Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor

The second Newspoll for the year finds no continuation of the Coalition’s recent improving trend.

After a period of improving poll results for the Coalition, the latest Newspoll records a tiny shift on primary votes to Labor, but not another to alter their existing lead of 53-47 from a fortnight ago. Labor is up one point on the primary vote to 39%, after a three-point drop last time, while the Coalition is steady on 37%, retaining their two-point gain in the last poll. The Greens are steady on 9%, while One Nation is down a point to 5%, the lowest it’s been in a year. Scott Morrison’s personal ratings are improved, with approval up three to 43% and disapproval down two to 45%, and his lead as prime minister out from 43-36 to 44-35. Bill Shorten is down one on approval to 36% and up one on disapproval to 51%. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1567.

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.

2,273 comments on “Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor”

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  1. “In the past four years since the government “stopped the boats”, 64,362 protection visa applications have been made by individuals who have arrived by plane and not been vetted before arrival while Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton were the relevant ministers”

    What next Potato Head “Stop the planes” ?

  2. [blockquote]Rex,

    We just had a watershed victory in the fight for compassion and justice for people seeking asylum in Australia. And it couldn’t have happened without you.

    Today, politicians of conscience from across the political spectrum passed a landmark bill ensuring sick men and women on Manus and Nauru are brought to Australia for treatment.

    This is the first time in 90 years a government has lost a vote on legislation in the lower house. But more than that, it’s a story of how you helped end a 15-year political trajectory of greater and greater cruelty to refugees.

    Click here to watch GetUp Human Rights Director Shen Narayanasamy explain exactly what happened today minutes after the vote passed.

    Click here to watch the video

    But let’s also take a look back at how you – along with thousands of GetUp members across the country – helped get all the kids and their families off Nauru. Together we pushed forward this legislation to deliver life-saving medical transfers to the people remaining offshore.

    Firstly, GetUp members broke the Government’s blackout across Nauru by bringing the faces of the children imprisoned on Nauru (photos Peter Dutton didn’t want the public to see) into newspapers, onto giant billboards and in television ads across the country.

    Billboards across the country

    This plea to simple humanity worked and when confronted with the faces of the little kids detained in our name, after 5 years of relentless detention, the media narrative started to shift.

    Daily Telegraph headline comparison

    Then as the scale of the medical crisis offshore escalated, you funded hard hitting television commercials ensuring that the voices of doctors responsible for care, not the fear-mongering of Peter Dutton, defined the public debate.

    Kids in Nauru

    It worked! After years of deadlock, public opinion started to shift. GetUp members quickly polled the public in strategic places to provide support to politicians who wanted to do the right thing, but were nervous about community backlash.

    Headline: Most Wentworth voters want Nauru children brought to Australia

    Then we turned our focus to every single politician in Canberra. GetUp members made phone calls, sent email messages and turned up to politicians offices to make the case for urgent action.

    GetUp members at the rally

    We did not stop until politician after politician from across the political spectrum started to move. New voices began to speak out about how compassion and justice needed to prevail in our treatment of those who had spent 5 years offshore.

    Then GetUp members sent a powerful message to the Liberal Party in the Wentworth by-election. It meant an utterly safe Liberal seat fell to independent Dr Kerryn Phelps, a strong advocate for the medical care of people seeking asylum.

    As the Government faced a crescendo of public opinion, the faces of the children they had detained for 5 years, and doctors beamed into living rooms and parliamentary offices across the country, they buckled and announced that they’d have all kids off by Christmas.

    Headline: All asylum kids to leave Nauru

    But GetUp members hadn’t fought this fight for so long, to only save children and ignore the 1000 adults still suffering offshore.

    So GetUp members rallied outside MPs offices and Parliament House to back in a bill that would not only ensure children were off Nauru, but ill men and women offshore would be transferred to Australia for treatment. Independent MP Dr Kerryn Phelps arrived in Parliament and put forward the bill in her name together with MPs Andrew Wilkie, Adam Bandt, Julia Banks, Cathy McGowan, and Rebekha Sharkie.

    Collage

    Then followed an intense two weeks as a crack team of GetUp staff took doctors, whistleblowers and legal specialists through the halls of Parliament knocking door after door to make the case to back the Bill as GetUp members were ringing on the phone lines and landing in MPs inboxes supporting the call.

    On the final day of parliament in 2018, politicians from across the political spectrum – a coalition of conscience led by Independent Senator Tim Storer and Senator Nick McKim of the Greens (which included everyone from the ALP to Senator Derryn Hinch) – stood up for the Bill to end the medical crisis offshore. But filibustering by the Morrison Government and far right Senators Cory Bernardi and Pauline Hanson pushed the final House of Reps vote into this year.

    But of course, it wasn’t going to be easy to deliver a defeat to a sitting Government in the House of Representatives. Morrison and Dutton were unrelenting in their attacks. To stifle the obvious sympathy for children, they took the children out of detention, with no plan for the women and men who remained. They made a splash across the Murdoch Press alongside a campaign of fear.

    Various newspaper headlines

    In the face of such overwhelming lies and fear-mongering, the ALP started to blink. Without their support, the Bill would have been dead in the water.

    But then you swung into action, elevating the voices of 6,480 doctors who signed an open letter backing the Bill and beaming national TV ads into Parliament House. And you hit the phones and sent messages, and in just 1 day made 619 calls and sent 191 tweets urging politicians to stand strong.

    Graphic showing actions GetUp members took

    It worked. The ALP stuck to the coalition of conscience, and negotiated frantically to clarify the Bill to address concerns without losing its original intention – to ensure ill people offshore were transferred to Australia for treatment.

    So that brings us today, to a watershed victory in the House of Representatives which will change the way we treat people held offshore forever.

    Never forget that you helped make this a reality. That every action you take to build something better does pay off, that while politics and people created our horrific offshore detention regime – we can also break it.

    We are writing this to you bleary eyed under the fluro lights of a nearly empty Parliament House, but our hearts are full thinking of you, and the people offshore you fought so bravely to see as human beings. They are cheering you tonight, and so are we.

    Onwards,
    Shen, Renaire, Neha and the entire GetUp Team

    PS. The Senate needs to now pass this Bill – so keep by your phone, your email and get your boots ready for rallying – we’ve gotta seal the deal in the next few days.[/blockquote]

  3. Getup certainly has been a driving force and have been a supporter from day one. Their enthusiasm and organisational skills are second to none. I like that they are issue – based as that hopefully weakens the ” my party, right or wrong ” mentality.
    Reminds me of a friend who told me she “was Liberal” , stopping discussion in it’s tracks. When I later asked if she meant that she voted Liberal, she agreed, even with the way the original comment silenced me. We can now discuss refugees, mainly in writing, and I stress that my compass is social justice, not party politocd.
    And like Citizen, I do wonder whether Dutton will stop turning the boats back . Desperation time and Tampa proved what they are capable of. And there are many gullible out there who will not see through the dorty tricks.
    Am dreading the mext frw months.

  4. I really though Morrison would not call parliament back (election already called), but it looks like he thought he had the killer strategy. It’s a money bill!
    No wonder they looked so unhappy. Lost the vote and they could have avoided it by going to an election earlier.
    They have dug themselves in and re now burning the furniture.

  5. Good morning all. Early start plus couldn’t sleep!

    Today is the 11th annniversary of Rudd’s Parliament Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples.

    It seems real progress happens in waves – usually only when Labor is in power federally.

    Whitlam – Land Rights
    Hawke/Keating – Mabo, Wik
    Rudd/Gillard – Apology

    (I also give credit to the Coalition figures who eventually pushed for the 1967 Referendum )

    I am looking forward to the next incremental steps when Labor regains government.

  6. @firstdogonmoon
    12h12 hours ago

    that was easy! let’s do climate change now

    Dr Stuart Edser
    ‏@StuartEdser
    8h8 hours ago

    Why does it follow that if you treat seriously medically ill ppl properly then our borders become insecure? If that’s the premise, then Australian border security relies on inhumane treatment of refugees! Or it means that Border Force is hopeless at its job. #auspol #nonsequitur

    @jonkudelka
    11h11 hours ago

    It’s nice that the absolute bare minimum has now turned into a humanitarian triumph.

    We must remember that only Stage One has been achieved. A root and branch assessment of our policy on AS is still waiting.

  7. I really hope some media people highlight the irony of Dutton’s failed challenge leading to the two independents (Phelps and Banks) who enabled the Government to lose this vote. Maybe Peter van Onselen in The Australian – the comments after such an article would be even more brilliant reading than most of his columns: he seems to fire up The Australian’s ‘base’ like none of their other writers.

  8. The Coalition did not want to stop the boats. It wanted to stop Labor stopping the boats.

    Cheryl Kernot
    ‏@cheryl_kernot
    13h13 hours ago

    You only acted when you lost the numbers – not for 5 years before! And then too begrudging, too dishonest, too tricky, too much power to Dutton – I hope you reap what wretchedness you have sown. It’s on your head Dutton, Morrison & your complicit colleagues. #auspol

  9. Bevan Shield is on to it….

    “I wonder if anyone who voted to roll Malcolm Turnbull in August paused for even a moment yesterday to recognise their actions were the catalyst for the government’s defeat on the refugee bill.”

  10. We have some incredibly anti-Labor (and anti-Green) relatives, and ‘GetUp!’ drives them to distraction. To the point of wanting to somehow ban them and their activities. So they must be doing good.

    I wonder how the ‘Advance Australia’ astro-turf ‘conservative GetUp’ group is going? Has anyone heard anything, or do we need to send out search parties?

  11. sprocket_

    Great. The law of unintended consequences. I can still remember that day waiting for the Liberal party room meeting and feeling physically ill at the prospect of Dutton becoming PM. I know it would almost certainly have garnered a bigger defeat for the Coalition, but I was incredibly distressed at the thought of it happening.

  12. Morning all, the air has a different smell this morning, PB took ages to catch up on from last night due to some sound contributions from all and sundry and no one exercising that inalienable right of the social media pundit “the right to be offended”.
    Well done WB, love your work!

  13. Gotta love Joe Root, who has said this shouldn’t go any further and should stay on the field, yet spent four months out here last year whinging about what was allegedly said on the field by his opponents during the Ashes. FFS be consistent.

  14. Scott Morrison speaking on 2GB has released an ‘artists impression’ of scenes across Northern Australia following news of ‘Bill Shortens Law’ being passed . He has denied exaggeration.

  15. How does one find the cartoon in The Age – it is not under Politics or Entertainment or any other heading that I can see?

  16. Great to see a positive announcement from the opposition with $2.6 billion to upgrade the Wollongong rail line, saving people at least 20 minutes.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-14/labor-announces-two-billion-dollar-rail-plan-for-illawarra/10812712

    Note that the combined cost of the rail upgrade ($2.6 billion) and an additional rail tunnel ($3.4 billion) is no more than the Liberal proposed F6 freeway extension ($6 billion) that only gets part of the way to the Illawarra and benefits far fewer people.

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