This week’s Essential Research poll has Labor recovering the point they lost last week, with the Coalition lead on two-party preferred down from 55-45 to 54-46. However, the primary vote figures suggest there is little in the change: the major parties are steady on 34 per cent for Labor and 48 per cent for the Coalition (although a one-point drop for the Liberals disappears from the Coalition total after rounding), with the Greens up a point to 11 per cent. Other questions find mounting opposition to the contention that the budget should return to surplus at all costs. Seventy-one per cent declared themselves opposed if doing so meant “cutting services and raising taxes”, with only 13 per cent supportive. Fifty-eight per cent said there was no need for the budget to return to surplus so quickly compared with 38 per cent in April, but if the government remains determined, the number who believe it should be paid for by removing tax breaks for high income earners (59 per cent) and increasing taxes for corporations (72 per cent) is up eight and nine points respectively. Only 35 per cent nominated cuts to “middle-class welfare”.
Further evidence of voters’ curiously social democratic bent was furnished by a question in which respondents were asked to indicated whether various parties had benefited from the mining boom: 68 per cent said yes for mining company executives, 48 per cent for shareholders and 42 per cent for foreign companies, against 12 per cent for regional communities and 11 per cent for “all Australians”. There was also an interesting question on the leaders’ performances during Barack Obama’s visit, in light of suggestions that Julia Gillard had been too effusive and Tony Abbott had politicised the occasion. The results suggest much more support for the latter contention than the former: Gillard’s performance was rated good by 38 per cent and poor by 23 per cent, compared with 18 per cent and 30 per cent for Abbott.
As far as essential is concerned , i think it a better poll than newspoll and believe that where essential goes newspoll is soon to follow.
arunta
You are right and I fear it is going to get worse.
only 4 points away from 50-50 2PP – good position to be in at the end of a difficult year politically and with 2 years to go – hoping for a similar result next week from Newspoll to create momentum
Patrick
As they say, democracy has to be more than two lions and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.
Abbott is just looking after himself. After all, less educated kids means more future climate sceptics. 😉
jenauthor
Not sure if you watched Insiders, but Dennis Atkins alluded to a video of Slipper being released whuch does not show him in a good light. Nothing sinister, but reflects poorly on his character. What is your feeling on this?
dio
u need the wolf too
The ‘Bogans’ were the target of Treasury spending under Swan.
When you spend money on Pink Batts and schools across the country they spend. They buy big screen TVs but also spend money on their houses and buy XR Falcons and HSV Commodores rather than BMWs, Audis or Mercs.
They decrease the tax revenue return and ‘rip’ off the system but money circulates within our economy. That is the important bit.
CTar1
Was your 58 a serious contribution or are you taking the pi$$?
Ayn Rand said greed was a virtue, not a sin.
I should not bang on about Howard. But I loathe the man
and the damage he wrought. The present crop of Liberals
pine for him and operate in the same mould.
TH
I was thinking the same thing. WTF!
“its not what u do for your country, its how much u can make your country do for u”
John Howard- 1996
CTar1 @ 40
I grade you a fail on that submission.
He was under relenting attack for the brief 3 years he was in office and fought and won a double dissolution in the middle of it.
His economic record was good compared to other countries at the time and certainly better than his successors.
You have swallowed the Fibs myths. 👿
@Tom – Serious. Banks got a guarantee only. Throwing money at them spreads it quickly. There was no time to build ports and whatever should be invested in in the long term. Money needed to circulate as quickly as possible and as widely as possible.
Arinta I take no heed of of polls that are done over the phone
BB @ 7
There was a classic example of it at Barnyard’s presser on the MDB. It should have produced more detail – apparently so he’d know what to attack. It should have had more consultation with the MDB stakeholders, which is apparently the aim of releasing it now for such comment without the specific detail until such feedback is in.
RD@53
Whats good about this is that many elections have been won from similar positions in the past , and whats even better , as you state, the result has been achieved against the background of a hateful and spiteful media , a minority govt, and delivery of unpopular but necessary legislation.
Not a bad position IMO.
I was devestated by last weeks newspoll , but this one I can handle.
CTar1
I can see now where you are coming from – I think
I think it’ll be as nasty for the coalition as for govt. They might threaten but I seriously doubt it’ll come out. Slipper himself has nothing to lose …. he was going down soon anyway.
Musrum,
I have IE which I presume is an old version. Tried Firefox for a bit but found it to be no better (expecially since I get lost in unfamiliar territory). Haven’t been game to try Chrome since my Firefox experience 🙂 There was a time when No.1 son had the time to come and sort out my computer problems but these days I just muddle through.
jenauthor
Fair enough
The problem David is that many of our conservative friends were and continue to belt Labor over the head for running a deficit. These people want to have their cake and eat it too.
Zoidlord
What are u studying
I remember our son goi g through this, have u enrolled elsewhere or are you older and have a family
We had a lot of medical and pharmacy students enroll from the mainland in our children tine
Well in a ll arears. Very worrying time for u
Hi everyone, back home again, after a trip to Sydney to see the kids, one of them lives in Morrison’s electorate, not impressed! Seemed to be so hot up here today, a lot of rain while I was away, but no problems Pleased to see Essential back to the 54/46 mark, hopefully will continue to improve, will now scroll though some of the posts to catch up!
CTar
That is exactly what it was all about. So those who are referred to as “bogans” actually saved our skin as opposed to many other countries who lost theirs.
Thanks Kevin!
@bemused – I was here and watched. Not reading ‘history’. He was a needed cleaner who vented all his frustrations in the first ‘100 days’.
After that things started to build-up.
Feel free to ‘grade’ me as a fail.
Feel free to call me a ‘fib’ as well or whatever else you want – better, I think, to judge and pick whoever is right for the time.
Gary@73
Also don’t forget that Hockey, Robb and Abbott, the 3 stooges of economics, promised to return the budget to surplus, sooner and without raising taxes and still delivering their promises to recind NBN, MRRT, CT, QLD. food levy etc, as well as world peace and peace in the middle east.
janice2
Some people (especially men in IT) get very excited about having latest versions of things. Internet Explorer works fine for me. 🙂
Hi mari
Welcome back
Re Tony ABBOTT (last thread)
Like RPL, etc this is an early 90s Hawke-Keating policy – 20 years old – with 2 additions:
1. The cut-off age for children under Family Tax benefit A has been extended
2. To get payment under FT A, or be paid the dole, or receive any other payment, students must stay in full-time secondary school study or a vocational equivalent such as a TAFE course. That’s it! School/TAFE retention was one of Keating’s proudest boasts – I’m sure he mentioned it yesterday (and the figures) in his interview with Paul B on ‘Meet the Press’
Another extract from the DT interview
Huh? Obviously Abbott doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about! And he wants to be Prime Minister?
Angels and Ministers of Grace defend us! He hath flipp-ed his lid
(Wayne and Shuster The Shakespearian Baseball game)
@my say/74,
Bachelor of Information Technology, I have an interest/hobby in Security, Web Development and Gaming.
” I intend to change Australia from a land of milk and honey, to a land of peeps who milk the gvt for money”
John Howard – 1996
Assange is a graceless bastard:
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1608279/WikiLeaks-Assange-awarded-at-Walkleys
I agree that Rand was indeed emblematic of what Howard thought. But why does anyone care about Ayn Rand?? She was a novelist, not a philosopher, and not a particularly literary one either. She knew nothing of economic theory. She had studied history and pedagogy at university. She knew how to argue, not necessarily what was correct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand
Why then was she so popular? Because she told the wealthy and those who dreamed of wealth what they wanted to hear: that the pursuit of riches was good and if you got them it did the society good, and you mustn’t have ripped off anyone else in the process. It was the psychological equivalent of the medieval catholic church selling plenary indulgences. It was also rubbish, and was thoroughly debunked by many scholars at the time.
When Socrates hears of Rand’s work, he just shrugs.
Arunta re 33 both the government and opposition should not have made that promise which they shouldn’t keep if economic circumstances require a slower return to surplus. The problem is that we have spent an obscene amount of money in recent years on programs with dubious long-term economic benefit however it is sunk expenditure and there is no easy way to claw the expenditure back. Both the Howard/Costello and Rudd/Swan governments should have been more prudent from around 2005 onwards but they weren’t so the circumstances we have today has to be managed effectively.
Australia is no different to the rest of the world in that the global economy is transitioning through very difficult circumstances and it will be a long and slow recovery. Artificial fiscal targets is not prudent economic management.
Love the Liberal whinging about deficit not coming sooner. Compared with the irresponsible Santa Claus promises that the Liberals made last year. Libs keep promising to wipe every middle class bum without expecting anybody to pay for it. Which suggests either, they are economically inept and will destroy this economy just to be popular or they are just saying whatever it takes to get people onside and they have no intention of keeping any promise. Probably a bit of both.
Either way, until they pull their heads out and start acting like responsible alternatives instead of petulant power hungry children with the ethics of a used-car salesman, the Coalition are nowhere near ready to govern. And I genuinely fear for this country if the current lot get in.
Minor issues like temporary deficit are nothing, compared to this gross irresponsibility. And don’t give me a tu quoque argument either. Labor wouldn’t dare be as irresponsible with its promises, for it would be lynched by every commentator in the country.
Thanks Lizzie – nice to know IE isn’t a dinosaur like me 😆
“Its not about rasing everyones boat,its about sinking the others boat”
John Howard-1996
@Tom – as quick as possible and Mr Swan not feeding the political machine is something he needs to be given credit for – whatever else he does. Wong will get some of the other parts right by balancing the economy and politics.
I have no problems at all with the Labor Government taking the budget back into surplus asap. At most such an outcome will put a nomimanl cap on our debt to GDP ratio.
My main reason is that we live in exceedingly uncertain economic times and, from a risk management point of view, the less debt we have, the better.
Other reasons are that the Government, through various descisions, is exposing us to the budget to significant risks of cost overruns and revenue shortfalls.
Our terms of trade are more likely than not to fall off their historical highs.
There is also the ethical issue of why future generations should pay more, through higher interest on Government bonds, so that the Boomers can have bigger houses, bigger fat bellies, bigger cars, bigger television sets, and bigger so on and so forth.
IMHO, if Mr Swan and Ms Wong can get us into a surplus within the promised timeframe I will laud the great determination and effort such an outcome requires when all the other ministers in cabinet always think that their department needs more money.
David @86
Said with perfect hindsight.
CTar1 @ 77
This is even worse, you were there!
I am regrading you to Fail — 😀
I did not just observe, I participated very actively.
I did not call you a Fib, just said you had swallowed their myths. The biggest myth of course is that the Whitlam Govt were not good economic managers.
FALSE! They did better than most other governments at the time (Oil Price Shock) and better than their successor with that little nerdy fellow with glasses as Treasurer.
janice2@71
Sure. There is always a learning curve for any new software.
Ms Rand was very fortunate later in life that not everyone believed what she had to say.
She depended on welfare to survive.
Of course greedy people don’t like giving any of the ready to needy people.
Well, BB, Aussies after all, no matter how multi-cultural/ethnic/racial they may be, are all tainted by the whinging working class Pom influence of our first settlers. They’re bound to be agin the gummint! no matter what.
@Boerwar – “our debt to GDP ratio”.
Nice line – ours compared with othe Western nations?
both the government and opposition should not have made that promise which they shouldn’t keep if economic circumstances require a slower return to surplus.]
DavidWH,
I just love (not) the way you tar the ALP with the same brush as the Coalition. I don’t remember reading a post from you where you don’t do this.
The best choice of browser may depend on your computer’s configuration.
If you have the time and inclination, this is a good article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers#Browser_features
If you want to go the good bits, start at “Browser features”.
@bemused – the ‘Duck’ was then and always was a bit of c#ap – nothing changed.
Feel free otherwise to propagate your version of history.