Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

Another status quo result from Essential Research, as a new entrant in the Australian polling market prepares to take the field.

The latest Essential Research poll, conducted for The Guardian Australia, has two-party preferred steady at 53-47, with both major parties up a point each, to 38% in the Coalition’s case and 37% in Labor’s, and the two biggest minor parties down one, leaving the Greens at 9% and One Nation at 7%. Other findings:

• Compulsory voting has the support of 66% of respondents, which is down five points since the question was last asked in October 2013, with 27% opposed, up two. Eighty per cent say they would have been likely to vote if it were not compulsory, versus 12% for unlikely.

• Economic sentiment has improved since December, with 30% now describing the state of the economy as good (up seven) and 29% as poor (down seven), and 29% thinking it headed in the right direction (up three) against 41% for the wrong direction (down four).

• A question on budget priorities find respondents want spending increased on nearly everything, with the exception of defence, foreign aid and business assistance, with health care, education and age pensions at the top of the chart. Respondents expect the budget will most favour business and the well off, and least favour “older Australians” and “you personally”.

• Contrary to expectations earlier in his career, respondents are confident that Malcolm Turnbull can deliver on “tougher citizenship requirements”, “tighter regulations for foreign workers” and “secure borders”, but not a strong economy, jobs and growth, a balanced budget and, most of all “action on climate change”.

In other polling news, there will shortly be a new entrant into the market in the shape of British market behemoth YouGov:

A new nationally representative political poll launches and goes into the field for the first time this week — a partnership between leading international research and polling firm YouGov and Australian engagement and communications agency Fifty Acres.

YouGov is an international online market research firm, headquartered in the UK, with operations in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Australia …

The poll will be a fortnightly online survey conducted amongst 1,000 Australians aged 18+. The poll sample is nationally representative with quotas based on age, gender and region.

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.

1,698 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

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  1. P1

    ‘I will always respond exactly the same way – whatever reductions you can achieve, we could achieve more by also replacing coal with gas until your renewables can kick in.’

    This begs the questions..Why is gas in such short supply in Eastern Australia? How come the price premium available in the domestic market has failed to attract extra supply, considering there is no physical shortage of gas? Why should we suppose that even if the coal generators were to close, the gas suppliers would fill the void?

    P1, whatever it is that you personally might prefer to do, consider what the gas extractors are already doing – and that is ignoring the already available home market demand for their products.

  2. P1
    Renewables will put coal out of business by 2032 according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Gas cannot do that. It is too expensive, with or without a reservation policy.
    You can’t compete with a fuel cost of zero.
    Now back to pigeon trapping.

  3. zooomster

    Its improbable today. I agree no reason to put brakes on renewable options. The whole reason Gillard no dummy along with Windsor and other Cross benchces brought about such strong climate policies to their eternal credit.

    History will judge the LNP and allies very very poorly over scrapping that legislation.

    Its the benchmark of a good policy government and is one major reason even as I was disappointed on Marriage Equality was cheering for Gillard.

  5. trog sorrenson @ #1402 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 2:04 pm

    Renewables will put coal out of business by 2032 according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Gas cannot do that. It is too expensive, with or without a reservation policy.

    Here is what the article you just posted says …

    Redman even invited his audience to imagine a 100 per cent renewable energy scenario in the year 2050, just a year or so after AGL closes its last brown coal generator

    Yes, it’s surrounded by lots of “maybe’s” that coal will probably go earlier, but the reality is these people think it is perfectly fine if we keep burning brown coal right up to 2050 when renewables will finally be able to displace the last brown coal power station … just as long as we don’t burn any of that demon-fuel gas.

    Unbelievable. And morally bankrupt, as I said.

  6. trog sorrenson @ #1397 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 1:53 pm

    “How much gas generation is under construction, or signed off, right now?”

    No, the question is why are you so implacably opposed to the one technology that can reduce our C02 emissions by 50% in just a few years? But don’t bother – I think we all know the answer to that one.

  7. briefly @ #1401 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 2:02 pm

    P1, whatever it is that you personally might prefer to do, consider what the gas extractors are already doing – and that is ignoring the already available home market demand for their products.

    The price of gas on the domestic gas market is being artificially inflated. Remove that impediment, and the problem will solve itself.

    But this, of course, is the one thing that scares the bejeezus out of the Solar Warriors.

  9. The Bloomberg report says that batteries are not cost effective for long term storage, and that pumped hydro and solar thermal are some methods that need to be developed. I read several years ago about molten salt , what is the current state of play of this technology as it hasn’t taken off as predicted ?

  10. Trog Sorrenson
    Friday, May 5, 2017 at 2:04 pm
    P1
    Renewables will put coal out of business by 2032 according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Gas cannot do that

    In principle, both gas and solar/wind are free. The costs that are incurred are capital costs. The price paid for the energy they produce is the return on the capital.

    So among other things, the question is…Who owns the capital? In the case of gas, the capital is very highly concentrated both spatially and in terms of ownership, and the sums involved are huge. In the case of solar/renewables, the sums involved are also huge, but capital is dispersed, both spatially and within the production/consumption chain.

    The energy giants would probably love to invest heavily in renewables. But there are very few places for them to invest. Their business models rely on mass scale, which means they are inherently unsuited to competing in diffuse markets where micro scale is often the best fit; in markets where any financial surplus will accrue to consumers rather than to producers.

    So the gas players – in reality, even greater monopolists than the coal burners – lack the features necessary for success in the renewables sector. The failure here is in capital management and business creation.

    I have a childhood friend who works for a gas major. When asked why they do not invest in renewables, he says the brief is to watch and assess but not to join the action. This is almost unbelievable. A top-3 global energy corporate is abstaining from the industry that is going to put them out of business within 30 years but they will cannot see how to be a part of that industry.

    Their reflex has been to try to thwart the development of the renewables sector, both technically and at the levels of regulatory action and consumer adoption. They are failing. They will continue to fail. They are the endangered species of the global energy habitat.

  11. By praising the removal of Obamacare, #Fizza has just given Labor it’s next election ad campaign. All they have to do is replay Turnbull’s own words and he and the rest of the Libs will be decimated.

  13. VE, the predicted shortfall hit the news before Pelican Point announced the reopening dates. I have been watching the outlook for signs of change but I suspect AEMO already had this factored in.

  14. Current council election results in Great Britain have 516 to the hard Brexiters (tories and UKIP) and 505 to the soft Brexiters and Remainers (Lab, Lib Dem, Plaid, Greens and SNP)

    But that is without a single vote reported in Scotland, where the Remain vote will be very high.

    UKIP have not won a single seat.

  15. P1

    You outed yourself with your acceptance of the 4% target. You backed the Santos business model. At the very least you did not condemn it.

    We do not need more gas production. We are awash with gas. Given the market system problem that needs to be fixed for domestic gas use for homes etc. Thats where prices need to come down. It hits consumers in the hip pocket with this astronomical rise in gas prices for cooking etc.

    That needs to be reduced in price. This will help the poor stuck with gas not able to convert to electrical to take advantage of lower electricity prices.

    Thats the political sell.

    More renewable energy production means more electric cars will be viable. (not a hard bar to get over given how unviable electric cars are now).

    Shifting cars to electric will make a huge difference to the environment as less electricity will in future rely on fossil fuels of any type including gas. The most you can say for gas is that in the short term politically its acceptable as a transition fuel.

    Thats how I am treating the debate. With the LNP in power I know renewables have the brakes applied and gas needs no promoting. Everyone knows the attacks on South Australia started when towers started falling over and the truth is that gas power plants would not have saved South Australia as it relies on the same transmission lines as coal.

    The truth is the fossil fuel companies are using gas as a surrogate to put the brakes on solar alternatives having investment put into them. We may disagree on timelines. However using gas to put the brakes on renewable take up is to be part of the denial crowd.

    We can do both. We can start by by going back to giving ARENA real independence in investing in renewables and not force them to divert funds into gas or “clean coal” when the economics don’t stack up.

    Note the qualification there when the economics don’t stack up. That includes taking into account reducing carbon emissions in the business plan.

    This way we get there fastest and don’t have denialists using gas or any other fuel source as a handbrake on renewables. Instead we have sane real world outcomes. That means if investors see politically they can’t get solar power plants up (not true as we see investment in such plants in Australia as well as around the world.) they can invest in gas plants that can be converted to solar later when the economics stack up.

  16. dan gulberry @ #1412 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 2:24 pm

    I apologise for interrupting the energy debate with a post about protecting our prized, single payer, universal health care system.

    Don’t be. The tripe being posted by the lobby trying to defend coal is getting a bit hard to take. Happy to discuss something else for a change.

  17. Here’s a birthday to be ashamed about.

    https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=51304#.WQwABNKGPMk

    Friday 5 May is the 25th birthday of the introduction of mandatory detention in Australia by the Keating government. It is by no means a ‘happy birthday’. Rather it is a sombre reminder of how control, power and political vilification can be used for political ends.

    :::::
    Another development during the past quarter-century of mandatory detention has been the increased use of statutory bars to prevent asylum seekers from lodging any application, unless the Minister personally intervenes (literally personally) to permit it.

    ::::
    There are now more sections in the Migration Act dealing with statutory bars — mainly directed at asylum seekers — than the total number of sections in the whole of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901.
    :::::
    Another development has been the increased vilification of asylum seekers in the political arena. This too has been a bipartisan effort.
    :::
    The ‘refugee queue myth’ goes back before Hawke, but it persists. Under Ruddock and especially Minister Morrison it morphed into the ‘good refugees / bad refugees’ dichotomy. ‘Good refugees’ are those Australia handpicks, excluding those with medical issues. ‘Bad refugees’ are those who arrive here directly and seek asylum. Not only are they ‘queue jumpers’, but now there is a connotation of criminality, with the insistence of Morrison and Dutton to refer to ‘unauthorised maritime arrivals’ as ‘illegal maritime arrivals’.

  19. Glad Newscorpse lost to Grand Mufti … their front pages and ‘opinion’ columns often border on the unhinged and there should eb a day of reckoning

  20. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/05/25-years-of-mandatory-detention-from-interim-measure-to-immovable-policy

    As part of this work, we represented 119 Cambodian “boat people”. Their arrival along with 270 others over the preceding few years triggered a public hysteria encapsulated in an uncompromising unwelcome from then prime minister Bob Hawke. Hawke trotted out the old, tired and highly contestable queue-jumping chestnut: “We’re not going to allow people just to jump that queue by saying we’ll jump into a boat, here we are, bugger the people who’ve been around the world.”

    :::
    Introducing the legislation, Hand acknowledged its “extraordinary nature”. But he reassured the parliament that it was “only intended to be an interim measure”. A quarter of a century later, mandatory detention is seemingly immovable government policy.

    ::::
    The human cost of twenty-five years of mandatory detention is a sobering reminder to beware political promises of the interim and the exceptional.

  21. Jen

    I see Murdoch and his press as one of the best allies the terrorists have as they stoke up the division and give platforms to the likes of Trump Farage and Hanson

  22. guytaur @ #1415 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 2:31 pm

    You outed yourself with your acceptance of the 4% target. You backed the Santos business model. At the very least you did not condemn it.

    What on earth are you smoking? I align with the experts that say we are heading for 3 – 4 degrees warming. If Santos believes the same thing, why would I find fault with that?

    Honestly, Guytaur, your logic is hard to follow sometimes. That’s why I don’t engage with you much.

  23. P1

    There you go again. Saying we are heading to 3 to 4 degrees warming and can ‘t do anything about it. Its inevitable.

    It NOT. Change business plans to get to a 2% target and it can happen. It’s not inevitable we can still act. WE DO NOT have to throw in the towel and shrug our shoulders and say there is nothing to do about it.

  24. Will the US now have the most expensive but least effective (in terms of population outcomes) health systems in the developed world?

  26. guytaur @ #1423 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 2:45 pm

    There you go again. Saying we are heading to 3 to 4 degrees warming and can ‘t do anything about it. Its inevitable.

    For goodness sake, do try to read what I actually say, and not what you think I say! Let me try again …

    I align with the experts who have analyzed the Paris Agreements, and determined that even if every country meets their commitments, we will see 3 – 4 degrees warming if that is all we do.

    That’s why I believe we should do as much as possible to reduce C02 emissions, and as fast as possible.

    That’s why I think using gas to replace coal in the short term is a good idea, and why I think that anyone who suggests that it is ok for us to continue to burn coal to 2050 is quite frankly a complete idiot.

    Got it?

  27. @ BK – I doubt it (unless they already do).

    The bill passed 217 to 214 in the House, and media whom I have no reason to doubt have been saying the whole time that passage through the Senate will be harder than the House.

    If it passed with a decent margin through the House, then we could conclude they are screwed. As is? Looks like Obamacare is here to stay.

  29. Clive Hamilton

    But consider this astounding fact: with knowledge of the cycles that govern Earth’s rotation, including its tilt and wobble, paleo-climatologists are able to predict with reasonable certainty that the next ice age is due in 50,000 years’ time. Yet because carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere for millennia, global warming from human activity in the 20th and 21st centuries is expected to suppress that ice age and quite possibly the following one, expected in 130,000 years.

    If human activity occurring over a century or two can irreversibly transform the global climate for tens of thousands of years, we are prompted to rethink history and social analysis as a purely intra-human affair.

    How should we understand the disquieting fact that a mass of scientific evidence about the Anthropocene, an unfolding event of colossal proportions, has been insufficient to induce a reasoned and fitting response?

    For many, the accumulation of facts about ecological disruption seems to have a narcotising effect, all too apparent in popular attitudes to the crisis of the Earth system, and especially among opinion-makers and political leaders. A few have opened themselves to the full meaning of the Anthropocene, crossing a threshold by way of a gradual but ever-more disturbing process of evidence assimilation or, in some cases, after a realisation that breaks over them suddenly and with great force in response to an event or piece of information in itself quite small.

    Beyond the science, the few alert to the plight of the Earth sense that something unfathomably great is taking place, conscious that we face a struggle between ruin and the possibility of some kind of salvation.

    So today the greatest tragedy is the absence of a sense of the tragedy. The indifference of most to the Earth system’s disturbance may be attributed to a failure of reason or psychological weaknesses; but these seem inadequate to explain why we find ourselves on the edge of the abyss.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/05/the-great-climate-silence-we-are-on-the-edge-of-the-abyss-but-we-ignore-it

  34. P1

    How about instead of saying lets use gas as much as possible instead you say you support a price on carbon and will let the market decide on the actual fuel.

    I get your arguments. I disagree. I think that the coal that is being burned now will continue to be burnt until those power stations are decommissioned. So its gas instead of solar you are arguing for. Not gas instead of coal.

    If you truly want emissions reduced you would say lets convert every coal power station to gas. Now before their lifetime use runs out.

    As for the experts. Yes they are saying sticking to fossil fuels including gas will see 3 to four degrees of warming. They are saying the political will to move to renewables is failing or is happening too slowly.

    This means that to reduce emissions you must put any new power plants with the lowest emissions possible. That means promoting renewable sources including by subsidies.
    If we don’t act now to do this we will see more emissions rise above 4%

    Using gas as an interim measure only works as it stops coal being burnt. In none of your posts have you talked about decommissioning existing plants to run gas. You have talked new plants.

    Thats choosing gas ahead of solar. If we take gas as a baseload solution first thing you have to do is work out how much renewables can take the load so the emissions from the gas plants will be at the maximum minimum emissions available.

    On the economics renewables win every time. The only caveat is the baseload power myth and I look forward to you promoting the party that calls for more coal power plants being shut down to run gas this year.

  35. lizzie @ #1429 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 2:54 pm

    So today the greatest tragedy is the absence of a sense of the tragedy. The indifference of most to the Earth system’s disturbance may be attributed to a failure of reason or psychological weaknesses; but these seem inadequate to explain why we find ourselves on the edge of the abyss.

    This is so true! You can see it right here on PB – many seem unable to even admit the scale of the looming catastrophe. And then there is this …

    Perhaps the intellectual surrender is so complete because the forces we hoped would make the world a more civilised place – personal freedoms, democracy, material advance, technological power – are in truth paving the way to its destruction. The powers we most trusted have betrayed us; that which we believed would save us now threatens to devour us.

    Again, PB exhibits this very phenomenon.

  36. simon aussie katich @ #1356 #1356 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 12:16 pm

    Don – can’t you just eat the stuff?
    You soak it in butter for a while. Also in chocolate too. Then sieve and use in cakes. There is a Nigella chocolate cake recipe that (obviously) uses a lot of chocolate and butter and ideal for this purpose.
    So I am told.

    I am just asking on behalf of a friend.

  38. Lizzie

    I am optimistic because to be otherwise is to give into despair and shrug ones shoulders and say theres no point to the economic pain of doing a transition. Thats part of the argument the denialists have relied on to stop action.

    There are scientists in the majority arguing for the 2% target for very good reason.

    At the worst if you aim for the 2% target and fail to meet it you have at least done the maximum to keep emissions down.

  39. Grattan not impressed by Turnbull

    michellegrattan: Bit disturbing to see Turnbull agreeing with Trump about report of phone call being fake news. He knows that’s not right

  40. bemused @ #1340 #1340 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 11:53 am

    don @ #1329 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 11:42 am

    Re Marijuana – can’t you just eat the stuff? I seem to remember stories about cookies with marijuana.
    Then there’s the oil, which contains the active ingredient, which can be swallowed in a tablet.
    Neither of these would be likely, I imagine, to affect your lungs adversely. The effect of the chemicals on your brain is, of course, another matter.
    I am no expert, this is just stuff I have heard over the years, might be right, might be wrong.

    You are right. I have previously posted on a celebrated case in Melbourne where a couple of characters fed some Mormon missionaries some hash laced cookies with highly amusing results.
    It gets around the effects on lungs but still leaves the effects on the brain which, in some cases, can be disastrous.

    Thanks, that is the impression I had also.

  42. Player One
    Friday, May 5, 2017 at 2:16 pm
    briefly @ #1401 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 2:02 pm

    P1, whatever it is that you personally might prefer to do, consider what the gas extractors are already doing – and that is ignoring the already available home market demand for their products.

    The price of gas on the domestic gas market is being artificially inflated. Remove that impediment, and the problem will solve itself.

    Artificial price inflation? You mean the market is rigged? By whom? By the gas extractors?

    The gas extractors could easily obtain for themselves better price than they get on the export market if they diverted supply to the domestic market. But they do not do it. Why not? Because they are in the gas liquefaction business not the gas piping business. Because they want to recover the capital committed to liquefaction from the mass markets in East Asia even though these markets are totally glutted.

    There is no “artificial” impediment in the market – only the capital management priorities of the gas majors.

  43. guytaur @ #1434 Friday, May 5, 2017 at 3:02 pm

    How about instead of saying lets use gas as much as possible instead you say you support a price on carbon and will let the market decide on the actual fuel.

    *sigh* I have said almost exactly this many, many times. I support an energy intensity scheme. Put this in place and we know what the outcome will be – gas will displace coal, and then in turn be displaced by renewables. Particularly if you also put in place a gas reservation policy to eliminate the ridiculous and completely artificial domestic gas “shortage”.

    I’m sorry, Guytaur. I’m going to stop responding to you for a while. All I am doing is repeating stuff that I have already said many, many times before. You obviously didn’t understand it the first dozen times, so I will save the sanity of others here and not bother repeating it all.

  44. Guytaur

    At the worst if you aim for the 2% target and fail to meet it you have at least done the maximum to keep emissions down.

    No. If you’re aiming for a higher target, you would be taking on more radical methods. You might then pass the 2%.

  45. jenauthor Friday, May 5, 2017 at 3:06 pm

    Guytaur – wholeheartedly agree re Newscorpse. Hatemongers/fearmongers for profit

    **************************************

    I’ve said before : A Rupert Murdoch publication is a printed device to make the ignorant, more ignorant and the crazy, crazier ……

    If you didn’t read his papers then you are uniformed and if you do read them you are ill informed.

  49. Guytaur

    Have you read the Clive Hamilton link I posted above?
    He is virtually saying that the world is not taking AGW seriously enough.

  50. c@tmomma

    Marijuana is able to be dried and ground up like flour then incorporated into food. You could probably even make tablets out of it and boy would it be a better antide

    ressant than some on offer these days.

    So why don’t people just do that instead of smoking it?

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