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”

Comments Page 3 of 13
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  1. Soc

    I’d also add to decide that anything to do with students entering University being linked back to Gillard’s educational reforms is spurious, to say the least.

    My youngest son was in the first group of students to be NAPLAN tested (in Year 3). He’s certainly been amongst the first to be NAPLAN tested at other levels, as well.

    NAPLAN testing, even in its current, extended format, ends at Year 9.

    Any student who has been ‘taught for the test’ is thus only just finishing Year 11 this year.

  2. bemused

    [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.]

    Well, that’s a reliable source.

    I have noticed that entry to University courses now seems to require less prerequisite subjects. If you’re accepting students into courses where they haven’t had to do the necessary subjects at Year 12, that obviously creates problems.

    My eldest did very well at Maths in Year 12, so we were on the look out for that when we looked at courses. Very few, if any, required any Maths at all.

    If Universities accepts students in to do courses without making sure they’ve got the required skills to do the subject, that’s surely their problem.

  3. Well known suppository of business wisdom Innes Wilcox of the AIG said this morning that consumers won’t see any drop in prices when the carbon tax is repealed because the extra costs from effected businesses have not flowed through yet.

    Must be the first price rise ever that hasn’t flowed through at the 17 month mark.

    Tell that to the banks vis a vis interest rate increase flow on speeds.

    Another rent seeker spokesman for a rent seeking organisational mate of Abbott’s.

  5. Thanks to the former Labor Government

    Australia may just be the best place in the world to live.

    A comparison by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development of the richest and fastest growing countries ranked Australia the No.1 nation on a range of indicators.

  6. guytaur

    [Very good presser from Senator Milne.]

    I thought so as well, pity Shorten is not articulating the debate with the same vigor, maybe he’s just warming up in the blocks?

  7. guytaur

    Christine Milne speaks clearly, uses complete sentences and knows her subjects. Obviously no good for leadership in comparison with our esteemed PM 😛

  10. [zoomster
    Posted Wednesday, November 6, 2013 at 10:27 am | Permalink
    …

    Any student who has been ‘taught for the test’ is thus only just finishing Year 11 this year.
    ]

    When I want through back in the stone age there was a standard test in year 4. I think it was called the leaving certificate. Things just move in circles.

  11. It goes on

    [Downing Street sought to play down the scale of the rift, with David Cameron’s spokesman insisting Mr McDonald had been “invited”, to the ministry. The spokesman said Mr Cameron had an “excellent” relationship with both Ms Merkel and her government, and that it would continue.]

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-demands-explanation-from-british-ambassador-over-secret-listening-post-in-berlin-8923082.html

  12. Well who knows?

    According to one business report this morning, “business has absorbed most of the costs associated with the CT” and thus there will be very little by way of savings when the time comes.

    On the other hand, another business report says “the costs have not flowed through yet”.

    I thought this lot had it all sewn up.

    One thing is for certain the day that $550 (correction, $200) from Abbott turning up by way of “savings” in my bank account will the day.

    I am happy to speculate it will never happen.

    In WA today, water costs for consumers are going up and the excuse as to why they are is something along the lines of “smaller increases now, to save larger increases later”.

    A lot of rubbish of course, as is the change to 2-monthly billing in WA “as something consumers wanted”.

    The real truth is that annual water rates bill and the 6-monthly consumption ones were looking enormous to consumers and the way around this was to make the bills seem smaller but coming out more frequently.

    I suspect the “savings” from the CT repeal, if it happens, will be couched in the same language.

    “Look how much higher the bill would have been if we had not done this” rubbish.

  13. CTari

    [lizzie – That, I guess, would be Jennifer Westercott.]

    It is Jennifer Westacott she started out in the Department of Housing in NSW in the 80’s.

    She had an air about her even then.

  14. zoomster@100

    bemused

    What is it with you and female Labor leaders?

    No problem with female leaders, just a general problem with incompetent leaders of either sex and ministers who pursue an idealogical agenda to stuff up education.


    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.

    Neither can I. Her wrecking was confined to Victoria thank goodness.


    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.

    I did my secondary education in NSW and later, when studying at tertiary level in Vic, was impressed by my peers from the Victorian system, including Tech Schools.

    The mad educational ideology of Kirnerism destroyed all that. I had a son in a school that trialled VCE English and friends who were teachers at the time who were very unimpressed with what was happening.

  15. Seriously we are led to believe that the carbon price has not been factored in 17 months later?

    I recall a recent report confirmimg the increase prices in the last twelve months included the carbon price component. How unsurprising we are getting a re writing of the meme.
    Democracy thieves the lot of them

  16. So either Tony Abbott lied about the savings in electricity costs as a result of abolishing carbon pricing, with flow-ons to other parts of the economy, or he didn’t know what he was talking about. I expect to see two-foot high headlines on the front page tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph letting the punters know about this outrage.

  17. By the way, for those fretting about the fact the media do not seem to be hounding the current government (not that we would expect any of the Murdoch press to do so) is that this government is not within a seat or two of falling.

    If Abbott had been in power in 2010 with a tiny minority, the press could not have resisted the siren call of making/breaking a government. I suspect he too, would have been under the same pressure as PMJG.

    None of what this shonk of a government is doing at the moment will meet a day of reckoning for over 2 years yet and so can get away with almost anything.

    When the Senate changes in July and if Palmer becomes the hard ball game player he is angling for, it might be another matter.

    From July 1 of 2014 onwards, into the election which is not really that far away, things might get very sticky.

    It is for this reason the conservatives are desperately working to set themselves up by hiding away, not exposing Abbott more than is necessary and saying nothing.

    They have not had to make any really hard/unpopular decisions yet

    This will only work for so long.

  19. zoomster@102

    bemused

    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.


    Well, that’s a reliable source.

    Yes, the Institution of Engineers is a reliable source, whatever the medium is to deliver the message.


    I have noticed that entry to University courses now seems to require less prerequisite subjects. If you’re accepting students into courses where they haven’t had to do the necessary subjects at Year 12, that obviously creates problems.

    My eldest did very well at Maths in Year 12, so we were on the look out for that when we looked at courses. Very few, if any, required any Maths at all.

    If Universities accepts students in to do courses without making sure they’ve got the required skills to do the subject, that’s surely their problem.

    Universities have attempted to fill the gap left by secondary education in maths. They are shouldering the burden.

    There needs to be much greater emphasis on core subjects like mathematics in secondary school.

    I had never heard the term ‘vegie’ maths until my son used it to describe the lower level maths offered in secondary school.

    Whatever institutional factors are causing more kids to opt for vegie maths, or worse still, no maths at all, need to be addressed and remedied.

  22. memo about/to abc news channel 24

    production intervention desperately needed. this is no news channel. it has identity crisis. it apes commercial breakfast shows – at least in same time slot. but thet separate news and entertainment, and have latter (music, panels etc). abc has buckets of silly self congratulory self conscious prattle – laughing at own jokes making audience feel like intruders to abc club. they had a novelist on today and hardly mentioned the book. learn from public broadcasting in america or sky here and act like the national broadcaster you are

  23. shorten????? the faceless man now protected by rules to stop faceless men getting their say … so much to say and where is he? he might win as drover’s dog. yet to prove he can whistle.

  25. [http://www.smh.com.au/comment/pm-stumbling-around-the-international-stage-20131105-2wz4q.html

    Apologies if already posted!]

    MTBW – a couple of times, but it bears repeating.

    abbott is finally finding that you can only bullshit yourself so far and the danger of rising through the ranks to one level above his level of incompetence. why isn’t the media giving him the same shit they gave Gillard?

  26. [I note that there have been a spate of shootings in NSW over the past week. I recall during the Gillard Govt, Liberal pollies blamimg the federal govt.]

    Probably because Labor were responsible for the complete and total breakdown of customs at Sydney Airport that saw unionised gangs running the joint allowing thousands of guns and drugs to be imported into the country.

    For example… whose idea was it to allow a unionised cutoms worker who was busted in a sydney airport snorting drugs to continue doing their job?

    Yet another Rudd/Gillard failure… and this one has killed people.

  27. The problem with the school curriculum, and here goes generalisation, is that it is crowded with too much stuff.

    What to keep and get rid of fills all the discussion about schools.

    It is quirky that there is a reversion, in some places, to rote learning as some kind of salvation. This has its place but the danger is that this is all there is.

    I see some good sense in learning, off by heart, say a dozen lines of a poem. On the other hand, apart from quiz nights, who knows or cares if one can name all the States in the USA off the top of the head?

    The other issue is actual time-on-task in schools.

    The normal school year of approximately 200 days of around 6-7 hours is not a lot of time. In primary schools about 60% of this tends to be allocated to literacy/numeracy so it should perhaps be no surprise that what schools used to do is now beyond them due to the unreasonable demands made of them.

    Which school has time for music, art, physical education, LOTE and science? Not to mention the 101 fad items foisted upon schools these days.

  29. Rudd 2.0 said that cutting Gillards carbon tax would save the average punters family $550 a year.

    Abbott has accepted this number and used the Rudd approved $550 figure so I don’t see how anyone here could complain about his maths, when it was Rudd he got the number from.

  30. i think shorten functions well in a dispute, in a campaign, in negotiations, already formulated by others — he is not a leader in that sense, and has done nothing in past week to prove it. he observes than creates.

  31. ST

    [Probably because Labor were responsible for the complete and total breakdown of customs at Sydney Airport ]

    There’s a mass staff redundancy program happening in Customs and the Quarantine Agency at the moment.

    That’ll solve the problem, for sure.

  32. Sean Tisme
    Posted Wednesday, November 6, 2013 at 11:15 am | PERMALINK
    I note that there have been a spate of shootings in NSW over the past week. I recall during the Gillard Govt, Liberal pollies blamimg the federal govt.

    Probably because Labor were responsible for the complete and total breakdown of customs at Sydney Airport that saw unionised gangs running the joint allowing thousands of guns and drugs to be imported into the country.

    For example… whose idea was it to allow a unionised cutoms worker who was busted in a sydney airport snorting drugs to continue doing their job?

    Yet another Rudd/Gillard failure… and this one has killed people.

    ———-ah been away os … good to see graphically base stupidity that informs our now ahem ‘gov’ment’. nothing changes including failure of labor leadership

  35. 16 July 2013 Tony Abbott press release

    Mr Rudd said that families would save $380 “per year”

    Only the Coalition will scrap the carbon tax lock, stock and barrel. Under the Coalition’s plans, average families will be better off by more than $550 a year in 2014-15, rising to around $900 a year in 2019-20.

  36. So let me see massive tax breaks for big business and really really big business – everyone else to pay more.

    Oh we must have a liberal govt.

    Why any small business owner or anyone with a personal net wealth of less than 5 million excluding their residence votes liberal is beyond me.

  37. bemused

    [Neither can I. Her wrecking was confined to Victoria thank goodness.]

    And only a couple of posts ago, you were saying the exact opposite.

  38. bemused

    [I had a son in a school that trialled VCE English and friends who were teachers at the time who were very unimpressed with what was happening.]

    Wow. Experts.

  39. [Mr Rudd said that families would save $380 “per year”
    ]

    It was a foolish desperate election comment to defuse Abbotts ongoing lies. It didn’t work and it is certainly not an excuse for abbotts deceipt.

  40. [
    bemused
    Posted Wednesday, November 6, 2013 at 11:05 am | Permalink
    …

    Whatever institutional factors are causing more kids to opt for vegie maths, or worse still, no maths at all, need to be addressed and remdied.
    ]
    You do not do vegie maths if you want to do engineering, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the advanced mathematics offered for those that want to do engineering.

    Very few people have done pure and applied and then watched there kid do Specialist Maths and mathematics methods; I have so I think I can offer a little incite past a general whine.

    The low entry level has nothing to do with year 11 and 12. Kids are turned off mathematics long before then.

    I am however of the view if you actually want to learn mathematics you need to read something written in the 50’s. The modern texts books seem to get tied up in the minute detail. Handy if you want to make mathematics your career, not so handy if you just want to use it.

    Specialist Maths and mathematics methods introduce topics we where not exposed by year 12 when I went through.

    In my view there in little wrong with what they are trying to teach, there is probable a shortage of teachers that can teach it well as there has been for at least 4 decades.

  41. Mike

    [Hockey has saved the Australian car industry by tossing out Labor’s changes to FBT]

    I used to work for a mob that had about 700 staff. They were able to salary package.

    A smart accountant who worked for me did an analysis of the car packaging arrangements and figured the the majority of those who did it went out backwards.

  42. zoomster@137

    bemused

    Neither can I. Her wrecking was confined to Victoria thank goodness.


    And only a couple of posts ago, you were saying the exact opposite.

    Verbaling me again?

    I am well aware she was the Victorian Education Minister and her wrecking was confined to that state.

    If other states engaged in similar activities then that is a separate matter.

  44. bemused

    (and sorry for multiple posts, doing this on the run…)

    [The mad educational ideology of Kirnerism destroyed all that]

    What evidence have you of that?

    We’ve established – using real data – that Victorian and NSW schools are ‘on par’ when it comes to Maths, ranking 7th in the world.

    This has been consistent for the last two decades across both systems.

    In other metrics – particularly English – Victorian students perform better than NSW.

    There’s absolutely no evidence that Victorian students have ‘suffered’ since the introduction of VCE.

    Yes, teachers were concerned during trials (hint, that’s what trials are for). I was, too. The VCE has undergone constant review and modification, although (as an English teacher) I thought the earlier model better prepared students for University (and life).

  45. zoomster@138

    bemused

    I had a son in a school that trialled VCE English and friends who were teachers at the time who were very unimpressed with what was happening.


    Wow. Experts.

    Participants and observers caught up in it.

    The smarty pants ‘experts’ behind this abomination were elsewhere.

  47. WeWantPaul

    Posted Wednesday, November 6, 2013 at 11:31 am | Permalink

    Mr Rudd said that families would save $380 “per year”

    It was a foolish desperate election comment to defuse Abbotts ongoing lies. It didn’t work and it is certainly not an excuse for abbotts deceipt.
    ======================================

    Despite the ranting from the shallow end of the gene pool; Abbott owns the $550 claim.

  48. [Sean Tisme
    Posted Wednesday, November 6, 2013 at 11:20 am | Permalink

    Rudd 2.0 said that cutting Gillards carbon tax would save the average punters family $550 a year.
    ]
    Proof that Rudd was a coward and a Lyer; I’m not sure what it proves about the Liberals.

  49. [ah been away os … good to see graphically base stupidity that informs our now ahem ‘gov’ment’. nothing changes including failure of labor leadership]

    I like it when leftists go overseas, because then they discover the line they typically use “The world is watching what we do” or “this makes Australia an embarrassment” is complete nonsense because nobody cares what Australia does or doesn’t do.

    We are the country of Kangaroo’s and beautiful beaches and quite frankly we could probably declare war on New Zealand and nobody would care.

  50. CTar,

    I see Hockey’s repealing Labors FBT changes as just putting back in place another dodgy loophole that benefits a minority at the expense of the taxpayer in general.

    Talking of which dodgy car sales dude on 24 shouting it to the rooftops.

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