BludgerTrack: 50.1-49.9 to Labor

Very little to report from the world of poll aggregation this week, with Newspoll hanging back another week for next week’s resumption of parliament.

The only new poll this week was from Essential Research, and it recorded next to no change from its established pattern, which means next to no change to the BludgerTrack poll aggregate. What change there is has caused Labor recover the slightest possible lead on the two-party preferred aggregate, but the seat total and its distribution between the states is entirely unchanged on last week. One point worth noting is the ongoing slide of Palmer United, which can be timed almost exactly to its Senators taking their seats at the start of July, and which has now brought it to its lowest ebb since the election. Essential Research also furnished us with a new seat of leadership ratings this week, the effect of which has been to moderate the upward lurch on Tony Abbott’s net approval rating caused by the recent Morgan phone poll. The overall trend for Abbott remains upward, but Bill Shorten’s rating has also been tracking upwards lightly, albeit more gently. As I explain in Crikey today, this improvement appears to have been driven by men rather than women.

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.

1,183 comments on “BludgerTrack: 50.1-49.9 to Labor”

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  1. I recall the early Dattos being called ‘tin boxes on wheels’ or, in one of the racist fashions of the time, ‘Jap crap’.

    How times have changed…

  2. Bw

    [Shouldn’t they do some swim-time before they get fixed up, already?]

    They get to wave at the sea on the way from Spain to Williamstown. That’s enough to make the current configuration unsuitable.

    Next question is what to put on the lift?

  3. Boerwar

    [If they apply it to keeping Australia’s JSFs grounded]
    That cunning plan has already been implemented by the JSF manufacturers.

  5. Nuclear fusion requires hydrogen atoms (certain isotopes) to be brought together at temperatures and pressures of the sort found in the core of the Sun. All this has to be contained by intense magnetic fields – absolutely NO leaks allowed. I don’t think I’d want a fusion station next door. And I think you would see a ‘cold fusion’ reactor in the science fiction museum next to a ‘warp drive’.

    In any case, while it only took a few years to build a fusion bomb, physicists have been studying the possibility of harnessing controlled nuclear fusion for over 60 years. My feeling (maybe no better than Maurice Newman’s ‘feelings’ about Climate Change) is that if controlled fusion were practical, it would have been accomplished by now.

    It would be great if it worked. You could use sea water as a virtually inexaustible source of fuel (you would need to concentrate the hydrogen isotopes – heavy water and super heavy water). The waste product is mostly helium, an inert, non greenhouse gas. And it would produce less toxic radioactive waste.

  6. CTar1

    Me mum still has a soft spot for Datsun . After moving into the big smoke from the farm she got a job in their accounts dept. Workers were not happy with the name change !!

  7. Steve777

    It’s a bit like the concept of ‘clean coal’ — doesn’t seem to be possible, but geez, if you could pull it off…

  9. [CTar1
    Posted Thursday, October 16, 2014 at 5:15 pm | Permalink
    Zoom

    I bought a Mercedes mid-sized V8 from a Melbourne car dealer a couple of years ago.

    It’s an ‘Avantgarde’ variety so has lots of perforated black leather and much electronics.

    While doing the test drive the sales guy says to me “This is a mans car. If you’re after something for your mistress I’ve got a C200 …”

    FMD.]

    I once had to organize a cremation for a workmate and the distant relative had asked me to keep the costs as low as possible so I asked the funeral director if he could show me the cheapest coffin he had. He replied “Certainly, but it’s not a very manly coffin.” FMD. Made me laugh.

  12. I wish my men would observe the manly thing.

    I keep buying things in bright pink, to stop them being nicked by the masculine members of the household – torches, toothbrushes, combs, reading glasses – but it doesn’t work.

  13. I don’t see fusion power as having the same kinds of issues as carbon sequestration.

    Whatever you do with ‘clean coal’ means sacrificing some portion of the usable energy content of the coal to clean it up, and there are good reasons to think that ‘clean coal’ is always going to be expensive and inefficient and create problems of its own (the concept of practically endlessly pumping CO2 into the ground strikes me as very unsound).

    Controlled fusion is obviously technically very very challenging, but if the technical problems can be overcome it won’t be a marginal technology (which is the best ‘clean coal’ could ever be), it would be a civilization changing technology.

    The technical problems may not be surmountable in our lifetimes, but fusion is either a big fat nothing or it’s a game changer. Clean coal is either a big fat nothing or a weak diversion at best.

  20. [A University of Sydney Professor – employed by the federal government as a specialist consultant to review the national English curriculum – has described the Prime Minister as an “Abo lover” while at the same time advising the government to focus less on teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature in our nation’s schools, and place greater emphasis on western Judeo-Christian culture.]

    […In email correspondence that spans more than two years, Barry Spurr, the nation’s leading Professor of Poetry, describes Aboriginal people as ‘human rubbish tips’ and “Abos”, and rails against the prevalence of Aboriginal culture in school curriculums, and within politics. But the exchanges are not just limited to First Nations people.

    Professor Spurr also takes aim at “bogans” “fatsoes”, “Mussies” and “Chinky-Poos”, and laments the reality that Australia is less white than it was in the 1950s.

    He calls Nelson Mandela a “darkie” and Desmond Tutu a “witch doctor”; describes his University of Sydney chancellor Belinda Hutchinson as “an appalling minx”; likens Methodists to “serpents”; refers to women as “whores”; and in response to a comment about a female victim of a serious sexual assault being a “worthless slut”, he suggests that she needs more than just ‘penis’ put in her mouth, before it’s “stitched up”.]

    […One day the Western world will wake up, when the Mussies and the chinky-poos have taken over,” ]

    Apparently, however, these are all in jest.

    https://newmatilda.com/2014/10/16/curriculum-reviewer-barry-spurr-mocks-abos-mussies-women-chinky-poos

  21. CTar1

    No, it wasn’t just me (ho ho). I am quite sure there were a lot of ardent admirers, predominantly young Australian males I would guess.

    You do know who the Nissan Cedrics are?

  23. Re Jackol @63: I agree. We have to bite tge bullet and phase out coal over the next few decades.

    […the concept of practically endlessly pumping CO2 into the ground strikes me as unsound]

    As does the concept of it staying there forever. Again, no leaks allowed.

  27. [Early Datsun’s were called ‘Datsh#t’.

    Anyone, anyone – a “cedric”?]

    Listen. I STARTED this conversation and I wasn’t really talking about Datsuns. I was talking about the Simca Beaulieu, 8-cylinder monster from France that sort-of worked a lot of the time.

    Can we please get back onto Simcas?

  29. BB
    My second car (after “The Flea” – a 1949 Renault 750) was a Simca Aronde. When I started work at Chrysler they were still assembling them and the V8 Simca Vedette to which you refer.

  30. And yet the Japanese still make motor cars and still appear to make money by doing so. The majority of countries against whose products theirs were declared “crap” do not.

    Funny that.

  32. Re Zoomster @70: the New Matilda site seems to be having problems so I haven’t read the article. But going by your summary / extract the learned Professor shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near school education outside his specialty (English Poetry?). I suppose he wants to establish Aurhur Mee’s Childrens’ Encyclopedea as compulsory reading. That Pyne would consider him remotely suitable to advise on school curricula further demonstrates his unfitness for office.

    Of course, the learned professor’s values are shared by maybe half of Liberal voters and probably many LNP MPs and Cabinet members as well. We have no major far right parties because the Liberals have all that ground except the most extreme fringes covered.

  33. From zoom’s link

    [A University of Sydney Professor – employed by the federal government as a specialist consultant to review the national English curriculum – has described the Prime Minister as an “Abo lover” …..]

    Sack Spurr from being employed in government education.
    He is clearly incompetent.

    Do it today – tomorrow at the latest.

    Ask Pyne, the bloke who selected Spurr, why he, Pyne that is, should not resign as education Minister for such appalling judgment as to appoint Spurr.

  36. Some stand-up idiot on ABC TV News just gave a shamelessly effusive list of reasons why the Abbott government, just can’t possibly, help out with the ebola disaster in Africa.

    One of his killers points was: we may not get landing rights.

    What a tosser.

  40. [Along with most I remember ‘Club Buggery’.]

    It’s cultural memory is fading. Draws a blank with a quite a few people these days, in my experience. 🙁

  41. BB
    I put a floor shift into my Aronde and also layback seats. It was the gearbox in the finish that let it down. Bought a new Renault 10 then. It had 4 wheel disc brakes and after I fitted a Valiant booster it would stop on a zac!

  45. My first was a mini moke (not the Californian which are NAF). Sans roll bar, deck chairs for seats, top speed 90kmh with a tail wind and a clear view of the road, through the floor pans which had rusted out.

    I loved it, in summer.

  46. BB / BK

    [It had no first gear, but apart from that it didn’t go too bad.]

    Early Ford Transit vans the same. None of the syncros lasted.

  49. Fiat 500. Handy for parking. (The four adults in the car could lift it into any space..)

    Loved watching the 2 stroke engine rotate everytime the ignition key was turned…

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