GhostWhoVotes reports that a Galaxy poll in tomorrow’s News Limited tabloids has two-party preferred at 50-50, from primary votes of 40% for Labor and 44% for the Coalition. This compares with a 51-49 lead for the Coalition at the last such poll four weeks ago, with Labor up two on the primary vote and the Coalition steady. More to follow.
UPDATE: James J fills the blanks: “Greens Primary for this poll is 9. Who do you think will be better, Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party or Tony Abbott and the Coalition, in handling the issue of asylum seekers? Rudd Labor 40, Abbott Coalition 38. Who do you think will be better, Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party or Tony Abbott and the Coalition, in tackling climate change? Rudd Labor 45, Abbott Coalition 31 Which of the two party leaders do you believe has the best vision for the future? Rudd 46, Abbott 36. July 23-25. 1015 sample.
We also have the Launceston Examiner reporting ReachTEL polls of 600 respondents in each of Bass, Braddon and Lyons show the Liberals continuing to lead in all three, although details provided in the article are sketchy.
UPDATE 2: Kevin Bonham has kindly passed on results of the ReachTEL poll of Bass, Braddon and Lyons. The polls were conducted on Thursday from respective sample sizes are 626, 659 and 617, for margins of error of around 4%. The results unusually feature personal ratings for both the Labor incumbents and Liberal candidates, which show a) implausibly high recognition ratings for all concerned (only 1.5% of Braddon respondents had never heard of their Liberal candidate, former state MP Brett Whiteley), b) surprisingly weak results for the incumbents, and c) remarkable uniformity from electorate to the next.
Bass (Labor 6.7%): Geoff Lyons (Labor) 34.7%, Andrew Nikolic (Liberal) 48.9%, Greens 9.4%. Two party preferred: 54.0%-46.0% to Liberal. Preferred PM: Rudd 50.6%, Abbott 49.4%. Geoff Lyons: 25.6%-39.8%-30.3% (favourable-neutral-unfavourable). Andrew Nikolic: 43.3%-24.0%-24.6%.
Braddon (Labor 7.5%): Sid Sidebottom (Labor) 34.6%, Brett Whiteley (Liberal) 51.3%, Greens 7.4%. Two party preferred: 56.8%-43.2% to Liberal. Preferred PM: Rudd 51.2%, Abbott 48.8%. Sid Sidebottom: 27.4%-37.8%-33.1%. Brett Whiteley: 42.7%-30.5%-25.3%.
Lyons (Labor 12.3%): Dick Adams (Labor) 32.3%, Eric Hutchison (Liberal) 46.8%, Greens 10.2%. Two party preferred: 54.4%-45.6% to Liberal. Rudd 50.7%, Abbott 49.3%. Dick Adams: 26.8%-34.3%-35.7%. Eric Hutchison: 36.8%-29.3%-18.2%.
UPDATE 3: More numbers from last night’s Galaxy poll. Kevin Rudd’s lead over Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister is unchanged at 51-34, but Malcolm Turnbull holds a 46-38 lead over Rudd.
UPDATE 4: Essential Research has the Coalition down a point for the second week in a row to 44%, Labor steady on 39% and the Greens up two to 9%. After shifting a point in Labor’s favour on the basis of little change in the published primary votes last week, two-party preferred remains at 51-49 despite more substantial change this week, suggesting the result has moved from the cusp of 52-48 to the cusp of 50-50. The poll finds 61% approval for the government’s new asylum seekers policy against 28% disapproval and concurs with Galaxy in having the two parties almost equal as best party to handle the issue, with Labor on 25% (up eight on mid-June), the Coalition on 26% (down 12) and the Greens on 6% (down one). The issue is rated the most important election issue by 7%, one of the most by 28%, quite important by 35%, not very important by 16% and not at all important by 8%. Malcolm Turnbull is rated best person to lead the Liberal Party by 37% against 17% for Tony Abbott and 10% for Joe Hockey, and there are further questions on workplace productivity.
guytaur
[ Assange is NOT a US citizen even if you ]
I assume that means that you think I can rip-off any foreign national and I’m being ‘persecuted’ if someone comes after me.
They stuck the stick in the ant-nest.
CTaR1
‘If they thought that the US Govt was not going to come after them them must be in the ‘not very smart’ group.’
Osama writ small.
Basically, Labor has to win seats not only in Queensland but also in that other wasteland, Western Australia. And that seems unlikely.
I may have in a few cases double counted but there are about 45 Australian embassies across the Asian region.
That’s probably the best piece I ever read from Keane.
Emoting is easy, wishing for nice things is easy. Real outcomes and dealing with all the consequences is bloody hard and is often ugly, but the responsible get on with it despite the jeering from the sidelines.
Source for 2004 was DFAT
I doubt whether a refugee could make it into most Australian embassies in order to seek asylum.
They are pretty well forted up these days.
Ratsak
[Greens can please themselves. They can rend their garments and gnash their teeth, but they have to preference Labor or else they’ll be voting for a smaller refugee intake, no carbon pricing and pretty much open slather environmental vandalism.]
Or we can simply flick pass the vote to someone more comfortable with the brutality which is the key rationale for the program. One can’t be held accountable for the things others do that you oppose.
Ctar
So you think prosecuting publishers is a great thing to do?
Why is it you are not saying the same about the Guardian, The New York Times and the Sydney Morning Herald. Like the US Government very hypocritical and not using the law equally. Thus persecution
Toorak Toff @2003
Are you sure?
Western Australia is the opposite to Victoria: the ALP have been so low there for so long that they can only improve. That’s at least Hasluck in the ALP column. If things start to break away, you can include seats like Canning and Swan in the firing line
Tony Abbott still leads.
Newspoll 52/50, Galaxy 50/50 and Essential 51/49, there’s your average 51/49 😎
You still have more time for people to compare Rudd and Abbott, a whole election campaign, and Abbott’s costings which must be presented to the public.
Labor are definitely in with a winning shot, but the Coalition are still rightly the favourites at present.
As for the Loons, one thing is for certain, we have seen Peak Greens!
And what a peak it was, they’d resemble a kids water pistol for use as a military weapon.
The Greens, Peak Pewny.
R.I.P. Can’t wait 😀
‘Only the impotent are pure’
AbsoluteTwaddle:
[I just pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming of being at an ISO meeting.]
And when you awoke to find that you weren’t at such a meeting, did any reason for rejecting the antecedent claim about the character of existing governance hove into view?
adrian
Yes. Pure not a word I associate with the UN. They must not be impotent
This question is a hypothical
If these coutnries are so bad and in need of reform would it be easier if the West went in and took over and supported the development of better structured government’s?
I don’t understand why Rudd hasn’t made Bob Hawke Governor General in order to piss the Liberals off.
WOAH!
Fran Barlow is in full Michel Foucault mode today!
Don’t know gets a higher poll result than Abbott in EMC’s lead the Libs question. 😆
mexican
Europe tried that. It was called colonisation
1961
Benji
[Essential Report:
PNG deal Approve 61, Disapprove 28
ALP voters 75-16
Libs 58-32 ]
Libs 58-32
I think that counts as politically neutralised for Labor.
And likely to be causing serious conniptions behind the scenes at Coalition Campaign HQ.
🙂
Essential Liberal leadership numbers make great reading
27% Turnbull (looks promising)
17% Abbott (looks terminal)
10% Hockey (the Dark Horse)
3% Bishop the Younger (Will she serve under Hockey?)
*% Andrew Robb (and rounded up * at that)
Not too late to parachute Peter Costello in….
Ctar
BTW FWIW I think Assange is a dickhead
Only the potent are impure. The question is this, just how impure is too impure?
I doubt Labor will win Canning. They outperformed the state average there by 5% in 2010 because Alannah MacTiernan was the candidiate.
mexicanbeemer
[I may have in a few cases double counted but there are about 45 Australian embassies across the Asian region.]
None of which will issue a visa to an asylum seeker without their first being assessed as a refugee.
Guytaur
Yes and in some cases it worked well particularly where people were given an element of self-control.
s
‘3% Bishop the Younger (Will she serve under Hockey?)’
Met a person who had met a conservative person who had had to have some dealings with Bishop jnr in the past week or so: he was, as who might say, less than fulsome in his compliments.
gaytaur
[So you think prosecuting publishers is a great thing to do?]
The source of the documents was proud to proclaim his efforts.
J.V
If that is the case then the problem appears to stem from the UNHCR procedures.
Clearly the UN convention needs an overhaul.
m
‘Yes and in some cases it worked well particularly where people were given an element of self-control.’
Worthy of emulation…?
I defer to your judgement William 🙂
[I think that counts as politically neutralised for Labor.
And likely to be causing serious conniptions behind the scenes at Coalition Campaign HQ.]
Yeah, that’s why Scott Morrison is basically saying that it is a good policy but you can’t trust Rudd/Labor to implement it. And also trying to say we need like a military campaign against asylum seekers.
They are trying to change the debate to something else cos they realise on actual policy they’ve been snookered.
Sprocket @ 2021
I thought Turnbull’s margin would be greater than that?
I think Hockey would get a BIG honeymoon if he became leader.
As for Mesma, she is due with all her seconds behind Nelson, Turnbull and Monkey, c’mon 😯
[If that is the case then the problem appears to stem from the UNHCR procedures.
Clearly the UN convention needs an overhaul.]
I know this is the new mantra, but can you explain how these things go together, and also what exactly needs to be changed in the Convention? All I’m seeing is ‘the Convention is outdated’ or ‘the Convention needs a review’. That doesn’t mean anything without more.
Ctar
If you mean Assange that is what publishing is. So were the Guardian, The New York Times and The Sydney Morning Herald. One law for all.
I had no idea just how self-indulgent the SMH editorial was until I opened up The Age today. Rather then use the usual column of its editorial page mid-paper, it has devoted the entire page 2 to a reprint of it. (Of course, page 2 isn’t what it used to be now that it’s a tabloid, oops, a compact, but still.) Packer and Murdoch will be drinking another toast to having caused such a mad scramble within Fairfax to answer the charge, and the author of the book will be dancing in the street.
There are going to be around five thousand negative stories coming out of the Raskols Cargo Cult Solution over the next three years: riots, mayhem, rapes, murders, humungous and growing costs, children sent to perdition…whatever.
And here’s the thing: practically every negative headline you read about it is going to be a political plus for the ‘owner’ of the policy.
Every sally by the judiciary will inevitably be met by a rejoinder in the legislative sphere: up to and including withdrawing from conventions and changes to the constitution.
RuddAbbott and BurkeMorrison are going to have an interesting time of it over the next three years.
J.V
The Convention appears to narrow the way people are able to move around.
Historically if you were seeking asylum you would visit an embassy.
Yet it appears that due to the convention that option to apply directly to an embassy is not available.
Yeah that’s your problem Boerwar @ 2027
You are too gullible to believe anybody and are incapable of making your own judgements.
Sounds like the way you have derived at your feelings for Rudd doesn’t it 😯
mb
You are wrong. Assange apppplied directly to an Embassy. So did that Chinese dissident in the US Beijing Embassy to name two recent examples
‘Yes. Pure not a word I associate with the UN. They must not be impotent’
Well in some cases they are, in others they are not.
BW …
Of course ‘numbers’ (more precisely, the resources of skill, material and time available to effect a maintainable solution to a given problem) are part of ethical principle. One person, (and by extension, a jurisdiction), can only do what {one/they} reasonably can, and it is not unethical to decline to do things that are unlikely to produce a measurable net benefit and/or also entail onerous personal costs.
One should have a care of course that this defence of disinclination to act is not simply self-serving. If one is ethically and intellectually rigorous, one makes an earnest attempt in the time available to weigh the known salient data and to assess feasibility of the options, including of course, doing nothing. Sometimes, all of the options apart from being self-serving are dreadful, and even that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Certainly though, it is not a defence to refusal to act that the aid one could give to one person cannot be extended to all who might have an equal claim. Solidarity with the defence of the legitimate interests of one person remains worthy, even if by giving it, one deprives oneself of the potential to aid another.
It’s obvious why this must be so. None of us can know in real time whether one is always aiding the most worthy recipient of our solidarity, and accordingly, one could refuse aid to all one the basis that one could be unwittingly misapplying one’s solidarity in relative terms. I’ve never met anyone who argued this way, and I am pretty happy about that.
Accordingly, the mere fact that a program in which Australia participated that achieved relief from persecution-related misery to only 10% or even 1% of those needed, would be a defensible program — assuming one could argue persuasively that such aid was at the frontiers of what Australia could reasonably provide over time.
I have proposed, as you know, a non-arbitrary way of determining the scope of assistance that might fall upon all countries paying lipservice to human solidarity, including Australia, though I’m open to arguments about refinement of terms. As things stand however, it does seem clear that those who say “we obviously can’t help everyone” are citing a truism in favour of doing far too little, and doing even that with attendant brutality on those who are vulnerable, for reasons that completely lack any warrant in ethical principles to which most would subscribe after close examination.
The ALP have 71 seats going into the election. They will probably lose 2-3 seats in Tasmania. Which means they need to make a net gain of 7-8 everywhere else. Dobell is one probable place and, depending on how well Labor campaign there and where Liberal preferences fall, Melbourne could be another. If those two go Labor’s way, 5-6 need to be found elsewhere.
A problem arises in the fact that we don’t know how Victoria will play on election day. There are a thin marginals won by Labor last time that could flip back to the Coalition, on the back of a modest movement to them.
South Australia it seems has settled down but a rogue loss there isn’t out of the question. OTOH, with a Liberal marginal in each of those seats with a margin of less than 1%, good election numbers could (albeit unlikely) give them net gains there, but I certainly wouldn’t bank on it.
WA is never going to embrace Rudd or (at this time) Labor, however, it’s possible to grab Hasluck (the Coalition’s most marginal seat in the country) and maaaybe Canning. Although, again, I wouldn’t bank on it.
In NT, Solomon is definitely gettable and worth a shot but don’t spend too much time on it. Darwin is a low yield place, politically.
ACT should be easy Labor retains all round. No point in dwelling on this.
Which leaves us to the two states where the action will be: NSW and QLD.
The first job in NSW will be to ensure that the ALP’s numbers there are not a reflection of the state branch’s dismal numbers. It’s no coincidence that one of the first things Rudd did as PM II, is the “takeover” of the NSW branch. He needs to make it clear that the state and federal branch are two different entities. From there, a gain of a few seats is essential. NSW is the most important state in federal elections, so it goes without saying that Labor need to do well there.
QLD is another place for potential gain. Fortunately for Labor, a lot of the party’s pain in 2010 was based in QLD, which means that there’s plenty of room to move upwards there. While I think some predictions of a net gain of 10 or so might be a bit on the optimistic side, Labor would want to get around 4, minimum.
It is a bit complicated and losses in some parts of the country are going to make it hard, but a net gain of at least 5 nationally (although I would like a few more just to be comfortable) is quite doable but requires an effective, disciplined campaign by Rudd and the ALP, both nationally and locally.
[There are going to be around five thousand negative stories coming out of the Raskols Cargo Cult Solution over the next three years: riots, mayhem, rapes, murders, humungous and growing costs, children sent to perdition…whatever.]
Hey, what if it works and after 100 or so people are settled as refugees in PNG asylum seekers get the idea that the Australian government was serious and it isn’t worth trying to get to Australia because you actually will at ‘best’ end up in PNG?
Guytaur
So if Assange can why can’t other AS?
Agree with Willaim too. Anything beyond Hasluck would be a surprise. Maybe, just maybe, Swan.
However, given Labor was looking down the sights of 1/15 or 0/15 just weeks ago, anything above that has to be status quo or marginal improvement.
I think the general point is that by the time the count takes place and Labor is 3 with plus one (Hasluck) the odds are that the same will be the case in many of the Eastern states.
As I understand it, the understanding that WA swings counter to the East is a urban myth.
I have noted some say however, that Tassie is another matter altogether.
@stilgherrian: “The ‘Australia tax’ is real, geo-blocking to stop”, writes @dobes. http://t.co/La7zUPO8xC Parliamentary report at http://t.co/tPD6tmuZWD
Now this voters will be interested in.
Ultimately this highlights why i think we need to streamline our immigration process
[with a Liberal marginal in each of those seats]
That should read “each of those states” meaning SA and Vic.
ratsak@1976
A bit like using a ruler graduated in cm and quoting a measurement to the nearest mm.
But it also gave me the chance to share what I thought was an amusing anecdote about WAGs and SWAGs.