BludgerTrack: 51.9-48.1 to Labor

Another slight narrowing of Labor’s two-party lead on the poll aggregate, which also finds increasingly worrisome personal ratings for Bill Shorten.

Three new polls this week, from Newspoll, Ipsos and Essential Research, all of them featuring leadership ratings as well as voting intention. As was widely noted, there was a big gap between the results from Newspoll and Ipsos, which has contributed to something of a two-track trend in polling, with one clump of results around 54-46 (Ipsos and ReachTEL) and another around 51-49 (two Newspolls and a bias-adjusted Roy Morgan). The middle ground plotted by BludgerTrack now has Labor’s two-party vote down to 51.9% – only a small change on last week, but enough to shift two seats on the seat projection, including one in New South Wales (which has done a lot of the heavy lifting in the recent Coalition poll recovery) and one in Victoria.

Leadership ratings are starting to look increasingly alarming for Bill Shorten, whose net approval has dropped a full 10% from the stasis it was in through most of 2014. Tony Abbott has now recovered to where he was before Australia Day, and while that’s still a bad position in absolute terms, the gap between himself and Shorten is rapidly narrowing. The same goes for preferred prime minister, on which Shorten’s double-digit lead after Australia Day has narrowed to about 3%.

Two polls warranting comment:

• I neglected to cover this on Tuesday, so let the record note that this week’s Essential Research result ticked a point in the Coalition’s favour on two-party preferred, putting Labor’s lead at 52-48. Primary votes were 41% for the Coalition (up one), 39% for Labor (steady), 10% for the Greens (steady) and 2% for Palmer United (steady). Also featured were monthly personal ratings, which found Tony Abbott up two on approval to 31% and down five on disapproval to 56%, Bill Shorten up one on both to 34% and 39%, and Shorten’s lead as preferred prime minister down from 39-31 to 37-33. Other questions related to asylum seekers, with 43% nominating that most were not genuine refugees versus 32% who said otherwise. However, a separate question found 49% allowing that asylum seekers arriving by boat should be allowed to stay if found to be genuine refugees. The government’s approach was deemed too tough by 22%, too soft by 27% and just right by 34%. In response to Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus leaving the Palmer United Party, 41% said those in their position should leave parliament and allow a new election to be held for their seat, with 19% favouring a new member nominated by the party and 24% saying they should be allowed to remain in parliament.

• Roy Morgan has published one of its semi-regular rounds of SMS state polling, finding the newly elected Coalition ahead by 54.5-45.5 in New South Wales, and Annastacia Palaszczuk’s newly elected Queensland government up by 52.5-47.5, after last month’s result and the weekend’s Galaxy poll both had it lineball. Labor governments are credited with leads of 54-46 in Victoria and 51-49 in South Australia, while it’s 50-50 in Western Australia. A 56-44 lead to Labor is recorded in Tasmania, which is more than a little hard to credit.

Preselection news:

• Murray Watt is set to win preselection for Labor’s Queensland Senate ticket after securing the endorsement of the Left faction at the expense of incumbent Jan McLucas, who entered parliament in 1999. Susan McDonald of the ABC reports that Watt’s position will likely be at the top of the ticket, reflecting the Left’s new-found ascendancy within the Queensland Labor organisation.

• It’s a similar story in the lower house Brisbane seat of Oxley, where Labor’s Bernie Ripoll has announced his retirement following reports he stood to lose preselection in any case to Milton Dick, Brisbane City Council opposition leader.

• Crikey’s Tips and Rumours section recently offered details on the Labor preselection in the marginal eastern Melbourne seat of Deakin, which has been won by Tony Clarke, manager of Vision Australia and unsuccessful state election candidate for Ringwood. His main opponent was Mike Symon, who won the seat for Labor in 2007 and 2010 before being unseated by current Liberal member Michael Sukkar in 2013. Symon narrowly defeated Clarke in the local party ballot, but this was overwhelmed by support for Clarke in the 50% of the vote determined by the state party’s Public Office Selection Committee. It was reported in Crikey that the Left abstained from the POSC vote, as it wished to let “the Right factions fight out between themselves”. For more on Deakin, see today’s Seat of the Week post.

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.

1,367 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.9-48.1 to Labor”

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  1. Delia Lawrie

    [I reckon I’ve got exactly the skills and experience, the networks and knowledge, to take the Territory into good government in 2016]

    She seems to have omitted to mention her non-existent reputation

  2. WA reaped all the benefits of the current funding formula in the years when it was favourable to them. If the formula they now want imposed had been in place in recent years the other states would have received a total of $7 billion more than they actually did. These funding allocations are zero-sum – one state can only gain at the expense of others. Prior to the mining boom WA was a net recipient of federal funds for seven decades.

    They’ve had more than enough special treatment as it is. The WA Government should make the political sacrifice of collecting annual land taxes. They could lead the federation in the use of economically efficient, progressively structured, impossible to dodge land taxes. They should make the case and get it done.

  3. About keys and microwave ovens.

    As an electronic engineer I actually use a microwave oven as a cheap way to test RF circuits in an EM clean environment. That’s what microwave ovens were designed for – to be an effective Faraday cage.

    Key fobs aren’t very powerfull transmitters and they are very inefficient receivers at the frequencies used. So it wouldn’t take much attenuation to defeat an attack with an amplifier. Basically any metal box with a tight fit will work. Fridges and freezers less so because of the wide and more importantly (in RF propagation terms) long gap created by the seal. Even a foil bag filded tightly will work.better than a fridge.

    It never fails to surprise how vulnerable many electronic systems are (I can easily defeat most of them – I’m not telling). What the key fob/car system is proper encryption, a cryptokey shared by physical contact between the key and the car, and in the case of the article the manufacturer needs to rethink its approach to verifying that the key is actually on the person of/under the control of the owner. Which probably means physical contact with the owner.

  5. Why Abbott going hard on E/W link?

    Maybe he is just a bad loser.

    Or maybe this…

    [Financiers Capella Capital and Spanish-based energy and infrastructure firm Acciona are key members of the Lend Lease-led East West consortium. Both companies have contributed to Liberal and Labor coffers through attendance at fund-raisers and/or membership of the parties’ fund-raising bodies since the 2010 poll.

    Such contributions – amounting to tens of thousands of dollars – are among the millions of dollars given to political parties each year in Victoria which do not appear on public records.]
    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/parties-fail-on-donation-reform-20141118-11p81y.html

    Which is interesting considering the LendLease policy of
    [the Group will not make any donations, whether in cash or in kind, to political parties or individuals holding or standing for elective office]

  6. Lizzie, victoria, TPOF, steve777 and others discussing Abbott’s motivations on the East-West link – as someone who lives in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I can personally attest that the Link was reasonably popular in the East, to the point that virtually no eastern state electorate swung meaningfully to Labor at the recent state election. The East is not terribly well served by public transport and is pretty heavily car dependant.

    My thinking is that Abbott is looking to get the most political mileage he can in the East, which, the argument went, was the area most served by the eastern portion of the Link. The Libs have two highly vulnerable marginals in the East, Deakin and La Trobe. Additionally, if Victoria does swing big to Labor at the next federal election, then Casey and Aston would probably be in play. Then there’s the Labor seat of Chisholm which swung big to the Libs in 2013, and is only held by a margin of around 1%. So with five seats in play, the East is politically and strategically important for both parties. This is my best guess as to why Abbott keeps banging on about the Link.

  8. JD

    I am not a fan of your well reasoned argument in 156.

    I am going for Abbott being a bad loser. It fits in well with him being an avid aggressive a_hole.

  13. Simon Katich and Lizzie – well there is of course the distinct possibility that Abbott is just channelling his inner thug on this one. And besides Abbott is just as much of a dead duck in Eastern Melbourne as the rest of the state. Abbott’s continuing reluctance to just yank the money, with which he could reduce a sizable portion of the deficit, seems a pretty good indication that Victoria is gunning for him. Also the fact that he keeps bringing it up indicates that Peta and Brian at least are worried about the Libs standing in Victoria.

  15. [Labor lit the fuse ahead of last November’s election, by expanding its opposition to the project to include a commitment to kill it off.

    It did so without knowing what the legal and financial consequences were, and its warning that Labor would kill the project if elected raised sovereign risk –the risk that the Victorian government would be regarded as untrustworthy in its dealings with the private sector.]
    Long before the last Victorian election and right up to polling day, the Victorian Greens Party ran a strong, local campaign opposing the E-W link and advocated ripping up the contract.

    A few weeks before election day, Andrews flipped on his opposition to ripping up the contract. Previously, Labor and its supporters, including here on PB (zoomster, in particular) argued ‘day and night’ that such an action raised sovereign risk.

    Andrews flipped because polling indicated that inner city Labor seats were vulnerable to being lost to the Greens.

    [Lizzie, victoria, TPOF, steve777 and others discussing Abbott’s motivations on the East-West link – as someone who lives in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I can personally attest that the Link was reasonably popular in the East, to the point that virtually no eastern state electorate swung meaningfully to Labor at the recent state election. The East is not terribly well served by public transport and is pretty heavily car dependant.

    My thinking is that Abbott is looking to get the most political mileage he can in the East, which, the argument went, was the area most served by the eastern portion of the Link. The Libs have two highly vulnerable marginals in the East, Deakin and La Trobe. Additionally, if Victoria does swing big to Labor at the next federal election, then Casey and Aston would probably be in play. Then there’s the Labor seat of Chisholm which swung big to the Libs in 2013, and is only held by a margin of around 1%. So with five seats in play, the East is politically and strategically important for both parties. This is my best guess as to why Abbott keeps banging on about the Link.]
    As someone who lives in Deakin this is my analysis too.

    I door knocked for the Greens in the Forest Hill electorate and found, together with the rest of the team, that there was a high level of support for the E-W link.

  17. Peg

    [Previously, Labor and its supporters, including here on PB (zoomster, in particular) argued ‘day and night’ that such an action raised sovereign risk.]

    Yep and then the facts changed and I changed my mind.

    You’ll notice that Andrews did not do what I said he shouldn’t – namely ‘rip up the contract’. Neither did he legislate the contract out of existence (something I also cautioned against). He negotiated with the contractors.

    I said – very consistently, from my first post on the matter – that governments CAN get out of contracts (I used Conroy and the Howard broadband contracts as an example) but that they have to be very sure of their ground to do so.

    Of course, peg, you don’t do nuance, so I don’t expect you to understand the complexities.

  18. “@andrew_lund: Victorian government demanding an apology from WA Premier @ColinBarnett for trying to link WA response to Black Saturday to GST revenue”

  19. JD and SK

    I thought there might be that kind of reasoning going on. But if it is the case, which is probable, it is clearly another misjudgement on Abbott’s part methinks.

    First, now that the EW has been killed, buried and cremated by Daniel Andrews will the voters in the eastern suburbs use the next available election, which is the 2016 Federal election, to register their displeasure? My experience is that voters generally don’t tend to punish unless they think that the alternative could be better. Even if Abbott was returned in 2016 on the back of these eastern Melbourne seats, I can’t see Andrews having a conversion on the road to the 2018 Victorian elections. So, the Libs would have to win in 2018 and then renegotiate contracts, taking us out to 2020 at least if the slim chance of this project getting up again is realised.

    Secondly, there is not a lot of benefit in sandbagging a handful of seats in Melbourne if the rest of Victoria, let alone the rest of Australia, is going to be pissed off about the Coalition jumping boots and all into a project with the most dismal business case of just about any large scale infrastructure project of the last 50 years – and that assuming the business case was honest.

    At least there was some rationale – but gee it seems to be politically dumb. All Abbott will be doing at this stage is pissing off a lot of Victorian voters by holding the funds to ransom, when they are crying out to fix level crossings and start the Melbourne metro. Can’t see that as being smart.

    The Victorian voters made clear what their infrastructure priorities were at the last State election. I cannot see the upside in Abbott flipping the bird to them.

  22. Pegasus @ 165 – I agree that Labor’s decision had a lot to do with containing the risk to Labor in the inner city. As a party of government, OF COURSE Labor has to make calculated political decisions. It was a painful decision for Labor because unlike the Greens, Labor is also a party of the suburbs and accordingly cannot have a policy of blanket opposition to road-building. Labor gave up the prospect of winning four or five Eastern Suburbs seats in order to shore up the Inner City. The Green elites are lucky that the Labor Left is as influential as it is in Vic ALP at the moment because the Right would almost certainly have decided to proceed with the E-W Link. And there WAS sovereign risk associated with tearing up the contract. Labor is lucky that the consortium ignored the Victorian Libs call to play hardball, in the hope that some or all of the consortium partners could compete for future contracts. It also had to figure out how to contain and counter the sovereign risk factor, given that Labor will be looking for funding for its quite considerable pipeline of projects, most of which will not get federal funding under Abbott.

  24. BlurbUllage

    “Any of the Bludger’s who have been so quick to judge the man’s supposed lack of political nous hold 5 tertiary qualifications?”

    You posted this on the last thread in defence of Dr Karl….. that was silly enough, but to repost it here @ #25 is plain stupid.

    Tom Hawkins @ #28 summed it up.

    How on earth did you dream up the rule that one is not allowed to criticise another who is arguably smarter.

    Let’s apply your rule to your comments on PB. You are clearly far less smart than the average PB poster, so according to your strange (stupid) rule, you shouldn’t be criticising us.

    But perhaps you just don’t understand consistency.

    BTW when did hack into the private data of PB posters, so that you can know Dr Karl has more tertiary quals than anyone here.

    Until today BlurbUllage was not a poster that I viewed as lacking in insight, but forewarned is forearmed and I will be scrolling past in future.

  25. 167

    Andrews negotiated with the contractors with the option of legislative the contract out of existence on the table. Without that on the table, there may have been compensation needed for the consortium to agree.

  26. Peg

    the reason Andrews flipped was because the legality of the contract was thrown into doubt. There was legal advice to that effect.

    It’s very clear from the timeline – the legal advice was released, Andrews then committed to doing everything possible to get out of the contract.

    He did not do what I was arguing against – commit to rip up the contract regardless.

    I repeat: in my very first post, I noted that incoming governments could get out of contracts. They can’t, however – and Andrews didn’t – commit to tearing them up without knowing the terms and conditions of the contract.

    Andrews promise (and remember, I was running one of the state campaigns, so I got all the background material) was that he would do everything possible to get out of the contract. He never promised to do what I was arguing against, which was to rip up the contract regardless.

    (And now I must go out and rip out some weeds which one of my local weed experts told me last night is number 8 on the most invasive list….)

  27. [ My blood is boiling over the instructions given to the Rand Corporation over the shipbuilding study ordered by Abbott ]

    BK, Its a very good indication, actually remarkably specific and pointed, that a deal had been done with a foreign supplier back before Sept 2014 and that they had decided to break their election promise to build in SA sometime before then.

    I’m wondering if the “documentary evidence” touted by Richo back a while that the Japanese deal had been done, is actually the terms of reference for the Rand contract? It may not have specifically mentioned the Japanese but it is pretty obvious they would have been the ones since they are the only ones with boats close to the size and config we want in construction.

    This creates a bit of a problem for the Govt now. the Rand report has obviously now been supplied to the Govt and is public.

    http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1000/RR1093/RAND_RR1093.pdf

  28. Peg re few weeks.

    IMO there is a difference. Not that I necessarily disagree with you on the topic, just enhancing your time precision.

  29. this war or words about which state helped out in times of trouble is most unseemly.

    I seem to recall there were quite a few firefighters from Victoria sent to WA a few months ago when we had several major fires at the same time.

    Barnett is just a grumpy old man who has run out of ideas and can’t face up to the responsibilty he shares for WA’s economic woes.

    I guess it is typical of the modern politician that none of them can face the public and say: “We stuffed up, this is what I have to do to get us out of the mire. If I don’t do it now it will be worse in 2017 when there is an election and you can kick me out then if you like”

    it’s called courage.

  30. I’m surprised by the extent to which some posters are crawling about in the weeds trying to work out who should get credit for the policy the Labor Party took into the last state election.

    Shouldn’t the focus be on the excellent outcome in the circumstances and the way it has been handled by Andrews and his team of negotiators under extreme provocation from both the State and Federal Liberals? The possibility of holding an inquiry may still be out there for Andrews if the Liberals at both levels keep suggesting there was any integrity in the way they behaved in getting the project going.

    As for now – Andrews is in a great position to get on the front foot with State voters about the reluctance of Abbott and his cronies to cough up the funds reserved for Victoria for infrastructure projects of great concern for Victorians – especially safety and public transport.

  31. Just prior to fed election in 2013

    [EXCLUSIVE Galaxy Poll for the Herald Sun, 63 per cent of voters in Chisholm and La Trobe and 53 per cent in Corangamite sent a clear message to Tony Abbott and Victorian Premier Denis Napthine — they want the $9 billion Metro public transport project, not the controversial $8 billion East-West Link.]

    https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/infrastructure-tony-put-trucks-before-people-in-victoria,5691

  33. JD

    [It was a painful decision for Labor because unlike the Greens, Labor is also a party of the suburbs and accordingly cannot have a policy of blanket opposition to road-building.]
    The fact Greens voters are concentrated in the inner city does not mean the Greens party is not a party of the suburbs where the Greens vote is lower but more dispersed.

    Greens do not have “blanket opposition to road-building”. It advocates that the funding of public transport should be prioritized above road funding. Improved PT benefits the “suburbs”.
    [The Green elites….]
    Oh dear, slipping into mythical stereotypes.

    I virtually spent the first 2 years on PB pushing back against Greens stereotypes.

    Stereotyping, (it’s a moving feast) seems to be making a comeback.

    The greater the perceived threat from the othes’, the more stereotyping is used to discredit ‘the other’.

  36. Interesting. In that Rand report, table 3.3 on pg 82 says that Build offshore and Modification of an existing design is:

    [ Strategy under consideration for the future submarine ]

    Would love to see the terms of reference and how they were phrased. 🙂

  37. [“Any of the Bludger’s who have been so quick to judge the man’s supposed lack of political nous hold 5 tertiary qualifications?” ]

    I have 2, and my OH has 3. Between the two of us, we have 5. Not that it means anything. Anyone can see Dr Karl let the wool be pulled over his eyes.

  38. Pegasus

    …the suburbs where the Greens vote is lower but more dispersed. Your point being what exactly? The Greens vote in suburban areas is lower because suburban voters generally don’t identify with the Greens. Labor’s vote is not dispersed in the suburbs because Labor is relevant to those voters, which is why it is a party of government and therefore a party that has to make difficult policy choices.

    It advocates that the funding of public transport should be prioritized above road funding. Improved PT benefits the “suburbs”.

    As does Labor – Excellent examples of Labor’s championing of PT would be Melbourne Metro, the previous federal government’s emphasis on rail including HSR, Regional Rail etc. One of the major reasons I joined the ALP was that its PT policies, and advocacy of them within the party, stand a good chance of being implemented because Labor is a party of government.

    Oh dear, slipping into mythical stereotypes.

    When Green posters stop calling Labor corrupt, irrelevant, an LNP clone etc then I’ll stop calling the Greens privileged and elitist.

  40. TPOF @ 169 – yes and no. I doubt very much whether Abbott or Guy’s posturing on the EW Link had much to do with getting Andrews to back down on it. I don’t think the Vic Libs will go to the next election advocating the Link. more likely, they’ll say and do as little as possible before election in the hope that they can do whatever the hell they want in government. After all, as Abbott has shown, the Libs are incapable of being humbled.

    As you say, it is more to do with sandbagging, which again as you say, is not looking like it will work. The East, just like the rest of Melbourne and Victoria is too angry with the Federal Government over too many issues for a single state-based issue like the EW Link to work against Fedeal Labor.

    As victoria pointed out @181, Melbourne Metro is far more popular than the Link, including in the East. It serves more people, is fairer and is more value for taxpayer money. Which of course, is exactly why the Libs hate it.

  41. Interesting snippet from Morrison yesterday about the child care package, implying it would be linked to $10 billion or so in savings proposed but not yet passed from the last budget.

    Is this going to be a common thread of the upcoming budget?

    Sorry lost the link.

  42. Re the submarines as reported in the AFR today

    by John Kerin
    Prime Minister Tony Abbott wanted to send Australia’s $50 billion new submarine construction project offshore to Japan towards the end of last year, a US defence think tank inadvertently confirmed on Thursday.

    [The admission came from the US based Rand Corporation which carried out a report in to the future of the naval shipbuilding industry, which found the sector is in need of shakeup, able to support only two shipbuilders rather than the current four and must shrink to a workforce of around 2000 – around half the size it is now to be viable.]

    http://www.afr.com/news/politics/tony-abbott-wanted-offshore-build-for-submarines-rand-review-told-20150416-1mm7jo?stb=twt

  43. After three days of zombies in games having their limbs hacked off and their skulls crushed, soldiers being mutilated and tortured, speeding cars running over innocent pedestrians to score bonus points, stand-up comedians making jokes about people dying of cancer and their daughter’s filthy toilet habits, and now a Netflix movie featuring four people on the Barrier Reef being eaten alive, one by one by tiger sharks – with the alternative movie being Saw, seeing as I was so squeamish- I have just spat the dummy and told my grandkids to either disconnect the X-box or watch something a little less bloody revolting and unsettling.

    The horrors of trench warfare at Gallipoli are turned into ads for fresh supermarket food, exhorbitantly-priced camping gear, and beer – spruiked by no less than a past Head of the Australian Defence Forces and present Governor-General.

    Troop committments are wrapped in 4, 6, 8 flags and peddled by a coward who is the son of a coward, all while he warns us grimly that THIS time there might be deaths as a result of his order to deploy (I’ll bet he’s praying for fatalities). His family has no connection to Australia pre-1940s, and then only as a refuge from national service in the UK, yet you’d think he’d been there with the Diggers fighting the Turks.

    Even documentaries are full of peopple being nailed to crosses, stabbed, garotted, speared and animals having their throats cut…. all in the name of “reality”.

    Sheesh… no wonder our kids today are so f*cked-up. We are conjuring up an entire generation of young people immune to the horrors of violent death in war and on the streets, and who are thus being prepped for the next massacre. These kids watch barbarity and participate in it vicariously so casually, even cruelly, and we’re told it doesn’t affect them?

    At least in this house, these holidays, I’ve had e-bloody-nough of it.

  46. Chortle.

    Peg gallops into view and – totally coincidentally – I’ve been asked to ‘like’ this facebook page —

    https://www.facebook.com/#!/Greensdoingthings?fref=photo

    — which has the Greens taking credit for winning the Logie, eradicating smallpox, the signing of the Magna Carta, the moon landing, ending slavery….

    Don’t think they’ve got around to E-W Link on the site yet, but I’m sure they’ll get there…

  48. Lizzie

    As Socrates said earlier today, Trioli’s behaviour when she I/Vd Daniel Andrews this morning was beneath contemt. One of the first questions was WTTE “How do you feel as the one who has destroyed the confidence of any company contemplating entering a government contract in future?”

    Had it been me I’d have just told her to farkoff. But Andrews was extremely calm, had his thoughts well gathered, and answered that and every other question she threw at him with poise, ease, and wisdom.

    The Labor movement has found someone in DAndrews who could well go right to the top and lead the nation one day. My impression so far is that he is that good.

    Obviously time will tell but his class apparent makes so many of the federal Abbotteers look to be the drngos they are.

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