The Australian plugs what will presumably be an Easter polling break with Newspoll’s quarterly breakdowns, featuring voting intention and leadership rating results since the start of the year broken down by state and metropolitan/non-metropolitan. The state figures differ from the current BludgerTrack readings in being weaker for Labor in Queensland, but stronger in New South Wales and Western Australia. Later this week I’ll incorporate these numbers into BludgerTrack and publish one of my complete quarterly updates. The other figures that stand out for me are the huge drops in Tony Abbott’s approval ratings in Western Australia (down 17% to 25%) and South Australia (down 11% to 19%), with his disapproval rating in South Australia at a remarkable 74%.
UPDATE 7/4 (Roy Morgan): The latest result from Roy Morgan, combining the last two weekends of face-to-face and SMS polling from a sample of 3063, is a relatively strong result for the Coalition, who are up 2.5% on the primary vote to 40.5% with Labor down 4% to 36% and the Greens up 1.5% to 12.5%. On respondent-allocated preferences, this pans out to a big drop in Labor’s lead from 56-44 to 53-47, but the shift on previous election preferences is a good deal more modest, from 54-46 to 53-47.
UPDATE 8/4 (Essential Research): Essential’s fortnightly rolling average is steady at 53-47 to Labor, although Labor are down a point on the primary vote to 39%, with the Coalition steady on 40%, the Greens steady on 10% and Palmer United up one to 2%. Further questions find 69% opposed to raising the pension age to 70, with only 21% in support; 35% support for lowering the threshold for payment of GST on online purchases, with 45% opposed; and majorities in favour of banning alcohol advertising and raising the drinking age, but not discouraging consumption by increasing tax.
BSA Bob
Yes it is absurd to blame the State government when the federal government is also systematically cutting their health and schools funding, thereby limiting their ability to do anything in response. In fact, the State has abandoned the balanced budget rhetoric and borrowed to build (the hospital) and I have no criticism of Weatherall for that. But in a state without large mining royalties, it is not enough.
People (journos who studied communications, not economics) do not deem to register that in Australia the vast bulk of revenue (>75%) goes to the commonwealth, but it is the States that have to deliver the most expensive services (health and education, which between them cost more than aged pensions and the dole combined). It is ridiculous to expect a non mining state to fix it if federal funds are pulled.
Tricot
Dunno much abt Francis. He is a motorcyclist (a tick) with tatts (a cross)
Early on he upset the Prison Officers Union, who is probably another tick but doesn’t seem to have done much to improve the performance of the contractors who run many of WA’s very overcrowded prisons.
He is also from the southern suburbs, not a traditional home of Liberal leaders, with the exception of Barry MacKinnon who the party didn’t really like much.
victoria:
Not just that he’s on Sky News, but his articles no longer are given prominent display by the SMH like they once were. Love Elder’s summary of Hartcher:
[Peter Hartcher has been lost since his career high-point as Rudd’s apologist. He couldn’t get any inside running from Abbott. who didn’t need Hartcher. Hartcher tried Joe Hockey but Hockey faltered, ceasing to be a leadership contender after the 2014 budget and then suing Fairfax.
Hartcher tried a Woodward-style imagined dialogue with Julie Bishop and Abbott before the latter’s leadership was challenged – but Julie Bishop doesn’t need him either. The Sydney Morning Herald barely reaches into Sydney’s western suburbs, petering out long before Bishop’s powerbase in Perth. Hartcher can’t go back to Labor; they’re awake to him. He can’t go beyond the major parties because he regards them as freaks, notwithstanding a longterm decline in support for the majors that Abbott and Shorten look to accelerate.
Now he’s lit upon the idea that Morrison is the coming man, and is giving him the green-light absence of scrutiny. We’ll see whether a deft media operator like Morrison needs a clapped-out groupie like Hartcher, to what extent, and to what ends.]
IOW, Hartcher: a king maker desperately casting about for a king.
[“Perhaps after he’s solved Welfare he can turn his mind to Education.”]
Morrison is without a doubt the star performer of this Government.
He achieved in 6 Months what his 4 Labor Predecessors couldn’t do in 6 Years and claimed was impossible… actually stopping the boats.
He’ll be fantastic in any role he is put in because he is a man who seeks results not spin.
[“I’m in a bad mood this morning. How can the govt plead for the lives of the Bali pair, and ignore a dying Iranian on our shores? Unfortunately, with all the secrecy surrounding Immigration, we don’t know the facts, but I bet they don’t reflect well on anyone.”]
Actually we do know the facts on this case, this guy is an economic migrant who arrived illegally by boat and deemed NOT to be a refugee by multiple investigations by the immigration department and courts of appeals.
Unfortunately we are stuck with this guy for now and we can’t give him a visa otherwise it will be a pull factor for thousands more who think Australia now has open borders as what happened under Labor.
Iran is one of the few countries Australia can not forcefully send citizens back to. This is why under Labor Iran ended up being the number 1 customer for Indonesian people smugglers because they knew we could never send them back.
Possible solutions:
1. We engage in private talks with Iran to allow forced transfers. I believe Julie Bishop is visiting Iran in the next few months so this may a step towards that.
2. Possibly sending those from Iran who are economic migrants to somewhere like Cambodia
The option that won’t be on the table is letting them stay in Australia because then we will have given in to blackmail
Julie Bishop to visit Iran in April:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-to-play-key-role-as-iran-broker-with-julie-bishop-to-visit-tehran-20150223-13mbwq.html
There we go… some way to a solution with dealing with Iran economic migrants. Hopefully an agreement is reached.
[ Iranian police had requested the extradition of Man Haron Monis, the gunman who was shot dead in the Martin Place siege, 14 years ago but Australian authorities would not hand him over, Iran’s police chief has claimed in comments to reporters.
Monis had committed a number of “violent” and fraud-related offences before he fled the country “in disguise” in 1996, according to Iran’s chief of police, General Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam.
At the time, Monis went by the name of Mohammad Hassan Manteqi. He fled first to Malaysia in 1996 and then to Australia, General Moghaddam claimed.
Monis applied for, and was in 2001 granted, refugee status in Australia. ]
At least Morrison comes across as having a knowledge of his portfolio.
I see you set your standards high, david ;).
Not my standards DN but it seems to be a standard lacking in the current ministry.
Morrison has been such a star performer in this Government that the Libs have gone from 53.3% TPP at the last election to 45% if these latest polls are accurate.
Anymore success and star performing like that and they’d be filing for bankruptcy.
lizzie @29:
[“The Coalition is very keen to help the financial sector in a policy sense and that is reflected in the disproportionate amount of donations,” shareholder activist Stephen Mayne said.
Mr Mayne said the banks were encouraged by Coalition moves to wind back financial advice regulation as well as the government’s opposition to a new transaction tax and greater capital reserve requirements.]
The bankster spivs know what side their bread is buttered on – best to keep the political spivs in office so they can keep looting virtually at will.
The Liberal Party are nothing but political whores.
The only person I can recall who had the ability to single-handed carry his team was Wally Lewis and Morrison is no King Wally 🙂
I see that the concept of abiding our voluntarily-signed, legally-binding international agreements is still just as strange to TBT as ever.
fess
[IOW, Hartcher: a king maker desperately casting about for a king.]
Bingo
davidwh
[At least Morrison comes across as having a knowledge of his portfolio]
He comes across as a pick.
CTar1
Why don’t you tell us how you really feel 😆
I am totally appalled at Morrison’s morality. A ‘happy clapper’ who, like Abbott, espouses compassion but acts without a shred of it.
If we end up with Morrison as PM, we’ll be going from the frying pan to the fire.
Even pricks can be knowledgeable:)
For those who continually Shorten bash, because he is boring and bland. I have a feeling this is deliberate – an attempt to take the violence out of the debate and replace it with calm reason.
The media and the coalition have conditioned people to want loud, crash through, style politics. This makes people react out of emotion rather than reason. Thus we get wild swings where single issues commanding votes.
Perhaps its time for reason and a safe pair of hands rather than loud violent and in the long run, empty, politics.
The most significant highlight for me is how little has changed in 12 Months.
Its hard to make any more in roads than this for ALP, as they need to change the mind of long time Liberal voters.
Western Australia now coming back to the real world economically (falling iron ore price) and starting to realize a safety net might not be a bad thing for a nation to have.
And before ppl say it: it’s it’s not its
[TrueBlueAussie
Posted Monday, April 6, 2015 at 12:00 pm | Permalink
The option that won’t be on the table is letting them stay in Australia because then we will have given in to blackmail
]
Hi Troll,
Recognising the moral bankruptcy of your position and changing it accordingly, is not giving in to blackmail.
This government has changed the rules defining a refugee so much that I doubt Aung San Suu Kyi would have qualified when she was being held under house arrest.
[55
TrueBlueAussie
Julie Bishop to visit Iran in April]
The purpose of the visit seems to be to develop strategic ties between Iran and the West. It appears we are being drawn into Iran’s military and political strategies because of our standing as a US ensign. Inevitably, this means becoming exposed to the military, political, economic and territorial contests being waged inside Islam. Knowing, as we do, of the warlike intentions of the LNP, this has to be taken as a quite menacing development. There must be risks that Australia will, once again, expend its blood and treasure in a conflict that is not ours and in which there can only be losers.
Iran is clearly intent on taking possession either directly or through its proxies of large parts of the territories of the former Iraq and Syria, consolidating its political reach from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean and from the Black Sea to the Red Sea. This is a new imperial conquest by Persia, and we are being solicited to join.
[davidwh
Posted Monday, April 6, 2015 at 12:43 pm | Permalink
Even pricks can be knowledgeable:)
]
They’re the worst type as their actions are often deliberately targeted at certain people or groups.
Primary votes at election (according to newspoll) in non-Capitals
ALP 34.5
LNP 35.7
GRN 7.3
OTH 16.0
———–
TOTAL 105.2
———–
Looking at an older poll they has ALP primary at 29.6% (found a mistake in morgan recently also)
MOE doesnt mean much is they cant press the right buttons.
davidwh@59
They are your team comrade, not mine or most others here.
Morrison is without a doubt the star performer of this Government.
He played a major role in cultivating moral panic over ‘boats’ and in mobilising Australia’s racists to vote for a hidden neoliberal ‘reform’ agenda.
Barney
Morrison is typical of Many of the really smart people I worked with also were the meanest nastiest types you would never want to meet.
They usually thought the rest of us were rubbish and treated us as such.
Ambition is a powerful thing
bug1 @ 70
[Its hard to make any more in roads than this for ALP, as they need to change the mind of long time Liberal voters.]
This not a bad thing. Elections are not won by changing the position of long term voters of any description. Indeed, I am happy to argue that our system is the better for having a solid base of people who are prepared to hold their nose and vote for their party, no matter how much they stink.
The real question is how entrenched are the people who have moved from voting for the Coalition the last time to supporting a change in government. I don’t know the answer to that.
If an election were held tomorrow (which would only happen if Abbott did a runner) then Labor would belt it in because the small target, policy-lite, Shorten would trump the ‘what are they afraid of’ Liberals.
If an election will be held when due in 18 months, I am almost certain that Abbott will not lead the Liberals because he cannot suddenly become fit to be Prime Minister when he never has been. Bill Shorten almost certainly will lead Labor (unless a rancid skeleton is in his closet) if only because he is immune from undermining as a result of the Rudd changes.
So the unknown issues are who will lead the Coalition, what will be the level of support that he or she will have, what policies the Coalition will bring to the table and what policy Labor will bring to the table.
The Coalition cannot not have policies because everything you do in government is, in effect, a policy. And you cannot hide those policies because action to implement them needs to commence and they need to be reflected in the official national accounting documents in the budget papers. Which is why the coming budget and the response to it will be so critical to the Government’s fortunes. And why they are on a near hiding to nothing having created an environment which is loaded to the gills with irretrievable contradictions.
The question for Labor is whether it remains a small target. I say ‘question’, but I have no doubt that Labor does not intend to do so. The one political lesson that has emerged from State and Commonwealth elections since at least 2007 is that while you can win elections by being a small target, you cannot govern freely if you have controversial policies that appear to have come from nowhere. Think the problems with WorkChoices, carbon pricing in the last Parliament, Campbell Newman’s can-do approach.
So I think that Labor will roll out its policies in its own time starting after the National Conference and leading up to the next election. All the argy-bargy at the moment with commentators trying to get Shorten to say something he’d rather not and this stuff about being policy-free, etc, will be irrelevant 12 months from now. The circus always moves on. But Labor does need policies if it is to claim a mandate to govern once it wins the election. The current Senate has shown that it is more amenable than most in the past to recognising specific policy mandates (though not without a great deal of negotiation) and opposing unpopular policies that do not appear to have been tested in public competition.
So lets see. We have been conditioned, especially in the last Parliament, to expect fluoro vests and hyperbolic rhetoric every day. So us tragics here are filling the gap for ourselves. But if a week is a long time in politics, 18 months is an eon.
Davidwh – even picks can be knowledgable…
They can also play good footy and the Maroons prove over and over again.
TrueBlueArseflap @ 54
[Morrison is without a doubt the star performer of this Government.]
Sickening to think this is probably a fair statement.
Darn@13
One thing is that the Green vote is highest in the states where it flows more strongly to Labor. Also the Others vote has dropped compared to the election in Queensland, where Others broke 55:45 to Coalition. It’s likely to be a combination of these sorts of issues and rounding.
TPOF @79: good post. While Labor can espouse general principles, there is no need for specifics at this stage and certainly not before the Budget.
ALP 39, Greens 12 (10 to ALP), others 11 (5 to ALP) gives ALP a 2PP of 54. You could get 53 – 55 depending upon roundings in the primary figures.
BU @ 81
[TrueBlueArseflap @ 54
Morrison is without a doubt the star performer of this Government.
Sickening to think this is probably a fair statement.]
To say that Morrison is the sharpest pencil in the box is less impressive when you realise that all the others are blunt. Morrison is more capable than any of the others in delivering – there is almost a level of cold precision in the way he does things – like executing a goose step.
But if anyone has watched Morrison on TV being interviewed he has a significant problem that would be much worse if he replaced Abbott – he is overbearing when an interviewee tries to unpick what he says. He speaks too fast and speaks over the top of the interviewer. This can be done with style, but Morrison sounds too overbearing and authoritarian. This is OK when you are a wartime leader, but having defeated the ‘enemy’ who have come from across the seas, we have no more existential imminent military threats.
So I don’t think that Morrison will do well if he makes the top job. He can certainly turn on the charm, and he at least has a clue about how to get policy implemented, but when these things don’t turn out the way he wants, the ugly side comes through and cannot be disguised.
[ with his disapproval rating in South Australia at a remarkable 74%. ]
He really is a corpse swinging isn’t he? It must take a special talent for annoying people and a total commitment to self indulgent dogma to have a disapproval rating that high.
85
A switch to Morrison would likely mean a fairly quick election, possibly a DD if a half-Senate election was not available quickly enough but unlikely to be a House only election, to avoid Morrison`s downsides being too obvious. Of course, if Abbott got wind of such a change, there might be an election before the leadership change.
Bemused #76 I often feel lonely amongst you all 🙂
TBA
Yes Morrison has been one of this government’s strongest performers but I see he has a bit of socialism about him as he is forking out several billion on the failed work for the dole scheme.
davidwh@88
Well that’s your fault for sticking stubbornly to what you acknowledge is a thoroughly discredited political gang.
Extraordinary dominance of twitter in UK by the SNP, despite only standing in Scotland.
[Let’s be clear about what that means. When you write a algorithm to find the most frequent three word groups that appear together, then you look at the top 200 most frequent groupings, you only find groupings describing the SNP, it’s leader, or it’s policies. NO POLICIES OF ANY OTHER PARTY APPEAR IN THE TOP 200.]
https://garyshortblog.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/uk-general-election-day-4-twitter-analysis/
I would have thought I have many times made my opinion of this discredited mob crystal clear. I’m gunna havta stop speaking Swahili.
Time for a Poppy nap.
davidwh
Don’t feel lonely there are others on here who respect you for having your say.
[So I think that Labor will roll out its policies in its own time starting after the National Conference and leading up to the next election.]
Will be interesting to see how Labor handle the issue of asylum seekers.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/act-leads-moves-to-soften-alp-refugee-policy-20150403-1mcbcc.html
[The ACT is helping lead the charge to ensure asylum seeker policy is front and centre at the Labor Party national conference in three months.
And a new element has been injected into this dynamic with the appointment to the Senate of Katy Gallagher to represent the ACT.
Around the country, ALP members are preparing motions for the conference, to be held in Melbourne in July. Some will target their anger at the parliamentary leadership’s blatant refusal to follow the national platform on asylum seekers.
……
Labor for Refugees national co-convenor Robin Rothfield says the group wants to improve the ALP platform by emphasising more strongly the party’s opposition to offshore processing. “Also to reinforce opposition to mandatory, indefinite detention,” he says.
…………
Labor for Refugees understands the Opposition immigration spokesman Richard Marles intends to abide by the party platform as determined by the ALP national conference in July.
No doubt, that is a sincere promise but, given Labor’s past performance, what chance is there the parliamentary leadership will decide to abide by the current platform, much less one with fewer deterrents?]
Ex-federal Labor minister, Barry Jones:
https://theconversation.com/a-challenged-democracy-wicked-problems-and-political-failures-39040
[If there is a united front between the major parties on issues such as asylum seekers or foreign policy, then voters will have to be reminded that (as Talleyrand remarked) “not to choose is to choose” and that Australia is – like the US – becoming a state in which government and opposition are essentially two wings of the same bird.
For Australian voters, it is like choosing between Coles and Woolworths. At present, Australia is ruled by a Grand Alliance, which refuses to engage in serious examination of, say, climate change, planning for a post-carbon economy, education reform, rethinking foreign policy, or securing an appropriate revenue base for an ageing society with increasingly sophisticated health needs and the shadow of Alzheimer’s.
A central failure in the current political debacle has been the pursuit of populism, fearful of serious analysis of the major ongoing problems that face societies like ours. Both the Coalition and Labor are at fault in this.
I have sometimes fantasised that there could be room for a new party, called Courage, but I don’t see it on the horizon]
He then rates the two major parties and his “Courage” party against a list of policy issues.
“Courage”party is equivalent to the existing Greens Party but he can’t see it.
So is the emphasis on the WA results in the way this has been spun by News Ltd a way of advancing Julie Bishop’s credentials?
[“Courage”party is equivalent to the existing Greens Party but he can’t see it.]
“Courage Party” for the Greens is equivalent to never having to provide the proof.
The ‘Courage” Party? Never having to say you are responsible.
TPOF @ 85
TB(insert derogatory “A” word here) is far to acutely unaware of self to realise the condemnation his own ranting and raving heaps upon the government he helped elect.
TPOF @ 85
TB(insert derogatory “A” word here) is far to acutely unaware of self, to realise the condemnation his own ranting and raving heaps upon the government he helped elect.