BludgerTrack: 51.7-48.3 to Labor

This week’s reading of the BludgerTrack poll aggregate maintains its gradual movement to the Coalition.

With the only poll this week being Essential Research’s best result for the Coalition in 18 months, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate maintains its slow and steady trend this week in shifting 0.2% to the Coalition on two-party preferred. The only change on the seat projection is a gain for the Coalition in Victoria. No new leadership ratings this week, so that’s your lot. Full results as always through the link below.

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.

842 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.7-48.3 to Labor”

Comments Page 1 of 17
1 2 … 17

  2. KayJay

    I find the newspaper pages you post very interesting. How nice to see that Barnaby is making money out of the little Beetroot!

  4. Barnaby Joyce is doing whatever it takes to get back onto the front bench. Plus using the Baby Beetroot to make up for lost earnings. 🙂

  5. C@t

    I see the IPA “researchers” are faithfully following the list of 75 recommendations we have seen.

    Fifield has “distanced himself” from the report on the ABC. What a weak, shilly-shallying type he is, always moving his position to try to stay popular.

    The authors say the $83.7 million cut to the ABC in this month’s federal budget is “only a flesh wound” and is the broadcaster’s own fault for going “well out of its way to annoy the government”.

    We know that the ABC is supported by the majority. I hope Labor can use this book as a sword in Turnbull’s side.

  6. lizzie,
    Murdoch’s malevolent minions and their ‘Think Tanks’ do it all over the world.
    In Britain they want to get rid of the BBC. In America it’s the PBS. In Australia, it’s the ABC.

    When they do, they know that the world can be run on propaganda and lies.

    The real Fake News Inc.

  8. This comment underneath the article lays out the reality in black and white:

    MorvaHindrance 14h ago
    What these politicians don’t understand is that in order to qualify for Newstart you have to have already run out of options. First, your savings have to be exhausted. You must have nothing in the bank and not have anyone else who can support you. If you can’t afford your mortgage then you will have to sell the house. Any money you have after paying the bank becomes your savings which you have to live on because you no longer qualify for assistance.

    Then you have to rationalise your housing. If you have a spare room you can rent it out but that rent is income so you won’t get Newstart. If you move into a share house it is likely one of your housemates will be declared your partner, regardless of your protests, and you won’t get Newstart. Nearly everything you do to try to make housing more affordable will put your Newstart payment in danger.

    So, when you have lost nearly everything you have worked hard for all your life, you may qualify for Newstart which can leave you with $17 a day to live on after housing costs. I would love to see a politician lose everything because of ill health or misfortune and have to start again with nothing.

    Unemployment happens for various reasons. If it lasts more than a few weeks it can destroy what has taken a lifetime to build. Anyone who thinks Newstart is some kind of lazy person’s lifestyle choice is deluded.

  9. ‘A pile of impulsive, ill-considered threats’: Wall Street Journal trashes Trump’s disastrous foreign policy ‘mess’

    The editorial board of the conservative Wall Street Journal had very little good to say about President Donald Trump’s last few weeks of foreign policy miscues, saying their attempts to find something praiseworthy is like looking under a pile of manure hoping to find a pony.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/05/pile-impulsive-ill-considered-threats-wsj-trashes-trumps-disastrous-foreign-policy-mess/

  10. Psychologist explains why Trump lies so much — and why it’s getting out of control

    It could very well come down to one thing: President Trump’s lies – the sheer number and frequency of them. Researchers have taken a look in the Washington Post’s fact checker on President Trump and found the president is now lying more often. He averaged 4.9 falsehoods per day in his first days in the oval office and now 9 lies per day.”

    “We don’t know specifically about why there’s an escalation in the president’s lies,” Sharot began. “It could be many reasons — maybe certain lies covered up with more and more lies, maybe falsehoods repeated so many times they are considered to be true, which makes them repeated more.”

    “Research done in our lab, not on the president, suggests that the emotional response that people have to their own lies is reduced every time they lie. Now they don’t have that negative arousal that comes with lying so there is nothing carving their dishonesty, and so dishonesty just escalates over time.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/05/watch-psychologist-explains-trump-lies-much-getting-control/

  15. Good morning Dawn Patrollers. The Australian is brim full of Get Bill and Get the Left today. Have a look!
    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/

    Cara Waters reports from the royal commission about another bank behaving badly.
    https://www.smh.com.au/business/small-business/i-don-t-believe-suncorp-has-shown-us-any-compassion-bank-s-pursuit-of-grieving-family-20180525-p4zhlk.html
    Simon Cowan deduces that government regulation may be ineffective in protecting against this misbehaviour. Sometimes it may make things worse.
    https://www.smh.com.au/national/personal-responsibility-not-regulation-will-fix-rogue-banks-20180524-p4zhc6.html
    And Caitlin Fitzsimons writes that depending how you look at it, superannuation funds charging fat fees to cover the cost of complying with new legislation is either a brazen impost on consumers or a model of transparency.
    https://www.smh.com.au/money/super-and-retirement/commonwealth-bank-to-raise-25m-from-extra-super-fund-slug-20180524-p4zh7x.html
    Mike Seccombe writes that the small business testimonies to the banking royal commission revealed a more nuanced area of questionable practices, but one that still turns up stories of personal hardship.
    https://outline.com/YaMD9B
    Karen Maley writes that banking industry insiders believe they had a win at the banking royal commission this week. It was the week when the Hayne commission came head-to-head with tough commercial reality.
    https://outline.com/tfmdR2
    According to the AFR’s Jacob Greber the banking royal commission could crimp lending, pushing small business borrowers to the high tech finance sector charging more than 40 per cent interest rates.
    https://outline.com/ju8hS7
    Foreign banks are circling Australia once more as they bet on resources and infrastructure investment gathering pace.
    https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/foreign-banks-flex-muscles-in-australia-as-locals-reel-from-scandals-20180525-p4zhg5.html
    Westpac-owned Bank of Melbourne turned a business loan into a residential loan because its officers wanted to earn bonuses and get the customer to sign up before a competing bank offer was accepted, the financial services royal commission has heard.
    https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/finance-news/2018/05/25/royal-commission-bank-of-melbourne/
    After exposing Australia’s top 40 tax dodging companies Michael West gives us our tax heroes.
    https://www.michaelwest.com.au/top-40-platinum-takes-gong-as-australias-top-corporate-taxpayer/
    A good contribution from Paul Bongiorno on Porline’s need for attention.
    https://outline.com/M5hErd
    Peter van Onselen interestingly makes the proposition that there is something disempowering about the polls in modern politics for leaders.
    https://outline.com/xAXG7G
    The editorial in The Saturday Paper goes to Dutton’s moral twilight.
    https://outline.com/FMbP9Z
    Laura Tingle wonders if Turnbull has done Shorten a favour with the tricky July 28 Super Saturday date.
    https://outline.com/rMCWtL
    Phil Coorey says the government has traduced convention by matching Labor with tricky-poo politics over the super Saturday date.
    https://outline.com/vX65nT
    Here’s a very good article on Gosford’s Father Rod Bower.
    https://outline.com/8GwKED
    Eryk Bagshaw reports that the Nationals will debate a $500 million cap on company tax cuts next week, as one MP calls for the Coalition to compromise with the crossbench to get its signature economic package through Parliament.
    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/nationals-to-consider-500-million-company-tax-cap-20180525-p4zhiy.html
    Mark Kenny on what Super Saturday means for Shorten.
    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/labor-sweats-on-byelection-doomsday-scenario-20180525-p4zhhl.html
    Ross Gittins tells us that whatever ScoMo’s objectives are, fixing bracket creep isn’t one of them.
    https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/bracket-creep-lives-to-fight-another-day-20180525-p4zhgm.html
    Peter Hartcher reckons Shorten made a poor call on the Chau affair.
    https://www.smh.com.au/national/shorten-s-poor-call-in-chau-affair-20180524-p4zhdd.html
    Nick O’Malley says that Australia-China relations are quite strained and causing divisions here in Australia.
    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/this-is-just-the-start-china-australia-tensions-brought-to-the-surface-20180525-p4zhid.html
    Karen Middleton writes, “Vice-Admiral Ray Griggs has twice offered a public, personal view that defence procurement should shy away from untested technology and hardware. But the pressure on the government to go with the British ship has been mounting.”
    https://outline.com/DjTqfK
    A Russian oligarch with links to the Kremlin met Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen at the Trump Tower in New York City less than two weeks before Trump’s inauguration as president, a source familiar with the meeting has said.
    https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/russian-oligarch-met-with-trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-days-before-inauguration-source-20180526-p4zhn5.html
    The Washington Post reports that it looks like Trump may have to wait for that Nobel Peace Prize he has been hoping for.
    https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/what-really-led-to-trumps-north-korea-faceplant-20180525-p4zhgo.html
    Who at Westfarmers is going to carry the can for its $1.6b failure with Bunnings in Britain?
    https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/wesfarmers-pays-for-its-1-6b-british-bungle-but-will-its-executives-20180525-p4zhjp.html
    The fresh attack on the ABC by the Australian Government, through its $84-million budget cut, has been followed up with a second punch against the high-profile journalist Emma Alberici. The Independent Australia’s media editor Dr Lee Duffield says a new complaint by the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, comes against a background of ABC-baiting that strikes up mutual interest between radical-right politics and conservative media.
    https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/government-attacks-on-the-abc-reveal-conflict-over-australias-future,11538
    Elizabeth Farrelly on the death of the Darling River.
    https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/our-role-in-the-death-of-a-river-20180524-p4zh8e.html
    A Queensland court has ordered the freezing of hundreds of millions of dollars of Clive Palmer’s assets.
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/25/queensland-court-freezes-205m-of-clive-palmers-assets
    TPG’s ‘free’ unlimited mobile data plan is not quite as great as it seems.
    https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/finance-news/2018/05/25/tpg-free-unlimited-mobile-data/
    Just who is the group awarded $443m to save the reef?
    https://outline.com/9H7UbD
    At the core of Trump’s foreign policy is a belief that he can use his personal charisma to charm his way to world peace. His “me first” diplomacy certainly has its limits.
    https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/the-limits-of-donald-trump-s-me-first-diplomacy-20180525-p4zhgt.html
    Jack Waterford goes to the history of electoral funny business.
    https://www.smh.com.au/national/home-side-will-always-kick-with-the-wind-20180525-p4zhf7.html
    In the wake of the Philip Wilson verdict the country’s top lawmakers will consider reforms to ensure all jurisdictions can mount criminal prosecutions when information about child sexual abuse is deliberately covered up.
    https://outline.com/RkddDs
    Pope Francis’ comments to Juan Carlos Cruz are a step towards ending the persecution of LGBT people around the world, writes Alan Austin.
    https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/its-okay-to-be-gay-pope-francis-says-so,11537
    Why Australia is still lagging behind on electric cars.
    https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/australia-unplugged-why-we-re-still-lagging-behind-on-electric-cars-20180525-p4zhgg.html
    Harvey Weinstein “goes down”.
    https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-america/harvey-weinstein-surrenders-to-authorities-on-sex-assault-charges-20180525-p4zhmx.html

    Cartoon Corner

    David Rowe has Trump writing a Dear Jong letter.

    Paul Zanetti with Burney and Shorten.

    Cathy Wilcox in the US.

    Matt Golding with a suggestion to curb pedestrian deaths.

    Alan Moir and US gun culture.

    Rod Clement on the collapsed Korean talks.
    https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/9a329b70c0ff923e6c8c832a8bd7de5e
    Some excellent ones in here, particularly from David Pope (look at Rhiannon!) and Alan Moir.
    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/best-of-fairfax-cartoons-may-26-20180526-h10kgj.html

  16. After summit pullout, South Korea and China have little appetite for Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’

    in Asia, many hold Trump, not Kim, responsible for the sudden collapse of diplomacy and cancellation of the planned June 12 summit in Singapore.

    From here, Kim looks like the more levelheaded leader who was trying to build confidence — releasing American detainees, blowing up the nuclear testing site — while Trump looks impetuous and unreliable.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/after-summit-pullout-south-korea-and-china-have-little-appetite-for-trumps-maximum-pressure/2018/05/25/e14774f4-5f74-11e8-b656-236c6214ef01_story.html?utm_term=.dcd01b4e5463

  19. From here, Kim looks like the more levelheaded leader who was trying to build confidence — releasing American detainees, blowing up the nuclear testing site — while Trump looks impetuous and unreliable.

    Because. Truth.

  21. According to the AFR’s Jacob Greber the banking royal commission could crimp lending, pushing small business borrowers to the high tech finance sector charging more than 40 per cent interest rates.

    Or it may prevent some with stars in their eyes being lured into financing a rum job with their houses and other assets.

  24. No worries, KayJay. Pleased to lend a hand. 🙂

    I’m simply on my laptop with Windows 10 and Chrome. I might add that when I am on my phone, Oppo with Chrome, I think different pictures appear.

  26. Barney in Go Dau @ #23 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 7:16 am

    C@tmomma @ #19 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 4:07 am

    KayJay,
    @6.58 No
    @ 7.04 Yes

    🙂

    I can see both!

    Barney. Yesterday I visited my GP for prescriptions, flue and B12 injections and various matters medial.
    Peter, my Doctor had been on holidays – Hanoi and London.
    I asked him had he seen Barney in Go Dau. No – said he.
    Dammit. Why did he bother to go ❓

    Please don’t try to make sense of this. I make GP visits a social occasion.

  27. Mike Carlton‏ @MikeCarlton01 · 11h11 hours ago

    The IPA loonies are on the loose again. The ABC should be given away to Australian citizens. WE ALREADY OWN IT, YOU FUCKWITS.

  30. Ireland has voted by a landslide margin to change the constitution so that abortion can be legalised, according to an exit poll conducted for The Irish Times by Ipsos/MRBI.
    The poll suggests that the margin of victory for the Yes side in the referendum will be 68 per cent to 32 per cent – a stunning victory for the Yes side after a long and often divisive campaign.
    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/irish-times-exit-poll-projects-ireland-has-voted-by-landslide-to-repeal-eighth-amendment-1.3508861

  32. BK (Block)
    Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 7:27 am
    Comment #30

    Does my posting of various pictures of the Newspapers interfere in any way with your wonderful Dawn Patrol ❓ 😇

  33. BK @ #31 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 4:27 am

    Ireland has voted by a landslide margin to change the constitution so that abortion can be legalised, according to an exit poll conducted for The Irish Times by Ipsos/MRBI.
    The poll suggests that the margin of victory for the Yes side in the referendum will be 68 per cent to 32 per cent – a stunning victory for the Yes side after a long and often divisive campaign.
    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/irish-times-exit-poll-projects-ireland-has-voted-by-landslide-to-repeal-eighth-amendment-1.3508861

    Well done.

    It’s amazing how non-divisive these divisive issues are!!!! 🙂

  34. “This week’s reading of the BludgerTrack poll aggregate maintains its gradual movement to the Coalition.”….

    Alternative take: In spite of the completely desperate tactics, dirty tricks, lies, propaganda, of the Coalition Government and their minions in the media and internet the ALP remains on a winning path that is unanimous both among the pollsters delivering recent results and also among betting agencies…… The Morrison-Turnbull Neoliberal Budget has been a complete failure!

    Question to Turnbull and the Coalition: What to do next?

  36. How Bill gets around the tricky ABC.

    Rowan‏ @FightingTories · 18h18 hours ago

    WOW
    @abcnews has recorded a Bill Shorten doorstop and edited it before showing it and only covering journo questions, not the announcement, but Bill repeats it during a Q because it’s now common by ABC

  38. Gorks says:
    Friday, May 25, 2018 at 9:25 pm

    …”Left wing/progressives are way too eager to shit on their own”…

    …
    You must have missed the great, steaming piles of the stuff, regularly dropped from upon high, onto assorted progressives, by various right wing ratbags on this blog?

  39. C@tmomma says:
    Friday, May 25, 2018 at 9:26 pm

    …”Exackerly! The Tories must love it when they can orchestrate it”…

    …
    Defence exhibit: (A)

  41. Interesting piece by Roman Quaedvlieg.

    It is inarguable that the so-called “Pacific Solution” is an almost insoluble mess. On the one hand as a deterrent to prospective asylum seekers jumping onto leaky boats to come to Australia, it has been highly effective. On the other hand, no one in the Coalition planned or envisaged any single asylum seeker being in a Pacific purgatory for this length of time.

    The intention was, and still is, off-shore processing and settlement, not indefinite detention, which is a misnomer. Detention in the first instance of course is understandable. What sovereign country would allow unassessed health, character and security risks to be absorbed into its communities, let alone a small Pacific island community where an asylum-seeker population would make up at least 10 per cent of the entire population?

    With the slowly dawning realisation that the processing of protection claims was advancing at a glacial pace, both the Papua New Guinean and the Nauruan governments acceded to “dropping the fences” and allowing the asylum seekers to move freely within their communities, at first with some restrictions such as a nightly curfew, and later to a wholly open camp model.

    This arrangement eased the pressure by enabling a degree of normalcy in the existence of those awaiting assessment, however it was only a temporary reprieve. Pressure continues to build as a result of many factors, not the least of which is the exacerbating impact on pre-existing psychological trauma incurred in their countries of origin or during the privations they suffered while fleeing that persecution.

    This week’s suicide of an epileptic and psychologically ill Rohingyan refugee on Manus Island is a stark reminder of this trauma and it reinfects the weeping sore on Australia’s collective psyche that this issue has become.

    After enduring the conditions of the Manus Offshore Processing Centre and island containment for many years, he was eventually found to be a refugee and determined to be eligible for resettlement in the United States, but tragically chose to end his life in a violent way before this could be effected.
    Paris Aristotle, the notable and respected Australian refugee advocate, once said to me: “Don’t underestimate the mindset and the tenacity of these people Roman, their patience is interminable.” I found this to be a truism but this week’s tragic death shows that every person has a limit.

    Kearney makes a commitment to solve this mess. It’s a commendable objective and I haven’t heard a single soul on either side of politics demur on this point, either ideologically or politically, publicly or privately – even the much-maligned Minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, has been desperate to find a solution for the blistering Pacific solution.

    https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/pacific-solution-has-become-a-mess-for-coalition-and-a-point-of-division-for-labor-20180524-p4zh8d.html

  43. Peter Hartcher is either a canary that sits on Hasties shoulder and reads his mind or he has simply regurgitated Hasties justifications for his “courageous” action.

    But he lied under privilege to defame an Australian citizen. Which has pissed of China, understandably so. These people are preoccupied by the fact that China is “communist” something they heard about from their parents. And Labor is somehow at fault even though they knew no more than the PM or the relevant Ministers.

    I presume this opens the way for any member to get up and say anything if there are foreign citizens involved, under the guise of security and bipartisanship.

    What is going on?

  44. “Good morning Dawn Patrollers. The Australian is brim full of Get Bill and Get the Left today.”….. Today, BK?…. They have been going hard pushing that line since Bill became the leader of the ALP!… Not even psephologists re-calculating the allocation of preferences of ON are really helping much… The damn 2PP is still firmly anchored South of 50% for the Coalition…. and the betting agencies agree.

    The Budget is a failure!
    Kill Bill is a failure!
    What’s next?…. The “Communists are coming to take your home and give it to the lazy, latte-sipping, mash-avocado-eating poor”?*
    —————
    *Note how, according to some members of the farther left, Bill is a “dangerous Neoliberal”, whereas the rabid right tells us that he is a “dangerous Communist”….
    Unbeknownst to them, Bill is simply: Our next Prime Minister!

  45. KayJay

    One of the suggestions was that people could take (buy?) shares in it. As taxpayers, we already have shares. I think that’s what Mike Carlton meant.

  46. Tony Burke‏Verified account @Tony_Burke · 2m2 minutes ago

    A fact many have forgotten: Barnaby’s by-election was called straight away and the AEC then declared his win in record time. As a result he arrived in parliament just in time to vote against High Court referrals for MPs from both sides. His vote stopped the referrals. #auspol

  47. Oh Lizzie, it was tony Burke who loudly touted “ extreme labor vetting” which as we all now know turned out to be extreme labor bullshit.

    To think Caboolture voters can do what labor mps have been too gutless to do. Sad!

    A liberal win in longman or Braddon will ensure an albanese labor government in 2019.

  48. lizzie @ #47 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 4:49 am

    Tony Burke‏Verified account @Tony_Burke · 2m2 minutes ago

    A fact many have forgotten: Barnaby’s by-election was called straight away and the AEC then declared his win in record time. As a result he arrived in parliament just in time to vote against High Court referrals for MPs from both sides. His vote stopped the referrals. #auspol

    Unfortunately Tony it’s called politics and until rules are established to have by-elections at the earliest possible time after a vacancy is created discrepancies will happen from one to the next.

  49. Joyce and partner have sold their story to a broadsheet for a considerable sum.

    I cannot imagine how this story can be very interesting. It can be told in three sentences, but I won’t go there.

  50. lizzie @ #50 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 5:05 am

    Joyce and partner have sold their story to a broadsheet for a considerable sum.

    I cannot imagine how this story can be very interesting. It can be told in three sentences, but I won’t go there.

    disloyalty, breach of trust, cheating, secrecy, manipulation, deceit, rorting, abuse of position, “victim”…

    I think there’s a few more than 3 sentences but I don’t think that will be the stories angle! 🙂

Comments Page 1 of 17
1 2 … 17

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *