The latest fortnightly result from Essential Research has Labor maintaining its 51-49 lead, with the Coalition up one on the primary vote to 41%, Labor steady on 36%, the Greens steady on 10% and One Nation steady on 6%. Also featured are questions on best Liberal and Labor leader: the former finds Malcolm Turnbull on 28%, up four since April, with Julie Bishop down one to 16% and Tony Abbott down one to 10%; the latter has Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese tied on 19%, which is one point down since August 2017 in Shorten’s case and six points up in Albanese’s, while Tanya Plibersek is down one to 12%.
The poll also has Essential’s occasional question on attributes of the main parties, which are chiefly interesting in having the Liberals up eight points since November 2017 for having “a good team of leaders”, to 45%, and down eight on the obverse question of being “divided”, to 56%. The biggest movements for Labor are a seven point decrease for being “extreme”, to 34%; a five point decrease for being too close to corporate interests, to 37%; and a five point increase for being divided, to 56%.
The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1022; full results can be found here.
Rhwombat@8:41am
No way hosay 🙂
MB
Peter Brent’s latest:
http://insidestory.org.au/jumping-at-shadows/
Ven @ #47 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:00 am
Mm, you’d think they’d be concerned about the future of the GBR in the hands of fossil fuel company executives and bankers, but no, it was straight back to KillLabor for Pegasus and KillBill for Rex.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/31/politics/mueller-investigation-foreign-agent-referrals-new-york/index.html
Ven @ #47 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:00 am
I think that there’s a bit more to it than being in thrall to Trumble. Surely this is the kind of scandal that on the face of it, could/should bring down a government.
Yet it is being all but ignored by our fearless media. Quite extraordinary.
a r @ #50 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:04 am
It actually got my two teenage boys interested in wholesome food that didn’t come from a Maccas or KFC at a formative time in their lives 10 years ago. Now they both eat healthily and cook for themselves and the family. That’s a very good outcome in my book!
And I don’t expect anything better from RD or Pegasus.
And, right on cue, Pegasus gleefully points us in the direction of the most unreliable political forecaster and psephologist of all with his anti-Labor take on the by-elections:
If anything, Labor’s stocks have declined in recent weeks. Focusing on by-election victories won’t change that
What a tawdry piece of work you are, Pegasus.
C@tmomma @ #56 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:07 am
It is indeed. 🙂
But how did increased U.S. tarriffs on stuff from China make that happen?
adrian @ #57 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:08 am
You just have to look at her first contribution for the day to know that.
Ha, even I didn’t think the Indie schools would be that quick out of the blocks.
See Meher et al this is what you are missing with your nothing to see here meme.
Everything changed on Saturday. The only reason Trumble has clawed back a couple of percent was that the media not just went full Kill Bill, but as part of that completely papered over the massive cracks in Trumble’s facade.
The old narrative was destroyed, but the media must have a narrative so the easiest one, the one Trumble handed them, is the one they’ll go with.
And the problem for Trumble is that the underlying reality will reinforce that narrative rather than kill it. The coming unraveling of Conski, the failure of NEG, Cash’s staff facing charges, half a billion giveaways to fraud reef funds, corporate tax cuts dying in the Senate…
All of these will just reinforce the new narrative. And there’ll be plenty of voices on the right looking to help the media write new stories that fit the new narrative. Each new story reinforces the narrative and frames the following story. It will take a significant real world event to reset the narrative.
If you think Trumble isn’t going to suffer from the new narrative in the same proportion that he benefited from the old you haven’t been paying attention.
Saturday was an inflection point.
a r @ #59 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:10 am
Que? I was talking about Masterchef!?!
If you have not heard this before you should.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp4h39qJKqU
Never assume that you know the truth or what goes on behind closed doors.
The names of the US establishment feature eg Prescott Bush. NOT mentioned but probably a BIG player was Joe Kennedy, whose pro German sympathies were well known.
Remember that something similar was abroad in UK (via Edward VII. I have even read somewhere that there was fear in Australia that Monash might play the role they hoped for Smedley.
Alan Jones is no fan of Turnbull. He no doubt sought out KKeaneally to appear on his program to discuss public funds being authorised by PM to go to an obscure foundation made up of miners and bankers.
Nothing to see here.
Move along
C@tmomma @ #62 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:12 am
Ah, that makes much more sense.
My original query was directed at Ven’s comment about Trump’s proposal to increase Chinese tariffs being a good thing. Not sure if it was meant sarcastically, or with the view that doing so would make Trump even less popular (which is indeed good), or what.
rhwombat @ #32 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 8:41 am
RHW
I think that article should have had a health warning!!!!!!!!!
Umm.. After an inflection point, things keep moving in the same direction (but at a different rate).
Queensland.
https://theconversation.com/video-10-notable-trends-from-the-new-hilda-survey-100832
C@tmomma @ #31 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 8:29 am
Can I call meher baba a Concern Troll?
Adrian: Yes
Nope: if I’m anything, I’m just a troll. It’s not accurate to describe me as “concerned” (I’ve still more or less given up on both sides of politics, at least for now).
I like the irony of Brent’s piece being titled ‘Jumping at Shadows’ when it’s apparently based on ONE Newspoll.
‘Also gone missing is the fact that Bennelong saw a bigger swing to Labor last December, yet was largely perceived as a disappointment for the opposition.’
What’s gone missing is that Bennelong should never have been even a question mark for Alexander. He should have been a shoe-in. The by election was exceptional because Labor ran a very high quality candidate, something it usually wouldn’t do in a contest like that one.
‘Inevitably, some people are plotting the Longman result on the pendulum and listing the seats that would fall to the same swing. But at a modest 3.7 per cent it doesn’t make for great drama. ‘
No. It doesn’t. But Labor doesn’t need a dramatic result to win the next election – it had that at the last one. Steady as she goes will do fine.
‘There are, of course, the furious partisans who roam social media in permanent campaign mode, insisting that the Albanese leadership story was made up, Lindsay MP Emma Husar is the victim of a beat-up and it’s about time journos publicly acknowledged the beauty and magnificence that is Shorten and the Labor Party.’
Well, actually, no. What we’d like to see is these issues reported the same way similar issues in the Coalition party are reported – where, given they’re in government, scrutiny should be even more important.
You don’t have to be a furious partisan to make that observation (it helps, of course…)
‘And there are journos themselves, some of them feeling silly for having contemplated Liberal victories on Saturday. It’s not really their fault — that’s what the public polling and the “leaked” internal polling told them was possible, even likely. ‘
Er, their whole job – their whole reason for existence – is to examine the information received and sift the wheat from the chaff.
‘Common to most of the above is the apparent conviction that if the political class, especially the media, believes something to be true, that will make it so. Momentum and all that. But momentum is illusory in electoral politics…’
Yes to the first bit, but momentum is important and a thing. In this case, the media didn’t see where the momentum was going ,and that’s the criticism.
‘Before Saturday we all thought Labor would probably win the next election anyway, didn’t we? Back when the by-elections were announced, few gave the Liberal National Party any chance of taking Longman. But those subsequent polls encouraged an expectation that has now been dashed.’
And who raised and nourished these doubts?
Fair reporting of these by elections would have been similar to the reporting of the New England by election a couple of weeks in – that is, non existent.
‘The only by-election swing to a Labor government in federal history took place in Fremantle in 1994; two wo years later the Coalition was elected in a landslide. And we’re making a fuss about 3.7 per cent in Longman?’
Yes, because the media told us it wasn’t going to happen. If both the Coalition and the media had started out treating the by elections as unimportant events with inevitable conclusions, there wouldn’t be the same fuss now.
‘Meanwhile, according to the national polls, Malcolm Turnbull might actually have been doing something right politically over the last few months. He needs to be careful about jumping at by-election shadows’
Malcolm created the problem by raising false expectations. He’s the one who made it a test. That casts doubt on his judgement, if nothing else, and judgement is important in a leader.
http://insidestory.org.au/jumping-at-shadows/
If the government was competent, none of this would or should be an issue.
It’s not polls which decide what happens, it’s how politicians react to them. Polls are a hint of what people are thinking. Election outcomes actually tell us what they’re thinking.
I repeat: nervous backbenchers drive leadership changes. So the question more commentators should be examining (using the backdoors we can’t open) is how backbenchers are reacting to these results.
Pegasus: “MB
Peter Brent’s latest:
http://insidestory.org.au/jumping-at-shadows/”
He makes some good points, although I’d say he seems to rate the chances of Labor even lower than I do. My view is that the Coalition is in quite a mess and Turnbull’s personal popularity is probably all that is keeping them from falling further behind in the polls. And the destabilisation of him is starting again.
Cormann negotiated the deal with ON in WA that saw the Libs lose Government. He has been unable to negotiate the Corporate Tax cuts through the Senate. I reckon he had a hand in the play nice with Hanson by-election campaign in Longman which did not work out well for the LNP. He was also on the balcony in that infamous photo smoking cigars from the never passed 2014 Budget.
Sure he talks reassuringly and seems to know what he’s talking about.
However, his high regard as a political operator and reputation as a deliverer of outcomes seems to be exaggerated imho.
MB
Peter Lewis’ latest piece balances out Peter Brent’s latest.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2018/jul/31/bill-shorten-will-win-on-traditional-labor-values-his-popularity-is-secondary
The Canberra Times’ Stephen Holt is listed as “a Canberra writer”.
Clearly most of the writing he does is to be found on side walls down back alleys, done with a spray can.
In a way, Holt is right, but in another, he is totally bonkers. Cormann, with his Talking Point chip implant, is probably the best of the potential leaders of the liberal party. An amazing number of people find it reassuring that a nuclear bomb can’t knock him off message. But the idea of parachuting him into Wentworth is lunacy. What, for instance, if Mal said he was gonna hang around and make sure his son-in-law, Capt’n Brown, gets the gig.
Good point
Replying to @KKeneally
If there was no proposal, plan or application by the organization then the 443 million was an unsolicited gift of public monies by the PM and Frydenburg which means they believe they can just give cash away on a whim.
How does that scenario sit with the taxpayer.
Greensborough Growler @ #77 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:34 am
Penny Wong recently had some nice things to say about Corrman in the context of their dealings as Senate leaders of their parties
I regard Penny as a rare combination of a person of very high integrity who is also a highly skilled politician. I’m sure she meant every word of those comments but I’m also sure she wouldn’t have uttered them unless she was confident she had Corrman’s measure.
Victoria @ #77 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:46 am
Just fine, because the Libs are doing it so the papers and TV-commentary will tell them it’s all okay and above-board (if they don’t just ignore the story entirely).
Pegasus @ #74 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:41 am
Which was in the Dawn Patrol yesterday, iirc, or at least already linked by others previously. So, your bringing it up doesn’t really serve as balance to the other one at all, actually.
Plus, you really should read Tim Colebatch for a sober assessment of the by-elections:
http://insidestory.org.au/what-it-means-to-lose-the-political-centre/
And if The Greens were smart, they’d realise that attacking Labor, the party of the political centre, won’t get their agenda looked at favourably should Labor be the next federal government as they will remember who attacked them every step of the way there along with the Coalition.
Re Husar’s trip to the Bruno Mars concert: this allegation looks like a big load of nothing to me.
If Ms Husar can prove, as she suggests that her early departure from the joint standing committee roadshow to Brisbane didn’t add any expenses to the overall trip, then she hasn’t committed any breach of the rules as far as I can see.
There is of course the question as to whether it is reasonable for the taxpayer to fund a bunch of MPs to attend committee hearings in Queensland, and then for one of the committee members to choose not to attend one of those hearings in favour of attending a rock concert in the same state. It certainly wouldn’t be permitted behaviour for most employees in most businesses or organisations, but it was presumably agreed by the chair of the committee: possibly on the grounds that Ms Husar had organised her night at the concert well before the setting of the hearing date in Townsville. Anyway, I can’t see any breach of the rules here either.
As for the question of ministers attending sporting, cultural and other such events, that’s a different matter altogether, as they tend to be official guests, so they can argue that it is appropriate for their travel costs to be paid. I’m not at all in favour of this, but ministers from both sides have done this sort of thing over the years.
It sounds as if Ms Husar was a private guest of her friend the Chief Inspector, so there was no official duties involved in attending the concert. And the meetings the next day sound legitimate.
So move along, nothing to see here IMO.
Z,
An important factor is that Labor start the campaign with nominally 3 additional seats to take them to 72. 5 Independents and 74 for the LNP in the new enlarged Parliament
As you say, a steady improvement gets Labor to victory.
Brent also alludes to popularity metrics to rationalise his position which Lewis derides as meaningless.
I’d also refer Brent to Tim Colebatch’s analysis of average by-election swings which I posted yesterday.
The outtake from Longman is that the LNP received less than 30% of the vote. A loot of that vote went to ON. But a decent portion went to Labor. If that trend is maintained Labor could win the next election in Queensland alone.
Realistically, Labour was on or close to 53% 2PP earlier this year, as attested by multiple polls. Now it seems to be on 51%, again as attested by multiple polls. OK, the margin of error on this latest poll is 3%, that on all the others was 2-3% depending upon the sample size (about 1,000 to 2,000), but even so, the evidence of a decline from about 53 to about 51 seems inescapable, much as I wish it were 55 or 57. I am sure the hard heads in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms on both sides are well aware of this.
(Hides).
Victoria @ #81 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:46 am
It also plays perfectly into Bill Shorten’s campaign about Turnbull having an unstoppable urge to give money away to the top end of town.
anton,
After Mayo, Dynasties like the Dinosaurs are extinct.
Here is interview KKeneally with Alan Jones
https://www.2gb.com/turnbull-asked-to-explain-half-a-billion-dollar-handout-to-great-barrier-reef-foundation/
Peg: “Peter Lewis’ latest piece balances out Peter Brent’s latest.”
I thought Peter Lewis was letting his heart rule his head a bit. Elections are rarely if ever won on the basis of an opposition having more attractive policies.
Hewson lost the 1993 election on the basis of having less attractive policies. And I think Labor was basically stuffed in 2013 by the legacy of Gillard’s carbon tax: not so much because voters hated the policy, but that they hated the idea that they had been lied to.
Labor’s chance in the next election is there courtesy of the continuing instability of the Turnbull Government. If the Turnbull Government was united and in control, all the attractive policies, fairness, etc. in the world wouldn’t get Labor across the line IMO.
Ven
Worth your while to listen to interview I linked above.
Gobsmacking stuff
Ante Meridian @ #65 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 9:17 am
Not always!!!!!!!!!. Some inflection points are maxima or minima.
PS: However, I do agree with Lewis that Shorten’s relative unpopularity isn’t a significant factor. I do believe that Turnbull’s popularity is helping the Libs a bit, and they’d be in far more trouble if not for that.
ajm,
Probably.
A couple of times when the Wongster has spat the dummy at him he’s responded like a delinquent puppy looking for love and a tummy rub.
GG, Dinosaurs or Downersaurs?
[Re Husar’s trip to the Bruno Mars concert: this allegation looks like a big load of nothing to me.
Other than revealing a lack of taste in music.
DaretoTread,
It’s been yonks since I studied Maths, and I wasn’t great at it at the time, and so I’m relying on Wikipedia to confirm my dim memories, but …
My understanding is that a tangent can’t cross its curve at a maximum or minimum, so those can’t be inflection points.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection_point
Umm.. After an inflection point, things keep moving in the same direction (but at a different rate).
Thank you maths pedant. 😉
I will contend that the polling curve was concave (downward) for Labor (as per bludgertrack) and after Saturday will inflect to a convex (downward) curve. The direction of the curve may still indeed be down and the turning point may be still to come, but the tangent has crossed the curve and a bottoming out with a rising curve to follow is inevitable quite soon. 😛
Thanks for the audio of the Jones’ interview Victoria.
Quite extraordinary.
@sproket;
I noted that comment from Peter Lewis (Essential) as well.
The thing a lot of people dont see with Labors 2PP result is that they arent playing ‘small target’ politics, quite the opposite.
The fact that Labor has a progressive policy, means they should do better against the Greens this election as well.
Labor has a broad policy range, which can be hard to do, but it seems to be working, if Labor was seriously worried about the election, they would likely be narrowing their agenda, making compromises, etc.
On the leadership ratings, it is a bit disappointing, but keep in mind he has been leader 5 years, and i expect there is some psychological bias influencing peoples decision on preferred PM because Turnbull has such a commanding lead within his own party.
They may not know if they prefer Turnbull or Shorten as PM, in a theoretical scenario. But they definitely prefer Turnbull as PM, because in practice they know the alternatives are much worse because Labor arent the government. So if in doubt they go with popular leader of current government.
This Husar hooha seem like a media/Lib attempt to divert attention from Mal’s dodgy $443 million.
Shellbell @ #93 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 10:10 am
Maybe she was doing it for the kids? 🙂
Ratsak
Maybe you can draw that for us?