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. So now Clive wants to sue his own ex-Senators for their election campaign costs??
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-01/pup-suing-former-senators/6364818

    Does this have any chance of success? Surely Clive makes his own decision, and own risks, in deciding how much to spend? Unless Lazarus and Lambie went guarantor on loans or personaly promised to underwrite the cost, this sounds like an empty bluff from Clive. Don’t the AEC $ per vote for Lambie and Lazarus go back to PUP anyway? Does Clive plan to hand them over to Lambie and Lazarus?

  2. briefly@498: try to keep it real. TBA is right: Indigenous people, particularly males aged between 15 and 40, commit far more crimes on average than any other group. Far from the justice system looking avidly for ways to lock them up, all sorts of diversion and community sentencing programs have been established that keep them out of court. I would admit that WA, where I believe you come from, is something of an exception to this rule with its three strike and mandatory imprisonment laws but, even there, I believe there are some special arrangements in place for first-time indigenous offenders that do not apply to any non-indigenous people in the same situation.

    Gordon’s misfortune was to commit some ridgy-didge criminal acts when much younger and then, more recently, to be accused of various actions towards an ex-partner(s). These accusations are not proven, and it’s not clear to me that they had any bearing on AP’s decision to expel him from the party, which seems to be more connected to his failure to disclose his past criminal convictions to the Party. And that seems fair enough to me.

  3. “Just heard on ABC news. Hird has been sacked. His replacement is Lance Armstrong. Mr A said he knew nothing about footy and would rely heavily on his assistant Ben Cousins to get things done. Mr Cousins was heard to say “let’s party””

    May have been this morning’s news

  5. zoomster@500: “I’m still cross that Beazley didn’t stand on the steps outside Parliament House and laugh his head off about the Migration Zone.”

    I’m not so sure about that one. I reckon “me too” was always going to be the best response. Beazley tried to get that to happen, but some in the party were uneasy about the rushed-through legislation, and that unease got through to the minds of the public. The overwhelming majority of Australians don’t like boat people arriving here: it induces in them the same sort of feeling that house cats get when they sense a strange cat wandering around their garden. Laughing at what turned out to be a reasonably effective strategy for stopping the boats would have been a pretty risky thing to do.

    But when, in 2004, Honest John Howard claimed to be the one guy you could trust, that was surely worth a bit of ridicule. Probably the focus groups told the Sussex St heavies not to go near it. But Howard’s claim re interest rates put Latham straight onto the back foot and he could never recover the ground: especially after he got taken ill. Ridiculing it might have seemed a risky tactic, but I reckon it was worth taking.

  6. I did some volunteer work in Qld courts years ago and in my experience what MB said at 502 is correct. However it is also the case that for anyone, juvenile records do not have to be declared. Therefore the only real failure on Gordon’s part now seems ot have been a failure to declare his past; none of it was serious enough to disqualify him form office, unless the DV allegation is found to have substance.

    I can only wonder what muck-raking is going on by both sides now? If lying about your past is sufficient reason to get turfed, then what about all those CV exaggerations? I’d bet a playing spot at Wimbeldon there has been plenty of exaggeration by pollies from both sides in the past. People mentioning “studied Degree X at Uni Y” without mentioning they failed to graduate is a common lapse of many.

  7. meher baba

    [But Howard’s claim re interest rates put Latham straight onto the back foot and he could never recover the ground: especially after he got taken ill.]

    Latham got taken ill AFTER the election and was demonised for not quickly making a compassionate response in the wake of the Boxing Day Tsunami.

    Regarding your claim, from a position of advantage, that
    [Indigenous people, particularly males aged between 15 and 40, commit far more crimes on average than any other group]
    says more about you than anything else.

  12. [502
    meher baba

    briefly@498: try to keep it real. TBA is right: Indigenous people, particularly males aged between 15 and 40, commit far more crimes on average than any other group.]

    Aboriginal men, women and children are convicted of disproportionately more crimes than non-aboriginals. This does not mean they are more disposed to break the law than anyone else, but rather that the law is more disposed to catch and then break them.

    This is about the three vices – fear, violence and racism.

  16. [505
    meher baba]

    Howard had form too, on immigration and race, going back to his “One Australia” slogan and his declaration that there were “too many” Asians in Australia. So when he declared he would stop the boats, people believed him because they knew he was a not-so-crypto-racist.

    No matter what Beazley said or did, he was not going to come across as Mr White Australia, re-badged.

    Howard got lucky then and not for the only time. Of course, his luck ran out in Bennelong a few years later when the East-Asian diaspora took the opportunity to throw him out.

  17. [This does not mean they are more disposed to break the law than anyone else, but rather that the law is more disposed to catch and then break them. ]

    Incorrect. It could either, both or neither.

    If you look at crimes like murder, armed robbery etc which have high clean-up rates, the figures still hold so the former is more likely than the latter.

  18. [“Just heard on ABC news. Hird has been sacked. His replacement is Lance Armstrong. Mr A said he knew nothing about footy and would rely heavily on his assistant Ben Cousins to get things done. Mr Cousins was heard to say “let’s party””]

  24. lizzie

    My biggest problem was she introduced Shorten with a “it’s the ‘year of ideas’ and there are no policies” but closed with “Marr’s essay will cover the policy debates at this year’s Labor’s national conference.”

  27. Socrates @505:

    [Does this have any chance of success? Surely Clive makes his own decision, and own risks, in deciding how much to spend? Unless Lazarus and Lambie went guarantor on loans or personaly promised to underwrite the cost, this sounds like an empty bluff from Clive. Don’t the AEC $ per vote for Lambie and Lazarus go back to PUP anyway? Does Clive plan to hand them over to Lambie and Lazarus?]

    Clive’s claiming that, as the “consideration” for the PUP’s endorsement of Lambie and Lazarus (and funding their election campaigns), the two promised to remain part of PUP for their whole terms. Under promissory estoppel, he’s claiming that he is due their Party allegiance as a result.

    I doubt it will succeed….but there’s a chance.

  28. [517
    Diogenes

    This does not mean they are more disposed to break the law than anyone else, but rather that the law is more disposed to catch and then break them.

    Incorrect. It could either, both or neither.

    If you look at crimes like murder, armed robbery etc which have high clean-up rates, the figures still hold so the former is more likely than the latter.]

    Law enforcement is both politicised and racialised in Western Australia.

    http://rightnow.org.au/writing-cat/article/overcrowding-in-western-australia%E2%80%99s-prisons/

    [In March 2012 it will be twenty-one years since the release of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The report found that while Aboriginal deaths in custody did not happen at a higher rate than non-Aboriginal deaths in custody, the rate of imprisonment was many times higher. Western Australia’s Indigenous incarceration rate remains the highest in the country, where an Indigenous person is 23 times more likely to be imprisoned than a non-Indigenous person.

    Any consideration of overcrowding in prisons in Western Australia needs to be considered in this context.

    Given the vast size of Western Australia (30 per cent of the Australian continent) many people from remote communities are jailed thousands of kilometres from home. In Acacia prison at any given time, there can be up to 200 Aboriginal people from remote communities incarcerated. The most common reasons for Indigenous prisoners to be in prison are driving offences, drinking offences, and non-payment of fines.

    The Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services in his unreleased, yet widely circulated draft report A Thematic Review of Overcrowding in Prisons (November 2009) identified the most overcrowded prisons in Western Australia as those where Indigenous prisoners are more likely to be held. WA’s tough on crime approach leads to overcrowded prisons…

    The latest Productivity Commission Report has a large section on incarceration, including a state-by-state breakdown. It is based on 2010 figures that show Western Australian prisons to be 30 per cent over capacity. By January 5 2012 this had risen to a prison population 50 per cent over capacity.

    Since 2007 the Western Australian prison population has increased sharply. This rise coincided with a change of state government in September 2008 when the Carpenter-led Labor government lost power to the Barnett-led Liberal government, which implemented an increasingly “tough on crime” approach to justice. This includes a tough approach to parole, leading to it not being granted as often, along with a decreased use of community service orders as an alternative. Statistics on these issues are available from the Corrective Services website.

    Double bunking is the key cause of overcrowding and is now the norm in WA prisons.]

    http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/12/15/aboriginal-prison-rate-continues-to-rise-is-neoliberalism-at-play/

    […the trend towards mass imprisonment began about 20 years ago, about the same time government pledged to achieve the exact opposite: to drastically reduce levels of incarceration in line with the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. ”The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody reported at a time when the ground had already moved towards more punitive approaches to law and order, and I think that’s a major reason why it’s never had any impact on imprisonment rates,” Cunneen said.

    What is clear is that the rise of control through crime has had a profoundly racial dimension in Australia, and the indigenous population has borne the brunt of this, he adds. Although incarceration rates for all Australians have risen over the past decade, the indigenous rate has outstripped the non-indigenous rate by a factor of 11, soaring more than 47% between 2001 and 2011, while the non-indigenous rate grew 4% in the same period. Notably, the two jurisdictions with the highest imprisonment rates — the Northern Territory and Western Australia — also have the largest proportion of indigenous residents. In the NT, where one in three people (32%) are indigenous, the imprisonment rate has risen 46% in the past decade, from 523 prisoners per 100,000 adults (one in 191) in 2001 to 762 prisoners per 100,000 (one in 131) in 2011. In WA, where indigenous people make up 3.8% of residents, indigenous residents are 23 times more likely to be locked up than non-indigenous residents, with one in 26 indigenous adults now behind bars.

    Racialised punishment is not unique to Australia but its ferocity surpasses some of the most notorious international examples.]

  30. Dio, there is no doubt at all that our society in general is increasingly divided by age, wealth and geography; and in Western Australia the racial divide is deepest and widest of all.

  31. victoria @514:

    [Defence review calls for sale of defence properties

    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/defence-review-calls-for-sale-of-defence-properties-and-structural-changes-to-cut-waste-20150401-1mcjny.html ]

    Rant cancelled – I realized that they might be talking about the sale of non-residential properties. Old office blocks and the like.

    However, if they are talking about the sale of residential properties, and consequently either paying more to subsidize private rentals for service families or telling them “tough bikkies!”, there’ll be hell to pay.

  32. briefly

    There is no evidence in those articles to suggest indigenous people commit the same number of crimes as others but are more likely to get caught or imprisoned if they do.

  35. Just finished watching Megalogenis’ program on iview.

    Couldn’t help but cheer that his interviews stopped at Gillard. When talking about Australia’s future who cares what Abbott or Hockey might have to say?

  36. Jackol

    I guess mega had a deadline to meet.

    Abbott and hockey will provide ample material for future programs.

    Working title: how to stuff it up big time

  38. victoria @533:

    [I had a look at the report, but was unable to ascertain exactly which sites have been earmarked for sale]

    Neither could I; hence, rant cancelled 😛

    ‘Twas rather a nasty rant, too. As would be merited by the idea of shoving military families under the bus.

  39. TBA @537:

    [What is the new party called? Lambie and the Brick?]

    That’s almost amusing, actually. But no – it’s the Jacqui Lambie Network.

    JLN….not quite as good as JLA, but it’s nice. XD

  40. Not one Essendon player tested positive to any illegal drug.

    Still, rub ’em all out. The kangaroo court is alive and well in Australia.

  41. Bushfire Bill @534:

    [Of course, Telstra is a part owner of Foxtel, but it wouldn’t have anything to do with that…. nah… nothing at all.]

    Never! How could you accuse the captains of industry of -gasp!- abusing their power in such a fashion? It’s another Kristallnacht, it is!

    (Apologies to Holocaust survivors; my reference was to a WSJ op-ed which compared criticism of the undue power afforded the wealthy to another Kristallnacht.)

  42. Matt

    Keep the rant under your hat, cos it might still be needed in future. You never can be sure what this govt is really going to do. 😀

  43. it is becoming apparent that we are going to need the NBN to provide efficient streaming of services such as Netflix. Our current internet capacity is just not going to cut it

  44. lol. Lynton Crosby demanded (and got) an apology from Crikey today.

    Conducting a campaign in the UK and concerned about how a pokey little outfit like Crikey might be describing you? Talk about thin skinned.

  46. There, fixed that for you, Victoria.

    [it is becoming became apparent a long time ago to Rupert Murdoch and his gimps in the Liberal Party that we are going to need the NBN to provide efficient streaming of services such as Netflix. Rupert is glad that Our current internet capacity is just not going to cut it]

  48. Jackol@544

    lol. Lynton Crosby demanded (and got) an apology from Crikey today.

    Conducting a campaign in the UK and concerned about how a pokey little outfit like Crikey might be describing you? Talk about thin skinned.

    Seems the tory way…form to support it and law suits as well.

  50. I think that a defamation lawsuit is an odd remedy for a journalist to invoke. Surely Ms Pryor could simply tear Mark Latham a new one in her next column. That is an opportunity which few people have. Another odd thing is a full-time medical student with a part-time journalist’s gig and parental responsibilities having the money for lawyers. I can understand a rich person wasting a court’s time with defamation lawsuits – I dislike it intensely and want defamation lawsuits to be difficult to bring and even harder to win – but you can understand it. When someone who isn’t rich decides to take the expensive route of legal action when they could use the platform of their newspaper column to respond to criticism there is something amiss.

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