Morgan phone poll: 58-42 to Coalition

Roy Morgan has published a phone poll of 742 respondents (margin of error 3.5 per cent) conducted over the past three nights which shows the Coalition with a highly improbable two-party lead of 58-42 – the worst result ever recorded by the present government by a very wide margin. On the respondent-allocated measure of preferences, which Morgan uses for its headline figure, it’s 59-41. The primary votes are 50 per cent for the Coalition, 30 per cent for Labor and 9.5 per cent for the Greens. While the figures are a bit hard to believe, all the other questions posed in the poll have produced fairly typical responses: 32 per cent believe global warming concerns to be exaggerated against 50 per cent who want immediate action; 37 per cent support and 53 per cent oppose the government’s carbon tax; support and opposition for Tony Abbott’s policy of overturning the tax in government are both at 45 per cent.

I must confess myself a little puzzled by further questions raised by Morgan, in particular: “Australia is only responsible for about 1% of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions. Are you aware of this or not?” This sounds an awful lot more like an attempt to disseminate propaganda than to meaningfully measure public opinion. Nor do I understand what value there is in asking the man on the Clapham omnibus how high he expects sea levels to rise over the next century. Results to these questions and one or two others can be found at the above link, if you’re really that interested.

Of rather more value than this poll is the latest Possum’s Pollytrend chart, which shows the two-party situation reaching an equilibrium of 54-46 since mid-April.

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.

2,627 comments on “Morgan phone poll: 58-42 to Coalition”

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  1. Also I’m inclined to take the immigration minister on face value until proven otherwise. In which case if Malaysia doesn’t agree to respectable terms then the deal won’t happen.

    Lets all take a breath and watch.

  2. In 2349, I am answering JV’s question, it has taken me this long to get a cooection through my wireless internet.

  5. Those who think China is only there to make toys, shoes, garments etc can start thinking again.

    Huawei is the world 2nd largest TeleCommunications company in the world, competing with Ericsson, Cisco etc. It wasnt there 10 years ago.

    Just like the bullet super fast train industry. 10 years ago, there was not 1 km of super fast train track in China. Now, it has 3 times of that Japan and making the trains themselves and exporting.

    It is also in the olanning process to build a new silk route linking Shanghai to Istanbul. As well as a new Orient Express linking Singapore to Beijing.

    The rumour in the Industry is that when they finish these projects, they will come and build the Epping to Parramatta line.

    [Huawei signs up some familiar faces to lift its game
    Lucy Battersby
    June 6, 2011

    THE former Victorian premier John Brumby, and the one-time foreign minister Alexander Downer, are among appointments to the board of the local arm of the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, which is looking to win key government supply contracts and overhaul its reputation.

    Also set to be named this morning as an independent director on Huawei’s newly formed Australia board of directors is the former Rear-Admiral John Lord, a 36-year veteran of the Royal Australian Navy.

    The appointments are part of Huawei’s ”localisation” policy, which includes overhauling local governance as part of the company’s bid to aggressively boost its market share in Australia.]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/huawei-signs-up-some-familiar-faces-to-lift-its-game-20110605-1fnbx.html#ixzz1OR5olain

  6. Hmmm…so j.v hasn’t challenged my assessment of his motives. Interesting.

    Which means we can now act on the basis that anything j.v. says about asylum seekers is politically motivated, and is not based on any concerns for their well being.

    It is not honest argument to pose a hypothetical and then ignore the answers which don’t suit you. Several posters here have said that yes, white Zs would be sent to Malaysia. I’ve used my own personal experience to suggest that white Zs aren’t treated any differently by DPI to other applicants.

    If the Malaysia solution is racist, so is continuing to encourage people to come by boat.

    Look at who does arrive by boat – largely people who have resources, some degree of education, and are relatively ‘white’.

    If we weren’t taking them, we’d be taking poor, uneducated, very very black people from Somalia.

    We ‘reward’ people who come by boat because their actions fit into a capitalist world view which sees those who money to work the system as more worthy than those who sit there and wait, even if that’s the only choice they have.

    The person who’s sitting in a camp in Somalia has probably had a more scarring life experience and is facing a longer wait in detention than someone who has flown into Indonesia and then catches a boat (however leaky and risky).

    The fact is that there are no perfect solutions for the refugee problem. j.v. certainly hasn’t been able to offer any, other than whatever is being done is wrong. Any solution we adopt can be twisted as ‘racist’ or ‘lacking compassion’ because we are dealing with a situation where we’re picking and choosing amongst the desperate.

    In that very imperfect situation – and I stress again, neither j.v., peg, or any other poster here seems to be able to put forward any alternatives – Malaysia is a better solution than Nauru and potentially an improvement on the situation we have now.

    By taking more refugees from Malaysia, the chances are we are taking people who come from more desperate backgrounds and are in more desperate need than those who have the resources to buy themselves a place on a boat.

    We are definitely saving lives, in a number of ways – firstly, by stopping the dangerous practice of embarking in leaking boats, by placing more scrutiny and thus ensuring better conditions for those in Malaysia and by taking people who have been waiting (in what we are assured by the Greens and others are intolerable conditions) for many years there.

    It’s not Nauru; because of Nauru’s position, it did nothing in itself to deter boats. What deterred boats was being turned back, and this only fed the desperation and resulted in asylum seekers setting fire to or sinking their own boats.

    Those who think they’re displaying their compassion by objecting to these policies must be able to come up with solutions, rather than simply bagging those which are offered – which is always easy to do, as TA has demonstrated.

    But, of course, that’s not why they come here. They come here to demonstrate their moral superiority – and to reinforce for themselves that they’re supporters of a more compassionate party – and close their minds to any real discussion of the issues involved.

  7. Well speaking of the devil. Australia could do well by talking to the Comrades and swapping our minerals for a super fast bullet train linking Perth to Brisbane.

    [Move over airlines, trains number one with a bullet, June 3, 2011 – Ma Xiaojing will abandon airlines for trips to Beijing from Shanghai after suffering through delays that can triple the length of the two-hour flight. Instead, she will take the new bullet train.

    “It’s so annoying when you hurry to the airport, board on time and then get stuck in the cabin for hours,” said Ma, 34, a marketing manager for a Shanghai-based luxury-goods company.

    She takes her Apple iPad to pass the time during delays, studying English and watching the TV show Friends.
    Advertisement: Story continues below

    “I will definitely take the bullet train.”

    A 221 billion-yuan ($A31 billion) high-speed rail link connecting China’s most important cities in less than five hours is due to start service later this month.

    The line, designed to carry 80 million passengers a year, will challenge Chinese airlines that have delays on at least one in four flights nationwide.]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/move-over-airlines-trains-number-one-with-a-bullet-20110603-1fkjo.html#ixzz1OR8n2mEu

  9. [Lenalidomide is very similar to thalidomide, surely contraception advice is crucial.]

    Opening themselves up to lawsuits.

  10. Zoom, my view on the AS issue is very cleared. As long as it is being treated as a political football, everyone will race to the bottom to appease the dark side of our society.

    Imagine if the Indonesians themselves are coming over in their boats. Hundreds if not thousands, who are going to stop the boats then.

  11. Good morning Bludgers.

    Only in Australia

    Catholic hospital bars contraception advice

    NOT Only in Australia, ruawake; internationally, and at its worst in “missions” the Developing World – Latin America, Africa, the SubContinent, SE Asia; India’s Nobel Laureate Sister Therese and her establishments’ being among the most notable/ notorious examples – carefully airbrushed out of almost all media coverage.

    Nor only in RC medical facilities, but those of most fundamentalist (adventist, pentacostal, evangelical etc) christian religions; very obviously in their USA activities, but also in their “missions” abroad; compounding the tragedy in the Developing World.

    The UN was (maybe still is) investigating the problem – esp with regards to HIV’s spread – and some nations (?USA/GOP, ?Oz/LNP – not sure of Oz) blocked funding to Developing World health facilities, esp for women, if they offered birth control education, medication and other contraceptives.

  12. I caught the Beijing to Tianjin fast train a couple months back. I think the 2 cities are about 150km apart. It took 35 minutes and was easily the smoothest train ride I have ever taken. There is a large workforce that commutes between the two cities.
    The same thing could be done here. A high speed train between Sydney and Canberra, Newcastle, Wollongong would certainly ease cost of living pressures.
    I tell you all this as I take my morning commute via train to work: 55 minutes to travel 35km

  14. OPT
    I am fairly sure that the OS funding for contraception was reinstated by the Rudd government, shortly afterthe election.

  15. [I tell you all this as I take my morning commute via train to work: 55 minutes to travel 35km]

    NateTG – Sympathies, mate. I remember the days and now it’s luxury time just hanging around doing nothing if I don’t feel like it – retirement is sweet! Downside is that the years are going too quickly.

  17. With the many words that have been spoken and written regarding the government’s proposal to use Malaysia as a return point for ‘boat people I have rarely seen any emphasis on the very strong possibility that children will not come to Australia in the first place to be transferred to a ‘place of risk’. This whole thing is a beat up by the press and pushed along by the ‘do gooders’
    This country has become a country of negativity and little vision by so many. How it has changed in the last 50 years I have been here.

  21. Fran and Michelle absolutely wetting themselves over asylum seekers. Was there a pro-carbon rally anywhere yesterday?

  23. Zoomster and Puff
    Glad that you are consistent regarding white refugees. This is encouraging. JV you should acknowledge their honest response.

    However Z it is OK for JV to raise hypotheticals – it is an essential part of intellectual progress to challenge pre-conceptions with hypotheticals.

    I think perhaps the point is not so much what we a PBers think, but how our media and the ordinary electors (“boguns” – though I am wary of the term) will react.

    My related hypothetical goes something like this. Civil war in South Africa. Whites, coloured plus some black tribes against say other powerful tribes. The white side loses.

    Faced with loss of land and property and many years in an unhygeinic “refugee” camp on the Sth african border, rich white South Africans board yachts (NOT landlocked), not all of which are sea going. In addition to the white families there are loyal black servants, many coloured (mixture of races but including Indians, SA indigenous (eg Hottentot).

    Also on board is the remanant of the rebel (aka losing) fighters, who had been conducting a guerilla campaign, including blowing up brigesm roads etc – The “rebel” leaders who will include many of the white farmer sons as well as many “rebel” troops, many of whom will be black. The ruling government in South africa has labled them terrorists. Some enterprising fishermen from indonesia or Sri lanka pick of quite a lot of this group – mostly the poorer ones not abord the rich white yachts – but they charge for the lift.

    How will our papers react and who will be allowed entry?

    Will a “white” terroist be allowed in. (We did not want “terrorist” Tamils – what is the difference)?

    What will be the paper reaction inf we send a white family to Malaysia – or indeed Nauru or manus island?

    These questions test our inate racism. I have little doubt that our papers would not perceive the whites as evil queue jumping refugees.

  24. vp

    Isnt it amazing that the media have focussed on asylum seekers, just when the momentum is with the climate policy. The majority of Aussies are not focussed on asylum seekers, but the media is making sure we are to be reminded of it in a hourly basis. No one I speak to ever discusses this matter. It is a media and coalition beat up. Let’s not forget the Greens playing politics as well. I am sick of these people being used as political pawns. It is a sick sick state of affairs

  25. [THE number of people suspended from the disability pension because they got a job has slumped 34 per cent, to its lowest level in seven years, raising concerns that policies to get people off welfare into employment are not working.

    Figures provided to a Senate estimates committee show that, in 2009-10, just 7725 people took advantage of a rule allowing them to suspend the disability pension while they worked for up to 15 hours a week.

    This compares with the 11,751 who had their pension suspended in 2003-04 because they got a job, the Department of Families and Community Services figures show.

    The revelation comes as the government moves to enhance the suspension measure from next month, allowing disability pensioners to work for up to 30 hours a week without losing their right to return to the disability pension.]

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/fewer-on-disability-pension-try-work/story-fn59niix-1226069775836

    Remember all the fuss about the govt’s reforms to the disability pension? You don’t hear about it now people have the details.

  27. I watched Walid Aly with Triolio and Rowlands doing ‘what the papers say’.

    Trioli dismissed the rallies as saying she’d seen bigger rallies!! Walid showed the Age front page and said that’s a pretty big crowd and doesn’t take in those on the side of the photo. No further discussion re the rallies. Triolio definitely not giving it any airtime.

    Walid dismissed the Galaxy poll and said wtte he agreed with Cassidy that the right questions have to be asked about the carbon tax.

    Trioli stunned me when she said wtte that it was a small poll and she’ll wait to see the newspoll or neilsen on the carbon tax.

  30. BK

    Thanks for linking article. Yesterday was such a great day at the rally, but listening to the airwaves is getting me down. It is hard to get a positive message out, with the media we currently have

  31. Regarding Boatpeople and refugees: my position is as it has always been:

    After WW II, Chifley’s government (Calwell as minister) and its Liberal successors decided that we, as a nation of 7 million people, would take huge boatloads of refugees, bombed out Brits and other immigrants – over 1 million in a decade.

    Among them were those who had fought us in the recent war, including many from “Mittle Europa” (inc. Czechs, Hungarians, Croats who had backed the Nazis), the Middle East (muslims and christians, inc Joe Hockey’s father), Crete (muslims and christians) mutually antipathetic Balkan states (ditto) – who of us Oldies could ever forget those 1950-60s take it out on the soccer field bloodbat … er, matches, uniting only to get us into the World Cup: Hello TeamOz 1966!

    At the same time, the Colombo Plan + Harry Holt’s demolition of the WAP saw the rebirth of Chinese, SubContinental and more Middle Eastern immigration. In the 1970-80s, in leaky boats this time, came refugees from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. And what citizens – and bright ones at that – they’d prove to be! We soon added those from strife-torn Latin America.

    A few rotten apples among all those, sure – but Oz’s white settlement was famously founded by Those were are convicts and those who should have been. The Sentimental Bloke and mate Ginger Mick weren’t all that much different from today’s Melbourne gangs Fair narks they are, jist like them back-street clicks, Ixcep’ they fights wiv skewers ‘stid o’ bricks. comes to mind. Yet we treasure them as Dinkum Aussies, and Ginger died a hero at Gallipoli.

    Indeed, except for those postwar refugees and more recent PlanePeople, we could say that Australia’s people, indigenous as well as non-indigenous, either made the risky journey here in small often leaky boats, or were descended from them. And a great many of those who did take to the sea in boats, never saw shore, and many who did were dead before they reached it.

    If you ask me whom I’d pick as most likely to become our best “traditional Aussies”, I have no hesitation in saying I’ll take those with the initiative and courage to risk everything getting here in small, leaky boats, over the PlanePeople any day.

  32. For you BK,

    [SpaceKidette Space Kidette
    The Oz has 1 token CC rally article. All the others are some form of JG or govt. bashing. Uncle Rup exercising #Murdochracy on your behalf.
    ]

  33. The Canberra Times has a rally on the front page and a reasonable size article to boot no time to read off to work now.

  34. OPT

    Sadly the discourse in this country has been poisoned. How do we ever get back to a sensible approach?

  35. OPT

    Beautifully said.

    Love the analogy to Ginger Mick.

    Masses of work to do. MUST MUST MUST turn this off.

  37. The only circuit breaker that I see in the political arena is when the govt announces the price and how the system will work. Then we need Turnbull to emphatically reject his own party policy and support the govt one. Then the msm will have no choice but to face the situation

  39. It’s a bit sad when you have to go to American blogs to find positive stories about the govt’s initiatives.

  43. Bob Katter was on NewsRadio this morning. It was all pretty unedifying to be honest.

    Marius Benson was just taking the piss which was the easy option. I never got a chance to hear what Bob was purporting to do not that it would have amounted to much.

  47. OzPol

    agree about plane people.

    But surely those who sit year after year in detention camps also exemplify Aussie values – that of a fair go?

    As someone who’s father came in the very first boatload of European refugees post War (and the General Heitzleman was NOT a leaky boat) I know we weren’t offering open slather then.

    We selected the migrants who came here, picking and chosing amongst those in the internment camps.

    The UNHCR guidelines we signed up to arose out of the WWII situation, where boatloads of Jewish refugees were forced to return to Germany (and certain death) because no other country would take them.

    Post war, this didn’t mean that displaced Jews automatically got refuge; my father was chosen, the Jews in the same camp weren’t.

  48. [The Opposition’s deep attachment to processing asylum seekers in Nauru, a policy known to have damaged the mental health of so many refugees, is given very little scrutiny these days.

    On my numerous visits to Nauru between 2005 and 2008 I was told by more than one Nauru government MP that the Australian Labor Party, then in opposition, would not be allowed to visit Nauru. When I reminded one minister that Julia Gillard had in fact toured the camps with Philip Ruddock in 2002, he shook his head. No – surely they hadn’t let the enemy of the then Australian government infiltrate the country. This is how things work in Nauru, it is all very arbitrary and the checks and balances that Australians expect when it is their money being spent cannot be guaranteed.]

    Very telling.

  49. [BK

    Did baby Greg think that 50,000 people attending rallies mean anything?]
    vic
    Only that he supports people’s right to demonstrate peaceably.

  50. Excellent posts @ 2357 (Zoomster) and 2382 (OPT) on AS and migration.

    The domestic political situation was debauched in 2001 when Howard took up the Hanson idiocy. It worked a treat for him in dividing Labor and its supporters, which is all essentially that Howard cared about. The wounds were very slowly healing until Abbott and Morrison decided to revive the issue.

    Reason is fairly helpless against such demagoguery. Compassion does require a fair degree of goodwill on all sides – something clearly missing at present and unlikely to change while AS boat people are a political football.

    Offshore processing is the least unsatisfactory way of breaking this deadlock.

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