Essential Research leadership ratings

Essential’s latest leadership ratings find Scott Morrison continuing to struggle, despite being back to level pegging on preferred prime minister.

The Guardian reports on yet another fortnightly Essential Research poll with no voting intention numbers, but we does at least get the monthly leadership ratings. These show Scott Morrison down a point on approval to 39% and steady on disapproval at 52%, after the previous poll respectively had him down five and up nine. Anthony Albanese is respectively down two to 41% and up one to 31%, and he has lost his 39-36 lead as preferred prime minister, with the two now tied on 36%. The BludgerTrack trends on the sidebar have now been updated with these results.

Further questions on bushfire recovery, sports rorts and coronavirus don’t seem to have turned up anything too mindblowing, but the publication of the full report may turn up something hopefully later today.

UPDATE: Full report here. The most interesting of the supplementary findings for mine relate to the budget surplus, the consistent theme of which is that respondents aren’t that fussed about it: 79% agree spending on bushfire recovery is more important than maintaining it, with 11% disagreeing; 65% say it would be understandable if the coronavirus impact meant it wasn’t achieved, with 18% disagreeing; and 57% agree it was wrong for the government to discuss the surplus in the present tense before the election, with 24% disagreeing.

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.

1,911 comments on “Essential Research leadership ratings”

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  1. Not Sure @ #1843 Friday, February 14th, 2020 – 7:25 pm

    C@tmomma says:
    Friday, February 14, 2020 at 6:38 pm

    …”Not good enough for you? Do you prefer it if the Opposition Leader effs and blinds instead!?! Or are you just pining for Paul Keating? Well sorry, that’s not who Anthony Albanese is. He actually believes in trying to pull politics out of the sewer where the Coalition have dragged it. Not jump in there with them”…

    ……………………

    I actually am pining for Paul Keating.

    You would be too if you had half a brain.

    I’d take you seriously if you didn’t think you had the right to abuse people like that. Btw, it’s not original either. Did you type it with a sneer? While patting yourself on the head? 🙂

  2. The Panorama of the City of New York is the jewel in the crown of the collection of the Queens Museum and a locus of memory for visitors from all over the globe. Conceived as a celebration of the City’s municipal infrastructure by urban mastermind and World’s Fair President Robert Moses for the 1964 Fair, the Panorama was built by a team of more than 100 people working for the great architectural model makers Raymond Lester & Associates over the course of three years.

    https://queensmuseum.org/2013/10/panorama-of-the-city-of-new-york

  3. C@tmomma says:
    Friday, February 14, 2020 at 6:42 pm

    …”Someone, I can’t remember who, already demanded Scott Morrison step down. He ignored the call”…

    ……………..

    Everybody already knows that the NSW unity faction is having a bit of a moment in the sun.

    Could Y’all just give it a rest?

  4. A man does not worry himself over being evicted from the house his children live in, because he knows he is capable of providing a roof.

    Oh dear, paternalistic comment of the day. Since when did the patricentric pov return to the Left of politics?

    Fyi, Mr Father Knows Best, I was the major breadwinner in my family. I was an Allied Health Professional and my late husband was a musician and a photographer. I was the one who held the Mortgage on our house and I was the one who got the business loan. I was the one that put a roof over my children’s heads and I was the one that put food on the table.

    So, Not Sure, could you please oblige us and take your 1950s mindset back to the dark ages and come back when you have seen the light? Maybe, if you go back even further to the Bolshevik Revolution you might get some tips about how to lead the bloody revolution you appear to be hankering after. I wait with baited breath for you to enlighten us all. 😐

  5. And now for a few words from an enlightened man with a brain to bless himself with, Don Watson:

    And now there’s Morrison from marketing: plodding in the ashes, searching for words or gestures to show, despite Hawaii, that he understands. But he’s an adman: the purpose of his professional existence has never been to find meaning or confront it, but to invent it. The meaning of a grieving woman and weary firefighter declining to take his proffered hand, for instance. He takes their hands anyway, not to hold and comfort them, but to compel them to comfort him. He turns his back and looks for a more likely customer. That’s the trouble with these disaster scenarios: even the most rudimentary market segmentation goes out the window. No sociographics. If a bloke’s got no idea what kind of customer he’s targeting, what’s he meant to say?

    He says he understands his absence has caused us some “anxiety”. Not offence, bafflement or antipathy – anxiety. On social media he releases a select résumé of his government’s good works in the form of a Liberal Party advertisement set to a musical pulse, a jingle. And he tells the Australian cricket team that when they’re out there batting and bowling they’re doing something that’s like fighting fires, or the firefighters are doing something that’s like batting and bowling, or, whatever, the two activities are related.

    “Whether they’re started by lightning storms or whatever the cause may be, our firefighters and all of those have come behind them to support them, whether they’re volunteering on the front line or behind the scenes in a great volunteer effort, it is something that will happen against the backdrop of this test match.”

    If no other good comes out of the emergency, in future there will be no excuse for thinking marketing is some kind of science.

    At some point in any interview with the prime minister one is liable to be reminded of a dung beetle: he starts with nothing much at all and by unstoppable single­minded exertion he pushes it through every interrogative thicket and every hurdle of logic and evidence until he’s created a ball of bullshit several times his own size. Forget what he’s said at other times, what stunts he’s pulled, ignore the fudges, ask not where consistency, truth and substance lie: he will drown out his doubters in a storm of platitudes and shameless demotic saws. What he says may be off the point, beside the point or have no point at all, but sooner or later it becomes the point.

    Some of us recall the PM expressing his concern that Greta Thunberg’s warnings about climate change might unnecessarily alarm and depress young people. The young, he said, are entitled to imagine a happier future. Just how he reconciled this admirable concern with his church’s belief in the (very fiery) End Times that await all creatures young and old, he never explained. But no matter. Despite so many indications to the contrary, he says he has never denied the reality of climate change and its effects, including the effects on the past several months of bushfires, in the course of which, we may presume, many young people found it impossible not to imagine an alarming and depressing future.

    Yet it turns out the government has been busily reducing emissions from the get-go, even back when Abbott was running the show, and when Scott Morrison went into parliament with a lump of coal. The European Union is dedicating a quarter of its budget to tackling climate change. BlackRock, the world’s biggest funds manager, is getting out of thermal coal. The Bank for International Settlements is telling the RBA that central banks might have to be “climate rescuers of last resort” and “buy a large set of carbon-intensive assets”. For his part, our prime minister will allow our emissions reduction targets to “evolve”. That’s the plan. That and improving our “resilience and adaptation”. What’s more, in a sort of customer-care commitment, he’s sworn to “keep us safe”. All, of course, “without a carbon tax, without putting up electricity prices and without shutting down traditional industries upon which regional Australians depend for their very livelihood”.

    Now, we might not see in his strategy an answer to the threat our planet faces. But we’re not in marketing, he is.

    And whatever the record may show, he had a perfectly amiable conversation with the lady in Cobargo. And that was not thermal coal he took into the House. It was non-thermal. That’s if it was coal at all, and not just a rock one of his advisers painted.

    Loyal customers that we are, why wouldn’t we believe him?

    https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2020/february/1580475600/don-watson/leaders-and-dung-beetles

  6. Not Sure

    ‘You can own a vagina and be a man, you know.’

    No, I didn’t. I don’t want to ‘be a man’. I’m quite content with being a person.

    Anyone who equates ‘being a man’ as a desirable for either sex is – by definition – sexist.

    Regardless, apparently being a man means being unemployed, homeless and dead, so I’ll pass.

  7. C@tmomma says:
    Friday, February 14, 2020 at 7:55 pm

    …”So, Not Sure, could you please oblige us and take your 1950s mindset back to the dark ages and come back when you have seen the light? Maybe, if you go back even further to the Bolshevik Revolution you might get some tips about how to lead the bloody revolution you appear to be hankering after. I wait with baited breath for you to enlighten us all”…

    ………………….

    It’s more of a 1990’s mind set.

    But I’ll lead a revolution, so long as I get to skewer the first idiot?

  8. zoomster says:
    Friday, February 14, 2020 at 8:14 pm

    …”Regardless, apparently being a man means being unemployed, homeless and dead, so I’ll pass”…

    ………………..

    Being a man might require help to get a job, a home or stave off death.
    Your Labor voting primary sex organ should definately pass on that.

  10. C@tmomma:

    I was shocked to learn that you’ve had you full of my Sutherland offerings. I was fortunate to hear her live at the SOH on numerous occasion’s in the ’70s & ’80s, though by then she was past her prime. I too wasn’t keen on her politics (eg, the Post Office incident) but thought that her almost peerless artistry should not be commingled with other aspects of her life. Henceforth I shall follow Itza’s lead, such as ‘Songs From The Bardo, a musical interpretation of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’ albeit I’m having a deal of trouble of getting my head around it. 🙂

  12. jenauthor:

    If ‘westerners’ ate real food, like in the 1950s when there was almost no heart disease and no type 2 diabetes … things might be different.

    …back when (American) life-expectancy for men was about 65-66, and about 71-73 for women, according to this: https://u.demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html

    you are correct that what works for one, might not work for everyone.

    You’re right, and your story is but an anecdote. Just as my blood sugar and cholesterol levels are “good” (the doctor seemed surprised) despite having a BMI above 30.

  13. Bellwether says:
    Friday, February 14, 2020 at 8:32 pm

    …”Send Morrison back to the Cobargo area, we’ll cut the bullshit-merchant down to size even if Canberra can’t’…

    ……………..

    Yep.

    The first wave of fighters in the war against corrupted governance should be lead by a 26 year old pregnant woman whose rental house has just burnt down.

  14. Anyone who equates ‘being a man’ as a desirable for either sex is – by definition – sexist.

    Fair dinkum this place gets fuckin’ stupid at times.

  17. C@tmomma @ #1791 Friday, February 14th, 2020 – 5:51 pm

    ItzaDream @ #1759 Friday, February 14th, 2020 – 4:24 pm

    C@tmomma @ #1725 Friday, February 14th, 2020 – 2:55 pm

    I reckon if us women have been told to quit it with the diet advice etc, certain other individuals should quit it with their endless classical music adulation.

    Huh?

    I guess that’s directed at me, having just linked to Death in Venice (the movie, about a plague in Venice and one man’s existential crisis) in the context of Venice as the City of Quarantine and the current virus crisis.

    It wasn’t compulsory, it was labelled clearly as classical music, and that it offends the spokeswoman for *us women* by even existing (I assume you didn’t open it) then that says at helluva lot more about you C@t, than me, mere certain individual that I might be.

    I should remind you that I haven’t posted a classical music clip this side of the last six months at a guesstimate, by intent. And on top of that, the last music clip I posted was this, Laurie Anderson et al and Songs From The Bardo, a musical interpretation of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

    It is much about Karma. You could do worse than give it some thought.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDYum_VtfVM

    Wasn’t thinking about you at all, Itza. I was referring to Mavis, who has been assailing my senses with more and more and more classical music clips than I can bear! Mainly because a lot of them are of Joan Sutherland, one of the most Right Wing and political singers Australia has ever produced.

    Anyway, I just thought if others can put their 2c worth in about females having a chat, I could throw my hat in the ring and have my say about the divas, by being a bit of a diva myself! 😉

    No worries. Fun fact: when Guiliani was mayor of New York, he declared a special New York Joan Sutherland Day.

  20. So things just get worse?

    Peter van Onselen@vanOnselenP
    ·
    8m
    The government kept saying “all project were eligible”….but the Auditor General has confirmed that’s no true. So they now say “no projects deemed ineligible were approved”. Apart from the fact merit not eligibility is the issue, that’s crap walking away from false comments.

    Peter van Onselen@vanOnselenP
    ·
    5m
    This THIS must be a line in the sand with how governments act. They won’t even admit the program was wrong. So let’s finger the future leaders in the government. When THEY want to lead their stance on THIS should dog their chances to do so. I will be sure to remind the public…

    Peter van Onselen@vanOnselenP
    ·
    3m
    The below is exactly right. They won’t even admit the sports rorts scandal was wrong. And that includes wannabe leaders of the future. They must be held accountable for the standards they wave through now in this cabinet and government. It’s a disgrace
    https://twitter.com/Boswell1740/status/1228272285926080513

  21. Why were school halls perceived to be a huge waste of government spending, but women’s change rooms at sports facilities aren’t? Is it because there is perceived to be an element of sexism underlying any negative comments about the latter? Sure, I’ve no doubt some were needed to be built, but a whole slew of them across the country at once? Was the need so great?

  22. No worries. Fun fact: when Guiliani was mayor of New York, he declared a special New York Joan Sutherland day.

    I rest my case. 😆

  24. Mavis @ #1861 Friday, February 14th, 2020 – 8:30 pm

    C@tmomma:

    I was shocked to learn that you’ve had you full of my Sutherland offerings. I was fortunate to hear her live at the SOH on numerous occasion’s in the ’70s & ’80s, though by then she was past her prime. I too wasn’t keen on her politics (eg, the Post Office incident) but thought that her almost peerless artistry should not be commingled with other aspects of her life. Henceforth I shall follow Itza’s lead, such as ‘Songs From The Bardo, a musical interpretation of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’ albeit I’m having a deal of trouble of getting my head around it. 🙂

    Mavis,
    How about some Kiri Te Kanawa for a change, eh? If you must. 😉

  25. ‘fess,
    The doublespeak coming out of Gaetjens is unedifying:

    The Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Phil Gaetjens, used a submission to a Senate inquiry to challenge a scathing audit of the scheme and insist it was fair.

    ROFL. Po’ Mosman Rowing Club, Applecross Tennis Club and Royal Adelaide Golf Club! It was only ‘fair’ and proper they receive taxpayers’ money. 🙄

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s top aide has admitted “significant shortcomings” in the program, including decisions made by ministerial advisers, but has rejected claims politics dictated who received cash.

    Sure, Phil.

    Is the heat getting too hot for Morrison from Marketing? So he pushed you out into the glare of the public eye?

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/morrison-s-top-bureaucrat-defends-his-report-on-sports-rorts-20200214-p540yw.html

  26. C@tmomma:

    Ah, I see Mr newbie has ‘infested’ the blog with his presence tonight.

    Ah, I see C@tmomma’s still trying to bully away anyone who seldom posts who doesn’t agree with her on everything.

  28. Not Suresays:
    Friday, February 14, 2020 at 8:19 pm

    “It’s more of a 1990’s mind set.

    But I’ll lead a revolution, so long as I get to skewer the first idiot?”

    Careful with that axe, Eugene! Self inflicted injuries are frighteningly common.

  30. Mr Newbie @ #1878 Friday, February 14th, 2020 – 10:30 pm

    C@tmomma:

    Ah, I see Mr newbie has ‘infested’ the blog with his presence tonight.

    Ah, I see C@tmomma’s still trying to bully away anyone who seldom posts who doesn’t agree with her on everything.

    Nice try at deflection, Mr Newbie. Now, to be clear, it has nothing to do with trying to drive anyone away from the blog whom I may not agree with. As a matter of fact, it was YOUR comment about people ‘infesting’ the blog whose opinions YOU didn’t agree with or respect, and which you haven’t resiled from or apologised for, which raised my ire. And, as I said, I still see you’re trying to bully your way out of responsibility for that. For, as you may or may not know, especially wrt American politics, ‘infest’ is a word that Trump likes to use about asylum seekers in the US, so I found it doubly obnoxious that someone on an Australian blog felt unburdened of responsibility as far as blog etiquette is concerned, to use the same expression.

    Now, you can try and brazen your way out of responsibility again, or you can put up with the consequences of forever being reminded of your poor choice of words. Or you can apologise to the people you directed that comment at. One of whom was me. As I perceived it. And for the crime of supporting someone other than that political carny barker, Bernie Sanders.

  31. You play the victim so well, C@tmomma. As do most bullies when confronted. Just as they often accuse those they’ve bullied of being the real bullies, and demanding an apology as you’ve done here is a classic tactic.

    I think you should change your username to G@slightmomma.

  32. C@tmomma, your comment at 10:22pm was stupid, pointless and immature. “Trying to bully away anyone who seldom posts who doesn’t agree with you on everything” is exactly what you were doing.

  33. You play the victim so well, C@tmomma. As do most bullies when confronted. Just as they often accuse those they’ve bullied of being the real bullies, and demanding an apology as you’ve done here is a classic tactic.

    Spot on.

  34. Mr Newbie @ #1883 Friday, February 14th, 2020 – 10:58 pm

    You play the victim so well, C@tmomma. As do most bullies when confronted.

    More deflection and attempted misdirection, without bothering to answer the substance.

    Anyway, it was actually you that was playing the victim card, attempting to imply I was trying to force you away from the blog. Sorry, but that’s just a flat out lie from you.

    Now, if you ever feel like addressing the issue of why you thought you could say certain people ‘infested’ this blog, I’d be interested to hear it.

    Other than that, don’t waste my time with more of your nastiness.

  35. William Bowe
    says:
    Friday, February 14, 2020 at 11:05 pm
    You play the victim so well, C@tmomma. As do most bullies when confronted. Just as they often accuse those they’ve bullied of being the real bullies, and demanding an apology as you’ve done here is a classic tactic.
    Spot on.
    _____________
    I concur.

  36. Thanks, William. It’s a shame that C@t feels a need to ‘dominate’ the comments section of this blog, as she sometimes makes worthwhile contributions that are overshadowed by that.

  37. William Bowe @ #1884 Friday, February 14th, 2020 – 11:04 pm

    C@tmomma, your comment at 10:22pm was stupid, pointless and immature. “Trying to bully away anyone who seldom posts who doesn’t agree with you on everything” is exactly what you were doing.

    I’m sorry, but yet again you have sided with the real bully and against the person who has been abused. That is, unless you agree that certain people ‘infest’ this blog, as Mr Newbie declared on the New Hampshire thread.

    It has nothing to do with being bullied, it has 100% to do with being abused. I would have thought you could discern the difference.

  41. For the record, my use of ‘infest’ was in no way Trumpian. I don’t follow him closely enough to have even known that was a term he uses. I meant infested as in a rat infestation.

  43. C@t, you are a good contributor, but perhaps you should take a short rest. Sit back, take a deep breath and think before you react any more. Take time to gather your thoughts and then start afresh…

  44. William Bowe @ #1892 Friday, February 14th, 2020 – 11:23 pm

    C@t, your complaint about the word “infested” is demonstrative only of your own hypocrisy.

    That’s a value judgement that is yours to make but with which I most definitely do not agree. Try thinking about how you would feel if someone,who you don’t know and have never met, casually stated that you were infesting a conversation?

    It’s got zero to do with victims, bullying, hypocrisy or false equivalences, even valid equivalences. It’s just the most offensive thing, no the second most offensive thing after someone saying my late husband died of cancer to get away from me, that I have had said to me on a blog. I just fail to understand what motivates people to say that sort of thing. Especially after Trump has used the same word. And all because I don’t worship at Bernie Sanders’ feet!

    Anyway, that’s the last thing I’m going to say about it. Your blog, your standards, your adjudication on matters such as this.

  46. C@t, get over yourself.

    I am not the least bit surprised – nor do I care – that you don’t ‘feel the Bern’. That’s fine, and it’s your right to like/dislike whichever political candidates you do. I don’t feel threatened by whichever candidate/s you support.

    It has been slightly amusing, though, watching you switch allegiance from Biden to Buttigieg, and your negative assumptions about people whose preferred candidate is Sanders. But I haven’t, until now, felt a need to comment on it, and probably won’t again.

  47. Just to be fair I do believe that C@t has supported Buttigieg for a while. She might have dallied with Biden at times too. But that’s fair enough.

  48. So i worked in the same team as Phil Gaetjens a long time ago when we both relatively junior. He seemed like the proverbial ‘good guy’ and by no means an aggressive Tory. However, as Robert Caro has said ‘power reveals’ . He’s no Dr Mike Keating that’s for sure.

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