James J in comments relates that the latest Newspoll result has Labor’s two-party lead at 53-47, up from 52-48 a fortnight ago, from primary votes of 40% for the Coalition (steady), 39% for Labor (up two) and 12% for the Greens (down one). However, Bill Shorten’s personal ratings have slumped again, with approval down one to 27% and disapproval up five to 59%, while Tony Abbott’s are unchanged at 33% and 60%. Abbott has also opened up a 39-36 lead as preferred prime minister, after a tied 39-39 result last time.
This is the second Newspoll for The Australian by Galaxy Research, using a combination of automated phone and online polling. It was conducted from Friday to Sunday, with a sample of 1638. Full tables from The Australian here.
UPDATE (Essential Research): Absolutely no change on voting intention in Essential Research this week, which has Labor leading 52-48 from primary votes of 41% for the Coalition, 38% for Labor and 11% for the Greens. The poll also finds 48% expect the current parliament will run its full term, compared with 25% who expect an early election. Further questions find a strong view in favour of renewable energy over coal, and a belief that the government is excessively favouring the latter. Fifty per cent of respondents were of the view that the government should prioritise renewables over coal versus on 6% for the other way around, with 28% opting that both should be treated equally. When asked an equivalent question about the actual position of the government, the respective results were 12%, 49% and 13%. Respondents also came down heavily in favour of gun control, with only 6% deeming current laws too strong and 45% rating them not strong enough, with 40% opting for “about right”.
[
I think he’s wrong there, which is why Rudd got himself into trouble over the OV.
]
Rudd promised to “turn back the boats” the day before the 2007 election in an interview with The Australian.
[
KEVIN Rudd has taken a tough line on border security, warning that a Labor government will turn the boats back and deter asylum-seekers, using the threat of detention and the nation’s close ties with Indonesia.
In an interview with The Australian, the Opposition Leader advocated a layered approach to border security based on “effective laws, effective detention arrangements, effective deterrent posture vis-a-vis vessels approaching Australian waters”.
]
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/defence/rudd-to-turn-back-boatpeople/story-e6frg8yx-1111114943944
@ BB, 1198
You might be willing to have your party murder people at sea, but I’m not.
It is, as they say, a red line I’m not willing to cross.
OK
Now I know we all rationalise but really now that Labor is to cave in it appears that the current rationalisation is
“they are only saying they are going to do it they really won’t do it at all”
Hey people. You are supposed to be intelligent posters interested in public affairs.
Have you NO personal insights or self respect.
Read EVERY word you wrote about Abbott/Morrisons’s turnback policy.
Here is a little secret. If you thought it was wrong, stupid, cruel and mean of Morrison to send back the boats it is ALSO wrong, stupid, cruel and mean of Marles to send back the boats.
No ifs not buts no maybes. Please have a little intellectual honesty people.
AS
[Boat turnbacks are mass murder.]
Given about 300 people a year were drowning coming here, you need to have robust figures that at least 300 people are dying every year due to the turn-backs.
If you can post that evidence, your statement has merit.
Dio:
Rudd promised to turn back boats before the 2007 election, but never implemented it.
Re Asylum seekers on unauthorised boats
There is a very simple attitude across the vast bulk of the Australian voting public: stop the boats arriving and keep them stopped. While there remains the risk of boats continuing to arrive or indeed ramping up attempted arrivals again that public cares very little about how those boats are stopped.
For Labor to take off the table anything that the Liberals have put on it as a means of ‘stopping’ those boats is political suicide. There remains the question of whether this Government has actually employed methods to turn back boats that would be utterly unacceptable to the majority of Australians if they knew it – and Labor has not given an open endorsement of the Coalition’s methods. But as far as agreeing to at least keep the same policies going, Labor have no choice if they want to win the next election.
As far as I can see, Labor will always do whatever is necessary and whatever it can do at law to stop unauthorised arrivals of asylum seekers, because that is what most Australians across all religions and ethnicities want the Government of the day to do. The only significant party that opposes active interdiction of boat people is the Greens – and while I have no doubt that the position of the Greens Senators and members are genuine, they can only be maintained because they will not have an opportunity to implement them as they will not be in government.
In the current environment the best that those opposed to interdiction can hope for is if the government of the day brings some conscientiousness to its duty of care towards those it has detained. The current government has shown that it does not care at all about the health and welfare of the detainees; indeed, actually turns a blind eye to mistreatment because it adds to the deterrent effect. A Labor Opposition that takes methods, such as turning back boats, off the table once it is on there condemns itself to remain in opposition and condemns existing and any new detainees to the most brutal detention regimes that can be maintained by an Australian government.
In the end, Labor will do what is practical in order to gain government. Those who cannot abide that ‘practical’ policy because of their own conscience will vote neither Labor, Coalition nor any party that supports interdiction of asylum seekers and turning back their boats. Others will, according to their own lights, vote Labor because other things matter as well and because Labor will always be more humane to detainees than the Liberals, or vote Liberal because they either don’t care or believe that the harshest possible treatment is the best deterrent.
@ dtt, 1203
Exactly.
Arrnea Stormbringer@1187
Grossly offensive and totally wrong.
Can I help you burn your ALP Membership Card? You don’t deserve to have one.
[Let them fly here on commercial airlines for fuck’s sake. Stop the boats permanently by making them unnecessary.]
How many refugees would you fly to Australia? I’m sure there is an order of magnitude of refugees in Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka willing to accept that offer than Australia would be capable of accepting without significant social disruption.
@ Dio, 1204
If you push people fleeing persecution back to their persecutors, that’s murder.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing.
evening all.
Shortens interview on 7:30 has been posted here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-22/bill-shorten-wants-labor-to-adopt-asylum-boat-turn-backs/6640990
Bill did well.
Leigh Sales ended saying
[an we’ve invited the Prime Minister Tony Abbott onto the show tomorrow night.
]
I wonder if he will show.
BB
A good example of this is the issue of marriage equality. For the people fighting for that its known its not likely to happen while Abbott is PM.
However in fighting for it most in parliament will vote for it and that makes it far more likely when Abbott is not the PM. So if your a Labor supporter you don’t vote against Labor because the fight is taking time.
So it is with AS. You keep up the fight on the issue from the outside. However you don’t vote against a party you know will listen on human rights issue and let one that will not listen govern.
The fight goes on but it boils down to what is the lesser evil on this issue. Then when you bring in other issues Labor has to come before the LNP on human rights issues as we have seen the LNP do big attacks on human rights.
bemused
[You need to check your Atlas. North Africa and the Mediterranean are a long way from the UK.]
You really are a sh*t stirrer. I meant France off course, the Germans were there BTW.
@ bemused, 1208
Why? Because you don’t like the implication?
You’re perfectly willing to have a Labor party that condones the murder of hundreds, perhaps thousands on the high seas by way of turnbacks because the policy has popular support – why is my suggestion any different? It’s still mass murder with public support.
Another bit from Marles. I think he’s saying foreign aid will be increased and we will take more refugees.
[
By contrast, Labor is driven by compassion. Accordingly, a future Labor Government will be more engaged with the world than ever before at a time when the globe is experiencing its biggest humanitarian need since World War II.]
AS
You asked the difference between the parties. I gave it to you. Remember I am against turn backs too.
AS
[Boat turnbacks are mass murder. Indefinite detention is torture.]
These are unsupportable statements.
If turnbacks are accompanied by monitoring to ensure boats safely return (with assistance rendered if necessary) and if detention is administered with due regard to the safety, health and dignity of those detained, then the use of emotive terms such as murder and torture is totally unwarranted.
ajm
For the obvious reason that if you broadcast the fact boats are being turned back you are going to cause massive trouble in Indonesia.
Even if the Indonesian government is OK about it you can be damned sure they will not want their people knowing about it. They have rednecks too.
Also you alert as human rights lawyers and the UN etc. All those trouble makers.
[At this point, I don’t know what to think the Labor conference will do – but it’s probably Labor’s last chance to convince me not to quit the party in disgust.]
And be sure to vote for the coalition. That’ll certainly allay your concerns about Australia’s refugee policies.
AS
[If you push people fleeing persecution back to their persecutors, that’s murder.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing.]
That’s not what we are doing at all. We are pushing them back to Indonesia who are definitely not their persecutors.
AS
In the years that Labor operated off shore they have reacted in the way you would expect to reports about problems with detention centres.
eg Burke doing his best to remove all children from detention. To his great credit.
@ ajm, 1217
Returning people to their persecutors is murder – and there have already been cases where refugees refouled by Australian authorities have wound up dead in the countries they fled from.
Australia has form on inhumane detention. I’ve yet to see anything to suggest an incoming Labor government could or would do anything to change this.
Take my advice, once you get him/her going, Arrnea (sorry to all the Andreas out there) is EVEN WORSE THAN ME AND BOERWAR PUT TOGETHER.
He/she will go into the night, 2am, 3am whatever, arguing the point, posting every second post against all comers.
Youse have been warned.
mikehilliard@1213
And the French fleet Churchill ordered sunk was in North Africa.
The French fleet in Mediterranean France was scuttled by the French.
ajm
I think indefinite detention is torture, mental rather than physical. The only way to fix that is to speed up processing and finding a home country.
Jesus… another PB “Kum-ba-yah v. Labor” flame war. Good night, suckers.
@ Dio, 1220
Get Indonesia to sign the refugee convention and uphold it and then maybe you’ll have a point. Indonesia is not a country of refuge.
Bemused
I expect better of you.
You have a brain.
We have no reason to assume Labor will be more humane that the Liberals, partly because the people doing the turnback are the Departmental Officials with a history of deliberate cruelty. there will be very, very little a minister will be able to do, at least in the short term.
Also @ Dio, 1220
We’ve done it before under Abbott – http://www.smh.com.au/national/sri-lanka-arrests-37-asylum-seekers-sent-back-by-australia-20141129-11wj9f.html
AS
[Get Indonesia to sign the refugee convention and uphold it and then maybe you’ll have a point. Indonesia is not a country of refuge.]
Indonesia are not their persecutors though. There is no evidence they are being killed in Indonesia. The conditions they live in are very poor but they are not being persecuted.
JR @ 1211
I thought that was Bill Shorten’s best interview to date when under pressure from interruption and frustration that he refused to be ‘gotcha-ed’ or to utter some gaffe.
My sense is that Abbott had agreed to appear tomorrow night. it will be interesting to see if he shows. If he doesn’t, especially given that he is given such a soft time by Sales, it will just show yet again what a gutless coward he is and how everything he does needs to be stage managed and controlled.
[The Greens policy stands or falls on its own.]
So other than take every refugee in the world, or rather fly in on airplanes, how do the greens limit and make being a refugee safe?
Bushfire
[Take my advice, once you get him/her going, Arrnea (sorry to all the Andreas out there) is EVEN WORSE THAN ME AND BOERWAR PUT TOGETHER.]
Thanks for the timely reminder. I’ll disengage. I often wonder if posters who go on like that are actually Menzies House trolls – guess we’ll never know.
On the issue of boat turn backs, the main problem facing the Rudd government and the reason why Howard stopped turning back boats was sabotage. We saw this in 2008, when two Afghan asylum seekers killed after an explosion onboard a boat under tow by the Navy. The passengers onboard the boat thought the Navy was taking them back to Indonesia.
I’m deeply skeptical about the success of the Abbott government in “saving lives”. We have reports of boats leaving Indonesia but no corresponding turn back. The shroud of secrecy around OSB makes it virtually impossible to confirm exactly what is happening on the waters between Indonesia and Australia.
The potential for sabotage is still there and I don’t see anything in the words if either Marles or Shorten which addresses that fact.
@ Dio, 1230
They have no rights to work, no rights to education, no protection under the law – nothing. Throwing people that seek our protection (legal under international law) back to that is not acceptable.
Also, see the story I linked about us turning asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka – very much a persecutor state.
AS
[If you push people fleeing persecution back to their persecutors, that’s murder.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing.]
Nonsense. Most of them – the vast majority – have come from Indonesia, where they weren’t facing any kind of persecution.
daretotread@1228
Yes, and I put it in control rather than my heart.
I am not interested in being in a protest movement which hands government to the Libs at each election.
If you think Labor will not run things more humanely than the Libs then why are you an ALP member?
[Bushfire Bill
Posted Wednesday, July 22, 2015 at 9:46 pm | Permalink
Take my advice, once you get him/her going, Arrnea (sorry to all the Andreas out there) is EVEN WORSE THAN ME AND BOERWAR PUT TOGETHER.
He/she will go into the night, 2am, 3am whatever, arguing the point, posting every second post against all comers.
Youse have been warned.]
We are as one.
AS does Greens righteousness to a T.
G was still in bed with the SYRIZAN Reds last I saw but I dare say he will get out of that sack to do the asylum seeker dance.
The point is, of course, that the Greens are utterly irrelevant when it comes to asylum seekers.
Labor can safely ignore the Greens on this one.
They have not, and will not, make a skerrick of real-world difference.
Never have. Never will.
dtt @ 1228
[ partly because the people doing the turnback are the Departmental Officials with a history of deliberate cruelty. there will be very, very little a minister will be able to do, at least in the short term.]
The people doing the turn backs are not ‘departmental officials’ but members of the armed forces working with what was, until 1 July, Customs and is now the garishly titled and uniformed border force.
As for what a Minister is able to do, no department was as responsive to a Minister’s clear wishes as Immigration in my experience of a number of departments. I cannot imagine that would change now.
@ zoom, 1236
As far as we know – with OSB’s secrecy, how can you know for sure?
In the meantime, we have this: http://www.smh.com.au/national/sri-lanka-arrests-37-asylum-seekers-sent-back-by-australia-20141129-11wj9f.html
@ bemused, 1237
Hope.
Let’s play at being outrageous.
Most Australian are xenophobic or racist to a greater or lesser amount. Particularly the men younger than 30!
The policy of the major parties to asylum seekers is a response to the perception in Sydney and Melbourne that we are being overrun by Asian immigrants – particularly from Hong Kong/China and India. These came in by plane with big bank balances and are setting up shops and businesses. And working in agencies like Telstra and Centrelink!
In the 1950’s, there was a similar worries about the dagoes and wogs – but then we found cappuccino and spag bol! We were OK about the Latvians and Dutch. Looking back, that sort of xenophobia looks really strange. I guess the social attitudes will change as the young men get older.
Arrnea Stormbringer
I agree about Sri Lanka but it’s possible Sri Lanka had a genuine grievance with those people who may have broken their laws (but I don’t know one way or the other).
And there is a bit difference between saying something is not acceptable and it being mass murder.
I really think you would be happier as a Green than as Labor, and I say that as a compliment (I’m neither).
bw
You have posted without paying attention.
I also have to reming you again I am not a Green supporter. I vote according to my local electorate to get the best candidate. In my electorate that means voting Labor first as the Greens have no chance yet with numbers.
Senate different matter. The point is I vote to keep LNP out.
So please stop with this stupid I must be Green just because I think what is happening on AS policy is wrong.
Same with other issues. I have pointed out to you for example that blaming Greens for Labor failures is just factually wrong.
That does not mean I am a Green MP which is about as deep Green as you can get as you fantasise the way you go on.
@ Diogenes, 1242
The Greens’ policies too often lack detail for my liking. Their heart is nearly always in the right place, but they’ve got work to do.
Bemused
Sorry to be the one to raise this and frankly you can all splutter as you like – especially BB
If you had had an election in NAZI Germany and asked the people is they supported the concentration camps they would have all said OK and the BB and sadly bemused’s of this world would have said”if it means we get rid of Hitler then the camps are OK.
Of course they would have turned the other way and not noticed that MOST of the deaths in the concentration camps were from diseases resulting from poor conditions and malnourishment. Sure many were shot and gassed but MOST of the deaths were from diseases such as typhus.
Sadly this is an exact parallel to our current concentration camps in Manus and Nauru (even down to the very high risk of typhus)
Now of course should our Border Protection “accidentally” sink a boat or 20 we really have an close parallel even to the gassing and deliberate murder of Jews and gypsys
AS
[As far as we know – with OSB’s secrecy, how can you know for sure?]
And how can you know otherwise?
But thanks for admitting that we’re not sending people to their deaths by stopping the boats.
arrnea
That is alright for you. But we have sick, disabled and disadvantaged, students, the elderly and workers in our family and they do not deserve an Abbott government because 70% of Australians are prejudiced against Moslem boat people. (which is the crux of it).
I want Abbott out, then everyone can have their go at getting what they want.
Just watched the Shorten interview on 7:30.
Well done Bill. 🙂
Sales finished that with nose seriously out of joint and was looking a bit rattled.
However, being a charitable soul i’m not going to judge her on this one until i have seen the Abbott interview proposed for tomorrow night. I think its possible she went hard on Shorten to justify going for Abbott’s throat when he goes on.
However, if Abbott has watched tonight’s effort there is a good chance he wont be on so as to avoid shuddering brainlock on national TV. 🙂
@ zoom, 1246
We’re sending them to die somewhere else rather than hearing their (legal under international law) claims for asylum.
If their claims aren’t legit, by all means send them back – but if you just blanket send people back, you’re sending persecuted people back – possibly to torture and/or death.
If you don’t give a shit whether people you send back end up dead, that’s murder.
Alan Shore at 1234
[I’m deeply skeptical about the success of the Abbott government in “saving lives”. We have reports of boats leaving Indonesia but no corresponding turn back. The shroud of secrecy around OSB makes it virtually impossible to confirm exactly what is happening on the waters between Indonesia and Australia.
The potential for sabotage is still there and I don’t see anything in the words if either Marles or Shorten which addresses that fact.]
A timely reminder of why Labor did not pursue boat turn backs and questions about what methods are actually being employed by the current government. We don’t know and I doubt if Shorten or Marles know officially. The simple fact is that the policy change proposed by Marles is not to simply adopt the Coalition Government’s methods without line of sight as to what is actually going on, but to not take it off the table. What they do once in government will depend on both whether people smugglers test our borders again with a new government and finding out what methods were actually used by the current government to achieve boat turn backs. If those methods were unacceptable to most Australians (for example involving physical torture) then they can disclosed to the community. But to exclude policies adopted by this government puts the Opposition on a hiding to nothing.