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”

Comments Page 62 of 63
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  1. Colton

    Cash is a travesty of something or other… perhaps humankind.

    She is intolerable, but has an ego of such size that it would not fit between the earth and the sun.

    One can only wonder how a person can acquire such a misguided view of her own talents and importance.

  2. Adrian – Crabbe and Cash. Together in the one show?
    YIKES!
    If they ever run that episode again remind me so I can re-watch Schindlers List for a bit of light relief.

  3. Colton

    I reflected on my previous post to consider if “travesty” was the correct word. So I looked it up.

    “grotesque” and “ludicrous” were 2 of the meanings …… apt enough for me.

  4. One thing I will give Michaelia Cash credit for is that she is saving the tax payer money by opting to forego her chauffeured com-car for a broomstick.

  5. Psyclaw,

    Grotesque pretty much sums her up.
    And I am not talking about her physical appearance (which would require me to dive into the thesaurus to find the appropriate words) but her nasty and ugly personality.
    A completely horrible and off-putting woman.

  6. RE: Crikey Log-in

    I am in the following habit now whenever I get an error saying I am not logged in or Musrum’s script stops working or I get taken to the subscribe page. I first click back so I am back here, then open the nearest link I can see in a new tab (right-click). I change to new tab, sign out on top right and log back in or just sign in depending on situation. I then close that tab, return to original tab, refresh and I am right back where I was before the mishap. Seems to work every time. Chrome in windows.

  7. @ Colton – how about we criticise Michaela Cash for the policies she supports, and the logic (or lack of) behind them.

    Lets not start some stupid ‘ditch the witch’ campaign. It takes away from the legitimate criticisms.

  8. The Libs are frustrated and as a result are pumping harder and harder as labor just sits back and calmly waits for the legislation. ..

    Not only the Libs. Jim Chalmers was beset upon by Michael Brissenden on AM this morning. Brissenden kept on putting Lib talking points to Chalmers, as in: “The Libs say you’re gutless. Do you have any comments on that accusation?” and so on… talking point after talking point.

    Brissenden is either stupid or (as I believe to be the case) deliberately obtuse on the matter of Labor requiring the government to actually provide the legislation before they will say they can support it. He kept on referring to this hypothetical piece of paper, which will purport to be based on what the government reckons Labor promised during the election. Chalmers very wisely said, “We’llneed to see it first.”

    But Brissenden would not take this as an answer (in my opinion, the only answer possible). He even asked Chalmers whether he “distrusted” the government. What a dill! After three years of Liberal broken promises, back-flips, lies, innuendos, leadership changes, and in-fighting, the only real news would have been if Chalmers did not trust the government. In any case Chalmers didn’t bite. He just kept repeating, “Show me the bill and then we’ll both know what we’re talking about.”

    So then Brissenden tried the “amendments” tack. Did Labor want to amend the bill? “We haven’t see it yet,” replied Chalmers slowly. “So you’re not ruling amendments out – remembering that it’s an omnibus bill?” “We haven’t seen it yet.” Round and round in circles they went.

    This is the kind of interview that obscures the debate, rather than enlightens it. Brissenden was trying to get a senior Opposition politician to comment on a figment of his political enemy’s imagination. When he woouldn’t do that he tried to drum up some controversy about “distrust” and “amendments”.

    The simplest thing to do would have been for Chalmers to walk out, but I guess he’s too seasoned a professional to do that.

    Maddening, just the same. Brissenden is hopeless.

  9. Remember me saying I want to see European rules adopted here when talking about the privacy debate?

    It seems its closer to reality than I thought.

    Australia to adopt European standard to make government IT more accessible
    The federal government is aiming to provide a greater level of inclusion and accessibility for staff and citizens, adopting an internationally aligned standard for IT services.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/australia-to-adopt-european-standard-to-make-government-it-more-accessible/

  10. Crabbe and Cash together? – I agree with you 100% Coulton. Shaving with a rusty cheese grater would be more enjoyable. talk about (sickly) sweet and (bitterly) sour.

    anyone who deliberately has a Thatcher hair do is a scary individual even before they opens their mouth, and when Cash opens her mouth is a truly horrible thing.

    Is the LNP so bereft of humans that they continue to put Cash, Pyne, and O’Dwyer in the public eye? (just as they used to let Sophie back repeatedly to Q&A when most of the nation’s skin crawled). Freedom Boy will be their next poster boy. He has a creepy pallor and manner – as well as a passionate belief that inequality, wealth and power should never be challenged – that induces the same bit-of-sick-in-the-back-of-my-throat that Pyne does.

  11. adrian @ #3050 Tuesday, August 23, 2016 at 11:22 am

    Ms Crabbe did her best to humanise the inhumane on Kitchen Cabinet (streaming on GITS iView) I am sure.
    Can’t comment on her success or otherwise as the combination of Crabbe and Cash is just about the worst combination of anything that I can imagine.

    When someone said yesterday regarding Michealia’s CFA interview how cringeworthy she was, I thought nothing could beat her performance on Kitchen Cabinet made so much more cringeworthy by Annabel Crabbe’s facial expression. Here’s are-run. Unfortunately I could not find the clip with violins.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki9Lfg1vP0A

  12. ‘Maddening, just the same. Brissenden is hopeless.’

    He is a model GITS employee. Always has been since he was on TV.
    A really useless journalist, but that is of of little importance these days.

  13. Michael Brissenden has to be the worst host of AM ever! He’s such a pantywaist with the Liberals that he feels the need to make up for it with Labor politicians. How an obviously intelligent individual can so debase himself publicly like he does, is beyond my comprehension. You’d think he would show some self-awareness and insight to see the things that are obvious to Blind Freddy and the rest of us, but no, on and on he blunders like an insensate pachyderm through a field of lavender unable to smell what is all around him.

  14. Shit Nicole, I couldn’t watch that, even without the sound.
    I thought that Annabel reserved the look of love for Mal and Scotty, but I was wrong.

  15. Boerwar @8.38a

    Exactly. Yet no one has asked MT why he didn’t confirm this before the election when he made his promise. How difficult is it for a journo to ask this simple question?

  16. kop @ #3073 Tuesday, August 23, 2016 at 12:09 pm

    Boerwar @8.38a
    Exactly. Yet no one has asked MT why he didn’t confirm this before the election when he made his promise. How difficult is it for a journo to ask this simple question?

    Ah, but Turnbull deliberately left himself some wriggle room by claiming that the plebiscite would be held “as soon as practicable after the election”. That could be anytime between July 3 2016 and the Twelfth of Never.

  17. Turnbull is about to privatise the ASIC database

    In fact this cunning plan has been going on since 2014.

    Low cost access to reliable information about businesses is critical to economic growth and one of the factors that has led to the last 150 years of economic development occurring at a far rapid rate than was previously the case.

    Instead of selling the registry as an asset they need to reduce the prices done to the cost of provision (plus a small margin) as the benefits of doing so will outweigh the effects of the revenue collected through charging higher prices on the basis of their monopoly.

    They can simply change their pricing tomorrow, and should do so.

    Whether ASIC should be responsible for capital and operational expenditure associated with running the registry is another matter entirely.

    Another “debate” poisoned by a complete lack of understanding of how national government finances actually operate.

  18. ‘Adrian – Crabbe and Cash. Together in the one show?’
    Agree. But with the addition of mud, people would pay and queue.

    Mud changes everything.

  19. Adrian

    That wasn’t adoration from Annabel, that was a noncommittal polite smile.
    Actually, I thought that at any minute Cash was going to run the line “the poor should just work harder”.

  20. c@tmomma @ #3033 Tuesday, August 23, 2016 at 10:38 am

    Sigh. This could have been Australia:
    ‘America’s First Offshore
    Wind Farm May Power
    Up a New Industry’

    BLOCK ISLAND, R.I. — The towering machines stand a few miles from shore, in a precise line across the seafloor, as rigid in the ocean breeze as sailors reporting for duty.
    The blades are locked in place for now, but sometime in October, they will be turned loose to capture the power of the wind. And then, after weeks of testing and fine-tuning, America’s first offshore wind farm will begin pumping power into the New England electric grid.
    By global standards, the Block Island Wind Farm is a tiny project, just five turbines capable of powering about 17,000 homes. Yet many people are hoping its completion, with the final blade bolted into place at the end of last week, will mark the start of a new American industry, one that could eventually make a huge contribution to reducing the nation’s climate-changing pollution.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/science/americas-first-offshore-wind-farm-may-power-up-a-new-industry.html?smid=tw-share

    Offshore wind farms are great for places where the land is already spoken for, like Rhode Island.

    They come with their own problems, though. They are hard to set up a long way out to sea, they have to be secured to the sea bed in some way, they are more subject to deterioration from salt winds, and getting the electricity to shore is expensive and tricky. Maintenance is difficult and expensive.

    If there is an onshore site, although it will have less wind, (which is a significant factor, power is related to the cube of the wind speed) it will have fewer problems with maintenance and getting the electricity to where it is wanted.

    However the windmills are definitely NIMBY, so that is a plus, they can be sited far over the horizon, and are only a significant problem to passing ships, which should have their radar turned on anyhow, and in good conditions they can be seen from many kilometres away in daylight. No doubt they have lights on them as well as further insurance against ships and low flying aircraft.

  21. psyclaw @ #3016 Tuesday, August 23, 2016 at 10:10 am

    I’m on an iMac using Chrome.
    I have no Musrum gear installed.
    Last night I shut down Chrome and this morning re-opened from History tab. It opened up already in PB, showing last night’s final page. Refreshed and all systems AOK.

    I’m on a mac desktop, when I shut down there is a box already ticked with wtte start again from where you were.

    Everything in Chrome opens up exactly where I was the previous night, no history tabs or anything needed.

  22. Don, also;
    no need for leasing land for each turbine and associated infrastructure and access
    no roads to be built
    wind modelling for individual turbine placement is much less onerous

  23. Interesting NPC today
    ABCNews24: Hugh White: We face pressure from America to align against China & we face pressure from China not to align with America against China #NPC

  24. Don,
    I’m sure an American will devise a way to eliminate the perceived problems. They are almost as inventive, and dare I say, ‘innovative’, as Australians!

  25. Had a chat with my son last night, whose job is designing (if that’s the right word) the NBN spaghetti. He said it’s a nightmare because there are so many players to be linked and the powers-that-be keep changing their decisions. He sighed for a simple, do-it-all-with-new-cable service. Sorta like Labor wanted. 😉

  26. Don

    That worked for me until this morning. Suddenly I’m getting the JulieB Free Trial “404” nonsense. Have to use history to get straight to the page (thanks for the hint, Nicole).

  27. Preferred option 1 – sit down with Labor to find a way forward to improve the budget. DID NOT ATTEMPT
    Preferred option 2 – provide the parliament with the proposed omnibus bill. HAVE NOT DONE SO YET.

    What actually happened. SMART ALEC POSTURING AND BULLYING.

    Well done fellas!

  28. BK

    What annoys me is the Liberals making assumptions about what Labor will do (based on their own nasty methods), throwing accusations around and attacking “Bill Shorten should man up”, etc, before a word has been said. Way to start a quarrel, you fools.

    And then the ABC using the prompts provided by the Libs. Hopeless…

  29. ‘And then the ABC using the prompts provided by the Libs. Hopeless…’

    With the govt, it is inherently assumed that everything they say is true, with Labor there is an underlying attitude of skepticism.
    But that’s your ABC…

  30. Lizzie

    He sighed for a simple, do-it-all-with-new-cable service. Sorta like Labor wanted

    Economies of scale. simplicity and roll-out experince were always going to mean a major drop in the cost of fibre to the premises. Instead the Libs sacrificed the project on the altar of “anything but Labor’s way”.
    Fibre to the Node with copper to the premises, with the power hungry boxes in the street, is already an expensive disaster.

  31. If Bill Shorten resisted the Olympic grade hectoring of the Abbott Coalition in the last parliament then I don’t think the B Team will bother him this time around.

    Mathias Cormann, Scott Morrison, Christopher Pyne, Michaelia Cash, Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull, were all around last time. Their modus operandi is well understood by Labor.

  32. There are plenty of obvious characteristics that Facebook knows about its users, such as whether they’re getting married, just returned from vacation, or are about to have a baby. Most of that personal data is collected when people voluntarily post to Facebook or update their profiles.

    But then there’s creepier stuff that definitely isn’t submitted voluntarily, such as the number of credit lines you have, whether you’re an investor, what you invest in, whether you carry a balance on your credit card, whether you use coupons, and whether you’re likely to move.

    Facebook explains its ability to gather this incredibly detailed personal information in a few ways. First, and most obviously, it tracks your activity on the site, your personal devices, and your location settings. What’s less obvious is that the company also tracks virtually every other website you visit.

    As The Washington Post points out, Facebook knows every time you visit a page with a “like” or “share” button. It also gives publishers a tool called Facebook Pixel that allows both parties to track visits from any Facebook user. It also works with companies like Epsilon and Acxiom who gather information from government records, warranties and surveys, and commercial sources (such as a magazine subscription lists) to learn more about Facebook users.

    By compiling all of this information, the social media giant can begin to make conclusions about whether you’re likely to be a parent, married, an expat, or intend to buy a vehicle. Then they sell you as a target to advertisers. The assumptions the company makes aren’t always correct, but it doesn’t matter. Facebook built a $355 billion empire almost entirely on this information, and it doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon.

    If you’re curious about all the data points Facebook is using to target ads to you, here’s the full list:

    http://gizmodo.com/all-of-the-creepy-things-facebook-knows-about-you-1785510980?utm_content=buffer63bb5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

  33. https://www.crikey.com.au/2016/08/23/essential-no-to-plebiscite-case-funding-and-no-to-foreign-investment/
    Aug 23, 2016
    Essential: No to plebiscite case funding – and no to foreign investment
    Voters are strongly opposed to funding the yes and no campaigns for Malcolm Turnbull’s same sex marriage plebiscite — and strongly opposed to foreign investment as well, this week’s Essential Report shows.
    Bernard Keane Politics Editor

    Voters strongly oppose public funding for either side’s case in the same-sex marriage plebiscite, today’s Essential Report shows. And there’s widespread hostility to foreign investment in the electorate.

    Sixty-two per cent of voters oppose taxpayer funding for advertising and messaging of the yes and no campaigns. Just 25% of voters support funding; 39% “strongly disapprove” of giving the yes and no campaigns an equal amount of taxpayer funding in order to buy advertising and make their case. Voters are also fairly uniform in their views: 30% of Liberal voters approve of funding and 61% disapprove; 23% of Greens voters approve and 68% disapprove; Labor voters are consistent with the whole population. The only noticeable difference is that opponents of same-sex marriage are even less supportive of public funding than supporters.

    By coincidence, 62% of voters also support same-sex marriage, up from 58% in July; 27% oppose it, compared to 28% in July. There doesn’t appear to have been any significant shift in sentiment on the question in two years: over four polls since October 2015, support has averaged 61%, opposition 28% — which are essentially the same numbers as in 2014.

    ………………..

    On voting intention, the Coalition is steady on 39% while Labor is down a point to 36%; the Greens are still on 10% and NXT on 4%. That leads to a two-party preferred outcome of 51%-49% in Labor’s favour, down from 52-48 last week.

  34. That NPC debate between Professor Gareth Evans and Hugh White is a must viewing I think for any interested in China v US and the role of Australia.

    Best debate I have seen at the NPC for some time.

    I am now more optimistic of the US and China getting along and more pessimistic on the damage the LNP has done with its foreign relations investment decisions

  35. Charles Croucher
    Aug 22
    Charles Croucher‏ @ccroucher9
    AFP diversity study
    -46% of women sexually harassed
    -20% of men sexually harassed
    -3 in 5 bullied
    -2% experience criminal behaviour

  36. colton @ #3045 Tuesday, August 23, 2016 at 11:11 am

    In a government full of embarrassing duds and failures Michaelia Cash stands out as the worst by a country mile.
    I would rather set my head on fire and then extinguish the fire with a hammer and bottle of acid than have to listen to her shrieking and bile filled nastiness.

    That’s a big statement when have;

    Scullion: abuse of Aboriginal kids in detention not piquing his interest.
    Brandis: everything he touches turns to sh*t.
    Dutton: thinking asylum seekers deserve everything they get in detention because it’s all their fault.
    Morrison: because he’s innumerate and that’s probably his most redeeming quality.

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