Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

No sign of seasonal goodwill extending to our political leaders, both of whom score declining approval ratings in the first federal poll for the year.

The New Year poll drought has been brought to an end by Essential Research, which will henceforth be conducting fortnightly polls, dispensing with its long establishing practice of polling weekly and publishing two-week rolling averages. As related by The Guardian, the poll has Labor’s lead unchanged on the final poll last year at 53-47 – as usual, primary votes will have to wait for the publication of the full report later today. Both leaders’ personal ratings have weakened: Malcolm Turnbull is down three on approval to 38% and up one on disapproval to 45%, Bill Shorten is down four on approval to 32% and up four disapproval to 49%, and Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister is out from 42-28 to 42-25.

Other findings: 53% support a tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, with 38% opposed; 44% support and 29% oppose “Australia becoming a republic with an Australian head of state”, which is all but identical to when the same question was asked a year ago (44% and 30%); and society is widely seen as going to pot, with crime perceived as on the rise across all categories, regardless of what the official statistics might say.

UPDATE: The primary votes are Coalition 37% (steady), Labor 38% (steady), Greens 9% (steady), One Nation 6% (down one). Full report here.

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.

3,426 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

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  2. It has to be done but I can’t quite see how.
    I suppose it is a rate of change thing but I cannot envisage a timely exclusion of fossil inputs from getting food to the world’s tummies any time soon without massive global disruption to all agriculture and substantial starvation. There are some extremely inflexible thresholds in there. As more and more people live in urbs, more and more fuel is required simply to distribute the food.
    Part of the nexus is that when food commodities are plentiful food is cheap and the hungry eat.
    As soon as there is a shortage food commodities zoom in price and the hungry go hungry.
    Even now there are an estimated 500 million people who go to bed hungry at least some of the time.

  3. Libertarian Unionist @ #3145 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 1:03 pm

    Essentially, diesel excise is a tax on the production of food, fisheries products and mineral ores. Why would we want to tax the production of foodstuffs – agricultural, horticultural and fisheries products? Diesel excise in these sectors work in a similar way to a sales tax. They are imposts on both sellers and buyers.

    It was, when there was no alternative to diesel. But now technological changes are bringing batteries and alternative fuels closer to diesel costs, it makes no sense to maintain the diesel excise exclusion.

    Eg. Terrajoule http://www.terrajoulecorp.com/

    My understanding is that a portion of the cost of petrol and diesel is for road funding.
    Therefore it is perfectly reasonable to not charge that tax for diesel used off-road. i.e. on farms or mines.
    As there is a shift away from internal combustion engines for vehicles and revenue for roads plummets, government will look to another way of raising revenue for roads, perhaps a usage charge per Km. Then the fuel excise, that gets some of you hyperventilating, will not exist.

    Of course in a rational world, we would have a carbon tax to cover the emissions considerations.

  4. glengyron: So @TonyAbbottMHR your hero is Arthur Phillip who was responsible for bringing boat loads of immigrants with criminal records to Australia? #Auspol

  5. Diogenes @ #3147 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 1:04 pm

    guytaur
    “JayWeatherill: I’m supporting @AnnastaciaMP’S call for bullying in schools to be on COAG’s next agenda. Too much harm being inflicted on our young people.A national plan sorely needed.”
    Surely it is a state issue. They run the schools. Talk about passing the buck.

    After a uniform approach?

  6. lizzie

    Turnbull knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that spending $60 million on the Reef will not save it from global warming and that the $60 million is therefore a total waste of money. It does not matter if acid water leaches out of Queensland farms onto the Reef if it already consists of dead coral. Total cynics might note that giving farmers $37 million to do what they should be doing anyway is a bit rich. And giving your mates millions to kill COTS in a program with little scientific rigor is also a bit rich. And urging everyone to relax and not talk so much about the fact that half the Reef already consists of dead coral is extremely rich. Which Turnbull is, of course.

    Turnbull’s head in the coral rubble routine is quite frightening. If ever there was proof that he will do anything at all to maintain power, today’s announcement is it.

  8. CTar1 @ #3137 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 8:53 am

    In tbe 70/80’s the Chinese and Russians had lots of successful meetings about big border issues.

    They, having established trust between the teams, drafted an agreement about a number of small areas that both could lay claim to but were very messy because of current land use and also because the locals liked at times to shop, buy stuff in places on either side of the border.

    In the end they drew some lines around the areas and said when there’s a problem local officials of equivalent rank would investigate and sort. The big point was no unilateral action.

    It was never signed as a formal agreement but is instead used as a protocol.

    Too sensible to be a formal international agreement!

    Many countries have these informal/formal arrangements.

    I remember staying on the Mekong in Thailand and all day there were boats ferrying locals from one side to the other but if I tried to use it, no way!

    This also is true for many land crossings. I have been turned back at the China-Myanmar border even though I had a valid Myanmar visa. I had to travel down to Thailand before I came to a crossing that I was able to use. 🙂

  9. LordofWentworth: Australian media marginally more trusted than media in Turkey, where journalists are routinely jailed #edelman pic.twitter.com/qworUncwbf

  10. There is probably a good case to make for using taxes raised on fossil fuels to subsidise non-polluting/renewable fuels. This would help propel the shift out of fossil fuels and extend the scale build in renewables. These are desirable goals. But these considerations are separate from asking why we should or should not tax the production of foodstuffs, per se. The real price of foodstuffs has been falling for several hundred years. This has helped transform real wages and liberated the labour force from subsistence agriculture and fishing. If we are concerned about real wage growth and income equality/inequality, we would not tax food production.

  13. ‘Libertarian Unionist says:
    Monday, January 22, 2018 at 1:25 pm

    Boerwar,

    Google bioDME or second generation biofuels. Same ICE tech, different fuel supply chain.’

    I inserted the word ‘timely’. I am sure that there are technical solutions to it all. But it require massive global investment and would be equally massive disruptive. For example, pesticides embody large amounts of fossil fuels in one way or another.

  14. Don and Bemused

    As it happens I agree with your comments re relying on expertise etc, but given I am called insane, crazed etc on a daily basis I include this stuff as a sort of protection – not very strong sure but maybe reduced the capacity of twits to attack me by a small amount. Call it rash shirt.

    If most of you were not so narrow minded and intransigent it would not be necessary.

    Mind you Bemused I might once have given you respect for science given your engineering background but c=lambda by frequency not lamb pie. This is pretty basic high school stuff, so you lost your right to pontificate on such matters. But of course it does confirm your point.

  16. BiDG

    Yep.

    I’ve heard of these also. Same sort of arrangements – local officials from both sides make sure the boat owners know only take resident locals across and there’s to be no movement of things like weapons and illicit drugs.

    Easy peasey.

  18. Bemused,

    There is no hypothecation, it all goes into consolidated revenue.

    But yes, if we charged for road use at the marginal price, before congestion, commuter transport would be a tiny fragment of revenue, and most of the cost would be born by heavy freight. This is because damage to the road base increases at something like the 4th power of the weight per axel… Dio probably knows this one off the top of his head.

    Carbon tax for carbon emissions, road use payment for road use, congestion charge for congestion. Simple stuff with current technology.

  21. CTar1 @ #3168 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 9:30 am

    BiDG

    Yep.

    I’ve heard of these also. Same sort of arrangements – local officials from both sides make sure the boat owners know only take resident locals across and there’s to be no movement of things like weapons and illicit drugs.

    Easy peasey.

    Some are even set up to collect any excise on goods being transported.

  22. The jumbo jet changed the world. The electric plane has some catching up to do.

    Yes it has a long way to go, but the Wright Brothers barely got off the ground at Kitty Hawk.

    Technology isn’t static. To get to the point that a battery powered plane even as small as this with such a short range can even get off the ground is a development of technology pretty much out of the question even a few years ago. It would be pretty brave to assume it has reached it’s development zenith.

    It’s obviously dependent on battery tech mostly. To replace say a Dash 8 – 200 you’d need about 10MWh in around 2300 kg of battery (replace 3,120l of avgas to power two 1600 KW engines for around 3hrs flight time – although tbf that’s assuming full power at cruising which is way excessive of course). Long, long, long way to go seeing as you are talking about a 3300% increase in energy density over a Tesla powerpack so it would take a quantum leap in the science and I’m certainly not expecting anything like this in the next decade or so, but you never can tell. An awful lot of investment is going into battery tech and that is only going to increase.

    Material tech is also moving forward so lighter weight air-frames will also assist in bringing the feasibility of electric aviation forward.

    No doubt electricity as a feasible power supply for long haul flight is even further off (although tbf the maximum fuel weight/take off weight of a Dreamliner is significantly more than for something like a Dash 8 – 0.40 v 0.14 so maybe not as out of the question as all that) and Biofuel or some other alternative will more than likely provide a better answer. But I don’t doubt electricity could be handy development for a lot of prop applications in the not too distant future, starting with small 1 or 2 seaters and going up in size and application as battery tech improves.

    Hybrids with combustion for take off and electricity for cruising (or the other way around) could also come into play as an intermediate technology. Getting up is obviously the hard part and a smallish (comparatively) battery with enough juice for take off could be a useful tech. Then the fuel powered part of the engine takes over, or better yet a high efficiency fuel powered generator charges up the battery during flight.

    Lots and lots of speculation here obviously, but last decade’s speculations are today’s gadgets.

  23. BW, I see people have answered your question as to the land border between Vic and Tas. It is 100 meters long.

    Citizen, re time zones. Some communities west of the WA NT border use NT time. A bit confusing for us visitors, but it makes sense as WA is such a wide state, that keeping time with NT was sensible.

  24. ‘Libertarian Unionist says:
    Monday, January 22, 2018 at 1:33 pm

    Boer,

    Will the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta be underwater or not?’

    It is increasingly so now. What is your point?

  25. Ratsak

    No speculation to say with that technology and a Dirigible style aircraft you could have cruise the Skys complete with first class lounge style design.

    That technology is here.

    The speculation only applies to propellor only aircraft and what technologies are about to replace jet fuel.

  26. Maybe the garden hose companies could come up with some sort of ground-based on grid retractable coil thingie.

    The hyperloop, incidentally, technically addresses all the issues raised by electric planes already.

  28. It is increasingly so now. What is your point?

    Replacement liquid fuels for transport and agricultural production will be the next wave of decarbonisation, after stationary energy and urban commuter transport.

  29. it’s much quicker to fly ventilated patients to Adelaide

    And Adelaide has a shiny new hospital.

    Speaking of which, I hear Spotless are spending up big time to fix its teething issues.

  31. Getting a bit grumpy about Crikey. Rundle does a piece on Australia Day without getting stuck into the Greens’ rank whitefella paternalism. All he does is carry on and on inside the bubble about Australia Day issues. Hello?

    Then Keane reckons that Shorten can’t ride his luck indefinitely, gets in some nasty snarks and snipes, and then advises Shorten to keep doing what he is doing.

    It is like reading Guytaur and DTT all over again.

  32. We should be grateful to Murdoch for one thing. He invites every RWNJ to write for the Oz. Like Abbott today, the effect is to further destabilise Turnbull’s PMship. That can only be a good thing for Australia in the long run.

  33. ‘Libertarian Unionist says:
    Monday, January 22, 2018 at 1:42 pm

    It is increasingly so now. What is your point?

    Replacement liquid fuels for transport and agricultural production will be the next wave of decarbonisation, after stationary energy and urban commuter transport.’

    Too late.

  35. Patrickavenell: Friday will mark the 3-year anniversary of Tony Abbott’s decision to knight Prince Phillip, effectively ending his prime ministership. How will you celebrate this occasion?

  36. When I was there I was told Broken Hill adopted SA time because there was a rail link to Adelaide at that point but not Sydney and it made the timetable easy to follow.

  37. Regarding Boundary Islet – common law border determination would suggest that as the intent was to have the islet on one side of the border then the island becomes a ‘monument’ and thus outweighs subsequent more accurate determination of the latitude and the islet. Unless determined otherwise by negotiation between the two parties, the border should wrap around the southern side of the islet.

    I feel this is a very important detail being forgotten – border determination is a foundation stone of our social and economic system. Not only would the inhabitants of the islet be best served in proper determination as outlined above we also risk wider implications – ultimately the collapse of a system that is crucial to all we hold dear.

  38. AP_Politics: BREAKING: Government shutdown will continue into Monday, as Senate leaders continue negotiations over immigration and spending.

  39. This could make S44 interesting

    CANZUK International, formerly known as The Commonwealth Freedom of Movement Organisation (commonly abbreviated as the “CFMO”) is a non-profit international organisation which aims to achieve the free movement of citizens, free trade agreements and foreign policy cooperation between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom through intergovernmental action. The organisation aims to promote similar free movement arrangements that exist under Article 45 of the TFEU within the European Union, and the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement between Australia and New Zealand.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANZUK_International

  40. On the subject of diesel, Frydenberg is lying (again).
    What does it take to make these ***** stop lying?

    Frydenberg Factcheck: Is S.A really burning 80,000l of diesel an hour to keep lights on?

    The truth is:
    1) the diesel generators are almost never turned on, having only been run for 35 minutes so far this summer, and only for testing purposes. Never in support of the grid.
    2) when they are turned on, these high-efficiency generators have an emissions intensity factor less than half that of Hazelwood.
    http://reneweconomy.com.au/frydenberg-factcheck-s-really-burning-80000l-diesel-hour-keep-lights-84966/

  41. daretotread @ #3164 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 1:28 pm

    Don and Bemused

    As it happens I agree with your comments re relying on expertise etc, but given I am called insane, crazed etc on a daily basis I include this stuff as a sort of protection – not very strong sure but maybe reduced the capacity of twits to attack me by a small amount. Call it rash shirt.

    If most of you were not so narrow minded and intransigent it would not be necessary.

    Mind you Bemused I might once have given you respect for science given your engineering background but c=lambda by frequency not lamb pie. This is pretty basic high school stuff, so you lost your right to pontificate on such matters. But of course it does confirm your point.

    Engineering is not science.

    I did my High Schooling in NSW when it was 5 years. Some other states, including Victoria, were doing 6 and the difference in standards in maths and science caused me much pain when I commenced studying in Victoria and ran into the knowledge gaps.

    This has since been rectified by NSW moving to 6 years of High School and Kirner/Kennett debasing the secondary education system in Victoria.

    Cue loud screams of denial from zoomster!

  42. Boerwar, Peebee – the other thing that prevents border wars is s 114 of the Book of Rules: A State shall not, without the consent of the Parliament of the Commonwealth, raise or maintain any naval or military force
    If the States did have their own armies I’m quite sure they’d manage to start a fight over that 100m on whatever island it is.

  43. JamesEltonPym: EXCLUSIVE: Damning audit reveals AEC’s massive mishandling of the 2016 election: (thread)

    1. AEC failed to meet gov cyber standards, creating ‘significant risk’

    2. Electronic vote count had to be 100% hand-checked, costing $6m+

    sbs.com.au/news/damning-r…

    @SBSNews #auspol

    Australia’s election authority misled the public about the security of its voting systems in the 2016 federal election, a damning report from the auditor-general has concluded.

    The AEC was granted last-minute permission to break the Australian Government’s cybersecurity rules and the laws in the Electoral Act due to “time constraints”, the report, released on Monday, reveals.

    https://www.sbs.com.au/news/damning-report-finds-aec-bungled-security-in-2016-election-costing-millions

  46. brianklaas: Literally nobody in Congress wants unchecked illegal immigration. These insane, bad faith statements should shock us — particularly a day after Trump’s campaign claimed Democrats are complicit in murder — but they’re now routine. Trump is poisoning our democracy. twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…

    realDonaldTrump: Democrats are holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Can’t let that happen!

  48. ratsak @ #3172 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 1:36 pm

    Lots and lots of speculation here obviously, but last decade’s speculations are today’s gadgets.

    It’s fun to speculate, and there is no doubt that technology is going to improve in leaps and bounds over the next few decades. However, we simply don’t have a few decades. We will hit 450 PPM C02 in around 15 years (equivalent to locking in around 2 degrees warming). There is pretty much nothing at all we can do to prevent that any longer, and we will most likely double that level or more within the course of this century.

    So some people alive today could experience temperature rises of 4 – 6 degrees within their lifetimes.

    Except that they won’t, of course – they’ll be dead.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-game-over-global-warming-climate-sensitivity-seven-degrees-a7407881.html

    🙁

  50. The AEC was granted last-minute permission to break the Australian Government’s cybersecurity rules and the laws in the Electoral Act
    Granted by whom???

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