BludgerTrack: 53.1-46.9 to Coalition

A dip in support for the Coalition recorded by Morgan makes its presence felt in the latest weekly poll aggregate reading, although the Coalition is still projected as on track to retain its thumping majority from 2013.

A fairly pronounced narrowing in the Coalition’s lead may now be observed on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate charts, thanks mostly to an unusually soft result for the Turnbull government in this week’s Morgan result. This shows up as a 0.6% move to Labor on two-party preferred since last week, but it’s only made a slight difference on the seat projection, which credits the Coalition with a net gain of one seat since the 2013 election despite a 0.4% lower two-party vote. The aggregate also records a lift in support for the Greens, who had had some of the wind taken out of their sails when Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister. The addition of new figures from Essential Research to the leadership ratings results in essentially no change to an overall picture of Turnbull enjoying massive but nonetheless slightly reduced leads over Bill Shorten on both net approval and preferred prime minister.

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.

1,097 thoughts on “BludgerTrack: 53.1-46.9 to Coalition”

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  4. Just catching up and the two things that stood out for me today were

    1. Stuart Robert is now officially on the skids (we all knew Mal would wait until Parliament’s week had finished, didn’t we.

    2. Barnaby protesting wtte ‘would someone tell me what this bloke has done wrong, because I can’t see it’.

    If he understands so little about correct behaviour for a Minister (and I believe it on his past performance) he should never, never be in the position of possibly leading the country if Mal’s away/sick. Standards, and all that. I mean, someone who is PM should know the difference between right and wrong behaviour without having to consult a bureaucrat, shouldn’t they, Mal. Mal? Tony? Oh, shit.

  5. lizzie

    What is even more disturbing to me re Barnaby Joyce is why it is okay for a person in his position to be given a pass. I could not imagine either Shorten or Plibersek getting any leeway whatsoever.

  7. Good afternoon all,

    The release of the GST modelling is, I believe, a sign of the tension between Turnbull and Morrison.

    Turnbull wants the GST issue to be gone but Morrison is still a champion for tax cuts paid for by a GDT rise.

    So Turnbull has released this modelling to shut Morrison up.

    Shows how little power Turnbull had when he had to resort to leaking of Treadury modelling to ensure his Ministers lock on behind him.

    It will be interesting to see what Morrison does now given the undermining of his GST push and the Robert decision.

    He has already been quick,out of the blocks leaking that he had supported Robert so Morrison is not a happy man.

    More to come I think with Turnbull having to watch his back for both Abbott and now Morrison.

    My take on things anyway.

    Cheers.

  8. Good to see the Treasury modelling. The modelling methodology makes sense, but to say the assumptions fed into the model are questionable is an understatement.

    The key assumption is that the tax cuts to prevent average income tax takes increasing will come exclusively from government spending on goods, services and subsidies to health, education, etc. And not at all from welfare/social security payments.

    And there is a further assumption that each $1 of government expenditure “crowds out” 70 cents of private expenditure. That’s BS pure and simple when applied to the current mix of Commonwealth expenditure. Do payments to the States for schools and hospital care, pharmaceutical benefits, defence spending, scientific research funding, infrastructure spending, direct subsidies to schools and unis truly crowd out private investment in these areas at a rate of $0.7? I don’t think even Milton Friedman would have argued this.

    And that list encompasses the bulk of non-welfare expenditure.

  9. This was linked earlier, but I think it’s important.

    When I requested a copy of my police files from the Australian federal police I had no idea how far they would show the government had gone to track down my confidential sources for reporting on Australia’s asylum seeker policies.

    Sitting on my desk now are more than 200 pages of heavily redacted police files. Every journalist, in fact every Australian, has a right under the country’s privacy law to access personal information held on them by government agencies.

    The files are made up of operational centre meeting minutes, file notes, interview records and a plan for an investigation the AFP undertook into one of my stories. Most concerning is what appears to be a list of suspects the AFP drew up, along with possible offences they believe they may have committed.

    The documents show that during the course of an investigation into my sources for a story I had written, an AFP officer logged more than 800 electronic updates on the investigation file.

    It’s a mosaic in document form of state surveillance of journalists by police. The files give an insight into the fragile state of journalism in Australia and the ease with which the police choose to take up these investigations because of poorly defined laws.

    http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/12/the-afp-and-me-how-one-of-my-asylum-stories-sparked-a-200-page-police-investigation?CMP=soc_568

  13. From lizzie at 1054

    Barnaby protesting wtte ‘would someone tell me what this bloke has done wrong, because I can’t see it’.

    If he understands so little about correct behaviour for a Minister (and I believe it on his past performance) he should never, never be in the position of possibly leading

    Absolutely.
    He has clearly and loudly disqualified himself from any position of authority within government and should relinquish his present positions immediately – or be forced to if he doesn’t do so voluntarily whilst shamefacedly admitting he’s unfit for office.

    The media should have a field day with it, before and after.
    They won’t.

  15. One interesting fact about the “fake” rolex watches that Abbott Roberts et al received is that they were all prepared to wear them on the understanding that they were fake.

    Abbott gave one to Marg to wear on the understanding that it was a fake.

    As PM, Industry minister and minister for whatever, they still continued to wear them on the understanding that they were fake counterfeit goods.

    This whilst trade agreements are being negotiated with various countries including the TPP.

    What did Abbott and the other ministers do at these meetings. Show their “fake” rolex to their overseas counterparts during the visits.

    Hey, you like my rolex, looks good huh, but its not real, fake, a knock off you know, huh ha huh.

    They certainly did do this before, that is how they found out they weren’t fakes when showing it to someone who had a real rolex.

    Course if I bought a fake rolex in Thailand and started showing it off to my mates here I’d be done quick smart.

    And what does it say to our trading partners on how Australia handles counterfeit goods.

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/10/liberals-took-rolex-and-other-designer-watches-assuming-they-were-were-fake

  16. Actually a read of the story does make the fake watch story a little believable.

    After all if they are handed out in a plastic bag you might assume they were fake and ALSO it would seem McFarlane valued his as between $300-$500. In other words it was a very nice gift – not a paper souuvenir or a tea towel, certainly declarable but not a $40,000 sort of gift.

    However I suspect that SOME of them knew they were not fake. probably not McFarlane and Abbott.

  19. DTT – They knew they were real watches. But Macfarlane eventually realised they wouldn’t get away with it, panicked and invented a cover story.

  26. And what does it say to our trading partners on how Australia handles counterfeit goods.

    It says “Australia is open for business” as Abbott loved to say.

    Obviously the rush of blood at receiving a luxury gift was too much for the greedy Libs. I’m guessing that a tip off from a New Ltd journalist is why the watches were returned.

    You’ve got to wonder what material Murdoch’s mob must have on the Libs that we never get to hear about. I bet that the stuff that incriminates Labor people is released within an election cycle with some held over for an election campaign to cause max effect. I bet plenty of damaging Lib material never gets to see the light of day as it doesn’t suit the editor’s brief.

  27. Most likely these geese were guilty of wilful (Nelsonian) blindeness. They strongly suspected they were real but thought that if they didn’t ask and didn’t check they were OK,>

  28. QUESTION – Slowly burying the last stuffup!

    A whopping 6 point shift! It won’t be long until #alltalk has his own #libspill 🙂

  30. it is more than a little ridiculous

    abc730 – Verified account ‏@abc730
    Will new @The_Nationals Deputy @SenatorNash make a difference? The so-called ‘Barnaby Whisperer’ joins #abc730 to talk about her new role.
    9:47 PM – 11 Feb 2016
    4 RETWEETS1 LIKE

    Reply to @abc730
    Replies
    BF
    1h1 hour ago
    BF ‏@FavellB
    @abc730 @The_Nationals @SenatorNash why should we accept irrational men in power, who need 2b calmed by a woman? that is actually ridiculous

  34. QUESTION: I thought you did a calculation which indicated they probably put 19 instead of 29 by mistake. Certainly, Doyley pointed out a problem. As I said, I reckon they’re slowly ironing out the problem in two jumps.

  35. Bw – I needed help alright. Deliberately ignorant of Paris.

    Been there heaps of times but have never taken to it. It’s an OK transit point on the way to Menton and that’s about all.

  37. According to Oakes Bill Shorten will announce a policy to only allow negative gearing on new property. Also to cut the CGT discount to 25% on investor property.

  38. MacFarlane didn’t put a value on his watch – just stated he had been given a watch as a gift (see the gift register). Sorry, I don’t believe they didn’t know the true value of the watches one little bit. Nor do I believe that they were in a plastic bag. If they were in a bag, it was made of brown paper and it was handed to them under a table.

    Tom

  41. The 81-19 PPM in the previous ReachTEL should be ignored. It looks like it was a calculation error and there has been no comment addressing the issues raised with it.

  43. Martin Parkinson concluded that Robert had “acted inconsistently” with the code of ministerial conduct, but accepted the breach was unintended, did not involve Robert receiving financial benefit and did not directly relate to his ministerial duties.

    That was the narrow, clinical judgment from a senior public servant. The political judgment was whether Robert’s transgression was a sackable offence – and Turnbull confronted a mountain of evidence this week that it was.

    That Robert believed he was acting in a private capacity when he met a Chinese minister and attended a signing ceremony in China in 2014 was beside the point. Naivety, of itself, is not punishable by removal.

    …The damage of this affair has not been the loss of a junior minister with a subterranean profile (yes, another one), but the tensions and contradictions inside the government that have been exposed.

    What was Barnaby Joyce thinking when, having just been voted in as National Party leader, he defied anyone to tell him what Robert had done wrong on Friday morning?

    While Turnbull had no option but to act decisively, he faces three dangers over the short and medium term. The first is that he will have no choice but to sack future transgressors, having made plain that those who stuff up do not get a second chance.

    The second is how he manages the tensions within the government that appear to be multi-faceted and are very likely to become entrenched.

    The third is a deputy prime minister who doesn’t appear to understand the practicalities of power.

    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/the-dangers-exposed-by-the-sacking-of-robert-20160212-gmsv0c.html

  44. K17, what I did was add up all the party breakdowns. They have a bit where the leadership ratings are shown for voters of each party.

    They only do this for LNP, GRN, and ALP, but those alone added up to 25+. Then I figured out what the OTH was in the previous poll (by subtracting the party totals from the headline) and added that proportionally (others had changed from 8 to 9%) to the party totals and got 29.2, exactly 1 transposed digit from 19.2.

  45. Something else up for sale?

    The Turnbull government is considering a proposal to sell Australian Hearing to a deaf children’s charity, an international hearing aid manufacturer and a university.

    The Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children are leading a consortium aiming to buy the government’s hearing services provider. Australian Hearing diagnoses and provides hearing aids to children, older and indigenous Australians and veterans.

    Chris Rehn, the Institute’s chief executive officer, said that if successful, they planned to extend Australian Hearing’s services to include cochlear implants for the severely deaf, therapy, education, and rehabilitation services.

    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/turnbull-government-considering-selling-australian-hearing-20160212-gmsy19.html

  47. Last post for the evening.

    I found Senator Nash so acid towards Labor on Q&A last Monday that I couldn’t watch it.

    Now she is Barnaby’s “whisperer”. Supposed to calm him? Oh yeah?

    This evening I see that she was in the group of MPs standing with Tony in front of the Ditch the XXXXX signs.

    Figures.

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