Morgan COVID-19 poll, Laming latest and more

Evidence vaccine rollout issues are taking their toll on the Prime Minister’s popularity.

I had a vague hope that last fortnight’s sooner-than-expected Newspoll portended a return to a (usually) fortnightly rather than three-weekly schedule, but apparently not. Essential Research should be along this evening though, hopefully including its monthly leadership ratings. Then there’s this:

• Roy Morgan has published results of an SMS poll conducted on Friday and Saturday from a sample of 1423, which asked if respondents were still up for the COVID-19 vaccine in light of recent developments (only 17% were not, increasing to 24% when those who would only settle for Pfizer were included) and, most interestingly, if they approved of Scott Morrison’s handling of “all COVID-19 related issues”. In the absence of a non-response option, the latter question recorded 49% approval and 51% disapproval. I’m aware of two past polls that specifically asked about leaders’ rather than governments’ handling of COVID-19, both from Newspoll – one in April and one in July – from which the weakest result was 61% approval and 36% disapproval for Daniel Andrews in the July poll.

Sarah Elks of The Australian reports that Andrew Laming has declined Scott Morrison’s invitation to sit out the preselection for his Brisbane seat of Bowman, and is “collecting evidence in an effort to disprove a series of allegations against him”. The report notes he has an incentive in a $105,600 reward available to to MPs who “retire involuntarily”, which would not be granted if he went gracefully. Laming will also need to pass muster with the Liberal National Party’s “candidate suitability panel” if his nomination is to proceed to the stage where local party members have a say.

• In a piece for The Conversation, Benjamin Reilly of the University of Western Australia evaluates the likely impact of optional preferential voting, as mooted by the Coalition members of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. The conclusion is that Labor would only have won about half of the 36 seats it won on preferences at the 2013, 2016 and 2019 elections after trailing on the primary vote, and that few if any members of the House of Representatives front bench would have got their foot in the door.

• I have a guide up for the Upper Hunter state by-election in New South Wales on May 22, though it’s still at a preliminary stage since most of the candidates haven’t been announced, together with a Tasmanian state election guide that has lately been supplemented with a page for the Legislative Council contests.

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.

1,028 comments on “Morgan COVID-19 poll, Laming latest and more”

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  1. Holgate has asked for and thoroughly deserves an unqualified apology from Morrison, who so unfairly besmirched her reputation under privilege. And she’s right when saying that a man wouldn’t be treated with such disrespect, and with almost total disregard by not affording her procedural fairness. Her evidence before a Senate Committee was both compelling and credible and the whole affair reeks of the bullying that the Tory & Country parties are so adept at. And while it’s difficult to predict how this will pan out politically, it does nevertheless fit the growing perception that the Morrison Government is in terminal decay, corrupt almost to its core.

  2. davidwh
    According to Holgate her employment contract had very specific clauses re resignation / termination. It required both parties to sign the termination document, Holgate at no stage signed anything.
    She is still employed …
    The ABC got it wrong..

  3. [‘Holgate’s resignation was reported on the ABC on 2 November including her explanation for the resignation.’]

    Based on her evidence today, Holgate was not in the right frame of mind to make any important decisions about her future with AP. I mean to say, she claims she was suicidal following Morrison’s cowardly and unjustified attack on the floor of the House. With the passage of time, and just like Higgins, she has been able to rationalise her position, which she most ably did today.

  4. God knows where her accent comes from, but the way she speaks is entirely up to her, thus not a matter of race.

    Only rarely is the way a person speaks entirely up to that person, but it was so in the case of one David Michael John Bennett AC, QC, formerly Solicitor General for the Commonwealth.

    His reputation surrounded him. At some point in the year, leading counsel must attend upon the High Court, and so they turn up in reverse order of their States’ seniority, something like this:

    Your Honours, I am so and so, ranking first in the Bar Roll for the State of X…

    Your Honours, I am so and so, ranking first in the Bar Roll for the State of Y…

    Your Honours, I am so and so, appearing first in the Bar Roll for the State of New South Wales

    Whereupon, McHugh’s associate asks the Judge: “Why is NSW different?”

    and the answer: “Ah, it used to be the same, but it was changed, for David Bennett!”

    And then there is Mr Bennett on Intellectual Property:

    Suppose I were to think of a Blue Wose, suppose it were to come to me in a Dweam!

    But now go back a few decades, to the inter-varsity debating in the early 1960s.

    Sydney and Melbourne had of course been disputing the title between themselves in the decades past, with the others mere bystanders to their scintillating repartee.

    Sydney was confident, led by the brilliant young Bennett, and somehow Melbourne failed to make the final, leaving Sydney facing Adelaide, and expecting a walkover.

    Yes somehow, Adelaide wins – Bennett postponed – Tail between His Legs

    What went wrong? – how could the Young Master possibly have lost to the Dissenters?

    It was simple really – he had yet to develop his Secret Weapon – he had yet to invent for himself a Lisp!

  5. Definitely worth exploring davidwh. Why did Christine Holgate release that statement and why wasn’t the document signed by both parties? The trouble for the Coalition is when the optics suggest that this is (yet) another woman leant on by Morrison and co to keep quiet.

  6. Australia’s borders certainly won’t be opening under the shambolic vaccination rollout we have at present:

    Health Minister Greg Hunt has refused to guarantee Australia’s borders will open even if the whole country has been vaccinated against COVID-19.

    Australia’s borders have been shut since March 2020 and will remain closed until at least the middle of June, leaving more than 36,000 Australians trapped overseas, unable to return due to caps on the number of quarantine spaces.

    Mr Hunt suggested at a news conference in Canberra on Tuesday the international border closures could last much longer and stay in place even if the entire population had been vaccinated against the coronavirus.

    “Vaccination alone is no guarantee that you can open up,” Mr Hunt said.

    https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/international-borders-might-not-open-even-if-whole-country-is-vaccinated-greg-hunt-20210413-p57ixi.html

  7. Here’s an interesting article from late 2017. It might have been linked here a while back. It makes the case for progressives to be more aggressive in putting the case for climate action, rather like the reactionaries do on “national security”.

    https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/11/10/16627256/conservatives-climate-change-persuasion

    It’s written about America but much would apply here.

    A few interesting observations made:

    – no one outside Washington think tanks actually believes in “free markets”.
    – The Right don’t care about deficits, it’s just something they use to beat up on progressives. This became abundantly clear during the Trump administration.
    – The Right don’t do bipartisan. For example, on borders and “National Security”, they don’t beg progressives to join them, they dare them to oppose. From their point of view, they win either way.

    I also learnt a new word, ‘agonism’. The article suggests that progressives need to practice it much more than they do. There’s a lot to be said for that, although in Australia there’s a big problem – the bad guys have all the big megaphones.

  8. BB
    One of the criticisms of discrimination laws is that they are based on how someone feels about a comment or image instead of the intent of the user of that comment or image.

  9. Racism also refers to ethnicity. An accent is a characteristics of an ethnic group. Therefore to mock their accent is to engage in racist behaviour. Hardly controversial. It’s probably at the casual end of racism. But Australia of course are experts at that.

  10. Another anti-China Article:
    https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/in-a-turnaround-china-is-starting-to-lose-the-covid-cold-war-20210413-p57inp.html

    Lots of Blah blah, with no evidence. I wonder if it was written by Andrew Zenz ?

    Also I was thinking – with Australia blocking all International Travel – wouldn’t that be worse than any other country? It be a first step in Totalitarian State, It would do Liberals multiple favors including limiting Immigration, Detention Centre coverups, it would give Murdoch Empire more media control (see latest Kevin Rudd Facebook Comments).

  11. If my brother Greg is anything to go by, Labor will fail to garner any benefit from the ‘Holgate Affair’. He is pretty switched on normally, but he was in support of her sacking and could not get past two things. First the front, to award Rolex’s to public servants who are already well remunerated for their efforts and second that she had a plum in her mouth and was a highly paid executive. He said I have no sympathy for her at all. As for her accent, I think it is manufactured. I can detect a northern accent in their somewhere, but buried away very deep.

  12. This caught my eye in the smh letters today:

    Horses for courses
    Thank you for letting us know that the NSW Police Commissioner was hosted in a corporate box at a recent horse race meeting (CBD, April 12). A small item, easily overlooked. Police officers are forbidden from taking a single beer from a publican yet their boss can rub shoulders with the rich and powerful in surroundings off-limits to the ordinary punter. Apparently no-one blinks an eyelid. But this is New South Wales after all.

    If true then it’s interesting that some media organisations are more interested in chasing ghosts from the distant past than what’s in front of their eyes now.

  13. Sally McManus@sallymcmanus
    ·

    The Morrison Govt has chosen to privatise the vaccine rollout in the aged and disability sectors where nearly 700 ppl died last year. It is a debacle. Who knows what those companies are doing with the money? This must be fixed – responsibility cannot be outsourced

  14. One for the sinophobes here …

    https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/not-sleepwalking-but-marching-with-eyes-wide-open-to-war,14982

    While the USA moves towards war, anti-China rhetoric grows on a daily basis and the idea of war is being sold as the “right” thing, writes Dr William Briggs.

    A LIE told often enough can become accepted, but it can never be the truth. China has been declared a threat to all that we hold dear, but it is just not so. China, for all its faults, is not a threat and nor is it practising genocide!

    The Uyghur genocide claim gets bigger as each day dawns. Peter Hartcher, in The Age on the 10 April, writes of this genocide and of ‘the evil genius of the system of genocide with Chinese characteristics.’ The “genius” according to Hartcher is that the Chinese are allowing the Uyghurs to live. What a clever and cunning genocide that is!

    The plight of the Uyghurs is but the latest lurid episode in a sustained and enormously successful push to demonise China in the eyes of the world. The motivations behind this are simple enough. China’s economic star is rising and America’s best days are behind it.

    If the USA goes to war with China, it will not be by chance. It has been meticulously planned, costed, budgeted for and the weapons, including “low-yield” nuclear weapons, have been manufactured and deployed by the USA. The world should be aghast at such blatant preparations, but it is not. Those who would take us to war need first to convince us that we have no option, that we are protecting freedom, that we are standing for justice and that a threat exists that the enemy is engaging in genocide.

    Still, I have to disagree with at least one point in this article …

    Nobody wants war but we are being prepared for it.

    Some people are so terrified of China that they do indeed want war.

  15. The essential report has at least one piece of good news for Labor – Albo has finally reached the dizzying heights of having 50% of Labor voters think he would be a better PM than Morrison!

  16. Sorry to break into the thread of the conversation, but does any one know the reason that the guardian newspaper is not taking comments any more, thank you in advance

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