BludgerTrack: 54.3-45.7 to Labor

Nothing much doing on the poll aggregate, but two ReachTEL seat polls provide further evidence of the Coalition’s low ebb in Victoria.

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate shifts negligibly in favour of the Coalition, who have picked up one on the seat aggregate in South Australia. I won’t be bothering with the leadership ratings until the new year recess, as some fairly heavy reupholstering is required to integrate Scott Morrison’s data into the code.

Two ReachTEL electorate polls have lately emerged from Victoria, recording swings approaching or exceeding double digits against the Liberals – with the caveat that both appear to have identified the names of the parties rather than the candidates.

• In Corangamite, held for the Liberals by Sarah Henderson on a post-redistribution margin of exactly nothing, a poll for the Geelong Advertiser gives Labor what I calculate to be a lead of 59-41, based on 2016 election preferences. The Advertiser’s report has it at 52.1-47.9, but this credits Labor with no preferences whatsoever from “other/independent”, when they in fact scored slightly over half of them in 2016. After excluding the 4.6% undecided from the poll, the primary votes are Labor 42.8%, Liberal 33.7% and Greens 11.7%. I don’t know exactly when the poll was conducted, but the sample was 856.

• The Herald Sun reported last week that a poll for the CFMEU found Kelly O’Dwyer, who holds Higgins on a post-redistribution margin of 10.3%, trailing Labor by 53-47. Primary votes of Liberal 38.6%, Labor 32.5% and Greens 18.8% are provided, which I presume does not exclude an undecided component.

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.

2,199 comments on “BludgerTrack: 54.3-45.7 to Labor”

Comments Page 3 of 44
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  2. BK @ #31 Friday, December 7th, 2018 – 8:53 am

    The SMH editorial says that these new encryption powers need careful scrutiny.
    https://www.smh.com.au/technology/encryption-powers-need-careful-scrutiny-20181206-p50kll.html

    This is a reasonably balanced article on the “encryption” issue. It points out that what the legislation mainly does is bring messaging apps in line with other forms of electronic communications, which can already be tapped with an appropriate warrant. It isn’t the end of the world as some people were claiming here yesterday.

    But it is also worth noting that just as voice scramblers were once used by people who wanted secure communications, end-to-end encryption is still available for those who want secure messaging. The bill does not actually “break” encryption, unless that encryption already has back doors built into it … which the security agencies would generally already know about anyway. So the bill will probably not achieve its intended aim in any case – at least, not if the “bad guys” are even remotely technically savvy.

    In other words it was a poorly crafted bill, pushed through parliament as a political stunt by the government, intended to wedge Labor into looking “soft” on national security. But on the other hand Labor did not have to agree to it, so it is also another instance of Labor choosing politics over policy.

    Not as bad in the long term as their backflip on the Trans-Pacific Partnership perhaps – but not good either.

  4. C@tmomma @ #3 Friday, December 7th, 2018 – 6:33 am

    Has Scott Morrison and his government MPs been out this morning trying to scare the living daylights out of the populace because Labor didn’t pass their attempted wedge?

    No?

    Mission Accomplished.

    That’s a rather narrow analysis. Labor’s position would be strictly better if they had passed the legislation with at least one of their amendments attached (and no, the Greens are not excused for playing games with their threats to oppose the amendments). Then Morrison can try his scare campaign if he wants, and Labor can rightly say “what the hell are you talking about, we passed the encryption bill, it was YOU who shut down Parliament; we’re more than happy to reconvene Parliament with you, today or any day, and get this legislation through the House”. Then Morrison looks lazy for shutting down Parliament. And weak for being afraid to reconvene Parliament. And like a hysterical, hypocritical nutjob on national security, because he can’t even be bothered to reconvene Parliament to finish passing the security legislation that he’s hyperventilating over.

    Also kind of moot, because we all know that the Coalition is going to scream “weak on terror, weak on borders” as loud as they can. It doesn’t matter what Labor passes or doesn’t pass. And we all saw what happened when they tried exactly that in Victoria. The voters are sick of it and it drove a late swing to Labor, fueling a landslide victory.

    Depriving the Coalition of an ineffective campaign tactic that no longer works for them anyways and throwing away a much bigger, much more effective wedge; Mission Accomplished?

  6. ,blockquote>Apple may pull out of the local market, the Aussie tech industry could be crippled and hackers could crack previously unbreakable codes under “outrageous” encryption legislation the government wants to ram through parliament.
    The federal government has long been pushing for law enforcement agencies to have access to encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Signal.

    The government, with the support of Labor, want to force tech companies to alter their apps so that communications can be monitored.

    A push to ram the laws through parliament on Thursday, the last sitting day of the year, failed as both sides failed to reach agreement — meaning the laws will be delayed until at least 2019.

    The legislation can force tech workers to cooperate with government and law enforcement in installing backdoors to access encrypted data — but these people cannot disclose the request to anyone, under penalty of several years in jail.

    Experts in the industry say this could see people either jailed for simply doing their jobs, or fired for essentially hacking their own company by installing vulnerabilities in programs.

    https://tendaily.com.au/news/australia/a181206zli/if-encryption-laws-go-through-australia-may-lose-apple-20181206

  7. Bushfire Bill @ #100 Friday, December 7th, 2018 – 8:57 am

    PB,

    I didn’t say anywhere that the laws were a good idea.

    What I dud say was that if you are going to lose a gight, then it’s unwise to keep on fighting.

    If you’re happy for a Christmas terrorist attack by a random lone crazy to completely derail Labor’s efforts across an immense front of policy – no matter how unfair such an eventuality might be – then stay pure, keep criticising and cast a de facto vote for Scott Morrison.

    You speak about “politics” as if it’s some kind of dirty endeavour. But that’s the game they’re all in. You have to vote for a politician eventually.

    For myself, I’d rather vote for one who, on balance, gave my country and myself the best chance overall for a brighter future.

    BB
    Yes there is a case for this pragmatic approach PROVIDED we each draw a line in the sand and KNOW when it is crossed. The problem as always is incrementalism. We give way on some small matter in exchange for a benefit, then gradually we wake up to find we have lost the lot.

    So IF you are going to argue your case you MUST identify your lines and then be ABSOLUTE in reacting when they are crossed. If you do not do this then you might as well accept that democracy and freedom of action and speech was a passing phase.

  8. @AR
    The worst thing about the legislation is it’s pretty useless in a practical sense. Other than as a wedge and for grandstanding about national security

  9. Guytaur – seriously, when you cite news stories to support your case about technological matters, you flat out lose me. Ridiculous.

  15. A11

    So twitter So news reports quoting experts loses you. No wonder politics is in such a mess in this country.

    I am one of those that have called out bad media reporting too.

    However I am not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Most of the time the media is accurate even if its biased at times.

    Mind you that cannot be said of the US site Engadget I posted on the previous page. Like it or not thats a tech news site run by expert commentators that specialise in tech and have no political axe to grind against Labor.

  16. Besides.
    Most devices are made in China, with built in hardware backdoors giving them COMPLETE systems access, between re-installs and even firmware updates 😀
    I’d be more worried about that than this legislation

  17. BB
    I entirely agree with your post which was the last one on the previous page. Labor needs to make it clear that it will at the earliest opportunity properly review the legislation and make it right.

  18. (and no, the Greens are not excused for playing games with their threats to oppose the amendments)

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2018/dec/06/government-morrison-nauru-energy-encryption-politics-live-shorten-labor-liberal?page=with:block-5c08c49ae4b04b34b3e61bb7#block-5c08c49ae4b04b34b3e61bb7

    The Greens are considering Labor’s amendment for an intelligence and security committee review by April. But all the others – including one that tinkers with the definition of “systemic weakness” – will not get Greens support.
    :::
    This, I think, answers a query we had here at Guardian HQ: would Labor really risk passing amendments in the Senate that mean the bill won’t pass by Christmas because it has to go back to the house?

    The Greens would have voted in favour of the amendment re review which would have meant the AA bill would have had to go back to the HoR. Labor did not even vote for this single amendment despite its serious concerns about the bill’s flaws and waved the legislation through with no amendments.

    Labor intended all along to vote against its own amendments for the base political reasons as outlined by BB et al.

  19. Zeh – I was going to comment that I bet the Chinese know a lot more about what’s in our computers than the Australian govt! I use pan.baidu and weibo to download classical music! God knows what that software’s got in it.

  20. There’s no doubt the Coalition formulated the encryption bill and pushed for it to be passed out of both policy conviction (they are becoming quite fascistic, after all) and political opportunity (wedging Labor between a concerned base and a scurrilous “danger to public safety” campaign). So, both policy conviction and political calculation were rowing in the same direction for the Coalition. Lucky them.

    Equally, there’s little doubt the Greens opposed the bill out of policy conviction (being opposed to an Orwellian Big Brother) and political opportunity (harvesting any left-Laborites for whom this is the last straw). Again, a party for whom policy conviction and political calculation row in the same direction.

    It is otherwise for Labor. They had, and strenuously expressed, serious policy reservations about the bill. But there was little political upside for them in actualising that opposition through their vote in the Senate – how many Coalition voters would they really sway? And there was a ton of downside for them in scuttling the bill over Christmas/New Year. The way the Coalition were shaping up to demonise Labor, with the assistance of a significant slice of an uncritical media, some swinging voters would have drifted back to the Coalition even if nothing terrible occurred over the holidays, and obviously very many more if something did.

    Uniquely among the three main parties, Labor had to choose between conviction and calculation. On this bill, they chose calculation. As the clear front-runner in the race to unseat this awful Coalition Government, Labor is quite right to decide on some issues that it is more important not to risk exposing themselves to an unfair scare campaigns that may very well work among sufficient swinging voters to see the Coalition returned for three more years in 2019.

  24. Labor needs to make it clear that it will at the earliest opportunity properly review the legislation and make it right.

    Trust us. Sure, sure.

  25. Zeh @ #116 Friday, December 7th, 2018 – 10:07 am

    Besides.
    Most devices are made in China, with built in hardware backdoors giving them COMPLETE systems access, between re-installs and even firmware updates 😀
    I’d be more worried about that than this legislation

    Did you see the story about BT deciding to junk Huawei 3G and 4G hardware from their systems? Likely not to allow them into 5G either, I imagine.

    After that microscopically small chip was found in Chinese hardware that fed data back to base, I’m not surprised.

  29. Pegasus telling us what the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party did and did not mean to do yesterday.

    You can’t write comedy more hilarious than this! 😆

    Oh, and that makes post number 6 from Pegasus today. All of them anti Labor, including making shit up. None of them focused on the Coalition.

    Sleazy. But we knew that.

  30. Cat

    Thats Fake News. Chip has not actually been found. I follow tech sites and the guys at MacBreak Weekly part of This Week In Tech a US video podcast site have debunked it.

    MacBreak Weekly[edit]
    A spin-off called MacBreak Weekly[7] was started on August 13, 2006. It distributed in audio and video formats and features many of the video version hosts as well as special guests. The intro theme is made by Ashley Witt at tenthauser.com.[8] The usual “Mac pundits,” as they refer to themselves, are Leo Laporte, Rene Ritchie, Alex Lindsay, and Andy Ihnatko. The content differs from MacBreak in that the discussion mainly covers Apple related news from the previous week. Other segments include a “Pick of the Week”, where the hosts discuss various software and hardware they find useful.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBreak

  31. The opinion of a guy who works in the technical field under discussion, or that of a stay at home DSP? Who to believe? Tough one that. 🙂

  32. @AR
    Or the best thing?

    I hinted at the best thing about the bill

    The only thing this legislation seems to achieve is public scrutiny of what are quite standard, albeit secret and arguably unethical, practices.

    Sure has people blathering about

  33. Zeh, thank you. Your interpretation makes sense.

    There is also an aspect to encryption that most people don’t realise, namely that the keys that get talked about come as a pair, one is used to encrypt, the other to decrypt. You can safely give the key you used to encrypt a message to anyone since it won’t help them decrypt the message.

  34. guytaur,
    I believe this:

    Meanwhile, in the UK, major telco BT Group announced it would rip out Huawei kit from the core of its existing 3G and 4G networks.

    Canada and Britain are the two remaining nations from intelligence sharing alliance “Five Eyes” not to have banned Huawei’s involvement in building the next generation of mobile technology.

    The ultra-fast mobile networks are expected to become central to critical infrastructure, such as water supply, and have attracted intense scrutiny from global governments over fears of foreign interference, security and espionage.

    https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/double-blow-for-huawei-as-senior-executive-arrested-20181206-p50kjq.html

    The decision of a major tech company. Not some half-baked wikipedia page.

  35. @Late Riser
    There are many many different flavours of encryption. But you are correct, Public & Private keypairs are the standard method nowdays.
    Maybe i should post a bit of a guide on how it works

  36. Zeh:

    This part is right, and I agree that this is probably the most likely use of TCNs in practice:

    Where I do see this being applied is at the operating systems providers (Microsoft, Google, Apple) where this development of the TCN basically only has to happen once. Then the spyware update be pushed to suspects’ devices in a targeted manner giving complete OS level access to the device.

    This, however, there is absolutely no evidence for:

    These companies already comply with security agencies along these lines however, so I’m not sure if this legislation adds any value here.

    I think this approach means that people are going to think twice about installing OS updates, which can’t be good for the security of the overall ecosystem.

    Additionally, where you say:

    Only to be bound by the permissions sandbox that the app lives inside (restricted from other apps’ content – you COULD run some privilege escalation exploits if they exist to give full device access via the app)

    Remember that local privilege escalation bugs are considerably more numerous (and less valuable when considering whether to ‘burn’ them) than remote code execution bugs.

    Anyway, as long as we are talking practical implications of the legislation, the worst of those at least in the short term is probably the loss of trust in Australian providers. I’m worried for a good friend of mine who works for a business with lots of overseas clients – I can see a significant number of those clients leaving over the idea that the Australian Government can now civilly conscript the business to add interception code.

  37. LR

    Zeh is wrong in fact.

    End to end encryption is specific in use. Only the authorised recipients can read the decrypted message.

    To create a side window by legislation is to break that chain of privacy, thus breaking the end to end encryption.

    Its that simple. Its as if the Germans handed the enigma code to the Brits and Alan Turing had to do no work because the British legislated it so.

  38. Cat

    The latest pod is not up yet.

    So those experts have not commented and its not some wikipedia page. Its wikipedia describing the podcast and naming the experts. Look them up if you doubt their tech credentials.

    Of course its nice deflection from Australian legislation.

  39. Zeh is wrong in fact.

    End to end encryption is specific in use. Only the authorised recipients can read the decrypted message.

    To create a side window by legislation is to break that chain of privacy, thus breaking the end to end encryption.

    Its that simple. Its as if the Germans handed the enigma code to the Brits and Alan Turing had to do no work because the British legislated it so.

    This proves beyond all reasonable doubt that you are utterly clueless
    The most absurd use of the word ‘thus’ I have ever come across

  40. Thanks, caf.

    It’s interesting to note, and remark on a good feature of the NEM, that the bulk of the $40m FCAS constraint savings are socialised by the market and not captured by Hornsdale.

    It looks like the market-based design actually did its job in this case.

  41. Zeh

    Nope it proves you are lying or you don’t understand what end to end encryption is.

    The whole point is to prevent unauthorised access. That is no back doors. No third parties unintended by the people doing the communicating whether thats a government or not.

    End to end encryption like used in WhatsApp has enabled freedom of speech to people like in Iran.

    Thats the reality your side window or back door is just BS to cover that you are defending the indefensible on the basis of the definition of what end to end encryption is.

    This from the person that claims the encryption bill has nothing to do with encryption

  42. @caf

    This, however, there is absolutely no evidence for

    Access achieving a similar outcome, not this use case specifically. (also if there were public evidence, they are doing it wrong, indeed this legislation enforces secrecy of such helpfulness)

    Remember that local privilege escalation bugs are considerable more numerous (and less valuable when considering whether to ‘burn’ them) than remote code execution bugs.

    This I know 😉

  43. Waleed Aly understands the implications of the slippery slope.

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-s-no-wonder-we-no-longer-trust-our-institutions-20181206-p50kk9.html

    In the maelstrom of the moment I can’t claim to know for sure why this is. My embryonic theory, though, is that our trust is slowly becoming militarised.

    That is, we’re more prepared to trust hard power than we are to trust institutions that guard something more abstract, like rights or systems of government.

    There are very few places in our public square that allow us to reason from principles, rather than gut. As a result we’re less used to thinking this way, less inclined to see how something like the presumption of innocence must be upheld even if it means guilty people go free because of what a society becomes if it starts finding exceptions to this.

    Look, for instance, at how readily we give up on the importance of something like privacy for the sake of security, without even requiring the security benefit being explained to us, as will happen this week with the passage of federal laws to weaken encrypted messaging services. We won’t even have a proper debate about whether the legislation is fit for purpose or whether it will invite awful unintended consequences. There is only pragmatic urgency. It’s why we so repeatedly hear naively circular statements like, “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.”
    :::
    In this world of Guantanamo-style reasoning, you convict the bad guys using whatever tools you can: if they don’t fight fair, why should we? The answer, of course, is that police are given the awesome power of state violence and if they are freed from the obligation to fight fairly, then many innocent people will ultimately suffer. But in a world of only concrete outcomes and not of abstract rights, there are no innocent people. An arrest is quickly conflated with guilt. And when your window onto this is terrorism suspects or some underworld figures, you eventually become conditioned to see only the concrete case in front of you. All else is quaint.

  44. guytaur @ #141 Friday, December 7th, 2018 – 10:40 am

    Zeh

    Nope it proves you are lying or you don’t understand what end to end encryption is.

    The whole point is to prevent unauthorised access. That is no back doors. No third parties unintended by the people doing the communicating whether thats a government or not.

    End to end encryption like used in WhatsApp has enabled freedom of speech to people like in Iran.

    Thats the reality your side window or back door is just BS to cover that you are defending the indefensible on the basis of the definition of what end to end encryption is.

    This from the person that claims the encryption bill has nothing to do with encryption

    Seriously, just stop now.

  45. Zeh @ #133 Friday, December 7th, 2018 – 10:28 am

    @Late Riser
    There are many many different flavours of encryption. But you are correct, Public & Private keypairs are the standard method nowdays.
    Maybe i should post a bit of a guide on how it works

    I remember PGP and the key pairs from way back, about 1991. Loads of information available courtesy of Professor Google. Fascinating stuff but way beyond my intellectual grade. Them that aren’t interested can make their own arrangements – like watch the cricket or arrange the sock drawer or cut back overgrown bushes.
    Bonjour monsieur. 😇

  46. Fuck me guytaur.

    So along the lines of a reply to you I posted yesterday.
    You’re saying that by someone reading one of your messages over your shoulder, they are BREAKING E2E encryption?

  48. guytaur @ #137 Friday, December 7th, 2018 – 10:33 am

    Zeh is wrong in fact.

    End to end encryption is specific in use. Only the authorised recipients can read the decrypted message.

    To create a side window by legislation is to break that chain of privacy, thus breaking the end to end encryption.

    Sorry, guytaur – Zeh is correct. You are wrong in this instance.

    To understand why, consider that if it is possible to put a “side window” in place – effectively to see the message either before it is encrypted or after it is decrypted – you don’t need to break the end-to-end encryption.

    And avoiding this particular “side window” vulnerability is trivially easy – just encode/decode your messages on a machine not connected to the internet. Use an internet-connected machine only for transmission of the encoded messages. Unbreakable.

  49. C@tmomma says:
    Oh, and that makes post number 6 from Pegasus today. All of them anti Labor, including making shit up. None of them focused on the Coalition.
    _______________________________
    How dare Peg post 6 times! Doesn’t she know that by law, C@tmomma is entitled to post 5 times as much as all other commenters combined.

  50. autocrat

    Seriously just stop now.

    What is the meaning of encryption in English?
    encryption in Retail. … It is a system that relies on heavy encryption and state-of-the-art security. Encryption is the conversion of data into a form that cannot be easily understood by an unauthorized person, and is important to make electronic transactions secure.
    Encryption definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

    https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Oxford+dictionary+end+to+end+encryption&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

    Go down the list and quote where what I wrote was wrong

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