Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor

Both leaders’ ratings remain at rock bottom, but the second Newspoll survey conducted by Galaxy finds Labor retaining a solid lead on two-party preferred.

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”.

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.

1,444 comments on “Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor”

Comments Page 28 of 29
1 27 28 29
  1. @ It’s Time, 1349

    How many official and unofficial refugees would be eligible for your “fly in” policy?

    Any of them that are found to be legitimately facing persecution in their country of origin.

    By all means work to encourage those countries not to persecute, but that’s a long-term project that does not help the people fleeing persecution today.

  2. Tom the first and best

    Wasn’t the key word in ruling against Fairfax “malicious” & that was found due to internal emails between Fairfax editors.

    The judge just couldn’t get his head around that being “malicious ” toward Joe is just normal behaviour for all the clueless things Joe has done to ordinary Australians.

  3. Darn @ 1326

    [As for the AS issue, if he gets rolled on that at the conference it will almost certainly mean another three years of Abbott. It’s as simple as that.]

    I would be very surprised if he and Marles did not already have a good idea of the numbers before they put the amended policy proposal out there.

  4. [Sales really does need the sack for being a disrespectful, biased hack masquerading as a journalist.]

    Yes, yes and yes. There is no way she’ll treat Abbott in the same way she treated Shorten. She has form.

    And I’d be very surprised if Abbott goes live being the gutless wonder that he is.

  5. @ TPOF, 1354

    I would be very surprised if he and Marles did not already have a good idea of the numbers before they put the amended policy proposal out there.

    As much as it pains me, I have to agree. His prevaricating on the issue before was almost certainly because he didn’t yet know at that point where the numbers would be. Now that he does, he’s made a policy statement on it.

  6. [But i can understand that a dribbling and apparently illiterate moron like yourself would like think so.]

    When people query why I allow this sort of thing, the answer is that not allowing it is all too hard. But I’m acutely aware that it’s not a very good answer.

  7. 1353

    There are often several key points in rulings of lower courts that could be grounds for appeal. The headline attached to the article was ruled not defamatory but by itself on posters and in tweets that linked to the article it was ruled defamatory. It is quite possible that tweeted headlines have not been dealt with before by the courts and thus it was a new ruling. It is certainly a ruling I would want overturned if I was a media organisation that tweeted its article headlines.

  8. @ Tom, 1360

    It is certainly a ruling I would want overturned if I was a media organisation that tweeted its article headlines.

    Agreed. That is an asinine ruling by a court that clearly doesn’t understand Twitter. What, did they expect them to tweet the whole article?

  9. DTT @ 1330

    [Why do we welcome the very rich boy but not the other.]

    If there were only two I would welcome both. Unfortunately, there are many, many more than that and we cannot accommodate them all. People will always miss out. That is why under all governments we have a capped immigration program.

    Having a lot more money gives people a lot of options that poor people don’t have. Whatever one thinks of inequality it has always been with us and always will be. The challenge for good governments is to minimise the difference, provide a fairly high base of social welfare, services and education for all, while providing sufficient incentive for people to push productivity and innovate. So it may be unfortunate that the rich boy gets a head start on the poor boy, but that is pretty much how it is.

    One way of looking at it, though, is that the rich boy remains in Australia as a skilled migrant, rather than as a refugee, thereby not taking a place under the humanitarian cap that can be left open to someone so poor that they cannot take the path the rich boy did.

  10. A rich. grown up country should be able to deal with a few thousand asylum seekers, or even the occasional spike of tens of thousands, without moral panic, without abandoning its principles.

    Unfortunately, Australia is not a grown up country.

  11. If we emptied Indonesia of asylum seekers, it would be refilled in a month. If we do not cap arrivals then millions could come here by plane, and there would be no chance of people in refugee camps ever being resettled in Australia. We can try to deter sea-journeys by denying residency in Australia.

    We also need places for people in our area who will need resettlement due to global warming.

    The other possibility is not to try to discourage Asylum Seekers coming by boat, and resettle any who get to Australia (not including Christmas Island) here. Those who drown in the journey do so at their own risk. We neither discourage nor encourage but just pick up any who survive the journey, once they reach Australia or get sighted by one of our vessels.

  12. @ Steve777, 1363

    A rich. grown up country should be able to deal with a few thousand asylum seekers, or even the occasional spike of tens of thousands, without moral panic, without abandoning its principles.

    Unfortunately, Australia is not a grown up country.

    Once upon a time, we were. Alas, no more.

    Pauline Hanson and John Howard have a lot to answer for.

  13. @ Puff, 1364

    If we do not cap arrivals then millions could come here by plane, and there would be no chance of people in refugee camps ever being resettled in Australia.

    Why, because we say it’s so? By executive fiat?

    We also need places for people in our area who will need resettlement due to global warming.

    And under a system with a hard cap, you’re going to leave some of those people to drown. Are you OK with that? I’m not.

    The other possibility is not to try to discourage Asylum Seekers coming by boat, and resettle any who get to Australia (not including Christmas Island) here. Those who drown in the journey do so at their own risk. We neither discourage nor encourage but just pick up any who survive the journey, once they reach Australia or get sighted by one of our vessels.

    Unacceptable when we can put the people smugglers out of business for good and stop the drownings once and for all. We just lack the political will in our political class to stand up to the racists.

  14. Man, I would have thought not wanting people to die as a result of Australian Government policy would have been a popular position.

    This country really has gone down the crapper.

  15. [Man, I would have thought not wanting people to die as a result of Australian Government policy would have been a popular position.]

    That’s the ‘stopping deaths at sea’ argument, and it’s been very popular.

  16. Alan Shore at 1342

    [We could easily take 20,000 to 30,000 refugees per year with a consequent reduction in the skilled migration intake if need be. ]

    We throw around these numbers as though they are equivalent. They are not. A skilled migrant is largely productive from arrival and puts very little demand on Australian social welfare infrastructure. They typically pay the cost of getting here and settling themselves and are taxpayers on the assumption that they get work fairly quickly or else get migration on the basis of already having a job.

    On the other hand, many, if the vast majority, of refugees need a lot of expensive settlement services before they are in a position to start contributing to our society. Many are mentally and/or physically damaged and have little or no money to set themselves up here with even the basics. Many are not skilled or have skills that do not translate readily to the Australian workforce. Therefore the cost of settling a refugee family is much, much greater than settling a skilled migrant and family selected on that basis.

    That is why we have a cap on the number of humanitarian entrants. And why even lifting the number of entrants by a few thousand adds substantially to the cost of the budget.

    That is not to argue against a humanitarian program, but it needs to be considered when deciding how many we can accommodate in a given year.

  17. Australians have never been okay about boat arrivals. The Vietnamese boats were accepted because it was bipartisan and it was framed, as I remember it, around people fleeing the Communists.

    It goes back, I think, to the fact that we (anglos) arrived by boat and stole the continent off the Aborigines.

  18. I was surprised that Leigh Sales allowed Bill to talk as much as he did. She really only interrupted him in the last 2 minutes when time was running out. Shorten did well and if he can maintain that sort of calm attitude through interviews he will go a long way toward building some trust with the audience. He still has the chance to do that, where Abbott is a shot duck.

    I think it would help if he could answer with yes or no and then explain why and keep it down to a few sentences. Limit answers to 30seconds and smile so they have to ask a new question. If Sales keeps hammering the same question say “I just answered that”.

    Well done to Shorten, he is getting into the swing of it now.

  19. @ Jake, 1368

    That’s the ‘stopping deaths at sea’ argument, and it’s been very popular.

    That argument is just a convenient cover for policies that are designed not to stop drownings, but to stop asylum seekers coming to Australia altogether.

    “Stop The Boats” == “Die Somewhere Else”

  20. [Unacceptable when we can put the people smugglers out of business for good and stop the drownings once and for all. ]

    I don’t think we actually can, whether it is Abbott saying it or it is a green, neither is actually telling the truth. Unless you solve both the actual refugee problem, and the largely fictional economic refugee problem you can’t expect people smugglers to have no business. If they have business they are likely to try a boat.

  21. @ Puff, 1370

    Australians have never been okay about boat arrivals. The Vietnamese boats were accepted because it was bipartisan and it was framed, as I remember it, around people fleeing the Communists.

    Then why not frame, say, Hazaras fleeing Afghanistan as people fleeing the Taliban and al-Qaeda? It would be an accurate description.

    Also, we seemed to be fine with boat arrivals when it was £10 Poms coming here for better economic opportunities.

  22. @ WWP, 1373

    I don’t think we actually can

    The best way to put a business out of operation is to provide a better alternative (competition). That holds true for any business.

  23. WB @ 1359

    [When people query why I allow this sort of thing, the answer is that not allowing it is all too hard. But I’m acutely aware that it’s not a very good answer.]

    I can understand the frustration that leads to ‘that sort of thing’, but really, if someone has got to the point of just slamming the poster, they have to think about whether what the poster wrote is so utterly stupid or Trollish that it is pointless or even rewarding to the maligned poster in question to respond at all.

  24. Puff @1364:

    [If we emptied Indonesia of asylum seekers, it would be refilled in a month. If we do not cap arrivals then millions could come here by plane, and there would be no chance of people in refugee camps ever being resettled in Australia.]

    With all due respect, that proposition is illinformed nonsense and not backed by evidence or experience. The “we’ll be flooded” fallacy is wrong and offensive. The simple truth is at the height of the last two major influxes of asylum seekers 2000-2001 and 2009-2012 Australia wasn’t receiving anything like the number of people that would equate to “millions”.

    As to the camp fallacy, camps are not storage pens for people. The whole point of the Refugee Convention and why Australia signed and ratified it, twice, is to prevent people going to camps. The Convention was designed so no one country would be forced to carry an undue burden for refugees. The Articles specifically allow people to leave the country of persecution by any means and go to a Convention state by any means. They are not required to go to a camp, they don’t need authorisation or a visa. Most people in camps don’t want or seek resettlement, they want to go home.

  25. [
    Also, we seemed to be fine with boat arrivals when it was £10 Poms coming here for better economic opportunities.
    ]
    Yep.
    [Then why not frame, say, Hazaras fleeing Afghanistan as people fleeing the Taliban and al-Qaeda? It would be an accurate description.
    ]
    Because it is not the 1970s.

  26. adrian @ 1356

    [And I’d be very surprised if Abbott goes live being the gutless wonder that he is.]

    I can’t remember the last time he did a live interview. He insists on soft lights and Prime Ministerial trappings (and multiple flags).

    Anyway, the more I think back on it, the more satisfied/impressed I was with Bill’s responses. She kept trying to justify her interruptions by claiming the high moral ground and he just clambered over her to higher moral ground.

  27. @ Puff, 1378

    More like it’s not about the boats at all, it’s about race (and to a lesser extent, religion).

    Governments should not pander to racists.

  28. The time is coming when our treatment of asylum seekers will be a national shame to the majority of Australians, like the White Australia policy, like the Stolen Generations, like the dictation test…

    What we should do now I have no idea. We can’t take tens of millions. Some form of regional processing seems to be the answer, plus higher quotas for refugees. But even if the quota was 100K, it would still be a drop in the ocean.

    And what else? Work with our neighbours to tackle the criminal gangs that exploit asylum seekers. Corruption if is problem among in our neighbours. That is no excuse to set up concentration camps on remote islands.

    And ditch the private contractors. If we are going to out innocent people in jail, it should be done by the Government, in the open, at home in our name.

    And ditch the secrecy. If the Government thinks its doing the right thing, it should be proud of it. It should invite scrutiny. But maybe it is worried that George Berbard Shaw (a vegetarian) was right – if abbatoirs had glass walls, there’d be a lot more vegetarians.

  29. [The best way to put a business out of operation is to provide a better alternative (competition). That holds true for any business.]

    Yes but there are obvious limits, and unless you are resettling every refugee and economic refugee in the world in Australia on a fairly short time frame you can’t compete.

    There are no good solutions to this, just different levels and version of bad.

  30. This whole migration thing has SO many issues wrapped up in it that it must be broken down into meaningful chunks to find a solution.

    First: The concept of refugee is outdated and MUST be changed. We need as a society, possibly worldwide, to determine who is a refugee. Now I do not think it is a simple answer and I think we could go much much further if we developed a “refugee scale.” Those who are at the top of the scale should be accepted by us happily, whether they arrived by plane, boat or were dropped from a helicopter. For those at the bottom of the scale they will know in advance that their chance of acceptance is very low, although if they skill up and learn English their chances may improve.

    Now the top of the scale will be a prominent political activists ie those who are certain to be jailed or executed if returned home.

    At the bottom of the scale will be those who belong to an ethnic group, who perhaps may face discrimination but whom are not actively being persecuted.

    Everyone else will get a score that takes into account factors such as
    1. extent of political activism – ie someone who regularly wrote for a newspaper or was an active politician or indeed a guerilla leader would get a high score,whereas someone who marched once in a student demo would get a low score.

    2.

  31. @ TPOF, 1380

    and he just clambered over her to higher moral ground.

    Sales and Shorten, clambering over each other trying to grasp the moral high ground.

    I’m increasingly glad I didn’t watch the interview.

  32. [And ditch the private contractors. If we are going to out innocent people in jail, it should be done by the Government, in the open, at home in our name.

    And ditch the secrecy. If the Government thinks its doing the right thing, it should be proud of it. It should invite scrutiny. But maybe it is worried that George Berbard Shaw (a vegetarian) was right – if abbatoirs had glass walls, there’d be a lot more vegetarians.]

    I agree completely with both of them. I am equally unimpressed with outsourcing to countries unable and unwilling to execute to our standards. I would personally have put Malaysia higher up the ladder than either Nauru or PNG, both on ability and willingness.

  33. @ WWP, 1383

    and unless you are resettling every refugee and economic refugee in the world in Australia on a fairly short time frame you can’t compete.

    I’m not suggesting we’d take everyone in the whole world, or even that everyone seeking refuge in the whole world would come here.

    But certainly we can take those who are seeking asylum in our region of the world (especially when we’ve contributed to the problems from which they’re running – Afghanistan, for example).

    You also seem to be supposing that everyone who comes to Australia to claim asylum would be deemed a legitimate refugee. That’s just not going to be the case. I’m interested in the kind of system that dtt describes in 1385 – re: rating refugees on a scale of persecution. However, there should also be consideration based on general persecution in that country (and not just at the hands of the country’s government – persecution at the hands of armed militias is just as pertinent when the Government of that country can’t or won’t protect people).

  34. There is no way Australians will accept the prospect of unlimited numbers of people coming into their country, from anywhere. It just will not happen, ever.

    I say that as a sociologist. No group will tolerate it. Setting up the circumstances where new arrivals will be welcome is a balancing act. If you present people with the idea of there being no control over who is going to join, how many and when, and you get discord. People get anxious and there is the exploitation an ambitious party can latch onto, and latch onto it they will. It does not matter whether you are talking about the local tennis club or a nation, it is the same.

  35. @ WWP, 1387

    I agree completely with both of them. I am equally unimpressed with outsourcing to countries unable and unwilling to execute to our standards. I would personally have put Malaysia higher up the ladder than either Nauru or PNG, both on ability and willingness.

    Even if we aren’t going to resettle them here in Australia, there is no excuse for not processing them here other than some attempt to keep them out of sight and out of mind for the average Australian voter.

    The billions of dollars spent on offshore detention would be much better spent here in Australia, creating jobs for Australians.

  36. TPOF @1369:

    [That is why we have a cap on the number of humanitarian entrants. And why even lifting the number of entrants by a few thousand adds substantially to the cost of the budget.]

    And spending billions on overseas prisons doesn’t add “substantially to the cost of the budget? You appear to assume the costs of resettlement are non-recoverable when they don’t need to be. At least with refugees resettled in Australia most of the economic activity occurs and stays within Australia. As to the employment or lack of for some refugees, that is almost solely down to a failure of government. With better funded and more comprehensive assistance refugees can and do become productive tax-payers and contributors to the common wealth.

  37. Jake @ 1384

    [Unfortunately. Vastly underrated, the ’70s]

    That’s what Captain Chaos and his clown circus seem to think. They are desperately trying to return Australia to the 70’s as a first step to getting back to the 50’s.

  38. @ Puff, 1389

    There is no way Australians will accept the prospect of unlimited numbers of people coming into their country, from anywhere. It just will not happen, ever.

    Man’s inhumanity to man, front and center. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother pretending to be concerned about the plight of others.

  39. Sales and Shorten, clambering over each other trying to grasp the moral high ground.

    If we’re talking about moral ground, Abbott bears major responsibility for what occured after he rejected the Malaysia solution, having persuaded the few members of his parliamentary party who had a shred of decency not to cross the floor. It was a dog act. The boats were essential to his election strategy. The last thing he wanted was for the boats to stop on Labor’s watch.

    And, like the impotent, the Greens maintained their purity.

    It is a vast, complex issue. There are no simple, moral solutions.

  40. AS

    [Man, I would have thought not wanting people to die as a result of Australian Government policy would have been a popular position.

    This country really has gone down the crapper.]

    You always have the option of flying to Syria and applying for refugee status there.

  41. [I’m not suggesting we’d take everyone in the whole world, or even that everyone seeking refuge in the whole world would come here.

    But certainly we can take those who are seeking asylum in our region of the world (especially when we’ve contributed to the problems from which they’re running – Afghanistan, for example).

    You also seem to be supposing that everyone who comes to Australia to claim asylum would be deemed a legitimate refugee.]

    It is running at 90%, if not higher isn’t it? I don’t buy into the whole economic refugee smokescreen, I think it is going to run at about 90% even if you try and ‘tighten’ the rules.

    And when those just outside our area of the world hear that so long as you can get into our area of the world bingo you have a house and a pension in Australia how long do you think it would take them to shift parts of the world, and how would you keep them out of boats?

  42. @ Steve777, 1395

    Abbott bears major responsibility for what occured after he rejected the Malaysia solution, having persuaded the few members of his parliamentary party who had a shred of decency not to cross the floor. It was a dog act. The boats were essential to his election strategy. The last thing he wanted was for the boats to stop on Labor’s watch.

    I agree. Abbott blocked the Malaysian solution because he couldn’t countenance the possibility that it would work.

    However, I disagree with the assessment that it would have worked. It had a very small cap on the number of asylum seekers that Malaysia would accept – a cap that would have been blown through very quickly.

    @ CTar1, 1396

    You always have the option of flying to Syria and applying for refugee status there.

    The fact that I can’t tell whether you are being sarcastic or serious is very disturbing.

Comments Page 28 of 29
1 27 28 29

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *