Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

The Coalition drops a point on the Essential Research rolling average, while further questions record an across-the-board drop in confidence in a range of public institutions since last year.

The latest Essential Research fortnightly rolling aggregate result has Labor’s lead back to 52-48 after two weeks at 51-49, with the Coalition down a point on the primary vote to 39%, Labor steady on 37%, the Greens steady on 10% and the Nick Xenophon Team down one to 3%. Other questions find an across-the-board decline in trust towards a range of institutions since the question was last posed in October. At the top of the list are state and federal police, followed by the High Court and the ABC, while political parties take the wooden spoon, followed by business groups, state and federal parliaments, religious organisations and trade unions. A series of indicators involving personal wellbeing were reported as having improved over the past 50 years, while job security and political leadership had become much worse. A question on trust in handling personal information found either a lot of trust or some trust for security agencies (51%), the Australian Bureau of Statistics (46%) and banks (45%), compared with 20% for social media sites.

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.

2,806 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  3. The only reason I’ll watch the ABC news is for the weather report. 730 I don’t care about anymore. They are so clearly automatons mutering LNP li nes.
    Sorry about the typos.

  7. Why the grovelling apology and comments that he was wrong/made a mistake/wrong thing/huge lessons etc etc?
    Mr Bean is saying it isn’t permitted behaviour. His Labor colleagues have said the same thing. But on PB, if you agree with him you are a Liberal.

  9. Ok, it seems the problem is with a gravatar.com server – requests for gravatars of a specific size (s=70) return with an error “502 Bad Gateway”. Requests for gravatars of other sizes succeed. Seems likely one of gravatar.com’s distributed servers is down. So it seems to be a gravatar problem, not Crikeys.

  11. diogenes @ #157 Tuesday, September 6, 2016 at 8:00 pm

    Why the grovelling apology and comments that he was wrong/made a mistake/wrong thing/huge lessons etc etc?
    Mr Bean is saying it isn’t permitted behaviour. His Labor colleagues have said the same thing. But on PB, if you agree with him you are a Liberal.

    He said it was a big mistake. It was. I don’t think he ever said it was not permitted behaviour because, in fact, it was permitted. That’s the problem with the current rules. If you want to be a Liberal, be my guest, but it doesn’t change the fact that what Dastyari did, however dumb, stupid, inopportune, downright immoral and unethical it was, was still within the rules. And as long as Dastyari, and not those rules, are there, far more egregious cases of paying for access or worse will occur.

    As has been pointed out by many others, these businesses do not give gifts and donations because they believe in Australian democracy. They have an interest in the people they are giving money to. And if they give to both parties, then you can bet your bottom dollar, and theirs, that they are interested in being heard and getting their proposals full consideration.

  13. The ENTIRETY of the case against Dastyari is that what he has done, despite being completely and utterly within the rules and disclosed above and beyond the rules, is that it is somehow against “the vibe”. That’s it. It’s the vibe your honour.

    Oh, and it’s only a vibe that applies to Labor. The Coalition vibe is more your lying cheating smearing kinda vibe. That way there’s never any risk that they will be found against the vibe.

    Watching the filth run a mile from Shorten’s bill to drag reporting back to $1k, ban foreign donors and all the other changes he’s flagged is going to so much fun.

  14. lol
    The reality is that the more the Libs plus resident ball ticklers err MSM and Turnbull scream for Sam’s scalp, the more powerless they are. Only Shorten can sack Dastyari and Bill steadfastly refuses to do Malcolm’s bidding.

    It is a long time to the next election so Shorten has all the time in the world to ignore the hystryonics of the hapless Malcayman.

  17. TPOF
    That’s why we shouldn’t allow foreign donations. As you say, Chinese companies haven’t given Lab/Lib pollies $5.5M in the last two years because they want to support a shining example of democracy for their government.
    There is also a difference between something being legal and it being ethical.

  19. We are seeing today the abandonent of the Media of any pretense of fair, independent or even inquisitive journalism.

    At Dastyari’s press conference today several journalists actually made speeches on the subject of ethics, while trying to phrase them as questions.

    The Liberals and no doubt the Nationals are just as, or more guilty of taking money from Chinese corporate donors. Turnbull is up in China right now sucking the cocks of Chinese billionaires, and tel us it’s good for us. Mesma took $600,000 for the WA Liberal Party. This latter fact is given a rote, routine mention by the Gallery, as if it is entirely unconnected with foreign corporate donors. Then they go back to today’s target: Sam Dastyari.

    Michael Brissenden this morning allowed Brandis to instruct him on what was “the issue of the day”, as if he was saying to Brissenden, “You have received your directions as to what will be talked about here, now carry them out. We will talk about Sam Dastyari to the exclusion of all else, all sense, all reality and all context.” Brissenden went quiet and just let Brandis rant on for 5 minutes uninterrupted. He could have left the studio for a quick leak, Brandis raved on so long.

    The Media are out for a scalp. It is naked, and unabashed. They have thrown all sense of meaning and association to the wind and are deliberately concentrating only on one person, to the deliberate exclusion of all others.

    It’s a new low, even for the reptiles of the Australian press. Lower than I thought they could ever go in their descent to the bottom of the self-opinionated, holier-than-thou, completely non-reality based opinion they have of themselves and their “duty” to report on the nation’s affairs.

  20. DIOGENES – That’s why Andrew Robb shouldn’t have taken $500,000 of Chinese money on the day that we signed the FTA. It takes breath-taking chutzpah for the Liberals to complain about Sam D when they’ve engaged in that sort of conduct. That is a spectacular conflict of interest.

  21. Apparently Gina Reinhart, other than being a ‘strong Conservative’ and donating to a party of like-minded ‘strong Conservatives’, got nothing for her $50000 donation to Barnaby Joyce’s campaign. Not Barnaby the ‘individual’ as he was at pains to point out, his campaign, in contradistinction to Sam Dastyari the ‘individual’.

    Yeah right.

  22. There is also a difference between something being legal and it being ethical.

    Great numbers of learned books have been written on the subject of The Law v. Ethics, by some of the more informed and insightful legal and philosophical minds of the ages. I doubt whether your opinion adds anything to to that database, Diogenes.

  23. diogenes @ #167 Tuesday, September 6, 2016 at 8:12 pm

    TPOF
    That’s why we shouldn’t allow foreign donations. As you say, Chinese companies haven’t given Lab/Lib pollies $5.5M in the last two years because they want to support a shining example of democracy for their government.
    There is also a difference between something being legal and it being ethical.

    Agreed. But ethics are subjective, the law is a lot more objective.

    If the issue is allowed to become the subjective question of the extent to which someone has behaved unethically and the extent to which they should be punished for their breach, the more significant issue of setting proper rules can be avoided. The Liberals are in full avoidance mode. And most (but not all) of the journalist class have such fluid understanding of these issues that they are buying that avoidance.

  26. player one @ #168 Tuesday, September 6, 2016 at 8:13 pm

    don @ #166 Tuesday, September 6, 2016 at 8:11 pm

    poroti @ #149 Tuesday, September 6, 2016 at 7:53 pm

    Player One
    My bumble bee has joined the MIA list.

    No, still buzzing around my screen, large as life.

    You may have a cached copy. Anyway, for once I don’t think it is a Crikey problem.

    May be so, but I quit PB and Chrome, started Chrome and PB, and the avatars/gravatars are still there.

    KJ’s various iterations of headgear appear as he changes them, so I find it hard to see how caching is the issue.

  27. TPOF
    In this case, the court of public opinion is takes the place of a legal court. Given they are pollies in a democracy, that’s what their fate is meant to be determined by.

  29. Don

    KJ’s various iterations of headgear appear as he changes them, so I find it hard to see how caching is the issue.

    Easy to tell. Use Shift +F5 to reload the page bypassing the cache, and see if the gravatars are still there.

    It seems some work and some don’t – it probably depends on which gravatar.com server your requests are being served by – which may also depend on other things, such as where you are.

  30. Don

    No, still buzzing around my screen, large as life.

    And you still a “handsome young devil” in my browser 🙂 Player 1 is still invading space .

  32. Ironically the best commentators in the media at present are people like Bolt, Credlin and shock jock Jones. They have absolutely no love for Turnbull and the other ‘turncoats’ in the Liberal Party. They are not directing their venom at Dastyari but instead at Turnbull as a weak leader without a mandate.

  35. Not Barnaby the ‘individual’ as he was at pains to point out, his campaign, in contradistinction to Sam Dastyari the ‘individual’.

    Because money is completely and utterly not fungible.

    FMD you would think fungibility would be a concept people could understand. No journalists obviously. Those dickheads wouldn’t know if their arses were on fire. But just generally.

    Oh Sam you can’t get a Chinese company to donate money to pay for you bills. But sure you can get them to donate to your ‘campaign’ funds and those campaign funds can pay your bills. F’kn joke.

    As TPOF notes the only thing that matters is the rules. If you can be hanged for the vibe it’s chaos. Even the dopiest Libs don’t want that. Your future is entirely dependent on if the media deadshits decide to go you. This can lead to a tightening of the rules and that will be great, but no matter what the decider of if you’ve done something wrong to deserve a legal sanction or sacking can only be the rules.

  38. Dio

    The court of public opinion says a plague on all their houses and wants everyone to get their noses out of the trough. The media throw the occasional Sam D to them while the rest go on as though nothing has changed.

    It’s time for that to change, along with the rules.

  39. [Shellbell
    Tuesday, September 6, 2016 at 8:49 pm
    Alan Jones and Dastyari are on the pro greyhound racing circuit]

    As is Hadley. Baird seems to have lost the love of the shock jocks.

  40. In this case, the court of public opinion is takes the place of a legal court. Given they are pollies in a democracy, that’s what their fate is meant to be determined by.

    At the election.

    That is very different from media drones and opposing side pollies demanding resignations or answers to questions they don’t actually know. If some voter decides that the fact Dastyari copped a donation similar to every single other politician is reason to vote against Labor, then that’s their business.

    However it isn’t the media’s business to dishonestly portray a completely by the rules event as a sacking offence.

  42. [

    Here’s the start of Shadow Game, the latest Lewis / Uhlmann tome. Once again, they start where novelists who don’t know what they’re doing always start: with a description of the weather. Betchya that their next novel starts with someone waking up with a hang-over.

    ]
    If the writing is that turgid the whole way through, I will give it a miss, thanks.

  43. Ratsak
    I’ve said it definitely isn’t a sacking/demotion offense but he does deserve some opprobrium.
    More importantly is to use the example to improve the rules to reflect what we expect from our democracy.

  47. As for the gravatars situation,I was declaring last night that mine had remained green. Until I hit refresh around 10.45pm ish to see if ‘fess had responded to me. Right before my eyes it flicked to the blue.

  49. From today’s Crikey:

    The Coalition this week has had the challenge of attacking Labor Senator “Sinophile Sam” Dastyari for receiving donations from Chinese businesses while insisting foreign donations were perfectly OK. It’s been a manful struggle. Christopher Pyne contorted himself into knots trying to explain what exactly Dastyari had done wrong while trying to avoid acknowledging there might be any innate problems with getting donations from foreign sources; provincial lawyer George Brandis today declared foreign donations were “a different conversation” from the Dastyari case; Barnaby Joyce, displaying a remarkable ignorance of the Electoral Act, declared that gifts were different to “cold hard cash” (check the definition of gift under s.287, Barnaby).

    Another element missing from most of the coverage of Dastyari’s stupidity and the media puffing about foreign donations is any mention that the Coalition defeated an attempt by Labor to ban foreign donations in 2009. That was contained in a bill — which was supported by the Greens, long advocates for proper donations and disclosure rules — for political donations and donations disclosure reform put forward by then-special minister of state John Faulkner.

    It does seem our msm is missing the bigger picture here. But that wouldn’t be the first time.

  50. Ides:

    Sorry, if you were expecting a response I’ve been busy and then at work all day, only signing in this evening. Remind me again what you were wanting a response to 🙂

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