This week’s reading of the Essential Research fortnight rolling average records an unusually solid two-point move in favour of the Coalition on two-party preferred, reducing Labor’s lead to 52-48. Nothing in The Guardian’s report on primary votes, so those will have to wait until later in the day. What we do have in the report is that 65% support a clean energy target, 74% back support for renewable energy and “a majority” support Labor’s goal of 50% renewable energy by 2030. Sixty-one per cent say the government is not doing enough “to ensure affordable, reliable and clean energy” (down from 71% in February), with only 15% saying it is doing enough (steady). Forty-two per cent say Tony Abbott should remain in parliament (down a point since April), with 30% saying he should remain (down two).
The fortnightly YouGov poll maintains the usual peculiarities of the series, most notably a headline two-party figure showing the Coalition with a lead of 51-49, based on low primary votes for the major parties and a strong flow of One Nation preferences to the Coalition (two-thirds, along with 27% of Greens preferences and half of the remainder). With preference flows like those of the 2016 election, Labor would come out about 52.5-47.5 ahead. The primary votes are Coalition 34% (steady), Labor 32% (down one), Greens 11% (steady) and One Nation 11% (up two). The poll also found 67% had voted in the same-sex marriage survey, of whom 61% voted yes and 35% no. The remainder, including the 20% still likely to vote, broke 54% to 28% in favour. Thirty per cent said companies declaring their support for same-sex marriage gave them a more favourable view of their brand, compared with 20% less favourable and 46% no difference.
Other findings: 37% thought the Constitution should be changed to allow dual citizens to run for parliament, with 45% opposed; 56% favoured stricter gun laws, compared with 7% for less strict and 34% for “remain about the same”; and 42% would deem it a bad thing if the government dropped its clean energy targets for 2020, compared with 32% for good thing. Asked to pick out of a list of 16 most important issues for the next election, health came out tops on 44% (though this was down five since August), with unemployment, living standards and the economy next placed on 30% each.
Note also that a Queensland state results from Newspoll came out overnight, which you can read about here.
Ch9 Nine just had a clip of her doing a bald-faced contradiction of herself. So much so it invited playing a clip of her comments a few weeks back, but they didn’t bother.
NZ is ahead of us in many ways. Second Female PM
GT
Third female PM
Speaking of Ch9 News, what I have seen of Uhlmann so far hasn’t been quite as bad as expected.
IOM
Helen Clarke. Adern. Who did I miss?
Ardern: “We will be focused on achieving an economy that doesn’t simply rely on the housing market and simple population growth” *cough* like Australia *cough cough*
GT
Jenny Shipley. Clarke replaced her.
guytaur – Jenny Shipley
IOM JD
Thanks. 🙂
😆
Commentator on ABC. Many people were thinking NZ First would form a coalition with Labour
Wow how fast the media narrative changes. Just pickanother commentator
Bemused and Zoomster
Jacinta is off to a better start than Gillard if only because when came to leadership after the voluntary withdrawal of the other guy.
The other guy had abysmal ratings ant theyse were clearly trending down
No matter what way you look at it Gillard came to the job with baggage. Now maybe Jacinta has some such baggage (i have not a clue on that) but it is not in the public arena.
Gillard came to office when Rudd was having a transitory down period but it was not a long term abysmal rating. This set the bar much, much higher for Gillard. Jacinta has a lower bar to leap, but she will start quickly to be compared with Helen Clarke.
Gods, Kiwis are slackers.
In 18 years they’ve only had 4 prime ministers.
I am hoping CBS do have plans to tap into the empty arid desert which is the Australian centre-left news market. If that is the plan I hope they put their news and current affairs programming in the same time slots as their competitors.
zoomster @ #1448 Thursday, October 19th, 2017 – 6:16 pm
She has been Labour leader for long enough to show her stuff and get the tick of approval.
I will be truly dismayed if this changes.
I’m not sure Adern’s decision to form Government in this Parliament is the best option for NZ Labour. Sitting back and letting English deal with Winston Peters (and his immense ego) for the next few years may have been the more strategic move.
Getting the Greens AND NZ First to sit on the same frontbench – it’ll be constant cat-herding duty for Jacinda, I fear.
– On law and order policies – whatever the Greens support, Peters will oppose and vice-versa.
– On immigration policies, likewise.
– On religious & social issues, likewise – NZFirst is hard-right on those, while the Greens are solidly left of centre.
There’s more room to give depending on the issue and there may be -some- common ground, but it will involve significant compromises from one or both parties. And Peters detests the Greens, who heartily reciprocate his loathing.
I just don’t see a Labour/Greens/Peters coalition holding up all that long. Can someone point me to where I’m wrong?
Bemused
She actually has been leader only a very short time, but the early trends are positive.
Agree, not even partisan me expected it. : )
Of course I wish her well, bemused. I’m just saying it’s far too earlier in the piece to compare her with anyone, good, bad or indifferent.
daretotread @ #1459 Thursday, October 19th, 2017 – 6:29 pm
Ummm it’s Jacinda actually. Not Jacinta.
Ardern has one advantage, she hasn’t got a vindictive former leader sniping in the background.
BK
Don’t confuse them with our lot. They are very different beast.
Barney in Go Dau @ #1469 Thursday, October 19th, 2017 – 6:34 pm
Surely we could loan her one of ours? We seem to have an excess here!
zoomster @ #1466 Thursday, October 19th, 2017 – 6:33 pm
I am confident in my prediction.
I will admit to completely expecting a Nat/NZ First Govt. Wont back away from it.
poroti @ #1470 Thursday, October 19th, 2017 – 6:06 pm
I thoroughly agree!
IoM
You should get a job at the ABC : )
?
I’m too honest to be.
Barney in Go Dau @ #1469 Thursday, October 19th, 2017 – 6:34 pm
With luck we will be able to send her a spare one. Baaarnaby Choice Bro..
From this distance, the NZ conservatives (Nationals) appear to be genuinely Centre-right, not dominated by hard right ideologues like ours.
[Player One
Barney in Go Dau @ #1469 Thursday, October 19th, 2017 – 6:34 pm
Ardern has one advantage, she hasn’t got a vindictive former leader sniping in the background.
Surely we could loan her one of ours? We seem to have an excess here!]
Excess?
Looking at our Parliament I only see one at the moment.
Given that left-wing parties champion the poor and the marginalised against a right-wing that seeks to hurt them, if a left-wing party is in a position to take government then it has a social and moral duty to do so. Political considerations should always be secondary.
Julie Bishop is going to be spinning so much they can plug her into the grid…….there’s a years worth of renewables right there.
English sums up how remarkable the turn around was
.
“a fairly remarkable performance … 10 or 12 weeks ago she was deputy leader of a fading opposition”.
NZ also won’t have feral Murdoch crapsheets pulling out all stops to bring down Labour and boost the conservatives.
Barney
If you have a former leader sniping then it is your job to ameliorate the snipe. Turnbull is a fool for letting Abbot snipe and win and so too was Gilard in allowing the problem with Rudd to evolve.
If you take a person’s job for whatever reason, particularly if by surprise then you MUST expect headwinds. It would not matter who the contenders were. This is human nature and is just as true of the person who gets promoted above a colleague even if the promotion is fair. There will be resentment and sniping. To expect anything else is just plain thick headed.
The job of a leader is to make the best of it. To try as hard as possible to pacify the aggrieved “staff member” or colleague. Gillard made no such effort and instead tried the other tried (rarely true) practice of making life as hard as possible so that the aggrieved staff member will resign.
Strategically Gillard was a fool. Firstly she agreed to step into the leadership prematurely, misjudging the depth of Rudd’s fall or her own support. This was a pretty rookie mistake.
Secondly she misjudged the character of Rudd. Surely she know the man well enough to know he was not the resignation sort. This was an example of very poor capacity to know or judge characters.
Thirdly she had a PR disaster when she allowed her “friends to put out the line that Rudd was mean and nasty because he made the pollies “work too hard”. Honestely what sort of PR idiot allowed that to happen. The public swung almost instantly behind Rudd as they all think politicians and public servants are lazy so and sos.
Then this error was compounded by people going out and about trashing the reputation of the ex PM. How to make an upset person really, really hate you – lesson 1.
In other words by week two of her leadership Gillard had four large bricks in her backpack. All were avoidable and the example of poor judgement.
I really was expecting Labour to play hard ball sufficiently with Peters to force him to go with the Nationals in the expectation it would be an unstable coalition and lead to another election.
I hope the Nationals are not doing that to Labour.
Barney in Go Dau @ #1479 Thursday, October 19th, 2017 – 6:47 pm
Well, one of them is no longer in Parliament, but as far as I know they have not found another job yet!
Steve777
NZ being a Rupert Free Zone is an incredible boon for advancing decent politic and policies.
poroti @ #1481 Thursday, October 19th, 2017 – 6:49 pm
And she goes into Government with that big plus rather than any negative baggage.
One reason why I expect her to do well.
JimmyDoyle: Perhaps, but if the “opportunity” comes at the likely expense of being consigned to Opposition for another 3-4 elections…is it worth it?
Oh great! The NZ election outcome has ignited yet another round of the eternal RGR wars!
Given that NZ has only had minority/coalition governments since MMP in 1996, Im not sure we could expect NZ Lab to somehow form government by itself. Its best option would be NZ Greens only.
I was glad to hear Peters say in his press conference…wtte…capitalism needs to be for everyone, not the rich, or corporations.
It will only be the left that has the willpower to implement policies that can achieve that goal.
Player One @ #1489 Thursday, October 19th, 2017 – 6:54 pm
Analysis sunshine, but I know you don’t understand that.
Ides
My pessimism does not come from the fact of a NZ Labour-led coalition government; that’s an inescapable part of MMP electoral systems, and one of hte best things about them.
My pessimism is who its coalition partners are – there’s very little common ground between NZ First and the NZ Greens. Ideally, coalition partners -should- be able to agree on around at least 50% of their policies, leaving less sources of friction.
Labour’s JUST taken government and you’re already predicting disaster? That’s a bit silly.
Almost word for word – Eliza Berrello (?) on PM:
‘Labor Party sources say they will eventually sign up to the scheme, but will have a bit of fun in the meantime.
Christopher Pyne neatly joined the dots’…cue Pyne rabitting on in his usual nonsensical way.
FFS what Labor Party ‘source’ would say such a thing??
Player One @ #1245 Thursday, October 19th, 2017 – 1:54 pm
Possibly, although the plugin doesn’t have a ‘quote buffer’ so I’m not sure if that button would necessarily fix the problem you’re experiencing. Pressing the ‘Quote’ button just tacks the quoted post content onto the end of whatever the text-editor content currently happens to be.
I can think of two possibilities that might cause what you’re seeing:
1. You’ve refreshed the page, and the browser is preserving the value that was in the comment box and restoring it when the page reloads.
2. You’ve got the comments set to display in chronological order, in which case you probably have a comment box at both the top and the bottom of the page. If so, maybe you’ve cleared out the bottom box but left the old text in the top box. I think in that case the text in the top box will be picked up if/when the ‘Quote’ button is pressed, and then essentially resurrected into both boxes.
Case #2 should be fixable, if that’s what you’re encountering.
Matt
I wont claim to know the full range of policies between the three parties but I do share your concerns. Managing NZ First and NZ Grns will be a challenge for NZ Lab
[sonar
Julie Bishop is going to be spinning so much they can plug her into the grid…….there’s a years worth of renewables right there.]
I’m not sure if that’s a truly renewable resource.
I’d imagine it would cause considerable wear and tear, and be a one off. 🙂