Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

After a spike to Labor a fortnight ago, it’s back to business as usual in the latest Essential Research poll, which also finds Donald Trump slightly less unpopular with Australians than he was a year ago.

Labor’s two-point gain in last fortnight’s Essential Research poll has proved to be an aberration, with the latest result snapping back to 52-48. This is matched by the primary votes, on which the Coalition is up two to 38% and Labor down two to 35% (we will have to wait for the full report later today to see how the minor parties have gone). According to The Guardian’s report, the poll also finds 50% favouring Labor’s tax policy over the Coalition, with the result for the latter not stated, except of course that it’s lower; 79% supporting the first stage of the government’s tax cuts, targeting lower and middle income earners, but only 37% for stage three, whereby the tax scales will be flattened to the advantage of higher income earners; support and opposition for company tax cuts tied at 39% apiece; support for higher finding for the ABC, though we will have to wait for hard data on which areas of the broadcaster’s activities were most favoured.

Other questions relate to international matters, with 35% responding that the North Korea summit would make the world safer, 8% less safe, and 41% no difference. On foreign leaders, Justin Trudeau (up nine on last year) and Jacinda Ardern (on debut) both scored 54% approval, and if I’m reading this correctly, Theresa May scored 42% (up nine) and Donald Trump 22% (up six) – I believe other leaders will have been canvassed as well, but further results will have to wait.

UPDATE: Full results from Essential here – the Greens are up one to 11%, and One Nation down one to 7%. Further international leadership approval ratings include a 43% for Angela Merkel, unchanged on last year, 42% for Emmanuel Macron, up one, 19% for Vladimir Putin, up three, and, if you could credit it, 9% for Kim Jong-Un. Fortuitously, this comes as the Lowy Institute publishes results of a survey of 1200 respondents on Australian attitudes to the world, which similarly finds high levels of confidence for Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron, and low ones for Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un.

Also out today is further results from the Newspoll in The Australian, finding Malcolm Turnbull favoured by 47% as best leader to handle the asylum seeker issue (down five from December) and Bill Shorten on 30% (up two). It also finds 26% expecting Labor will “improve the policy”, 37% that it will “open the floodgates”, and 24% that it will make no difference.

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.

3,271 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  3. I dont know why so many of you all make it personal.

    Just accept people will say stuff you disagree with, debate the point or stay quiet imo.

    There is no point talking to an echo chamber.

  4. P1

    The proof is on the record. No bemused look at the blog.

    So very different.

    I have even noticed some people who lurk have been posting in his absence.

    More diverse voices I think should be welcome to the blog.

    Discussing bemused in his absence is giving him the impression its his blog not William’s

  5. Alice Workman‏Verified account @workmanalice · 22h22 hours ago

    Matt Canavan’s office has sent around a 13 page slide show called THE COAL ERA IS NOT OVER. This could have been what Tony Abbott was carrying around this week.

  7. There is no point talking to an echo chamber.

    I can’t speak for others, but personally I have no problems with a plurality of views. What I do dislike is the thuggish, abusive and misogynistic stalking that I and other women PBers were subjected to.

    That, I do not miss.

  8. Michael Koziol tweets

    Christopher Pyne says Bill Shorten’s leadership has “failed” and he should hold a leadership ballot immediately #auspol

    This should leave Labor in no doubt. No leadership change its just more kill bill from the LNP

  9. Longtime conservative George Will publishes stunning call for Americans to ‘vote against the GOP this November’

    In a striking op-ed for the Washington Post, Will made his point directly in the headline: “Vote against the GOP this November.”

    Trump’s malicious and incompetent border policies are just the beginning of Will’s problems with the Republican Party.

    He rails against the Republicans’ refusal to curtail the president’s abuse of his congressionally granted tariff powers. He is equally scathing toward Stephen Miller and Corey Lewandowski, two of the most corrosive figures in Trump’s orbit.

    “Meaningless noise is this administration’s appropriate libretto because, just as a magnet attracts iron filings, Trump attracts, and is attracted to, louts,” he writes.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/06/longtime-conservative-george-will-publishes-stunning-call-americans-vote-gop-november/

  11. “Michael Koziol tweets”

    You might think at some point it would be too humiliating to just be used by clowns like Pyne and they’d just not report rubbish like that rather than be the funnel of garbage.

  12. BK @ #2757 Saturday, June 23rd, 2018 – 7:28 am

    The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the Australian Environmental-Economic Accounts on June 15. It’s a fine achievement, which shows, among other things, growing efficiency in water and energy use. That’s good for both the economy and the environment. Less good is that waste generation is increasing, broadly in line with GDP growth.
    https://theconversation.com/you-probably-missed-the-latest-national-environmental-economic-accounts-but-why-98620

    Hang on a minute. Aren’t our greenhouse gas emissions meant to be going down, not up?

  13. WW
    Simon Birmingham’s assertion that UNIONS want our children to be uneducated and illiterate went completely unchallenged by journalists.

  15. On Bemused…
    From a purely personal perspective, once he stopped the gratuitous sniping at me (over events long, long past) Bemused and I got along OK. Admittedly that took him years, but eventually things calmed down.

    I readily note that he didn’t stop the sniping at others, however, and that this led to his ultimate undoing.

    Given that we could probably never be “best blog buddies” ( I don’t think either of us would have wanted that anyway), and probably also through sheer exhaustion, Bemused and I reached an unspoken accommodation over the past few months, where we left each other alone, in that “best of enemies” kind of way. In my new rustic habitat and pastoral torpor, that accommodation suited me fine (and I hope him too). Call it mellowing with age but (and I never thought I would ever write these words) I will miss Bemused.

    Then, just as he and I had buried the hatchet, the idiot had to go and virtually put his neck on the chopping block and then hand William the axe.

    As the only other person here who has been part (though by no means all) of a decision-making process to ban Bemused from a blog, I can understand William’s frustration. I’ve been the subject of one of those email tirades too.

    So, my feelings are mixed about Bemused: obviously intelligent, equally belligerent, and decidedly unrepentant. He was the master of the last word, but a slave to his own vivid imagination which saw enemies and slanderers evrywhere where, mostly, there were none, certainly none as dedicated and energetic as he believed they were.

    I suspect Bemused would be a good man next to you in the trenches, if only you could get him to point his rifle at the real enemy more often. Perhaps not so much in the trenches, but up a tall tree, as a sniper? In the end he fell victim to his own inability to know when he’d won the argument or, if he hadn’t actually won it (or had even lost it), to know that the argument was over anyway.

    (And yes, as someone who suffers from the same affliction at times, I can also see things from his point of view.)

    I echo Puffy’s sentiments that perhaps one day William might exercise the mercy for which he is renowned throughout the blogosphere and that Bemused might be allowed back, preferably calmer and sweeter (there is always hope).

    But then again, would he even want to return to a place where, in the end, we and our places in the world have really only ever been figments of each others’ imaginations?

  16. Just catching up: – So Bemused got flushed down the poop chute by WB. Cest la vie.

    The celebrations at his demise – rather gauche – IMHO.

    Would be good to get some Longman / Braddon news for a change on the site – IMHO too!

  18. Pyne’s comments on labor’s leadership remind me of the old line about what is news.

    If a dog bites a man, it’s not news. When a man bites a dog, that’s news.

    Nobody would expect Pyne to say anything other than what is reported.

    Journalists who give a platform to such stuff should be embarassed. But I suspect they will not be.

  20. WW
    Simon Birmingham’s assertion that UNIONS want our children to be uneducated and illiterate went completely unchallenged by journalists.

    The CPG and the MSM generally have this rule set in stone:

    Anything the L/NP says is transmitted verbatim without question or comment.

    Anything Labor says is challenged, howled down or accompanied by critical commentary.

    Anything Hanson says gets varying treatment, depending whether she is supporting the L/NP or opposing them at any given time.

  21. I see the campaign for Bemused to return is in full swing. He was not that bad is the sentiment.

    I disagree. While he had some contributions to make and yes I too will miss them in the overall scheme of things the blog is better without Bemused here

    I disagree with BB on a lot of things sometimes. Very robustly.

    However I do think BB and William have made the right decision regarding Bemused.

    Thats two people who moderate blogs coming to a decision.

  23. phoenixRed:

    George Will is the latest in an increasing line-up of Republicans to urge a vote for Democrats in the midterms.

  24. BB

    I said I disagree with you at times. Sometimes very robustly.

    I then said I agree with you on the decision you made about Bemused. Thats based on his behaviour here. I don’t visit the blog you moderate.

    So I don’t get how thats putting my words in your mouth

  25. Guytaur, I don’t care whether you agree or disagree with me. Just don’t cite me as support for one of your moral judgements.

    I’ve said exactly what I wanted to say about the dear departed. It doesn’t need amplification or illumination from the likes of you.

  27. BB

    Oh its a moral judgement is it.

    I thought I had pointed out the difference in the blog. Thats observable facts not a moral judgement.

    As for moral judgements when it comes to educating people about harm to others then some moral judgements are indeed needed.

    As for example we have seen with the American reaction to separating children from their parents.
    Thats a moral judgement I agree with and have no shame in doing so.

    Just like I have no compunction in my moral judgement that Dutton is cruel and inhumane in his policies on AS.

    The same goes for the arguments I put on sexuality.
    When denying rights you are acting immorally. I will so say.

  28. BB

    Like it or not I agree with your decision as a moderator on Bemused.

    Thats all I said about you.

    Your high dudgeon is not needed.

    I will continue to give my opinion no matter if you like it or not

  29. Confessions says: Saturday, June 23, 2018 at 11:41 am

    phoenixRed:

    George Will is the latest in an increasing line-up of Republicans to urge a vote for Democrats in the midterms.

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

    The Democrats do need to get their own act together rather than just relying on an anti-Trump platform.. They need to find decent leader(s) and policies that resonate with all of America that will bring people out to vote for them ……. and it goes without saying they have to have true and accurate voting/polling without interference from ‘external’ sources

  30. phoenixRed:

    Agreed. Actually the closer we inch towards November the more anxious I am that Dems will snatch defeat from the proverbial jaws of victory.

  31. briefly says:
    Saturday, June 23, 2018 at 9:30 am
    No-one has been buried. A skinhead has been ex-communicated. Excellent. The skinhead passed at least the last 8 years contriving insults, slurs, sledging asides, fake arguments and rancid whinges directed against confessions, z, cat, puff and numerous others, almost on a minute-by-minute basis. A completely obtuse and frankly obnoxious and sexist belligerent has been excluded. I hope it’s permanent.

    Briefly

    You probably don’t realise it but that is a perfect example of the kind of name calling and abusive language we could well do without here.

    Why don’t you give it a rest.

  32. “I had to comment today because of a segment I just saw on ABC 24

    I have a question for Labor. When does running the LNP talking points on tax[payers’ money?] uninterrupted become a campaign advertisement?”

    I didn’t see the report, but I have had concerns about ABC news reports (radio and TV) in recent times. Government press releases seem to be being read verbatim. So reports are declaring that the Government is ‘slashing’ tax rates, that the lower taxes will create jobs, etc. The former is a matter of interpretation best left to the listener, while the latter, presented as fact, is disputed not only by the Opposition but by experts. They should say something like “the Minister says that these tax cuts will create more jobs” or similar.

    The Government has decided that the ABC must act as an additional mouthpiece for the Government (the others being Newscrap outlets) until conditions are right to get on with item 20 on the IPA’s wish list.

  34. Cute how many posters are crying out, “Don’t say nasty things about bemused!” who were, apparently, quite happy to let bemused say nasty things about others.

    (Reminder: I’m the one who said I wasn’t going to dance on his grave. I’m not doing that now).

  36. Darn @ #2881 Saturday, June 23rd, 2018 – 12:01 pm

    briefly says:
    Saturday, June 23, 2018 at 9:30 am
    No-one has been buried. A skinhead has been ex-communicated. Excellent. The skinhead passed at least the last 8 years contriving insults, slurs, sledging asides, fake arguments and rancid whinges directed against confessions, z, cat, puff and numerous others, almost on a minute-by-minute basis. A completely obtuse and frankly obnoxious and sexist belligerent has been excluded. I hope it’s permanent.

    Briefly

    You probably don’t realise it but that is a perfect example of the kind of name calling and abusive language we could well do without here.

    Why don’t you give it a rest.

    No one has appointed you blackboard monitor for the blog.

    You’ve made a series of assertions about the nature of PB over the last day or so. However, I can assure you that robust discourse will continue whether it is to your tastes or not.

  37. Peter Brent: http://insidestory.org.au/big-target/

    Despite the revisionism that routinely follows elections — tales of conviction politicians cutting through, connecting with battlers and heroically seizing the agenda — changes of federal government tend to come about when (a) most voters are sick and tired of the current bunch and (b) the opposition doesn’t look too scary. That means there’s little advantage in taking more policy to an election than is necessary.

  38. I will not be commenting on Bemused’s banning. It is William’s blog and he has the right to have/ban whomever he wishes.

    Be aware though, his being banned does not prevent him from reading everything here …

  39. “Just come back from my weekly ParkRun at Chermside. Mr Shorten, of all people, was there. Was banging away on the track and he gradually came up beside me. Exchanged pleasantries. He said his goal was to break 25 minutes for the 5km.”

    That’s my winter goal as well!

  41. William Bowe @ #2262 Friday, June 22nd, 2018 – 8:09 am

    I’m afraid I have a sad tale to relate, the conclusion to which may cause distress to some readers. Yesterday I logged on to the site and cast an eye over the preceding page or two of comments, and was troubled by the volume of abuse that was being bandied about. So I did what experience has shown to be the best thing for it in these cases — announced that at there would be a moratorium on personal insults henceforth, and emphasised the latter point with this follow-up:

    A lot of comments are getting chopped at the moment, in the interests of getting things back on course. Please don’t try my patience by pointing out that worse comments in the past were left undisturbed. That’s not the point.

    My efforts were not instantaneously effective — perhaps because some posters had not absorbed by injunction at the time, perhaps because they just felt like pushing the envelope. If the latter, fair play — I don’t ask anyone to be a saint. A number of people had comments deleted during the course of my crackdown, but the important thing was that most took it in their stride and promptly got on with their lives. As a result, the tone of the discussion did indeed improve immensely from that point, giving me a feeling of satisfaction with a job well done. So in a spirit of accentuating the positive, I doff my cap to Puffy, C@tmomma, boomy1, Greensborough Growler and Adrian.

    But to quote the late great Lee Hazlewood — this is the sad part. There was one very conspicuous exception to the picture just noted. This was a character who posts, or rather posted, under the name of Bemused, who had three comments cut: one informing a commenter that they were “a person of low intelligence”; another, that they were a “mental midget”; and yet another that they were a “repetitive bore”. All were bereft of any substantive comment about politics or any other subject of imaginable interest.

    Such is the scale of the entitlement that this person has built up over the years that he responded to the removal of comments from what he all too clearly regards as his site rather than mine with white-hot fury. I shortly received the first of seven emails under the subject heading, “You are a disgrace”. Comments from the other five aforesaid commenters were proferred as cast-iron proof of my double standards, although in every case they had been deleted well before the relevant emails arrived in my inbox. Notwithstanding that he had made his comments after I had drawn a very clear line in the sand on personal attacks, and that I had dealt in the exact same fashion with five other commenters, Bemused asserted that I had no imaginable right to delete his comments, since they were “innocuous”. In Bemusedworld, “person of low intelligence”, “mental midget” and “repetitive bore” were on no account to be equated with him being called a “misogynist”, because there was — I swear I’m not making this up — “nothing provocative” about him saying so.

    Were Bemused around to defend himself, he would no doubt point to the fact that, in the course of the disturbance that triggered my crackdown in the first place, Greensborough Growler made this crude joke at his expense. While I don’t properly understand the joke, a joke is what it undoubtedly is, Bemused’s hysterical showboating notwithstanding. GG shouldn’t have said it, and if I had been on to the comment quick enough for it to have done any good, I would probably have told him off for it. As it stood though, the comment was simply one part of a broader disturbance that also included Bemused himself calling one commenter a “psychopath” and another a “toxic liar”. I think it can hardly be argued that, rather than wade into the morass myself by trying to calibrate the severity of this or that insult, I did the right thing by drawing a line in the sand and demanding that all concerned observe higher standards going forward. In Bemusedworld though, doing so made me a “disgrace”, lacking in “values and integrity”, and a person to whom “equal treatment and fairness” were “alien”.

    To cut a long story short, Bemused can go and fuck himself. Or more to the point, he can start up a Twitter account and broadcast to whatever audience he is able to generate on the strength of his own merits. What he can’t do is aggressively and abusively demand the unconditional right to broadcast every thought that enters his head (sometimes amounting to one hundred comments in a single day) to my audience, as if it that were his prerogative rather than mine.

    I for one look forward to a much less hostile political discussion going forward.

  42. Here I was thinking there was no way a Labor leadership change would eventuate before the next election and up pops Albo with a megaphone !

  43. I’m tending to the Rex Douglas view of things Pegasus, it’s probably too late for a baton change to albanese.

    For better or for worse it will be Turnbull and shorten as party leaders. A primary vote which has moved by 0.3% since the last election for labor (according to essential) suggests a very close election and probably a labor-Greens alignment as the end result.

    There would be a sweet irony if Danby losing to the Greens decided that outcome.

  44. “I will not be commenting on Bemused’s banning.” Ditto.
    “It is William’s blog and he has the right to have/ban whomever he wishes.” Agreed.

  46. Pegasus

    That means there’s little advantage in taking more policy to an election than is necessary.

    Very wise.

    The Press, however, love to have lots of meat to chew on. 🙂

  47. Confessions @ #2843 Saturday, June 23rd, 2018 – 8:35 am

    Psychologist says motivation is often more about sex than power, describes calls for teaching respect in schools “naive”

    Psychologist is saying schools should not be teaching respect? 😮

    The Australian is infested with members of the reactionary right. Let me put the premise of the article another way:

    We at the Australian, being of the reactionary right and not liking the direction that the current debate around attitudes to women in society is going, went and found a psychologist with opinions that reinforced our view of the world. Having found one, we’ve given him a prominent national platform on which he can broadcast his (our) opinions without telling our readers that his views are not generally accepted within the psychology profession or in psychology academia*.

    * I have no idea if this is true. I am projecting my political prejudices about the Australian onto an article I haven’t read.

  49. Bushfire Bill @ #2541 Saturday, June 23rd, 2018 – 11:28 am

    On Bemused…
    From a purely personal perspective, once he stopped the gratuitous sniping at me (over events long, long past) Bemused and I got along OK. Admittedly that took him years, but eventually things calmed down.

    I readily note that he didn’t stop the sniping at others, however, and that this led to his ultimate undoing.

    Given that we could probably never be “best blog buddies” ( I don’t think either of us would have wanted that anyway), and probably also through sheer exhaustion, Bemused and I reached an unspoken accommodation over the past few months, where we left each other alone, in that “best of enemies” kind of way. In my new rustic habitat and pastoral torpor, that accommodation suited me fine (and I hope him too). Call it mellowing with age but (and I never thought I would ever write these words) I will miss Bemused.

    Then, just as he and I had buried the hatchet, the idiot had to go and virtually put his neck on the chopping block and then hand William the axe.

    As the only other person here who has been part (though by no means all) of a decision-making process to ban Bemused from a blog, I can understand William’s frustration. I’ve been the subject of one of those email tirades too.

    So, my feelings are mixed about Bemused: obviously intelligent, equally belligerent, and decidedly unrepentant. He was the master of the last word, but a slave his own vivid imagination which saw enemies and slanderers evrywhere where, mostly, there were none, certainly none as dedicated and energetic as he believed they were.

    I suspect Bemused would be a good man next to you in the trenches, if only you could get him to point his rifle at the real enemy more often. Perhaps not so much in the trenches, but up a tall tree, as a sniper? In the end he fell victim to his own inability to know when he’d won the argument or, if he hadn’t actually won it (or had even lost it), to know that the argument was over anyway.

    (And yes, as someone who suffers from the same affliction at times, I can also see things from his point of view.)

    I echo Puffy’s sentiments that perhaps one day William might exercise the mercy for which he is renowned throughout the blogosphere and that Bemused might be allowed back, preferably calmer and sweeter (there is always hope).

    But then again, would he even want to return to a place where, in the end, we and our places in the world have really only ever been figments of each others’ imaginations?

    I have to agree pretty much with BB here although in my case it went in reverse – from being best blog buddies to him constantly sniping and being offensive. Eventually I blocked him, more to stop myself wasting time responding.

    However I must note that he was by no means the worst offender and there are several others whom I have blocked that I regard as much nastier and more destructive to this blog than Bemused.

    Now in Bemused’s case I am pretty sure he just not really understand how offensive he has been – William’s post amply demonstrates that – it as if unless you use a four letter word it is not offensive.

    It is wrong and it is sad. If I could argue his case I would say to William- allow him back but on STRICT instructions. No offense of any kind even trivial. If called out for offensive posts he needs to either apologize or depart the blog. His choice.

    However in fairness if he is goaded by others they too should cop some punishment. It is a bit like offering grog to a known alcoholic on the wagon. Just mean and wrong.

  50. Rex

    If you read the speech it was backing Bill Shorten no matter how the press and LNP try and spin it.

    I did not see any calls for a People’s Bank. I may have missed it. Thats a traditional left policy of the Labor party at least until Keating sold off the CommBank.

    So agree with the policies or not to say Albo is doing a megaphone on leadership is BS pure and simple

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