Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

Both parties up on the primary vote in the latest Essential poll, which concurs with Newspoll in finding Malcolm Turnbull’s personal ratings edging upwards and Bill Shorten’s edging down.

The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll has Labor’s two-party lead unchanged at 52-48, and The Guardian report provides full primary votes for a change: both major parties are up two, the Coalition to 40% and Labor to 37%, with the Greens steady on 11% and One Nation down one to 6%, with the “others” vote presumably well down. Also featured are Essential’s monthly leadership ratings, which tell a remarkably similar story to Newspoll: Malcolm Turnbull’s approval is up one to 43%, his best result since March 2016, and his disapproval is down two to 40%, his best since the eve of the July 2016 election; while Bill Shorten is respectively down two to 31% and up one to 47%. Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister is out to 42-25, compared with 41-27 last time.

The Essential poll also finds only 15% of respondents expect the government’s national energy guarantee will reduce power prices, compared with 22% for increasing them (down nine since the same question was asked last October) and 38% for making no difference (up seven). The government’s proposed tax cuts for big companies have 41% support, up four on a month or so ago, with 36% opposed, down one. Further on company tax cuts, The Australian has a comprehensive set of further results from the weekend’s Newspoll, which find respondents tending to be persuaded that the cuts will be good for employment (50% responded cuts would create more jobs versus 36% who said they would not, and 43% believed repealing them would put jobs at risk versus 37% saying they would not), yet 52% supported Bill Shorten saying cuts for businesses with $10 million to $50 million turnover would be repeated if won office, versus only 37% opposed.

UPDATE: Full report from Essential Research 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.

2,074 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  2. lizzie,

    HRH Terry Australis
    ‏ 17h

    ” IT’S NOT A DROUGHT, IT’S A HUGE DAM ” SOLD OUT. Cubbie Station has been allowed to DAM the Culgoa River, diverting water into a 538,800 ML DAM with 4 Meter High Walls, next to the Culgoa River. Cubbie Station can take 200,000 ML, up to 500,000ML #auspol #MurrayDarling

    That’s appalling.

    Do you know if the dam on the Culgoa will be in NSW or Qld?

  4. adrian @ #85 Tuesday, July 3rd, 2018 – 7:32 am

    What about the media organisations that have given him a venue to repeat these statements, such as the ABC?

    The ABCs defence will probably be that the interviewer not only disparaged what he said, they also gave him an opportunity to apologise and make amends.

    SkyFoxNews doesn’t have that defence despite them apologising for it, and neither Dickhead Dean nor Craphead Cameron has any defence as they didn’t call him out on it at the time, nor have they apologised (yet).

    #NotALawyerjustmy2cents

  5. Of course ACT would be the choice of courts for federal polotitions. Most things are local or state based and the event would most likely happen in the ACT

  7. lizzie: “” IT’S NOT A DROUGHT, IT’S A HUGE DAM ” SOLD OUT. Cubbie Station has been allowed to DAM the Culgoa River, diverting water into a 538,800 ML DAM with 4 Meter High Walls, next to the Culgoa River. Cubbie Station can take 200,000 ML, up to 500,000ML #auspol #MurrayDarling”

    Cubbie’s water-carrying capacity isn’t news. Cotton farms generally operate by taking a lot of water during high rainfall periods and nothing at all during droughts. In theory this is actually better than fruit-growers and dairy farmers who to take need the same amount of water every year regardless of the river conditions.

    The key issue is whether or not there have been any abuses: ie, has Cubbie been sucking up large amounts of water when there’s little available? There have been plenty of accusations against other growers lately (http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/pumped/8727826), but I haven’t heard any against Cubbie.

    They tend to attract a lot of attention because of their size and because they are now owned by Chinese interests. But I’ve never been sure that this is entirely fair.

  9. There must be some mutual recognition law which allows a NSW Magistrate to order someone to be detained in their home in SA.

  10. Is it just me but does it look like when Leyonhjelm was circumcised they did the wrong part of his body to anyone else? Yeah I know that comment aint pc…..

  12. meher baba @ #136 Tuesday, July 3rd, 2018 – 10:40 am

    C@tmomma: “To give you the full picture, the question was asked of Mr Shorten by one of the journalists for the local paper which only comes out once a week. And I’m not even sure they will see fit to publish it as the issue will likely have blown over in the 24/7 news cycle by then and it has no local relevance. But it did happen.”

    He can hardly be said to have taken a strong public position on the issue, and neither has Turnbull.

    Julie Bishop, Catherine King and even Tony Abbott have come out and made strong comments.

    I guess the party leaders feel that they have to remain in a position to be able to work with Leyonhjelm in the Senate, and that dumping on him too heavily wouldn’t help that situation.

    What don’t you get about the fact that Catherine King would have had her LEADER’S imprimatur to make her statement to the media, PLUS, the leader of the Labor Party yesterday made a public statement to the media, ALL the media who were present, in support of S H_Y and condemning Leyonhjelm!?!

    That is NOT shying away from it!

  14. The major river system of the world’s driest inhabited continent somehow sustains this thirsty cash crop – the WWF estimates that 2,700 litres of water can be used to produce a single cotton T-shirt. Australian conditions have pushed local farmers to become the most efficient in the game, using hi-tech innovations to improve water productivity by more than 40% in a decade.

    Water-smart farming: how hydroponics and drip irrigation are feeding Australia
    Read more
    Yet critics note that saved water is simply reinvested in producing ever-more cotton, rather than released back into a once-mighty river network crippled by increasingly erratic rainfall since the turn of the millennium.
    …
    An Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner, Jonathan La Nauze, is more interested in another area of CSIRO work – the agency’s climate change research, which forecasts a dramatic rise in extreme weather events such as droughts and heatwaves, and a sharp drop in winter and spring rainfall across southern Australia.

    “We’re already the driest part of the world and water use is a key concern – cotton uses a hell of a lot of it,” he says.

    “Growers are aggressively trying to increase amount they can take rather than accept the current amount as the upper limit. We saw the Darling river stop flowing for months this year – extraordinary and avoidable.”

    “The impacts on native fish and water birds have been severe, and significant opportunities to improve downstream communities have been missed – and that’s before factoring in the CSIRO’s global warming scenarios of a reduction of water availability in the northern basin.”

    La Nauze welcomes Cotton Australia’s measures to improve water efficiency but says it isn’t much help to the environment if the saved water doesn’t get shared around. “The dividend should be a long-term sustainable river system – if you kill that system, you won’t have an industry,” he says.

    https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/may/01/can-csiro-wwf-and-technology-fix-the-australian-cotton-industry

  15. In theory this is actually better than fruit-growers and dairy farmers who to take need the same amount of water every year regardless of the river conditions.

    Sorry, which theory is that, MB?

    Clearly it is not the one in which periodic large rainfalls in SW Qld and NW NSW flush the entire western MDB.

    Nor is it not the one that accounts for massive evaporative losses from using broad, shallow dams to hold water in one of the hottest and driest parts of the country.

    Nor is it the one that allows dairy farmers to destock or move their herd around, or for fruit and nut growers to reduce their yields but keep their trees alive, and to draw water from deeper dams in moister parts of the country.

    You say Cubbie hasn’t broken any rules. Perhaps it’s the rules that are broken?

  16. ESJ:

    “Will be interesting if SHY actually sues. It has the potential to be an Oscar Wilde style litigation outcome.”

    What fresh idiocy is THAT comment Eddie? Are saying that if it turns out that SHY is a mad shagger that that in some way legitimises what L said?

    WTF dude. It’s fracking 2018, not 1918, FFS!

  18. If there is litigation, SHY’s personal lifestyle will not be an issue. It’s hard to see how truth could be a defence as the defamatory statement was not in the public interest. If Leyonjhelm tried to go down that route he would just be jacking up the damages. What will be interesting is whether she bothers to sue Fox and, if she does, they will try to pick up the tab for Leyonjhelm. That would be difficult because it would be, effectively, a political donation. Further, they have tried to apologise. He hasn’t bothered.

  21. AE – 1895 – I think. I’ve been dipping into a book called Oscar Wilde – The Unrepentant Years. Very interesting. He spent two years in gaol. In those days, gaol was designed to break the spirit. No thought of rehabilitation. His first year was absolutely horrific. He went very close to suicide, if he could have managed. It only got better during his second year.

  23. Nasty letters from lawyers and actual writs are two very different things. I’d say both are locked into position now. If either backs down their credibility is shot.

    Shy if she doesn’t sue and L if he backs down.

  25. Andrew_Earlwood @ #166 Tuesday, July 3rd, 2018 – 11:15 am

    What fresh idiocy is THAT comment Eddie? Are saying that if it turns out that SHY is a mad shagger that that in some way legitimises what L said?

    In terms of legally defending oneself against claims of defamation, yes, it absolutely does:

    It is a defence to the publication of defamatory matter if the defendant proves that the defamatory imputations carried by the matter of which the plaintiff complains are substantially true.

    So it does have the potential to become a circus, should Hinch go that route (and if he has or can fabricate any evidence to back up his claim). The onus would be on Hinch to prove that SHY is a “mad shagger”.

    antonbruckner11 @ #168 Tuesday, July 3rd, 2018 – 11:21 am

    It’s hard to see how truth could be a defence as the defamatory statement was not in the public interest.

    ‘Truth’ and ‘public interest‘ are two separate and independent lines of defense. Your defamatory statements don’t need to be in the public interest if they’re true.

  27. AR – I could be wrong, but you’d better check that. The defo act, as I understand it, is intended to stop prying into private matters. That is why truth is only a defence if the statement is in the public interest.

  31. A few stages normally:

    (a) first, are the asserted imputations defamatory – answer yes;
    (b) second, are there any defences – Leyonjhelm is extremely unlikely to be capable of getting evidence to support a truth defence – he will probably represent himself and bullshit away on freedom of political communication

  32. Shellbell @ #130 Tuesday, July 3rd, 2018 – 10:38 am

    I wonder if she will kick off proceedings in Federal Court (no juries) or the Supreme Court of ACT.

    Presumably L has some implied free speech over political communications idea running in his wee little cranium.

    …particularly when he’s thinking (as I suspect he usually does) with his little wee cranium.

    “I say, verily, unto thee, didst not Dog give unto mankind two crania, but only the heart to sustain one? Therefore, render unto Rupert that which is Rupert’s, and unto Faux News those things that are unclean in the eyes of the Dog”

    Paul’s letter to the Onanists Ch 2v3 (revised KRV)

  33. I’ve been taking a bit of a break from PB. Still lurking, but not posting.

    However, I am making an exception now.

    ESJ, stop.

    If a woman is subject to abuse of any kind, she is under no obligation to go through a very public court case if she does not want to. It is a matter for each person in that situation to decide if a court case would be right for them. You will not shame or judge any person for their decision.

    The woman in question does not lose credibility if she does not wish to go ahead with the court case.

    Her not going ahead with the court case does not excuse the behavior of the man, or assign any form of guilt or responsibility to the woman.

    In the SHY situation, her not going ahead with the court case would not make the allegations true, would not make the allegations appropriate if they were true (for the two equally important reasons that lyejonhelm has no business commenting, and a woman has no need to feel ashamed of enjoying sex).

    Your earlier post, where you encouraged SHY to stay silent about abuse, because calling out her abuser would backfire as she might be revealed to be a slut in a court case was equally terrible, for a bunch of reasons that I hope are obvious to you.

  35. lizzie

    The point is the nature of the water used.

    In a time of drought, cotton takes no water – but irrigation for the purposes of growing fruit crops continues, because it has to, or the fruit trees die.

    Incidentally, this is why NSW grows crops such as cotton and Victoria doesn’t; NSWs water market allows for a zero allocation in years of water scarcity, Victoria’s guarantees a certain amount.

    So, in a drought, a cotton farm (growing nothing) is making less of an environmental impact than a Shepparton orchard.

    If we enter a period of permanent water shortages, the cotton industry will vanish, but we’ll still be churning out apples, pears, grapes etc using irrigated water, and the river system will continue to suffer.

  36. Wilson sentencing…
    This defies logic..
    Given Wilson’s conviction.
    “In a landmark decision that could have wide-reaching implications for other high-ranking clergy members, Magistrate Robert Stone found Archbishop Wilson had been told by a 15-year-old boy in 1976 that he had been indecently assaulted by notorious Hunter paedophile priest Father James Fletcher, but chose not to go to the authorities despite believing the allegations were true.”

    And today’s sentencing ..
    “However, defence barrister, Ian Temby, QC, had urged Mr Stone to convict Wilson but place him on a good behaviour bond, saying he should be spared a jail term due to his ailing mental health and the risk he would be seriously assaulted behind bars.”

    Stone has chosen 12 months home detention for what amounts to Wilson’s criminal negligence ( complicity even) that resulted in child abuse by a priest…
    The justice system truly sucks!

  37. For Peg: sky just showed clip of Shorten again, today, reiterating his disgust at SHY’s treatment by Leyonhjelm. Satisfied?

    ABC probably didn’t play at all since Shorten’s presser occurred same time as Turbull’s so they, indubitably, played Turnbull’s self-serving discussion with a ‘businessman who hates Labor’

  38. ‘jenauthor says:
    Tuesday, July 3, 2018 at 11:44 am

    For Peg: sky just showed clip of Shorten again, today, reiterating his disgust at SHY’s treatment by Leyonhjelm. Satisfied?’

    Of course not! That is merely a signal not to apologize for verballing Shorten, but to move right along to the next bit of Labor bashing.

  39. I’ve appreciated Meher’s contributions this morning, especially his long post at 7:50am (I think).

    However, I don’t think Bill and Labor are consciously running a ‘class warfare’ campaign at all, but there are being remorseless portraited as such by the CPG and the MSM. In the last few days I witnessed the talking bobble heads that are the newsreaders on each of the three commercial TV stations AND the ABC repeat that claim as fact.

    I think Labor are very conscious of the tactic to paint themselves as class warriors and anti-aspirational and are well aware of the risk of saying ‘no’ to the most outrageous of the Governemnt’s tax cuts poses, given the unity ticket between big business donors (who will pay for millions of propaganda ads in the GE campaign), the LNP and a compliant, indeed actively participating MSM. I think that risk assessment was at the heart of the Shorten backdown last week. From what I can glean from my own sources in the FPLP at conference over the weekend Bill was looking for a way out as much as he was pushed into the backdown on Friday.

    That said, I don’t think Meher is necessarily right – or at least totally right – in his analysis of why Labor has adopted the tactics it has thus far. Without being an exhaustive explaination I think the tactics form part of a long term strategy to not only win government, but provide a solid foundation for a long term government: By projecting that it will tackle the most egregious of the tax concessions etc racket and will not be drawn into a tax auction where the only winners are the already super wealthy it has set itself up to be credible when promising the kind of things that people who either vote labor or may consider voting labor (if they are swinging voters) expect from a Labor team.

    So far the Labor war-chest stands at about $400 billion over 10 years. That’s the equivalent to about 2% of GNP each year, or about 8-10% of government outlays. I get the impression that Bill and his economic team think that the job of those revenue saves is largely done and its time to switch to selling labor’s positive policies whilst focusing lazer like on the soft underbelly of the LNPs trickle down tax approach – the windfall to the Big Banks and huge multinationals and personal tax cuts of $7,000 pa to everybody on incomes above $200K pa. I am confirmed in that view by Bill’s speech to NSW Conference on Sunday – the $6.3 billion infrastructure expenditure promises are particularly well targeted. … and there is potentially another $300 billion of similar promises that Labor can afford still to come.

    In sum, Labor can say to both its base and the swinging voters in the middle that Labor’s tax policy is as good or better than the LNP’s in terms of their own Household Budgets AND can win those voters over with the massive rollouts in Government services and programs that those voters love and expect a Labor Government to provide.

    Of course, Labor will not get any help from the MSM in selling this message. But we expect that. Hopefully, while the CPG goes bananas poverty Leadershit Labor’s campaign network – social media, door knocking, Town Hall meetings etc does the job that it has trained so hard and long for.

    With the 2PP seemingly stuck between 51-53 to Labor I think its still all to play for. However, I think that many Libs and Liberal leaning voters have gotten over the great disappointment of Magnificence Mal – his Shambles of a Governemnt has somehow managed to shamble its way though most of its contentious policy initiates intact. There has been a modest recovery in the LNP primary vote, but the 2PP vote is still proving tricky. The view of at least one senior frontbencher in the FPLP I spoke at length to at conference was that Malcolm is waiting for the mid year accounts to show that the budget is already back in surplus and for ScoMo to do a quick mid term economic statement in March next year claiming vindication for the Governemnt’s approach before running off to the GG for a snap April/May election as soon as the NSW Election is done. We shall see.

    The upcoming election could still prove the equivalent of the 2001 election, with a budget in balance replacing Tampa and 9/11 as Labor’s Black Swan. However, if the budget is already in surplus the punters might be more comfortable in accepting Labor’s Spending Program. again, we shall see.

  40. Thanks zoomster. I probably shouldn’t have started an argument about this issue, but, while I probably think Cubbie has been allocated a bit too much water over the years, I think it gets a lot of unfair criticism: particularly from pollies in SA and Victoria where the irrigation systems are less spectacular-looking, but arguably more damaging to the environment.

    I’m of the view that we need to continue to have an agricultural sector in this country, and that this in turn requires irrigation. We do need to have some sort of economically-sustainable productive private industry in this country apart from mining.

  41. jenauthor,

    Thank you for informing me. Will seek it out.

    Public pressure reached a point where neither major party leader could stay silent about the matter.

  43. Still no apology from Pegasus yet on behalf of the grubby Greens for the slur against Bill Shorten here today.

    Boerwar @ #188 Tuesday, July 3rd, 2018 – 11:50 am

    ‘jenauthor says:
    Tuesday, July 3, 2018 at 11:44 am

    For Peg: sky just showed clip of Shorten again, today, reiterating his disgust at SHY’s treatment by Leyonhjelm. Satisfied?’

    Of course not! That is merely a signal not to apologize for verballing Shorten, but to move right along to the next bit of Labor bashing.

    Yep. That’s exactly what has happened. Just a mealy-mouthed hat tip to jenauthor.

  44. I like the way the noted Freedom(TM) warriors on Sky both ran to make an apology at the first whiff of legal buckshot. Cowards both.

  45. Anton:

    “AR – I could be wrong, but you’d better check that. The defo act, as I understand it, is intended to stop prying into private matters. That is why truth is only a defence if the statement is in the public interest.”

    You are on the right track.

  46. Pegasus
    Tuesday, July 3rd, 2018 – 11:52 am
    Comment #191
    jenauthor,

    Thank you for informing me. Will seek it out.

    No doubt so she can assess how genuine Bill’s statement was.

    🙄

  47. THE major problem with Cubbie (and with others) is that harvesting cross country flows on the flood plain (as opposed to pumping water directly out of rivers) was not counted as an allocation under the MDB Plan. It is ‘free’.

    Even supposing the system is correctly allocated the other major problem is that trends in evaporation are up and trends in rainfall are down.


  50. THE major problem with Cubbie (and with others) is that harvesting cross country flows on the flood plain (as opposed to pumping water directly out of rivers) was not counted as an allocation under the MDB Plan. It is ‘free’.

    Yep. Relevant definition of environmental flows applies only to water in the rivers. It’s just a pity that the Culgoa only drops 80 metres over its 500km length, so most flood waters flow overland.

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