Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

Respondents don’t expect Tony Abbott to make it to the next election, remain strongly opposed to a GST increase, and are effectively unchanged on voting intention since last week.

The regular Essential Research fortnightly average is our only new federal poll for the week, and it finds Labor losing one of the two points it gained last time to record a two-party lead of 53-47. Primary votes are 40% for Labor (down one), 40% for the Coalition (steady), 10% for the Greens (steady) and 1% for what’s left of Palmer United (steady). The poll finds only 26% deeming it likely Tony Abbott will make it to the next election with 57% opting for unlikely, with wide partisan differences along the expected lines. With respect to tax reform, strong majorities are recorded in favour of measures hitting multinational corporations and high-income earners, while fierce hostility remains to expanding or increasing the GST. However, it’s lineball on removing negative gearing, which 33% support and 30% oppose. Questions on economic and financial issues get the usual set of grumpy responses, with a balance of belief in favour of company profits having improved, but every personal and national indicator deemed to have gotten worse.

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.

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

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  1. zoomster@403
    Anyone hitting anyone for any reason is inexcusable.

    Self defence?

    Protection of a child from having violence done to it?

    Stopping a pilot from nosediving a plane into the ground?

  2. ASADA made its point through Hird and the Club. I am not sure of the utility of pursuing the players particularly after the finding of insufficient evidence has been made.

  3. don

    actually, a few of those came to mind after I’d posted..an strange that you single me out, I wasn’t even the first person to post along those lines.

  4. psyclaw @ 447

    Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting it is a malicious set-up on her part or that her accusations have no substance. I have absolutely no way of knowing. All I said was that she appeared to me to be co-operating with the LNP.

    I have no doubt that the fate that awaits her is what you say. It’s just that she is playing along with them as far as I can see.

  5. Jackol @ 450

    I also think Little and Hird (in particular) have come out of this as tarnished goods.

    Hird’s reputation as a coach has been damaged and if I was an up and coming player would be treating anything he says or does with trepitation.

    Dank IMHO is finished.

    It will be now interesting to see what Collingwood will do with their two players.

  6. ASADA has no choice but to appeal if it has any grounds to do so.

    It has to satisfy its parent body WADA which also has rights to appeal.

  7. Steven Grant Habey

    Collingwood is already on the record as saying if the two players are found guilty they will be sacked.

    Hard to do much else because the ban is likely to be a minimum of two years.

  8. Ouch!

    [
    The iQ3 has been plagued by technical bugs.
    Several software bugs have plagued the launch of Foxtel’s $150 iQ3 video recording device, causing a great deal of frustration for the pay TV giant’s customer base.

    The bugs have been so frustrating for some of its customers that they have told the company they are returning the bug-laden device because it has become unusable.

    Foxtel launched the iQ3 set-top box on Monday last week, just one day before rival service Netflix officially launched its highly-anticipated service in Australia.]

    http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/major-software-bugs-plague-foxtels-netflix-rival-iq3-causing-customer-outrage-20150401-1mccy9.html

  9. “@ABCNews24: Andrews: This was to look at the corporate structure of #Defence…there will be some restructure involving jobs #auspol”

  10. [Ousted LNP MP David Kempton, who lost the Cape York seat of Cook, helped Mr Gordon’s former partner make a complaint about unpaid child support in the days after the January 31 state election that brought Labor to power.]

    Hmm, the plot thickens.

  12. [ASADA made its point through Hird and the Club. I am not sure of the utility of pursuing the players particularly after the finding of insufficient evidence has been made.]

    If the appeal venue will just get the same evidence I’d tend to agree. If additonal evidence can be provided or compelled they should give it a go.

  13. “@vanOnselenP: Annastacia Palaszczuk has acted very differently to Julia Gillard: not prepared to compromise just to cling on to power. Congratulations.”

    I don’t agree regarding Gillad. Labor knew about Thomson. Until he was expelled from the Labor party for the same reason.

    However at least this is a sign that the smear is not gaining as much traction as when Abbott did it.

  15. WWP

    I think ASADA is hoping to compel Dank to produce more evidence. He has given conflicting stories about ‘keeping a detailed diary’ and ‘having no written records’.

  19. If ASADA haven’t been able to compel Dank or the other guy so far, you’d have to think there wouldn’t be much chance of doing so now.

    And if they suddenly discover that they are able to get real answers out of Dank after all this time and hadn’t got their act together beforehand… that would be truly clownish.

  22. It is an established fact that the indigenous community is much more likely to be arrested and even imprisoned than any other, and police prejudice/poor training may be the reason.

    Is the LNP going to try to prevent any representative of aboriginal people ever getting into parliament?

  23. Shellbell

    I understand ASADA’s next port of call is an AFL appeals tribunal. Recall reading that yesterday but not been able to put my finger on it just now. CAS is still a way off.

  24. Jackol

    I agree with your 450 comment, the lessons here are important, not just the need to maintain good record management systems which is often overlooked and the players welfare is where the focus should be, this is why I have never said Hird must or must not coach as that really should be a decision for the playing group.

  25. Goods news about Hazzard no longer being AG but Speakman should have got that job.

    Hopefully Upton won’t be on standby to call and assuage Ray Hadley every time Ray craps on about what his police mates have told him.

  26. guytaur

    Under case law one can only appeal if there has been an error made in law, I am not sure that there has been although its possible that the rules are different for this tribunal.

  29. [“It is an established fact that the indigenous community is much more likely to be arrested and even imprisoned than any other, and police prejudice/poor training may be the reason. “]

    Or more logically it could be they are more likely to commit crimes.

  30. mb

    The tribunal could be limited to question of law or entitled to rehear the whole matter and many alternatives in between.

  32. [I understand ASADA’s next port of call is an AFL appeals tribunal.]

    What’s the point of appealing to another AFL Kangaroo Court?

  36. It is clear that the AFL has no desire to know the real truth about the drug program at Essendon (the hearing was held in secret for a start), so I imagine that ASADA appealing to the white-washers is pointless.

  38. I’m a bit concerned that it could be a trial by media especially when it seems there’s too many people sticking their finger in this pie.

    Let the police do their investigation.

  39. zoid

    [Hasn’t Courier Mail hated Labor Party for like ages, and they always running stories like this against Labor Party?]

    Yep. Same for its NSW stable mate, the Daily Telegraph. The hatred is pathological.

  40. [Australia’s biggest 900 companies claimed tax deductions and exemptions worth a total $25 billion last year – enough to wipe out two-thirds of the current federal budget deficit at a stroke.

    As Treasurer Joe Hockey prompted a national “conversation” about tax reform, including the prospect of a higher and broader GST, the Australian Tax Office’s own data showed the top 900 companies paid an “effective tax rate” of just 19.3 cents in the dollar on pre-tax profits in 2014.

    The corporate tax rate is 30 per cent.
    . . .
    The report, which found companies like James Hardie, Sydney Airport, Echo Entertainment – owner of Sydney’s Star City Casino – and Downer EDI paid less than 10 cents in the dollar in company tax, was rubbished by the corporate lobby, including the Business Council of Australia and the Corporate Tax Association.

    It was also dismissed by Mr Hockey who said the review, part-funded by United Voice, a union which represents low-paid childcare and hospitality workers, was “wrong”.]

    I have no qualifications to judge the material in this article.

    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/big-business-took-25-billion-in-tax-relief-in-2014-tax-office-figures-show-20150401-1mbnuh.html

  41. “What’s the point of appealing to another AFL Kangaroo Court?” Having James Brayshaw presiding would be punishment enough.

  42. Jackol@443: “The case follows a failure to “resolve matters directly”, Pryor wrote on Twitter yesterday. In November, Pryor approached Australian Financial Review editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury wanting a printed apology after a column she wrote for Fairfax’s Good Weekend magazine led to her being attacked by AFR columnist and former Labor leader Latham, but she was denied.”

    What does “resolving matters directly” mean? Critics from many different media outlets jumped on Latham after he wrote the article, lambasting him with a level of vitriol that didn’t fall too far short of his own. Why isn’t that enough? Was Pryor asking the AFR to publish an apology for what was pretty obviously an opinion piece? If so, I’m not entirely surprised she received a rebuff.

    Anyway, if her defamation case succeeds, she will be able to feel vindicated. I’d say good luck to her, but I’m not enthusiastic about the use of the courts to redress a persons hurt feelings about something nasty somebody else said about them: I feel exactly the same about Bromberg’s 18C judgement. Real defamation seriously damages somebody’s reputation and credibility. I wouldn’t have thought that, these days, anyone’s reputation is going to be damaged by being savaged by Latham.

  43. Lizzie

    And this as mentioned earlier

    [Australia’s 76,000 wealthiest retirees are receiving just over $10 billion in superannuation tax concessions, which are now the subject of calls for reform.

    A report from the peak super industry body says 24,000 people who have more than $2 million each in their self-managed super accounts received about $216,000 in tax-free income stream payments each, or $5.2 billion in total.

    A further 51,700 people with between $1 million and $2 million in their accounts got a total of $4.9 billion in concessions, the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia said.]

    Labor has offered bipartisan support to crack down on these concessions for the wealthy but the federal government appears reluctant, saying the issue is much broader

    http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/04/01/rich-retirees-get-10b-concessions

  44. Matt@445: “an apparent unwillingness to take Pryor seriously when she privately contacted him to resolve the issue”.

    It’s not a question of taking/not taking Pryor seriously. If the article falls into the category of what the law calls “fair comment”, then by definition there can’t be anything to resolve between them. They both have much easier access to getting their words published in major newspapers than most of the rest of us.

    “Mark Latham is an egocentric, misogynistic piece of slime. I’m heartily ashamed of having voted Labor is 2004, with someone like him as the leader.”

    The tragedy of Latham is that he is easily the most intelligent, thoughtful and policy-driven person to have led the Federal Labor Party since the Hawke-Keating era. His writings are generally tremendously insightful. His thoughts on the path in which the Labor Party, and Australia in general, should take into the future are, IMO, more spot on that just about anyone else who writes about Australian politics.

    However, as you say, Latham’s personality leaves a lot to be desired. He shouldn’t have been made leader: being leader is not simply about having the best intellect and policy ideas. What used to be called “character” is also a big part of it: and Latham certainly doesn’t have this quality. (As Winston Wolf put it in Pulp Fiction, “Just because you are a character, doesn’t mean you have character.”)

    In another era, he would have been killed in a duel well before he reached the age of 40. That said, he did an ok job as Opposition Leader and might have been a show in the 2004 election if a) he hadn’t been subjected to a pretty disgraceful campaign of smearing by the Murdoch Press and others, and b) if he hadn’t been taken suddenly ill in the early days of the campaign. Oh, and he could have done the bleedingly obvious thing when Howard announced that the election was going to be “all about trust”. Which was not to object and disagree somewhat incoherently, but to have burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter for about a minute and then said “comedy gold”.

  45. zoidlord @467:

    [Hasn’t Courier Mail hated Labor Party for like ages, and they always running stories like this against Labor Party?]

    Yes. Which is why everyone who pays attention to the Murdoch media already votes Liberal.

    Because if you pay attention to the Murdoch media, something like this is your impression of a Labor Party caucus meeting:

  46. meher baba @494:

    Your comments regarding Latham are well-considered. He’s certainly got intellectual heft which is necessary to be a serious leader of a Parliamentary party (although it is, as you note, insufficient), but he’s a disgrace on every other level.

    And fair-comment doctrine or not, it’s still quite possible for one journo to defame another. And – having read Latham’s miserable piece – I’m inclined to the view that his words are actionable.

    Freedom to speak is not freedom from the consequences of speaking.

  48. [479
    TrueBlueAussie

    “It is an established fact that the indigenous community is much more likely to be arrested and even imprisoned than any other, and police prejudice/poor training may be the reason. ”

    Or more logically it could be they are more likely to commit crimes.]

    Justice is not equal in this country. If the police spent as much time trawling for possible offenders among the affluent and white, they would find plenty to keep them and the courts busy and the prisons full.

    Policing is and always has been aimed at aboriginal offenders.

    The True Blue Truth is that young aboriginal men, women and children are incarcerated in disproportionately far larger numbers than other Australians. Convictions of aboriginals tend to be for less serious offences and their terms are also shorter, but they are also more frequent. 3-strike and mandatory imprisonment laws really compound this.

    We need a root-and-branch reforming of policing, sentencing, imprisonment and post-imprisonment pathways.

    Gordon’s original misfortune was to be born poor and black in Queensland. He had to endure the shame of imprisonment and has now faced the renewed humiliation of concealment and disclosure.

    He has also made the mistake of supposing he would be taken at face value. What a terrible pity for him. He will be punished again….and again.

  49. A side note:

    A letter I posted on Monday 23 March had still not been received on 30 March. Both addresses are in Victoria.

    No wonder so many people are paying for express mail now.

  50. meher

    I’m still cross that Beazley didn’t stand on the steps outside Parliament House and laugh his head off about the Migration Zone.

    We’d be in a very different space if he had.

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