Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor

Newspoll finds Labor retaining the clear two-party preferred lead it opened a fortnight ago, and an even balance of opinion on the realism of renewable energy targets.

Courtesy of The Australian, the latest fortnightly Newspoll finds Labor maintaining its two-party lead of 52-48, although the primary vote has Labor down a point to 36% and the Coalition up one to 39% – reflecting the fact that the Coalition clearly had rounding going in its favour in the earlier poll. The Greens and “others” are steady at 10% and 15%. There is little change on personal ratings, with Malcolm Turnbull down one on approval to 31% and up one on disapproval to 56%, while Bill Shorten is down one to 35% and steady on 51%, and Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister increases from 44-33 to 45-30. The poll also finds 39% agreeing that renewable energy targets are unrealistic versus 36% for disagree. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1622.

UPDATE (Essential Research): The latest result of the Essential Research fortnightly rolling average has Labor recovering its 52-48 lead on two-party preferred, after slipping to 51-49 last week. On the primary vote, the Coalition is down two points to 38%, Labor is steady at 36%, the Greens are up two to 10%, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is steady at 6% and the Nick Xenophon Team is steady at 3%. The poll also features Essential’s monthly reading of leadership ratings, which has Malcolm Turnbull up three on approval to 38% and down two on disapproval to 41%; Bill Shorten up one to 37% and down one to 40%; and Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister at 41-28, down from 41-26. The other questions follow up on the recent controversy generated over the pollster’s finding that half of respondents would favour a ban on Muslims migrating to Australia, and demonstrates the importance of how questions are framed. In particular, 53% professed themselves concerned at the number of Muslims in Australia with 42% not concerned, but 56% said prospective migrants families should not be rejected on the basis of religion with 24% taking the other view. The poll also found 61% taking a positive view of multiculturalism with 23% for negative. A question on renewable energy had 60% identifying it as “the solution to our energy needs”, with only 16% opting for the alternative, “a threat to future energy supply”.

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.

2,214 comments on “Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor”

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  1. adrian
    Friday, October 14, 2016 at 2:54 pm

    BW, if you are going to use words like inchoate, it’s a good idea to learn how to spell them. The next step might to understand its meaning.

    I prefer the fully cacao-ed inchocolate. It’s chewable. Is it smokable? It’s impulsive. It lingers too. It is a very tall story, from the uppish hillsides. It reminds me of Ruby, who is in every detail either drinkable or edible.

  4. Inchoate

    ‘being only partly in existence or operation : incipient; especially : imperfectly formed or formulated : formless, incoherent ‘

    Well, it does sort of sum up Dylan’s poesy rather nicely, IMO.

  7. 1. Why does the Senate committee need months to decide on the Brandis controversy?
    2. In his defence, Brandis avoids the question as to why he did not employ simple courtesy in his dealing with the S-G, and inform him what was in the wind (I think we understand why).

  8. Boerwar Friday, October 14, 2016 at 4:57 pm
    Inchoate
    ‘being only partly in existence or operation : incipient; especially : imperfectly formed or formulated : formless, incoherent ‘
    Well, it does sort of sum up Dylan’s poesy rather nicely, IMO.

    ******************************************

    Yes, and how many times must a man look up
    Before he can see the sky?
    Yes, and how many ears must one man have
    Before he can hear people cry?
    Yes, and how many deaths will it take ’til he knows
    That too many people have died?

    The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
    The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

  9. Re Bob Dylan and the Nobel Prize.

    I’m a fan of Dylan and I think it is unarguable that he is the greatest wordsmith in the history of rock and roll. So, if we can accept songs as literature, he’s a pretty worthy winner: although it does beg the question as to why other forms of non-literary writing such as screenplays or non-fiction couldn’t also be accepted as literature.

    But the Nobel Prize for Literature is truly a rather sad joke. There have certainly been some worthy winners, but there have also been many whose books are deservedly long out of print in any language. Leaving aside Ingmar Bergman the film-maker, there is only one Swedish writer of any major distinction: August Strindberg. He never got a Nobel Prize, but six other Swedish literary non-entitities – Selma Lagerlof, Verner von Heidenstam, Erik Axel Karfeldt, Par LagerKvist, Harry Martinson and Eyvind Johnson – have received one. Major modern writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekov, Henrik Ibsen, Emile Zola, Mark Twain, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov, Yukio Mishima and Jorge Luis Borges have all been overlooked.

    In other words, don’t take it too seriously.

  10. I like Dylan’s work. Perhaps I will like it less now that he’s been gonged for it, but I doubt it.

    He practically invented his own idiom or at least licensed new ways to deploy the lingo. He does a kind of oratorio in jeans. He just opens up and cries everything. Very few are up to that – have the guts for it. He is an expert at revealing and composing paradox. It’s a singular talent. It seems to me that paradox is an essential feature of the human condition and he has shown us how this runs through the most daily of life. He does the puzzle-making thing of both disclosing and concealing at the same time. The effect is to be left with echoes in the senses.

    I like him. I always have.

  11. Oops! Just remembered that Winston Churchill scored a prize for Literature, which shows that non-fiction writers are capable of being recognised, although – fan of Winston though I am – I wouldn’t want to overemphasize his achievements as a writer: his history books are quite interesting, but it would be a stretch to describe them as “literature”.

  12. A second Scottish independence vote is planned by the SNP:

    Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced that she will be publishing a draft bill for a second referendum vote, just two years after the country voted not to seek independence from the UK.

    “I can confirm today that the independence referendum bill will be published for consultation next week,” she said.

    “I am determined that Scotland will have the ability to reconsider the question of independence, and to do so before the UK leaves the EU.”

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-14/could-scotland-have-a-second-referendum/7932428

  13. Message from my nephew after finishing HSC exam yesterday
    [Thanks guys. Solid first day but will look to build upon paper 1 in paper 2 tomorrow]
    I see his future in the Australian Cricket team.

  14. meher baba
    Friday, October 14, 2016 at 5:11 pm

    …it would be a stretch to describe them as “literature”.

    I think the term “literature” is obsolete. The right concept may be “language”. When the only way to record language was to copy or print text, “lit” was a broad enough term. The various media are both decomposing and fusing these days, irreversibly. The ideas and instances of “meaning” and “expression” are also contested territory, for mine. Where in the scheme of things do tattoos come into it, for example? Can tattoos be literature? I suspect for their skins, they are. Where does that leave the Poets Laureate?

  16. I see his future in the Australian Cricket team.

    Now Irongloves has rusted away do you think Smith should captain?, I don’t think he is a leader.

  17. EXCLUSIVE
    October 12 2016

    Australia facing questions at UN over post-2020 climate change stance

    Adam Morton

    Adam Morton

    Australia is facing renewed international pressure to explain what it is doing to tackle climate change, with a United Nations review finding its emissions continue to soar and several countries calling for clarity about what it will do after 2020.

    Countries including China and the US have put more than 30 questions to the Turnbull government, asking for detail about how Australia will meet its 2030 emissions target and raising concerns about a lack of transparency over how the government calculates and reports emissions.

    …
    An expert review commissioned by the UN found, based on data submitted by Australia, its emissions would be 11.5 per cent higher in 2020 than they were in 1990.
    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-facing-questions-at-un-over-post2020-climate-change-stance-20161011-gs0avq.html

  18. meher baba Friday, October 14, 2016 at 5:11 pm
    Oops! Just remembered that Winston Churchill scored a prize for Literature, which shows that non-fiction writers are capable of being recognised, although – fan of Winston though I am – I wouldn’t want to overemphasize his achievements as a writer: his history books are quite interesting, but it would be a stretch to describe them as “literature”.

    ************************************

    My dear Mum – who lived through the War Years/ The Blitz – always said of Churchill – whatever his many faults – drunken old hound – HIS WORDS/DEFIANT SPEECHES gave us hope when all seemed totally lost …….

  19. Like all true poets, like Cohen, Lowell and Plath among many many others, Dylan speaks to a part of us that we sometimes forget ever existed.

  23. BW:
    I agree with your conclusion that Dylan is an unworthy recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. But I disagree with your reasons and disagree vehemently with your analysis of his opus.
    You start with:
    [‘Sappho and Homer would agree’.
    Had they bothered with second rate poetry, which they did not, they would have pissed themselves laughing at Dylan’s poetic dross.]
    It is unlikely in the extreme that Sappho and Homer, were they alive today, would have – or even be able to have – avoided Bob Dylan’s poetry. It is ubiquitous and unavoidable. Nor do I see any reason to assume they would have had trouble with their bladders confronted by it. No such effect has been noted among current literary greats so far as I am aware. Or was “piss themselves laughing” your best effort at imagery?

    Sapho translated wrote: “He who is fair to look upon is good, and he who is good will soon be fair also.” Structurally this bears some resemblance to “The loser now will be later to win for the times they are a’changin’. For poetry and meaning, I prefer Dylan.

    But I digress.

    [Fancy enlisting dead poets to the Dylan cause! Can’t they find a live literary critic?]
    I agree dead poets should not be spoken for and do not know why you rebuke and then enjoin in the practice of speaking for them. And surely you know, such are the tastes of Mankind, finding a “live literary critic” to support Enid Blyton for the Prize is unlikely to be impossible. For Dylan, a piece of cake.

    Your literary criticism is way off the mark:
    [‘Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
    I’m not sleepy and there ain’t no place I’m going to
    Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
    In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you’

    Second line: Dylan has to go the spurious double negative because he cannot create a form of words that fits his metre and still address his main ‘literary’ preoccupation: lines that end with rhyming words.]

    This is nonsense. The rhyming pattern is ABAB so the second line was free form and did not have to fit with the first.

    [He inserts a spurious ‘ain’t’. What? To show that he is a man of the illiterate people? Was he angling for slummers with literary pretensions, or was he pretending to slum with a view to literary pretensions. Perhaps he was not pretending to slum? Homer would not have given this sort of rubbish the time of day.]

    Again speaking for Homer?
    There is nothing “spurious” about the “ain’t. Many people, particularly when they are tired (and American) will relax their syntax in just this way. You do not need to be illiterate.

    The use of “ain’t” raises the suggestion, confirmed by the drawling way Dylan sings the line, that in fact he IS sleepy, contradicting the preceding claim he is not sleepy. (Indeed confirmation of his sleepiness is confirmed in the next stanza where the narrator’s “weariness amazes me”.
    This fits nicely with the use of “ain’t”. The phrase “there ain’t no place I’m going to” supposedly intends to mean that the sleepy narrator isn’t going anywhere even though, having worked through the double negative, the narrator is literally saying “there are places I am going to.”

    As it happens the rest of the song is practically a road trip of the places the tambourine playing might actually transport our supposedly stay-put narrator.
    First there is the slow: “I have no one to meet
    And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming”

    Then there is:
    “Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship”

    Then there is:
    “Though you might hear laughing, spinning, swinging madly through the sun
    It’s not aimed at anyone It’s just escaping on the run”

    And finally:
    Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
    Down the foggy ruins of time
    Far past the frozen leaves
    The haunted frightened trees
    Out to the windy bench
    Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

    So, far from the narrator NOT going anywhere, the narrator is actually ready to be transported by the tambourine and song.
    Finally, consider that in fact the narrator is the listener, Bob Dylan is the Tambourine Player.

    [Dylan further tortures this line by ending the line with the preposition ‘to’ for no other reason than he ends the refrain with ‘you’ and he is a stickler for the old rhyming business.]
    Cart before horse? And you mean that a Nobel winner can’t rhyme? What would Tom Lehrer think? And what would Whinny himself say of the criticism of ending a sentence with a preposition? I am sure you do not need reminding but if so, look it “up”.

    [The overall result is that the second line does ‘literature’ like Trump does ‘truth’.]
    I agree. But then I think Trump plays with truth in a powerfully imaginative way hardly bested by any of the most courageous liars of all time. The Iraqi defence minister showed good form briefly but was not permitted by circumstance to engage in the sustained assault on truth that Trump has been capable of.

    My own personal favourite is his recent claim “No one respects women more than I do.” My first thought on hearing this was to jokingly disparage my mother (since she is a person) for so disrespecting women.
    To think as he does, with more reason than is explicable by me, that saying this could assist him in becoming POTUS, is audacity that leaves me speechless. A bit like Dylan.

    [As for his marvellous imagery, many of Dylan’s images are a hoot. How about the ‘smoke rings of my mind’? That would have boggled Sappho’s mind for sure.]

    Cutting a phrase out of context to mock it is silly. Particularly this one.

    “Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind” as part of the journey the Tambourine Man’s song will take him on with the end hoped for result being the narrator will be taken “Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow” finally tells us that our narrator is thinking repetitive thoughts (hence rings) that are unresolving (hence smoke) and caused by some pressing disappointment (crazy sorrow) which is also the likely cause of the insomnia.

    [The very next line he leaves out an apostrophe. Whether this was because he was illiterate, or possibly whether he was doing a temporary genuflection to eecummings, has been lost to literary history. Of course he does use an apostrophe a few lines down so, to explain his punctuation we will have to opt for either arcane and acute literary creativity, or lazy bullshit.]

    Oh really? You are reliably sure that on the original proof of the song “evenings” didn’t have an apostrophe?
    More importantly, should every Prize winner’s every work be subjected to grammar checking and rejected if a decent literary explanation cannot be made for the error?

    Even more importantly still, Dylan did not write the Song to be read. Unless you can think of a way of hearing apostrophes being sung, its absence is completely irrelevant for his chosen medium.

    My reason for thinking Dylan should not have won the Prize is that, much as I have admired and enjoyed his songs all my life, as a wordsmith I regard him as chained by his musicality. Although he has written some books I doubt any of them would have brought him under consideration for the Prize.

    He can only impart meaning by combining words with music. He is very talented at it and if there were a Nobel Prize for Songwriting he would be a candidate. Reading his songs without hearing the music and the voice is at a huge cost to meaning. I want the Prize winner for Literature to be someone who is able to fully express themselves in just that medium. Not requiring harmonicas or paintbrushes or guitars etc.

  24. The thing about Dylan is that he is a man for his age. Chances are, like many before him, he will be forgotten in a new era as his words are unlikely to be universal or enduring.
    I just wish he would not try to sing any of the stuff he wrote. I happen to like the very strong words of the song, “With God on Our Side” but it took Manfred Mann to do them justice.

  26. I didn’t realise the AFL umpires awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
    Thankfully, wearing my tinfoil hat allowed me to discover this.
    (On an unrelated subject, does Boerwar ghost write Donald Trump’s tweets?)

  27. Does this sound familiar?

    The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee told the BBC the Department of Health has drawn up plans to cut funding by 12% from December.

    It said the cuts were “madness” and would damage the NHS and social care.

    The Department of Health said no final plans had been made. An announcement is expected shortly.

    Sue Sharpe, chief executive of the PSNC, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the changes would throw the health service into “chaos”, as more people would be forced to turn to GPs instead of pharmacists.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37651250

  28. MB, B
    Confusing literature with language renders literature as anything separate totally meaningless.
    If literature is indistinguishable from anything and everything else why not give humanity the Nobel Prize for literature. We all literature, after all.

    My view is that there ought to be some thresholds that distinguish great, truly great, literature from trash. Formless fumblings with words, pedestrian doggerel, insightful doggerel, struggling doggerel, paradoxical doggerel, rhyme-tortured doggerel do not great literature make. The excellent content ascribed by so many to Dylan’s oeuvre (which I doubt) does not forgive poor form.

    If literature can now be stripped of all technical language expertise, formal structure, discipline and rationality in favour of literature as using words for meaningful communication, then the truly great literaters of our era are people like Jones and Hadley and Trump. They excel.
    Why stop at Dylan? Let’s give the shock jocks a joint Nobel Prize for Literature for their amazing grasp of language to communicate truly and deeply and meaningfully to so many?

  29. Why on earth do you think Dylan is not worthy of a Nobel Prize?
    He has been a prolific song writer over many years should that not be awarded.

  30. The stench with Brandis is not sitting well with me. I can’t see Turnbull doing anything about it in this term of Parliment.

  31. I’m really starting to like Amy Remeikis at the SMH. Where did she come from? Can she replace Mark Kenny, please.

  32. Windhover
    Let’s hope he did not get lung cancer from the smoke rings of his mind.
    Oh, and it ain’t ‘ain’t’.
    ‘Tis ‘is’.

    That said I agree with what you and others have said the musicality should not be a prop for poor wordsmithing and nor should the musicality be allowed to cover up the shortcomings of Dylan’s literary messes.
    The debasement of literature and of language seems to be symptomatic of the Age.
    In such a case Dylan is truly a worthy recipient of the Nobel Prize.

  33. BW:
    [Formless fumblings with words, pedestrian doggerel, insightful doggerel, struggling doggerel, paradoxical doggerel, rhyme-tortured doggerel do not great literature make. ]

    Your criticism, applied to James Joyce, has been heard before. Great literature CAN be created out of “Formless fumblings with words, pedestrian doggerel, insightful doggerel, struggling doggerel, paradoxical doggerel, rhyme-tortured doggerel ” as Ulysses demonstrates.

    It depends upon the context in which the words are set. Dylan’s words impart meaning because they are sung to inventive tunes. Their meaning is greatly diminished without it. Songs are by definition not literature, which imparts meaning by use of words alone, albeit they must at times be spoken.

  41. WH
    There is, in any case, no comparison whatsover between Joyce’s magisterial command of prose and Dylan’s lame attempts at rhyming doggerel.

  46. “Political power,” George Brandis once opined, “is a dangerous elixir for some.”

    In his maiden speech extolling the virtues of small government, the erstwhile barrister and self-described suburban boy from Brisbane told the Senate that government must “understand its own limitations”.

    In the 16 years since that speech was delivered, Brandis – elevated to the office of Attorney-General after the Abbott government seized power in 2013 – appears to have made it his business to test precisely where those limits lie.

    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/george-brandis-tests-the-limits-in-stoush-with-justin-gleeson-20161010-grzf1h.html?

  47. BW:
    [Let’s hope he did not get lung cancer from the smoke rings of his mind.]
    Stick to pissing metaphors. They suit you better.

    [Oh, and it ain’t ‘ain’t’.
    ‘Tis ‘is’.]
    If you mean his ain’t was intended to meant “is” to the listener, I am not mistaken. You have missed my point.

    [That said I agree with what you and others have said the musicality should not be a prop for poor wordsmithing and nor should the musicality be allowed to cover up the shortcomings of Dylan’s literary messes.]

    You have verballed me. I said NOTHING about poor wordsmithing, still less about his musicality “covering up” alleged literary messes (I can understand the shortcomings of Dylan’s literary work, I struggle to understand what the shortcomings of a mess might be, but I digress).

    My point is to award him the Prize for Literature is a category error. And extracting his words from his songs and praising them stand alone is to undertake an artificial assessment the words were never written to endure.

  48. BW:
    For formless fumbling with words this is hard to beat:

    no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no refinement nor no nothing in his nature slapping
    us behind like that on my bottom because I didnt call him Hugh the ignoramus that doesnt know
    poetry from a cabbage thats what you get for not keeping them in their proper place pulling off his
    shoes and trousers there on the chair before me so barefaced without even asking permission and
    standing out that vulgar way in the half of a shirt they wear to be admired like a priest or a butcher
    or those etc.

    And heaven help JJ if you started having a go at the lack of punctuation.

  49. My point is to award him the Prize for Literature is a category error. And extracting his words from his songs and praising them stand alone is to undertake an artificial assessment the words were never written to endure.

    Sounds sensible.

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