BludgerTrack: 51.2-48.8 to Coalition

A weak result for the Coalition from Newspoll this week delivers a corrective to the Turnbull honeymoon in the latest reading of the BludgerTrack poll aggregate.

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate this week records a strong move back to Labor, which partly reflects the Coalition’s soft Newspoll result this week. However, it’s also indicative of how sensitive the model is short-term fluctuations now that it’s using the start of the Turnbull era of year zero, and thus only has a small number of data points. The story on the primary vote is that the Greens have recovered some of the ground they lost over the previous weeks, with the Labor primary vote remaining steady. The difference all this makes to the seat projection is rather modest, with the Coalition dropping two seats in New South Wales and one in Queensland. The leadership ratings from Newspoll give a further boost to Malcolm Turnbull’s already strong net approval rating, but the other indicators are essentially unchanged. Preferred prime minister and Turnbull’s net approval are still being determined through weighted averages of all polling since the leadership change, rather than trend measures.

What’s more:

• The meeting of the New South Wales Liberal Party’s state council on the weekend, chiefly noted for the heckling delivered to the Prime Minister, saw the demise of a proposal for all preselections to be conducted by plebiscites of party members, in place of the current system where the vote is divided between branch delegates and head office. This was despite just such a reform being advocated by a post-election review conducted by a panel headed by John Howard. However, a compromise resolution will see plebiscites conducted in one federal seat before next year’s election, two for the subsequent federal election due in 2019, and two for the next state election, also due in 2019.

Tom McIlroy of the Canberra Times identifies Christina Hobbs, a United Nations World Food Program program officer, as a possible starter for the Greens’ Senate preselection in the Australian Capital Territory. However, the report also cites a party source saying its resources were likely to be concentrated elsewhere, particularly on “potentially difficult fights in Queensland, NSW and South Australia”.

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.

2,178 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.2-48.8 to Coalition”

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  1. cash transfers are among the best-studied approaches to fighting global poverty, and the results are very positive, with various studies finding that just handing out money increases consumption, encourages investments in important assets like metal roofs, encourages more people to start working, boosts earnings, and doesn’t lead to more spending on things like alcohol or tobacco. GiveDirectly’s strategy stands out as among the most evidence-based of any charity working on global poverty.

    But it also stands out because it’s, in theory, more or less infinitely scalable. There are other very good, evidence-based ways to help the world’s poorest people, such as supplying free anti-malarial bednets and providing deworming pills. But they tap out at some point. We could reach a point, if all goes well, when everyone in regions where malaria is prevalent will have free access to bednets treated with insecticide that can kill mosquitos and thus save lives. We could reach a point when everyone at risk of worm infection has gotten deworming meds. But we’re very, very unlikely to reach a point in which transferring $1,000 from an affluent American to a poor person abroad ceases to make the world a better place. Money will always be more valuable to the poor than to the rich, and so cash transfers will always have the benefit of redirecting money to where it’s most needed.

    Oftentimes in public policy, the counterfactual against which proposals are evaluated is “Would this be better than literally doing nothing?” If you think about it, that’s a really low bar. What would be better, GiveDirectly cofounder and UC San Diego economics professor Paul Niehaus and Columbia economist Chris Blattman have argued, would be to ask, “Does this program do more good than would be done if we took its budget and just gave it to poor people as cash?”

    In some cases, the answer may be yes! It seems quite plausible that distributing bednets, for example, is a more cost-effective way to fight poverty than handing out cash. But a lot of interventions will fail that test. Given that we know cash can be effective, redirecting billions of dollars spent every year on projects not supported by evidence to cash transfer operations could be a huge win that materially improves the lives of millions of people. GiveDirectly’s $1,000 grants are larger than the GDP per capita of Uganda. It’s more than doubling some people’s incomes. That’s huge, regardless of the structural effects.

    http://www.vox.com/2015/8/4/9092053/facebook-givedirectly-donation-cash

  2. Puff

    Sorry but the problem with a proportion of welfare recipients is that the money is spent on alcohol and gambling. Now if they are adults perhaps it is OK to say spend money as you like.

    My problem is where there are children involved. We are faced with a terrible dilemma. If the parent or carer takes the fortnightly pension and spends it on alcohol or gambling not food, then we must either REMOVE the child or somehow direct the money to food first. I prefer the second choice, rather than child removal.

    If the card achieves this or if it stops males from bullying older women into handing over cash for alcohol or drugs, then I am all for it.

    I am inclined to the view that a cashless card should apply whenever an individual has been on welfare continuously for 5 years or for say 5 years out of the last 7. This way you ONLY pick up people with a high risk of being problem drinkers or gamblers. The other group that should be added is where a child is deemed at risk. A cashless card should be tried before a child is removed.

  3. [victoria
    Posted Thursday, October 15, 2015 at 8:55 am | PERMALINK
    Puffy

    Newstart allowance is $476 per fortnight. I seriously dont know how anyone could live on this meagre amount of money!!]

    And the worst part about it is that there are plenty of miserable bastards out there (and no doubt some here as well) who would begrudge the unemployed even that pathetic level of support.

    I put the responsibility for it, along with the ugly uncaring attitude towards asylum seekers, squarely at the feet of the Liberal party.

  4. Nicholas

    [People don’t like it when politicians say things that are obviously different from what they really think. ]

    So how does that make Malcolm different? – unless you really believe he thinks Abbott was wonderful, there are no factions in the Liberal party, and they’re not beholden to big business.

  5. [If the card achieves this or if it stops males from bullying older women into handing over cash for alcohol or drugs, then I am all for it.]

    No doubt that does occur. But let’s not pretend that substance abuse, not to mention excessive gambling, is primarily a male problem. Damaging addictions affect women just as readily as they do men.

  6. There is something terribly askew here.

    Why is it the politics of envy to question, legitimately, a self made millionaire who holds the highest office in the land?

    Being an ‘inspiration’ because he has made money does not exempt his dealings from being probed.

    Ah yeah, there’s the ‘Spy Catcher’ ‘success’ but there’s also HIH.

    One also questions why he told a reporter he would meet them in a dark alley and wanted to remain anonymous when he handed over documents against Packer because he feared for his life.

    I’ve always wondered why he would think that… 🙂

    http://www.insurancenews.com.au/local/former-auditor-settles-hih-case

  7. The Cayman Is smear attack on MT is perfectly legitimate politics.

    Sure, there is nothing illegal having investments in the Cayman Is. Sure, there is good sense in MT investing overseas to avoid conflict of interest and sure his investments are through some sort of blind trust.

    But like any of us, MT remains morally responsible for what he invests in. I choose to invest in the ethical investment option of my super fund. Sure, some of those so called ethical investments might turn out to be less than morally desirable investments, and might well be through Cayman Is companies. There are limits and I am happy with that.

    But MT can instruct those charged with managing his direct investments what and where those investments are made. Presumably in the understandable pursuit of increasing his wealth he has NOT prescribed his instructions to prevent bolstering the tax avoidance industry in the Cayman Is. MT needs to be big enough to admit this limit to his ethical boundaries and wear it. Thus far he is just squealing like a stuffed pig.

  8. Who the forken hell or you to say people on welfare for 5 years must be bad managers of money, problem gamblers or alcoholics?

    Give me the evidence to back up your paternalistic and arrogant asssertions.

    What a bloody insult to people on long term welfare. If kids are neglected then Child Welfare can recommend a cashless card as part of an individual intervention plan. A discrete community such as Aboriginal lands may request the card for their group, as an example of a targetted use. But the stench of the well-off directing the lives of those further down the pole is disgusting.

  9. Darn

    No I agree. As I understand it there are two problems, especially in indigenous communities, but also they apply often to welfare dependence with a drug or alcohol addiction or a mental illness.

    One is the spending by the welfare recipient of the payment on alcohol and gambling on day 1. This means not food for kids. This is just as much a female as male proble..

    There is ALSO a problem in close knot communities where adult males (mostly) bully their mothers/aunts etc into handing over cash, mostly for alcohol but possibly for other things. it is known as “humbugging” which is such a genteel word for a practice that is appalling and needs to be stamped out. The threat of violence always accompanies such “humbugging’

  10. Darn

    [And the worst part about it is that there are plenty of miserable bastards out there (and no doubt some here as well) who would begrudge the unemployed even that pathetic level of support.]

    Possibly explained by such people being “less evolved” .

    [We’re not as selfish as we think we are. Here’s the proof

    While chimpanzees might share food with members of their own group, though usually only after being plagued by aggressive begging, they tend to react violently towards strangers. Chimpanzees, the authors note, behave more like the homo economicus of neoliberal mythology than people do

    .Humans, by contrast, are…………]

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/14/selfish-proof-ego-humans-inherently-good

  11. Job data due out today is expected to be flat – in more ways then one –

    [ The former head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has accused the organisation of badly bungling the way it collects and analyses its monthly employment survey.

    After working for the organisation for over 40 years, Bill McLennan said changes early last year to the way the data is gathered suggest the bureau has abandoned “strict methodological and operational practices” established over half a century ago.

    ….{he} criticised the bureau for effectively papering over problems with its data. As a junior officer, he helped establish the labour force survey in the early 1960s.

    “The results of the last six months aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, so why are we wasting millions of taxpayers’ money on the survey?” Mr McLennan told The Australian Financial Review.

    …doubts about their credibility mean that policymakers both at Treasury and particularly the Reserve Bank have moved towards relying on private sector measures – such as ANZ Bank’s job ads, National Australia Bank’s business conditions survey and alternative indicators such as welfare payments – to gauge the strength of the labour market.

    On another matter, late on Wednesday and almost a month since Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was sworn in, it is still unclear who has ministerial responsibility for the ABS. ]

    http://www.afr.com/news/economy/former-abs-head-says-employment-data-not-worth-paper-theyre-written-on-20151014-gk8syh

  12. dtt,

    I agree with your general thrust that actions like a Welfare card need to be tried/tested and evaluated.

    However, having prescriptive parameters from the get go based on your personal opinions should be avoided.

    It’s up to the people administering it on the ground to assess the effectiveness of the initiative and I’d be guided by their recommendations.

    As for Puffy and her spray, well most Australians demand that welfare payments are targetted and efffective. The open slather approach has created generational dependency and encourgaged alchoholism and violence. Fresh approaches that take advantage of technology need to be tried.

  13. Dee@59

    Why is it the politics of envy to question, legitimately, a self made millionaire who holds the highest office in the land?

    The tories copied *the politics of envy* put down slogan from the US Repugs. The tories rarely come up with anything original.

    What they are really saying is “Its a sin for you to envy the fruit of our Greed”.

    That should be shoved in their smug faces.

  14. @ daretotread – do you really think that someone who would spend money on booze instead of food for their starving child is going to respond to the introduction of this card by saying “well, now I can’t spend newstart on alcohol, I’m going to sober up and finish my MBA.”

    No, they will find some other way to get their fix.

    Addicts will use this card to buy things to sell to cash converters at less than face value, meaning they will have less money left for food, or they will steal, or deal drugs or prostitute themselves out (and not necessarily in a safe way through a regulated brothel), or sniff petrol because it’s cheaper.

    Any of those sound better than the current situation?

  15. Humbugging is domestic violence. You do not help women and kids escape domestic violence by taking their cash off them. if removing cash from a family is an appropriate intervention then it should be done as that, not aa a blanket postcode imposition.

    I have an idea. Let’s leave the welfare cash exactly as it is, but also give a basics card with extra government credits to spend on food and prescription medicines, say $100 per adult and $25 per kid and $10 for a family pet.

    It would be an immediate fix to the results of financial DV, and provide economic stimulus to boot. Just stop this refusal to collect tax from our usual tax avoiders.

    Some things are just to easy to solve.

  16. Considering the personal, family and social destruction caused by addictions to alcohol, drugs and gambling anything that might help reduce these would be worth trying. Of course, by itself, the welfare card is not likely to be enough.

    There is also this to consider…social payments made to welfare recipients that are then spent on alcohol, drugs and gambling are really subsidies to these industries. Why should the Commonwealth be transferring cash to these pest-creators?

    For mine, I would far prefer to greatly increase welfare payments as well as ensuring the income does not flow into destructive products.

  17. [daretotread
    Posted Thursday, October 15, 2015 at 9:42 am | PERMALINK
    Darn

    No I agree. As I understand it there are two problems, especially in indigenous communities, but also they apply often to welfare dependence with a drug or alcohol addiction or a mental illness.

    One is the spending by the welfare recipient of the payment on alcohol and gambling on day 1. This means not food for kids. This is just as much a female as male proble..

    There is ALSO a problem in close knot communities where adult males (mostly) bully their mothers/aunts etc into handing over cash, mostly for alcohol but possibly for other things. it is known as “humbugging” which is such a genteel word for a practice that is appalling and needs to be stamped out. The threat of violence always accompanies such “humbugging’]

    I think we are just about on the same page in regard to this DDT.

    But I would add that the very nature of addiction turns its victims into demanding, implacable arseholes, totally beyond reason, when anything is standing between them and their next fix (of whatever kind). Younger, physically stronger, women in this situation, are just as capable of brow beating older defenceless women (and men) into handing over money for undesirable purposes.

    There is a scene in the movie “I’ll Cry Tomorrow”, which depicts the true life story of Lillian Roth and her battle with alcoholism, where Susan Haywood (who plays the part of Lillian) pressures her mother to go out and buy her more alcohol. The mother stands her ground at first, knowing that her daughter will die if she keeps up her drinking, but in the end succumbs to the verbal onslaught. It is a very poignant lesson for anyone who has never seen the pernicious effects of alcohol addiction first hand.

  18. MT’s success in being perceived as an independent-minded major party politician is relative. He has been open in the past in expressing his disagreement with how the leader of his party was dealing with issues such as climate change. The fact that he isn’t absolutely perfect on this does not negate relative success. Shorten is perceived as a bland machine man who would endorse his leader’s statement unequivocally without even seeing the statement.

  19. I thought PB’ers may be interested in the following definition.

    [A blind trust is a trust in which the fiduciaries, namely the trustees or those who have been given power of attorney, have full discretion over the assets, and the trust beneficiaries have no knowledge of the holdings of the trust and no right to intervene in their handling. Blind trusts are generally used when a settlor (sometimes called a trustor or donor) wishes to keep the beneficiary unaware of the specific assets in the trust, such as to avoid conflict of interest between the beneficiary and the investments.

    Politicians or others in sensitive positions often place their personal assets (including investment income) into blind trusts, to avoid public scrutiny and accusations of conflicts of interest when they direct government funds to the private sector. A blind trust is often used with those who have come across a fortune within a short period of time (e.g. an inheritance, or a multimillion lottery) in order to keep their identity anonymous to the public.]

  20. briefly,

    The purpose of the exercise is to break the horrible cycle of entrenched poverty, dependency and the ensuing social problems.

    Throwing further money at a problem without accountablility aspects will not be supported by the tax paying community.

    Welfare should be targetted to those who need it. However, it is legitimate for the Government to be looking to solutions that ween people from their dependencies.

  21. [MT’s success in being perceived as an independent-minded major party politician is relative. He has been open in the past in expressing his disagreement with how the leader of his party was dealing with issues such as climate change. The fact that he isn’t absolutely perfect on this does not negate relative success.]

    That’s a lot of words to explain a policy that hasn’t changed much. Where’s the success?

  22. Nicholas

    so the politician who admits that they’re backing their leader regardless is less honest than the one who pretends to back their leader whilst undermining them at the same time?

    An interesting insight into Green ethics.

  23. Clearly a slow news week this week, especially today, as the venerable West has an ancient picture of Prince Charles with comely female Jane Priest accosting him in the surf at Cottesloe in 1979.

    To show the press had about as much credibility then as it does now, it has been admitted this photo shot was a total set up – to help improve the Prince’s image.

    To think Keating had the world fall on his shoulders (Lizard of Oz)for touching Her Mag, but Charles was happy to be mauled by a professional model to make him look more human – with the connivance of the same British press who got stuck into Keating.

    Roll on the republic.

  24. ..and, of course, the politician who suggests he’s going to make changes if he’s made leader and who doesn’t intend to deliver is obviously a moral and ethical success.

    I’ll start being impressed by Turnbull when I see him actually doing something.

  25. Morning

    Those of you arguing the merits of the welfare card. Its food stamps. We know this is a failure the US has proved it. The arguments of those arguing for controlling the way the poor spend their money sounds like those of the Tea Party in the US on food stamps.

    To say nothing of the right of the poor to make the same mistakes as the rich.

    As for addiction it might be enlightening to watch the ABC TV show at 9:30 on Tuesday about designed poker machine addiction. That is more of a threat to families than how the poor are punished in their spending for being poor.

  26. [78
    Greensborough Growler

    briefly,

    The purpose of the exercise is to break the horrible cycle of entrenched poverty, dependency and the ensuing social problems.]

    I agree. We should try all kinds of things. Higher value transfers/less cash…more support for policing as well as sentencing reforms, more job creation, better mental health services….these problems are soluble. We should solve them.

  27. Panic in Hadley World this morning.

    Apparently listeners in Wagga, Coffs Harbour and somewhere else (can’t remember the town) have been deprived of five minutes of their hero’s show.

    A “network switching problem” has meant that instructions to Southern Cross radio’s network router were not entered last night. Southern Cross is a network affiliate of 2GB.

    Listeners called in by the dozen, apparently, to complain that instead of Hadley’s exhilarating mix of court reports and bail outrages from the Daily Telegraph, reports from truckies of traffic snarls on the M4, and Ray’s routine slagging-off of selected NSW government ministers for not doing as Hadley has instructed them, they got local ads for furniture stores and bait shops.

    This outrage lasted for well over 5 minutes right at the start of the show.

    Hadley has had a gutful. He’s jack of being blamed for network problems that are not his fault. It’s all the fault of the “clowns” who work at the Southern Cross network department, who just seem to be incapable of doing their job properly, and who thus upset Ray’s tradies, pensioners and other admirers.

    Ray wants heads to roll at Southern Cross, and he doesn’t mind broadcasting this to the world (well, his little world anyway). Ray reckons Southern Cross doesn’t have much room for making “horrendous blunders” like this, as (he is quite happy to say about a broadcast partner) their ratings are so poor and their staff so useless.

    I see a couple of problems here:

    1. The workplace issues that Hadley may bring up, publicly threatening to see whoever is responsible sacked or disciplined could be construed as bullying or intimidation;

    2. Slagging off an affiliated company that pays you good money to receive your radio show (toxic as it may be, but nevertheless a revenue generator for Hadley’s masters at 2GB), is probably not the wisest of moves in this delicate situation.

    But as Hadley repeatedly points out, he’s won the last 90-odd ratings for his timeslot, and he has quite a bit of clout. The people’s verdict is in: if there’s a stuff-up, it can’t be Hadley’s fault, so it must be someone else’s.

    Hadley has issued his instructions to Southern Cross radio. He has promised to see them through. He does have a way with words and persuasive argument. Just ask any NSW state government minister who’s come into Ray’s sights. They’ll tell you he’s not joking.

  28. @82

    Blimey, the darned same photo has turned up on ABC on-line news….though the caption says Charlie was “embarrassed” by the kiss which ranks rather oddly with the admission by Priest that her crew had agreed with his people for the whole charade to take place.

    The truism I guess is neither accept what you see nor hear in the media.

  29. The reason cashless cards have chance of working is because additive behaviour is spontaneous. Few addicts think – I am going to spend this fortnight’s income on grog/pokies. Just as I weaken and buy a chocolate or icecream when I buy petrol, the addict has an instantaneous loss of control.

    If however they cannot instantly access cash on day one, then the opportunity for loss of control is delayed and in most cases they will go out and buy the fortnightly groceries.

    Remember that the plan is for 80% of the money on the card. There will still be $90/fortnight for spending on alcohol, Mr Whippy, fresh fruit at markets, flowers for a gift etc, which is way, way more that I spend now. One issue is of course how cigarettes are treated. $90 will not go far if you are a smoker.

    Now I am not sure that taxpayers should fund smoking but I also admit that it is a bit nanny state to prevent it. I am on the fence with splinters in the bum on this one.

  30. Managed income schemes have been tried extensively and found wanting. Only a dessicated coconut with amnesia could consider it a fresh idea with a lot to commend it.

  31. DTT

    Its simple. If its legal then then welfare recipients should not have their spending controlled. General rule as Puff pointed out their are cases where money is managed.

    The problem with the welfare card is it punishes all for the sins of the few. Not even solving the problem. The solving of the problem of addiction is a general society problem and therefore cannot be solved by controlling the spending of the poor even those that are not addicts of any kind.

  32. Can this be really true?

    “Another problem is that – almost by definition – many of those who dominate public life have a peculiar fixation on fame, money and power. Their extreme self-centredness places them in a small minority, but, because we see them everywhere, we assume that they are representative of humanity. ”

    from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/14/selfish-proof-ego-humans-inherently-good

    Maybe the cult of individualism is just that – a minority cult, but with a strong following in most media.

  33. [91
    Nicholas

    Managed income schemes have been tried extensively and found wanting.]

    The cash-limited card is not so much an income scheme as a spending/budgeting instrument. If it works it will have the effect of increasing the effective disposable incomes of recipients.

    Mind you, by itself, it is nowhere near enough to change the dynamics of social, personal and family poverty. Much more should be and could be done.

    How much easier it would be to address poverty if addictions were also lessened.

  34. The Welfare card could act as a disrupter.

    If welfare money is forced to be spent on food and clothes then children will be better fed and more healthy and other social benefits such as school attendance may flow.

    At the same time, addicts are denied their fix of money to feed their drug, gambling and alchohol problems. So, the attendant problems like crime and violence may abate.

  35. Remember the US with is mix of punishing the poor for being poor has seen it have the highest crime rate amongst OECD countries.

    If the US is punishing the poor with policy it should indicate not to do it here. We do not want an increase in crime

  36. Genuinely recovering addicts appreciate income management of some kind, because they recognise the risk of impulsive weakness.

    I know recovering (now recovered) herion addicts who during recovery went to the chemist (presumably who supplied their methadone) and handed over cash fortnightly which was saving for a washing machine. Ordered the chemist that they were NEVER to hand over the money until they had the invoice for the washing machine in their hands.

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