Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor

Malcolm Turnbull’s personal ratings fall to a new low amid an otherwise uneventful set of fortnightly Newspoll numbers.

Courtesy of The Australian, the latest fortnightly Newspoll result records no change to Labor’s 52-48 lead, with the Coalition steady on the primary vote at 39%, Labor up one to 37% and the Greens steady at 10%. Malcolm Turnbull’s personal ratings are at a new low, with approval down two to 29% and disapproval up one to 57% – the fifth successive deterioration in his net position, covering each Newspoll published since the election. Bill Shorten is up one on approval to 36% and steady on disapproval at 51%, while Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister has narrowed from 45-30 to 42-32.

Also out today was a Roy Morgan phone poll that found 58% expressing support for “Muslim immigration” with 33% opposed, in contrast to an earlier Essential Research finding. There were also results of 66% support and 25% oppose for asylum seeker immigration; 77% support and 18% for skilled migrants; and 74% support and 21% oppose for family reunion migration. Other questions found 21% wanted the rate of immigration increased, 40% kept level and 34% reduced; that opinion was evenly divided as to whether immigrants made Australian life better or worse, at 32% apiece. The poll canvassed 656 respondents over 14, including 588 over 18. From the latter, two-party preferred voting intention was recorded at 55-45 in favour of the Labor.

UPDATE (Essential Research): The latest reading of the Essential Research fortnightly rolling average finds Labor losing the point of two-party preferred it gained last week, bringing their lead back to 52-48. On the primary vote, the Coalition is up one to 38%, Labor is steady at 37%, the Greens are down one to 10%, One Nation is upon one to 6%, and the Nick Xenophon Team is steady at 3%. Further questions find 36% support for re-establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission, with 16% opposed, and 39% deeming the issue important, versus 38% for not important. Other questions relate to the threat of terrorism and appropriate responses, with 24% very concerned and 48% somewhat concerned about the threat of terrorism in Australia. Twenty-eight per cent said the government had provided appropriate support to Julian Assange and 26% that they had not (though there’s no distinction here between too much and not enough), with fully 46% opting for don’t know.

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.

1,111 comments on “Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor”

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  3. It’s a great shame that the lesson the political class learnt from Hewson was ‘don’t put out a comprehensive policy platform’ rather than the more correct ‘don’t have a policy platform of right wing garbage like gutting Medicare’.

  4. lizzie

    For Cash it’s all about the hair & the clothes. As some one commented in that article she was far better at her last job, being a background noddy for Abbott pressers.

  5. boerwar @ #999 Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 7:04 pm

    BB
    When is it appropriate to re-open Dream World? Some people say tomorrow. Other say wait a week. Maybe two weeks. A month? Two months? Never? You obviously think that it should be longer although you do not say just how long. Fair enough. I don’t. I think it should be a shorter period. Your personal abuse of me is unwarranted, IMO.
    My view about death, and my experience of it in public places, and what it means is obviously different from yours.
    Around 3200 Australians die each week or around 450 a day. Every year significant numbers die in shared public places, the workplace and in tourism venues.
    I have worked at public/tourist places where people have died – at times in distressing circumstances and at times with with some pretty horribly physical results, speaking from direct participation in helping find and pick up the pieces.
    It is routine that only the bits of immediate interest to the police were closed: the rest remained open. And the death scenes were opened then to thousands of tourists immediately the police allowed so. No-one bats an eyelid.
    I assume that the vast majority of the Dream World employees will be casuals per hour employees who will not be being paid while it is shut.
    I see no particular reason to turn Dream World into an ad hoc mausoleum or public shrine or anything else.
    Much of the reporting of the deaths at Dream World has given me has been bizarre. It has been little better than death porn. Phrases like ‘outpouring of grief’ by the ‘nation’ are weird, to put it mildly.
    Princess Di arrangements of flowers from total strangers who are then interviewed breathlessly by the MSM to close the circle, ditto.
    FWIW, the Dream World corporate response has been shite.

    I agree.
    Far too much is being made of this sad accident.

  7. blanket criticism @ #1000 Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 7:07 pm

    “The board is ultimately responsible in its governance role to ensure that safety and all other issues are properly attended to by management. It is the role of a board to provide that oversight of management”
    Oh absolutely, but the question remains as to whether they fulfilled this responsibility, or if something was lost in translation along the way. In my experience the culture of these organisations is one of pretending everything is working flawlessly in order to cover your own arse and therefore reports stop somewhere along the way as they travel up the chain of command. The bigger the organisation the bigger of a problem this is. I’m sure someone has come up with a name for this phenomenon at some point, but I don’t know what it is.

    A good board will not take things at face value, will know what questions to ask and will make their own inquiries. They should do unannounced site visits and talk to staff at all levels.

  10. There must be a very big warehouse somewhere full of reports/studies containing a wealth of information into why our indigenous brothers and sisters are over represented in jail.

  15. VP
    Yep. I thought that she got a bonus of something like $800,000 plus?
    If so, the $167k could blow up in her face.
    But maybe that was someone else.

  16. vogon poet @ #1008 Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 7:17 pm

    Dreamworld CEO has announced she’s donating her $167,500 cash bonus to the red cross.

    Woop de do. Her bonus for overseeing a company that has just caused four entirely preventable deaths was apparently more like a million dollars. How about she donates that whole amount to the relatives of the deceased?

  18. I noticed a little while ago you were talking about how the American election may end up closer than we think. Well on the Drive show on the ABC they had the Journos Forum and discussed the topic. David Marr thought that Americans would, in the solitude of the voting booth, finally make the considered choice that they just couldn’t come at Trump. However, Michael Peshart from the BBC seemed to believe in the ‘Shy Trump Voter’ phenomenon. That the demagogue who is promising the earth to the victims of globalisation may surprise on the upside. Though personally I haven’t been able to divine exactly what Trump’s solutions are for the problem of the rise of Manufacturing and certain sorts of Service Industries in 2nd world countries. ‘Fortress America’ and the raising of Tariff walls again isn’t going to cut in any more.

    Plus, as a perspicacious observer noted, if these people believe Trump really gives a damn about them and their circumstances, then are sadly mistaken. It will more likely be the case that Trump will be the one who ruthlessly exploits them.

  20. Total bonus was $860K, just the cash bit donated. Seems a half arsed effort. Whatever she’s doing, she doesn’t appear to be justifying her wage, but that could be said of nearly all CEOs

  22. I’m sure Ardent CEO, Deborah Thomas, will arrange some suitably mawkish and favourable coverage of the victim’s families in the organ of her former gig, The Womens Weekly.

  23. C@tM
    ‘…Yet what is most remarkable about all this is that many of Trumps’s supporters do not have a triumphal air about them, but a funereal and nihilistic one. Some of the alt-right talk about a “Flight 93” election, taking control or crashing to the earth. Sean Hannity and others mainstream this, calling it “America’s last chance” or the “last American election”. At rallies, they do not have a sense of organising urgency about them — many, of course, are elderly — but of fatalism. Trump’s rallies are huge, but they don’t lead to anything — you rarely see someone circulating with a clipboard pushing hard for sign-ups, the staple of political rallies.

    They’re here for Trump, for the Trump transfusion, stories of rigged media and fixed polls, all of which will tell that the America communicated to them is not the real America. They are storing up a sense of what what remains of their America for the long Clintonian winter. Everything that surrounds them in the culture tells them that the world they knew is passing away — powerful women in non-trivial numbers, black and Latino culture, SCOTUS waving through same-sex marriage, and the prospect of a liberal-dominated SCOTUS next year, a society dominated by incomprehensible knowledge production rather than straightforward industry, a multi-polar world abroad.
    …’

    Just a taster from Rundle in today’s Crikey. A fascinating read and well-advised for anyone with an interest in Trump and the outcome of the US election.

  24. player one @ #1016 Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 7:27 pm

    vogon poet @ #1008 Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 7:17 pm

    Dreamworld CEO has announced she’s donating her $167,500 cash bonus to the red cross.

    Woop de do. Her bonus for overseeing a company that has just caused four entirely preventable deaths was apparently more like a million dollars. How about she donates that whole amount to the relatives of the deceased?

    At some level any accidental death was ‘preventable’, but they still happened.
    Responsibility is yet to be determined but once again, don’t let this stand in the way of your genius. You have found the one person who, according to you, is wholly responsible and must pay the price!
    The non-cash component of the bonus may not be readily converted to cash.
    There will no doubt be a large payout from the insurance policy Dreamland holds.

  26. Hmmm. Seems the Dreamworld ride may have had a design flaw that the staff all knew about. To be fair, the staff didn’t realize it could possibly end up killing four people. But any operational or safety audit should have picked it up. It is surely not normal for rafts to routinely get stuck, or for staff to have to “kick” them free to keep the ride in operation.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-27/dreamworld-mother-describes-similar-river-rapids-ride-experience/7972724

  27. Vogon Poet

    CT, having no donations from CEOs would be a positive to Trumpists I’d think.

    Spot on . Right from the start he used as a big selling point that, unlike Clinton, he would not be taking a dime from Wall Street bankers.

  28. Socrates, Day’s -company- is indeed insolvent. This doesn’t mean that Day is personally insolvent, as not all of its debts are personally guaranteed by him.

  29. bemused @ #1001 Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 7:08 pm

    ctar1 @ #998 Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 7:02 pm

    Bemused
    It’s just a little bit too much ‘the dead guy done it’.

    Yes, but it could also be true.
    It is very hard to believe a nurse or doctor could have made such an error.

    As somebody who once had to train doctors and nurses in using a range of medical equipment, including life critical equipment, that is a very naive view.

    (This is not a dig at front line medical staff, for whom I have great respect, on the whole. It is a comment on the fragile relationship between humans and technology. If it can be used incorrectly, if it can be broken, it will be, at some point.)

  31. What happens is that these organizations keep pushing the safety envelope. It’s the same in the Health system, too. Construction, ditto.

    As the envelope expands, and nothing happens it becomes accepted lore that nothing would have ever happened.

    It’s not much of a stretch to label those who are concerned about health and safety as “cranks”, “nanny staters”, even “Communists”, or “Union thugs”. The rules are changed, the standards are relaxed to reflect the new wisdom.

    Then, something happens. It was predictable, and predicted. But someone chimes in that it was an “Act of God”. The coroner will have to decide.

    The coroner does not “decide”. He or she recommends only. Those recommendations can be either accepted or rejected. Too often, it’s the latter.

    Kibbitzers put in their two-bob’s worth: you’ve got less chance of being killed at Dream World than you have driving there. It’s probably true. Yeah, tell that to the victims, and their now orphaned kids, who not only have to live their lives without their parents, but they also witnessed the tragedy, and will never, ever, forget it.

    Once it becomes a matter of statistics, it’s not long until it becomes a matter for the corporate PR parasites, and the stockmarket chart junkies. The humanity of four deaths is forgotten in a convenient mist that’s the combination of “There but for the grace of God go I” and practical administrative action and reaction. It’s humanity’s way of shrugging the collective shoulders and moving on to the next disaster.

    There is no accident but the accident that happens when an asteroid hits you on the head. All the rest is predictable, and those charged with the responsibility formaking sure it doesn’t happen are absolutely accountable.

    The spectacle today of the Dream World parent company’s CEO taking her money, then crying crocodile tears and invoking God was sickening. Big rewards are the product of big risks. I don’t give a flying fuck what the shareholders think, or for some kind of “life goes on” imperative to keep their crappy fun rides open and their employees in jobs.

    Four people are dead, horribly killed by something that was predictable either from an engineering, design or supervisory perspective. The imperative is to keep that park closed until we find out why, and institute meaningful reforms, not the least of which might be forgetting about what God’s got to do with it, and thinking about what sensible people warned the proprietors might and probably would happen… and were opposed all the way.

  32. Rewi

    Keating’s groping of Liz Windsor is a matter of public record so I don’t know why you’re being so coy.

    I don’t recall this at all…can you provide a reference?

  35. I don’t recall this at all…can you provide a reference?

    It garnered widespread media outrage, notably among the Murdoch media.

  36. Labor says it cannot properly consider legislation allowing the ongoing detention of “high-risk terrorist offenders” until the government guarantees that outgoing Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson provided advice on the final version.

  38. It is just as well that coroner’s recommendations are not enforceable orders.
    Some of the deaths with which I have been associated have attracted bizarre recommendations from coroners who were utterly clueless.
    The systemic difficulty here is that coroners do not manage things. They do not make things. They do not provide services in the real world. They do not run things. They do not have to concern themselves with whether the sun shines in the morning or whether it rains. They bear none of the costs or the rewards of their recommendations. They often have only very limited apprehension of science, engineering etc, etc, etc. Their recommendations are independent of budgets.
    The systemic risk is this: the coroner makes a bizarre recommendation. You ignore it. When the next death occurs you are held accountable partly against the bizarre recommendations of the coroner.
    If you ignore it because it is bizarre you are being sensible. But if you want to cover your arse and you spend money on implementing it, then that is money that is not available for more worthy objectives.

  39. Confessions

    It garnered widespread media outrage, notably among the Murdoch media

    Yep, I remember it easily now….I just didn’t recognise that Rewi was referring to our esteemed monarch with the name Liz Windsor. Not usually that slow on the uptake!

  40. just me @ #1029 Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 7:57 pm

    bemused @ #1001 Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 7:08 pm

    ctar1 @ #998 Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 7:02 pm

    Bemused
    It’s just a little bit too much ‘the dead guy done it’.

    Yes, but it could also be true.
    It is very hard to believe a nurse or doctor could have made such an error.

    As somebody who once had to train doctors and nurses in using a range of medical equipment, including life critical equipment, that is a very naive view.
    (This is not a dig at front line medical staff, for whom I have great respect, on the whole. It is a comment on the fragile relationship between humans and technology. If it can be used incorrectly, if it can be broken, it will be, at some point.)

    Yes, I am sure you are right and I have no reason to believe in the infallibility of the medical and nursing professions, in fact quite the opposite.

    But even with my laypersons knowledge, I would recognise that a catheter is to take the output of the urinary system and an oxygen line is to provide assistance to the respiratory system. They are not physically close together.

    Anyway, it will be interesting to see what the investigation turns up. I hope the coronial system in SA has more integrity than that in Victoria.

  41. I’ve been wondering why the woman who is the public face of the Dreamworld tragedy is so familiar. I’ve only remembered today that she used to edit Cleo magazine and the Women’s Weekly and had some talking head role on one of the bubble-headed afternoon TV talk shows.

  44. And if you want to get just an inkling of an idea of just how much coroners’ recommendations cost us all, check out all the signs you see as you enter and leave every single beach side precinct around 20,000 km of Australia’s coastline.
    And then mentally deduct the ones that should come under the heading of a fairly basic ‘common sense’.
    The managers have ‘no choice’.


  45. Bushfire Bill
    Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 5:43 pm
    I finally clicked on one of those “Canadian Spinning Tops” ads at Fairfax.
    Sheesh!
    WHAT A WANK!

    Did you put up with it long enough to find out what it was?

  46. boerwar @ #1038 Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 8:16 pm

    It is just as well that coroner’s recommendations are not enforceable orders.
    Some of the deaths with which I have been associated have attracted bizarre recommendations from coroners who were utterly clueless.
    The systemic difficulty here is that coroners do not manage things. They do not make things. They do not provide services in the real world. They do not run things. They do not have to concern themselves with whether the sun shines in the morning or whether it rains. They bear none of the costs or the rewards of their recommendations. They often have only very limited apprehension of science, engineering etc, etc, etc. Their recommendations are independent of budgets.
    The systemic risk is this: the coroner makes a bizarre recommendation. You ignore it. When the next death occurs you are held accountable partly against the bizarre recommendations of the coroner.
    If you ignore it because it is bizarre you are being sensible. But if you want to cover your arse and you spend money on implementing it, then that is money that is not available for more worthy objectives.

    Unlike BB you seem to have some grasp of what Coroners do.
    In Victoria, and I would expect the other states, they make findings on certain prescribed matters such as ID of the deceased and cause of death and they may then make recommendations which are easily ignored.

    And some do go off on a frolic in pursuit of a personal agenda, such as one in Victoria who wanted to see cops equipped with Tasers as a means of avoiding shooting the mentally ill. Other important issues to second place to this issue.

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