Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

No real change in Essential Research, but some interesting findings from both parties’ internal pollsters have emerged in the media this week.

This week’s fortnightly rolling average result from Essential Research has both major parties up a point on the primary vote (the Coalition to 40%, Labor to 38%), both minor parties down a point (the Greens to 9%, Palmer United to 5%), and two-party preferred unchanged at 52-48 to Labor. The poll also has 57% saying the threat to Australia from terrorism has increased over the past few years with only 6% saying it has decreased, and 33% opting for stayed about the same; 56% approving of government spending to reduce the threat of terrorism versus 24% disapproving; 57% rating the contribution of multiculturalism to Australian society as positive versus 30% negative; 63% believing prospective migrants should not be rejected on the basis of religion versus 21% who say they should; and strong support for a greater emphasis on solar, wind and hydro power in providing for domestic energy, a neutral result for gas, and highly negative results for nuclear and especially coal.

Federal electoral news nuggets:

John Ferguson of The Australian reports Senators Stephen Conroy and Kim Carr are facing opposition within their respective Right and Left factions over their determination to seek another term at the next federal election. Partly at issue is Labor’s affirmative action requirement that at least 40 per cent of winnable seats go to women. Under a party rule to take effect on January 1, a spill of all preselections will occur if the requirement isn’t met. Rosie Lewis of The Australian reports that some in the ALP believe the Carr and Conroy preselections are being fast-tracked to lock them in before the rule takes effect. Carr is quoted saying the requirement will be satisfied by giving the third position on the ticket to a woman, but the result of the last election suggests the winnability of a third seat for Labor is doubtful for as long as the existing electoral system remains in place.

• The Courier-Mail reports that“federal Liberal and National MPs unhappy with the performance of Nationals deputy leader Barnaby Joyce” are planning to thwart his succession to the Nationals leadership by drafting Lawrence Springborg, the Queensland Health Minister and former Opposition Leader. This would be achieved by having Springborg succeed Bruce Scott as member for Maranoa, a seat Joyce had his eye on last term as he sought to make his move from the upper house to the lower.

Andrew Probyn of The West Australian reports a Labor internal poll of 600 respondents by UMR Research shows it leading 54-46 in the eastern Perth electorate of Hasluck, held for the Liberals by Ken Wyatt on a margin of 4.9%. Primary votes are cited of 40% for Labor and 37% for the Liberals. Aggregated polling for the three months after the budget, from May to July, is reported to show swings to Labor in WA of 12 points on the primary vote and 7.7% on two-party preferred.

• The Financial Review reports results from Coalition pollsters Crosby Textor showing a surge in support for the Renewable Energy Target, an increase in the salience of the environment as a political issue, and a decline for immigration.

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.

833 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  1. zoidlord

    [ Your argument Player One is “silly”. How do you say that small amount of piracy is ok, when Anti-piracy companies and lobbyists don’t want nothing of it at all? ]

    I didn’t say it was “ok”, I said it was “tolerated”. Exactly the same way that a small amount of petty crime is tolerated, since the alternative is to have a police force that would be far too expensive to maintain.

    [ That also does not work in real life, when police say, “a small amount of bit of crime is ok”, right? No, thought so. ]

    Of course the police tolerate a degree of petty crime. That doesn’t mean they advertise the fact that you can sometimes get away with such things. And it doesn’t give you license to try.

  2. [How do you feel about insurance fraud FarQU? Leather jacket in the back seat of your car that got “stolen”?]

    Have neither leather jackets nor car insurance.

  3. Zoomster

    [As for egalitarian, in AFL it’s quite possible for someone (especially at junior levels) to go through a game without touching the ball – that’s nearly impossible in soccer.]

    Also very common in soccer, in my experience. My brother went through a whole season plus half of another and made contact with the ball on 11 occasions. Admittedly, he only made it off the reserve bench on 3 occasions. His best play was at practice, but it was all moot as he wasn’t buddies with either the coach’s or manager’s kid. They were not a good team. Bottom three all the way, so it wasn’t as if his lack of talent was keeping him out.

    He gave up soccer in favour of tennis, which he wasn’t as good at, but which was more engaging.

    As an adult though, I usually attended my 2nd son’s games for several seasons and it was unusual to see him contact the ball more than once per half and unusual to see the ball handled on multiple occasions by more than the five best players. Often you’d arrive to see the last 30 minutes of the previous game and it was much the same there. Sure a lot of kids were chasing the ball but it really was beside the point. It was always just out of reach.

  4. [citizen
    Posted Wednesday, September 3, 2014 at 7:00 pm | Permalink

    He could send troops to the north of England just in case the newly independent Scotland decided to invade.]

    Abbott wouldn’t stand a chance against this!!

  5. [The fact that if these corporations did not take steps to prevent this occurring on a large scale there would be much less for you to pilfer seems to escape you.]

    I fully agree with that. I have no problems with corporations taking steps to reduce illegal downloads, including stopping ripping off customers, provide better service, and stop engaging in collusive and anticompetitive practices. (I also object to people selling pirated goods for their own gain.) I object to the taxpayer doing it on their behalf, there are far more important things to spend our scarce law and order dollars on, especially when there is more corporations could be doing and the costs of piracy are significantly overstated.

  6. 810

    The UK would still exist if Scotland gained independence. It would likely be called, after its constituent parts, the United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK would still have citizenship.

    I presume from Abbott being born in England (to an English born father and Australian born mother), if he still has UK citizenship, that he would keep UK Citizenship and not gain Scottish Citizenship.

    Independence would not occur immediately but after a period of sorting out details.

  7. [And I have already said that my industry – a multi-billion dollar one here in Australia alone – would not exist at all if we did not vigorously protect our intellectual property. What do you find so difficult to understand about that?]

    I don’t find it at all difficult to understand, I just haven’t seen any evidence for what you claim, in fact my research would suggest you are talking bollocks. But that is why I asked you what industry so we could have a sensible discussion beyond the mindless slogans and stupid policy free conclusions you are so fond of … oh nevermind I give up you are a fundamentalist believer

  8. I’m trying to think of an Australian industry that is in the billions of dollars that needs to criminalise non-commercial domestic copyright infringement, behaviours like recording onto a tape recorder a song playing on the radio, for its very survival and I’m not coming up with one.

  9. Harvard University ‏@Harvard 1m

    Report shows widening disparities in diet quality between rich and poor in U.S. http://hvrd.me/AZHVZ

    “These income-related differences in diet quality are likely associated with price (healthy foods generally cost more) and access (low-income people may have limited access to stores that sell healthy foods), the authors wrote. They also noted that education played a role: Dietary quality was lowest and improved more slowly among those who had had 12 years of school or less.”

    ““The overall improvement in diet quality is encouraging, but the widening gap related to income and education presents a serious challenge to our society as a whole,” said Walter Willett, Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition, chair of the Department of Nutrition at HSPH, and senior author of the study.”

    So Income does seem to relate to how healthy someone is due to cost involved by the price of healthy food.

  10. [671
    kakuru

    briefly

    Russia should withdraw. All the peoples of Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea would agree that Russia is completely out of line.

    I agree that Putin is totally out of line. But there is an element of realpolitik to all this. Crimea is already lost, and there is nothing the US or NATO can do about it.

    The US and NATO (and Kiev) has to pick their battles. How far will they go to keep all of eastern Ukraine in Kiev’s hands? If Putin trades a piece of eastern Ukraine in return for agreeing to let Ukraine joining NATO – would the US and NATO jump at the chance? Still a hypothetical… but it’s difficult to tell how much of Putin’s rhetoric is just posturing.]

    Russia is in breach of the agreement made in 1994 in order to induce Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal:

    [According to the (Budapest) memorandum, Russia, the U.S., and the UK confirmed, in recognition of Ukraine becoming party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and in effect abandoning its nuclear arsenal to Russia, that they would:

    Respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty within its existing borders.
    Refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine.
    Refrain from using economic pressure on Ukraine in order to influence its politics.
    Seek United Nations Security Council action if nuclear weapons are used against Ukraine.
    Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against Ukraine.
    Consult with one another if questions arise regarding these commitments.]

    While this helps depict Russian insincerity, it also illustrates the paucity of European interest in the security of Ukraine. The US and the UK made a very limited gesture to protect Ukraine, but there is nothing from any other European party: nothing from The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) or NATO, or any other other security body. Clearly, in 1994, even as Ukraine consented to disarmament, other European States were unwilling to make even token gestures support them. The territories and peoples of Eastern Europe can readily see that the West is unwilling to oppose Russia on their behalf. This also invokes memories of the end WW2, when the East was effectively ceded to the Soviet Union.

    From the perspective of European peoples, doubtless there are many echoes from their too-bloody past. Russia’s ambitions are reminiscent of German conduct in the lead up to WW2 when the re-occupation of the Rhineland was followed later by the imposition of union with Austria and, soon after, the annexation of the Sudetenland, all of which served as a preface to the invasion of Poland.

    Everyone in Europe must fear that opposing Russia might result in war, in the same way that they feared resisting Hitler would lead to war – to a war they were not ready to fight. In the end, appeasement had the same result. War came because Germany was prepared to risk it – really, wanted, planned for and pursued it – and because the rest of Europe allowed themselves to believe they could make deals with Hitler. Russia is certainly playing on those collective fears, and talking up the risks of war, even nuclear war.

    If there are risks in opposing Russia, there are risks in making concessions as well. Russia made some valuable gains in Crimea at remarkably little cost and are obviously gambling on making more equally cheap gains. Russia is playing on European indecision, disunity and aversion to conflict; and they are getting away with it.

    If Russia is to be checked, they will need to be persuaded of two things: first, that the costs to them of their extra-territorial adventures will rise very steeply in comparison to the possible gains; and second, that NATO members are willing to carry the costs of defending themselves, each other and the post-cold-war order in Europe.

    All things considered, the outlook for Ukraine must be taken to be very bleak. The Europeans appear to be resolute about only one thing: staying warm this winter.

  11. The question i: “How long can the government keep this up before the punters twig?”

    [Raising the alarm: Australia’s national terror alert could be overhauled following the latest beheading by the Islamic State

    EXCLUSIVE SIMON BENSON NATIONAL POLITICAL EDITOR

    **********

    AN overhaul of the nation’s terrorism public alert system is being considered to better warn Australians of the likelihood of an attack on home soil.

    The move to brace the nation for heightened terrorist threats following the jihadist bloodbath in Iraq came as the world condemned yet another horrific beheading of a US journalist in Iraq. It also came as Foreign Minister Julie Bishop flew out to a NATO meeting in the UK which will focus on the twin military crises in Iraq and Ukraine.

    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/raising-the-alarm-australias-national-terror-alert-could-be-overhauled-following-the-latest-beheading-by-the-islamic-state/story-fni0cx12-1227047011209 ]

    Are we going to have sirens in the subways? Terrorism wardens on every street corner? Just how long can the charade that we are under attack be maintained?

    How many more “exclusives” have Abbott and Murdoch promised each other? It’s getting ridiculous. Truly stupid.

    Can a government genuinely believe that they can manufacture a war – along with the “War Prime Minister” and “International Statesman” schtick – simply to keep them from tanking in the polls?

    The journos all love the idea of a war. They can dust off their old safari suits and pretend it’s the nitty-gritty THIS time…

    “… and Russian troops and tanks are just a kilometre down this road…”.

    “Stay safe, Phillip.

    “I will, Emma…”

    They’d love to be James Foley… without the “beheading” aspect to proceedings, natch. It’s no use appealing to the media. If they’re going to be a War Media, then they have to invent a War Prime Minister.

    We are reaching the stage where we have a new manufactured “crisis” every other day. Today its hightened alert status. Yesterday it was sending troops (for eff’s sake!) to the Ukraine. The day before we were hauling ammunition for an official terrorist group (one on our own list!). Last week we were rescuing punters who had already been rescued. The week before that we visited a UK Prime Minister who wasn’t home and sent the flunkies to see us as a consolation prize.

    We’ve muscled in on every single crisis point on the entire globe. Surely the local voters must be waking up to it? SURELY the Yanks must be getting tired of their lap dog yapping at them, “Are we going in the car? In the car? IN THE CAR?” and barking at every passer by.

    Is someone going to put a stop to this ridiculous bullshit?

    Australia is becoming like a cheap in-house promo campaign for a Reality TV show.

    The Block: This Time It’s War.

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