BludgerTrack: 51.3-48.7 to Labor

Another incremental move to Labor on the poll aggregate this week, though not enough to change the overall seat projection.

ReachTEL livened up the Newspoll off-week with a federal poll conducted last Thursday, putting extra ballast into this week’s BludgerTrack update along with the reliable weekly Essential Research result. However, the results have made next to no difference, with two-party preferred ticking 0.2% to Labor and the total seat projection unchanged. ReachTEL in particular provides substantial new data for the state breakdowns, which have accordingly shifted to the extent of Labor gaining seats in New South Wales and Queensland and losing them in South Australia and Tasmania. Nothing new this week on personal ratings. Next week should be a big one, with the debut federal Fairfax-Ipsos poll in the pipeline, together I presume with the fortnightly Newspoll and Morgan and weekly Essential Research.

Note new posts below on New South Wales and Victorian state polling.

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.

1,403 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.3-48.7 to Labor”

Comments Page 4 of 29
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  2. To be fair to Palmer and the PUP Senators they have actually operated as a true balance of power party in this situation.

    Whether, the PB commentariat agrees or not, the Coalition was elected on a policy platform of removing the Carbon Pricing legislation and the introduction of the Direct Action Plan. PUP have negotiated to introduce moderating amendments that they believe leaves the door ajar for the introduction of an ETS further down the line.

    Remember, Palmer forced the Libs to retain the ETS structure in legislation. He has now forced the Libs to be party to a review of an ETS over the next 18 months. In that time the greater cost and less effective Direct Action Plan will be in place and open to direct scrutiny.

    At that stage, there will be further evidence that the world is moving to an ETS trading system for carbon pollution and a switch could become an irresistable force for a Government spruiking an expensive dud of a policy.

    18 months also leaves us in the run up to the next election where Labor can argue the better alternative of the ETS. No doubt finances will still be tight then. So, a way to save money and deliver better outcomes will be most appealing to the voters.

    The Greens have always perceived themselves as players rather than a true balance of power Party. It’s served them and Australia poorly as they have next to nothing to show for all their huffing and puffing.

    No doubt Clive’s approach won’t satisfy the ‘all my way or nothing” set. But, at least there is a semblance of a plan to get an ETS introduced; hopefully with popular support.

  3. GG

    I was not addressing you you. However even you with limited skills may realise that going from 10,000 reported cases to 13,000 reported cases in one week is quite serious.

    Oh and that is WHO reported data as of YESTERDAY. Not mine.

    I am very impressed with what seems like a full on effort by the USA and with a bit of luck they just may be able to bring the epidemic under control.

  4. dtt,

    Every day might be a new dawn. But, it seems to contain the same doomsday nonsense being spouted by you.

    I’m of the inclination to stay calm and carry on.

    You of course, are welcome to carry on with your histrionics.

  5. Re Briefly @57: I’ve been away for a while so haven’t responded.

    You have a point, although much of the good conditions enjoyed by Australian employees is a legacy of a time when unions and employee bargaining power were much stronger. Businesses did not provide four weeks’ annual leave and parental leave out of the goodness of their corporate hearts.

    But after 30 years out downsizing, outsourcing and intense overseas competition, this is being slowly wound back. I fear that Walmart in the USA may be the way of the future.

    Regardless, while some regulations may be surplus to requirements or obsolete, most of them exist because businesses need to be legislated into good behaviour.

  6. GG

    Abbott promised Direct Action and no carbon tax

    Its been good that mainly Labor and the Greens have delayed it for over a year.

    If as I hope Labor gets back in then its straight to an ETS. Only the LNP will oppose and in opposition they will be split.

    If Labor does take two terms the damage to the economy is going to be hard to undo.

    This is why I am pleased Abbott strategy seems so stupid with the budget. Hitting people in the hip pocket big time makes a one term LNP likely.

  10. Re Guytaur @156: …If Labor does take two terms the damage to the economy is going to be hard to undo.

    This would apply if significant parts of the 2014 Budget get through. Once the Copayment has been introduced, bulk billing will be finished and will be hard to get back. It will be near impossible to reregulate Universities and there’ll be a who new bunch of rent-seekers in private tertiary education with a mammoth sense of entitlement.

  11. Yesiree Bob
    Posted Thursday, October 30, 2014 at 11:50 am
    “Just how stupid do these people think we are ?”

    From my observation over the last couple of decades, the Libs have generally a much better handle on how intellectually challenged the average Aussie really is. The ‘left’ (or those who think of themselves in those categories) continually make the mistake of believing that the average voter gives a rats about things like altruistic thinking, societal benefit self-evidently outweighing naked, short-term self interest, etc. The evidence mounts that they are deluding themselves. Look at what governs us, look at the polls, and weep.

  12. Re YB @158: that probably applies to the fossil fuel industry as well. The situation is probably similar to that faced by the Tobacco industry in the 1960s. The reaction if the fossil fuel industry and their Australian clients the LNP will be similar: keep the game going for as long as possible and strenuously resist efforts to control and wind back the damage they do.

  13. Brenda Loots@161

    Look at what governs us, look at the polls, and weep.

    I do look at what is governing us, but then the polls seem to reflect that the public has also looked at what is governing us, and is starting to realise they are being had, and are passing judgement.

  17. WWP

    [For the same reason you have a law criminalizing killing people.]

    The analogy is poor because laws criminalizing killing people are not a failed model. Sure, people continue to kill people despite the law, but assuming we can detect those doing it we can restrain them. That’s as good as it gets.

    The 2009 CPRS would not have achieved any tangible benefit and could simply have been cited as an example of the pointlessness of carbon pricing. Worse yet, it could have forced the diversion of public money into CC&S.

  18. GG,

    [Campbell on the way to gorn!!

    http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/election-too-close-to-call-poll-20141029-11ddg6.html%5D

    Good riddance. I especially like this bit:

    Opposition leader Annastacia Palaszczuk led Campbell Newman as preferred premier, 52.5 per cent to 47.5 per cent.

    followed up in the comments with:
    [
    Geez, imagine how popular the ALP would be with someone we liked as leader. Anna is OK, but the way she drones on about nothing annoys the crap out of me.

    Get someone with a bit of charisma to lead the ALP and they would romp it in like the LNP did last time.

    Now, who can we get? Wally Lewis? Shane Webcke? Darren Lockyer?

    Geez, even Paul Gallen would be preferred over Newman.
    ]
    🙂

  19. The CPRS is history and never coming back, which makes long debates about it pointless now.

    However, it did include, as a cap-and-trade system, a cap. As long as there was integrity in the accounting for permits – whether the permits are free to industry, and regardless of whatever other compensation industry was provided – then the system would have achieved the target.

    CC&S is a sideshow – yes, funding for it is and would have been waste, in my opinion, but it was never ‘built in’ to the fundamental ETS.

  20. [Campbell on the way to gorn!!]

    Newman is probably gorn but I doubt the LNP will lose government. A minority government is more likely than a Labor win.

  21. Another brilliant day in Sydney. The real Summer, when it arrives, will probably be a disappointment as it often is in Sydney. Weather patterns will switch to a more Easterly / maratime pattern, with frequent showers and lots of dull overcast days with Southerlies, some time in the next few weeks. However, I think it likely that away from the East Coast it will be yet a scorching Summer again which is definitely not wanted.

    But in the meantime it’s just nudging 30 across Sydney again with clear skies, low humidity and a gentle warm breeze. The jacarandas are now out in full bloom and I just heard the first cicadas of the coming season.

  23. [The analogy is poor because laws criminalizing killing people are not a failed model. Sure, people continue to kill people despite the law, but assuming we can detect those doing it we can restrain them. That’s as good as it gets.
    The 2009 CPRS would not have achieved any tangible benefit and could simply have been cited as an example of the pointlessness of carbon pricing. Worse yet, it could have forced the diversion of public money into CC&S.]

    I wasn’t comparing the CPRS to murder – I had misunderstood your backflip – I take it now you were not attempting to ask abroad question about why make laws at all, you were asking why make laws you consider would have failed. I think it is a ridiculous baseless claim created long after the debate when the size of the greens f$&kup became apparent probably about the time of negotiating another compromise ETS with the Gillard government.

    But I accept you needed to convince yourself it would have failed and there is no point highlighting facts to try and convince you.

    Let’s say for a minute you are actually right still it is obvious that an established framework that could be evolved was more important and much much better than nothing. the greens Gillard and the HoR xbench wouldn’t have needed to do create the frame nor have the fixed price period. They could have adjusted it. Much like the EU has two times now.

  24. AA

    [A bank robber would get paid not to rob banks. The less banks he robs the more he gets paid, and then he gets paid for not robbing banks he may have robbed in the future.]

    Are you saying that in Minority Report, they should be rewarding those would be law breakers instead of persecuting them?

  25. [“Hopefully, having ended the carbon tax, and having been forced to accept the idea of an ETS, at least as a subject of study, the Abbott government will be in a position to move on both from the doomed denialism of the rightwing tribalists and the semantics of the carbon price, and return Australia to the mainstream of global policy on climate change. The upcoming G20 meeting would be a great opportunity.”]

    I’d regard that as over optimistic, but an interesting article by John Quiggan of the CCA: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/30/direct-action-is-here-now-tony-abbott-can-finally-move-on-from-doomed-tribalism

    Anyway, off to Newcastle (150 km North) so bye for now.

  27. [The jacarandas are now out in full bloom and I just heard the first cicadas of the coming season.]

    Only thing missing is the death march of a thousand moths out the back of my place

  28. Steve777

    Strangely enough the Jacaranda at my house and others in the neighbourhood managed to keep their leaves through winter. Another sign that winters are warmer now in Perth…

  29. William.
    Given the huge swings to the LNP in the last NSW and Qld state elections, is it safe to assume preferences will be distributed in the ratios in the upcoming state elections?

  30. Correction.
    William.
    Given the huge swings to the LNP in the last NSW and Qld state elections, is it safe to assume preferences will be distributed in the same ratios in the upcoming state elections?

  32. WWP

    [Let’s say for a minute you are actually right still it is obvious that an established framework that could be evolved was more important and much much better than nothing.]

    I don’t agree. If ‘the framework’ achieves nothing except to act as a constraint on one that might work, then it’s a negative.

    Imagine you start building a house on a block of land, but as it happens, you’ve built too close to the property line and the local council requires slab construction du to the terrain and places where gas or electricity lines should enter are obstructed.

    The framework is not better than nothing. It’s a costly nuisance. Better to have waited until you had the right plan and the right materials to start.

    Now Rudd actually spurned something like the right framework of course. Garnaut had offered an entirely adequate framework. Rudd could have proposed that and invited the LNP to either support it or block it then and there. At the time, the LNP were not in a position to resist and Abbott was advising the Liberals to acquiesce.

    Of course, Rudd wasn’t keen on that. He wanted to wedge the LNP and ensure that we did not share the kudos with him, and so he set about prolonging negotiations designed to keep those opposed within the LNP to paying a price for carbon emissions engaged and us to one side. By the end of the year there was turmoil and of course as we know, Rudd got his wish — Turnbull was seriously weakened and he had also ensured that we wouldn’t support it. What he didn’t count on was Turnbull being rolled by Abbott, which, due it seems to the absence of Fran Bailey from the party room through illness, occurred.

    Rudd’s plan was politically artful and might have worked but regrettably for him, when it fell just short he had torpedoed his own moral imperative.

    Since that time, people in the ALP have suggested that we should have come to Rudd’s rescue, even though he was only in trouble because of his desire to turn policy into a political game with his ego as the only winner and abatement as the biggest loser in circumstances where a comprehensive scheme had been on the table in politically favourable cirumstances.

    That’s perverse and self-serving of the ALP fan club.

  33. [153
    daretotread

    ….going from 10,000 reported cases to 13,000 reported cases in one week is quite serious.]

    Nearly all the increase results to revisions to the data in earlier months. The weekly increments and aggregates are clearly shown in the histograms and associated table here:

    SITUATION REPORT
    29 OCTOBER 2014

    http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/situation-reports/en/

    [GENEVA — Three months after declaring West Africa’s Ebola epidemic a global emergency, the World Health Organization said Wednesday that new infections in Liberia, one of the worst affected countries, appeared to be declining. But the organization also warned against complacency in international efforts to fight the disease.

    The health authorities in Liberia are reporting lower numbers of new infections; treatment centers in the capital, Monrovia, that once turned away victims now have unoccupied beds; and the number of burials of Ebola victims has started to drop, Dr. Bruce Aylward, the W.H.O. assistant director-general, told reporters in Geneva.

    “Do we feel confident that the response is now getting an upper hand on the virus? Yes, we are seeing a slowing of the rate of new cases very definitely” in Liberia, said Dr. Aylward, who is in charge of the operational response to the epidemic.

    At least 13,703 people have been infected by the virus, all but 27 of them in the three worst affected countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the latest estimates cited by Dr. Aylward. Nearly half of the total is in Liberia.]

    According to the data published by WHO the rate of infection in West Africa from the index date, 26 December 2013, until 27 October 2014 has been 3.172% daily, and this has fallen in the last 3 weeks to 1.17% daily. If the data is complete, the rate of new infection in Liberia has fallen to 0.68% daily in the last three weeks.

  35. 182
    Fran Barlow

    By playing games with the CPRS, Rudd put his destiny in the hands of Nick Minchin. Needless to say, Minchin did not hesitate to use his power to destroy a Labor PM and a policy that he chose to oppose. 2009 and 2010 were very good years for Minchin even if they were a debacle for the rest of us.

  36. [Another brilliant day in Sydney. The real Summer, when it arrives, will probably be a disappointment as it often is in Sydney. Weather patterns will switch to a more Easterly / maratime pattern, with frequent showers and lots of dull overcast days with Southerlies, some time in the next few weeks. ]

    I suppose you got that crap from the discredited BOM.

    Typical.

    Sheesh.

  38. That is lovely writing Fran and I know you need to believe it I just consider it dishonest in places completely wrong and ridiculously so.

    It is also interesting to review why it was opposed at the time and realize this concept you’ve constructed is entirely after the fact whether you are right and I am wrong or vice versa about the importance of the CPRS as a framework and maintaining popular support for action the debate at the time was about the target and the industry support.

    I agree on one thing and that is Rudd failed and failed badly – but at least he failed trying to do the right thing. The greens were doing the wrong thing for political reasons – puts the greens with those opposing action on climate change and the greens working for coal and succeeding. No wonder a fanciful after the fact construct is needed.

  39. Diogenes re Nova Peris Post 181
    ________
    The call for the Fed Police(from a Senator) must prompt some action as her emails must have been hacked…and the raunchy bits published by News Limited…an old story..and who better than Murdoch’s hencemen

    And the faux shock of the News Tabloids at the content of her rauchy emails to her new lover…shows a scant knowledge of how mature adults speak and behave about their sex lives ..it seems as if New Ltd are surprised that peoople actualy enjoy… and look forward eagerly to having sex with a loved partner…and the West Indian athlete looks as if he can supply all her needs…so what is wrong… who’s surprised… that’s life…and she was a grand-mother,trice married..at 40…no shy virgin

    I suspect the Murdoch rage is because she’s a Labor senator

    The Murdoch henchmen sound like the Rev Fred Niall

  40. [188
    WeWantPaul

    I agree on one thing and that is Rudd failed and failed badly – but at least he failed trying to do the right thing.]

    WWP, Rudd failed because he misplayed his hand. He could have got the mother of all cap-and-trade schemes up and handed the Libs a thorough beating. Instead, by means of his own chicanery he first precipitated a legislative defeat and then his eventual ejection from power.

    Rudd’s weakness and too-smart-by-half gamesmanship gave rise to the conditions in which the scoundrel, Tony Abbott, was able to seize hold of the Liberal Party and then the Treasury benches.

    If there is anyone who should be held to account it is the miserable Rudd.

  42. WWP

    [I agree on one thing and that is Rudd failed and failed badly – but at least he failed trying to do the right thing. ]

    No, he prioritised his own political game over the policy he once described as a great moral imperative, debauching it entirely. He nearly succeded in the former, (and kudos at the artful way he tried to … um r*tf**k us and the Libs I do admire art) but when he me missed out on that, all he had was his debauched policy, which we declined to support.

    He failed because he was doing the wrong thing when if he’d done the right thing he’d have succeeded. He snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and a special kind of ignominy is reserved for folk like that.

  44. PUP vote collapsing in QLD , says latest Essential.

    As a friend of mine noted: “Bluster and stunts followed by rolling over for meaningless concessions is obviously not what the voters want from Clive.”

  45. Vic Ipsos Poll today
    ____________________
    Two further interesting things
    The Greens polling amongst the 18-24 aged group is ony 2% less than the Labor vote…a remarkable comment
    My 18 year old G-daughter is voting Green…and says so are many her many of her friends

    Interesting too the polls shows that most National voters are elderly…young conservatives going for the Libs in all cohorts… but the older group

    the Nationals are a dying party

  46. deblonay, the real story for the murdoch press is the public outrage at Peris’ seemingly diddling taxpayer funds so she could bring her boyfriend/lover to Oz on the public tit. That she seems to have done nothing wrong is irrelevant.
    The sexual stuff is just additional grist for the mill for the murdochracy, click bait, as it were.
    People don’t matter to them.

  48. So there you go WWP … briefly … who is plainly a supporter of the ALP rather than us, agrees with me on this particular matter.

    It is not merely Greens who see matters this way.

  49. [So there you go WWP … briefly … who is plainly a supporter of the ALP rather than us, agrees with me on this particular matter.
    It is not merely Greens who see matters this way.]

    Lol I am even more sure I’m right now.

  50. [PUP vote collapsing in QLD , says latest Essential.]

    It must be going up elsewhere then according to the latest Essential Report because it increased from 3% nationally to 4%.

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