BludgerTrack: 53.7-46.3 to Labor

Two new poll results this week, including the first Ipsos poll in four months, have failed to budge the BludgerTrack poll aggregate.

Two new polls this week, from Ipsos and Essential Research, have wrought next to no change in voting intention, outside of an improvement for the Greens. However, their state breakdowns have caused Labor to make a net gain of two, having picked up two in Queensland and Victoria, while dropping one in New South Wales. Both pollsters produced leadership ratings this week, but I would caution against reading anything into the changes in the leadership ratings trends, as I don’t make any effort to correct for Ipsos’s consistent peculiarity in producing unusually strong approval ratings for both leaders. In other words, both leaders are up this week not because their ratings have improved – indeed, the opposite happened, particularly for Bill Shorten – but simply because there was an Ipsos result. This is not an issue with the preferred prime minister trend, on which Malcolm Turnbull increased his lead.

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.

1,282 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.7-46.3 to Labor”

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  1. Steve 777

    Many Centrelink staff I am sure continue to work there because they dread the prospect of being on the other side of the desk.

    I know one ex-Centrelink worker who understanding how the system works found a way to get themselves marked down as a full time ‘carer’, scooped up some quite acceptable govt housing, and then by doing a bit of back yard car maintenance a couple of days a week lives quite happily on the combined allowances they have milked from the system and the cash they get for the back yard mechanics work.

  2. Earlier this year, in writing a report for the Australian Conservation Foundation, michaelwest.com.au had put detailed questions to the Federal Government and its credit agency, the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation (EFIC). We asked whether the agency was considering supporting Adani’s Carmichael thermal coal project. Already EFIC had a team working within the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) on project evaluation for the Galilee Basin railway.

    On two occasions, questions were put to Steven Ciobo, the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment whose portfolio oversees EFIC, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). There was no response.

    EFIC acts at the instruction of the minister, in this case the Queensland MP Ciobo. He has now flagged that large domestic coal projects are fair game for taxpayer subsidies. Adani Mining is registered in Australia.

    The ACF report, Dirty Deeds, Done for Cheap Dirt, notes that EFIC – despite its mandate to support small and medium-sized exporters – has a track record in making sizeable investments in large fossil fuel projects. Adani – as operator of what would be the world’s biggest new thermal coal mine – is now, explicitly, within its scope.

    https://www.michaelwest.com.au/did-ciobo-instruct-efic-to-fund-adani/

  5. Of course there is a lot more going on in the government IT sector than just publicly accessible websites and services, however you can say the same about facebook,
    I mean $10 Billion? That was Google’s (Alphabet Inc.) entire capital expenditure in 2016!!

    Google has 2 billion users on Android, 500M on Google Photos —
    Android isn’t the only massive property Google has under its umbrella. The company now has seven services which have reached 1 billion users: Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome, Google Maps, Gmail, Search, and Google Play. People downloaded 82 billion apps during 2016 and also tune into YouTube to watch over 1 billion hours of video each day.

    Let that sink in
    EDIT: *Yes I noticed google maps listed twice in that article, a bit sloppy*

  7. Good morning Bludgers : )
    It’s often educational to read a few articles in the Fin Review about the topic du jour, in this case Energy policy and government intervention, to get a flavour of what the rest of the Business community, looking on, thinks about what is going on.

    How about the following?

    ‘A frustrated and angry business community has implored the government to work with it, not against it, if it wants to solve the energy policy crisis.

    Following a week in which the Turnbull government has demonised AGL Energy over it’s unwillingness to extend the life of the Liddell power station beyond 2022, the Business Council of Australia added it’s voice to fears that politics would again triumph over policy, causing prices to rise and volatility to continue. ‘

    Hmm. We weren’t told that prices would rise by our Prime Minister as a result of his ham-fisted intervention, were we?

  10. peter love @ #53 Saturday, September 16th, 2017 – 10:14 am

    Confessions

    A large number of Immigration staff , at all levels, has left in disgust at the direction of the Department.

    And many who haven’t are counting down the days and months to when they will be able to do so. As someone who worked there for many years it is a national tragedy that Pezzullo has turned the greatest nation-building institution in the history of this country into a meaningless second-rate bodied dedicated to keeping people out.

  11. How about this comment by Jennifer Westacott?

    ‘And you can’t deal with this one project, scheme by scheme, issue by issue.
    That’s where we’ve been for the last decade and we are in a mess because of it.’

    The majority of the decade is covered by Abbott’s spoiler tactics followed by the takeover of the Coalition in government by the Coal lobby and Malcolm Turnbull’s capitulation to it and the MPs representing it.

  15. Facebook gave Robert Mueller far more information than Congress on the $100k of Russian ads

    Special counselor Robert Mueller reportedly got a lot more information from Facebook about the ads paid for by Russia than the Congressional committees investigating the Russia scandal.

    In a Friday Wall Street Journal report, sources revealed the social network handed over all records of online ad buys from Russia on the platform.

    Facebook disclosed last week that approximately 500 fake Facebook accounts with ties to Russia bought $100,000 in ads during the two-years leading up to the 2016 election. There was also $50,000 in ad buys that were linked directly to Russian accounts. Over 5,000 ads were run from these groups, according to Facebook.

    http://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/facebook-gave-robert-mueller-far-more-information-than-congress-on-the-100k-of-russian-ads/

  16. Part of a long letter from Lenore to Guardian subscribers.

    “Most Australians would be surprised to know that our media ownership laws ignore the existence of the internet,” the communications minister, Mitch Fifield, said.
    “A proliferation of news sources, including online publications like Guardian Australia, mean there is now more diversity than ever before.”

    If the existence of our four-year-old Australian company was a justification for scrapping media diversity rules so the biggest print and television companies could better cope with the media industry’s revenue crisis, it seemed reasonable for Xenophon to ask how smaller players, including us, could be helped to manage exactly the same pressures.
    …
    The government still had to do a series of deals with the Senate crossbench to get the changes through. The most disturbing was with Pauline Hanson – who thinks all public funding for public broadcasting is a “slush fund” and ABC balance would be best demonstrated by exposing the “hoax” of global warming – to establish an inquiry into whether the ABC is competing too successfully with its commercial rivals.

    When Fifield came to do the side-deal with Xenophon, the minister had a non-negotiable condition. It could not apply to Guardian Australia. He’d cited us as a reason that media concentration was no longer a problem, but now he singled us out for exclusion from a package protecting diversity. After long argument, Xenophon agreed.

    “The government’s position was that the Guardian Australia’s parent entity was foreign and therefore would not qualify. I do not believe this is relevant. What is relevant is that Australian news stories and analysis are being produced by Australian journalists,” Xenophon said.

    “The Hobson’s choice I faced was to lose the $60m package of measures I negotiated for small and regional publishers. It was made clear to me that if Guardian Australia and other so called foreign-based parent entity publications were included, the funding package would fall through.
    “I fear that there was narrow, blinkered ideology at play on the part of some Coalition backbenchers and some crossbenchers … You have to ask whether blind ideology, yet again, got in the way of sensible public policy.”
    …
    If the government’s objection was really about providing assistance to Australian companies with a foreign parent company, why selectively waive that rule for some?

    At the end of this saga, the ABC and SBS face an inquiry that could dramatically curb their journalism and the big players will be able to merge and and better cope with reductions in advertising revenue, but this is also highly likely to increase our already extreme levels of media ownership concentration.


  17. C@tmomma

    Does anyone else get the feeling that commentators like Chris Kenny and Gerard Henderson are losing their ability to influence the debate?

    Yes.

    The Liberals have been so incompetent; the raiding of the treasury so blatant; their economic miss-management so obvious; the CPG herd mentality is breaking down.

  18. UK Politics:

    The article says that Johnsons’ ambitition to be PM is ‘undimmed’ but I think he’s busy trying to make that come about before the final Brexit situation becomes apparent.

    After that I think his prospects are ‘dim’.

    He insists Brexit will allow the UK to “be the greatest country on earth” and “our destiny will be in our own hands”.

    “This country will succeed in our new national enterprise, and will succeed mightily,” he wrote.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-brexit-nhs-350m-theresa-may-leaderhsip-bid-speculation-a7949806.html

  20. guytaur @ #54 Saturday, September 16th, 2017 – 10:17 am

    Good on Cottesloe Tennis Club. 🙂

    https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/same-sex-marriage-critic-margaret-court-hits-back-over-cottesloe-tennis-club-dumping-ng-b88600348z

    “You don’t have the freedom of speech today to really defend yourself” – Says the lady to a nationwide media outlet as she defends herself and falsely accuses the gay community of some sort of conspiracy to ‘destroy marriage’.

    Are people being ballsy when they use their free speech to claim that their free speech is being attacked, or just stupid?

  22. Lizzie,
    It seems to me that the Coalition don’t like what they have been reading in The Guardian Australia and so devised a little bit of payback for them. Ditto Buzzfeed, who have also been similarly shut out by this government of the spivs, by the spivs, led by Spiv-in-Chief Turnbull.

    I mean, how can you say with a straight face that the Regional and Rural papers owned by the Septic Tank, Murdoch, aren’t also in the same boat as Buzzfeed and The Guardian Australia?

    Anyhoo, so much for sycophantic coverage as a result of the government drip from those outlets. : )

  23. AR

    Are people being ballsy when they use their free speech to claim that their free speech is being attacked, or just stupid?

    ___________________________________________

    Cynically tapping into the cognitive dissonance which is growing around the world, but especially in English-speaking countries, as a result of an education system that has been debased into some sort of training ground for workers, rather than teaching people how to think.

  24. A very good letter from an “oldie” in the GG. A response to a Sheridan article.

    As a former altar boy, now hurtling towards 80, I still know that you must never leave the gospel candle burning on its own. That nonsense stays with me. So does a lot of the dogma that came with it. It is a fair matter for Senator Feinstein to raise; and also for herself. We are all of us victims and captives of our own history. I’ll be voting Yes, like my children, and my grandchildren. Religion is protected by the constitution. That’s quite enough. And it is irresponsible of Mr Howard and others to imply that a tacky, non compulsory poll has the authority to change it. It is a classic Howard diversion. Don’t fall for it.

  25. C@

    Does anyone else get the feeling that commentators like Chris Kenny and Gerard Henderson are losing their ability to influence the debate?

    I think they’ve undermined themselves by not being able to resist appearing on TV shows like “Insiders”.

    That most of them have no real idea of what is going on becomes apparent in the face of even the mildest questioning.

    They think government policy consists of the Coalition deciding to call Shorten ‘Blackout Bill’.

  27. A R

    Are people being ballsy when they use their free speech to claim that their free speech is being attacked, or just stupid?

    What Court means to say is that she feels she cannot freely publish the things she really believes about LGBTIQ people for fear of being rebuked for bigotry. Implicitly, she’s a hater who is feeling repressed. How strange it must be for Court and others like her to find they’ve been left behind by events, values and opinions, and that they’re now relatively powerless – that, in fact, their authority has evaporated. Their resentments are obvious.

  28. Re: Plebicite mailout.

    Nothing yet in Gisborne (50 km north of Melbourne) yet friends in Sandringham (southern Melbourne bayside suburb) and Minyip (4 hours west of Melbourne) already received the envelope, responded and posted by Thursday.

    Asked local post office in Gisborne this morning. They had no idea when they would arrive.

    Normally it is 3 days from Melbourne and up to one week from anywhere north of the Murray.

  29. The msm’s refusal to call Abbott out, instead promoting him as the ‘best Opposition Leader evah” damaged them, particularly when they kept spruiking for Abbott long after the polls showed that most voters had realised for themselves the man was incompetent. Then they spruiked Malcolm….

    When I was a candidate, I knew that credibility was important. If you’ve established yourself as credible, you no longer need to ‘sell’ every argument. You’d think the media would grasp this.

  30. briefly @ #77 Saturday, September 16th, 2017 – 12:29 pm

    A R

    Are people being ballsy when they use their free speech to claim that their free speech is being attacked, or just stupid?

    What Court means to say is that she feels she cannot freely publish the things she really believes about LGBTIQ people for fear of being rebuked for bigotry. Implicitly, she’s a hater who is feeling repressed. How strange it must be for Court and others like her to find they’ve been left behind by events, values and opinions, and that they’re now relatively powerless – that, in fact, their authority has evaporated. Their resentments are obvious.

    _________________________

    She wants to be a homophobe without being labelled a homophobe. Fair enough.

    But what about pedophiles who don’t want to be labelled pedophiles, murderers who don’t want to be labelled murderers, and terrorists who don’t want to be labelled terrorists?

    Who is defending their freedom of speech?

  31. Limited Through Mixed @ #78 Saturday, September 16th, 2017 – 12:33 pm

    Re: Plebicite mailout.

    Nothing yet in Gisborne (50 km north of Melbourne) yet friends in Sandringham (southern Melbourne bayside suburb) and Minyip (4 hours west of Melbourne) already received the envelope, responded and posted by Thursday.

    Asked local post office in Gisborne this morning. They had no idea when they would arrive.

    Normally it is 3 days from Melbourne and up to one week from anywhere north of the Murray.

    It appears there was a bulk post-out from the Dandenong Mail Centre and presumably other Mail Centres.
    My wife and I got ours on Wednesday I think but my son’s family in another suburb serviced by the Dandenong Mail Centre still have not received theirs.
    My conclusion is that they are being sent out in digestible batches so the system does not get stressed.
    I have no other explanation that would make sense.

  32. I too have received the ME postal forms. as well as an extra for the previous owner, who obviously didn’t update their electoral details.
    Will the ABS account for people turning in other peoples forms statistically? Luckily, I foresee it skewing further toward the yes vote, sure newer copies sent out to individuals that request them and can then render the older form’s unique ID invalid, and that can be accounted for. But for those who couldn’t care less and don’t chase up the form, there will be free extra forms floating around, and I would imagine it is more likely that these will be submitted as yes votes

  37. Maher says Trump ‘isn’t being bipartisan — he’s being bipolar’

    Bill Maher is deeply concerned about President Donald Trump’s twists, turns, flips and flops on major policy decisions.

    “We’ve weathered Harvey and Irma, but now we’ve got Sh*tstorm Donald,” Maher began Friday’s episode of HBO’s Real Time.

    “This week Trump wined and dined Schumer and Pelosi. Well, they dined — he whined,” Maher joked.

    He “announced a breakthrough on immigration,” Maher recalled. “The DREAMers can stay, and by that he means they can’t stay. Or maybe they can stay, ask somebody else. He wants them to stay. And by that he means, ‘get out.’ And we’re building a wall and by that he means we’re repairing the fence. I mean, he thinks he’s being bipartisan. This isn’t being bipartisan this is being bipolar.”

    Trump’s closest allies have been irate since the meeting. Whether Breitbart or Ann Coulter – everyone is furious.

    “They’re burning their ‘Make America Great Again’ hats, which is disturbing because it means they’ve discovered fire,” Maher joked. He added that it means they’ll likely discover tools next.

    http://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/watch-maher-says-trump-isnt-being-bipartisan-hes-being-bipolar/

  39. Smoking gun?: Maddow pinpoints a massive missing link in the flurry of Trump firings and resignations

    In President Donald Trump’s White House, all roads are said to lead to Russia, to his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and…to Vice President Mike Pence?

    According to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, “Pence has been caught out in way more of these scandals than his bland Beltway press coverage would have you believe.”

    Pence, as Maddow noted on Friday night, was head of the presidential transition — and was also the recipient of a letter from Congress warning that the Flynn “was on the payroll of foreign governments” and an in-person visit from the former general’s lawyers with the same information.

    “Pence insisted — insisted — that there were no contacts at all between the Trump campaign and Russian officials during the campaign,” she said. “That of course, was not true, either.”

    And just last week, she said Pence “has stuff to worry about” when it comes to his long string of lies and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/smoking-gun-maddow-pinpoints-a-massive-missing-link-in-the-flurry-of-trump-firings-and-resignations/

  40. Solar rooftop PV is having a measurable effect on reducing peak demand in WA:

    The growth of rooftop solar PV in Western Australia has taken the market operator by surprise, but has resulted in a dramatic reduction in both the scale and the timing of peak demand in the state.

    According to the latest statement of energy market opportunities for WA, the Australian Energy Market Operator says that rooftop solar PV – now on one in four homes and businesses in the state – reduced peak demand by 265MW, or 7.2 per cent in the last summer.

    It says the uptake of rooftop solar in WA, which has been double expectations over the last two years – driven by falling costs of rooftop solar PV and the rise in grid prices – is “accelerating a paradigm shift” for the energy industry.

    The biggest impact is on peak demand. The biggest peak in the state occurred on March 1, reaching 3,670MW in the 1700-1730 trading interval – the lowest since 2009.

    This was helped by the contribution of rooftop solar (265MW in that peak interval), and from demand response (124MW), a technology that AEMO wants to deploy more in the eastern states for the same reason.

    “The rapid adoption of rooftop solar is not only slowing annual operational consumption growth but also eroding the mid-day grid demand and shifting peak demand to later in the day,” said AEMO’s Executive General Manager – Western Australia, Cameron Parrotte.

    This is the graph:

    This is the article:

    http://reneweconomy.com.au/boom-in-rooftop-pv-shifting-peaks-and-taking-market-operator-by-surprise-46984/

  41. Jolyon Wagg

    OK I give up….can someone let me know where I get the C+ plugin.

    ……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

    Notes made regarding C+

    ……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
    A R

    bemused @ #164 Tuesday, September 12th, 2017 – 1:14 pm
    Perhaps you could add it into your other plugin?
    Eww, feature-creep. I’d rather just package the 3-line plugin.
    Enjoy: http://bit.ly/2wmIaeZ
    Here’s a link you can test with: http://www.afr.com/news/malcolm-turnbull-edges-away-from-a-cet-doubts-agls-clean-energy-plans-20170911-gyfhla

    A R

    bemused @ #386 Tuesday, September 12th, 2017 – 11:54 pm
    I use Firefox.

  44. Jolyon Wagg

    OK I give up….can someone let me know where I get the C+ plugin.

    ………………………………………………………………………………………………………

    A R

    bemused @ #164 Tuesday, September 12th, 2017 – 1:14 pm
    Perhaps you could add it into your other plugin?
    Eww, feature-creep. I’d rather just package the 3-line plugin.
    Enjoy: http://bit.ly/2wmIaeZ
    Here’s a link you can test with: http://www.afr.com/news/malcolm-turnbull-edges-away-from-a-cet-doubts-agls-clean-energy-plans-20170911-gyfhla

    A R

    bemused @ #386 Tuesday, September 12th, 2017 – 11:54 pm
    I use Firefox.
    Very well.
    Enjoy if and when Mozilla approves it for download: https://mzl.la/2xji5RU

  48. One interesting comment in Murphy’s article on energy
    “While Abbott is never one for fine policy detail, or constrained particularly by facts in the crafting of a deft political argument, he’s been very determined to front run the inevitable crab walk by the government in the direction of coal.”.
    It is interesting that Murphy uses the term ‘inevitable ‘, implying a revision back to coal by the government, read Turnbull was always going to happen.
    Does this mean there is no longer a ‘real Malcom’ waiting for the right time to reveal himself?

    When it became, clear in 2013 that Turnbull would faithfully follow orders from Abbott and ‘wreck the NBN’, his motives and ability came on full display.

  50. One for ABC fan Adrian 🙂 So as to “better acquaint you with Malcolm Turnbull.” the ABC in 2015 gave us “seven facts” about the then newly minted PM. could not find any mention of HIH or the $10 million Russian “rainmaker” or Utegate etc .

    “From his single-parent childhood, early ‘Spycatcher’ success, and ‘Dog Blog’ — here are seven facts that will better acquaint you with Malcolm Turnbull.”
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-15/7-things-to-know-about-malcolm-turnbull/6776238

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