Essential Research: 50-50

Still no sign of Newspoll, but the ever-reliable Essential Research still has a two-party deadlock, and offers responses on Peter Cosgrove, unions, parental leave and intolerance.

Essential Research has two-party preferred at 50-50, with both major parties up on the primary vote: the Coalition by a point to 43%, Labor by two to 38%. The Greens are down a point to 8%, the Palmer United Party down one to 3% and others down to two to 7%. Also covered:

• Only 4% rate Peter Cosgrove “not a good choice” for Governor-General, with 30%, 34% and 11% respectively rating the choice excellent, good and acceptable.

• Forty-three per cent are happy for the Governor-General to be appointed by the government, with 40% favouring direct election.

• Sixty-one per cent think unions “important for Australian working people today”, compared with only 30% who think them not important, with 45% thinking workers would be better off if unions were stronger compared with 27% for worse off.

• In response to a question which first explains the specifics of the government’s policy, including the $150,000 ceiling and 1.5% levy, only 23% favoured the government scheme over 36% for the current policy and 32% for neither.

• There are also questions on the prevalence on various forms of intolerance, which you can read about in the report.

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.

875 comments on “Essential Research: 50-50”

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  1. @Simon_Cullen: Govt frontbencher @BriggsJamie has described Tasmania as an economic “basket case” in defending the decision to give money to Cadbury

  3. ABC World at Noon SPC is the lead story.

    Sharman Stone is not moving one inch and Napthine has bought into the story as well.

    I think Tony is on a big loser with this particularly since it has come out today that the Government has given $16 mill to a fishery in Tasmania.

  5. @guytaur/451

    You’d think they blame Queensland for example for a basket case economy, but Liberals are basket case of their own making.

    So now using Cadbury are a “basket case”.

    How will that help Tasmania by labeling it a basket case?

  7. Should have added Albo on World at Noon as well giving it to Abbott:

    WTTE The workers at SPC get in the range of $50-60 thousand per year while the Ministers making this decision are earning in excess of $300,000 per annum.

  12. [ Darn
    Posted Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at 10:46 am | Permalink

    Apparently Leigh didn’t do her homework. ]

    The homework would have been done if it was a Labor leader being interviewed.

    There would have also have been many many interruptions.

  13. “@latikambourke: AWU’s Paul Howes ‘any union official proven to be engaged in corrup or criminal behaviour is a traitor.’ #npc”

    “@latikambourke: AWU’s Paul Howes says challenge for modern unionism is ‘we must not allow this treachery to define us.’”

  17. Poroti

    Your modern Tory doesn’t actually know what a lie is ( and some on the left can be as bad.)

    Abbott had become so adept at tailoring his message to his audience and the circumstance that he probably can’t remember what he said an hour ago, let alone a week or a month or a year.
    That was the rationale for the famous explanation to Red Kerry that it soesn’t matter what he says, it doesn’t count unless it is written down on some official document and signed, presumably with a blood pledge.

  18. guytaur

    Is this the same Paul Howes who went on ABCTV to announce the dismissal of a Labor Prime Minister before it happened?

    I wouldn’t trust Paul Howes as far as I could kick him. His main interest is Paul Howes.

  19. [AWU’s Paul Howes – we must cut the cancer out – we must be the first to crack down.]

    He could direct anyone who has information but is concerned about contacting the police to contact any one of the several high profile and able law firms which have been doing union legal work in this country for generations.

    The HSU brouhaha started from a legal investigation undertaken by Slater & Gordon.

  21. Darn@413

    I’m puzzled by that pre-recorded interview Abbott did on 7.30 this week. He seemed all too ready with the answers to some tricky questions – very unAbbott like. I’m wondering if it was a condition of him appearing that his office be given a list of the questions in advance.

    I took it differently, ie feeling more confident to say what he wanted to.

    In a way I thought that good – all the more opportunity for a major gaffe.

    But Leigh Sales didn’t really put a mark on him and gave him an easy ride in the second portion of the interview.

    The no interruptions stand out though.

  23. [@Simon_Cullen: Govt frontbencher @BriggsJamie has described Tasmania as an economic “basket case” in defending the decision to give money to Cadbury]

    As Sharman Stone pointed out, her electorate has a higher unemployment rate than Tasmania.

  24. “@latikambourke: This is a big speech from Howes – basically calling for a truce in debating IR. Test will be in the actions v rhetoric.”

  26. [ sustainable future

    ….Higgins …{is a} hero of mine ]

    I’ve always enjoyed the irony that costello a ‘mover & shaker’ in the HR Nicholls Society represented the seat named after Higgins.

    [ In 1907, Higgins delivered a judgement which became famous in Australian history, known as the “Harvester Judgement”. The case involved one of Australia’s largest employers, Hugh McKay, a manufacturer of agricultural machinery.

    Higgins ruled that McKay was obliged to pay his employees a wage that guaranteed them a standard of living that was reasonable for “a human being in a civilised community,” regardless of his capacity to pay.

    This gave rise to the legal requirement for a basic wage, which dominated Australian economic life for the next 80 years. ]

  27. [ http://www.tai.org.au/content/mr-consumers-likely-lose-out-if-australia-signs-secretive-trade-deal ]

    Not only do we have a PM who has admitted he doesn’t read important documents (BHP report, Ashby judgement), he is about to sign a “free trade” agreement which not only has he not read – he won’t allow anyone else to read it either!

    This agreement will herald the closure of the pharmaceutical benefits scheme and place restrictions on medicare, override restrictions on coal seam gas exploration, override local environment and planning laws, override local content rules, override local food standards and labeling laws, restrict public broadcasting, and generally inhibit our ability to make any laws that might impact international (read: US) companies.

    It is apparently so bad the government does not even intent to let parliament see it before they sign it.

    And most people apparently don’t know anything about it!

    How did we come to this?

  29. [I think Tony is on a big loser with this…]

    In so may ways.

    It’s pointless for Turnbull to deny Abbott’s a liar. That horse bolted when Abbott himself volunteered to Kerry O’Brien that he said the first thing that came into his head, true or not. You had to get it in writing from him to have any confidence (and not even much then).

    Second, the SPCA document issued yesterday proved his facts to be wrong and misleadingly so. If they based their decision not to aid SPCA on a few measley bucks here and there that the workers are entitled to, and a bunch of other workplace conditions that no longer exist, then it is evidence of a pretty piss-poor decision-making process.

    Has Abbott come out and clarified his position, or accepted the corrections SPCA pointed out?

    No. He’s perpetuating the lie, hoping that the all the punters needed to hear was “multi-national”, “Coca-Cola”, “unions” and “shiny can allowance”. The truth would clutter up the political message, rather inconveniently.

    Thirdly, Abbott has a history of lying and back-stabbing. He has a liar’s face, and a liar’s smirk. He won office because he convinced the public that, although he was a scammer, he would scam them. It’s the oldest con-trick in the book: dare the victim to take you on at your own game. They can’t even whinge about it later… except in politics they can, and they are.

    The best thing to have done would have been to try to cobble some kind of explanation together that accepted some of the facts he presented were wrong, or out of date, and to claim that these were quibbles that didn’t affect the substance of his case.

    Except there are all the other companies who have received handouts. How VERY inconvenient they are.

    Abbott’s problem is that he promises everything to everyone, one stump speech, one slogan, one TV interview at a time. That is a recipe for certain disaster when the day of reckoning comes along.

    Adding that what people thought he promised wasn’t what he actually promised didn’t help either.

    Abbott’s entire life has been built on bullshit. There’s not a shred of decency in the man. It’s his style to be a bovver boy. That’s his trademark. Trying to make him a “statesman” simply by declaration is bound to fail.

    Worse, the more he stands his ground the more people are going to take note of his lies. He always gets someone else to go into bat for him.

    From his father’s lawyers frightening off his accusers in university days, right up to Murdoch taking him under his wing. Like all bullies Abbott is at heart a coward and withers at the knees whenever the real pressure is applied. He runds screaming to teacher, or to Daddy or to his media minder.

    Bad luck there’s probably a Newspoll scheduled for this weekend. It should be a disaster for him.

    People’s livelihoods, their jobs and their hopes are at stake. The last thing they want to hear is that they’re on their own, when the man who is informing them of this has never stood up by himself, or for himself in his entire life without heavies alongside him.

    It’s a disaster for him, and I couldn’t think of a more deserving punk than Abbott to be squirming.

  30. guytaur@474

    “@latikambourke: This is a big speech from Howes – basically calling for a truce in debating IR. Test will be in the actions v rhetoric.”

    Its Howe doing ‘look at me’ yet again.

  33. @Player One/477

    It’s a pitty Crikey doesn’t play a more active roll in updating on TPP related events..

    & on that bombshell:

    http://www.3news.co.nz/Report-claims-TPP-gains-have-been-overstated/tabid/423/articleID/331031/Default.aspx

    “A report by The Sustainability Council and Dr Bertram says modelling of trade gains is flawed and any benefits could be just a quarter of those claimed.”

    ““From what I can see on the public record I’m not convinced, [it is] not a good idea – in fact it could be a bad idea,” he says.”

    http://www.afr.com/p/business/companies/obama_tpp_agenda_hangs_on_thin_reid_V3WfuLkMHda6QJQ3A4zHwI

    http://www.agriview.com/briefs/crop/asa-nopa-partner-on-tpp-letter-to-ambassador-ag-secretary/article_3012b19a-fb46-5aa5-87cc-61514eebfc2f.html

  34. [@Simon_Cullen: Govt frontbencher @BriggsJamie has described Tasmania as an economic “basket case” in defending the decision to give money to Cadbury]

    There goes Tasmania…

    When will these cretins ever learn that continual trashing of reputations and whole economies does no-one any good at all?

    Confidence is getting lower. IS this kind of statement designed to be the upbeat that gets Tassie back n track?

    I bloody doubt it.

  35. What on earth???

    [Government must curb poor spend to calm rich says Grattan Institute

    JARED OWENS THE AUSTRALIAN FEBRUARY 05, 2014 11:31AM

    THE Abbott government should target some of its cuts at the poor, so that larger cuts targeting the rich are politically more palatable, a leading policy institute has warned.]

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/government-must-curb-poor-spend-to-calm-rich-says-grattan-institute/story-fn59niix-1226818457180#

  38. “@Sandra_Sully: #BREAKING News on Schapelle – Indonesia’s justice minister says #Corby could be released from prison within 3 days. Details to come.”

  39. “@Colvinius: Zing “@notjunior: Schapelle Corby likely to be released in time to see her own tele-movie. Hasn’t she suffered enough?””

  44. Bill

    The tories will always be hanrahans — we’ll all be rooned!

    They inherited a triple A credit rating, low inflation, interest rates and unemployment and all Hockey could talk about was how crap things were.

    Trouble is too many people believe it, tho that pool may be shrinking.

  47. Ooops. The government accidentally tells the truth. Don’t worry they soon “fixed” it.

    [Coalition feels ‘pain’ over carbon tax typo

    In a media release to accompany the latest greenhouse gas emission figures for Australia, Mr Hunt was quoted in the opening line as saying: “Emissions figures released today show the Carbon Tax is still inflicting plenty of gain, with no environmental pain”.]
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/coalition-feels-pain-over-carbon-tax-typo-20140205-320qz.html

  48. @guytaur/495

    http://www.thejakartapost.com/assets/gallery/a-year-of-dedication-a-look-back-at-kominfos-accomplishments-in-2013.html

    If only local news picked up this article:

    “Tapping is also a worrying national security matter, as highlighted by the recent high-profile tapping incident involving the country’s leaders.
    The Communications and Information Ministry responded immediately to the incident by gathering all the country’s telecommunications operators to ensure none of them were involved in the tapping incident.”

  49. Bushfire Bill @ 479

    Thanks for, once again, a great piece. It accurately gives the measure of the man and it is not a good look. I fear the worst is yet to come but I would enjoy the sight of the little t*** squirming!

  50. [The Corby situation is a timely distraction for Abbott, who will milk this as a ‘win for the Govt’.]

    Of course the ‘Bali nine’ are still in prison.

    Some time ago the Indonesian Justice Minister said Corby’s case would not be affected by the (poor) state of Aust/Indon relations.

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