GhostWhoVotes relates that a Galaxy poll, presumably to be published in the News Limited tabloids tomorrow, has Labor’s lead at 52-48, down from 53-47 at the last such poll. On the primary vote, the Coalition is up a point to 39%, Labor down one to 37%, the Greens up one to 11% and Palmer United down one to 7%.
Other questions posed by the pollsters elicited results that would be highly disappointing to the government under the circumstances. Bill Shorten leads Tony Abbott not only on “best at managing the economy”, by 43% to 36%, but also by 41% to 39% on “trust to stand up for Australia’s overseas interests”. Shorten also maintains a 41-35 lead as preferred prime minister.
UPDATE: Daily Telegraph graphic here, giving highest prominence to a question on “who has shown the most leadership after the MH17 disaster” out of Tony Abbott (48%), Barack Obama (17%) and David Cameron (7%), notwithstanding the doubts one might harbour about respondents’ capacity to provide a meaningful answer to such a question. Of more use is a question on whether the Prime Minister should ban Vladimir Putin from attending the G20 summit in Brisbane, which finds 45% in favour and 36% opposed, and a slightly stronger lean in favour among Coalition supporters.
UPDATE 2 (Roy Morgan): This week’s Roy Morgan multi-mode poll, combining the results of face-to-face and SMS surveying from 3296 respondents over the past two weekends, has the Coalition up four points to 38%, but Labor also up half a point to 39%. Palmer United is down from 7.5% to 5%, with the Greens also down a point to 10.5%. Labor is down two points on both respondent-allocated and previous election two-party preferred, its respective leads now at 54.5-45.5 and 54-46.
So much hatred on here…
Re-posted from previous thread…
Centre
So all the unemployed will need to work for the dole?
Great news…I’m sure the Greens will be ecstatic.
Reported in the msm no less.
The Greens Party support evidence-based policies.
The Greens has condemned plans by the federal government to force all jobseekers to work for the dole, saying there’s nothing to prove it’s effective.
Greens family and community spokeswoman Rachel Siewert says in a statement today the tough new rules fail to address barriers to employment such as lack of available jobs and training or discrimination.
Ms Siewert says the announcement is all about punishing people and that it’s nonsense to say people have to apply for at least a job a day if jobs aren’t available.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/greens-blast-work-for-dole-for-jobseekers-20140727-zxdc3.html#ixzz38fhzK900
Siewert’s media release: http://rachel-siewert.greensmps.org.au/content/media-releases/work-dole-expansion-continues-governments-attack-job-seekers
I don’t see why healthy young people shouldn’t work for the dole.
@1
Care to elaborate on that idiotic comment?
Rex
Work for Dole is a way of getting a slave Labor force. Its intended to undercut the minimum wage.
As said in previous thread by someone if there is a real job let there be real pay.
We will soon see a proliferation of rocks painted white as young people have to work for the dole.
Same old, same old.
New2This
You’re welcome to redeem the place, by spreading sweetness and light.
From last thread
DL
[The media of course also has an ethical duty to not pay too much attention to the these recent arrivals, lest their MO be shared in the region and encourage more boats, which is in no-one’s interests, except maybe lawyers’.]
This is a bizarre claim on a number of grounds.
1. It’s not an ethical duty of the media to become part of the existing regime’s policy narrative — well not in a country said to have n accountable government. If the media can be said to have an ethical duty at all, then that duty lies in offering accurate, intellectually rigorous reports on matters that people might want to consider when forming views about the integrity and conduct of government.
2. During the last regime, IMAs were front page news, accompanied by hectoring editorials. Plainly, this ethical duty you posit, if it existed at all, was ignored. Perhaps they thought it was the opposite then.
3. I disagree with you that ‘boats’ are in nobody’s interest apart from lawyers’. Plainly, in the opinion of asylum seekers, they serve their interests. This is not the result of some silly poll, but a vote by people willing to risk death and worse at the hands of Australia, and it seems willing to pay for the risk trade. You can’t argue that their calculus is wrong because you don’t and can ‘t know their circumstances.
I’m also not aware that lawyers do all that well financially out of asylum seekers. As I understand it, much of the work is pro bono. Doubtless, many are giving up more lucrative work to do this, because they believe in the issue. If you have figures that could show the contrary, you should adduce them.
Rex
it stops them actually finding work…
New2This Well you reap what you sow mate,
@New2This
Thats because Coalition Party policies are not evidence based.
@Rex/3
140,000 jobs available vs 700,000 Newstart?
There is a problem, it’s not welfare.
[A team of unarmed federal police officers have been forced to delay their planned visit to the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash site in eastern Ukraine after the area was declared unsafe.
The Australian Federal Police officers are among a team of international experts in the region as part of the mission to secure the site and recover crash victims’ remains.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott had said the Australian officers would join a Dutch contingent at the site from Sunday evening.
However, Alexander Hug, the deputy head of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) monitoring mission in Ukraine, says the local conflict has affected the start of the mission.
“We heard indications there’s fighting going on. We can’t take the risk,” he said.]
There are only 11 AFP officers, but still. Abbott takes time to make an announcement about it, presumably to tie in with the 6pm news broadcasts, yet it appears now that that announcement was way premature.
Perhaps it’s time Abbott shut up with the media appearances and just let those who actually do know what they’re doing get on with it quietly behind the scenes? It seems counterproductive to the overall mission to keep fronting the media every day to say something that in all likelihood is going to be null and moot hours later.
New2this
[So much hatred on here…]
Not all that much, really, given the bad stuff going on in the world …
The problem is that the economy pushes out at least 5% of the workforce, including a higher proportion of the young. The economy used to operate with full employment until 1974 but we can’t seem to get back there. This is what tge government shoukd be looking at, not demonising the unemployed.
[Rex Douglas
I don’t see why healthy young people shouldn’t work for the dole.]
In the good old days, the unemployed were obliged to carry out menial work in return for their pittance. The ALP introduced State-sponsored unemployment insurance, payable with income tax, so that the unemployed would receive income support as a right, rather than as a grudgingly-given hand-out. We all pay our taxes so that if we or any of family are unfortunate enough to lose their job, we will not have to add shame to our list of other woes.
guytaur #5
I think that’s an exaggeration.
[140,000 jobs available vs 700,000 Newstart?]
This is what makes it a minimum wage lowering scheme, not a ‘welfare policy’.
Its a labour market intervention to lower working people’s standard of living.
Toss this lot of toffs and elitists in the bin where they belong.
zoomster #9
There’s no reason to stop applying for work.
@Leroy_Lynch: Blogpost by @awelder: the golden moment of the Abbott government, and its passing http://t.co/xoKNVLxBEf #auspol
I think I’ve touched a nerve…
Well said , Fran.
@Margy011: First plane load of asylum seekers believed to have arrived at Curtin Detention Centre http://t.co/zUiv2Is9UZ http://t.co/EDzAYCxi2m
[20
Rex Douglas
I think I’ve touched a nerve…]
…or revealed your ignorance
Given the circumstances this is a remarkably good poll, pretty much what William predicted a few days ago.
After this MH17 distraction has blown over and the spot light goes back onto Abbott’s mean and nasty budget these figures can only get better for Labor.
So no “bounce”. Will leadership rumblings get louder?
New2this It’s not hatred, it’s despair and anger at the backward, vindictive and futile policies of the LNP.
As always, it’s the ALP that will have to get us back on a progressive, contemporary way forward. The Greens will whimper from the sidelines, but every move forward in the Australian project over the last 30 years has the ALP brand.
Tears and tantrums… ?
If there is unskilled work that needs to be done, hire people at the minimum wage (at least).
If the work doesn’t need to be done, forcing people to do it is just punishing them for their misfortune.
Rex
Well it has not affected outcomes this time. So thats good the relay teams got gold and a world record.
Apologies for the double post.
@Caf/28
As it is, many companies do not actually have minimum wage, even though it’s law.
And one of Coalition Parties polices is that wages are too high, how to solve it? Cut wages and welfare.
[ As I’ve said before, if they bring in a 40 jobs a month requirement, I’ll be actively encouraging anyone in that position to apply for jobs at MPs electorate offices. ]
Yup Zoom, i think there will be a lot of people doing that. I find it amazing that this kind of brain fart can actually make it into policy.
[25
Darn
After this MH17 distraction has blown over and the spot light goes back onto Abbott’s mean and nasty budget these figures can only get better for Labor.]
The budget is not going to pass the Senate, so voters will be spared most of its ill effects. But the recession in fiscal collections will persist. The weight of policy changes will make the deficit worse than it otherwise would be. This might be good for the economy, but will be politically toxic for the LNP, who define themselves as the party of deficit reduction.
When attention reverts to economic issues, the LNP will be seen once again for what they are – divided, out of touch, powerless, ideologically-driven and incompetent.
Rossmore@26
Hear hear
If the government won’t pursue fiscal policy that will maximise employment, then it is fundamentally wrong to punish the unemployed.
There is something deeply disturbing about people willing to demonise a group that they are almost solely responsible for the creation of.
[ Not all that much, really, given the bad stuff going on in the world … ]
Your well right on that Fran, but die hard Tories seem to view the world from an odd perspective.
Work for the Dole is really all about reinforcing their messaging. Until they actually fund it as a real training exercise its bollocks.
In regards to zoomster in the previous post saying that Australians will always maintain a 2 party system.
There is a trend of the major parties (Labor + the Coalition of Liberal and National parties) total primary vote going down over the years, and going towards minor parties and independents.
Below are graphs sourced from Crikey:
These track the votes of major and minor parties between 1977 and 2007.
What is not seen is the surge of the Green and Independents in 2010, and the introduction of the PUP in 2013, which grabbed some of those Green votes, but even more so, from Labor and Coalition votes. You will probably see this reflected in Newspoll trends.
From the recent polls, what is lost from the Coalition in the 2013 election is not recovered by Labor, but rather leaking towards the minor parties.
It is only with the focus on the TPP that hides the truth of actual trends.
I believe a fair way to plot the trend is to take the Electoral Funding awarded to each party for primary votes received after every major election, corrected to CPI.
[briefly
Posted Sunday, July 27, 2014 at 11:11 pm | PERMALINK
25
Darn
After this MH17 distraction has blown over and the spot light goes back onto Abbott’s mean and nasty budget these figures can only get better for Labor.
The budget is not going to pass the Senate, so voters will be spared most of its ill effects. But the recession in fiscal collections will persist. The weight of policy changes will make the deficit worse than it otherwise would be. This might be good for the economy, but will be politically toxic for the LNP, who define themselves as the party of deficit reduction.
When attention reverts to economic issues, the LNP will be seen once again for what they are – divided, out of touch, powerless, ideologically-driven and incompetent.]
Briefly
I’m happy to settle for that 😆
YB
That should be ‘Here! Here!’ assuming you affirm the statement preceding the response.
imacca
[You’re well right on that Fran, but die hard Tories seem to view the world from an odd perspective.]
I don’t know whether New2this is a die hard tory. S/He’s certainly a die-hard troll. In this place, the easiest way to do this is to repeat some reactionary meme.
DL
[The media of course also has an ethical duty to not pay too much attention to the these recent arrivals, lest their MO be shared in the region and encourage more boats, which is in no-one’s interests, except maybe lawyers’.]
The MO of the government of the day re asylum seekers is to keep what they are doing ‘off the public radar’ and enforce “out of sight, out of mind”. It’s all about dehumanising and demonising ‘the other’ so that the populace can be kept in a state of alarm with the sham that is border protection able to be maintained by the government while supported by the uninformed masses.
Investigative journalism is one of the ways a light can be shone upon the government’s treatment meted out to asylum seekers. Any reportage that contributes to transparency may help achieve some level of accountability and in so doing will inform sections of our society who care about such matters relating to desperate human beings.
Lawyers who usually work pro bono on AS cases deserve to be supported in representing asylum seekers.
[This government can only be rendered competent when its other sneaky, half-baked alternatives are firmly closed off. The press gallery are not yet awake to this, and may never be – they are waiting pointlessly but earnestly for a “poll bounce”, a return to their ‘golden September’ of last year. The polls are, as ever, beside the point. All we should reasonably foresee from recent developments is “the tenderness of patient minds/ And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds”.]
http://andrewelder.blogspot.it/2014/07/capability-decency-and-abbott-government.html?m=1
This government will pay a high and ongoing price for the sheer nastiness of its tone. All this talk about “lifters and leaners” is a good example: “leaner” is clearly just their latest word for bludger, borrowed from the American right.
Now clearly there are some bludgers, people who commit fraud to get benefits. And good luck to any government which comes down hard on them. But there are many more people who get benefits because some previous government decided that they deserved them. They might be pensions, social security payments, tax deductions, whatever. Some might have been introduced as a form of vote buying in election campaigns.
Now there may well be good economic arguments for doing away with some of these benefits. That does not, however, imply that those receiving them have done anything unethical or deserving of censure. To frame the argument as personal criticisms of benefit recipients is quite insulting and indefensible, and the voters in question have every right to be thoroughly brassed off.
I’ll say again…
The Greens will whimper from the sidelines, but every move forward in the Australian project over the last 30 years has the ALP brand.
No takers?
confessions
[Perhaps it’s time Abbott shut up with the media appearances..]
Right on! Token Tony should take the slight improvement in polling numbers and quietly fold the MH17 hand.
But bluff and bluster is his game – he may think he has more mileage in this hand…. or more rope.
I’ll grant the Greens what’s left of the Tasmanian forests, but that’s about it. The rest is just aspiration and good intention. A modest legacy.
The long term plan of the market fundamentalists who control the country (big corporations and their political wing the LNP) is to greatly reduce or abolish the minimum wage – currently about $630 for an adult for a 40 hour week). Jobs will become available that pay well below the current minimum wage – maybe $400 per week, maybe $200 per week. Of course benefits like annual leave will be a memory for most. If you read right wing columnists they say as much.
Of course all of this will exert a gravitational pull downwards on the wages and conditions of all employees outside upper management ranks.
So where does it end? A small number of Elites in mansions in gated suburbs; great numbers of workers in insecure employment, one paycheque or one health crisis from penury; a huge underclass in favellas in crumbling outer suburbs and former parklands, scratching a living as best they can, legally or otherwise; and a middle class crushed by debt, struggling day and night to stop dropping back into the working class, being told by their masters that if they work even harder they can make it into the elite.
It’s not a pretty picture. Australia might even have a higher GDP than it has now, but mostly in the hands of the elites. Everyone else will have gone backwards.
The boats had stopped but they’ve started up again. They provide a useful supply of cheap labour to keep the workers on their toes.
Reading Andrew Bolt’s column, claiming that one of Mr Abbott’s policy aims is now to get Russia right out of the east of Ukraine, I was reminded of the woman who asked Hermann Kahn at a public forum what she could do to prevent nuclear war. His reply was that her position was akin to that of a mouse trying to choose between a career in space research or cancer research.
Of course, any winding back of the minimum wage would need to be accompanied or preceded by a windback of social welfare, including the dole, pensions and universal health care. It’s already started.
“@GhostWhoVotes: #Galaxy Poll Primary Votes: L/NP 39 (+1) ALP 37 (-1) GRN 11 (+1) PUP 7 (-1) #auspol”