Essential Research: 54-46 to Labor; ReachTEL: 53-47

New and new-ish federal voting intention numbers from Essential Research, ReachTEL and YouGov, plus a bonanza of same-sex marriage polling that is consistent only in pointing to a big win for “yes”.

Three new results on federal voting intention:

• The Guardian reports Labor’s lead in this week’s Essential Research fortnightly rolling average is 54-46, up from 53-47 last time. Primary vote numbers to follow later today. (UPDATE: The full results reveal the Coalition is down a point to 36%, Labor up one to 38%, the Greens steady on 10% and One Nation steady on 7%)

• A ReachTEL poll for Sky News, conducted on Thursday from an unusually big sample of 4888, has Labor’s two-party lead at 53-47, out from 52-48 at the previous poll on August 23. The primary votes are all but unchanged, with the Coalition steady on 34.5%, Labor down 0.3% to 36.4%, the Greens down 0.1% to 10.2% and One Nation up 0.6% to 11.0%. On 2016 election flows, the result would have come in at 54-46. The poll has Malcolm Turnbull leading Bill Shorten 51.7-48.3 on preferred prime minister; Turnbull’s performance rated as very good or good by 26%, average by 34% and poor or very poor by 39%; Bill Shorten’s respective numbers coming in at 31%, 31% and 37%.

• The YouGov poll for FiftyAcres maintains its idiosyncratic form in having the Coalition with a 51-49 lead on respondent-allocated preferences, compared with 50-50 a fortnight ago. After producing somewhat more conventional primary vote numbers last time, it’s back to having both major parties deep in the doldrums, with Labor down two points to 33% and the Coalition steady on 34%. The Greens and One Nation are also steady on 11% and 9%, with minor players soaking up the difference. Labor is credited with a fairly conventional 73% of Greens preferences, with the Coalition getting 68% from One Nation and 60% from the rest. A two-party result based on 2016 election flows would have come in at around 53-47. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1054.

Same-sex marriage survey latest:

• The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ yesterday released the first of what will be weekly estimates on the response rate for the same-sex marriage survey. It estimates that 9.2 million survey forms have been received, amounting to a turnout of 57.5% of eligible voters. The result will be announced on November 15.

• The ABS figure is at odds with two polls that have emerged in the last few days, which can only partly be explained by postal lag effects. A ReachTEL poll for Sky News, conducted from a sample of “nearly five thousand people”, found 79.5% identifying as having voted. This included 64.3% who said they had voted yes compared with only 15.5% for no, with another 6.0% saying they still intended to vote yes and 5.7% for no. The other poll is a survey for the Marriage Equality campaign finding 77% of those eligible had voted, including 69% of the 18-to-24 cohort and more than 80% of those aged over 65. However, the Essential poll comes in a good deal lower, with 47% saying they had already voted, up from 36% a week ago, and another 33% saying they will definitely do so.

• Essential Research now has support for same-sex marriage at 61%, up from 58% last week and 55% the week before, with opposition tracking from 34% to 33% to 32%. Of those who voted, 64% said they voted yes compared with 30% for no.

• Without providing further detail, Sky News relates that a ReachTEL poll “separate” to the one it commissioned itself had a 72-28 forced response split in favour of yes, reducing to 61-39 among those who said they had already voted.

“ The Sky News ReachTEL poll has 47.2% very concerned or somewhat concerned about “what might be taught in schools if same sex marriage is legalised”, compared with 42.8% for somewhat or not at all concerned.

• The YouGov poll found 64% of respondents saying they had discussed the survey with family, 54% with friends, 21% with work colleagues and 14% with others, with only 17% saying they had not discussed it with anyone.

Other recent attitudinal findings:

• The ReachTEL poll found a 53-47 split in favour of Labor on who was best to manage the energy crisis and rising power prices. It also found 41% would support more coal seam gas mining if it meant reduced gas prices, with 36% opposed.

• Absent qualifications about lower prices, a Research Now survey of 1421 respondents for the Australia Institute found 49% would support a moratorium on fracking in their own state, with 24% opposed. Seventy-four per cent said they would support higher renewable energy targets in their own states.

• The YouGov poll finds 42% saying Tony Abbott should “play a quieter role and not be so critical of Malcolm Turnbull”, compared with 31% for “he should continue to speak up in the media, even if it involves being critical of Malcolm Turnbull”. Results were fairly similar across different voting intentions, with the exception of One Nation, whose supporters were notably harder on Turnbull. It was also found that 40% thought it wrong of Tony Abbott to relate the headbutt incident to the same-sex marriage campaign, compared with 34% who thought it was right, with clear distinctions emerging in this case betweeen Labor/Greens and Coalition/One Nation supporters.

• Also from the YouGov poll, 59% were in favour of a royal commission into the banking industry, with 19% opposed.

• Essential Research has results from its occasional questions on trust in institutions and media organisations, but all we have from The Guardian is that the the federal police performed best on the former, with religious organisations, trade unions and political parties bringing up the rear, with the ABC as always taking the mantle of most trusted news organisation.

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.

1,728 comments on “Essential Research: 54-46 to Labor; ReachTEL: 53-47”

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  2. SK

    You think 18C should be repealed?

    I said we need a Bill of Rights. Privacy is just one of those rights.

    AR put it well. Have a warrant required. Have it targeted surveillance not mass surveillance.

    I really don’t know why people are scared of a Bill of Rights. I have not seen UK EU Canada fall apart for having them.

  3. Quite aside from the reasons for this, it’s worth looking at what else happened this week. Yesterday, the ABC announced a major shake-up of its news and current affairs approach, which will have Lateline disappear (among other things), to be “replaced” by investigative units across platforms. And at the beginning of the week, another part of the ABC revealed the absolute financial debauchery of the Adani Carmichael coal mine project — billions and billions of state funds being poured into a crisis-ridden company, which diverts billions to tax havens, and would provide less jobs than would direct investment.

    What links these and other events? ‘Tis not often that this writer gets the chance to be straight-down-the-line Marxist, but it’s worth it this time: the last remnants of liberal capitalism are being shut down, by “liberals”, and we are moving to an authoritarian capitalist social model. The right, who labelled themselves “liberals”, are going along with it, restricting their complaints about state repression to abstruse matters of speech regulation, and wilfully ignoring wider challenges to liberty, and the notion of an independent public sphere.
    …
    Politicians need Big Fear to distract, and their oppositions don’t want to be caught out. Police forces work to extend their power, regardless of the public good, and politicians in turn respond to that with a fresh round of new laws. Round it goes. Beneath the immediate processes, we need to understand the deeper effects, to fight it more effectively.

    https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/10/06/rundle-on-turnbulls-surveillance-offensive-latelines-demise/

  4. Dutton has already called environmental protesters ‘criminals’ and Keenan says the surveillance is to catch criminals.

    Urban Wronski‏ @UrbanWronski · 4h4 hours ago

    Whatever the target, such laws will be abused,rolled over to public protest — especially environmental protest.

  6. G
    I didnt mention 18C. Did I violate it when using the term ‘MOFO’ or when is insinuated Barney is in ‘Mt Gambier’.

    imo the uproar around 18C shows that we would never be able to get one into the constitution or similar untouchable document (that everyone agrees on and that is worthwhile and workable).

  7. ‘Whatever the target, such laws will be abused,rolled over to public protest — especially environmental protest.’

    Yes, because environmental protest threatens the bottom line of their donor mates.

  8. The problem, however, is that the only means of halting such attacks on basic rights is via parliament, and parliament is rendered pointless if a supine opposition refuses to do its job, which has long been the case with Labor on national security.

    …Europeans have the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which has been used to reverse the imposition of mass surveillance schemes like data retention.

    Here, at the federal level we have nothing beyond an implied right to political communication, which the High Court only conveniently found when it was needed to protect the financial interests of commercial television networks.

    https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/10/06/politicians-contempt-for-liberties-shows-need-for-bill-of-rights/

  9. SK

    Where did I mention putting it into the Constitution.

    I know some countries Bill of Rights is not in the Constitution.

    We have plenty of examples to look at and model on. We know the bad part of the US.

    No one said it would be easy.

    However we are the only Western Country without a Bill of Rights.

    Why are we so more immature than those other Countries?

  10. I was doubtful about the metadata stuff, but the arguments against it were so weak they actually lessened my concerns.

    It’s going the same way with this discussion!

    The trouble with any form of prevention is that you can’t absolutely prove it worked. You especially can’t do this where releasing your evidence is counter productive.

    A security agency can’t go around boasting that “because we had access to X, we were able to get the information which stopped this happening’ because if they did no bad guy would ever use X again.

    So if metadata collection – for example – is working at preventing terrorist acts, we might never know about it, because if we did know, it wouldn’t be as effective at preventing terrorist acts.

  11. …regardless, I remember the hysteria about how the retention of metadata was going to lead us to a draconian police state and how foolish we were to trust that it would be used appropriately. So far, it seems, so good.

  12. If we have a Bill of Rights which isn’t in the Constitution, what we would have is just another piece of legislation which can be changed at the whim of Parliament.

  13. Zoomster

    Thats trust us its working.

    Lets have a Bill of Rights so we can have proper protections for the innocent and targeted surveillance of the guilty with warrants to access.

    Lets not go down the path to becoming like Turkey or Russia or China.

    Not one foot stepped on that path. Human Rights are not a luxury.

  16. “Whatever the target, such laws will be abused,rolled over to public protest — especially environmental protest.”

    Too bloody right. I have wattched the UK for years introduce laws in the name of stopping terror and heard all the same tripe defending the path we are going down and all the same reassurances. Always ,always the powers flow out in to other areas which have nothing to do with terrorism. This instance however took the cake AND the biscuit.

    Half of councils use anti-terror laws to spy on ‘bin crimes’
    More than half of councils are using anti-terror laws to spy on families suspected of “bin crimes”, it has emerged.

    Their surveillance tactics include hiding secret cameras on streets and even in neighbouring homes to catch householders putting their rubbish out on the wrong day.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-councils-use-anti-terror-laws-to-spy-on-bin-crimes.html

  17. ‘…so we can have proper protections for the innocent and targeted surveillance of the guilty with warrants to access.’

    We can – and do – have that without a Bill of Rights.

  18. Zoomster

    The alternative is to oppose a Bill of Rights.

    You can’t have ti both ways if you are supporting a bill of rights to protect civil liberties that are the core of democracy and that are currently unprotected

  19. guytaur

    Not trying to have it anyway. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to want to know why a Bill of Rights is necessary, what it would do that our present system doesn’t, and poke and prod any proposals to see how they’ll work in the real world, instead of signing up sight unseen to something because it’s such as Luverly Idea.

  20. Why are we so more immature than those other Contries?

    Some countries needed to be an immature or burgeoning democracy to be able to create such a document helped along in some cases by a revolution immediately preceding.

    Canada had a BoRs without it being in their constitution but realised it was a waste of space and ended up putting a Charter of freedoms into their constitution. Buggered if I know how they managed that, but it wont happen here for many year.

    The problem for me is I do not believe Human Rights as a ‘packet’ are universal AND timeless.

  21. The big challenge for Bill of Rights supporters in Australia, as I see it, is to realise that a Bill of Rights must only contain the important stuff. The stuff that absolutely needs protecting – very basic liberty/equality sort of stuff. Nearly always when I see a “bill of rights” claim from the left in Australia, it comes with a list of “rights” claims which is basically an ill-disciplined greedy grab-bag of all their major political claims. An especially dire example recently was Richard di Natale supporting a “right to a clean environment” in the hope of restricting Adani. The more that is put in a Bill of Rights the more the parliament is restricted.

  22. poroti

    Their surveillance tactics include hiding secret cameras on streets and even in neighbouring homes to catch householders putting their rubbish out on the wrong day.

    Town Clerks with a constipated mind (but not really funny).

  23. SK

    Actually except for the 2nd Amendment the US Bill of Rights is not half bad.

    I really don’t see why we should be so scared to do what other countries have done.

    This is a country where people are dreaming of a Republic.

    Having rights fixed first will make that transition easier. Or we could do it as part of the Republic Constitution. However I don’t think we should have to wait to have human rights codified.

  24. KB

    Yes. The most I have seen a successful rights bill go is South Africa.

    That why I think we should look at models that have succeeded. More chance of success.

  25. lizzie

    Their using o “terror” laws was truly !!! Of course such “mission creep” of “terror” laws would never happen here eh ? 🙁

  27. Sara‏ @_sara_jade_ · 5h5 hours ago

    Journo “Are you saying safety trumps privacy?”
    MT “No ah safety & ah privacy go hand in hand” Keenan nose touch lie

  29. All this talk about Facial Recognition reminds me of the person who went into a bank to cash a cheque, when asked to identify Him/herself, he/she pulled out a mirror, and said, “yes it’s me !” (Note how careful I was not to identify the blond/e involved.
    I managed to get a smile out of a French passport control officer (no mean feat). She was examining my passport, and I said “Oui, c’est moi.”

  30. The usual problem with draconian anti terror laws is that while you may trust the current Government to exercise them judiciously and in the public interest (I don’t), do you trust any Government that might come to power in future? A Government run by Peter Dutton? One run by whatever the “Liberal” party evolves into after a decade or two. Authoritarian regimes have abused anti terror (anti insurgency / anti communist) laws in many times and places since WW2 (and before then).

  31. zoidlord:
    “The only reason the people from PB are defending these mass weapons of survivalence, is because Labor will use them, when they are in power.”

    And because Labor, so far, are not offering any significant opposition to them.

  32. This Government has form in releasing personal details to try and destroy their enemies in public.

    It will let nothing stand in the way of political power.

  37. poroti @ #1575 Friday, October 6th, 2017 – 6:44 pm

    lizzie

    Their using o “terror” laws was truly !!! Of course such “mission creep” of “terror” laws would never happen here eh ? 🙁

    You’ve got to have the faith, poroti.

    Why anyone wouldn’t have faith in the conmen, shysters and crooks that run this country is beyond me!

  40. I suppose we would be a lot safer if the government could install video cameras and microphones in all of our homes.

  41. DulcieFairhurst: My landlord is selling my flat and every evening rich people come to look around so I’ve started building a subtle collection of propaganda pic.twitter.com/0Zt4Lln63A


  42. The project to enhance our safety might be more successful if those who voice opposition against it were interned. Safety is paramount, isn’t it?

  44. The particular threat to our safety is posed by extremists from certain religions and ethnicities. We would therefore be safer if special laws can be made to apply to these groups. Safety first!

  47. Well, Well.

    ABC boss Michelle Guthrie has launched a stinging attack on her commercial television rivals, accusing their chief executives of wanting to deny “your children and grandchildren” the right to watch Play School and Peppa Pig.

    Ms Guthrie also questioned the commercial strategies of rival media players and said the Turnbull government’s media law reforms were designed to further a “political vendetta”.

    http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/abc-boss-michelle-guthrie-attacks-commercial-rivals-media-law-reforms-20170918-gyjzue.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nc&eid=socialn%3Atwi-13omn1677-edtrl-other%3Annn-17%2F02%2F2014-edtrs_socialshare-all-nnn-nnn-vars-o%26sa%3DD%26usg%3DALhdy28zsr6qiq

  48. shiftaling:
    “I suppose we would be a lot safer if the government could install video cameras and microphones in all of our homes.”

    An even better idea than facial recognition in public. After all, if you’re a terrorist, you’re unlikely to be meeting your accomplices in shopping malls etc. Installing cameras and microphones in all of our homes is the only way to stop terrorism before it even reaches the planning stage. I’d feel that much more secure knowing that the government is looking out for our best interests. Giving up your privacy is a small price to pay for the warm feeling you get, knowing you’re safe. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve no reason to oppose this.

  49. BuzzFeedNews: BREAKING: The International Campaign To Abolish Nuclear Weapons has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
    buzzfeed.com/matthewchampio…

  50. Boerwar

    Vote 1 JTI. OMFG , Truffles really was the full Ministry of Truth last night.

    On A Current Affair, Malcolm Turnbull went as far as to suggest that increasing national surveillance powers was a step towards a utopian future where everyone was free as a bird.

    “Well, national security enables us to be free; it is security that keeps us free. The terrorists want to take away our freedom; they want to take away our freedom to live. They want to take away our freedom to go about our lives the way we always do. So security goes hand-in-hand with freedom,” Turnbull said.

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