Post-budget polling has emphatically confirmed a second major shift in public opinion since the election, the first being a strikingly early dip in the new government’s fortunes in November, leaving the opposition with a narrow lead when the dust had settled. With every pollster but ReachTEL having produced results in the wake of last Tuesday’s budget, the latest landslip looks even bigger than the first, and it sends the Coalition into territory that was all too familiar to Labor during its tumultuous second term in office. The damage was done by Newspoll, Nielsen and Morgan, with a small amount of the edge taken off by more moderate results from Galaxy and Essential Research. Even so, Labor now has a lead on the primary vote for the first time since BludgerTrack opened for business in late 2012, even taking into account that the Greens have retained a healthy share of the vote, perhaps finding a new equilibrium with their head just above double figures. Also continuing to make hay out of the exodus from the Coalition is the Palmer United Party, which this week reaches a new high of 7.0%.
No less spectacular is the latest update on leadership ratings, for which near-identical sets of data have emerged this week courtesy of Newspoll and Nielsen. The slump in Tony Abbott’s standing which had become evident over the previous fortnight has continued apace, to the extent that I have had to increase the range of the y-axis on the net satisfaction chart to accommodate it. This puts Abbott at a level Julia Gillard would only have known in a particularly bad week. Even more encouragingly for Labor, Bill Shorten’s ratings are on an upward swing, putting him back into net positive territory after three months below par. What had previously been a steady narrowing trend in Tony Abbott’s lead on preferred prime minister has sharply accelerated, to the extent of putting Shorten substantially ahead – an uncommon achievement for an Opposition Leader.
The state projections this week see the distinction in state swings even out, most notably in the case of Queensland where the swing to Labor got out of hand for a few weeks there. A considerable influence here was the latest Nielsen breakdown, which provided the first presentable set of figures I had seen for the Coalition in Queensland for some time. This may suggest that the budget backlash in that state was muted by the fact that Labor had less slack to take up, although there is no doubt also a large element of the statistical noise to which state breakdowns are inevitably prone. The upshot is that the Coalition’s position on the Queensland seat projection actually improves by four seats this week, testament in part to the state’s super-abundance of marginal seats. Offsetting this are bumper gains for Labor in other states – four seats in New South Wales, putting Bennelong, Gilmore and Macquarie on the table in addition to all the seats lost in September; three in marginals-starved Victoria, adding Casey and Dunkley to the more familiar targets of Corangamite, Deakin and La Trobe; and one each in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.
In other BludgerTrack news, you now have the chance to put Labor’s poll surge in somewhat broader perspective thanks to the retrospective poll tracking displayed on the sidebar, which at present encompasses the previous three terms, with plans to go back to the start of the Howard era in due course. For this you can think the sleuth work of Kevin Bonham, who has provided me with Nielsen data going back to 1996. Taking into account the more readily accessible archives of Newspoll and Morgan, this should eventually give me three pollsters to play with over the totality of the intended period. For the time being, the display encompasses the familiar poll aggregate from the previous term; the first term of the Rudd-Gillard government, which also includes Essential Research and a smattering of Galaxy to supplement the three aforementioned pollsters; and the Howard government’s final term in office.
Rossmore&1597
Education standards will fall under this government, in all fields.
Mikehilliard … thanks.
I weep at the death by a thousand cuts of the public TAFE system. The rot started in Victoria under the last ALP State Gov who were bewitched by Treasury bright sparks into thinking a private TAFE market was the answer to skills shortages. It has created a whole army of private education rent seekers desperately trying every trick to squeeze money out of public education.
The TAFEs with their long and valued focus on supporting disadvantaged students have been rolled by this tsunami. The only public TAFES that will survive are those that adopt the approach of the private providers and focus on profiteering from their students.
They’ll start on secondary education next.
Soon ‘public education’ will be a sad distant memory.
I cant understand why the ALP doesnt draw a line in the sand and issue policies committing to stop this madness.
[lefty e
Posted Friday, May 23, 2014 at 10:35 pm | PERMALINK
#Galaxy Poll QLD Federal 2 Party Preferred: L/NP 52 (0) ALP 48 (0) #auspol
If my memory serves me: thats a 5% swing to ALP since Sept 2013?]
Bludgertrack currently has the swing in QLD at 7.6%.
What poodle doesn’t say is that he is destroying TEQSA, neutering the gatekeeper tasked with maintaining standards. So soon the private colleges may be able to offer any old rubbish which will be at least subsidised funded by the taxpayer.
That $60k ‘investment’ in Ms Abbott is looking like the bet of the century!
[1601…..mikehilliard]
Learning will always be less under a Liberal Government
Lenore Taylor seems to have become quite the full blown lefty since joining The Guardian. I like it.
[1596….Darn]
The historical precedent must still favour the Libs, but nevertheless I think it’s losable. They have shown an amazing capacity to get things wrong.
Rossmore,
Carr government minister, John Aquilina, ardently continued the push to greatly increase the % of TAFE students studying with private providers, a “reform” which began in earnest with Metherill/Greiner.
Then this bogus “level playing field” competition was used as a weapon to explode the casual teachers’ portion of total classroom hours from 30% to around 70%, a false economy of the worst kind. Moreover, the bonus for Labor’s NSW Right faction was that it significantly diminished the resistance power of the TAFE Teachers union, from whose ranks had risen some of the most effective NSW Teachers Fed leaders, such as Max Taylor in the 1980’s.
I would imagine most of the conservative percentages would be wasted on large majorities in rural seat, unless you get a situation where it’s independents vs LNP. It’ll be the Brisbane marginals that will be quite tight.
I can’t fathom how it’s possible to accurately model a meaningful Queensland 2PP when there’s already a PUP seat now and potentially more next election. PB’s with psephological expertise might be able to clarify this for one benighted as moi.
New thread.
[Henry
Lenore Taylor seems to have become quite the full blown lefty since joining The Guardian]
Which illustrates the suffocating impact Fairfax management must have had – probably still does.
Worth a repost
https://newmatilda.com/2014/05/23/whitehouse-denies-lobbying-pm-cant-recall-and-400-people-saw-it
Given that much of the private “TAFE” funding is provided by State Governments isn’t this something that the NSW ICAC should be looking at?
Anyone care to advise how a private citizen can make a referral to the NSW ICAC?
Yes the demise of TAFE is a great shame.
The entire education system in Australia has been in such a state of flux for several decades.
So many shonks. So much traducing of teaching standards.
The system needs some stability and commitment to support from government. And it needs to be held to account for the quality of its teaching.
Having private colleges that pop into existence and promise the world without any consequence for passing any old crap standard and pretending that they are equivalent to the old TAFE system is a short road to ruin for Australia.
Education and training need to be seen as an essential component of our future prosperity, not a budget line item to be scrimped on to make state and federal budgets look better.
Rossmore@1597
There are already quite a few who have gone bust leaving students who have paid their fees stranded. And that includes some students from overseas so it does reputational damage to Australia.
An incoming Labor Govt should do a big crack-down on them to weed out the shonks. i.e. most of them.
Rossmore@1602
Skills shortages you say?
What skills shortages?
A bit problem is that employers seem to want the ‘perfect match’ these days and that is like chasing unicorns. They should settle for someone who has the basic training gained at Uni or TAFE and be prepared to train them in the specifics of their requirement.
What we have here folks is not a ‘skills shortage’ but an ‘unwillingness to train’.
Professor Peter Cappelli at Wharton University in the US has written a lot on this. See for example:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3027
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/07/09/does-a-skills-gap-contribute-to-unemployment/if-theres-a-skills-gap-blame-it-on-the-employer
HI MOFOS!
fredex
[Its in “The Land”.]
The shrinking TAFE system particularly rankles in the country.