Essential Research: leader ratings and protest laws

Discouragement for Newspoll’s notion of an Anthony Albanese approval surge, plus a mixed bag of findings on the right to protest.

The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll still offers nothing on voting intention, though it’s relative interesting in that it features the pollster’s monthly leadership ratings. Contrary to Newspoll, these record a weakening in Anthony Albanese’s ratings, with approval down three to 37% and disapproval up five to 34%. Scott Morrison also worsens slightly, down two on approval to 45% and up three on disapproval to 41%, and his preferred prime minister read is essentially steady at 44-28 (43-28 last month).

Further questions relate to the right to protest, including the finding that 33% would support laws flagged by Scott Morrison that “could make consumer or environment boycotts illegal”, while 39% were opposed. Fifty-eight per cent agreed the government had “the right to limit citizen protests when it disrupts business”, with 31% for disagree; but that 53% agreed that “protestors should have the right to pressure banks not to invest in companies that are building coal mines”, with 33% disagreeing.

The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1075 respondents chosen from an 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.

1,832 comments on “Essential Research: leader ratings and protest laws”

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  1. “ In general, political leaders don’t change public perceptions. The worst ones follow them. The best ones anticipate them.”

    Which one are you, P1?

    Maybe you could give lessons, hold a leadership conference even, with those other ‘doers’ Rex and Lars. Peg could hand out brochures.

  2. You have to wonder how NSW Labor are going to fundraise from now on given the dopes who organised the Aldi shopping bags have exposed the party.

  3. “ Let’s see now … worst drought in history, destruction of our agricultural sector, death of our greatest tourism asset, followed by actually burning down people’s houses and killing them … that might just do it, don’t you think?”

    Amen.

    I was taught to always say Amen after I heard a prayer.

    Regrettably you seemed to have missed the cult of victim blaming that has taken root in our fair land since 1996.

    Hoping (praying) that the motes will fall out of the eyes of the great unwashed any time soon seems a piss poor strategy of affecting meaningful change for your cause any time soon, let alone by levels you set for 2030.

    Cassandras were not rewarded in Ancient Greece, and there is little evidence that the Australian populace will do anything but crucify their modern day climate equivalents.

    Meanwhile, Labor is not a one track pony. We have other social justice reforms to prosecute. Things that the voting public expect from us. We should attend accordingly.

  4. Was trying to post an image but it wasn’t working GG. Unless you want to look at it in the article.
    But I do appreciate the Split Enz video.

  5. Aqualung

    Another Split Enz song this with a chorus line that many a political tragic believes 😆

    History never repeats
    I tell myself before I go to sleep
    Don’t say the words you might regret
    I lost before, you know I can’t forget

    History never repeats
    I tell myself before I go to sleep
    And there’s a light shining in the dark
    Leading me on towards a change of heart, ah

    History never repeats
    History never repeats
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzuJXqgsiSM

  6. Andrew_Earlwood @ #1308 Sunday, November 17th, 2019 – 5:27 pm

    “ Let’s see now … worst drought in history, destruction of our agricultural sector, death of our greatest tourism asset, followed by actually burning down people’s houses and killing them … that might just do it, don’t you think?”

    Amen.

    I was taught to always say Amen after I heard a prayer.

    That noise you hear is not prayer. It is the electorate crying out for help.

    But both you and the Labor party seem to be deaf to them – “Now is not the time …”

    Odd really, since you seem quite able to hear the coal miners ok 🙁

  7. I know that doomists are trying to panic people, but over egging is as bad as under egging.

    Some examples:

    ‘Destruction of our agriculture sector’. Then you have what ABARE says:

    https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/research-topics/agricultural-commodities/mar-2019/agriculture-overview

    ‘Death of our greatest tourist asset’. Most of the Reef is not dead. A tiny proportion of the Reef is visited by the tourists. What will probably happen is that this tiny percentage of isolated high visitation areas will be ‘farmed’ to maintain colour and fish by seeding heat-tolerant corals.

    ‘Worst drought in history’. For some areas, yes. For most of Australia, no.

    Fires: Over the past 150 years Australia has had larger areas burned, more infrastructure burned, more people killed and more houses burned.

  8. Boerwar @ #1316 Sunday, November 17th, 2019 – 5:53 pm

    I know that doomists are trying to panic people, but over egging is as bad as under egging. …

    Unbelievable. Except, somehow … sadly, all too believable 🙁

    “You think you have it tough … we had to live in a paper bag in the middle of the road …” etc etc

    What is happening now is not a comedy sketch. It is a mere foretaste of things to come.

  9. Amy R, the Guardian

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/17/australias-bushfire-politics-the-parties-prevaricate-while-the-country-burns

    It set the tone for the week in political discourse. Wanting to talk about climate change as a cause of the increasingly unpredicted and unprecedented bushfires marked you as a “leftie”. Those on the right pointed to “Green party” policies as having stymied hazard reduction efforts and other fire preparations.

    Neither was true. But McCormack’s comments took hold, fuelling debate about whether or not Australia was allowed to have a debate on climate change as more than 100 fires scarred the landscape and capital cities were choked by smoky haze.
    :::
    But from the major parties and their leadership, there was nothing, as the “not today” bipartisan narrative held.

    With authorities warning the latest threat is not over, and to brace for a potentially catastrophic summer, it will be months before the smoke clears.

  10. Shaun Micallef

    RECIPE
    1. Place frogs in saucepan of tepid water & slowly increase temperature.
    2. Yell at frogs with increasing urgency that they are in danger.
    3. Listen to frogs as they blame sun or Mother Nature & refuse to get out of saucepan.
    4. Repeat next election or until time is up.

  11. Boerwar:

    I know that doomists are trying to panic people, but over egging is as bad as under egging.

    No it isn’t. Under egging is mainly bad, and worse than over egging, which is mainly stupid, and certainly a lot more stupid than under egging.

    As Talleyrand might say of over egging: it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake!

  12. Rex Douglas says:
    Sunday, November 17, 2019 at 5:19 pm
    You have to wonder how NSW Labor are going to fundraise from now on given the dopes who organised the Aldi shopping bags have exposed the party.
    _____________________________
    with the NSW ALP there is always another constituency to betray or trade off Rex. Maybe instead of Aldi cash they’ll use iTunes cards or bitcoin for transactions?

  13. phoenixRED @ #1284 Sunday, November 17th, 2019 – 1:03 pm

    Voters Humiliate Trump As Democrat Wins Louisiana Governor Election

    Bel Edwards withstood a rally from Donald Trump for his Republican opponent, Eddie Rispone. At the rally, Trump said, “You need to fire your far-left governor.”

    Louisiana voters didn’t listen to the president.

    Trump is being impeached, and even in the reddest of states, he has proven to be of no help to his party.

    John Bel Edwards’s margin of victory will be slim, but it will represent another defeat for the myth of Donald Trump.

    https://www.politicususa.com/2019/11/16/democrat-wins-louisiana-governor-election.html

    #ETTD!

  14. Thank god.

    Louisiana’s Democrat governor, John Bel Edwards, has been re-elected following a closely fought gubernatorial battle that marked another statewide defeat for Republicans and Donald Trump in the American south.

    The president had invested significant resources into the race in one of America’s most conservative states, making two trips to appear with the GOP candidate, Eddie Rispone, in the past two weeks. On election day Trump took to Twitter multiple times to urge Republican voters in Louisiana to turn up to the polling booths.

    Although Rispone lost by a thin two-point margin, the defeat is a substantial blow to the president following the loss of another Republican governor in Kentucky last month. Trump won Louisiana with 58% of the vote in 2016 and the state has not elected a Democrat president since Bill Clinton in 1996.

    Edwards, a socially conservative Democrat who supported the state’s regressive abortion laws and who has upheld expansive gun rights, mobilized a base in Louisiana’s major metropolitan areas and swept up the vast majority of African American voters across the state to claim victory.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/17/louisiana-re-elects-democrat-governor-john-bel-edwards-in-blow-to-trump

  15. Classic Pegasus – totally on the mark!

    I think the ALP should have published that instead of the root and branch review!

  16. A Greens government will destroy as a matter of publicly-available policies: the dogs, the trots, the jumps, rodeos, camp drafts, chicken factories, piggeries, feedlots, the beef industry, the lamb industry, the wool industry, the coal industry, the live export industry, the gas industry, bottom trawling, the oil industry, the cotton industry, bottom trawling, the native timber industry, the GMO industry, and the uranium industry. Further, all rural activities will be covered by something coyly called ‘community decision making’.

    Further, all fossil-fueled agricultural heavy machinery will have to be replaced. We are talking about many tens of thousands of items of equipment which can cost over a million dollars a pop.

    All these policies will have far, far greater Australian-wide economic and social impacts in rural and regional areas than the current drought and/or the current fires.

    Not only that but it will all have to be done within the next ten years to achieve Zero/2030.

    But that is NOT something that you will hear from any Greens supporter or any Greens politician for that matter. They would much rather rant endlessly about Adani, the drought and the fires.

  17. And in Sri Lanka, the Rajapaskas are back:

    Sri Lanka’s former wartime defence minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa will be the country’s next president, after his opponent conceded defeat in a tightly contested election.

    The candidate for Sri Lanka’s ruling UNP party, Sajith Premadasa, on Sunday accepted defeat in the poll held on Saturday and congratulated his rival.

    …Early results showed Rajapaksa, 70, the candidate for the SLPP, the Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalist party, leading with 48.2% of the vote.

    A member of one of Sri Lanka’s most powerful political families, he served as defence minister when his brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, was president for a decade from 2005. The pair oversaw the end of Sri Lanka’s brutal 26-year-long civil war.

    …Gotabaya Rajapaksa has also explicitly said he would repeal Sri Lanka’s commitment to a UN human rights agenda for reconciliation and accountability for atrocities committed in the civil war, describing it as “illegal”.

    He has also said he intends to put his brother forward for prime minister at the general elections next year, paving the way for the family to take a stranglehold on power in Sri Lanka.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/17/sri-lanka-presidential-candidate-rajapaksa-premadas-count-continues

  18. Boerwar says:
    Sunday, November 17, 2019 at 6:43 pm
    Edward’s re-election does make sense. He failed to commit to Zero/2030, MMT, the UBI and the UJG.
    _____________________
    You of course knew this before anybody because Bluey the Octopus told you so! When will we be able to hear from the marvellous Bluey again?

  19. Tories sat work.

    This is how it begins: with a theatrical attack on a vulnerable minority. It’s a Conservative tradition, during election campaigns, to vilify Romani Gypsies and Travellers: it tends to play well on the doorsteps of Middle England. But what the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, proposed last week is something else. It amounts to legislative cleansing.

    The consultation document she released on the last day of Parliament aims to “test the appetite to go further” than any previous laws. It suggests that the police should be able immediately to confiscate the vehicles of “anyone whom they suspect to be trespassing on land with the purpose of residing on it”. Until successive Conservative governments began working on it, trespass was a civil and trivial matter. Now it is treated as a crime so serious that on mere suspicion you can lose your home.

    When I say “you”, obviously I don’t mean you, unless you are a Romani Gypsy, a traditional Traveller or a New Traveller. If you’re on holiday in your caravan, it does not affect you. It applies only if you have “intent to reside” in your vehicle “for any period”. In other words, it is specifically aimed at travelling peoples. It is clearly and deliberately discriminatory.

    https://www.monbiot.com/2019/11/15/performative-oppression/#.XdD8onIyIfQ.twitter

  20. This morning Bandt stated that the Greens ‘support’ hazard reduction burning.

    One Greens policy has wtte, that they support hazard reduction burning to protect persons and properties while ‘minimising’ impacts on biodiversity.

    The Greens biodiversity objectives also include: ‘Effective habitat management, including ecologically appropriate use of fire.’

    These various Greens objectives, policies and assertions are mutually exclusive.

    They nevertheless form the basis for the Greens to run around calling other people ‘arsonists’.

  21. Sprocket. I like how you had to explain that you were on the left. Are you sure that isn’t you on the right screaming something about circle jerks?

  22. Oh, how Eddie loves Peg.

    Wondered why Eddie never mentions the Greens failure to achieve much more than 10% of the vote. Which is strikingly curious given how shit hot the Greens policies are … and how much it is aching obvious that it is exactly these type of policies that the public is just crying out for: more, we want more. More Richard, more Larissa, just well … more …

    BTW, Peg how the Greens review of their failure to achieve much more than 10% of the vote after 30 years of trying? Surely there must be a First Dog cartoon in that little travesty. Maybe there should be a recount. The Greens can’t be that piss poor, given how shit hit their policies and personnel are … something must be wrong …

  23. Hey Mr Earlwood – given your a TWU alumnus – can you tell us how many TWU officials drove a truck for paid employment? Asking for a friend.

  24. “ Hey Mr Earlwood – given your a TWU alumnus – can you tell us how many TWU officials drove a truck for paid employment? Asking for a friend.”

    At any given time, at least half.

  25. How can that be Mr Earlwood ? Can you elaborate your saying only half of officials drove trucks for a living? What where the other half – portrait artists?

  26. Ever since John McLean took over the TWU there has been a practice of having at least half of all officials dream from delegates in the industry and half drawn from a political background. This has proved an effective balance IMO.

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