BludgerTrack: 52.2-47.8 to Labor

The latest poll aggregate puts Labor back in parliamentary majority territory, as a new result from ReachTEL makes the Coalition’s strong result from Nielsen a fortnight ago look still more like an anomaly.

Following on from the thumping Labor lead in last week’s Newspoll, the addition of the latest ReachTEL to the BludgerTrack poll aggregate causes Labor to regain nearly all the ground it lost on the back of last fortnight’s Nielsen. However, with new contrary signals emerging through a shift back to the Coalition in Essential Research, it’s perhaps telling that the two-party trendline (displayed as always on the sidebar) looks as though it’s not sure which way to turn. Labor is now back into majority territory on the national seat projection, having picked up three seats each in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland and a further one in the territories (i.e. Solomon). It’s interesting to note that the state breakdowns show emphatic swings to Labor except where they govern at state level, at least until next Saturday’s elections. On the primary vote, Labor makes a gain this week directly at the expense of the Coalition, while the Palmer United Party is up slightly on a post-election low last week. There is no new data for leadership ratings this week.

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.

3,396 thoughts on “BludgerTrack: 52.2-47.8 to Labor”

Comments Page 1 of 68
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  2. Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
    Here we go. Management Joyce and Abbott style.
    http://www.smh.com.au/business/qantas-starts-process-of-shedding-jobs-as-australian-services-union-calls-for-urgent-intervention-from-fair-work-australia-20140305-347gh.html
    Hockey’s strategy. Is it a “Hail Mary”?
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/hockey-to-go-slow-on-cuts-20140305-347og.html
    There is a hint of a stench here.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/email-trail-reveals-treasurers-department-kept-unusually-close-tabs-on-qantas-20140305-347lf.html
    This Victorian commissioner voted with her feet.
    http://www.theage.com.au/environment/environment-commissioner-kate-auty-quits-drops-bucket-20140305-347ln.html
    David Marr: The boats will come back and we will have to draw on fresh reserves of cruelty.
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/05/the-boats-always-come-back-and-when-they-do-australia-will-have-to-draw-on-fresh-reserves-of-cruelty
    Fair enough I suppose. But their predecessors were silent on the treatment of certain Australian children some years ago.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/church-slams-cold-blooded-treatment-of-asylum-seeker-children-20140305-346cy.html
    And the UN gets in on the act.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/united-nations-human-rights-chief-navi-pillay-to-call-for-review-of-png-asylum-seeker-processing-20140305-346oz.html
    Tanya Plibersek on Australia’s need to improve relations with Indonesia.
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/05/australia-must-work-to-improve-its-image-in-indonesia
    All is not well in Victorian Liberal land.
    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/battle-for-kew-liberal-infighting-threatens-to-tear-party-apart-20140305-347m7.html
    Greg Jericho has a detailed look at current economic indicators. And he reckons Hockey has over-egged the gloom.
    http://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2014/mar/05/positive-economic-data-upsets-hockeys-doom-and-gloom-budget-narrative

  3. Section 2 . . .

    This will not assist the development of good policy. But hey – they don’t like using factual information, do they?
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/public-service/abs-to-cut-up-to-100-more-public-service-jobs-20140305-346a0.html
    Alan Moir takes inadvertent navigational errors into the Ukraine.

    David Pope channels Dr Seuss.
    http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/david-pope-20120214-1t3j0.html
    MUST SEE!! David Rowe with Abbott at the sacrificial altar. Credlin is there, too.
    http://www.afr.com/p/national/cartoon_gallery_david_rowe_1g8WHy9urgOIQrWQ0IrkdO

  6. And from the Land of the Free –

    Repug hypocrisy, Wisconsin style.
    http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2014/03/04/accused-gop-sexual-harasser-dumped-from-wi-assembly-leadership-post/
    Every Texan household should have some guns.
    http://crooksandliars.com/2014/03/texas-man-engaging-backyard-target
    A Boston Catholic school shows its colours.
    http://crooksandliars.com/2014/03/catholic-school-wont-march-st-patricks-day
    Oh no! The Repugs’ worst nightmare!
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/04/1282095/-Obamacare-boosting-household-income-and-nbsp-spending

  7. “The latest poll aggregate puts Labor back in parliamentary majority territory…”

    You know that this means — ELECTION NOW1!!!!!!1!

  8. Good Morning

    Despite LNP claims there is no evidence the Carbon Price was designed to send business into bankruptcy.

    None have proven this case.

    Hockey on 24

  9. Morning all and thanks BK. The ABS staff cuts is actually getting problematic, in our slow evolution into the Greece of the south. They are already short of skilled people. In my work I have found several clear errors in demographic and economic statistics in recent years. The census takes longer to get results released now than it did in the 90s. Mathematically illiterate politicians probably do not care, but this undermines a lot of scientific, engineering and financial work.

  12. Regarding Qantas, it is quite pathetic that an executive can know their current strategy is not working, admit they have no plan B, then cut capability anyway. It is a recipe for continued losses.

    We do not need evidence to know the carbon price is not mattering to Qantas performance. They only pay it on domestic flights where their competitor Virgin pays the same tax. Besides, they passed it onto customers via a surcharge anyway.

  13. Ausdavo

    Factcheck has pointed out plenty of coalition lies and errors. To their credit, they have also pointed out when Hockey has been misleading while not actually lying. I have noted many instances of Labor ministers saying incorrect or out of date things that I have not posted on, because I still support the causes they sometimes work towards.

    If Labor employed more intelligent/less lazy staffers who spent more than five minutes on google before giving advice, labor politicians would be caught out less often. But they do not – they employ their mates, even if dumber than Tom Koutsantonis.

  14. Hopefully WA voters will vote against being treated like mushrooms with Audit Commission cuts to be kept secret until after the Senate election.

  15. If Hockey really wants to have more revenue to spend, he could start with the world’s most profitable corporation, that pays almost no tax here.

    US tech giant Apple has shifted an estimated $8.9 billion in untaxed profits from its Australian operations to a tax haven structure in Ireland in the last decade, an investigation by The Australian Financial Review has found.

    http://www.afr.com/p/technology/how_ireland_got_apple_bn_profit_erlmHONvoHJGixwLUpFckN

    That is enough unpaid tax to pay for the parental leave scheme.

  17. Tony Wright wields a sharp pen against Abbott. 🙂

    The classic upbringing in a dirt-floor log cabin has been in lamentably short supply among the political class since Abe Lincoln, but when you’re wooing foresters, a prime minister could barely do better than a folksy tale about a carpentering childhood.

    It has been omitted from the official prime ministerial resume to this point, Tony Abbott confided to the leaders of Australia’s forest, wood, paper and timber industries, but his granddaddy was a shipwright, which is to say a marine carpenter.

    And glory be, this old salt with gnarled hands recruited young Tony to build a timber workbench for the new family home (could it have been a log cabin?), and together, man and boy, they happily fashioned a timber canoe and a large timber shed down the back garden.

    Why, the old fellow presented his grandson with a tool set, and it stayed at the Abbott side, employed in manly tasks, until it disappeared in a flash flood only a couple of years ago.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/tony-abbott-carves-out-new-friendship-20140305-347ly.html#ixzz2v7nyYFHw

  18. Snap BK! A few welfare cheats are small consolation to not catching Apple.

    Now we will see whether Hockey or Joyce (the other bumbling one, in politics) has the ticker to fight a foreign corporate tax cheat. Or will he just whinge about falling revenues? He could also talk to Singapore, with whom we have a generous free trade deal.

    Have a good day all.

  22. Looks like ALP finally getting their Social Media strategy up & running…

    Host of them putting out positive messages past couple of days…

    None from Coalition though as they’ve been gagged. No loss though as they were invariably negative and unpleasantly personal…

  27. guytaur@25

    @abcnews: About 1,500 Qantas office workers given two weeks to consider redundancy, Union says http://t.co/067V9EWqJ5

    As hard as it is, I think many are better off out of Qantas and have thought that for some years.

    Very very difficult if 10 years or so off retirement etc, but very hard to see things getting any better for those who remain knowing management are going to continue to blame workers for their own considerable shortcomings and be cheered on by abbott and co.

  28. Bastards!

    Mr McCulloch said he and his colleagues were elated by the Prime Minister’s strong support for the forestry industry.

    Mr Abbott told the Australian Forest Products Association: ”When I look out tonight at an audience of people who work with timber, who work in forests, I don’t see people who are environmental bandits, I see people who are the ultimate conservationists.

    ”I salute you as people who love the natural world, as people who love what Mother Nature gives us and who want to husband it for the long-term best interests of humanity.”
    Canberra would now be ”friendly country” rather than ”hostile territory” for the forestry industry, Mr Abbott said.
    . . .
    Australia’s forestry industry is in decline according to economists.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-speech-splits-brokers-of-tasmanian-forest-agreement-20140305-347of.html#ixzz2v7wrDP6n

  29. When you click on a link such as BK’s invaluable morning coffee companions, the link opens in the same tab, that is, PB disappears to be replaced by SMH or whatever.

    I would prefer the link to open in a new tab.

    Are there any others who think the same?

  30. dave

    Posted Thursday, March 6, 2014 at 8:33 am | Permalink

    Might be the only place scum like that get some justice.

    But please go to bat for him.

    I have no facts or knowledge of the case to go to bat for him or batter him, which of course is my point. I’m wondering where you & Shellbell have got all the facts from to wrap it all up. It still sounds like talkback justice to me.

  32. kevjohnno@30

    dave

    Posted Thursday, March 6, 2014 at 8:33 am | Permalink

    Might be the only place scum like that get some justice.

    But please go to bat for him.


    I have no facts or knowledge of the case to go to bat for him or batter him, which of course is my point. I’m wondering where you & Shellbell have got all the facts from to wrap it all up. It still sounds like talkback justice to me.

    Try reading the article.

  34. guytaur@31

    don

    In browser preferences you can have links open in a new tab instead of a new page

    Also if you right click on the link it will give you a choice, of new tab, or new window, or private/ incognito window etc.

  35. Don@29. You can also right – click on the link, which gives you the option of opening the link in a new tab.

  36. Morning all

    Any comment on Palmer’s pathetic performance in QT yesterday?

    A very shallow point in democracy as far I’m concerned when we see an MP arguing in support of his own interests.

    { I have a question for
    the Prime Minister. The carbon tax and the mining tax
    removal are key to the resurgence of the Australian
    economy. Why has the government not removed or
    proposed their removal from the day they were elected?
    Is it not true that only Palmer United can remove these
    taxes and break the gridlock in the Senate? Why would
    Western Australian voters vote for the Liberal Party
    when they cannot deliver on their promises? Western
    Australians must vote for Palmer United in the Senate,
    as only Palmer United can remove the carbon and
    mining taxes. Do you agree, Prime Minister?]

  38. In my Inbox

    Hello, everyone —

    Several weeks ago, I met Semethia and Anna.

    Semethia’s a 36-year-old single mom. Her son hopes to go to college one day. Her daughter wants to take gymnastics lessons. But with a service job that pays just $8.25 an hour, Semethia relies on food stamps and help from friends and family just to keep food on the table — much less build the future she’d like for her kids.

    Anna works as a tip server at two local D.C. restaurants. She doesn’t yet have to support a family, but she still struggles to make ends meet when she’s relying on tips to get by — and she sees the tough decisions her colleagues make every day. One of her coworkers recently missed her son’s birthday party in order to cover a shift — that’s how badly she needed the money to support her family.

    You see, when we talk about the kind of folks whose lives will be made better by raising the minimum wage, we’re not talking about a couple teenagers earning extra spending money to supplement their allowance. We’re talking about providers and breadwinners. Working Americans with bills to pay and mouths to feed.

    And right now, millions of them are trying to do that on just $7.25 an hour.

    We can change that. We can raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, we can do it right now, and we should. If you agree that it’s high time we do — that America’s workers deserve a raise — then add your name right here.

    The President said this in his State of the Union, and we can’t lose track of it: Here in America, no one working full-time should have to raise a family in poverty.

    Think about that for a second: Right now, around the country, there are parents who, despite working full-time jobs, are living below the poverty line. We’re better than that.

    It’s time to raise the wage — click if you agree.

    This is the right thing to do for our workers, and it’s the right thing to do for our economy. If you agree, then say so here: It’s time to raise the federal minimum wage.

    Thank you,

    Tom

    Secretary Tom Perez
    Department of Labor

    Visit WhiteHouse.gov
    This email was sent to guytaur1@gmail.com.

  39. The Abbott government has re-introduced a controversial freeze on granting protection visas to refugees who arrive by boat on the eve of a High Court challenge on behalf of a 15-year-old Ethiopian boy who is being denied a visa.

    The freeze was introduced, but quickly revoked, late last year under threat of legal challenge, but re-introduced without explanation on Tuesday, prompting outrage from refugee advocates.

    The lawyer leading the challenge, David Manne, described the decision as ”extraordinary”, saying it lacked any rational basis in policy or law.

    But a government spokesman defended the move, saying the freeze on visas for boat arrivals would enable the government to deliver on its promise of at least 11,000 visas for those taken from refugee camps around the world.

    They’rs all heart, aren’t they.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/visa-freeze-reinstated-for-refugees-who-arrive-by-boat-20140305-347op.html#ixzz2v84YcJaL

  40. http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2014/03/06/bludgertrack-52-2-47-8-to-labor/#comment-1926514

    “Try reading the article”

    I did. It’s a newspaper article. Are you suggesting to base sentencing on this? Makes for a great justice system.
    Always frightening to see that so many in this country mix up revenge and justice. A trial is there to establish facts and circumstances. If it is to be a murder trial with a conviction, then the sentencing judge has a pretty severe range of penalties to choose from. I’d much rather rely on a professional applying the law of the land than a bunch of enraged bloggers. Insofar the 2GB reference by kevjohnno I think was spot on. Then again, we could revert to the laws and customs of the original owners of this wide brown land and revert to such grown-up behaviour as spearing. Or, the moment three people following a newspaper article decide for themselves that punishment is due, gather up a flashmob (much more efficient to organise these days thanks to modern technology) ready for a stoning in front of the courthouse. Worked in the olden days, so must be right.

  42. Treasurer Joe Hockey has revealed he talked to Qantas chief executive officer Alan Joyce about the airline’s apparent change of mind on the impact the carbon tax was having on the company’s bottom line.

    But the Treasurer rejected suggestions Qantas was leaned on to toe the government line..

    No, of course not. It was just a friendly chat. Just ignore the guys in the trenchcoats carrying the bags of concrete, Alan, they’re just mates Joe’s giving a lift to…

    The airline angered the government earlier this week by rejecting Mr Hockey’s claims Qantas had cited the tax as contributing to its current financial woes.

    Two days later, after cabinet rejected the company’s request for a debt guarantee, or failing that, an unsecured $3 billion loan Mr Joyce admitted the tax was among its most significant challenges.

    See, Alan? Told you those guys were harmless.

    A “low-level person” at Qantas had put out the statement that was not consistent with earlier comments from the company, the treasurer said he was told by Mr Joyce.

    Low level people are so annoying, aren’t they? It makes you wonder why any major company entrusts them with a simple thing like a press release.

    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2014/3/6/hockey-confirms-carbon-tax-chat-qantas

  43. The Abbott government’s claim that it will be levelling the playing field in the aviation industry if it succeeds against the odds in the Senate and repeals part three of the Qantas Sale Act is another oddity. It could help Qantas but it also promotes an industry ownership structure that at its heart is rubbish.

    . . .

    If the government were somehow able to manoeuvre it through, however, Qantas would be able to lower its cost base, by shifting more maintenance offshore, for example.

    Its competitor, Virgin, already does it, so that would help ”level the playing field” as the government claims. It is the government’s observation that Qantas and Virgin would then have a ”single regulatory framework” in the form of the Air Navigation Act and its 49 per cent foreign shareholding limit that contains a policy conundrum.

    Virgin has already flown around the Air Navigation Act’s 49 per cent limit. After a share register shuffle in 2012 it is now three-quarters foreign owned, with three state-backed airlines, Etihad, Singapore Airlines and Air New Zealand, on board as major shareholders and financiers.

    It is a ”false” flag carrier, in effect, with a two-year-old Air Navigation Act-compliant share register frozen in aspic in an unlisted shelf company that ”owns” the international business, but pays 75 per cent foreign-owned Virgin Australia to resource and run it, transferring profits and losses in the process.

    Barring an extraordinary intervention by the Abbott government to block a move Virgin has already taken, scrapping the Qantas Sale Act would open the way for Qantas to try the same trick.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/joyce-may-benefit-from-false-move-20140305-347hr.html#ixzz2v85j82KQ

  45. The ABC’s fact check stories might have a little more credibility if they did fact checks on their own statements.

    There is an article this morning with the two lead paragraphs being:

    Pressure is building on Labor to give way to Government plans that would allow Qantas to sell a majority stake in domestic operations to foreign investors.

    The Federal Government will this morning introduce legislation to remove all foreign ownership restrictions from Qantas, despite it facing certain defeat in the Senate.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-06/pressure-builds-on-labor-to-support-changes-to-qantas-sale-act/5301826

    Two points:

    – the second paragraph directly contradicts the first

    – the only hint of any “pressure” is what David Epstein said and this has been denied by Albanese

  46. Brenda Loots
    Posted Thursday, March 6, 2014 at 9:17 am | Permalink

    “Try reading the article”

    I did. It’s a newspaper article. Are you suggesting to base sentencing on this? Makes for a great justice system.

    I believe the son and I detest woman bashers.

    But go right ahead and defend him. One day it might be you or some you know in such a position.

  47. mikehilliard
    Posted Thursday, March 6, 2014 at 9:08 am | PERMALINK
    Morning all

    Any comment on Palmer’s pathetic performance in QT yesterday?

    Palmer was doing what Palmer likes best – promoting himself. He does have a point however, with his complaint that the Abbott government is doing very little on bringing forward legislation. He and PUP in the Senate will be a continuing annoyance for Abbott.

  48. My unwritten point is that mandatory sentencing for seemingly spontaneous severe criminal acts is even less justifiable when no such sentencing exists for sustained violence in the home culminating in death.

  49. dave

    I believe the sentence of guilty and punishment imposed by society as decided by the courts is sufficient.

    However I do acknowledge that criminals do not and have their own methods of punishment in jail.

    So I think you are wrong to want a crime to be a punishment. Namely rape.

    Throw the legal book at them that should be enough.

  50. Truss, just now, is introducing the bill to cut the ties between Qantas and Australian ownership.

    He talks about Qantas as if he cares about it.

    But the very act of cutting Australian majority ownership provisions will make Qantas just another airline, and a pretty unprofitable one, at that.

    It will become a foreign-owned logo on a tailplane parked somewhere out the back of an airport in Asia, or the Middle East, with no meaningful sentimental, historical or legal ties to Australia.

    In effect, Truss, while touting Qantas’ “special” status as the national air carrier, is urging that it must be cut free from its “Australian” shackles in order to remain Australian. It’s a completely contradictory and illogical proposition.

    If international airlines have any advantage over other, more ground-based industries it’s their ability to – literally – fly off somewhere else, bag and baggage neatly tagged, “Stateless”. Almost overnight.

    Somehow Truss is trying to weave in a tale of Labor not caring about Qantas’ ikonic status, of them letting it go broke.

    But why should we care if it goes broke or disappears off the Australian horizon, if it is no longer owned locally? At least Labor wants to keep them here, by guaranteeing their debt.

    There’s the paradox: Qantas has to be destroyed as an Australian ikon in order to save it. The minute the bill passes (if it indeed does) Qantas is no longer qualified to enjoy any special, even emotional status as an Australian company… because it won’t be.

    It won’t be owned locally, and it won’t be employing many locals. It probably won’t even fly here, given enough time.

    That’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s an emotional aspect to it. Literature is full of stories about animals in captivity let go free to fulfill their destiny. Unfortunately (except in the case of Elsa the lioness, and perhaps the Tassie Devils of Maria Island) their “destiny” is usually to be eaten, soon after release.

    But whether Qantas can survive or not should, by rights, be none of our concern. Qantas wanted to be free. The government wants to free it. So go ahead, but don’t expect us to care, and don’t let the door hit you in the arse on the way out.

    Current Qantas management, for better or worse (mostly for worse), has presided over its appalling drop in share value to junk status. Yet their positions are under no threat whatsoever.

    Despite the advantages (some say slight, but advantages nevertheless) conferred upon Qantas as the national carrier it has found it can’t compete. If it is expected to remain as the national carrier, and employ locally in large numbers, then the quid pro quo is for government to support it as such: a Labor government’s plan.

    However, if the government does not care about the employment, seeing its decline as a chance to get rid of a few more unionists, and to score a few cheap points about the miniscule carbon tax at the same time, then such a government will let it go.

    I just wish Truss, Abbott, et al wouldn’t cry the crocodile tears over Qantas. They are using its “special” status as a wedge to remove that very status.

    Qantas will only be special until the minstant the ownership laws is repealed.

    After that, its history, and deservedly so.

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