change policy that cuts emission would be difficult to argue for.
    Sadly, foreign policy triumph wins little to no additional votes. We’ve just had G20, where incredible justling took place. The economic and/or territorial conflict/negotiations between The US, EU, China and Japan were the fiercest seen for some time. I have yet to see any mainstream media in Australia even to scratch the surface. As to foreign policy of Australia, I doubt we are going to see any significant change. The US-OZ alliance is the core, everything else is peripheral. If Kevin Rudd, a career diplomat who has close ties with China could push out a confusing and confused strategy with regard to China. I hold little hope with anyone else delivering a clear, well-considered China policy.

  33. Space Kidette:
    [If today is any example, Julia is about to turn those polls around.]
    But only if she can translate her performance in Question Time to the wider public.

  34. Julia has me laughing today. She tells Rabbott his front bench is a ‘motley crew’ and he is too busy ‘out herding the cats’ to come up with policy.

    Swan is defending the gov’t’s economic management, using ‘the resounding endorsement by the OECD’.

  47. Diogenes@4179

    I’ve never worked out why the OECD feels it is an expert on every economic decision made by every country. How well did they predict the GFC?

    I though they said it was going to start next Tuesday. It’s hardly the OECD’s fault if others got impatient and started it early! :LOL:

  48. Thanks cuppa
    [Only could find this, about his uni days with Costello:

    … Costello then became a lawyer, married into Liberal Party royalty (his father-in-law is Peter Coleman, a former NSW Liberal leader and federal MP) and spent the rest of the 1980s playing political games as he and Kroger terrorised the Liberals’ so-called “wet” faction.]
    Did you notice there is no info pre-uni? My mum told me a story & I have been trying to verify it but I cannot find anything.

  50. brisoz
    [New Lib Slogan, Lost it’s way… Found it’s way…]
    Did Anthony Abbott finally work out how to use the sat-nav the kids gave him last Christmas?

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