Essential Research: 53-47 to Coalition

Essential Research has primary vote shifts towards Labor and away from the Greens cancelling each other out with respect to two-party preferred. Also featured: party attribute polling, and Senate news.

The latest fortnightly average from Essential Research drifts further away from Newspoll in having Labor’s primary vote up a point to 36%, with the Coalition steady on 45% and the Greens down two to 8%. The Coalition’s two-party preferred lead is unchanged at 53-47.

Questions about party attributes deliver a generally poor report card for Labor, the most eye-opening finding being a 72% rating for “divided”, which up six points from during the election campaign. Labor continues to perform poorly on trustworthiness and the keeping of promises, but is not thought to be too influenced by corporate interests and does okay on vision, policies and moderation. Results from earlier party attribute polling allow us to compare Labor’s position under Julia Gillard at the start of April, Kevin Rudd two weeks into the election campaign, and Bill Shorten this week. With results for negative indicators like “divided” and “out of touch” inverted so that higher numbers consistently indicate better results, Labor’s average score across 12 common indicators goes from 37.25% under Gillard to 46.2% under Rudd to 44.2% under Shorten (the three polls respectively had two-party preferred results of 56-44, 50-50 and 53-47). Departures from the overall trend suggest that while Rudd was rated a better and more visionary leader than his two peers, he had baggage for being too liberal with promises and was not seen as “moderate” (the latter being the only measure on which Gillard was competitive with him).

The Liberals’ average responses went from 47.5% in April to 45.25% in August to 48.7% in November. They have much improved since the August poll on leadership and being clear in what they stand for, but are more likely to be seen as extreme or too close to corporate interests. With mediocre ratings recorded for promises and trustworthiness, the party’s trump card remains that only 25% think it divided. The poll also tests opinion on what the government’s commission of audit should recommended, with means testing of welfare and presumably painless cuts to “duplication” strongly favoured over lower benefits and anything involving privatisation. A separate question finds opposition to the privatisation of Medibank Private at 43% compared with 22% support. Finally, a question on voluntary euthanasia has support at 68% and opposition at 19%, respectively down one and up five since September 2010.

Senate matters:

• I’ve had a fair bit of paywalled material on the Western Australian situation in Crikey, which subscribers can enjoy here, here and here (the articles respectively being from Tuesday, Monday and Friday).

• Labor in New South Wales moved promptly last week to confirm former Robertson MP Deb O’Neill to fill Bob Carr’s Senate vacancy, which he announced to the surprise of nobody only a week before. O’Neill was a surprise winner in Robertson at the 2010 election after deposing beleagured incumbent Belinda Neal for preselection, but she was unable to withstand the tide against Labor on September 7. Early nominees for the vacancy included another casualty of the election, former junior minister and Eden-Monaro MP Mike Kelly, but he withdrew as it became apparent that O’Neill had decisive cross-factional support. Labor appears to be planning to have O’Neill continue to work her old electorate with an eye to recovering it at the next election, as well as maintaining a broader Central Coast presence for the party after it also lost Dobell.

• The Queensland Senate seat made vacant by Barnaby Joyce’s move to the lower house as member for New England remains in limbo, as Campbell Newman withholds parliamentary endorsement for Liberal National Party nominee Barry O’Sullivan pending a Crime and Misconduct Commission inquiry. A former LNP treasurer, O’Sullivan faces lingering accusations that he improperly sought to induce state MP Bruce Flegg to vacate his safe seat of Moggill at last year’s election in favour of Campbell Newman, in lieu of which Newman was required to contest the Labor-held seat of Ashgrove. With the CMC taking longer over the matter than anticipated, the vacancy will go unfilled until state parliament resumes in February. That leaves Queensland a Senator short when the new parliament convenes next week, which if nothing else will deprive the Nationals of a vote in the party room. The matter has aggravated ongoing tensions within the LNP, with Barnaby Joyce and Ron Boswell calling for O’Sullivan’s Senate position to be confirmed even as “senior members” of the party reportedly push for him to “graciously step down”.

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.

640 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Coalition”

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  1. I will add —

    any Victorian student who is at all serious about Mathematics does the ‘general maths’ subject as a Year 12 one in Year 11 (my youngest, who is in Year 11, is sittting his first Year 12 exam now).

    Despite the woes I described above, my eldest son’s (small, but it’s a small school) VCE Maths cohort produced one student studying aeronautical engineering and another who is doing a Physics Major, which he wants to follow up with a doctorate (his ambition is to be Sheldon Cooper).

    No Maths teachers, though.

  2. Zoomster

    Within the school system in NSW “2-unit” always refers to the advanced course whereas the other is simply called “General”. Yes, they are both 2-unit courses, but that’s the convention.

    There’s also a 3-unit course.

  3. What an outrage for Howard to describe climate scientists as rent seekers. Scientists are generally not well paid at all in this country.

    Real rent seekers are all too familiar at places like the Business Council and the Minerals Council of Australia.

  4. BH

    The very smart girl who only just came second was said to have become a high priced hooker.

    It’s sort of who knows!

    (Marty Natelagawa will eat small Bish for lunch and exploit as much as possible).

  5. Also ironic that Soc has chosen NSW Maths education to use as a basis for his rant – if NSW was a country, its students would rate 7th in the world for maths (Victoria is apparently ‘on par’).

    There’s no evidence there’s a decline in Maths standards in Australia. Our rankings haven’t improved, but even that’s not bad given the fierce focus on education – and particularly maths – in some of the Asian countries.

  6. I’m mildly amused that Juline Bishop insists there’s no rift in diplomtaic relations when the Indonesians say there’s a rift.

    Don’t both parties have to agree for her statement to pass initial muster?

    Now Bishop might say — “look, it’s a problem but I believe in the long run we can get past this as we have a strong common interest” but to flat out deny that the other side is upset when they are saying they’re upset is prima facie ridiculous and insulting to the other party.

  7. Sheridan and ‘The Australian’ editorialist spend some time addressing Natalegawa’s continued criticisms of Australia’s spying on Indonesia. I assume that they are gilding the lily with Abbott love aforethought because, if they are not, they are showing remarkable levels of foolish ignorance. Here are some examples:

    Sheridan assumes that the degree of official Indonesian irritation is downt to some sort of personal issue that Natalegawa has. I am sure that Natalegawa does have shit on his liver with regard especially to Bishop. The particular reason is on the public record – Bishop serially publicly misrepresented the tone and content of meetings between Natalegawa and herself. This was, on her part, contemptuous behaviour and par for the Coalition course when it came to the wellsprings of their behaviour vis-a-vis Indonesia. Sheridan does not mention this. What he does say is that, nationalism aside, and the forthcoming Indonesian elections aside, Natalegawa’s release of the minutes of the meeting was a diplomatic no-no.

    Sheridan is also silent on whether Natalegawa is doing SBY’s bidding. Sheridan knows that SBY is the key here but is curiously silent on SBY. A clear signal that Natalegawa has not gone rogue on SBY is that Indonesia, along with a couple of other countries, is going to the UN with a proposal to restrict spying. Sheridan is silent on this as well.

    The issue here is that Indonesia was embarrassed by the international exposure of its cruelty to animals. Indonesia has also taken due note that Abbott hangs around with islamophobes, that members of his Party occasionally break out with burka madness, and that people smuggling issues were routinely framed in islamophobia by Abbott’s shock jocks. Indonesia has taken due note that for years Abbott and Bishop publicly framed policies in ways which were an insult to Indonesian perceptions about sovereignty.

    Sheridan’s problem is that he cannot bring himself to tell the truth about his coffee shop mate. So, for Sheridan, it has to be that Indonesia is over-reacting and that Natalegawa is the bad egg. He does note that things are getting ‘dangerous’ for Abbott vis-a-vis Indonesia. Indeed. I would frame it somewhat differently. Abbott and Bishop have already done severe damage to the Indonesian-Australian relationship. And that things are getting ‘dangerous’ for Australia.

    Sheridan has sold his soul to Abbott because the latter is powerful. Sheridan has a personal history of hanging around powerful war mongering losers, particularly from the US. Today’s article is, quite simply, appallingly blind.

  8. psyclaw
    Posted Wednesday, November 6, 2013 at 9:03 am | PERMALINK
    My email to the Minister for Agriculture just now:

    The following regulation may be of assistance to you.

    ”official business” means attendance at ”properly constituted meetings of a government advisory committee or task force provided that the senator or member is a member of the committee or task force”.

    As an aside, I am wondering what advisory committee or task force meetings are held concurrently with the football games at the game venues?

    It seems quite appropriate that you are the Minister for Agriculture. I’m sure you will give Mr Abbott and fellow traveller cabinet members and backbenchers expert advice and mentoring about the management of pigs’ snouts in troughs.

    I will pay that. 😀

  9. MM

    [What an outrage for Howard to describe climate scientists as rent seekers. Scientists are generally not well paid at all in this country.]

    What he’s effectively saying by calling them “rent-seekers” is at a minimum, self-serving liars i.e fraudsters. Given that there are hundreds of lines of independent corroborating evidence for the science of anthropogenic climate change, he’s implying a conspiracy to defraud of gigantic proportions, involving every national scientific body in the world and every journal of record in the physical sciences.

    That ought to be an extraordinary position for someone who qualified as a solicitor to take and require some extraordinary proof but to the best of my knowledge Howard, no more than others who have made the claim of “grant-grubbing”, have been called on it.

  11. “@GrogsGamut: John Howard saying he is “agnostic” on climate change shows again that it is climate sceptics who treat it like it is a religion”

  12. Boerwar

    Spot on assessment. JBishop is not sounding very confident today. Not surprising. Whilst the msm were gilding the lily and touting the Abbott indonesian trip as a great success, blind freddy could see that this was far from the truth.

  15. It will have to be an “approved” statement from Bishop this time. The Indonesians will probably let her know they’ll be listening carefully.

    The Daily Telegraph’s remit doesn’t extend to Jakarta, and Greg Sheridan’s man-love is probably more of an irritant to the Indonesians than a help.

    They’ll know that he was told what to write, and who told him.

    START THE BOATS!

  17. [Mark Kenny described his visit as a triumph.]

    Not only a triumph, but one born of raw native talent for getting on with people, mano-a-mano.

  18. [The very smart girl who only just came second was said to have become a high priced hooker.]

    Ctar1 lol A schoolfriend of our daughter did the same. OH and I bumped into her at an advertising do in a posh Sydney Hotel in the early 80s She laughingly told us she was an Executive Assistant (wink, wink) for the night but spent most of her time travelling as a paid companion.

    She was a girl we instantly liked on first meeting her at 13 and that never changed.

  19. This is disgraceful. Bad enough if he had only read one book in 2008 and used it to argue against advice, but to have read nothing since, not kept up with factual advances, and then to swan off to UK to give a speech on something he knows virtually nothing about? More rorting of travel expenses IMV.

    [Mr Howard revealed before the speech that the only book he had read on climate change was Lawson’s An Appeal to Reason: a Cool Look at Global Warming, published in 2008.
    Mr Howard said he read it twice, once when he was writing his autobiography, when he used it to counter advice for stronger action on climate change given to him by government departments when he had been prime minister.
    . . .
    Sir John Loughton, lead editor of the first three reports by the IPCC, the UN’s climate panel, called the book “neither cool nor rational”, saying it showed a “surprising ignorance of elementary statistical analysis” and ignored the impact of more frequent floods and droughts.]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/the-claims-are-exaggerated-john-howard-rejects-predictions-of-global-warming-catastrophe-20131106-2wzza.html#ixzz2joRzstbw

  20. zoomster@17

    Soc

    AUSTRALIAN schoolchildren’s results in maths and science have flat-lined over two decades..

    The latest figures show some improvement in year 4 maths between 1995 and 2011


    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/maths-and-english–nation-could-do-better-20121211-2b7vl.html#ixzz2jo5K3Jke

    As I said, it’s not a recent problem, and can’t be slated home to the federal Labor government.

    A lot of the blame belongs with the introduction of the VCE by Joan Kirner and subsequent under funding by all governments.

    And guess what, you point the finger for the shortage of maths teachers back approx 20 years – just when the VCE was introduced.

    The Institution of Engineers has been pointing to the deficiencies in Maths teaching for at least 10 years if not longer. I heard a spokesperson on the radio talking about how universities had to run remedial maths classes to teach what secondary schools used to teach but no longer do.

  21. John Howard of course stuck his head above the turret to test the political waters for Abbott.

    Abbott most likely dismayed at reaction. Means he is going to have to try and make Direct Action work

  22. [@GrogsGamut: John Howard saying he is “agnostic” on climate change shows again that it is climate sceptics who treat it like it is a religion]

    Very much so. The notion that the matter is something upon which people can choose to have an opinion based on something other than a grasp of what is and is not salient data, evaluations of their purview, and/or the integrity of models deploying such data is exactly what “faith” describes.

    One might add that if Howard is indeed “agnostic” he can scarcely claim that scientists are “rent-seekers” since without the firm “belief” that anthropogenic climate change is refuted, he has no basis for saying that scientists are seeking to profit from a fraud.

    Of course, unlike scientists, Howard feels free to make claims that lack internal coherence or evidence when it allows him to hurl abuse at those he perceives either as his enemies in the culture wars or the enemies of his allies amongst the actual rent-seekers currently using the biosphere as a privatised sewer for their effluent and public media as a sewer for their cant.

    I suppose once in a while I should get off the fence and declare what I really think. 😉

  24. [They are the WA Senate hopefuls thrust from obscurity to the political stage but voters still know little about Wayne Dropulich and Zhenya “Dio” Wang, including where they stand on some of the country’s biggest issues.

    In the two months since the election the men have given little away on their voting intentions when it comes to issues such as Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme, the carbon tax, gay marriage and the mining tax.]
    http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/19696815/wa-senate-hopefuls-silent-on-big-issues/

  25. guytaur

    I heard someone on radio in early morning, I think head of Business Council saying that there were “of course” flaws in carbon pricing policy so it wouldn’t work any better than an improved Direct Action Plan. She would be working with government to make those improvements, so that DA would not impact in any way on business.

    Up until that moment in the interview, I thought she sounded reasonable 🙁

  27. Before the election all power price increases were linked to the carbon price. And that when repealed people would see a drop in prices.

    Now after the election the story changes. Just another deception perpetrated by Abbott and his corporate supporters

    BUSINESS group has cast doubt over an anticipated drop in electricity prices following the carbon tax repeal.

    In a submission to the Carbon Tax Repeal Taskforce, the Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) says any downward shift in electricity prices is likely to take some time, saying other factors have contributed to recent rises in the utility cost.

  28. lizzie

    We have the government and policies big business through old media wanted.

    Proving business has about as much rationality as an undergraduate smoking pot.

  29. [Paul Syvret ‏@PSyvret 29m
    Yay for equity. Govt to axe super tax on 16k millionaires, remove tax break for 3.6m low income earners. Trickle down baby.]

  33. Business is rational. They want to make lots of money, not pay tax, not be regulated, have the upper hand in negotiations with employees and if there’s a problem with the climate that needs fixing, someone else to pay to fix it. They campaigned for the party that came closest to giving them what they wanted. Tony Abbott is not exactly what they want but they can work on him or work on the Liberals to have him replaced by someone better.

  34. CTar1

    Thanks. I remembered Jennifer but not the surname. She talked of her early life in government housing, and her lifetime interest in housing and planning. Pretty sure the interviewer expected her to agree with carbon scheme after all the build-up, and sounded surprised when she said no. I suppose she’s been exposed to too much “education” by the business lobby.

  38. [The Howard and Rudd/Gillard governments each made tentative starts on the international stage. The current government’s diplomatic initiation has been worse. Even allowing for inexperience, the Abbott government appears to be setting a new standard for diplomatic ineptitude. The Prime Minister in particular has lurched from one mistake to another, with each episode more ham-fisted than the last.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/pm-stumbling-around-the-international-stage-20131105-2wz4q.html#ixzz2joHAAxc2

    No surprises there really. It’s hard to think of a more inept federal government than the current one.]

    the really terrifying thing about this is that most of the msm (murdoch and abc news 24) hailed abbott’s embarrassing backflip/shot sandwich eatring tour of indonesia as the work of a Great Leader/Diplomat, and barely reported Bishop’s humiliation in dealing with the indonesians. They are now trying to credit the lower boat numbers with their work when they have in fact done NOTHING new other than stopped reporting boats and megaphoning xenophobic rantings every day. Labor’s bastardry and seasonal conditions have ‘stopped the boats’, but the main factor has been that morriscum and abbott aren’t daily beating the hansonite drum.

  43. sust fut

    “Schoolyard language” on best friends. Abbott is again reaching back into Howard years for “advice”. Lazy and foolish.

    [The more concerning aspect about this kind of language, however, is what it portends in future. Open declarations of affection for Japan appear intended to soften the ground for the resurrection of one of two unfinished Howard-era initiatives: a more comprehensive defence alliance with Japan, or participation in an alliance of democracies. Neither would serve Australia’s interests. Both are thinly veiled attempts at edging Australia into a more confrontational posture towards China, which is the the exact opposite of what we should be doing.]

    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/pm-stumbling-around-the-international-stage-20131105-2wz4q.html#ixzz2jodRRB2m

  46. MM,

    [Real rent seekers are all too familiar at places like the Business Council and the Minerals Council of Australia.]

    And the jaunt jockeys.

  47. lizzie

    [I remembered Jennifer but not the surname.]

    She’s primarily employed by the BCA to get the second airport up on behalf of Transfield.

  49. CTar1,

    [(Marty Natelagawa will eat small Bish for lunch and exploit as much as possible).]

    All will be well, as Tones is going to lend her one of his ear-pieces, and advise in the background…

    Errr…on second thoughts…

  50. bemused

    What is it with you and female Labor leaders?

    [A lot of the blame belongs with the introduction of the VCE by Joan Kirner and subsequent under funding by all governments.]

    I really don’t see how Joan Kirner can be blamed for NSW education.

    If the VCE had that much influence on other (often non Labor) governments, then it obviously had recognisable benefits, particularly as it’s a more expensive model than the existing one.

    [And guess what, you point the finger for the shortage of maths teachers back approx 20 years – just when the VCE was introduced.]

    This is you introducing a timescale to suit your argument.

    1. We’re talking about NSW, which – and I’ve taught there, and at least supervised Maths classes at all levels – has nothing remotely resembling the Victorian VCE in place.

    2. NSW and Victoria, which have (see 1.) wildly different educational models, produce results ‘on par’ for Mathematics, and – again – if they were one country, would rate 7th in the world (so the ‘problem’ would appear to not be with either NSW or Victoria).

    3. When I was at school in the seventies, schools had exactly the same problem – which is why my Maths teachers over the years consisted also of teachers whose main methods were French and PE, or who were on exchange from Canada or the US.

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