BludgerTrack: 52.5-47.5 to Labor

Not much doing in the one published poll to emerge since the start of the election campaign, reflected in a stable reading from the BludgerTrack poll aggregate.

Despite the onset of the election campaign, there is only one new data point to add to BludgerTrack this week, which is a status quo 52-48 result from Newspoll that has duly little effect on the national vote trends. Such movement as there is is away from One Nation and towards the Coalition on the primary vote, with next to no impact on two-party preferred or the seat projection, where the Coalition makes a single gain in Victoria.

Since there is no new state-level data this week, the breakdowns continue to record an unnatural looking lurch to the Coalition in New South Wales, which I would want to see corroborated by more data. The leadership trends are interesting in that an upswing in Scott Morrison’s net approval has returned him, just barely, to net positive territory. The effect on preferred prime minister is more modest, but there appears to be a slight trend in his favour there too.

However, the biggest news in BludgerTrack this week as far as I’m concerned is that a helpful reader has told me how to fix the bug that was preventing the state breakdown tabs from working much of the time. If this was causing you grief before, there is a very good chance it will not be doing so if you try again now, which you can do 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.

1,586 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.5-47.5 to Labor”

Comments Page 30 of 32
1 29 30 31 32
  1. bug1

    Well it shouldn’t be difficult to understand that Assange worked in concert with Putin to facilitate their agenda to disrupt the US and then support Trump as candidate.
    And Assange in order to save his sorry hide will tell all. Cos ultimately he is only worried about what the Ruskies could do to him.

  2. Victoria

    Yes Assange is an A hole.
    He may have worked with Russia indeed.
    That does not make him a traitor to Australia and deny him legal human rights.

    You all said Assange had no reason to fear Extradition to the US. There was no Grand Jury pursuing him.

    Well we know differently now. There was.
    Calling people cultists doesn’t help your argument much.

    He is our and Ecuador’s A hole who did what was outlined in the Mueller report.
    There is still no evidence that he committed a crime on US soil.
    Barr’s comments do help his case as Assange’s defence is he is a publisher.
    Lying however despicably about your source does not change that.

  3. @EGW

    I disagree that the ALP adopting a platform like that of Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn would be a Kamikaze strategy. Because it would really rally the Millennial’s and Generation Z behind Labor, my estimate is something like 70% of them would vote Labor.

  4. C@tmomma @ #2748 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 7:15 pm

    rhw,
    I thought the Private Psychiatrists (ie a ‘thinking specialty’), were very well paid?

    Yes, but not in the public sector – which is why most Psychiatrists leave for Private Practice. Those who can afford it can have their anxieties palliated – but not many of those with psychosis can.

  5. Firefox says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 8:20 pm

    …..constantly bang on about the Greens being in cahoots with the Libs. You can’t be taken seriously when you talk such nonsense and it proves that you don’t actually know what the Greens stand for at all.

    The vocation of the Gs is perfectly transparent. It is to defile, defeat and replace Labor. They have no other purpose. They are a pretext for division.

  6. People should listen to this from the ‘Nixon tapes’. It is about the birth of the HMO in the USA. Nixon wonders how private insurers will make profits on health care and is told that presumably profits will be made on denying claims. Nixon’s response ‘Fine….Not bad’. It is horrific.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qpLVTbVHnU

  7. Guytaur

    Assange has nothing to fear from the US. It is the Russians, he is worried about.
    He is currently working hard to make a deal with the US. He after all puts a high value on his own life even if it doesn’t extend to care and concern for others.
    I am not losing any sleep for Assanges rights or whatever. He will be fine despite not deserving it.

  8. Actually, Jeremiah turned out to be right, although of course he was being fed information by God.

    But seriously, I’ve seen too many predicted Labor landslides turned into comfortable wins (1972, 1983, 2007), too many predicted comfortable wins turn to just scraping through (1974, 1984, 2010), too many predicted narrow wins turned to narrow losses by lies (1980) or ‘events’ (2001) to be a cockeyed optimist. Then such wins as Labor achieves are whittled away further by postals after the election.

    Realistically, on balance, I expect Labor to win. Betting markets and MOE on published polls suggest a probability of about 80%. Factoring in 4 weeks of the right wing noise machine at full blast in support of “Liberals” fighting like cornered rats with no regard for the truth of ethics, with alternative voices being mostly drowned out, I’d say at this stage the chance of a Labor win is about 60-70%.

    The advantage of being a pessimist is not being disappointed, although I consider myself a realist.

    And I am not going to “bugger off”, nor should anyone else who posts here in good faith, whoever they support or whatever their view.

  9. Boerwar @ #2751 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 7:19 pm

    rhw
    Thank you.

    In our extended family we have a specialist, a cousin who died because of the malpractice of a drunken doctor, and several individuals who are still alive because of medical interventions of one sort or another. In my case six operations on my hands have kept them fairly functional, for which I am hugely grateful. I can’t tickle the ivories any more but much worse was in the offing. There have been short post op periods when I could not tie my shoelaces – and that makes you think!
    On the whole the system has kept a significant number of people in our family alive and well and functioning for much longer than would otherwise have been the case.
    Having watched the tortuous progress of our specialist to get there, I wonder why anyone would ever bother to become a specialist. They are practically robbed of their youth and young adulthood.

    Most go for specialisation for the same reason people climb mountains: because one can. It also ties you into the richness of the narrative tapestry of others like few other vocations. Very few of us regret it.

  10. bug1 @ #1413 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 9:38 pm

    The Mueller report vidicates Wikileaks, no proof DNC was hacked, and explicitly states wikileaks could not have committed a crime unless they participated in hacking. The conspiracy theory pushed by the proagandists has failed.
    https://angelof-truth.com/2019/04/18/barr-exonerates-wikileaks-in-press-conference-regarding-mueller-report/

    The operators of that site might want to pick their taglines better. I don’t think exonerations from Barr carry much weight.

  11. guytaur

    So frickin what? Assange is going to make a deal that is good for him. Even though I dont believe he deserves a way out of his troubles.
    If you want to be melodramatic , by all means. I am not losing any sleep. It’s just good to get confirmation that my understanding that Assange was a Russian asset, a fascist and a cancer on society, turned out to be correct.

  12. Assange did expose Shorten’s visit to the U.S consulate where he said to the African American Consul that MLK was his hero and quoted some of MLK’s speeches to him. Of course we all know Napoleon is Shorten’s hero.

  13. rhwombat @ #1457 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 10:17 pm

    C@tmomma @ #2748 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 7:15 pm

    rhw,
    I thought the Private Psychiatrists (ie a ‘thinking specialty’), were very well paid?

    Yes, but not in the public sector – which is why most Psychiatrists leave for Private Practice. Those who can afford it can have their anxieties palliated – but not many of those with psychosis can.

    Too true. I remember going to the home of one of my close friends from school whose father was a psychiatrist at the old Callan Park. They lived on site. The first words my friend said to me when we got inside the house were, “Don’t be afraid if you hear or see someone in the closet. It may just be one of my father’s patients who has agorophobia. But don’t worry, they won’t come out.”

    I can see why he went on to become a banker. 🙂

  14. Judging from the title, a very mendacious book.
    __________________________________
    Really? I have not read it yet but I assume It’s about the emergence of the social democratic tradition in Australia. Worthy of some research I would have thought.

  15. ajm says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 9:29 pm

    Any universal health scheme in Australia which excluded private practice could come up against the provision in the Constitution which prohibits “civil conscription” in respect of a whole host of social benefits including madical benefits. This provision was inserted in 1946 and the “civil conscription” bit was specifically meant, I understand, to protect medical practitioners’ right of private practice.

    Introduction of something like the Canadian scheme may be impossible without a change in the constitution.

    —————————–

    You constitutional lawyers out there can correct me if I’m wrong, but I was horrified to learn that a Labor-introduced successful constitutional amendment designed to increase federal jurisdiction over social welfare measures could have been used to combat attempts to, among other things, establish universal single-payer Medicare.

    The constitutional referendum of 1946 was initiated by Prime Minister Ben Chifley to give Canberra the right to legislate in areas such as providing pharmaceutical, sickness and hospital benefits and medical and dental services plus maternity allowances, widows’ pensions and child endowment.

    It’s hard to believe but the medical profession had fought tooth and nail to prevent the Federal government from subsidizing medicines in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Incredibly, as late as the 1940’s the peak body for the profession in Australia was still the British Medical Association.

    They won in the High Court so Chifley then decided to go to the people in a referendum, one of a rare number that resulted in a victory for the “yes” side.

    Curiously, the constitutional amendment inserted into Section 51 contained this exception: “(but not so as to authorise any form of civil conscription)”. This clause has been interpreted by opponents of expanding government intervention in medical care, claiming that it would be tantamount to civil conscription of physicians.

    Here is an excerpt from the Australian Medical Association’s history of the period, showing how incredibly conservative the profession was back in the day:”

    “With the referendum result behind it, the Government introduced legislation in 1948 to implement the PBS with amendments to deal with clauses in the original Act that the High Court had criticised. In the BMA’s judgment, the 1948 legislation was in practice no better than the 1945 one, and it decided to launch a national campaign against it.

    “Doctors were instructed not to cooperate with the scheme and return their formularies to the Government without opening them. The campaign was effective: it was reported that about 98 per cent of all doctors complied with the BMA’s instructions. Moreover, the association issued yet another legal challenge as soon as the legislation was proclaimed, on the ground that the Government’s instructions to doctors under the legislation amounted to civil conscription and therefore was in breach of the Constitution. This too was upheld by the High Court.

    “It was now 1949. An election was due. Time had run out. The Government did not have time to put up any more amendments to the PBS legislation that would satisfy the High Court and the BMA.

    “While the struggle over the PBS was taking place, the Government had moved on another aspect of health policy. This was its proposal, also opposed by the BMA, to legislate for a hospital subsidy scheme and negotiate it with the States.

    “The subsidy proposed would be paid on condition that each state government would abandon means testing of public hospital patients. A similar subsidy would be paid to private hospitals for patients who had taken out private health insurance.

    “Though the BMA at the federal level opposed the scheme, some state branches accepted that it was relatively inoffensive in practice. New South Wales (with Federal Council support) set up a Medical Benefit Fund to head off any attempt to use the subsidy scheme to introduce salaried medical service sessional payments. Something like 1,000 doctors in New South Wales each donated £10 to establish the MBF. The Fund was open to public subscription. Subscribers were offered reimbursement of expenses for treatment by doctors on a fee-for-service basis. This became the basis for the national insurance scheme established by the Menzies Government in the early 1950s.”

    But there is some light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of a High Court decision in 2009 which held that the Medicare system does not amount to civil conscription of doctors in contravention of the Constitution.

    The judgement not only clarified the scope of the constitutional prohibition on “any form of civil conscription” in relation to federal legislation concerning medical or dental services (s 51xxiiiA), but has highlighted its importance “as a great constitutional guarantee ensuring the mixed State-federal and public-private nature of medical service delivery in Australia. ”

    Previous decisions of the High Court have clarified that the prohibition does not prevent federal laws regulating the manner in which medical services are provided. It held that the federal legislation in question Act, as a legal authority noted, “does not amount to a form of civil conscription, because doctors do not compulsorily provide service for the Commonwealth, or for other bodies on the Commonwealth’s behalf.

    “The Act does not force doctors to treat or not treat particular patients. Doctors are free to choose where and when they practise. Aspects of the Medicare scheme, such as denial of payment where there is a failure to record details such as item numbers, are conditions of participation in the scheme but these aspects do not amount to a practical compulsion to perform a professional service.”

    I’m no constitutional lawyer as you may have guessed, but I’m hoping that we have come far enough that an enlightened High Court would not act on a matter that would benefit all Australians.

  16. I know who I’m putting my money on to win the May 18 election that will be our great LNP as bill shorten will stuff up in the last week of the campaign so Morrison be PM

  17. I’m just an observer here.
    First post.

    In my opinion, and this is the first time I’ve really bothered to get really involved in the election campaign, more damage has been done by Dutton/Christensen (mainly Dutton) than anything Bill has done.

  18. nath @ #1469 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 10:38 pm

    Judging from the title, a very mendacious book.
    __________________________________
    Really? I have not read it yet but I assume It’s about the emergence of the social democratic tradition in Australia. Worthy of some research I would have thought.

    The ‘social democratic tradition’ in Australia was well established before Whitlam.
    Whitlam did not suffer fools gladly and would have been very dismissive of clowns like the Greens.

  19. guytaur @ #1451 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 10:16 pm

    You all said Assange had no reason to fear Extradition to the US. There was no Grand Jury pursuing him.

    I never said that. He has lots of reasons to fear extradition to the US. He helped Russia fuck with their election.

    Though it’s hugely ironic that he’s apparently being extradited by the administration he helped install. And not entirely undeserved, either. He turned Wikileaks into a partisan political plaything for no reason whatsoever.

    Barr’s comments do help his case as Assange’s defence is he is a publisher.

    Nah. His best defense is that U.S. jurisdiction doesn’t extend to things that happen in Europe or Ecuador’s embassy. Which makes everything else immaterial if only the rest of the world is willing to stand up and tell the US to stop playing world police.

  20. Nathpoleon
    We actually know it’s you who idolises both Naopoleon and Shorten. Obsession is a burden. You’ll celebrate 18th May.

  21. Briefly: “… The sooner they are electorally gutted and dissolve themselves the better for egalitarian goals in this country.”

    Briefly – You are too gentle!

    They should be (electorally) disembowelled, their (legislative) livers unplugged and their bodies (politic) burned away. And all their (parliamentary) limbs should be hacked and mangled.
    Moreover, their (psephological) eyes should be gouged out. And then their (factional) kneecaps split. And also they should have their (party political) bottoms burnt off!

    And that’s just for starters!

  22. beguiledagain @ #1470 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 10:40 pm

    The AMA strongly resisted the introduction of the original Medibank under Whitlam and most doctors at the time were opposed.

    Things have changed a lot and I think most GPs would now be strongly in favour of Medibank and supportive of extension of it. Certainly that is true of those I know.

  23. The Mueller report vidicates Wikileaks, no proof DNC was hacked, and explicitly states wikileaks could not have committed a crime unless they participated in hacking. The conspiracy theory pushed by the proagandists has failed.
    https://angelof-truth.com/2019/04/18/barr-exonerates-wikileaks-in-press-conference-regarding-mueller-report/

    I too consider the most authoritative source on this topic to be… “Angel Fox’s blog” and totally see how you are definitely not somebody who is, as you describe of everyone else “just blindly accepting what they are told” and most definitely have an open mind to all evidence and not just stuff that fits the convoluted fan theory you formed (or, rather, was told) years ago.

  24. “The Greens have never been in Government outside of the mickey mouse city state of Canberra.”

    Incorrect.

    There were two Greens ministers in the cabinet of Tasmanian Labor Premier Giddings. They were the Greens leader Nick McKim, who held the senior portfolios of Education and Corrections, and Cassy O’Connor, who held Human Services and Aboriginal Affairs.

  25. AR

    I agree with you about the US trying to be the world police.

    My only point with Victoria is about press freedom. It’s precisely upholding human rights laws that prevents dictatorships including fascism.

    That’s my argument. I also think we should do this in the case of terrorism.
    The terrorists the fascists and all the rest win when we bend on human rights and the rule of law.

    As Trump is amply demonstrating in the US.

  26. Getting late in the day, but my typing is slowing down and an edit I made did not get through. The coda to my constitutional law lecture should have been:

    I’m no constitutional lawyer as you may have guessed, but I’m hoping that we have come far enough that an enlightened High Court would not act adversely on a matter that would benefit all Australians.

  27. Peg
    Actually in both instances the Green reps were part of a Labor government. A good position for the Greens to adopt if they like to contribute to progress. Thanks for adding that info.

  28. EGW

    Fact. Sanders is the Democratic Party Front Runner.
    He is running on a platform of a living wage. Medicare for all.

    Such strange things to Labor party voters.

  29. Apart from anything else, there are constitutional barriers in Australia to the implementation of a Corbynite program. But that aside, even in the austerity-afflicted UK, Labour struggle to reach a vote in the mid-30s. Were Labor to model itself on UK Labour, the chances are Labor’s vote here would fall into the 20’s. The only beneficiaries would be the Tories and the Libkin.

  30. The Barnaby Joyce/Taylor story is gaining more traction on Twitter. Apparently it will be discussed on ‘Insiders’.

    Could this be the end of the Coalition???

  31. I still remember the heady year on PB running up to the 2007 ALP victory: the palpitations that followed each dastardly trick pulled by the L-NP or their allies in the media We all feared that Howard – the MacGyver of Australian politics – would contrive one last escape from his cage as its plunged into the icy pool. But the polling effect of all the shenanigans was minimal, or even counter-intuitive: Rudd was too deft, the mood for change too strong, and a party that had finally outstayed its welcome was duly shown the door. The ALP needed to capture 15 seats – it was all over by 7pm, in spite a late drift back to the L-NP. The giddy 55-45 polling became a 53-47 result.

    And now to 2019: Shorten is not deft, or seemingly liked all that much, but he has proved the leader the ALP needed. In the past 6 years the machine he heads has learned hard lessons and further increased its experience and nous in the campaign field. Enough mood for change is there, among enough of the population. The current L-NP is now a shambling zombie of the party that was shown the door in ’07: all its obvious talent has departed, just the chancers, useful idiots and ideologues remain, with only tribal hatred and rabid self-interest to animate them. Recall all the breathtaking rorts, stuff-ups and outrages the L-NP have authored in the past 6 years. The ALP need only ensure that only 1 of those many, many transgressions is lodged in a voter’s mind as he/she enters a polling booth on/before May 18.

    Most importantly – it’s the L-NP who need to capture seats this time: at least 3 to govern in their own right. Can all the naysayers and worry-warts conveniently infesting this site ignore the MSM contest boosting, doomsday predictions of future 2PP poll headlines and the “vibe” for a moment, and just tell me where in tarnation these 3+ seats will be won?

    And that’s a net 3+ seats – further gains will be required to offset the bloodbath I can assure all PBers awaits the Libs in Victoria. Frydenberg has gone and covered every flat surface in Camberwell if it doesn’t move fast enough with his grinning mug . I don’t think he’s doing that because the seat of Kooyong urgently requires printer-led economic stimulus.

    If I were an L-NP operative/booster/stooge I would be relieved to lose this coming election, and not by the margin they deserve*. While the ALP (hopefully) rights the good ship Oz as it ploughs towards stormy waters, the Coalition might try to re-imagine themselves as something bigger than the willing instrument of undeserved favor to the powerful and injustice to the marginalised and young. At the moment they are simply incapable of comprehending and meeting the profound social and environmental choices facing the world over the next 20-50 years. Both these problems and the voices demanding action on them will grow larger: if an unreformed L-NP manage to escape a spanking on 18/5 then the seeds for their eventual destruction will surely have been sown.

    * – Put me down for ALP 82 seats Late Riser, if you are now running this comp. Apologies to all for the length of the post … but it’s still 0.1% of the pointless bickering I’ve had to scroll past over the past week!

  32. Wayne – AI / Machine Learning (ML)

    It is well within the capabilities of the ML technique “Long Short-term Memory (LSTM)” (a form of recurrent neural network) to generate the Sayings of Wayne. It would be really funny if someone has done this (I tips me hat to you, if so). Even more impressive if it could be made self optimising via reinforcement based on the degree of annoyance expressed in reactions by other posters, and I think that this too is possible.

  33. The problem with Sanders is not what he stands for. It is what – or rather, who – he stands against. He campaigns against his natural allies in the Democratic Party. He is a figure of division. In this respect he is Trumpy. The US needs a figurehead who represents not only reform but also unity. Sanders is not such a figure. He is an insult.

  34. Here’s a novel idea: Maybe wait until Sanders/Corbyn actually win an election (not in their own heavily left-leaning electorates) before going around lecturing everybody on their electoral genius and how much their strategies are obvious free wins electorally.

  35. beguiledagain @ #2822 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 8:32 pm

    rhwombat says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 7:03 pm
    If I had my druthers, I would like to see a Canadian (or Scandinavian)-like system that funded all parts of Medicine from a single central fund that paid public practice (including primary practice) by salary bands, and let the privateers squabble for the convenience of the worried wealthy. Not going to happen though.

    ——————————————-

    Thank you Wombat for your thoughtful contribution. It was music to my ears. When I have explored this idea with many Australians their eyes glaze over and they can’t believe that there is a much better alternative to what they’ve got. It’s good to have your views confirmed by someone who has the lived experience. All but the last sentence: “Not going to happen though.”

    I am a bit more upbeat because where health care is involved I believe Australians would be able to cut through the political bullshit which would be arrayed against a single-payer universal system, not to mention the vested interests.

    I was around in 1959 when Tommy Douglas, the agrarian-socialist Premier of Saskatchewan battled with the province’s medical profession to bring in the first universal public health care system in North America. After a 23-day doctor’s strike the provincial health care plan was on its way and within a few years the profession had come to appreciate its benefits for them, especially guaranteed payment and not having to bill patients.

    And again in 1966 when the national Liberal (centre-left) government of Lester Pearson took Saskatchwan’s plan and brought in the present universal healthcare system across Canada, single-payer and all bulk billed. It has become an icon in Canadian identity as Canadians look across the border at the U.S. system. It is the answer given overwhelmingly when they are asked what they like best about their country. And the country hasn’t gone broke paying for it out of consolidated revenue.

    I can’t believe that Australian voters in this day and age would not respond to a party that offered the same thing. If, as I suspect, Labor’s cancer initiative plays a big role in the forthcoming election, then it could be the first stage towards a full single payer system. I may be a Pollyanna, but I think politically it’s a no-brainer.

    There would be a problem dealing with the current employees in private insurance, but my hope would be that those companies would continue to offer insurance for the health frills. Redundant workers would go to the national health insurance entity.

    I’d appreciate a little detail from you on why such a proposal wouldn’t fly.

    Thanks bga. I agree. The major reason I don’t think it will happen here is that I and most of my colleagues (with a few notable exceptions) find it much more rewarding to focus on the complex biological problems that we are trained and equipped to solve, rather than the socio-political. Most of us did medicine to escape the jungles of law, economics and commerce. We get smug and lazy within our privileged positions in the accidentally Lucky Country. Gough changed our world – but someone left that cake out in the rain…

  36. Laura Tingle
    ‏Verified account @latingle
    13h13 hours ago

    Laura Tingle Retweeted The Project

    Barnaby Joyce approving $80 million of water purchases that can’t be used off the property that is selling them???

Comments Page 30 of 32
1 29 30 31 32

Leave a Reply

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