BludgerTrack: 53.7-46.3 to Labor

BludgerTrack returns from hibernation, albeit with only one new poll result to play with.

The return of Essential Research provided the BludgerTrack mill with its first grist for the new year, but the model is at its least robust when it only has one data point to play with after a long gap. This means BludgerTrack strongly follows the lead of a poll that was less bad for the Coalition than their usual form, resulting in a substantial reduction in Labor’s still commanding lead on two-party preferred. Labor is also down six on the seat projection – one in each mainland state and two in Queensland. The Essential poll also included a new set of numbers for the leadership ratings, and these produced a weak result for Bill Shorten that has blunted his recent improving trend. Full results through the link below.

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.

3,129 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.7-46.3 to Labor”

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  1. Fran Kelly was back this morning on RN, and has said something very stupid – clearly given to her by the producer. In short, she put to her guest Liberal Senator Jane Hume, how awful it was that a ‘Union News tweet’ purportedly said of Kelly O’Dwyer ‘Goodbye Bitch’.

    You can imagine the tut tutting, unions bad dialogue that ensued between a Liberal senator and a fellow traveller.

    Now yesterday, PVO foolishly retweeted this troll Twitter account, before deleting it. Sally McManus was right on to it, sending a series of tweets, see below, pointing out what Blind Freddy knows – especially if anyone had been taking even the slightest interest in the manipulation of social media in other jurisdictions.

    Probably more to come on this matter today

  2. A water-sharing plan for the Barwon-Darling was altered by the former New South Wales minister for primary industries, Katrina Hodgkinson, even though public consultations on the draft plan had ended and her bureaucrats had already submitted a draft for her to sign.

    The changes made it more favourable to irrigators and delivered valuable additional water during low flows. According to some modelling it may have increased legal extractions by irrigators by 32%.

    Documents obtained by the Guardian, including ministerial briefing notes and minutes, show that NSW bureaucrats and an independent panel charged with assessing the public submissions thought they had come up with a balanced plan, which they put to the minister for signature in about June 2012.

    But even though the public process had closed, an irrigator lobbyist, Ian Cole, who was chair of the body representing large irrigators, Barwon-Darling Water, ramped up his representations directly to the minister.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/feb/08/nsw-minister-altered-barwon-darling-water-sharing-plan-to-favour-irrigators

  3. PuffyTMD says:
    Monday, January 21, 2019 at 2:35 am
    NathanA @ #1662 Sunday, January 20th, 2019 – 8:19 pm

    Have to say that I’m very, very disappointed with both Bill Shorten’s and the Greens Jordan-Steele’s comments on the “cash for cruelty” allegations, where Animals Australia were allegedly offering money for specific footage from workers on live export vessels that was subsequently delivered and paid for.

    “”It’s not my role to always judge how information gets out there,” Mr Shorten told reporters in Brisbane on Friday.
    “For me, what worries me is the images we see.”

    and

    Speaking in general terms, Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John said he did not have a problem with welfare groups paying for footage.
    “I think it is important that organisations that care about animal welfare take any step necessary really to uncover the truth,” Mr Steele-John told the ABC’s Country Hour.

    This is a terrible response for politicians that bang on about integrity. If Person A offers to pay big bucks to Person B for footage of “piles of dead sheep” to blame on Person C, you better believe there’ll be piles of dead sheep. But you might as well believe the wrestling is real if you’re then going to take those images at face value. For some reason it hasn’t been commented much on PB, but I know plenty of people that are blowing up deluxe over this.

    Much better to say that the allegations need to be properly investigated, because integrity doesn’t just mean scrutinizing the people you disagree with. These allegations from the Daily Telegraph are very serious for mine and more may come out in the near future. They ought to be taken seriously and properly investigated.

    https://www.mandurahmail.com.au/story/5857447/activists-are-crossing-the-line-farmers/?cs=12324

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-01-18/acting-pm-demands-animals-australia-explain/10726712

    If they had a go fund me for that footage I would have chipped in. Considering the great risks the filmer went to get it (man overboard. anyone?( it is only right that Animals Australia paid for the video

    Police pay informers. The AFP inform on Aussies in countries with the death penalty to rack up a few brownie points with overseas police forces.

    The real thing is that there should not have been any piles of dead/dying sheep covered in muck and slime, and live ones in horrific, cruel and nightmarish conditions, for anyone to film.

    Live expert should be stopped immediately. Anyone who has invested in the trade deserves to go broke.

    An excellent post from Puffy last night. Well worth repeating this morning.

  4. lizzie @

    Coalition colleagues have congratulated Barnaby Joyce, who’s expecting his second child with Vikki Campion.

    Hmmm.

    In the video on CH9, Barnaby’s ‘bump’ is as big as Vicki’s.

    Well that would explain a headline I saw yesterday “Barnaby Joyce expecting another baby ” 😉

  5. SW

    it’s the black clad SS-look-a-likes that the Victorians call a Police Force. I realise those with mental health problems and Aborigines are in greatest danger.

    And happening under the watch of a supposedly ultra progressive Andrews government.

  7. sprocket_

    Some of the Old Guard at the ABC (including producers?) do not seem to be very familiar with the pitfalls of Social Media.

  9. Morning all

    Swamprat

    What has been your personal experience with Vic police insofar as mental health issues are concerned etc?
    Cos I can say from people in my sphere who have had to deal with police regularly due to substance and mental health etc, they have been a brilliant support

  10. At the moment Barnaby Joyce is still the only high profile candidate for New England.

    Labor have not put up a candidate capable of winning (to be fair, if you walked on water and were Labor you wouldn’t win New England anyway.)

    Fiona Simson of the NFF would have a fair chance, but the word is that she is not (so far at least, we live in hope) going to run.

    Come on down, Barnaby!

  11. SW

    It is. I was being sarcastic about how Andrews and his government is lauded as being so progressive by its supporters.

    Just like its years of resistance and obstruction to safe injecting rooms and, dying with dignity, it’s the same with pill testing.

    It will be dragged kicking and screaming to support pill testing when it’s politically expedient for it to do so.

    Meanwhile young people will continue to die.

  13. Peter FitzSimons
    ‏@Peter_Fitz

    This is grim. There are 60 replies to this benign tweet from the PM, congratulating Australia’s latest hero, Ash Barty who had just toppled Maria Sharapova in the Oz Open
    59 of those replies are just different ways of telling the PM to F*&@ Off.
    The mood is savage.

  17. I see Labor is once again canvasing options to advantage the political duopoly:

    https://www.theage.com.au/national/labor-eyes-electoral-reforms-to-stamp-out-big-donors-20190117-p50s1y.html

    One model being considered by senior officials is a $4000 cap on donations – a major shift which would lock out large corporate and union contributions – as well as distributing public funding for political parties based on the number of seats won rather than the number of votes received.

    That switch could advantage Labor and the Liberal Party while setting back the Greens, One Nation and independents who rarely win a place in Parliament despite attracting a sizeable number of votes.

  20. Victoria,

    I have no experience. I do not live in Victoria.

    I was referring to the number of cases some years ago when a number of people with mental illness were shot by Victorian Police in questionable situations.

    It is of course good if they have improved since then.

  21. Maybe the ALP are happy to have Barnaby win New England. Then he will go for leader of the Nats and as an opposition minister for 9-12 years rage & rage & rage with no effect, but the (ALP) Govt. will be able to call him out again & again for all his disastrous policies & actions.

  22. Peg

    The donation cap and lowering of disclosure thresholds is very good. The change to funding based on seats won over votes recieved is absolutely terrible and imho anti-democratic.

  23. Swamprat

    Wow. So you go back years to make a current observation
    Like any police force, there are deficiencies and issues or corruption etc. To single 0ut Vic Police in light of the excellent work they have done this week, annoys the crap out of me.

  24. Why is the Victorian government so progressive? And is it really?

    When you have Fiona Patton able to drive government policy, yes you can do that.

    I think that people need reminding, there is official policy, policy that we would really love to do if somebody else gets the credit for it, policy that is part of our agenda, policy that the Herald Sun says is dopey if we introduce it, policy that we would like to enact if we think we could get away with it and policy that we are only dreaming about.

    It isn’t so much that they are super progressive, the environment in Victoria and the delivery of their infrastructure program lets them slip out more progressive policies, even if it is Patton and the greens with the whip in hand.

  25. Regarding donations, i think NO organisation that operates for profit should be allowed to bribe (“donate”) to any publicly employed person either directly nor via his/her political party or other supporting organisation.

    “Donations” from individuals should be limited and immediately disclosed.

  26. It’s so wonderful to have Pegasus return from her self imposed exile following the Greens debacle of a Victorian State Election.

    She’s rested, been to the room of mirrors, reviewed all the reasons why it all went so horribly wrong for her little cult.

    What’s even better is that she has decided not to change her approach in any way, shape or form. Still the cut and paste. Still the never ending denigration of all things ALP.

    The ALP thanks her and her coterie of irrelevant buffoons for continuing their role of of snarky nay sayers determined to entrench their irrelevancy to Australian political debate.

  27. If the Dems want to skewer Trump they could propose US$6.0b not on a wall but the repair of roads and bridges across the nation. That was another of his election pledges.

  29. Victoria

    I was referring to that appalling treatment of the teenage Aboriginal boy and the virtual exonneration of the police thug who did it. Things like that make me feel sick and also very annoyed.

    Be annoyed, if you must.

  31. 5 reasons Trump may be a oncer – Jennifer Rubin
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/20/five-reasons-trump-may-be-one-termer/?utm_term=.55bd8c265b77

    In short:

    1. Mueller.
    2. Trump’s play to the base strategy is a big fail.
    3. He has no coherent or sane foreign policy to fall back on in times of scandal to leverage the authority of office – he just looks more scary palling around with Kim Jong Un and co.
    4. There are no sane or competent people advising him, or who want to work with him.
    5. While once unthinkable, a primary challenger could well emerge – polling shows more Republicans want a primary challenger.

    This is not a prediction that Trump will be impeached and removed or forced to resign. Republicans remain sheeplike in their devotion. However, it is more likely than at any time in his presidency that he won’t finish or won’t be nominated. And if by some miracle he survives a primary challenge, he’ll reach the general election bruised and battered, a much easier target than any president since Gerald Ford. Indeed, with each passing day, the 2020 election looks like the post-Watergate 1976 election. Now imagine 1976 if Nixon were still the incumbent.

  32. re: political donations

    I am increasingly coming around to simply banning all donations, and going for a fully publicly funded option.

    At the very least we should ban all donations except from registered voters, cap them to a modest amount, and require real time reporting of them.

    swamprat @ #1772 Monday, January 21st, 2019 – 6:06 am

    I have long advocated the need for a national pest control authority to rigorously coordinate the battle against invasive species before we lose more of our precious and unique animals and plants.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/21/we-are-clearly-losing-the-fight-scientists-sound-alarm-over-invasive-species

    The war against introduced weeds in the north of Oz is lost, and has been for some time. Basically impossible to eliminate them now, and we won’t even be able to contain them. Best we can do is to slow their expansion.

    The north is going to be unrecognisable in 50 years. Four terrestrial weed species alone are wrecking the joint – Gamba, Mission, Calopo, and Humidicola. All introduced as cattle feed, at the demand of pastoralists, you won’t be surprised to learn.

    Calopo is a particularly insidious weed, as it drops hundreds of hard tough seeds that have a potential lifetime in the soil of around 15 years.

    It is heart breaking. 🙁

  34. Fess

    I am not wanting trump to be a 0ncer. I want him and the rest 0f the GOP and Democrats who have been bought with dirty money to depart asap

  35. Trump could always start a war with Iran to keep the American public behind him if he thought he was a goner for 2020.
    Aparently Bolton has already asked the Pentagon for various war and invasion scenarios with Iran

  37. A look back on two dismal years of the Trump administration.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-look-back-on-two-dismal-years-of-the-trump-administration/2019/01/19/c1878508-1b4b-11e9-9ebf-c5fed1b7a081_story.html?utm_term=.74d991941f84

    Max Boot writes that Trump’s presidency can be summed up with four words:

    – Racism
    – Authoritarianism
    – Incompetence
    – Megalomania

    So true. Just imagine how different (ie normal and sane) things would’ve been with President HClinton.

  39. Fess

    Remember the assault Gillard endured from the media. The liberals and everyone else in between? Times that by 100 for Clinton. It would have been relentless.
    Trump and all the rest of the dirty operators have already had their wings clipped just by virtue of investigations. Something that may have not occurred if he didn’t become president.
    This whole shit show has a karmic vibe to it

  40. Amanda GoldenVerified account@amandawgolden
    17m17 minutes ago
    President Donald Trump’s attorney @RudyGiuliani told @jaketapper that he did not know for sure if Trump spoke with Michael Cohen about his congressional testimony, but that it would not have been significant if Trump did.

    And he provides more indication of collusion!

    Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, said on Sunday that discussions about building a Trump Tower in Moscow lasted through the November 2016 election, months longer than previously confirmed.

    Mr. Giuliani said in an interview with The New York Times that Mr. Trump “recalls a series of conversations” with his former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, about the project during the campaign.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/us/politics/trump-tower-moscow-cohen-giuliani.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

  42. JM

    Yes, it is very sad.

    Just in my lifetime, i cannot get over the speed with which the bush and coast have been diminished, chopped up, dis-figured i.e. “developed”. There are increasingly fewer places for native animals to live and the few that are are infested with cats, foxes, cane toads, wild dogs, pigs, deer, goats, camels, carp, tilopia, etc

    Settler Australians seem, on the whole, to have a utilitarian approach to managing and using the environment. They apply this same philosopy to both their own heritage and the country.

    It is ad hoc and motivated by short term personal monetary gain. It’s about extraction. The dominant economic ideology of de-regulation and privatisation is an awesomely effective tool for speeding up the environmental destruction.

  43. Fess

    For sure. They impeached Clinton for lying about a blow job.
    This President lies everytime he opens his mouth.
    Of course, GOP members are compromised and so are some Dems. The cleanskins are waiting for Mueller to do their dirty work

  45. Fess

    Giuliani is also up to his neck in it. Yet he comes out when he needs to and throws shade. Similarly to what buzzfeed has done

  46. Jenny might have problems with her doors falling off but the country has a PM that is unhinged.

    I assume the doors are falling off because they are also unhinged.

  47. News Breakfast
    ‏
    Verified account

    @BreakfastNews
    1h1 hour ago
    More
    “The Coalition has done more to progress the causes of women in the last five years than, I think, any government in the last 40,” says Liberal Senator @SenatorHume #auspol

    Unbelievable.

  49. Morning all – thanks BK

    I like that Shorten has called on the scientific community to examine and report on the fish deaths and health of the MDB (I hate the term ‘kills’ because it insinuates an ‘actor’ is involved which at this stage is unknown).

    But Shorten is signalling that Labor will go to experts rather than boffins in the PMO for policy direction/advice.

    I reckon Shorten has a long term plan to reassert trust in science/research/experts to answer our most vexing questions. THe CSIRO is generally very respected by the public, for instance, but the current govt has done its damnedest to gut and destroy it so their mates in big business can guide policy in favour of them.

  50. Vic:

    Every time Guiliani opens his mouth there’s more stuff that comes out which contradicts his earlier statements. You can see why so many people say he’s just trying to butter everyone up ahead of the Mueller report.

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