Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

Essential Research is back at 52-48 after a one week interruption at 53-47, and finds 42% of Coalition voters taking the view that the ABC is biased to the left.

The latest weekly reading of Essential Research’s fortnightly rolling average on federal voting intention has Labor’s two-party lead at 52-48, reverting to type after a blip to 53-47 last week. However, the only change on the primary vote is a one-point drop for the Greens to 10%, with the Coalition steady on 41% and Labor on 39%. Further questions find 22% perceiving the ABC as biased to the left (42% among Coalition voters, and 10% to 13% for the rest), 3% as biased to the right, 36% as biased in neither direction, and fully 40% responding with “don’t know”. Sixty-one per cent of respondents were opposed to Trans Pacific Partnership provisions allowing the government to be sued for policies that cost foreign companies money, with only 10% in support; and 69% thought it likely that same-sex marriage would be allowed in the next few years, compared with only 20% for unlikely. A series of responses on the government’s handling of issues finds it rating positively only on “supporting Australian businesses”, but its stocks have improved markedly since January on all measures except treatment of asylum seekers and environmental issues, with double-digit improvements on health, education and supporting Australian businesses.

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.

1,455 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  1. This would be funny if not so ridiculous:

    [But Mr Truss said the leadership team, which includes Mr Joyce, had agreed to boycott Q&A more than a week ago.

    “The decision was made by the leadership team, which includes the Prime Minister and I [sic] and my deputy leader Barnaby Joyce, the last sitting Thursday,” Mr Truss said.

    Mr Truss said it appeared Mr Joyce had not “interpreted the decision” as others had.]

  2. From the last thread

    [1355
    TPOF

    There is nothing inherently ‘right’ or correct about one’s principles. My first principle is that national cohesion is essential. Apparently unconstrained arrivals of self-selecting unscreened immigrants in large numbers threatens that cohesion fundamentally, despite the real sympathy due to the circumstances of many of them.]

    The “national cohesion” argument is tosh. It is the same line that Enoch Powell and Pauline Hanson deployed. It is the same false argument that was used to erect the White Australia immigration law 120 years ago.

    The use of the description “unconstrained arrivals of self-selecting unscreened immigrants in large numbers” is also emotively loaded. It’s a revival of Pauline Hanson’s phrase, “We’re being over-run…”

    This is to succumb to xenophobia, pure and simple. It “catastrophises” the dynamics and validates the use of fear in the construction of so-called “policy”.

    It is the fabrication of fear and exaggeration of “threat” that not only permits the use of exemplary violence against refugees, it practically insists on the use of such violence.

  3. Apparently Tones has been doing a presser..

    [@murpharoo: PM asked whether he’s concerned about Greece and China. ” … again I get back to the grocery code of conduct.”]

  4. And furthermore…from the last thread…

    [1388
    ratsak

    Labor have no choice other than put a bipartisan approach that accepts as it’s basic ingredients:

    1. No unauthorised arrivals to ever be settled in Australia
    2. Offshore processing of any unauthorised arrivals
    3. Maximum effort to prevent any arrivals by boat including turn backs.]

    That is to say….

    1. Australia will abandon the legal principle of non refoulement

    Non-refoulement is a principle of international law which forbids the rendering of a true victim of persecution to his or her persecutor. Generally, the persecutor in mind is a state actor. It is a principle of both the customary and trucial law of nations.

    2. Australia will try to have its neighbours agree to becoming refugee waiting-rooms, as if there are not already plenty of refugees already being “processed” (that is, held in prisons) in these jurisdictions.

    3. Australia will continue to traffic human cargoes into other territories, even if this means discounting persons who have broken no law into punitive and exemplary detention.

    Great. Australia has become an administrator of a gulag.

  5. Guytaur on the other thread:

    [No my argument is that Australians are not racist by nature but fearful of the other like anyone else in the world.]

    What do you base this on guytaur? Are you white by any chance, cos in my experience the only people who say what you said are white and have never experienced the pervasive racism that underpins Australian society.

    Its fair enough to say not all Australians are racist “by nature” (which really means institutionally and culturally.) I agree with that, but a large chunk are. And really much of the population of earth is too given the way humans treat each other.

  6. [ Well, there you go…another day at the office with 52-48. ]

    So .. wasn’t Abbott given six months to turn things around? And hasn’t he completely and utterly failed to do so? So when does his six months expire?

    Much as would love to see Abbott stay on and get defeated at the next election, the damage he is doing to the fabric of Australia – not to mention our reputation overseas – is just too appalling. When are the LNP going to sort him out?

  7. Victoria @ 1395 – its unbelievable, well not so much unbelievable as disappointing. Especially from Dawn Fraser, who was a brat herself and was originally suspended from the Australian Olympic team for 10 years for being a pain in the backside.

    What a comment. So many Australians have at least one parent born overseas. I think it was 44% at the last census.

    Then again Fraser did express support for Pauline Hanson once upon a time. I think you have a point about the national climate encouraging arseholes to speak their mind.

  8. Over the past 5 years there have been from 100,000 to 900,000 refugees per year. Over the same 5 years the number of placements available has remained around 80,000. The average time spent in camps is 17 years.

  9. Australia should be calling on the EU to reform its monetary order; an order that is exporting deflation and economic suppression to other parts of the global economy, including this one.

    [http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/07/us-eurozone-greece-idUSKBN0P40EO20150707]

  10. The consistency of the 52-48 theme cannot be argued, not even by the most ardent Coalition supporters. Its hard to see anything changing this pattern.

  11. Jules

    You have read that wrong. Fear of the other is culture it exists around the world and everyone has it.

    Generally Australians are not racist as a majority that includes the non white people who can be just as racist as white people.

    My point is that this is not because Australians are better than anywhere else. The difference is in the culture of the country not the people in it. Good leadership has seen to that.

    Now we have bad leadership fostering fear racism and division.

    Just like Howard did and Jones took to heights helping in my opinion to inciting the Cronulla riots.

  12. @Briefly/8

    Which points out that Labor has become weak over the years, no care and no responsibility.

    If they don’t care about AS, then hell’s chance of caring about anything else for the matter.

  13. [9
    jules]

    It is precisely because some seem to be always inclined to bigotry that we need to create legal, cultural and other normative bulwarks against this scourge. We have no choice. This is a perpetual mission.

  14. [The “national cohesion” argument is tosh. It is the same line that Enoch Powell and Pauline Hanson deployed. It is the same false argument that was used to erect the White Australia immigration law 120 years ago.]

    I was prepared to allow you to disagree, but the first two comparisons are nonsense (or tosh to use your words) and the last is unhistoric. Powell called for a complete shut down of authorised immigration on racist grounds to shut out people whom the British were happy to have as subjects as long as they could be exploited. Hanson wanted people who were already here to conform to her paradigm. And the White Australia Policy, while in no way defensible now, was central to the national compact on which 20th century Australia was built – rightly or wrongly.

    Nothing at all to do with the issue of the appearance of uncontrolled borders.

  15. Anyone want to attempt to reconcile those facts with the increasingly popular propositions of “economic migrant” and “country shopping”.

  16. [16
    zoidlord

    @Briefly/8

    Which points out that Labor has become weak over the years]

    It’s far more accurate to say the public has been weakened, or has allowed itself to be weakened. Labor is simply a political party. By themselves, they cannot change the culture. They have been beaten into submission by their enemies.

    My own view is that there are no winners here. We are all diminished….those stationed within the dominant culture, those refugees who hope for protection, our own economy, our very patrimony. There is nothing but loss to be derived from the politics of fear, cowardice and revenge.

  17. citizen

    From way ABC played it looked leaked mobile phone footage did not see any youtube indication on it.

    My bad to say leaked.

  18. @Briefly/23

    Labor is suppose to help people, not destroy them, they helped destroy them by siding with the Coalition Party and LNP Party in the states.

    Passing the blame back on Australians is like not reading the instruction manuals or fine print (which many people do not do).

    Labor has failed to capitalize issues, issues that are important such as TPP, NBN, Security, Education and Health, which tie in to other areas like Detention Centers, LAND, Housing, Investors and so forth.

  19. [19
    TPOF

    And the White Australia Policy, while in no way defensible now, was central to the national compact on which 20th century Australia was built – rightly or wrongly.

    Nothing at all to do with the issue of the appearance of uncontrolled borders.]

    Oh, this is mistaken, The White Australia policy was put forward as a response to the otherwise “unconstrained” use of black indentured labour. Fear of refugees is similarly motivated by economic fears – by the desire to suppress competition for jobs and other economic resources, including welfare and other State benefits.

    We will not likely revert to an explicit version of White Australia, but we a culturally implicit version is up and running. Perhaps it should be called Vanilla Australia.

  20. Yes, the waiting time in camps is far too long – but we don’t help that problem at all by creating a separate stream for those who don’t wait in camps.

    The only way to decrease waiting time in camps is to take more people from the camps…(which will do nothing to stop those who don’t want to wait in camps taking to boats).

  21. briefly @ 26

    [Oh, this is mistaken, The White Australia policy was put forward as a response to the otherwise “unconstrained” use of black indentured labour.]

    Not dissimilar with the current debate over the use of 457 visas to import cheap labour and displace Australian workers who are not prepared to work under the remuneration and conditions currently required. The point I was raising was about the appearance of uncontrolled borders. It still stands. There is no broad opposition to a managed humanitarian program where we select the refugees who are given a home in Australia after appropriate checks are done.

  22. So in the space of a few days we have seen the Greens rated as:

    IPSOS ………16%
    New/Newspoll…13%
    Essential …..10%

  23. [guytaur
    Posted Tuesday, July 7, 2015 at 2:11 pm | PERMALINK
    citizen

    From way ABC played it looked leaked mobile phone footage did not see any youtube indication on it.

    My bad to say leaked.]

    It’s hard to say whether ABC or someone else uploaded it to Youtube. In any event, he was talking in a pub to a friendly audience and the footage would have been taken by a supporter. The video gives a glimpse of what Labor’s election message is likely to be.

  24. zoomster

    Think of how much the queues could have been reduced with all that money we spend on Off shore detention and turn back policy.

    FWIW. What I want Labor to do as long as they talk to Indonesia other countries in the region to really go after people smugglers. No people smugglers no boats leave shore.

    Of course Labor cannot say that in opposition

  25. The queues in camps is bit like the waiting times in hospitals, and how screwed the hospital system is now with private insurance, and medibank sold.

  26. [2 minute youtube video (therefore not leaked) linked at ABC site

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-07/bill-shorten-outlines-dreams-for-australia-in-pub-speech/6600794%5D

    Can’t see how that is anything but good for Bill to be more widely seen. Passionate and articulate (for sloganeering). Again, why I don’t feel Shorten’s netsats are anything much to get worried about.

    He’s clearly playing rope a dope. He’ll have plenty left for the last round to deliver the knockout.

  27. From previous thread

    victoria
    Posted Tuesday, July 7, 2015 at 2:17 pm | PERMALINK
    Shorten at a Sydney pub on sunday night. Is this what is known as a stump speech?

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-07/bill-shorten-outlines-dreams-for-australia-in-pub-speech/6600794

    1423
    victoria
    Posted Tuesday, July 7, 2015 at 2:19 pm | PERMALINK
    race discrimination commissioner has his say on Dawn Fraser’s comments

    http://www.snappytv.com/tc/679898/180020

    1424
    victoria
    Posted Tuesday, July 7, 2015 at 2:20 pm | PERMALINK
    8m8 minutes ago
    Bridget O’Flynn ‏@BridgetOFlynn
    Laura Jayes on Sky thinks furore over Dawn is ‘political correctness gone mad.’
    Laura said few weeks back she grew

  28. vic

    [Bridget O’Flynn ‏@BridgetOFlynn
    Laura Jayes on Sky thinks furore over Dawn is ‘political correctness gone mad.’
    Laura said few weeks back she grew]

    Grew what?

  29. ratsak 38 victoria 39

    Yet more evidence that the ABC is biased against the Coalition. Imagine reporting anything Bill Shorten says without sneering at it!

  30. Here is full tweet

    Bridget O’Flynn
    Bridget O’Flynn – ‏@BridgetOFlynn

    Laura Jayes on Sky thinks furore over Dawn is ‘political correctness gone mad.’
    Laura said few weeks back she grew up in Sutherland.
    9:11 PM – 6 Jul 2015
    1 RETWEET1 FAVORITE

  31. [She grew up in Sutherland.

    Whatever that means]

    I think it means she’s a bogan who has managed to jump up a social class.

  32. citizen@2

    This would be funny if not so ridiculous:

    [But Mr Truss said the leadership team, which includes Mr Joyce, had agreed to boycott Q&A more than a week ago.

    “The decision was made by the leadership team, which includes the Prime Minister and I [sic] and my deputy leader Barnaby Joyce, the last sitting Thursday,” Mr Truss said.

    Mr Truss said it appeared Mr Joyce had not “interpreted the decision” as others had.]

    This is ridiculous. If the same thing happened to the other side, the media would be hounding this as “cabinet disunity”!

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