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 3 of 17
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  1. Vic:

    I find it laughably ironic that for years Assange obsessed about being extradited by the US, even though the US repeatedly said they had no interest in him. Now shit is real and he could well be extradited by Mueller and he’s still holed up in an embassy in the UK when he had his chance to get to Ecuador all these years and didn’t take it.

  3. Re: the Karen Middleton article concerning the Future Frigate tender:

    “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.”

    This process is like watching a slow moving train wreck. The government nearly has the right approach, but someone finds a way to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory.

    Because of the potential threat of nuclear ballistic missile attack from North Korea or any other emerging proto-nuclear state in our region the government has mandated that the winning tender built ships with the Lockheed Martin Aegis combat system, so that the navy could utilise the Aegis Ballistic missile defence shield. This system requires a number of Aegis ships to establish a monitoring array and then utilise missiles from a suit of SM2, 3 & 6 launched from the ships Mk41 vertical launch tubes.

    Given that requirement the Italian and Bristish bids should have already been ruled out because neither uses the Aegis system. Nor do they utilise the Mk41 vertical launch tube systems or standard missile (SM) – they both use European ‘astor’ systems.

    With this in mind Barrie’s cautionary note is well worth taking heed of.

    The only bid that is compatible with the Ballistic Missile Shield requirement is Navantia. It has both Aegis and mk 41 vertical launch tubes with SMs in service with a number of navies around the world, including our own Air Warfare Destroyers that are now just coming into service.

    Significantly, the government plans are to ultimately modify our new AWD to the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defensive system standard and modify their vertical launch tubes to take SM2, 3 and 6 missiles.

    What is also interesting and of note is that the governemnt declined to build a 4th AWD (you might remember Minister Johnson’s comment that the ASC couldn’t be trusted to build a canoe. That was said by a new minister that had just been briefed over delays and potential cost blowouts with the AWD build, which have been subsequently successfully resolved). In the end, and as a polical fudge the government doubled down on its decision not to proceed with a 4th AWD and yet brought forward the future frigate program by 6 years because of the political pressure over Ship Building job loses faced by the ‘valley of death’ – the gap in time between the end of one build project and another.

    In my view the obvious solution to postpone SEA 500 until the mid 2020s. Our Anzac Frigates have been substantially upgraded over the years and even the oldest – HMAS ANZAC – is fit for purpose and could have its life extended until 2030 or beyond.

    In the meantime the Governemnt could proceed with a “step 2” AWD program of a 3 further Hobart Class ships, but with the Ballistic Missile Shield version of Aegis and with SM 2, 3 & 6 to complement the current complement of RIM66 and SM1 missiles. Once the step 2 ships are build and tested to operational standards then the current step 2 AWDs could be retrofitted.

    In the meantime the British will be able to finish its first batch of type 26 Frigates and it may be that we could proceed with a purchase of those ships, safe in the knowledge that it is proven technology (and given that were would then have 6 AWD with ballistic missile shield capabilities, without having to force aegis unto the build – ie. stay with the excellent Astor system for their principle purposes of anti submarine warfare).

  4. Barney IDG

    Last I heard, was the new boundaries had been finalised. Don’t know how long it takes for it to be formally enacted etc.

  6. Victoria @ #107 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 6:53 am

    Barney IDG

    Last I heard, was the new boundaries had been finalised. Don’t know how long it takes for it to be formally enacted etc.

    No, proposed boundaries have been released, the finalised ones will be released later this year.

    You may be getting confused with Qld and Tas which have been finalised.

  9. Credico’s appearance on Ari Melber’s program is well worth finding on the Watch MSNBC website later today. Credico recently had an informal chat with Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic Party member of the House Intelligence Committee. He conveyed to Schiff that Julian Assange would welcome a meeting in London in order, evidently, to start defending himself against possible conspiracy allegations.

    The situation has became urgent for Assange now that Ecuador purportedly wants him out of their embassy and has terminated Assange’s internet access. I assume that the obvious potential for “termination with extreme prejudice” by some country’s spooks or another’s might be a significant factor in Assange’s eagerness to meet with Schiff.

  10. He also said he’d got his information from a briefing with United States authorities about espionage and foreign interference legislation.

    Does anyone think that the US ‘authorities’ had their own agenda in giving Hastie the information they did; and that they wanted him to use it in exactly the way that he did? They do not want Australia wandering too far from their hip.

  11. Katharine Murphy, who once told her readers that Barna-Baby – the political story of the year – may well have been important, but was essentially a private matter, unrelated to trivial issues such as a by-election that could have overturned the balance of power in the parliament by causing the moralizing Deputy Prime Minister and staunch “family man” to lose his seat on just about the most serious morals issues imaginable (adultery and nepotism) , and despite her being specifically tasked with covering the by-election from Joyce’s perspective, now tells us this:

    Now, let’s get to the merits of [Hastie’s] behaviour. Self-evidently as a journalist I always prefer more information in the public domain than less. It would be pretty bizarre if I argued otherwise…

    What. A. Fraud.

  12. Credico’s appearance on Ari Melber’s program is well worth finding on the Watch MSNBC website later today.

    Thanks for the heads up. I saw the tweet of this Victoria posted, but will search out the video of the interview.

  14. Why do the IPA/LNP/MurdochPress/private school/ self-righteous twerps of both genders continue to roll out misinformation in order to hang onto power/government/agenda?
    It’s their whole shallow purpose in life. They have no other purpose. They have no hesitation in regurgitating the heritability rights of supposed superiority of thought and therefore their rights to judge and condemn in order to preserve their advantages.
    All best illustrated by Headlights’ budget proclaiming tax concession to the wealthy and rorting by the conglomerates will result in us all being better off. And aren’t all of you stupid for not seeing how it all works.
    And again, the hedonistic donation of millions to save the GBR. Look at us, look at us, but not under the covers.
    The banking royal commission and certainly nothing to see there and besides what an extravagant waste of money!
    Perhaps a little look at the hospital/healthcare/agedcare/pharmaceutical/disability/ intertwined conglomerate will find nothing untoward! A little waste of a bit more money maybe well worth it.
    The LNP bandwagon has as it primary tenet: we shalt not be fair nor govern for all.
    The fact that the Turnbull/LNP government is within a bull’s roar of winning the next election is commenable but they (Turnbull etcetera ) need to be tossed out unceremoniously and left with a sore arse and double vision.
    Then again, John O’Grady proclaimed in 1957 “They’re a Weird Mob”. So we’ll see!

  15. From BKs Dawn Patrol.

    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

    There were all the usual ingredients: stories of financial suffering inflicted on decent, hardworking ordinary people, and plenty of instances of inept, stupid and immoral conduct on the part of bankers.

    Casting my eye over the story and being infused with my daily dose of beetrooters bonking
    I quite naturally, I thought, read the excerpt above as

    plenty of instances of inept, stupid and immoral conduct on the part of bonkers.

    Situation normal said I – to myself. (SNAFU).
    I think I had better go back to my mowing.
    🌺🌻🌺🌻

  16. Socrates @ #70 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 6:57 am

    One more small detail about Joyce that says it all about his character. Many politicians get their wikipedia pages carefully editted for image enhancement. Have a look at the 8 year old photo used as the current mug shot in Joyce’s entry. Also the lengthy reporting of an ancestor’s military record, and almost no mention of his four daughters, other than a total number of children.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnaby_Joyce

    I don’t have an issue with details of his daughters not being on Wikipedia. They are private figures and should be off limits without a compelling reason.

  17. Barney in Go Dau @ #33 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 7:31 am

    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!!!! 🙂

    Not surprisingly (although I am surprised at the size of the Yes vote) the ‘divide’ is age group related, with the over 65s the only group voting No.

    How far the influence of Church dogma has fallen. I read yesterday somewhere that Church attendance has fallen from the 60s to the high 40s, which still seems high to me. So they haven’t let go their religion so much as begun to drag it into the 21st C.

    Well done Ireland.

  18. Laurence TribeVerified account@tribelaw
    4m4 minutes ago
    Using an FBI informant to chat up the talkative Carter Page and George Papadopoulis after they’d revealed themselves as working with the Russian Government to help Trump’s campaign is NOT an instance of “planting” a “spy” in that campaign. Nor was it a political Obama operation.

  19. I thought anyone would be an improvement on Massola, but Crowe is even worst. The strange thing is that the Oz has a mortgage on right-wing ratbag readers. What demographic, if any, does the herald think it is serving? It’s just sending readers to the guardian.

  21. C@tmomma @ #8 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 6:34 am

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

    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.

    Indeed. They will also ask you to sell your car. When you ask them how you are supposed to get to work should you happen to actually find a job, given that you live 30 miles out of town, they just stare at you 🙁

  23. ItzaDream @ #119 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 7:12 am

    Barney in Go Dau @ #33 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 7:31 am

    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!!!! 🙂

    Not surprisingly (although I am surprised at the size of the Yes vote) the ‘divide’ is age group related, with the over 65s the only group voting No.

    How far the influence of Church dogma has fallen. I read yesterday somewhere that Church attendance has fallen from the 60s to the high 40s, which still seems high to me. So they haven’t let go their religion so much as begun to drag it into the 21st C.

    Well done Ireland.

    The Church, I understand, largely stood back from the debate.

    It seems their moral authority has little weight in today’s world, especially in the light of revelations of their immoral history. 🙂

  25. Itza:

    Thank you. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to hear the rain overnight, and wake up to this morning’s news on the bushfire front!

  26. ItzaDream @ #126 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 7:22 am

    Speaking of the Church, can you believe that arrogant criminal bishop Wilson has refused to resign.

    I think it’s most appropriate that he does not.

    It reflects the Church’s position that it should be outside the law and according to them he’s done nothing wrong he was just defending the Church’s interests. 🙁

  28. From BK’s reading (thanks, per usual)

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/this-is-just-the-start-china-australia-tensions-brought-to-the-surface-20180525-p4zhid.html

    So the light bulb lit up inside Hastie as he read

    So Hastie was in two minds. Then he read the biography of the US strategist and former diplomat Henry Kissinger by Niall Ferguson. It was dangerous, Kissinger had argued in his doctoral thesis in the 1950s, to allow “an argument about democracy [to] become a discussion of the efficiency of economic systems”.

    Ferguson wrote that “this attitude contrasted starkly with that of his contemporaries, such as the economist and political theorist Walt Rostow, for whom the Cold War could be won so long as capitalist growth rates were higher than communist ones”.

    But Kissinger believed that “the inward intuition of freedom . . . would reject totalitarianism even if it were economically more efficient”.

    In other words, a democracy must put the freedom and dignity of its people above all else as an absolute, above the seductive power of profit and above the siren song of export opportunity. And Kissinger’s thesis was not solely an academic exercise; after losing a third of his family and most of his schoolmates to Nazi death camps, he had special credibility in Hastie’s eyes.

    There’s a lot there to unpick, and it’s way beyond me, but for a quickie, I’m pretty conflicted to say the least about Kissinger, especially when the word interference looms large. This democracy at the hands of hegemony isn’t all its cracked up to be, like Christianity at the hands of the sword, freedom and dignity my arske.

  29. Bushfire Bill,
    As the Guardian and KM are seeking feedback on their performance to “celebrate” the 5th anniversary of Australian edition, mine was one of a plethora of comments which criticised KM for not only the phoney baloney excuses for their egregious Joyce coverup, but for incessantly “laying doggo” on Turnbull’s blundering/obfuscation/mendacity. Some commenters have made negative assertions regarding her personal relationship with Turnbull’s wife, but that’s not a line of attack I find worth pursuing.

    My chief exasperation with the Guardian is their bizarre obsession with false equivalence. Labor Party gaffes or minor mistakes are met with equally harsh, often harsher, Guardian coverage than the plethora of LNP diabolical actions to engender a disastrously high level of socio-economic inequity and a catastrophically high level of global warming emissions.

  31. Point of order – Exit Polls in Brexit showed a victory for Remain. Results said otherwise. Im not sure we should be celebrating so early when real results are not to be known for a while.

  32. Victoria @ #128 Saturday, May 26th, 2018 – 8:28 am

    fess

    here is video Prof Higgins was referring to

    https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber/watch/julian-assange-offers-to-talk-to-house-russia-probe-per-credico-1242251331612

    Thanks Vic. I don’t know what to make o Credico, but if what he is saying is true then Assange definitely knows shit is getting real for him and fast.

    And how much of a creep is Roger Stone? Threatening someone’s dog, just like the thugs Trump hangs around with.

  33. fess

    Credico like the rest of this motley crew are up to their eyeballs in crapola. They are doing what is expected. Trying to get the best deal for themselves.

  34. This is good, Hey? @DanielAndrewsMP announcing a re-elected Labor government will introduce industrial manslaughter legislation and wage theft will also be a crime

  35. ‘Trump’s son should be concerned’: FBI obtained wiretaps of Putin ally who met with Trump Jr.

    The FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with U.S. lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., in May 2016, a top Spanish prosecutor said Friday.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-son-concerned-wiretaps-show-trump-jr-met-putin-ally-231215529.html


  37. Ides of March. not logged in says:
    Saturday, May 26, 2018 at 10:46 am

    Point of order – Exit Polls in Brexit showed a victory for Remain. Results said otherwise. Im not sure we should be celebrating so early when real results are not to be known for a while.

    Mate we are not talking 2% here.

  39. Victoria,
    Can’t wait to see the faces of “this motley crew” when they cop a slew of indictments from Mueller’s aerie of legal eagles. As one MSNBC pundit predicted, there will be so many of them flipping against Trump that it should be called ‘The Art of the Squeal’.

    I wonder if Trump’s end-time will have the flavour of a Tarantino mobster melodrama or a Marx Brothers screwball comedy. Or both.

  40. Prof. Higgins

    It is interesting watching this whole thing play out. And obvious to anyone on this blog, I haven’t been able to take my eyes off it. It has been a mind boggling event

  41. Victoria says: Saturday, May 26, 2018 at 11:24 am

    PhoenixRed

    I guess Trump will find a way to blame Obama and Clinton for this too.

    *************************************************

    Well , seeing it is all on SIGINT ( tape ) then its going to be hard to deny …… As been reported , it is not just domestic sources feeding into Mueller – its also from at least a reported 19 foreign agencies that their ‘eaves dropping’ has picked up ……

  42. PhoenixRed

    Yes. FVEYS as well as others.

    Whilst Trump continues to make his ridiculous public statements, and wants to believe he is somehow winning the PR wars, he should really be negotiating a way out of his position as President.

  43. “It’s amazing how non-divisive these divisive issues are!!!!”

    They divide a very noisy minority who think they are or should be the arbiters of morality for the whole community from everyone else.

  44. Haste is worried about getting re-elected. He has used the supposedly secret information to promote himself, on the premise that he will only win votes by venturing onto this turf.

  45. briefly

    I don’t actually think so. Hastie did not make this decision on his own. He was tasked with doing so. reasons are not clear, but there are clues.

  46. Victoria says: Saturday, May 26, 2018 at 11:41 am

    PhoenixRed

    Whilst Trump continues to make his ridiculous public statements, and wants to believe he is somehow winning the PR wars, he should really be negotiating a way out of his position as President.

    ***********************************************

    I just wonder where the “tipping point ” is ??????? ……what does it take for the GOP to do something to end this farce.?????? I see they have pinged McConnell for being at these Trump Tower fandangos …… how many more does it take beyond GOPers stalwarts like Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, Jeff Flake etc etc to work out where this mess is ultimately going to end

  47. The RW in the US are trying to make Australia-China relations into an issue in US-China relations.

    Few things could be less in our interest than US political interference in our affairs, especially our interactions with China. The US can barely manage their own interactions with China. We should ask them to piss off.

  48. PhoenixRed

    As I said earlier. Maybe after FIFA World Cup. Only cos it is taking place in Russia. It is just something that keeps popping up in my mind

  50. https://www.theage.com.au/business/workplace/labor-promises-to-jail-bosses-over-wage-theft-20180525-p4zhko.html

    Labor promises to jail bosses over wage theft
    By Noel Towell & Ben Schneiders
    25 May 2018 — 7:15pm

    Victorian employers who deliberately underpay their workers could face prison under a re-elected Labor government.

    The state will become the first Australian jurisdiction to criminalise wage theft if Labor wins November’s election, Premier Daniel Andrews will say on Saturday, pledging up to 10 years behind bars for the most serious offenders.

    https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/labor-to-jail-bosses-over-workplace-deaths-20180526-p4zhny.html

    Labor vows to jail bosses over workplace deaths
    By Noel Towell
    Updated 26 May 2018 — 11:43am first published at 10:36am

    Victorian employers could face 20 years in jail under industrial manslaughter laws pledged by the Labor state government.

    Premier Daniel Andrews told his party’s annual conference in Melbourne on Saturday morning that 234 Victorians had lost their lives at work in the past decade and that Labor was determined to change workplace culture in the state.

    Mr Andrews told the 600 delegates that bosses whose negligence cost workers their lives would also face fines running into the millions of dollars under a reformed Occupational Health and Safety Act.

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