Galaxy: 50-50 (plus quarterly Newspoll breakdowns)

The first Galaxy poll since the federal election finds nothing in it, while Newspoll’s quarterly breakdowns suggest the swing is weakest in the state where voters head to the polls on Saturday.

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%.

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.

2,028 comments on “Galaxy: 50-50 (plus quarterly Newspoll breakdowns)”

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  3. @Steve/1549

    The difference is “wealthy” bit, wages between low income and high income are still a large gap.

    Of course the wealthy have to buy stuff, but so does the non-wealthy.

  5. For what it’s worth, I suspect those on here wishing Ludlam away are going to be extremely disappointed, with the Greens achieving near a quota in their own right.

    3 Liberal, 2 Labor and 1 Green I suspect.

  6. If you believe that the lower your earnings, the higher the percentage of tax you should pay – then you support the GST.

    If you don’t believe that the lower your earnings, the higher percentage of tax you should pay, and you support the GST – then you are a NUMBSKULL!

  7. matt31
    I am by no means a Greens voter but I do think that Scott Ludlam is a worthy Senator. Just as was Andrew Murray of the Democrats.

  8. Bolt had apparently been so upset with the verdict that he had contemplated silencing himself.

    A martyr complex was the result of that wallowing contemplation

    narcissism 101

  9. ziod

    Let’s use an example for the dummies.

    Bloke A earns $100k spends $20k i.e. $2k GST = taxed at 2%.

    Bloke B earns $20k spends $10k i.e. $1k GST = taxed at 5%.

    Poor B is taxed 2.5 times higher than A.

    The stupidity….mindboggling 😆

  10. I don’t think Medibank Private has any “members”. They only have customers and the Govt owns the whole thing. There was a report the other day by the 94 year old guy who started it up, and he said it is wrong for the Commonwealth to get paid for selling it.

    But that was because the Feds only put seed money into it and Medibank Private paid it all back. Therefore in his mind the Feds do not morally own it because they didn’t pay for it. They certainly own it legally though and have every right to sell it and keep the money.

  12. The double dipping (GST on top of the fuel excise) was offset by reducing the excise at the time the GST was introduced. This was done as part of the deal with the Democrats to get the GST through the Senate. GST commencing 1 July 2000

    The excise stopped being indexed for inflation in 2001

  13. Phil, there is a copy of a minute prepared for the Fraser Government floating around…I”ll see if I can remember where
    i saw it…raised doubts about the marketability of the Commonwealth interest…

  14. Ludlam is the most sensible Greens MP.

    I actually think it’s Greens supporters who should be most hoping he is re-elected, because if he isn’t, then the next Greens leader is likely to be SHY, and that won’t be good for the party.

  15. Centre

    Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2014 at 9:10 pm | Permalink

    ziod

    Let’s use an example for the dummies.

    Bloke A earns $100k spends $20k i.e. $2k GST = taxed at 2%.

    Bloke B earns $20k spends $10k i.e. $1k GST = taxed at 5%.

    Poor B is taxed 2.5 times higher than A.

    The stupidity….mindboggling

    thanks for saving me the trouble

  16. Just further @ 1559

    In the real world, B would spend all his $20k ($2k GST)therefore is taxed at 10% whereas A would spend $50k tops ($5k GST) therefore is taxed at 5%.

    The lower income earner pays twice as much tax as the higher income earner.

    Yep, wonderful. No wonder the high income earners have multiples when they think of the GST 😆

  17. [“Mrs Batty is on TV frequently to promote the charity she’s started up.”

    Obviously she’s not ready for it.]

    No-one is ready for what she’s gone through but she’s trying to find some meaning in it so more power to her.

    I know quite a few people who have done similar things and it’s helped them and done a lot of good.

  20. Income bracket creep has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of, if you go up an income tax bracket then you only pay the increased tax on all earnings above the thresh hold.

    Articles I’m reading on it remind me of a mate that refused a (quite large) pay rise because it would have pushed him into the top tax bracket. Clearly progressive tax ignorance is quite a thing.

  22. Jimmyhaz

    You are still better off if you receive a higher income that puts you into a higher tax bracket than not receiving the pay increase at all 😯

  23. Diogenes

    [No-one is ready for what she’s gone through ]

    I cannot even begin to imagine just 1% of the horror she must deal with.

  27. [If you don’t believe that the lower your earnings, the higher percentage of tax you should pay, and you support the GST – then you are a NUMBSKULL!]

    This seems to be a bigger group than I would have predicted.

  28. Income bracket creep has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of

    If you’re critiquing Gittins’ argument you’ll need to do a lot better than that.

    The obvious point is that the thresholds are fixed values – they don’t automatically index with CPI over time, so automatically in real terms (just talking CPI increases), the thresholds are reducing every year, and Gittins’ argument is that this process impacts significantly more, proportionally, on lower income earners than on higher income earners.

  30. Jimmyhaz

    Not right.

    If your taxable income is $37,000 you pay 19c for each $1 over $18,200

    If your taxable income is $37,001 you pay 3,572 plus 32.5c for each $1 over $37,000

  32. lefty e

    If I didn’t know better I’d say Downer asked for $60K to help out with a few emails and wouldn’t help the other guy because he wasn’t going to get paid.

    But we know that just couldn’t be true.

    It’s not like Downer is a totally shameless scumbag. 😐

  36. Given Parkinson’s lack of accuracy in predicting budgets one year ahead, I’m not placing much store in this prediction.

    [Addressing the Sydney Institute on Wednesday, Dr Parkinson detailed a bleak budget outlook in which there would be no return to surplus in a decade, even if “bracket creep” through wage inflation was allowed to push up the average tax rate on full-time workers from 23 to 28 per cent. ]

  37. Diogs

    You could have a flat rate of tax IF an appropriate deduction was allowed for cost of living expenses.

    We don’t – therefore thresholds are actually necessary.

    The most progressive tax system of all is company tax. A flat rate of tax BASED on net profit.

    Nobody could expect the Reject Shop to pay the same amount of tax as a Woolworths, there’d be no Reject Shop. The same should really apply with individuals to enable them to get ahead 😎

  38. briefly at 1569 linked to a fascinating article on the history of Medibank Private.

    Thank you for that, it showed me what I was missing. The question of members rights is therefore still partly unresolved, but will need someone with deep pockets to fight for them.

    It sounds like one of those legal arguments where the Govt says “we extinguished those rights” in one sentence and then loudly proclaims they never existed in the next sentence.

  39. Prof Wallerstein (Binghampton U)looks at the rise of “Libertarian “Politics in the Repub Party and the role of Senator Rand Paul as a centre of the idea in the USA

    _________________
    A new idea inside the tradional conservative Repub. Party ,”libertarianisn” has an clear opposition to the
    state”…. ,and has ideas about civil liberties that conflict with”security”politics

    He is also of a view that a total isolationist position is what the US requires in world affairs
    For example,,,re the current crisis over Ukraine he believes that the US should have no policy at all on the Crimea…and that it is of no alue or concern to the US what happens there
    remarkable policies after several generations of US imperial policies in which military intervention was universal

    http://www.iwallerstein.com/commentaries/

  40. Jackol

    Does the government ever update its income tax brackets? It seems impossible that the current ones have been in place since its implementation.

  41. RE WA Result
    _____________
    Several polls suggest a greatly increased Vote for Ludlam of the Greens,with almost a quota in their own right

    A great shock for those who have said “RIP Greens ” on Pb
    could someone have a sedative(or large brandy ) on hand on Sat night for Centre who constantly reads the final prayers over the Greens…to no avail

  42. Jimmyhaz – they do, but they use it as a song and dance act to claim they are reducing taxes, when in fact most of the time they’ve only really been correcting for inflation.

    As Gittins points out, Hockey is not scheduling any threshold increases in his projections, for obvious reason – he has to take what revenue increases he can get, and if bracket creep is the way that happens he will take it.

    But nothing comes for free, and relying on bracket creep has implications on the fairness of our income tax system.

  43. Bracket creep means we are basically heading towards a flat tax rate.

    We have been for many years.

    Re earlier discussion: bloke A earns $70,000 per annum. He is in the PAYE system. He earns an extra dollar. He pays an extra 34 cents in tax.

    Bloke B earns $1,000,000 per annum. He earns an extra dollar. Does he pay an extra 45 cents in tax, as per the top marginal rate? There’s a good chance that he doesn’t. His effective overall tax rate could well be less than that of bloke A.

  46. …which is why my tax plan which enables the current tax deductions, but a new, overriding rule, that you have to pay a minimum rate of tax of x% even after deductions are applied.

    I reckon 15% or so would be a reasonable minimum but this could be worked out by the boffins.

  49. Centre:

    You have to admit that Ludlam is one of the few sensible Greens MPs in the federal parliament. He isn’t prone to bouts of emotional hysteria like most of his party colleagues, and is always calm and measured in his committee representations.

    I’d prefer federal parliament rid itself of the likes of SHY and Rhiannon before Ludlam.

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