GhostWhoVotes reports Galaxy has plugged a hole in the Newspoll and Nielsen schedules with a federal poll conducted from 1015 respondents on Wednesday and Thursday (UPDATE: Make that Thursday and Friday – The Management). The result is at the low end of Labor’s recent form, with the Coalition leading 48% to 34% on the primary vote and 54-46 on two-party preferred, compared with 47% to 35% and 53-47 in the Galaxy poll of a month ago. The Greens vote is steady on 11%.
Galaxy also grapples with the AWU matter, with what to my mind are problematic results. Poll questions are most effective when gauging basic affective responses, namely positive or negative feelings towards a person or thing, and mutually exclusive choices, such as preferences out of political parties or election candidates. On this score, the best question to emerge so far has been Morgan’s effort on approval or disapproval of the Prime Minister’s handling of the controversy. Difficulties emerge where the range of potential opinions is open-ended, as too much depends on the choices offered by the pollster.
A case in point is Galaxy’s question on whether Gillard had “lied” (31%), been “open and honest” (21%) or, as a middle course, been “economical with the truth” (31%). Particularly where complex or half-understood issues are involved, choices like this are known to activate the strategy of “satisficing” (“choosing the easiest response because it requires less thinking”, according one of the pithier definitions available). This results in a bias towards intermediate responses, in this case the “economical with the truth” option.
I have similar doubts about Galaxy’s question as to whether respondents believed Gillard “should provide a full account of her involvement through a statement in parliament”, an over-elaborate proposition that feels tailored towards eliciting a positive response. Sixty per cent of respondents duly gave it one, although it is clear the thought would have occurred to few of them before being put to them by the interviewer. Only 26% offered that such a statement was unnecessary, with 14% undecided.
Then there is the finding that 26% of respondents said the issue had made them less likely to vote Labor. Like any such question, this would have attracted many positive responses from those whose pre-existing chance of voting Labor was zero. However, the question at least allows us to compare the results to those of similarly framed questions in the past. In July, a Galaxy poll found that 33% were less likely to vote Labor because of the budget. In January, 39% of respondents to a Westpoll survey said power price hikes had made them less likely to vote for the Barnett government. In July of last year, The Australian reported polling by UMR Research (commissioned, it must be noted, by Clubs Australia) had 23% of voters less likely to vote Labor due to mandatory pre-commitment for poker machines. And a month after Kevin Rudd was deposed as Prime Minister in June 2010, Nielsen found the proportion saying they were less likely to vote Labor as a result was similar to today’s finding: 25%.
UPDATE: GhostWhoVotes reports News Limited has published a further result from the Galaxy poll, a four-way preferred prime minister question which has Kevin Rudd on 27%, Malcolm Turnbull on 23%, Julia Gillard on 18% and Tony Abbott on 17%.
[ http://andrewelder.blogspot.com.au/ Agreed. Must read.
But anyone know if this is true????
The current Opposition Leader grabbed an inaccurate story on Thursday morning from what used to be a respected newspaper, and now faces libel action as a result of relying on it too heavily.]
I think Mr Elder is saying that it is possible for the PM to sue for libel in this situation, not that she has or said she will over that particular slander.
[I’m not defending the DT, I’m asking for EVIDENCE (remember evidence?) that the DT fabricated this story.]
I’m not saying the story was fabricated, but I’d guess it was a bit of a put-up job.
You don’t need names, dates and faces of happy boat people just itching to get to Australia to realise they’re coming here in droves because they see us as an easy mark. The photograph, for example, was clearly set up. It was a happy snap, pure and simple, posed and tailored to make a point.
But by the same token, refusing people visas isn’t stopping them. Refusing them the right to work is only a partial solution, because supporting them on the dole is treated just as badly as letting them “take our jobs”.
We can’t sink boats. We can’t get (or even ask) the Indonesians to take them back. The Indonesians want rid of them.
The only thing I’ve seen that might work was the old Malaysian solution, the key element of which was that we take MORE people, nett, than we normally would, but these are people who have been processed and are in verified genuine need, not self-selected chancers.
The convention was designed around land borders. If you wanted to refuse entry to people you could put up a fence to stop most of them. you didn’t have to either take them or let them drown like you do with a sea border.
Unfortunately the “maritime” aspect of it all reinforces a sense of “nobility” and desperation, much more than just turning people back at some barb-wired checkpoint on the Austrian or Czechoslovakian border.
It seems to be assumed that if people are prepared to go to all the trouble of risking their lives and finances by coming here by boat then, axiomatically, they MUST be desperate.
I have no trouble accepting they are desperate, but desperate AND genuine refugees, AND more deserving than less well-off applicants are separate matters.
If you don’t want any boat people to come here you must send the ones who DO make it away, to another country. And send them again and again if they repeat their efforts.
But common decency requires us to help those countries where these people will accumulate. Otherwise it’s almost purely “Australian exceptionalism”, which might fly well in the Western Suburbs of Sydney, but is a lead baloon in SE Asia.
Bemused might like to comment on the fact that this appalling decision, which is both wrong in principle and likely to be very damaging to the government, has been made a minister who is a leading Ruddite.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/asylum-seeker-work-rules-to-be-relaxed-20121126-2a3ng.html
Perhaps I’m being overly cynical.
victoria
[Birds, bees – and, it would seem, butterflies]
As fiona suggests, there is an orgy going on in my courtyard.
I can only sit and watch!
Bemused. @# 1384
But how do economists explain why the lowest point at which inflation pressure can be quiescent has shifted from 2 per cent to 5 per cent over the past 35 years or so? Well, the reason you can get inflationary wage pressure while still having 600,000 people looking for jobs is ”structural mismatch”: the remaining unemployed either don’t have the skills employers are seeking or don’t live in the parts of the country where those workers are being sought.
But that doesn’t explain why structural mismatch is a much greater problem today than it was 40 years ago. So the truth is economists can’t offer a thorough explanation for why the full-employment rate has risen, as many of them will admit.
Please remember that I never worked as an economist but was in a profession that needed to be aware of economic treads to be able to gauge/assess economic arguments. As well I have been retired for almost a decade now and that can be a long time when considering these sort of things
One has to be aware of the changes in the global economy the structural changes in Australian economy over the last 100 years as well as at least be aware of such things going into the future.
It is not that long ago that the Australian economy rode on the “sheep’s back” (as well as other rural activities) and that there was a high demand for workers on most rural properties. That has been changing for many years where today there are very few “farm workers” who today would be considered unskilled labour. Most of the Labor “ imported” onto farms is skilled labour (ie shearers vets etc) and or subcontractors(like contract harvesters).
This has meant that many of those who worked in the bush have either moved to the town or city and in order to survive have acquired skills that in many cases did not even exist before , It takes time to change the skill profile of a population though that has been falling over the years.
As an example, my grandfather was a trained linotyper in the printing industry a “brand new skill back before WW1. My brother-in-law was also a linotyper but I think he was one of the last ones and was one of the last to use hot led in the printing industry. As you can see things move very quickly and in the space of 100 to 50 years a new skill was developed and then became obsolete. Another thing that has impacted the economy has been the participation rate which has continued to rise since at least WW2. Women are demanding to be treated equally in the workforce. In doing so they have taken over and will continue to take over segments in the economy that they are particularly good at or to apply an economic term those areas where they have a comparative advantage. If one were to examine the new jobs that are arising I think one would find that many of them are more suited to women than men.
When I first entered the workforce one job for a lifetime was still the norm but how often have we heard in recent years that we should be prepared for 3 of 4 careers in our working life. Each change will require reskilling which of cause will mean some time out of the workforce.
I think you are misunderstanding the situation with you comments re mismatching. Employers need to match the skills of the individual with what is required. There is no benefit to the employer, employing a plumber if what is really need is a bricklayer. The output and quality of the work demands such matching.
I hope William does a post on Essential, comparing the AWU questions to the also informative Roy Morgan questions, and the less informative Galaxy one.
[AEC Hi @ThumpersAunt, @shtuwang, @deantregenza Pls send these enquiries to media@aec.gov.au for a more thorough response than twitter allows 1/2]
[@ThumpersAunt @shtuwang @deantregenza I’ll respond on Twitter whenever possible, however this response requires more than 140 characters 2/2]
According to Essential today, AWU stuff more of a negative for Libs than Labor.
How can Labor rise in the polls when
1. So many voters think Gillard is a crook
2. Many marginal seat electors think she’s soft on asylum seekers
3. No-one knows that parliaments has passed more than 400 bills, many of them truly significant like the Murray Darling Basin Plan – which the Libs are now claiming as all their own work?
There is always the chance too that “stopping the boats” here by sending people to Malaysia to cool their heels might eventually stop them from crowding into Malaysia as well.
If you cork the outlet, water stops running all the way back, as well as just at the end of the hose.
CTar1
I was not sure what you were referring to. I am with you know. I await the AEC response with interest
[According to Essential today, AWU stuff more of a negative for Libs than Labor.]
Can’t be right. Galaxy found the punters thought Gillard was “economical with the truth.”
I saw it in the Sunday Tele.
been reading not commenting
what the point when there is so many poster
who just hog the whole place
sadly i doubt the legtislative council will pass the forestry bill i hope i am wrong
[ AEC Hi @ThumpersAunt, @shtuwang, @deantregenza Pls send these enquiries to media@aec.gov.au for a more thorough response than twitter allows 1/2
@ThumpersAunt @shtuwang @deantregenza I’ll respond on Twitter whenever possible, however this response requires more than 140 characters 2/2]
Wouldn’t a simple FOI request be appropriate here?
frednk@1461
+1
I don’t have strong views either way about Ms Barlow’s posts, but the hot air expended by some on bagging her seems, er, a little disproportionate.
Nobody is being forced to read her posts. Yes?
Bemused
As I said car manufacturing only survives on tarrifs and subsidies. Each of the remaining workers in the industry is subsidised heavily by the taxpayer. You are not really advocating this are you?
torak toff
has not read the ess results the
my say
I agree with you about the LC. However the hope is that the Legislative Councillors who were at the FCA meeting vote for it as their organisation did.
[But by the same token, refusing people visas isn’t stopping them.]
We’ve never actually tried that policy. If we said, “no-one who comes to Australia by boat will ever get a visa of any kind,” and stuck to that policy for six months, the message would get through and the boats would stop coming. This is a commercial operation in which people are paying $10-20k for an Australian visa. If they become convinced they won’t get one, they’ll shop elsewhere.
Psephos@1552
I have criticised Rudd himself in the past when he was PM so no reason I wouldn’t criticise any other minister if I think they have done the wrong thing.
So this decision came after a ‘backlash from MPs’. So who really made it? Was it Bowen or is he just the patsy who announced it?
The whole policy is an ungodly mess and needs fixing. I have expressed my thoughts on many occasions, including earlier today.
Psephos
I agree that would work. However it would mean refusing entry to a genuine refugee as well. Breaching our treaty with the UN.
This is why it has not happened. This is why so far none want to.
[There is always the chance too that “stopping the boats” here by sending people to Malaysia to cool their heels might eventually stop them from crowding into Malaysia as well.
If you cork the outlet, water stops running all the way back, as well as just at the end of the hose.]
Most of the refugees in SE Asia are Burmese — hundreds of thousands of them. For these people Malaysia or Thailand is their first country of asylum. It also means that they can’t be sent back further up the chain from Malaysia.
@Simon_Cullen: Gillard appeals to disability advocates ahead of Friday’s COAG meeting with Premiers. http://t.co/I2yVk9nK @abcnews
[There is always the chance too that “stopping the boats” here by sending people to Malaysia to cool their heels might eventually stop them from crowding into Malaysia as well. If you cork the outlet, water stops running all the way back, as well as just at the end of the hose.]
Only if people are convinced that you mean what you say. In August we said that boat arrivals would be sent to Nauru and Manus indefinitely. Now we’e backed down from that. Why would anyone take us seriously again? We have to adopt a policy which is a genuine deterrent, and MEAN IT, and STICK TO IT.
c@tmomma:
[Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain
]
You are part of the majority of MPs (possibly the population as well though this is unclear) on asylum seekers.
[I agree that would work. However it would mean refusing entry to a genuine refugee as well. Breaching our treaty with the UN.]
As I’ve said here at least 50 times, there is nothing in the 1951 Refugee Convention which obliges any signatory to admit any person to its territory.
Toorak Toff
[How can Labor rise in the polls when]
How can the Libs rise in the polls when:
1. Voters have understood that Tones is a turkey;
2. The rest of their front bench are failed recycled yesterdays or idiots; and
3. Talc, although popular, is being seen as being some sort of US Libertarian.
Ratsars @ 1554
I have a BEc but never really worked as an economist although I did have one job where I was able to use it. I have tried to maintain an active interest.
[But that doesn’t explain why structural mismatch is a much greater problem today than it was 40 years ago. So the truth is economists can’t offer a thorough explanation for why the full-employment rate has risen, as many of them will admit.]
I previously commented on that and provided a link to an excellent article based on an interview with Professor Peter Cappelli of Wharton University. It is largely an artificial construct.
Psephos except that our High Court has made rulings on the Refugee Convention which contradicts that.
C@tmomma @ 1466,
Ouch! 😉
Psephos
Yes there is. Australia has agreed to accept genuine refugees. The whole point of signing the treaty. Otherwise you go back to the example of the Jews fleeing Nazis being denied entry.
[How can Labor rise in the polls when …]
TT that rise has been happening even given those circumstances.
[We’ve never actually tried that policy. If we said, “no-one who comes to Australia by boat will ever get a visa of any kind,” and stuck to that policy for six months, the message would get through and the boats would stop coming. This is a commercial operation in which people are paying $10-20k for an Australian visa. If they become convinced they won’t get one, they’ll shop elsewhere.]
TPVs were pretty close to it, although I’ll admit not a blanket refusal.
We need to get order back into the procedure. The best way is to discourage people from even sailing, and if they do, deport them to a processing centre, putting them in a much bigger queue than there is on Nauru, Manus or Xmas Islands.
In doing so we haven’t refused consideration of requests, we’ve simply ruled that arrival by boat, if it is not absolutely vital, is not the way we will do things.
Once upon a time boat arrivals had a romantic tinge to them: poor souls who had taken on the cruel sea and risked their lives to sail thousands of kilometres, avoiding the perils of storms, pirates and disease to get here.
Nowadays it seems much more of a doddle. A flight into Jakarta, a bus to the port of embarkation, a couple of nights’ coaching on the finer points of identity destruction, a few calls to the rellies in South-Western Sydney, and a quick hop across the straits to Xmas Island.
OK, people STILL dies doing this, but the “epic journey” aspect, the noble, brave image of the desperate refugee is long gone, replaced by a rort, a racket.
The simple truth is that there is no valid reason for 99% of the people who come here by boat to come here by that method, except for the express purposes of jumping the queue.
Bemused – shouldn’t
[I have criticised Rudd himself]
‘himself’ have a capital letter.
Bushfire Bill@1559
BINGO!
That is why, if I was running AS policy, I would move heaven and earth to negotiate with Indonesia and Malaysia for the return of AS to their point of embarkation and be prepared to offer financial incentives for them to do it.
bemused
Yes. Even the Greens agree with your position do a degree. Just not the fly back part. Processing in Indonesia and Malaysia would stop people smuggling.
If you really want to become confused about employment/unemployment then try reading up on “Employment Hysteresis”. It was really big in the 80’s before the effects of the Hawke/Keating structural reforms had a chance to take effect.
We are probably overdue for another round of Hawke/Keating reforms however neither side of politics seems to have either the courage or political capital to undertake real reform.
[BINGO!
That is why, if I was running AS policy, I would move heaven and earth to negotiate with Indonesia and Malaysia for the return of AS to their point of embarkation and be prepared to offer financial incentives for them to do it.]
Dummy. They’ve tried that and…
1. Got pinged by the High Court.
2. Managed to get Morrison crying crocodile tears about how awful the idea was.
There is no way Malaysia/Indonesia is going to send people back to their home countries, whether we pay the fares or not, whether they’re signatories to the convention or not.
It sounds good in principle, but those countries are just not run that way, with a central government calling the shots. Organizing a mass repatriation is impossible in those circumstances. And it smacks too much of Australian Exceptionalism.
I think we should come up with a comaparative list – two colums – of which party is responsible for which of the
big economic, infrastructure and public policy reforms/initiatives since WWII and get it circulating on the NM..
It’s time people faced up to the fact that the country they know and love has been created by successive Labor governments.
I think their Accreditation by the Market Research Association needs review. This type of questioning is frowned on — its a virtual multiple choice examination where you preclude the response — all of the above or none of the above. The questionaire is one of forced choice as you suggest where the questioner nominates the choices it expects. A Likert Scale is better but not perfect and increasingly Best/ Worst is the preferred format and where significance testing can be used, nevertheless question design in all cases needs unbiased.
[Psephos except that our High Court has made rulings on the Refugee Convention which contradicts that.
Yes there is. Australia has agreed to accept genuine refugees. The whole point of signing the treaty. Otherwise you go back to the example of the Jews fleeing Nazis being denied entry.]
Show me where the Convention, or any Court ruling based on it, requires Australia to admit any person to its territory. The “Malaysia” decision doesn’t do so, so don’t try that one.
Do you seriously think the Australian government of 1951 would have signed a treaty which obliged it to admit people to Australia that it didn’t want to admit?
Oakeshott Country@1565
Only to the extent other countries are doing the same so that it is a true level playing field.
We need to also improve productivity through greater automation and to develop export markets so we can get better economies of scale. I would love BK to enter into this discussion as I don’t have his manufacturing knowledge.
We have to get serious about it or get out of it.
There are too many valuable spin offs to get out of it lightly unless we can find some other manufacturing to take its place and I can’t think of any.
Essential’s AWU questions:
“How much have you read or heard about the Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s involvement with the AWU when she was working as a lawyer 20 years ago?”
“How would you rate the way each of the following have handled this issue concerning Julia Gillard and the AWU? (based on respondents who have read or heard about the issue)”
“How has the issue concerning Julia Gillard and the AWU affected your views on Julia Gillard as Prime Minister?”
Galaxy’s AWU Question
“Julia Gillard has been embroiled in allegations surrounding an AWU slush fund. In your opinion, has Julia Gillard been completely open and honest in responding to the allegations, has she been economical with the truth or do you think she has lied?”
[no, the definition of full employment hasn’t changed, as Gittins made clear – it’s been the same since the ’70s.]
It’s a pretty stupid definition if unemployment was 1% lower than “full employment a few years ago.
What did we have in 2008, “supersaturated employment”?
The more I learn about economics, the more I realise that economics was lucky to get the name “dismal science” as it’s really a pseudoscience.
Psephos@1573
The problem with Nauru and Manus is that they have a finite and not very large capacity.
The Malaysia 800 cap has the same problem.
Fran Barlow@1510,
I’ve been here long enough to evaluate your posting pattern.
Back to the condescension again I see.
Frankly, I don’t need or accept your ‘evaluation’. I am not one of your students.
I do not have a ‘posting pattern’. I have opinions. They are many and varied and do not follow any particular ‘pattern’. No matter how much you may wish to squeeze them into some sort of theoretical box to suit your self-serving argument.
What if the implication turns out to be true?
Well, take it from someone who actually knows the truth, rather than you, who merely asserts these things to suit themselves, any implication you make along those lines is simply, factually wrong.
Sometiems there’s express malice, but often it is just avertaing the eyes when something inconvenient moves into view.
Garbage.
Although, I must admit, The Greens appear to have become adept at this in the Asylum Seeker debate.
Your concern (and that of amny others here) lies principally with the vicissitudes attending ALP rule.
More garbage assertions. Absent any factual proof.
Right now, asylum seekers as an issue plays badly for the ALP and so those who think that ALP rule is about as good as it can get are willing to make any claim that in their view seems to predispose that result.
Risible.
Honestly, I don’t know how DRinMelb can say, without bursting out laughing, that you run intellectual rings around people.
Suffice to say, that posters here put well-reasoned and factually-based arguments to you, and all you seem capable of coming back with is intellectual drivel like that.
It might well be that privately, you feel troubled by what you and your tribe are doing, but right now that’s the cost of doing business, and so you have little alternative but to embrace the dark side and whatver resources it offers.
Just more boorish assertion based upon very little by way of verifiable fact. Just your self-serving opinion.
It obvious to me, that since The Greens have decided to play politics with the issue of Asylum Seekers, to the extent of colluding with the Coalition to defeat the government and the perfectly reasonable recommendations of The Huston Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers, they have very much gone on the defensive attack.
Not accepting the recommendations of an Expert Panel is something The Greens have to live with. Not the Labor Party.
Note I haven’t had to resort to emotive buzzwords like ‘tribe’ or ‘regime’ such as you predictably do, in order to make my point. I can make it without predictable cant such as that. You appear to be unable to. You also appear to be functionally incapable of not being condescending.
Shame, really. You appear to have the requisite IQ to be capable of behavioural change, but choose not to even try. Instead preferring to intimidate and not take a backward step. Pretty much like the Liberals and other Conservatives, who The Greens have more and more in common with every day.
Oh, and please accept my abject apology for behaving ‘predictably’ again. I forgot the equation that to question The Greens is to ‘insult’ them.
Psephos
Yes I can believe it. This was an era when the unlimited and infinite was fully accepted courtesy of economics.
Do not be a fool. Note the words genuine refugees. That is a process to make sure the unwanted do not come. As for numbers we do only have the Malaysian Decision as a guide. That is no number mentioned but you have to apply valid reasons to deny.
[I would move heaven and earth to negotiate with Indonesia and Malaysia for the return of AS to their point of embarkation and be prepared to offer financial incentives for them to do it.]
“Regional solution,” episode 390. Yawn. There is no regional solution. Indonesia doesn’t give a stuff about out boaties problems, as they’ve made clear repteadly over 20 years. SBY nods and smiles, but that’s just Javanese for “no.” And even if he meant “yes”, the Indonesian state is too weak and too corrupt actually to stop the flow-through of people. Consider: nearly every one of our boaties has passed through Jakarta airport on their way to their boat. It would be fairly simple to stop them there. Is Indonesia willing even to try? No. This is our problem and no-one else’s.
Whatever the economic theory human beings will find ways to both prove and disprove the theory. We really are evil creatures.
[Do you seriously think the Australian government of 1951 would have signed a treaty which obliged it to admit people to Australia that it didn’t want to admit?]
Back in those days Xmas Island was woop-woop, not a quick flight away from the eastern states. There was no GPS to guide boats at night. There were no mobiles to call the rellies, no easy way of getting from Tehran to Jakarta without getting your feet wet or being killed by bandits along the way.
In 1951 it was tantamount to physically impossible to come here by leaky boat (as opposed to tramp steamer, and even then it was a most precarious voyage).
Today, given half decent weather its a 36 hour long cruise, with only the off chance of sudden death if things turn nasty.