GhostWhoVotes reports the first Nielsen for the year has the Coalition leading 56-44 on two-party preferred, compared with 52-48 in the final poll last year. The primary votes are 30% for Labor (down five) and 47% for the Coalition (up four) – we’ll have to wait on the Greens. Even worse news for Julia Gillard on personal ratings, with Tony Abbott seizing a 49-45 lead as preferred prime minister compared with 50-40 to Gillard last time, and she trails Kevin Rudd 61% to 35%. However, the latter result is very similar to Abbott’s 58-35 deficit against Malcolm Turnbull. Opinion is divided on whether the parties should actually do anything about it: 52% support Labor changing leaders and 45% don’t (up four and down three), with eerily similar numbers for the Liberals (51% to 46%).
We also had overnight a Galaxy poll of 800 women voters concerning voting intention and attitudes to the leaders. The voting intention figures were 36% for Labor, 46% for the Coalition and 10% for the Greens, for a two-party preferred lead to the Coalition of 53-47 – about where you would expect it be when allowing for a 55-45 poll trend, the size of the gender gap in recent years and perhaps a smidgin of house bias in favour of the Coalition on Galaxy’s part. When respondents were asked if they were concerned about Abbott saying “‘no’ to everything”, his views on abortion and “the way he treats women”, abortion recorded the lowest response rate among Labor voters and the highest among Coalition voters (albeit by slight margins in each case). The divide was still wider for the question of whether was Abbott was a misogynist, breaking 44-24 for among Labor voters and 9-69 against among Coalition voters for a total of 25-44. Thirteen per cent of respondents said they were less likely to vote for Gillard because she was unmarried and has no children, and the same number said they were more likely to vote for Abbott for the opposite reasons.
UPDATE (18/2/2013): Essential Research breaks the freefall with the Coalition two-party lead back down to 54-46 after a week at 55-45, with Labor up a point on the primary vote to 35%, the Coalition down one to 47% and the Greens steady on 9%. The poll also finds 56% approval and 22% disapproval for recent thought bubbles about development of northern Australia. Other questions relate drugs in sport, including the eye-opening finding that 52% would approve of a ban on sports betting.
BB@4822
Agree completely … everything except this bit …
[ It’s either the last, or close to the last throw of the dice for the media. ]
Every time I think we’ve reached “peak unhingement”, the OM manages to ratchet up the “batshit-crazy” meter yet another notch.
I now don’t think this particular dial has any upper limit. The OM seem determined to continue until they drive their own businesses into receivership.
[ @4828 – I’m not saying there is a challenge ojn at the moment, and neither is the media. ]
Are you being serious here, or is this a joke? It’s a bit hard to tell amongst all your other ravings.
“@Simon_Cullen: RBA Governor says he didn’t find it that surprising that Govt said a surplus this year was unlikely
“@Simon_Cullen: RBA Governor: “I would have found it…more surprising for them to go and do some drastic things… in order to try to meet that commitment””
Trouble is Bushfire, it’s not ONE poll. There have been heaps of polls and very few have offered a lot of comfort to Labor. Some in NSW point to a massive meltdown in the Labor vote. Most polls indicate Labor would do better under Rudd.
Them’s the facts. When the facts change, I’ll change my opinion. What will you do?
Things look bad in Northern rivers area.
@Mayorjd: Wilsons River is at 4.09m and the wind is starting to roar here in Goonellabah. stay indoors if you can. Lismore’s #2ndbigwet
There have been around 16 polls so far this year. Is there another poll out before Mondays Newspoll. Assume Morgan? I’m with BB – we’re in the “steps back” mode. They will ease back, and the commentary will shift – for a while.
[@4828 – I’m not saying there is a challenge ojn at the moment, and neither is the media.
That said, you can’t beleive that given the state of the polling and the nature of the ALP they aren’t discussing it.
It’s in their DNA to be war gaming options, doing a desk audit of numbers, working out best case and worst case scenarios – that what’s these guys and gals live for.]
You are so full of bullshit C/C, I don’t know where to start.
However, I won’t be wasting time going back through your posts to prove that agitating about a challenge is just about ALL you have been doing for the past week.
I see from your second sentence that now it’s “discussion” about numbers and a challenge.
That’s a big step down from your previous position that it was all over bar the shouting and that Gillard was a “dead woman walking” (as it has been put elsewhere).
So now the Labor caucus is just doing what it always does. So, why the excitement and the gloating?
You cite the one time a challenge materialised, forgetting the thousands (literally) of times we have been assured by the savants and gurus of the media that one was “on”.
Pathetic scientific method, C/C: illogical, biased and one-eyed.
You cite the predominance of the issue in newspapers, when it is really just a handful of hacks working for failing businesses striving to reinvigorate their own relevance, based on anonymous tip-offs and midnight phone calls, and spectacularly unsuccessfully at that.
Hardly one concrete source has been named. Sure, it may be true that phone calls were made, but unless sources are named, there is no substance to the story. There never was.
It was a ginger-group of legends in their own lunchtimes trying to big-note themselves. The media fell in with it and made bloody fools of themselves.
As to what “these guys and gals” in Labor do for a living, unless you think the Liberal Party is a Philosophers Club, you might reflect on the way their own caucus conducts its affairs: red in tooth and claw like any other political party. See: Turnbull v. Nelson, Abbott v. Turnbull, and Costello thrashing around like two sulking ferrets in the same sack expecting high office to handed to him on a platter over a period of 10 years.
You’re a waste of space, mate.
“@sspencer_63: If all Australians were forced to watch today’s entire session with the RBA Gov, large sections of the Australian media would cease to exist”
Socrates@4716
Great post Socrates and I recommend anyone who missed it read the whole post.
The piece I have extracted is true and is just pure Machiavelli. If you substitute ‘Prince’ for ‘Labor’, it is exactly what Machiavelli was advocating all those centuries ago.
Labor needs to rise above this and have a clearly articulated purpose in society. With that embedded in place, much of the rest might just follow.
@Toorak/4853
His ego was/is the problem.
He couldn’t just sit in a corner with the rest of his supporters and be a good boy.
Ha!
Barry Cassidy has caught up with what many of us have been saying here for months and months.
They are getting it.
*Julia ain’t going – rolled or tapped
*There is no clean-skin Third Candidate
*Rudd has missed the boat.
It will be down to weak as…p Abbott and tough cookie
Julie.
In others words the Evil Empire as led by Abbott – nasty, shallow and cheap versus real government.
Gillard will have done – in holding a minority government together for three years – what Abbott could not do in his wildest dreams.
He has been, is and will continue to be despised.
I am looking forward to it.
Insiders looks very dull this week with Adam Bandt and Gerard on the panel.
Bandt is so middle of the road vanilla he should be run over.
I see the coalition are just avoiding Cassidy completely.
Instead of it being seen as what it is (ie avoiding tough questions and scrutiny) they are trying to it around by suggesting that Cassidy is so biased why would we waste our time with him.
Toorak Toff@4731
Yes, so Labor is doing those things but why?
What is the unifying ideology that Labor pursues to do these things?
How do they all fit together?
Is this a coherent program or just a grab bag of random thoughts?
That is where I think Labor falls down.
[Trouble is Bushfire, it’s not ONE poll. ]
Sorry T/T, but it is. I have never seen a beat-up so big as the one concerning this poll.
We are in a cycle of snakes and ladders, and have been for over two years. Three steps forward, two back for the government and opposition alike.
The vested interests are concerned with depicting one poll – Nielsen this week – as the harbinger of doom for the government. Everything but the kitchen sink has been thrown at the government to set this bootstrap up.
Nielsen has been all over the place for the past year. It’s practically useless, especially one isolated instance of it, as a harbinger of anything, much less doom.
In the same time period there was an Essential that showed an uptick for the government. I didn’t see that discussed anywhere.
One single poll with a 95% confidence rating that it was within 3% or so of reality has unleashed the entire week of spin and bullshit. Including your own contributions.
The only evidence that there was a challenge was a few phone calls to a select group of “insider” journos, unsourced, unidentified. That is not evidence at all.
The rest was opinion pieces, nothing more or less.
The “Everyone’s talking” p[loy USED to work, but now not so well.
[4814
Gecko
Posted Friday, February 22, 2013 at 11:21 am | PERMALINK
Compact Crank
@4803 – guytaur – your derision is palpable…
Don’t blame guytaur, you are a doing a fine job yourself and becoming more moronic by the minute.
…if they are so far right then why are they so succesful?
Evidently your brain is using the expressway to your mouth and bypassing thought.]
Strange, but crank sounds normal on PB as the left voters are sounding shrill, panic driven and blaming ever man and his Rudd for Labors dire position.
@Colvinius: rt @FionaKatauskas: Wow! NSW Govt KurtCobainia courtesy of @cjjosh http://t.co/zmchOmoiaN
rummel
Yeah Fox News has such a lot to do with PMJG and the polls.
Hadn’t everyone “stopped listening” to Gillard back in April last year? And yet the polls narrowed. Now they’re changing again… this isn’t a sign that people have made up their minds.
[“@sspencer_63: If all Australians were forced to watch today’s entire session with the RBA Gov, large sections of the Australian media would cease to exist”]
Stephen Spencer seems to be able to pick the right messages.
I’m disappointed that Waleed has decided to join the groupthink about Labor. I was expecting him to be an independent voice who would delve more deeply than ‘Labor has no narrative’.
Waleed is a slippery and ambitious opportunist.
I am sure that a pre-commitment to the dominant ABC narrative, that is, that the government is in a permanent state of chaos, was part of the reasons he gained his employment.
It would be nice to see one senior journalist at the ABC accurately describe the subverting of our democracy by the media barons and the ABC compliance with their subversion.
Waleed is willfully blind to this subversion. He lays out the same old warmed up vomit that New Ltd, Fairfax and the ABC present for their rapidly diminishing customers. He is a smooth sycophant in his selling of this boring , stale and predictable narrative that has run since Labor was elected. Glenn Milne first offered up this tired old trope on Insiders in the early days of the Rudd government.
Waleed has warmed up this old vomit and presented it as a fresh insight. All the while the big stories go unnoticed.
Z
[You seem to be equating involvement in a union with being against change, which is muddled thinking, to say the least. (Some fundamental changes in our society were driven by unionists, after all).]
Actually you were saying Labor was moving away from being union dominated.
I was pointing out that Labor is still heavily union dominated.
[Hadn’t everyone “stopped listening” to Gillard back in April last year? And yet the polls narrowed. Now they’re changing again… this isn’t a sign that people have made up their minds.]
Yep and now Gillard called the election, they are all listening again and there terrified of Labor and Gillard all over again. The last thing needed is a close election with Labor an inch away of forming another minority government. That alone should push some fence sitters towards the libs, just to be sure.
[It would be nice to see one senior journalist at the ABC accurately describe the subverting of our democracy by the media barons and the ABC compliance with their subversion.]
I am sure Barrie Cassidy thinks it.
Halfhour to go until swim gate. How much blame will the OM put on her?
[Suggesting I didn’t, as some here are doing (looking at you, Diog) is saying I’m lying.
]
I’m suggesting you might not be very objective.
oops Sorry. How blame will OM put on PMJG.
Did not mean any disrespect at all.
[It would be nice to see one senior journalist at the ABC accurately describe the subverting of our democracy by the media barons and the ABC compliance with their subversion.]
I love it when Labor are going to loose it’s a some issue of democracy… In this case media. Get over it, labor stink to high heaven and in a democratic election labor is going to be tossed by the people, not the media.
In this morning’s Financial Review I’ve highlighted a serious problem we have with big multinationals using loopholes to avoid paying a fair share of tax in Australia.
Every year Australia misses out on significant amounts of tax revenue from these global corporations while they use our taxpayer funded roads, staff educated in our schools and universities and our ever improving communications infrastructure to underpin their profits.
If you’re on Twitter, can you tweet using the hashtag #payafairshare so we can let the multinationals know what we think of their tactics?
If you’re not on Twitter, can you forward this email to friends and family so they know what’s happening?
We’re not the only country facing this problem, but we are taking action to put a stop to it. The Government has been tightening our rules on tax avoidance and profit shifting and we’ll amend the laws to make sure there’s transparency around how much tax these corporations are paying.
There also has to be international cooperation and the Treasurer last week worked with the G20 on a commitment to develop a global action plan.
The companies are dodging their responsibilities with complex global structures and transactions like the “Double Irish Dutch Sandwich” and that puts an unfair burden on ordinary Australian workers and small businesses.
Thanks,
David Bradbury
Assistant Treasurer
Toorak Toff@4853
TT your comments here for over 12 months at least have been putting the boot into Labor.
Now you have run up the surrender flag and are conceding defeat 7 months out from the actual election. No support from you when the going is getting tough – just putting the boot in harder and harder.
Someone who claims to be Labor through and through, yet revels under the nickname ‘Toorak Toff’ and is taking great delight at the difficulty Labor is in at present.
I just don’t believe you were ever Labor.
Shame on you.
Gecko
[Re Labor has lost its way:
]
Funnily enough, I was just quoting what Gillard said about Rudds government.
[Yep and now Gillard called the election, they are all listening again and there terrified of Labor and Gillard all over again. The last thing needed is a close election with Labor an inch away of forming another minority government. That alone should push some fence sitters towards the libs, just to be sure.]
What’s there to be terrified of? Labor’s recovery in the polls came *after* the carbon tax was actually introduced. Most of the stuff they’re proposing now is new spending.
Anyway, if the people are listening, they can be convinced. Hopefully they’ll be convinced by policies and facts.
[Yep and now Gillard called the election, they are all listening again and there terrified of Labor and Gillard all over again. The last thing needed is a close election with Labor an inch away of forming another minority government. That alone should push some fence sitters towards the libs, just to be sure.]
What’s there to be terrified of? Labor’s recovery in the polls came *after* the carbon tax was actually introduced. Most of the stuff they’re proposing now is new spending.
Anyway, if the people are listening, they can be convinced. Hopefully they’ll be convinced by policies and facts.
@JuliaGillard: The PM and @PeterGarrettMP met with @IGiveAGonski ahead of the PM’s speech to the AEU Conference. TeamJG http://t.co/jsZMmHhm8B
BH@4868
Sadly I’m not surprised at him at all.
“@Diddoms: #auspol Dear Caucas, this is what to say to journos. Just do it!
AAA rating
Inflation 2.2%
GDP 3.1%
Unemploymt 5.4%
Interest Rates 3.0%.”
Carr now refusing to raise Assange with Sweden having said he would in a letter.
[A spokesman for Senator Carr told AAP the pair would discuss a range of issues but Assange won’t be on the agenda.
It has subsequently emerged that Senator Carr told Greens Senator Scott Ludlam earlier this month of plans to raise Assange’s case.
“The Australian government has on several occasions sought and subsequently received assurances from Swedish authorities that Mr Assange would receive due legal process in any proceedings against him in Sweden,” Senator Carr says in a letter to Senator Ludlam, dated February 8, 2013, published on a Greens website.
“I would expect to renew our request for such assurances at my next meeting with my Swedish counterpart.”
Comment is being sought from Senator Carr over the apparent discrepancy between the two statements.]
Diogenes@4870
No reason why they wouldn’t. Unions still help many many non union member workers to gain and maintain good working conditions and even more importantly safety working conditions.
The tories represent the big end of town who have the most wealth and disproportional power in our society. Throw in a small number of farmers etc as well.
They represent far less than the Labor/ Union movement.
dave
I’m not disputing that. I was disputing the assertion that Labor was moving away from its union dominance.
bemused
[Yes, so Labor is doing those things but why?
What is the unifying ideology that Labor pursues to do these things?
How do they all fit together?
Is this a coherent program or just a grab bag of random thoughts?
That is where I think Labor falls down.]
You’ve avoided the word “narrative” here the way some writers avoid split infinitives.
Anyway, what was the “coherent program” of Howard, Keating and Hawke, for example? And where would, say, the Murray-Darling or plain packaging policies fit into those programs, if those governments had done them, or would they just not have done them because they wouldn’t have fitted the program?
We have plain packaging because that was next in line after a long series of incremental anti-tobacco measures, and we have the Murray-Darling policy because with the competing water interests and dwindling health of the river system some compromise was desperately needed. Not every policy has to fit nicely into a big story.
Dave.
Yes that is even when you take into account increased workforce not in a Union for various reasons
Psyclaw at 1710:
You obviously didn’t read my whole post.
And I stand by that.
The ALP, as Aly points out, has in recent weeks been trying to grab on to the “workers’ party” theme. Julia Gillard explicitly did so at the AWU conference – wtte ‘I am not the leader of a progressive party or a moderate party, but a labour party’
Now I have no problems with their being a workers’ party, and if that’s what the ALP are going to be then fine.
But I don’t see any reason why a “workers’ party” is going to be anything but a minor party in future. A minor party with an important role to play in advocating for the rights of blue collar workers, but a minor party nonetheless.
The ALP, of course, has been a party of government and so has had to deal with issues of every hue. The problem is that it has been becoming more and more difficult to reconcile the “rights of blue collar workers” with the response to the environment or to the operation of a fairly free market economy, the regulation of business, education, resources, etc.
Once you make the leap from “rights of blue collar workers” to social justice or equality of access to education or environmental protection or all this other good stuff the question becomes are you talking about a “labour party” or are you talking about something else.
I think you’re talking about something else.
That’s the point.
Let’s take the handling of the MDB. This has almost nothing to do with “rights of blue collar workers”. So how should the ALP respond? Is it going to be prioritizing rural communities dependent on agriculture, or is it going to be prioritizing environmental outcomes? Well, frankly, there was no way for us to know because the ALP doesn’t really come from any of these backgrounds and isn’t known as a champion of either. In the end, unsurprisingly, the ALP was almost entirely reactive about the MDB. Something had to be done, but what was done was mostly a shambles and a result of random political pressures. A little bit for everyone but no concept of an overriding plan or goal beyond making the issue go away.
Back in the day the beloved Richo tried to use environmental causes as a way of securing voter support, in quite a cynical way (ok, we’re talking Richo so I didn’t need to state that), but the ALP is not naturally a party of environmental protection. They have done a lot of good things for environmental protection over the years, and certain strong individuals have championed environmental causes, but it’s not in the ALP’s “blood” so to speak, and as such the ALP is always going to be suspect as to whether they will take an environmental stance on a particular topic.
Now I know that’s part of being in government – it’s not all one thing or all another, it needs to be a balance, but again, the things that the ALP decide to protect vs the things they don’t seems to be quite ad hoc. Reactive to the political winds of the day rather than based on any particular belief set or principles or plan.
So, a big question as an example – if the ALP lose this year are they going to roll over and allow the carbon price to be repealed even if they can block legislation in the Senate?
We simply don’t know. They might, they might not – as a voter I don’t know, and I can’t tell from looking at their past behaviour or at their “principles”.
That’s an important consideration, and the fact I cannot work that out is a problem.
Naively there are 2 options – the ALP can move away from being defined as a “labour party” – cutting ties to the union movement etc, OR the ALP can stay a “labour party” and some new party can arise to take the centre left ground and be based on principles of balanced government leaning towards social justice, environmental protection, education for all, etc etc.
Diogenes@4887
Historically I think you would be proven wRONg there as well?
I think you will find Unions were much dominate in the ALP and Society in general in say the 1950’s as a example.
Jackol
As I was reading your post, I was thinking that “balance” was what Labor was about and then you mentioned that in your last sentence.
dave
I’m talking about the last few years.
Time for big news story of the day.
Presser due now. Delayed so any minute.
WRT Waleed Aly’s article……
I think a lot of you are missing the point – and it is a very important one that you Laborites need to grasp. It is implicit in the post I made yesterday about the woman at the hire shop who blamed Julia Gillard for the GST.
Many – maybe most – people don’t break down their voting decision into specific policies or programs that benefit them “under party X” and weigh them against what they will lose “under party Y”. They vote based on “themes” and their general perception of what and who a party stands for.
That woman in the hire shop – I could have run through a long list of Labor policies that benefit her directly and indirectly – if she has children in childcare, receives a pension, contributes personal superannuation, school aged children etc., and it probably wouldn’t make an iota of difference. Because that is not how she thinks.
Like it or not, the majority of people are disengaged from the detail of politics and policy – they either don’t care, don’t understand, don’t have time, or are told not to worry… For whatever reason, they roll their “once every 3 years” vote up into an assessment of what they think a party stands for and whether they have any connection with it.
Waleed is right. A lot of Australians don’t know what the Labor party stands for anymore because Labor has embraced so many policies of the traditional right that make them look like a bad copy of the Liberal Party, and a few policies of the traditional left, which make them look like a half-baked copy of the Greens. The result is a party that, to the general, disengaged voting public, just doesn’t seem to stand for anything or anyone anymore.
You can’t sell policy details to a disengaged and disinterested polity – but if you can give them a story that makes them feel included, it might be enough to break through to them and get them to vote for you.
And that’s the narrative and the story that Waleed is noting as missing.
DR
And waaaay more people were members of unions back then.
Rummell, the stink that you are so aware of comes from the tired, servile crap that you present here as insight.
This trolling seems to be taxing your poor brain, lie down when your brain hurts, breath deeply and think of your hero Abbott,( he is designing workchoices 2 for your children) the pain should eventually ease off.
I’m going to stick up for the much disparaged “low information voters” of Australia.
Why should they spent their precious time looking at policy when it would be better used on their kids, or leisure or whatever. They know it makes no practical difference how they vote (there is about a 1 in million chance it would ).
[I love it when Labor are going to loose (sic) it’s a some issue of democracy… In this case media. Get over it, labor stink to high heaven and in a democratic election labor is going to be tossed by the people, not the media.]
Labor only “stinks to high heaven” because the media keep saying that it does.
They have little basis for it, as in:
[ AAA rating
Inflation 2.2%
GDP 3.1%
Unemploymt 5.4%
Interest Rates 3.0%. ]
* They concocted a “crisis” over something as simple as the confirmation, early on, that there would be no early election (as had been confidently predicted by a big swathe of them – wrong again) and that, in fact, the election would be about the precise time it should be: September 2012.
How this was a “crisis” or a “blunder” I don’t know, except that, once again, the media didn’t see it coming, so had to cover for their ignorance by making it a “shock announcement”.
* As a result of the confirmation of the election date, routine resignations of ministers were announced, as they are always announced upon the date of the election becoming established.
The media missed this as well, so turned it into a “rats deserting the sinking ship” beat-up, even finding the one emotional ten seconds that Gillard used a hanky, to portray the whole conference as a “desperate” affair, that showed the government was “ridden with tears”.
* They took the announcement of the MRRT recovering $126 million as a sign of failure, even after it became apparent that one of the main mining companies had made a $3 billion loss due to mismanagement by its (immediately sacked) CEO.
While praising Rudd’s version of the MRRT, the RSPT – most of them having mocked it in 2010 – they ignored the fact that the RSPT would have involved the pay out of $4 billion to the mining companies, and so was exactly $4,126,000,000 behind the 8-ball compared to the MRRT.
U* Minor mistakes made in QT – an incorrectly attributed quote here, a slightly wrong figure there – are written up as symbols of dysfunction, even though immediately corrected when pointed out.
* Currently they are trying to depict an increase of Health funding to Labor “walking away” from her Health policy, even though the State Premiers have been clearly misappropriating Health money and blaming the government.
* There is no scrutiny, none, of Tony Abbott, except puff pieces about how wonderful he is to women, and what a brave firefighter he is, even though women hate him and he fought no fires.
* Individual polls are written up as disasters, when any kind of professional analysis would deny this as being too short of data.
* Most of the articles on the subject of the “dysfunctional” government, by far the majority, have been pure opinion pieces, written by insiders, colour writers, second-hand hacks, ring-ins, part-timers and Fairfax dregs, whose personal opinions are worth no more or less than those of any ordinary member of the public.
* Most of the “news” columns have been based on completely unsourced, anonymous tip-offs from alleged members of caucus, with axes to grind (usually revolving around loss of privilege and promotion potential). These stories are thus next to useless. If a story COULD have been made up we are entitled to believe it was, until proven otherwise.
I suspect much of the above has been agenda driven and motivated by the increasing tendency of the media to get a story out before there is any possibility of establishing context.
Gillard is “struggling” one day, “beleagured” the next, “gone” by Wednesday, being asked to resign on Thursday (because it’s becoming increasingly obvious there’s NO CHALLENGE), and “safe… for now” by Friday.
By any estimation, this is a remarkable morphing of bullshit into another form of bullshit, and finally to reality. And all in one week.
It is a non-story. There are few facts to back it up. One poll and a few phone calls, plus some very unwise and inaccurate opinion, wrapped up in the embarrassment of the media in continuously getting just about everything wrong, not having a clue what’s going on have driven it.
It’s the media’s demise we are seeing, not Gillard’s.