Essential Research: 55-45 to Labor

The latest Essential Research poll finds less than no evidence for the Coalition bounce recorded by Newspoll.

The Essential Research fortnight rolling average result departs firmly from the Newspoll script in recording a two-point jump to Labor, who now lead the two-party preferred by 55-45. On the primary vote, the Coalition drops one to 34%, Labor is up one to 37%, One Nation is down one to 10% and the Greens are steady on 9%. Also from this survey:

• A series of questions on power costs records 77% saying they have increased over the last few years, compared with 2% who clicked on the wrong button; 75% approving of a policy to reserve gas for domestic use, versus 6% disapproval; 29% apiece favouring more government control and more government ownership of energy production, versus 17% favouring “more private power companies to increase competition”; 68% approving of the South Australian government’s plan to build, own and operate a new gas-fired electricity plant along with a battery storage plant, with only 11% disapproving (59% and 17% among South Australian respondents, although there were fewer than 100 of these); 25% favouring banning coal seam gas mining, 31% favouring its restriction on farming land, and 14% believing current regulation to be sufficient.

• An occasional series of questions in which respondents are asked about the attributes of the two parties, which finds Labor increasing by three to five points on most positive indicators since last June, whereas the Liberals are down about five on most positive indicators and up about five on negative ones. Worst of the bunch by some margin is “divided”, on which the Liberals have shot from 52% to 68%. They have also dropped nine points on “has a good team of leaders”, on which Labor now leads 41% to 33%.

Elsewhere:

• A ReachTEL poll of Peter Dutton’s outer northern Brisbane seat of Dickson, conducted for progressive think tank the Australia Institute, finds Dutton with a two-party preferred lead over Labor of 52-48, essentially unchanged from his 1.6% winning margin in 2016. However, the primary votes are shaken up by the arrival of One Nation on 17.6% (after including responses for a follow-up question prompting the undecided), with Dutton on 38.2% (down 6.4%), Labor on 30.2% (down 4.7%) and the Greens on 9.7% (down 0.2%). The poll also finds 60.5% opposed to public funding for the Adani Carmichael coal mine, with 17.5% in support; and 65.2% in favour of a 50% renewable energy target for 2030, with 22.8% opposed. It was conducted last Wednesday from a sample of 726.

• Courtesy of the ACTU, we have a second set of ReachTEL poll numbers on federal voting intention in Western Australia. After including results of a follow-up question prompting the initially undecided, the primary votes are Labor 42.8%, Liberal 31.7%, Nationals 5.6%, Greens 6.8% and One Nation 4.2%. The poll also finds 29.3% rating the penalty rates cut as very important in helping shape their vote; 23.2% somewhat important; 18.4% somewhat unimportant; and 29.0% as very unimportant. On the question of whether the federal government should legislate to protect penalty rates, 61.6% said yes and 38.4%. The poll was conducted Tuesday from a sample of 1471.

• A separate finding on the impact of penalty rates on the WA result comes from a poll by Labor-aligned lobbying group Campaign Capital, which finds 62.6% out of 1800 respondents across eleven marginal seats saying they opposed the cut.

I’m continuing to lag with the BludgerTrack updates – what’s below is what I should have published last week, without the latest numbers from Newspoll and Essential Research. The latest update will, I promise, be published in good time at the end of the week.

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.

1,927 comments on “Essential Research: 55-45 to Labor”

Comments Page 3 of 39
1 2 3 4 … 39

  1. The Liberals’ decimation at the state election means they will struggle to find enough MPs to sit on parliamentary committees, making it harder to scrutinise the Labor Government, analysts have said.

    “In the last 10, 20, 30 years committee work has become a major feature of the activities of Parliament and it’s under some threat and pressure because of the one-sided nature of the recent election,” parliamentary fellow in the Legislative Assembly Committee Office Professor David Black said.

    Labor will hold 41 seats in the new Parliament’s Legislative Assembly, while the Liberals will have only 13 and the Nationals five.

    The opposition leader and deputy do not normally sit on committees, which could leave the Liberals with 11 MPs to contribute to four standing committees, two joint standing committees and any select committees.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-22/wa-liberals-will-struggle-to-sit-on-committees/8374648

  2. citizen @ #77 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 8:20 am

    Uhlmann (the energy expert) has an article which might be called “energy policy for dummies”.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-20/hazelwood-closure-leaves-major-energy-black-hole-prices-to-rise/8367826

    Thanks for that, though is there a hint of irony in your characterisation of Uhlmann as an ‘energy expert’?

    From the link:

    Subsidised wind farms bid on the National Electricity Market against other forms of power.

    Does anyone know if wind farm subsidies are greater per MW than those for fossil fuel power, and what is their nature?

    I wonder what the direct subsidies are for fossil fuels? There are hidden subsidies as well for fossil fuel power, I would imagine, from diesel fuel to run coal mines to clean up costs of mines and derelict coal fired plants.

    When the wind is blowing a generator’s marginal cost of producing electricity is next to nothing, so it underbids coal and gas.

    This is phrased as though a zero marginal cost for producing electricity is a bad thing. Not so, in my book.

    Here the energy expert brings out into the open something which has been discussed at length on PB:

    And there’s another problem for thermal generators.

    The rapid rise of solar panels on suburban homes means that electricity demand is supressed in the middle of the day, which also cuts into their margins.

    Which means that solar roof top panels are helping to keep the costs of electricity down in the middle of the day.

    Frequency control

    There is another, more complex, problem…

    Coal-fired generators, hydro and gas have a large spinning mass of turbines embedded in them.

    Put out the fire or remove the water and the inertia in the turbine will keep it spinning until it is stopped by friction. The stability and reliability of the entire electricity system depends on inertia.

    Even when wind and solar are providing the bulk of the power in South Australia, they are doing little to keep its frequency stable.

    This is another service that is often imported from Victoria.

    I feel sure that the electricity and engineering experts can find holes or fudging in this scenario, but to a lay person it seems like there is some hand waving going on here.

    I am at a loss to work out what he is saying about the loss of driving force to the turbines and inertia. It seems he thinks this is significant, but it is basic maths/science/engineering.

    The tying of the concept of inertia to the stability of the system seems strange, like some sort of innuendo.

    This quote:

    Even when wind and solar are providing the bulk of the power in South Australia, they are doing little to keep its frequency stable.

    This is another service that is often imported from Victoria.

    ..is one I can’t make head or tail of. Aren’t there systems in place to keep the frequency stable? I thought that was one of the key drivers for designers of electricity systems.

    And how do you import that needed frequency from Victoria? And why is that necessarily a bad thing? I thought we had an electricity system so one part of the grid could help out another when necessary, so the lights stay on in all the targeted area?

  5. socrates @ #99 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 9:20 am

    I must agree with Pegasus too. Languiller’s case is sad and due to an unfortunate combination of personal circumstances and their timing. He has paid the money back and I accept there was nonintention to defraud. But Nardella appears to have quite cynically worked the system for years, taking up to $200,000. This is where the sense of entitlement shows up. People who did that in non-parliamentary or CEO careers would be savked by now.

    It seems the cops will probably be having a look at Nardella and it is possible he may end up with a new residential address at Her Majesty’s expense.

  6. Darn,
    That’s 1/4 of the issues which have been cut and pasted about today by pegasus. However, wrt to that Victorian issue in particular, I don’t think it really warrants a campaign on PB, cutting and pasting, day after day, screeds with respect to it. Is it that important in the scheme of things!?! Especially, as others have commented, and which The Greens no doubt know, it isn’t as easy as Daniel Andrews saying, “You’re fired!” 🙂

  7. It seems the cops will probably be having a look at Nardella and it is possible he may end up with a new residential address at Her Majesty’s expense.

    Which is all that really needs to be said. Let the law take it’s course. There’s no need to run a constant carping campaign about it.

  8. Socrates:

    Trump should just resign and save everyone the hassle and expense of playing this out to the very end. But unfortunately that isn’t going to happen.

  10. Japan court shocks nuclear industry with liability ruling

    By SHAUN BURNIE MARCH 20, 2017 11:24 AM (UTC+8) 1,5812
    Japan’s atomic power establishment is in shock following the court ruling on Friday that found the state and the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant liable for failing to take preventive measures against the tsunami that crippled the facility.

    The reason for the shock is the ruling has wide-ranging implications for Japan’s entire nuclear power industry and the efforts to restart reactors throughout the country.

    http://www.atimes.com/article/japan-court-shocks-nuclear-industry-liability-ruling/

  11. Fess
    True, Trump is psychologically incapable of admitting failure. It is the source of his “self-confidence” which is really just delusion. There are a lot of such people in the corporate world. Most crash and burn. A few get lucky and fly high for a while. But they keep risking it all and eventually lose it all. Alan Bond is the classic local example.

  12. Socrates

    “The German bank that loaned $300m (£260m) to Donald Trump played a prominent role in a money laundering scandal run by Russian criminals with ties to the Kremlin, the Guardian can reveal.”

    What a beat up.

  13. Guytaur,
    I have as much right to comment about the boring predictability of Pegasus’ posts as she does have the right to post them. 🙂

  14. Tony_Burke: In a few minutes every MP will have to vote to support or oppose Govts weakening of protections against racial hate speech. #auspol

  15. If you want to know why Trump, Bannon and Miller are not going anywhere soon, it’s because they have only just started on their project to remake America:

    What has been lost in the discussion of the Deep State, however, is that even if it is fiction, it is a profoundly useful one for the White House. As Trump takes a wrecking ball to the federal bureaucracy—what Steve Bannon has called “the administrative state”—an illusory enemy like the Deep State is exactly what is needed to justify the destruction. Repetitive allusions to sinister officials and administrators will expand and energize the constituency for a radical downsizing and weakening of government agencies, especially among Republicans, who appear to believe Trump’s utterances no matter how much the media debunks them. However thoughtful the New York Times or the New Yorker criticisms of the Deep State rhetoric may be, the White House seems to have plenty of reasons to stick with its new myth.

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/steve-bannon-deep-state-214935

  16. @ Don – the main subsidy for Coal Plants is that the cost of cleaning up after them, this is split into a few things.

    1) Cost of global warming is paid for by the entire world, some of which comes from Australians.

    2) Coal mines will generally be sold, after use, to a ‘company’ for $1. This company then goes bankrupt, leaving the area not rehabilitated. Generally, the taxpayer gets the bill for this when the government cleans up.

    These are both much more significant than any diesel use, funding for rail lines etc. The costs of cleaning up would be huge, if we made the Coal miners/power plants pay for it themselves.

  17. socrates @ #99 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 9:20 am

    But Nardella appears to have quite cynically worked the system for years, taking up to $200,000. This is where the sense of entitlement shows up. People who did that in non-parliamentary or CEO careers would be savked by now.

    That’s the crux of the whole entitlements abuse debate at all levels of Government.

    In the majority of cases the Members are legitimately claiming entitlements available, but they are not doing this to facilitate their work in Parliament, they are doing this in a way to maximise entitlements for their own personal financial advantage.

    That is why stronger rules and oversight is needed with the Members having to clearly identify the reasons for making a claim.

  18. Tony_Burke: Every government MP who had previously spoken out against racist hate speech now voting with the govt to prevent House affirming 18C #auspol

  20. Re Bemused @ #100: Fact is that even in WWII the Union Jack was widely flown and the Australian flag was the ‘Red Ensign’. Our current flag became official only in 1953.

    I can recall going to Anzac Day marches in the city (Sydney) with family as a kid – it would have been the late 50s. The red and blue versions of the flag were both waved in the crowd and seemed to have equal billing. Both versions were in the shops in the leadup to the day. It seemed to a matter of preference (I liked the red one).

  23. Victoria
    What was the connection between Trump getting a loan from one of the world’s biggest banks and his doing anything nefarious ?

  24. steve777 @ #120 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 9:55 am

    Re Bemused @ #100: Fact is that even in WWII the Union Jack was widely flown and the Australian flag was the ‘Red Ensign’. Our current flag became official only in 1953.
    I can recall going to Anzac Day marches in the city (Sydney) with family as a kid – it would have been the late 50s. The red and blue versions of the flag were both waved in the crowd and seemed to have equal billing. Both versions were in the shops in the leadup to the day. It seemed to a matter of preference (I liked the red one).

    I’d imagine the red ensign was excluded due to many Communist counties having red flags. 🙂

  25. I wonder if Craig Laundy, despite all his protestations to the contrary last weekend, will enjoy the fact that Labor can now campaign in his multicultural Western Sydney seat around the fact that he voted against supporting Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act? 🙂

  29. don @ #102 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 9:21 am

    citizen @ #77 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 8:20 am

    Uhlmann (the energy expert) has an article which might be called “energy policy for dummies”.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-20/hazelwood-closure-leaves-major-energy-black-hole-prices-to-rise/8367826

    Thanks for that, though is there a hint of irony in your characterisation of Uhlmann as an ‘energy expert’?
    From the link:

    Subsidised wind farms bid on the National Electricity Market against other forms of power.

    Does anyone know if wind farm subsidies are greater per MW than those for fossil fuel power, and what is their nature?
    I wonder what the direct subsidies are for fossil fuels? There are hidden subsidies as well for fossil fuel power, I would imagine, from diesel fuel to run coal mines to clean up costs of mines and derelict coal fired plants.

    When the wind is blowing a generator’s marginal cost of producing electricity is next to nothing, so it underbids coal and gas.

    This is phrased as though a zero marginal cost for producing electricity is a bad thing. Not so, in my book.
    Here the energy expert brings out into the open something which has been discussed at length on PB:

    And there’s another problem for thermal generators.
    The rapid rise of solar panels on suburban homes means that electricity demand is supressed in the middle of the day, which also cuts into their margins.

    Which means that solar roof top panels are helping to keep the costs of electricity down in the middle of the day.

    Frequency control
    There is another, more complex, problem…
    Coal-fired generators, hydro and gas have a large spinning mass of turbines embedded in them.
    Put out the fire or remove the water and the inertia in the turbine will keep it spinning until it is stopped by friction. The stability and reliability of the entire electricity system depends on inertia.
    Even when wind and solar are providing the bulk of the power in South Australia, they are doing little to keep its frequency stable.
    This is another service that is often imported from Victoria.

    I feel sure that the electricity and engineering experts can find holes or fudging in this scenario, but to a lay person it seems like there is some hand waving going on here.
    I am at a loss to work out what he is saying about the loss of driving force to the turbines and inertia. It seems he thinks this is significant, but it is basic maths/science/engineering.
    The tying of the concept of inertia to the stability of the system seems strange, like some sort of innuendo.
    This quote:

    Even when wind and solar are providing the bulk of the power in South Australia, they are doing little to keep its frequency stable.
    This is another service that is often imported from Victoria.

    ..is one I can’t make head or tail of. Aren’t there systems in place to keep the frequency stable? I thought that was one of the key drivers for designers of electricity systems.
    And how do you import that needed frequency from Victoria? And why is that necessarily a bad thing? I thought we had an electricity system so one part of the grid could help out another when necessary, so the lights stay on in all the targeted area?

    The LGC price is ~$85 at the moment: http://lgc.mercari.com.au/

    They can be claimed per MWH generated up to 31 December 2030.

  30. I have a certain amount of moral discomfort as a privileged white woman standing up and endorsing taking away restrictions that work to protect the vulnerable – while conveniently ignoring a whole bunch of other restrictions that work to protect the powerful.

    I’ve never been offended or insulted on the basis of my race and feel it might be best to listen to and respect the lived experiences of people who have.

    Very well said Katharine Murphy – and credit to her too for acknowledging that she is a privileged white woman. It is not only white men who are privileged, as some here seem to want to believe.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/mar/21/coalitions-18c-overhaul-a-hollow-and-operatic-outbreak-of-gesture-politics

  31. voice endeavour @ #116 #116 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 9:50 am

    @ Don – the main subsidy for Coal Plants is that the cost of cleaning up after them, this is split into a few things.
    1) Cost of global warming is paid for by the entire world, some of which comes from Australians.
    2) Coal mines will generally be sold, after use, to a ‘company’ for $1. This company then goes bankrupt, leaving the area not rehabilitated. Generally, the taxpayer gets the bill for this when the government cleans up.
    These are both much more significant than any diesel use, funding for rail lines etc. The costs of cleaning up would be huge, if we made the Coal miners/power plants pay for it themselves.

    Thanks VE, much appreciated.

  33. steve777 @ #120 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 9:55 am

    Re Bemused @ #100: Fact is that even in WWII the Union Jack was widely flown and the Australian flag was the ‘Red Ensign’. Our current flag became official only in 1953.
    I can recall going to Anzac Day marches in the city (Sydney) with family as a kid – it would have been the late 50s. The red and blue versions of the flag were both waved in the crowd and seemed to have equal billing. Both versions were in the shops in the leadup to the day. It seemed to a matter of preference (I liked the red one).

    Any suggestion my father heard that they were fighting for the flag or ‘King and Country’ would draw a snort of derision.
    In WWII, he and his comrades were fighting against fascism and in defence of their homeland and loved ones.

  34. bemused @ #105 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 9:23 am

    socrates @ #99 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 9:20 am

    I must agree with Pegasus too. Languiller’s case is sad and due to an unfortunate combination of personal circumstances and their timing. He has paid the money back and I accept there was nonintention to defraud. But Nardella appears to have quite cynically worked the system for years, taking up to $200,000. This is where the sense of entitlement shows up. People who did that in non-parliamentary or CEO careers would be savked by now.

    It seems the cops will probably be having a look at Nardella and it is possible he may end up with a new residential address at Her Majesty’s expense.

    Good. The sooner our parliamentarians are facing gaol time when caught rorting their entitlements the better for confidence in our system.

    Neither Liberal nor Labor have ever shown any mercy towards welfare recipients and I have no sympathy for any of them.

  35. confessions @ #108 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 9:29 am

    Socrates:
    Trump should just resign and save everyone the hassle and expense of playing this out to the very end. But unfortunately that isn’t going to happen.

    Disagree. The longer this drags out the better as it is doing well deserved colossal damage to the Republican brand.

    I hope that Trump and the current republican incumbents are enough to shock some sense into the American public.

  36. So, Malcolm Turnbull has developed his ‘Get Out of Jail’ form of words for saying one thing before an election, and doing the complete opposite after(as put to him in a question by a Guardian journo):

    The other issue that hangs around like a fish in the sun is section 18C. Yesterday, the government unveiled changes to remove insult, offend and humiliate as offences and insert harass. That also looks doomed in the Senate and the prime minister was pressed on that too, this morning.
    Q: Why bring it on when no one likes it? Why did you change your mind on it, having said five times prior to the election that you had no plans to change it?

    A: “What we said before the election was that we did not have any plans to change 18C and that was absolutely true. So again, as a guardian of the truth, you should be more careful with the language you attribute to me. Any other questions? ”

    So now, all he has to do is say, “No plans”, concrete or otherwise, before the election, maybe thoughts only, but they aren’t plans, so…

    Then, after the election the plans get developed.

    Too easy for a politician whose special subject is Semantics.

  38. Obviously Nardella should go: however, there is no mechanism I know of which can make that happen, if he’s not willing to pull the plug himself.

  39. barney in saigon @ #124 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 10:02 am

    steve777 @ #120 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 9:55 am

    Re Bemused @ #100: Fact is that even in WWII the Union Jack was widely flown and the Australian flag was the ‘Red Ensign’. Our current flag became official only in 1953.
    I can recall going to Anzac Day marches in the city (Sydney) with family as a kid – it would have been the late 50s. The red and blue versions of the flag were both waved in the crowd and seemed to have equal billing. Both versions were in the shops in the leadup to the day. It seemed to a matter of preference (I liked the red one).

    I’d imagine the red ensign was excluded due to many Communist counties having red flags. 🙂

    I don’t think it has been excluded and is still a valid Australian Flag and my preference too.
    Photos of the opening of the original Parliament house show it being flown extensively.

  42. @ Grimace.

    Frequency Keeping is based on making tiny adjustments to supply/demand to keep them in balance. If these are not in balance, the frequency increases or decreases from it’s typical 50/60 hz depending on country.

    The more ‘big rotating bits of metal’ your grid has, the more lead time your frequency keeping services have to respond.

    In primitive countries like Australia, frequency keeping is provided by generators running below their full capacity, and ramping production up or down as required to keep everything in balance. This is a role the generators are terrible at, and don’t like doing, as it causes efficiency losses running below full capacity. If you have fossil fuel generators providing your frequency keeping, you need fossil fuels providing spinning inertia in the system, to give the generators enough time to respond.

    Civilised energy markets, allow load to participate in frequency keeping. A reduction in demand has the same impact on grid frequency as an increase in supply. An increase in demand has the same impact as a decrease in supply. These are able to be controlled much more finely, provide distributed response, and provide faster response. The faster and better response means that nowhere near as much spinning reserve is required (although that is not to say none is required).

    Currently, SA sometimes doesn’t have enough frequency keeping providers to meet it’s requirements. This is mostly because small grid require a higher % of their demand in frequency keeping. It also is exacerbated by high renewables %, which do not provide frequency keeping. So they rely on frequency keeping in Victoria, shared over the interconnector. A change in supply/demand in Victoria, will generally flow through to SA over the interconenctor. This can only be done if the interconnector is not maxed out, and will not protect SA if the event causing frequency disturbance is related to the interconnector.

    SA needs to be able to have loads provide frequency keeping in order to keep their grid stable.

    The good news? From 1 July, they can!

    http://www.aemc.gov.au/Rule-Changes/Demand-Response-Mechanism

  43. bemused @ #139 Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 10:28 am

    I’d imagine the red ensign was excluded due to many Communist counties having red flags. 🙂

    I don’t think it has been excluded and is still a valid Australian Flag and my preference too.
    Photos of the opening of the original Parliament house show it being flown extensively.
    I meant as the choice for the national flag. 🙂

  45. Poroti
    Sorry I linked that article on Trump before reading it fully. I agree the link is pretty thin. However I have read several other articles suggesting that some of Trump’s biggest private creditors have links to the Kremlin and that is a possible means they can use to put leverage on him. Trump is heavily in debt, but it is very difficult to get a full picture of how much he owes.

  47. liable for failing to take preventive measures against the tsunami that crippled the facility

    Yes, how dare they build a nuclear plant without bolting down the world’s tectonic plates first? Everyone knows tsunamis are eminently preventable, all you have to do is stop the continents from moving around. Shame on Japan for not doing this.

  48. Socrates

    The amounts involved were staggering. I wonder where it all ended up ? Cayman islands ? :).
    That dodgy Russian money was pouring into The City has been written about for years and nothing really done about it.. I guess with so much money to be made by so many banks made turning a blind eye SOP ..

  49. Poroti
    True. No doubt some good f it is n Australia,given the ethics of our banks.

    VE
    You are absolutely correct about coal power plants and remediation. The same is true of far too many derelict factories here in SA and coal mines in Qld. I saw one estimate of the remediation cost of former Qld coal mines running past $500 million back in the 1990s… no idea what it would be now.

    Sadly in my time in government I saw far too much tolerance of this in the departments supposedly regulating these industries. The Qld mines had strict conditions on clean up… that were almost never enforced. The department was far too busy spruiking the next batch of mining prospects to the government of the day.

Comments Page 3 of 39
1 2 3 4 … 39

Leave a Reply

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