A tale of four pollsters:
Newspoll
GhostWhoVotes relates the first Newspoll in four weeks has delivered Labor its best poll result in some time, with a two-party lead of 53-47 that compares with 51-49 last time. The Coalition is off three points on the primary vote to 38%, but the direct beneficiaries are the Greens, up three to 14%, with Labor steady on 34%. Tony Abbott is down three on approval to 38% and up one on disapproval to 53%, but Bill Shorten’s numbers have also declined – his approval is down three to 35%, and disapproval up three to a new high of 46%. On preferred prime minister, Shorten closes the gap from 41-37 to 39-38.
The poll also has 63% saying Tony Abbott should “confront” (not “shirt-front”) Vladimir Putin over MH17, against 27% who don’t.
Morgan
This fortnight’s result from Morgan, encompassing 3131 respondents from its last two weekends of face-to-face and SMS polling, is little changed on last fortnight, which was the Coalition’s best result from this series since February. On the primary vote, the Coalition is down half a point to 39.5%, Labor is up half a point to 35.5%, and the Greens and Palmer United are unchanged on 12% and 3.5% respectively. On two-party preferred as measured using preference flows from the 2013 election, the Labor lead increases just slightly from 51.5-48.5 to 52-48. On respondent-allocated preferences it goes the other way, down from 53-47 to 52-48, minor party preferences evidently having been a little more favourable to the Coalition this time out. Keen poll watchers will be aware that Morgan has lately taken to including two-party preferred breakdowns by age. These results appear to indicate that Morgan’s noted Labor skew is being driven by the younger respondents. I mean to get around to taking a closer look at that some time.
Fairfax Ipsos
The big news in polldom this week is that Fairfax has announced Ipsos, a major international market research concern whose local operation Iview has done some scattered online polling around the place this year, will fill the void created by Nielsen’s shutdown earlier in the year. Best of all, it will replicate Nielsen’s methods in conducting live interview phone polling from 1400 respondents each month. State polling will also be conducted, starting with a Victorian poll which we can expect very shortly.
Essential Research
It will, as always, publish its weekly result at around 2pm EST. Watch this space.
UPDATE: Essential concurs with Newspoll in having Labor’s lead at 53-47, which is up from 52-47 last time, although the primary vote numbers suggests there’s not much in the shift: the Coalition is down a point to 40% and everyone else is steady, Labor on 39%, the Greens on 10% and Palmer United on 3%. Some indication as to why the Coalition is in this position is provided by a further question on perceptions of economic indicators, with very large majorities finding everything has gotten worse except for “company profits”. Forty-four per cent think their own financial situation is worse versus 16% for better, and the economy overall fares similarly. Other findings are that 66% favour voluntary euthanasia with 14% opposed, and 58% believing Australia is doing enough to fight Ebola versus 21% for not enough.
victoria
don’t let ModLib see that..
[Julia Baird @bairdjulia 6 minutes ago
Gough Whitlam did righteous anger so well. This is from 1972, but could be today. Via @mrbenjaminlaw ]
http://media.smh.com.au/news/national-times/adventures-of-edward-gough-whitlam-4177200.html
MTBW:
Not sure what you mean.
Mungo MacCallum on Whitlam. A great read in my opinion.
[
Gough Whitlam dead: The man who reached for the sky
]
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/obituaries/gough-whitlam-dead-the-man-who-reached-for-the-sky-20141021-1193cg.html
[181
MTBW
briefly
He also got the sewer on for many of Sydney’s outer suburbs.
Didn’t he also so implement “no fault” divorce?
182
confessions
Posted Tuesday, October 21, 2014 at 10:36 am | Permalink
briefly:
And no-fault divorce too I believe.]
Yes…so much accomplished in such a short time…awe-inspiring
The article on Hird by Tom Ryan is interesting because it essentially says that:
(1) Hird is being targetted for false reasons
(2) Hird is alone in being targetted
(3) Hird is innocent until proven guilty
Therefore, Hird is like Lindy Chamberlain.
While it is clear that some sections of the media are targetting Hird, probably unfairly, other sections of the media, notably the Murdoch press targeted first Demetriou and subsequently ASADA, probably equally unfairly.
Hird is not ‘alone’ in being targetted. A goodly proportion of the people he oversaw have been sacked, been resigned or have been fined. 34 players are engaged in a do-or-die legal struggle which has been going on for the best part of two years.
The notion that Hird is being targetted for his feminine side, just like Chamberlain was targetted for being a woman, is also interesting.
In terms of whether Hird has been convicted of anything:
(1) He took responsibility for, and then absolved himself from responsibility, for the whole damn mess.
(2) No-one in Essendon is actually claiming that they actually know what went into the players, although they are reasonably sure there is not enough evidence to prove that T-4 was not one of the things.
(3) The club’s cohesion is a stupendous mess. One of their best players has left because of concerns about the effects on his unborn child. There are heavily polarized pro- and anti- Hird elements inside Essendon, let alone outside Essendon.
(4) Switowski’s Report painted a very ugly picture. This Report was commissioned by Essendon, not by some outside agency.
Ryan does not canvass the view that many former strong admirers, inside and outside Essendon, probably feel betrayed.
Ryan’s piece is, therefore, an entertaining flight of fancy, largely devoid of much critical thinking.
LOL this quote from Wran:
[“It was said of Caesar Augustus that he found a Rome of brick and left it of marble. It can be said of Gough Whitlam that he found Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane unsewered, and left them fully flushed.”
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/obituaries/gough-whitlam-dead-the-man-who-reached-for-the-sky-20141021-1193cg.html#ixzz3GjWMWBjN ]
😆
Gough gone. Bugger. 🙁
Still i hope the ALP uses reference to his legacy to rally people around some of the concepts of fairness that the current Govt is just so fwarking blind to.
And i dare this idiot govt to accuse them of playing politics with it. 🙂 I cant help but think that Gough would really want this lot put to the sword and be happy to have any part in that.
Anyone who visited the exhibition in the National Museum devoted to the lives, tragedies and triumphs of children institutionalised before the Single Mothers Pension instantly realized that Whitlam changed fundamentally the lives of tens of thousands of infants and children.
The went from being isolated victims of, at best, institutional coldness, and at worst, victims of rape and sadism, to being engaged members of society.
That reform alone makes Whitlam a truly great prime minister.
Re unemployment: in the second half of 1974 Australia shifted gear from a postwar period of (literally) full employment, in the wake of the first oil shock and swept up by ensuing international conditions.
Between 1945 and early 1974, unemployment rarely reached 2% and never 3%. After that time unemployment has been above 5% and mostly above 6% except for a short period around 2007. The Whitlam Government did not cause the shift, even though its management of the economy could have been better. On the other hand, there was not much it could have done about it. Similar shifts were occurring throughout the Western world.
But Whitlam and Labor copped the blame. Malcolm Fraser promised a return to a 50s and 60s era of prosperity and full employment, rather like Abbott promised a return to a Howard age Nirvana all those years later. Of course neither happened.
Boerwar
I did not bother reading the piece on Hird. Whilst coaches are being sacked left right and centre. Hird is still coach of Essendon. Why?
[The went from being isolated victims of, at best, institutional coldness, and at worst, victims of rape and sadism, to being engaged members of society.
That reform alone makes Whitlam a truly great prime minister.]
Hear hear
confessions
I think that he made the brought in the “unmarried mother’s pension” so they didn’t have to put their babies up for adoption.
Gough Whitlam and Neville Warn were fellow residents at Lulworth House, Sydney, over the last few years.
“he made”wasn’t needed!
Re MTBW @214: correct. Before then, there were Widow Pensions and ‘Deserted wives’ pensions, but not single parent pensions as we have had for many years.
MTBW:
Yes, I believe that’s right.
Steve777
What a wonderful man of compassion he was we all really owe something to him. He brought Australia out of the dark ages.
There are no giants around today or on the horizon. Bill Shorten is no Whitlam, Hawke or Keating, nor does it seem is any likely successor. On the other side, neither Abbott or any likely successor is a Menzies or even a Howard.
I know an 85 year old who has voted Lib all of her life (and will continue to vote lib). But she can’t stand Abbott because of his bellicosity. Says he shouldn’t be getting stuck into Putin, etc etc. I’m sure she’s not alone in his age group.
CONFESSIONS – Good point. Two of gough’s great obsessions in politics were sewage and railway gauges. In other words, he did roll up his sleeves on basic issues.
@mattcargill: Australians take to social media to pay tribute to Gough Whitlam http://t.co/2UEFODizCx via @ABCNews
Looking forward to Abbott’s condolence speech?
Malcolm Fraser presser now
Abolished university fees changing many Australians lives for generations
Passed the Racial Discrimination Act
Introduced Medibank
Introduced needs based school funding
Returned traditional lands to Gurindji people in NT
Blocked oil drilling on the Great Barrier reef
established Diplomatic relations with China
Just some of his governments progressive work
Here’s the view of AMP Chief Economist Shane Oliver in two tweets. This seems to get the balance right:
[“(1) Very sad news of Gough Whitlams death. 1972-75 was not great for macro econ mgt – but which country was? It was a bad time everywhere..
(2) ..but Gough Whitlam left a massive legacy of a more diverse, open & outward looking Australia that has paid huge econ & social dividends”]
STEVE – 777: Because of gough (and public health insurance) we spend about 8% of GDP on health, and the yanks almost twice that. Thus public health insurance was a massive economic reform that contributed to our present prosperity.
Paralysed man walks again after cell transplant
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29645760
Re AA @226:
We can also add to that list:
– introduced single parent pension
– introduced ‘no fault’ divorce’. No more need for private detectives
– got rid of silly book and film censorship laws that were making Australia a laughing stock
– ended conscription and Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war
– introduced an independent foreign policy that put Australia’s interests first
– funding infrastructure spending – sewering outer suburbs
– …
Fraser saying Gough wasn’t the kind of man who bore grudges says it all about Gough at the same time saying it all about the born to rule arrogance that is Fraser.
AA – Passed the Trade Practices Act (requiring fair dealing in business);
– Family Law Act (no fault divorce)
Whitlam also removed the last planks of the White Australia Policy, although to be fair his Liberal predecessors were making progress since about 1967. Gough also put Australia on the side of history with regard to Apartheid.
One of my great regrets was not going to the second “Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture” at the then NTU (now Charles Darwin University) when we were living there in 1997. Young kids, busy work etc – was just too tired that night. At least I had met him years before that for a brief chat when I was at uni.
http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/whitlam.html
guytaur:
3D printer gives a man his leg back.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/25306121/3d-printer-saves-cancer-patients-leg/
Abbott about to speak. Brace.
I know I am biased but you might like to see this:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/the-pulse-live/former-prime-minister-gough-whitlam-dead-at-98-20141021-3ii1t.html
I just saw a picture of Gough with Blue Poles on News 24 … remember the controversy over the purchase price back in 1973 for 1.3 million.
What is it valued at right now 50 to 150 million dollars.
http://whitlamdismissal.com/1973/12/17/blue-poles-herald.html
Vale EGW
Architect of what we should become.
Antidote to what we are left with
So Abbott made his eulogy of Gough to be all about Menzies. when it was not about Abbott. No mention of Gough’s nation making policies.
Boorish oaf,
[
Abbott says Whitlam may not have been our greatest prime minister but he was certainly one of the greatest personalities that our country has ever produced. He says no prime minister has been more mythologised. ]
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2014/oct/21/former-australian-pm-gough-whitlam-dies-the-world-reacts
I have seen Blue Poles. It is truly incredible, a work that seems to have a soul of its own, it is mesmerising when you stare at it.
jeffemu
I still don’t appreciate it !
[purchase price back in 1973 for 1.3 million.
What is it valued at right now 50 to 150 million dollars.]
house for 15K in 1973 now pushing 2 mill
similar hundred fold + inflation
[it is mesmerising when you stare at it.]
follows you round the room
Abbott’s condolence speech wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Thankfully it was short so his opportunities for being tacky were somewhat limited.
Puff
[He says no prime minister has been more mythologised.]
Ooooh, the small-minded batarde.
Fraser was far more complimentary and talked of a “great man”.
fraser on Faine unnecessarily me-tooing the Libs pre and post Whitlam about all the stuff they agreed with. Made the dismissal sound almost unnecessary
Vale Gough Whitlam.
A true leader.
So far a very generous speech from Truss.
[He says no prime minister has been more mythologised]
all that he hopes to destroy