BludgerTrack: 53.0-47.0 to Labor

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate continues to drift minimally in Labor’s favour.

Two new polls this week, from Newspoll and Essential Research (expect the post-election pollster duopoly to be broken over the next few days), produce an incremental move to Labor on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, sufficient to gain them a seat in Western Australia on the seat projection. Newspoll as always provided a new set of leadership ratings, which likewise failed to make much difference.

bt2019-2016-11-23

• A production error resulted in me neglecting to mention the Essential Research numbers earlier this week. There was a move back to the Coalition on two-party preferred, putting Labor’s two party lead at 52-48, with primary votes at Coalition 38% (up one), Labor 37% (steady), Greens 10% (down one), One Nation 6% (steady) and Nick Xenophon Team 3% (steady). Essential have surpassed themselves with their supplementary questions this week, by recording strikingly high levels of agreement with a series of pointedly Trumpian statements about the present state of our own nation. This included an 83-9 split in favour of “the government should bring manufacturing jobs to Australia”, 75-14 for “if people who are not Australian citizens commit a crime they should be deported”, 77-13 for “we should do more to stop people entering our country illegally”, 52-32 for “I would like to see Australia more like it was in the past” and 60-26 for “no matter who is in power the system is rigged against ordinary people”. There was a 46-40 split in favour of “racial equality has gone too far”, and 40-48 against “gender equality has gone too far” (no gender breakdown on the latter unfortunately). Other findings: 64-17 in favour of cutting back on 457 visas, 45-44 in favour of taxes to make junk food more expensive, 51-39 for a 20% levy on soft drinks, and 56-16 for resettling refugees on Nauru and Manus Island to the US.

• Possum Comitatus relates that union-commissioned polling in Queensland finds One Nation support “in the teens”, and that the support is driven not by “the things One Nation gets headlines and TV grabs for”, but rather by those who “think, in the general case, that the world is fucked and not operating as it was promised”. For what it’s worth, Campbell Newman rates that a shy Hansonite effect is causing polls to rate One Nation several points too low; that the party will win a bag of seats at the next state election; and that the Liberal National Party should be laying the groundwork to enter into a coalition with them. I had a fair to say on such matters in a paywalled article for Crikey yesterday.

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.

467 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.0-47.0 to Labor”

Comments Page 8 of 10
1 … 7 8 9 10

  1. One thing I can’t see is the timing of next week.
    I didn’t see Insiders but assume this would be discussed.
    As I understand it, the expectation is that Turnbull will get the ABCC bill through the Senate before close of sitting.
    But I don’t think Xenophon is ready. Will other issues like Brandis or the mooted reshuffle take away time and attention.

  3. Australians may be spared the TPP thanks to the Donald’s popular isolationism but should he carry out his threat to impose tariffs on Chinese imports, or enact any of his promised protectionist trade measures, Australia could be in for a bumpy ride. Luckily our crack team at DFAT, headed by show pony Julie Bishop and with jolting Joe Hockey strategically deployed Trump-side, has come up with a brilliant game plan. Denial. So far the government’s position is that the Donald’s just bluffing about his trade and foreign policy. Never happen. Yet the evidence, from his transition team appointments, his recent attacks on the media, to his release of a video denouncing the TPP attest otherwise.

    Luckily there is a big win for the government this week as Mike Baird nobbles ICAC by passing a law which replaces the current commissioner with not one head but three and makes a few running alterations which mean that property developers can be a lot more relaxed and comfortable if not brazen exhibitionists about getting back into bed with the Liberal Party. Profiteering out of buying and selling property now reclaims its rightful place as the moral mainstay of an agile and innovative nation. Real estate speculation can now come out from under the doona and mount the victors’ podium atop resource extraction and labour exploitation as number one engine of our 21st Century economy.

    A knackered ICAC will restore the party’s fortunes in many ways. Perhaps Arthur Sinodinos may even recover his memory. A frighteningly re-energised screaming Scott Morrison is out of the blocks already; his sights fixed on filling developers’ pockets. He talks all over a fawning Lee Sales on 7:30. Gotta increase supply. Relax zoning. Release land on the edge of town. No jobs, no transport but by God it will sell well. He’s all worked up to distract us from party-poopers Deloitte Access Economics whose forecast this week joins other experts who warn that as treasurer Morrison is a hopeless joke. His binge-spending coupled with his denial of his revenue problem is rapidly increasing the deficit.
    …
    Posturing as a moderate against a “tricky Bill Shorten”, Dutton ends up wedging Turnbull who is daily revealed to be a weak leader, our weakest Prime Minister ever, who must appease his right wing captors at all costs even if it means indulging overt racist hate-speak in parliament. Each time Dutton gets into the gutter he drags his captive Prime Minister down with him.

    https://urbanwronski.com/2016/11/27/sack-dutton-turnbull-you-have-nothing-to-lose-but-your-whips-and-chains/

  4. john reidy @ #317 Sunday, November 27, 2016 at 1:43 pm

    Thanks for that Lizzie, re a reshuffle, I thought Massola had been tipped off.
    I still don’t see how they can call a reshuffle at this stage in the life of the parliament a sign of ‘good, stable government’ intent on ‘delivering’.

    Maybe Abbott is sensing blood regarding Brandis and putting pressure on in the resultant re-shuffle.

  6. Very interesting.
    There is a pretty good write up in Wikipedia and later variants exceeded 400mph. Amazing.

    Here is a pretty good site for that kind of aircraft history buff thing.

    Mossy nice, its follow on the Hornet, amazing.

    Sadly being wood, none flyable or even intact today.

    http://www.airvectors.net/index.html

  7. JR – A few things seem pretty obvious:
    1. Barnyard has promised the 450 gigalitres to some of his mates and isn’t going to give SA any;
    2. Xenophon has absolutely no incentive to pass the ABCC Bill or anything else next week. The longer he delays, the tighter the screws on the govt.
    3. Xenophon knows, absolutely, that he cannot trust this govt. So they will have to demonstrate their bona fides. They won’t be able to do that next week.
    I think it’s pretty obvious though that Malcolm will reshuffle to weed out any cabinet ministers he doesn’t need for support and bring in any potential trouble-makers (except for Tones). It will also allow him to send Bookcases to London.

  8. Unless I missed something Cassidy missed a blatant lie by Cormann, who said Swan introduced foreign income tax of 32.5% and the L-NP were working to reduce it to 19%.

    Greg Jericho’s piece on this in the Guardian clarifies something that I had missed/forgotten:

    In March 2015 the Administrative Appeals Tribunal ruled that backpackers – even if they were here for more than six months – were not necessarily residents, and thus could not automatically claim the tax-free threshold.

    Instead they would have to pay 32.5% tax on every dollar they earned up to $80,000, like other foreign workers.

    In the May 2015 budget Hockey removed any wriggle room the AAT decision might have offered by announcing that all holiday workers would pay 32.5% tax from the first dollar of income earned. He claimed it would bring in $540m in extra revenue over three years.

    …

    Prior to the 2016 election, in response to the industry’s loud complaints, the government pushed out the start date for the 32.5% tax rate from 1 July to 1 January, and pledged to review the decision.

    Subsequently it decided to make the tax rate 19%, but the legislation last week was voted down in the Senate with an amended rate of 10.5% – the same as for similar workers in New Zealand – supported by senator Jaqui Lambie and the ALP.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2016/nov/27/the-backpacker-tax-is-a-textbook-case-of-how-not-to-develop-policy

    So it sounds like there was some ambiguity in the pre-existing legislation (perhaps Swan-era, from tweaking tax rates at the time of increasing the tax free threshold), and the AAT decision threw the cat among the pigeons of existing practice.

    However, the government chose how to respond to the AAT decision – they could have chosen a different path, but instead decided to adopt the 32.5% with no tax free threshold and set that in stone …

    So Cormann’s framing may simply be misleading and irrelevant spin, but might not be outright lying.

  9. Apparently the last time anything like this occurred was in the 1876 US election…..
    Josh Marshall
    13h13 hours ago
    Josh Marshall ‏@joshtpm
    Clinton popular vote lead hits 2.228 million votes. 1.7% point lead.

  10. Will this be the location for Pauline and malcolm’s next visit?

    IT is sobering to think that only as recently as the 1970s there was an amazing and spectacular undersea jungle, with 30m high giant kelp trees, that ran the entire length of Tasmania’s East Coast.

    It was one of the world’s great marine ecosystems, part of a community of plants and animals that included the world’s largest seaweed and that stretched hundreds of kilometres along the eastern coastline of Australia. It was so common that local divers regarded it as the very characterisation of the waters off this island’s sunny East Coast. The giant kelp forests were thriving.

    Alas, in the space of a few decades, rising water temperatures have largely wiped it out.

    It is an environmental tragedy.

    All that is left of the 250km stretch of kelp forests that ran along the coast from Eddystone Point to the Tasman Peninsula is a few outlying patches.

    Marine biologists say the disappearance of the magnificent Tasmanian kelp forests has been incredibly sudden and disturbingly widespread.

    Global warming, or more specifically rising sea temperatures and the changing nature of ocean currents, are being blamed.

    However, the latest research seems to suggest that some of the world’s kelp forests are, at least to some extent, resisting climate change, and continuing to thrive. Not so in Tasmania.

    Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies researcher Craig Johnson says Tasmania is among the worst affected areas in the world. Professor Johnson said there had been a 90-95 per cent decline since the 1970s.

    Yes, that’s right, less than 10 per cent remains.

    This is because eastern Tasmania has some of the fastest-warming ocean water on Earth, rising at two to three times faster than the global average.

    http://www.themercury.com.au/news/opinion/editorial-our-vanishing-kelp-jungles-a-global-tragedy/news-story/15c347b077a12c23cc5eeccb644da46f

  12. Are there any states in Oz where paramedics are on motorbikes with a defibrilator, etc? Am sure I saw them in Europe and wondered at the time why we don’t when it is obviously much faster in getting through heavy traffic, especially if they have a siren. They can get to the patient first followed by an ambulance if required.
    I know the dread of waiting for what seemed like an eternity for an ambulance while HI was having a heart attack and finally two ambulances arrived . I’m Living near a hospital is no comfort as we lived near one in Sydney, but the next available ambulance had to travel from St Ives. However, the Ambos were amazing once they got there.
    I often sit in Sydney traffic and wonder how ambulances will get through that snarl, let alone driving over the traffic calming bumps and through construction zones . And often on arrival , there is little parking so they hold up traffic as they double park.

  14. erasmus @ #362 Sunday, November 27, 2016 at 4:59 pm

    Are there any states in Oz where paramedics are on motorbikes with a defibrilator, etc? Am sure I saw them in Europe and wondered at the time why we don’t when it is obviously much faster in getting through heavy traffic, especially if they have a siren. They can get to the patient first followed by an ambulance if required.
    I know the dread of waiting for what seemed like an eternity for an ambulance while HI was having a heart attack and finally two ambulances arrived . I’m Living near a hospital is no comfort as we lived near one in Sydney, but the next available ambulance had to travel from St Ives. However, the Ambos were amazing once they got there.
    I often sit in Sydney traffic and wonder how ambulances will get through that snarl, let alone driving over the traffic calming bumps and through construction zones . And often on arrival , there is little parking so they hold up traffic as they double park.

    Sounds a good idea. The only possible problem I see is would they be able to carry all the kit they might need to cover all likely situations?

  15. Bikie paramedics in Sydney CBD.

    They ride very fast, usually standing up on the footrests for a better view of holes in the traffic.


  20. Steve777I don’t think that Dutton is as stupid as he looks but he is as malevolent. He is playing a deliberate strategy with the PM’s acquiecence or active support (who knows or cares) to keep bigots in the Coalition fold and to prise them off One Nation and other Far Right groups.

    With the greatest of respect to you, Steve, Potato Head is exactly as dumb as he looks. This is the man who had to have Morrison point out the boom mike to him when he was making disparaging comments about the Pacific Islands.

    Dutton is both malevolent and dumb, but enjoys the Coalition’s generalised privilege of being held to low standards by our media.

  22. Bemused Comrade

    In mid CBD it’s quite different though. The bikie paramedics go faster than the bicycle couriers, and that’s saying something.

  25. There are no paramedics on either push or motorcycles in Queensland. We have rapid response sedans with a solo paramedic who will be backed up by a crew in a ambulance. It doesn’t make much difference timewise with or without sirens (getting through traffic lights aside) – although those at the patient end think they take forever to get there.

    The biggest problem on ambulance services nationwide- and especially Queensland- is ramping timed at hospitals. Delays of over an hour are common place.

  30. Well done barnaby –

    Crossbench Senator David Leyonhjelm says he will vote against legislation to re-establish the construction industry watchdog if the federal government caves in to Nick Xenophon on water, making Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s task of passing his key bill even tougher.

    And the last-minute drama has also exposed serious tensions within the Coalition: Liberals are furious at Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce for raising the water issue that provoked Senator Xenophon.

    Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/fury-at-barnaby-joyce-as-water-threatens-to-sink-abcc-20161126-gsydms#ixzz4RC0F7MD4

  31. halloween jack @ #375 Sunday, November 27, 2016 at 6:17 pm

    There are no paramedics on either push or motorcycles in Queensland. We have rapid response sedans with a solo paramedic who will be backed up by a crew in a ambulance. It doesn’t make much difference timewise with or without sirens (getting through traffic lights aside) – although those at the patient end think they take forever to get there.
    The biggest problem on ambulance services nationwide- and especially Queensland- is ramping timed at hospitals. Delays of over an hour are common place.

    You certainly nailed the problem there.
    I also suspect we have another problem in Victoria. Kennett privatised the part of the Ambulance service that dealt with routine, non-emergency, patient transport. Such ambulances cannot be used as emergency ambulances in a crisis.
    I am not sure what the overall impact of this is, but would like to see it studied to find out.

  32. There ya go – so much for the tories having such a *Good Week* etc.

    I thought the Nats had a big chunk of the extortion market – are they jealous ?

    One National told The Australian Financial Review that Mr Joyce’s actions “made him a hero in the regions” and “the Liberals can go and get stuffed”. He said the Nationals were not fussed about the ABCC and said the government should not give in to Senator Xenophon.

    “South Australia’s biggest export is extortion,” he said.

    Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/fury-at-barnaby-joyce-as-water-threatens-to-sink-abcc-20161126-gsydms#ixzz4RC0F7MD4

  33. This just about sums it up:

    Malcolm Turnbull may be wishing to sew up a sack-full of election promises before heading into the Christmas break, but the final parliamentary sitting week of the year is unlikely to be a smooth run.

    In a week the prime minister will be hoping to rubber stamp the re-establishment of the building watchdog and get a result over the controversial backpackers tax, the government will find itself again defending George Brandis who the Greens have labelled the “trouble-prone attorney-general” .

    http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/pm-hoping-to-get-abcc-over-the-line/news-story/8deed7533f912b96a0b31cc3b70ae5c8

  34. My first thought about the extra 450 paramedics to staff the new super stations is where are they going to come from? Ambulance services all around the world are trying to attract paramedics from other jurisdictions – both national and international.

  35. Jacqui Lambie on the news said, in relation to the back-packers tax, wte “If other MPs want to get on their bellies for the LNP they can, but I won’t.” Go, Jacqui.
    Then someone interviewed that bag of pus Leonjhelm, who threaten that if the govt caves to Xenophon it might lose his vote. But David, old bean, you had a chance to show the govt you’ve got a backbone and folded like warm jelly. So why would anyone take you seriously?

  36. DAVE – That’s hysterical. As we’ve been predicting, Barnyard will pull this govt down before he concedes to Xenophon. He’s obviously already promised this water to his mates.

  39. Hypocrite writ large:

    For months Donald Trump called the US presidential election “rigged”.
    The president-elect has a different word – “scam” – for the recount effort aimed at revisiting the vote in three pivotal battleground states.

    “The people have spoken and the election is over,” Trump declared on Saturday in his first comments about the growing effort to force recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He added, “We must accept this result and then look to the future.”

    http://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/trump-calls-vote-recount-request-a-scam/news-story/f8e700126c7b1741237f64d86e7b694e

  41. Sarcasm? (Oz headline)

    Pollies too busy to scrap perk
    JOE KELLY
    Bill to scrap Life Gold Pass travel entitlement for MPs likely to be delayed due to government’s busy agenda.

  42. I don’t know all that much about Castro, but the lengthy report on ABC news on his death was quite extraordinary, probably featuring the words ‘brutal dictator’ at least half a dozen times. The report comprised almost totally of interviews with exiles in Miami, celebrating his death with champagne etc.
    At the end the reporter ventured that she hopes that one day the rest of Cuba will experience the delights of American democracy.

    Seems like these days only those on the right are given the benefit of any doubt.

  43. Australia has won the the third test in Adelaide
    (A dead rubber)
    Australia may have won but they are still a s**t team lead by a s**t captain

  45. Funny, the USA never had any big worries about brutal, repressive dictatorships in the Americas, as long as they were friendly to US interests. Think Pinochet. Ditto in the Middle East. Think Saudi Arabia.

    A quick quiz. Your soul is in an ante room in Heaven in, say, 1958, waiting to be born. You are given some foreknowledge and a choice: be born to landless peasant family in Cuba or be born as a girl in a family of any station in Saudi Arabia. Which would you choose? I know which one I’d go for.

  46. I’ve always thought that Malcolm would send bookshelves to London to get rid of him. But I’m wondering now if the stink is so great that he can’t. Be interesting to see.

  47. Australia has won the the third test in Adelaide
    (A dead rubber)

    In sport as in politics, winning is everything. It’s not how you play the game, it’s whether you win or lose.

  49. Channel nine news here in Melbourne did not report anything on Brandis , but focussed on Abbott basically giving Turnbull an ultimatum re givin him a cabinet position.

Comments Page 8 of 10
1 … 7 8 9 10

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *