Essential Research: robodebt, protests and coronavirus latest

The weekly Essential poll finds considerable displeasure at the government’s handling of the robodebt affair, even as Newspoll finds the electoral damage to be limited at best.

Together with the usual suite of questions on coronavirus, the latest weekly Essential Research survey offers findings on the government’s robodebt the recent disturbances in the United States. The former make grim reading for the government, or might do if Newspoll hadn’t suggested the debacle had made no difference on voting intention: 74% say the government should apologise to those negatively impacted, with only 11% disagreeing; 66% support interest and damages for those who wrongly repaid money, with 13% disagreeing; 55% supported a royal commission, with 23% disagreeing; and only 32% agreed the automated notifications were a good idea “even if it was poorly implemented”, with 43% disagreeing.

Regarding the protests in the United States, the propositions that “protesters are right to demand better protection and treatment of African Americans in society” and that “the protesters want to loot and cause property damage, more than they want social change” both received majority support, though far more emphatically in the former case, with 80% agreeing and 11% disagreeing, compared with 54% and 33% for the latter. There were likewise large majorities in favour of the notions that “authorities in America have been unwilling to deal with institutional racism” (78% to 10%) and that the death of George Floyd pointed to “wider discrimination against minority cultures in society” (72% to 16%), while only 33% considered Floyd’s death isolated and not illustrative of institutional police racism, compared with 54% who disagreed.

As for coronavirus, the number who are “very concerned” maintains a steady decline, down five to 27%, with quite concerned down one to 48%, not that concerned up six to 21% and not at all concerned up one to 5%. Approval of the government’s handling of the matter is little changed, with 70% rating it good (up two) and 12% poor (steady). Small-sample state breakdowns provide a further increment of support for the notion that the Western Australian government has done best out of the crisis, with the good rating at 84% and poor at 6%, with other states ranging from 67% to 79% on good and 8% to 13% on poor. Queensland respondents were most likely to say their government was moving too slowly in easing restrictions, although even here the result was only 23% compared with 63% for “about the right speed”. The poll was conducted online from Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1073.

Elsewhere, yesterday’s declaration of candidates and ballot paper draw for the July 4 Eden-Monaro by-election revealed a field of 14 candidates. Along with Labor candidate Kristy McBain and Liberal candidate Fiona Kotvojs, there are starters for the Nationals (Trevor Hicks, who won a preselection vote on Saturday), the Greens, Shooters Fishers and Farmers, the Liberal Democrats, the Christian Democrats, Help End Marijuana Prohibition, the Science Party, Sustainable Australia, something called the Australian Federation Party and three independents.

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.

2,555 comments on “Essential Research: robodebt, protests and coronavirus latest”

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  1. GoldenSmaug says:
    Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 9:30 am

    “I know this might be contentious but coming from the only country that has actually successfully committed genocide (Tasmanian Aboriginals) Hitler’s main problem was a lack of long term planning.”

    With respect, “genocide” as a defined crime comes from the Nuremberg trials in the late 1940’s. It has never been defined as the complete annihilation of a group of people. It most definitely includes the attempt to do it and the annihilation of a good proportion as well as the forcible removal Of a group of people from their homeland.

    So the murder of over a million Armenians and their expulsion from their ancient homeland was most assuredly a successful “genocide” by the Turks, even though many survived outside the boundaries of the new Turkish State.

    The Nazi’s also most assuredly committed “successful” genocide.

    “Whereas he tried to destroy a few minorities in a 12 year period”.

    Well he only had 12 years in power so he spent 100% of his available time. He was planning on a 1,000 year Reich remenber.

    As for the dismissive phrase “a few minorities” I am left speechless. Genocide is not in anyway defined by the numbers of the groups of people who are victims.

    You are inadvertently diminishing the Australian settlers genocidal actions against Aborigines as that was “only” against one minority!

  2. continuo @ #133 Thursday, June 11th, 2020 – 8:11 am

    Confessions says:
    Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 7:22 am
    I’ve said all along that the next election is not a foregone conclusion. It’s silly to write it off at this point in the election cycle – anything can happen over the next couple of years.

    The next election is likely to be held in October next year. The alternative would be March 2022. Election-related jostling will commence In February….so not far off. There’s a few months left of phoney games.

    The LNP are already running their election strategy….They’ve announced that Yes, there’s a recession and they’re the ones best qualified to manage it.

    I would be very surprised if Morrison doesn’t engineer a COVID election early next year, or maybe even later this year. With the explicit support of Rupert and Stokes and with the ABC and the Guardian in a ‘respect the Govt in a time of crisis, how wonderful is Morrison’ mode it could go very well for them indeed.

    If I was Morrison I’d be engineering a populist racist type law to get beaten in the senate a couple of times.

  3. BK hah.. its about time these Premiers spoke openly about the fact that they want NSW/Victoria to eliminate rather than avoiding using the ‘e’ word.

  4. Richard Willingham
    @rwillingham
    ·
    2m
    A person who attended Melbourne’s #BlackLivesMatter protest has tested positive to #COVID__19
    @abcmelbourne
    #springst
    @VictorianCHO
    said the case is “unlikely” to have caught the virus at the rally.

  6. In covid news I work for an organisation that is very much in the ‘well we are probably gonna want you in the office again, most days, pretty soon’ mode.

    Less than 10% of the population is currently in the building on a workday.

    And already there is news that the parking station connected to the CBD office tower I work in is so busy that they are already increasing parking fees. While price gouging a monopoly advantage is not surprise, that they are already in a spot to do it is a big surprise. They’ve announced they’ll review pricing weekly from here.

    So any spare cash move into parking shares quickly.

  7. On Covid, Morrison says he’s interested in history (Spanish flu). On slavery, not so much.

    To Neil Mitchell.

    And I, you know, I’m interested in history, always have been.

  11. Good Morning

    So Labor is going to roll over and let us become a dictatorship.

    How about instead of that Labor you fight strongly for workers
    You fight strongly for the environment.
    You fight strongly for social justice.

    If you think you are going to lose the recession/depression election make room for the Greens who are at least willing to fight and thus shift the Overton window.

  12. continuo @ #150 Thursday, June 11th, 2020 – 8:35 am

    Australia could be a world leader in the production of natural fibre textiles, using wool and cotton. But we’re not. We sell bulks. We do not even wash wool any more, still less turn it into materials suitable for textile production. We could be the centre of textile production and use, including in fashion and homewares. But we’re not. We could have done this at any time from the 1850s onwards. But we haven’t. We won’t.

    We could be a world leader in any number of things, our leadership has been consistently poor through the whole of federation and we’ve chosen not to be.

    The franking credit investment incentive does NOT seem to have created a vibrant Australian based entrepreneur type culture. It is almost certainly a policy that has acheived next to nothing but pour money to the already very wealthy (and I’m not talking about the cash out for non taxpayers I’m talking about the underlying incentive where we take the little tax wesfarmers pays and give it to the richest Australians.

  13. My daughter attended the rally on saturday.

    Participation required everyone to wear masks. Based on her observations, every single person wore masks.

  15. Should we be surprised

    Tea Pain
    @TeaPainUSA
    ·
    1h
    Racism lights up the MAGA brain like a crack pipe.
    NASCAR fans explode with anger over Confederate flag ban: ‘Good luck on filling those stands’
    On Wednesday, NASCAR announced the Confederate battle banner would be prohibited at all of its events and properties. But this decision did not go over well with fans, 80 percent of whom are white…
    rawstory.com

  16. [‘…but most are reasonable people.’]

    I never expressed nor implied anything to the contrary. I just stated what my personal experience was. That is to say, and couched in different terms, I didn’t come across many progressives in the RAN save for one who became my best friend.

    Mavis, don’t get me wrong, most are reasonable but those that are not are seriously on the loopy side of not being reasonable.

    Most NCO’s & almost all of the SNCO’s when I joined were ex-Vietnam vets. I did keep in touch with my first Section commander on and off over the years until the advent of Facebook which was when I decided to end all contact.
    He was racist back in the day and hadn’t got any better, to be honest a lot worse with PHON fanning the flames. The only good “gook” is a dead one. Abo’s are bludgers, if you don’t love it leave (Australian Flag). Worshiping Anzac and the ethos of preserving Australia for the Australians (which means White and British, perhaps European but not Wog or Gook).
    The Army attracts people in the same way as the police, generally good people in the majority of cases but those that are not, are total arsehats.

  17. I get the feeling that Scotty from Marketing is being heavily pressured by his corporate masters at the moment to reopen the doors and borders.

  19. WWP

    Our political class with a few exceptions still act as if we are a colony.

    A good example. The contention Australians would not vote for inserting a Bill of Rights in the Constitution. One of the best selling points for establishing a Republic.

    Edit: Note slave owners did a better job setting up the US Republic.

  22. lizzie @ #120 Thursday, June 11th, 2020 – 9:55 am

    Morrison says he’s ‘studied history’ and there was no slavery.

    Ewart Dave
    @davidbewart
    ·
    5m
    Between 1842 and 1904 more than 60,000 men and boys from the South Pacific islands, and an unknown number of women and girls, were kidnaped and brought to Australia to work as slaves on the sugar plantations that still dot the country’s northeast coast.” latimes #auspol

    Morrison is perfectly correct. We didn’t have ‘slavery’ here. We called it ‘blackbirding’.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbirding

  24. Someone probably bringing covid to a mass event involving mask wearing protestors sounds like a opportunity to test a few theories on spreading, mask effectiveness etc.

  26. Cud chewer

    I’ve been somewhat distracted this week.

    All students have returned this week to primary and secondary education here in Victoria.
    This may result in even more infections.

  28. “And so what I would like Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania to do is to nominate the date that those borders will be open in July.”

    Scotty must have run out of “good news” announceables.

  30. Katharine Murphy
    @murpharoo
    ·
    5m
    On that open-shut contradiction.
    @PhillipCoorey to @JoshFrydenberg
    Q: Is it a conflicting message to ask states to open borders when we don’t know the full health effects of these rallies with possible clusters? Is that contradictory? A: “Absolutely not” #auspol

  31. While price gouging a monopoly advantage is not surprise, that they are already in a spot to do it is a big surprise.

    Come the revolution, we’re going to need a bigger wall.

  32. meher baba @ #145 Thursday, June 11th, 2020 – 10:31 am

    – free market economics (but I’ve been around PB long enough not to expect too much enthusiasm on here for this concept);

    Works fine for things that aren’t essential goods/services or natural monopolies, sure. But is not the one-size-fits-all solution the right employs it as.

    – libertarianism: the state should not interfere in people’s lives and choices any more than is required to prevent harm to others

    Civil libertarianism belongs to the left. It’s deluded to think otherwise. The only libertarianism that exists on the right is of the corporate variety. Businesses and moneyed-up interests can do what they want; everyone else can fuck off. That’s the right-wing version of libertarianism. Or that plus you can buy as many guns as you like, at best.

    It wasn’t the left telling the gays that they can’t get married, or women that they can’t have an abortion, or terminally ill people that they can’t end their lives humanely at a time and in a manner of their choosing. It wasn’t a left-wing president who deployed tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters for a photo op, threatened them with vicious dogs and gunfire, declared the press the “enemy of the people”, and threatened to sue a news outlet for publishing a poll he didn’t like.

    The left does civil liberties. The right pretends at it.

  33. Lizzie

    The framing in that tweet is wrong. It should be Is it racist to blame the protestors while demanding borders open?

    Edit: yesI know it’s implied. My point is don’t let the bastards off the hook.

  35. Cud Chewer

    Out to 20

    New Zealand has gone 20 days with no new Covid-19 cases.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12339051
    4 days to go.

    : NZ to mark June 15 as COVID-19 elimination day

    7 days ago – The Ministry of Health now says elimination can be declared 28 days after the last case from a “locally acquired unknown source”, or community

    https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/june-15-to-mark-new-zealand-s-covid-19-elimination-day-20200604-p54zga.html

  36. – libertarianism: the state should not interfere in people’s lives and choices any more than is required to prevent harm to others

    Any libertarian principles should be subservient to the Society.

    So it comes down to the word “others.”

    If “others” refers to a personal level, I disagree completely, while if it refers to the Society as a whole I can accept that.

  37. poroti

    Bit cheeky of them to party early but I don’t begrudge them.
    NSW having 15 days means the odds of a new case showing up are getting progressively lower.

  38. Cud Chewer @ #184 Thursday, June 11th, 2020 – 9:09 am

    NSW at zero cases (15 days in a row with no local transmissions)

    I’m very sorry but in order to eradicate the virus, we are going to have to nuke Melbourne..
    https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&psi=20,5,1&ff=52&linked=1&kt=100000&lat=-37.8154798&lng=144.9601364&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=47553&zm=9

    Tsar Bomba – maximum yield..

    I haven’t been paying super close attention, do we know what happened in Victoria, was it the Grand Prix, was it just unlucky, or did it do stupid things?

  39. shellbell: “Someone probably bringing covid to a mass event involving mask wearing protestors sounds like a opportunity to test a few theories on spreading, mask effectiveness etc.”

    If you are still around, what was your take on the NSW Court of Appeal’s decision to allow the rally in Sydney last weekend on legal grounds that were very confusing for this non-lawyer to follow?

  40. Christenson has been absorbing too much media and can no longer distinguish between fact and fiction, USA and Aus.

    guardian

    Just days ago, tens of thousands of activists engaged in protests which turned violent, triggered by an event which occurred not here but in the USA.

    Behind these protests were the extremist Communist Party of Australia and Antifa, a group that engages in terror tactics. Protesters waved signs saying ‘The only good cop is a dead cop’.

    Police officers were punched, kicked, spat on and abused, with chants of ‘Eff the police’. Protesters threw bricks at, bashed and jumped on top of police cars. We don’t need this anti-police, race-baiting violence and division here in our country. What of social distancing restrictions in force to deal with the pandemic?

    What a slap in the face these protests were to our diggers and veterans, who couldn’t attend Anzac Day ceremonies.

  42. a r

    Works fine for things that aren’t essential goods/services or natural monopolies, sure. But is not the one-size-fits-all solution the right employs it as.
    ———-

    Hear! Hear!

    Apart from the fact that “free markets” only exist in a laboratory, there is no way that essential community services Should be left to profiteers to run.

    If we ever have a social democratic government again I would like it to run a real community exercise to find the views of Australians as to what they consider are essential community services accessible to and funded by the community as well as the roles and responsibilities of elected politicians in administering those services.

    (E,g. the politicians responsible for robodebt should be able to be prosecuted and justifiably punished for their lawless behaviour.)

    We need an amendment to the constitution to provide for a plebiscite before those services can be privatised.

  43. The right is at its old tricks trying to pretend we did not have a racist colony set up by a racist empire.

    Instead we are supposed to admire the Empire of the Mother Country.
    It’s noteworthy that South Africa went back to the drawing board and rewrote the Constitution as a necessary part of ending Apartheid.

  44. WWP: “I haven’t been paying super close attention, do we know what happened in Victoria, was it the Grand Prix, was it just unlucky, or did it do stupid things?”

    It wasn’t the Grand Prix.

    The Vics did one thing that was out of step with other states: they allowed people to travel freely between their normal place of residence and their holiday home/shack. But there’s no evidence that this caused their current problems.

    They were probably just a bit unlucky: they had a few workplace clusters. Could have happened anywhere (and also did in N-W Tas and at the aged care home in Sydney).

    My growing impression – which I expect the aftermath of the protest rallies to confirm – is that transmission between passing strangers or between people standing or walking near each other in public places is comparatively rare. The real danger zones are inside people’s homes and in enclosed workplaces, including health care facilities.

  45. WWP

    That’s a very good question. I was a fierce critic of the fact that testing in this country was far too restrictive until far too late. I think Victoria has paid the price for that – letting the pool of community ifnections build up. I think they are drying up that pool but its frustrating with these clusters. I also think that Vic Health were just not on their game until relatively recently.

  46. meher

    Its also possible that the NSW Health staff were simply better at tracking and tracing. I’ve seen several reports in the media of Vic Health just being plain slack and disorganised.

  48. Christensen is worried about “Antifa, a group that engages in terror tactics.

    Aren’t terror tactics are how the LNP runs Robodebt and unemployment “mutual obligation”.?

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