Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

Essential Research records no change on two-party preferred, indifference as to the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and very strong support for a royal commission into banking.

This week’s reading of the Essential Research fortnightly average finds the Coalition down a point on the primary vote to 39%, with Labor, Greens and Nick Xenophon Team steady at 37%, 10% and 4%, but two-party preferred is unchanged at 52-48 in favour of Labor. Other questions record 71% saying they gave their name and address when filling out the census, 6% saying they did not do so, and 23% saying they did not fill out the census, although one wonders if the sample might be skewed towards the sort of person who doesn’t mind filling out surveys of one kind or another. Also: 32% support the re-establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and 18% with 28% opting for neither, after a question which sought to explain the situation to respondents; 35% rate the issue important, and 40% not important; and 64% supporting a royal commission into banking versus only 13% opposed.

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.

3,126 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  1. confessions @ #2899 Monday, August 22, 2016 at 10:00 pm

    Who’s idea was it to bring a Brit person onto Qanda to argue against legislative attempts to enable indigenous people and other minorities from making accusations of racism?
    Colonialist much?

    Brendon thingo is another loud mouth who promotes free speech because he can talk over everyone. Another Rowan Dean.

  3. From control command space, a cool sunglasses emoji:
    The above may be blank.
    Now paste from a wp:

    The above may also be blank. Both appear on Musrum’s preview but.

  4. Player One

    Nothing in your post contradicts what ABS is saying.

    Firstly, it IS only the 22nd of August. It’s a bit meaningless to try and compare the final number received in 2011 with the present one, given that there is two weeks to go.

    Secondly, in previous censuses, the ABS had field officers out on the ground a week earlier. I’m constantly coming across people who still have their census papers – some have completed it, and then forgotten about it, others thought they were being collected – and hand them straight over. So the knock on the door definitely makes a difference.

    And, of course, anyone who had a hiccup with the census – their form was destroyed (we’ve had a lot of wind and rain here, and a lot were water damaged), they’ve lost it, their English failed them – have waited until that knock on the door (in many cases) to sort it out.

    If the ABS is lying about the returns exceeding expectations, that is an extremely serious matter. It is a grave charge to level at a public department. Rather than taking that risk, I can’t see why the ABS wouldn’t simply say that the hiccups with the website has meant a delay in papers being returned. If they’re not saying that, then it’s at least worth considering that they might be telling the truth.

  7. nina661 @ #2897 Monday, August 22, 2016 at 9:58 pm

    KayJay – Poll Bludgers resident boulevardier, my love heart hides among the emojis within my iPhone and iPad…

    How in the name of providence have I been promoted from silly old b***ard to clotheared bint and now, and now to bouevardier? From a Jack to a King. Will the sun shine bright tonight in the middle of the darkness? A little secret, my FD really like the emoji. We exchange g’day messages composed mostly of emoji. The senior favourite daughter looks down on the FD and presumably me as well. However I have made a will and am in constant favour. Have you heard something? Is there a plot? I need a new gravatar but cannot do so until the Marx Bros rest in peace again. ❤ and 😀

  8. Zoomster

    If the ABS is lying about the returns exceeding expectations, that is an extremely serious matter. It is a grave charge to level at a public department.

    It very endearing that you still trust the ABS after David Kalisch acknowledged they had been lying to you about past censuses …

    http://www.itwire.com/open-sauce/73961-abs-head-admits-lying-about-name-retention-in-census.html

    … but perhaps you can at least understand why other people don’t?

  9. This Brendon character is very alarmist.

    It used to be that conservatives accused progressives of being alarmist, but now the so-called conservatives are the shrill hysterics while the progressives are the sensible centrist types.

  11. c@tmomma @ #2871 Monday, August 22, 2016 at 9:30 pm

    Finally, it is one thing to take the Busman’s holiday in order to get to PB on the Crikey website, but quite another order of magnitude again to attempt to find a solution to a problem of access to the Sydney Morning Herald website, where you try to pay for access to it, but it won’t let you, so you think that you may as well just read it, because it’s not letting you pay for it, but it blocks you and says you’ve read enough this month, thank you for coming!
    …So you try and pay them for access to the website, but it won’t let you and it just keeps returning you to the homepage, so you think it has given you access, so you try and read an article, but a banner pops up telling you that you have read enough free articles for this month, thank you, so you try to subscribe, but it just redirects you back to the homepage, so you try to read an article, but up pops a banner….
    …So you try to Contact someone at the SMH Help Desk. You go to their Online Chat service. You get told you are speaking to ‘Karl’. So you carry on your conversation with ‘Karl’. Karl tells you to go to the SMH Subscribe web page and re-subscribe because it seems like your payments for the SMH haven’t been taken out of your bank account recently. “This should fix it”, ‘Karl’ says/types, blithely.
    So you go to the SMH Subscribe page. And you try to subscribe. It takes you back to the Home Page….you can guess the rest.
    So you tell-type ‘Karl’ about this. ‘Karl’ says/types, “Well which browser are you using?” I go, “Firefox”. ‘Karl’ goes, “Well you’ll just have to change browsers to Google Chrome if you want to subscribe and have the website work for you!”
    !!!
    I have been using, and been quite happy with, Firefox for over 10 years now and never been inclined to contribute to Google’s world domination plans, but I was so desperate for a solution to what ailed me by this time that I did what I was told.
    Then I typed, ‘But won’t that take a while?’ So ‘Karl’ goes, “Yes but I’ll stay on the line here until you get back.”
    So I go and download Chrome and AdBlock Plus, after I see how infested with ads the SMH site has become without it. But, hey, at least it worked when I pressed ‘Subscribe’ and I got the website back up again.
    So back to ‘Karl’ I went to update them on how I went…
    *crickets*
    ‘Karl’ had decamped into the ether and left behind a note which said that the Help Desk had closed since it was after 5.30pm.
    !!!
    Little did I know that wasn’t going to be the end of it, because, lo and behold, when I went to my email account about a half an hour later, there was a friendly little email from Fairfax, asking me to rate my experience with ‘Karla’ today.
    !!!
    The whole time I had been conversing with a ‘Karla’, not ‘Karl’, and not once did they try to correct me??? Anyway, I gave them a ‘5’ and an almighty serve in their comment box. Not that anything will happen, because it never does these days when you complain about the service.
    Very ‘Brazil’ indeed!
    And that was how I spent MY Monday afternoon. : )

    C@tmomma, it is all about cookies.

    I haven’t had a ‘you can’t look at this smh article because you have reached your quota’ for years.

    Just set your browser to not allow cookies, or to erase your cookies when you shut down, or something similar. Or tell it to specifically not set cookies for the smh site.

    Same goes for lots of things which rely on cookies.

    You can only get half an hour of free, very very fast internet access at major French railway stations – unless you tell your browser to delete your cookies for the last 24 hours or whatever.

    Various sites tell you that you should enable cookies for the best browser experience, when they realise that you have turned cookies off. You ignore that, who gives a damn, and soldier on.

  12. Fess – No idea if he appears outside Spiked. He was on Qanda a number of years ago. I ignore him if I see him pop up.

  13. [Bemused
    Monday, August 22, 2016 at 8:31 pm
    Interesting Australian Story tonight on ‘Little Patty’.
    Learnt a lot about her including close friendship with Gough Whitlam and the strength of her continuing support for the ALP.]

    Did they play the Labor theme song for the 1972 election “It’s Time”? Little Patty was not lead singer but was involved. It’s on YouTube and worth seeing.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjZAxeyztK0

  14. Re the CFA-UFU contretemps.

    Cash might have given a bad interview and Turnbull might have made a mistake in jumping in.

    But there’s a genuine problem here for the Andrews Government: after all, the relevant Victorian Minister resigned a few months back.

    BTW, some posters a while back were claiming that the term “militant union” was a slur from the RW press. But the distinction between “militant” unions (eg, the CFMEU, ETU and MUA) and “moderates” (eg, the AWU) is one that unionists often make themselves. In the past, I have heard members of the ETU and MUA proudly refer to themselves as “militants”.

    Having said that, I don’t know if the UFU is/isn’t a militant union. Although I think I read that there are close ties to the CFMEU?

  15. Well, going by those reports, Player, I should trust Kalisch more than past Heads of the Bureau – he came out and told the public what had been happening before he took over, in the interests (he says) of transparency.

  16. Re ABS trumpeting their unexpected success rate in the return of paper forms. When I did the last one, we had all the forms collated, accounted for and basically signed off to the supervisor of the “region” by this time. They must have lowered their expectations this time or they are spinning like a top.

  17. zoomster @ #2915 Monday, August 22, 2016 at 10:21 pm

    Well, going by those reports, Player, I should trust Kalisch more than past Heads of the Bureau – he came out and told the public what had been happening before he took over, in the interests (he says) of transparency.

    No, he only owned up because he was planning to do something much worse – i.e. retain your names and addresses indefinitely. Of course, the backlash against that was so strong that he later reduced it to 4 years – after your data had been permanently linked anyway, of course.

    But by all means keep trying to defend the indefensible. I’m fascinated wondering what you will come up with next.

  18. citizen @ #2913 Monday, August 22, 2016 at 10:19 pm

    Bemused
    Monday, August 22, 2016 at 8:31 pm
    Interesting Australian Story tonight on ‘Little Patty’.
    Learnt a lot about her including close friendship with Gough Whitlam and the strength of her continuing support for the ALP.

    Did they play the Labor theme song for the 1972 election “It’s Time”? Little Patty was not lead singer but was involved. It’s on YouTube and worth seeing.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjZAxeyztK0

    Yes, they sure did.
    Revised my opinion of her.
    I thought she was just another entertainer who got drawn in to the excitement of the moment, but she has a real long term commitment to Labor and turned down invitations to stand for the ALP.
    The long term friendship with Gough was quite a surprise too.

  19. ‘Fess,
    Let me guess, he regularly appears in The Australian. I’ve never heard of him before.
    If I remember correctly, Brendan O’Neill is also the editor of the British Spectator. Just another professional Conservative outrage machine on (hind) legs.

  20. Don,
    Alas, I have to have cookies enabled because I am a Nielsen Net Ratings panel member. : (

    It does allow me to rack up enough money to get a free present each year though. : )

    So I have to pay for the SMH. : |

  22. Bemused,
    I was at the NSW State Conference the day Little Patty received her Life Membership. She got into Labor through the MEAA.

  24. allan moyes @ #2916 Monday, August 22, 2016 at 10:25 pm

    Re ABS trumpeting their unexpected success rate in the return of paper forms. When I did the last one, we had all the forms collated, accounted for and basically signed off to the supervisor of the “region” by this time. They must have lowered their expectations this time or they are spinning like a top.

    Yes, this is what I have heard from others, and it also accords with the dates I found online. I don’t know why the ABS extended the time frame by so long for this census, except that they must have been anticipating trouble. That is why I think that even though they are far behind the last census, they can still say they are ahead of their “expectations”.

    This kind of deliberately misleading and even borderline lying from the ABS only reinforces why we should no longer believe a word they say.

  25. c@tmomma @ #2920 Monday, August 22, 2016 at 10:29 pm

    Don,
    Alas, I have to have cookies enabled because I am a Nielsen Net Ratings panel member. : (
    It does allow me to rack up enough money to get a free present each year though. : )
    So I have to pay for the SMH. : |

    I live my life by the moral code:

    ‘Take what you want and pay for it’

    Since you have decided to take that course, you must pay for it!

  28. This weekend I played sport with my boys and ran with them around the local oval, without having a heart attack or requiring assisted removal. This exceeded my expectations…

    This merely indicated that I had a reasonable expectation of failure.

  29. Player 1
    You’d have thought that the time frame could have been shortened, given their expectation and desire that most households would do it on-line. Surely that was the point of sending out so many pin codes. I think it is spin extraordinaire.

  32. allan moyes @ #2929 Monday, August 22, 2016 at 10:38 pm

    Player 1
    You’d have thought that the time frame could have been shortened, given their expectation and desire that most households would do it on-line. Surely that was the point of sending out so many pin codes. I think it is spin extraordinaire.

    Me too. Their press releases are too clever by half.

  34. simon katich @ #2826 Monday, August 22, 2016 at 8:21 pm

    Barney, I was in Aceh about a year after the Tsunami.
    Toba was nice but hiking in Gunnung Leuser NP looking for Orangutans, finding tiger prints (I think) and resting sore limbs in hot springs next to a billion butterflies was the highlight. And the lowlight too – hearing chainsaws in the distance.
    Didnt get time to go south.

    Sorry, just got back from work.
    I was a few years after.
    I planned on going up to Ache but like you ran out of Visa time.
    The south was fantastic mainly small towns and as I said great people.
    Bengkulu was interesting, it’s the town the British swapped with the Dutch for Malacca.
    I also got to see some flowering Rafflesia Arnoldii whilst doing some trekking around Bukit Tingi.
    But Sumatra’s huge, (north-south) and travel is very slow. It’s the only time I’ve crossed the Equator on land.

  35. Allan

    Well, I’m operating on the timeline I was signed up for in April, and we haven’t finished the first round of visits yet.

    I thought they might adjust it, given the website problems, but they haven’t.

  39. That said, the on ground support staff are pretty good in Armidale, or in my section of it.

    We got back from our botanical trip south, during which we filled in the census on the night at a motel, to find a form on our home doorknob.

    I threw it into the garbage, but on Saturday a lady showed up asking about it, I told her we had filled it in at a motel down in Vic, and she was fine with that. Quite professional and common sense attitude, I was impressed.

  40. [Steve777
    Monday, August 22, 2016 at 10:35 pm
    C@t: most SMH comment and big stories are in the Canberra Times.]

    It seems the Federal political articles and much other content are the same across all Fairfax capital city mastheads, although the headlines sometimes vary. In fact, the main differences seem to be local state news. Fairfax now seems to be getting by with a minimal number of reporters across the country.

  42. I was sitting here quietly playing Spider Solitaire when I heard a huge shrieking from outside. Galloped out in my stockinged feet to see a fox with my precious goose in its mouth. Goose rescued, appears to have only suffered injuries to her dignity, but my heart is still pounding…

  43. Hi Zoomster
    It’s obviously changed and fair enough, although I do wonder why it has to be so protracted. In fact, last time our supervisor actually curtailed our collection period by a couple of days. I don’t know if this was a general thing or the region of which I was part were quicker (and luckier) than most. We still achieved a 97% success rate.

  45. Meher Baba
    Monday, August 22, 2016 at 10:20 pm
    But there’s a genuine problem here for the Andrews Government

    And that problem is?

  47. To clarify, that is 97% responded either on-line or on paper. The other 3% of dwellings were accounted for in one way or another, e.g. vacant premises etc.

  48. Confessions
    Monday, August 22, 2016 at 9:16 pm
    Just for the record ..Michaelia Cash did NOT say: “..the current EBA negotiations are the CFA’s equivalent of Ash Wednesday”

    “Oh please. She may have been quoting a CFA volunteer but she did so in an attempt to sidle up to him and use his own words to make her political point. She may as well have said the words, with tears glistening in her eyes.

    Liberals do this all the time. Find some ‘everyman’ to cuddle up to, a person who represents The Real Australia whom they can exploit for their own political agenda.”

    I agree 100% with what you say ..I was merely correcting the record. Cash’s use of the alleged Don quote ..and I don’t necessarily believe Don (if he’s real) even said it ..was to engender a wholly false view that she cares a jot about CFA vollies..

    ..of course, she doesn’t. The interview was no more than a very poorly executed attempt to demonise the UFU & Dan Andrews. A cynical political stunt which is all this Govt seems capable of doing ..very poorly!!

  49. If the ABS was expecting more people to do the census online then the number of paper forms returned would be higher that expected.

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