Every pollster under the sun took the field this week, and the collective verdict from the six pollsters as aggregated in BludgerTrack is that the Coalition two-party vote has lifted 0.7% in the wake of the budget. The result on the seat projection is even more striking, with Labor now reduced to minority government territory, although the presence of Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie on the hypothesised cross-bench suggests that 74 seats would still be enough for them to form government. The Coalition has had considerable bang for its post-budget buck on the seat projection, because state breakdowns (including published ones from Ipsos and Morgan, and unpublished ones from ReachTEL and Essential Research) suggest the biggest gain has been in marginal seat-rich Queensland, whereas Labor’s vote has held firm in the less strategically important state of Victoria. All told, the Coalition is credited with two gains in Queensland, and one each in New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania. New results on personal ratings were provided by Newspoll and Ipsos, and they offer no sign that Tony Abbott’s remarkable recovery from the depths of February is abating, his net approval rating now being no worse than it was before last year’s budget. However, they also suggest that Bill Shorten’s recent downward slide has levelled off.
Apropos of not very much, here’s a display of Newspoll’s post-budget polling results going back to the late 1980s. The scatterplot shows the strong relationship that exists between the results for personal financial impact and overall economic impact, with this year’s result indicated by the pink dot.
lizzie
This is from the man who said he would create 1 million jobs in his first term.
I think Labor needs to say that when talking about the EW link to counter Abbott. Not sure who in Labor should do so but it has to be someone who can cut through.
So maybe Penny Wong as she will weave it into the narrative of deceit it is and the media reports her pressers and I don’t think Shorten should do this,
Tricot @ 99
[The touted ‘facts’ that Shorten is bland, sounds like an accountant, is uninspiring, has not come up with any policies, has not broken through, does not present well, does not dress well, does not look like a PM, has blood on his hands – and a dozen other weaknesses that arm chair critics from both sides throw up, is the kind of stuff that all LOTO face.]
From a lifetime of watching politics I could not agree more.
lizzie
[Where does Abbott get the 7000 jobs destroyed by cancelling E-W Link?]
From the same place he pulled the $1 billion cost of cancelling it, his bottomless pit of bullshit.
TPOF
I have been waiting fo Shorten to take off the gloves. Thought after budget, it would happen. Nothing so far.
@markberman: Nebraska lawmakers voted today to make it the 19th state in the U.S. to abolish the death penalty http://t.co/UAOs8plePD
poroti
Every time he mentions E-W link now, it’s 7000 jobs lost by Labor. Crazy stuff.
lizzie
Again. Abbott continually focusing on east west link and labor (in this case Vic politics), strengthens the view that he is shoring up his vote in Victoria. An election in the wind?
I know that the new QLD Premier is bland & stilted & during the election Some QLDers hadn’t even heard of her yet she won. Perhaps Abbott is not disliked as much as Campbell Newman was.
[victoria
Posted Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 10:37 am | PERMALINK
TPOF
I have been waiting for Shorten to take off the gloves. Thought after budget, it would happen. Nothing so far.]
Vic
Assuming he does take the gloves off at some stage, what do you foresee him doing that he is not already doing?
Darn
What worked for Abbott was repetition. Saying the same things over and over. Shorten could do the same about abbott’s flip flops on medicare, PPL and fhe like. Rinse and repeat.
victoria
Abbott is many things. However he and his political team are not stupid when it comes to the polls. No matter how much the MSM tells us about IPSOS he knows its just one poll.
He will have seen the Newspoll. He will have seen the Essential.
All that one poll does is give him hope there might be a shift on and a bolster to staying in the leadership.
As bludgertrack shows a long way to go. Consolidating his vote otherwise known as his base is not the way to win elections.
[What worked for Abbott was repetition. Saying the same things over and over. Shorten could do the same about abbott’s flip flops on medicare, PPL and fhe like. Rinse and repeat.]
I think you are forgetting he did that with great effect last year You can only go so far with this until you use it next election.
The minute Shorten “takes the gloves off” we will see a barrage of articles about how people are sick of “confrontational politics” and shame on Bill for indulging in it.
Where does Abbott get the 7000 jobs destroyed by cancelling E-W Link?
Where he gets all his statistics – double the number he first thought of and add enough zeros to the end so that it supports whatever he is trying to say.
Abbott really is like a dog with a bone with this East-West Link. Why hasn’t he moved on? The people of Victoria have said they don’t want it, and after all Abbott himself said the last Victorian election was a referendum on the link. However, his donors and backers must really want it badly.
Sounds like Abbott is using the same logic on the EW link as they used in the budget.
They booked savings that have not been passed in the Senate and jobs have been lost from a project that had barely started.
Meanwhile over in the oil and has business
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/28172497/woodside-staff-cost-cuts-revealed/
I guess that’s Labor’s fault.
[Abbott really is like a dog with a bone with this East-West Link. ]
Isn’t it issue management, if he stops talking about the link he needs to talk about the alternative uses for the funds and he doesn’t want to do that.
I suppose Abbott quotes 7000 jobs because it’s a bigger number than he’s lost directly by announcements so far.
What shits me is people, essentially Labor people, getting on here and blaming Shorten for a loss in some support for Labor. Firstly, Labor is still in front, secondly, what a government does or doesn’t do carries a great more weight in voters minds than what an opposition does and thirdly, I don’t recall those same people praising Shorten when the polls were stronger for Labor and Shorten.
I expect to read this shit from posters like True Blue Arsole but not from Labor supportors.
@political_alert: White House report on the national security implications of a changing climate https://t.co/OXvZYfLAmV #climatechange http://t.co/Cv0lfn4btI
63
poroti
🙂
What worked for Tony Abbott as Opposition Leader won’t work for Bill Shorten or any other Labor leader. Tony Abbott was being actively boosted by the big end of town and most of the mainstream media, while any Labor leader will have most of the media and most of the money actively working against them. If Bill Shorten tried the same tricks – constant negativity, stunts in high-viz gear and empty three word slogans, he would be decried as irrational, bellicose, confrontation, unhinged and lacking substance, as Abbott should have been.
I don’t know how this can be countered. It calls for a completely different strategy and a bit of creative thinking wouldn’t go astray.
briefly,
[There is an alternative to imposing a price on carbon by direct mechanisms. That is to simply change the Renewable Energy Target – to set rolling increases in the target such that by 2050, at least 90% of electricity production must come from RE.]
Yes, but the RET addresses just one use of carbon fuels, which doesn’t even get to 50%. We need to tackle more of our primary energy sources at once.
What about the gas used in industrial process heat, cooking and heating?
What about liquid hydrocarbon fuels used in transport and agriculture?
On the other hand, I had an interesting chat yesterday to a fellow in the know re transport emissions. He started by pointing out that charging his Nissan Leaf overnight for the daily commute is more carbon intensive than using the 1999 Mazda 3 that he keeps parked in the garage, because the main energy source generating electricity at this time is coal.
He then pointed to the EU, where the new rules on emissions allow the car manufacturers to average their emissions ratings over all the cars they sell. The emissions ratings are quite strict, and it is very costly and time-consuming to engineer a single engine to meet them. So they have an incentive to internally cross-subsidise electric and hybrid-electric vehicles, so that they can sell enough to meet their average emissions targets.
Which is all very similar to the structure of the RET.
In contrast, Australia hasn’t moved on vehicular emissions ratings for *some time*.
It seems like some low-hanging fruit that would change the structure of our transport fleet for the better, and would multiply the effects of changes to the composition of our electricity generation fleet.
[ I don’t think any LOTO has a wonderful job. ]
Dont take this the wrong way Tricot, but FFS you do have a penchant for understatement dont you??
LOTO for a 1st term opposition where the Govt has a substantial majority in the HoR should be a career killing sh$t sandwich of a job with their being virtually NO prospect of coming back to Govt at the next election. The discussion would usually focus on whether or not they can claw back any or enough seats to be in a competitive position NEXT time.
The ALP under Shorten is competitive NOW. Wile there are a lot of factors responsible for that, i think he (and the rest of the ALP front bench) deserves some credit.
Abbott is doing rinse and repeat with east west link. Saying that Labor wasted a billion dollars tearing up the contract and 7000 jobs lost. He is not saying this for the sake of it. Say it enough times and it will stick
Steve777
[What worked for Tony Abbott as Opposition Leader won’t work for Bill Shorten or any other Labor leader.]
😀 You’re right.
The stars aligned for Abbott. Winning the leadership by one vote was the first sign.
Maybe it really does need two periods in office for voters to understand what a disaster he is for the nation.
[Violent fantasies as mass-amusement…doesn’t work for me!]
Leaves me cold too, and a little disturbed at their popularity. Always has. No idea what people see in this stuff.
Not like we are short of actual real-life examples to look at and deal with if we want play at being tough noble heroes bravely fighting the forces of evil.
Gary,
Offering thoughts on how Shorten can counter Abbott is not derisive.
Steve 777
Agree wholeheartedly
Question 127
Yes, this is not a case of deriding Shorten at all but rather analysing possible alternate strategies that he might use. This is actually a positive thing to do. I’m actually pleasantly surprised that most contributors here aren’t looking to replace their leader as was the case in years gone by.
[I’m actually pleasantly surprised that most contributors here aren’t looking to replace their leader as was the case in years gone by]
The ALP would be mad to start that up… and everybody knows it.
[The ALP would be mad to start that up… and everybody knows it.]
Including the MSM.
[On the other hand, Beazley and Hayden faced much more formidable opponents (John Howard and Malcolm Fraser) than Bill Shorten faces in Tony Abbott.]
Not sure about that. It is true that Abbott is a lot less substantive and finessed than Howard or Fraser, and needs a lot more propping up by his team (and then some!). But he is also more ruthless and unprincipled and monomaniacal than either Howard or Fraser (as best I can recall).
In the short term that is always a tactical advantage, that is hard for your opponents to neutralise, especially when you have an equally ruthless and unprincipled propaganda machine watching your back and covering up your mistakes.
Which is why I think Shorten Labor (and the anti-Abbott forces in general) have done a good job so far in keeping Abbott behind in the polls, and why they deserve more credit than some give them.
Is it enough to keep Abbott from being re-elected? Remains to be seen. But Labor have nothing to be ashamed of so far. Most of the drift back to Abbott is due to forced changes in his behaviour and policy, not because of cock ups from Labor.
On the News ….Qld is formally in recession.
Well done Newman and Abbott.
Agreed JM,
Although I think Howard was a bit more ruthless than his bespectacled accountant image. Throughout his career he coveted the bigot vote, first with Asian’s, and more successfully with “boat people”.
lizzie@85
Same as hunt.
Yuck.
Chaelie Edward @129:
[I’m actually pleasantly surprised that most contributors here aren’t looking to replace their leader as was the case in years gone by.]
First, it’s harder to do now than in the past.
Second, why give the LNP the free kick?
Third, Shorten’s worked miracles, given that the ALP barely had the furniture left in the room after Rudd-Gillard-Rudd. Give him an election to prove himself.
lefty e@68
It is about policy – very bad and unfair tory policy that has already been blocked in the senate by Labor and others – that would have law now if abbott had his way.
Its also about the policy Labor has announced and what is yet to come.
[Player One
The key thing for Shorten at the moment is not to get “spooked” into pretending to be something he isn’t.]
[poroti
The minute Shorten “takes the gloves off” we will see a barrage of articles about how people are sick of “confrontational politics” and shame on Bill for indulging in it.]
Wot they said.
Abbott’s opponents certainly have to be prepared to play hard against him, but not according to the rules (or lack of them) that Abbott wants to play by.
He will always win if you try to take him on his terms, because he will always be prepared to dive deeper into the tactical cesspit than you.
“@sarahinthesen8: Me Abbott, only a dope would say “nope” when the rest of the world is asking for you to act and help.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-21/ancient-stone-tools-discovery-challenges-mainstream-history/6485566
[Anthropologists say the discovery of stone tools found in north-west Kenya dating back 3.3 million years challenges the mainstream story of mankind.
Found in desert badlands near Lake Turkana, the tools include sharp-edged flakes that could have been used for cutting meat from animal carcasses and rudimentary hammers perhaps used to pound open nuts or tubers.
They are 700,000 years older than any other such stone tools ever found.
“The tools we have unearthed are the very first fossil traces of techniques bequeathed by our hominin ancestors 3.3 million years ago,” said French researcher Sonia Harmand of New York’s Stony Brook University.
“Our discovery also refutes the long-standing theory that Homo habilis was the first maker of tools.”
Tool-making, like fire-making and farming, is considered a key moment in the ascent of humans.]
Shorten on 24 now
“@ABCNews24: LIVE: Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is speaking about jobs after meeting with engineers from Google http://t.co/FlRWJAqVJo #auspol”
[122
Libertarian Unionist
briefly,
There is an alternative to imposing a price on carbon by direct mechanisms. That is to simply change the Renewable Energy Target – to set rolling increases in the target such that by 2050, at least 90% of electricity production must come from RE.
Yes, but the RET addresses just one use of carbon fuels, which doesn’t even get to 50%. We need to tackle more of our primary energy sources at once.]
Yes, it’s not a complete solution. But it’s a lot better than the LNP’s anti-solution.
The other factor is the very fast-moving tech and cost developments with solar. In all likelihood, in 10 years – nay, even in 5 years – it will be significantly cheaper to produce and distribute electricity (and power passenger vehicles) using solar sources than any other source.
We have already seen peak coal consumption in China even though electricity consumption continued to rise. The fall in coal was mostly made up by increases in renewable sources. The increase in global emissions is said to have stalled as a result of developments in China alone.
What we need to remember is that the point of the ETS was to propel tech change in electricity generation. If there are political barriers to using an administrative price on carbon, then use other means to achieve the same result. The RET and the changing dynamics in solar (market-driven) pricing will achieve the same result without any political blow-back.
The argument is that tech change will not only help prevent dangerous climate change, it will drive down energy costs…which will help the economy here and elsewhere in lots of different ways. Cheap energy would be a terrific boon for the global economy and this can only sustainably come from renewable sources, so we should be building renewable capacity to replace fossil-based capacity.
Energy costs have climbed so quickly that electricity demand has actually been falling even though the economy has been growing. The path to lower energy costs lies in dismantling the old energy sector and building a new one. The Germans certainly understand this.
The LNP have locked themselves into the energy framework of the 1950s. Labor can lock onto the energy framework of the 2050s.
poroti@90
The outgoing US AG Eric Holder – *Declined* to prosecute CitiBank.
Obama choose Wall Street over voters yet again.
Woeful situation – they were to big to fail – now they are too big to jail.
“@AustralianLabor: 75% of the jobs being created right now require STEM skills – science, technology, engineering and maths skill. @JasonClareMP #auspol”
“@ABCNews24: Shorten: Where there is an unfolding humanitarian crisis in south-east Asia, Tony Abbott’s not my problem approach is disappointing #auspol”
“@jmodoh: Shorten: the Labor Party is a party focus on the future, not just the next opinion poll #auspol”
“@ABCNews24: Shorten: We will not introduce the carbon tax that Tony Abbott wants to have a false argument about #auspol”
On the Government’s sort of polling recovery – well I guess this is a poll blog, so it’s not surprising to see each dip and bump in Bludgertrack stimulate lots of comment – BUT
– it’s a long road still to polling day, even allowing for the possibility of an early election. A week is a long time in politics etc etc
– the left 2PP is still way in front of where we might have expected it say this time 2 years ago
-even with the Government in the best position it’s been for a year and more, it’s still in a losing position
-anything can come out of the blue at any time to affect the political climate (whether favourable or unfavourable to the Government) and probably will.
Abbott has at least shown some minimal ability to recognise that the perceptions of his leadership were unsustainable earlier in the year and that he needed to change those perceptions. By the unsophisticated method of keeping his head down and minimising his public appearances, a la Can do’s Operation Boring, the polling trend suggests he’s had some success. However he leads an administration that has spent its political capital, is focussed above all on survival, and so has very little room to prosecute its policy agenda – thank goodness for that.
Perceptions of Shorten – difficult to know how much it matters at this stage. Adverse perceptions weren’t ultimately an obstacle to Abbott becoming PM. I’ll admit to having been unimpressed by Dan Andrews as Vic Opposition Leader for example but I think he’s showing the signs of being an excellent Premier. I know what people mean about Shorten – so many of his public appearances come across to me as cringeworthy. Just occasionally though he steps out of the media straitjacket and really cuts through. Hints maybe of what he could be – and maybe with the focus and energy of an election campaign he’ll rise to the occasion more often.
In the meantime, less than 2 years after their election, we have a highly dysfunctional LNP government that can get very little of its reactionary agenda moving. It’s not great, but it could be worse.
“@ABCNews24: Shorten: Tony Abbott’s direction tax policies are paying a price for carbon right now #auspol”