Essential Research: 54-46 to Labor

Reasonably good personal ratings are the only consolation Scott Morrison can take from another diabolical poll result.

The Guardian reports the Coalition’s recovery in Essential Research a fortnight ago has proved shortlived – Labor has gained two points on two-party preferred to lead 54-46, returning to where they were the poll before last. Both major parties are up on the primary vote, Labor by four points to 39% and the Coalition by one to 38%. We will have to wait on the full report later today for the minor parties. The monthly personal ratings have Scott Morrison up one on approval to 42% and down three on disapproval to 34%, while Bill Shorten is down three to 35% and down one to 43%. Morrison leads 40-29 as preferred prime minister, barely changed on 41-29 last time.

Also featured are questions on Labor’s dividend imputation policies and negative gearing policies. The former had the support of 39% and the opposition of 30%. On restricting negative gearing to new homes, 24% said it would reduce house prices; 21% said it would increase them; and 27% believed it would make no difference. Thirty-seven per cent believed it would lead to higher rents, 14% to lower rents and 24% make no difference. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1032.

UPDATE: Full report here. Greens down one to 10%, One Nation down one to 6%.

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.

2,545 comments on “Essential Research: 54-46 to Labor”

Comments Page 9 of 51
1 … 8 9 10 … 51

  1. Of course the Indonesians would not dream of invading Australia while Australia has responsible governments looking after our defence.
    It would only be if Greens insanity became Australian defence BAU that the Indonesians might just say to themselves, ‘320 million and growing rapidly, massive loss of low lying land through rising sea levels, massive loss of rice productivity due to increases in temperatures… we’ll just walk in and we’ll have that.’

  2. The Olympic Dam mine “uses 35 million litres of Great Artesian Basin water each day”. It is a menace to the environment. Shut it down.

  5. Heads up!

    Penny Wong and Mathias Cormann are both back in the Senate chamber.

    Given the amount of business they both have to attend to, they usually skip the motions to take note of answers.

    So the fact they are both in the chamber means shiz is about to get real on the religious discrimination bill.

  6. Scott Morrison will not act to keep Liberal senator Jim Molan in parliament, despite intervening to save backbench MP Craig Kelly yesterday.

    “This afternoon, I have been told that I can expect no special intervention from the Prime Minister regarding the order on the Senate ballot,” Senator Molan said in a statement today.

    “I will continue to work hard for veterans, national security, and the people of Australia.

    “I intend to run as a Liberal in the next election so that those that support me can vote for a Liberal from a conservative base.”

  7. Burgey @ #392 Tuesday, December 4th, 2018 – 3:32 pm

    Look, can I just say on behalf of those of us who reside in the sensible centre and are therefore Labor supporters, just ignore the Greens and they’ll go away. They’ve been around since, what, the 1970s, and have grown steadily to a position of one HORs member in that time. They are not, and never will be, a Party of government. They are a hodge-podge of idealistic protest movements who at once want to play politics with real people, then cry foul as soon as they’re subjected to a sliver of the scrutiny the major Parties are subjected to n a daily basis.

    Just ignore them and they’ll go away, because they’ll never appeal to anything like the majority of Australian voters.

    The ‘sensible centre’ loves neo-liberal bastardry such as the attack on migrants welfare last night.

  8. My guess is that the when the Greens shut down Olympic Dam they will retrain the workers and give the workers a UBI/UJG slot doing coffee waitpersons in Inner Leafy Melbourne.
    But I am not sure that even the wealthy inner urban Greens will be able to drink the coffee poured by 10,000 erstwhile miners.

  10. “Labor is unlikely to get 19 LC seats. The VEC has an infuriating habit of removing votes from the count when they’re being rechecked, making the calculators misleading.

    Most likely Labor will get 17, although a couple more are possible, or even one less (or fewer, if you prefer).”

    Actually, most likely Labor will get 18. They are more likely to get 19 than 17. There is no chance they’ll get 16.

    Bottom line is they’ll have a host of progressives and centrist cross benchers to get legislation through

  11. I assume that the Greens would do the same for the 10,000 cotton industry workers: retrain them as UBI/UJG coffee pourers for Inner Urban Wealthy Greens.
    My view is that the UJG coffee pourers should go Gilet Jaune and not pour coffee for any Inner Urban Wealthy Greens wearing any item of cotton clothing. Because it would all be sourced from o/s GMO cotton crops.

  12. BTW, any Bludger who is in full employment would be very interested to know that the Greens are going to share your work with anyone who is unemployed.
    Yep. No-one in full time employment now is going to keep their hours up.
    The line in the Greens Employment Policy is a bit opaque, but then so are many of the lines of the Greens policies.
    But it is there.
    And I do wish the Greens would stop calling for Aung Sung Suu Kyi’s release from prison!

  13. Queensland is waking up to global warming.
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/04/bushfires-tropics-queensland-terrifying-new-reality-cyclones-flooding

    “They’re always intense, but now you’re getting punished for days and days. Instead of a heatwave lasting one day, heatwaves are lasting four days or longer,” Gray says.

    “Climate change is having an impact on firefighting. There’s scientific data to back it up, but I like to think that because we are on the coal face that people are a little bit more aware of just how things have actually changed.”

    …and so on.

  14. From Gareth Hutchens in The Guardian re the Reserve Bank leaving Interest Rates on hold at 1.5%:

    The Reserve Bank has kept the official cash rate unchanged at 1.5%, again.

    The cash rate has been sitting at the same level since 3 August 2016.

    To put that in perspective, the 2016 federal election (which Malcolm Turnbull helped to win for the federal Coalition with a personal $1.75m donation) was in July 2016.

    The Reserve Bank says forces emanating from the global economy are mixed.

    There are signs of a slowdown in global trade, partly stemming from ongoing trade tensions (read: US-China trade war), and growth in China has slowed a little, with Chinese authorities paying close attention to risks in their financial sector.

    In Australia, business conditions are currently positive and higher levels of public infrastructure are supporting the economy, as is growth in resource exports.

    However, wages are not growing much, household debt levels are high and house prices have declined. It means the outlook for household consumption is uncertain.

    The RBA says the outlook for Australia’s labour market remains “positive” with the unemployment rate at 5%, the lowest in six years. Unemployment is expected to continue falling in coming years. The ongoing improvement in the economy is also likely to see wages pick up eventually, though the process will be slow.

    However, conditions in the housing markets in Sydney and Melbourne are continuing to “ease”, and nationwide measures of rent inflation remain low. Borrowers are finding it harder to secure credit from banks, with some lenders having a “reduced appetite to lend.” The demand for credit by investors in the housing market has slowed “noticeably.” And growth in credit to owner-occupiers has slowed to an annual 5-6%.

    Mortgage rates remain low, and banks are competing for borrowers with higher grade credit.

    Economists say it appears as though the RBA is becoming increasingly cautious, particularly due to conditions in the housing market.

    It means interest rates may not rise for another two years at least, and they may well have to drop at some stage, if circumstances demand it.

    Keep all this in mind when Frydenburg delivers his Economic Statement tomorrow. No doubt he will gild a few lilies.

  16. Yes, I’ll never forget the ad for ‘Vegan shoes’. They were made out of plastic! Platics are, of course, made out of polymerised hydrocarbons. The majority of which are sourced from fossil fuels. 😆

  17. LR

    ‘Instead of a heatwave lasting one day, heatwaves are lasting four days or longer,” Gray says.’

    I had always thought that a stinking hot day is a stinking hot day and that a heatwave is a string of stinking hot days one after the other.

  20. Cud Chewer @ #413 Tuesday, December 4th, 2018 – 3:59 pm

    C@t that presumes Labor me-toos it.

    Can’t see why they wouldn’t give a tick to a study for HSR. They’ve certainly been out and about promoting other Public Transport Rail projects.

    Especially considering the fact that the Conservatives have figured out that funding large scale infrastructure projects keeps a lot of people in work and happy to vote for you as a result.

  22. @Boerwar:

    “The Greens want Australia to have the same air force, navy and army we had when the Japanese invaded Australian territory: no fighter planes; no heavy bombers; no tanks; no heavy artillery; no air defences and no submarines.
    For a significant period of time the only defence of Australia was mounted by Dutch submarines based in Fremantle. In the early months of the Defence of Australia these boats sank more Japanese tonnage than the British, US and Australian navies combined.
    The Australian soldiers who fought in New Guinea wore exactly what the Greens want. They were ill-equipped, out-numbered and ill-trained. They died miserably.
    Darwin was flattened, being bombed fifty times.
    In the Greens vision splendid, other Aussies do the dying.”

    I’m left scratching my head over that analogy frankly.

    By December 1941 Australia, like the other dominion countries of the British Empire had been on a total war footing for well over two years. However, Australia, like Britain and America were unprepared for Japan initiating a new war, even though it was obviously ‘on the cards’ as a realistic possibility for many years.

    This shared failure does not appear to be one of a lack of commitment to resourcing a war (except for perhaps America that had stayed out of the direct entanglement in the Europe conflict).

    Rather the failure was one of strategic thinking, especially by conservative Australian governments who followed Churchill’s ‘Europe first’ approach with its deployed of the Second AIF, which had morphed into the North Africa campaign by mid 1941. The Singapore defenses were a complete cock up, although one wonders what might have been if Brudenal White didn’t die in the Canberra Air Disaster in 1940.

    In short, the Australian Government between 1939-41 showed the correct resolve to prosecute a war, just the wrong one. They simply blinded themselves to the source of the likely direct threat to the homeland and the immediate sphere of our influence. Further, to the extent that military thinkers were aware of the threat they simply misunderstood and underestimated Japanese maritime war doctrine: without a concerted effort to build a dozen or so aircraft carriers and requisite support ships and submarines from the late 1930s Australia would have remained impotent no matter how many military resources were re-deployed from Europe-North Africa. Indeed, if Australia possessed a large, mobile army-navy-airforce, at home (but without aircraft carriers) it seems likely that it would have made Australia a more important target for the Japanese to deal with as a first order priority, because they would not want THAT threat to potentially outflank them as they dealt with South East Asia.

    I just don’t get your comparison with the Greens defence policy of today, which seems to be based on adopting a ‘small target’ lessening the external threats, alla NZ. This is just not same-same.

  24. Think about this Greens’ policy for a moment. They hid it at the end.

    17. Government to ensure the equitable distribution of paid work among those who wish to engage in the workforce.

  25. I am one who has always deferred to the RBA Notes attaching to a decision, not media commentary on those Notes

    You defer to what the Organ Grinder is saying not what the Monkeys are saying

  26. #BREAKING Australia's live export industry will not export live sheep to the Middle East during the northern hemisphere summer next year. @KathSully confirms the industry will self-impose a three-month moratorium for the dangerous exporting months #auspol— Brett Worthington (@BWorthington_) December 4, 2018

    Just end it once and for all !

  27. Rex,

    The sensible centre realises it needs to make compromises to get elected and get things done, be it those in the centre of the Libs or the ALP. That’s what you need to do to get into government and progress your agenda. Occasionally you have to pinch your nose, hold your breath and agree to something you don’t like in order to achieve your overall goals. Obviously, we’d all like to be like the Greens, and have our pet unicorns fart clouds of incense over the whole land, but it just doesn’t work that way. The Greens’ agenda is about as applicable in the real world as the Libertarian agenda is on the Right side of politics. You’re just two side of the same coin.

    The easiest thing in the world is to sit on the sidelines and cry foul about everything and anything, safe in the knowledge that your own preferred policy of the establishment of a Vegetarian Comintern will never actually fly in the real world.

    You’re just a protest movement. You’ve never been a Party of government, and you never will be while these ridiculous ideological blinkers blind you to the real world and what it takes to change it.

  29. Burgey @ #427 Tuesday, December 4th, 2018 – 4:08 pm

    Rex,

    The sensible centre realises it needs to make compromises to get elected and get things done, be it those in the centre of the Libs or the ALP. That’s what you need to do to get into government and progress your agenda. Occasionally you have to pinch your nose, hold your reath and agree to something you don’t like in order to achieve your overall goals. Obviously, we’d all like to be like the Greens, and have our pet unicorns fart clouds of incense over the whole land, but it just doesn’t work that way. The Greens’ agenda is about as applicable in the real world as the Libertarian agenda is on the Right side of politics. You’rs just two side of the same coin.

    The easiest thing in the world is to sit on the sidelines and cry foul about everything and anything, safe in the knowledge that your own preferred policy of the establishment of a Vegetarian Comintern will never actually fly in the real world.

    You’re just a protest movement. You’ve never been a Party of government, and you never will be while these ridiculous ideological blinkers blind you to the real world and what it take to change it.

    Labor didn’t pinch their nose.

    Had they voted ‘no’ the bill would’ve failed.

  30. So Cat, in regards the infrastructure spend as referred to in the RBA Board Notes, which governments precisely are expending on projects?

    And what is the status of those projects, creating what employment?

    I would also offer that those with skills are being well remunerated – which feeds into the wages growth also referred to in the RBA Board Notes

    So what about the rest of the Australian work force?

    Again statistics are for comparative purposes only and need to be drilled down on to have any meaning

  31. Burgey says:

    The sensible centre realises it needs to make compromises to get elected and get things done

    The problem is if you keep comprising enough there is no point in electing you.

  33. Re the encryption compromise

    and to provide a definition of “systemic weaknesses” to limit backdoors that tech companies can be required to build into their products.

    Good luck with forcing the US 800 lb gorilla tech companies to comply. Or will there be Fair Dinkum Aussie software versions created ? That’ll work 🙂

  34. Rex,

    Herein lies in a simple post the willful naivety of the Greens.

    Labor is about to win a federal election and return to government. Their political opponents (the Tories, not the Greens, who are not so much opponents as that annoying mozzie who buzzes you in bed at night – tiny, inconsequential but bloody annoying even though easily swatted away) are attempting to throw Labor’s way anything they can to wedge them and move the national debate back onto an area where the Tories are perceived as strong; and then beat them up on it.

    Now, as much as you, I or anyone else would like the ALP to have opposed the Bill, those of us in the real world can see the political consequences of doing so. It’s not, as the great Benny Elias once said “Rocket surgery.” And this is the problem with the Greens. They would rather choose to die on a hill than scale the Everest of government from where they can actually achieve something. Again, they are the flip side to the libertarian outfit on the Right; completely dissociated from political reality, and reality in general.

    I mean, you have to be pretty stupid not to realise that government and politics in a democracy is, at its core, transactional.

  36. Burgey

    Now, as much as you, I or anyone else would like the ALP to have opposed the Bill, those of us in the real world can see the political consequences of doing so.

    Tell me of these ‘consequences’ ?

  37. Lynchpin @ #142 Tuesday, December 4th, 2018 – 9:54 am

    BK, I note this comment above:

    “John Birmingham writes on the ridiculous and hypocritical expulsion of Patricia Karvelas from the House for having the gall to show, just like Julie Bishop her bare arms.”

    I think we need a referendum to change the Constitution so that people have the right to bare arms.

    You will give the NRA a premature erecculation!

  38. Rex Douglas
    says:
    Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 4:29 pm
    Tell me of these ‘consequences’ ?

    Seriously? Do you have no imagination?

  41. Nathan …
    The Olympic Dam mine “uses 35 million litres of Great Artesian Basin water each day”. It is a menace to the environment. Shut it down.

    While you’re at it look at the subsidisation of electricity to the aluminium smelting industry. Tax payer foots the bill for additional supply infrastructure .. foots the bill for secret kW rate, foots the bill for environmental damage.

  45. Observer @ #428 Tuesday, December 4th, 2018 – 4:12 pm

    So Cat, in regards the infrastructure spend as referred to in the RBA Board Notes, which governments precisely are expending on projects?

    And what is the status of those projects, creating what employment?

    I would also offer that those with skills are being well remunerated – which feeds into the wages growth also referred to in the RBA Board Notes

    So what about the rest of the Australian work force?

    Again statistics are for comparative purposes only and need to be drilled down on to have any meaning

    Observer,
    As far as meaning goes, I found this article today instructive and this particular paragraph an, at least, partial answer to your question:

    Middle class jobs fall
    Import penetration on this scale costs jobs in the West: the so-called “China shock”. But nor do Western companies under competitive pressure stand still. Technical change and rationalisations help them to stay ahead of the game. But these dual forces hit the less-than-college educated middle class from both sides. In all countries, the share of middle class jobs has fallen while that for low-paying jobs has risen. Political ramifications follow.

    https://www.afr.com/opinion/columnists/australia-is-about-to-feel-the-power-of-the-chinese-state-20181203-h18nep

    As far as infrastructure spends are concerned, there is, of course the Victorian State government, the NSW State government, the Tasmanian government who want to turn the Tasmanian Wilderness into a tourist theme park, the Queensland State government have their Cross River Rail plan, the WA State government has a Rail project, and I’m sure there are others.

  50. I think Nath is a much better troll than Rex. Nath’s posts are worth reading as we are looking at quality trolling, Rex same shit over and over. Poor old Bree; his heart is no longer in it.

Comments Page 9 of 51
1 … 8 9 10 … 51

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *