BludgerTrack: 54.2-45.8 to Coalition

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate is back for the new year with something less than a bang.

BludgerTrack is back in action following poll results last week from Roy Morgan and this week from Essential Research. The only movement it records is from the Greens to Labor, with two-party preferred all but unchanged, and a gain for the Coalition on the seat projection in Victoria balanced out by a loss in South Australia. Given the gap in the time series, the model is highly sensitive to the latest data points, so I’d await confirmation from further polling before I read anything into what little movement has been recorded. For similar reasons, I haven’t updated the leadership ratings despite there being a new result this week from Essential Research.

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.

547 comments on “BludgerTrack: 54.2-45.8 to Coalition”

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  1. Barely beaten anyone of note in the last 10 years and leaves the playing side of the game with this:

    [Hewitt asked the chair umpire Pascal Maria to get rid of the “moron” linesman, after calling him a “f***ing cheat” following a series of foot-fault calls against him.

    In a heated confrontation at a change of ends, Hewitt unloaded on the chair umpire Maria.

    “You’re a friggin’ idiot,” Hewitt said.

    “That’s why everyone in the locker room thinks you’re so full of yourself.”]

  2. This from Vic State Labor MP

    Philip Dalidakis MP
    Philip Dalidakis MP – Verified account ‏@philipdalidakis

    This cld be the ABCs most egregious, partisan & ethical issue during @mscott’s tenure. Quite damning if proven #nbn https://newmatilda.com/2016/01/21/false-balance-abc-news-boss-directed-journalist-nick-ross-to-target-alps-nbn-plan-for-insurance-against-coalition-attacks/

    False Balance: ABC Directed Journalist To Target Labor NBN Plan For “Insurance” Against Coalition…

    The is the first in a series of articles from New Matilda about Nick Ross and the ABC’s NBN coverage. In the lead up to the 2013 federal election, amid a fierce political

  3. davidWH – I don’t understand. We have a transcript of a recording where he is told he cannot criticise something of the Liberals, unless he finds/invents something to criticise about Labors plan.

    How can you possibly justify that? Balance, is not criticising all things regardless of how good they are. It is criticising bad things despite how is repspinsible for them.

    Honestly, you can’t just say you don’t think it is an issue. Explain why you think this behaviour is justifiable.

  4. Victoria@346,

    I also noted the change in the ABC news bulletins to every one leading with “The opposition says…” around the time Nick Ross says he was gagged.

    Things have only got worse with the ascension of Turnbull, and I no longer bother listening to the ABC. Unfortunately, Fairfax has gone the same way. Given the demographic of the journos and board members of both it is not surprising, but no one should be under any illusions that either the ABC or Fairfax are independent – they are now players.

    The country is worse for it, and our internet infrastructure is now a long way behind the rest of the developed, and usually developing world.

  5. The ABC was doing ‘the opposition says’ long before 2013. If memory serves correctly it started around the time Abbott became LOTO.

  6. One for the Bludger Diary, for Canberra types and will be streamed as well.

    [Professor Graeme Orr
    Friday 5 February, 12.15pm to 1.15pm • Theatre, Parliament House
    ‘Why do we vote in school halls?’ ‘What is lost when we vote early or
    by mail, rather than on election day?’ ‘What generates the theatre of election night?’ ‘How does the parliamentary cycle set up the political seasons?’ ‘Should we allow betting on elections?’ Elections are defining events in the life of a community. Compelled to the polls,
    we may experience elections as imposts on our time. Or we may experience them as the coming together of the political community.Understanding elections as a set of staged rituals means thinking about how they are run at a social and human level. It takes us beyond traditional thinking about managing the integrity of elections as a power game, or pretending that every individual vote makes a
    difference.

    Graeme Orr is a Professor of Law at the University of Queensland, with special interests in the
    regulation of democracy, language/symbols and their relationship with law, and labour law. He
    particularly researches and commentates on how political parties and electoral democracy are
    shaped by law. This public lecture draws on his recent book, Ritual and Rhythm in Electoral
    Systems (Ashgate, 2015). Graeme is also the author of The Law of Politics (Federation Press,
    2010), outgoing International Editor of the Election Law Journal and a Fellow of the Australian
    Academy of Law.

    Admission free – bookings not required, can’t make the lecture, watch it live at http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/Lectures
    Enquiries: Senate Procedure Office, telephone 02 6277 3074 or email research.sen@aph.gov.au]

  7. [I think the Ross story is a big beat-up and that is why it’s dead in the water as a story.]

    Yeah mark me down as surprised. Least Steelydan admitted that the word where you use ‘think’ should be ‘believe regardless of what facts are presented’.

    [No I’m posting for me. I think with Ross we are seeing a touch of the person spitting the dummy because he couldn’t get his own way.]

    There is a tiny aspect of this that is true. As a journalist he certainly didn’t like being told to make up a bad story about labor, because that is just bad dishonest journalism worthy of the very worst of the Murdoch publications (clearly something the ABC has embraced, at least in relation to Labor). As a tech journo he probably cared about the NBN, and having done a well research, proper piece of journalism which was only negative to the Liberal plan, because on all the facts the liberal plan was just rubbish. This has played out to show he was not only professional but he was right.

    But it will play out on beliefs and people who just can’t accept facts rather than on the facts because it seems as a society we don’t do facts any more.

    I may be wrong but we need to see much more than what Ross has released to date.
    ]

  8. So, first we have a debt and deficit disaster; then the Libs double our national debt; now ScoMo thinks we should all have tax cuts. Does that all sound incoherent to anyone?
    The only think the Labor Party ever has in its favour its the stupidity of its enemies.

  9. You know what bugs me the most about Reality TV politics stars like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin?

    That without the fierce abasement of their many political missteps and malodorous verbal outpourings by the mass media (better to say that than mainstream media these days because it is just a tributary along with all the rest, albeit one with a lot of backwaters feeding into it), they become political zombies forever feasting on the electorate’s brains, continually debasing politics and democracy and never being able to be killed, politically-speaking. Thus they gain strength from not being wiped off the face of the political earth and are able, via their being able to jack into the media easily and at will, to keep their show going and seemingly immune from valid, rational criticism. Which they also feed off, like a zombie feeds off brains.

  10. bemused,
    I have plenty of patience, but no tolerance for faulty products, especially when I have given my hard-earned to the service for an expected, basic standard of service.

    I also realise that problems need the time for a solution to be crafted, so I am patient.

  11. @ C@tmomma #10

    “Anyway, isn’t there a computer program that automatically calculates pay? So what’s so hard and complex?”

    Clearly you’ve never been involved in running a payroll. I’m an accountant and have worked in management / financial accounting for nearly 15 years and have spent much of that time working with payroll systems and, more recently, being responsible for payroll.

    Payment of penalty rates, shift loadings, allowances and uplifts gets complicated because of the award/contract interpretations involved and the very short timeframes in which you have to calculate the payroll.

    A computer system does some of the work, but certainly not all of it. When you add in the debacle of HR involvement, things can really get hard.

    A few years back I was responsible for running a 500 person multi currency payroll out of New Caledonia. HR promised everyone (contractually) that they’d be paid a guaranteed amount of money, plus a few other things that nobody who knew anything about running payroll would commit to, before considering that the payroll structure that they had committed Finance to implementing had 17 variables between the net payment and the gross payroll calculation (which we were legally obliged to do), some of which were interdependent. We had 2 working days to turn that around.

    What’s so hard about payroll hey?

  12. [So, first we have a debt and deficit disaster; then the Libs double our national debt; now ScoMo thinks we should all have tax cuts. Does that all sound incoherent to anyone?
    The only think the Labor Party ever has in its favour its the stupidity of its enemies.]

    Yeah but it is good now we know the ABC can be expected to do a story on both how the tax cuts are good and the tax cuts are bad, and we will just have to guess which is the real story and which is the made up one.

    I must confess that unlike David and others it wasn’t the explosive tape that made the biggest impact (perhaps because it seemed to me more likely than not that he had something like that when he started tweeting) but the ABC’s and Emma Alberici reply that surprises me. Oh and the idiot executive who decided to just totally lie, he should just be sacked immediately.

    [“There was no specific publication date in mind. It was conceived after the Lateline debate I’d hosted the week before between Malcolm Turnbull and Anthony Albanese – see here.”

    Ms Alberici stated she was not pressured at all about her reporting on the NBN, and that there was “no substance” to the claim she had also been “gagged”.
    ]

    Besides the impossible to believe claim that Alberici cared so little about her journalism that she was happy to have it land in the dead time of Abbott’s victory it is interesting how she reacted to Ross at the time and how she reacted yesterday.

    As such a wonderful and well researched journalist it seems she went into the Turnbull / Albo interview on the NBN without actually bothering to read the well researched published within the editorial guidelines ABC work on the NBN. It is remarkable she’d go into such an interview so deliberately misinformed.

    Then she wants it to be very clear that she was in no way influenced or informed by the ABC’s own editor of technology in preparing a technology article. Ross was clearly on the burn list at the ABC, even though he’d done nothing wrong nothing against the guidelines.

    Very telling that clowns with their head in the sand are still going with Ross being a guilty bad egg …

  13. [Stephanie Anderson ‏@stephanieando · 4m4 minutes ago
    Tony Abbott’s office has confirmed he was sounded out about becoming High Commissioner to London, but knocked back the offer #auspol]

    He’d rather stay and wreak vengeance.

  14. All major media outlets carry reports about ‘allegations’ as well as rumour, gossip and opinion.

    Thats even before unattributed or possibly made up ‘comment’ is thrown in by the low life end and other parts of the MSM.

    In this instance Nick Ross is said to have taped conversations and other supporting material.

    Looks to me as if the ABC or Fairfax would run such a story in the vast majority of instances. The murdoch media would certainly carry it if could be used to damage Labor.

    The MSM are always crying out for content and make a series of daily ‘decisions’ on what to cover and not cover and what ‘approach’ they will take (straight bat or otherwise etc etc).

    Whether consciously or not (I’m being kind here) clearly there are also issues about who they might or might not upset – major advertisers, major income generators, politicians etc.

    Sometimes MSM proceed anyway (eg hockey) other times not.

    But we do know at the time in question the ABC was coping a major barrage from the tories about alleged ‘bais’ and the ABC were cowing. The ABC’s budget was slashed anyway when abbott gained power.

    Attacks from abbott in particular seemed to have the effect he wanted – the ABC appeared to tone down anything the tories might see as criticism. There will be differing opinion on what I’ve said about this of course.

    But to not even report serious allegations about the National Broadcaster allegedly nobbling negative reports concerning one side of politics about important strategic National infrastructure in the run up to a National election is another thing altogether.

    If the positions were reversed and the ABC/ Fairfax were reporting a major similar issue they would be screaming the allegations on high frequency repeat and demanding the supporting data be responded to.

    They lose credibility by keeping silent.

  15. [The ABC was doing ‘the opposition says’ long before 2013. If memory serves correctly it started around the time Abbott became LOTO.]

    You’d have to be an idiot to not even be asking questions of the 14th floor and why a manager (who now has no credibility and makes a good target for the ABC to sack as a sacrificial lamb, but I think they are going to Abbott it out) felt under incredible pressure for having published an accurate journalistic article.

  16. [But we do know at the time in question the ABC was coping a major barrage from the tories about alleged ‘bais’ and the ABC were cowing. The ABC’s budget was slashed anyway when abbott gained power.]

    Ahh but you are using facts, just ask David and he’ll explain what you should believe.

  17. [Barry Tucker ‏@btckr · 8m8 minutes ago
    But then, suspected RW journo James A. Carleton is moving from RN Brekkie to produce ABC’s Media Watch this year. ]

    So, a right wing producer for Media Watch? This might be an interesting battle (although I got bored with MW last year).

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  18. The lack of reporting on this story shows exactly why Conroy was right to want to regulate the media.

    Commercial interest is overriding public interest in publications not reporting this important political story.

    This is a blow to the freedom of our democracy as voters are denied facts to make decisions on.

  19. William – the website is even more troublesome this morning.

    Refresh is going back to comment 184 most of the time.

    When already logged in and attempting to post ‘a you must be logged on’ message comes up.

    ‘You are posting too quickly’ continues to appear – even when its your first post in hours etc.

    A simple refresh of the page can take multiple attempts for it to happen.

    Major problem with stability of the site and traffic ‘looks’ light.

    Could you please pass this on.

  20. Socrates at 321

    “Many will protest but will anyone stop it? Sanctions? The remaining area of Palestine will soon be unviable to support its population, since the Israelis are systematically annexing all the best farmland in a very dry region. No end in sight for mid east wars any time soon.”

    Isreal was never serious about peace but they have rarely been less serious than they are now. As Isreal holds all the power, peace can only occur when they genuinely decide it is time. Accordingly, there will be many more deaths though most will continue to be Palestinians.

  21. Menadue

    https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/turnbulls-media-censorship-and-his-nbn-mess,8600

    [The NBN failure is a major set-back. That is a major story in itself.

    But the failure of the media to professionally report on the issue is also a major story in itself. A compliant media pulled out all the stops concerning pink batts and the school building program under the Labor Governments. But the problems with those programs were minor compared with the NBN mess which is now upon us.

    The media prefers to turn a blind eye to what is happening with our most important infrastructure project.]

  22. Lizzie – at least six and I am lucky to be in right now before it goes back to 184.

    Not worth my time and effort for the time being so y’all have fun y’hear.

  23. @ Zoomster #21
    “My husband plays indoor soccer regularly with a bunch of professional types, most of whom run their own businesses. He has asked them whether they calculate the cost of their workers on a daily rate, a weekly rate or a yearly rate, when they’re determining their profits.

    Noone works on anything other than an annual rate.

    It’s standard practice. You sit down, work out the costs you’re going to incur for the year, and then work out what you need to be turning over and how much you need to be charging to cover those costs and make a profit.”

    As someone with years of experience in management accounting I respectfully suggest you’ve oversimplified the issue of labour costing. Calculating labour costing when your trading conditions are stable works fine (say in an office or a construction site), however it is very poor business planning in a restaurant where you face very different business conditions based on the day and time (say Monday morning vs Sunday afternoon).

    In hospitality where you are far busier on Sunday afternoon than Monday afternoon I’d most definitely want to know the Total Cost of Employment (TCE) per hour based on single time, time and a half, double time, triple time etc, plus the impact of any allowances that I had to pay on TCE.

    Knowing the TCE allows you to do your situation analysis based on turnover (any well run hospitality business has a breakdown of revenue per hour) allowing you to determine whether it is profitable to open on Monday afternoon, Sunday afternoon etc.

    But as you and others have gone on to comment, many business owners plan their businesses very poorly and are in desperate need of some management accounting skills. I’d suggest most small businesses structure their businesses based on guess work (which only ever ends in disaster) and if they can’t handle the relatively straightforward matter of payroll costing which is a variable cost, they are in real trouble when it comes to the more complex matter of step costs and overhead allocation.

  24. NickRossTech: @Matt_Ros @btckr @ABCmediawatch Thanks. But I’ve already been through it and still feel the repercussions. Liberating defending myself.

  25. Victoria @ 346

    [I remember when Abbott was OL. Every radio and tv report on the ABC started with the words the opposition says. Now it is the govt says. Funny that.]

    And that is exactly what happened. I remember noting it at the time because it was so bizarre. What’s more, often the first I heard of a Government announcement on the ABC (and to a lesser extent in other areas of the MSM) was when they reported Abbott’s response. For example, ‘the Opposition has condemned the Government’s failure to support small business’ was often how I found out that the Government had announced a small business measure (that the Opposition looked to pick holes in).

  26. COBrienBris: Internet speeds in the far west to improve with 600k of fibre optic cable. Stonehenge-Jundah-Windorah-Birdsville-Bedourie. @abcnews #qldpol

    Wow an ABC report on Fibre Optic cable. Nick Ross having an effect?

  27. guytaur

    Hasn’t improved at all – 10 refreshes and loses my post.

    It hasn’t been ‘right’ since the Day of the Great Improvements, which was when the ‘posting too quickly’ messages started.

    Could someone perhaps just press ‘Undo’? 😉

  28. [Tony Abbott’s office has confirmed he was sounded out about becoming High Commissioner to London, but knocked back the offer #auspol]

    If it was good enough for Stanley Melbourne Bruce, who does this Billy McMahon wannabe think he is?

  29. grimace @ 385

    [I’d suggest most small businesses structure their businesses based on guess work (which only ever ends in disaster)]

    And not just small businesses. I understand that Masters was set up by Woolworths using a similar methodology.

  30. lizzie

    Yeah I posted that and it reverted back to the bad service.

    I agree while it is being fixed they should just revert to previous incarnation.

    TPOF

    It does seem that way. However it does acknowledge Labor argument that Optic Fibre is superior.

  31. K17 @ 380

    The only serious contribution that Mark Latham has ever made to Australia was to lose the 2004 election so badly that Howard got control of the Senate and sufficient hubris to enact WorkChoices, which was the biggest single factor in his losing the 2007 election.

    Rosie Batty, on the other hand, is an extraordinary person who has done an extraordinary amount to bring an issue that had bedevilled the nation for years to serious political and official (i.e., police) attention.

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/rosie-batty-reveals-the-selfdoubt-grief-and-strength-she-found-as-australian-of-the-year-20160120-gm9wso.html

  32. MTBW

    [James A Carleton is the son of the late Richard Carleton I am not sure he would be of the Right.]

    Richard Carleton was the Tony Jones of his generation. Headline hunter and gotcha provocateur extraordinaire.

    That said, the children of people do not always carry on their political views or preferences. Quite often their formative experiences have been very different from those of their parents (often much more comfortable and indulgent) and they can be more in tune with the right wing mentality of pretending we all have freedom and opportunity while ignoring the incredible head start that some have and their continued benefits through parental support and school and social networks.

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