Essential Research: bushfires, climate change and asylum seekers

A new poll finds respondents clearly of the view that not enough is being done to tackle climate change, but with opinion divided as to whether it appropriate to debate the matter in the context of the bushfire emergency.

The Essential Research poll series continues to chug along on its fortnightly schedule without offering anything on voting intention, with this week’s survey mainly relating to bushfires and climate change. Support for the proposition that Australia is not doing enough to address climate change have reached a new high of 60%, up nine since March, with “doing enough” down five to 22% and “doing too much” down three to 8%.

However, perceptions of climate change itself are little changed, with 61% attributing it to human activity (down one) and 28% opting for “a normal fluctuation in the earth’s climate”. On the debate as to whether it was appropriate to raise links between climate change and bushfires, opinion was evenly divided – out of those who considered such a link likely, 43% felt raising the matter appropriate compared with 17% for inappropriate, while another 30% rated the link as unlikely.

A further question related to the issue of medical evacuations for asylum seekers, and here the situation is murkier due to the need to provide respondents with some sort of explanation of what the issue is about. As the Essential survey put it, the relevant legislation allows “doctors, not politicians, more say in determining the appropriate medical
treatment offered to people in offshore detention”. Put like that, 62% were opposed to the government’s move to repeal it, including 25% who believed the legislation didn’t go far enough. That left only 22% in favour of the pro-government proposition that “legislation will weaken our borders and result in boats arriving”.

The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1083.

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.

1,314 comments on “Essential Research: bushfires, climate change and asylum seekers”

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  1. Bugger!

    Midterm victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin gave Democrats hope of retaking the Rust Belt battleground states that handed the presidency to Donald J. Trump in 2016.

    Yet success in the midterms might not mean as much for Democratic presidential candidates as the party might think. Nearly two-thirds of voters in six battleground states who voted for President Trump in 2016 — but for Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 — say they intend to back the president against each of his top rivals, according to recent polling by The New York Times Upshot/Siena College.

    The results suggest that the party’s winning formula in last year’s midterms may not be so easy to replicate in a presidential election. The Democrats’ relatively moderate House candidates succeeded in large part by flipping a crucial segment of voters who backed the president in 2016. If these voters remain open-minded again in 2020, Democrats will have a ready-made blueprint for winning back the crucial Rust Belt battlegrounds.

    This group is only a sliver of the electorate — 2 percent of registered voters — and is not representative of all voters. They are overwhelmingly white, 60 percent are male, and two-thirds have no college degree. But the president’s strength among them helps explain why he is highly competitive in states that Democrats carried just one year ago.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/upshot/democratic-trump-voters-2020.html

  2. Quiggin has gone gaga.

    He is verballing decent people.

    The fossil extremists are subsidising CO2 emissions.

    The Sensible Extremists promise to deliver Zero/2030, and to do so between 2022 and 2030. Insanely impossible. But wait, there’s more: The Greens intend to close down:

    Beef feedlots
    Piggeries
    Poultry sheds
    Biofuel operations
    Native forestry industry
    Rodeos
    Camp drafts
    Dog racing
    Trots racing
    Jumps racing
    Live exports of beef
    Live exports of sheep
    Live exports of goats
    Circus animals
    Duck hunting
    Kennel breeding of dogs
    Rabbit hunting
    Kangaroo hunting
    Buffalo hunting
    Deer hunting
    Pig hunting
    Muttonbird harvesting
    Quail egg production
    Theme park animals
    Life exports of greyhounds
    All uranium mines
    Lucas Heights reactor/radiation medical production
    All uranium exports
    All coal mines
    All conventional gas production facilities
    All coal seam gas production facilities
    Deep sea bottom trawling
    All oil production facilities
    Beef farming
    Sheep farming
    Cotton industry (on current indications, might as well add the irrigated olive and almond industries because the chief thresholds for those industries are the same as those for the cotton industry).
    Warship manufacturing
    Fighter component manufacturing
    Infantry fighting vehicle manufacturing
    The Singapore Air training facility in Queensland
    The three joint spy bases
    Around a dozen major fleet, air and army bases
    All facilities that enable the deployment of nuclear weapons – whatever that means

  3. phoenixRED:

    It’ll be interesting to see how Bloomberg polls. As you’d be aware, he’s entering the race in March (“Super Tuesday”). He’s spending $US37M this week to get his message out. I know it’s said that he’s attempting to buy the Democratic nomination, but who really cares as long as he has the goods to beat Trump, and I think he has.

  4. The Greens have form in this space.
    You might think that they would be attacking the Coalition with scathing vitriol. The Coalition has an extremist position on global warming. It denies the science. It uses myriad ways to undercut the science. It subsidizes fossil fuel production, burning and export.

    You would be wrong, of course.

  6. Bloomberg is splitting the “Moderate or Centrist” lane.

    This makes it more likely that Sanders or Warren will win the majority of delegates. Meaning in the proportional Democrat voting system going to preferences will not be necessary

  7. Can you believe ScoMo spoke directly to NSW police commissioner “about the investigation and the nature and substance of their inquiries”?

    Shows about as much ‘integrity’ as Bjelke-Petersen.

    This is the same Police Commissioner who investigated his own ministerial boss and, amazingly, found him to be innocent.

    And, likewise, the Commissioner’s reply to ScoMo was: “Oh, it’s nothing really. Just some Bubble shit brought up by, y’know, Labor. There’s no evidence and, even though it’s our job to find evidence, unless it’s served up to us on a plate we won’t dig too deep. Pretty safe to say it’s all over already.”

    And what is a Commonwealth Prime Minister doing having top level discussions into an ongoing case (with no national security or Commonwealth law implications) with a state Police Commissioner?

    How can this state Commissioner possibly telegraph the results of an investigation before the ink is even dry on its administrative paperwork?

    Is this “investigation” the mysterious “process” that the FOI rejection letter (ex. Taylor’s office, from earlier in the week) referred to? And was it set up simply as a cover to give that FOI rejection an element of credibility?

    It should also be remembeted that sub judice rules apply to court proceedings, not mere police investigations.

  8. Mavis says: Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 11:56 am

    phoenixRED:

    It’ll be interesting to see how Bloomberg polls.

    **********************************************************

    Just reading some good articles on him in the Washington Post, Mavis

    “Indeed, Bloomberg’s candidate offers a test of an unusual proposition: Can someone who is only nominally a member of a party, and who has taken many positions at odds with that party’s consensus, win its nomination if he has virtually limitless money to spend?”

    What Mike Bloomberg’s candidacy will tell us about the Democratic Party

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/26/what-michael-bloombergs-candidacy-will-tell-us-about-democratic-party/

    Mike Bloomberg’s campaign makes absolutely no sense

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/26/mike-bloombergs-campaign-makes-absolutely-no-sense/

  9. The problem with devotion to being a “centrist” is that if your opponent is sliding towards an extreme you also move towards the extreme view.

  12. ‘E. G. Theodore says:
    Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 12:03 pm

    Mate if they’re going after quail egg production it’s time to man the barricades!’

    Haha. I was waiting for someone to pick that one up. Yet another couple of business in rural and regional Australia destroyed.

    On a slightly related matter, the Greens have skirted around saying anything terribly definite about the $3-$4 billion pet industry. One of the most popular aviary birds in Australia is you budgie which are often incarcerated two at a time in a tiny space where they can barely fly in circles. It just has to be cruel. But as with flat racing and as with recreational angling, the Greens are remarkably circumspect with banning urban pet-owning behaviours.

    Which gets us to the hear of the Greens policies: they routinely punish rural and urban voters but let Inner Urbs get away scot free: purity of principles meets sordid political calculus?

  13. porotisays:
    Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 12:09 pm

    The problem with devotion to being a “centrist” is that if your opponent is sliding towards an extreme you also move towards the extreme view.

    If you maintain your position you will actually move left of centre.
    🙂

  15. Quiggin characterises our record on climate change as a failure. This is only half the story. It is actually about the LNP winning. They have been making political capital from the contest. It works for them. It also works for their counter-parts, the Greens.

  16. Australian quail production is a small industry: around $14 million a year. It is growing quite rapidly. Once again the Greens policies will stop some more businesses and kill some more jobs in rural and regional areas. This is not isolated. The Greens have a huge swag of policies that will destroy or disrupt the livelihoods of rural and regional people.
    Fortunately not a single Greens policy will disturb a single Greens voter in a single Greens Inner Urban stronghold. Do what we say. Not do what we do?

    http://www.poultryhub.org/species/game-birds/quail/

  17. Quiggin has only just now noticed that the extremist Greens and the extemist Coalition have failed for 30 years to deliver on Zero/2030?

    Seriously!

  19. Boerwar – you make it sound like shutting down those industries are a bad thing…

    How many of them could we do without. How many of them do we actually need?
    Dog racing
    Trots racing
    Jumps racing
    Those 3 industries aren’t necessary for starters.
    Duck hunting
    Ah the need to shoot stuff – native birdlife should be off the table you would think)..
    Kennel breeding of dogs (hasn’t this been stopped in Victoria)

    As for the other need to shoot stuff:
    Rabbit hunting (I can live with Rabbit hunting, they should never have been brought here)
    Kangaroo hunting – If it wasn’t for New Zelanders you know that Kangaroo culling would still be called Kangaroo Killing) – I get that their numbers get to plague proportions…
    Buffalo hunting – not native – no probs
    Deer hunting – not native – no probs
    Pig hunting – not native – no probs

    Most of the other industries that you listed employ minimal people around the country. I would say that Lucas Heights should be retained for obvious reasons…

    Perhaps you want to go on a fox hunt?

  20. PhoenixRED:

    Thanks for the link. There’s no doubting that Bloomberg does have a chequered past, though, in a perverse sort of way, it’s those very things he did and said that may attract swing voters and even moderate Repugs if there are any left. Other clear advantages are that he has name recognition and heaps of money. I think the front runners are running scared of him, evidenced by their recent trenchant criticism re. his attempt to buy the nomination. Overall, the imperative is to get rid of Trump; to that end, I think Bloomberg is better placed than Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg.

  21. Barney in Tanjung Bunga

    If you maintain your position you will actually move left of centre. 🙂

    Yes but you would no longer be in the ‘middle” . That would need a little shuffle to the right 🙂

  23. Mavis says: Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 12:29 pm

    PhoenixRED:

    Overall, the imperative is to get rid of Trump; to that end, I think Bloomberg is better placed than Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg.

    ***************************************************************

    The run for the Presidency in recent seems to be being taken over by rich white guys in their 70’s ( Bloomburg being 77 ) …..

    As comedian George Carlin said “In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem.”

  24. Kronomex

    Good grief. They are up up and away into fantasy land.

    The amended statement claims the Wallabies would have put in a “superior performance” had Folau been selected for the 2019 Rugby World Cup team, which could have been “trophy-winning” under his “possible captainship.”

  25. phoenixRED:

    [‘The run for the Presidency in recent seems to be being taken over by rich white guys in their 70’s ( Bloomburg being 77 ) …..’]

    I guess when you’re old and rich all that’s left is the power aphrodisiac.

    [‘As comedian George Carlin said “In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem.”]

    That’s a good line, as is this one, from your second link:

    [‘Bloomberg’s approach won’t stand out from the crowd, and the comparatively shy mayor has never been accused of having too much charisma.’]

  27. The rotting stench of corruption, political or otherwise, from this bunch is becoming so overwhelming that it should surely be called a health hazard to the whole country.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/27/turnbull-says-morrison-should-not-have-called-nsw-police-chief-over-doctored-document

    I can almost hear the “exremely short” conversation:
    “Mate.”
    “Mate.”
    “This thing with my mate Angus, is there anything I should…”
    “Nah, mate, it’s cool.”
    “Thanks mate, I’ll get your bins in for a couple of months as a thank you.”
    “No problem mate.”
    “See ya mate. Next beer’s on me”
    “Ta mate. See ya mate.”

  30. Devin Nunes can’t sue a fictional cow because cows don’t have thumbs: Lawyers

    Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is pushing forward with his widely-mocked lawsuit against the fictional Twitter accounts “Devin Nunes’ Cow” and “Devin Nunes’ Mom,” complaining that they are defamatory and have injured his prospects of re-election. Among other things, he is demanding that Democratic National Committee worker Adam Parkhomenko disclose the identity of the accounts.

    But according to the Sacramento Bee, an attorney representing Parkhomenko argues that, quite aside from the First Amendment issues with Nunes’ demand, people could not have seriously fallen for the satirical accounts, because — among other things — cows don’t really have Twitter accounts, or even thumbs to type tweets. Thus, there was no injury to Nunes’ reputation.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2019/11/devin-nunes-cant-sue-a-fictional-cow-because-cows-dont-have-thumbs-lawyers/

  32. Yet another CEO loudly tells the world what a sacrifice he is making to atone for massive wage theft – never mind that a person who stole $20 worth of groceries from one his stores could go to prison.

    ‘Right thing to do’: Woolies CEO takes $2.6m pay cut for wages scandal

    Chief executive Brad Banducci will forgo $2.6 million in short-term bonuses in response to the supermarket giant’s $300 million underpayment of staff.

    (Nine/Fairfax headline)

  33. Simon Katich
    The funny thing about your comment about CEO’s being obsessed with profit is we have quarter of the world’s population on our door step yet many of our major businesses do not know how to engage with the region so they are losing billions in potential profits.

  34. citizen @ #183 Wednesday, November 27th, 2019 – 1:04 pm

    Yet another CEO loudly tells the world what a sacrifice he is making to atone for massive wage theft – never mind that a person who stole $20 worth of groceries from one his stores could go to prison.

    ‘Right thing to do’: Woolies CEO takes $2.6m pay cut for wages scandal

    Chief executive Brad Banducci will forgo $2.6 million in short-term bonuses in response to the supermarket giant’s $300 million underpayment of staff.

    (Nine/Fairfax headline)

    Jeezus! How much do these jokers make a year!?! If the guy is just foregoing one short term bonus this year!?!

  35. John Quiggin is probably Australia’s second greatest economist, behind William Mitchell. We should take what he has to say very seriously. I think that his takes on politics are usually highly perceptive and lucid.

  37. It appears that the Union Busting Bill has passed the Senate. Thanks for nothing John Setka.

    Hear! Hear! Penny Wong:

    I want to end this contribution with the same contribution I made 14 years ago as we went to the vote on Work Choices in 2005:

    … it is quite likely … that we will lose this vote. But we will not be beaten. We are not beaten. …

    What this government have never understood as they abuse and revile trade union officials and those in the labour movement is what created the labour movement, what binds the labour movement and what has guaranteed such widespread support in the campaign against this bill by unionists and non-unionists alike. What binds us is a belief in our self-worth and also the worth of the person next to us. We have always understood that not only do we fight for our worth and our dignity, we also fight for the worth and the dignity of the person working alongside us. We fight for the principle of a fair go for all. We fight for a fair wage for a day’s work. We have always done this as a labour movement, and we will continue to do this as a labour movement.

    This fight is not over. We will fight this until the next election and beyond. This fight will continue, because we are here for the long haul. We have always been here for the long haul and, fundamentally, we fight for a fairer Australia.

    (Courtesy of The Guardian)

  41. The funny thing about your comment about CEO’s being obsessed with profit is we have quarter of the world’s population on our door step yet many of our major businesses do not know how to engage with the region so they are losing billions in potential profits.

    Many of our major businesses have become addicted to easy money… to the point they have structured their whole business to it and they dont know any other way.

    Some do engage in the region… through Ausaid etc. A lot of au based engineering companies jumped into the International Development field as soon as they saw the gravy.

    And there are small companies too. One operating out of a shack on Kangaroo island got a 400 million dollar contract with the government.

  43. And you can put your money on the fact that every time Labor and The Greens align themselves over a policy the government will quietly smile and file it away for the future:

    The government is still hoping to repeal medevac. Jacqui Lambie has still not said which way she will vote – but the lobbying is only intensifying.

    Political Alert
    (@political_alert)
    At 8:45 this morning @TheRACP will present an open letter signed by over 4,500 Australian doctors calling on Parliament to save #Medevac. See: https://t.co/S6ooiWFnHS #auspol

    November 26, 2019
    The debate is listed for today but that doesn’t mean anything. It could be shifted. It could be called on with the government knowing it is going to lose to get it off the agenda. At the end of the day, the government won’t necessarily see losing its repeal bid as a loss – you would have seen a lot of stories about Labor and the Greens alliance on this, Labor wanting to change border policies yadda, yadda, yadda – which, for the government, is a win in itself.

  46. Mike Bloomberg could be seen as a reverse Palmer because his ads might do more harm to Trump’s campaign than his chances of actually winning anything. He will help the Democrats to build an economic narrative in a language many on the left struggle with. and he will be difficult for Trump to attack and his media network has the network and information reach to know a great deal about Trump’s business dealings and he is one billionaire the left should like because it comes from charging bankers for access to market news.

  47. Cat

    Which is why Labor has to have a backbone and not be scared of being called Green.

    Instead own it just as it did when Malcolm Fraser called Bob Hawke a communist.

    Labor can stand on its own ground and should do so proudly.
    Don’t back down on Labor policy because of name calling by the IPA government and it’s media arm Newscorp

  49. C@tmommasays:
    Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 1:18 pm

    It appears that the Union Busting Bill has passed the Senate. Thanks for nothing John Setka.
    …

    I find sad and pathetic that we have politicians who acknowledge that a piece of legislation is not good, but will allow there vote to be bought because of one person within the targeted organisations.

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