Essential Research: 54-46 to Labor

After taking a step forward in ReachTEL, the government takes a step back in the year’s second Essential poll.

The second poll of the year from the now-fortnightly Essential Research series has Labor’s lead widening from 53-47 to 54-46 — the primary votes will be with us later today.

Among the poll’s other findings are that 73% believe the cost of living has increased over the past year, and 75% believe energy prices have done so. Fifty-one per cent believe the cost of living has increased more quickly than their income, 28% that it has stayed even, and only 14% that their income has increased more. Eighty-three per cent thought the government should do more to make health insurance affordable, and 60% believed health insurance wasn’t worth the premiums.

Thirty-two per cent of respondents thought the political and economic system needed to be fundamentally changed, 48% favoured refinement, and only 8% registered satisfaction with the status quo. Questions on which party was best to handle various issues evoked the usual responses, with the Liberals doing better on managing the economy and terrorism, and Labor doing better on climate change and industrial relations (and, less predictably, housing affordability).

The poll was conducted Thursday to Monday from a sample of 1028.

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.

2,702 comments on “Essential Research: 54-46 to Labor”

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  2. poroti (Block)
    Saturday, February 3rd, 2018 – 6:48 pm
    Comment #2536
    C@tmomma

    Meh,last election I voted Labor got Liberal

    You can thank The Greens for that as well!

  7. Seth AbramsonVerified account@SethAbramson
    5h5 hours ago
    In 2013, three Russian spies tried to recruit Carter Page as a Kremlin asset. The FBI charged all three, deporting two with diplomatic immunity and imprisoning the third. Page was told what happened, and yet he kept trying to get in touch with the Kremlin.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/us/politics/carter-page-trump-russia.html

    How quickly we forget. Of course the pace with which the Russia investigation moves (every day brings new tidbits), I guess we can be forgiven for forgetting things that happened early on in this Administration.

  11. Hmm. Initially I got redirected to that link and copied the link from sbs.
    I was trying to get a image. Leave it with me Confessions.

  15. Aqualung:

    The convenience of online shopping combined with high rents in shopping centres would be to blame for that.

    Even here we are seeing more local outlets closing down because of slowing trade. It’s worse in our mall which has seen numerous shops close down in the last few years.

  16. Confessions @ #2562 Saturday, February 3rd, 2018 – 4:31 pm

    Aqualung @ #2560 Saturday, February 3rd, 2018 – 4:25 pm

    Does this work?
    <a href="” rel=”nofollow”>” rel=”nofollow”>?itok=2G0kIUTt&mtime=1489028218

    Is there any evidence for this?

    Over here even those retailers allowed to trade on Sundays still don’t open – even those owner operator outlets who don’t have staff to pay.

    I’d say the evidence is for the opposite.

    For most businesses, their wages are not a huge proportion of their total operating costs – when I was a manager for a large chain of fast food outlets their labour costs as a percentage of operating costs was about 20%.

    Whether nor not a business should open on a Sunday (or any other day) is a throughput accounting (or cost volume profit) issue. Provided there are a reasonable amount of potential customers then it is in the interests of most businesses to open for as many hours as is possible.

    Lets make the assumption that penalty rates are payable and this makes the business “unprofitable” on a Sunday. What a business generally means by “unprofitable” is that the total turnover does not cover the full costs of operation, and this is where things get a bit more complicated.

    Even where the business was unprofitable on Sunday, if they were able to open and cover all of the variable costs of operation (food + wages) and then a portion of the fixed costs (rent, depreciation, insurances etc) then opening on Sunday makes their business as a whole more profitable.

    Any business operator who does not understand throughput accounting properly has no place running a business.


  18. poroti (Block)
    Saturday, February 3rd, 2018 – 6:42 pm
    Comment #2539

    frednk

    The idea would be to set the toll as the means to pay for it. Once it is paid for the toll is removed. A la Auckland Harbour Bridge.

    In my view a better idea is user pay; the toll stays on and the profit used to pay for new stuff and people should stop arguing for no tolls and oppositions should stop promising to remove them.

  19. Like this quote from Keating on Michael Gordon.

    Paul Keating, about whom Gordon wrote a biography, also described him as a journalist of the highest calibre. “Michael’s journalism is characterised by perhaps journalism’s most fundamental tenets: to dispassionately assemble facts, to present them in a digestible and intelligent way, to give the reader the credit of understanding their import and to allow the reader the opportunity to come to a conclusion – without the story needing artificial colouring.”

    Particularly the last bit about allowing the reader the opportunity to come to conclusion.

    Very few in journalism these days do that. It’s all about telling people what they should think and we are poorer for that.

  22. I came to have a look at what PBers were saying today saw who was monopolizing and left, just came back same! think will leave looking for another day

  23. grimace:

    Provided there are a reasonable amount of potential customers then it is in the interests of most businesses to open for as many hours as is possible.

    About 3 year ago the local chamber of commerce here brought down some fancy economic consultants from Perth to look at our retail sector, opportunities for growth etc, presupposing that a thriving retail sector would provide jobs and activate our CBD.

    What they found is that Albany is different to just about everywhere in the state in that people move here and start retail businesses because they are tree/sea changers and want to downshift. They don’t want to open 7 days or even long hours during the week, even on days when cruise ships visit with potentially hundreds or thousands of customers – one cafe steadfastly refuses to open on a Monday even if there are cruise ship patrons wandering the main street!

    I remember sitting in a presentation from one of the consultants and he was truly baffled to find this attitude. He really believed that every retail operator was in it for the money not the lifestyle.

  27. Businesses, whenever they can get away with it, will pocket tax cuts and wage reductions, not create more jobs. Such cuts are normally a straight transfer from the taxpayer or staff to owners. The owners may invest some or all of such benefits in the business, pocket it or hide it in tax shelters. They won’t create jobs so long as they can screw the staff they have. ‘More jobs’ is mostly a lie to cover that fact, because business owners / shareholders apparently don’t think they can win the argument based on its merits.

  29. Btw, I just watched ‘Real Time’. I enjoyed the interview with Richard Haas and would be interested in reading his book and Frum’s book as well. Scaramucci has drunk the Orange Kool Aid and couldn’t lie straight in bed at night after some of the answers he gave. Plus, I am enjoying Bill’s interviews and commentary more. He’s getting to the nub of some real serious issues and not just doing it totally for the laffs.

  30. poroti says:
    Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 7:58 pm

    Keeping the tolls after “pay back” as an income stream is a very good option. Either way the public wins.

    Disclosure: I know only a little about Sydney, and almost nothing about other state capitals.

    Sounds good to me. I should not be crowing, but city folk are putting money into the coffers of state government, and the ones who use the super motorways are, in general, well off enough not to notice the cost.

    Though I am conflicted. Such grand highways, normally of no use to people like me, need to be paid for somehow, and the extra revenue after payback will help in the next round of super duper Sydney/Melbourne you beaut highways to hell, without my financial input.

    But good transport in major capital cities is a public good, which I should help pay for.

    If the money was instead put into decent public transport for Sydney (in particular, I suspect Melbourne already has a functioning public transport system, and as far as I can tell, Perth is way ahead) then I would be even more pleased.

    When, oh when, is Sydney going to approach the standard of rail transport in Europe?

    I would happily pay taxes to make it so, even though it is essentially of no benefit to me. We live in a society, and must expect to contribute to the efficient functioning of that society.

    Good public transport in our major cities is a very important part of that society.

    All citizens, no matter where they live, even in Woop Woop, should pay taxes to make it happen.

  31. jenauthor says:
    Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 5:28 pm
    The Coalition does not want to see the greens winning anything.

    I don’t agree, jen. The LNP enjoy seeing the Gs take seats away from Labor, knowing this contributes to Labor/G conflict. They fan this whenever possible, on the premise that whatever weakens Labor must be good for the LNP. By the same token, the Gs also seek to weaken Labor at every turn on the premise that a weak Labor will be open to sharing power with the Gs.

    In playing a role as a decoy/spoiler, the Gs have really become standing opponents of Labor. They are in an unspoken alliance with the LNP, and become more and more a middle-class splinter group with each passing year. These days, the Gs are an LNP-prodigal. The LNP are quite happy to favour their G cousins.

  34. I mean businesses will use extra money to hire more staff in the situation where extra staff would improve net income but the current profit overhead doesn’t allow it. The problem is that situation isn’t as common as business would like you to think since their purpose is maximising profit already, so it’s highly unlikely businesses have large gaps in that area.

  35. C@t:

    I want to buy Frum’s book too. I’ve seen some interviews he’s done since it was published and he makes some very good points about the US democracy and in particular the Republican party.

  36. briefly @ #253 Saturday, February 3rd, 2018 – 8:22 pm

    jenauthor says:
    Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 5:28 pm
    The Coalition does not want to see the greens winning anything.

    I don’t agree, jen. The LNP enjoy seeing the Gs take seats away from Labor, knowing this contributes to Labor/G conflict. They fan this whenever possible, on the premise that whatever weakens Labor must be good for the LNP. By the same token, the Gs also seek to weaken Labor at every turn on the premise that a weak Labor will be open to sharing power with the Gs.

    In playing a role as a decoy/spoiler, the Gs have really become standing opponents of Labor. They are in an unspoken alliance with the LNP, and become more and more a middle-class splinter group with each passing year. These days, the Gs are an LNP-prodigal. The LNP are quite happy to favour their G cousins.

    I’m tipping that Labor has voted with Liberal on far more occasions than the Greens Party.

  37. Ahh yes , to be a Green is to simultaneously be Fifty Shades of Red Stalinist Radical Marxist Extremists , Tree Tories and Liberal Lite.

  38. Rex Douglas
    You’d be correct but you don’t understand that Labor only votes with the Liberals for the right reasons (getting the ALP elected so they can do {good things} or {cruel but necessary things with less cruelty} or because they believe the same thing) but the Greens only vote with the LNP for the wrong reason (not voting like they are members of the ALP). It’s a fundamental distinction of the utmost importance.

  39. Very true Rex, Labor and Liberal sustain a duopoly and work together.

    Anything or anyone who stands against the duopoly gets attacked.

  46. Really now. The people complaining about Pegasus posting excerpts with links give Boerwar who has literally spends weeks at a time , posting every day, some personal axe to grind account of how the Greens are bad , based pretty much completely on his own deductions, reflections and often incorrect or misleading data a complete pass. And also C@tMomma is one of the most actively and consistent malicious people on this blog when it comes to the Greens and posters who support them, so claims from her about Pegasus being annoying and partisan are more than a little trite , especially since close to C@ts every interaction with Pegasus is trying to pick a fight and then complaining when Pegasus doesn’t engage.

    The hypocrisy is impressive.

    (Not to mention there’s a lot of people who post links to their pet causes every day here and it’s part of business as usual. )

  47. BK

    From the glass half full point of view those that heed such advice through their applying for the Darwin Award will weed out the not so fit and so improve the gene pool. 🙂

  48. BK
    FFS, this anti-vaxism stuff is ridiculous.

    Poroti
    But due to risking herd immunity can take out innocents along the way (those to young or allergic or old or ill for certain vacxines) which is the problem.

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