Morgan: 55-45

• Roy Morgan has released a survey of 1255 respondents from face-to-face polling conducted over the past two weekends, showing the sitution unchanged in every respect from the previous poll released a fortnight ago. Labor leads 55-45 on two-party preferred, and by 45.5 per cent to 39.5 per cent on the primary vote.

• Another poll that slipped through the cracks was Newspoll’s quickie survey over the weekend of 564 respondents in Queensland, regarding attitudes to Lawrence Springborg, Mal Brough and the Coalition merger.

• To mark the demise of Channel Nine’s Sunday program, here’s a fascinating Laurie Oakes retrospective of the events of 1975 which some kind person put on YouTube, which I’m guessing dates from around 1990.

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.

149 comments on “Morgan: 55-45”

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  2. [A little summary of the problems pollsters in the USA have]

    Sounds like they’re trying to look for excuses already in case their polls get it wrong

  3. We now have the Oz reaction to Georgia, and it’s less forceful than Bush and Putin’s! We’re backing Georgia and the West’s position.

    “Our position, like the Americans, is that it’s important for peace and stability to return to this part of Georgia,” he said.

    “We recognise and continue to recognise Georgia’s soverignty over Ossetia and therefore it’s important that Russia cease its military involvement.

    “This problem in Ossetia has been brewing for quite some time. Certainly the timing of the actions on the part of the Russians, that’s a question best put to them. What I know is the international community is speaking with one voice in support of the cessation of hostilities by the Russians.”

    Kevin Rudd reveals Bush-Putin argument at Opening Ceremony
    http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/beijing_olympics/story/0,27313,24156469-5014124,00.html

  4. Reading that, I don’t think they Beijing organisers will be sitting Bush and Putin together again. Actually, finding someone to sit next to Putin might be a problem.

  6. Re. Bush v Putin:

    I hope to Christ that someone has informed the US President that Georgia is in fact a former Soviet Republic in the Caucuses, not the state in America that houses the worldwide headquarters of Coca-Cola.

  7. Diog, awhile back you mentioned that it looks like that no veep for Edwads now. Yeah, always suspicious of god waving pollie ala Edwards. Just hope your kid doesn’t have any in his closet.

  9. Fagin

    I was quite surprised that Bush had such an “animated” reaction. I thought there was no chance he would have the faintest idea about the South Ossetians. Perhaps he really did think that Russia had invaded Georgia to help Obama over the line. I must say Kevin Rudd seems to have the matter well in hand. He’s very calm and reasonable.

  10. Don’t you love this beat up from the Error re Maxine being “MIA”

    [BENNELONG community groups and constituents have accused Maxine McKew of turning her back on the electorate since the federal election.
    On the night of Labor’s election victory, in a dig at John Howard, Ms McKew promised Bennelong would never again be taken for granted – but the former TV journalist is now being accused of doing exactly that.

    Ms McKew, who holds Bennelong with a slim margin of just under 2 per cent after unseating the former prime minister, has been called a ghost by her constituents, who claim she has been invisible since December.

    Gladesville resident Praveena Ramrakha was described as one of Ms McKew’s strongest supporters before the election and 35 members of her family voted Labor in Bennelong.

    But the 38-year-old mother said, if the former ABC TV journalist did not lift her game in the next four months, she would not vote for her again.

    “I want to give her the benefit of the doubt and say maybe she’s trying to understand her job better but, if after a year nothing is happening, then I won’t vote for her again,” she said.

    “I go frequently to our local schools and shopping centres and I haven’t seen her this year, not since December.”

    The Sunday Telegraph polled 40 Bennelong residents in the Eastwood shopping strip, just metres from the building where Ms McKew staged her campaign.]

    http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,24156440-949,00.html

  13. Frank

    There are some at the Tele, and other papers, still harboring a festering hatred over Maxine for humiliating Howard. There was also that photo by another paper of Maxine a couple of weeks after her victory that implied she wasn’t wearing any undies.

    What a ridiculous survey, ask 40 people what they think about Maxine and report a couple of negative answers.

  14. Like I said, ‘Error’ sounds fine to me 🙂

    The Toad is trying to link GG-designate Bryce with the Heiner ‘Affair’ and my post pointing out it was Cabinet Secretary Stuart Tait asked the Archivist to shred the Heiner documents somehow? didn’t get published 🙂

  15. I think Latham’s description of the bloated toad in the parliament relates everything I need to know about the creature and, explains a lot to me about his current addiction to the Heiner non-affair. You would think his employers would quietly ship him off to the RSPCA, he is obviously suffering extreme relevance deprivation .

    As for the Error, well the murdoch boys are getting awfully desperate and now is the time to push as hard as they can to protect the energy industry control of energy and environmental policy. They are as blatant as you can get in their bias without actually having the Liberal party logo pasted at the corner of each page.

    I try hard to think of the fate of the Howard/Costello journalists and Editors if they fail in their current quest. You would think they could only push their heavy bias for only this election cycle without it becoming totally obvious to even a kindergarten kid. After that they would to the world look like that bitter shriveled woman in Great Expectations, sitting in the dark, lamenting the wedding that never happened, leaving the banquet table untouched covered in dust and cobwebs (with a faded picture of Howard and Costello propped up) hating Australians.

    They will be extra bitter if Rudd wins the next election because it means he was right, they wrong; he won, they lost. Rudd will invalidate everything they pushed for, believed and hoped for.

    Go Rudd, crush the spirit of these awful journalists.

  18. We were on the right path in 1906

    ELECTRIC CAR RECORD; MAKES 100-MILE RUN
    http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9404E0DD1631E733A25750C1A9669D946797D6CF

    In 1912 it was all still going strong.

    GIGANTIC STRIDES IN AUTO INDUSTRY; Col. Pope Reviews the Progress of the Motor Car During the Past Fifteen Years.
    http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=940DE1D6113CE633A25754C0A9679C946396D6CF

    And even in 1914 it was all still looking good.

    SAYS ELECTRIC TOURS ARE CLOSE AT HAND; Statement of Electric Vehicle Association Shows Possibilities of This Type of Car.
    http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A01E3DF143AE633A25757C1A9609C946596D6CF

  19. Interesting bit of trivia then is that the first dog victim of a car was a fox terrier. RIP What is it with dogs and wheels?

  20. An interesting article by Mark Mordue about the way he reckons the West is blind to Chinese nationalism: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-20080810-3szo.html?page=-1

    He likens China’s Olympic efforts to Hitler’s of the 1936 games: a spin effort designed to show-off to the world and gee up the locals. Completely different from all other Olympic Games, I’m sure.

    He criticises the “4-2-1” (4 grandparents, 2 parents, 1 child) policy, saying it has produced a generation of spoilt brats who will be China’s next brace of leaders. For the life of me I can’t see what the alternative would have been. Untrammelled population growth maybe? We might have 2 billion chinese now instead of a mere 1.5 billion. That’d be nice.

    Rudd comes in for cautious approval with his “friend who will tell you the truth” concept, but Mordue reserves judgement on whether it will work. I suppose the alternative is to nuke the buggers and be done with it.

    Whatever the criticism of China, it is the fact that there are so many of them that is the problem (if that is the correct term) for the West. The day had to come when pressure of numbers blew out the windows of the old status quo and took the country over by storm.

    Mordue doesn’t mention Global Warming, but I may as well. Can we in the West afford to go on polluting in the way we have been if that means the Chinese will see us as hypocrites for lecturing them about their Carbon responsibilities? I don’t think so. We have to come to the environmental table with clean hands. The alternative is to think politics and ill-feeling towards some of the more strident Chinese policies are substitutes for fixing the planet. We can go down secure in the knowledge that we showed those Asians a thing or two. But we still go down… only that the disaster is immeasureably larger.

    It’s all too confusing sometimes. Bush lecturing the Chinese on Darfur (or the Russians for invading South Ossetia – a country roughly the size of Sydney) comes to mind. Olympic officials whingeing about over-zealous crowd control, or no crowds at all… take your pick. Hey guys, you gave ’em the Games! Mordue says the brats sit around in baseball caps saying how they hate America. Oh, the irony! Are we to worry that they’re hating America (for what… can’t think of a single reason), or are we to rejoice that they’re doing it in baseball caps?

    I’m wondering whether China is far too big to govern in the conventional way. 1.5 billion people ruled from a single apex point of government is an experiment that has never been attempted in world history until this century… and the first few efforts failed miserably. Maybe there’s a critical mass far below that figure and China has passed it. Devolution, anyone? Democracy sure seems to be the least likely option. Ask yourselves whether China can afford democracy, or whether it is not in a state of permanent national emergency, requiring stricter control. Just sayin’…

    Then again, Mordue does not consider the radical changes that have occurred in the past three decades of China’s history. I can still remember the Red Guards, the famines, Chairman Mao… as real, live events covered in newspapers and on television daily during my adult lifetime. Where are they all now? Should the Cultural Revolution have been included in the opening ceremony? Would that have done any good at all? Or best to forget them and be thankful they’re gone?

    Whatever the answers, dealing with China presents real challenges and I think I’d rather be Rudd, coming to the table with clean hands on invasions, the environment and (just lucky, heh) speaking the lingo, than Bush, shouting at Putin at the Opening Ceremony, flailing around about Darfur while all the time meandering through Iraq like he owns the place and getting bogged down in Afghanistan.

    It may be true that there were so many empty seats at the Games venues because hundreds of thousands of China’s spoilt brats just wanted the tickets to show off, but not the spots in the stand to sit down in. That would hardly be different to our own near-miss in 2000, or Athens in 2004. The Chinese just do it bigger than we did.

    Thing is, we’re applying our own values to China, but China has enough momentum and bums on geopolitical seats to be able to ignore us (once they’ve finished selling to us, of course). So it’s fair enough, I guess, to write “Crouching tiger, hidden dragon” stories in The Age, but I would have appreciated Mordue’s article a little more if he’d come up with an alternative method of dealing with the Dragon, besides the gloom and doom cliches of the Right.

  21. BB

    On CC and China, I have to disagree with Ron and agree with you. The fairest way to reduce CO2 emissions is so that each person on the planet is “allowed” to use the same amount. Countries like the US and Oz currently use about 25 tons per capita. China uses about 3 tons per capita (and India 1.5 out of interest).

    How can “the West” lecture China? Even if they keep increasing their emissions at 2% pa (which they are currently doing) and we achieve a 50% reduction by 2050, we’ll still be emitting double what they do per capita. If I was Chinese, I would point that out to the US etc and tell them to fcuk off.

  22. CC did make it in to the opening ceremony so that is a good sign.

    I found it a little disturbing to see the obvious uncritical nationalism of the new young rich in China. Hyper-sensitive to crticism and every negative thing is just the tricky international press. However, these are still a small part of the whole.

    Australia needs to see China as a big ocean liner that we can only influence with lots a small tugs pushing against the side but powerless to influence otherwise.

  23. Did anyone else find the media news coverage on the weekend slightly disturbing? Russia and Georgia are now engaged in what appears to be virtually a full scale war in South Ossetia (2000+ dead in 3 days) yet it was the fourth item on weekend news. Only SBS led with it on Saturday night.

    I confess to not being as interested in the Olympics as nationalism demands but even so, was a gold medal really more important than this? Even our cautious PM Rudd made a statement expressing genuine concern for this incident, yet it barely got mentioned. Does it take a spike in oil prices before anyone cares which countries are getting bombed into oblivion?

  24. BB 120

    You make several excellent points on China. I do not see it as the ogre some fear, although I would not pretend it has a clean slate on human rights and support for dictators like Mugabe. It is not as monolithic as people might expect either. The provincial governments are more powerful than states here, and the level of modernity, corruption and human rights varies greatly from province to province. Provincial governments in big coastal areas like Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin are trying very hard to improve the quality of life of their people. Some in western mountain areas including, but not limited to, Tibet are still in conquer/exploit mode and very corrupt.

  25. Socrates

    I agree. Bush’s furious reaction was a clue that there was something more going on than a separatist movement so I looked around a bit. In Europe, they are now reporting that this Ossetian war is about oil and it’s going to get uglier because of it.

    Russian jets targeted a key oil pipeline with over 50 missiles in a weekend bombing raid in Georgia that raised fears the conflict will tighten Moscow’s stranglehold on Europe’s energy supplies.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/georgia/2534767/Georgia-Russia-targets-key-oil-pipeline-with-over-50-missiles.html

  26. Socrates @ 123 –

    Does it take a spike in oil prices before anyone cares which countries are getting bombed into oblivion?

    Unfortunately, the ‘West’ has backed itself into a very vulnerable corner with Russia. America, and to only a slightly lesser extent Europe, happily patted itself on the back for having seen off the Soviet Union and then in a vulgar, pitiless display of hubris proceeded to rub the Russian peoples’ noses in it.

    At the same time Europe eagerly made itself hostage to Russian oil and natural gas and America threw away what little moral authority it may have had (and much of its military capacity) with its unprovoked attack on Iraq.

    The Russians are having the last laugh as they begin rebuilding the Empire and there is little anyone can do about it. Revenge can be a very heady cocktail. Pity about the innocents that are/will be crushed underfoot. 🙁

  27. The West has been picking on China because it has been an easy pick. But no more. China knows it and they will never allow themselves to be an easy pick again. Why should they? China has never been an imperialist and colonialist country. It has been conquered and occupied by foreign powers before the Mongolians,the Manchurians, the Western Powers, Russians and Japan. Yet, it has managed to survive and maintain its unity and identity. Empires and nations come and go throughout human kind history, but China has been a constant for over 5000 years. So they must have have done something right.

    The West picks on China over Tibet, Xinjiang and even Taiwan. But these regions have been in and out of the Chinese Empire for thousand of years. The Chinese have legitimate claim to say these are internal matters.

    Yet the West is prepared to ignore the 500 pounds black bear in the room. If you compare the records of Russian and China over “external” interference. there is no comparison. Now is Georgia, remember the Baltic, Hungary, Czeckoslavia, Afganistan and it is still hurting over the lost of its Soviet Empire.

    The West has really ffffup again. The fear of China is based more on the fact that they look different and many of them. The West has more to fear from the Russians than the Chinese but the Russians do look alike.

  28. Diogenes and MayoFerral

    I didn’t mean to imply that this conflict was only about oil; there are multiple causes with a long history. My concern was that it is a very serious conflict but the media was so distrcted with the Olympics that its no wonder policiticans use such times to report/do bad things.

    Still, just to prove that the politicians can misunderstand this conflict as badly as the media, here is a ridiculous quote from Cheney:
    “United States Vice-President Dick Cheney has called Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to say “Russian aggression must not go unanswered,” the vice-president’s office said.”
    See http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/11/2330960.htm

    Quite apart from the shrill tone (Rudd’s statement was much more measured, reasonable but still firm) which is just begging for further military action, it would probably deeply offend the Russians to call them the aggressors. No doubt it suits them fine to take control of Ossetia, but my understanding is that this conflict was actually started by the Georgians sending their military into the breakaway province of South Ossetia, with the Russians then intervening to kick them out. As I understand it, the georgian preseidnet gambled that the Russians would be distacted, but that was a big mistake. Putin is not Bush.

    Strategically it is important. The area does not have large oil reserves but a major pipeline could be built from the Caspian Sea via it and Turkey to the west bypassing Russia. The Russians are undoubtedly aware of that and, having been given an excuse to take it, I doubt will give it up any time soon.

  30. Socrates

    I suspect Cheney is squealing because of the oil pipeline. When was the last time the US lifted a finger over “ethnic cleansing”?

  32. A slight non-sequiter for Adelaide residents or those who know the aviation game: flight cancellations and fuel prices. Through news reports and personal experience I have seen a significant number of flight cancellations out of Adelaide in the past six months. Very often there is a pattern: flights in mid afternoon or early evening are delayed until the passengers wind up catching a plane at the same time as a later (or last) flight. Once off this could be bad luck. But I have not seen any of the prime time full flights delayed in this way. Another potential example was reported about a Virgin flight:
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/11/2331248.htm

    If it happens repeatedly I’d say an edict has been issued that planes will not take off unless 75% or more full and if people have paid for an earlier flight (often more expensive than the last of the day) then too bad, they don’t get that time. I find it hard to beleive that so many planes are “broken”. NB this trend began before Qantas’s recent argumetn with engineers, and includes Virgin too.

    Am I just too cycnical or have others experienced this too? Any aviation insiders care to admit the truth?

  34. But Steve, if they are forced to cut interest rates how else can they rip off borrowers here to recoup their losses on a bunch of stupid investmetn decisions in the USA?

  35. Socrates

    Clearly you haven’t read Janet’s latest apologia for the banking industry. We HAVE to let them make as much money as they want. That’s good economics evidently.

    The more the PM and the Treasurer bash the banks, the more they hurts Australian borrowers. Bank-bashing may feel good at the time but the subsequent pain will outweigh – heavily – the momentary pleasure. Anyone who understands the economy should understand that.

    http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/labor_wins_populist_gold_medal

  36. Yes, whats good for the banks is good for the economy. We should bugger a hundred-billion domestic housing sector so the banks can make a few more billion in profits. Brilliant economics!

  37. I’ll tell you what’s worse! Those non performing overpaid executives and their front line management whose name appears in their annual reports.

    Take Suncorp Metway for e.g. What a pack of losers. I wouldn’t give them the dole.

  38. At least CBA and Westpac have performed exceptionally well given the global credit crisis. If they were running Suncorp Metway the stock would be around $20 bucks today.

    Pensioners should note that Mal Brough tried to get more dough for them but their hero Howard rejected him.

  39. The point that I was trying to make is that poor management has the potential to be far more costly to medium income earners through their super for example than banks not immediately passing on an interest rate cut.

  40. CC was one of the themes included in the opening ceremony of the games for China which at least means for China there is no denialist battle going on as we see with the LNP and murdoch nuts.

    This add is about to go out in the USA calling for a total switch to clean power in 10 years. Impossible yes but a sign of the momentum that is going to swallow up people like Minchin and co.

    http://www.wecansolveit.org/page/invite/repoweramerica

  41. Ronster

    You’ve been very quiet recently. I thought the comments on CC in China would bring you out of your lair.

    I have solved your feasibility problem vis-a-vis the Ron-Wong Solar Farm. As gusface pointed out earlier, high voltage DC should solve the connectivity distance problem. And there is something called Pumped-Storage Hydroelectricity which will solve some of the storage problems. The principle is fairly simple. Excess electricity is used to pump water from a reservoir up a mountain into another reservoir. When you need the power, the floodgates open and turning turbines and creating hydroelectric electricity. I would at least appreciate a footnote when you collect the Nobel Peace Price with Ms Wong.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_storage

  43. Diogenoski

    # 121

    “BB
    On CC and China, I have to disagree with Ron and agree with you”

    re CHINA vs USA , on BOTH humanitarian abuses and CC , you’ve misstated my position , argue your case not mone , I hav enough trouble pputting my case with my lingos without your ‘help’

    CC:
    China & India has had th decency to ratify Kyoto , USA hav not for selfish reasons ALL three ar huge emitters in total and reductions ar needed from ALL 3 otherwise CC will not get solved Kyoto allows a mechanism for China & India (quiet rightly) to get a dispensation ( a reduced target) as “developing nations” on how high there targets ar vs USA who would get th FULL alocated target as a “developed nation” (same as EU Japan etc get) That reduced target is subject to yet to be negotiated negotiations USA ar holding this process up by refusing to ratify Kyoto

    Whats wrong or inequitable with this Kyoto process ? (except to USA competitive to India/China self interests)

    HUMAN RIGHTS:
    Go back in history & you’ll find most European countries hav been guilty of human right abuses Russia’s record is despicable (Stalin & Soviet epire0 Israel on palestinians “White” South African apatheid Japan in Manchuria killing millions , USA (Iraq & Vietnam directly , and “compliantly in Ruwanda ,Darfur famines , with Pol Pot slaughters , Zamarbe & th Croatia/Sebia genocide)

    Who is blameless (Hardly any country !) , and who has more blood on there hands ? China quite rightly should be critisised for Tibet and other “rights” issues and I completely suport Kevin Rudd for doing so and no one should criticise him for his firm dipomalacy BUT China is one of th least ‘abusers’ , lets not be blinkered USA has been a worse indirect ‘human right abuser creating more civilian deaths , but offshore from US mainland , but its still th SAME thing’ , still humanitarian abuse

    I liked Hillary’s Public stand idea , let th Chinese rebut with US examples , let it all hang out , instead of being handled by “confidential diplomacy” , a system that for 30 years has failed oppressed peoples world wide My theory of th effective “muted” reactions to russia/Georgia , is every Nation knows they also hav skeletons , and Russia knows it

  44. Ronster

    My point was that I don’t think China and India would be selfish if they refused to do anything about CC until they had the same emissions per capita as the truly selfish countries like the US, Australia etc.

    On human rights, I don’t recall stating your position apart from trying to wedge you on Hillary which you seem to have squirmed out of somehow by the skin of your teeth (and thank God we didn’t choose Edwards BTW).

    Obviously no country is without fault, except maybe New Zealand, in causing human rights abuses. I’ve bought lots of books on world history recently and Australia only ever rates about two lines in a 500 page book. But now, finally, I’ve bought a book where we rate a decent mention. It’s called “Blood and Soil” and its a history of genocide. We rate a whole chapter on the 19 Century genocide of Aboriginies. 🙁

  48. [Nelson PPM 12%, Rudd 68%. Ha ha ha ha!!]

    It would be very interesting to see if the WA Liberals will invite Nelson over to help campaign for Colin Barnett ?

    Somehow, I doubt it very much.

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