Essential Research: coronavirus and attitudes to China

A major souring in Australians’ attitudes to China but little change on coronavirus (at least since last week), according to the latest Essential poll.

Another week, another Essential Research coronavirus poll — this one focusing on attitudes to China, which have notably soured. As related by The Guardian, respondents were asked if they had a favourable or unfavourable view of China’s influences on Australian life, which produced a net rating of minus 30% on trade, compared with plus 1% last August, and a net rating of minus 40% for Chinese business operating in Australia, down from minus 21%. There were also scores of minus 26% for defence, minus 36% for politics and minus 9% for culture. Conversely, the United States scored net positive scores, albeit that these were quite a lot bigger for defence (plus 29%), business (plus 15%) and trade (plus 14%) than politics (plus 2%) and culture (plus 7%).

Asked which relationship would be more beneficial to strengthen, 42% favoured the US and 18% China, compared with 38% and 28% last August. Respondents had two bob each way on trade in that 53% thought Australia “needs to do all it can to avoid a trade war with China”, with 17% opposed, but 48% felt Australia should impose retaliatory tariffs, with 22% opposed. The poll found “more than half” believe China’s trade sanctions against Australia were motivated by the government’s call for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

The poll continued its weekly suite of questions on coronavirus, recording no change on the government’s handling of the crisis, which was rated positively by 73% and negatively by 11%. Levels of concern little changed on last week (79% either very or quite concerned, down one, and 21% either not at all or not that concerned, up one). A divide appears to be opening on restrictions, with higher responses for both lifting them as soon as possible (up five to 14%) and holding off (up two to 27%). The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1087; a full report should be published later today.

Note that below this post is a dedicated thread for the Eden-Monaro by-election, which you are encouraged to use if you have something specific to say on that subject.

UPDATE: Full report here.

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.

2,091 comments on “Essential Research: coronavirus and attitudes to China”

Comments Page 31 of 42
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  1. ​​From the excellent Covid Data website. These young guns are onto the issue of recovery classification in Oz.

    https://www.covid19data.com.au/data-notes

    [When does an active case become a recovery?

    The answer varies across states and territories.

    The national guidelines for COVID-19 define conditions for release from isolation:

    For asymptomatic cases, at least 10 days must pass without symptoms since the first positive test sample was taken;

    For mild cases, at least 10 days must pass since the onset of symptoms, and there must have been no acute symptoms in the last 72 hours; and

    There are further conditions for people who were hospitalised or will enter high-risk settings such as health care or residential age care facilities.

    Spokespersons for ACT Health, Queensland Health and WA Health each said recoveries are determined by public health officials who monitor patient symptoms and make a determination based on the national guidelines. The Queensland Health website also refers to cases with a notification date of 30 days or more. A spokesperson for NT Health said a patient must return two consecutive negative test results. NSW Health has published recoveries are assessed three weeks after the onset of illness by interviewing the case. Cases reporting no symptoms are considered to have recovered. Cases who have not recovered at three weeks are called in the following weeks until recovery. A response is pending from SA Health. Victoria Health and Tasmania Health have not responded to questions clarifying their processes.]

  2. poroti:

    Not at all. Labor shadow ministers are in the nightly news, they are appearing regularly on the political talk shows, they are invited onto Qanda to discuss climate change, they are being heard on a range of issues (as reflected in BK’s Dawn Patrol wrap most days), and the federal party is still highly competitive in the polls, unlike some state oppositions.

    I know some Bludgers take a fatalistic view about the federal opposition, but it isn’t based on any objective reality at all that I can see.

  4. Poroti

    It is a real pity that, unlike NZ, government documents are not available within about 2 months. If NZ at the date in the article was getting such reports you can be sure Australia was and probably earlier. It would be interesting to match up what the Scrott government had been told versus the ‘Off to Footy” stuff we were being given.

    If our local MSM bothered to read stuff from across the ditch, or even further afield, they would pick up information which would contradict SfM’s daily dose of rubbish.
    Such that, as you say, our gov’t had been told about the dangers of covid19 well before they acted.

    And it is really looking like SfM is pushing us towards a Swedish-style solution, with Gladys and NSW as the advance-guard.

    Unfortunately, as Rod Jackson (NZ Epidemiologist)says:

    “Sweden has made a fatal mistake”.

    In light of this new evidence, Aotearoa New Zealand has clearly taken the only sensible route in the absence of a vaccine or effective treatment. Australia and other countries need to refocus efforts on the same elimination strategy.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12335221
    If the magic ‘herd immunity’ status is not achievable then Sweden will be stuck with the infection rate of ~5 per 100,000 per day (now similar to that in US) shown in the graph linked below, forever.
    https://coronavirusgraphs.com/?c=dpp&y=linear&t=line&f=0&ct=&co=2,221

  6. Confessions @ #1502 Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – 8:09 am

    poroti:

    Not at all. Labor shadow ministers are in the nightly news, they are appearing regularly on the political talk shows, they are invited onto Qanda to discuss climate change, they are being heard on a range of issues (as reflected in BK’s Dawn Patrol wrap most days), and the federal party is still highly competitive in the polls, unlike some state oppositions.

    I know some Bludgers take a fatalistic view about the federal opposition, but it isn’t based on any objective reality at all that I can see.

    It’s based on the objective reality that federal Labor is better at losing than winning.

  8. lizzie @ #1499 Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – 8:06 am

    12 month pay freeze for public servants NSW. Nurses, teachers, and police.

    Ged Kearney
    @gedkearney
    ·
    30m
    Austerity has kicked in. So bloody predictable and shortsighted of neo-Libs. Cutting the pay of the most stable consumer base in the state is not good economics as well as showing total lack of respect. #auspol

    Yes, Mundo was wondering what happened to all the happy clappy teary – insert mawkish song about brotherly love – new found respect for public servants meant to be sweeping the country.

  10. Confessions @ #1492 Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – 7:52 am

    Greensborough Growler @ #1519 Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – 5:39 am

    One of the biggest forums for discussion about “Energy” and the Greens are excluded.

    How irrelevant are the Greens?

    <a href="” rel=”nofollow”>” rel=”nofollow”>

    Incredible. I’ve said all along that the pandemic has sidelined minority voices as people want to hear from decision makers not stunt makers. But perhaps the pandemic exacerbates Bandt’s inability to cut through normally.

    About as irrelevant as Canavan, Mundo would have thought.

  13. ‘Steve Bracks proposes five key planks of what should be done to come out of the recession and set Australia up for the future. It’s quite a good contribution.’

    Or to put it another way, ex-Labor premier puts anything said by current federal Labor in the shade.

  14. Scotty from Marketing’s version of “negotiation and cooperation” for PuttingWorkersintheirPlace…I mean Workplace Relations strikes me more as (no surprise there), “We negotiate with big business and the unions and workers cooperate whether they like it not.”

  18. What do you guys make of this?

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/121640611/coronavirus-hopes-to-get-transtasman-bubble-flying-by-july

    My take is that the devil truly is in the detail. You don’t need hotel quarantine but you do need testing and you do need strict compliance. And even then, there is a risk (especially to NZ) and that risk may grow very quickly if Sydney starts having outbreaks. What do they then do? Close the scheme temporarily? Ban travellers that have been near a hotspot?

    Incienetally the article does mention fare conditions. That’s what I was thinking too. You need zero cost refunds/rebooking if you fail a test.

    Huge incentive for NSW to get even more serious about elimination, I think.

  20. Morrison does not want any union / business consensus. The whole idea of “ bringing unions to the table” is so Morrison can blame the labour movement for standing in the way of “ job creating IR reforms “.

    Unions were never going to roll over and agree to what business (and Morrison) want. Morrison will use the union opposition to push forward with his plan to make unions even more irelevant by calling on workers to follow him into the brave new world of IR with jobs for everyone. He has their back while unions stand in the way of a bright future for workers etc etc. Another divide and conquer tactic.

    Morrison and Porter already know what they will put forward. Business has told them what they want. Hubris is on the rise within the government and big business cartel. The revelation by Porter yesterday that consensus is not needed for any IR reform and legislation will be presented to Parliament this year irrespective of the outcome of business / union discussion is the perfect example.

  21. poroti @ #1482 Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – 7:04 am

    C@t
    Scrott will be this Cartman when it comes to negotiation and “cooperation’. He’s getting the build for it too.
    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    Look, Scrote knows, we know…pretty much everyone knows Scrote has another 5 to 8 years left to run in his tenure. He ain’t fussed.
    And neither should we be. Let it go. Even Howard ran out of puff in the end.
    Albo simply doesn’t have the killer instinct to dent Scrotes confidence or swagger. Morrison will win the politics of the pandemic recession in a canter.

  22. doyley @ #1518 Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – 8:41 am

    Morrison does not want any union / business consensus. The whole idea of “ bringing unions to the table” is so Morrison can blame the labour movement for standing in the way of “ job creating IR reforms “.

    Unions were never going to roll over and agree to what business (and Morrison) want. Morrison will use the union opposition to push forward with his plan to make unions even more irelevant by calling on workers to follow him into the brave new world of IR with jobs for everyone. He has their back while unions stand in the way of a bright future for workers etc etc. Another divide and conquer tactic.

    Morrison and Porter already know what they will put forward. Business has told them what they want. Hubris is on the rise within the government and big business cartel. The revelation by Porter yesterday that consensus is not needed for any IR reform and legislation will be presented to Parliament this year irrespective of the outcome of business / union discussion is the perfect example.

    And your point is?

  25. Confessions

    Labor needs cut through stuff. Thats why I suggested the Labor National Cabinet idea.

    Labor needs to make sure its not the whim of media journalists that gets it coverage. This is less of a problem now with the collapse of Newscorp as it moves to online only.

    That means: The ABC; The Guardian; Independent Australia; Crikey; The Saturday Paper; The Daily News; This blog become more important sources of information in addition to the legacy media outlets.

    There is finally a level playing field. With subscriptions being the new funding model its even conceivable that some cooperative regional outlets could take shape. As long as they can pay their journalists they need not worry about influence of corporate money on their reporting.

    Its a brave new world for politics as Alan Jones and 2gb also keeps losing audience share and reach.

    Labor should really make some effort to get rid of Sky News in all spaces it controls. Even Foxtel has given up on it with its new online packages. One is sport alone. The other is the premium shows packaged like Netflix. No news channel.

    With its loss of regional newspapers thats a huge impact. Already it means the Brisbane times is a real competitor in Queensland and we don’t know what is going to spring up in the regional space for North Queensland. Labor should fund an independent online regional alternative to counter the inevitable right wing outfit that will be the starting point up there.

  27. One hundred thousand Americans dead in less than four months.

    It’s as if every person in Edison, N.J., or Kenosha, Wis., died. It’s half the population of Salt Lake City or Grand Rapids, Mich. It’s about 20 times the number of people killed in homicides in that length of time, about twice the number who die of strokes.

    The death toll from the coronavirus passed that hard-to-fathom marker on Wednesday, which slipped by like so many other days in this dark spring, one more spin of the Earth, one more headline in a numbing cascade of grim news.

    Nearly three months into the brunt of the epidemic, 14 percent of Americans say they know someone who has succumbed to the virus.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/100000-deaths-american-coronavirus/?itid=hp_hp-bignews3_fisher-blurb%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

  28. The PM’s senior media advisor, Nick Creevy, emailed a complaint to ABC News Director, Gavin Morris, regarding the ABC’s story about US tech giant Amazon winning the contract for the COVIDSafe app data storage.

    The complaint from the PM’s office criticised the story for its “unnecessarily alarmist” coverage of privacy concerns. The article claimed the data could be “obtainable by US law enforcement”. The ABC later inserted a note in the online story to clarify that “the Covid-19 tracing app will not record people’s movements, only their contact with other people also using the app”, and altered a further bulletin to change “tracking” references to “tracing”.

    For many this might seem like ‘minor’ interference. A small alteration of words.

    But it can been seen as setting a dangerous precedent. Many, including journalists who fiercely protect their independence, argue that it is perfectly acceptable for factual errors to be corrected, but when a senior government official – or anyone with the power to apply pressure – simply doesn’t like what is being said – a turn of phrase, the tone or writing style or choice of words, and the journalists and publishers acquiesce, then it’s the start of a long, slow and painful death for press freedom, media independence and journalistic integrity.

    https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/rip-press-freedom-pm-pressures-abc-to-change-report-about-covid-19-app/

  29. guytaur @ #1523 Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – 8:45 am

    Confessions

    Labor needs cut through stuff. Thats why I suggested the Labor National Cabinet idea.

    Labor needs to make sure its not the whim of media journalists that gets it coverage. This is less of a problem now with the collapse of Newscorp as it moves to online only.

    That means: The ABC; The Guardian; Independent Australia; Crikey; The Saturday Paper; The Daily News; This blog become more important sources of information in addition to the legacy media outlets.

    There is finally a level playing field. With subscriptions being the new funding model its even conceivable that some cooperative regional outlets could take shape. As long as they can pay their journalists they need not worry about influence of corporate money on their reporting.

    Its a brave new world for politics as Alan Jones and 2gb also keeps losing audience share and reach.

    Labor should really make some effort to get rid of Sky News in all spaces it controls. Even Foxtel has given up on it with its new online packages. One is sport alone. The other is the premium shows packaged like Netflix. No news channel.

    With its loss of regional newspapers thats a huge impact. Already it means the Brisbane times is a real competitor in Queensland and we don’t know what is going to spring up in the regional space for North Queensland. Labor should fund an independent online regional alternative to counter the inevitable right wing outfit that will be the starting point up there.

    Labor needs, Labor should,….Labor should, Labor needs……etc
    Absolutely agree.

  30. I see Hanson has raised a mere $14K of her $1M target to crowd fund her open borders stunt.
    Doesn’t look too popular, possibly a backfire .
    That’ll pay a QC until morning tea

  31. Barney

    How do you kill a scorpion? Stamp on it from a great height? Who has the moral authority to bring down Morrison?

  32. Kronomex @ #1512 Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – 8:35 am

    Scotty from Marketing’s version of “negotiation and cooperation” for PuttingWorkersintheirPlace…I mean Workplace Relations strikes me more as (no surprise there), “We negotiate with big business and the unions and workers cooperate whether they like it not.”

    Scrote is well and truly in charge.
    We get it.

  33. “Whereas an observer whose head wasn’t jammed up Player One’s arse would note a certain commonality between these two individuals’ levels of interest in each other.”

    ***

    That observer needs to extricate their head from wherever it may be and realise that their website is being flooded with personal bullshit that is supposedly against the rules. You had a go at me for simply speaking the truth about Joe Biden’s history but yet you are willing to let your blog be trashed with all this personal garbage. I don’t get it mate. You clearly put in a lot of hard work and research into writing the excellent articles that you do but then you undo it all by making absurd posts such as the one I have quoted. Instead of having a go at P1 for no good reason you should have been cleaning up the mess left by the trolls who litter your blog with this kind of personal abuse.

  38. Vogon Poet says anyone who bought a LandRover Freelander is disqualified for life on offering advice of any kind

  40. boerwar says: Thursday, May 28, 2020 at 8:36 am
    Why has Dutton allowed white spot disease to infest Australian crustaceans?

    Because they are white spots and not brown spots or yellow spots or other non-white spots?

  41. Firefox

    That includes people shaming others for their views. Its a different thing to say something is a racist homophobic or sexist argument than to accuse someone of being such a thing.

    Yet here its regarded as one and the same. This makes talking about contentious social policy areas a lot harder.

    This has a lot to do with the culture of getting a rise out of someone. This of course should not be a measure of being on this blog. After all its not parliament or a press conference.

    There is a concerted effort to make the general personal on this blog by a couple of posters. This flows into an acceptance of personal attacks. That includes comments about how much time is spent on the blog by individual posters.

    Edit: P1 however opened up about some details of personal finance. Thats something William advises against for the very reason it opens up attacks on the person as the individual and general is extremely hard to separate.

  44. Kronomex @ #1538 Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – 9:01 am

    boerwar says: Thursday, May 28, 2020 at 8:36 am
    Why has Dutton allowed white spot disease to infest Australian crustaceans?

    Because they are white spots and not brown spots or yellow spots or other non-white spots?

    Making fun of Potato…it’s amusing. Not that satisfying but, it’s all we’ve got.

  46. mundo

    Thursday, May 28, 2020 at 9:10 am
    Vogon Poet @ #1536 Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – 8:57 am

    Vogon Poet says anyone who bought a LandRover Freelander is disqualified for life on offering advice of any kind

    Mundo also has a Land Rover Discovery Sport.

    For that Mundo gets 20 years with no parole

  47. Phillip Lodge
    @phlogga
    ·
    28m
    Trioli hosting an unpaid political broadcast on ABC Radio at the moment. Victorian LNP Shadow Attorney General “doesn’t want to be party political”. Is he serious? Has been bashing Andrews whole “interview”. Trioli sounding empathetic feeding him opportunity questions.

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