This week’s Newspoll finds Labor making a minor gain on two-party preferred, from 54-46 to 53-47. It comes despite a three-point improvement on the primary vote to 37%, with the Coalition and the Greens steady on 47% and 9%, and the balance coming off others. The disparity is down to a set of numbers last time which suggested the rounding to two-party preferred had favoured Labor. The personal ratings are the first in a while where Kevin Rudd’s position hasn’t deteriorated, although this may be due to a bad sample for Labor last week. His approval rating is up one to 36% and his disapproval down two to 52%, while Tony Abbott continues improving steadily with approval up one to 42% and disapproval down two to 49%. Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister has increased slightly, from 43-41 to 44-40. The sample is back to its normal size of a little over 1100, after being bumped up to over 1600 last week to allow for fortnightly aggregated state-level results from decent sample sizes.
The weekly Morgan multi-mode poll has the Coalition leading 52.5-47.5 on previous election preferences and 51.5-48.5 on respondent-allocated, up half a point on both measures. On the primary vote, Labor is down two points to 34.5%, the Coalition is up half a point to 45% and the Greens are up 1.5% to 11%. Full details including state breakdowns here. Here too the poll is back to a normal sample size, of 3419, after blowing out to 4515 for some reason last week.
The addition of Newspoll and Morgan to BludgerTrack finds two-party preferred moving 0.2% in the Coalition’s direction, but Labor gaining one on the seat projection. This is down to the confounding pattern of strong numbers for Labor in state breakdowns for Queensland, the latest examples being a 37% primary vote from last week’s Newspoll aggregate, 39% from Saturday’s Nielsen and 36% from today’s Morgan, compared with 33.6% at the 2010 election. This is flatly contradicted by all seat-level polling, most notably Saturday’s large-sample Newspoll of the eight most marginal Liberal National Party seats, which had the Labor primary vote down 4.5% from 2010. Due to the probability that seats selected for such polling will not be representative of the state at large, the model can only use the statewide results. So while the BludgerTrack vote and seat numbers look broadly in line with expectations in the other states, I suggest the projection of a three-seat gain in Queensland be treated with considerable caution.
Finally, Adelaide’s Sunday Mail brought us a Galaxy poll of 586 respondents in Hindmarsh, Labor’s most marginal seat in South Australia, which had the result at 50-50, a swing to the Liberals of 6%. I’m not sure if this was a live interview poll like Galaxy normally does, or an automated one such as they did last week for the first time with marginal seat polling in Sydney and Victoria. UPDATE: The poll was automated. The primary votes were 41% for Labor (44.7% at the 2010 election), 44% for the Liberals (38.6%) and 10% for the Greens (12.2%).
UPDATE: Essential Research is still at 50-50, but Labor is down two on the primary vote to 38% with the Greens surging three points to 11%, and the Coalition down one to 43%. The poll also finds 60% of Coalition supporters saying they will “definitely not change my mind” against only 46% for Labor, while 17% of respondents rating it “quite possible I will change my mind” against 11% of Coalition. Since I started paying attention a few years ago, I have never seen the Coalition fail to do better than Labor on this measure. I’m not sure whether this is a Coalition/Labor thing, or if it’s to do with the fact that every election I’ve been observing has been a bad one for Labor. Kevin Rudd’s net approval has moved into negative territory since a fortnight ago, his approval down four to 41% and disapproval up two to 45%. Tony Abbott is steady on approval at 37% and up one on disapproval to 52%. Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister has narrowed from 47-35 to 43-34. Two points of encouragement for Labor: their parental leave scheme is favoured over the Coalition’s by 35% to 24%, and respondents were slightly more inclined to believe Labor rather than the Coalition would be able to pay for its commitments without spending cuts (41% thinking it very unlikely the Coalition could do so against 35% for Labor).
and it seems that Abbott’s PPL being a real stinker of a policy has wound up the cheersquad to put the proverbial lipstick on the pig.
bad luck guys and gals, the $3,000 per week for rich to breed does not pass the smell test, and may cost your side the election – or at least the landslide you have been expecting.
The main issues with abbotts PPLs
– it pays the most to those who need it least
– we will all pay (through increase prices of goods and cuts to services) to pay the most to those who need it least
– the LNP are clearly not in favour of it, and it will be a ‘non-core’ promise – abbott will defer the scheme due to ‘labor’s black hole’ costed by Costello’s committee of audit; will declare he is still committed to it sometime within the next 10 years and then drop it or change it.
– labor put a scheme in place that abbott opposed that is fairer and affordable.
– abbott’s scheme is about keeping women out of the workforce (at home with the kids where he thinks they belong).
– abbott’s scheme will be rorted – with businessmen paying high wages to their partners for admin jobs when they fall pregnant and getting the government to pick up the tab.
– I suspect some men will become primary care givers if they are on the highest wage in the family.
– australia doesn’t need a LNP upper class twat breeding program – there are too many of the fuckers already.
it is not class warfare to think means testing and equitable PPL should be in place.
briefly@1224
You are busily creating a straw man and then attacking it ferociously.
All that is likely to happen in the life of the next govt is determination of the route and acquisition of land. Actual construction may not start for quite a few years after that.
You also seem to have a binary mindset. Completion by 2035 does not mean that some sections could not be completed well ahead of that. It is not ‘all or nothing’. One proposal I have seen mentioned is to build Sydney – Newcastle initially.
Other links could then be filled in progressively.
Photo of Voldemort
Zoom in & Fade to black
Cue “Doonk Doonk!” from Law and Order
“if you elect Tony Abbott, then around Australia single celled organisms like E Coli will be able to breed, with each being its own mother and daughter at the same time.”
Doonk Doonk
That bacterium could be a Lawyer on $350 000 a year.
Doonk Doonk
If that bacterium breeds.. And breeds.. And breeds..
Doonk Doonk
Then Australian debt would rise to the limit of anything of value on the planet..
Doonk Doonk
Including slightly over-ripe bananas.
Doonk Doonk
…by the timeTony Abbott finishes his election speech.
Doonk Doonk
…is THAT the future you want for the lucky country?
[I don’t get what the point is about the public service, they have a strong union who have negotiated a good agreement?]
Abbotts getting rid of the double dips by the Public Servants.
Why are we paying these public servants more than a janitor? Are their babies worth more?
Plus it’s a GREAT BIG NEW TAX which I thought Abbott was against
Very inconsistent person Abbott. No wonder they call him the Weather Vane
hey morpheus
did you know that the drug morphine is names after the god morpheus? so you have an affinity with dope it would seem. Certainly your posts are dopey.
@Sean/1505
Saving money, not about giving women more security.
Who is on Qanda next week?
Like Ducky, I was thoroughly disappointed with the way Watson was treated, like some extra.
Compare and contrast with that Qanda when PJ O’Rourke was a guest.
Abbott’s PPL paid f or by 3,000 companies and taxpayer subsidy.
Direct Action paid. For by taxpayers.
Carbon or vice paid for by about 300 companies.
and here is Tony Abbott’s sexist moment of the day, spotting a female apprentice, he reverts to type….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Q4kyTeMNo
1484
confessions
[>It’s funny how all these rugged individualists who say they are in favour of enterprise and individual effort and risk taking believe they need handouts and concessions from the government
In my experience the most vociferous opponents to welfare hand outs are usually the first to put their hands out for government pork.]
Yep. I come, in part, from traditional conservative rural stock, and those feckers stick their hand out for government help faster than anybody I know, and then whine endlessly when asked to pay a bit of tax back during the good times, so there is money there to help them during the next round of bad times.
For some reason they do not appreciate me pointing this out. 😀
Sean Tisme, costs should be paid in the appropriate place.
All businesses will pass on the costs onto their customers.
The difference between making it a proper entitlement across all business and using tax is that with the former, only those people who are making use of a product/service are paying the cost of it – parental needs being part of that cost – whereas with the latter, some customers will be subsidising the cost of other customers’ choices of products/services.
Rudd does need a BBQ stopper child care policy. Even if he reannounces part of it – the last announcer sunk without a trace
Small business owners are getting a tax cut. And for small business owners, their employees under the ALP scheme get minimum wage PPL. If their employees or their union can negotiate a PPL then they get that one…If not they have the ALP PPL safety net.
That seems fair. Over time and with improving economic conditions they could either renegotiate or the safety net will rise.
Sean tisme
Take your Tea-party ‘class warfare’ slogan and stow it before the plebs get really mad and start rebuilding Madame Guillotine.
Abbott and Rudd should do Q&A in a Fortnight
Post Election wrap-up special… would be epic.
“Hi Kev, Just wondering where you think everything went wrong in the last 6 years?”
I agree Labor’s policy is a welfare payment poorly disguised as a workplace entitlement. Abbott’s PPL is a welfare payment/quasi workplace entitlement. In the absence of a proper PPL workplace entitlement the Labor scheme is the one that makes the most sense.
Public servants are not being employed to have babies.
Tom the first and best@1241
Oh yes…. and it will allow us to keep all those delightful 19th Century level crossings which have a major effect in limiting train frequency.
All part of the charm of Melbourne, just like the trams. 😉
morpheus
Posted Monday, August 26, 2013 at 11:01 pm | Permalink
cud chewer @1473
Full wage for 6 months.
AussieAchmed @1453
WHat a load of horse shit. I hope you didn’t write that with a straight face. Public service PPL is a work entitlement but the coalition plan isn’t ? PPL IS A WORKPLACE ENTITLEMENT no matter who is doing it. If you are stupidly using the reason that its tax payer funded that that applies to the public service PPL. Stop trying to justify the unjustifiable.
SImple question. Why is someone working for Messiah Kev entitled to a much better PPL than a worker in a factory ?????
———————————————————-
Under Abbotts plan
Someone with a PPL clause in their Award will still get their full wage for 6 months, the worker in the factory will still get their full wage for 6 months
The wage differential stays the same.
The worker who has PPL as an Award condition the PPL is paid by the employer and the factory worker whose Award does not have a PPL clause gets the current govt payment of the minimum wage.
And under Abbott’s PPL the taxpayer foots the bill for all PPL. Taxpayers foot the bill for ALL PPL.
And what makes the scheme even more insidious is that those who can least afford it are going to be paying for the scheme to operate.
That’s already been identified. Self funded retirees, the removal of several benefit schemes, the removal of the superannuation co-contribution from 3.7 million low paid workers will fund the scheme.
The working supposition is HSR would not be fully operational until 2065…first stage in about 20 years. The forecasts are that most of any taxpayer investment would be lost. The announcement is a gimmick, pure and simple.
[Once fully operational (from 2065), HSR could carry approximately 84 million passengers each year, with express journey times of less than three hours between Melbourne-Sydney and Sydney-Brisbane.
The optimal staging for the HSR program would involve building the Sydney-Melbourne line first, starting with the Sydney-Canberra sector. Subsequent stages would be Canberra-Melbourne, Newcastle-Sydney, Brisbane-Gold Coast and Gold Coast-Newcastle.
The estimated cost of constructing the preferred HSR alignment in its entirety would be around $114 billion (in 2012 dollars).
The HSR program and the majority of its individual stages are expected to produce only a small positive financial return on investment. Governments would be required to fund the majority of the upfront capital costs.
If HSR passenger projections were met at the fare levels proposed, the HSR system, once operational, could generate sufficient fare revenue and other revenue to meet operating costs without ongoing public subsidy.]
lefty e
Posted Monday, August 26, 2013 at 11:04 pm | Permalink
The worst thing about Abbotts policy is the way it lets employers off the hook. The ALP scheme is a safety net version for those who miss out on it altogether. It was never designed to replace more generous employer mat leave
Abbotts means employers no longer have to try: the taxpayer will foot the bill to make them attractive to women employees.
—————————————————–
YES
[ Abbotts getting rid of the double dips by the Public Servants. ]
vale polly pedal
AA,
Have you worked out who pays Labors PPL yet?
I am a bit surprised Bludger track is showing a 53.3-46.7 split given the recent polls have been flat or showing a slight decline in the coalition’s position, compared to the previous poll of news and the flat poll of essential.
[and here is Tony Abbott’s sexist moment of the day, spotting a female apprentice, he reverts to type….]
AFter all this time invested in trying to emphasise his feminine side, why is Abbott now behaving like blokesville on steroids?
There have been a series of these types of comments in recent weeks from him. Why?
lefty
it’s not a ‘tax’ it is a ‘levy’
makes it Ok apparently.:)
Gillard should have used that for the carbon price. “It’s a levy on the top 350 polluters that they will avoid by reducing pollution” (& much less than a 1.5% tax on 3,000 businesses that is abbott’s PPL brain fart).
I also love the magic pudding accounting that says – we’re giving you a 1.5% company tax break but putting on a 1.5% levy, so there’s no cost (but somehow the revenue is magically there). Abbott’s PPL scheme will be paid for by cutting programs and debt. it will damage the economy by cutting employment, damaging our largest companies, increasing debt, and slowing growth. And all so the baby boutiques of toorak and north shore can do a roaring trade and tristan and imogen can have the best nannies and overseas holidays. (Ok, that did sound a bit class warfarist, but paying the wealthy 2, 3, 4 or 5 times more to have a baby than everybody else is just wrong)
Thank you AA and Lefty E you both explain PPL beautifully, I think our LNP cheerleaders are being a bit wilfully obtuse now.
Sean Tisme
Posted Monday, August 26, 2013 at 11:08 pm | Permalink
I don’t get what the point is about the public service, they have a strong union who have negotiated a good agreement?
Abbotts getting rid of the double dips by the Public Servants.
Why are we paying these public servants more than a janitor? Are their babies worth more?
———————————————————–
Abbotts PPL pays the persons wage. So if a public servant is earning $100k p/a they will get $50k.
If the janitor is earning $50K they will get $25k.
That’s Abbotts scheme
As a sociologist, I have deep worries about what this world is headed for with the imposition of austerity on the majority lower classes by the minority upper classes. If it keeps up, along with the panic over the effects of unaddressed global warming, imo there will not be a gated community safe enough. For better or worse we all live on this planet together, and share the consequences.
And it is not like it hasn’t happened before now.
Agree 1526 Truth I was also confused.
[Yep. I come, in part, from traditional conservative rural stock, and those feckers stick their hand out for government help faster than anybody I know, and then whine endlessly when asked to pay a bit of tax back during the good times]
There are few of that sort around me. Even when times are good, they still whinge that they could be better. No pleasing them.
Of course the fact that taxpayers are footing the bill as a form of welfare means that PPL will be phased out by many employers leaving PPL at the mercy of government whim. For example, during the next recession, a government will be able to destroy PPL as a cost cutting measure.
If PPL is a negotiated part of an award or Enterprise agreement it is more difficult to cut it without discussion or negotiation.
Sean If Unions have no place then what place does CPA, IPA (accounting body) and REIV have in today society.
Confessions
[There have been a series of these types of comments in recent weeks from him. Why?]
he is playing to his Sydney western suburbs, blokey football playing, Ray Hadley listening constituency. They love this stuff, and Abbott at heart is one of them, so it comes naturally.
if I was in the Liberal Brains Trust, I’d be a tad worried that their man is pissing off systematically key demographics. Women, feminists, Greens, environmentalists in particular.
So much so that the 80/20 split of Greens preferences may approach 100/0
Sustainable… 3000 companies making over $5 Mill a year pay the PPL Levy of 1.5%
But all companies paying company tax get a 1.5% cut in the Company Tax
That means 3000 companies will be paying 30% Company Tax but those making less than $5 Million(probably tens of thousands) will now only pay 28.5%
Make sense now?
Labor’s scheme – while inadequate – is the correct mechanism for something that is implemented within the government’s domain. Abbott’s scheme – while more generous – is an incorrect mechanism for something implemented within the government’s domain.
Similarly, if we dreamt up a flat PPL implemented within the private sector, it would not simply be inadequate, it would be an incorrect mechanism that doesn’t properly capture the value of an employee. Here is where it makes sense to talk about opportunity cost.
It’s been a good six years for policy. Major advances on the Howard era.
Maternity leave
NDIS
NBN
CO2 reductions
Childcare rebate up
School improvements
Plain packaging
Averted recession by not following failed austerity policies
Major advances on homelessness
Fair work Act
National apology (which even Abbott admits was overdue)
Good strong legacy. Lets defend it.
Autocorrect butchered my post at 1510. It’s the iPad’s fault. But I think it’s clear that if the ‘Carbon Tax’ is a wrecking ball (or a boa constrictor or whatever) then so is the Coalition’s PPL, made more destructive by other unfounded promises like Direct Action and removing taxes.
morpheus
To earn over $100K in the VPS you need to be at least a grade 5 which is management level.
Please don’t tell me that wages in the major corporations for similar ranking people is lower because in most cases its actually higher than the PS
Sean Tisme
Posted Monday, August 26, 2013 at 11:17 pm | Permalink
AA,
Have you worked out who pays Labors PPL yet?
——————————————————–
Don’t be so obtuse and ridiculous.
Abbotts scheme has taxpayers paying for everyones PPL.
Currently thee are a massive number of Awards that have the employer paying.
What Abbott wants to do is help out his big business mates by having the taxpayers pay the PPL that is currently paid by them….
[I think our LNP cheerleaders are being a bit willfully obtuse now.]
A prince just kissed you?
Abbott should definitely appear on Q&A next week but I doubt he will probably because the audience will be spiked as usual with psycho greenies and ALP drones complaining about how life is terrible without SSM. They will spend 30 minutes talking about how only the evil are against it while slowly and dramatically carrying the Messiah out on their shoulders out stage left. Purely because the Messiah had a convenient change on SSM (obviously Twitter polled) two weeks before rolling Gillard and he needed more Tweets to overcome the evil witch.
[Make sense now?]
No. We allegedly have a ‘budget crisis’. How does it help to cut tax and increase expenditure – and to partly find it with retirees savings?
sprocket:
The only way I can accept that these are slips and reverting to things which come naturally to him, esp after all these years of being stage-managed to within an inch of his life (he can’t even select his own tie FFS), is hubris and arrogance at the expectation of victory.
And I really do hope it’s that because that means they are more likely to make mistakes.
morpheus
Why does a highly successful professional person need six months leave on the taxpayer one full wage including super.
If we are serious about helping families then invest in the most important thing that every parent thinks about. their child’s education
zoildlord @1500
And WHO pays the taxes that pays the PPL (+ the hidden millions of the government public service PPL) ? As per usual the drones keep on thinking the money the government is now spending on PPL just falls from the sky.
mexicanbeemer
Posted Monday, August 26, 2013 at 11:26 pm | Permalink
morpheus
To earn over $100K in the VPS you need to be at least a grade 5 which is management level.
Please don’t tell me that wages in the major corporations for similar ranking people is lower because in most cases its actually higher than the PS
———————————————————
I think you will find that people in the public service get paid a lot less than a private company equivalent.
Before I retired I worked for Govt. I had to manage a $20 million budget and over 90 staff, and had the responsibility for 160 prisoners.
I was earning just over $100k, with a “call out” allowance and car the package was probably around $115k
sprocket I was thinking that too. I suspect that this time around those voting 1 Greens will have an even stronger component of those disaffected by labor and thus giving 2nd pref to labor.