The latest fortnightly Newspoll sees Labor’s 51-49 lead last time obliterated by a six-point shift to the Coalition, with Labor’s primary vote down four points to 32 per cent, the Coalition up five to 45 per cent and the Greens steady on 12 per cent. Large amounts of tosh were written about the Labor lead last fortnight, even though a lack of corroborating evidence from other polls made it clear enough the result was an aberration. No doubt there will further over-analysis of this correction – probably over-correction, with the New South Wales state election perhaps injecting a bit of static into proceedings. On the primary vote, Labor is down four points to 32 per cent, the Coalition up five to 45 per cent and the Greens steady on 12 per cent. Julia Gillard’s lead as preferred prime minister has narrowed from 50-31 to 46-37.
morning bludgers
not surprised with Newspoll. In fact, I believed that the last newspoll should have been around this figure.
Abbott is not going anywhere just yet. That will upset Turnbull no end.
Rudd did well last night.
Interesting read in the OZ. Windsor says Labor should go straight to an ETS.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/wily-windsor-more-cunning-than-nats/story-e6frgd0x-1226033575367
William as I stated last time Newspoll came out that it was out of Sync with both the Morgan Phone Poll and Essential which came out only 24 hours and were overlooked by the media. You were obviously skeptical as well but he media just ran as usual with Newspoll. To much emphasis is placed on Newspoll it would be better looking at the combination of Polls excluding Morgan Phone which would show that the real figure is about 54 to 46.
Your PBers got completely carried away with previous Newspoll that was obviously a totally “Rogue” poll.
Julia Gillard is reply unpopular with a large section of the community far more so than Kevin Rudd ever was and the only thing keeping her in the game is Tony Abbott’s own performance replete with far too much aggression and lacking alternate policy viewpoints.
Would Turnbull cross the floor in support of an ETS? Would the Greens now grow a brain and accept an ETS?
Doyley
Be very careful just taking information from 2 data points. Look at the trend taking into account all 2PP points since the election.
Good Morning Bludgers!
I thought a week in politics was a long time but having to work a living yesterday, it seems that I missed a bundle in just 24 hours.
I won’t comment on the Rudd stuff, because I haven’t yet watched it and I would like to read for myself the manner in which Rudd outed himself for his ETS mistake.
The newspoll is starting to worry me. Yes, I am well and truly aware the the only poll that matters is some time away. What is worrying me is what I mentioned a few polls ago. The message that the Govt is illigitmate, that Julia is pretendy Julia and incompetent is sticking.
Personally, I don’t believe any of it, but the fact that these numbers are continuing to decline for the govt tells me one thing. In the war of the messages Abbott is winning.
Why? Because the ALP media machine is ineffective. They need to start working on controlling the media message NOW because messages like these are like the Titanic. In the minds of the public it is going to take ages to replace these negative Abbott driven messages and replace them with positive ones.
Trust me, these numbers tell me that the ALP is incompetent messages is firmly ingrained in the Australian public psyche. The ALP media machine but up the ante NOW or the Federal ALP will go out in the same style its Sussex st counterparts did.
SK
Your assessment is sound.
The article I posted from The OZ re Windsor is interesting. Labor and the Greens need his vote to pass a carbon tax. What would happen if the govt decided an ETS would be the best way to go? Would the govt get Turnbull’s vote? Windsor’s vote? and perhaps even Crook’s vote?
The Greens have to realise that if they do not negotiate with the govt now on this policy, there is little chance it will ever get up. It is looking very likely now that the coalition will win the next election. With that any hope of an ETS is gone.
What is the govt’s strategy?
This all fits with the meme that Rudd made a mistake not sticking with the ETS, and that both the coalition and the Greens voted it down. Will the Greens reconsider their position. Windsor is not parking his vote for a carbon tax as yet. If he is more likely to vote for an ETS, than the govt and Greens should pursue this course of action now.
I have to agree with you SK. The oppos have the govt hobbled with the threat of a Great Big New Advertising Campaign backlash, stopping the govt getting its own message out. Maybe it is time to start informing the people directly about gov’t policies and programs. Better to get a message out with oppo squeals than have no message at all.
Space Kidette
No more ‘media machine’ is needed. THere’s already been too much spin. The incompetence is a failure of vision. What is needed in Labor is real leadership – a cabinet transparently and aggressively committed to progressive policies, as needed by the nation. Unfortunately no such people are left. The last to leave turned out the light. Only the stand-for-nothings remain. That’s why the PV is stuck in the 30s.
Wouldn’t it be terrific to have real leaders telling us clearly and relentlessly what we were going to get and why – starting with a proper carbon mechanism; and onshore processing of boat refugees. Instead the party appears to be being dragged along reluctantly on the issues just because of the minority government agreements. That clearly does not wash with the voters, on the polling.
I honestly believe that proportional representation in the HoR is now the only way to go for Labor if they want power on a regular basis from here – albeit shared with the Greens and indies. Now is the chance for Labor to get it through both houses – or at least after 1 July. PR is the new light on the hill.
jv
what do the coalition stand for? Their primary vote is in the mid forties. They are managing to do well with no vision at all.
Really bad numbers for Labor & Gillard, confirming too that the last Newspoll was a rogue.
Lenore Taylor on Radio National just revealed that sources inside the party after the leadership coup told her that Gillard wanted to kill off the ETS altogether.
BK has gone to Ballarat. He is already causing trouble! 😉
[Residents of Ballarat, in central Victoria, were woken by what sounded like a bomb exploding. But it turned out to be an exploding water boiler.
The boiler exploded in a factory in Ballarat East at 5:30am (AEST) and became airborne, landing about 200 metres away in the backyard of house.
The factory was severely damaged and the blast shattered the windows in the house.
Police, firefighters and WorkSafe are at the scene]
From the Twittersphere:
[davidschneider David Schneider
by RosaRubicondior
Obama announces he’s standing for election with the slogan “Yes We Haven’t”.]
evan14
can you clarify? Lenore Taylor was told this back in June?
So Arbib, Bitar, Gillard, Swan wanted to dump the ETS altogether, Tanner & Wong argued furiously for the government not to dump it completely, Rudd was stuck in the middle.
victoria@58
But that means another backflip. That would be guaranteed to get the PV down into the 20s. The government’s key advisor supports the two phase process starting with a price on carbon. That gets things under way more immediately and gives time to set the target at the correct level for 2020. The current way forward is now the only way – unless of course Garnaut sees a beter way forward.
[can you clarify? Lenore Taylor was told this back in June?]
After Gillard became PM.
jv
if Garnaut says an ETS is best, and the govt can get the votes it needs, what is wrong with that course of action?
jaundiced view,
Garbage. When it comes to media wars the ALP have done their governing thing only to have incompetent, lazy hacks regurgitate the lies and grossly overdone spin of the coalition.
Julia is a real leader. She has taken on all the crap stuff that desperately needs resolving but no one, including your beloved Tony, has been prepared to take on. That takes guts, balls and Leadership. What is more is she is getting results.
JG is winning on the governing front, no doubt about it.
Be clear, JV, if the media baron decides Abbbott’s days are numbered and they start pinning him to the wall over his outright lies and BS he is gone. He has given them a mountain of lies as fuel for that fire. Besides Abbott is not a leaders arse so the hatchet job would be easy.
evan14
well that was in June 2010
Turnbull could get his revenge if he voted for an ETS. It would certainly throw a cat amongst the pigeons as far as Abbott is concerned.
If Gillard is winning on the governing front, why then the 10 point lead to the Coalition?
Maybe because this government has a communications problem, or perhaps the main messanger herself should stop engaging in phoney spats with the Greens that aren’t helping Labor’s cause?
Oh noes, what an unexpected result (for once my prediction was near the mark :D).
And predictably some people are going crazy over this.
Looking at all the pollsters the range of results is between 55% and 49% to the Coalition. So the actual state of play would be around the 53-52% mark. Quite clearly its the end of the government 😛
It is a bit strange that the ALP PV can be 32% yet the TPP is 1 point lower (might be a rounding thing) than the ‘government ending’ Newspoll of 4 weeks ago. I wonder what props Oakes will use to describe this poll.
victoria@61
You agree with the stand-for-nothings? That’s their argument.
Labor as the erstwhile ‘party of principle’, has lost part of its support base on the ‘left’ when it dropped progressivism in favour of being like the Libs.
Labor cannot simply become just like the Libs and therefore expect an automatic PV in the 40s when they are dumping part of their support base as a result. Surely you can see that.
The polls are bad for labor so Julia must be bad for labor, is that the the take on this?
It would not matter if JC was leading the labor party at the moment the poles would be bad. Julia is the victim of uncle rupes a bucket of shite a day and no one in australia could withstand this constant attack by MSM and carry good poll numbers.Its all about kill the labor govt and kill the NBN. No greater threat ever existed to rupes empire in this country than the NBN. Stay solid with Julia until the the new senate takes over in july and then watch the fun and games.
The first thing that the government needs to do after the senate changes is to put a hot carving knife through the MSM and their ABC.
As Rudd said last night “only 1% of what we say gets reported”.
victoria@69
That would be different, as I said before:
But he has been on this path since January last year for good reasons. His speech on 25 Jan 2010 is available online.
Sabra Lane’s report on Am about Kevin Rudd on qanda was entirely predictable. They really justbstick to the same old angles don’t they. If there is any sustained criticism of the Libs you can expect it to be pretty much entirely framed as a leadership battle because apparently thatbis the only real thing to talk about when it comes to the Coalition. Of course that won’t happen until if/when Newspoll numbers go down significantly.
All rather trite really.
Possum always makes sense
[POLLYTICS | 4 minutes ago
Public opinion doesnt actually work like that folks – take a deep breath
POLLYTICS | 5 minutes ago
“Labor Surges” to “Abbott by a landslide” to “Labor ahead” to “Coalition’s best poll in 8 years” – all within 6 weeks 😛
POLLYTICS | 7 minutes ago
Funny watching the media every fortnight breathlessly explain this: http://yfrog.com/h3gawp by the political events of the day]
Two things annoyed me in QandA last night.
The first was JulieB, who simply parrotted the Oppn’s “message”. She was stopped the first time by Tony J, but got it all out the second time. Gee, she’s a hard-faced sheila.
The second was Tony J, who kept interrupting Kevin in a gotcha kind of way. Several times I felt K was on the verge of giving more detail and he was stopped.
A point which seems to have been missed (partly because Jones cut him off) was that Kevin was pointing to the context of the GST decision. He said wtte there were other pressures at the time such as the GFC and this affected their thinking.
Take this context into account and we might see the justification for a Treasurer wanting to put off another financial upheaval.
Evan14
[the main messanger herself should stop engaging in phoney spats with the Greens that aren’t helping Labor’s cause?]
Agree – Labor need help from the grass-roots left to support the Carbon price (like we saw at the rally) and Greens-bashing is just reacting to the media cycle and upsets people who will otherwise do all they can to help get this defining policy implemented. The MSM and the coalition are doing all they can to drive a wedge between Labor and the Greens in the hope that the government will implode and this type of thing is just playing right into their hands.
Space Kidette
The media can smell lack of conviction like dogs smell fear.
And what’s ‘your beloved Tony’ supposed to mean? That’s rather cheap. As I have said repeatedly, I want what Garnaut wants. And I want onshore processing of boat arrivals. I also want the end of middle-class welfare; and an end to the private school funding rort. That is, I am to the progressive side of the major parties.
Geoff @55,
Fair call.
By comparing the March4 poll with this one and accepting the March 18 poll as a aberation ( like that term ) all I was trying to do was show that over the last four weeks there has not been much change. The MSM will go on about big drop in vote etc, but really things in the last month have been pretty stable.
Of course there has been a big drop in PV and 2PP since the electon but most of that PV has gone to others (+5.5%) with the coalition picking up 1.4 and the greens approx 0.3%.
The first thing labor has to do is get back some of that 1.4 and a lot of that 5.5% How to do that ? Firstly, I think distinguish themselves as much as possible as a individual party with its own policy platform and agenda. And that is what the PM is trying to do. Second, show themselves to be listening to COL issues by combining compensation with the carbon pollution price, as they are doing, stick to their guns on this issue, again, which they are doing and be strong on the job/training front and the economy in general which they will do in the budget.
If they get that vote back then the next step is get back the 3% of the vote lost to the greens at the last election. How? That may involve getting a bit down and dirty but I think one step at a time.
cheers.
Rudd took responsibility for the decision. He also spoke of “party colleagues” who wanted to shelve it. This does not only mean members of the kitchen cabinet.
[“We tried twice, they voted it down. But it was a wrong call, for which I uniquely am responsible,” he said.]
Sorry, the above was from ABC online.
Gillard isn’t consistent: firstly she wants to dump the ETS, now she’s in favour of a Carbon Price; she claims to be an atheist yet now she’s espousing her love of the bible; she used to embrace the Greens yet now she pronounces their social policies as dangerous etc.
I really think this is part of her problem, the public can’t get a handle on “The Real Julia”. She’s obviously still being stage managed by Arbib/Shorten/Farrell/Swan.
[Lenore Taylor on Radio National just revealed that sources inside the party after the leadership coup told her that Gillard wanted to kill off the ETS altogether.]
Evan – what she said was Gillard wanted to kill it off until they could get their act together to work on it properly again. The CPRS that is – a dog’s breakfast cobbled together to get the Opposition’s vote. It failed and we got Abbott instead.
If you remember rightly George Megalogenis and a couple of other respectable journos said when Kev first announced his CPRS that it was simply structured to wedge Turnbull and the Opposition. He virtually panned it and could see why the Greens opposed it. If Labor had played proper policy instead of Howardlike wedges Kev may still be having his day in the sun.
BH
Thank you for the extra detail on what Lenore Taylor actually said. Headline reporting is always misleading.
I love this Carbon Tax vs Rudd vs ETS vs Gillard vs half the cabinet wanted to drop the ETS debate.
Remember the phrase in The West Wing – [issue x, y or z] is ‘ The third rail of American Politics, step on it and you die’ ?
I’ve been searching for an equivalent phrase to use in the Australian context. We don’t have third rails, we have overhead electricity, so it doesn’t quite work.
for example – [clears throat] – “Carbon tax is the overhead cables of Australian politics, reach up too high and you die’
See what I mean? It doesn’t quite work. So I’ve been searching for an equivalent to use in the Australian context.
These days, I think I’ve stumbled on to the right words – [clears throat, again]
‘Carbon tax is the carbon tax of Australian politics. Support it, and you die’.
Carbon tax/ETS is form of career suicide. Gillard and the ALP have gone kamikaze over it, and its just a matter of time before MHRs on marginal seats start to grumble.
[she claims to be an atheist yet now she’s espousing her love of the bible]
I don’t know whether it’s accurate to say she “loves” the bible. In Question Time she told how she’d had Bible verses drummed into her head as a child, such that she still remembers them now, and said (wtte) she’d be happy to challenge Abbott to a competition any day to see who recalls more. Saying that doesn’t mean she necessarily has a “love” of the bible.
Nor is atheism inconsistent with being able to quote Bible passages at length. Some of the most committed atheists are also some of the most knowledgeable about the Bible. Atheist websites are full of dissections of the Bible, showing up the hundreds of internal contradictions, inconsistencies, absurdities and abominable sentiment. For example, this site: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/
Oakeshott still thinking about Pokie reforms
[
INDEPENDENT Rob Oakeshott will only support “evidence-based” reforms to curb problem gambling, casting further doubt over Julia Gillard’s ability to deliver on a key promise to form Government.
A cross-bench split appears to be emerging over Ms Gillard’s deal with Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie to introduce pre-commitment technology for pokie machine addicts.
Mr Wilkie has reaffirmed that if Ms Gillard fails to deliver on the issue, which will require independents’ support for legislation, he would withdraw support for the Government, which could force a fresh election.
Yesterday Mr Oakeshott would not fully commit to the reforms and said he still had discussions with the clubs and other stakeholders to consider.
]
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/independent-wavers-on-gillard-pokie-gamble/story-e6freuzr-1226033638138
BH
An excellent grasp of history. That is exactly how it was.
The only correction I would suggest is that Gillard wanted to well and truly shunt any carbon scheme until after this parliament = the Citizens’ Assembly and no carbon price. That is consistent with someone killing it off altogether. If it isn’t planned to happen in the current parliament, then it isn’t going to happen at all, in the nature of politics, because there is no control over ‘the next parliament’ because of the election in between.
cyril
Katter has said he supports the pokies thing so they should get the numbers given Wilkie and Bandt will support it.
Chisolm out of the running for Labor National Secretary gig
[
LABOR’s plans for a clean transition in its top party job have been thrown into disarray by the withdrawal of Queenslander Anthony Chisholm from the running to be the party’s new national secretary.
Mr Chisholm, the ALP state secretary in Queensland, was being positioned to succeed Karl Bitar in the federal job, but The Australian understands the Brisbane-based apparatchik pulled out only days before his appointment was to be ratified. The move is a surprise, as Mr Chisholm had the backing of right-wing factions and the numbers on the national executive to be installed in the plum role of running Labor’s federal campaigns.
He turned turn down the job for family reasons and because the imperative for him to concentrate on the state scene in Queensland had changed with the emergence of Campbell Newman as Premier Anna Bligh’s conservative opponent. With no agreed alternative, the ALP will have to scramble to find a replacement for Mr Bitar, who is aligned with the NSW Right.
]
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/star-candidate-quits-at-last-minute/story-fn59niix-1226033622126
The proposed Citizens Assembly was just a fudge dreamt up by Arbib & Bitar, the same chuckleheads responsible for other dud ideas such as “cash for clunkers”. 😆
[POLLYTICS | 23 minutes ago
The change in primary votes makes the game look even sillier http://yfrog.com/h7hnjwqp%5D
if the govt, the indies and greens could agree on ETS legislation, rather than starting with a fixed price, I believe they would be onto a winner.
BH, JV
Agree with the wedge commetn on the ETS. If they had stuck closely to the model agreed with Turnbull, Labor wouldn’t be in this mess.
The Newspoll figures are very volatile at preesnt. Does anyoen know what the % of “undecided” voters is? I presume it is large.
Diog
Yes, if Oakeshott and / or Crook support the Pokies reforms then they are fine. I gather Windsor at this stage is looking likely to not support.