The fortnightly Sky News Pulse poll by YouGov has Labor up a point to 30%, the Coalition up one to 20%, One Nation down two to 25% and the Greens steady on 13%. Labor holds two-party leads of 55-45 over both the Coalition and One Nation. Anthony Albanese is up a point on approval to 39% and down two on disapproval to 55%, while Angus Taylor improves not inconsiderably with a four-point increase in approval to 38% and a three-point drop in disapproval to 39%. Albanese leads 44-36 on preferred prime minister, out from 43-37. The poll was conducted last Tuesday to this Tuesday from a sample of 1500.
The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor up half a point to 30.5%, the Coalition up one-and-a-half to 24%, One Nation down two to 21.5%, and the Greens down one-and-a-half to 12%. In Labor-versus-Coalition terms, the poll finds Labor leading 56-44 based on previous election and 53.5-46.5 on respondent-allocated preferences (the latter measure has on average had Labor a point higher since the last election). The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1411.
Roy Morgan also had an SMS poll recording an 83-17 split in favour of the government’s decision to cut fuel excise on petrol and diesel, although there was a 64-36 split against the government on satisfaction of its management of the shortage. Respondents were also invited to provide open-ended responses as to who they blamed and why, which you can read about in very great detail in an accompanying report. This poll was conducted March 26 to April 1 from a sample of 2514.
A poll I missed last Thursday was a RedBridge Group/Accent Research “super-poll” of 5563 respondents in the Financial Review. It was slightly dated in having been conducted from March 6 to 19, and did not feature a national headline result, its raison d’etre being breakdowns with significant samples. I will add the results later today from the four largest states and by age, gender, language, housing tenure and past vote to the BludgerTrack poll data archive, and stick here to the bits it’s unable to accommodate. Kos Samaras of RedBridge Group has published a cross-tabulation for generation by financial stress to illustrate the point that stressed older voters are voting One Nation while their younger equivalents are voting Greens, a point he elaborated on in an accompanying analysis piece.
My own favourite cross-tabulation is age-by-gender, which offers a too-rare look at one of the most striking electoral phenomena of our time, namely the pronounced gender gap that has developed among young voters. Among “Gen-Z” men, Labor is on 39%, the Coalition 12%, One Nation 19% and the Greens 24%; among women, Labor is on 26%, the Coalition 14%, One Nation 11% and the Greens 38%. The pattern is reflected in lesser degree among “millennials”, the result for men being Labor 36%, Coalition 16%, One Nation 26% and Greens 13%, and for women Labor 28%, Coalition 19%, One Nation 27% and Greens 15%. For “Gen-X” men, Labor is on 32%, the Coalition 18%, One Nation 35% and the Greens 6%; for women, Labor 29%, the Coalition 21%, One Nation 31% and Greens 9%. Among “baby boomer” men, Labor is on 27%, the Coalition 30%, One Nation 31% and the Greens 4%; among women, Labor 33%, the Coalition 24%, One Nation 32% and the Greens 3%.
The poll also asked four questions of the 491 respondents who said they would vote One Nation. Seventy per cent agreed their choice was a “tactic to make the major parties listen to ordinary Australians”, with only 18% disagreeing. However, 65% felt it “important to elect qualified leaders, even if we don’t always agree with them”, with 14% disagreeing. Fifty-four per cent felt “almost anything is better than the way things are going now, I just want to vote for change”, with 24% disagreeing.
The Australia Institute has an unrelated YouGov poll (hat-tip to Nadia in comments), conducted March 12 to 19 from a sample of 1502, as part of its campaign for a gas exports tax but encompassing voting intention. The result includes an undistributed 8% “don’t know” component, with the rest being Labor 26%, Coalition 19%, One Nation 24% and Greens 12%. The full report features breakdowns by state, age and gender. It also finds 60% agreeing that Australia exports too much gas, with only 10% disagreeing.
Perhaps I should have been clearer. That ‘law’ which is merely a convention, has lost its relevance. The reason, I suspect, that it was ever used was as a rebuke against laziness and ignorance. Rather than lazy, today’s comparisons feel desperate, a search for answers.
Late Riser at 8.51am.
That is an interesting graph of fuel price rises. The uniform rise started around the 9th of Feb but the Straits of Hormuz didn’t close till the 28th of Feb. What happened to trigger the price rise before the closure?
@Arky
I do agree this whole argument is a bit of cope, and really only matters in a protracted war. I did a count of the missile exchanges on the 7th of April and of the ones that were confirmed with footage, there were 8 missiles launched and 2 intercepted, which is a 40% interception rate. There was one more report of an explosion which could either be an impact or interception, but I was unable to find any photos, footage or news about it. Anyway the only thing we can really glean from it is that they are rationing their interceptors, but unless the supply line is cut off (basically impossible) then I don’t think they will ever actually run out of interception. The Gulf states were copping it badly though, their interceptor supply would be more likely (though still unlikely) to run dry considering Israel would get preference on restocks.
We take care the bill. We subsidence their free health care we subsidence putting their veterans through collage while ours are on the street.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nB5wDFsbnjA
Team Katich, Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 9:35 am:
True, about the pro-Republican structural advantage.
I blame the (then) TEA Party dominated Republicans being in power in enough States in the period immediately following the 2010 Census and consequent bout of House redistricting. Those Republicans were the first to brazenly engage in aggressively partisan maps. Fairness in House districts has never really recovered from that. Gavin Newsom has been the first Democrat to really try to fight fire with fire.
As for the Senate, the Republicans benefit from being entrenched in all those small plains/mountain States and getting 2 Senators from each of those.
GrannyAnny @ #502 Thursday, April 9th, 2026 – 9:45 am
You have to go back in time for the answer, which is that there was, until then, a regular cyclic up and down in those prices: a sharp up, followed by a gradual down. You could almost set your calendar by it. It was well known. You’re looking at the upswing of the regular cycle, then instead of the expected downswing, it kept going up.
Late Riser says:
Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 9:18 am
frednk,
There once was a convention that any comparison with Hitler was an automatic loss for your argument. I’m struggling to remember the name we had for it.
There was a time it was something you would only see in a blog’s comment section. It seems to have spilled over into the main stream press. It will be interesting to see if Godwins law still applies.
Fortunately, Trump has tacoed, but now, Israel.
Following on from Albo’s phone call with China’s Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday night, the Chinese Embassy issued a statement, which includes these excerpts:
Obviously, if the NLP made it back into govt and started putting tariffs on everything like Canavan suggests, trade and relations would probably degenerate back to what they were like under Morrison, when the Chinese wouldn’t even pick up the phone.
Arky
Remember a couple of weeks ago when some commenters were divinely convinced the Iranians were about to run everybody else out of air defence munitions and have them begging for mercy. That idea vanished. It was always propaganda. A lot of people let their hatred of Trump make them overrate Iran’s position.
That is why the Iranians were so pissed the Ukrainians showed up.
Canavan did a sterling job at the National Press Club yesterday. I have never seen the journo audience more aggravated and testy. He excelled at dancing around every question, best of which was along the lines of “What will you do when your party gets trounced in the Farrer by-election next month?”. Rare to see such punchy questioning at the Press Club.
Godwin’s “Law” was an observation, not legislation.
Yes, Hitler loved his dogs, but only up to a point.
Boerwar says:
Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 9:25 am
…
The public sector’s share of the Australian economy is already extremely high by global standards: 40%. There is an argument that there you have one of the main drivers for our moribund productivity rates.
Could also be an argument as to why Australia can manage global recessions.
True, about the pro-Republican structural advantage.
I blame the (then) TEA Party dominated Republicans
———————————————-
Blame Manchin as well. And, maybe Biden for not finding a way to make it work (would have required significant concessions) but at least he tried.
I’m not against a large public sector. Many very efficient economies have large public sectors e.g. Nordic countries. I spent the first half of my career working in a (highly efficient) public sector department, Qld Main Roads.
However, as that department demonstrated, if you have a large public sector and want to be efficient, then the public sector has to deliver services. It cannot simply administer and contract out. If all the service delivery is private, then the PS is only an overhead. And IMO (related problem) we have way too many managers and people aspiring to be managers. We need more technical indians.
The Australian public sector’s highly efficient State based delivery agencies were largely killed off in the 1990s, with Campbell Newman finishing the job in Qld in the 2000s.
The flip side of this is that we have to retrain PS organisations to be able to deliver. That means building and maintaining stuff as well as teaching, nursing etc. We can’t afford five million policy makers in a workforce of fifteen million.
BB says
Yes, Hitler loved his dogs, but only up to a point.
Yes, they come in handy for testing out your cyanide capsules!
Did anyone point out that Trump’s proclamation that ‘whole civilization will die tonight’ was a little bit like the Oracle of Delphi telling Croesus “that if he should send an army against the Persians he would destroy a great empire”? In that case, Croesus’s kingdom was destroyed and it looks like Trump might have started the destruction of America.
The leaks of Hungary’s duplicituous dealings with Russia against European countries are coming thick and fast in the run up to the election on April 12:
“Fresh details emerge of how Hungarian foreign minister coordinated with Russia on actions to harm Ukraine”
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/04/08/8029347/
Has Szijjártó been as keen to brief Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha on the details of all Hungary’s discussions with the Russians? Obviously not. Why not? Because Orbán’s Hungary is on Russia’s side, not Ukraine’s.
The question is: how many Hungarian nationalists who voted for Orbán in the past will now take Peter Magyar’s suggestion to see Orbán’s and Szijjártó’s servile behaviour towards the Russians as a betrayal of Hungarian sovereign independence? The polls right now are indicating: enough of them to unseat Orbán.
Given the Iranian supply to and support of Russia’s war on Ukraine, this was richly deserved payback.
I saw some dickheads on social media (mix of Islamists and tankies) castigating Ukraine for providing support to the war on Iran, and it’s like fuck off, the one country in the world against whom Iran can’t claim to be the innocent attacked-without-cause victim is Ukraine.
I wasn’t expecting these for a couple of years:
https://www.drive.com.au/news/2027-denza-z9-gt-confirmed-for-australia-with-ev-charging-as-fast-as-filling-with-petrol/
If old timey EVs are more your thing, there’s this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK5Fa1hFwQE
(courtesy of https://cleantechnica.com/2026/04/06/new-zealand-car-yards-empty-as-electric-vehicle-sales-surge/)
Arky, Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 10:32 am:
Arky – those tankie dickheads (I don’t care if some self-identify as Islamists, if they oppose Ukraine for any reason, they are tankies) are lucky I don’t know who any of them are. 😡
New York Times reports that no oil tankers have crossed Strait of Hormuz since ceasefire, citing data from shipping intelligence firm Kpler.
Andrew Bolt sounding sensible: I have a simple question for the people angrily defending Ben Roberts-Smith, claiming a war hero is being persecuted by woke civilians judging soldiers in battle from the comfort of their sofas. Do you think Australian soldiers should be allowed to shoot unarmed prisoners?
Are you fine if our soldiers shoot prisoners in the back? Machinegun a one-legged man who’d surrendered? Murder a handcuffed man already injured after being thrown off a cliff?
What would you say of Nazis who’d (allegedly) done that? Of Islamic State terrorists who’d slaughtered captives? Be honest.
Defending Roberts-Smith is being made a test of our patriotism. But my patriotism is not measured by my loyalty to a Victoria Cross winner who may – or may not have – committed the five war crimes in Afghanistan for which he was charged on Tuesday.
My loyalty is to the values of this country. And murdering the unarmed is not among the values of the Australia I know.
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt-its-wrong-to-make-defending-ben-robertssmith-a-test-of-patriotism/news-story/f6857f30bcb76f1afe4c26b999d6f3fd
Ukraine’s allies often promise big, but deliver little and late:
“None of six F-16 fighters promised by Norway has arrived in Ukraine yet”
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/04/08/8029329/
This is what Ukraine, the victim, has been putting up with in its efforts to resist the unprovoked invasion and occupation of its land and people by Russia: help that gets promised with great fanfare, but still hasn’t arrived three years later – while other NATO countries not actually being attacked get ahead of it in the queue. All while Iran and North Korea gave prompt and massive military support to the aggressor.
This also underscores why NATO membership remains the best possible security guarantee for Ukraine against any future Russian aggression. Remember: neither NATO nor Ukraine has never attacked Russia, while Russia has attacked Ukraine.
Thanks to Leroy for his link to the Satoshi Nakamoto story yesterday. I’ve only just waded through the long read. It’s bloody good. https://archive.is/iRBng
Brent oil price US$97 – up 8% from yesterday’s low.
Holden – I hate it when I agree with Bolt. But he is absolutely right.
Holdenhillbillysays:
Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 10:39 am
New York Times reports that no oil tankers have crossed Strait of Hormuz since ceasefire, citing data from shipping intelligence firm Kpler.
==================================================
How long does it take a $2 million bank transfer to clear? Asking for an oil tanker.
De-programming prevalent Western misconceptions of the imperialist nature of the Russian Federation, and before it, the USSR: a primer for tankies, from a KI interview with historian Serhii Plokhy:
“Historian Serhii Plokhy on Russian imperialism, de-colonization, and why Putin is so obsessed with Ukraine”
https://kyivindependent.com/acclaimed-historian-serhii-plokhy-explains-why-russia-is-so-obsessed-with-ukraine/
Bolt plays the game of distinguishing himself from his fellow SNAD commentators but it appears occasional, opportunistic and disingenuous.
Let’s face it, Netanyahu is the leader of a terrorist outfit that should be treated as such by the rest of the world. They are simply a menace.
Entropy – The big issue is that Iran is still under banking sanctions. Hence why they want payment in Yuan or crypto.
Where is Albo’s strong condemnation of Netanyahu’s terrorist regime …????
War crimes are committed by every side at every level during war. Check out Operation Meeting House by “Bombs away” LeMay -killed 100,000 Japanese civilians (old, children, women) in 8 hours in Tokyo in 1945. Check out the Allied blockade of Germany in WW1 – costing 750,000 German lives – noncombatants – mostly old, children and women. The ethnic cleansing of Germany after WW2. Who is held responsible for that?
@newy boy Russia was provoked. NATO was going to put offensive nuclear weapons on the Russian border if Ukraine was accepted into NATO. What would USA do if, for instance, Soviet Union put nuclear weapons into let’s say Cuba. They would say remove the weapons or we invade – you know the Cuban missile crisis. So OK for Kennedy to do that but not Putin. This is NOT an endorsement of Putin simply pointing out the reasons for his actions.
Trump’s Taco looking shaky…
Well, well. That was then. This is now. Let’s see what the law decides with respect to the alleged cold blooded murders for which B R-S has been charged.
NATO was going to put offensive nuclear weapons on the Russian border if Ukraine was accepted into NATO.
———————————
They were not.
Ukraine might decide to acquire nuclear weapons if they can not gain more sovereign security by, say, joining NATO.
Paul James Baker, Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 11:05 am:
News flash: NATO already had offensive weapons on the Russian border: in Poland and in Norway. What’s more, they have put in even more since Russia’s ‘defensive’ invasion in 2022, in Finland. None of which warrants an invasion of Ukraine, by the way, where there were none. (Ironically, NATO has now supplied Ukraine with many ‘offensive weapons’ on the Russian border – but all as a direct consequence of Russia’s invasion, not as a result of any purported prior posturing by NATO or by anybody else.)
Further news flash: Ukraine is not in NATO, and wasn’t in 2022. Nor had even the first of the many required concrete steps been taken to bring such NATO membership about. How pre-emptive you must think Russia is entitled to be, if you think that the mere logical possibility of future NATO membership entitled Putin to militarily invade Ukraine. That possibility also existed for Finland in 2022. Do you think Putin would have been entitled to invade Finland then? As it happened, the prospects of Finland joining NATO turned out to be greater than those of Ukraine.
Sorry, but the ‘national defence argument’ you are putting forward in an attempt to justify Putin attacking Ukraine is pure BS.
By the way, do you think Russia was entitled to put nuclear weapons in Belarus, right on the NATO border?
I also find it offensive that you should falsely accuse the one country on Earth which willingly relinquished its (substantial) nuclear arsenal, Ukraine, of potentially harbouring nuclear weapons, as an excuse for the nuclear power which most directly benefited from that unilateral disarmament (Russia) to break its own promise to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine – a promise it gave expressly in return for that nuclear disarmament. And then for Russia to compound the moral egregiousness of their violation of their security assurance by threatening nuclear retaliation upon anyone who interfered with their ‘special military operation’!
You are so off the mark with your assessment of the rights and wrongs of Russia’s illegal and unjustified invasion of Ukraine, that it is a deep concern if your view is held by anyone at all in the West other than yourself.
Iranian drones are dealing just fine with Ukrainian ones in Ukraine. If and when the drones arrive in Saudi Arabia I doubt it will be a huge strategic turnaround, they’re all basically made from the same Chinese technology anyway, which is why the USA doesn’t want them.
PJB
If excluding Ukraine from NATO was Putin’s objective, it was achieved in 2014, when Ukraine’s territory was compromised. Then in 2022 he made a dumb mistake and tried to take the whole country, seeking to reincorporate it into the Russian empire, or Russky Mir, if you prefer
Paul James baker, just a few fine points.
The allusion to Kennedy and Cuba is clever, but the conclusions you draw are not comparable with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The USA could have, but did not invade Cuba during the Missile Crisis in 1962. It had good short term retention of the failed Bay of Pigs landing the previous year and resolved the missile crisis diplomatically. Also, the USSR was the protagonist in that action. I’ll accept that the world sat on the edge of its seat, but the matter fizzled out.
It’s also noteworthy that since 1903 the US has operated a navy and marine base on the island of Cuba. Under a series of agreements Cuba retains ultimate sovereignty but the U.S. exercises sole jurisdiction of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. It is not an ongoing source of military dispute. Certainly, neither side has used it as an excuse to bomb the shit out of each other’s civil infrastructure, as Russia does in Ukraine.
Who let Putin’s tankies loose on the truth?
The scenes from Lebanon this morning were absolutely horrific. Something seriously has to change here to end this senseless bloodshed. Trump, a lame duck, couldn’t care less about the future of the Republican party, but I’ve seen lots of anger from their supporters and online commentators in regards to Israel. It’s most likely all nonsense just playing to the growing sentiment in the American public but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that people in the party who actually want a political career may be finding the impunity of the relationship untenable.
Bean, Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 11:25 am
You think?
Q: What is the interception rate Ukraine has achieved against Shahed and Shahed-based drones?
From Google Gemini
Regading whether the US wants Iranian drones, it’s worth looking at the Low-cost Uncrewed (Unmanned) Combat Attack System (LUCAS). It’s a U.S. one-way attack or kamikaze drone, developed by SpektreWorks for the U.S. Armed Forces, based on reverse-engineered Iranian Shahed-136 technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-cost_Uncrewed_Combat_Attack_System
Newy Boy
Aside from the fact that those numbers are not much better than the interception rates from the Gulf, it’s also lumping in interceptions that were done by helicopters, small arms fire, FPV drones and infantry with rockets, things that Saudi Arabia may not be willing to do or even be able to provide. Not even mentioning that the amount of drone operators in Saudi Arabia is probably quite low (a country like Australia has numbers in the hundreds), plus the armed forces over there is more of a bureaucratic job than a military one.
Luigi Smith, Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 11:27 am
LS, you raise excellent points in rebuttal of PJB.
My one two cents: his is a shit argument anyway. It amounts to: “The US would have been entitled to launch a full scale invasion of Cuba in 1962 (although they didn’t), so therefore Russia is entitled to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.” I think it is a bad faith argument to start with: does he really think the US was entitled to invade and conquer Cuba in 1962? And secondly, what a shit analogy, given: (a) Krushchev was actually sailing nukes to Cuba, while NATO has done no such thing with Ukraine; and (b) the US didn’t actually invade and attempt to conquer Cuba, while Russia is actually doing this to Ukraine.
I really hope that PJB, or anyone else who thinks like him, is nowhere near any official decision making or policy input position, either here in Australia or anywhere else in the West. Their thought processes and moral compasses are truly FUBAR.
Paul James Baker
———————————
This is false, and a repeat of Putin’s talking points. Antony Blinken recently said that not only was it not happening, but that he and Biden had told Putin that before the invasion.
Many forget but the nukes went to Cuba because the USA put nukes in Italy and Turkey. Part of the resolution to the crisis was removing the nukes from Italy and Turkey, though it wasn’t well publicised at the time.
Bean – you understand that Ukraine’s technique of combatting incoming missile and drone strikes is as much a matter of the honing of methodology under intense combat conditions over a matter of years, as it is of the straight development of drone technology as such? It is this considerable skill in making a mish-mash of platforms perform under pressure, in the form of expertise sent to the Gulf states, which Ukraine has offered to those states. And those states (you know, the ones actually under fire from Iran) are very receptive to that offer, even if the arrogant USA under Trump is not.
Newy boy I can put aside my disappointment in Ukraine supporting the agressors of the war to actually praise and respect the move to supply equipment and operators in exchange for (hopefully) financial and diplomatic support, I just don’t think it’s going to be the epic game changer that will make Iran soil themselves like some people think it will. I wish it were, cause then Ukraine would’ve kicked Russia out of their territory and won the war by now.