The year’s second Ipsos poll for the Fairfax papers seems to confirm two things: the government’s poll recovery from the depths of the leadership spill, and the pollster’s relative lean to the Coalition. The poll records a straight four-point exchange on the primary vote, with Labor down to 36% and the Coalition up to 42%, and the Greens up one to 12%. This gives Labor a lead of just 51-49 based on 2013 election preferences. There will presumably be another respondent-allocated result to come, and if past form is any guide it will have Labor further ahead (UPDATE: It does, though only to the extent of 52-48.)
The obligatory bad news for Tony Abbott is provided by a preferred Liberal leader question, which places him third at 19%. Malcolm Turnbull tops the leader board on 39%, with Julie Bishop second on 26%. Unlike Newspoll, there is also improvement on Tony Abbott’s personal ratings: his net approval rating is up eight to a still dreadful minus 30%, and Bill Shorten’s lead as preferred prime minister is down from 50-34 to 44-39. After a somewhat quirky result in his favour last time, Shorten’s net approval rating slumps from plus 10% to zero, with both approval and disapproval on 43%. The poll was conducted from Thursday to Saturday, with a sample of 1406.
Abbott obviously got a boost in the polls with his flags extravaganza. He reckons more flags even better!!
{Climate change key in Syrian conflict – and it will trigger more war in future]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/climate-change-key-in-syrian-conflict–and-it-will-trigger-more-war-in-future-10081163.html
As a librarian in the public sector I can state that public libraries have reinvented and continue to evolve.
A significant bulk of our traffic is now generated through loans of e-books, etc and many patrons deal with us online. There is ever more a case for libraries to act as a community space for people to gather and we are seeing the development of ‘maker spaces’ for arts and cultural initiatives.
The increassing cost of access to the internet and the general appalling response times in the country are seeing record usage of wifi networks at public libraries by the community.
Interesting the number of physical books published has actually increased thanks to POD (print on demand) services and desktop publishing (although it is argued the quality is perhaps not improved)
Most public libraries offer much more than just the traditional bread and butter access to books, magazines and the local papers plus a photocopier.
I think we will see libraries gradually evolving to a 24/7 service model (i.e. with librarians available 24/7)
Essential Poll: TPP ALP 53 (0) L/NP 47 (0)
Primaries L/NP 40 (0) ALP 41 (0) GRN 9 (0)
More details later on the Essential site
http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/03/03/essential-voters-endorse-abbott-on-national-security/
[Essential: voters endorse Abbott on national security
Bernard Keane | Mar 03, 2015 12:51PM
Voters strongly back Tony Abbott on terrorism and want less freedom in exchange for security, today’s Essential poll finds. But the Coalition is still well adrift of Labor.
Australians have given strong support to Tony Abbott’s national security push in today’s Essential poll, though it has failed to result in a polling boost for the government.
Some 46% of voters approve of the Prime Minister’s handling of the threat of terrorism, although the response is strongly split along partisan lines. Nonetheless, 24% of both Labor and Greens voters approve, along with 81% of Coalition voters. Some 39% of voters want to see more spending on national security, while 33% believe the current level is about right. Just 12% want to see less spending. That’s a substantial shift since August, when 28% wanted more spending and 19% thought it was about right.
Voters also support further restrictions on freedoms for some people to improve security.
Only Greens voters weren’t supportive of giving up freedoms for security; the support for more restrictions has increased in September.
However, voters don’t endorse Abbott’s claim that the president of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, has “lost the confidence of the Australian people”. In response to a question that specifically mentioned Triggs and the report on children in detention, 34% of voters, including a quarter of Coalition voters, approve of the performance of the Human Rights Commission, compared to 22% who do not approve.
On voting intention, there’s been no shift either way despite perceptions Tony Abbott’s stocks have improved. The Coalition remains on 40%, Labor on 41% and the Greens on 9% for a two-party preferred outcome of 53%-47% in Labor’s favour.]
If ever there was an argument for parliament not just the PM to authorise sending our soldiers into Harms Way its this Abbott government
“If Abbott was the President of Indonesia, would he be out there strutting behind the firing squad himself?”
Or, preferably “strutting in front of the firing squad”.
[fredex
Posted Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at 12:36 pm | Permalink
When do most working people want to go to their local library?
Our local regional libraries, at least 4 of them, are open for only 4 hours on weekends and never after 4pm any day.
Mind you they have pretty good online systems and very helpful staff – if you can get to see them.]
Much better here in Redcliffe. Library is open to 8PM on Fri 9:00 to 4:30 PM on Sat.
It’s a boxing thing … Eight is the standing count. Abbott is telling is he’s still in the fight
“@dannolan: I guess you’d say Tony’s support is… flagging”
😀
Re JR @892: what – only 8 flags? What an unpatriotic wimp our PM is. There’s easily room for at least four more, maybe even six. And that’s before we consider the flower pots, the unused space on the lectern and, if we move the camera out a bit, the space above the door.
@political_alert: PM’s statement on the deployment of an additional 300 ADF personnel to Iraq #auspol http://t.co/1qYuYDphHY
[Voters strongly back Tony Abbott on terrorism and want less freedom in exchange for security, today’s Essential poll finds.]
Meanwhile two triple domestic massacres have occurred, one just yesterday in Queensland (the other in Ballarat recently), plus 8 children killed in Cairns from one family, and they barely rate a mention in the news bulletins more than a day or so later, much less a month later.
We have seriously skewed priorities in Australia. The Australian of the Year can be upstaged by Abbott’s knighthood gaffe, and now it seems the more flags the better.
Talk about falling for the three-card trick over and over again.
Thankfully, these improvements in polling for the Coalition over terrorism are only momentary.
Another war to save his own arse.
On those Essential results Me Too not doing Labor any favours on Security
[ @political_alert: PM’s statement on the deployment of an additional 300 ADF personnel to Iraq #auspol http://t.co/1qYuYDphHY ]
This 300, plus the 200 already there, plus the 600 supporting the RAAF in Dubai(?) adds up to 1100 and counting. Isn’t that more troops than we had there during the invasion of Iraq?
And what are they doing? Training people we’re supposed to have already trained. They needed training, of course, because Iraq went to shit when we invaded, and all the skilled army officers were sacked.
This is such a pointless exercise. I suspect Abbott is hoping for body bags. He is running his own Death Cult.
Re Lefty e @900:
Where the HELL dies this useless government actually stand on a co-payment?
They want it, the want to ratchet it up in future years and they want to bring private insurers into the GP space, if only the Senate would let them have it. It’s not dead, just resting, as we would soon find out if the electorate were ‘absent-minded’ enough to return a Coaltion Government next year.
@srpeatling: PM says on 100th anniversary of Gallipoli it is fitting that Australia & NZ are again making a military commitment http://t.co/bI6GA4oMDw
Wow what a stupid reason to have people sent to a death zone
Don #886
Does one of those software combos apply to iMac?
Thanks.
Don #886
Does one of those software combos apply to iMac?
Thanks.
[Essential Poll: TPP ALP 53 (0) L/NP 47 (0)]
I’d agree with that, this Ipsos poll has hairs on it.
[guytaur
Posted Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at 1:22 pm | Permalink
@srpeatling: PM says on 100th anniversary of Gallipoli it is fitting that Australia & NZ are again making a military commitment http://t.co/bI6GA4oMDw
Wow what a stupid reason to have people sent to a death zone ]
That’s insane. Commit to war on every commemoration?
It would be much more fitting that we did not have to make any military commitments but we never learn.
guytaur
[@srpeatling: PM says on 100th anniversary of Gallipoli it is fitting that Australia & NZ are again making a military commitment http://t.co/bI6GA4oMDw%5D
Fantastic precedent. The Gallipoli campaign went SO well.
[@srpeatling: PM says on 100th anniversary of Gallipoli it is fitting that Australia & NZ are again making a military commitment http://t.co/bI6GA4oMDw%5D
What an idiot.
Tony Abbott – the war to end all wars is a fitting example of why we should go to war.
Whilst Labor was in power, a number of soldiers were killed in combat, in accidents and by some that were supposed to be our allies. It was never a good thing for the sitting govt
Did Sussan Ley just tell us ANYTHING?
guytaur@914:
“On those Essential results Me Too not doing Labor any favours on Security”
So the push back to security issues has given Abbott a boost in the polls and you’re suggesting that Labor’s best way to counter this is…what…oppose what the Government is doing?
If you’ve been paying attention, Labor has made some noises in the past few weeks in opposition to the data retention stuff, and there has been a swing back to the Government in the polls. I think that gives you some sense of what would happen if Labor came out full bore and opposed troops going to Iraq or something like that!
BK
Official confirmation that GP tax dumped
Oh and that she only rates two flags
@Colvinius: Apple’s @timcook: don’t let’em use terrorism as an excuse to take your privacy. http://t.co/dUp6zmPVjA via @lesposen
[As soon as TBA appears every second or third post seems to either from him or in response to him. The level of scrolling needed to avoid this makes it hardly worthwhile staying on the blog. Why people continue to indulge this idiot is quite beyond me.]
Exactly. I would have thought that replying to him is the definition of futility.
bemused@890
This is the archive: http://userscripts-mirror.org/scripts/show/63741
It’s not in active development. CCCP has moved so that I can continue bug fixes.
meher baba
labor have had a bi partisan approach to national security
MB
I imagine Labor’s results would be similar to those when it opposed going into Iraq in the George W era.
[Have just read a piece of filth written by Larry Pickering.]
Toorak Toff – Last week I got a Pickering piece from a friend who works for a respected NGO in Adelaide. He included about 20 other recipients in the email with his owncomment above, wtte ‘if this is true Gillard and Shorten are criminals. I myself believe Pickering is telling the truth otherwise he’d be sued’.
I, and a few others saw red and sent him a few links rebutting Pickering’s ‘facts’. Yesterday we all got an apologetic response from him saying that he was thankful others had acquainted him with facts.
It stunned OH and I to realise that this well educated, seemingly intelligent bloke thought it OK to send Pickering sleaze around.
Atm we’re trying to get over seeing Abbott surrounded by 8 flags!!
GG @745:
Per Briefly @720 and myself @721, there’s no particular stimulatory effect to monetary policy under these circumstances – interest rates aren’t a particular drag on investment at the moment.
bemused@890 I just installed STFU to see if it was still working. The default username was set to: bob1234.
Memories…
Ley makes it clear that some kind of ‘price signal’ is still needed to stop wealthy people (who, unless they’re tax avoiders, have already paid for the service) accessing bulk billing.
Reminds me of Andrew Peacock’s claim that the Liberals had reveiwed their policies and in some cases had even changed their names…
More generally re security, Muslims and boat people (all closely-related issues IMO):
As I stated a couple of days ago, I suspect that the Triggs stuff has been something of a plus for the Government with marginal voters. They must have gotten some private polling/focus group stuff supporting it or surely they would have hesitated about going in so incredibly hard. And likewise with the idea of taking social security away from some people.
It’s hard for the sort of armchair lefties who frequent PB, Twitter, etc. to understand, but the average swinging voter out there in the suburbs – especially in Sydney and Brisbane – really, really doesn’t like Muslims coming to Australia on boats and then being accepted as refugees and then accessing public housing and living on social security. And they particularly don’t like bleeding heart lawyers and others who advocate for these people.
It might be immoral for these people to feel like this, but they do. One thing I can say in their defence is that they tend to live in the parts of our cities where a lot of the Muslim migrants end up settling. Whereas your bleeding heart types tend to live in the inner cities and leafy suburbs, where the only Muslims you are likely to meet are Westernised.
The Coalition is always on a winner in Sydney and Brisbane when it goes into this space. The only problem for them is that the issue doesn’t really play in the “AFL states” where there are either fewer migrants coming in general and/or they are mainly settling in areas which are profoundly safe Labor seats.
“@CatherineKingMP: Health Minister says it’s definitely the right thing to introduce a ‘values signal’. Medicare’s death by a thousand cuts #auspol”
Musrum@936
Did you see Psyclaw’s questions @ 919?
[Don #886
Does one of those software combos apply to iMac?
Thanks.]
MB
You mean there are people out there in the suburbs falling for a lot of myths. People who read the Murdoch press listen to Alan Jones etc.
You have misread the Triggs affair. There is a reason why Labor has been asking questions about it so much in QT.
Its about transparency and justice. NSW voters have shown by booting Labor out in such force in 2011 that voters do indeed get that
kevjohnno@921
Shouldn’t more military action (despite what happened at Galipoli) means that we have learned LESS?
This Coalition guy speaking just before QT is wearing a suit and tie from a 1960’s sitcom wardrobe department.
Has anyone else noticed those ‘Camp Gallipoli’ advertisements on TV?
They have a website here: https://www.campgallipoli.com.au
While it claims to support some worthy causes and have some endorsements from credible organisations, it just strikes me as cringe worthy jingoism.
@BK/943
Which is apt for their ideology.
[As a librarian in the public sector I can state that public libraries have reinvented and continue to evolve.]
StevenGH – I agree. As a voluntary librarian I’ve seen so many changes in our rural Libraries and the online service for renewals, reservations, browsing the catalogue, ebook loans is fantastic.
It’s unfortunate that getting sufficient funding from the State Govt. for our local Council to keep Libraries afloat is like pulling hen’s teeth.
psyclaw@919
They should run OK on Firefox or Chrome regardless of OS. Any other browser is unlikely (untested).
The Australia that Camp Gallipoli celebrates is as dead as the soldiers who fought in the campaign.
[Ley makes it clear that some kind of ‘price signal’ is still needed to stop wealthy people
]
After saying nothing about this before the election (in fact denying it), the really can’t leave the idea of a co-payment alone.
Gallipoli summed up: going to war against Muslims, on their ground, at the behest of a foreign power, throwing away young lives for nothing, only to retreat, getting beaten so badly that to make sense of it we invent what has become a quasi “national day”… in short, a disaster.
Iraq summed up: going to war against Muslims, on their ground, at the behest of a foreign power, throwing away young lives for nothing, only to retreat, then going back, invoking the previous disaster from 100 years ago as somehow inspiring it.
When will we ever learn that poking a stick into the ants nest that is the Middle East will get us precisely nowhere?
Unless we slaughter them all we can never win. And we’re not going to slaughter them all, so we may as well not go… no matter how many flags are flying.