The diversion of Super Saturday meant I fell out of my habit of running weekly posts on the latest BludgerTrack numbers, although I have been updating them as new polls have come through. As no national polls appear likely this week, now is a good time to resume.
There have been three national polls since the last BludgerTrack post, each of which has registered some sort of improvement for the Coalition: the Ipsos poll three weeks ago had Labor’s two-party lead closing from 53-47 to 51-49, and its respondent-allocated preferences result was 50-50 (as it was in the Ipsos poll from early April); and, more modestly, last week’s Newspoll and Essential Research results both had Coalition up a point on the primary vote and Labor steady.
We also had yesterday a Western Australia only poll from YouGov Galaxy, which gratifyingly supported what BludgerTrack was saying already. On voting intention, it had the Coalition on 42%, down from 48.7% at the 2016 election; Labor on 36%, up 3.5%; the Greens on 10%, down 2.1%; and One Nation on 5%. The published two-party result is 51-49 in favour of the Coalition, which is presumably based on previous election flows, and compares with 54.7-45.3 in 2016.
Other findings of the poll: Malcolm Turnbull led Bill Shorten 47-32 as preferred prime minister; they were tied at 40% on who was most trusted to “change the distribution of GST revenue to ensure WA receives a fairer share” (which might be thought presumptuous wording, though few in WA would be likely to think so); and 36% supported and 50% opposed company tax cuts, in response to a question that specified beneficiaries would include “those with a turnover above $50 million a year”. The poll was conducted on Thursday and Friday for the Sunday Times from a sample of 831.
Together with the existing BludgerTrack reading, this poll tends to confirm that much of the air has gone out of the boom Labor was experiencing in WA polling through much of last year and this year. The BludgerTrack probability projections now have Labor likely to pick up Hasluck, but Swan and Christian Porter’s seat of Pearce are now rated as 50-50 propositions.
At the national level, recent polls have produced a movement back to the Coalition on two-party preferred, with Labor’s lead down to 51.1-48.9, its lowest level since late 2016. However, this has not availed them much on the seat projection, which actually credits Labor with a bigger majority than it achieved in 2007, when its two-party vote was 1.6% higher.
Partly this reflects continuing weakness in the Coalition’s ratings in all-important Queensland, consistent with the Longman by-election result. Labor has also made a gain in BludgerTrack against the national trend in Victoria, netting them two projected seats, which is balanced only by a one seat loss from a slightly larger movement against them in New South Wales. BludgerTrack is now registering a small swing in the Coalition’s favour in New South Wales, but thanks to adjustments for sophomore surge effects in all seats the Coalition could conceivably gain from Labor, it’s not availing them on the seat projection.
Ipsos and Newspoll both provided new results for leadership ratings, which have made a small further contribution to the existing improving trend for Malcolm Turnbull, both on net approval and preferred prime minister. Full results through the link below.
Bernard Keane tweets
The one on the left slashed ABC funding by tens of millions and sends vexatious complaints when journalists don’t toe the govt line. The one on the right used private information to arrange a public attack on someone who criticised his department.
Speaking with locals in Aston with Minister @AlanTudgeMP about the Turnbull Government’s achievements. Delivering more jobs, stronger economic growth and cheaper power prices. https://twitter.com/SenatorFifield/status/1027743518104608768/photo/1
@Meher:
“The guy is under formal investigation, with the report expected to be released in a couple of months. So how is it appropriate for all these allegations to be aired now in a trial-by-media? (Similar to Workman’s job on Husar, for which she at least had the excuse that the complainants believed that the investigation had stalled.)”
Yep. You are missing something. The investigating journalists checked, rechecked and verified their sources before publishing re: B R-S . Contra feckless Alice re Husar.
Question: Why on earth did Anne Marsden appear before Estimates. All the other clowns refused to turn up (making excuses). Couldn’t they have stonewalled until at least after the election. Her appearance was a disaster. Funnily enough, she seems to have been yanked from the limelight.
chinda63 @ #2584 Friday, August 10th, 2018 – 12:34 pm
Hungry Jacks at Southern Cross Station also has Sky News on the TVs.
Antonbruckner11@11:17am
Touche’
I keep my office life and private life completely separate.
MB
Leaping Leo Macleay was one of my first direct exposures to a politician. Totally unpleasant, where the personal and the power outweighed the policy and the practice.
Nah. I will drink with anyone. Some of my closest friends are ex colleagues.
Clients on the other hand need to be no more than acquaintances. That is something my ex-employer thought was rather old fashioned of me.
A_E: “Yep. You are missing something. The investigating journalists checked, rechecked and verified their sources before publishing re: B R-S . Contra feckless Alice re Husar.”
Yes, but why publish it now?
Perhaps I am not financially literate, but that is never something I could understand, how can a retail fund outperform a well managed industry fund.
_______________________________
What you’re not literate in is right wing neoliberal ideology, which holds as axiomatic that an operation that generates a profit for the people who run it will always be better (in every way) than one which does not. No evidence, but that ideology supports pretty much everything this government has done in terms of spending public funds by channeling them through private organisations.
sprocket_ “Leaping Leo Macleay was one of my first direct exposures to a politician. Totally unpleasant, where the personal and the power outweighed the policy and the practice.”
Leo wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist either. But my impression always was that PJK absolutely adored him, and often went out of his way to aid and protect him.
The NSW Right are a close-knit bunch, that’s for sure.
guytaur
My understanding of SkyNews (never watch it) is that it is reasonable for news weather up until 6pm and then the right wing crazies run the station.
Citizen – Malcolm Muggeridge once said something about how, if he was alive at the time of Christ, he would have spent his time gossiping with Roman centurions and Pharisees about court politics and completely ignored the Jewish peasant drawing big crowds to his sermons. Grattan would have been exactly the same.
I realise that there are some websites that need customer support, such as this one, and few begrudge that, and willingly donate.
But I am getting so tired of the ‘hard sell’ of websites that I have no interest in, but whose URLs I follow here on a whim because a poster says it is interesting or funny, who push very hard indeed for you to whitelist them on your adblocker, or donate so much per month, or turn on cookies for their site.
In your dreams, mate.
I guess it is like the SMH and the Australian and others who either don’t allow you on their site after a certain number of views per month, or don ‘t allow you on at all.
It is a first world problem, sure. And it is the last gasp for many of them, who have an unsustainable business model.
In particular, the dead trees press. They are thrashing around looking for some way out of the impasse they find themselves in. Meanwhile, we can get free news from any number of other sources. They are trying to make us pay for something we can get elsewhere for nothing.
The SMH has never got over the loss of the celebrated ‘rivers of gold’ of their classified ads section, which was a dead duck after the internet started.
In general, I expect that my net experience will be free, after I have paid my access rights to my ISP. I can’t believe I am alone in this expectation.
Advertisements can be hard coded into the page, and be undetectable by adblockers, so long as the website owners don’t want it to be specifically targeted to a particular audience – and if a significant number of the customers have turned off their cookies and so on, the targeting is pretty useless in any case.
Ooh, I actually found the quote: Malcolm Muggeridge:
“I’ve often thought that if I’d been a journalist in the Holy Land at the time of our Lord’s ministry, I should have spent my time looking into what was happening in Herod’s court. I’d be wanting to sign Salome for her exclusive memoirs, and finding out what Pilate was up to, and — I would have missed completely the most important event there ever was.”
antonbruckner11: “Malcolm Muggeridge once said something about how, if he was alive at the time of Christ, he would have spent his time gossiping with Roman centurions and Pharisees about court politics and completely ignored the Jewish peasant drawing big crowds to his sermons. ”
Anyone, if we’d been there, might well have ignored Jesus, because it’s more than likely that he never existed as anything more than a legend.
MB:
Anyone, if we’d been there, might well have ignored Jesus, because it’s more than likely that he never existed as anything more than a legend.
__________________
The Romans recorded pretty much everything, but there are no records of Jesus’ death by crucifixion, which you would expect them to note, nor even of his being a ‘rabble rouser’.
You can fool all people for some time and some people all the time but not fool all the people all the time. I have suspicion that MT thinks he can fool most people all the time even after repeated failures starting with Republic vote.
That is why he keeps saying Shorten has questions to answer and does not answer any of the questions put to him.
That is the reason he is always stunned with any election results he campaigned for.
don @ #2616 Friday, August 10th, 2018 – 1:29 pm
Well, naturally. When he rose again three days later, the responsible Romans quickly amended the records. I mean, who wants to be demoted for not even being able to crucify someone correctly?
Ven @ #2617 Friday, August 10th, 2018 – 1:31 pm
As many have now discovered, you can fool Mal as many times as you like!
Kristina Keneally
Verified account @KKeneally
6h6 hours ago
Kristina Keneally Retweeted Kristina Keneally
“Malcolm Turnbull’s office has confirmed that two of the directors of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation — the recipient of a $444 million grant from his government awarded without tender — may have been hosted at the Prime Minister’s home by wife Lucy.”
Political Alert
@political_alert
29s30 seconds ago
NSW Labor statement on the investigation into complaints against the Member for Lindsay – Ms Emma Husar #auspol
Jesus was completely unimportant during his lifetime. It was only centuries later that he became important retrospectively. And if one or two key people had been run over by … whatever the equivalent of buses were back then … in the meantime, he would have stayed unimportant forever.
You people are pretty harsh. There is not much doubt among historians that Jesus existed and was crucified. Those are about the only two facts they agree on. There were literally hundreds of itinerant preachers wandering around the Middle East in those days espousing contentious philosophies.
Grattan’s article, if it is a reprint from The Conversation this morning isn’t too bad.
It does miss Reef gate, but in the point about Turnbull attacking Husar, seems to sort of half say Turnbull has no clothes and is best to leave this alone.
She doesn’t take it to its conclusion, as Mathison did in her good article in New Daily so say Turnbull has consistently shown to lack judgement.
Given Keating made this observation a long time ago ago, you would think her articles might contain some analysis.
Also has Murphy said anything on Reef gate? All I have seen from her is articles on the NEG.
I miss the days when politics in this country had “affairs” rather than “gates”.
He was ’round these parts.
lizzie @ #2583 Friday, August 10th, 2018 – 10:34 am
I think Workman needs an appropriate lesson in what is appropriate to publish. I’d suggest publication of the following about Workman:
– Her weight;
– Details of her romantic life;
– We track down a couple of people who’ve worked with her and didn’t like her, get a few drinks into them and uncritically publish verbatum what they had to say about her, and;
– Go digging and find some incident from her past that anyone decent would consider unseemly to dredge up and publish it prominently.
She’d learn an important lesson about how she treated others.
zoid
Looks like a mixed bag. Half the complaints upheld but the worst ones dismissed. Main thing is they wouldn’t have sacked her based on the report, but it sounds like there are another two investigations to come.
Polishing a turd takes time and requires a narrow focus.
meher baba @ #2599 Friday, August 10th, 2018 – 10:59 am
Generously assuming reasonable accuracy about how the article has reported the character of Roberts-Smith while in private I’d suggest to you that he’s recently shit on the wrong person and this is the square up for that percieved/actual transgression.
The first questin I suppose that has to be grappled with is what “Jesus” is said to have existed. The historians don’t say it is the Jesus who walked on water, etc etc. So what do you have to have done to qualify as “Jesus”? How much of the biblical story must be true before you qualify?
Media outlets have no responsibility to present balanced or truthful news. The owner can have his views aired and we see Sky adopting a RW anti Labor bias more and more. Almost desperation to get MT reelected. Coalition MPs given an uninterrupted platform, not so the opposition.
I’m glad advertisers are taking the opportunity to distance themselves from Sky. Cricket sponsors pulled support after the ball tampering incident, Sky lose out for airing extreme interview.
Murdoch will be able to write something off so probably little or no tax for longer. The presenters and beneficiaries of Sky bias on the other hand, are rushing to defend ‘free speech’ that operates to their benefit.
Diogenes @ #2628 Friday, August 10th, 2018 – 1:45 pm
The only allegation that still has legs is the potential misuse of entitlements. The others may have “merit”, but do not warrant dismissal.
@Dio
Sounds like an overblown media scrum.
Workman will never apologize to Labor or Emma.
P1
True. The line about the investigation “generally favouring” the complainant’s perception of her management style being “offensive and unreasonable” isn’t a big help to her though.
Easily worse for Husar than the complainants and on its face suggests Whelan was diligent in the preparation of his report.
Diogenes @ #2635 Friday, August 10th, 2018 – 1:52 pm
Agreed. However, you could probably level a similar accusation against many MPs on all sides and it would be found to have “merit”. Procedural changes, training and counselling would probably be an appropriate response.
ABC Politics
Verified account @politicsabc
5m5 minutes ago
#BREAKING: The investigation into Labor MP Emma Husar has found there is no basis for her to resign from Federal Parliament #auspol
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/09/the-half-baked-neg-needs-more-time-in-the-oven
Good article. Would love more detail
“I’ve often thought that if I’d been a journalist in the Holy Land at the time of our Lord’s ministry, I should have spent my time looking into what was happening in Herod’s court. I’d be wanting to sign Salome for her exclusive memoirs, and finding out what Pilate was up to, and — I would have missed completely the most important event there ever was.”
A recalcitrant, subversive Jew was executed? I wasn’t a momentous event until decades later, when this event was re-packaged for a gentile audience.
Diogenes,
As an amateur, but avid, historian of the Roman Empire, I would appreciate you passing along the name of historian(s) that you have read providing evidence that Jesus existed and was crucified. My respect for your comments has been high for almost a decade, and this is a legitimate request.
There you go. All the pile on of Emma Husar looks kinda stupid now. You know who you are
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Life_of_Brian
@Victoria
Exactly.
Sounds to me like Emma Husar just had too much on her plate – I don’t know how she coped. I don’t know what the solution might have been.
S2K
🙂
AnteMeridian
“Jesus was completely unimportant during his lifetime. It was only centuries later that he became important retrospectively. And if one or two key people had been run over by … whatever the equivalent of buses were back then … in the meantime, he would have stayed unimportant forever.”
I’d mostly agree. Though I’d say that Jesus (or what he purportedly represented) became important late in the late first century AD – this was decades after his death, but long before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Under the Herodian kings and their Roman overlords, troublemakers were crucified willy-nilly in the ‘Holy Land’. There’s no reason why Jesus of Nazareth would have stood out.
I am sure I have seen the lance that killed Jesus…..
….. in at least two different locations.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/politics/nsw/emma-husar-cleared-of-lewd-behaviour-by-labor-investigation-20180810-p4zwqw.html
Emma Husar cleared of lewd behaviour by Labor investigation
By Nick O’Malley & Deborah Snow
10 August 2018 — 1:54pm
Under-fire MP Emma Husar has been exonerated of the most serious and salacious of the allegations against her, with a Labor-appointed assessor John Whelan finding that “allegations of lewd conduct in the office of a fellow member of parliament” were not supported.
He has also cleared her of allegations of sexual harassment by a former staff member, saying that these too were not supported “on the balance of probabilities.”
Mr Whelan advised senior officials of the New South Wales Labor party on Friday morning that based on his assessment, “there is no basis for Ms Husar to resign from the Australian parliament”.
Mr Whelan, who has been investigating 44 allegations of misconduct against Ms Husar lodged by former staff members, found that their complaints that Ms Husar had “subjected them to unreasonable management, including unreasonable communication, demands, practices and disciplinary methods” did have merit.”