Essential Research: that was the year that was

One last hurrah for 2019 from Essential Research finds an improvement in Anthony Albanese’s ratings, but little change for Scott Morrison.

The fortnightly Essential Research poll is out and, perhaps unsurprisingly for what will surely be its last survey for the year, it does not break its post-election habit of not publishing numbers on voting intention. What it does have is the monthly leadership ratings, which record little change for Scott Morrison (approval steady at 45%, disappoval up two to 43%) and favourable movement for Anthony Albanese (up two on approval to 39%, down six on disapproval to 28%). There is no preferred prime minister rating, but we do get evaluations on how the leaders have performed since the election: 11% say Scott Morrison has exceeded expectations, 41% that he has met them and 47% that he has fallen short of them, with Albanese’s respective ratings being 8%, 48% and 44%.

Also:

• The regular end-of-year question on for whom this has and hasn’t been a good year suggests people leaned positive about their own circumstances, albeit less so than last year; that it was a much better year for the government, which is hard to argue with on a purely political level; that it was a bad yet still much better year for “Australian politics in general”, the improvement presumably relating to the lack of a prime ministerial leadership coup; and that things were unambiguously positive only for large companies and the Australian cricket team.

• After two years of legalised same-sex marriage, 47% say it has had a positive impact, 15% negative and 38% neither.

• There remains negative sentiment towards unions, whom 49% say have too much power compared with 37% who disagreed. Fully 68% thought union officials should be disqualified merely for breaching administrative laws, with only 18% in disagreement, while 51% thought unions should be disqualified for taking unprotected industrial election, with 32% disagreeing. However, 62% agreed the government was “more concerned about the actions of union officials than the CEO’s of banks and other corporations”.

• Thirty-five per cent thought Scott Morrison should have stood Angus Taylor down from cabinet with 17% supporting his position, while 48% conceded they had not been following the issue.

• There was overwhelming support for the establishment of a federal ICAC, at 75% with only 8% opposed.

The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1035 respondents drawn 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.

1,940 comments on “Essential Research: that was the year that was”

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  1. guytaur:

    [‘You forgot the blairites attacking Corbyn from within the party and having to be expelled. The ones that caused the fence sitting over Brexit.’]

    A strong leader should’ve been able to overcome this. Like Shorten with the Adani matter, Corbyn appeared, at least to me, to have no concrete position on Brexit. A majority of the electorate appears to have not wanted the Parliament to spend any more of its time on this vexed issue. They wanted it done and dusted. Of course, we are yet to see the domestic outcomes of Brexit – “Operation Yellow Hammer” providing some clues if a no-deal eventuates:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47652280

  2. “I just choose to ignore the views of anonymous commenters here who criticise Labor’s positions because a) there is little point getting worked up about it, and b) many of my friends and social acquaintances do not vote Labor and never have, and I don’t see the need to be offended because of their views. Perhaps others need to do the same.”

    Well said fess.

  3. Trump adviser admits president ‘will come out of this impeachment process unhinged’: report

    CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta learned from a top adviser to President Donald Trump that he will likely come out of the impeachment completely “unhinged.”

    “I think it’s starting to sink in that he’s about to be impeached,” Acosta told CNN’s John Berman Friday evening. “Impeachment is coming.

    “You hear the president still pining over the idea he’d like to have a lengthy trial in the Senate where he can bring in people like the whistleblower and Hunter Biden,” Acosta explained. According to one official, you can’t find any Senator who wants a lengthy trial in the Senate. They want to get there over with as soon as it gets out of the House.”

    . This adviser saying get ready for a brand new even more aggrieved President Trump heading into the 2020 ycle.”

    Brennan found it interesting that the source felt “unhinged” would be something different to which we are accustomed.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/trump-adviser-admits-president-will-come-out-of-this-impeachment-process-unhinged-report/

  4. Is there a worse infrastructure investment for the public than toll roads and freeways? Possibly building more dams would be equally as poor a public investment. And then there’s Fraudband…

    Dont get me started on roads. I am somewhat involved in a disagreement wrt to road infrastructure atm. Trying to compartmentalise the fury.

    Fraudband is a great example. It was cluster f’d up by a business man/entrepreneur using ‘pragmatic business acumen’. To all those libertarian friends of mine who say all infrastructure needs to be done by such types in order to remove it from politically motivated stuff ups – take note! Private industry and successful business people are just as fallible (more so IMO) than state based infrastructure investment. Not to mention the inability of private industry to be long sighted in the public interest, preferring short sighted in their personal interest. But hey, the market…..oh the beautiful, magical market… just gotta let it be free from all regulation so it can spread its tinkle dust on us all.

  5. I just heard Sean Hannity on Fox News do a ‘scare piece’about the “radical socialists” ie the Democrats. He rattled off a list of ‘ooga boogas” and by golly his list of ‘frighteners’ sounded almost a carbon copy of what we hear here from self proclaimed “centerists” and/or ‘Greens are the devil’s spawn’ people.

  6. Mavis

    Like Shorten with the Adani matter, Corbyn appeared, at least to me, to have no concrete position on Brexit.

    He between a rock and a very hard place. Core constituency for Labor had high support for Brexit. The compromise position Labour had was the best that could be done without totally shitting on one side or the other. Get a deal, as per referendum and then put that to the vote.

  7. p

    Nothing to do with socialism. Nothing to do with radicals. The Greens would 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
    Theme park animals
    Live 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
    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.
    These are all definites and flow directly from stated policies on the Australian Greens policy site.
    There is reason to believe that the following would be added to the bans list:
    Recreational angling
    Thoroughbred racing
    On current indications, we might as well add the irrigated almond industry because the Greens have a gut hate for this sort of industry. Wine grape industry? Not so much. Might interrupt the flow of Chardonney?

  8. Other than that, the Greens show absolutely no sign that they understand what impact implementing Zero/2030 would have in the real world.

    Other than that, various Greens zealots do rah rah for MMT, UBI, UJG, as the ideological whim appears to take them.

  9. See what I mean?

    For criticising the Labor Party’s inability to win elections (with supplied reasons) you get called “a nasty piece of work who doesn’t cope with criticism very well at all”, a “bully”, a “skinny arsed”, “pathetically puerile, cranky old man” who wears “hob-nailed boots” while delivering “sliming tongue lashings” to others.

    I see there personal comments, body shaming, ageism, amateur psychological assessment, sexism and anger… all of which is in response to my criticisms of the Labor party and some of its more rampantly tribal members… yet I am supposedly the bully?

    The sooner Labor weeds out the crooks, manipulators, hypocrites, the perpetually confused and the radical membership that kick out viciously against, not just their political enemies, but also those who have even voted for their party (granted, not always with the requisite gusto and purity of heart), the better.

    My mother worked for the Labor Daily, and was always a union member. My father was always in the union (despite owning the companies he worked for!). Both my sister and her husband attained office as Labor candidates. Personally, I’ve never voted for anything except Labor over dozens of elections.

    Yet somehow this is not sufficient qualification to point out that the Party has too many crooks, policy flippers, time servers, branch stackers and bribe takers for the public to vote for it. They even lost the unloseable election.

    Certainly makes me wonder whether my voting habits have been misguided.

  10. Avril @DocAvvers

    What does the #UnitingChurch say about @ScottMorrisonMP’s ridiculous and unnecessary #ReligiousFreedom Bill?
    “We do not want to discriminate against people, nor do we want to subject already vulnerable people such as LGBTIQ Australians to further pain in this conversation.”

  11. “ Maybe Labor will, ultimately, surrender. It’s certainly possible. But what’s happening now isn’t surrender – it’s an attempt to stitch climate action and blue-collar jobs together. It’s an attempt to craft a nuance.
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/14/australias-democracy-has-faceplanted-and-labor-is-staring-down-some-disturbing-truths

    ‘Nuance’. It seems that some people here, with their ever-ready criticism of Labor, just can’t see the nuanced Labor wood for the trees. Thank goodness they are nowhere near the leadership of our great party.”

    Neither the Liberal-Nationals nor The Greens are prepared to countenance ‘nuance’ – because both see nuance as the great opportunity to pillage labor from the right and left.

    The Greens will portrait ‘nuance’ as weakness and an opportunity to buttress their 10% – maybe get another 6 senators elected in 2022 and pick off a couple of inner city starts from Labor as well.

    The LNP will also portrait nuance as weakness and point too the Greens threats to ‘hold Labor to account’ (i.e. hold the country’s to ransom) and warn voters that if the country votes Labor, they will get radical Greens policies that are scary and dangerous instead. That will be the basis of their next scare campaign – which will likely be successful – again.

    So another electoral cycle will see the return or a nasty bunch of incompetent fixers and do nothing fraudsters. And so it goes.

    The only way I can see to break this vicious cycle if if the wheels completely fall off the economy and the government’s incompetence is exposed – even to the low information voter that they have successfully manipulated into voting against self interest in every election bar one since 1996. In which case it won’t be ‘nuance’ that wins it for labor: just desperation and all that Labor should be doing to capitalise on that desperation is to project itself as a safe pair of hands and selling a message of ‘no cost’ (as in no nasty taxes or wealth redistribution) hope.

  12. Tanya Plibersek
    @tanya_plibersek
    ·
    9m
    I’m a big fan of public transport, but I can’t get excited by the decision to spend $3B on a tram which is slower than a bus, yet refuse to add a station on the metro line which goes under Green Square, soon to be the most densely populated part of Sydney.

  13. Lizzie

    It’s fair criticism from Plibersek except for one thing.

    I am excited by trams because they replace buses and shows a sea change in the mindset about roads before and private transport ahead of public transport.

    Just having the tram is the start of real change.
    A tram in Sydney. Last seen before the Opera House was built

    Edit: I forgot to add advantage Labor which has the reputation of best at managing public transport .

  14. Bushfire Bill @ #1659 Saturday, December 14th, 2019 – 1:42 pm

    See what I mean?

    For criticising the Labor Party’s inability to win elections (with supplied reasons) you get called “a nasty piece of work who doesn’t cope with criticism very well at all”, a “bully”, a “skinny arsed”, “pathetically puerile, cranky old man” who wears “hob-nailed boots” while delivering “sliming tongue lashings” to others.

    I see there personal comments, body shaming, ageism, amateur psychological assessment, sexism and anger… all of which is in response to my criticisms of the Labor party and some of its more rampantly tribal members… yet I am supposedly the bully?

    The sooner Labor weeds out the crooks, manipulators, hypocrites, the perpetually confused and the radical membership that kick out viciously against, not just their political enemies, but also those who have even voted for their party (granted, not always with the requisite gusto and purity of heart), the better.

    My mother worked for the Labor Daily, and was always a union member. My father was always in the union (despite owning the companies he worked for!). Both my sister and her husband attained office as Labor candidates. Personally, I’ve never voted for anything except Labor over dozens of elections.

    Yet somehow this is not sufficient qualification to point out that the Party has too many crooks, policy flippers, time servers, branch stackers and bribe takers for the public to vote for it. They even lost the unloseable election.

    Certainly makes me wonder whether my voting habits have been misguided.

    Cheer up comrade.

    At least they didn’t accuse you of barracking for Collingwood.

  15. Re the Sydney Light Rail : the old Monorail was the answer.

    The Monorail interfered only minimally with road traffic. It was quiet and had low carbon emissions (which today would be zero). It was quick, safe, had the potential to go where standard public transport could not go, and cost comparatively little to run and install.

    Instead, it was turned into a virtual carnival ride,from nowhere to nowhere, by a bunch of slogan-chanting do-gooders who effectively promoted traffic gridlock, urban congestion and fossil fuel pollution in its place.

  16. Cud Chewer

    I don’t understand. Unless the station she’s talking about isn’t at Green Sq. but just “on the metro line”. (Ignore me, I’m from Vic and should butt out.)

  17. BB

    Agree with you on the Monorail.

    With exactly the same route as the tram it would have been more practical. I suspect less people would have been electrocuted during construction.

    Plus a tourist attraction.

  18. The Bushfire Bully just has to have the last word and double down. 🙄

    Thank you, GG, for reposting that vomitous rant in full. Just proves my point really.

    And you don’t get an elephant stamp for proving ‘my family is more Labor than yours’. Anyway, it’s an argument I would win hands down. But then I’m not allowed to win. So I won’t bother even trying. 😐

  19. I try not to judge the Labor party by the quality of the Labor members that post here on PB.

    If I did that, I would probably never preference Labor above any other party again 🙁

  20. Lizzie its complicated. There was a choice between a Waterloo metro station and one at Sydney Uni and Waterloo won that. Sydney Uni are still pissed about that one.

    Good chance that Metro West will end up with a station at Zetland. Do a map search for Sutton City Hyindai. That will complement Green Square.

    Biggest problem with the area is pedestrian connectivity. I think there are plans to partly fix that.

  21. Guytaur that’s rubbish. The monorail had no capacity and was slow.

    Besides iirc it was the Greens that opposed it and frankly it was a crap experience as well as ugly.

  22. The Green Square station is already
    struggling to cope now. The Waterloo station is nowhere near the bulk of the new units in that area and presumably Botany Road will be the epicentre of yet another orgy of unit building.
    The 304 and 343 buses service the bulk of the new units and are pretty well full most of the day now.
    CoS bought land for a light rail right of way to this area.
    This should have been the state government priority not duplicating an existing transport service. All that was required for the existing transport service ie the buses, was to provide priority and more dedicated lanes which would have cost a fraction of the money wasted.
    Disclosure: I’m one of those horrible bus drivers that Constance can’t wait to get rid of to the private sector so he doesn’t have to soil himself dealing with.

  23. CC

    I disagree about the experience as I thought it was fun.
    I lived in Pyrmont and in rainy periods it was a practical alternative to buses and taxis.

  24. C@tmomma @ #1670 Saturday, December 14th, 2019 – 2:03 pm

    The Bushfire Bully just has to have the last word and double down. 🙄

    Thank you, GG, for reposting that vomitous rant in full. Just proves my point really.

    And you don’t get an elephant stamp for proving ‘my family is more Labor than yours’. Anyway, it’s an argument I would win hands down. But then I’m not allowed to win. So I won’t bother even trying. 😐

    Glad to oblige.

    BB has never demanded I move to New Zealand because I had a different POV on an issue.

    He can punch me anytime he likes as long as he buys me a beer afterwards.

  25. Cud Chewer,
    Waterloo is more than, ‘just up the road’ from Green Square.

    And Town Hall, Central, Wynyard and Circular Quay have train stations, bus stops and tram stops. So, why can’t Green Square have an underground Metro station too?

  26. BB has never demanded I move to New Zealand because I had a different POV on an issue.

    GG,
    Is that, after an apology was given by me and received graciously by you, iirc, the standard by which you judge an insult now? I’d call that a double standard. Especially after the rant directed your way that I read. And because I’m not a bloke or female who would agree to having a beer with you after punching you in the nose, does that make me subject to different standards?

  27. C@t the metro station is 12 minutes walk from Green Square station.

    If you include a station at Zetland, there will be very few addresses west of the M1 more than a 15 min walk from a station. You also have a poor bus network that feeds longer routes through the area rather than primarily running localised station feeding buses.

    Also much of the road congestion is private vehicles headed to the CBD. There are ways to fix that issue.

  28. And when I go back to the 304 next week my bus will be half full at the second stop at Gadigal and Day Streets and almost certainly full at Bourke Street. Long walk to Waterloo from there.

  29. The NSW Government specialises in pulling down and paying mates to replace it.

    So the new Metro – I’ll pay Epping to Tallawong, it’s a good piece of infrastructure for a new route, but not Epping to Chatswood. That was aready integrated into the rail network, ripped up and rebuilt. And a planned extension to Parramatta was dropped.

    Pull down and rebuilding stadiums – money down the toilet.

    Newcastle – rip up heavy rail and build a dinky little tramway about 100 metres South of the old route. Zero points (or negative).

    Chatswood to City metro, under construction- OK, a new route.

    Planned Bankstown metro – rip up heavy rail first. Zero points. If Labor gets back in before the Bankstown metro can be started, they should drop it and use the money productively elsewhere.

  30. CC

    Well it’s certainly moot now.

    Maybe a practical monorail could have been our metro. Straight up the middle of one of those numerous freeways that has been built.

    Cheaper than building tunnels everywhere.

  31. “Guytaur. Ok the monorail was a fun toy.”

    It was basically a fairground ride, a scenic trip around the City. It could take you from the Southern part of the CBD into the Darling Harbour precints – for shows, exhibitions or to gamble at Star Casino. I used it once or twice to go to computer exhibitions from work – but it wasn’t a serious transport system.

  32. C@tmomma @ #1684 Saturday, December 14th, 2019 – 2:19 pm

    BB has never demanded I move to New Zealand because I had a different POV on an issue.

    GG,
    Is that, after an apology was given by me and received graciously by you, iirc, the standard by which you judge an insult now? I’d call that a double standard. Especially after the rant directed your way that I read. And because I’m not a bloke or female who would agree to having a beer with you after punching you in the nose, does that make me subject to different standards?

    If I got offended by every comment of wrath and derision directed my way on PB, I’d be you.

    I am not precious or overly worried by any of the commentary here on PB.

    Some of it, I choose not to view because of personal quality control issues. But, that is mainly because I’m always looking for fresh meat and “rinse and repeat” posters bore me shitless.

    I like to think I give as good as I get and that is good enough for me.

  33. Steve the Epping to Chatswood line existed as a branch line. Short version – it was a bad idea. Limited frequency. 4 trains per hour max 6-8. Compared to 15-30. Plus it added extra complexity and fragility to the network as a whole. As well as complicating the Northern line.

    What we are getting now is a simpler, more robust network.

    I’m sorry but the rail planners that kept dreaming up yet more branches were fools.

  34. I like the monorail. It served a niche purpose quite well. It could efficiently move several thousand people between pyrmont-darling harbour and the middle of the cbd every hour. I used it frequently over the years, especially when I was studying at UTS and working in town.

    It’s wasn’t a mass people mover, but nor was it a white elephant or a waste of time and money. It shouldn’t have been pulled down.

    The $3 billion light rail was not a good project to my mind. If the desired outcome was light rail in the CBD then it would have been better to run a live down George St, perhaps also down Sussex st as well and connecting with the existing Dulwich Hill light rail (which should also be upgraded in terms of the last 50o M to dulwich hill so that frequency of service can come down 8 minute intervals to under 5 minutes (also the rolling stock and station platforms should be upgraded eventually to also increase capacity).

    As for a rail project to connect the city, Surry hills and southern beach suburbs a proper underground metro was and is always the way to go. It would have cost 3-4 times as much as the light rail, but would have gone down to La Parouse or perhaps even loop through botany to the airport. It’s capacity would have been 10 times more than the light rail. It would not have interfered with other modes of on street transport either.

  35. Steve777 @ #1694 Saturday, December 14th, 2019 – 2:32 pm

    “Guytaur. Ok the monorail was a fun toy.”

    It was basically a fairground ride, a scenic trip around the City. It could take you from the Southern part of the CBD into the Darling Harbour precints – for shows, exhibitions or to gamble at Star Casino. I usesd it once or twice to go to computer exhibitions – but it wasn’t a serious transport system.

    It was an important piece of infrastructure that Labor could point to at every Election as being a prime example of their commitment to public transport. It put years on the careers of Bob Carr and Laurie Brereton.

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