Essential Research: 54-46 to Labor

Little change from Essential Research this week, as various pollsters drop results on Snowy Hydro, penalty rates, negative gearing, 18C and party leadership.

NOTE: The configuration of comments at the moment is as a result of a glitch which will, I am told, be rectified over the next 24 hours – so hopefully by Wednesday afternoon.

This week’s reading of the Essential Research fortnight rolling average has Labor’s blowout lead from last week moderating slightly, from 55-45 to 54-46. On the primary vote, the Coalition is up a point to 35%, Labor is steady on 37%, the Greens are up a point to 10%, One Nation are down two to 8% and the Nick Xenophon Team is up a point to 4%.

The poll also finds 59% approval for the government’s proposal to invest $2 billion in the Snowy Hydro scheme, while its proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, once explained, draw 45% approval and 34% disapproval. However, another question finds 16% saying racial discrimination laws are too strong, 26% too weak and 40% about right.

Asked to select three from a list of favoured government priorities, health and ensuring big business pays a fair share of tax come out on top, and investment in renewal energy gains six points since the question was last asked in the middle of last year. On the importance of various international relationships, the United Kingdom has gained six points since June last year and Japan five points, both of which reverse earlier downward trends, leaving the UK and the United States at level pegging on top of the table. Only 6% rate that Australia’s relationship with the US is getting better compared with 41% for worse, for reasons I can only speculate about.

Elsewhere:

• Roy Morgan conducted one of its occasional small-sample polls on party leaders, which recorded little change for Malcolm Turnbull since the last such poll in October, with approval down one to 30% and disapproval up one to 54%. However, Bill Shorten recorded particularly weak ratings of 28% approval and 56% disapproval, respectively down three and up seven, while Turnbull’s lead on preferred prime minister widened from 47-32 to 49-32. Peter Dutton was added as a response option to the question of best person to lead the Coalition, and his 5% appeared to cause Tony Abbott to come down from 14% to 9%. Julie Bishop retained her lead over Malcolm Turnbull, although it narrowed from 34-25 to 30-27. Bill Shorten continues to run third on the Labor question, which has Tanya Plibersek up a point to 26%, Anthony Albanese down five to 19% and Bill Shorten up one to 15%. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Thursday two weeks ago from a sample of 534.

• Supplementary questions from yesterday’s Ipsos poll for Fairfax address penalty rates (29% believe the cut will encourage more businesses to open on Sunday, against 63% who do not), negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions (35% believe they should be pared back, 40% do not) and company tax cuts (44% support, 39% oppose). Another tranche of results published today relate to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, finding 78% agreeing with the section’s “offend, insult or humiliate” provision versus 17% opposed, but as there is no allowance for the “intimidate or harass” alternative proposed by the government, I would consider the Essential findings more useful.

• The Australian had a follow-up to last week’s Newspoll finding 59% support for higher penalty rates on Sundays, 29% for reducing them to Saturday levels, and 10% abolishing them altogether.

I remain a week behind the eight-ball on BludgerTrack, and continue to promise that normal service will resume at the end of this week. Let’s see if it actually happens this time. For the time being, here is the result I should have published at the end of last week, inclusive of the Newspoll result and last week’s Essential, but not the latest Ipsos and this week’s Essential.

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.

854 comments on “Essential Research: 54-46 to Labor”

Comments Page 14 of 18
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  1. Missing comments on Chrome mystery solved. I had disabled JavaScript for Crikey around when the comments originally disappeared, as an experiment to see if maybe with no scripting enabled the comments would load. Forgot to re-enable JavaScript when the experiment proved unsuccessful.

    So new UX issue for the developers to fix; it’s currently impossible to view comments without JavaScript enabled.

  4. What I found interesting is that the established gas turbine owners have actively discouraged the move from half hour to five minute updates, since batteries come into their own with that change, and become much more viable, delivering a better performance for the grid, but lower profits for the owners of the gas turbines.

    Change is inevitable, the almighty dollar will see to that – together with the efforts of people like Weatherill in South Australia to break the stranglehold of the established suppliers.

  5. Why Snowjob 2.0 is unlikely to happen:
    1) Centralised storage business models like Snowy 2.0 rely on a large price differential between peak and off peak power. Changing market rules and the proliferation of battery storage behind the meter will even out these price differentials and destro the business model.
    2) Storage, such as batteries, is much more efficient “behind the meter” so that the battery owners can consume their own power without all the retail and transmission overheads.
    Ultimately, business and domestic battery storage may be all we need, making pumped hydro redundant.
    3) According to the former manager of Snowy Hydro the plan was discarded years ago as being impractical. It didn’t offer any additional storage capacity, only increased the peak power output. The total amount of stored energy remains the same.
    4) It will take years to develop, by which time technology costs – solar, batteries – will have decreased even further, and network software and metering will be in place to coordinate distributed storage.
    5) etc

  6. Shocking Poll Shows Majority Want Trump To Resign If His Campaign Colluded With Russia

    If it turns out that Donald Trump’s campaign did, indeed, work with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton in last fall’s presidential election, a majority of the country – 53 percent – thinks the president should resign.

    According to the explosive new poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP), which debuted Wednesday night on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, the American people said – by a 14-point margin – that Trump should step down if there was collusion.

    http://www.politicususa.com/2017/03/29/shocking-poll-shows-majority-trump-resign-campaign-colluded-russia.html

  7. Big news. This is bad for Malcolm. Now he’ll really have to show his colours in the lower house. Will some marginal seat MPs cross the floor?
    From the guardian:
    Labor wins penalty rate motion
    Labor has just won a motion to amend the Fair Work Act 2009 in the senate.
    It is unlikely to pass in the house.
    It would:
    ensure that modern awards cannot be varied to reduce penalty rates or the hours to which penalties rates apply if the variation is likely to result in a reduction in the take-home pay of an employee; and provide that any such determination made by the Fair Work Commission made on or after 22 February 2017 is of no effect.
    Labor won the vote 37 to 26.

  8. West Wing Reports‏Verified account @WestWingReport · 1h1 hour ago

    Stunning story: Intel chairman says Russia hired more than 1000 hackers to create fake, anti-Clinton news in key states won by Trump (CBS)

  10. I suppose the govt in the lower house can refuse to debate the Senate bill on penalty rates, but even that will look bad.

  11. don

    What I found interesting is that the established gas turbine owners have actively discouraged the move from half hour to five minute updates, since batteries come into their own with that change, and become much more viable, delivering a better performance for the grid, but lower profits for the owners of the gas turbines.

    The Coalition is quite prepared to lower penalty rates for workers, presumably in the interests of “economic efficiency”, but when it comes to the big end of town, the generator spivs, and the bleeding obvious economic benefit of lower power prices, they do nothing.

  13. I am really enjoying the new minimalist, utilitarian format, it’s kind of reminiscent of one of those Soviet Era apartment buildings.
    Only thing remaining, is for Mr Bowe to replace his mug-shot with a picture of a leggoman head and the transformation will be complete.

  15. From Grauniad’s round up of politics today 😆

    “Immigration minister Peter Dutton has called ACTU secretary Sally McManus a “modern day communist”.

  16. Trog

    This is about ‘Westinghouse Electric’ i.e. builder and maintainer of many nuclear power plants around the World.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-board-idUSKBN17006K

    I can’t find an article mentioning it (but haven’t tried much to) but there was quite a bit of speculation last night on the BBC that they’d survive the cost over-runs if they could re-finance, but they can’t because lenders think the industry is now a ‘loser’ – too long to build and by then what will be the state of renewable energy.

  18. I don’t think Sally McManus is going to be too upset that Dutton has called her a modern day communist. Its probably comparable to what Sally McManus thinks of Dutton.

  23. poroti
    With luck the minimalism will carry over into the Rudd v Gillard , ‘Energy”, and Assange arguments

    In your dreams!

    The energy topic is being promulgated by the pollies themselves – it is important political news.

    At least the Prime Minister and the Premier of South Australia think so. Makes it a political discussion, surely?

  28. 14:04
    This article was probably linked by BK in his dawn patrol: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/paul-keating-says-neoliberalism-is-at-a-dead-end-after-sally-mcmanus-speech-20170329-gv9cto.html

    The Hawke and Keating Governments instituted some hard but necessary reforms but tried to spread the benefits throughout the whole community and moderate its worst impacts. The Coalition is allowing, indeed encouraging, the 1% to keep all the benefits.

    I liked this exchange in the comments:

    VitaminCSydney,Mar 30 2017 at 8:42am
    Exactly what is “liberal economic philosophy” and “neo-liberalism”?

    Vote Mal Eat PalMar 30 2017 at 9:10am
Take from the poor to give to the rich, then lie about it.


  31. CTar1
    Yes I don’t think that many more nuclear power stations will be built. The notion comes up from time to time, but I think the penny has dropped, except for a few diehards.

  33. 14:10: I see that the PB site is still a dog’s breakfast. Don’t Crikey’s programmers test their work before letting it loose in production?

  36. Jimmy – **can i call him a nazi?**

    I would call him a f_tard but I think we are both behind the times when it comes to such labels. He is, without doubt, a Dutton.

  38. Good afternoon all,

    HOR to sit tomorrow morning to deal with whatever company tax cuts are passed in the senate.

    Good time perhaps for labor to push the penalty rate legislation for a vote.

    ” While we are here PM here is some legislation to pass the time. ”

    BTW, looks like the PM and Shorten are back for QT. The timing of the visit to QLD stills confuses me. Why so much of a hurry to spend three hours on the ground ?

    Turnbull obviously thought it a good idea and Bill jumped on board ( as any good opposition leader would ) but what was driving Turnbull ?

    It all seems to me nothing more than a photo op.

    Cheers.

  40. Angela Merkel comes back quickly at Theresa May over Brexit initiation.

    Good. If people aren’t punished for voting for stupid things, they’ll never learn anything.

  42. The woman who forgot she’d made $1 million investment thinks minimum wage earners live in high income homes.What a complete dickhead she is.

  45. OFF THE BREXIT CLIFF
    The Tories and their little helpers in the Labour party in Scotland have shown themselves in their true colours. The Tories with their arrogant contempt for democracy and refusal to accept votes which don’t go their way, and a Labour which is so blinded by its tribal hatred of the SNP that it’s acting as an enabler for the very sort of nationalism that it claims to oppose. Theresa May has pushed us all off the Brexit cliff, and Scottish Tory after Scottish Tory has lined up to push
    Scotland off along with the rest of the country and together with Labour they’re taking a knife to our parachute. Make no mistake, this is a direct assault on Scottish democracy. This is an attempt by Westminster’s little helpers to ensure that Scotland cannot have a say, cannot have a voice, cannot have a choice in its future. And it must be resisted by every legal means possible.
    https://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/off-the-brexit-cliff/

  46. Gee Mr Shortens team are deadly quiet in the HOR today. I expect that there might be a few surprises heading PM Trumbles way today. Interest watching it unfold.

  50. I’ve just logged in and yet again can only load a few posts at a time. It’ll take me ages to find out what was posted earlier today. On the other hand, perhaps Crikey really wants contributors to give up in disgust and go elsewhere?

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