Essential Research: budget surplus and economic management

Essential Research’s latest suggests voters still give the Coalition the edge on economic management, but are nervous about their prioritisation of surplus over stimulus.

It hasn’t yet appeared on the organisation’s website, but The Guardian had reports on Tuesday concerning the latest fortnightly poll from Essential Research, which is still holding its fire on voting intention. There’s the usual general report on the survey from Katharine Murphy, plus analysis from pollster Peter Lewis that features detailed tables for two of the key questions.

The headline finding is that 56% would favour prioritising economic stimulus at the cost of a later budget surplus to avoid a downturn, compared with 33% who favour a surplus as first priority. Other indicators of economic sentiment were more favourable for the government: only 29% of respondents deemed the government’s economic management the most likely cause of the IMF’s recent downgrade in Australia’s growth forecast, compared with 52% for factors outside the government’s control most likely to blame (comprising 42% for global factors and 10% for local ones), and 49% expressed greater trust in the Coalition to handle economic management compared with 34% for Labor (compared with 44% to 29% when the question was last asked in March). A question on the Extinction Rebellion movement found more favourable sentiment than you might have expected from following the news: 52% expressed support for the campaign, while 44% were opposed.

The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1033 respondents out of the pollster’s online panel.

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.

1,706 comments on “Essential Research: budget surplus and economic management”

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  4. Steve777

    “ If so, will he demand that Labor unconditionally support it or be condemnerd as a friend of booers? And will Labor cave?”
    ———————

    Will Labor cave?

    At the next national conference they are changing the name to the Australian Peleological Party. 🙂

  6. Most of us agree the Libs have always been despicable social dividers interested only in preserving the 1%er advantage.

    But I’d like someone to tell me when it all went south for Labor ?

  8. Call me old fashioned but 25,000 attendees to UN Climate COP25 seems to be a bit perverse.

    Conferences have become a joke. The wrong people go to them and consider it ‘hard work’. One would think that modern day communications would reduce the number and size of these things yet the opposite has happened. Conferences are less a means to an end and more a stand alone industry in themselves… competing against each other for largess and status – forgetting purpose and outcome.

    Same for company internal meetings. OMG.

    But….. the market is perfect. What would I know.

  9. Sally McManus
    @sallymcmanus

    ‘Public protests are what people do when all other means of getting their message through to those with power – Governments or employers – have failed. Billionaires can campaign with paid advertising. We only have ourselves and our ability to stick together.’

  10. Re Jack Mundey,

    Yes, as nath and P1 pointed out, his hero and mentor Jack Mundey joined the Greens in 2003.

    I am looking forward to RI/Briefly’s rationalisation as to how that could be.

  12. Just having a look at the Greens forest industry policies.
    They are the usual litany of bans, prohibitions, tighter controls, additional regulations, and processes.
    Bans will include monoculture forestry plantations. Around 100% of current forestry plantation are monoculture.
    All towns, mills, contractors that rely on native forests will be out of work, of course.
    Never fear the Greens will be retrained along with everyone from all the other industries that are going to be banned.
    It turns out that not a single Inner Urbs job is lost, so that is all OK.

  15. ‘Civil Disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is Civil Obedience.

    Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders. Millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people have been obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obediently filling our jails full of petty thieves, while the grand thieves are running the country.
    That’s our problem.’

    Howard Zinn

  16. adrian @ #1616 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 5:22 pm

    ‘Civil Disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is Civil Obedience.

    Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders. Millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people have been obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obediently filling our jails full of petty thieves, while the grand thieves are running the country.
    That’s our problem.’

    Howard Zinn

    Simply voting for someone new might go a long way to fixing things…

  17. adrian

    I have those words of Howard Zinn displayed at my desk….read them every day.

    I have posted those same words many times here on PB over the years.

  20. “This is the lesson the younger generations are learning from us.”

    Indeed. The younger generation and the action they are willing to take offers hope.

    Authoritarian submissives, be gone!

  21. Player One @ #1620 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 5:32 pm

    Rex Douglas @ #1616 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 5:28 pm

    Simply voting for someone new might go a long way to fixing things…

    No matter who you vote for, a politician always ends up getting elected.

    And some problems just seem to be beyond political solutions.

    This is the lesson the younger generations are learning from us.

    🙁

    That’s a bit too defeatist I reckon.

    You might see a better calibre of candidate standing if they think they might have a chance.

    Continuing to vote for dud candidates/organisations is illogical.

  23. poroti

    That would be a march organised by All Under One Banner. Last month it was over 100,000 in Edinburgh on a rainy day!

    I note Nicola Sturgeon was there!

    Maybe that’s a response to criticism that the SNP is being perceived as overly cautious and putting anti-brexit politics above independence.

  24. C@tmomma @ #1576 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 12:05 pm

    Greensborough Growler @ #1569 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 2:54 pm

    C@tmomma @ #1567 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 2:51 pm

    Greensborough Growler @ #1550 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 2:33 pm

    Trump went to Madison Square Gardens, NY last night. The boos were deafening. Much louder than the recent Washington baseball crowd.

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1190819199431725057

    I can see why Trump did that. He always doubles down. He obviously thought he would be among fans at an MMA fight, and New York is not Washington. However, for someone who just abandoned New York for Florida, his political antenna need tuning.

    Further reports from unbiased witnesses casts doubts on the original story.

    https://www.axios.com/trump-booed-by-ufc-new-york-crowd-0a8af07d-51f3-4fcd-9d49-2f744258e84e.html

    Nope. Doesn’t sound especially positive to me. One guy in a seat in one of the expensive seats gives a raised clenched fist to Trump but that was the most positive thing I saw or heard. And I watched it twice.

    I think GG was being sarcastic considering one of the “unbiased witnesses” is Eric Trump.

  26. Pegasus @ #1618 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 5:31 pm

    A socialist (no, it’s not a dirty word) perspective of AGW and the need for action…

    Rage against the dying of the light: https://redflag.org.au/node/6812

    Good article. I agree with this …

    In addition to these reflections on the situation in Queensland, we also have to consider what happened in the rest of Australia. When you broaden the picture in this way, it becomes even clearer that pointing the figure at Bob Brown’s convoy is just a convenient way for Labor to avoid facing up to the real reasons for its defeat.

    And this …

    In most of Australia, Labor’s equivocal stance on Adani, and climate change in general, is likely only to have reinforced the impression that the party doesn’t really stand for much.

    And this …

    The real question, then, isn’t so much why a party of outright climate vandals was re-elected, but why the two prospective parties of government are both climate vandals.

    But especially this …

    But the idea that it’s the public that’s the drag on climate action is rubbish. Survey after survey over the past decade has shown that a majority of Australians want serious action – even if there are short term costs. The thing that needs explaining is why Labor has been so reluctant to offer it.

    And most especially this …

    Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old who spearheaded the global School Strike for Climate movement, had it right when she spoke at the UN climate summit in Poland late last year. “We have not come here to beg world leaders to care for our future”, she said. “They have ignored us in the past and they will ignore us again. We have come here to let them know that change is coming whether they like it or not. The people will rise to the challenge.”

    Historically, there is little precedent for positive reforms simply being offered by our rulers from on high. Again and again, they’ve had to be forced to accept change.

    Change is coming … if you don’t want to be part of the solution, your best bet is to get out of the way 🙁

  28. Those $1080 tax givaways promised by Morrison and Frydenberg have shrunk to $420. Surely our happy clapper PM was not telling porkies?

    The Morrison government’s promised $1080 low and middle income tax boost to 4.5 million Australian taxpayers which would lift the economy has turned into a $420 bump barely noticed by the nation’s shopkeepers.

    Australian Tax Office figures show the average tax refund received by those who rushed to get the tax offset announced in this year’s budget have received far less than expected.

    In the April budget, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg unveiled a doubling of the low and middle income tax offset which he said would deliver up to $1080 to single earners and up to $2160 for dual wage families.

    https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/promised-1080-tax-burst-ends-up-much-more-modest-20191102-p536sf.html

  29. But I’d like someone to tell me when it all went south for Labor ?

    June 1975. That is when Bill Hayden became Treasurer. He was the first neoliberal Treasurer in Australian history. He articulated an economically illiterate belief in the need for fiscal austerity because otherwise the currency issuer might “run out of money”. Labor has never had an economically literate Treasurer or Shadow Treasurer since then.

  30. swampratsays:
    Sunday, November 3, 2019 at 5:39 pm

    poroti

    That would be a march organised by All Under One Banner. Last month it was over 100,000 in Edinburgh on a rainy day!

    …

    “rainy day”?

    I can’t remember reading about floods in Scotland! 🙂

  32. Rex Douglas:

    E. G. Theodore @ #1600 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 4:26 pm

    If Asian countries stop buying thermal coal, Australia will stop selling it to them.

    Until then, you supply-siders should go back to laughing into your Laffer curves!

    The ‘NRA’ defence.

    I am merely stating what I believe to be the case, I am not asserting that things should be that way, and not even attempting to defend anything.

    In reality the NRA works its mischief almost entirely on the demand side – the percentage of Americans owning guns has fallen very considerably but total guns owned has increased dramatically due to fairly small numbers owning hundreds of guns.

    The NRA analogy is also completely irrelevant and your snide remark seems mainly to be a pathetic attempt to associate coal production with gun manufacture, rather than engaging substantively. I am of course well aware that substantive engagement is not your thing but perhaps you could try being a little less rude.

  33. This is where it all started to go wrong for the ALP and our country.

    The more substantive Ministerial change at the same time was the sacking of Jim Cairns as Treasurer on June 6, 1975 (he became Minister for Environment until he quit in dismay on July 2, 1975).

    He was replaced by one William (Bill) Hayden as Treasurer on June 6, 1975 (he had previously been Minister for Social Security.

    This Ministerial shift marked the beginning of neo-liberalism in Australian economic policy circles.

    Among the selected documents that are available electronically for immediate download you can read the – 1975–76 Budget strategy (8.9 mb), which became the basis of the fiscal statement a few weeks later.

    It contains a classic submission to Cabinet from the then Treasurer (dated July 15, 1975) – so not long after he became Treasurer. It was classic Treasury Groupthink. The Treasury had been baying at the moon to introduce more Monetarist orientated policies and they were able to take advantage of Hayden as an ‘illiterate’ in economic matters to push their agenda.

    Before he was replaced as Treasurer, Jim Cairns had made a submission to Cabinet acknowledging that inflation had to be addressed but resisted the idea that the Government should introduce highly restrictive fiscal and monetary policy because he correctly reasoned that would create high unemployment.

    And, after all, this was a Labor government and the Labor Party was the political arm of the trade unions and the defenders of social justice and promoters of social inclusion.

    He argued that there should be some government spending restraint but this would be accompanied by a major political campaign to break into the wage-price spiral that was driving the inflation. He wanted trade unions to moderate their wage claims and take the real hit that the oil price rises required.

    He also railed against the idea that wage increases automatically caused inflation. He said “some wage increases will not cause inflation”. In general, he promoted real wage increases in line with productivity growth and understood that these should not be inflationary. If prices still rose, it was all due to profit push.

    ….

    Cairns was duly sacked as Treasurer less than a month after presenting his fiscal plan to the Cabinet.

    William George Hayden, who was of a conservative ilk became Treasurer and Chief Surrender Monkey. Clyde Cameron was replaced as Minister for Labor by James McClelland who was a notorious ‘union-basher’ (Source).

    The documents show that Hayden was obsessed with reducing the fiscal deficit. He wanted major cuts to progressive areas of government spending – education, income support, public health, public housing and indigenous support. He also wanted concessions to big business.

    In his Submission to Cabinet upon taking over as Treasurer (Submission 1928, ‘1975–76 Budget Strategy: Overall Policy Options’ [A5915, 1928] starting Page 53 of the document linked above), Hayden outlined the neo-liberal vision that still resonates today.

    He claimed that if the deficit rose further it would be “quite outside the range of our own previous experience” – invoking fear of the unknown.

    http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=30146

  34. E. G. Theodore @ #1633 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 5:57 pm

    Rex Douglas:

    E. G. Theodore @ #1600 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 4:26 pm

    If Asian countries stop buying thermal coal, Australia will stop selling it to them.

    Until then, you supply-siders should go back to laughing into your Laffer curves!

    The ‘NRA’ defence.

    I am merely stating what I believe to be the case, I am not asserting that things should be that way, and not even attempting to defend anything.

    In reality the NRA works its mischief almost entirely on the demand side – the percentage of Americans owning guns has fallen very considerably but total guns owned has increased dramatically due to fairly small numbers owning hundreds of guns.

    The NRA analogy is also completely irrelevant and your snide remark seems mainly to be a pathetic attempt to associate coal production with gun manufacture, rather than engaging substantively. I am of course well aware that substantive engagement is not your thing but perhaps you could try being a little less rude.

    We’re supplying the thermal coal bullets for environmental terrorists to kill the planet.

  35. poroti

    Is there any other sort of day ?
    ———-
    Well a dreich day!.

    There was, as usual, a small group of Union Jack waving unionists at the march, surrounded by police. You must be bad to be expelled from UKIP!

    “ To the rear of the square, a police cordon contained a vocal pro-Union demonstration led by A Force for Good founder Alistair McConnachie, who was expelled from Ukip after denying atrocities against the Jewish people during the Second World War.“

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/18011136.20-000-strong-crowd-nationals-rally-back-indyref2020/

  36. On my bookshelf is a book self-published by Jim Cairns that he personally signed for me at a ‘politics in the pub’ event we attended back in the day.

    Title: Towards a New Society: a new day has begun

    Preface: The supreme human value is intelligent affection and care for all forms of life. Can it be achieved?
    :::
    The vital area for progress is not the “means of production” as Marxists, capitalists and economic rationalists believe. It is in the “means of reproduction.”

    There is no other way to social reform, to the good society.
    ———-

    In the current ALP right manifestation he would probably be reviled for his views.

  39. swamprat

    My ‘Hoots Mon’ ancestry is in Assynt and Wick, they could only have dreamed of weather as good as “dreich” 😀

  40. adrian

    Cheers.

    I also have a second quote of his to read every day:

    “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

  42. Sally McManus gives a good outline of the various laws Coalition governments have introduced to limit workers rights to organise and strike.

    @sallymcmanus
    Laws bought in by Coalition Governments over 23 years punishing union protests & boycotts:
    – 1996 changes to “secondary boycott” laws so unions can be sued by companies for boycotts
    – 2005 multiple hurdles & limits imposed to make strike action “lawful”
    – 2005 workers must be docked a minimum four hours pay even for a 10min protest
    – 2005 increased fines for “unlawful” industrial action (now $12 600 for a worker, $63 000 for a union)
    – 2016 tripling the fines for all workers in or connected with the construction industry
    – 2016 dedicated police force (ABCC) for construction workers to enforce fines
    – 2016 fulltime police force for all unions (ROC) to enforce paperwork fines
    – Now attempting “Ensuring Integrity” laws to shut down unions & sack leaders for protests

  43. Rex Douglas says:
    Sunday, November 3, 2019 at 5:01 pm
    Most of us agree the Libs have always been despicable social dividers interested only in preserving the 1%er advantage.

    But I’d like someone to tell me when it all went south for Labor ?
    ______________________________________
    I reckon that’s an easy one – March 1996 , Labor has had no rationale for government (other than self-interest) since that time. Its had 2 anti-party leaders in that time and 8 out of 9 NSW General Secetaries who have become either anti-party or not in communion with the party.

  44. Absolutely spot on about Rex Douglas, E.G.Theodore. But he doesn’t even succeed as an agent provocateur these days. We are hip to his jive. 🙂

  48. It’s very rare that I comment on here, but some of the posts here show absolutely no comprehension of the issues which matter to working-class and suburban Australians, the people who are my peers. Do you seriously think that climate change is the critical issue for these Australians? Try instead getting a job for themselves and their kids, the price of houses, paying the mortgage, the cost of utilities, congestion, road tolls-you get my drift. People understand, other than a few die-hards, that climate change is real and we need to make changes to address it. But it is absolutely not the biggest issue in the daily lives of suburban voters. The LNP understand this. At the state level, there are at least 7 working-class western Sydney electorates which are a lock for the Liberals, including my own of Seven Hills. Hopefully the ALP now understand it too. I just wish people with progressive views would try to see things through the eyes of working class voters, and frame discussion about climate change in terms which are meaningful to suburban and working-class voters. Cheers

  49. Player One:

    E. G. Theodore @ #1598 Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 – 4:26 pm

    If Asian countries stop buying thermal coal, Australia will stop selling it to them.

    Until then, you supply-siders should go back to laughing into your Laffer curves!

    I’ll bet you also blame smokers for dying of lung cancer

    KRAS G12C and G12V mutated lung cancer is like to have been caused by smoking; lung cancers with other driving mutations are less to be so and in some cases likely to have another cause (closely equivalent to bad luck)

    I am not even slightly interested in assigning blame, and my statement was simply a statement that is true by definition (if Asia stops buying coal from AUS then by definition AUS has stopped selling coal to Asia). This is in fact vacuously true (like Nicholas’s favourite identity relating to the national accounts…) and the question is what to do about it

    I am interested in situations where people legally pursuing their genuine interests lead to adverse outcomes, particularly when those adversely affected include themselves. That is the case here.

    The flaw in supply-side solutions in this case is that they would need to be applied more or less universally (at least for traded commodities, and unfortunately in the case of coal the new consumers also have abundant domestic reserves).

    If one is addicted to supply-side solutions (perhaps one is a Reaganite Relic, so to speak) then something that could be tried is to pass and enforce an international agreement mandating a high standard of thermal coal “purity” (so only coal with fewer than X units of muck per KWh can be traded or burned). X can of course fall annually, thereby actually contracting the global supply. At least some Australian short term interests would be delighted by this (if it is true as often claimed that Australian thermal coal is “purer” than that of others) but the key would course be whether the United States has large reserves of slightly less dirty coal.

    However I suspect that these supply-side measures have a very low chance of being implemented and will take too long in any event, so it would be wiser to focus on the demand side. Certainly it would be extreme folly to focus exclusively on the supply side: Reagan and Thatcher demonstrated the folly of supply-side focus conclusively, and I am continually surprised that a bunch of people who claim to be “left wing” are advocating a return to that idea!

    Now you raised lung cancer and smoking, so I’ll engage with you. Various markets including Indonesia are the “great new markets” for the tobacco companies. This is based on the ability to generate demand (by more or less openly marketing to children) and in particular maintain it (via addiction). This is a demand side (nefarious) activity. Now there a big health problem with males smoking in Indonesia (60% of men smoke, only about 5% of women do!) and this will lead to increased rates of lung cancer. In tobacco, Indonesia has both growing demand and large domestic supply capacity (most smokers smoke an indigenous variety of cigarette). In coal, Indonesia likewise has both growing demand and large domestic supply capacity. I suggest we learn from the failure to prevent the smoking related lung cancer “epidemic” from spreading (shifting?) to Indonesia and apply the lessons (and others of course) to the case of coal.

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