Leadership polling, Eden-Monaro latest, yet more on COVID-19

Scott Morrison settles in at a lofty approval rating perch, as hordes of candidates descend upon Eden-Monaro.

Firstly, as per the above post, don’t forget to give generously to the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly donation drive. Now to an assembly of recent events in the worlds of polling and Eden-Monaro:

• The Guardian reports the latest Essential Research poll includes the pollster’s monthly leadership ratings, which find Scott Morrison’s approval up a point to a new high of 65% and disapproval down a point to a new low of 26%, reflecting continuous improvement since a nadir of 39% and 52% in February. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is 53-23, compared with 50-25 last time. Albanese stands at 43% approval, up one, and 30% disapproval, up three. These numbers have been used to update the BludgerTrack trends, which can be see on the sidebar or in detail here, showing Morrison now at a plateau after his recent ascent.

• The Essential poll also finds 41% saying Jobkeeper reporting bungle reflected negatively on the federal government, compared with 43% saying it did not. “A third” wanted Jobkeeper broadened in response, along with another 20% who wanted the eligibility criteria broadened, while 45% preferred that it go to reducing the debt. The poll also featured a semi-regular suite of questions on the leaders’ attributes, which have become more favourable for both leaders across the board since January. This is especially so in the case of Morrison, and still more especially in the case of his ratings for good in a crisis (66%), leadership capability (70%) and trustworthiness (66%), which have yo-yoed between the bushfire and coronavirus crises. These ratings will be available to review in detail when the full report is published later day. UPDATE: Full report here.

• A poll by the Australia Institute finds 77% support across the country for state border closures. Labor and Greens supporters are somewhat more in favour, One Nation supporters somewhat less so. The poll was conducted online on May 27 and 28 from a sample of 1005. Small-sample state breakdowns suggested Western Australians were particularly supportive, at 88%, a finding consistent with …

• The West Australian ($) had a poll yesterday that recorded a remarkable 89% in favour of keeping the state’s borders closed, with which the state government is persisting in the face of criticism from the federal government and New South Wales government. Presumably the poll had more to it than that, but that’s all there is in the report. The poll was conducted online by Painted Dog Research on Thursday from a sample of 1000.

Eden-Monaro latest:

• With a week still to go before the closure of nominations, the ABC by-election guide records ten candidates and counting, including Cathy Griff for the Greens, Matthew Stadtmiller for Shooters Fishers and Farmers, sundry candidates for the Liberal Democrats, Science Party, Christian Democrats and Sustainable Australia, and two independents. The Nationals have also opened nominations, although they have not traditionally polled strongly in the seat. The deluge has prompted Antony Green to argue that all candidates should be required to produce 100 locally enrolled nominators. This burden is currently imposed only on independents, exemption being a perk of party registration.

• The Australian Electoral Commission has announced its service plan for the by-election, detailing special measures arising from COVID-19. A familiar set of social distancing rules will apply at polling booths, and mobile polling will not be conducted as normal at hospitals and aged care facilities, where “support teams” will instead assist with postal and telephone voting (the latter still only available to the visually impaired).

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.

2,003 comments on “Leadership polling, Eden-Monaro latest, yet more on COVID-19”

Comments Page 33 of 41
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  1. boerwarsays: Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 12:18 pm

    The second best thing Mattis ever did was to get sacked by Trump.

    ********************************************

    Not quite correct Boerwar – James Mattis actually RESIGNED from the Trump post :

    US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has announced he will leave the role at the end of February.

    In the latest departure from US President Donald Trump’s inner circle, General Mattis said Mr Trump had “a right to have a secretary of defence whose views are better aligned” with the President.

    In his letter of resignation — which followed Mr Trump’s controversial announcement to withdraw American troops from Syria — General Mattis said the US needed to show respect to its allies in maintaining strong ties abroad.

    The full text of his letter are shown on the site listed

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-21/jim-mattis-letter-of-resignation/10645874

  2. MB – “it doesn’t seem to be correct to describe Robodebt itself as “illegal” or “unlawful.””

    Actually, I think that it is fair. Using income averaging as an indicator that there might be a debt is OK, as long as there is a more exact process prior to pursuing the debt. So, use income averaging to sort through your database, them manually check each “suspicious” case.

    Where Robodebt failed was in solely relying on income averaging, as far as I can see. This is straight up an LNP failure.

  3. Germany’s Merkel will not be attending the G7 in the US later this year.

    She has said she no longer desires to be in the same room with Trump.

  4. Brucephalus

    If you read the article you would have seen that the WA State ALP government abandoned the scheme because it was such a failure. I would love a room at the Pan Pacific paid for by someone else.

    ———-

    You are the one that introduced the hotel stay scheme to pretend the Liberals are addressing homelessness.

    Spin spin spin

  6. Lizzie
    Andrews wont be bothered since Murdoch’s influence is not that great and the media is usually always moaning regardless of who is in office.

  7. Lizzie

    Germany’s Merkel will not be attending the G7 in the US later this year.
    ————
    It may end up being a meeting of Trump and his adoring acolytes like ScottyfromAustralia.

  11. News.com and the “homeowner’s dream.” It’s all good news, guys, and here’s the spin, and how you can get even more money from the states.

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison has just unleashed a home reno dream, announcing grants of up to $25,000 to build new homes and refurb existing houses.

    Called HomeBuilder, Mr Morrison said it was now time to get building to drag the country out of its COVID-19 induced recession.

    “This investment isn’t just about helping Australians bring their dream home to life, it’s about creating jobs and helping support the more than one million workers in the sector including builders, painters, plumbers and electricians across the country,” the Prime Minister said.

    But an analysis by news.com.au has found first home buyers could get even more bang for their buck by adding the HomeBuilder grant to incentives already offered by both the Commonwealth and their state or territory.

    https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/homebuyers-grant-how-much-homebuilder-youll-get-in-every-state/news-story/670b92f073a37d63a75a5437548f5bcd#.ibcfb

  12. From lizzie’s post

    Robodebt was bureaucratic violence enabled by lack of government accountability. Its prime purpose was the dogmatic pursuit of a campaign of cruelty against the unemployed, disabled people, single parents, care-givers, casual and gig economy workers.

    Utter rat f*ckers

  13. Bucephalus @ #1608 Thursday, June 4th, 2020 – 10:41 am

    Bluebottle says:
    Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 12:31 pm

    Briefly standing on a reseeded front lawn isn’t going to lead to a charge of trespass or property damage anywhere that I know of. But if you are concerned about that incident then the trashing of the Bristol Cathedral College Green by Greta and her pals must have really upset you.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-england-bristol-51696203

    Just imagine the reaction if it was a putting green at a private golf course!

  15. Alpha Zero says:
    Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 12:45 pm

    “This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that US police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behaviour, not race, determine most police actions.

    Police officers fatally shot 1004 people last year, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53 per cent of known homicide offenders in the US and commit about 60 per cent of robberies, though they are 13 per cent of the population.

    The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites last year, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, New Jersey, who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1 per cent of all African-Americans killed last year. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.”

    https://amp.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/george-floyd-riots-the-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-in-us/news-story/b8374609bb77e64fda62132aec116133

  16. ajm: “Income averaging can be useful in identifying the POSSIBILITY that someone has received benefits they are not entitled to but requires human investigation to finally determine the fact and the quantum, which was the situation before Robodebt .”

    Have you got a source for this? (Genuine question.) It was my impression that the quantum was calculated in the same way before and after the introduction of Robodebt. It certainly seems that the court’s verdict has killed income averaging altogether, however it might be used.

    “If outsourcing the administration of Medicare isn’t tantamount to privatising it I’m buggered if I know what would be.”

    The notorious text message sent out on election day 2016 read: ““Mr Turnbull’s plans to privatise Medicare will take us down the road of no return. Time is running out to Save Medicare.””

    To me, this was implying something rather more significant than simply moving from having a bunch of public servants processing the claims to, say, having a bank do it. I think the idea was to make older voters feel that some sort of “US-style managed care” was going to appear and they would no longer be able to afford their pills or get any access to hospitals. (Ironically enough, Medicare in its current form is basically a managed care scheme, and one which is in several respects quite a bit less generous than the US version of Medicare for the over-65s.)

  17. meher babasays:
    Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 12:16 pm

    Actually that is not how it worked. Newstart is based on current fortnightly income. So, you get the full payment one fortnight if you earned below threshold, but you will lose an amount in newstart for every dollar earned above the threshold in another fortnight (for example). This is not over payment. The annualised amount of income from the ATO was used to estimated fortnightly pay (overall divided by 26). So if you had at any stage gone over the threshold in a fortnight, even if you had reported it (and had your benefit reduced on the basis of this that fortnight), the Robodebt estimate would automatically put you over and generate a debt notice. So the calculation itself is flawed, but also the shoot first ask question later approach. Here, an often highly mobile population, usually young and often with other issues, might be required to produce up to 7 years of payslips to defend themselves from the automatically applied debt. Often, the stress and difficulty even contacting Centrelink would be too much and the person would end up paying just to make it stop.

    There is lots of evidence the government was warned about the unlawfulness of the scheme before it even introduced (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/feb/06/government-warned-robodebt-scheme-unlawful-but-wont-say-when?CMP=share_btn_link)

  18. mikehilliard: “Utter rat f*ckers”

    So you reckon people who receive welfare payments to which they are not entitled should be permitted to hang on to them, even if the reason they got them was that they didn’t fulfill their obligation to inform Centrelink about their changed circumstances?

  19. Alpha Zero says:
    Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 12:48 pm

    Small problem:

    “Tourism generated a direct contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) of $16.2 billion, or 5.8 percent of GDP. Tourism is our biggest export industry, contributing 21% of foreign exchange earnings. The indirect value added of industries supporting tourism generated an additional $11.2 billion, or 4.0 percent of GDP.”

    I assume that they also have international students as well.

    There’s no booming while they are cut off from the rest of the world.

  20. The AFR is reporting a case of karma

    George Floyd had Covid but wasn’t showing symptoms

    MB
    There is already a process for reviewing and reclaiming excess or incorrectly claimed welfare payments as should be the case but robodebt was acting in a manner that exceeded the normal process followed by centrelink or the ATO.

  21. If you are on a CentreLink Benefit then every time you get a non-CentreLink payment you should advise them as soon as reasonably practicable. The MyGov system is quite easy to use now for that. If you aren’t sure give them a call.

  22. “There’s no booming while they are cut off from the rest of the world.”

    New Zealand in a better position with respect to countries that have a depressed economy thanks to all the measures needed to “suppress” the virus. Our economy will never fully restart without fully functional public transport, just to name one issue.

  23. AlphaZero

    New Zealand now at 13 days straight without a case. June 15 will mark 24 days.
    Lets hope we get there too because I for one would love to go travel 🙂

  24. Cud Chewer says:
    Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 1:03 pm

    So let the Public Transport function. My kids are using it almost every day.

  25. Blobbit: “Where Robodebt failed was in solely relying on income averaging, as far as I can see. This is straight up an LNP failure.”

    Sorry, I missed this. Again, have you a source for this?

    As far as I can work out, all Robodebt did was to automate the process for calculating debts through income-averaging, thereby greatly increasing the numbers of debt notices issued. That’s why I see it as arguably an administrative stuff-up (for which the Coalition Government certainly has to take some of the blame).

    The stuff-up aspect was that an automated process was inevitably going to expand the number of cases in which the recipient of a notice would, rightly or wrongly, consider themselves to be unfairly treated. And it doesn’t seem to me that the architects of the Robodebt scheme had worked out a good way of responding to this.

  27. Australia not doing too bad either.

    NSW is now at 8 days without a local transmission.
    Victoria has had 2 local cases today. One from a known contact. One from community testing.
    The trend is down.

  30. Did ‘The Australian’ post an article proving that there is no racist bias in the US policing, justice and incarceration systems?

    bwhahahaha

  32. How things change.
    Three quarter of a century ago, Germany was a pariah state led by a megalomaniac.
    Today, the US is a pariah state led by a megalomaniac.

  34. meher baba @ #1617 Thursday, June 4th, 2020 – 10:54 am

    mikehilliard: “Utter rat f*ckers”

    So you reckon people who receive welfare payments to which they are not entitled should be permitted to hang on to them, even if the reason they got them was that they didn’t fulfill their obligation to inform Centrelink about their changed circumstances?

    Many of the debts ended up being quite insignificant or disappeared upon review.

    What benefit is there in chasing such small amounts up?

    Do you believe every cent over paid should be retrieved?

    It seems to come down to ideology, the current Government seem to hate the idea of anyone getting a cent more than should when it comes to welfare payments.

    As a result they will happily put people through stressful processes at a time that they are probably already stressed from their situation.

    I’m more than happy to see minor over payments if it makes the process less stressful for those in need.

    Now when it comes to deliberate fraud, the amounts are different and these people should be perused aggressively.

  35. Working in the Department of Human Services as an IT contractor in 2015 there was a proposal to develop a new IT system to process Medicare payments.
    This would have cost North of $1 billion and probably would have been outsourced to Accenture or some such company with DHS managing it.
    This became the basis for the Mediscare story.
    All or most government departments outsource much of their IT work.
    The Tax Office outsourced theirs to Accenture but not sane person would say the Tax Office was being outsourced or would they?

  36. Kudos to James Mattis for calling out Donald Trump for the failed president he is. Mattis is a retired and decorated Marine Corps General. Pretty hard to write him off as a lefty. Though no-doubt the RWNJ delusionarium will try.

  37. “So let the Public Transport function. ”

    Public transport is not going to be running at more than a fraction of its capacity unless the virus is eliminated.

  38. meher baba says:
    Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 1:06 pm

    I haven’t been able to find the article that detailed the full judgement from the Court but one of the major issues that continues to be ignored is that it isn’t just that averaging was an issue but that the correspondence sent to people didn’t fully explain their rights or the processes for appealing decisions. The Public Service really has let down the Government on this.

    It seems to me quite reasonable to look at what CentreLink thinks your income was and cross check it with what the ATO thinks your income was and then verify any inconsistencies and recover over-payments. I know my parents got caught out early in retirement when Dad picked up some work and they repaid it. They were red hot on reporting his income after that.

  40. Socrates says:
    Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 1:11 pm

    Who’s calling him a lefty? Who?

    Most ex-military wouldn’t care his politics because they trust his judgement.

  41. Socratessays: Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 1:11 pm

    Kudos to James Mattis for calling out Donald Trump for the failed president he is. Mattis is a retired and decorated Marine Corps General. Pretty hard to write him off as a lefty. Though no-doubt the RWNJ delusionarium will try.

    ********************************************************

    Any obvious difference of who has done what for their country ???

  42. Cud Chewer says:
    Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 1:16 pm

    “Their nasty, sick philosophy just won’t allow them to ever accept it.“

    Perhaps you could tell us how many years that they have been in Government with it in place? Strange that it still exists then.

  44. Former Chairman of the US Joint Chief of Staff Mike Mullen has also written a similar piece, saying the Washington action is a clear breach of the intended constitutional role of US armed forces.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/american-cities-are-not-battlespaces/612553/

    They are both really well written articles and well worth reading.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/

    After the Brett Crozier sacking they can also forget about US Navy support. This confirms that Trump will not easily take the US military with him on his death ride. As others have said, there are a lot of African Americans in the military (and Hispanics). They won’t think much of Trump.

  46. With the Mattis intervention my question is.

    Will the 25th amendment be used or will we see the military overthrew an elected President.

    The US is now at a Brazil Venuezla tipping point.

    What are the Generals going to do. What is the elected President going to do. Will the US end up like Brazil under Bolsinaro or will the US avoid all that by ending the Presidency today?

  47. phoenix Red

    Mattis got the Bronze Star serving in Vietnam. Lucky he had no bone-spurs.

    Trump is the pretend leader followed by pretend militarists. No wonder they both like fake news.

  48. guytaur

    Read the two articles. They both lay out very clearly the legal and constitutional cases why serving US military personnel should not use force against peaceful US protestors. To me they are implicitly telling all US troops not to follow such orders.

  49. The problem with Robodebt was its implementation. There is nothing wrong with identifying overpayments from information available to the Government and pursuing recovery. Determining whether amounts have been overpaid would be difficult for people who get occasional paid work (‘gigs’), whose income varies greatly week by week, with many weeks zero. Use of an average income over long periods to determine whether or not a debt exists can only be a first-level check to identify cases for further investigation.

    Before sending out a recovery notice, Centrelink needs to make all reasonable efforts to check that amounts demanded are:
    1. Actually are owed, and
    2. Have been correctly calculated

    This is the same obligation placed on any organisation public or private that seeks to recover a debt. It is clear that this was not done. I do not know but the system used gives every impression of having not been properly tested. That’s just not on. The Government seems to have been very cavalier in their attitude to Centrelink “clients” affected. This is likely to be for a mix of reasons, including: Centrelink “clients” are not part of its base; by and large they’re not swinging voters; they’re unable to fight back;…

  50. In the Roman Republic serving military generals and their armies were not allowed in Italy proper, whose border was the Rubicon. Hence Caesar’s ‘The Die is Cast’ as he crossed the Rubicon. He was then at war with the Senate.

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