BludgerTrack: 52.8-47.2 to Coalition

Another week, another surge in Malcolm Turnbull’s personal poll ratings, together with solid if less spectacular movement on voting intention.

There’s been a fair bit of polling in the past week, from Newspoll, ReachTEL and Essential Research on voting intention, plus a leadership ratings phone poll from Morgan. Pretty much all of it has been good news for the Coalition, and especially for Malcolm Turnbull. The BludgerTrack poll aggregate accordingly finds the Coalition lead picking up yet further, by 0.9% on two-party preferred and four on the national seat projection, which includes two from Queensland and one each from Victoria and Western Australia. However, this is small beer compared with the movement on leadership ratings, with Turnbull recording roughly double-digit improvements in his already commanding position on both net approval and preferred prime minister – a result of very strong numbers from Newspoll, and positively spectacular ones from Roy Morgan.

Other news:

• Two state by-elections will be held on Saturday in Victoria, which you can read about here, and December 5 has been set for the federal by-election to replace Joe Hockey in North Sydney, which you can read about here. All are Liberal seats that stand to be uncontested by Labor.

• Calla Wahlquist of The Guardian reports three candidates have come forward for Labor preselection in the newly created seat of Burt in Perth’s south-eastern suburbs, which as conceived in the recent draft redistribution has a notional Liberal margin of 4.8%. The presumed front-runner is Matt Keogh, the Right-backed lawyer who ran unsuccessfully at the Canning by-election on September 18. However, he will face opposition from Gosnells councillor Pierre Yang – who will have the backing of the Left, according to a report from Joe Spagnolo of the Sunday Times – and Lisa Griffiths, a medical scientist at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital who ran in the nearby seat of Darling Range at the 2008 state election.

• A Nationals preselection to choose a successor to Bruce Scott in the safe pastoral Queensland seat of Maranoa has been won by David Littleproud, manager of a Suncorp bank branch in Warwick and the son of Brian Littleproud, a Nationals member of state parliament from 1983 to 2001. Other candidates were Cameron O’Neil, a Maranoa councillor who works for the Queensland Disaster Management Committee, and had been spoken of as Littleproud’s strongest rival; Lachlan Douglas, southern Queensland regional manager for Rabobank; Alison Krieg, a grazier from Blackall; and Rick Gurnett, a grazier from Charleville.

• The ABC reports candidates for Liberal Senate preselection in Tasmania include Jonathan Duniam, chief-of-staff to Premier Will Hodgman, and Sally Chandler, an employee of the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They will compete for positions with the number one and number two candidates from 2010, Eric Abetz and Stephen Parry.

• Adam Carr at Psephos now has complete historical state election results for Victoria on his site, going back to the very first elections for positions on the Legislative Council in 1843. As a resource for electorate-level results extending deep into the mists of history, it joins David Barry’s highly sophisticated federal election results site; the complete historical New South Wales state election results archive developed by Antony Green and maintained by the state parliament website; Tasmanian historical results back to 1909 on the state parliament website; and electorate-level results for Queensland going back to 1932 on Wikipedia. However, things are very barren in the case of Western Australia and South Australia, for which the best thing is Psephos’s electorate results going back to the mid-1990s. UPDATE: Kirsdarke in comments notes the Wikipedia oompa-loompas have also worked their way back to 1956 in Western Australia and 1950 in South Australia, without me having noticed.

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.

2,186 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.8-47.2 to Coalition”

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  1. 1698
    Douglas and Milko

    This is all well and good.

    However, the Liberals do not understand and cannot run the economy. Furthermore, the proposition that environmental issues are not of economic significance to working people is demonstrably false.

    Turnbott may hope to run a reprise of Howard’s “relaxed and comfortable” project – shiatsu politics – but it’s way too late for that.

  2. AA,

    Oh yeah.

    But, it depends on whether the Libs want to go to an election with a policy that is not supported by the States.

    That would be very brave.

  3. Douglas Milko, 1698

    It’s simply not prudent for the Greens to replace Labor, there are areas of the electoral map which swing to Labor and not the Greens (think Western Sydney) and places that swing to the Greens and not Labor (Ballina, inner-city Lib-held Melbourne)

    I disagree to a formal Lib-Nat style coalition as I think that leads to the suffocation of the smaller party, but there’s no reason why the Greens and Labor cannot cooperate when the opportunity comes up

  4. [1696
    E. G. Theodore

    The Federal Government should …get out of direct funding of infrastructure unless it is genuinely multi-state.]

    Why? Since the the cost of capital to the Commonwealth is least of all, it makes sense for them to become the architect and the builder. Let the States run services. Let them compete to create the best models of service and reward that success.

    Btw, I think the concept of using the GST to moderate the rate of change of consumption spending/demand is a good idea. It may be difficult to carry through…but, time was, the discount rate was set by the Treasurer, who had to account for it in the Parliament. fmd…that is a democratic idea!!

    The fiscal lever could be used to overtly run the economy. Dangerously democratic.

  6. Bemused@ 1688

    The big problem, as you say, is that those in power currently owe their success to the nomenklatura system. We desperately need to break this model.

  7. [1696
    E. G. Theodore

    Labor is likely to lose the next election no matter what it does.]

    I think that whether Labor win or lose cannot be regarded as a foregone matter. It is certainly open to Labor to influence the course of events. The Liberals will make mistakes (they nearly always do). The winds can change at any time.

  8. Briefly @1704

    In 1977 (or perhaps 75) Arnottt and Stiglitz discoved the “Henry George Theorem” – that for an urban community with “optimal” population given its circumstances appropriate public good investments increase rents by at least as much as those investments cost. The corollaries are that these investments are self financing (over time) and hence that they are self regulating (the urban government

  9. 1708
    E. G. Theodore

    This is intuitively obvious but doubtless in hot dispute.

    The best examples are cities built around ports…

    [Karachi (Sindhi: ڪراچي‎, Urdu: کراچی‎ / ALA-LC: Karācī IPA: (kəˈrɑːˌtʃi) ( listen)) is the capital of the province of Sindh, as well as the largest and most populous metropolitan city of Pakistan. It is main port city of the country. Karachi is world’s 6th largest metropolitan area. It is the 2nd-largest city in the world by population. It is also the main seaport and financial centre of the country. Karachi is also known as City of Lights mainly due to city’s night life, for which it is famous as the city which never sleeps. Karachi metro has an estimated population of over 23.5 million people as of 2013, and area of approximately 3,527 km2 (1,362 sq mi), resulting in a density of more than 6,000 people per square kilometre (15,500 per square mile).

    Karachi is the 7th largest urban agglomeration in the world and the largest city in the Muslim world. It is Pakistan’s centre of banking, industry, economic activity and trade and is home to Pakistan’s largest corporations, including those involved in textiles, shipping, automotive industry, entertainment, the arts, fashion, advertising, publishing, software development and medical research. The city is a hub of higher education in South Asia and the Muslim world.

    Karachi is also ranked as a beta world city. It was the capital of Pakistan until Islamabad was constructed as a capital to spread development evenly across the country and to prevent it from being concentrated in Karachi. Karachi is the location of the Port of Karachi and Port Bin Qasim, two of the region’s largest and busiest ports.]

    Karachi has grown up around a public wharf constructed by the British.

  10. (continued from 1708 – it effing happened again)…

    (the urban government should not invest beyond the point at which the rent increase is sufficient to fund the investment).

    So the second tier (i.e state) governments should not get infrastructure grants from the first tier (i.e. commonwealth) as they do not need the money and would just waste it on gold plating (at best)

    Complications:
    – States are not wholly urban (but in Australia they mostly are)
    – The conditions stipulated by Stiglitz do not entirely hold in actually (but actual conditions are usually close and furthermore there is empirical evidence that the “theorem” holds in typical actual conditions.
    – Tasmania has too small a population (almost certainly true, also too old: it needs help).

  12. briefly@ 1701

    I think I may not have made it clear enough how appalled I was at Guy Rundle’s commentary. I am totally in agreement with you.

    Rundle may be “taking the piss”, but I do not see it clearly in his article. Instead I think he is saying that the “Greens voters, aka the highly educated and now quite wealthy culture-knowledge-policy (CKP) sector of the economy ” no longer have any interest in social justice, and we had better get used to it.”

    Rundle seems to take this position as though it is a good thing. He even suggest that this group of former progressives will not be too bothered by rising equality.

    As I said int he previous post “and the Lord wept”.

    See, e.g http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/acadhum1.html

  14. OK, too many typos from me in the last few posts. I will sign off now.

    Good night all, and thanks for another night oo stimulating discussion on PB.

  18. Breifly @1701 and 1697.

    Red Ted – the real one – was in fact the first to understand the modern economy and achieved this understanding without formal education or any of the other advantages of Keynes (a bit like Keating, and then some).

    He was for enabling everyone to participate successfully in the market (real economy) as he did, but without any privileges as pre-requisties (e.g. inherited land or other wealth) and also without expecting everyone to have his immense talent so as to be able to kick the door down (since this expectation is clearly unreasonable).

    1. Indentured labour cannot participate in markets on reasonable terms and this is unacceptable to anyone who really believes in markets as the proper form of organization in the real economy.

    1a. In modern Australia the same argument applies to education and health (and mild disability) as well: good education and good health are prerequisites to market participation and should thus be provided (to the extent feasible)

    2. A functioning financial system is another prerequisite for markets in the real economy (but is not itself a market, though there is a related market for financial services). The financial systems should serve the needs of the real economy (which is the real source of wealth) and its markets, and currently it does not do so well. It needs to be fixed to better serve the markets in the real economy .

    3. Costs of environmental damage are currently distributed across the economy without reference to the market participant who caused them; this is a form of theft or corruption that (at best) significantly reduces market efficiency. These costs need to be attributed to the participants responsible, so that markets in the real economy operate more efficiently. Moreover the environment is another pre-requisite to the functioning of markets and indeed to their existence: the remote (but extreme) danger is that the environment is damaged to the extent that important real economy markets cease to be viable.

  19. [1712
    Douglas and Milko

    briefly@ 1701

    I think I may not have made it clear …. I am totally in agreement with you.]

    I’m very happy to hear it. There are great opportunities for Labor if only we might see and reach for them!

  21. Douglas and Milko,

    Guy Rundle’s basic premise is shaky. The ‘CKP class’ can never detach from politics and get on with their own lives. Their jobs, their housing costs, businesses and investments are effected by the decisions and actions of the political class.The higher up the food chain you go, the more you have to watch what your government does.

  22. http://reiwa.com.au/about-us/news/market-softer-across-all-sectors,-a-great-time-for-buyers-and-renters/

    [Houses and units

    REIWA President Hayden Groves said Perth’s moderating housing market presented fantastic opportunities for buyers to secure property at a more affordable price with houses and units both posting declines to their median house price in the quarter.

    “The median house price for the September quarter came in at $522,133, an adjustment of 4.2 per cent on the revised June quarter median of $545,000, while units and apartments edged back 2.3 per cent to $420,125 from the revised June quarter figure of $430,000,” Mr Groves said.]

  24. Good morning.

    Matthew Guy’s Liberal party is on track to retain two western Victorian seats, but the primary vote of the party has taken a major hit in Denis Napthine’s old seat.
    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/liberals-set-to-win-first-state-byelections-since-1988-20151101-gko3vg.html#ixzz3qGoYQ3nx
    Small Business Minister Kelly O’Dwyer says the government wants to reduce red tape and regulation for small business.
    http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/kelly-odwyer-says-government-needs-to-get-out-of-the-way-of-small-business-20151029-gklt1c.html#ixzz3qGnRTQUk
    Gittins. If you want innovation and agility, the last people to whom you should look for help are the two professions that, in their approach to problems new or old, demonstrate minimal innovation or mental agility.
    http://www.theage.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/economists-propose-same-old-same-old-on-tax-reform-20151031-gknll2.html#ixzz3qGnpdRm2
    Professor Fiona Stanley said she strongly supported the call for Ms Ley to go to Paris, because Australia desperately needed a national strategic plan for handling the health impacts of climate change.
    http://www.theage.com.au/environment/australian-doctors-call-for-health-minister-to-attend-paris-climate-talks-20151101-gknvym.html#ixzz3qGoDWUOQ
    The world remains on course to exceed dangerous temperature increases even if nations carry out pledges they make at next month’s global climate summit in Paris
    http://www.theage.com.au/environment/un-climate-conference/paris-2015-carbon-promises-lock-in-27-degrees-of-warming-un-says-20151030-gkmuw5.html#ixzz3qGqOIev8
    A WWF study shows Australian insurers tell customers far less than overseas insurers about the risks climate change could pose to their businesses
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/02/ausralian-insurers-keep-customers-in-the-dark-about-climate-risks-finds-report
    Victoria’s fire season has started more than a month earlier than usual, prompting emergency services to warn Victorians to begin preparations now for a “long, dry, hot summer”.
    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victorians-urged-to-prepare-for-summer-bushfire-season-now-20151101-gko2rb.html#ixzz3qGoRDe1d
    Winds of 89 kilometres per hour were recorded in Shepparton on Sunday afternoon, with winds of up to 117 kilometres in southern NSW.
    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/thunderstorms-lash-victorias-northeast-and-gippsland-regions-20151101-gko62y.html#ixzz3qGqfKmrz

  25. Forecasts for a quieter cyclone season shouldn’t stop Queenslanders preparing for the worst
    http://www.theage.com.au/queensland/qld-shouldnt-drop-cyclone-defence-expert-20151101-gknwr7.html#ixzz3qGsqGQJ0
    South-east Queenslanders have stuck to their water-saving ways since the 2001-2009 drought
    http://www.theage.com.au/queensland/waterwise-queenslanders-saves-need-for-new-dam-until-2030-20151031-gknqfd.html#ixzz3qGt28Kgj
    Brace yourselves, Perth, the mango shortage is coming.
    http://www.theage.com.au/wa-news/was-summer-mango-season-is-already-over-20151029-gklr5h.html
    Backyards will soon be unattainable for the majority of children born in Sydney and Melbourne, according to an explosive new report
    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/housing-crisis-report-says-backyards-for-children-vanishing-as-oldies-stay-put-20151028-gkl3eh.html#ixzz3qGoqhcpj
    Parents’ childcare entitlements are likely to change multiple times a year under the Coalition’s new childcare package, amid warnings from parents and childcare groups it will place a huge burden on busy families and Centrelink.
    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/the-administrative-storm-brewing-on-the-childcare-package-20151030-gkmnt7.html#ixzz3qGqvH5D0
    A Melbourne private school is set to axe the VCE because it is “too competitive”.
    http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/school-set-to-axe-vce-because-it-is-too-competitive-20151031-gknv40.html#ixzz3qGrYHfoi
    Increasing the cost of degrees is likely to produce little benefit for students as universities would instead pump much of the extra money into research projects rather than teaching
    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/grattan-institute-says-money-raised-by-higher-university-fees-likely-to-go-into-research-20151101-gknzdj.html#ixzz3qGs8xSkV

  26. Senator Sinodinos said the Coalition was conscious of fighting for higher consumption taxes and against the Labor states and federal opposition.
    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/pleas-for-a-political-truce-with-the-labor-states-on-gst-ignored-20151031-gknvil.html#ixzz3qGrLvkCg
    NSW opposition health spokesman Mr Secord said a doubling of the Medicare levy to 4 per cent was a fairer solution than Premier Mike Baird’s proposal for an increase in the GST to 15 per cent.
    http://www.theage.com.au/nsw/walt-secord-pushes-for-medicare-levy-increase-to-bridge-nsw-health-funding-gap-20151101-gko2yo.html#ixzz3qGtsgD00
    A Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt on Saturday “broke up in the air”, a Russian aviation official said on Sunday.
    http://www.theage.com.au/world/official-claims-crashed-russian-plane-broke-up-in-the-air-over-egypt-20151101-gko93s.html#ixzz3qGpFjDdY
    Let me tell you: the innocent are paying an intolerable price for the West’s failure of leadership.
    http://www.theage.com.au/comment/seeing-wounded-and-dying-children-in-warravaged-aleppo-leaves-haunting-memories-20151030-gkmvsr.html#ixzz3qGsN27Qj
    Exporting problems is now the Australian way.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/australias-obsession-with-border-protection-has-reached-peak-farce-with-the-kyrgyzstan-plan-20151101-gknz8f.html
    The parents of a Brisbane man fighting against the Islamic State would rather he continue to risk his life overseas than return home to a possible jail term.
    http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/ashley-dyballs-parents-rather-he-keep-fighting-is-than-go-to-jail-20151101-gko5et.html#ixzz3qGrmQycs
    Putting Connie Stocco front and centre is simply shifting the blame on to the innocent and that alone should make us all extremely uncomfortable.
    http://www.theage.com.au/comment/how-did-gino-stoccos-former-wife-become-the-no-1-scapegoat-20151030-gkn99i.html#ixzz3qGpVE5GU

  27. Allegations against the family of Sarawak governor Taib Mahmud are contained in a report by anti-corruption campaigners in Switzerland concerned with logging of rainforests in Borneo.
    http://www.theage.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/corporate-watchdog-investigates-malaysian-tycoons-family-20151101-gknxjg.html#ixzz3qGpvcO8q
    An estimated 1.5 million immigrants and refugees will arrive in Europe this year, and the inundation is driving Europe to the anti-immigrant right in election after election.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/refugee-influx-turns-europe-to-the-right-20151030-gknhl6.html#ixzz3qGwGq9In
    And which character is Peter Dutton assassinating today? Your news of the weekend, reduced to a snarky rant.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/view-from-the-street/view-from-the-street-government-suggests-that-kyrgyzstan-is-the-new-nauru-20151101-gko3l3.html#ixzz3qGwXXpzt

  34. As well as Vic Labor, we now have NSW Labor also preferrring the increase of the Medicare levy rather than a GST increase.
    Is this where Federal labor will land?

  35. There have been many nonsense claims about this being a good time for the federal government to “borrow” for infrastructure because bond yields are so low. The truth is that the financial cost of government spending is always zero. The cost of government spending is the real resources that are used when the government spends.

    For a sovereign government that issues its own currency there is no binding revenue constraint on government spending. The interest servicing payments come from the same source as all government spending – its infinite (minus one cent!) capacity to issue fiat currency. There is no “cost” – in real terms to the government doing this.

    The concept of more or less expensive is therefore inapplicable to government spending.

    The cost of government spending is the real resources that are deployed in the production of the goods and services being purchased rather than the accounting entry in the Treasury books for some dollars outlaid.

    http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=32218

  38. Is Sun Nation a parody publication, cos it reported this

    [Axed Aussie PM Tony Abbott made headlines across the globe when he told the British government to turn back boats carrying refugees.

    After his speech Guido asked Abbott if his controversial words might end his chances of a cushy job with the United Nations, to which he replied: “Who’d f***ing want one, mate?”]

    Although Abbott has been in London, he chose not to stay to see his boys get stuffed by the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup final at Twickenham.

  42. victoria

    Guido Fawkes is a very well known right wing blogger, commentator in the UK. Tory papers like The Telegraph regular publish his work. Sun Nation is a political site set up by the pom paper The Sun.

    Mind you The Sun would be called a parody of a newspaper by some. England’s biggest selling paper and one of Rupert’s shit sheet tabloids , think page 3 girls. Many a Scouser still boycott it over claims it made over Hillsborough.

  44. Mesma just told FKelly the following:

    1. Broader GST at 15% will raise $130 billion annually
    2. It will make the tax system less complex n fairer and reduce people’s tax burden overall.

    So any GST raising is motivated by the need for a fairer simpler lesser-tax tax system, and nothing to increasing the revenue bottom line?

    Could someone clarify this please in simple terms.

  46. psyclaw

    Bigger question is what happened fo the claims of a scare campaign by Labor that the fibs wanted to raise and broaden the GST?

  47. zoidlord

    [ “Astonishingly, Brandis claimed to have “enlarged the scope” of the Australian Human Rights Commission.” ]

    That would be his anoscope.

  48. Morning all.

    Laura Tingle’s article from yesterday. Apologies if already posted.
    http://www.afr.com/leadership/innovation/australia-is-like-apple-before-jobs-returned-says-csiros-larry-marshall-20151101-gknyfs

    [Australia is at a crossroads very like the one facing Apple when Steve Jobs returned to the company in1996 and transformed it from producer of software platforms and computers into the centre of a new digital industry, according to CSIRO’s chief executive Larry Marshall.

    Jobs returned to Apple in late 1996 as the company was facing a major competitive challenge from Microsoft and its Windows system. But instead of simply pushing Apple to catch up, Jobs re-imagined the entire marketplace.

    Dr Marshall came back to Australia this year from a successful career in both research and venture capitalism in Silicon Valley to head Australia’s venerable science and research institution.]

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