Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

A move in Labor’s favour in Essential Research this week, but further questions find support for a tougher regime on disability support and the government’s handling of boat arrivals.

The only new federal polling result we look to be getting this week, the regularly fortnightly rolling average from Essential Research, has Labor up a point on two-party preferred to lead 53-47, as the bad result which saw them drop two points a fortnight ago washes out of the system. On the primary vote, Labor is up two to 40% and the Coalition down one to 39%, with the Greens and Palmer United steady on 9% and 6%. We also have Essential’s monthly leader approval ratings, which have Tony Abbott down one on approval to 34% and steady on disapproval at 58%, Bill Shorten down two to 36% and down one to 39%, and Shorten’s lead as preferred prime minister shifting from 40-36 to 37-34. Other questions find approval of the government’s handling of boat arrivals up two since March to 41% and disapproval down three to 35%, with 27% thinking the government too tough, 18% too soft, and 36% “taking the right approach”. Another result suggests paring back the disability support pension to be a relatively popular cost-cutting measure, with 46% supporting recent recommendations to that effect and 37% opposed.

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.

941 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

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  1. [Work To Rule

    It would appear that the reformist/progressive Joko Widodo has the more legitimate claim on victory and Prabawo Subianto claim is more bluster.

    It does raise the question if what will the establishment and the military do in response to seeing the country being led by an outside.

    Could Indonesia head down the same path as Thailand?]

    Jokowi is no outsider, he is the governor of Jakarta. He is a self made successful businessman with minimal or no links to the Suharto regime, unlike Prabowo. Indonesia has a relatively young population and Jokowi appeals to them more than does Prabowo.

    The Indonesian army would have a much harder time trying to declare martial law than has the Thai army.

  2. BW,

    Your boring, yet alluringly tiresome tirades against the Japanese for their pre 1945 atrocities may keep you warm at night. However, the Japanese have proven over the period since to be good world citizens, good trading partners to Australia and hugely instrumental in creating the comfortable lifestyle we Australians have learnt to enjoy.

    So, this never ending quest to find fault or critique their lack of actions doesn’t cut the mustard with people who are more than happy to leave the past behind and focus on what can be done for the future. I mean how many jabs up the arse do you reckon the Japanese need to endure before they are forgiven?

    The Chinese have their own motives for their antipathy to the Japanese. I really don’t think we need to be overly excited about their approval or disapproval.

    One good thing about the Japanese is at least they are not affiliated with the Catholic Church. You can take comfort in that, comrade.

  4. rossmcg:

    Yes, the mining boom is definitely winding down. It seems almost daily we’re seeing reports of mining projects cutting staff, delaying or shelving commencement, or ceasing altogether.

  8. Google translation of Kompas media article:

    [JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com – The results of a quick count while the Compass Research held presidential elections on Wednesday (07/09/2014), shows the pair-Joko Widodo Jusuf Kalla still superior to mate Prabowo-Hatta Rajasa.

    Based on sample data that is entered at 95.85 percent, Jokowi-JK Prabowo gained 52.37 percent and 47.63 percent of Hatta.

    Still based on a quick count, amounting to 70.31 percent of valid votes and invalid votes 0.94 percent.

    This figure is based on preliminary data, and not the official results. Official election results will be announced by the Election Commission.

    In the presidential election this time, R & D Compass takes a sample of 2,000 TPS. If the average number of registered voters in each polling station as many as 393 people, then sample its almost 786,000 people.]

  11. [Greensborough Growler
    Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2014 at 8:18 pm | Permalink

    BW,

    Your boring, yet alluringly tiresome tirades against the Japanese for their pre 1945 atrocities may keep you warm at night. However, the Japanese have proven over the period since to be good world citizens, good trading partners to Australia and hugely instrumental in creating the comfortable lifestyle we Australians have learnt to enjoy.

    So, this never ending quest to find fault or critique their lack of actions doesn’t cut the mustard with people who are more than happy to leave the past behind and focus on what can be done for the future. I mean how many jabs up the arse do you reckon the Japanese need to endure before they are forgiven?

    The Chinese have their own motives for their antipathy to the Japanese. I really don’t think we need to be overly excited about their approval or disapproval.

    One good thing about the Japanese is at least they are not affiliated with the Catholic Church. You can take comfort in that, comrade.]

    I have no argument with some of what you say. And you are correct about China behaving in its own national interest. If you had gone further and said that China, under Xi, is behaving badly, I would have agreed with that as well.

    But you have missed some key points which is probably not all your fault because the majority of the Australian MSM has missed it as well.

    Japanese prime minister worships at a shrine to Japanese war criminals, has changed the constitution to allow Japanese soldiers to fight abroad, has increased Japanese defence spending, has abrogated appointment procedures to himself and has used that abrogated power to appoint right wing militarists to key Japanese positions.

    Along with most of the MSM you have also missed the point that Abe was being totally and utterly hypocritical in his professions of his sorrow for past deeds.

    These professions are totally inconsistent with worshipping at the shrine of war criminals.

    Like most the MSM you also seem to have missed the main linkage here: that Abe is bent on entangling our idiot prime minister (and hence Australia) into a relationship which would make it difficult to avoid involvement in what would surely be an utterly ruinous enterprise for Australia – a general east asian war. Not one MSM jounralists, for example, has seen fit to note that Abe is busy helping various South-east Asian countries bolster their armaments.

    Another key point here, and again you have missed it, as have most of the MSM, is that our main trading partner is no longer Japan. It is China.

    The subtletlies of balancing a military relationship with one side while trying to maintain an economic relationship with the other side is something that is surely completely and utterly beyond Abbott.

    Finally, and since you have raised the wonderful topic of the Roman Catholic Church, no doubt your heart was warmed at the fulsome expressions of regret by Il Papa Francis in exactly the same week that he refused to provide the Royal Commission Into Child Sexual Abuse with the documentation which would have exposed the people in the Vatican who were protecting the child rapists.

    The good old Vatican Protection Racket remains in place.

    No doubt Abbott would say that that the Vatican is the best friend he ever had and that Francis has demonstrated both skill and honour.

  12. Greensborough Growler

    It has nothing to do with “living in the past” or letting bygones be bygones. Abbott praised what they did in the bloody war. A very big difference.

  13. Hasn’t the $550 already gone from every household will be $550 better off to now ON AVERAGE a household will be (you know the rest)

  17. GG’s favourite choo choo:

    https://www.google.com.au/search?q=image+of+yasukuni+shrine+locomotive&tbm=isch&imgil=fEbVS0AgYzqLFM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcRvLaaxxcuUKoVYHM96S4iwtQLBs3qTIb3qg623ROjAw8qtZ3Qe%253B225%253B140%253Bw8IMiIGtPBZz8M%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.ebay.com%25252Fsch%25252F%25253F%25252526_nkw%2525253DYasukuni%2525252520Shrine&source=iu&usg=___m1FkZVOsHeKfcYxL38s3ll8jVY%3D&sa=X&ei=Jxy9U7rmFoSvlQW8l4DQCA&ved=0CCIQ9QEwAg&biw=1024&bih=602#imgdii=_

  18. [@bofo_man: And here we have @TonyAbbottMHR showing the Japanese PM how to cock his leg and piss on Australia http://t.co/QNTPRdM9kZ #auspol]

    Whoever arranged that particular posing should be shot.

    Not just because RM Williams is synonymous with cattle in Victoria rather than mining sector frou frou, but WTF with the wide-legged stance?

  21. Sorry (well, not really) but I can’t forgive the Japanese for what they did to our soldiers and the civilian populations of Asia during the war.

    Unless they face their past, they are living a lie.

    Shinzo Abe, as BW puts it, worships at the shrine of war criminals. That’s enough for me.

    Take their money, ship them iron ore or whatever, but don’t ever trust them… that’s my motto.

    Not until they apologize unequivocally and honestly.

  22. AA:

    Synergy puts the per unit carbon price cost for residential customers in 14/15 at just under 2.5c. I’ll be watching my bill to see whether it actually decreases by this amount per unit once carbon pricing is repealed. I’m guessing that like Qantas, it’ll be a no, sorry.

  24. Boerwar,

    You are the one with the fixation on this train (it’s at least three or four mentions today). So how about you stick your strawman where the House of the Rising Sun does not shine. At least have the honesty to own your pathetic obsession instead of passing it off to me who has never seen it, has never visited it and basically doesn’t care about it.

    The Japanese are a great friend to Australia these days and most Australians recognise this.

    You should learn to deal with reality.

  25. [Shinzo Abe, as BW puts it, worships at the shrine of war criminals.]

    I’m pretty sure it was Abe who also denies the then Japanese govt kept so called comfort women, even though previous Japanese govts had apologised and offered compensation to nations whose women and girls had been abducted by the Japanese and put into sexual slavery.

  26. p

    I am reading ‘Tip and Run’ by Edward Paice, a rattling good retelling of the East Africa campaign in WW1.

    And, lo and behold, von Brandis makes an appearance as a Chief of Staff for one of the German commanders!

    Unlike the present Brandis person, this Brandis was very competent. He also spoke german with scottish accent, having had a scottish nanny.

    One wonders what Brandis and Abetz yarn about when they are in their cups.

  27. BB,

    You another one of those soldiers still fighting WW2?

    It’s over. It was in all the papers, comrade.

  28. Modern Japan is not responsible for what happened 70 years ago, but they are certainly responsible for accepting it did, and teaching it honestly to their children.

    Just like Australia and the treatment of our indigenous.

  30. [Greensborough Growler
    Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2014 at 8:48 pm | Permalink

    Boerwar,

    You are the one with the fixation on this train (it’s at least three or four mentions today). So how about you stick your strawman where the House of the Rising Sun does not shine. At least have the honesty to own your pathetic obsession instead of passing it off to me who has never seen it, has never visited it and basically doesn’t care about it.

    The Japanese are a great friend to Australia these days and most Australians recognise this.

    You should learn to deal with reality.]

    Aw, GG, I know that you don’t really care about the choo choo.

    The reason that locomotive is relevant is not that it pulled the first end-to-end train along a railway that cost over 100,000 dead, including many Australians.

    It is not even particularly relevant that those deaths were unnecessary or that many of them involved torture.

    What is relevant about that train is that it is a main exhibit in a shrine to war ciminals that Abe visits to worship.

    What is relevant about that train is that the Japanese are enthusiastic about its restoration.

    What is relevant about it is that it is a symbol of Japanese unwillingness to own their role in the second world war.

    This is not about the past. It is not even particularly about the present.

    It is about where Abe’s head is at. And it is about where Abbott’s head is at. Abbott’s dim-witted sleeve tugging admiration of ‘skill’ and ‘honour’ demonstrates that he does not get Abe.

    What should frighten you is what this might mean for the future.

  31. I always thought Brandis,from his appearance and name,was of Greek descent.

    Clearly I am wrong again, if he’s of German heritage.

  34. GG, I am shocked that you think it is ok for the Japanese prime minister should worship at the shrine of war criminals. I only wish you could have spoken to my father who spent 3 and a half years as a guest of the emperor building the Burma railway for that locomotive travelled down. He would have given you a tongue lashing in both English and the best ‘camp Japanese’ for your insensitive comments and total disregard of the sacrifice and hardship he and his mates went through so that trophy locomotive could be venerated as it is by the current Japanese.

    You are a true disgrace.

  36. [poroti
    Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2014 at 8:35 pm | Permalink

    Greensborough Growler

    It has nothing to do with “living in the past” or letting bygones be bygones. Abbott praised what they did in the bloody war. A very big difference.]

    Poroti

    I was unaware of that. Are you able to point me to what he actually said?

  40. Darn

    Here you go.

    [China blasts ‘appalling and insensible’ Tony Abbott for showing admiration for Japan and its wartime aggression

    Xinhua’s Canberra correspondent quoted Mr Abbott’s speech to a special joint sitting of Parliament.

    “We admired the skill and the sense of honour that they brought to their task although we disagreed with what they did. Perhaps we grasped, even then, that with a change of heart the fiercest of opponents could be the best of friends,” the prime minister said.

    The correspondent said that Mr Abbott “probably wasn’t aware that the Japanese troops possessed other “skills”, skills to loot, to rape, to torture and to kill”.]
    http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/china-blasts-appalling-and-insensible-tony-abbott-for-showing-admiration-for-japan-and-its-wartime-aggression/story-fnda1bsz-1226983386589

  41. poroti

    Oh.

    And how things move right along: from the article you link: ‘Afghanistanschutztruppe’

    The East African von Brandis was a lietenant of a schutztruppe field company composed almost entirely of Askaris.

  43. Normally I take the predictable outrage at Abbott’s ridiculous attempts at profundity here with a grain of salt, but that Japanese ‘skill and honour’ quote is a level or three up from his usual mind-numbing asshattery.

    Unit 731. Comfort women. Nanking. Pearl Harbor. A fucking alliance with Nazi Germany?! Yeah. Skill and honour in spades.

  45. Fulvio Sammut@881

    I always thought Brandis,from his appearance and name,was of Greek descent.

    Clearly I am wrong again, if he’s of German heritage.

    You could still be right.
    For example, WWII German Admiral Canaris was of Greek heritage.

  48. [Unit 731. Comfort women. Nanking. Pearl Harbor. A fucking alliance with Nazi Germany?! Yeah. Skill and honour in spades.]

    And don’t forget all of it something to be admired.

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