The Seven Network had a poll this evening from ReachTEL, which records a Coalition lead of 53-47 – a substantial shift on the 50-50 result it recorded on September 15, the evening after the leadership change. That’s all there is from that poll at this stage, but there were some headline-grabbing results today from a Morgan poll, conducted by telephone from a fairly small sample of 574. Bill Shorten could manage only fourth place on the question of preferred Labor leader, with Tanya Plibersek leading on 27% (up a point since July), Anthony Albanese second on 23% (up four), Wayne Swan third on 10% (steady) and Shorten down three to 9%. By contrast, Malcolm Turnbull’s first result for preferred Liberal leader as prime minister has him gaining from 44% to 64%, with Julie Bishop on 12% (down three), Tony Abbott on 8% (down five) and Scott Morrison on 4% (down one). The current leaders’ ratings were 66% approval and 16% disapproval for Turnbull, 25% approval (up one) and 62% disapproval (up two) for Shorten, and Turbull leading 76-14 as preferred prime minister.
UPDATE: GhostWhoVotes relates that ReachTEL has Turnbull leading Shorten 68.9-31.1 on preferred prime minister, with 40.2% saying Labor should replace Shorten as leader versus 26.0% opposed.
UPDATE 2: Full results from ReachTEL here. The sample was 3574 – big even by ReachTEL’s standards – with primary votes of 46.7% for the Coalition (up 3.4%), 33.0% for Labor (down 2.9%) and 11.3% for the Greens (down 0.6%).
[Zac Spitzer
Zac Spitzer – @zackster
Truss’s shipping legislation is an astounding betrayal of the national interest | Anthony Albanese http://gu.com/p/4dj2z/stw
The Guardian
The Guardian
Embedded image
Truss’s shipping legislation is an astounding betrayal of the national interest | Anthony Albanese
Proposed new shipping legislation is extraordinary in its blatant disregard for Australian jobs and business. No other G20 nation takes this approach
View on web
6:08 PM – 25 Oct 2015
6 RETWEETS]
[adrian
I never watch commercial television I only watch the ABC and SBS and have no complaints.]
I don’t expect anything from commercial television, but I think ABC is a severely compromised news and current affairs organisation.
If you have no issue with their journalists for some reason, you just need to look at the stories that they obsess over and ignore.
KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN@1272
On this, Abbott went from +2 as better PM as Opposition Leader to +19 in his first poll as PM. Since incumbent PMs have a house advantage of about 16 points on better PM, and incumbent LOs have the same disadvantage, it might be argued that in real terms he went backwards. The boost he got came with the job and ideally he should have got more.
By comparison, Howard went from -5 to +32 and Rudd went from +3 to +57. This is not quite a fair comparison because Rudd had been up against a still fairly popular and respected PM while Howard and Abbott had not.
Another way of looking at it is the raw gain in the percentage preferring the leader as PM (ignoring those preferring the opponent). On this Rudd gained 21 points, Howard 14 and Abbott only 2.
Considering also that Coalition voting intention never tracked above the election result (whereas Howard’s and Rudd’s new governments both took 60:40ish leads), I don’t think people ever wanted to believe in Abbott. They just wanted to get rid of Rudd/Gillard/Rudd.
Back today from a week away volunteering on an environmental project in the forests in the south west of WA.
No papers, no phone, no internet, no television. 6 am and 9pm ABC radio news kept me in touch with the world and I found there wasn’t much I really needed to know about.
Kinda liberating.
NBN just started running in the lead in fibre to my place.
Thought you’d like to know 😉
mexican:
ABC news will of course have more detailed reporting compared to commercial outlets because it doesn’t have ad breaks.
But that doesn’t mean its reportage is necessarily of a higher quality. Look at 730’s recent ‘scoop’ of missing corporate documents which it somehow angled towards being on Bill Shorten, as if a union leader is responsible for record keeping by corporate entities.
[A lot of the discussion on this topic here is just infantile.]
Well you should know.
Adrian
What if any recent stories would you say that they ignored?
I think there are bigger issues at 7:30 and sometimes on Q&A.
rossmcg:
The project sounds interesting. What was it?
rossmcg
You didnt miss th 24/7 news cycle. 😀
bingo
[sortius
sortius – @sortius
@WarWraith Turnbull is exactly like Abbott. He’s deeply rooted in partisan politics and the politics of narcissism.
2:39 PM – 25 Oct 2015
5 RETWEETS4 FAVORITES]
[The ABC (and SBS) allowing themselves to be bullied by the commercial media, in particular the Murdochracy has been another fail. As is their cowering to the govt of late. It’s bad enough we have to have AGW ‘balanced’ with bullshit, but a public broadcaster is a public broadcaster, not a commercial media outlet.]
I can remember the complaints about how 7.30 hadn’t covered the AWUgate allegations. They were canvassed on Media Watch, and Edia Watch predicted the allegations would be examined on 7.30 very soon after.
As they were… with an interviews of Nowicki, Ralph Blewitt and the ex-S&G solicitor who now works in the US… all of them adverse to Gillard.
All of these people have disappeared now:
* Blewitt is on the lamb in SE Asia somewhere,
* Nowicki never wrote the “book” he claimed he was writing,
* The solicitor now in the US has never been heard from again.
Gillard was, of course, exonerated, with a dummy spit bit at the end of Heydon’s finding that she hadn’t been the greatest solicitor he’d ever come across, which did not affect his findings however.
The best 7.30 has been able to do regarding Shorten was a furtive interview at some airport with an ex-executive of Theiss who reckoned his word should still be law at the old firm, and that they should still be paying to store his old notebooks, five years after he’d left.
The interviewed Kathy Jackson as if she was Joan of Arc. No such interviews nowadays, though. 7.30 also dismissed Peter Wicks and his evidence, if I recall correctly.
When Leigh Sales interviewed her recent dinner companion, Malcolm Turnbull, she all but slipped into something more comfortable and sat on his knee, nibbling his ear. It was so obvious, even Bolt noticed!
They never do this kind of positive stuff for Labor ministers or Shadows. The best a Labor person can expect from Sales is to escape the interview without being told at least once to “Just answer the question”, or being asked whether they’re the worst Minister for xxxx in history.
Not only is this interviewing style off-putting, but it elicits almost zero information, as viewers hear one person trying to get a word in edgewize while the camera is focused on the other person flapping their mouth. It may be entertainment (depending on your point of view), but it ain’t news.
And it certainly ain’t fair when, for the most part, the other side gets the Kid Gloves treatment almost every interview. I expected a “go-easy” on Turnbull last time Leigh interviewed him, but even I was shocked at just how palsy-walsy it got.
[Back today from a week away volunteering on an environmental project in the forests in the south west of WA.
No papers, no phone, no internet, no television. 6 am and 9pm ABC radio news kept me in touch with the world and I found there wasn’t much I really needed to know about.
Kinda liberating.]
Sounds beautiful, so long as there is a bit of wine about …
[But that doesn’t mean its reportage is necessarily of a higher quality. Look at 730′s recent ‘scoop’ of missing corporate documents which it somehow angled towards being on Bill Shorten, as if a union leader is responsible for record keeping by corporate entities.]
And its recent obsession with TERROR ad nauseum.
I just think those that believe that the ABC is ok in its news and current affairs coverage have remarkably low standards, or are too young to remember when it covered a broader range of topics without fear or favour.
Fessy
Channel Nine goes for an hour, and to your second point, that does sound silly, a business is responsible for its own records just as a union is responsible for its own records but such stories tell me more about the journalist’s knowledge of the story.
TPOF
I agree that Jones and Urlman come across as leaning towards the Liberals or at least come across as not being left wing.
BB
My OH has never watched 7.30 and didnt have a clue who Leigh Sales was. A few months ago, he happened to be at my parents house, and my dad was watching it. Sales was interviewing a Labor MP. Cant remember who. But when OH came home, he asked me who was the person who hosted this show as he had just watched it and what a nasty piece of work she was!!
Oh gawd: I log on here for a bit of lunchtime diversion and what do I find but more “Fran Kelly is a Liberal” nonsense.
From what I know about her through some personal connections, she is anything but a Liberal. Even on her show, and particularly when she is on the Insiders, she has never made any secret of her support for SSM and for doing as much as possible to address climate change.
As a general rule, ABC journalists and presenters are expected to aim for a high standard of impartiality and balance. Guests on shows like the Drum are exempt from this requirement, as are presenters such as Phillip Adams, Amanda Vanstone and Tom Switzer. (Apropos of nothing, I would say that Vanstone and Switzer generally make more of an attempt at balance than does Adams, who is pretty unashamedly left wing. But, fair enough, his show is generally very good IMO: even though the Turnbullesque magnitude of his ego sometimes gets up my nose.)
Although they are much-maligned on this and other left-leaning online forums, ABC journos such as Sales, Kelly, Uhlmann, Melissa Clarke, Greg Jennet, etc. all strive very hard to achieve balance.
A problem they have all faced in recent years was the unbalanced nature of Coalition rhetoric under Abbott. To a large extent, the Coalition stopped trying to argue the toss, and embarked upon an orchestrated campaign of name calling and groundless assertion. Under its charter, the ABC felt compelled to report all this nonsense as genuine political comment, giving it equal weight to government announcements, etc.
On occasions (eg, Sales’s interview with Hockey), ABC journos couldn’t resist turning the spotlight onto some of the rubbish that Coalition politicians were sprouting. And then didn’t we hear screaming from the Right about ABC bias!
Two final thoughts.
1. While I see Fran Kelly as being an impeccably balanced journo, there is no question that Michelle Grattan displayed an undisguised personal loathing of Julia Gillard that became quite embarrassing at times. But let’s be fair to Fran and her producers: it was during Julia’s time as PM that they reduced Michelle’s appearances to alternate days and brought Paul Bongiorno to provide balance. (And surely none of you are going to argue that Bongiorno is biased against Labor!)
2. Kelly, Sales et al – as well as quite a few Gallery journos who work for other media outlets – are very biased on one issue:
unauthorised boat arrivals. For more than 20 years, the ABC has singularly failed to provide balanced reporting on this issue, regardless of whether Labor or the Coalition are in government. The ABC has run a line on this issue which is pretty much indistinguishable from that of Sarah Hanson-Young.
[Adrian
What if any recent stories would you say that they ignored?]
When was the last time you heard a detailed look at climate change (the biggest issue of our times) or environmental issues in general, without the ridiculous balance requirement, corporate tax avoidance, Liberal party problems with ICAC and foreign policy looked at outside the prism of the govt. And that’s just for starters.
And what BB said!
[Although they are much-maligned on this and other left-leaning online forums, ABC journos such as Sales, Kelly, Uhlmann, Melissa Clarke, Greg Jennet, etc. all strive very hard to achieve balance.]
Like the rest of your post this is arrant bullshit. You spice up your bullshit with ‘personal connections’, but it is still bullshit, just PhD level.
What matters is what she broadcasts, not what your supposed insider knowledge supposedly reveals.
Confessions
Woylies. Cute as they are.
Victoria
Thought I might but strangely no. Best part was that most of the other people didnt want to talk politics or religion and sport only got a cursory mention.
adrian
[I just think those that believe that the ABC is ok in its news and current affairs coverage have remarkably low standards, or are too young to remember when it covered a broader range of topics without fear or favour.]
Really! How about the commercial stations running ads every five seconds.
Remarkably I am not too young to remember when it covered a broader range of topics without fear or favour.
I choose choice and my choice is the ABC and SBS.
BB:
Well said, although the first time in ages I’ve watched a 730 segment was that one about the missing corporate records, and that was only because it was linked here.
mexican:
I’ll have to take your word for it because I don’t watch commercial TV news apart from the very odd occasion if they are leading into the footy or cricket. 😀
MBTW I don’t know why you keep banging on about the commercials. The whole point, supposedly, of the ABC is that it is inherently better than the commercials because it lacks their commercial imperative.
rossmcg
My break was not a noble venture like yours, but I went on a cruise for 8 days a few months back. I did not have a clue what was happening in Australia for the whole time. I didnt miss it, but did look forward to coming back to the noise!
And, bemused, credit to you for posting sensibly on the issue of ABC bias.
There is an AFL forum called Big Footy, which has sub-forums for each of the 18 clubs in the League. On each and every one of these sub-forums, you will a noisy group of club supporters who are absolutely convinced that the AFL and the umpires are joined in a conspiracy against their particular club and in favour of other clubs.
I interpret the accusations of ABC bias by some on this forum as being on the same level. I think there is much to criticise about the ABC’s approach to reporting and providing commentary on politics: eg, AM/PM, the 7.30 Report and Insiders have very tired old formats (Lateline less so), the selection of panelists on The Drum is silly, Tony Jones is a bit of a prat on Q&A, etc.
But these are questions of style and structure, not of bias.
WWP
Wine not my choice but a nightcap under the stars at the end of a day out in the bush is my version of heaven
“ABC journos such as Sales, Kelly, Uhlmann, Melissa Clarke, Greg Jennet, etc. all strive very hard to achieve balance”. This can only be the work of a satirist.
Victoria
Seeing the subject de jour is ABC bias I might just head back there!
adrian
I don’t think I was banging on I mentioned commercials once.
adrian@1320: “Like the rest of your post this is arrant bullshit. You spice up your bullshit with ‘personal connections’, but it is still bullshit, just PhD level. What matters is what she broadcasts, not what your supposed insider knowledge supposedly reveals.”
Adrian, what a charming personality you are. Have you thought of going into marketing?
adrian
[ I just think those that believe that the ABC is ok in its news and current affairs coverage have remarkably low standards, or are too young to remember when it covered a broader range of topics without fear or favour. ]
I think it is age-related. The older you are, the more likely you are to perceive the ABC as “balanced”.
Perhaps this is partly because the older you are, the more balanced it was when you first knew it – the drift to the right has been gradual and so many people have simply failed to notice it.
It is also true that it seems balanced if you compare it to the rest of the rabidly right-wing media. But it is a false balance, as other have pointed out – balancing science with mumbo-jumbo is hardly “balance”.
mb @ 1318
I can’t comment on Fran Kelly because I don’t listen to her. Most of the others are not necessarily politically biased, although Toolman seems to most closely wear a political worldview in his commenting.
My problem is the failure of journalists and interviewers to properly and logically probe all parties. All too often they are brushed off or allow themselves to be brushed off by facile responses from Coalition members while insisting aggressively on direct answers to difficult questions from Labor members. By all means do the hard talk on Labor. But the soft pedal on the Coalition all too often is unacceptable poor quality journalism. The same as people like Jennett pontificating on who won QT (usually the Government, which has 95% of possession and field position and a biased referee) when really it is just tea leaf reading anyway.
The number one rule should be that those in power need to be given a hard time, whatever party is in power. Those who are most likely to be the alternative government should also be given a hard time, and not just allowed to get away with ill-supported attacks on the government.
Otherwise we get a crap government, whoever is elected.
And on that – I have not seen a single journalist apologise for their failure to properly test Tony Abbott as LOTO, let alone his colleagues. Despite the fact that he was such an abject failure as PM as he lasted less time than any PM in a hundred years who has taken his party from Opposition. And the fact that there was a national exhalation of relief confirms how poorly the media were in alerting the public to his character.
It’s not about bias to Labor as far as I’m concerned. It’s about the failure to properly do a professional job in testing one side, leaving a bunch of fools in charge of government in this country.
And we as a nation lose from this. As is palpably evident.
[WWP
Wine not my choice but a nightcap under the stars at the end of a day out in the bush is my version of heaven]
Very jealous
Player One@1333: Well, I’m old enough to remember the ABC in the 1960s and 1970s under the management of a bunch of unashamedly Liberal-supporting senior executives, including CEO Talbot Duckmanton. And it was profoundly conservative in its orientation in those days, until the team from This Day Tonight arrived to inject a bit of very mild baby boomer radicalism into the mix.
The ABC today is way to the left of what it was before This Day Tonight came on the scene.
On the rare occasions that I pick up a copy of The Australian, I find the profound right wing bias that oozes out of almost every article to be almost nauseating. And I’m someone who is slightly to the right of the political centre.
The ABC does not give me this feeling at all. Every time I wtach Chris Uhlmann or Melissa Clarke reporting, or Leigh Sales interviewing a politician, I look out for signs of the strong pro-Liberal bias that many posters on Poll Bludger believe them to possess, and I can’t find the slightest sign of it. They are not infrequently glib and superficial, but across the board, not more in relation to one party than another.
Indeed, I reckon of all the political elements, the one which gets easily the best run from the ABC are the Greens.
Meher
I am not sure I can agree with you fully about the bias of some presenters on the ABC.
Fran Kelly this morning for example was quite nasty in her interview with Albo. He trounced her, but it was not a frienly interview.
Leigh Sales is shamelessly biased towards some Liberal Politicians – Turnbull and Hockey are the two standouts for me. She was NOT an Abbott fan. Emma Alberici – say no more.
On the other hand Tony Jones is mildly leaning to the left (but only just)
ratsak
[
NBN just started running in the lead in fibre to my place.
Thought you’d like to know 😉 ]
May I say on behalf of the Bludger lounge…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5i1cJIwE7M
TPOF@1334: I agree entirely. It’s superficiality that is the problem, not bias. It was the superficiality of the Press Gallery’s approach towards Abbott and co which played a big part in the election of such an untalented individual as PM.
Although, to be fair, we need to remember that Credlin kept Abbott away from the ABC as much as possible: especially after the embarrassing interview with Leigh Sales about Olympic Dam.
meher baba
[ The ABC does not give me this feeling at all. Every time I wtach Chris Uhlmann or Melissa Clarke reporting, or Leigh Sales interviewing a politician, I look out for signs of the strong pro-Liberal bias that many posters on Poll Bludger believe them to possess, and I can’t find the slightest sign of it. They are not infrequently glib and superficial, but across the board, not more in relation to one party than another. ]
If your own personal bias is to the right of centre, the ABC may well seem “balanced” to you.
1301
victoria
Truly, this is the 1890s all over again!
[It’s not about bias to Labor as far as I’m concerned. It’s about the failure to properly do a professional job in testing one side, leaving a bunch of fools in charge of government in this country.]
Yep that’s it for me too, along with a willingness to be bullied by the Murdoch press.
[The number one rule should be that those in power need to be given a hard time, whatever party is in power. Those who are most likely to be the alternative government should also be given a hard time, and not just allowed to get away with ill-supported attacks on the government.]
This. Because of the ridiculous “unbalanced nature of Coalition rhetoric” and criticism of the ABC for far longer than just the Abbott leadership going at least back to Alston and probably further, they pull their punches. It’s just too bloody hard to put up with the grief the Libs give them for any scrutiny.
One of the few who held the Libs to account in opposition was ABC Technology Editor Nick Ross. He was the best writer around on the NBN especially, but Turnbull (slimeball that he is) did his usual trick of attacking the messenger. Ross was essentially sidelined by the ABC. He’s still there, but not in a position to report in depth as he was. The ABC did this whilst the ALP were still in government, but the fear of the Coalition keeps them well in line no matter who is in government. The example of Ross was no doubt well noted throughout the organisation.
[The number one rule should be that those in power need to be given a hard time, whatever party is in power. Those who are most likely to be the alternative government should also be given a hard time, and not just allowed to get away with ill-supported attacks on the government.]
This. Because of the ridiculous “unbalanced nature of Coalition rhetoric” and criticism of the ABC for far longer than just the Abbott leadership going at least back to Alston and probably further, they pull their punches. It’s just too bloody hard to put up with the grief the Libs give them for any scrutiny.
One of the few who held the Libs to account in opposition was ABC Technology Editor Nick Ross. He was the best writer around on the NBN especially, but Turnbull (slimeball that he is) did his usual trick of attacking the messenger. Ross was essentially sidelined by the ABC. He’s still there, but not in a position to report in depth as he was. The ABC did this whilst the ALP were still in government, but the fear of the Coalition keeps them well in line no matter who is in government. The example of Ross was no doubt well noted throughout the organisation.
[The number one rule should be that those in power need to be given a hard time, whatever party is in power. Those who are most likely to be the alternative government should also be given a hard time, and not just allowed to get away with ill-supported attacks on the government.]
This. Because of the ridiculous “unbalanced nature of Coalition rhetoric” and criticism of the ABC for far longer than just the Abbott leadership going at least back to Alston and probably further, they pull their punches. It’s just too bloody hard to put up with the grief the Libs give them for any scrutiny.
One of the few who held the Libs to account in opposition was ABC Technology Editor Nick Ross. He was the best writer around on the NBN especially, but Turnbull (slimeball that he is) did his usual trick of attacking the messenger. Ross was essentially sidelined by the ABC. He’s still there, but not in a position to report in depth as he was. The ABC did this whilst the ALP were still in government, but the fear of the Coalition keeps them well in line no matter who is in government. The example of Ross was no doubt well noted throughout the organisation.
[Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.”]
Many political journalists/reporters/commentators have strong biases towards or against individuals and few are able to adequately compensate for them.
dtt@1337: Leigh Sales biased towards Hockey?! Even though she was investigated by ACMA for allegedly displaying bias against him in an interview.
If you have followed Leigh Sales’s career, you will recall that she used to do a lot of online blogging about books that she enjoyed. Almost without exception, these were the same sorts of left-liberal books that Phillip Adams promotes. I would say she is almost certainly left-leaning in her political orientation.
I would suspect the same assessment is broadly applicable to many other ABC journos and presenters: eg, Fran Kelly, Kerry O’Brien, Barrie Cassidy, Virginia Trioli, Jon Faine, Tony Jones, Sarah Ferguson, Annabel Crabbe, Jonathan Green, Geraldine Doogue, Michael Cathcart, Norman Swan, Andrew West, the Chaser team, Charlie Pickering, Todd Sampson and, of course, Phillip Adams. I’d be very surprised if many, if any of these individuals voted for Tony Abbott in the last election.
Perhaps Emma Alberici is right-leaning: to be honest, I can’t get any sense of her political views (which is how it should be).
Chris Uhlmann has acknowledged publicly that, despite being married to an ALP parliamentarian, his views are somewhat to the right of centre. He’s just about the only prominent ABC figure who I feel confident is right-wing. Even Julia Baird, who obviously has strong family connections to the Libs, comes across as left-leaning on quite a few issues.
A lot of it is to do with the baby boomer and X generations being infused with a broadly left-liberal world view on issues such as feminism, human rights, anti-racism, third world politics, welfare statism, etc.
I know many on here won’t agree with me. So be it.
meher baba@1327
I don’t like engaging in mutual admiration but I liked your post too.
Regarding Fran Kelly, I have heard she comes form a DLP family background. I also know she was once in a girl band and is now in a same sex relationship, so she is an illustration of people being complex and having diverse influences on their lives.
Yes, Michelle Grattan did not like Julia Gillard and I would guess that put her in company with more than 50% of the Australian population. Gillard was a poor leader and worse politician and Grattan would have judged her harshly.
The program has a brief segment in which they run through the headlines mainly from The Australian. For all its many sins, The Australian is distributed nationally unlike any other paper and so it makes some sense to lean to it on a national program.
And of course to claim that the whole program is just The Australian being broadcast is just laughably stupid. It carries many interesting interviews like those with Albo and Andrew Wilkie this morning. Or were they in The Australian?
Player One@1340: “If your own personal bias is to the right of centre, the ABC may well seem “balanced” to you.”
Perhaps, but then why is the right-wing bias of The Australian self-evident to me and the ABC’s not?