GhostWhoVotes reports Newspoll’s third entry in the life of the new government has Labor hitting a 52-48 lead on two-party preferred, after leads of 56-44 and 52-48 for the Coalition in the first and second polls. This is Labor’s first two-party lead in Newspoll since the poll of March 18-20, 2011, which was itself an aberrant Labor-friendly result that emerged a month after Julia Gillard announced plans to introduce a carbon tax. Primary votes are 38% for Labor, up three on a fortnight ago, with the Coalition down three to 40% and the Greens down one to 9%.
UPDATE: James J in comments relates that Tony Abbott’s approval rating has maintained its downward trend across the three polls, going from 45% to 42% and now to 40%, while his disapproval has progressed upwards from 38% to 42% to 45%. Bill Shorten’s approval has gone from 37% to 39% to 44%, while his disapproval was 24% in the first poll to 27% in the second and third. Tony Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister is also narrowing, going from 46-30 in the first poll to 44-33 in the second to 41-34 in the third.
UPDATE 2: The Australian’s report is here. Stay tuned for more polling action courtesy of Essential Research at around 2pm EST tomorrow – I believe we’re due for Essential’s monthly leadership ratings, which should be interesting.
UPDATE 3 (Essential Research): The Essential Research fortnightly average reflects the move to Labor in its characteristic slow and steady way, moving one point to Labor on two-party preferred for the second week in a row to reduce the Coalition lead to 51-49. Labor is up a point on the primary vote to 37%, the Coalition and the Greens steady on 44% and 8%, and the Palmer United Party is up one to 5%. Tony Abbott’s approval rating is unchanged on last month at 45%, but his disapproval rating is up six to 46%. Bill Shorten on the other hand finds things going his way as the undecided jump off the fence, his approval up eight to 39% and disapproval up four to 31%. Similarly to Newspoll, Abbott holds a 43-33 lead as preferred prime minister, narrowing from 42-27 last time.
Questions on education provide the government with better results than it might have feared: its handling of education has 35% approval and 50% disapproval, while Labor’s lead as better party to handle the issue is only 36-33, although there’s also a 7% Greens component in the mix. Only 26% believe all schools will be better off under the new government, 26% believe only private schools will and 22% believe no schools will, with 2% signing on to the unlikely proposition that only public schools will. Also canvassed are the importance of unions “for Australian working people today” (57% important, 34% not important), and the importance of politicians keeping their promises.
re: the return of henderson to the Oz
[Just what the Australian needs: another ageing white male apologist for the Liberal party!]
and I’d add, “another NCC deeply conservative catholic stuck in the 1950s ‘anti-communist’ crusade” – the Australian should change its name to News Weekly and the LNP to the DLP.
swamprat,
The precise details of your monetary situation is of zero interest to us.
Plenty here talk about their circumstance, usually to give weight to comment. That is totally fine.
Beemer
Swamprat is greener than the surface for lawn bowls.
During Howard’s time as either treasure or PM 4 car makers quit or decided to quit making cars here – Chrysler and Renault 1981, Leyland 1982, Mitsubishi 2007/8, and now Holden has while JWH’s favoured political son is PM and Toyota is likely to go too.
OTOH, only two have quit or decided to during the term of Labor governments, Nissan (1992) and Ford.
Clearly Howard and those tainted by him are poison to car manufacturers.
Fessy
The first person who made the comment about Hockey being worst than Swannie was before the election always going on about the need for a new government.
I’m curious why did Chrysler and Renault 1981, Leyland 1982 leave, at that time we had high trade tariffs so what was the reason if anyone can remember?
The Greens have apparently secured zero nothing nada in exchange for giving Abbott/Hockey access to unlimited debt
“@phonytonyabbott: Abbott: Jan 19, 2012: “It’s very, very important – very, very important that we keep a car industry in Australia.” #auspol”
[Lucky there are no Newspolls until the new year.]
Fortunately we still have BludgerPoll, now showing a 564% swing to Labor, giving Labor 896% of the two-party vote. Rosa Luxemburg is preferred PM on 230%, followed by Fidel Castro on 189% and Mikhail Bakunin on 153%.
paaptsef
Who cares. The standard that existed before 2007 applies. Hockey Black Hole will be useful to Labor
@WilliamsJon: Huge story in #China. Former top security chief placed under house arrest. Zhou YongKang was Hu Jintao’s “iron fist” http://t.co/rn0wQjsOxC
Dismiss my earlier question
Google seems to have more answers than Canberra
“@WilliamsJon: Zhou’s detention most serious action against member of Politburo Standing Committee since Gang of Four purged in 1970s. Was Bo Xilai patron.”
Let me make it abundantly clear to anyone here who does not realize, this Government wants to reduce the cost of labour. If you do not realize the implications of that then you should just absent yourself from William’s blog.
that is to yet be proven Guytuar and until it is we have a Greens/Coalition deal for Unlimited debt.
sustainable future@2301
All perfectly reasonable, but then in her inimitable style, confessions throws in gender and age. One hell of a sick individual.
Go Red Rosa!
Psephos,
MOE?
paaptsef
Any debt blame will belong to the LNP. Made worse by not putting money in to save the car industry
Bemused, to the best of your extremely limited ability, stop being a dickhead.
paaptsef
Not only that, the Greens praised Hockey’s decision on Graincorp and were against funding for Holden.
The Greens support the Coalition on many issues.
So … has anyone told the ABC about the latest NewsPoll yet?
Coalition keeps wedging itself.
Graincorp: Piss off the dries to appease the Nats
Car subsidies: Piss off the wets to appease the dries.
Had they reversed these settings — i.e. allow Graincorp to be bought, but keep the car subsidies going, they would’ve avoided two own goals and still credibly maintained their mantra of being “open for business”.
This Coalition is showing signs of being in thrall to its own internal ideological contradictions, leading to bad policy decisions with disastrous consequences for Australia.
They see facts as negotiable, while their beliefs are rock-solid.
Bugger.
2314
The cost of labor will come down on comparative terms no matter what. Nothing can be done about it.
mexican:
What worries me is what the coalition will offer business in order to get them back inside the tent.
Tolerance is thy middle name.
mexicanbeemer @ 2306
Chrysler were in deep financial poop in America and Leyland borrowed heavily to make the P76 and never really recovered when it bombed. I’ve no idea why Renault upped stakes.
centre
Greens are not responsible for LNP decisions. As you are so fond of pointing out the Greens are not the government.
Has the new govt mentioned Abbott’s PPL scheme since winning office?
confessions
Nope. Will not until they have to at budget time
[Greens are not responsible for LNP decisions.]
They are responsible for spreading their legs for the LNP.
Thanks Slothy
@ducky/2331
Horrible mental imagery.
TLBD
[The ALP is like a cuttlefish, still looking for a backbone.
Your understanding of politics leaves much.]
I agree my understanding of politics is probably zero.
I was referring to the lack of backbone in the ALP to agree a coherent policy against the cargo-cult nonsense of the dominant economic model which is to move more and more wealth and power to the wealthy.
The fact that many (a majority?) of ALP parliamentary timeservers agree with this new empowering the overprivileged, is wrong.
The ALP will never recover it’s backbone until they develop a coherent social-democratic response to the current immoral garbage (evil) that pretends to be a political economy that has colonised the former Liberal Party.
guytaur:
MYEFO is due soon. Perhaps some questions about it will be put to the govt then in light of what is undoubtedly going to be Hockey wailing and gnashing teeth over the state of the nation’s finances.
TLBD
Yeah just like abor has done for the gambling industry. All parties do it.
I’d love to see Shorten in QT tomorrow tell Abbott that he’s meant to stop the boats, not the cars.
The mail, not that it’s a surprise, is that Toyota will announce plans to discontinue in the second half of next year.
confessions
Yes I do think that is part of Hockey’s problem. Of course now he has to add in all this money to manage the adverse effects of closing an entire industry. Maybe why he wanted out of the debt ceiling.
Can somebody else please give TLBD a blast for his nauseatingly misogynistic contribution at #2331? I’m tired of doing all the work around here.
This little black duck
this Government wants to reduce the cost of labour.
I get that, but I dont see it as their highest priority and I dont think it explains their handling of Holden. Consolidating power is LNP’s highest priority. Unions are still the major base of the ALP so I postulate this is a deliberate attempt to reduce that base. But the cost???
And surely they didnt think they could do this without haemorrhaging votes.
Or maybe they just f’d it up.
Has anyone asked Shorten what a Labor government elected in 2016 would be willing to do to get GM to reverse the decision to leave in 2017?
[ Can somebody else please give TLBD a blast for his nauseatingly misogynistic contribution at #2331? I’m tired of doing all the work around here. ]
Should they be spreading their cheeks instead?
Swamprat
Labor are doing something right if they make Green supporters such as yourself whinge about them, proven by the fact they’ve hit the front on the polls
[nauseatingly misogynistic contribution]
Men have legs too, William, and some have been known to spread them in the right circumstances.
Ducky:
Seriously. Do we have to endure such comments?
Lately it feels like hardly a day goes by without someone leaving a revoltingly sexist comment.
Duck
10 min in the bin. That was hard for the imagination to take 😛
#2331 #2342
Ewww. Grow up.
It’s an adult government now and what goes on between consenting adults, well, it is not your place to condemn 😀
swamprat,
[I was referring to the lack of backbone in the ALP to agree a coherent policy against the cargo-cult nonsense of the dominant economic model which is to move more and more wealth and power to the wealthy.]
A “coherent policy” would be political suicide. Julia Gillard introduced and got much legislated to get more out of the wealthy, such as means testing of the health insurance rebate.
I thought Lenore Taylor’s Guardian piece on the Holden non-decision had a fairly perceptive, slightly subtly different take on LNP motivations in this whole sorry saga.
…
The Coalition leaned toward abandoning industry assistance, but didn’t want to take the blame, so it avoided answering the question it didn’t have the guts to ask.
The ALP, I’m sure some here would argue, had the same problem but had taken the opposite approach – the ALP were determined to keep the car industry going and so avoided asking and properly answering the questions about whether the subsidies were good value for taxpayers etc.
That doesn’t absolve the LNP from the fact that this whole tawdry charade of having a PC inquiry, of having Macfarlane negotiating with GMH etc, but preempting their own inquiry and negotiations to goad the carmaker into taking a position to prevent the LNP from actually having to make a decision based on evidence and take responsibility for that decision.
The ALP, at least, right or wrong, were unwavering in their support of the industry and the workers. The LNP didn’t even have the convictions to be seen to be making a decision – it had to be someone else’s decision, someone else’s responsibility.
What a bunch of incompetent cowards.
I apologize for the words but not the implication.
Bye.