Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

Not much doing in Essential Research this week, apart from results showing uneasiness about data retention. Elsewhere, a union-commissioned poll finds Joe Hockey taking a hit in his seat of North Sydney.

Absolutely no change whatsoever in this week’s Essential Research result, except that the “others” reading is up a point to 9% without making any change the other primary votes, because rounding. That means Labor leads 52-48 on two-party while trailing 40% to 38% on the primary vote, with the Greens on 10% and Palmer United on 4%. We also get Essential’s monthly personal ratings, which have Tony Abbott down one on approval to 39% and up two on disapproval to 50%, Bill Shorten up two on both measures to 37% and 38%, and Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister narrowing from 38-32 to 36-34. Further questions are inspired by data retention, the most direct of which finds 41% broadly supportive and 44% broadly opposed. A slight majority indicated a lot or some trust for police and intelligence agencies not to misuse data (53% against 42% for little or no trust), but few did so for private companies. Only 34% expressed support for the AFP using data retention to pursue illegal downloaders, with 47% opposed.

Elsewhere:

• United Voice has commissioned ReachTEL to conduct automated phone polls of the North Sydney (Joe Hockey, Liberal) and McMahon (Chris Bowen, Labor) electorates, by way of promoting its campaign for childcare funding. The full results, including responses to questions on childcare, can be downloaded here. Excluding the undecided, the North Sydney poll has the Liberals on 49% (down 12%), Labor on 34% (up 14%) and the Greens on 13% (down 3%), translating on 2013 preferences to a Liberal two-party vote of 53.7% (down 12.2%). However, the McMahon poll is almost bang on the 2013 election result: Labor 49% (down 2%), Liberal 40% (down 1%) and Greens 4% (up 1%), with Labor’s two-party vote unchanged at 55.3%.

• The Australian Electoral Commission has been rebuked in an Australian National Audit Office report for failing to implement promised improvements to ballot box and polling booth security before the 2013 election, and not doing as much as it claimed to have done to implement the recommendations of the Keelty report following the WA Senate disaster. More from Harley Dennett at The Mandarin.

• South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has flagged the possibility of Legislative Council reforms, in particular an end to staggered eight-year terms, to be implemented after a referendum.

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.

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

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  1. [That you cannot distinguish between what the Libs were saying and what the Greens were saying, and see all opposition to the ALP as being the same, is a failing of your analytical abilities.]

    It isn’t about what I can differentiate between, but my bad on forgetting the greens took a carbon tax to 07, it is about how the message played and the messages played together as one ‘cprs’ bad. Look you still got greens clowns here who need to believe it.

    It was very effective and support for action on climate change plummeted. It had nothing at all to do with labor being bad at selling it was sold before 07. It was the greens and libs who grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory. The libs deliberately the greens stupidly.

  2. BK @ 350 – where does that leave to Coalition’s 5% target? It just looks pathetic, especially with Direct Action tipped to not even achieve that.

  3. [293
    WeWantPaul

    one of the silliest things ever attempted in Australian politics and precipitated his ejection from office.

    Care to explain this on any level – excluding internal ALP politics which I will concede on upfront?]

    There were several reasons:

    First, the RSPT amounted to the use of the tax system to impute a form of equitable interest in mines; meaning
    Second, the RSPT exposed taxpayers to future losses in the event that mines failed; and
    Third, the RSPT also implied an attempt to use the tax system to carry out a partial nationalisation of the mining industry; while
    Fourth, the proposed kick-in rate for “super” profits was going to be pitched at or close to the Commonwealth Bond Rate, a rate that was absurdly low; and
    Fifth, the system would have treated small quarries supplying basic materials used in the domestic economy – resources like gravel, limestone or gypsum – in the same way as the Pilbara iron mines or the coal deposits of the Bowen Basin or Hunter; as well as
    Sixth, treating small exploratory deposits the same way as large, long-life deposits.

    Reflect on this. Gina Rinehart is the major owner in Australia’s single best iron ore deposit, Roy Hill. She has decided to develop it using capital borrowed in the US from a US-Govt owned bank. If, as is now quite likely, the mine fails due to falling prices, and the RSPT were in place, Australian taxpayers would be called on to reimburse both Gina and the US Import-Export Bank for their losses without ever raising a dollar in revenue from the venture.

    The RSPT was premised on the foolish notion that resource export prices and volumes would remain at stellar levels forever and that losses would never exceed gains. Developments in the markets for IO, coal, LNG, gold, copper, zinc and others demonstrate this premise was wrong.

    It is a very, very fortunate thing for taxpayers that the RSPT never got off the ground.

  4. While Abbott has been making a fool of himself threatening to “shirtfront” Putin ..Obama is about to seal an historic deal with China to massively reduce CO2 emissions..

    Difference between a leader ..and a liar..

    U.S. and China Reach Deal on Climate Change in Secret Talks

    http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F11%2F12%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Fchina-us-xi-obama-apec.html%3Fhp%26action%3Dclick%26pgtype%3DHomepage%26module%3Dfirst-column-region%26region%3Dtop-news%26WT.nav%3Dtop-news%26_r%3D0

  5. [Reflect on this. Gina Rinehart is the major owner in Australia’s single best iron ore deposit, Roy Hill. She has decided to develop it using capital borrowed in the US from a US-Govt owned bank. If, as is now quite likely, the mine fails due to falling prices, and the RSPT were in place, Australian taxpayers would be called on to reimburse both Gina and the US Import-Export Bank for their losses without ever raising a dollar in revenue from the venture.]

    Bingo.

  6. I’s starting think at this stage that Abbott is toast (God willing). He and Hockey are wrecking the economy and now with the Solar Council gunning for the government and a probable worldwide commitment to deep carbon emission reduction, what can Abbott do to change his fortunes that doesn’t upset the public further? Given that he campaigned on trust and a stable, mature government, people aren’t going to believe a word he says at the next election. He’s a total failure. One term Tony!

  7. Hey Maaaarh, there’s gonna be some them tharrr spinnin’ from them tharrr Fibs tonight.

    Lil Greg Hunt is gonna git himself all dizzy like from his spinnun’

  8. briefly

    And the particularly stupid thing about the RSPT proposal was that instead of the mining industry saying thanks a bunch, this was one of the things that was used to hit the regime around the head with — so much so that in the MRRT we got an even worse deal than with the RSPT.

    That the RSPT was pushed through in such unseemly haste reflected Rudd’s attempt to hang onto authority both within and outside his party.

    There were/are far better ways to tax anomalous profits and also far better ways to undercut stakeholder opposition and sell that as an idea to the public. Rudd had too little sense to grasp either of these points. One suspects that by the time he proposed this, he was beyond the appeal of anyone in his circle.

    Really though, as I’ve said many times, the ALP should have collared him in 2009 and put him on what some workplaces call “a support and improvement program” which is either a path to rectifying your behaviour and meeting the organisation culture/benchmarks or, failing that, your departure.

    So although Rudd was the proximal cause of the problem, the distal cause lay in ALP culture, which allowed him to be selected, assert bonapartist control over the parliamentary party and the larger cabinet, become detached from reality in his hubris, and then drag the party to within sniffing disatnce of disaster before they finally removed him, and on this occasion, without warning, precisely because he was an autocrat operating within a hostile media context.

  9. jeffemu@361

    Hey Maaaarh, there’s gonna be some them tharrr spinnin’ from them tharrr Fibs tonight.

    Lil Greg Hunt is gonna git himself all dizzy like from his spinnun’

    Spoken like a true Queenslander… 😀

  10. markjs

    Excellent but not surprising news. The Chinese have accepted for a while something must be done. From comments Obama made to John Key when they met earlier in the year I took him as aiming for a global agreement as his administration’s “signature” achievement. The target is for it to happen at Paris next year ..I made it “game over” for Tones’ troglodytes then and this is another nail in his coffin.

  11. Fran/362

    [So although Rudd was the proximal cause of the problem, the distal cause lay in ALP culture, which allowed him to be selected, assert bonapartist control over the parliamentary party and the larger cabinet, become detached from reality in his hubris, and then drag the party to within sniffing distance of disaster before they finally removed him, and on this occasion, without warning, precisely because he was an autocrat operating within a hostile media context.]

    This last declaration invited wild applause from the western quarter, with fans leaping to their feet and appealing for “More! More! More…!”

    🙂

  12. [There were/are far better ways to tax anomalous profits and also far better ways to undercut stakeholder opposition and sell that as an idea to the public. ]

    How? And is this policy written up on the Green’s web site?

  13. MTBW ..
    ( What do you reckon the odds are on that one.

    For a former Jesuit how will Tony respond to this.)

    How will he respond.. how do you reckon.???

    Pope Frank is in for one hell of a Shirtfronting, you bet he can.

  14. For those maybe in early crowing mode about Abbott being made look a fool over climate change stuff, it must be remembered that while the DA stuff is rubbish, the conservatives have always touted the ‘We must wait for those dirty polluters to act first before we do anything’ line.

    How many times did we hear that it was “unfair” that Oz penalise itself when our “competitors” were not doing anything? Canada was often used as an parallel example, and I suppose, explains why Oz has copied Canada’s conservative approach to CC – that is, do SFA.

    I have not seen any details of the ‘secret’ agreement between the US and China, but the Coalition can now validly make the point that now the Big Players have made some kind of agreement, it is okay now for Oz to fall into line.

    Of course the rank hypocrisy of Abbott (climate change is crap), Hunt and associates will be totally ignored.

  15. markjs

    With the Paris summit late next year the timing was just right . Obama is in his last year so nothing to lose there and a couple of major countries like Sth Korea have trading schemes kicking in. So when Obama said the following in June the dots were there. Fingers crossed anyway.

    [(Obama) “So we discussed our plans for putting forward robust action in 2015 with the upcoming Paris conference.”]

  16. Think of all those pythons squeezing and octopussy’s clutching and all those cobras striking all those millions and millions and millions of poor chinese and septic tanks.

    Tone The Imbecile and Team Australia could save the world. C’mon lets all do it.

  17. jeffemu@371

    Bemused, I might be living north of the Tweed, but I am still a Cockroach. Always remember ‘me’ old roots so to speak.

    Queenslanders were always a lot of fun to take the mickey out of. 😀

  18. Tricot @ 373

    That was my first reaction too. However, it may well be that the Coalition have been so completely bought and sold by big coal that they will have to keep up their denialist line.

    We may be about to find out whether their objection to climate change policy is ideological (which can readily change to meet the circumstances as you suggest) or just simple corruption of the old fashioned type.

    Popcorn will be in order I think.

  19. but the Coalition can now validly make the point that now the Big Players have made some kind of agreement, it is okay now for Oz to fall into line.

    Yes, they could make that shift, but they won’t. The domestic stakes are too high for them – they put so many of their eggs in the ‘carbon tax bad!’ basket and courting fossil fuel big business interests and the outright denialists in the population that they cannot change tack now.

    Perhaps if it shows up as a major issue in opinion polling, and the LNP sink to 45% TPP or lower for a sustained period, then they might consider emergency surgery on their leadership and their platform, but … I kind of doubt that will happen. This LNP government will live or die by what happens to the economy and the budget.

  20. Briefly, Victoria and lizzie, having seen Shorten talk in person, it wouldn’t be the cameras but Shorten’s robotic, dissociated manner that would be causing that. I was very impressed by Shorten as the union guy covering the trapped miners, I have been underwhelmed seeing Shorten on TV, but having now witnessed him in person, I have to say he is truly dreadful. His lack of interest and depth on anything except IR is patently obvious, and his approach to politics is pure NSW right.

  21. [Pope Francis writes to Tony Abbott, calls for G20 not to forget poor]

    He will write back “The poor will always be with us. Blessed are the poor.”

  22. Oh yeah, on JG and her comments on carbon pricing and mining taxes: I’ve said before the time for the mining tax has passed for now, and probably for a decade or two, so spending any political capital on mining taxes now is a bit silly.

    However, JG’s comments serve two purposes that are useful for the ALP: it starts to rehabilitate some of the most contentious elements of the Rudd/Gillard period, rather than trying to pretend these things never happened, and it lays the groundwork for future moves by the ALP.

    So far the ALP leadership have proven to be steadfastly behind reintroducing carbon pricing – and good on them for showing some spine – but to do this politically successfully it needs to be kept in the public’s mind at all times (and JG’s comments provide another reference point for this, which is good). The government has been losing the next election for a while now, and the ALP has some hope of winning the next election, and carbon pricing won’t prevent people from voting for the ALP – but it cannot be allowed to be a ‘surprise’ or a point of attack (in terms of ‘the ALP will bring back the carbon tax, but they haven’t talked about it – they’re trying to pull a swifty!’). It just has to be accepted by everyone that this is ALP policy, and when they reintroduce it after winning, no one can say it was a ‘lie’ or a surprise or deviousness or any of the other crap.

    As for the mining tax – I don’t imagine any ALP government in the near future will be looking to reintroduce such a thing, but the mining industry can be generally expected to be hostile to a future ALP government so reminding the public that the mining industry got their way with the mining tax (however pointless it might have been one way or the other) is something of a political bargaining tool – they got their way on that, so whatever measure they’re objecting to down the track (carbon pricing perhaps) they should just accept – tit for tat win/defeat balancing the ledger kind of thing.

  23. The Pope writes to Abbott and tells him not to forget the poor.

    So, Abbott writes back to him and says, ‘You look after your mob, and I’ll look after the eye of the needle mob’.

  24. Even with the MRRT Australian iron ore would have remained competitive. The ore is of a higher quality and being closer to the market lower shipping costs would have assisted.

    Compared to the taxes paid in other mining countries, Chile, Argentina, Sth Africa etc and some provinces of Canada the taxes would have been competitive.

    We regularly heard the tale that mining would leave Australia, but the facts contradicted these “tales”. A prime example is the Gina mine. That was all being planned and negotiated while the MRRT was being mooted and the investment did not stop when it came in.

    The only argument that could raise some dispute is that Gina was confident that the libs would win and repeal.

  25. I don’t have time to go deep back into Henry but are you referring to the royalty refund or something else. Richardsons modeling for the minerals council showed the RSPT would have had a negative 900 million in the first two quarters 2012-13 but it is all royalty refund.

    I dont have a real problem with royalty refund

  26. In general it would be useful if all ex Labor prime ministers, ministers, parliamentarians and hacks just STFU.

    Many of them were not much help when they were in the saddle and very many of them just cannot help themselves afterwards, either.

  27. Hypothecation doesn’t make sense and is a political minefield.

    Revenue raising measures should be justifiable in their own right in terms of the tax mix, equity, budget sustainability etc.

    Expenditure measures should be justifiable in their own right.

    Any given tax is never going to follow a particular expenditure program. The business cycle basically guarantees that revenue and expenditure are going to diverge over time so claiming that X tax pays for Y expenditure is just a lie. It may at a single instant in time, but that just means it won’t 6 months down the track. It devalues the public debate around taxation and expenditure to make such obviously untrue (over time) claims.

    It was one of my major criticisms of the ALP government that they attempted to link taxes and expenditures in a pointless attempt to ‘prove’ that they were fiscally conservative.

    And when a particular tax becomes a political football – as it is inevitably going to do – the ‘linked’ expenditure then is at political risk as well, rather than being debated on its own merits. We’ve seen that already with the repeal of the mining tax that was ‘linked’ with various small business tax benefits – the tax benefits were repealed when the mining tax was, even though they were clearly unrelated and should have been debated separately.

    And, of course, if general revenue over time becomes a tangled web of nominally ‘tied’ expenditure the whole taxation system becomes a fragmented mess.

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