Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition

Newspoll has opened its account for 2013 with an encouraging result for Labor, recording a primary vote six points higher than the previous poll of December 7-9.

The result of the first Newspoll for 2013 has been reported by AAP (your guess as to how that’s come about is as good as mine) and almost simultaneously by the ever-reliable James J, and it’s a relatively encouraging one for Labor who trail just 51-49 on two-party preferred, down from 54-46 in the final poll of 2012. The primary votes are 38% for Labor, up six on last time, with the Coalition and the Greens both down two, to 44% and 9% respectively. Julia Gillard is up two on approval to 38% and down three on disapproval to 49% while Tony Abbott is up one to 29% and down one to 58%. Gillard leads as preferred prime minister by 45-33, up from 43-34.

UPDATE (16/1/13): A Morgan face-to-face result covering both the previous two weekends (and presumably warranting more than the usual degree of caution on account of the holiday period) has the Coalition leading 51-49 when preferences are distributed as per the 2010 election result, and by 52-48 according to respondent allocation. The primary votes are 36.5% for Labor, 41.5% for the Coalition and 10.5% for the Greens. This follows what now looks an aberrant result in the final poll of last year, when Labor led 53.5-46.5 on previous election preferences and 52.5-47.5 on respondent-allocated.

UPDATE (19/1/13): AAP reports a ReachTEL poll of 511 respondents conducted for the United Voice union in Wayne Swan’s Brisbane seat of Lilley suggests he is heading for defeat, trailing LNP candidate Rod McGarvie 45% to 38% on the primary vote.

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.

3,565 comments on “Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition”

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  2. My pleasant was my LOTO. Oh just an entree BTW:

    16 Quotes From Tony Abbott to Remind You Why He Shouldn’t Be Prime Minister, Posted on August 23, 2012

    On immigration:

    1. ‘Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia.’

    2. ‘These people aren’t so much seeking asylum, they’re seeking permanent residency. If they were happy with temporary protection visas, then they might be able to argue better that they were asylum seekers’

    On rights at work:

    3. ‘If we’re honest, most of us would accept that a bad boss is a little bit like a bad father or a bad husband … you find that he tends to do more good than harm. He might be a bad boss but at least he’s employing someone while he is in fact a boss.’

    On women:

    4. ‘The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience.’

    5. ‘I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons’

    6. ‘I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman’s right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man’s right to demand I think they are both they both need to be moderated, so to speak’

    7. ‘What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going

    to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up, every year…’

    On Julia Gillard:

    8. ‘Gillard won’t lie down and die’

    On climate change:

    9. ‘Climate change is absolute crap’

    10. ‘If you want to put a price on carbon why not just do it with a simple tax.’

    On homosexuality:

    11. ‘I’d probably … I feel a bit threatened’

    12. ‘If you’d asked me for advice I would have said to have – adopt a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about all of these things…’

    On Indigenous Australia:

    13. ‘Now, I know that there are some Aboriginal people who aren’t happy with Australia Day. For them it remains Invasion Day. I think a better view is the view of Noel Pearson, who has said that Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country’s British Heritage’

    14. ‘Western civilisation came to this country in 1788 and I’m proud of that…’

    15. ‘There may not be a great job for them but whatever there is, they just have to do it, and if it’s picking up rubbish around the community, it just has to be done’

    On Nicola Roxon:

    16: ‘That’s bullshit. You’re being deliberately unpleasant. I suppose you can’t help yourself, can you?’

  4. Hats off to Gigi, FranB, Frednk, Dave and Just Me.

    Your troll-alert receptors are in great order and working with accuracy.

    But JM continues to suck in a few PBers.

  5. Vic, interesting how them painful doggys dare not go near the BISONs. They simply make a statement and then pretend it is self evident

  8. For the first time ever I’ve scrolled through pages and pages. It seems under-bridge dwellers either don’t sleep, or operate as a team.

  9. Psyclaw:

    [Your troll-alert receptors are in great order and working with accuracy.]

    The perverse thing is that everyone who has ever had a 3-year-old say to them “but why? …” knows what trolling is like. Unlike 3-year-olds, who though fascinated by the power of the challenge to secure attention, usually grow out of it, internet trolls tend not to.

    JM’s “why won’t you answer my question?” to Victoria probably appears on page 1 of The Dummy’s Guide to Trolling. If there isn’t such a book, there probably should be.

  14. I’ve just read through much of last night’s “discussions” with JM, and I think you’ve all missed the point.

    She’s not a troll, she’s just someone from the country who listens to 2GB. And believes all the rubbish!

    Simple.

  17. You know what is really weird. Lance Armstrong is everywhere in the news because of his interview with Oprah admitting to being a liar, bully and of course a drug cheat. Everytime there is a news break reporting this, i immediately think it is Tony Abbott. I kid you no!!

  18. Hi, Malcolm!

    [While Australia is better placed than most for wired broadband, courtesy of the national broadband network, Mr Johnston said it was in the same poor position as the rest of the globe for shortage of wireless spectrum.

    Australia’s government, like others worldwide, needed to speed up the auction process for 4G broadband spectrum and realise that carriers will not pay the historic high prices paid for 3G.

    ”We believe that the current spectrum shortage issues that are being experienced now will get worse before they get better,” he said.]
    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/mobile-spectrum-headed-for-smartphone-traffic-jam-20130118-2cyue.html#ixzz2IMxtarDe

  19. It has been enlightening watching the twists and turns of some trying to explain a “carbon tax” It is clear that they have no idea of what the term means and grasp anything that may assist them in their argument to support their political views.

    A quick definition of a tax is as follows –

    ’According to Black’s Law Dictionary, a tax is a “pecuniary burden laid upon individuals or property owners to support the government […] a payment exacted by legislative authority.” It “is not a voluntary payment or donation, but an enforced contribution, exacted pursuant to legislative authority” and is “any contribution imposed by government […] whether under the name of toll, tribute, tallage, gabel, impost, duty, custom, excise, subsidy, aid, supply, or other name.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax”

    However, this does not fit with how we use the term in an Australian context. A lot of payments to Governments that could fall under the above definition are in fact treated as an expense or expense recovery and not a tax. The examples are many from the fee for a copy of a marriage certificate to a bus fare – the list is very long.

    So if we look at the black law definition the “carbon price” is a tax” however that is not what is meant by the term “carbon tax”. This was most clearly explained by Tony Abbott when he argued for a “carbon tax” as opposed to an ETS. That is it is payed by the end user (aka like a GST/VAT) and not by the polluters (ie businesses). Of cause haveing the consumer pay instead of the polluter (read business) is in the DNA of the LNP. To them people come second to the means of production.

    So accordingly to the definition above any scheme that imposes a “cost” on polluters for the pollution that they produce is a tax. However, in the Australian context this is not the case. All, including Abbott et al accepted that an ETS was not a “carbon tax” However, what we have now (ie an ETS with a fixed price) is somehow transfigured this payment into a “carbon tax” and not a price on carbon. This is done despite Gillard making a clear distinction between the two in the run up to the last election.

    The current arrangement (ie a price on carbon) is more akin to the bus fair or a similar expense in that those that pollute have to pay us, the citizens and taxpayers, for the right to deposit their pollution into out atmosphere.

    Many have criticized Gillard for not being more aggressive in fighting back against this argument about the correct descriptor of this imposition. It is really an ineffective argument because depending on one’s views there will always be an argument that somehow the Government has misled the citizens. If you have any doubt just think back to the problems Howard had when trying t differentiate between a levy and a tax or Costello’s problems trying to class the GST as a State’s tax and not a Commonwealth tax.

    Instead of this silly argument over weather this is a carbon tax or a carbon price the question that should be addressed is will it do the desired thing and reduce the amount of carbon emitted into the environment.

    What we know is that Gillard has delivered almost exactly what she promised in the run up to the last election. The only shortfall is that she expected to have a floating price on carbon but was unable to do so and we ended up with a fixed price for the first two years.

    That is how democracies work.

  20. Victoria

    [I truly find JM’s efforts hilarious]

    I suppose that’s good for you. I find their appearance a rather sad commentary on the human condition and substantively, pure cliché.

    Had (s)he said: I believe that Julia Gillard is a kind of duck I’d have tittered at the work that had gone into that. You can possibly pun on ‘mallard’ or having wings or maybe do Huey, Dewey and Louie sayinf she quacks me up!.

    At least there would be some work there that wasn’t simply copy and paste from nutbag central. But no — it’s just the same old, same old in endless iterations of GroundHog Day.

  21. I’d take someone at their word if they managed to get the words right.

    What do I mean? Well – Catholics (I’m a very lapsed one) don’t usually refer to themselves as ‘practicing Christians’ as a certain supposedly Catholic under-bridge dweller did last night. They might say ‘I’m a practicing Catholic’ or just ‘I’m a Catholic’ but you won’t hear ‘I’m a practicing Christian’, especially not from Catholic who is female, 80+ year old, National Party voting and very conservative.

    If you are going to be a successful troll you need to get your terminolgy spot on.

  22. FB

    What does JM hope to achieve on a blog like this? A conversion to supporting Abbott and is cronies?

    That is what I mean by finding the efforts of JM hilarious.

  25. During the heat last week I had time to puzzle over why his supporters should consider Abbott so admirable. In a spirit of fairness I thought I should admit that he does, truly, have some admirable qualities.

    When I’ve found some, I’ll get back to you.

  26. One thing is obvious about JM, he/she is not the person they claim to be. This is probably Menzies House stuff – all learned by rote, of course.

  28. [What does JM hope to achieve on a blog like this?]

    Up here in Lyne we have a few trolls who deluge every online article in the local paper with anti-Oakeshott drivel. The stuff they post is remarkably similar to the stuff JM posts. The National Party must have sent out handbooks containing things trolls have to say. The aim is to drown out eveyone else, to make the place so unpleasant that anyone sane of any political persuasion just gives up and goes away. When that happens these idiots claim they are representing the majority opinion because no-one is disagreeing with them.

    Ignore JM. She/he/ (maybe even ‘they’) is so blatantly a troll it’s not worth responding.

  31. Thanks J J.
    You are good practice for fighting Tories.

    Other than a lot of dogmatic opinion impenetrable by fact or logic, have you anything else to add?

  34. J M
    You are getting boring. This blog is a bit different to others. If you get boring people usually just scroll on by.

    I know a really good blog you would enjoy and I KNOW people will respond to you. I am not saying go away from here, but variety is the spice of life and all.

    It is called A Frank View.

  36. Does anyone think our recent conservative arrival here is a set up?

    I am not saying there is not a ‘real’ person there, but I have found even the most rabid of conservatives can, when pushed, at least find some support for their views other than, “I believe”.

    As Fran, I think, has pointed out, all the buttons which might get some of us going, are there to be pushed from this person.

    Then again, an 81 year-old named Jenny, who listens to agrees with and enjoys some of the most unthinking right-wing hacks, just beggars belief. A self-admitted National who hates Labor yet is careless with details does make one wonder.

    And, the contributions are only terminated when said person has to go out and milk cows?

  37. I’d take someone at their word if they managed to get the words right.

    Eh, it’s not really about what you believe or the alternatives you suspect. If you just interact normally, the resulting conversation is likely to be normal. If that’s the case, who even cares if you’re being trolled or what the troll gets out of it? If they think they’ve gotten one up on me, *shrug*, whatever floats their boat, I guess?

    Anyway, I don’t judge the value of my interactions by the other parties’ goals.

    If they do manage to create a lot of noise, they’re unlikely to have done it alone and one should take that as a suggestion to reflect on one’s own flaws :P.

  39. JM – Jenny or John – 81 year old or much younger has finally gone to sleep. She(or he) is a person who, by holding up the sign “Ditch the Witch”, by believing the leader should be a christian, should be married, should have children, has shown him or herself to be an extremist of the worst order. A person to be feared in our society.

  42. J M has a right to her opinions, even if we consider they are based on fallacies.

    What worries me more is that there are many like her, who may put Abbott & his heroes in charge. I wish the Nats would split from the Libs. That would be much more fun.

  43. [16 Quotes From Tony Abbott to Remind You Why He Shouldn’t Be Prime Minister, Posted on August 23, 2012 ]

    There was the one about homelessness which was truly awful.

  44. Victoria:

    [What does JM hope to achieve on a blog like this? A conversion to supporting Abbott and is cronies?]

    It’s impossible to say with certainty. Best guess — it’s attention-seeking. Lacking social skill or any sense of accomplishment in their personal lives, these people have few that they can call more than acquaintances, and for them being taken seriously is about as good as it’s going to get. They’ve worked out that if you agree with people, you get far fewer responses than if you annoy them with stupidity. One troll I recall from usenet made it a point to include stupid typos — generally made in complaints about the illiteracy of ‘libtards’ or ‘socailists’. That always provoked massive flames.

    Second best guess? Cyber-vandalism. Some people deriver perverse pleasure from trashing things. Why slash train seats or damage phone boxes or tip over street bins? Because you can, and you can enjoy the irritation it causes others. If you walk past a wall you’ve sprayed, you’ve left your mark, literally. It’s a kind of anomie.

    Finally — there’s astro-turfing. People will work in teams freeping sites in an attempt to posture as part of some ‘silent majority’ or ‘groundswell of opinion’ or ‘common sense’. This helps frame the debate on terms more favourable to some lobby group. Sometimes the particualr troll is a flank attack — such as when Rachel Carson was attacked for killing millions by helping to ban DDT. The whole premise was bogus of course — DDT was never ‘banned’ and Carson and the WHO were right to respond to increasing mosquito tolerance to DDT by recommending against its use in crops, but the tobacco lobby was fighting the WHO over smoking and wanted to discredit the WHO and so sent out its flying monkeys to spread the troll that Carson had the deaths of millions on her hands. The whole ‘boats’ meme here in Australia is very probably another example of that. It discredits the regime that has tried to price emissions and in a modest way, tax mining super profits. These things still occur, but the subversion has reduced the scale of the challenge.

    Whenever you have powerful interests involved in protecting some privilege — and the value of carbon assets plus the right to pollute are such interests — it’s a very cheap and simple thing to mobilise huge armies of the socially marginalised and recklessly dishonest to your cause.

    the cyber equivalent of mindless vandalism. You

  45. The Westpoll William has been waiting on:

    [Mark McGowan has made no headway in his 12 months as Labor leader against Colin Barnett and the Liberals, according to the latest Westpoll, which shows Perth’s transport congestion woes have emerged as the defining issue of the election campaign.

    The Statewide poll of 400 voters reveals Labor’s primary vote has risen just 1 point to 30 per cent in the year since Mr McGowan replaced Eric Ripper as Opposition Leader, while the two-party preferred result is unchanged at 59 per cent to the Liberal-Nationals Government and 41 per cent to Labor.]

    http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/15879621/labors-uphill-battle-for-power/

    As I predicted ages ago, The Liberals are headed for a comfortable win.

  46. Tricot is spot on re the troll. Normally I would not feed them but my post after midnight setting out basic stuff about Bolt/Jones/PA. was meant to give JM a chance to engage. A simple test, and she failed.

  49. The Finnigans @ 3352: In your catalogue of charming quotes from Mr Abbott, you have left out the Bernie Banton one. Bagging a normal, decent Australian who fought an awful disease to achieve a kind of greatness has got to be close to the lowest one of all.

  50. lizzie:

    [What worries me more is that there are many like her, who may put Abbott & his heroes in charge. I wish the Nats would split from the Libs. That would be much more fun.]

    There are not ‘many more like her’ — at least, not in the usual sense. On the internet, one can be as many people as one has time to author — and even a small team can appear to be a very large number of people. When one reads blogs one can’t help but suffer from a bit of affirmation bias — and recall most strongly those whose conduct has seemed most outrageous. Most of us know at least one completely ignorant and stupid git who listens to Alan Jones and soaks it up. In a sense then, there is a stupidity dividend. Astroturfers know that. Provided those conjuring the memes keep them simple enough to repeat even by total fools, they will always get this dividend.

    Are there enough people in the country who are stupid enough to make Abbott PM? Sure there are, but the bulk of them are mere tribals rather than the kind of people who are as stupid as JM appears to be. They always vote Liberal and they don’t bother putting much effort working out why. If they are asked, they will borrow the meme du jour and move on “Oh I just don’t trust Gillard” or “we just can’t run up so much debt” or some other drivel but really this is an exercise in non-responsiveness rather than an argument. Essentially, they are asking to be left alone to vote tribal.

    The broader question concerns the approach of the ALP to those who are not tribal and might vote ALP. To date, it has not challenged the memes and in some cases (“boats” for example) it has reinforced them and therewith the angst of the uncommitted. It’s far too late for the ALP to change tact {Ha! Ha!} on this so they are just going to have to wear this burden and cross their fingers.

    I suspect the ALP will win in any event, probably by a handful of seats, because Abbott has run negativity much longer than was advisable if the government ran full term, and now has nothing to take to an election, whereas the regime can argue that it has delivered outcomes that most people want and is a safe pair of hands. Abbott will have the devlil’s own job of explaining how he will unwind carbon pricing or the MRRT and meet other commitments people assume he has made.

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