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”

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  1. Paywalled in the oz

    THE Abbott government is prepared to sacrifice up to $2 billion in budget savings in a bid to regain momentum and kick-off the new year with a much-needed political victory on higher education ­reform.

    As the Prime Minister yesterday placed the university shake-up “front and centre” of his legislative agenda, The Australian can reveal the government is prepared to further retreat on proposed cuts in order to secure Senate support for its landmark deregulation reforms.

    Under the compromise ­position the government would substantially scale back — or scrap entirely — a 20 per cent cut to course funding on the condition institutions were then free to set their own tuition fees.

    Hard to see how this leaves any budget ‘saving’ at all

  3. [ Billionaires Shocked To Learn They Only Control Half The World’s Wealth

    Satirically brought to you by The New Yorker’s Borowitz Report –

    A new Oxfam report indicating that the wealthiest one per cent possesses about half of the world’s wealth has left the richest people in the world “reeling with disappointment,” a leading billionaire said on Tuesday.

    Speaking to reporters in Davos, Switzerland, where he is attending the World Economic Forum, the hedge-find owner Harland Dorrinson said, “I think I speak for a lot of my fellow billionaires when I say I thought we were doing a good deal better than that.”

    Calling the Oxfam findings “sobering,” he said that he hoped they would serve “as a wake-up call to billionaires everywhere that it’s time to up our game.”

    “Quite frankly, a lot of us thought that by buying politicians, rewriting tax laws, and hiding money overseas, we were getting it done,” said Dorrinson, who owns the hedge fund Garrote Capital. “If, at the end of the day, all we control is a measly half of the world’s wealth, clearly we need to do more—much more.” ]

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-20/billionaires-shocked-learn-they-only-control-half-worlds-wealth

  5. trand

    [ the Prime Minister yesterday placed the university shake-up “front and centre” of his legislative agenda]
    Hmmmm. isn’t that where people are put for firing squads ?

  6. [ KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN
    Posted Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 8:29 am | Permalink

    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 ]

    Pascoe has gone through a huge change.

    He would never have written something as truthful as that back when he worked at Channel 9 for all those years.

    He was the sneering simkin of his day.

  9. Bemused
    My laptop is in for repairs so I had to use my wife’s that does not have Microsoft software installed so I suppose they all got screwed up there. It’s useless trying to use the iPad to do it!

  10. [ Discount retailer Aldi Australia has vowed to maintain pricing pressure on rivals in the $85 billion grocery market, after increasing sales by 13 per cent in 2014, outpacing food and liquor sales growth at Coles and Woolworths almost three-fold.

    ….Aldi Australia’s sales reached $6 billion in the 12 months ending December 2014, compared with $5.3 billion in 2013.

    …”We have about 11 per cent share on the eastern seaboard (and) I’d expect we’d obtain that sort of success in the new markets of Western Australia and South Australia.

    Aldi would maintain its lowest-price position in the market, despite renewed discounting and price investment by the big chains, Mr Daunt said.

    A basket of branded and private label groceries at Aldi was 20 to 30 per cent cheaper than a similar basket at Coles or Woolworths and the discounter enjoyed strong relationships with suppliers, he said.

    However, unlike multinationals such as Apple and Google, Aldi appears to have paid a full corporate tax rate since becoming profitable five years ago and has no intercompany loans or licence fee arrangements with its German parent.

    Aldi Australia’s average corporate tax rate in the past few years was almost 31 per cent of net profit and in 2013 it paid $80 million in corporate tax.]

    http://www.smh.com.au/business/aldi-vows-to-maintain-pressure-on-rivals-20150120-12ucpu.html#ixzz3PP2sw9AO

  11. BK@159

    Bemused
    My laptop is in for repairs so I had to use my wife’s that does not have Microsoft software installed so I suppose they all got screwed up there. It’s useless trying to use the iPad to do it!

    You seem to often use the same link for consecutive stories.

    You wife has a Mac?

  14. victoria

    I thought Andrews did well, when Faine did one of his “you are just messing up the TAFE system which was already in transition” accusations, and Daniel came back with “Is there a question in there, Jon?”

  18. victoria@167

    bemused

    Yep. That was my point. Faine was being his usual self.

    Sorry, I thought you were having a go at him.

    The way I look at it, by asking tough questions, he gives Andrews the opportunity to dispose of a lot of rubbish non-issues.

  20. Regarding Andrews and compensation.

    He has limited the exposure for compensation. As soon as he stated his government would not be involved in building the EW link he changed the risk assessment.

    Anything after Labor said they would scrap the EW link means the company going ahead was a risk to the company and compensation will not be due.

    Before that is a different story .

  22. frednk 163

    I’d like to think the former, given how Shorten weaved ‘investing’ into his budget reply. time will tell this year though

    as an aside, how would one relative newcomer use the quote feature?

  29. vic,

    Jones is talking/influencing a group that would normally be impervious to any Labor message. It has the potential to carve off a small, but significant vote in some key seats.

    As the article talks about. Trust is the issue and he’s hammering away.

    Once you get people interested in Labor for one issue, they can be swayed on others.

    However, life is littered with Conservatives who claim they will not vote for the current incumbent only to rationalise their way to voting the way they always do come the election.

  30. “@jrajca: Nick Xenophon: “I am not convinced. My position is the same as a few months ago when I voted against the deregulation package” #auspol”

  35. For the indent enclose what you want indented in square brackets.

    [ trand
    Posted Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 9:59 am | Permalink
    …..
    as an aside, how would one relative newcomer use the quote feature?
    ]

  41. Business is unhappy, inter alia, that the NBN will encourage online shopping.

    [Australia’s top chief executives are deeply concerned by the government’s lack of control of the nation’s debt and an internationally uncompetitive tax system, a survey has found.

    Accounting firm PwC surveyed 44 of the nation’s leading chief executives who said over-regulation, the government’s response to the fiscal deficit and debt and the increasing threat of rising taxes were the biggest threats to business growth.

    Woolworths chief executive Grant O’Brien said his concerns about government regulation related to strict trading hours that were hurting bricks and mortar retailers, whereas online, people could shop anytime.

    “We’ve got a government investing billions of dollars into the national broadband network,” he said.]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/top-ceos-raise-concerns-over-abbott-governments-lack-of-control-20150120-12tz5u.html#ixzz3PPHE9vJM

  43. Not another one 🙁

    [A nine-month-old baby boy died on Monday after he was shot in the head by his five-year-old brother in their grandfather’s home in the US state of Missouri, police said.

    The five-year-old found his grandfather’s .22-calibre revolver in the bedroom and was playing with it when he ended up shooting his younger brother, said Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White. The baby was in a playpen in the same room and the bullet struck him in the head.

    “He was apparently fascinated by the gun, as most young kids would be,” Sheriff White said.]

    http://www.theage.com.au/world/ninemonthold-boy-shot-dead-by-fiveyearold-brother-20150120-12ul4v.html

  44. [Mungo, like me, pines for the Whitlam Government.

    Nothing subsequently has even come close.]

    Oh, yeah, I pine for the days when Cairns and Moroni were playing soulmates, when the Iraqi loans affair and Govt chaos was splattered around every bbq and office water cooler.

    Dream on, bemused. I’m a huge Gough fan and his achievements immense but I’m not looking backwards. In my 8th decade I’m going forward with my kids and grandkids.

    Mungo still has a bee in his bonnet about the old days and Rudd. He needs to get over it.

  46. vic,

    Labor has to focus where the main chance of changing votes lives: in the centre.

    Alan Jones may have a portion of people pissed off at the moment. However, I would not be taking their votes to the Bank.

  49. Victoria re Mungo………..he was not very kind to FPJG and stuck the boots in towards the end.

    It may well be, like some of us here, nothing substantial has happened in Labor politics since Gough’s time!

    In his bash of Shorten, I am not quite certain, after admitting Shorten has pulled Labor back from the brink, what Mungo wants.

    He is too long in the tooth, surely, to expect Labor to list 20 policies some 18 months before the next election?

    It is always easy to talk about “Vision” with a capital V in an arm chair, but such “visions” are usually jumped upon and destroyed by the conservative press.

    Having said this, it will be soon time for Shorten and Labor to make some vague gestures towards that which Labor might do to regain office.

    I would think a set of about 6-7 broad promises (a la Abbott), a 10 page booklet (a la Abbott) and a phoney launch of said stuff (a la Abbott) just to shut the arm chair mob up for awhile.

    Pardon my cynicism.

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