Newspoll: 54-46 to Labor

The latest fortnightly Newspoll records a post-MH17 improvement in Tony Abbott’s personal ratings, but no dividend on voting intention.

Stephen Murray tweets that the fortnightly Newspoll in tomorrow’s Australian shows no change on two-party preferred, with Labor maintaining its lead of 54-46, and next to no change on the primary vote, with the Coalition steady on 36%, Labor down one to 36%, the Greens up one to 12% and others steady on 16%. However, Tony Abbott is up five on approval to 36% and down seven on disapproval to 53%, and has drawn level on preferred prime minister at 38-38 after Bill Shorten led 41-36 a fortnight ago. Bill Shorten’s personal ratings are also improved, his approval up four to 38% and disapproval down two to 41%.

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.

1,361 comments on “Newspoll: 54-46 to Labor”

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  1. AFR headline of paywalled article presumably based on Abbott’s media appearance this morning:

    [Too early to judge Russia, PM says]

    http://www.afr.com/p/national/too_early_to_judge_russia_pm_says_oUVakCf6Y3sqKu4PBr8bqL

    It seems Abbott is saying one thing in Australia while JBishop in the Ukraine is saying “My great fear is Russia is actively undermining this process.” (ABC story).

    Her story is sticking to Abbott’s original line of condemning Putin while he has completely changed his tune. Do these two people not communicate?

  2. [Werner & Ursula ‏@Wersula 10m
    AS medication was just dumped in bin with no collating who it belonged to & what the medication was! AS ended up having seizures!#HRInquiry ]

    [Dr Sanggaran says a hearing aid was taken from a boy on Christmas Island #HRinquiry ]

  3. rossmcg

    Yep. Just as Vote 1 Greg Combet said yesterday/day before. Workers have to keep refighting the same battles to keep what they have won.

  5. More information suggesting Hamas was not involved in the kidnapping and murder of the 3 Israeli teenagers which spark the war on Gaza. Not even the former Shin Bet (General Security Service) chief thinks Hamas knew anything about it.

    Seems the Israelis were not happy that Hamas was gaining political influence in the West Bank and the murders gave them an excuse to arrest most of the Hamas leadership in the WB.
    Israeli Intelligence Officers Doubt Hamas Involvement In Incident That Sparked Gaza War

  6. [Sadly for Australia I believe that the following Liberal/National politicians were well to the LEFT of the current liberals and 75% of the current ALP.

    Fraser, Menzies, Chaney, Gorton, McEwen, most of the old “country party,” Hasluck, Peacock and these are just the ones I can think of at the top of my head.

    The rot in both political parties started about 1977 as those “educated” in monetarist economics came into office and rose up the public service. This quasi religious doctrine preaches greed is good and survival of the fittest and has infected our political psyche. Few are immune and those that are are regarded as maverick nutters. Because it helps the big corporations, newby coalition people were easily captured and because the monetists were ALSO anti communist/socialist the right/centre of the ALP were also easily captured, largely because so many raised as Catholics were pathologically hostile to communism.

    The result is a meaner Australia.]

    dare-to-read wins post of the week for telling it how it is. what concerns me most about most australian graduated economists is that many of them are not taught that there are alternative theories/approaches to neo-classicism – some alternatives may get sneered at without any real critique, but mostly they are taught the orthodoxy as if it is the only option. I am often staggered when I talk to them to find them ignorant of alternative theories.

    I think all subjects, and perhaps especially economics should have a ‘history and philosophy of’ critique so students realise the context and social construction of their knowledge (& I am not a deconstructionalist – but it is a handy tool to use in considering the foundations of your beliefs/’reality’ and where what you believe might not be 100% right).

    Neo-classicism is ‘religious’ in that proponents stick to doctrine of what ‘should happen’ and refuse to use observation of what actually happens when their theories are applied to be reframe their doctrines. It is a nasty fundamentalist religion based on protecting and building the power and wealth of a ‘select brethren’ (i.e. those already with money and power). It appeals to the unimaginative and unemphatic. Under both labor and lib governments, government departments will not employ left wing economists to work for them or as consultants to do reviews of programs and policies. The productivity commission and every state and federal treasury dept (& dept of premier and cabinet) is wall to wall neo-classicist. One of the great failings of Rudd/Gillard and Bracks/Brumby here in Vic is that they kept all of the treasury people of their neo-con predecessors. I can’t see Shorten deviating from this path very much.

  7. A couple of AFR paywalled articles today:

    [Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has called on content providers to lower prices for customers to discourage internet piracy if they want the government to support stronger protections for copyright.
    ]

    and

    [The Department of Health has admitted for the first time it expects some GPs to charge more than the mandatory $7 co-payment as they adjust their business models to the new regime.
    ]

  8. “@oliverlaughland: Dr Sanggaran now running through medical flaws with 48 hour turnaround policy (sending asylum seekers offshore within 2 days) #HRinquiry”

  10. CITIZEN – My understanding is that foxtel has been dropping its prices anyway (to preserve market share) so Shallow Mal is behind the wave, as usual.

  11. Just saw on ABC 24 the clip of the Dr telling the Enquiry that the Immigration Department have attempted to have the figures of the health of kids in the detention centres downgraded or not included.

    Morrison is a scumbag turd.

  13. zoomster

    I think the GST decision was the final nail in the coffin for the Democrats. It wasn’t so much as it was the GST itself, but rather how the leadership of the party went against the voice of its members and made that decision. This goes in contrast against the party constitution.

    Anyway, the history side of things and how it varies state to state is what makes it interesting. Only recently have we seen Tasmanian National candidates in the Tasmania state election make the news, and recently how Tony Crook performed in the context of WA in contrast with other state Nationals.

  16. K 17

    Amongst the Peter Mac docs is oodles of evidence that PeterMac would not settle the dispute (by giving $250K) unless their 160 researchers were informed and agreed. The employees did sign the Deed of Release which was the agreement doc to end the dispute.

    Here is what KJ said yesterday about the fact that the employees were not to get (and did not get) their back pay. They had a sword of Damacles hanging over them …. if they got the back pay, Peter Mac would go belly up.

    “So what I meant by that was that the members did have
    millions of dollars of outstanding entitlements and there
    was a settlement, but the settlement, as I now understand
    because I have seen the certified agreement that was
    subsequently negotiated and the threats that were being
    made by management that the hospital may have to shut – or
    not shut, but make many staff redundant – so instead of
    going down the path of backpay, the members agreed that
    they would get this new enhanced career structure and
    security of employment.”

    Of particular interest is that the Deed of Release signed by the workers did not mention the $250K to be given to the HSU as part of the deal. KJ does not recall why it was not mentioned!

    A suspicious person might think that right from the get-go when the $250K came onto the table, KJ thought “Hmmmmm! Now her’s a bit of cash floating around that no-one really owns!”

    The same suspicious person might think that Peter Mac made KJ jump through many documentary hoops not only to cover their own arses, but because they sensed that the other side of the negotiating table might be prone to memory loss and loss of docs in the future.

    It’s a pity for KJ that Peter Mac was a responsible organisation as to keeping their VIP docs secure.

  18. psyclaw, thanks for the summary.

    citizen and others,

    The Tories are siphons, funnelling cash to their mates. They are the political arms of the rent-seeking class, currently manifest as vulture capitalists.

    From the outside, they look to be suffering some sever cognitive dissonance, but this is because they are projecting different facades depending on the context.

    For example, from one angle they are indignant at public money being put to services that provide a social wage, such as health and education, subsidised public transport and the provision of utilities.

    At the same time, they want to quarantine what income people do have in order to limit spending to specific uses. No doubt there will be an electronic system set up to manage such a scheme, which will make it economic for only the big players.

    Thus, these seem to be incoherent positions, but both are ways of funnelling money to their mates: private education, private health, private water, electricity, telephony and transport infrastructure, and the big retailers.

  19. [The Department of Health has admitted for the first time it expects some GPs to charge more than the mandatory $7 co-payment as they adjust their business models to the new regime.]

    I know of one country practice which has used the excuse of the $7 payments to scrap bulk-billing for all bar war veterans and kids up to age 8. Pity the OA and DS pensioners, the unemployed and parents with chronically sick kids who now have to fork out over $30 per visit, or perhaps drive to the next town 16km away.

  20. I wonder if this guy had a whisper in Tone’s ear about what applying sanction could do ?

    [When BHP’s boss met Vladimir Putin

    Russia is central to the resource giant’s plans, but the relationship is getting complicated.

    Before taking over the top job at BHP Billiton, Andrew Mackenzie met a world leader with enormous influence over the global resources sector: Vladimir Putin.

    The two leaders spoke German to each other one evening in Moscow. The language connection came about from their times working on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall in the 1980s: Mackenzie as a research scientist and Putin as a KGB officer]

    http://www.smh.com.au/business/mining-and-resources/when-bhps-boss-met-vladimir-putin-20140731-zyrx9.html#ixzz390HKociI

  21. Here is a link to the material about foreign bribery that our government has got the Victorian Supreme Court to suppress. Shows how futile such suppression orders are.

    SNIP: Perhaps, but orders are orders – The Management.

  22. K17 (& please tell me you’re joking – Rudd to return and whiteant PM Shorten post 2016? It would not amaze me if he tried)

    [Shallow Mal]

    love it 😀

  23. psyclaw – If Peter Mac were so concerned about keeping their employees informed, you’d think the $250 large would have been mentioned in the deed of release.

  24. poroti

    [Too early to judge Russia, PM says]

    Really? When will Abbott start judging him then – what number of dead will convince him.

    Moron!

  25. A triple 😆 for this news. Remember the miners and Coalition screaming “sovereign risk” over the mining tax and how they’ll flee to places like Africa. Come on down Rio Tinto.

    [How Rio Tinto turned $3.9b into $50m

    Rio Tinto has washed its hands of its disastrous $3.9 billion Riversdale Mining acquisition, by announcing a sale of its Mozambique coal assets for just $US50 million ]

    http://www.smh.com.au/business/mining-and-resources/rio-tinto-sells-mozambique-coal-assets-for-us50-million-20140730-zyiuu.html#ixzz390IwchxP

  27. re: potter and prejudice

    “The students in the first group discussed prejudice and bigotry as themes in the books, while the others didn’t, serving as a control group. The students in the first group showed “improved attitudes towards immigrants,” but ONLY IF THEY IDENTIFIED WITH POTTER”

    problem is, the young budding sociopaths who later become prominent LNP members identify with Voldemort – can you seriously tell me that there is one of them that does not subscribe to “There is no good and evil – only power and those too weak to seek it” (in latin,that could be the credo of Murdoch, the IPA and their puppet the ‘modern’ LNP).

  28. MTBW

    It is more the straight face he used to deliver that message considering he had previously tried and convicted Putin and Russia within hours of the crash.

  29. Sir sf

    [One of the great failings of Rudd/Gillard and Bracks/Brumby here in Vic is that they kept all of the treasury people of their neo-con predecessors. I can’t see Shorten deviating from this path very much.]

    And Brumby argued that going into debt was fine, if it paid for infrastructure which would have long term benefits.

    Just as Rudd/Gillard used classic Keynesian strategies in their response to the GFC.

    Advice is there to be listened to. It doesn’t have to be followed.

    (That said, I agree with your overall point about economists. They go straight from school to university to working as economists – so ideology is all they have.

    My sister, after a couple of decades in the real world, went back to Uni and majored in Economics. She said she struggled for the first year, because she answered questions based on her own experiences. When she switched to simply regurgitating what the lecturer had said, she aced it).

  30. Income management for welfare recipients always makes me think of the old days when workers were paid in tokens which could only be spent at the company store.
    I recall this applied at some mill towns in the early days of wa’s timber industry.
    I daresay the Tories could strike a deal with their old mate Roger Corbett’s company woolworths where that was then only place the “managed” could get their groceries.

  31. poroti

    He will do and say anything. I really don’t think he can keep track of the differing positions he take.

    For a Rhodes Scholar he is really bloody stupid.

    Did Daddy pay for him to get the scholarship?

    Between him Hockey Morrison you would have every right to feel you would like to leave this country sometimes.

    Bloody christians my ar*e!

  32. Poroti

    Yeah, loved the rio story. And these are the corporations who hold so much sway with the Tories.

    It cost the CEO his job but I bet he got a fat cheque to ease his pain, unlike the workers in the Pilbara who are being unloaded as rio and BHP try to cut their costs

  34. rossmcg

    I heard on radio this morning that the Libs will also be telling the recipients what they can spend their money on.

    Stuart Bocking on 2UE this morning who is fairly moderate thought this requirement was absolutely unbelievable.

    This whole Government is arrogant self important self interested and bloody disgusting.

  35. [It shows what a rag the Australian has become (always has been?) that it puts Forrest’s demented mumblings at the top of the front page. A “newspaper” is so-called because it has “new” on “paper” – so what about a bit of news, boys? Can’t wait for Loon Pond’s reaction.]

    Dorothy is on fire!!
    http://loonpond.blogspot.com.au/

  36. MTBW – Yes, Tony is VERY stupid. Nobody has ever suggested that he did well at a university in Australia. He got his Rhodes Scholarship through his catholic connections. Further, when he got to Oxford he earned what they call a “Desmond”. In other words, Honours 2.2 (as in “Tutu”). That’s very, very close to a fail.
    Interestingly, the tory trolls haven’t been saying much recently about his Rhodes Scholarship. Even they’ve given up saying “he can’t be all that stupid because he’s got a Rhodes Scholarship…” etc etc

  38. [Income management for welfare recipients always makes me think of the old days when workers were paid in tokens which could only be spent at the company store.
    I recall this applied at some mill towns in the early days of wa’s timber industry. I daresay the Tories could strike a deal with their old mate Roger Corbett’s company woolworths where that was then only place the “managed” could get their groceries.]

    Bingo!

  40. Just heard on ABC702 that the children on Christmas Island have had their glasses and hearing aids removed from them.

    Absolutely despicable and they are doing this in our name.

    Double Dissolution Now!

  41. American Jewish leader Henry Siegman:

    [Responding to Israel’s U.S.-backed claim that its assault on Gaza is necessary because no country would tolerate the rocket fire from militants in Gaza, Siegman says: “What undermines this principle is that no country and no people would live the way that Gazans have been made to live. … The question of the morality of Israel’s action depends, in the first instance, on the question, couldn’t Israel be doing something [to prevent] this disaster that is playing out now, in terms of the destruction of human life? Couldn’t they have done something that did not require that cost? And the answer is, sure, they could have ended the occupation.”]

    http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/30/henry_siegman_leading_voice_of_us#.U9mYhLsqOyM.facebook

  42. mandate sounds like a right where he can do what he wants, even above the law, just as he is doing with the Asylum Seekers.

  45. Abbott knows he has no mandate. If he did he would go to a DD on it.

    The public knows this. This is why the polls are as they are people know they were conned and are reacting harshly as the polls show.

  47. K17

    Isn’t it amazing that you can declare all of your achievements and then with a little bit of research like you have done it all falls foul.

    Social justice is not something known to Abbott and Co they are hard line conservatives all of them.

  48. Scholarship is only one criteria for getting a Rhodes Scholarship. Good contacts and references from the right sort of chaps testifying to your “awesomeness” in the other criteria are a big help. Especially in the old days.

    [Rhodes’ legacy specified four standards by which applicants were to be judged:

    -Literary and scholastic attainments;

    -Energy to use one’s talents to the fullest, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports;

    -Truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship;

    -Moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one’s fellow beings.]

  49. The whole ‘job snobs’ attitude was well and truly around during The Depression, when part of the reason people took to the swag was that the regulations around assistance for the unemployed meant that you weren’t allowed to collect your payment from the same town more than a couple of weeks in a row.

    The theory was that, if you’d failed to find work in that period, you should move on to another area and try there.

    The rules also were that if you refused work, you were tossed off assistance for a couple of weeks (failure to comply with the conditions!) regardless of the kind of work offered.

    So employers would deliberately offer the unemployed a couple of days’ work at below-dole payment, knowing that if the person refused, they could report them and they’d be without payments for a couple of weeks.

  50. [Maybe we should give Abbott the benefit of the doubt]

    No, let’s not. Cynicism is the only way to deal with a prick like Abbott until he can be voted out.

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