BludgerTrack: 52.5-47.5 to Labor

As the weeks go by, so do the opinion polls.

The Coalition had relatively good numbers this week from Essential Research, but unchanged ones from Newspoll. The first of these is cancelled out by the fading impact of the Coalition’s improved result from the post-budget poll from Ipsos, so BludgerTrack once again goes nowhere this week. Newspoll’s leadership numbers have the net approval trends improving for Malcolm Turnbull but deteriorating for Bill Shorten, but the opposite is true on preferred prime minister, so take your pick really.

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.

1,589 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.5-47.5 to Labor”

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  2. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/06/adani-gives-green-light-to-16bn-carmichael-coal-mine

    Julien Vincent, the executive director of environmental finance group Market Finance described the announcement as “little more than a PR stunt”.

    “Announcing an intention to invest is a far cry from having the finance to do so,” Vincent said.

    He said the Indian parent company Adani Enterprises, with estimated net debt of $2.5bn, was “yet to raise a single cent of the $5bn required to capitalise the project”.

    But Adani had little choice but to pursue the project because “failure would mean a write-down equivalent to around half the value of the company”, he said.

  3. There was a discussion earlier about housing affordability (spurred on from the discussion on Q+A). Since I’ve been heavily involved in promoting faster rail concepts in Sydney and intercity high speed rail, I’d like to add my own thoughts to this.

    First of all, there is no ideal housing for everyone. Some people do just fine with apartments. Some need a backyard. Personally, I grew up on a farm and I feel claustrophobic on 2 acres. I suspect few people have that experience.

    Now, if we accept a growing population then we accept that housing will cover more land area, or high rise, or some of both. There’s no getting around the fact that this will happen whether we plan it or not and there’s not getting around the fact that if we essentially do nothing, then we reach a point where younger people are excluded from housing and end up living in increasingly crowded accommodation.

    Land supply isn’t the whole answer, but it is an essential part of the answer. And like it or not we live in a country where for various reasons land supply has been controlled. Some good reasons, some bad. However in any well-organised solution there will be more land supply (as well as more densification/high rise). Urban planners who want an end to low(er) density settlement just don’t get human nature.

    People are attracted to where there is the most opportunity. Its not just jobs, its connectivity in the interpersonal sense. Its having friends and contacts. Its the ability to live a rich life socially. And yes, high value jobs tend to congregate in CBDs. Why? that’s a topic in itself. But the fact is it happens and it is very closely related to transport infrastructure.

    Now, what do you do if you have a “plan” for where people will live and it involves as the Greater Sydney Commission thinks, lots more moderate to medium density suburbs out west. What you don’t do is create more areas that people don’t want to live unless they have to. And the idea that you can have a good mix of jobs in these places far from the CBD is just wishful thinking. The only way to create centres of high value employment outside the CBD is to create high speed transport between these centres. Macquarie Park is a case in point. It owes its existence to the M2. If you want to create another Macquarie Park, you give it 20 minute access to the CBD, encourage high value employers (yes even Google) but certainly high tech, research, design and so on.

    Where can Macquarie Park v2.0 sit? Well there is the Western Sydney Employment Area. But, if the Greater Sydney Comission has its way, this site will be over an hour by public transport from the CBD. It’ll attract low value warehousing and fabrication and the like. Jobs, yes. But not the opportunity people seek. Of course, people will continue to populate new areas in western Sydney. But only because they have no choice. What they need is either high value jobs near to them (and this can’t happen without truly high speed transport) or they need fast access to where the high value jobs are. Again, truly high speed transport.

    You can see where I’m getting at. Sydney is physically too large to be using low speed trains. By low speed I mean the stuff we have now. Its destined to become (well, no, it already is) a set of loosely connected sub cities and regions. And what you get of course is lack of quality of life. People who forever have to settle for the opportunities that are physically possible rather than having a transport network that levels the playing field.

    The same could be said of regional cities like Newcastle. People who grow up in these cities either have to move to Sydney or they are forever second class citizens. Yes, there are some companies moving to Newcastle now, largely forced out by the rent in Sydney. But its slow. Imagine if Newcastle were 40 minutes from Sydney. It would be treated as another suburb. One with some really nice beaches too.

    What am I getting at here? My frustration with urban and transport planners. The “join the dots” mentality of rail planners. People who think that connectivity alone will create a rail network. But they forget that speed does matter.

    If you can get to the WSEA in 20 minutes, its competitive with Macquarie Park. If you can get to Badgerys Creek airport in 25 minutes, its competitive with Kingsford Smith. And more to the point, Badgerys Creek then becomes a transit point for everyone living in the southwest. Places like Leppington and Narellan. This is their ticket to access to the rest of Sydney. Not just hour plus slogs over slow rail via St Marys which is the idea being flogged to Albanese by certain western councils.

    We need a high speed backbone east west across Sydney. One that links Parramatta with the CBD in 12 minutes and links Parramatta with Badgerys Creek airport in 12 minutes. Its much, much more than an airport line. Its a teleport system. it takes several important nodes in the existing rail network and pulls them closer together in time. Suddenly a whole lot of journeys that took over an hour are possible in half the time. And going back to housing affordability, it means people can actually buy those blocks of land (or units) in Western Sydney and enjoy the opportunity that comes with ubiquitous transport everywhere.

    Another reason for fast rail is it must compete with private vehicle transport over medium to longer distances (15Km+). Another blind spot for the rail planners who are currently obsessed with metros. Make the rail system competitive with car transport and suddenly you don’t need to keep building more motorways. The rail option is simply cheaper. Okay, so we’re building WestConnex. And that’ll be nice for a while. The only way to keep WestConnex from congesting and to keep its value as an artery of commerce is to attract people away from private cars and into rail. And that just won’t work if we keep building slow trains. We need speed. Speed not only makes millions of lives better, it also avoids spending billions on more roads.

    The same arguments apply to high speed rail. Open up google maps, put it into satellite view and zoom out form Sydney. What do you see? A big basin that’s filling up. Then a lot of mountains. The only big area near Sydney that could provide more land is the lower Hunter. Its large. Its relatively flat. Why do we not consider this as an alternative to Western Sydney? Because of lack of vision. Because of the fear of building something technically new.

    I’m not going to bore you with the stats, but the traffic on the M1 from Newcastle to Sydney shows a trend. Increasing congestion. By 2030 it will be stalling out (discouraging further growth). Long before then there will be demands for a widening and duplication of the M1. How much is that going to cost? My group’s estimates put it at around $15B in todays dollars.

    Funnily enough, $15B is about what you need to build a high speed rail line from Newcastle to Sydney. So instead of a wider motorway, we get a transport artery that moves more people (lots more people) faster. Its a wise investment. It should be treated as the next big road project.

    In the process you create a link to Sydney. Sub hour commutes from Kurri to Parramatta. Then you have all the land supply you could possibly want. No, I don’t encourage needless sprawl, but look back to the top of this. Not everyone is suited to high rise. Lots are. You can certainly add two million to the population in the Hunter and in so doing you can give the Hunter a decent public transport network including faster conventional rail and a fully fledged light rail network.

    Its cheaper to do this (for a host of reasons) in the Hunter than it is to do this in Sydney. Its not just land prices. Its also Sydney’s aching plumbing.

    You might also want to consider what happens if you took away the hour and a half commute from Wollongong to the Sydney CBD. And made it 45 minutes instead. Wollongong has a lot of amenity. It would be very popular. If you’re a fan of densification or high rise, it could settle hundreds of thousands.

    How much? My estimates are around $3B. That’s pure capital cost. But it includes a freight bypass to Maldon and a low frequency but reasonably fast passenger link from Wollongong to Wilton and the southern line. $5B gets you a complete solution with fast (XPT class) rolling stock and other shit thrown in. Its a tiny spend compared to the billions actually involved in developing new land and building houses on it. If it costs 100,000 to take a bare block of land and provide services (not uncommon) then 100,000 houses costs $10B to develop. The cost of high speed rail to service new affordable housing is therefore the minor component of the real cost.

    Anyhow I’ll leave it there, but my bugbear is that housing costs aren’t just about markets. They are about human needs. About connectivity not just to work but socially. And they’re fundamentally about the average speed of transport. Our planners have suffered learned helplessness. Our rail planners live in the past. Reasonably fast commuter trains (130-160Km/hr class) have been around for a long time. The reason we aren’t getting modern high speed transport is that there is noone in the system daring to promote it. And I and some of my colleagues are constantly dealing with bureaucrats and politicians who either just don’t get it, or are too scared to do something new.

  4. P1

    I think your only mistake is to assume that these hurdles are ‘accidental’.

    It’s all due to the totally evil ABS.

  5. London Mayor Calls On UK Government To Cancel Trump’s State Visit After Unhinged Tweets

    I don’t think we should be rolling out the red carpet to the President of the USA in the circumstances where his policies go against everything we stand for.”

    Not only should the world be coming together in support of London after the tragic series of terror attacks, but the UK should not be rewarding the childish U.S. president, as Khan said, by “rolling out the red carpet.”

    http://www.politicususa.com/2017/06/05/london-mayor-calls-uk-government-cancel-trumps-state-visit-unhinged-tweets.html

  6. P1

    In the Centrelink case, I’m trying to avoid unnecessary expense to the taxpayer…you’d think there’d be an express service for that!

  7. New report suggests Jeff Sessions may be the next Trumpster voted off the island

    President Donald Trump has “grown sour” on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, according to a bombshell new report on the relationship between the two.

    Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman report in the New York Times that White House insiders are talking about the complicated optics of firing Attorney General Sessions.

    “Mr. Trump is said to be aware that firing people now, on the heels of dismissing James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, would be risky,” The Times reports. “He has invested care and meticulous attention to the next choice of an F.B.I. director in part because he will not have the option of firing another one. The same goes for Mr. Sessions, these people said.”

    http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/new-report-suggests-jeff-sessions-may-be-the-next-trumpster-voted-off-the-island/


  8. Player One
    ….
    Not for me. For me it is mainly about the amount of misinformation that gets posted here.

    All the engineers are wrong but p1 with superior search skills is right. Just another ignorant arts major; or is it high school graduate?

  11. grimace @ #1339 Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 12:05 pm

    Re: Adani, what I can’t understand is that there are coal mines in Australia with required infrastructure that are on care & maintenance and others operating at considerably less than their capacity. There are mines elsewhere in the world in the same position.
    Ignoring the environmental position, it makes absolutely no sense to me that anybody would take the financial risks of a mine in a location which is completely greenfields – no other mines, no transport infrastructure and not even a port. It’s not a rational risk.
    Someone(s), somewhere, are getting a massive payoff.

    You are pointing to reasons why it should not be able to get finance.
    I hope it doesn’t.

  15. Support For Donald Trump’s Impeachment Is Now Higher Than His Approval Rating

    The president’s approval rating dipped from nearly 42 percent to just 36 percent over the weekend, according to a Gallup daily tracking poll published Monday. Trump’s declining popularity is inching closer toward his all-time low of 35 percent as president in March, when Gallup had the president’s approval at just 35 percent. What’s more, nearly 43 percent of American voters support the idea of beginning the official impeachment process for Trump, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll published Wednesday.

    http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-impeachment-support-odds-removal-approval-rating-white-house-620913

  16. It is a bit hard to find MSM condemnation of Turnbulls shameful attempt to politicise the murder (and terrorism in general) in Brighton with his rant on parole.

    Parole is a valid discussion point, but so is rehabilitation and monitoring as not all terrorism related offences will attract a life sentence or deportation. All Turnbull needed to do was calmly assert that all facets of the cause of the crime would be quickly investigated and changes made where necessary. Instead he shamefully focused on a limited area which suited his political agenda and in the process indirectly (and deliberately) blamed a Labor Premier for this incident – he deserves to be lambasted by the media with a metaphorical flagpole up his Khyber.

  17. Holy Half-Life Batman! are you guys still talking the N word?

    Shame on the Wally that brought that up in the first place.

  19. Re Phoenix – 36% approve of Trump and 43% want him impeached. If that truly reflects Americans’ attitudes, that would make the USA a deeply divided country.

  21. simon katich @ #1367 Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 1:35 pm

    Holy Half-Life Batman! are you guys still talking the N word?

    No, I think it’s over. When posters resort to personal abuse, it’s fairly clear they’ve run out of arguments.

    No guarantee that it won’t start again on Friday, though! (insert evil grin emoji here)

  22. CC
    why so much to make Newcaslte-Sydney a fast rail? isnt a lot of it already capable of 140km/h? Are you talking widening is as well – extra Woy Woy Tunnel?

  23. Steve777 Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 1:37 pm

    Re Phoenix – 36% approve of Trump and 43% want him impeached. If that truly reflects Americans’ attitudes, that would make the USA a deeply divided country.

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

    A couple of places had rumours of some GOP members trying to find the “off ramp” for Trump .
    Will be interesting to see the washup from the NSA’s Mike Rogers and ex-FBI head James Comey testimonies this week …..

  26. player one @ #1291 Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 10:28 am

    zoomster @ #1277 Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 10:11 am

    I don’t know – and you haven’t shown me – whether it is declining or increasing.

    It is currently increasing, and has been since Fukushima, as the figures both I and Don have provided clearly demonstrate.

    I’m very much against sloppy argument.

    Me too. But here you are guilty of exactly that.

    I have done nothing of the kind. I gave you data which showed that the US output of nuclear derived electricity is flat lining, which you chose to interpret as increasing.

  27. frednk @ #1358 Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 1:00 pm


    Player One
    ….
    Not for me. For me it is mainly about the amount of misinformation that gets posted here.

    All the engineers are wrong but p1 with superior search skills is right. Just another ignorant arts major; or is it high school graduate?

    Kindergarten drop out?

  28. P1 is simply one of those people who are so insecure that they can never admit (or even contemplate) being wrong. Their suspicion is that they’re not as clever as they think they are, but to admit that even for a split second will bring their whole edifice crumbling around their ears.

    I’m happy to accept that I’m probably wrong on almost everything, and even in the areas where I think I know a lot, I have even more to learn…

  29. Quick vox pop — Ritchie’s King Arthur, The Zookeeper’s Wife, the latest Alien movie or the latest Pirates?

  30. “Where Shorten and labor can fight with some purpose is opposing the $1 billion loan. That is a fight that Shorten and labor should take on and prosecute strongly. They will do that and Shorten had already laid the ground work for that fight.”

    Yup. ALP should oppose the loan any way they can. Fwark this Adani mine is a disaster if it goes ahead.

  31. don @ #1376 Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 1:55 pm

    I have done nothing of the kind. I gave you data which showed that the US output of nuclear derived electricity is flat lining, which you chose to interpret as increasing.

    *sigh*

    2012 = 769,331,249 MWh
    2013 = 789,016,473 MWh
    2014 = 797,165,982 MWh
    2015 = 797,177,533 MWh
    2016 = 805,327,221 MWh

    Yes, I guess you could call that ‘flat lining’ … if you tilt your head to the left a bit.

  34. zoomster Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 2:03 pm

    Quick vox pop — Ritchie’s King Arthur, The Zookeeper’s Wife, the latest Alien movie or the latest Pirates?

    ******************************
    I thought you would have included your life story biographical movie that is getting rave reviews, Zoomster – “Wonder Woman “

  35. simon katich @ #1366 Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 1:32 pm

    It is a bit hard to find MSM condemnation of Turnbulls shameful attempt to politicise the murder (and terrorism in general) in Brighton with his rant on parole.
    Parole is a valid discussion point, but so is rehabilitation and monitoring as not all terrorism related offences will attract a life sentence or deportation. All Turnbull needed to do was calmly assert that all facets of the cause of the crime would be quickly investigated and changes made where necessary. Instead he shamefully focused on a limited area which suited his political agenda and in the process indirectly (and deliberately) blamed a Labor Premier for this incident – he deserves to be lambasted by the media with a metaphorical flagpole up his Khyber.

    Quick response which should limit this – from the State Parliament report – the guy was sentenced under the previous Liberal government.

  37. “I’m happy to accept that I’m probably wrong on almost everything, and even in the areas where I think I know a lot, I have even more to learn…”

    Same here Zoomster. I’ve learned that I’m on the shakiest ground when I think I know a lot about something. That’s when I make my biggest mistakes.

  38. @ P1
    About 4.7% difference between the biggest and smallest numbers. The timing of minor and major maintenance shut downs would easily account for that. A small change in utilisation changes that.

  39. Guess who:

    ‘Meet the new Malcolm Turnbull. Steely jawed. Resolute. Alert and alarmed as he tells Australians they face “a growing threat from Islamist terrorism”.’

  41. grimace @ #1388 Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 2:26 pm

    About 4.7% difference between the biggest and smallest numbers. The timing of minor and major maintenance shut downs would easily account for that. A small change in utilisation changes that.

    So, in what engineering discipline is a 4.7% increase a ‘decline’?

  44. Sessions gave up a soft Senate seat to become A-G. Be hysterical if he got booted after a few months. Boy, would he be pissed.

  45. zoomster @ #1348 Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 12:39 pm

    Aha! It is my lack of Internet Explorer (because my nephew, who programmed my new computer, hates it) which is causing me problems with the NSW Department…

    I suggest that if one of the regular “spankers” who attend to the needs of the current federal government can be lured to your assistance, then your very devoted nephew could be treated to the luxury herein more or less described.
    :government minister detrousered being spanked emoji:
    😜

  46. Hi

    Inhave been immersyed in Apple today as its their WWDC Keynote day. I won’t bote you with details. I only mention because they have addressed a major bugbear in their next version of Safari.

    Blocking of autoplay. Hopefully this will force website designers to assume you have to press play to see video. I am crossing my fingers that we will finally be seeing the end of autoplay website videos.

  49. CT

    I only posted because of the impact on autoplay. I thought that was something all users of the internet could appreciate. I did not go into all the new great things Apple was doing.

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