Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

A new poll suggests voters want parliament to legislate for same-sex marriage if they can’t get their favoured option of a plebiscite, as the Coalition primary vote maintains a slow downward trend.

This week’s Essential Research finds the Coalition down a point on the primary vote to 37%, Labor steady on 37%, the Greens steady on 10%, One Nation up one to 6% and the Nick Xenophon Team steady on 4%, with two-party preferred unchanged at 52-48 in favour of Labor. The poll also finds 53% favouring a vote by parliament on same-sex marriage in the event that the Senate blocks a plebiscite, with only 29% opposed. Support for the proposed plebiscite question, “should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?”, is at 60% with 30% opposed, compared with results of 57% and 28% when the same question was posed a month ago. Only 22% of respondents supported the goverment’s plan for $7.5 million of advertising to be provided for both sides of the argument, with 68% opposed. When asked about the biggest threats to job security in Australia, 31% nominated “free trade deals that allow foreign workers into the Australian market”, 23% companies using labour hire and contracting out, 18% the impact of technological change, and high wages in last place on 11%.

In other news, I mean to start shaking myself out of a spell of post-election laziness, so I’ll have BludgerTrack back in one form or another next week. In the meantime, I have the following to relate:

• The Australian reports that factional arrangements ensure that Stephen Conroy’s own sub-faction of the Victorian Right will decide his successor when he vacates his Senate seat on September 30. That seems to bode well for his ally Mehmet Tillem, who previously served in the Senate from late 2013 until mid-2014, when he served out David Feeney’s term after he moved to the lower house seat of Batman at the September 2013 election. However, some in the party are said to be arguing that the position should go to a woman, specifically to Stefanie Perri, the former Monash mayor who ran unsuccessfully in Chisholm at the recent election.

• A draft redistribution proposal has been published for the Northern Territory’s two electorates, in which early 3000 voters are to be transferred from growing Solomon (covering Darwin and Palmerston) to stagnant Lingiari (covering the remainder of the territory). The transfer encompasses Yarrawonga, Farrar, Johnston and Zuccoli at the eastern edge of Palmerston, together with the Litchfield Shire areas around Knuckey Lagoon immediately east of Darwin. This is a conservative area, so the change would strengthen Labor in Solomon and weaken them in Lingiari.

• A redistribution for the five electorates in Tasmania is in its earliest stages, with a period for preliminary public suggestions to run from November 2 to December 5.

• The Liberal National Party announced last week it would not challenge its 37 vote defeat in the Townsville-based seat of Herbert, despite complaints from Senator Ian Macdonald that the Australian Eleectoral Commission had promised hospital patients it would take their votes on polling day without delivering, and that students outside the electorate were denied absent votes because the required envelopes were not available. The 40-day deadline for lodgement of a challenge closed on Saturday.

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.

2,992 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  2. The plebiscite was devised to preserve a facade of unity in the LNP while wedging pro-reform opinion. Once the plebiscite bill has been rejected attention will return to proposals for a free vote in the Parliament and the tensions inside the LNP will again become the centre of attention.

    Any renewal of Labor’s reform moves will highlight the divisions in the LNP and expose Turnbull’s vulnerability. Clearly, this would be to Labor’s advantage. It will also serve the interests of the LNP right.

    It is a mistake to think the failure of the plebiscite bill will mean ME is off the agenda. Rather, it will mean ME remains a constant feature of political exchange and a continuing reminder of Turnbull’s hopelessly weak position – a weakness that would be greatly magnified if the LNP were to face a by-election or other threat to its numbers.

    The LNP will suffer for their cowardice. This is clear as day.

  3. I’m also wondering if this SSM stuff is also eating into Malcolm’s soul.

    He’s a neoliberal ideologue, dedicated to dismantling the Australian post-war settlement. He’s also very much enjoying being in the top job. All else is secondary and can be sacrificed: same sex marriage; action on climate change; the Republic.

  4. Boerwar,

    Once it comes back to the politicians for a decision, then a compromise that every one can live with will emerge.
    See my earlier comments

  5. BW @ 8.35
    I think that is what I was getting at. Whatever the character of the nation as a whole individual people make personal decisions for better or worse. Some find nasty and cruel decisions easy to make because they have been conditioned to see these as unexceptional or even naturally justified. Others are tortured all their lives by relatively small decisions made under very heavy duress.

    I was in Amsterdam a few months ago. I didn’t like it much, but that’s another story. The highlight, though, was a walking tour through the city. The guide, a Canadian woman who had lived there many years, finished the tour at the end of the line to Anne Frank’s house (not the house itself). She encouraged us to go there at a quieter time and told us the best time to go. But she also discussed the betrayal of the Frank family. She put herself in the shoes of a (putative) betrayer, beset by starvation and whatever else may be going on and said that, in retrospect, it is very hard to judge that person. We only see the history through the story of Anne Frank, not the story of anyone else there at the time.

    It was an eye-opening thought to me. It does not justify betrayal, but it puts it into a very complex context beyond the simplicities of morally good and bad – on the side of the Nazis or the side of the angels.

    Earlier I had been in London at the Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. In the exhibit there was a number of TVs showing continuous reels of Holocaust survivors recounting personal experiences. One woman recalled how a German soldier in Poland (I think) grabbed a religious Jew with full beard, etc and called up to the windows in the apartments above for scissors to cut the man’s hair. The narrator told how many windows opened and the occupants tossed out numerous pairs of scissors.

    These stories are not emblematic of anything but the sheer impossibility of trying to reduce the complex dehumanising horror of the Second World War down to a relatively accessible number of easy to remember pastiches.

    Against that background, there are broad stories of heroism on a national scale and willing, even eager, cooperation with the Nazis on a national scale. Against those big stories it is hard but necessary to not give a person of the time the benefit of the heroism of their fellow nationals nor condemn them for what their fellow nationals did, without knowing their personal story.

  6. GG
    On this matter we support different things and different processes.
    My view, FWIW, is that having come from much the same place, I can do what many people on PB cannot do – put myself in your shoes.

  8. Briefly

    The plebiscite was devised to preserve a facade of unity in the LNP

    That’s being far too kind. It was devised to avoid an almighty split in the Coalition. And it still serves the purpose of (barely) covering over the chasm between real Liberals and their right wing ideologue colleagues.

  10. greensborough growler @ #2904 Monday, September 26, 2016 at 9:01 pm

    Boerwar,
    Once it comes back to the politicians for a decision, then a compromise that every one can live with will emerge.
    See my earlier comments

    There will never be a compromise that ‘everyone can live with’. Strong conservatives within the Coalition and some cross benchers in the Senate (and a few remnants in the Parliamentary Labor Party) could not live in the Marriage Act being extended to include non-straight marriages. Many, almost certainly most, members of the LGBTIQ community will not accept an ersatz simulation, such as a civil union.

    I cannot see a compromise between these two fixed positions any more than I could see a grand Liberal-Labor coalition in government.

  13. Are we getting a Newspoll tonight? I cannot believe the serious dearth of polling since the election and the revelation that we have a govt hanging on by the skin of its teeth.

    If this were a Labor govt you can bet we’d be Morgan’d, Reachtel’d, Ipsos’d, Newspol’d, Essential’d and polled by goodness knows who else on high rotation every week.

  15. The real issue is the inability of the Lyle Sheltons and GGs of this world to put themslves in the shoes of others. Ban gays, ban blacks, ban jews, ban christians – same same.

  16. tpof @ #2910 Monday, September 26, 2016 at 9:09 pm

    greensborough growler @ #2904 Monday, September 26, 2016 at 9:01 pm

    Boerwar,
    Once it comes back to the politicians for a decision, then a compromise that every one can live with will emerge.
    See my earlier comments

    There will never be a compromise that ‘everyone can live with’. Strong conservatives within the Coalition and some cross benchers in the Senate (and a few remnants in the Parliamentary Labor Party) could not live in the Marriage Act being extended to include non-straight marriages. Many, almost certainly most, members of the LGBTIQ community will not accept an ersatz simulation, such as a civil union.
    I cannot see a compromise between these two fixed positions any more than I could see a grand Liberal-Labor coalition in government.

    The problem I see with compromise is that on one side it’s all about equality, and on the other side it’s all about marriage.

    Where is a satisfactory position of compromise?

    Anything short of ME might satisfy one side but leaves the other side with what we started with, inequality.

  17. El Guapo,

    You are as weak as piss, comrade.

    You can’t mount a coherent argument. But, you can resort to mindlessness.

    You must be so proud of yourself.

  18. davidwh @ #2914 Monday, September 26, 2016 at 9:18 pm

    Can’t see any SSM compromise. All parties have locked themselves into restricted positions.
    Politics will be the only winner.

    I don’t think politics is getting much of a victory out of this ongoing kerfuffle. Someone earlier drew a comparison with the apology to the stolen generation, which I think is justified.

    Another relevant comparison is constipation. There is a very big blockage caused by an extremely hardened blob of Coalition right wing members. The plebiscite is a bit like an extremely unpleasant and potentially dangerous laxative that still might not work and cause a lot of grief on the way through.

    But once it is over and the poor constipated body politic has recovered from the ordeal nothing will be different. Except we can move on with the rest of history and future generations would be surprised to be told that it was ever otherwise.

  19. Also, it’s vital to remember that one “side” are interested in limiting the rights of the other “side”, who are only seeking the removal of discrimination as it applies to themselves. They are not equal but opposite propositions.

    Legislating equal marriage laws does not infringe the religious freedoms of anyone.

  21. BIS

    Anything short of ME might satisfy one side but leaves the other side with what we started with, inequality.

    Yeah. That’s what I was getting at. It’s a bit like the bible story of the judgement of Solomon where two women claimed to be the mother of the one baby. One ‘mother’ was happy with the compromise that the child be cut in half and each mother get one, while the other would rather cede the child than see such a ‘compromise’.

  23. At least from what I’m hearing (in one of the safest metropolitan conservative seats) the general populace doesnt care for the plebiscite. They think everyone delaying it is wrong, and that forcing a public vote is a joke. They just want their gays married. When you mention the cost, and public funding of the campaigns, they’ve gone off their rocker at it.

  25. The ‘compromise’ position is, essentially, to remove the definition of marriage from law and just define a ‘civil union’ for all those kinds of official contracts between two people.

    However, as GG pointed out some time ago, those who try to get everything had better be prepared for nothing, The religious lobby, through Howard, refused to compromise and tried for everything by insisting on their definition of marriage in our law. Well, what one man can define, another can redefine. The precedent has been set. I hope they’re prepared ;-).

  26. There’s a Coalition politician called David Littleproud on Lateline tonight. Doesn’t sound like a surname that Donald Trump could live with.

  33. Still waiting for your argument GG. Why is it ok for religious organisations to discriminate against gay people in the workplace? Why is it ok to discriminate aganist gay people in the commercial sector? Why exactly is that ok? Why is it ok to view gay people as nit morally equivalent?

  36. Birmingham, is adopting the Brandis sitting position: sit at an angle so your back is ‘presented’ to the intelligent female Labor politician.

    They don’t like them and want to exclude them from the debate.

  42. The answer to funding is pretty obvious: the money is going to the wrong schools.

    The politics are insurmountable, however: those ‘wrong schools’ are incredibly powerful lobbyists and won’t give up their less-needed funding so it can be sent to those schools that most desperately need it.

  44. Birmingham was a bit of a Qanda darling when his party was in coalition, but struggles with the weight of responsibility it would seem.

  45. The only thing Birmingham has to sell is the transfer of money from public to private schools, with a bit of gratuitous teacher bashing along the way. I Agree with the view that its not about more money its about better use of money. That of course means less money for the private sector so that aint gonna fly.

  49. If VAnstone wants a more positive story to be told about our immigration record she needs to have a word in the ears of her former colleagues.

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