GhostWhoVotes relates that the monthly Nielsen poll in tomorrow’s Fairfax papers has Labor leading 52-48, after trailing 51-49 last time. The primary votes are 40% for the Coalition (down four), 34% for Labor (down one) and, remarkably, 17% for the Greens (up five). The latter is three points higher than the Greens have scored in any Nielsen result going back to the 2010 election (UPDATE: It turns out 15% is their previous record in Nielsen, and 16% is their record in Newspoll). Stay tuned for leadership ratings and state breakdowns.
Further results from the poll indicate strong opposition to the government’s policies with respect to the Racial Discrimination Act, with 88% disagreeing with the contention that it should be lawful to offend, insult or humiliate on the basis of race, as per the provisions of 18C of the act, and 59% opposed to George Brandis’s contention that people have the right to be bigots, with 34% supportive. Opinion on knights and dames is more finely balanced than might have been expected, with 35% supportive and 50% opposed.
UPDATE: The poll has Tony Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister down from 48-43 to 45-44, which equals the Newspoll of February 21-23 as the narrowest lead yet recorded (ReachTEL may or not be an exception, as I don’t track it due to its unusual methodology). Abbott is down two on approval to 43% and up one on disapproval to 50%, while Bill Shorten is up one to 43% and down one to 41%.
UPDATE 2: GhostWhoVotes has full tables. By far the most striking results are from Western Australia, where the Greens lead Labor 27% to 20% – remembering this is from a sample of 150 with a margin of error of 8%. The lesson I would take from this is that static from the WA Senate election is making federal poll results less reliable than usual just at the moment.
I must say the opening 4 posts on this thread were hilarious. 😀
What this latest poll shows is that clearly, the LNP has reached the high water mark.
What the high polling for the Greens show is that there is clearly an appetite for an alternative to the LNP, if only the ALP learn to tap into it, and quit their seemingly “me-too” attitude.
If the ALP are smart, they can easily relegate this Government to a one-term wonder.
Do they have the balls to do it though ?
mari
I’ve given up on the printer for the time being.
bemused’s suggestion to connect it directly to the router made sense until I realised when I’d downloaded the software for the printer for the other computer, I was in exactly the same situation, i.e. the other computer was further from the router than this one.
On the other hand, maybe I mean modem. I get them confused.
My son’s coming to see me during the week, so I’ll get him to sort it out, hopefully.
Other than that, it’s such a beautiful here, lots of cool sunshine, fabulous autumnal weather, that I’m heading out to the garden. The rain has made the weeds flourish.
Check ya later.
It probably was Tones’ bestest week. Merely bad instead of the usual god-awful. No lords and ladies, plant closures or Bigot Liberation Front battles, etc.
[If the ALP are smart, they can easily relegate this Government to a one-term wonder. Do they have the balls to do it though?]
Can they stop shooting themselves in the foot for long enough to do achieve that?
I hope so, otherwise the Greens and/or PUP will become the opposition.
[Greens: 23-26%
ALP: 34-35%
LNP: 32-33% (LNP get 49% of the 55+ vote)]
For the sake of ‘balance’, I’d like to remind PB that 49% is only just half of the 55+ people. We’re not all in our “Tony dotage”.
kezza
Routers are commonly part of Modem nowadays.
I was not happy when I saw the PM strutting in front of an “Open for Business” sign. Too much of a spiv-like “Make me an offer”. It also reminded me of Tony Windsor wondering what Tony would offer for sale when he went to Asia. Seems the answer is “I’m offering Australia for sale”.
[The “open for business” claim is as dishonest as it is stupid. If we listen to the blabber of Coalition politicians we may believe that in economic openness we have ranked down somewhere near Bolivia or Iran, but in fact Australia is one of the world’s most open economies. The conservative Heritage Foundation each year publishes for 178 countries its index of economic freedom.
Unsurprisingly, North Korea is at the bottom. Top ranking goes to Hong Kong, then Singapore, and Australia comes in at third spot, a long way ahead of the USA (12) and the UK (14). Both main parties are committed to economic openness.
Of course, bipartisanship does not indicate good policy. It could also be said that both Labor and the Coalition are too enthusiastic about bilateral trade agreements.
. . .
Part of the game in bilateral deals is for negotiators to offer tariff reductions on goods that never get traded (we can offer the Japanese duty-free entry of crocodile-skin baggage and they can offer us duty-free entry of orthotic snowshoes). Lots of bureaucrats in Canberra are employed in this meaningless task, just so politicians can sign-off on a list of trade concessions.
Understandably, economists have generally pointed out that Australia does far better out of general reductions in trade barriers than it does with bilateral deals. But for insecure politicians who like to be seen strutting the stage in one-on-one negotiations with world leaders, they just don’t offer the same pizazz.
It’s hard to see any significant benefit from the trade agreement with Japan. An 18 year timetable for reduction in beef tariffs — from 38 per cent to 20 percent — is hardly raising excitement among Australian beef producers. In any event, the Japanese Government has not ruled out compensatory financial assistance to its beef industry or even imposing quotas.]
https://newmatilda.com/2014/04/14/abbott-breaks-basic-rule-diplomacy
And also –
[On display in this, and in other international forums, has been Abbott’s lack of graciousness for what he has inherited from the previous government. For four years, since Abbott disposed Turnbull, we have had a stream of rudeness and loutish invective from Abbott and his close supporters in the Liberal Party. It would come at no cost for the Coalition frontbench and others to display some decency and good manners by acknowledging the contributions of those who have gone before them.
At the very least they could simply treat signing trade deals with the same neutrality as Truss did when opening a freeway that came to be completed on his watch. Indeed, an outbreak of good manners may even improve the Liberal Party’s miserable political standing.]
“@political_alert: Chief Coordinator of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, will hold a press conference at 12pm WST #MH370”
@abcnews: #Woolworths found to have breached #ACCC fuel dockets deal http://t.co/xnxXgeHLrv
Lizzie
I agree the lack of manners and decency is costing Abbott in the polls.
lizzie
Back when Andrews was a minister JTI had an hilarious blog on meeting Andrews. The line I remember was that a 15 minute meeting with Andrews will be the worst two weeks of your life.
Joint Standing Committee into Electoral Matters is coming to Hobart this Wednesday. Details and a link to my submission:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/jscem-comes-to-hobart.html
poroti
😀
SportsBet, Share market? What’s the diff?
[Market manipulation appears to be rife on the Australian sharemarket when compared to other major markets around the world, according to the country’s leading market researchers.
The dramatic price spikes which occur just before the markets close at 4pm – the strongest proxy of market manipulation – are being used to boost bonuses for rogue fund managers, the researchers claim.
The dramatic price movements occur in the last 15 minutes of trading each month, quarter and end of financial year and most likely relate to fund managers lifting their trading results which are measured on the key dates.
“They are getting money in all the time but instead of buying it every day they save it and buy it at the last minute to drive more demand,” chief executive of the federal government-backed Capital Markets Co-operative Research Centre, Michael Aitken, told The Australian Financial Review.
For example, on December 20 last year, $23 million was traded in the last 15 minutes for just three stocks, Village Roadshow, Ocean Gold and REA, most likely delivering a healthy Christmas bonus to the rogue fund managers.
On Friday, $23 million in trading occurred for the same three stocks over the entire day.]
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/australian-shares-are-being-manipulated-say-researchers-20140414-36m8p.html#ixzz2yp31TewN
Some suggestions for why the regions are hurting the Coalition’s numbers:
(1) PUP offers a safe haven for protest votes.
(2) 10,000 jobs lost in the coal industry alone.
(3) declining work as the mining boom development phase winds down
(4) a couple of billion dollars of taxpayers’ lolly, justified by a confected 18 month drought ‘crisis’, did nothing to address a capital cum liquidity crisis affecting much of the bush. This crisis was generated by easy money and bad investment decisions by farmers: $200 billion worth of agricultural equity carries a debt of $70 billion. (A mate of Joyce’s ‘owner’ of five properties has just been run off his home property because of debts of $30 million). Joyce targets the banks. Gimme a break.
(5) Xenophobia. The Chinese are coming to buy Australia’s farm. They easily have the lolly: $200 billion is a knock- down price and it is likely to be even cheaper as all the distressed loans come home to roost. This electoral impact is a direct consequence of Joyce’s populist dog whistling for the last six years. The World’s Greatest Retail Politician was simply TOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOD at the bullshit.
(6) Climate change. This is having a marginal but significant (if unevenly distributed) impact on farm incomes in various parts of Australia and has already caused some farmer to walk off their farms altogether.
(7) Liberal Dries are in the ascendancy and not the Rural Socialists. Consequently, a slew of decisions are actually hurting the Regions.
(8) The Greens have been effective in forming alliances with farmers against the fracking industry. Inter alia, it has finally come to the attention of some farming groups that they do not own the Nationals: the mining industry does. Farmers take hind tit every time.
(9) The Regions were led to believe that ALL their problems were due misgovernment by Rudd and Juliar. It turns out that this was Coalition crap. The Regions swallowed the crap and raised their expectations accordingly, but Joyce’s Golden Dawn has yet to arrive in any way, shape or fashion.
guytaur@257
I’ve not long put in fixed wireless (6 months ago) and I have a modem fixed to the wall and a router sitting on the desk.
Half the cost and ten times the speed of the copper. And VOIP.
Boewar
I hope you are right about the penny dropping for the bush. For the 40 years I have been voting I have heard rural and regional Australia whinge about Can’bra. Tory or labor in power it made no difference, they felt they were getting stiffed.
But with a few exceptions like Andren, Windsor and oakshott, they queued up every three years to vote coalition.
Hockey’s G20 target “triumph” was always a crock.
Now he’s out hectoring the rest of the world because they’re not doing what he thinks they should be doing.
Which is kind of funny given he has yet to deliver a budget and has yet to reveal what he is actually planning for this economy.
Does Hockey have any tone other than belligerent and hectoring?
Does the rest of the world find Hockey as unimpressive as we do?
@Kevin Bonham -244
I have heard of that trend, but I think it is sometimes overstated. Demographic changes are a lot more complex then a simple people get more conservative as they get older. Also, the political parties have changed quite a bit in their stances overtime and the demographics they target. In short, more nuance is needed.
The Greens are polling well in the age 25-39 bracket (meaning they are more than holding on to their young radicals from a decade earlier). It will be interesting to see how they do in the next age bracket over the next 10 years.
I don’t think the demographic changes will have hit the LNP yet; the baby boomer population bulge has been a pretty good insurance policy and they have targeted that group well. But in 20 years time, when the bulge starts to die off, I think things will get interesting.
I’d have though the next batch to move into the 55+ group would be better educated than the current crop. The Libs have always relied on ignorance to maintain power, perhaps they will lose some of that.
rossmcg
I think they will revert when it comes to the crunch.
If they still haven’t twigged that the thing that has really killed their export profits is a very high dollar generated by the mining boom investment inflows, then they will never twig.
Too bloody dopey.
If Bullock is the answer, what was the question?
If Bullock is the question, then the answer cannot possibly be Labor in its current state.
In ’07 I was campaigning for a rural ALP candidate and my duties included fielding many requests from country voters about broadband and climate change.
My answers were simple.
For the broadband issue I directed them to the Liberal website and invited them to read the fine print on page 3 of their broadband proposal. The fine print admitted that reception for most regional users would be poor to non-existent.
For climate change I referred people to the national Farmers’ Federation website which included a statement that climate change was the biggest challenge facing farmers today and, elsewhere on their site, an admission that ALP policies were far better for farmers than that of Howard/Abbott et al.
Yet the silly buggers still voted COALition a few weeks later – less of them than usual, all polling booths showed a swing to the ALP and Greens, but still large majorities.
I reckon its the ‘union thugs’ ethos that kept them in the COALition fold. The NFF, and the COALition, ran anti-union ads on the regional telly channels in the last week of the election.
Socially conservative – I wouldn’t dare suggest bigoted.
“@ABCNews24: Live: Opposition Finance spokesman Tony Burke speaking about the upcoming federal budget. Watch http://t.co/TTkTJ5G5Ba #auspol #ABCNews24”
Things ‘hot’ at the UN.
Burke good on attack. As usual
Attila the Hockey?
Way back in September, Emma Alberici wrote in favour of the Real NBN.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-09/alberici-can-the-coalitions-nbn-keep-pace-with-change/4931864
O’Farrell called before ICAC!
“@AustralianLabor: “…they made an election commitment that they would not be changing the pension and we intend to hold them to account on that.” @Tony_Burke”
CTaR1
Yep.
Just happened to come across a biography of Von Manstein the other day. One of his jobs was to deliver on one of Hitler’s WW2 presige projects: the siege of Fortress Crimea, regarded as the largest and most formidable ‘fortress’ of WW2.
Manstein duly succeeded and Stalin duly took it back.
Stalin awarded ‘Hero City’ status to just three Soviet cities: Leningrad, Stalingrad and Sebastopol.
By way of understanding history, the Crimea was dead easy to sort.
Sorting the national schizophrenia cobbled together by the Ukraine state will be far, far more difficult.
It is not as if common sense appears to be a highly-regarded commodity thereabouts.
And some won’t like this but another former Minister is backing Bob Carr on Gillard’s contacts with the Jewish community.
[ I’d have though the next batch to move into the 55+ group would be better educated than the current crop. The Libs have always relied on ignorance to maintain power, perhaps they will lose some of that. ]
The people hitting retirement age now are the “baby boomers”, so now the LNP has come up with an even better strategy than relying on ignorance – they can now rely on greed.
I do hope that Labor’s contribution to the policy debate we have to have on Australia’s various major structural issues with receipts and outgoings is going to be a bit better than slagging Hockey and Abbott for saying one thing and doing another.
fredex
I understand your frustration. I spent 4 years at an ‘Agricultural’ boarding school with students from all over the southern half of NSW.
I still know and am in contact with many of them – dumb as dog-shit on voting.
Well, it’s abundantly clear respondents are turning away from this Govts destructive and deceitful nature.
It’s also abundantly clear that respondents aren’t engaging with the ALP. Wasted opportunity.
Rex
And it is on that basis that many in Labor are calling for reform.
Haven’t seen nearly enough of Tony Burke in the media since the election.
MTBW
No, just need smart, common sense decision making.
Coalition 6% down on its election-winning stats – and that is even before the coming Massacre of the Innocents.
BTW, following the blow back on politician’s entitlements, be prepared for politician’s entitlements to take a hit.
By way of example.
The only entitlements that will not be hit will be the foreigners who own 90% of Australia’s mining industry.
Why we need to punish a whole lot of Australians in order to feed foreign profits is something I don’t quite understand.
Here is reportage re BOF
[In a surprise announcement, New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell has been called to give evidence tomorrow at the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s (ICAC) inquiry into a Sydney water firm.
The public inquiry into Australian Water Holdings (AWH) has heard the company corruptly obtained monies from Sydney Water for salaries and political donations.
Mr O’Farrell was originally listed as a witness from the end of April, but Counsel Assisting, Geoffrey Watson, said: “developments have made it necessary” that he appear sooner.
“From the outset I was in two minds as to whether or not Mr O’Farrell should be called,” he said.
“There have been things which have developed which make me think he should be”.]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-14/icac-barry-ofarrell-called-to-witness-stand/5387974
3 Hours to until war starts between Russia and Ukraine
I would add another reason for disquiet in the regions: there has been quite a few closures of regional manufacturing plants.
g
That is quite specific. On what basis do you make that prediction?
So, what did B’OF know? And when?
Bad moon tomorrow night.
I see a blood moon rising
Dumb decisions like Bullock.
Dumb decisions like ‘terminating the carbon tax’ rhetoric.
Dumb decisions like not committing to re-modelling the MRRT.
All no brainers…
bw
Comments about the deadline made by the Russian Foreign Minister about Ukraine’s deadline of taking action in the east.
That deadline is in 3 hours.
Rex Douglas@288
Wouldn’t matter how often Burke was in the media – you would still bellyache over something else.