Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten both lose ground on the question of best person to lead their party, as voting intention remains largely unchanged.

Essential Research records incremental movement away from the Coalition on its fortnightly rolling average, on which the Coalition and Labor are now both on 37% on the primary vote with the former down one on last week, although two-party preferred is unchanged at 53-47. The Greens are up a point to 11%, One Nation is steady at 6% and the Nick Xenophon Team is steady at 3%. Other findings:

• Contra a recent result from Morgan, Malcolm Turnbull retains the narrowest of leads over Julie Bishop as preferred Liberal leader, with Turnbull down nine since immediately after the election to 21%, Bishop up four to 20% and Tony Abbott up two to 11%. The same question for Labor finds Bill Shorten’s election campaign spike disappearing – he’s down ten to 17%, with Tanya Plibersek up two to 14% and Anthony Albanese up one to 12%.

• Forty-four per cent would sooner see the words “humiliate or intimidate” than “offend or insult” in section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, but only 17% think Australia’s racial discrimination laws too strict, against 26% for too weak and 40% for about right.

• There is strong support for a range of campaign finance reforms, including immediate disclosure, $5000 donations caps, and bans on foreign donations and donations by companies and unions. However, most oppose banning donations and having only public funding for party spending.

• Thirty-three per cent said they took more interest in the American election than the Australian, compared with 22% for vice-versa and 38% for the same amount.

• Sixty-three per cent say institutions involved in child sex abuse claims should pay compensation, 14% say the government should do so, and 7% say neither.

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.

1,707 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

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  1. Lizzie

    Oh, lizzie, I wasn’t meaning to be cruel.

    I just meant, . . . ‘and they thought women were harmless, insignificant, vessels/vassals, let alone being able to service a contraption’.

  2. C@t

    Whenever I have a meaningful problem with Centrelink, having tried to solve it by normal means (phone. interview) I then email his eminence Hank Jongen.

    Usually within 24 hours I am contacted by his rep, and the problem is solved.

    Usually it is a genuine “systems” problem and human intervention fixes it.

    Centrelink is a huge and complex operation and the areas it covers (ie types of cases) is massive.

    This is even before the many ad hoc rules changes and staff reductions etc etc the political processes throw at them.

  3. And this…

    Handel
    Atalanta ‘Care Salve’
    Janet Baker
    English Chamber Orchestra
    Raymond Leopard

    Handel wrote it about 300 years ago…could have been yesterday….

  6. Could someone remind me how to access maps which include street view? It was never difficult before, but I seem to have lost the knack.

  9. Ohhhh….guytaur, Trog et al – you rabid Greenies never cease to amuse me! The very notion of a UBI is ludicrous, if only because it devalues the power of today’s powerful to the point that they’ll fight tooth & nail (using armed force if needs be, although their propaganda machines do well enough for now) to prevent it from coming to pass.
    You wanna know the kicker to this joke? If the poor eat the rich over UBI, the damage the war will wage on economic infrastructure will make the UBI simply impossible! Not to mention that the narrative will be even MORE firmly set in the robber-barons’ favour next time round, and so on…
    It’s a colossal fucking joke, and humanity is the punchline!

  11. Matt

    if only because it devalues the power of today’s powerful to the point that they’ll fight tooth & nail

    Too right they will but you seem to assume they must/always/will win, resistance is futile.

  12. lizzie
    you should be able to just google the address and the first search item is a map and in the lower left corner of that map is the street view option.

  13. Matt,
    To which I might add that it therefore behoves the Labor Party to continue the eternal struggle against the Man for decent wages and conditions for the employed.

    In politics you must always choose your battles wisely.

  15. Matt

    Ohhhh….guytaur, Trog et al – you rabid Greenies never cease to amuse me! The very notion of a UBI is ludicrous, if only because it devalues the power of today’s powerful to the point that they’ll fight tooth & nail (using armed force if needs be, although their propaganda machines do well enough for now) to prevent it from coming to pass.
    You wanna know the kicker to this joke? If the poor eat the rich over UBI, the damage the war will wage on economic infrastructure will make the UBI simply impossible! Not to mention that the narrative will be even MORE firmly set in the robber-barons’ favour next time round, and so on…
    It’s a colossal fucking joke, and humanity is the punchline!

    Well you are right about one thing: if Greenies advocate for UBI (on the basis of “social justice” or whatever) then that will delay its coming to pass. This is because—just as they did with climate change—the Greenies insist on attaching a whole lot of green-left social agenda to a previously uncontroversial economic measure, leading to understandable skepticism on the part of the majority.

    UBI is in fact uncontroversial in economics: both Milton Friedman and FA Hayek supported it for example. The reason for this is that there are no other economically neutral proposals for how to sustain demand in a world in which less than 10% of people can offer any economically valuable supplies. This world is coming sooner than one might think: manufacturing will return to the USA, but without jobs at skill levels below engineers (even highly skilled robot maintenance electricians are now marginal).

    This being the case, the argument for UBI will be won by those with the discipline to address it purely in terms of economic outcomes.

  17. E G T

    the argument for UBI will be won by those with the discipline to address it purely in terms of economic outcomes.

    Unfortunately that isn’t how it works. The politicians (almost) always distort matters. I’m still annoyed at how the Coalition is cherry picking bits of Labor action during the GFC to prove they are spendthrifts.

  19. :large

    michael o’connor ‏@michael47818552 · 10h10 hours ago

    And it’s now official @TurnbullMalcolm has lost the plot #fizza #auspol

  20. Lizzie

    E G T

    ” the argument for UBI will be won by those with the discipline to address it purely in terms of economic outcomes.”

    Unfortunately that isn’t how it works. The politicians (almost) always distort matters. I’m still annoyed at how the Coalition is cherry picking bits of Labor action during the GFC to prove they are spendthrifts.

    I mean politicians need to have the discipline, not to stay “on message” for three days but instead to stay “on strategy” for twenty years. That’s how it used to work and is the only path to lasting change. The mass media has undermined this for at least the last 25 years, but one of the outcomes of the Trump phenomenon is that that era is now at an end.

  22. EG Theodore

    The mass media has undermined this for at least the last 25 years

    As I said long ago democracy/governance, call it what you will, in the Anglo Saxon world is fuacked as long as Rupes draws breath. He and his organisation have been a cancer on society.

  23. I don’t know if this article has been mentioned previously: 5 key things people don’t get about the American working class.

    I think much of the article equally applies here. The following paragraph especially:

    Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men, also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “[I] can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a labourer told her. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.

    I once heard that the definition of happiness was having more money than your friends. In Australia the dream seems to be more about winning lotto than having your own business, but I think the observations in the article still ring true.

  24. Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Norman have another thing in common besides being Grade A arseholes behind closed doors (or so it was said by the former women in their lives).

    They are both men who exhibited enormous potential in their chosen fields, but at the end of the day, when they got to the top, were chokers.

  25. Poroti

    As I said long ago democracy/governance, call it what you will, in the Anglo Saxon world is fuacked as long as Rupes draws breath. He and his organisation have been a cancer on society.

    In Australia this is actually crap (slightly less so in the UK). Murdoch’s opposition to McMahon in 1972 was probably significant but since that they have simply been exploiting a business model in which they give the impression of having influence in order to sell advertising. Their contribution is annoying but has not presented serious difficulties to politicians with the discipline to get things done. Politicians without such discipline have both abounded and floundered, but that’s because they were going to flounder anyway.

  26. The same aggressive and uncompromising international effort used to combat terrorism must be employed to eliminate tax havens, says Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz …

    “That they have the instruments to do so has been forcefully shown in the fight against terrorism. That they do not do so in the fight against corruption and tax … evasion is testimony to the power of the interests of those who benefit from secrecy.”

    https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/11/15/anti-terrorism-laws-should-be-applied-to-tax-havens-report-says.html

  30. NBN is looking at a 10-fold blowout on early estimates of the cost of remediating the old copper network which forms the basis of FTTN.
    The Australian. :large

  33. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-20/how-many-spies-does-china-have-in-australia/8041004
    What if the Chinese government discovers that our brave boys: Dutton, Pyne, Morrison, Turnbull are a bunch of Fwits?
    Another disaster in the making. We should all do our best to protect these, our elected representative who are charged with defending our honour in the international arena. All together now # “our land is girt by see” da da da dum.
    As an aside I foresee a huge market for cricketers “boxes” for the ladies intending to or forced to be involved in the Trump presidency. 🙂

  34. I hate hearing Turnbull lie by saying “We’ve had success in Cambodia and in America” as regards resettling refugees.

    Cambodia
    $50,000,000later and there is ONE person there.

    America
    Hardly even off the ground and very problematic with Trump around.

  35. ‘Their contribution is annoying but has not presented serious difficulties to politicians with the discipline to get things done. Politicians without such discipline have both abounded and floundered, but that’s because they were going to flounder anyway.’

    The fact is that Murdoch has had the Labor party spooked since Keating.
    His influence is as real as the spineless think it is.

  36. ‘I hate hearing Turnbull lie by saying “We’ve had success in Cambodia and in America” as regards resettling refugees.’

    I hate the way he is never challenged by the useless idiots we call journalists.

  37. EG Theodore @6:35PM: …they have simply been exploiting a business model in which they give the impression of having influence in order to sell advertising.

    That might be partly true and Rupert’s influence is overstated. He is also largely preaching to the choir. But he doesn’t have to influence that many, just one or two precent at the margins, which is often all that is needed. His outlets played a big role in whipping up moral panic about the “Carbon Tax” over a sustained period of two and a half years, for example, and convincing many that the Home Insulation program was a major disaster.

  39. Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Norman have another thing in common besides being Grade A arseholes behind closed doors (or so it was said by the former women in their lives).

    Only women?

  40. I hate the way he is never challenged by the useless idiots we call journalists.

    You’re absolutely right about that.

    The official line is “success in Cambodia andAmerica” and woe betide anyone who says different.

    Greg Jennett tonight on ABC TV News (no doubt fed his lines by his predecessor, Mark Simkin) was bloody atrocious.

    What is the point of these people being “journalists” if all they do is report talking-points from The Drip, so that they can stay on The Drip and report even more talking points?It’s a circle of insanity.

  41. Ag0044
    Sunday, November 20, 2016 at 7:06 pm
    That article from the Australian, about an NBN blowout, is from December 2015

    So What. It is still pertinent.

    And the cost blow-out is probably more.

    Take my example:

    I was connected to the MTMess on October 10, 2016. Nothing worked. No broadband, no VOIP, a big fat nothing.

    Telstra knew, NBN Co knew, my ISP knew, I knew, we all knew what the the problem was: the dreadful condition of the copper wires in my street.

    But cop this, young Harry. NBN Co couldn’t monitor my service beyond the NODE. Nor could my ISP. Guess who had to do that? Free of charge. Moi.

    For 31 days I monitored it. (and have still, since). Of those 31 days, I had one 12-hr period where it actually worked.

    In the intervening period, I have seen so many technicians in the streets round my place, spraying the telco lines, waiting for the huntsmen to disappear – huntsmen love telco poles – and then testing, testing, testing.

    Yet, my ISP tech people think something fishy’s going on. So do I, for that matter.

    The NBN Co contractor says he’s not allowed to speak to me – yet, he told me, confidentially, that if I have a problem, I have to report an outage, not a line fault. He told me, again confidentially, that my whole street has been red-flagged, but he is only able to report one section (my street apparently has five sections) at a time. It’s totally fucked, quite frankly.

    So, despite the article being from 2015, I’m sure it’s accurate, albeit less accurate than it is now; i.e. I’m absolutely sure the cost has blown-out more.

    Malcolm Fu*king Turnbull totally screwed the NBN. And he should be called to account.

    But, nothing will happen. It will just cost more and more and more.

  44. kezza2
    #3266 Sunday, November 20, 2016 at 7:33 pm
    Channeling Roy Rene and McCackie Mansions for us.
    Excellent work. Bonza mate 😉

  45. Kezza2,
    You have my sympathy. And it is for the exact reasons you specify so completely and well that I did not take the ‘opportunity’ to connect to the NBN when it came to my area.

    I still have my ADSL2+. It still works as well as I hear people with the NBN say theirs is going. When it is going. That’s the main difference.

    I will just wait for Labor to get back to the job they were doing, after the next election. They can just call it an ‘Aussies First Job Stimulus Package’. Should go down a treat. : )

  46. kezza2 @ #1641 Sunday, November 20, 2016 at 7:33 pm

    Malcolm Fu*king Turnbull totally screwed the NBN. And he should be called to account.
    But, nothing will happen. It will just cost more and more and more.

    My point was that it’s not yet (that we know of) yet another blowout.

    And, I agree with you. What Turnbull has done to the NBN is a disgrace, and that it is being allowed to happen is a disgrace. (“Disgrace” being a very polite term.)

  47. Hey, Thanks KayJay

    I’ve been meaning to say to you – not that I think you’re in my father’s age group – but I was wondering if your parents/grandparents did what my father and his mother did?

    Every night after dinner (tea), dad and granny would have sweets. This consisted of either a slice of white bread, sprinkled with white sugar, and drenched in cream – or, cutting cubes of butter, rolling them in white sugar, and savouring them like boiled lollies.

    I don’t know what made me think of it, but this vivid memory came up out of nowhere, and I just wondered, if you recall anything like that, at all?

    It was possibly an overnight BBC program on cholesterol or something that prompted the memory, but I’m not sure.

    It just came out of nowhere. And I had to ask.

  48. C@t

    I agree. I was happy enough with ADSL2+. It worked, albiet intermittently, for me. And I knew I had until mid-2018 to make up my mind.

    The worst bit is, I didn’t agree to changing over. GRRRRRRRR. It happened without my consent.

    Long story, but.

    So, it’s been

  49. I hate hearing Turnbull lie by saying “We’ve had success in Cambodia and in America” as regards resettling refugees.

    And this is simply repeated without comment by the ABC and other media outlets. Malcolm is lying, knowing he’ll go mostly unchallenged, in an attempt to cover up and rewrite history. Cambodia was a complete failure, something that could have been a plot of a “Yes Minister” episode, like the hospital without any patients.

    Again, the usual comment. Imagine if it had happened under Labor.

  50. Ag0044

    My point was that it’s not yet (that we know of) yet another blowout.
    —
    Yeah, well, fair enough. BUT it would probably have been better to say that, rather than leave it up in the air; and open for a bullet.

    Because when you don’t say what you mean, it appeared as if you were saying , to me at least, that everything was hunkydory, when it most certainly wasn’t, and if my experience is anything to go by, then the costs will most certainly blow out.

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