Essential Research leadership ratings and coronavirus polling

As the contours of the Eden-Monaro by-election start to take shape, a new poll finds respondents highly satisfied with antipodean governments’ handling of coronavirus, and mindful of the less happy situation elsewhere in the anglosphere.

The Guardian reports Essential Research’s latest weekly round of coronavirus polling includes the pollster’s monthly leadership ratings, which have Scott Morrison’s approval at 64%, gaining a further five points after his 18-point hike a month ago. Anthony Albanese is down two to 42% — we must await the full report later today to see their disapproval ratings. Morrison holds a 50-25 lead as preferred prime minister, out from 46-27 last time (UPDATE: Full report here; both are at 27% disapproval, which is a four point drop in Morrison’s case and a two point drop in Albanese’s).

The most interesting of the latest tranche of coronavirus questions relate to other countries’ handling of the crisis, with 79% rating New Zealand’s response very good or good, whereas (if I’m reading this correctly) the United States’ response is rated very poor or poor by 71%, and the United Kingdom is similarly rated by 48%. Another question finds 57% support for maintaining Newstart either at its current level “after the current crisis passes” or aligning it with the rate for single pensioners, with only 28% in favour of returning it to its earlier level.

The poll also finds growing appetite for easing restrictions, with 37% now saying it is too soon to do so, down from 49% a fortnight ago, and 36% wanting restrictions eased over the next month or two, but still only 10% wanting them gone as soon as possible. Respondents were also presented with a series of propositions about school closures, which found 45% sayig schools should reopen, “half” saying schools should teach students remotely until the outbreak passes, and 41% saying they would keep their children at home even if schools reopened.

The latest news on the by-election front is that NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro has announced he will not run in Eden-Monaro, and Senator Jim Molan has likewise withdrawn his intention to pursue Liberal preselection, with both allowing a clear run for Andrew Constance, NSW Transport Minister and member for the seat of Bega, most of which is within Eden-Monaro. The by-election now looms as a straightforward contest between Labor and Liberal, with the Nationals sure to be only a minor presence in Barilaro’s absence, if indeed they run at all.

Constance was the subject of sympathetic media attention after nearly losing his Malua Bay house in the summer bushfires, a particularly helpful asset given the federal goverment’s handling of the fires loomed as its main liability in the campaign. He revealed in March that he would be quitting politics when the bushfire recovery was complete, albeit without making clear when that might be. The by-election that will now be required in Bega will thus be less disruptive than one in Barilaro’s seat of Monaro would have been, and the seat is also at less risk of being lost by the government. No indication so far as I can see as to who might be in the running in Bega.

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.

3,512 comments on “Essential Research leadership ratings and coronavirus polling”

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  1. max

    I’m also really disappointed about the local government election “reforms” in Victoria, supported (surprise, surprise) by the LNP.

    I have posted several times about LG reforms. Thanks for reminding me. I will add it to my list (sounds of BW lol)

    Just for the record, I have never cared about Mother’s Day….just another marketing/commercial, profit-making exercise. The issue for me re Andrews’ stance is it is another pointer to his “I know best” belief.

  2. Pegasus
    GG is all bark and no bite. Quite the adorable puppy still requiring potty training and obedience classes.
    ———————-
    I imagine that many of our canine friends would take serious exception to that comparison.

  3. The danger of relaxing the restrictions in time for Mother’s Day is that you are starting to relax things at a time many people want to out. Much better to do it on a normal day when people are less like to go out in numbers.

    The crowded shopping centres possibly represent people getting ready for tomorrow.

    I also wonder how many people heard Morrison, but missed what their Premier said.

  4. Peg – fair enough re your take on Andrews. I don’t myself get an “I know best” vibe from Andrews on Mother’s Day. To me it looks like leadership.

  5. All this talk of ‘groupers’ over the last period of time has had me thinking about my long deceased father. One thing he used to say was he ‘was meeting with the group tonight’, or ‘had joined the group’. This was in the Canterbury- Bankstown region in Sydney.

    I was too young to understand anything about politics, at the time. Later on, when I was, I understood he was handing out for the Liberal Party, and had left the group. I would love to be able to ask him was it Bob Santamaria’s mob he was involved with – as I suspect it was, as A Point of View show was always on our TV on Sunday mornings.

  6. Diogenes @ #1916 Saturday, May 9th, 2020 – 4:21 pm

    Anyone know how a bottle of badly made home brew can kill you?

    “A couple who made a batch of home-brew beer have died during lockdown after drinking just one bottle each.
    Tony Hilliar, 54, and Alida Fouche, 42, had run out of their own supplies of alcohol and decided to make their own brew with no end of South Africa’s tough alcohol restrictions on the horizon.”

    https://apple.news/AlfopnyXZRMOWdEdAg7NpcQ

    Some of the mycotoxins can produce severe kidney damage, or bugger up already alcohol compromised livers.

    I would wonder whether it was actually beer, or some distilled fire water from an alcoholic brew they made from whatever would ferment. You can get concentrated alkaloids in such ‘vodka’ type products. Acotine and solanine can turn up in fermented mouldy or sprouted grains, or potatoes or whatever. Plus methanol, of course.

    In vodka they get the nasties out with activated charcoal. Aged in stainless steel for 48 hours.

  7. Barney ITB

    Premier Andrews declared state of emergency 6 weeks ago which expires on 11th May.
    He has consistently maintained that restrictions would be reviewed on that date.
    Nothing has changed as far as the vic govt is concerned

    More retail stores have reopened this week, primarily due to the jobkeeper payment flowing through to businesses.
    Coinciding with mothers day tomorrow.
    That would explain more people out and about.

  8. sprocket_

    If you watched the Santamaria/Gillies video he references “the martyrdom of the Federated Clerks Union. As you seem fairly knowledgeable about labor history, do you know what that was referring to?

  9. Having just had one nice flathead and three large KG Whiting fillets I am as full as a butcher’s dog!
    Nice though.

  10. yabba

    Re vodka nasties, they would also do what an old Norwegian told me about the distilling of akvavit at home back in the day. The initial distillate,the heads, was thrown out. That would have had a lot of the methanol,if any, in it. His father’s job in their annual “brew up” was to sit and keep tasting the output through the day.Deciding when to stop discarding the “heads” , start keeping the “body ” and discarding the “tails” . I was a hell of a job but someone had to do it 😆

  11. ”What would the Canterbury-Bankstown area be characterized as back in those day”

    Traditional working class. Home to many of the latest waves of immigrants – when I was young Southern and Eastern Europeans, later Vietnamese, later Lebanese and other Middle Eastern. Solid Labor territory.

  12. sprocket_

    Thanks for the links.A big LOL Philip Adams always says in his radio program when discussing a book, especially with the author, that he is “holding it up to the microphone” . Well bugger me, after all this time i discover he really does !

  13. Regarding extra payments to frontline workers some Canadian provinces are paying frontline workers an extra $4ph maybe our premiers should do the same.
    I know some people working locally have been given an extra $1500 by their employer.

  14. BOB LYNCH @ #3418 Saturday, May 9th, 2020 – 5:49 pm

    Regarding extra payments to frontline workers some Canadian provinces are paying frontline workers an extra $4ph maybe our premiers should do the same.
    I know some people working locally have been given an extra $1500 by their employer.

    My understanding is that’s not a payment from the Provinces.

    It’s a national Government payment, but the Provinces decide who gets it and how much.

  15. Poroti

    The Federated Clerks Union was one of the battlegrounds mirroring the split when the DLP were formed.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_Clerks%27_Union_of_Australia

    There was a time back when Australia had many small manufacturing places, I can recall working in Namco and then Pye in Taren Point for example as a teenager – they all had ‘an office’ with a dozen or so clerks, heavily unionised in the FCU. White men mostly, some female typists, receptionists.

  16. poroti @ #2025 Saturday, May 9th, 2020 – 7:42 pm

    yabba

    The initial distillate,the heads, was thrown out. That would have had a lot of the methanol,if any, in it.

    Agreed. As a chem engineer, who participated in the making of some pretty good apple, pear, plum and apricot ‘brandies’ in the lab at uni, I am quite au fait with the process. We used to go on the condensation temperature, which was quite a bit safer. We started with clean, decent fruit in the first place, which helps a lot, but we did make one plum effort that had quite drastic
    laxative effects.

  17. When I used to go and visit my grandfather, ‘A Point of View’ with B A Santamaria was always put on the TV on a Sunday morning. He would stand in front of the TV and yell at Santa. He was of good Irish Catholic stock but came at politics, not from the Right but from the Communist Left. After the Great Disillusionment with Stalin he left the Communist Party and joined the Labor Party. Never the DLP. I was the apple of his eye, and he of mine. I guess that’s why I always bristle at the know-it-all, know nothing about mes, who tell me what I am all the time. I’m a Centrist, or a member of the NSW Right, or anything else they can think of to sneer at me. It just makes me laugh out loud at them. In fact, I’m probably more Left than 99.9% of all the idiot Greens here. Not to mention cockwombles like Oakeshott Country who think they’ve got me pegged. You can only feel pity for such people at the end of the day. Can’t you?

  18. I remember going ice skating at Canterbury Ice Rink every weekend when I was a teenager. It’s why I can never get the song, ‘Born To Be Wild’ out of my head when I hear the word Canterbury. 🙂

  19. yabba

    Definitely go by the temp. I have distilled a few small batch ‘brews’ for fun over the years. By luck I have somehow over the years acquired from work the right sort of glassware to monitor column outlet temperatures 🙂

  20. I was a member of the FCU for a while. It wasn’t too bad unlike my current one, which will remain nameless, which is a useless left faction vehicle for personal advancement and PC views. Of course the dream is a white collar CFMMEU.

  21. History, our unionised staff went to the CFMMEU from United Voice a few years back thinking that. It safe to say they have been disappointed that nothing really changed for them

  22. I too recall when Santamaria was almost compulsorily viewing, with him exuding plausible explanations to corundums. He was intellectually gifted but he stuffed Labor up big time. The Catholic-Right are worse than
    the Left.

  23. Historyintime
    Left or right I think,sadly, unions have too often become mere vehicles for the political ambitions of aspiring nomenklatura .

  24. Mavis says:
    Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 8:22 pm

    I too recall when Santamaria was almost compulsorily viewing, with him exuding plausible explanations to corundums. He was intellectually gifted but he stuffed Labor up big time.
    ____________
    And even worse, he was a Carlton supporter.

  25. further to BOB LYNCH’s comment : cbc says trudeau’s feds are paying 70 per cent & the provinces are paying 30 per cent of the raise in wages for front line workers (including supermarket check out staff). its left to the provinces to determine who is a front line worker. the raise is for the duration. the end of the duration is not specified.
    https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1735244355787
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/covid-19-health-care-bonuses-quebec-1.5560287
    80 per cent of deaths in canada have been in aged care nursing homes. -a.v.

    -a.v.

  26. United Voice merged with the NUW to become the United Workers Union in 11 November 2019.

    Big union merger vows to tackle wage theft, redistribute wealth, shift Labor left

    https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/big-union-merger-vows-to-tackle-wage-theft-redistribute-wealth-shift-labor-left-20191108-p538me.html

    “The two unions that have been most active in bringing attention to the epidemic of wage theft in Australia will merge on Monday to form one of the country’s largest unions, and in doing so, potentially shift the Labor Party to the left.

    The merger of the National Union of Workers and United Voice will be a bid to “rebuild worker power” in Australia and “change democracy”, according to the new union’s national secretary Tim Kennedy.
    ::::
    The merged union will be called the United Workers Union. Its creation as a left-wing union will give that faction of Labor a possible national conference majority for the first time in decades, with the old NUW delegates shifting from the right faction to the left.
    :::
    The new union has also ditched more than a 100 years of union practice in Australia, abolishing the structures of state and federal branches, as part of a radical overhaul.

    “That’s not the system we are in any more, employers are national, they’re global,” said Jo-anne Schofield, who is the new union’s national president. “It did require a root-and-branch review of what a union for the future might look like.”

    Instead of the old structure, the UWU will set up around industries and as a single national union, Ms Schofield said. Its core industry areas include aged care, farms, food and supermarket supply chains. Ms Schofield said the scale of the new union and its new structure would allow it to pursue a positive agenda to grow. “We’ve been in too many fights, too many defensive fights.”
    ::::
    RMIT professor of workplace law, Anthony Forsyth, said the merger was “really significant” as it involved “two of the best unions in the country joining together”.

    They had been innovative in recruiting migrant and young workers, areas where many other unions had struggled to have a presence.
    :::
    In the byzantine world of Labor factional politics, the move threatens to destabilise delicate power arrangements. It could tip the balance of power in the party to the left at next year’s national conference for the first time since 1979, according to senior left and right Labor sources”

  27. Rex Douglas says:
    Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 6:24 pm
    I’ve been thinking about how heroic our health workers have been putting themselves in such danger to care for the infected.
    We really should have some sort of lasting acknowledgement of their service, shouldn’t we …?
    Any suggestions ?
    ______________________________________
    A fit and proper union to represent them would be a good start, or has the HSU improved since the days of Williamson, Thomson and Kimberly Kitching.

  28. Hit the nail on the head again, Blobbit…

    I’m waiting for the expert comments here on the source code, now it’s been posted.

    No-one here knows a fuckin’ thing about the source code, or how to analyse it line by line.

    All the posturing, the “I’m in IT and I know it won’t work”, and the “My battery life is the most important thing in the world” bullshit goes down the tubes as of today.

    They got their source code, now they have to tell us why it presages “Nazi Germany Meets 1984”.

  29. Greensborough Growlersays:
    Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 7:02 pm
    Pegasus @ #3388 Saturday, May 9th, 2020 – 6:52 pm

    You want to think that. But you know you have been totally owned today.
    ________________________________________________
    In your dreams dickhead, Peg won easily.
    But is not that difficult when the Victorian rusted on are so sensitive to even the slightest criticism of Daniel Andrews.

  30. “No-one here knows a fuckin’ thing about the source code, or how to analyse it line by line.”

    You may think that BB, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

  31. Aqualung, yep I did packing at Namco and graduated to a forklift driver, before seeing the light and going to uni.

    And C@t, yes been to the old Canterbury skating rink, though Roselands rink was our wet arse hangout 🙂

  32. Pegasus

    Jaysus you have been bagging Dan Andrews for the last 12 hours.
    I am very happy for you to play with your grandkids after they have caught trams to their creche, primary school or high school especially if you live near Brooklyn.

    Sadly Cedar Meats outbreak in Brooklyn is a long way from the fragrant electorate of Goldstein whose local member is Timmy Wilson

    IE Knock yourself out

  33. nath:

    [‘And even worse, he was a Carlton supporter.’]

    Well, nath, it could be worse. I’ll tell you a little. In the ’80s, two premier AFL teams were invited to the Warrant officers and Chiefs’ mess at HMAS Cerberus. They didn’t behave well.

  34. Pegasus says:
    Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 7:11 pm

    max

    I’m also really disappointed about the local government election “reforms” in Victoria, supported (surprise, surprise) by the LNP.

    I have posted several times about LG reforms. Thanks for reminding me. I will add it to my list (sounds of BW lol)

    Just for the record, I have never cared about Mother’s Day….just another marketing/commercial, profit-making exercise. The issue for me re Andrews’ stance is it is another pointer to his “I know best” belief.
    ————————————————

    Let’s cut to the chase:

    In this particular situation, who do you think knows better. Give us some names and some evidence to back it up.

    Don’t just throw ex cathedra statements out there. This is a forum of ideas supported by evidence.

  35. Re-posting
    ————–

    Pegasus says:
    Friday, May 8, 2020 at 9:01 pm
    The G

    Covidsafe app code released
    Josh Taylor Josh Taylor

    The Digital Transformation Agency has finally released the source code for the Android and iOS apps for Covidsafe.

    It’s being hosted on Github and there’s a lot of interesting T&Cs there, including agreeing to stop accessing the code if DTA ask.

    It’s unclear why it took so long to release the code, given the UK released the code for its NHS app overnight (which, incidentally, had fixed the iPhone bluetooth issue that has dogged the Singapore and Australian apps).

    We will get a better idea of how it all works once developers have had a chance to go through it in the coming days.

    There are now calls for the server side code (that is the code on the government’s server for storing your registration data and data should you test positive) to be released. That will probably be less likely.
    ———

    https://www.dta.gov.au/news/dta-publicly-releases-covidsafe-application-source-code

    You can provide feedback about the application’s source code by emailing support@covidsafe.gov.au. We welcome the feedback that has already been provided following the app’s launch
    ——–

    https://covidsafe.gov.au/app-code-terms-and-conditions.html

  36. boerwar
    A bit of a worry to see our current R number is above one. Means we are on the up and up and up trail. Hopefully it is just a result of the Cedar Meats cluster(fcuk) and washes out of the numbers in a day or three..

  37. billie

    And like all my other detractors you fail to address any of my points. I understand why that is.

    (We do not have any grand children).

  38. WA has done very well. The virus will soon be eliminated here, and with our borders shut for the foreseeable future, we should be coronavirus-free for a while.

    The premier is doing a town hall next week via videoconference, inviting questions from members. I’m attending and looking forward to it.

  39. Coronavirus: Unlike Labor, unions, Scott Morrison is for the workers.

    Gerard Henderson

    Absolute shite from Henderson. Smoko just put a million workers on the dole.
    With friends of the workers like that who needs enemies.

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