Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

This week’s Essential Research offers results on Tony Abbott and 457 visas, along with yet another boring set of voting intention numbers.

The Essential Research fortnight rolling average maintains its recent habit of shifting between 53-47 and 54-46, the latest instalment going from the latter to the former. On the primary vote, the Coalition is up a point to 37% and Labor is down one to 36%, with the Greens and One Nation steady at 10% and 8%, so that the result is in all respects identical to the week before last. The poll also finds 40% think Tony Abbott should resign from parliament, 17% that he should stay on the back bench, and another 17% that he should be given a position in the ministry. This is worse for him than when the same questions were posed in August last year, when the respective results were 37%, 21% and 25%. Other findings relate to the tightening of 457 visas: 16% said they went too far, 28% not far enough, and 39% that they were about right; 59% approved of allowing visa holders to apply for permanent residency, against 23% disapprove; 78% agreed that those applying for permanent residency should first be put on a probationary visa, against only 10% for disagree.

The Australian also had extra questions from Newspoll, which found that 70% favoured the government prioritising spending cuts over 20% for increasing taxes, but that only 30% favoured cuts to welfare payments with 61% opposed.

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.

784 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

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  1. sprocket_ @ #649 Friday, April 28, 2017 at 6:24 pm

    One for BK
    Former Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella is suing a regional Victorian newspaper over an article she says defamed her during the 2016 federal election. Ms Mirabella is suing weekly newspaper The Benalla Ensign and its editor Libby Price in the Victoria County Court over an April 2016 article about an encounter with Indi member Cathy McGowan.
    Ms Mirabella, who lost the seat to Ms McGowan in 2013, says the article is defamatory because it said “Mirabella had physically pushed Cathy Magowan (sic) out of the way of a photograph for her own political reasons”, according to a writ filed on April 19.
    The writ also describes Ms Mirabella as a well known public figure whose 2013 election loss and 2016 candidacy attracted increased media coverage. Her defeat and attempt to win back the seat of Indi were “matters which attracted local and national media coverage beyond which would ordinarily be expected for a sitting or prospective Member of Parliament”. Ms Mirabella alleges the The Benalla Ensign and Ms Price, a former ABC journalist, did not make adequate inquiries about the story, and failed to contact her or other witnesses who were present at the event being described. The newspaper “instead relied solely on the unsubstantiated account of one or more persons the defendant knew to be active supporters of McGowan”. Ms Mirabella alleges the newspaper knew the pushing allegations would be damaging to her reputation and election campaign, but they published the “unsubstantiated” story anyway.
    “It is to be inferred that they did so with the intention of unjustifiably and improperly hurting Mirabella’s political campaign”, the statement of claim says. The former Indi member says a day after the article was published on April 20, 2016, her office confirmed to other media outlets no physical contact had taken place.
    But the newspaper only acknowledged their “mistake” and withdrew the allegations in October 2016, well after the federal election, Ms Mirabella says in her writ. The matter will go to court at a date to be fixed.

    Errrr … snap! By an hour or so.

  3. Hillary’s crucial miscalculation was to ignore the economic concerns of about 90 percent of the American population. He economic agenda was not helpful to them.

  5. socrates @ #654 Friday, April 28, 2017 at 6:38 pm

    So the police get to decide when the police should be charged over breaking the law?
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-28/afp-officer-accessed-journalists-call-records-in-metadata-breach/8480804
    Funny thing is, I always thought the Courts should decide that.

    Nope. Police would decide whether or not to send a brief to the DPP who would then decide whether to proceed.
    Courts rule on guilty or not guilty.

  6. In relation to a certain Puff Adder suit the $64 question just has to be whether a certain B_ , who shall remain anonymous, is a co-plaintive.

  10. Nicholas,

    You just never stop making stuff up, do you? Don’t give up your day job.

    (Which, I assume, is guarding Lenin’s tomb)

  12. Barney in Saigon
    Re the investigator. Might as well retain the existing one as I suspect a new one might accidentally find out about the destroyed evidence. I have very little faith in the Keystone Kops.

  13. Trump would be less frightening if he was diagnosed with Alzheimers. At least then he’d have a carer.

    Plus there would be a legitimate justification for his erratic behaviour, but also a legitimate justification for forcing him out of office on medical grounds.

  15. What I’m getting out of posters like Nicholas is that Hillary should have lied more, pretended to be dumber than she is, made promises she knew she couldn’t keep, been racist, sexist and homophobic…and if that what the Democrats have to do to win, I’d rather they kept losing, thank you.

    Populists have the advantage that they can say anything they want. Professionals know that they have to deliver.

  17. Trump would be less frightening if he was diagnosed with Alzheimers. At least then he’d have a carer.

    I thought that was Ivanka’s job?

  18. socrates @ #664 Friday, April 28, 2017 at 7:09 pm

    Bemused
    Sarcasm aside you are correct. So why no brief to the DPP? An audit means nothing.

    I had no intention to be sarcastic.
    This case is highly political and I think it will be looked at long and hard by any prosecuting authorities who will want to be very sure of their case.
    From close observation of a couple of cases, the office of the DPP leans very heavily to believing the cops, no matter how preposterous their claims, and are not very competent.

  19. C@t:

    Saw that Meyers vid earlier – just brilliant.

    One thing you can say for President Trump in his favour is that he is a gold mine of fodder for the comedians.

  21. ItzaDream
    Friday, April 28, 2017 at 4:55 pm
    That’s looks bad, Sorry Briefly. You’re no morsel.

    lol

    Itza, no problem… 🙂

    I’m more like a fisherman’s basket.

  22. “So, that’s cool.

    Every journalist in Australia will now be wondering whether they are the subject of a tainted investigation.”

    Well all journos apart from Simon Benson. Who doesn’t print anything unless it is handed to him by the PMO

  23. briefly:

    What do you make of McGowan’s public service cuts announcement today? Merging 41 depts into 25 seems like a tough order given the timeline.

  25. john reidy @ #672 Friday, April 28, 2017 at 7:28 pm

    “So, that’s cool.
    Every journalist in Australia will now be wondering whether they are the subject of a tainted investigation.”
    Well all journos apart from Simon Benson. Who doesn’t print anything unless it is handed to him by the PMO

    You regard Simon Benson as a journalist?

  26. socrates @ #674 Friday, April 28, 2017 at 7:34 pm

    Bemused
    I was acknowledging my own sarcasm, I did not intend to suggest you were.

    Oh you really had me puzzled.
    I didn’t pick up on your sarcasm. A lot of people have not had an intimate acquaintance with the law to find out those things for themselves.

  27. lizzie Friday, April 28, 2017 at 5:19 pm

    I think that Stephen Long just said that the Gallilee Basin is larger than the UK. That’s a bloody lot of coal, and guess who owns it: Gina, Andrew, Clive…

    And how much did they pay for the leases?

  28. Dan Mulberry at 1.19pm
    I know it was ages and many posts ago but I never seem to be able to catch up. Someone may have pointed it out in a later post but, if not, the Emperor Hadrian wasn’t an “Eytie” – he was actually born in what is now southern Spain. 🙂

  30. Speaking of McGowan’s department consolidation announcement…

    I’m not there, and I must necessarily take a neutral position without knowing what is being proposed or why, but the optics (if nothing else) look bad to me. Rather, it is the stereotypical new consultant type of thing to do – if things have been consolidated recently then propose decentralizing/breaking up departments to make them more agile and responsive to customer/client/stakeholder needs; if things have been decentralized/broken up recently then propose consolidating/centralizing to improve efficiencies/synergies/economies of scale. Repeat as necessary to continue earning consultancy fees.

    I hope for WA and WA Labor’s sake there is more intelligence, wisdom and sound judgment being applied than there might at first appear.

  31. allan moyes @ #678 Friday, April 28, 2017 at 7:39 pm

    Dan Mulberry at 1.19pm
    I know it was ages and many posts ago but I never seem to be able to catch up. Someone may have pointed it out in a later post but, if not, the Emperor Hadrian wasn’t an “Eytie” – he was actually born in what is now southern Spain.

  34. Keating IS Labor down to his bootstraps and he HAS misgivings about US hegemony and Trump.

    The current Labor leader is not interested in pursuing a more independent and intellectually rigorous foreign policy for Australia. He is obsequious towards the Trump-led United States.

  35. Socrates:

    I do share your concern at the apparent power the AFP has and its ability to avoid being held to account. I don’t know if you saw this where you are, but yesterday it was revealled that the WA path lab bungled a DNA test that resulted in an innocent man losing years of his life behind bars.

    PathWest reported its error to WA Police a year ago, and police only released the information recently. Not good enough.
    https://thewest.com.au/opinion/pathwests-dna-bungle-ruined-a-mans-life-now-it-must-apologise-ng-b88457744z

  36. Jackol:

    That was my first reaction, esp as the departments targetted are the easy options, ie Aboriginal Affairs, Local Government and Child Protection.

  37. Centrists lack policy knowledge and imagination when they claim that there There Is No Alternative to neoliberal economic disasters. It’s why they are getting their butts kicked in elections (deservedly so). Centrists have done far more damage to our society than the far right because the far right don’t have much power whereas centrists have been stuffing up economic policy for forty years. The stupidity and the conceit of centrists is their misguided belief that if they put more lipstick on the pig that is their economic policy framework, voters will accept it. Fewer and fewer voters are prepared to accept the delusions and policy laziness of centrists.

  38. Hillary Clinton’s incompetence on economic policy, and her general lack of integrity and trustworthiness, resulted in her being an even weaker candidate that the extremely poor candidate to whom she lost. It is astonishingly incompetent of a Democratic nominee to get fewer votes than a weak Republican candidate in the Democratic strongholds (in presidential elections) of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

  39. Nicholas

    How about you giving Clinton a break and talk about today’s report that Bernie Sanders wife being under FBI investigation for past year. Also appears Bernie s being implicated. Interesting stuff

  41. From Vic ALP office.
    “The Administrative Committee has opened nominations for positions 1 and 2 in the Northern Victoria Region, Legislative Council.”
    Going to nominate Zoomster or not your region?

  44. This is an important warning for Democratic office-holders:
    Hillary wrecked her campaign with three crucial miscalculations:
    Emphasizing what she was against, not what she was for… Clinton conducted one of the most negative campaigns in recent history

    I’m so glad Nicholas has taken this advice on board!

  46. and talk about today’s report that Bernie Sanders wife being under FBI investigation for past year. Also appears Bernie s being implicated. Interesting stuff

    Wow, really? On what grounds Victoria?

  47. Barney:
    But if doG’s perfect then everything doG creates should be perfect. We see flaws in doG’s creation. This implies that doG is not perfect, or doG does not exist and the creation story is bullish!t.

    On Wednesday I went to a play at the Old Fitz (Woolloomooloo) – Bengal Tiger in the Bagdad Zoo, Rajiv Joseph. Good play, got a Pulitzer and everything. Maggie Dence was the tiger, the last role Robyn Williams played before he killed himself. That might be significant.

    The Yanks are in Bagdad, to say in charge would be fake news. The Tiger gets shot and in a marvellous device, from the bardo* becomes a commentator, along with others including Uday Hussein who has his brother’s head in a plastic bag, on What’s Going On.

    Natch we end up on the question of God, existence and nature, the God who makes tigers who eat children and are then meant to feel bad about that, when all they were was hungry. And makes Americans who kill. And the horror of Bagdad.

    The message from this ‘God’, as the play ends, as delivered by the Tiger Spirit (Maggie Dence is incredibly good) directly into the ear of now war-crazed marine who killed it, is as shocking as it is pretty stark – “Go Fuck Yourself”.

    *the interspace between lives

  50. I don’t understand why people whom in the Australian context would support a left-based understanding of economic relations could not see that the Democrats and the Clinton campaign did not address what should be core issues. In a completely disengenuous way, Trump did, well sort of, in his superficial, unattainable way, that was full of lies, deceit and hate. But the issue isn’t about supporting Trump, or Saunders for that matter, but critiquing the nominee, Clinton. Or maybe I’m missing something fundamental here.

    I critique the hell out of the US democrats and am truly fearful of the Trump regime, but why would a critique of Clinton get so much push back here? What is it she was going to do that is so deserving of support? I understand one might vote for the dud because the alternative is even worse, but can’t that dud be critiqued?

    I really don’t understand the dynamic PB now (and I’ve been reading for 3 years!!!!)

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