BludgerTrack: 54.1-45.9 to Labor

A quiet week for national polling leaves Malcolm Turnbull looking a little bit better on personal approval, but a little bit worse on voting intention.

In a week where only Essential Research reported a national voting intention result, BludgerTrack records a tick to Labor – although it’s actually due to me finally being able to add last fortnight’s ReachTEL to the mix, for which I hadn’t previously been able to get full primary vote numbers, and which was actually a bit of a shocker for the Coalition by the pollster’s standards. As for the state breakdowns, all I can really offer at the moment is apologies for how screwy the Queensland numbers are looking. Whether because of state election static, or simply a freakish accumlation of outliers over a very short period, six of the last seven results I have from Queensland have the Coalition primary vote at 30% or below, compared with 43.2% at the 2016 election. It will be interesting to see what we get from the Newspoll quarterly aggregation, which should be along in a week or two. Essential had its montly leadership ratings this week, which have givenn Malcolm Turnbull a bit of a lift. Full results on the sidebar.

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.

768 comments on “BludgerTrack: 54.1-45.9 to Labor”

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  1. The bans on secondary boycotts were actually passed by Fraser’s government, along with other measures that enabled the widespread de-unionisation of the private sector

  2. I think we could take G protests about unions and working conditions and pay erosion if they stopped collaborating politically with the Liberals

  4. “A senior Labor MP said …”

    doesn’t deserve any comment. As soon as you see those words, you just know they come from a James Massola column. Did you check?

    Massola can always be relied upon to find a “Senior Labor MP” to go after whomever is Labor leader at the time, especially if that leader is Shorten. Massola has an obvious and intense dislike of Shorten in particular, and of trades unions in general. He wears his heart on his sleeve concerning these issues.

    I’m surprised you’d give anything he wrote the time of day.

  5. Bemused – Tell me which would you prefer: to be accused of rape, or to actually be raped?

    See, you have the privilege to be talking about this issue from a very safe distance. It is unlikely that you have been on the other side of this equation, and you sit there worrying about a minuscule chance that you and your male friends could be falsely accused, and that freaks you out.

    Dare you spare some empathy for the countless women who are constantly under real physical threat? The majority of woman who have had to put up with sexual assault and harassment, for whom there is little chance of any justice? Only a minority of them ever report it (they know, from history and personal experience, that reporting it rarely makes any difference and often even makes things worse), and if they do report it, this is what they get:

    Men who are accused of sexual assault or harassment are entitled to being given the “benefit of the doubt” and are “innocent until proven guilty;” however, the women who accuse them are not afforded the same. They will be accused of making things up, of having an “axe to grind,” their lives will be examined and judged, and their name will be dragged through the mud. Even if the man is found guilty in a court of law, many will still claim the woman “asked for it” in some way. If it happened in a professional setting, she was trying to “sleep her way to the top,” if it happened on the street then she “shouldn’t have dressed like that.”

    I am interested to know: why are you more interested in defending a man who is – statistically speaking – likely to be guilty of sexual harassment – than a woman who is statistically speaking likely to have been sexually harassed?

    If you want to wait until the evidence has been provided, by all means do so – but you didn’t do that, did you? Instead you jumped in to defend the bloke, and threw shade on the woman (and all women who raise complaints of sexual harassment and abuse) by providing an unrelated example of one time you were “told of one very nasty case by a female friend who was just outraged to see a male colleagues career destroyed by false allegations by a psychopathic woman.”

    The double standards are not bemusing.

    To claim that our discussion of a relevant current news article on this topic equates to us calling for a “complete denial of natural justice” is you railroading the topic.

    A further double standard: if this were not about “sexual harassment” and were about another topic – like who might be ousted for dual citizenship- would you try to shut down the discussion saying we should believe all involved are “innocent until proven guilty”? There would be very little conversation here by those standards!

    TBH I am so sick of men who are more vocal about implying that women make up these accusations than they are about speaking up against men who sexually harass women. This tells me a person’s values: they care more about protecting men from accusations (which is an incredibly rare occurrence) than they care about protecting women from assault and harassment (which is bloody common). Don’t take my word for it: all the statistics say the same. False accusations are like hen’s teeth. Sexual harassment is an everyday occurrence.

  7. Funny, isn’t it? As soon as their man gets to be Prime Minister, all this musical chairs business, swapping PMs and the like, should stop for the good of the nation.

    It was the same when Abbott was PM, and Turnbull has turned out to be only slightly worse a PM than he was.

    Yet still our media cling to the narrative that ‘any day now’ Turnbull will turn it all around. They did the same with Howard expecting that every blip he faced he’d pull a rabbit out of the hat and the issue would magically disappear. The media kept up with this narrative that he’d pull a rabbit out of his hat right up until the day he didn’t and lost his seat and the election.

    Presumably it will be the same with Turnbull always expecting that ‘any day now’ he will turn it around, doing that right up until the day he loses the election.

  8. nicholas / AJM

    This gem worthy of Pol Pot was posted here a few days ago –

    However, in the current climate there is no room for nuance, and the process of cultural change is too important to get distracted or diverted. No one should be able to hide behind expressions of regret and (quite possibly empty) promises to be better in future.

  9. Luci @ #455 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 5:28 pm

    Bemused – Tell me which would you prefer: to be accused of rape, or to actually be raped?

    See, you have the privilege to be talking about this issue from a very safe distance. It is unlikely that you have been on the other side of this equation, and you sit there worrying about a minuscule chance that you and your male friends could be falsely accused, and that freaks you out.

    Dare you spare some empathy for the countless women who are constantly under real physical threat? The majority of woman who have had to put up with sexual assault and harassment, for whom there is little chance of any justice? Only a minority of them ever report it (they know, from history and personal experience, that reporting it rarely makes any difference and often even makes things worse), and if they do report it, this is what they get:

    Men who are accused of sexual assault or harassment are entitled to being given the “benefit of the doubt” and are “innocent until proven guilty;” however, the women who accuse them are not afforded the same. They will be accused of making things up, of having an “axe to grind,” their lives will be examined and judged, and their name will be dragged through the mud. Even if the man is found guilty in a court of law, many will still claim the woman “asked for it” in some way. If it happened in a professional setting, she was trying to “sleep her way to the top,” if it happened on the street then she “shouldn’t have dressed like that.”

    I am interested to know: why are you more interested in defending a man who is – statistically speaking – likely to be guilty of sexual harassment – than a woman who is statistically speaking likely to have been sexually harassed?

    If you want to wait until the evidence has been provided, by all means do so – but you didn’t do that, did you? Instead you jumped in to defend the bloke, and threw shade on the woman (and all women who raise complaints of sexual harassment and abuse) by providing an unrelated example of one time you were “told of one very nasty case by a female friend who was just outraged to see a male colleagues career destroyed by false allegations by a psychopathic woman.”

    The double standards are not bemusing.

    To claim that our discussion of a relevant current news article on this topic equates to us calling for a “complete denial of natural justice” is you railroading the topic.

    A further double standard: if this were not about “sexual harassment” and were about another topic – like who might be ousted for dual citizenship- would you try to shut down the discussion saying we should believe all involved are “innocent until proven guilty”? There would be very little conversation here by those standards!

    TBH I am so sick of men who are more vocal about implying that women make up these accusations than they are about speaking up against men who sexually harass women. This tells me a person’s values: they care more about protecting men from accusations (which is an incredibly rare occurrence) than they care about protecting women from assault and harassment (which is bloody common). Don’t take my word for it: all the statistics say the same. False accusations are like hen’s teeth. Sexual harassment is an everyday occurrence.

    You are just plain illogical.
    I deplore the crime of rape and to a lesser extent other forms of sexual assault or harassment. Perpetrators who are proven guilty should be appropriately punished, I have no qualms at all about that.
    But false accusations are easily made and hard to disprove. I would deplore any situation where an innocent man was falsely accused, convicted and punished.
    Apparently this would cause you no discomfort.

  10. ctar1 – as the author of said comment I also explicitly made a distinction between exercising of coercion by the state vs action being taken in relation to facing disciplinary action at work.

    Jail time, confiscation of assets, etc will/should be covered by ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and all the rights and protections for the accused and due process exercised by the courts.

    But thanks for taking what I said out of context.

  11. Luci

    I am interested to know: why are you more interested in defending a man who is – statistically speaking – likely to be guilty of sexual harassment – than a woman who is statistically speaking likely to have been sexually harassed?

    That’s why we should treat all such accusations with utmost seriousness and not impute bad motivations to those making them.

    However, it has nothing to do with whether they are true in a particular case.

    Convicting people, even “provisionally”, on the basis of statistics is the sort of process used by just about every oppressive regime in history.

  12. bemused
    ” I would deplore any situation where an innocent man was falsely accused, convicted and punished.”
    True, but I deplore it even more every time a guilty man gets off or isn’t accused in the first place.

  14. PuffyTMD @ #206 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 7:53 am

    The Shoppies are not high in my esteem, though I am working from hearsay not direct knowledge. My impression is that it is a union mostly headed by men with Catholic-based religious beliefs which disadvantage women’s control of their reproductive systems.

    My impression may be wrong, or outdated but I get the impression the union is a vehicle for power rather than there for the members,

    If that is not the case then that union has some image problems.

    In a previous life, I worked for a large chain of fast food outlets was an SDA member, and then a shop steward.

    My view of the SDA is that they do the best they can under very difficult circumstances.

    Speaking generally, a very large portion of their membership base is in a job which the members themselves see the job as short-term engagement whilst they are at school or university. Compounding this short-term view of the employees themselves, many of the employers within the industries the SDA represent are have accepted high levels of staff turnover and everything that is associated with it.

    The end result of this short-term view is that neither the membership base nor the employer takes a long-term view of the employment relationship.

    Therefore, as a union, the SDA has to work with members who are generally relatively very disengaged from their employment and employer, therefore are unlikely to take any sort of industrial action, and, an employer who is in an extremely competitive industry and is cost focussed, who doesn’t care that they have disengaged employees and high levels of staff turnover.

    In general, the SDA has done well to achieve what they have and I very much doubt that any other union could do better.

  15. Is the “Bill” referred to one “Bushfire Bill”?

    They should have spread me around more. Together, V1J and I are known as The Voting Machine.

    Our charm with little old ladies, come-hither smiles at the younger women, firm manly handshakes with the blokes and ability to misdirect obvious Liberal voters so far off course away from the direction of the polling booth that they ended up in the wood pile at the far end of the campus, became legendary as the day wore on.

    BB’s famous lascivious leer almost convinced Fiona Nash (who was there on HTV duty) to go for KK instead of JA, but some Liberal in a straw hat and white ducks whisked her away before the full BB magic took hold. But it was quite obvious to me she was wavering.

  16. Bemused if you are in fact innocent you don’t have to be convicted to be punished. I don’t see a lot of point in trying to argue relativities about who ends up having their lives ruined the most. It is a horrible part of human living.

  17. Tell me which would you prefer: to be accused of rape, or to actually be raped?

    One injustice does not justify another.

    There is immense scope to make our institutions and our culture more serious and thorough and respectful in how it responds to accusations of sexual misconduct, and more supportive of people who make accusations.

    The accused still deserves to be treated fairly.

    Being murdered is worse than being accused of murder, but it would be grossly unfair and incredibly stupid to dispense with fair procedures for evaluating accusations of murder.

  18. True, but I deplore it even more every time a guilty man gets off or isn’t accused in the first place.

    That’s not the way it works Diog, and you bloody-well know it.

  19. Think I’ve mentioned this before:

    Mys son worked successively in two warehouses run by large national companies. One was unionised (SDA) and the other was not.

    Like chalk and cheese: pay, conditions, workplace climate, etc.

    In case you have trouble working it out, the better one was the unioinised one.

  20. grimace
    That may be true but it doesn’t explain why the shoppies are far-right social conservatives completely out of keeping with the young people they represent. That stinks of a fiefdom.

  22. Interesting times for WA’s media.

    Following years of substantial media downsizing, politicians who were once used to speaking in State Parliament to a press gallery full of journalists ready to disseminate their words to the public have found themselves adjusting to a new reality.

    “When I was first elected, at 11 o’clock at night in Parliament there used to be five journalists sitting in the gallery,” Premier Mark McGowan said earlier this year.

    “These days, we are lucky if there is one.”

    In recent years, media cost-cutting has led to significant changes to the extent politics is covered by the major news players in WA, worrying some that the end result is a less informed public.

    Now, just a handful of journalists are stationed at WA’s Parliament on sitting days to report to the public what the politicians they pay to represent them have, or have not, been doing.

    Gone are many of the outlets which used to occupy the press gallery, along with several main sources of in-depth political coverage to punters.

    The days of seven-minute-long in-depth interviews with key figures in WA politics broadcast in prime time on a nightly basis are long gone. Those outlets that still provide regular coverage often find themselves talking to diminished audiences — with broadcast ratings and newspaper sales trending down.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-17/media-cuts-leave-wa-voters-deafened-by-sound-of-silence/9260122

  23. Diogenes @ #462 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 5:38 pm

    bemused
    ” I would deplore any situation where an innocent man was falsely accused, convicted and punished.”
    True, but I deplore it even more every time a guilty man gets off or isn’t accused in the first place.

    Both are perverse outcomes which we should strive equally to avoid.

    There was a case in Sydney recently where a guy was acquitted by a jury, but on the published facts, appeared to not only be guilty, but a pretty nasty individual. That would be devastating for the victim.

    But would securing convictions of an innocent man in another case secure justice for the first victim? That seems to be what Luci thinks.

  24. Boerwar @ #217 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 8:21 am

    1. I didn’t realize that Whitlam was an arrogant ethnic basher. De Bruyn is an Australian.

    2. Coles can walk away from enterprize agreements any time it likes. It can use the penalty rate cuts as the starting point for its workers.

    3. People need to understand something quite basic here: the bosses have all the power. And all over Australia and in literally millions of jobs they are either killing off wages growth or reducing wages.

    4. Wages as a share of GDP has never been lower.

    5. For most Australians real wages are falling.

    6. The generally left public sector unions (no doubt full of righteous loathers of the socially conservative right winger De Bruyn) at the Federal level are demonstrating to a ‘T’ just what left wing unions can achieve for their workers. These workers have not had a pay rise since 2013.

    Instead of bashing the Shoppies in some sort of stupid reflexive right bashing, have a good hard think about what is going on.

    Without the shoppies and without de Bruyn, Coles’ workers would be getting the dregs and the pits.

    Do bloody well wake up!

    Well said!

  26. A rule of law society treats each case as important for both the accuser and the accused. That is a bedrock principle of a rule of law system. We can’t convict people on the basis of statistical reasoning. A person’s life is not just a statistic to that person.

  27. BB
    “That’s not the way it works Diog, and you bloody-well know it.”
    I know that’s not the way it works but I’m pointing out that because one outcome is deplorable (ie false accusation), you can’t say that’s the end of the matter. It’s much more complicated.

  28. Confessions @ #472 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 4:46 pm

    Interesting times for WA’s media.

    Following years of substantial media downsizing, politicians who were once used to speaking in State Parliament to a press gallery full of journalists ready to disseminate their words to the public have found themselves adjusting to a new reality.

    “When I was first elected, at 11 o’clock at night in Parliament there used to be five journalists sitting in the gallery,” Premier Mark McGowan said earlier this year.

    “These days, we are lucky if there is one.”

    Fess, don’t know about WA, but in Qld there is an internet video feed running all the time state parliament is sitting. Even if no one is sitting in the gallery it doesn’t mean no one is watching. In fact, a member of the public can now inform themselves directly.

  29. bemused
    It gets down to the quote about preferring a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man being convicted. It depends where you draw that line. It’s grey.
    I should add I am an innocent until proven guilty and beyond reasonable guilt man for criminal cases, but civil cases and the court of public opinion don’t follow that.

  30. davidwh @ #466 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 5:42 pm

    Bemused if you are in fact innocent you don’t have to be convicted to be punished. I don’t see a lot of point in trying to argue relativities about who ends up having their lives ruined the most. It is a horrible part of human living.

    Indeed. The accused is named and suffers irreparable damage to their reputation even if innocent and acquitted. The false accuser is not named and goes on their way, reputation intact.

  34. ajm:

    I’m pretty certain the WA Parliament has live parliamentary broadcasts, but the broader point about our shrinking media outlets here is a valid one in my view.

  35. Diogenes @ #479 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 5:52 pm

    bemused
    It gets down to the quote about preferring a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man being convicted. It depends where you draw that line. It’s grey.
    I should add I am an innocent until proven guilty and beyond reasonable guilt man for criminal cases, but civil cases and the court of public opinion don’t follow that.

    Indeed.

  36. While we’re on the guilt and innocence thing, someone above mentioned that an accused may be a pretty nasty piece of work. While that is true and may well be taken account of in deciding on the balance of probabilities if they are guilty, it can be a very dangerous thing to take into account. That someone is generally nasty does not prove they committed a particular offence.

    On a more general point, this area illustrates one of the potential weaknesses of our adversarial common law system. A more active role for the judiciary in getting to the truth of the matter rather than just adjudicating on the arguments put before them could well bring more balance to these sort of matters.

  37. question

    but i didn’t say that shorten should be replaced. others can decide that. i know it will not happen – not unless there is a great disaster which is possible.

    no i was just grieving for the loss of leadership in this country – maybe generally

    we probably need a better system – or another party – or both.

    i just have low tolerance listening to shorten – he is dull, he is not relaxed in the moment – and suspect most of public think same.

    let speech experts work out what is going on

  38. ajm
    “While that is true and may well be taken account of in deciding on the balance of probabilities if they are guilty, it can be a very dangerous thing to take into account. ”
    The jury can’t take it into account and the prosecution can’t even raise the character question unless the defense raises it.

  39. ajm @ #486 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 6:00 pm

    While we’re on the guilt and innocence thing, someone above mentioned that an accused may be a pretty nasty piece of work. While that is true and may well be taken account of in deciding on the balance of probabilities if they are guilty, it can be a very dangerous thing to take into account. That someone is generally nasty does not prove they committed a particular offence.

    On a more general point, this area illustrates one of the potential weaknesses of our adversarial common law system. A more active role for the judiciary in getting to the truth of the matter rather than just adjudicating on the arguments put before them could well bring more balance to these sort of matters.

    You would enjoy the writings of Evan Whitton on this subject.

  40. geoffrey @ #487 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 5:01 pm

    question

    but i didn’t say that shorten should be replaced. others can decide that. i know it will not happen – not unless there is a great disaster which is possible.

    no i was just grieving for the loss of leadership in this country – maybe generally

    we probably need a better system – or another party – or both.

    i just have low tolerance listening to shorten – he is dull, he is not relaxed in the moment – and suspect most of public think same.

    let speech experts work out what is going on

    Not sure who said it: True leadership is making your followers believe they did it all themselves.

    Shorten’s method is not to say: I’m a great leader – elect me and I’ll fix everything. It’s rather: If you want (insert desirable outcome), vote for a Labor government – he emphasises that the agency is with the voters.

    I think we’ve had enough of leaders who tout themselves and their mystical abilities as the answer to everything.

  41. bemused

    And the fact Joe was born in Holland. FFS “sheep references” came out re Barnyard and it was only his dad born over there. Called out for “racism” ? Of course bloody not.

  42. Diogenes @ #488 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 5:04 pm

    ajm
    “While that is true and may well be taken account of in deciding on the balance of probabilities if they are guilty, it can be a very dangerous thing to take into account. ”
    The jury can’t take it into account and the prosecution can’t even raise the character question unless the defense raises it.

    Fair comment, but in the first paragraph of my comment I was talking more about the court of public opinion than a court of law.

    Should have made that clearer

  43. briefly

    pompous (I assume aging male)

    glad to free exchange of ideas rules on this bulletin board

    the left wing could invoke a tyranny as bad as any giving a chance

    my comments re bill are well founded and timely

    “Bill was a big negative in Bennelong but he wouldn’t stay away.”

    pick on someone else i’m not in mood

  45. interesing ajm

    “he emphasises that the agency is with the voters.

    I think we’ve had enough of leaders who tout themselves and their mystical abilities as the answer to everything.”

    i hope you are right. it never occurred to me this was case until you said it. but i will give idea its due

    not sure he added one vote in bennelong however

  46. bemused @ #210 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 10:59 am

    TPOF @ #166 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 10:22 am

    For a blog where comment posters are supposedly much more engaged in real politics the discussion of personalities in unpacking the outcome of the Bennelong by-election is extraordinarily facile.
    —
    I think that, based on this result, Bennelong will go to Labor at the next election, along with a slew of other seats and a thrashing of the Government is in order. We just need to wait and hope that not too much damage has been done in the meantime.

    How does your analysis differ from those you dismiss as ‘facile’? Is it based on hard data? What are your sources?

    Demographically, Bennelong is unlikely to go to Labor unless the Libs just keep on annoying the local people of Chinese and other Asian descent with their dog whistling and occasional overt racism, or over a longer period of time, the demographics change.

    I dismiss the commentary as ‘facile’ because it is obsessed with personalities (Shorten, Trumble, KK, Alexander, presumed Chinese sympathies where these people form only part of the electorate and are as diverse and disparate in their views as any other ethnic group).

  48. I have a theory that Menzies House places their trainees on practicum to PollBludger. Probably have certain objectives to meet, such as
    *number of responses to their posts
    *relative anger of responses
    *evidence of other posters picking up one of their themes, especially the “Shorten is dull, undeserving of support” theme

    Names of these trainees vary
    As each one is dispatched another arrives.

  49. jackol

    I’m quite happy to post the whole thing.

    But all you said was some innocents will get wasted meanwhile and that’s OK. Luck of the draw and all that.

    Some properly conducted ‘justice’ would be better that doing ‘Salem Witch’.

  50. Things that just stop getting reported – Catalonian Independence happenings was big news here for a while but now don’t rate a mention.

    Stuff is still going on.

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