Essential Research continues to disappoint on the voting intention front, but its latest fortnightly poll does include its monthly leadership ratings, which record a recovery in Scott Morrison’s personal standing after the battering it copped during the bsuhfires. Morrison now leads Anthony Albanese 40-35 as preferred prime minister after being tied 36-36 in the last poll, which his first lead out of the six sets of results published so far this year (three apiece from Essential and Newspoll). His approval rating is up two to 41% and disapproval down three to 49%, while Albanese is respectively steady on 41% and up two to 33%.
As related by The Guardian, the poll also finds 71% want investigations into sports rorts to continue, but I suspect that should actually say 51%, as 43% favoured the alternative option that the resignation of Sports Minister Bridget McKenzie should be the end of the matter. The poll also has the unsurprising finding that concern about coronavirus is growing, although we will have to wait for the publication of the full report later today to see by how much.
Other questions produce familiar findings on energy sources (71% favour further taxpayer research into renewables, compared with 57% for hydrogen, 50% for “clean coal” and 38% for nuclear energy) and economic management (the Coalition was rated better overall, but was also seen to favour big business whereas Labor was better at managing the economy to benefit workers). The poll was conducted from 1096 respondents from an online panel, no doubt from Thursday to Sunday.
UPDATE: Full report here. It turns out the poll doesn’t really find an increase in concern about coronavirus over the past month: there’s a two point increase in “very concerned” to 27%, but a five point drop in “quite concerned” to 36%, a two point rise in “not all that concerned” to 28% and a three point increase in “not at all concerned” to 9%. I’d have been interested to see breakdowns by party support on this – Democrats in the US are far more concerned than Republicans – but no such luck.
CMO
the virus *probably* doesn’t last more than a few hours
FAIL
I thought the virus could last for up to 48 hrs on surfaces?
Greg the Lyin’ Hunt is in his element – now dissing PVO
Hunt running interference on behalf of Murphy. Just like Estimates hearings.
So, here we have it.
A corrupt Government which is a byword for chicanery, secrecy, and lying is, at the cusp of the pandemic, defending the appalling modelling behaviour of its Cabinet members. That is where corrupt leadership by a corrupt government gets you every single time.
In relation to the disinfecting of parliament rooms visited by Dutton, Murphy just said the Virus ‘lasts only a couple of hours.’
Deadly fuckwit.
Hunt, who is smart enough to know that Murphy just fucked up big time, taking Murphy’s questions.
Hunt directly attacks PvO by name.
Murphy reckons that it is OK for people to shake hands right now.
Deadly fuckwit.
When the public wants the facts, now is not the time for weasel words and trying to cover your own ass!
Murphy saying ‘once we get community transmission, we will harden up the advice….
This is wishy washy
Murphy is doing a VERY bad job of providing confidence. Everything is up in the air for him. Stupid man. No leadership. No idea.
sprocket_ @ #3007 Sunday, March 15th, 2020 – 9:30 am
It’s retrospective when you urgently need proaction.
Well, that’s it, IMO.
Morrison and Frydenberg have been yapping on that their first priority is jobs, jobs, jobs.
Not the lives of citizens.
Murphy is clearly out of his depth. And this will kill people.
Hunt is a political animal first, last and foremost.
We’re fucked.
Murphy, ‘be more careful, start thinking about taking more measures…..
No facts for the panic buying or those reading the draconian measures overseas
Murphy is more concerned with projecting his ‘Me Dr, You Pleb’ persona rather than informing the public with facts.
Here’s certainty for you
“you might want to start about thinking“
A question that should be asked is what are the specialist epidemiological qualifications of the CMO and if his are limited, because his speciality is in another field, who is/are the experts advising him and why are they not publicly giving the information and the advice.
Shorter Murph
Once everyones got it we’ll give advice on how not to get it ?
If EVER there was a time for Speers to shut the fuck up and just listen, it’s during this interview.
But he can’t help himself, can he?
If he’s not actually talking over his interviewees, he’s saying “OK”, “But…”, “Indeed…”, “Yep, yep”, leading the viewer to think he’s just about to interrupt, which is almost as distracting as a full-blown interruption anyway.
Having said that, the CMO has just justified saying it’s OK to attend the cinema because “the risk at the moment is very low”.
Jesus wept. Shouldn’t we be keeping it low by going in early and hard?
Bizarre! “As we get more information, we will tell you to be more careful”
If your best judgement is that advice is likely to get more severe, surely you should give that more severe advice NOW.
Murphy very reluctant to answer a direct question – only vague “it’s all on you” pronouncements.
Sounds like the words being missed are,
“proactive measures”.
Buying enough food for 2 weeks?
Murphy:’Yeah, Nah’
This is a complete and utter trainwreck.
Murphy must go.
Hunt should resign.
For once, my sympathy is with Speers. “Well, can we travel on a train or not?”
Train wreck interview for the CMO. Hunt is his usual political animal, more concerned with covering his and his govt’s ass than informing the public. But this is a total fail for the CMO.
Murphy is doing OK here. It’s only when people can accept that nothing in the C-19 world is or will be black and white. It is all about probability and its understanding and recognising when the probabilities change and changing the advice then. Speers’ gotchas are inappropriate.
“This is a complete and utter trainwreck.
Murphy must go.
Hunt should resign.”
Speers should shut up.
Infectivity?
Bushfire Bill @ #3017 Sunday, March 15th, 2020 – 8:33 am
Bushfire, I haven’t been able to follow the blog closely this week, but in case anyone hasn’t already posted it, we all have to admit” You Told Us So”.
It’s becoming fairly clear they are making this up as they go along.
Despite obvious shortcomings, this Hunt/Murphy show is 1 million percent better than Trump’s pressers over the last 2 days
Hunt: this is unprecedented…
So why not make an unprecedented actual firm recommendation?
I think Speers is fine. He asking and trying to get answers to questions that are on people’s minds – can I go to the flicks today? Should I buy extra food, and how much? etc
And not getting clear answers.
Greg Hunt is reliable in his “I just want to have the last word.”
Hunt is now praising Morrison, and backslapping himself
Let’s see how the ‘War Cabinet’ goes today, and whether Morrison attempts to shake GladysB’s hand again
PVO now in full ‘it’s all about me’ mode…
PvO has just spent 10 minutes waiting to have the last word about the Ly’n Hunt. He’s not missing …
PvO is right to call out Hunt’s inappropriateness at making personal attacks on journos at a time when people want answers from the government.
Phil Coorey, Chief Apologist for the Coalition Government
Middleton is more tactful than PvO, but she still criticises the mixed messages and says the web site (that Hunt keeps recommending) is way behind.
For a ‘Virtual Parliament’ you’d need a first class NBN.
The comparison between these feckless no hopers and the Rudd-Swan-Tanner-Gillard-Henry response to the GFC is simply astonishing.
From the Guardian live blog …
You know our government would do this if they could. For once, we should perhaps be thankful they are so utterly incompetent 🙁
Porter is IR minister. What happened to Michaelia Cash?
dave @ #2979 Sunday, March 15th, 2020 – 7:31 am
I have also been monitoring this link.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
It is less flashy but may be updating more regularly. It had Australia at 199 cases early yesterday, adding 49 new cases late last night, bringing us to 258 known infections.
There is also this third link that appears to collate raw data for the keen and bored.
https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series
How do you get into Centrelink to claim the Sickness Payment if you are Self Isolating!?!
There has been several serious studies into electronic voting for Parliament – including analysis of the myriad international examples. So why was it never implemented?
It turns out that the politicians, especially Whips and back benchers, like the divisions for 4 minutes. More wheeling and dealing gets done then, than at other times. Face to face. Clock ticking.
People in the US can access sick leave if they have to self-isolate for coronavirus, thanks to Dems in the House.