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”

Comments Page 38 of 44
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  1. Trog – Wow, if they got away with that, that would be the most spectacular example of rent-seeking I’ve ever seen. What ever happened to creative destruction?

  5. bemused
    [There is plenty wrong with Turnbull’s words and actions not to need to go making stuff up.]

    Sorry bemused for confusing the difference between “like a business” and “businesslike”.

    To expand on TPOF’s point – Turnbull wants to use his NBN strategy as a template for government:
    [“With the NBN, the first thing we threw out was ideology, lies, and spin. We told the truth about the project — with an independent Strategic Review completed three months after the September 2013 election, by publishing weekly rollout statistics, through requiring the company to provide detailed quarterly financial and operational reports. In short, we made NBN Co as open and accountable as a publicly listed company,” Turnbull said.]

    If you believe this you’ll believe anything. Abbott/Turnbull destroyed the FTTP business model by signing a massive new contract with Telstra. we will now never know how far costs would have dropped if we had continued with doing the job just once properly and doing it properly. Now we are locked into servicing the copper networks and Telstra shareholders for another 100 years.

    And all so Abbott could take revenge on technology and liberal thinking.

  7. [“I normally don’t bother with your rubbish but this caught my eye and I now realise how much you lie awake at night grieving over those poor children. What a guy.”]

    Someone has to grieve them.

    As Sarah-Hanson Two-Names once famously said “accidents happened, tragedies happen” when hearing of another boat sinking off Australia.

    And this girl thinks she is the moral voice of the left?

  9. Increasing the GST is a policy of neither party.

    Introducing a new Carbon Tax is the policy of the Labor Party so perhaps we could have a Plebiscite on that one?

  10. Does anyone think all this speculation over a GST is good politics. All they are doing is raising expectations. At some point, voters are going to say FFS, we’re tired of the strip-tease, do something

  12. This GST chatter just sounds like a thought bubble to me. If you listen to Morrison there are quite a few weasel words being thrown around with a lot of wriggle room…

    [“I should stress it’s not the government’s position or even the Nationals’ position but it represents an option I suppose.”]

    Howard used to be a master at this… chuck out an idea as a “bit of a maybe” and then test it on focus groups. Judging by this comment the early feedback is probably not very positive…

    [“There’s a lot of detailed modelling there which I suppose sets out one option that sits right at the, I think, the very end of the spectrum,” Mr Morrison told Sky News]

    Still plenty of time to pitch the magic pudding I suppose…

  14. [“@ABCNews24: .@Bowenchris: It is time for the speculation surrounding a #GST increase to stop #auspol”]

    LOL!

    We must stop the speculation on the speculation… by speculating

  15. zoidlord

    [ Claiming to “National Security” is weak, because we have laws in our country that already prevent these measures. ]

    Prevent what measures?

    [ You forget that Metadata does take your personal information, so you are confused about “National Security” + “personal security” (when there is none). ]

    Metadata has been ruled to be “personal information”, but not because it contains “personal information” as most people think of it – e.g. your name and address etc. I think you may be confusing the two.

    [ IN addition a very scary internet bill was passed in the USA Senate called CISA just passed the Senate with Privacy Laws not fixed. ]

    As far as I can tell, CISA is just formalizing what was already common practice – and common knowledge – but probably required more red tape (or perhaps covert activities) in the past.

    [ Your computer & every bit of information on it, is pretty much owned by the National Security now, in the name of Terrorism etc. ]

    Anything you ever did on the internet was already available to anyone in the various telecommunications companies and security agencies, with the possible exception of encrypted traffic (and they can decode a lot more of that than you probably think). You just never realized it. Perhaps the only thing that ever gave you the illusion of privacy was the sheer volume of information that had to be trawled through, which puts it beyond the capabilities of most of the companies and people that already had access to it.

  17. TBA

    One of the speculators Bowen was referring to was an LNP MP/Senator. He was interviewed on News 24 today.

    Yesterday it was Senator Sinodinos

    No doubt about where the speculation is coming from and your response is truly idiotically pathetic.

  18. [Does anyone think all this speculation over a GST is good politics. All they are doing is raising expectations. At some point, voters are going to say FFS, we’re tired of the strip-tease, do something]

    It’s certainly not good for wavering confidence in the economy.

  19. @P1/1865

    It does include your personal information, and lol at the excuse of “Common sense”.

    As to the rest of your post, it continues the LOL path.

  21. guytaur

    [ The national security implications of hacking are severe. See Obama Administration comments. ]

    I agree. So we should have legislative protections. But I think (although I have to say I’m not sure, since his arguments are hard to follow) that zoidlord is arguing that these would have no benefit, and is then conflating this with “metadata” for some reason that is not clear.

  23. I think the GST debate could backfire on Labor.

    Like it or not, I’d say a GST increase is on the way. A lot of voters suspect the same. Here we have the Turnbull government basically saying: “We’re not going to spring nasty surprises the way we did in the 2014 Budget. Now we’re going to explain it all to you first. The numbers show we need a significant increase in revenue to fund the social safety net we all want for our society.”

    Labor reflexively rejecting the GST increase, even as some state premiers offer an open mind, simply casts an already deeply unpopular Shorten as an Abbott-style nay-sayer.

  24. zoidlord

    [ It does include your personal information, and lol at the excuse of “Common sense”. ]

    You’ve lost me again. What “Common sense”?

  26. Victoria

    With all the back tracking, flip flopping and hosing down, i suspect that by the end of the day Morrison will be saying increasing the GST is a labor plan!

  27. P1

    Snowden made the dangers of collecting metadata crystal clear.

    All the hacking zoid is highlighting is how vulnerable collection of data is to hacking.

    Best security don’t collect it in the first place there are other ways to tackle security issues.

  30. alias,

    I think you are overthinking it. I will believe it when I see it. I can’t see it being a winner… hence all the weasel words…

  31. Victoria @1870,

    Good morning to you.

    It is interesting listening to Morrison sidestepping any real discussion.

    Makes you wonder who actually gave Maiden and Newscorp the story and for what purpose.

    Turnbull putting Murdoch press back on the drip, someone acting on their own and jumping the gun or someone trying to cause some mischief ?

    The Libs seem to be all over the place atm in response.

    Cheers.

  32. guytaur

    [ Best security don’t collect it in the first place there are other ways to tackle security issues. ]

    The problem you have with this argument is that your data is already being collected, always has been, and has been available to all telcos and security agencies whenever they wanted to look at it. Mostly, they didn’t, which is why you probably didn’t realize it.

    There is zero chance of that stopping.

  34. I reckon the average voter would cop a 15 per cent GST if it comes with the cast-iron promise of significant income tax savings. They won’t love it, but the lower income tax would take a lot of the sting out of a GST hike.

    Turnbull has the ability to explain the need for all this in a way that voters will buy – especially during this Viagra-charged honeymoon period he is enjoying.

    Not sure about the striptease K17, though such a show would attract GST I guess?

  35. P1

    The problem with your argument there is the government is requiring the Telcos to hold data for lengthy periods at some cost to the business organisations.

    This means the data is stored and available to be hacked for a lot longer than the ISP or Telco etc were storing it.

  38. Will be interesting to see if the Libs DO follow though with GST changes. The ALP will have a reasonable campaign to run on this especially as the Libs are rather confused over their economics.

    They have spent much time telling everyone that we have a spending rather than revenue issue, and all the focus is now on tax and revenue? I suspect their strategic plan is to now have people focused on GST and slip in draconian spending cuts under the cover of that debate aided by a media that will focus on what the Libs want them to.

    All the ALP really needs to do is come up with viable plans to address revenue by dealing with Tax Expenditures (Negative Gearing, Super Concessions…..) and show willing to look at modest spending changes. The groundwork has already been laid for that. Then they pitch it as more fair than the Libs plans to slug everyone with a regressive GST hike and remind people that what we saw in the 2014 Budget is what the Libs actually WANT to do if they get the chance.

  39. [Question

    Thanks. If this is a kiteflying exercise, it is fairly stupid]

    Yes, at the moment division in the LNP on a range of issues kind-of helps Turnbull, by boosting his “I’m not Abbott” image… but whether it will stay that way is another matter…

    Having Sinodinos and others saying one thing, and Morrison another, is a bit confusing, on an issue where voters will be paying attention.

    Meanwhile, I still have no real idea what Turnbull’s agenda is.

  40. [I reckon the average voter would cop a 15 per cent GST if it comes with the cast-iron promise of significant income tax savings. They won’t love it, but the lower income tax would take a lot of the sting out of a GST hike.]
    And there’s the rub. We all know bracket creep eats into such savings. Besides if you are going to impose a higher GST but give a large sum of the money back in tax relief, why bother? How does that help the budget bottom line?

  41. [ I reckon the average voter would cop a 15 per cent GST if it comes with the cast-iron promise of significant income tax savings. ]

    The problem with a GST hike is that the Govt has to commit so much of it to broad “compensation” that it begs the question “why bother”? Especially as there are other measures available to address revenue that would be less politically difficult for everybody except Liberal donors.

  43. alias

    [Turnbull has the ability to explain the need for all this in a way that voters will buy – especially during this Viagra-charged honeymoon period he is enjoying.]

    Maybe he can, but there is no actual evidence of this yet, or actual evidence he even intends to raise the GST.

  44. Player One is being disingenuous about metadata. A single piece of metadata out of context does not reveal personal information, but that is not how it is used. An agency with a large amount of metadata on a person, plus the software needed to analyse it, can deduce an immense amount of personal information such as where the person works and lives, whether they have financial problems, whether they have health problems, whether they cheat on their partner, who their friends are.

  45. I think the backdown is already starting with the GST. I don’t think the LNP wants to fight a GST election.

    Howard did so but even then it was only by Senator Lees going with him on a vote and destroying the Democrat party as a result.

    The truth is to get a GST up you need all the States and Territories on board. You then have to get it past a fickle cross bench.

    Why burn political capital on something we know has very low chance of succeeding with the politics of the day.

  47. [ Why burn political capital on something we know has very low chance of succeeding with the politics of the day. ]

    guytar, as far as i can see, raising the GST has been on the Libs agenda since Abbott won in 2013. They have not, up till now been particularly competent in prosecuting the case, but i think we are now moving into a period where the heavy handed cuts to the States in the 2014 budget are really coming into play and that’s what is going to keep the issue alive.

    And now, they figure they have super salesman, oh he is so successful in business and popular so believe him Malcolm, to front the sales job.

    I dont think the Libs will go for 15% and apply to everything…yet…but they have invested enough in this so they will want to get SOME changes. One thing they will hope to gain is kudos for being able to “work with the States” and “brining people together” on this issue.

  48. guytaur

    [ The problem with your argument there is the government is requiring the Telcos to hold data for lengthy periods at some cost to the business organisations.

    This means the data is stored and available to be hacked for a lot longer than the ISP or Telco etc were storing it. ]

    Your’e being sucked in by the companies complaining about the “increased overheads”. There are none, other than additional administrative costs. Most companies would have already held the data for the necessary 2 years because they use it for their own purposes. The legislation actually requires them to hold less data than they were probably holding on to already, since the mandated “data set” is a lot less than the data they actually collect for other purposes.

  49. Guytaur

    [Why burn political capital on something we know has very low chance of succeeding with the politics of the day.]

    Certainly my view of it. Seems like a waste of time especially if it needs to end up revenue neutral, especially since “we don’t have a revenue problem”.

    It’s only benefit seems to be in putting off setting out an economic agenda. The big end of town will think “At least Mal wants to have a GST”, just like many think “At least Mal wants an ETS”.

    And you end up with neither 🙂

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