Today’s Essential Research result reverts to its position a fortnight ago, with Labor up a point on both the primary vote and two-party preferred. That puts Labor on 34%, the Coalition on 48% and the Greens on 9%, with two-party preferred shifting back to 55-45. Monthly personal ratings show Tony Abbott in his strongest position since late 2011, his approval up three to 40% and disapproval down two to 50%. Julia Gillard has also recovered slightly, up four on approval to 38% with down two on disapproval to 54%, her best figures since January. Abbott maintains a two-point lead as preferred prime minister, which shifts from 39-37 to 41-39. There are also questions on the NDIS (57% approving of the levy increase and 30% disapproving) and paid parental leave (34% support the government’s scheme, 24% the opposition’s), as well as parliamentary majorities (49% would favour a government majority in the House, with an even spread of opinion for the Senate) and the independents (broadly neutral for Oakeshott, Windsor and Wilkie and negative for Katter, oddly enough).
The weekly Morgan multi-mode poll likewise records little change on last week, with the Coalition up half a point to 46.5%, Labor steady on 32% and the Greens up one to 9.5%, leaving both respondent-allocated and previous election preferences unchanged at 56-44.
If Abbott promised not to waste $40 billion on building submarines in Adelaide and promised to buy 12 off-the-shelf type 214s I reckon I would just about vote for him.
Here is a matrix for the sub decision:
1. Cost.
Son of Collins at least $40 billion
Type 214 around $10 billion.
2. Likely cost blowout.
Sons of Collins, based on the Collins experience, say, $10 billion.
Type 214: no cost blowout.
3. Delivery date.
Sons of Collins really in the Never Never as to delivery date.
Type 214 on time over the next five years.
4. Reliability.
Sons of Collins: highly unreliable.
Type 214, completely reliable.
5. Performance specifications
Sons of Collins: who knows, but cross your fingers and get your laptops ready.
Type 214, meets specifications.
6. Capability continuity
Sons of Collins: there will be a capability gap between when the new subs become operational and the time when the current Collins are clapped out.
Type 214: no strategic capability gap.
7. Maintenance, spares
Sons of Collins: one-off class, make your own spares as you go along.
Type 214: off the shelf for a class that has several navies running it.
8. Quality of construction
Sons of Collins: numerous problems with quality control during the construction phase.
Type 214: guaranteed high quality German engineering.
It goes on and on. The sub decision by Labor, endorsed by the Coalition is practically an effing crime.
And the UN but they’re not getting it all they’re own way these days.
TLBD
‘The Greeks should have done an Argentina and told the IMF and the ECB to get stuffed.’
Their inflation rate is around 30%, there has been a flight of capital and things are not looking all that good in Argentina.
Gauss,
[Northern Europe has minimized fiscal stimulus]
minimising fiscal stimulus is not austerity
[Southern Europe, France, and Britain have pursued fiscal stimulus and all suffered from recession]
this has no bearing on the link between austerity and growth
In short there is no evidence for your claim, which I’m sure you knew. The only evidence i see is that strong social democratic countries are much better at providing sustainable and healthy economies.
[Meanwhile in British Columbia, a left wing party in power for 12 years and training in the polls by 20 points have pulled off a remarkable victory, actually increasing their margin.]
It was actually more of a right-wing party (though a reasonably centrist one) and the party which lost was the left-wing union-affiliated one with a bad rep for profligate spending…
We could buy 48 type 214s for the same overall cost as the 12 sons of Collins.
[Sure, We night suggest that to whoever pays your salary: if your pay were cut you would increase the supply of your labour and your income would rise. Win-win. Your loss becomes the author of your prosperity. Really, what complete f-wittery.]
Beautifully put.
Boerwar,
The Argies were doing really well. I’m not familiar with the details but the Kirchners seem to have put off the locals and the investors mightily.
Argentina is so much like Australia in resources and tourism. Maybe we could lend them Wayne Swan for a while.
We could also buy three Su30s for each JSF, provided the JSF does not blow out further… which it will.
TLBD
Around 110 years ago Australia and Argentina were about the two richests countries per capita in the world.
Aregentina an exemplar of what bad management can do to a country with rich resources.
If we bugger us up enough, there is no reason why we shouldn’t follow Argentina down the tubes.
Boerwar,
Precisely.
BattleLines Turkey
You are right, the British Columbia losers were left wing with some radical ideas and a unpopular leader, a sort of mirror of the LNP and Abbott. My comment was more aimed at the slavish reliance some have on the polls here, and it appears in Canada.
[Longtime Liberals were privately as shocked as pundits — and likely, so too were pollsters. But publicly, those close to the campaign said they knew it all along.
“There were some signals that such a result was possible over the last year and a half,” Barry Penner, a longtime Liberal and former cabinet minister who left politics in 2011, said in an interview.
At no time did support for the NDP register greater than 50 per cent in major public opinion polls. Even at the lowest ebb for the B.C. Liberal party, the public was not wildly enthusiastic for Adrian Dix or the NDP. That was a signal that the public was not falling in love with the NDP.”]
BW – Equity ruled in Australia being rich in the first decade of the 1900’s
It really doesn’t matter where in the spectrum the party in British Columbia sat.
The point is that the polling for years provided no predictive value in terms of what ended up happening.
OR
Where there is life, there is hope.
briefly@2393
😀
sprocket, I wonder if the Liberals in BC had the sort of internal troubles Labor has had over the last few years. I very much doubt there was any equivalent of the Simon Crean debacle six months before the election.
CTar1 @ 2413
Not quite understanding you there.
The thing about the Trickle Downers is that they all imagine that they are going to be up there pissing down on the trickled-down upon.
It is a dead give-away to what they are really thinking.
Après Labor le déluge.
TLBD
Yeah. It won’t trickle down, it will flood down.
[The point is that the polling for years provided no predictive value in terms of what ended up happening.
OR
Where there is life, there is hope.]
Oh, there is always hope in a two horse race. Anything can happen. It’s just very unlikely that anything will.
I don’t think it is at all likely at this point, because many have believed we’d reach ‘peak Abbott’ and the public would wake up every month since he become opp leader, and the public is more asleep than ever. But in the very unlikely event a Labor campaign could highlight the constant lies of Abbott and make people understand he has just lied his ass off for 4 years and laughs as them for being stupid enough to believe him, there could, unlikely though it is, be a backlash, and shock Labor win.
Essentially truth may overcome evil, but it is unlikely evil usually wins.
Apparently the losers in BC wanted to install a PPL that was grossly unfair to poorer people, pandered to women of high calibre, imposed a brand new tax on business the cost of which would be passed on to everyone by way of increased prices. Not only that but practically no-one in the party room or amongst the Party’s backers thought the policy was anything more than a crock of shit.
It could have shifted a few votes as people came to their senses about the narcissism involved in maitaining a pisspore policy in the face of common sense and common decency.
BW
[Not quite understanding you there.]
There was a time when we stuck in railways in the bush and London trips were available to pretty much everyone.
[The public know the fiscal situation is tight.]
We know the government is getting $80 Billion more per year in revenue than the last Howard budget.
Labor has a spending(and truth) problem.
Some will say the GFC spending was needed and it has some substance, however they NEVER spent less than the GFC spending years of 2008-2010, in fact they’ve done the opposite and spent more per year, every year.
CTar1
Ah, I thought that might have been it. Yep.
BT
The BC experience is probably different in many respects, but it does show the power of incumbency and unless the economy is really bad or there is gross misbehaviour in the incumbent, why would the average Joe want to risk a radical and unpopular alternative?
Australia has an excellent economy on all measures, and the coming avalanche of negative attack Abbott advertising will be raising these very questions in many minds.
Might explain the depressed vibe emanating from NewsLtd organs at present. A grumpier bunch would be hard to find.
Boerwar,
I understand the B.C.s weren’t too impressed with the fraudband either.
SeanTisMe
You are obviously working to Party instructions so you might have some inside knowledge.
Is there even the faintest feeling amongst your fellow staffers and their members and/or shadow spokespersons that maybe the Adelaide build of the Sons of Collins is possibly the worst defence acquisition decision in Australia’s history?
[ in fact they’ve done the opposite and spent more per year, every year.]
If you are right and given your usual level of accuracy it would be an accident rather than considered outcome, so what, should spending have been cut in any year so as to ensure a recession? Should 100,000’s of jobs have been lost through austerity or are you just talking absolute rubbish?
@Sean/2425
What your forgetting is that if we did Austerity measures like the UK, the results will be like the UK, situation won’t improve at all.
A Typical Liberal thinker thinks that excessive cut backs vs moderate the situation will always be the same.
Boer war
The BC losers were promising Fibre to the Node (derided as Fraudband) and a Green Army to paint rocks. And building 100 dams in the mining areas with taxpayers money.
[The BC experience is probably different in many respects, but it does show the power of incumbency and unless the economy is really bad or there is gross misbehaviour in the incumbent, why would the average Joe want to risk a radical and unpopular alternative?]
I think the notion that Tony Abbott is viewed as radical and unpopular is a bit of wishful thinking. True his net satisfaction rating isn’t very good, but it is better than Julia Gillard’s.
As for him being radical, that is complete nonsense, both the idea that he actually is radical, and the idea that he is perceived by voters as being radical. He is a complete populist and doesn’t have a single value – secular or religious – which he wouldn’t ditch if it would get him into the lodge. He will probably be a moderate, do-nothing Prime Minister.
sprocket
‘The BC losers were promising Fibre to the Node (derided as Fraudband) and a Green Army to paint rocks. And building 100 dams in the mining areas with taxpayers money.’
Delicious.
Did they toss in Abbott’s PPL while they were at it?
Battle Turkey
‘He will probably be a moderate, do-nothing Prime Minister.’
This is one of the funniest sentences written by a pro-Coalitionista in Bludger history.
Talk about singing Abbott’s praises. Is that the best we can hope for? That Abbott does nothing?
On the BC election upset:
[
The polling clearly doesn’t reflect what we’re seeing tonight, so I guess that raises some questions about that,” said New Democrat Shane Simpson, the NDP Opposition caucus chairman, suggesting the NDP’s internal numbers pointed to a tight race, but the public numbers raised expectations of an NDP rout.
Simpson said the election result, which now relegates the NDP to Opposition status for another four years, means the party must re-evalutate its election strategy that focused on policy, programs and issues and steered clear of the well-tested B.C. tradition of pounding the policies and personalities of the opponents to political pulp.
“We tried to elevate politics,” said Simpson. “We tried to take a lot of the personal negativity out of it. I think that was the right thing to do. I feel very positive about our choice to do that.”]
I don’t know close to enough about Canadian politics to say if this is roughly true, but if that is indeed how the NDP conducted themselves, then well done them. They are an improvement on our opposition.
[As for him being radical, that is complete nonsense, both the idea that he actually is radical, and the idea that he is perceived by voters as being radical. He is a complete populist and doesn’t have a single value]
… doesn’t have a single value, couldn’t have said it better myself, that is radical for Australians, if Labor can show he doesn’t have a single value, not even liberals will vote for him (they shouldn’t but seems that are that stupid after all) … it is only an inexplicable belief that he will implement a particular set of values (usually not his but other members of the liberal caucus) that supports him, a common view in my liberal friends is that ‘he can say whatever he wants after the election he’ll be obeying the ‘Heffernan / Robb / Super Dry’ instructions whether he wants to or not.
Well the anti wind farm astro turfers are going to have a rally outside Parliament on June 18th. Headlining is our old favourite, though I would think “pants off” would be a better lauding than “hats off”
[Rally Update: the line-up, so far
May 15, 2013 By stopthesethings 3 Comments
Getting bigger by the day, STT can announce the line-up of confirmed speakers for the National Rally, June 18, at Parliament House, Canberra. We expect more to confirm their involvement soon, but the line up so far is:
Alan Jones: 2GB Radio announcer. Alan will act as MC on the day. Tune into 2GB or catch up online for further stories and information on the Rally. STT says thanks to Alan for his support for the Rally and for the “forgotten” people. Hats off.]
The full line up of wackos is here:
http://fb.me/2Xuw5A3e3
[Talk about singing Abbott’s praises. Is that the best we can hope for? That Abbott does nothing?]
I think it is the most likely outcome. There doesn’t seem to be anything he even wants to do. I can’t think of anything off the top of my head anyway.
His Prime Ministership will just be a sort of nightmare for him; he’ll be bombarded with conflicting demands from his political advisers and the true believers within his party and he will make a big mess of trying to balance them out and end up with everyone unhappy and will probably end up with his leadership in question quite early on.
Anyway, Abbott can’t do nothing AND create 2,000,000 new jobs.
Battle Turkey
Nice post @ 2439.
sprocket
I have inside knowledge that the AFP, on the direct and personal orders of the Prime Minister, is going to stop anyone trying to get to Alan Jones’ Don Quixote special.
[2397
Gauss
However my question was to GG and the difference between the United Kingdom & Sweden. What’s your opinion?
People on the blog have complained about austerity in the UK, quoting journalists who completely ignore how the UK got into the mess it’s in. Huge government debt by massive, pump priming expenditures in response to the GFC.]
For a start, the UK has not engaged in pump priming in the conventional sense.
But that aside, the casual chain in the UK commences with a build-up of private sector debt linked to speculation in the property market. Excessive household debt is intrinsically unstable, and when private lending slumped the result was a contraction in the UK private sector. The rise in public sector deficits occurred in the context of private sector instability. It is not possible to understand the dynamics of public finance without also looking at developments in household finance. They are two sides of the one coin.
The origins of the stress in public finance in the UK, Ireland, Holland, Spain and the US were all in the household sector – that is, the unsustainable accumulation of liabilities/assets related to property speculation.
Incredibly, the imposters that currently masquerade as the Government in the UK are still trying to goose the property market. The now require the Bank of England to print cash which is used to subsidise further private speculation in one of the world’s most unaffordable housing markets.
(This is not so very different from our own circumstances. The budget is in deficit in part because we offer tax relief for speculation in property.)
In any case, your summation of the origins of the crisis in the UK is entirely wrong. The crisis owes nothing to “pump-priming” and everything to speculative asset creation in the private sector.
Good night all. Sleep well.
UK still thinks it will be awhile before any good recovery (i.e. slow):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22539965
Boerwar,
Ils ne passeront pas!
mb
Anyone who is staunchly pro-McCarthy is a fascist in my book.
This is another of his poems
[a kike is the most dangerous
machine as yet invented
by even yankee ingenu
ity (out of a jew a few
dead dollars and some twisted laws)
it comes both prigged and canted.]
this from david wh
davidwh
Posted Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 8:57 pm | Permalink
BB Labor has been running on stunts all year so I guess one had to work eve.
===================================
david so do you think Ndis is a stunt
====================================================
Bludgers I was just reading that the 10th President of the USA, John Tyler (1841-1845) has two grandchildren still alive today. Apparently he fathered a son quite late in life and then that son did the same thing with the two grandchildren. Quite remarkable.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/01/grandchildren-of-10th-president-john-tyler-still-alive/
From no to nothing’s not very far.
Nothing on climate change
Nothing on Murray-Darling basin
Nothing on infrastructure
Nothing on public service reform
Nothing on education
Nothing on agriculture
Nothing on the environment
Notthing on cost of living
Nothing on childcare
Sounds about right