Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

After a strong result for Labor last week, Essential Research’s generally slow-moving fortnightly rolling average records a solid tick to the Coalition.

Essential Research now has two weeks of polling to rub a fortnightly rolling average together, and the addition of this week’s sample to last week’s result causes two-party preferred to tick a point in the Coalition’s favour, from 54-46 to 53-47. The Coalition is up two points on the primary vote to 40%, with Labor, Greens and Palmer United respectively steady on 40%, 10% and 2%. Further questions find skepticism about Australian involvement in Iraq, the ABC and the High Court rated most trusted out of a specified list of “institutions and organisations” (though it doesn’t include police and defence forces, which might have rated higher), and the medical profession trusted in use of personal information but social media sites not so much. Also featured are interesting questions on internet and social media use, and a less interesting one on sports events.

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.

924 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

Comments Page 3 of 19
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  1. Total shit-canning piece on Dutton as Health Minister:

    [Mr Dutton leaves behind many questions, among them whether he was Australia’s worst federal health minister.

    There may be candidates whose efforts in pursuit of the dishonour go too far back in time, or whose tenure was too short to cast judgement. But Mr Dutton was around long enough — just over a year — to stake a claim.

    For many, he seemed someone intent on loyally serving nothing but the narrowest of party interests, a politician who rather than taking on the laborious task of fixing the dysfunctions of the health system became a type of anti-health minister.

    The clues were there during his time as Opposition health spokesperson. He rarely troubled the democratic process by putting parliamentary questions to the health minister of the day — whether that was Nicola Roxon or Tanya Plibersek.]
    http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2015/01/20/beware-the-anti-health-minister/

    Etc, etc, etc.

  3. [Utopian words of the holier than thou (or politically savvy) that ignores reality]

    Twenty-five years ago I listened to ALP right hard-heads smile knowingly and tell me that independence for East Timor was a utopian position that ignored reality, and we should cut a compromise on that. Public opinion moved so fast on that that even John Howard was forced to come on board that one.

    Fifteen years ago I listened to ALP right hard-heads smile knowingly and tell me that gay marriage was a utopian idea that ignored reality and that we should cut a compromise on that. Public opinion has moved so fast on that that the ALP right now claims that, gosh, it’s not a left issue at all.

    No doubt many of the aspirations of the Greens, and the left in general, will not be realized. It is important to focus on what is achievable. But experience has taught me that it is neither moral nor sensible to give up on a principle because some in the ALP right have deemed it to be unrealistic.

  4. [and has dealt with the handful of trouble makers at the Manus detention centre with a firm but steady hand.]

    I’m assuming you are a troll i should be ignoring but if you are not you are so very very dumb it has made my evening.

  5. [Peter van Onselen ‏@vanOnselenP 2m2 minutes ago
    I wonder if @JoshFrydenberg will raise his idea of increasing the GST on online goods at Davos. It went down so well internally…]

  7. Chris Uhlmannn on returning LNP MPs views on T Abbott tonight on ABC Late News…

    ‘Some are willing him to succeed. Others fear he is beyond redemption’.

    So even the LNPs chief cheerleader at the ABC is having a bob each way on the leadership.

  8. TBT @ 100

    [PNG is a refugee signatory so the detainees will have to accept it is their new home.]

    Otherwise they can go to one of the other parties, such as:

    Afghanistan, Angola, Belarus, Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Egypt, Guatemala, Haiti, Iran, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Russia, Somalia, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

  9. The Oz media which has a short span of attantion,seems to have missed a major Euro item today

    The Russian’s Gazprom has turned of the gas to six Euro states that get theit gas via the Ukrainian pileline from Russia

    This is because of the continued siphoning of gas by the Ukr govt and non-payment of their bills to the Gazprom

    This will cause a major winter crisis in many Euro states within days and major social crisis in Ukraine with industries closed and homes unheated in the midst of major snowfalls
    The Ukr needs 16 Billion US$ right now …. from whom one might ask ?????

    see below

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/01/no_author/ukraine-launches-full-scale-war/

  10. [ The barnacles aren’t being removed, just rearranged. ]

    So, we have moved on from ironing to rearranging the barnacles on the Titanic have we??

    rossmg@93

    Nope, anti-foul is the toxic stuff you paint a clean hull with to stop barnacles and weed accumulating quickly. The only stuff on daH good ship Liberal seems to be slightly Pyne scented voter repellent that is actually helping to rot the timbers holding the seemingly precious barnacles together.

    From a theater and politics as blood-sport perspective it is good to see the Libs sticking with the policies that proved so toxic for them in 2014. They are going to get smashed if they keep on with this.

  12. [ and has dealt with the handful of trouble makers at the Manus detention centre with a firm but steady hand. ]

    Some may see it that way, but he really should get that hand out of his trousers.

  13. What does the Turkish Pres Erdogen mean by his astonishing claim that the Paris events were”organised by the West”???
    a view put also now out by Craig Paul Roberts,ex-Asst-Tresurer to Reagan and a bitter critic of the neo-cons and the Pentagon

  14. debonlay

    Apparently some less the scrupulous sites are digging up 2009 quotes and republishing them to create a scare story (as should be obvious by the references to the Black Sea pipeline, which Russia canned in the middle of last year as uneconomic.)

    ITAR-TASS have a current quote from Naftogaz confirming there is no interruption in the gas supply from Russia.

    http://itar-tass.com/en/economy/771883

  16. The Ukraine stuff is an interesting example of why one should check the source —

    The article linked to by deblonay reads –

    [Russia has shut off gas supplies through Ukraine to six EU states, ostensibly due to Ukraine’s alleged illegal siphoning gas from the pipeline. The European Union warned that the sudden cut-off to some of its member countries was ‘completely unacceptable’. The move comes just as winter begins to bite across Europe.]

    The original article it links to states –

    [In 2009, Russia shut off gas supplies through Ukraine to six EU states, ostensibly due to Ukraine’s alleged illegal siphoning gas from the pipeline. The European Union warned that the sudden cut-off to some of its member countries was ‘completely unacceptable’. The move came just as winter begins to bite across Europe.]

    http://www.goldcore.com/us/gold-blog/ukraine-lurches-full-scale-war-russia-drastically-reduces-gas-supply-eu/

  17. Interestingly, while I can find multiple links to the Ukraine story, they all have identical wording. This wouldn’t happen if the story was indeed true. It’s unthinkable that something affecting, or threatening to, six EU states would only have one news source.

  18. zoomster:

    I gave up taking anything deblonay wrote seriously when he a) Putinised himself big time and b) cheered over (rejoiced even) about women being held back by the glass ceiling and misogyny.

  19. Gecko, would you like to put a number on how many asylum seekers have been psychologically tortured by Labor’s policies over the past 20 years?

    The number of people who try to flee their home country in a given year depends on political developments around the globe. We are not the centre of the universe. We are a small part of a very large and complex whole. There are ways to reduce the number of boat arrivals by actually cooperating with Malaysia and Indonesia instead of ignoring or antagonizing them. If we give them something they need, they may be persuaded to refuse visas on arrival to people who fly in from major source countries. Let’s do that in addition to allowing more people to apply for refugee visas from overseas. Whoever does get here by boat should be treated with dignity and respect – only minimal if any detention for health and security purposes, no more than one month maximum, preferably much less than that.

    Psychological torture should not be part of Australia’s policy repertoire. Labor and the Liberals have yet to learn this.

  22. i followed lead by deblonay before checking name and also source – wrote to contact in east europe but corrected first mail … deblonay is a tosser, a putin loving unreformed communist

  26. TPOF @ 125

    [ We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It’ll slip through our fingers. ]

    Yup, and all under the Coalition “better economic managers”. 🙁

    This is something i have seen referred to over the last few years, particularly in context of the NBN years. People overseas wanting to throw money at us so we could debt finance at very low locked in rates a piece of infrastructure that is going to be massively important for the economy over the next 100 years.

    Any board of directors that missed an opportunity like this would be sacked and then lynched by shareholders. So much for having an “infrastructure PM”. 🙁

  29. [What does the Turkish Pres Erdogen mean by his astonishing claim that the Paris events were”organised by the West”???
    a view put also now out by Craig Paul Roberts,ex-Asst-Tresurer to Reagan and a bitter critic of the neo-cons and the Pentagon]

    Erdogen means he/his govt was actually involved and is trying to deflect the blame.

    Paul Craig Roberts, a bit like Lew Rockwell, is a full of shit right wing prick and never distanced himself from his 1980s support for Pinochet. He churns out articles based on what he thinks will sell to idiots for the conspiratainment industry.

    Lew Rockwell is a wanker. i think leroy lunch summed him up well.

    Anyway its 3 and am I’m off to bed.

    Before i go has anyone here ever heard of a band called Swans? They were and are a New York post punk/experimental band.

    Just saw them at the Corner in Richmond.

    Fantastic.

  30. Nicholas@119

    Gecko, would you like to put a number on how many asylum seekers have been psychologically tortured by Labor’s policies over the past 20 years?

    The number of people who try to flee their home country in a given year depends on political developments around the globe. We are not the centre of the universe. We are a small part of a very large and complex whole. There are ways to reduce the number of boat arrivals by actually cooperating with Malaysia and Indonesia instead of ignoring or antagonizing them. If we give them something they need, they may be persuaded to refuse visas on arrival to people who fly in from major source countries. Let’s do that in addition to allowing more people to apply for refugee visas from overseas. Whoever does get here by boat should be treated with dignity and respect – only minimal if any detention for health and security purposes, no more than one month maximum, preferably much less than that.

    Psychological torture should not be part of Australia’s policy repertoire. Labor and the Liberals have yet to learn this.

    Jesus wept Nicholas, I get it… we all do! But for pities sake, you simply can’t keep going on and on (and on) pointing the finger at everybody else, when you can’t even produce basic numbers for Australians to assess. Surely you understand we’re not a bottomless pit – how many refugees is too many? How much do we spend? What’s the plan when these quotas are exceeded? How do you enlist bipartisan support from a nation fractured by years of xenophobic abuse… the very support you failed to give others on the same quest?

    Not too much to ask, of course, but it won’t happen. Why? Politics. A game the Greens play very well.

  32. gecko

    [Why? Politics. A game the Greens play very well.]

    They pick and chose bits and pieces and try to wedge.

    But they provide no practical policies.

  34. I was SMS polled on the 16th by Morgan on Qld state voting intention and preferred Premier. No sign of the result so far. Was it done for one of the parties? Never had this happen before – the result is always out in a couple of days.

  35. [Who’d say no to the deal of a lifetime? Tony Abbott would, and it’s our tragedy.

    The 10-year bond rate is the rate at which the government can borrow for 10 years at a fixed rate of interest. Right now it’s just 2.55 per cent, an all-time low
    . . .
    If Abbott was the chief executive of a company with good prospects he’d grab the money and borrow as many billions as he could without impairing his credit rating.

    In Australia’s case that’s probably an extra $100 billion. That’s enough to build the long-awaited Brisbane to Sydney to Melbourne high-speed rail line, or to build Labor’s original national broadband network, or Sydney’s $11 billion WestConnex road project plus Melbourne’s $11 billion metro rail project plus Melbourne’s $16 billion East West Link plus something big in each of the other states.

    And it would cost next to nothing. All each of these projects would need is a positive real rate of return (which several of those listed above lack) and we would get ahead.]

    http://www.theage.com.au/comment/low-10year-bond-rates-are-the-deal-of-the-century-but-abbotts-not-at-the-table-20150120-12tq4j.html

  37. Seriously, some of these people would have trouble thinking their way out of a brown paper bag —

    From the Mungo article linked to above..

    [.. Shorten took his time about it, but he had his reasons; he wanted to maximise the opposition from the medicos, who had already tasted government blood and wanted more of it, and he expected, correctly, that the resulting pressure would foment both panic and trouble within Abbott’s ranks.]

    …is immediately followed by —

    […it can hardly be called a triumph for Shorten. Once again the Opposition Leader has won only by default; his opponents have simply fallen over. And in the process Shorten has been seen as reactive and opportunist rather than actually taking the lead.]

    So Shorten implements a strategy, which gets exactly the outcome he aimed for, but apparently it was really a failure.

    The alternative (which Mungo refers to) would have been for Labor to immediately declare they weren’t supporting the package. This would have been just as reactive and opportunist (assuming you agree with Mungo’s assessment).

    In fact, with this kind of reasoning, any way Shorten reacted (short of agreeing to wave through the government’s legislation, which Mungo admits Labor would never have done) would have been wRong.

    Being seen as negative and opportunistic was Abbott’s forte in Opposition, but Shorten is apparently meant to be different from all Opposition leaders before him.

    It’d be really, really good if some of these writers, instead of criticising whatever it is that Shorten has done, explained before hand how the issue should be handled.

    Of course, they can’t – it’s far easier just to wait until Shorten reacts and then explain why he did the wrong thing.

  40. Good morning Dawn Patrollers.

    Peter martin is less than impressed with our leader.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/low-10year-bond-rates-are-the-deal-of-the-century-but-abbotts-not-at-the-table-20150120-12tq4j.html
    And so are top business CEOs!
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/council-to-pursue-labor-mp-robert-furolo-over-2441-debt-20150120-12uee8.html
    Air Asia black box gives up some interesting information.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/low-10year-bond-rates-are-the-deal-of-the-century-but-abbotts-not-at-the-table-20150120-12tq4j.html
    A difficult decision this would be.
    http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/treasury-warns-labor-newsagents-plan-could-cost-nsw-760-million-20150120-12txz8.html
    Michael Thorn urges the NSW government to stay the course on alcohol lockouts.
    http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/treasury-warns-labor-newsagents-plan-could-cost-nsw-760-million-20150120-12txz8.html
    Another exposure of Canterbury Council issues. What IS it with these people?
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/council-to-pursue-labor-mp-robert-furolo-over-2441-debt-20150120-12uee8.html
    Legal academics rally to support Gillian Triggs in the wake of Abbott’s outburst.
    https://newmatilda.com/2015/01/20/legal-academics-add-support-gillian-triggs-after-abbott-attack
    The Victorian government is putting the acid on local government to justify rate increases above CPI.
    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/council-rates-capped-from-mid2016-20150120-12tz7k.html
    Peter Martin explains the pessimistic outlook of the IMF.
    http://www.theage.com.au/business/world-business/imf-global-outlook-more-pessimistic-20150120-12u57e.html

  41. Section 2 . . .

    Thousands more APS jobs to be scoped for privatisation.
    http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/thousands-more-public-service-jobs-to-be-scoped-for-privatisation-20150120-12tvn8.html
    The 23 worst things the Liberals did yesterday.
    http://www.ellistabletalk.com/2015/01/20/the-three-worst-things-the-liberals-did-yesterday-173/
    Michael Caton -Tell Brandis he’s dreamin’!
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/council-to-pursue-labor-mp-robert-furolo-over-2441-debt-20150120-12uee8.html
    FOI documents reveal big questions about the approval of Whitehaven’s Maues Creek coal mine.
    https://newmatilda.com/2015/01/20/foi-documents-cast-further-doubt-economic-viability-maules-creek-mine
    So Catholics need not breed like rabbits? The let’s drop the big contraception con!
    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/council-rates-capped-from-mid2016-20150120-12tz7k.html
    Michael Pascoe punctures the Liberal perceptions of industry super funds.
    http://www.smh.com.au/business/perception-industry-funds-are-funding-the-labor-party-20150120-12u39m.html
    Abbott’s “putting uni fee deregulation front and centre” vow bites the dust very quickly.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/university-fee-deregulation-plan-fails-to-convince-key-crossbench-senators-20150120-12ud2e.html
    Dutton blames the media for the Manus Island problem. What else would you expect?
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/claims-manus-island-asylum-seekers-denied-food-and-water-complete-rubbish-peter-dutton-20150120-12trb0.html
    Such a good one from Alan Moir!
    http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/alan-moir-20090907-fdxk.html

  43. True to form. The Front page of Herald Sun.

    Compo debacle
    Dan’s dodgy words in East West flip-flop
    PREMIER Daniel Andrews’ election pledge that Victorian taxpayers would not pay compensation to dump the East West Link is in tatters.

  44. Surely the herald Sun remember what they report on

    Mr Andrews said he could not discuss compensation clauses without further information from the Government about what was included in the deal. This is back in September 2014

    [“We haven’t seen the business case and we won’t, we haven’t seen these, what’s called a contract, these alleged contracts, and we won’t.”

    Despite this he said there could be “some modest compensation”.]

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria-state-election-2014/east-west-link-contracts-are-not-binding-says-daniel-andrews/story-fnocxssc-1227074443219

  45. victoria

    seems to be a deliberate attempt to brand Andrews a liar a la Gillard.

    I looked through a few articles last night – none of them provided a quote of Andrews saying he would not pay compensation, or even a link to a past article, and when I googled, I couldn’t find anything from Andrews prior to the election ruling compensation out.

  46. Most of the pre-election reporting seems to refer to a few radio interviews: on the ABC where Andrews said that the contracts, including the compensation agreement, “weren’t worth the paper they were written on” and on 3AW where he said he “didn’t think” they would have to pay compensation because they would sit down and talk about other projects with the developers.

    So he certainly gave the impression of ‘no compensation’ but probably never made an absolute promise.

  48. The Pascoe Article is a ripper, especially where he mentions that Frydenberg’s new CoS is a big bank lobbyist. Confirms my impression that the ministers in this govt just cruise around in white cars and have delegated everything to lobbyists

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