ReachTEL: 53-47 to Labor

ReachTEL turns in a result that is nicely in line with the overall trend, and finds Palmer United coming down hard.

The latest monthly ReachTEL automated phone poll of federal voting intention for the Seven Network ticks a point in Labor’s favour, putting their two-party lead bang on BludgerTrack at 53-47. The biggest mover on the primary vote is Palmer United, who have slumped from 5.1% to 3.1%, with Labor up 1.2% to 38.7%, the Coalition up 0.1% to 40.2% and the Greens down 0.4% to 11.1%. Also featured are leadership ratings and attitudinal results on the G20 and, entertainingly, whether Jacqui Lambie should leave the Palmer United Party (43.4% yes, 17.6% no).

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.

1,783 thoughts on “ReachTEL: 53-47 to Labor”

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  1. An obvious way to increase tax revenue is to crack down on ‘cash only’ businesses. Virtually every restaurant and take away shop in our area is now ‘cash only’. Not only is the GST being lost but income tax as well. Presumably also any employees are cash only and who knows what their rights would be in a workers compo situation.

  2. I find it a big wrong that a couple can draw about $70k a year from a super fund tax free and still qualify for a part age pension with all the benefits that go with that.

    It is quite ridiculous that people drawing big super incomes are paying nothing in tax. After all, these people may/ may not be drawing the old age pension or part thereof but they are still consuming government services – health, roads, defence, etc. Not to mention also self funded super funds pouring lots of money into the property market driving prices ever higher.

  5. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_JAPAN_SURROGATE_TUNA?SITE=COBOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

    Engineering tuna…

    Yamazaki’s technique involves extracting reproductive stem cells from the discarded guts of tuna shipped by cold delivery from fish farms and inserting them into mackerel fry so tiny they are barely visible.

    The baby fish are put in an anesthetic solution and then transferred by dropper onto a slide under the microscope. Researcher Ryosuke Yazawa deftly inserts a minute glass needle into one’s body cavity to demonstrate.

    Under the right conditions, the tuna stem cells migrate into the ovaries and testes of the mackerel. The team is now waiting to see if the mackerel, when mature, will spawn tuna, and if the tuna will survive. Following that, they could be released into the sea or farmed.

  6. http://theconversation.com/brain-food-diets-impacts-on-students-are-too-big-to-ignore-33895

    Eating and learning are correlated..

    2013 Norwegian study, regular breakfast was associated with fewer learning difficulties, not only in maths but also in reading and writing.

    In a 2008 Canadian study, higher academic achievement was reported in adolescents who consumed more fruits, vegetables and milk. Increased fish consumption positively influenced academic grades in Swedish teens, according to a paper published in 2010.

    Another 2010 paper showed that, in Iceland, adolescents who had poor dietary habits (with higher consumption of chips, hamburgers and hot dogs) had lower academic achievement. In contrast, adolescents with higher fruit and vegetable consumption achieved higher academic scores.

    In Australia, data from the long-running Western Australian Raine study have shown teenagers’ diet impacts cognitive performance, which is a significant predictor for academic achievement.

  9. http://theconversation.com/the-rosetta-lander-detects-organic-matter-the-seeds-of-life-34413

    Panspermia?

    Interestingly, the idea that life could have been delivered to Earth by comets has another, more speculative side – a theory known as “panspermia”. What if life didn’t start on Earth at all, but rather began elsewhere, and was delivered to our planet by rocks (or snowballs) from space?

    The idea isn’t actually as far-fetched as it sounds. Experiments have shown that bacteria can survive the kind of forces that would be experienced in the collision of a comet or asteroid on a planet such as Earth.

    And we know that impacts can eject solid, complete rocks from the surfaces of planets intact – we have meteorites on Earth that were definitely ejected from Mars. Still other experiments show that bacteria can survive, dormant, in the vacuum of space.

    Following all of these results, it is quite possible, and perhaps even likely, that life in our solar system has been scattered back and forth between the planets over the billions of years since the planets formed. So if we do find life on Mars, then perhaps it will share a common origin with life on Earth, thanks to the countless collisions that have wracked both planets since they formed.

    Some scientists go further, though, noting that life could be carried in comets from one planetary system to another. We know that they carry a rich organic budget – as demonstrated by Philae’s latest exciting result – but what if they carry more than just the precursors to life? Perhaps comets are actually an inter-stellar delivery mechanism, by which youthful planets are seeded with life as they form.

    The more extreme versions of panspermia remain both speculative and controversial. Despite this, it is becoming more apparent that comets are, at the very least, a prime source of the precursors to life. They delivered the water on which life thrives, as well as the compounds upon which it is built.

    Without comets, it seems, we may well not be here.

  10. Fran Barlow

    Posted Saturday, November 22, 2014 at 4:39 pm | Permalink

    AA

    Plainly, people below the threshhold can be compensated with

    A) Income support payments

    And/or

    B ) Means-tested non-liquid benefits (such as housing

    Then we go through the “the wealthy pay the tax while the “poor” just put their hands out for government money”…the “leftie bludgers” as the right wing like to describe them

  11. Fredex

    I am no expert but I read a lot and the figures were quoted by financial planner nick bruining in The West Australia earlier this year.
    I would imagine the $70k would have to be coming from a superannuation fund which is tax free, not investments outside super such as shares, property and bank deposits.

  12. A question. If you have a tax free super income and you have non tax free super income – shares, bank deposits, etc. Where does the tax free threshold sit. Do you have to earn $18k on the non-super before paying tax or is there a sliding scale in there?

  13. Isn’t there something for all over-60s which has nothing to do with income or assets and is separate from the age pension? Or even a health card?

  14. 302

    The ALP should have made a big noise about the structural deficit, after being elected in 2007, and then gone for fixing it in the first budget. Restoring taxation on super for the over 60s (at least over a threshold, such as that of the 30% tax rate), taxing super contributions and income for those in to top two tax brackets at their tax rate minus 15%, tightening up the aged pension means-test, fixing capital gains tax, dumping Howard`s last round of tax cuts (at least for the top two tax brackets) and restoring petrol excise indexation.

    The Super changes could have also been sold on equity grounds, especially if the low income super contribution tax cut had also been brought in then.

  15. 312

    I believe that, since super is now untaxed at withdrawal, it counts as tax free income and thus there is no sliding scale.

  17. Blackburseph

    I doubt thIs a good place to be getting financial advice…

    I worked for the first three months of the 2013-14 year and then took redundancy and retired and started drawing in my super in January this year.

    When I did my tax return the super income did not have to be declared. Because I only worked for part of the year I got most of the tax I had paid back, including the low income earners rebate. Was a nice surprise.

    My understanding from my accountant is that super income is simply not declared on tax returns.

  18. Tom @ 314

    Probably somebody (even the Treasury or Department of Finance) should have made a bigger noise when a lot of these things were even being considered. The economic/ political team of Rudd and Swan would have been incapable of doing any of those things – an opportunity missed.

  23. briefly

    In a 2008 Canadian study, higher academic achievement was reported in adolescents who consumed more fruits, vegetables and milk.

    Some part of this can be put down to parents who take care.

  24. rua

    ewman joked about hi rise in Coolum, well the joke is on him.

    You don’t want to end up like the Gold Coast where the beaches are swathed in shadow.

  25. 323
    CTar1

    briefly

    In a 2008 Canadian study, higher academic achievement was reported in adolescents who consumed more fruits, vegetables and milk.

    Some part of this can be put down to parents who take care.

    I’m sure you’re right. Just the same…it sounds intuitively plausible.

  29. But that only gives discounts where retailers offer them, doesn’t it? (I’ve never had one)

    It gives you PBS scripts for $6 each. A huge saving for the chronically ill over 60s. Howard introduced it originally for farmers wives, then of course it was expanded to bleed the PBS of funds.

  30. They delivered the water on which life thrives

    For some time now it has been widely accepted that comets could only have delivered 10-20% of the oceans’ water content, at most. The vast bulk of the oceans was emitted from the Earth’s interior.

  31. The ALP should have made a big noise about the structural deficit, after being elected in 2007, and then gone for fixing it in the first budget

    They should have made noise about it before Being elected instead of just signing straight up to Howard’s promised tax cuts.

  32. The Age – from link at #323

    Several hundred people filled Town Hall Square …

    The ABC from #328

    Thousands of people have gathered at Sydney’s Town Hall

  33. ruawake

    Thank you. I knew there was something else. Considering how many medications are on prescription, that must be hellishly expensive for PBS. Big spender Howard.

  34. Critique of the Oz editorial

    NOVEMBER 22, 2014 / PRESTONTOWERS
    It seems that at least one media outlet is interested in Newspoll results 2 years out from an election – the poor, largely unread Australian. It’s a curious organ of record, the Oz – there’s fine journalists working for them like Peter Lalor, Patricia Karvelas and Rick Morton and their sport section generally is good. Yet they also employ as their columnists a gaggle of former Liberal government staffers, muttering extremists and spear carriers for causes that either serve specific corporate interests (such as miners) or lost their relevance some time ago. The continuing anti – ABC and anti “Leftist” campaigning from Chris Kenny and Gerard Henderson’s strange gnomic utterances are the stuff of Twitter guffaws but hold little interest for punters in the community at large.

    http://prestoninstitute.com/2014/11/22/applyingthewhip/

  35. 327
    Nicholas

    Yeah. But the argument is facile. Take this example, given in your reference.

    Staging a performance of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part II” takes a lot of people and a lot of time. There are dozens of roles to fill. You need theater support staff. You need rehearsals. And performing the play takes, well, as long as it takes.

    What struck two Princeton economists, William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, was not that performing “Henry IV, Part II” requires all that time and effort, but that it has always been that way. Nearly a half-century ago, Baumol and Bowen observed that Shakespearean theater hasn’t grown much more productive since the Bard of Avon directed operations himself.

    The output is not the play itself. It is the number of times it can be viewed – the audience reach a given performance can have. In S’s day, plays were performed live in the afternoon (there was no such thing as stage lighting). These days, a performance can not only be performed live several times a day, it can be recorded and re-played. A given performance has an almost infinite existence and audience. The proposition that there has not been and can not be any productivity gains in theatre is mistaken because it attempts to measure the wrong thing.

    They further attempt to support the argument by pointing to rising ticket prices. But this just ignores the fact that most performances are now viewed for free – that there is widespread piracy and free-riding – and that live performance subsidises off-venue performance.

    This is actually not an argument about productivity but about the interactions between the monetary and non-monetary economies.

  36. They

    being the COALition

    have changed the rules of the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.
    It was based on annual cost of prescriptions.
    I was always just below the threshold where you could claim.
    Now its on the number of prescription per person per year and I’m about 1/3rd of the way along that number.
    So I pay full price for everything – about $2000 per year.

    On Senior’s card
    Federal – the age eligibility is 65

    its a bit more complicated than that but that’s close

    .
    I applied but copped out on page 20 or so of the ‘form’ when they wanted to know the date my wife came to Oz over 50 years ago. After umpteen pages of irrelevant guff I chucked it in the bin.
    Incidentally it was the 2nd last trip of the “Oronsay”, the next and final trip brought out a bloke named Abbott.

    State senior card here in SA operates from age 60.
    Handy thing, has all sorts of discounts including at least one of the hardware chains giving 5%.
    That was dead easy to apply for and get.

  37. Lizzie@319

    It gives you a discount on public transport as far as I am aware. A friend of mine who turned 60 uses it to get to work.

  38. lizzie@284

    AA

    I’m not falling for “increase the GST and compensate with tax cuts and you’ll be better off” tactic.


    Agreed. Tax cuts only benefit those who actually pay it.

    Welfare payments are effectively negative tax payments. Any increase in the GST should be require a full re-calibration of all transfer payments. I think this is an area where, I hope, the ALP is doing some preemptive work for when the Lib try to breakout of their poll woes by proposing broadening and increasing the GST.

    If they do their homework they could wedge the Libs right out of the gate.

  40. re Fredex @602

    Ludlum actually anticipated this in his speech when he said wtte “How many people are here? 50000?” (uprorious laughter) “The cops will probably say ‘200’”

    I thought there might have been one to two thousand gathered.

  44. 327
    Nicholas

    I would argue that the productivity gains in the services sector are one of the enabling conditions that have propelled its rapid growth. It would not have been possible for these sectors to expand as quickly as they have while real wages also rose and with full employment unless there were associated gains in productivity in the production of services.

    Baumol et al should read some of the literature on the production and marketing of intangibles – on how to think of intangibles from the viewpoints of their consumers and producers.

    I also think the distinction between a “service” (say, the retailing of a product, like a pair of shoes) and “manufacturing” will tend to evaporate as direct relations between “makers-designers” and consumers start to change both the execution of production and marketing. This is already occurring in specialty or bespoke production and will rapidly become more widespread.

  45. Reluctant as I am to link to the GG, it appears there is some movement in the EvilForce with the Boadaciea-like Julie Bishop apparently bestriding the globe, whilst the ever-shrinking, inarticulate Captain Coal being lampooned.

    PVO is leading the way (tho the Sphere of Influence Laurie Oakes is doing his bit in the Murdoch tabloids). This search with a microscope to find where Xi declared a democratic China by 2050 mirrors my own search of Xi’s speech after Abbott made those claims. I couldn’t find it, so pit it down to normal Abbott BrainFart ™ behavior, but Murdoch minions also looked..

    “I HAVE never heard a Chinese leader declare that his country would be fully democratic by 2050,” Tony Abbott proudly told a state dinner on Monday in honour of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit. “I thank you, Mr President, for this historic, historic statement which I hope will echo right around the world.”

    I literally couldn’t believe my ears when I heard the remarks. Put simply, our Prime Minister completely misunderstood the words of the Chinese leader when he addressed parliament earlier that day. Abbott had spoken well in the chamber, just as he did when the British and Indian prime ministers gave addresses. And the substance of the free trade deal with China was well worthy of applause.

    Xi had stated a goal “to turn China into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious by the middle of the century”. That was the only reference to democracy in Xi’s entire speech, which Abbott subsequently clung on to as a “historic, historic statement”.

    In the aftermath of Abbott’s analysis of what he had witnessed, China experts the world over lined up to point out that Abbott failed to comprehend the meaning of Xi’s words. For a start, they have been uttered many times before, so there was nothing new in what Abbott tried to draw meaning from. Xi’s words were not a signalling of intent to embrace a “fully democratic” China, as Abbott claimed.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/abbott-invited-ridicule-by-hailing-xi-jinpings-democracy-pledge/story-fn53lw5p-1227131142001

  46. Xi had stated a goal “to turn China into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious by the middle of the century”.

    Theres democracy there, jim , but not as we know it!!

    Klingons on the starboard bow as well…

  48. 327
    Nicholas

    Briefly

    The point is that there are significant disparities between the speed of productivity increases in different sectors and that this is due to the intrinsic nature of different types of good.

    Think about newspaper publishing. There have been very great advances in the productivity of journalism and printing since, to take a watershed moment, the strikes known as the Battle of Wapping in 1986/7.

    For a while, the media companies were able to monetise and appropriate all the resulting productivity gains, which were really very considerable.

    However, tech gains no longer generate income gains for publishers. The opposite is the case. Even though there is probably more editorial output than ever before, and its creation consumes relatively fewer resources, this production is generating progressively less revenue. Does this mean that the productivity of publishing is falling?

    Probably not. Content is more widely distributed, more extensively and rapidly replicated and more completely stored than at any time in history while consuming relatively fewer inputs. Publishing not generates less income, it also requires far less revenue to sustain itself. This is a productivity gain when measured from the point of view of the consumer, the economy as a whole and the culture, though not from the viewpoint of the dinosaurs in print and tv.

    This is all true even though our personal literacy-dependent production/hour has, at best, not changed since 1986.

  50. 314
    Tom the first and best

    302

    The ALP should have made a big noise about the structural deficit, after being elected in 2007, and then gone for fixing it in the first budget.

    I agree. I think Lindsay Tanner had the same view, but was over-ruled by the gang of three – Rudd, Gillard and Swan.

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