The first Newspoll for the year, and the third under the new YouGov online polling regime, finds Labor opening up a 51-49 lead, after they trailed 52-48 in the poll in early December. On the primary vote, the Coalition is down two to 40%, Labor up three to 36%, the Greens up one to 12% and One Nation down one to 4%. Perhaps more remarkably, Scott Morrison now trails Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister by 43-39, after leading him 48-34 in the previous poll. The damage on Morrison’s personal ratings amounts to an eight point drop on approval to 37% and an eleven point rise on disapproval to 59%. Conversely, Albanese is up six on approval to 46% and down four on disapproval to 37%. The Australian’s report is here; the poll was conducted from Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1505.
UPDATE (Essential Research): The Guardian has numbers from the first Essential Research poll of the year, but they disappointingly offer nothing on voting intention. What they do provide is corroboration for Newspoll’s finding that Anthony Albanese has taken the lead over Scott Morrison as preferred prime minister, in this case at 39-36, which compares with a 44-28 lead to Morrison when Essential last asked the question in early November. We are told that Scott Morrison is up nine on disapproval to 52% and that Anthony Albanese is up four on approval to 43% – their respective approval and disapproval ratings will have to wait for the full Essential report, which will presumably be with us later today or tomorrow. UPDATE: Morrison is down five on approval to 40%, Albanese is up two on disapproval to 30%. Full report here.
Despite everything, the poll finds 32% approving of Morrison’s handling of the bushfire crisis, which may be related to the fact that his approval rating was down only three among Coalition voters. The Guardian tells us only that 36% strongly disapproved of Morrison’s performance, to which the less strong measure of disapproval will need to be added to produce an equivalent figure for the 32% approval. Fifty-two per cent disagreed that Australia had always had bushfires like those just experienced, and 78% believe the government had been unprepared for them. Efforts to shift blame to the states do not appear to have borne fruit: Gladys Berejiklian’s handling of the bushfires scored 55% approval among New South Wales respondents, while Daniel Andrews was on 58% (these numbers would have come from small sub-samples of around 300 to 400 respondents).
The poll also offers a timely addition to the pollster’s leaders attributes series. The findings for the various attributes in this serious invariably move en bloc with the leaders’ general standing, and Morrison is accordingly down across the board. However, a clear standout is his collapse from 51% to 32% for “good in a crisis”, on which he was up 10% the last time the question was posed in October. Other unfavourable movements related in The Guardian range from a six-point increase in “out of touch with ordinary Australians“ to 62% to a 12 point drop on “visionary” to 30%.
More on all this when the full report is published. The poll was conducted online from Tuesday to Sunday from a sample of 1081.
Bushfire Bill @ #49 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 7:43 pm
I hear there’s an opening in the Royal Family at the moment.
Peter van OnselenVerified account@vanOnselenP
It will be interesting to see what marketing strategies Team Morrison deploys to try and turn around the slump in the PM’s personal numbers. I firmly predict they will fix the situation very quickly.
Aided by Liberals in the media they might succeed. However, I’m not so sure. To my eyes, Scott Morrison doesn’t seem to do genuine care and compassion very well. It seems forced, practised to within an inch of his life. Like the little catch he has inserted in his voice to connote sadness and/or contrition. It sticks out to me like dog’s balls. So, his genius marketing team might have to learn the lesson that leadership comes naturally to some and can never be learnt by others, no matter how many marketing gew gaws you hang around their necks.
And as it takes so long to do. A repost
Blog watch 12/1/2020 10.17pm
does demographic collapse matter?
My previous post asked whether demographic collapse can be avoided. Perhaps an even more vital question is whether it actually matters. Is demographic collapse necessarily a bad thing?
Big difference to population is growing, we are ruined. You look at the birth rate statistics, basically, yes demographic collapse it is.
http://anotherpoliticallyincorrectblog.blogspot.com/
PETER SAINSBURY. Sunday environmental round up, 12 January 2020
The dismal failure of the Madrid COP meeting in December starts the round up for 2020, and no one should be surprised by Australia’s disgraceful performance in Madrid when they see the government’s latest greenhouse gas emission projections to 2030. In better news, the highest court in the Netherlands has required the government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25%. Nothing about the fires themselves, just a couple of observations about reactions to them.
Well somebody gets it. Australia’s disgrace is on the demand side, we elected a Liberal government to get that.
https://johnmenadue.com/peter-sainsbury-sunday-environmental-round-up-12-january-2020/#more-34890
Stacey’s feminism
And that’s where feminism is at. There is an assumption, a remarkable assumption, that men in the past pursued their collective self-interests at the expense of women. So that it can now be justified as “equality” if the reverse is true and we have a society in which both sexes pursue the material self-interests of women.
Not a topic that rocks my boat, but we are all different.
http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/
A climate disaster levy might just be a good idea
Edward Treloar THE AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE recently launched a full-page advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald, again calling for a climate disaster levy. The levy could charge $1 per tonne of embodied carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) from coal, oil and gas mined in Australia or other heavy polluters.
Rejecting the emptiness of hell
CAPITALISM WAS BORN out of the worldview of an empire and its state religion which claimed that a few were saved, and most were damned to burn eternally. Less than 400 years after Jesus Christ’s birth, the words and deeds of this Jewish carpenter from Palestine were converted into the official religion of a powerful empire.
The rising support for Julian Assange
Davey Heller. The working class is increasingly supporting Assange as they learn more about his dire conditions in Belmarsh Prison, the threat to his health and the end of the bogus Swedish investigation into him. However, there has also been increased support amongst layers of the ruling class, including social democratic forces who had previously abandoned Assange.
Measuring the bushfire tragedy and what we can do next
Kim Sawyer Now that the damage has been done, it’s time to think forward to how we can prevent another large-scale bushfire tragedy from happening again.
https://independentaustralia.net/
Consumed by fire (crosspost from Crooked Timber)
It’s been hard to think straight with the fires that have burned through most of Australia for months. Brisbane was among the first places affected, with the loss of the historic Binna Burra lodge, on the edge of a rainforest, a place where no one expected a catastrophic fire.
Another blog to keep an eye on.
https://johnquiggin.com/
Frontera – Sydney Festival 2020
The intensity of this Canadian dance and media coproduction is almost unbearable. Animals of Distinction (AOD) has the core proposition that you can obtain critical knowledge by…
Saturday Sanity Break, 11 January 2020 – Fires and exploding planes
Relative quiet wind, some rain and cooler temperatures have helped calm the bushfires around Australia. This gives the firefighters some respite but still working to burn off dangerous scrub and put out some of the burning bush. When intense heat and strong winds occu…
https://www.henrythornton.com/
US expels Saudi military trainees after Florida shooting
The Pentagon announced on Dec. 10 it was halting operational training of all Saudi Arabian military personnel in the United States after the incident. The Pentagon then announced on Dec. 19 that it found no threat in its review of about 850 military students from Saudi Arabia studying in the United States.
ABC News “Looking to sink your teeth into a new series? Here’s our summer binge guide”
Next time you hear the ABC bleat about not having enough money, just remember ABC “News” now runs a TV reviewing service – because there’s not enough of those on the internet.
I fully recommend you go to the ABC link which is https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-12/what-shows-to-binge-this-summer-netflix-stan-foxtel-amazon-apple/11805516 and skip the whine that it was produced.
Iranian pro-women activist Masih Alinejad hooks into Julie Bishop over hijab and bowing to Iran’s regime
Miserable ghost Turnbull calls for AOC-style Australian Green New Deal
President Trump supports Iran’s people against their regime – the regime Julie Bishop bowed to
Etc. and so on. If you want to get a feel for RWNJ intolerance, this is the site.
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/
Quick Dick McDick explains to Protestors the secret of Vegan Margarine …
A vegan diet helps combat climate change? The video fits in nicely with her site. Load, irrelevant and stupid.
http://joannenova.com.au/
Burning anxiety: The new normal isn’t just the fire, it’s the fear
Back in September, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the United Nations that the climate change debate was subjecting Australian children to “needless anxiety”.
…
Full news coverage.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/
James Cook university crookedness in support of global warming continues
Although replication efforts have blossomed in psychology, biomedicine, and other fields, they’re still rare in ecology, says biologist Shinichi Nakagawa of the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The new paper “sets a great example,” says Nakagawa, who hopes it “will instigate and inspire more replication studies—not to prove previous results wrong but to make our science more robust and trustworthy.”
Not sure how a validation study results in the title but I’m not trying to disprove global warming with nit picking.
AFP eyes case of author Bruce Pascoe’s indigenous identity
He’s no more Aboriginal than I am. He is just a fantasist
Tried an convicted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
Degrees to AVOID if you want to get a job straight out of university and it’s bad news for those studying communications, psychology and maths
In its annual Graduate Outcomes Survey, Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching revealed the number of students securing a job straight after university has plummeted yet again to just 72 per cent.
Australia has been hotter, fires have burnt larger areas
The word unprecedented is applied to almost every bad thing that happens at the moment, as though particular events could not have been predicted, and have never happened before at such a scale or intensity. This is creating so much anxiety, because it follows logically that we are living in uncertain time: that there really is a climate emergency.
Like it or not mate, the heat balance is up the shit and the polls are melting,
Queensland grossly negligent about back-burning too
ACTING Fire and Emergency Services Minister Leeanne Enoch blames the weather for the State Government’s failure to conduct the required controlled burns for four consecutive years to 2019
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/
It is less a “rejection” of the Government than i expected, given the widespread distribution of those videos and the extent of the bushfire disaster.
To the extent the poll is accurate, a 51:49 is within the margin of error, is it not?
It may make Morrison’s hold on the job more insecure but i think it will be a relief to the the LNP.
They will assume they have two years and the media to let it all be forgotten by the next election.
One wonders how bad they really have to be to be held to account.
Mundo, your aboutface is so disappointing.
I would have followed you to the end of the earth.
I would have burned for you.
I would have watched your back.
I would have been Terry McCann to your Arthur Daly.
But you have turned out to be just another would be Guru with feet of clay….
While we’re about it, we need to attack Newscorp. Kevin Rudd’s got the idea but he has no power. Maybe the Greens could lead the attack. Albo can’t urge a boycott of Newscorp but a Green Senator can. Call out lies as they are published. Urge all non-L/NP/RWNJ voters to cancel their Foxtel and other Newscrap subscriptions. The punters can get their NRL/AFL coverage elsewhere.
It won’t lose the Greens any votes, it will most likely increase them. Rupert will respond viciously, but he’ll viciously attack the Greens anyway. Albo can call for calm while secretly applauding.
Mind you, the attack dog would have to have a distinct lack of skeletons in their closet.
Steve777,
I noticed that Kevin Rudd is doing videos now and The Guardian is running them. That gets him out to a wider audience. I imagine he puts them on his facebook page as well as on Twitter. He’s a good Labor man at heart.
Steve777
says:
Urge all non-L/NP/RWNJ voters to cancel their Foxtel and other Newscrap subscriptions.
__________________________________
Now that’s going too far. I got Shameless and Ray Donovan and The Walking Dead plus the footy. I would like to, but Rupert’s got me by the nackers I’m afraid.
They will assume they have two years and the media to let it all be forgotten by the next election.
Unless Mother Nature has something more to say about it next Summer.
Poll size 1,505.
Margin of error = 2.6%.
Steve777 @ #55 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 7:51 pm
His best bet is to ignore it altogether. When/if asked about it all he needs to do is reply with a “Look, my focus is on helping the people of (insert fire destroyed town name)”, and move on.
While secretly applauding of course. 😉
What Morrison and the coalition need to worry about is the next three to six months of lived experience not this “ poll”.
Morrison has made huge promises re rebuilding, compensation and ongoing support for the tens of thousands of Australians affected either directly or indirectly by the fires.
It will be all about lived experience v rhetoric and fuckups and burecratic stonewalling are already happening.
doyley
says:
Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 10:56 pm
What Morrison and the coalition need to worry about is the next three to six months of lived experience not this “ poll”.
__________________
IDK. Once that net satisfaction starts going in the wrong direction it’s pretty hard to ever get it back up high.
doyley @ #61 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 7:56 pm
Centrelink is not going to do ScoMoFo any favours.
Danama Papers
says:
Centrelink is not going to do ScoMoFo any favours.
______________________
I think scomofo is probably the best of the scomo themed insults. but its a low bar.
C@tmomma,
Rudd was on pod save the world a few weeks back. It was good interview. He seems to really be putting his boot into the murdoch press in his post PM years
https://twitter.com/mrkrudd/status/1194731579312148480?lang=en
Also I suspect that scomo doesn’t take marketing advice easily. He’s gotten where he is by failing upwards lazily. Effort doesn’t seem to be his thing. I suspect that he thinks he’s got his finger on the pulse of the quiet Australians.
I don’t think it’s dawned on him that after this job, he may never have another.
One other question to the crowd, is scomo wealthy? I know he lives in the shire but he’s only pulling down a smallish salary as PM, does anyone know if he’s got a ton of investments like dutton or is he just a solidly upper middle class.
Unless Mother Nature has something more to say about it next Summer.
Let us sincerely hope not. I mean it.
Well, well, well! It seems that Morrison’s poor performance over the summer’s long bushfire crisis is starting to hurt him.
I’ve been a bit bemused by how badly he has performed over the last couple of months – a big crisis should be a gimme for any half-decent politician, but this initial evidence suggests that Morrison has now squandered all the political capital that he earned last May. I would not be at all surprised if he doesn’t end up leading the Liberals to the next election.
Albanese can feel quietly vindicated by these results. He’s copped a bit of flak in recent months for this and that, but these results suggest that he is on the right path.
Of course, a single poll doesn’t necessarily mean much, but this might be one of those polls that ends up looking highly significant.
south
says:
One other question to the crowd, is scomo wealthy? I know he lives in the shire but he’s only pulling down a smallish salary as PM, does anyone know if he’s got a ton of investments like dutton or is he just a solidly upper middle class.
_____________________________
From what I remember just a house with a mortgage. No shares. He should be mowing MT’s lawn. 🙂
Bushfire Bill @ #72 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 11:01 pm
Oh yeah. Me too. I’m in the direct line of fire, so to speak as well. However, as this recent catastrophic event has shown, hoping, or even praying, that it won’t happen is not going to make any difference. It’s out of our hands now.
You’d think it would be worse. Hard to imagine a worse period any PM has had in a long time.
Danama Paper,
Oh also human services is doing a digital transformation for it’s core IT payment platform at the moment, so chances are everyone’s going to get a fucked around by centerlink this year and next.
And as with all large digital transformations, expect the worst and be surprised when it blows past your expectations for a huge fail.
mundo says:
Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 10:38 pm
…”As I’ve said many times, Scrotty is toast!
Toast I tells ya!!”…
………………
Thank Gawd you’ve finally come to your senses.
nath,
interesting to hear he has a mortgage, I wonder if he didn’t come back from Hawaii because he didn’t want to wear the cost of changing flights.
I might also add, it’s out of Scott Morrison’s hands, realistically, now too.
‘Events, dear boy, events.’ When a political Icarus flies too close to the sun he thinks shines out of him like a halo of invincibility, then you know you are getting too close to the sun.
And the sun is an apt metaphor because it is that which has burned his political capital up, along with the bush.
south @ #77 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 11:07 pm
If they were still using the same system which has been in use for over a decade, then it’s about time!
I wonder if Hillsong gets 10% of Scott Morrison’s salary for the tithe?
south
says:
Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 11:09 pm
nath,
interesting to hear he has a mortgage, I wonder if he didn’t come back from Hawaii because he didn’t want to wear the cost of changing flights.
______________
I remember the Chaser lads chasing around Abbott when he was raving about debt. They had Abbott’s mortgage and asset details and showed that personally he was in much worse shape than the country. Abbott walked off and one of the Chaser lads yelled out. ‘you want 20 bucks mate’. I think Abbott kinda laughed. Funny moment.
“Ahead in the polls; bad news for Labor. Last time that happened they last an election.”
The difference of course, Shorten was never ahead on personal approval or PPM for the entire last term. Never.
Do Hillsongers engage in “tithe avoidance”? Or perhaps they can’t because unlike the ATO, God can see where they hide their income.
We need to see a trend. The next few polls should give an indication. But it’s a start, an expected start give the past six weeks.
Albo ahead of Morrison
But reactionaries have been claiming for the past week or so that this was not resonating with the “quiet ones” and they were all backing the PM.
I know its only one poll but for a Christmas period poll this shift is quite big.
nath:
I’m not entirely sure how they would have gotten such details, but it’s widely speculated that Mr Abbott was only persuaded to take the LOTO job (knowing he was unsuited to be PM) becuase of the effect on his financial situation.
Is 59% disapproval the highest level ever recorded by a PM?
I make it 79th.
Davidwh says:
Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 11:22 pm
We need to see a trend. The next few polls should give an indication. But it’s a start, an expected start give the past six weeks.
————————
Agree and feel the real test will be in 3 to 6 months when everything has settled down.
Murdoch will con them all again in 2022.
Danama Papers @ #5 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 9:08 pm
The country burns down, and 49% of people want to vote for more of the same. Incredible.
Being behind 49-51 is just par for the course, a perfectly normal mid-term dip in popularity. Scumo, Rupert, Gina et al will not be the least bit worried.
Once the fires are off the front pages, with a bit of boosting by Rupert and a bit of cash splashed around in the right places, things will be back to ‘normal’ in no time.
> I make it 79th.
Thanks William, it didn’t sound right on twitter! People are stirrers
Do not Overestimate the Power of the Dark Side of the Force!
A R
49% are braindead tossers.”Its the greens or arsonists wot did it!!”
steve
Correct.
a.r
The nature of the TPP pretty much ensures that the numbers will remain close no matter what since the ALP already hold a number of safe electorates with little room for swings and there are safe LNP areas that wont change. This shows a 2% swing against a government with little margin to speak off.
Frednk.
I wonder if the comments on that Quick Dick McDick video about vegan margarine are from the same Bemused we know.
Also still 40% PV. They are the most ignorant of all.
E. G. Theodore
says:
I’m not entirely sure how they would have gotten such details
________________________________________
After the Howard government lost office in 2007, Abbott famously joked about mortgage stress when he had to take a $90,000 pay cut on a ministerial salary of more than $200,000.
“The advent of the Rudd government has caused serious mortgage stress for a section of the Australian community, i.e. former Howard government ministers,” he told the Australian newspaper in January 2008.
“You don’t just lose power, in inverted commas, you certainly lose income as well, and if you are reliant on your parliamentary salary for your daily living, obviously it makes a big difference,” he said.
But it was not a joke as Abbott took out a mortgage of $710,000 which was revealed in 2010 after he failed to declare it in 2008.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/10/tony-abbott-describes-his-own-mortgage-stress-to-defend-joe-hockey
“frednksays:
Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 10:36 pm
doyley says:
Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 10:33 pm
I may be missing something but would not the fact that “ signing up “ to a online panel be a requirement for being included in a News poll ( or any poll ) screw the sample somewhat.
Are you suggesting the foundation of statistics ( the sample is random) is broke. Go and wash you mouth out with soap.”
I very much doubt that any opinion poll is “random”, but rather “stratified” – and even after this often “adjustments” are made.
BB – backpfeifengesicht – new word to me. Thanks.
I don’t know what makes PvO so confident they’ll get SmoCo’s numbers back up: his PR / spin team have demonstrated repeatedly they are actually f*cking terrible at what they do.
Danama Papers @ #13 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 7:12 pm
Got to get with the times Danama Papers, PPM isn’t relevant because we don’t elect the PM.