Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

No change in voting intention from the latest Essential poll, which also finds respondents evenly split on the future of the Nauru detention centre.

The Guardian reports the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll has Labor’s two-party lead unchanged at 53-47. The poll also includes the monthly leadership ratings, which show Scott Morrison leading Bill Shorten 42-27 as preferred prime minister, out from 39-27 a month ago. We will have to wait for the full report later today to see primary votes and approval ratings. The poll also finds 40% in favour of transferring families and children on Nauru to Australia, with 39% opposed; 37% supporting the closure of the Nauru detention centre and transferring those remaining to Australia, with 42% opposed; and 35% in support of keeping them there indefinitely, with 43% opposed. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1025.

UPDATE: Full report here. Both major parties are up a point on the primary vote, the Coalition to 38% and Labor to 37%, with the Greens reverting to 10% after a spike to 12% a fortnight ago, and One Nation up two to 7% after dropping three in the last poll. Scott Morrison is up six on approval to 43% and down three on disapproval to 28%, while Bill Shorten is respectively down three to 33% and down two to 45%.

The Guardian report focused on asylum seeker questions, but the other focus for the supplementary questions this week is the media. Thirty-six per cent offered that the government had too much influence on the ABC, 16% not enough, 17% about right and 31% don’t know, with Labor and Greens voters greatly more likely to offer the first response. Forty per cent felt ABC reporting was independent and unbiased and 34% the opposite – Labor and Greens supporters weighed more heavily towards the former, with Coalition supporters evenly split.

Also featured is an occasional “trust in media” question, along with a new question identifying specific news outlets. Despite all the fuss of late, results to both follow the usual patterns: public beats commercial, broadsheet beats tabloid, news beats tabloid, and there’s nothing lower than an “internet blog”. The Australian has a slight edge over the Fairfax papers, which I would hypothesise has something to do with the latter’s move to tabloid.

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.

2,060 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

Comments Page 28 of 42
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  2. WWP
    Would you represent Tony Abbott in a legal suit against Julia Gillard? (Assuming you wouldn’t accept it just so you could throw it and lose)

  3. WeWantPaul @ #1349 Wednesday, October 10th, 2018 – 10:12 pm

    “WWP
    I’m not sure praying for GG will work. The bakery owner says he’s got the Big Guy in his corner.
    “I want to start by thanking God. He has been with us for the last four years.””

    Nah he has a fake, I have god in my corner and she is a lesbian, she tells me someone was drunk when they were writing out the bible for her and got large bits of it wrong. Then it was taken by politicians who kept adding their favourite ideas until she can’t recognise it at all. She can’t stand most of her followers and is looking for ways out of her promise not to flood the whole world again. She says technically if we do it to ourselves it isn’t on her.

    I should engage you to sue yourself for being bigoted toss pot. But, you’d probably win.

  4. WWP

    both of whom were evangelical Christians.

    There’s that word ‘evangelical’ again. There’s them and POTUS Agent Orange them and the Brazilian RWNJ and we now have our own PM evangelical. Not a good pattern forming.

  6. “So if someone comes into your cake shop and asks you to make a cake that says “This cake was made by a paedophile” then you have to make it?”

    No. I’d clearly excluded that in my examples, I will try and use little simple words for you next time. And perhaps you were at confession and missed that paedophilia is illegal, so also I had at no time indicated that a cake maker should be required to make cakes supporting crime.

    But really pretty close for ridiculously massively wrong.

    Also that old disgusting dishonest evil moving things from homosexuality to paedophilia, my god would strike you dead for that disgusting old trick, but she is busy blessing same sex marriages.

    Apparently that long passage about love was pretty close to what she wanted.

  7. Player One @ #1351 Wednesday, October 10th, 2018 – 9:15 pm

    WeWantPaul @ #1345 Wednesday, October 10th, 2018 – 10:10 pm

    They are in a job where writing the stupid things people want on cakes is part of the job.

    So if someone comes into your cake shop and asks you to make a cake that says “This cake was made by a paedophile” then you have to make it?

    I say yes.

    But if they then make it clear that your cake shop made it and imply that the words are meant as anything other than a pure jest, you can almost certainly sue them for defamation afterwards. 🙂

  8. WB:

    [‘Aunt Mavis, there isn’t one single thing in what you quoted at 9:26pm that has anything at all to do with your or his opinions.’]

    Maybe you should view posts contextually. Over a period of time, one picks up certain features of another’s posts, with me coming to the conclusion that GG deserves to be challenged from time to time; he certainly challenges others, sometimes quite aggressively. Again, my reference to the DLP and GG is entirely appropriate in my view. I really don’t comprehend where you’re coming from.

  9. I suspect WWP would almost certainly accept Abbott’s brief Dio, if it was within his area of expertise and there was merit in the claim.

    He swore an oath to do so.

  11. Yabba88
    Sorry Jimmy, you have completely lost me. We are a cross purposes. I really have no idea what you are trying to prove.

    I was talking about the teaching abilities needed for gifted students.

    Your contention was that exceptional students need exceptional teachers. My argument is that this is not necessarily the case. They certainly need to be supported and challenged, but the greatest need for exceptional and talented teachers lies with students who struggle and who generally have poorer educational outcomes.

    Anyway, I am off to bed. Good night.

  12. “Would you represent Tony Abbott in a legal suit against Julia Gillard? (Assuming you wouldn’t accept it just so you could throw it and lose)”

    I can’t remember the rules but there is a good chance there is an obligation to take the case, and in every single case you take you have an obligation to do you very best.

    I saw a lawyer get away with not doing that once, but it was a country court room and there was a full court all of whom detested the defendant. “The defendant your Worship instructs me she was completely sober when she got into the car and had only consumed a few cans of emu export while driving, she asserts the reading must be wrong your worship.”

    The defendant got a year inside and the lawyer, who should have been up before the board explaining himself, got free beers for about 6 months.

  13. I’m having posts seemingly disappear. When I try to repost it says “that’s already been posted”.

    Had this yesterday too. I’ll append the post I’m trying to send in case it doesn’t show up..

    For C@t..

    cud,
    I was in bed at 12.30am last night. Finally! Or, I think I saw the reply but I mused to myself about all the trouble we are having with the locating somewhere to dump the spoil from dredging Brisbane Water, let alone what we would do with all the stuff from a tunnel excavation!

    Also, as the tunnel advances further away from Brisbane Water, how are you going to deal with the spoil then? And will the tunnel always be 80M underground? Plus, how does Hawkesbury Sandstone cope with all this subterranean excavation? Not to mention the fact that the tunnel has to begin somewhere and have an access point for all the molemen and women that will be working on it undergorund. They don’t just magically disappear into the hole underground. And I would imagine undergrounding power that deep would cost a pretty penny. Finally, you didn’t answer my first query. What about internet access?

    Well my response early this morning was about the Gosford waterfront. Just to repeat what I said then.

    In the process of bringing high speed rail to Gosford its possible to improve the waterfront. That means sinking a section of the Central Coast highway. That’s from west of the current rail line to a point near the Mann Road intersection. It doesn’t actually go very far – its just being moved about 5 metres downwards. Along with that goes the bridge.

    What does this do for the waterfront. Well for a start it means that Gosford City park gets to continue to the waterfront. More so if Baker street is pedestrianised, that pedestrian path can also continue to meet the water rather than ending at a four lane highway.

    There is a plan to uncover the creek that used to flow through the park. Again, rather than this ending up in a concrete pipe flowing under a four lane highway, it can be restored to the original form where it flowed into Brisbane Water.

    The other thing that can be done is that instead of the existing rail line meeting the foreshore at grade, it can be raised onto a bridge so that you have continuous pedestrian access from the Gosford city waterfront right up to west Gosford.

    Now these things are not essential to bring high speed rail to Gosford, but they are easier to do as part of the same construction process and (I believe) they make it a better city. I was hoping you might agree with me on that.

    Now on the other specific questions. Brisbane water isn’t particularly deep and the rail line doesn’t actually occupy a lot of volume. To cut a long story short, the excess spoil (silt, mud etc) from there gets reprocessed and used eventually for landscaping (highways etc).

    The tunnel spoil usually ends up in construction projects but what I’d like to see it used for is rehabilitating some local disused mines. There are some major projects further afield that require millions of cubic metres of clean, crushed rock like this. And again, the most efficient method of transport is either by barge or rail. Trucks are actually an expensive way to move large masses around.

    The tunnels will be at a varying depth. Typically you aim to be at least 30m below surface. Sometimes you’re going to end up being 160m or more below the surface. You’re not attempting to follow the terrain. Rather you’re trying to build a railway with low grades.

    Tunnelling with TBM’s is actually a very automated process. Typically you’d have a dozen people underground at any one time (they work in shifts). Underground power is expensive (to your or me) but its a small part of the overall cost. You can go many Km without need a separate access so its pretty easy in a place like the Central coast to have access that’s nowhere near someone’s house.

    I didn’t actually see your question about internet access? Do you mean internet access whilst in a tunnel? Typically they install what is called a leaky feeder. Its essentially cable that acts as a very long distributed antenna. From that you can broadcast a broad range of frequencies so basically you’re creating an underground cell network. Its pretty reliable. Its done a lot in underground Sydney and its very common in other modern rail lines. You can get internet access in the Channel tunnel btw.

    Oh and to answer another implied question. Central Coast stadium stays where it is.

  16. “WeWantPaul @ #1345 Wednesday, October 10th, 2018 – 10:10 pm
    They are in a job where writing the stupid things people want on cakes is part of the job.
    So if someone comes into your cake shop and asks you to make a cake that says “This cake was made by a paedophile” then you have to make it?
    I say yes.
    But if they then make it clear that your cake shop made it and imply that the words are meant as anything other than a pure jest, you can almost certainly sue them for defamation afterwards. ”

    I like this answer better than mine, and the one true god, a lesbian, tells me she likes it better than my lame one too, she says my first answer is as if it never happened and that she’ll credit me with the much better subsequent answer.

  17. Player One @ #1352 Wednesday, October 10th, 2018 – 7:15 pm

    WeWantPaul @ #1345 Wednesday, October 10th, 2018 – 10:10 pm

    They are in a job where writing the stupid things people want on cakes is part of the job.

    So if someone comes into your cake shop and asks you to make a cake that says “This cake was made by a paedophile” then you have to make it?

    Surely you can always say you have too much work on and politiely decline. I’ve said from the get-go that this is likely to be how those businesses and contractors opposed to SSM get around having to serve gay couples.

  18. “No need. Your argument would be equally silly whether you used big words or small.”

    Well you’d have a little more credibility if you hadn’t built a ridiculous strawman and done the whole homosexual – paedophile swap move you did. It is a dishonest classless move.

  20. Doctors don’t have to treat everyone. Obviously in an emergency you do but you can refuse as long as you know the patient can be treated by someone else.

  24. “Doctors don’t have to treat everyone. Obviously in an emergency you do but you can refuse as long as you know the patient can be treated by someone else.”

    Obviously the Drs rules were as well thought out as the judgment was. Yet again lawyers much better thinkers than human mechanics.

  29. GG
    “Is that part of your Hypocritical Oath?”
    No that’s part of your Medical Defense training. If you’ve got red flags going off that the patient will be a litigious albatross who will never be happy, you don’t have to treat them.
    Some of these patients come back and kill you, literally.

  30. “No that’s part of your Medical Defense training. If you’ve got red flags going off that the patient will be a litigious albatross who will never be happy, you don’t have to treat them.”

    Money first, always money first.

    The previously secret, but shared with us tonight, first oath of human mechanics.

  32. “What if a hetero guy went in to a cake shop owned by two gay guys and asked for a cake saying “SSM is against God”?’

    No worries that is $90 dollars, and so you know, she is laughing at you, god that is, she is gay and she thinks you are a clown. Cake’ll be ready Thursday. I’ll have the full price upfront, you look like a credit risk. No no it is store policy applies to everyone who looks like a credit risk. Here is a written summary of the store policy the lawyer, Terry couple of shops up, did for me, just for troublemakers like you.

  34. It’s not money; it’s not wanting to get sued, have a chronically unhappy patient and self-preservation.
    There is an acronym for cosmetic patients who you should never treat; SIMON (single, immature, male, overly expectant, narcissistic). Two surgeons in Aust and NZ have been murdered by SIMONs.

  36. “It’s not money; it’s not wanting to get sued, have a chronically unhappy patient and self-preservation.
    There is an acronym for cosmetic patients who you should never treat; SIMON (single, immature, male, overly expectant, narcissistic). Two surgeons in Aust and NZ have been murdered by SIMONs.’

    I was just doing a joke, I will save it for Drs I know, they love the ‘human mechanic’ line, in stitches laughing I tell you, me obviously they just wait till I’m finished and will talk about something sensible.

  37. Not that I want to jinx them but Shaun and Mitch better be a bit careful or they will be available for the scorchers and the warriors all summer long.

  42. Ratsak

    Finch is challenging your prediction.

    I for one never doubted him.

    Finch won’t let me down. He’s just making sure my prediction seems even more remarkably prescient when it comes to pass.

    SMarsh also doing a good job of living up to my expectations of him. As I’ve no doubt MMarsh, Travis, Marnus and Once (and only once) Were an FC Centurion Tim will shortly be doing also. Very shortly.

  43. “So is an orthopaedic surgeon specialising in hip replacements a fitter and turner?”
    I think doing a hip replacement is very similar to many fitter and turner jobs.

  46. [‘The Evangelical Alliance’s UK director Peter Lynas has been campaigning on the issue and told Christian Today the verdict was ‘absolutely brilliant news and absolutely the right decision’.]

    Says if all really. I’m sure Morrison will be over the moon about the decision, giving him the seal of approval to legislate the discriminatory provisions of the Ruddock Review.

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