The Daily Telegraph has results of a Galaxy poll of federal voting intention showing the two major parties tied on two-party preferred, and while the accompanying graphic is spoiled by a production error, it’s clear enough the primary vote results are 43% for the Coalition, 37% for Labor and 10% for the Greens. It also finds 56% opposed to cuts in welfare spending against only 34% in support. The poll was conducted from Friday to Sunday from a sample of 998. The Australian also brings Newspoll’s quarterly aggregates of voting intention broken down by state, gender, age cohorts and capitals-versus-regionals, which have Labor leading 53-47 in New South Wales, 57-43 in Victoria and 54-46 in South Australia, and trailing 51-49 in Queensland and 54-46 in Western Australia.
UPDATE (ReachTEL): Channel Seven reports the monthly ReachTEL result has Labor leading 52-48 – primary votes will have to wait until the morning. The Seven report also relates that 26% of respondents support the Prime Minister’s decision on imperial titles with 45% opposed, and that only 19% expect to be better off financially over the next year compared with 43% who expect to be worse off, respectively down five and up four on three months ago. More on this poll either this evening or tomorrow.
UPDATE (Essential Research): A considerable move to Labor on Essential Research’s fortnightly rolling average, with the Coalition moving from 51-49 ahead to 51-49 behind. There are also two-point shifts on the primary vote, Labor up to 39% and the Coalition down to 42%, with the Greens steady on 9% and Palmer United down one to 3%.
GG
No doubt the boats mantra does well in WA for some reason.
I wanted to ask. What are your thoughts on napthine scrapping zone 2?
They are using the December galaxy poll which was clearly an outrider/rogue – especially in WA.
So Labor has fallen against an absurdly HIGH December figure
It is bad enough when walls, fences etc are defaced, but vehicles too!
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/teens-graffiti-cars-shops-in-challis-street-newport-20140331-35sbq.html
Transcript of Sky News
[The visits come in the wake of the latest Newspoll in The Australian which shows Labor is bleeding support in the west to both the Greens and the Liberals.
Primary support for the Coalition has risen to 46 per cent up from 41 per cent three months ago but it’s still down on election result of 51.2 per cent.
Labor’s support in WA has dropped from 36 per cent three months ago to 29 per cent but it’s the same as its election result.
The Greens have received a five per cent jump in support up to 15 per cent.
They had 9.7 per cent of the primary vote in WA at the election.]
Its all about how you spin it.
victoria,
The Libs have obviously realised that it was Public Transport what got them elected in the first place. So, decisons like this and the committment to remove some level crossings in the South East are bound to be popular especially in those marginal seats that saw them defeat Labor in 2010.
As always, read the fine print.
Also, a lot of fair evasion occurs in the city area. This might just be a surrender to those recalcitrants that won’t pay.
I’d also point out that the generosity does not seem to extend to Regions and rural areas. They must be wondering why their city brethren can get a tax cut and they get to have their services cut and TAFE colleges closed.
Personally, it will save me a couple of hundred dollars a year as I commute and use the trains regularly.
However, I do wonder how the service can sustain itself in the long term if users do not pay a fair fare for the service.
Fredex
It is indeed how you spin it
GG
Agree that it is a good move politically for the govt.
Also, Cant see how the system can be sustained into the future.
[Henry
Posted Sunday, March 30, 2014 at 11:49 pm | PERMALINK
BB all due respect mate, the bloody plane is lying on an ocean bed somewhere.
341
Rossmore
Posted Sunday, March 30, 2014 at 11:51 pm | PERMALINK
Bushfire … love your work generally, but the 370 at the US airbase Diego Garcia is a conspiracy too far.]
Just an echo from last night…
“Conspiracy theories” have a habit of sometimes becoming true.
Then they are not conspiracy theories, but real events. Eventually they become accepted as almost predictable, part of the routine.
They leave the pages of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, and become part of the culture.
Who would have believed that ANYTHING like a bomb in the basement (tried that… didn’t work), a demolition crew (didn’t try that, but a bog job), much less a gaggle of amateur pilots with no direct flying experience in the associated aircraft, could bring down not one, but BOTH of the Twin Towers, in a little over one hour?
Who would believe that photons could be in two places at the same time?
Or, going back, that the Earth was not created in 7 days? Or than man and the apes were descended from the same common ancestor?
Or that Tony Abbott would be elected Liberal leader, and then Prime Minister after getting rid of two Labor PMs, one of them twice?
Or that the US would send a huge army to the Middle East, take on and defeat Saddam hussein and fight a smaller but still expensive war simultaneously in Afghanistan?
Don’t ask in the current timeframe of 2014. Put yourself back to 2000, the last year of Clinton’s presidency, and ask yourself these questions.
All the above now seem so inevitable as to be rather mundane (no matter how distasteful or unpleasant). “Yeah so what? Of course they happened. what’s your point?”
That acceptance is my point.
Proposing my hypothesis that Diego Garcia was the target of the MH-370 diversion in flight path can’t be conclusively dismissed simply by calling it “a conspiracy theory”. Something unlikely and weird. Unlikely and weird things do happen all the time, and we then proceed to convert them from “unlikely and weird” to a footnote in history.
No matter how stupid and way-out it may seem, I guarantee youse all that if it turns out to be true (for the record, I think it’s unlikely, but there is some evidence to support it), withing six months you’ll all accept it as just about inevitable, certainly as routine.
We tend to do that as humans: to take our present situation or predicament, and then work back, coming to the conclusion that it had to end up this way. there was no other option.
It’s how we cope with Life’s little surprises.
Greensborough Growler@55
A lot of people who are apparently fare evading in the CBD have travelled in on MYKI in the morning and it does not cost them anything to hop on a tram in the CBD. They just can’t be bothered touching on and off.
I have never liked zones and think it would be better to charge point to point with a daily cap. I don’t know about the daily cap, but Singapore charges point to point and it works. The present system hits people undertaking a short journey too hard. Zone boundaries are also arbitrary and create anomalies.
Re Fredex @41 – if those numbers quoted are from typical Australia-wide polls (with about 2,000 voters) then the number of WA voters included would be about 11% of the sample – about 220 voters. The margin of error for such a small sample would be about 15, i.e. 6.7%, so I don’t think we can draw much from those numbers – ALP at 41% and 46% would be within the margin of error.
[Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten will plead today with the WA public to stick with the coalition and Labor amid fears the Palmer United Party’s wall of advertising is wooing over disengaged voters.]
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/22265757/big-two-fear-palmer-success/
Both leaders are in WA today apparently.
My understanding is that if you use the Public Transport system you have access to all parts throughout the day for a simple daily fare. This is about $11 per day.
So, strictly speaking, people who don’t touch on trams or buses after using the trains in the morning are not fair evading as they are not gaining any financial advantage by not touching on and off throughout the day.
I’m uncertain how they come up with their figures that people are evading fares. I alwys thought it only related to freeloaders.
I suppose it will be a week or longer after the weekend before we get an indication of a result?
BB
The problem is that even if you Diego garcia is true, neither you or I or our grandkids will be alive long enough to know of it. Some historians/archivists in 2114 may investigate it but until then forget it.
Latest on missing plane
http://www.theage.com.au/national/missing-malaysia-airlines-plane-australian-aircraft-spots-four-orange-objects-at-sea-20140331-35s9l.html
Tony Abbott is governing by brainfart and media manipulation.
The interpretation of the latest Newspoll that says Labor is tanking in WA, despite not losing any support there since the election, and that the Liberals are triumphant, despite losing 5 or 6 points in their support is a case in point.
Knighthoods are another.
The PPL is another.
The Education switcheroo of last year… ditto.
Bolt’s Law, Financial Advisors laws, and related back-tracks and flip-flops… uh huh.
It’s a bad way to run a country, by just making shit up and blurting it out.
Abbott has always been a mucker-upper. He just can’t help himself. He likes to get into as much trouble as he can, then to charm (or smarm) his way out of it. He’s been like that all his life (I have friends who went to school with him).
“It’s sometimes better to seek forgiveness than ask permission,” is his motto. It has to be. It’s been his lifelong modus vivendi.
He doesn’t confine his antics to just Lefties (although they do bear the brunt). When he gets bored, he’ll turn on his mates. Peter Reith found that out when Abbott dudded him for Presidency of the Liberal Party. Ditto Turnbull, and next day, Hockey, when Abbott got the leadership.
Abbott once said we shouldn’t believe him unless we had it in writing. So when it was written down that he didn’t want to reintroduce knighthoods, he started parsing his own words, like an oily lawyer, and in the meantime had the written record expunged over at News Corp.
But someone who forces you to always read between the lines for hidden meanings, who always leaves a back door for himself to scamper through, who always, in effect, tricks his victims into believing him, then grins and has a bit of a gloat when he puts one over them, will eventually become universally distrusted. First by the other side. Then by his own.
He wants us to accept that he never said what he plainly did say. Maybe he was promising something that was different to what we thought he was promising. That’ll inspire confidence in his words. For sure, Tony.
Peter Hartcher wrote a few months ago that we should always take Abbott at his word. If his words turned out to be trickery, then we could vote him out next election. How naive was that? (Well, it wasn’t naive… even Hartcher with all his propensity for hero-worship and man-love knows Abbott is a natural-born swindler. It’s how Abbott gets his kicks: anarchy)
Who would trust him now?
Amanda Vanstone today fired a warning shot over Abbott’s bows:
“Pull your head in Tony, or else it’s going to get harder.”
It wouldn’t have been her own self-generated idea. Someone – perhaps more than one person – has had a word in her ear.
Three long years to go, and Tony’s already getting bored. He’s also learning that he’s the boss, and he can get away with a lot.
It’s a bad combination of narcissm, sociopathy, self-indulgence, anarchy and Whirling Dervishism that we are seeing played out.
Abbott also thinks he’s politically bullet-proof. Can do no wrong.
But gee, there’s a lot of wreckage in his wake.That seem like “wrong”to me. And a lot of wreckage ahead too, if someone doesn’t do something about it, quick.
He won’t be able to stop. That’s what you get with crazies. The more they do it, the more they need to do it. They just don’t get the rush they used to get.
Expect Abbott to become even more unhinged as he increase his own dose.
Self-medication never ends well. Someone will have to stop him before he wrecks everyone’s joint.
BB 58 Ta for that clarification. There are no end of creative theories on the dissappearance of 370, like the beaut one about it being a cunningly planned hijack that evaded radar by flying just behind a Singapore Air flight to Europe and then diverting off to land in some remote Al Queda controlled airfield in Turkmenistan.
I’lm sticking with the bottom of the Indian Ocean theory as still the most likely.
BB
[Self-medication never ends well. Someone will have to stop him before he wrecks everyone’s joint.]
Who will be that “someone”?
Dolly Downer’s new job is entirely predictable. Of course his dad, Sir Alec (a knighthood for Dolly too, perhaps?), was also High Commissioner to the Court of St James, from 1964 to 1972, leaving a somewhat lonely little Dolly languishing as a boarder at Geelong Grammar School.
Orange objects?
Bloody asylum seekers. Those lifeboats are costng us a fortune.
AND they can’t even sail ’em straight.
I’m getting confident enough about this search to say, “Mark my words…”.
I could have used the phrase every day for the last three weeks as exciting, breaking news, evaporated in rubber duckies, old mattresses, half-sunken containers and other ordinary flotsam and jetsam.
Mark my words: as soon as I start using “Mark my words” they’ll find the bloody thing.
Re BB @66 – I simply assume that anything that Tony Abbott or any of his front benchers say are lies, half-truths and disinformation. You can’t believe anything they say. Any commitments they make only apply until they change their minds. Heard Joe Hockey interviewed on Radio National this morning laying the ground for the Government to back away from its commitment to the NDIS.
[I’lm sticking with the bottom of the Indian Ocean theory as still the most likely.]
Well that’s better than “No way possible” (not sure if that was you who put it that way).
Every crazy thing is impossible… until it happens.
[Re BB @66 – I simply assume that anything that Tony Abbott or any of his front benchers say are lies, half-truths and disinformation.]
So do many others, but not enough just yet.
If it happens too soon then they’ll just get rid of him.
Then they might put someone normal into the job.
That would be bad for Labor.
[BB
Self-medication never ends well. Someone will have to stop him before he wrecks everyone’s joint.
Who will be that “someone”?]
Vanstone’s column this morning does not rule out someone from his own side. In fact it practically rules that in.
Caligula (does a reference to Roman emperors fall under Godwin’s Law?) was apparently not too bad a ruler for the first six months. Then he went feral as he got to realise he had unfettered power.
I don’t think Abbott believes he has unfettered power, but he enjoys performing a wedgie against his own side as much as against his opponents.
He’s always been exactly like this. He’s a natural stirrer. So is Boris Johnson, but he does it with more elan.
Abbott’s trouble is that he also craves being taken seriously. That’s his weakness.
Today’s Petty cartoon on the letters page of The Age is a cracker.
Abbott as the court jester of cabinet.
Housing bubble fears. Prices could fall 10 to 20 percent
http://www.theage.com.au/business/the-economy/housing-bubble-fears-property-prices-could-fall-10-to-20-per-cent-20140331-35sg7.html
Excellent move by Abbott to appoint Dolly to the UK. Now we don’t have to see him commentating on every political story when they need a Lib talking head.
Steve777
There are 4 Newspolls in the Oct-Dec quarter and 4 in Feb and March of the last quarter [January scored a miss].
How many people are polled each time?
IF, perhaps a big if, we assume the Feb/March numbers for WA are reasonably accurate with a quota being, I think, about 14%, then the ALP at 29% is very close to 2 quotas and the Greens with 15% have one quota.
The ALP scored 1.86 quota in the last election and with 9.5% of the vote the Greens got .66 of a quota.
It could be, presuming Newspoll numbers, that the Greens preferences will decide the 2nd ALP quota.
Swing Required
Have a lovely time!
Interestingly, i emailed the HEMP candidate last night on their position regarding Carbon Price and MRRT since i couldn’t find much on the website and don’t like to assume anything about their politics.
He got back to me this morning and its obvious they wont be voting to repeal Carbon Pricing, though he didnt address MRRT directly.
He will just be replaced with another tory bubblehead diogenes. Or a bitter ex ALP hack like Michael Costa.
29% is 2 quotas.
However, as is clear from the figures for the last election the primary vote figures for the House of Reps don’t necessarily translate into votes in the Senate for the majors (or at least the ALP).
As for Saturday’s Senate by-election – I’m struggling to work out how these figures are going to be useful in making any predictions on the outcome. Quarterly figures tell you very little about what is happening now; the polling is always done with regards a House of Reps vote “if an election were held tomorrow” to decide government; the sample sizes are small etc etc.
The quarterly figures are supposed to be more amenable to analysis (supposedly being more reliable with the larger aggregated sample sizes and averaged over a longer duration to smooth out short term noise), but I frankly don’t believe either that the ALP were at 36% at the end of last year in WA (theoretically having gone from 29% to 36% and back to 29% – yeah, right), or that the Greens have gone from 9% to 15% – is that all shark cull protest vote?
The only thing I think those quarterly WA figures tell us is that the most likely outcome now that some of the air has leaked from the Lib tires is 3 Libs, 2 ALP, 1 Green, but that is hardly news.
I would have expected the polling companies to do some specific Senate voting intention polling in WA with decent sample sizes in the lead up to the election – maybe we’ll get some this week, or maybe the polling companies don’t want to spend the money playing the mugs’ game that is predicting a Senate vote, and worse an unprecedented Senate by-election where it’s very easy for the pollsters to end up being quite wrong.
Fred
The December quarter WA poll was clearly out of wack. There was no rational reason for a 10% swing to the ALP. It was bonkers. The Qld swing was about 1.5%, and WA and Qld follow a similar trajectory.
By December 2013, buyer remorse was starting to set in but it was NOT at 10% swing levels. Therefore I always assumed that the WA result was a rogue. It would only make a small impact on the overall Labor TPP, well within the margin of error.
We are NOW getting into more realistic territory and it seems a 5% swing is on the cards in WA as well as the rest of the country.
It is still a week away but it looks as if it will be 2 ALP, 1 green and probably 3 Lib in the Senate.
[Proposing my hypothesis that Diego Garcia was the target of the MH-370 diversion in flight path can’t be conclusively dismissed simply by calling it “a conspiracy theory”. Something unlikely and weird. Unlikely and weird things do happen all the time, and we then proceed to convert them from “unlikely and weird” to a footnote in history.]
Doesn’t stop me thinking that’s bullshit bill.
Henry
But at least his replacement might not be yet another embarrassing Croweater; between Dolly, Minchin and Vanstone, we have altogether too many obnoxious South Aussies plaguing our media.
Just realized about the life boats.
I hope to bloody Christ there are no dead AS on board
Why hasn’t Abbott found the plane yet?
WA by election. Abbott and Shorten gear up for WA battle
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/wa-byelection-abbott-shorten-gear-up-for-wa-battle-20140331-35spj.html
Jackol
[ clear from the figures for the last election the primary vote figures for the House of Reps don’t necessarily translate into votes in the Senate for the majors (or at least the ALP).]
At the last election in WA the ALP got 28.76% in the Reps and 26.59% in the Senate.
The Libs/Nats/LibDems got considerably more in the Reps than they did in the Senate, about 4-5% more [its a bit hard to lump the COALition types together].
I’m sort of wishin’ and hopin’ and half expecting, at this stage a 3-2-1. result.
The Greens got 9.74% and 9.49% respectively.
Fredex “Greens are likely to be overstated because the survey isn’t from the week or two leading into an election it is a 3 month period. Almost always the Greens poll better the further out from an election. So a result of 12 over 3 months (with all other things being equal) probably means a 13&12&11. Of course this is an unusual situation but I think it is likely they will do worse at an election than their 3 month average.
Have a Swing
If you are still around Costa Rica is a great country, but be careful. I loved it, trying very hard with forests etc
Hockey carries on as if Labor was the only government on earth to have ever run up a deficit since the GFC. It’s a pity that those in need most, the sick & elderly, children, the environment, low paid & casual workers will all suffer the most in his vain attempt to create a surplus.
There is to my knowledge not one example of a right wing government instigating economic reform that has disadvantaged the 1-2% who are the wealthiest in our society.
When Hockey decrees we all need to do the heavy lifting he’s not talking about the Rinehart’s of this country. He’s just moving us closer to a plutocracy.
You can add Christopher Pyne to that mix too diogenes…
So many of them with a plum in their gob, they really do give SA a bad name. Must be the no convict background born to rule mentality.
[The Greens got 9.74 and 9.49 respectively.]
No, the Greens got 9% in the 2013 WA election did they not?
Woops my comment 91
Swing Required sorry but still have a great time in Costa Rica
[So many of them with a plum in their gob]
In my experience Adelaide people tend to speak like that anyway.
AEC site
WA 2013
Reps Greens…9.74%
Senate Greens…9.49%
Honestly the accent shouldn’t be an issue, it’s just the godawful things that Minchin and Pyne and Bernardi and Downer say (and do) that make them complete prats in my eyes.
Vanstone can’t help being a partisan warrior, but at least she occasionally betrays shreds of humanity.
fredex – I wouldn’t worry about Centre, he’s just demonstrating his ‘leet rounding skillz for us.
CFMEU fined 1.25 million dollars
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/cfmeu-fined-125m-over-grocon-emporium-stoppages-20140331-35spk.html