Category: Federal Politics 2022-2025

Not a whole lot to report from within what this site regards as its wheelhouse, but past time for a new post nonetheless. Here’s what I’ve got:

• Roy Morgan continues to eke out polling information in an unpredictable fashion on its weekly update videos, the latest of which features a full set of voting intention numbers from polling conducted August 1 to 7. This has Labor’s two-party lead narrowing, apparently from a week previously, from 54-46 to 52.5-47.5, from primary votes of Labor 37% (up one), Coalition 38.5% (up two-and-a-half), Greens 11.5% (down one) and One Nation 3.5% (steady). They also had a second SMS poll of Victorian voting intention which I’ll cover in a state-specific poll later this week.

• US pollster Morning Consult’s tracking poll of global leaders’ domestic approval records little change in Anthony Albanese’s numbers – his approval rating of 58% is unchanged on a month ago and his disapproval is up three to 29%.

• The membership of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters is now settled, with Labor’s Kate Thwaites as chair joined by party colleagues Karen Grogan, Shayne Neumann, Sam Rae and Marielle Smith; former chair James McGrath now deputy chair, joined by Coalition colleagues Darren Chester, Marise Payne and James Stevens; and Larissa Waters continuing to represent the Greens.

Essential Research’s fortnightly report continues to not feature voting intention, and its monthly leadership ratings are continuing to not feature Peter Dutton. Anthony Albanese is down one on approval to 55% in this month’s result, while his disapproval is up four to 28%. Some steam has also gone out of a post-election surge on a monthly national direction question, on which 43% find Australia headed in the right direction, down four, with wrong direction up three to 31%.

In a series of “performance of the Albanese government” questions, there was a 56-44 majority in favour of it having its priorities right, 54-46 majorities for getting things done and being in touch and 52-48 for addressing long-term problems, although a 51-49 majority felt it too idealistic. A series on “support for federal government measures is less good: 60% want the fuel excise cut extended, with only 12% supporting the government’s intention to not do so, 44% support higher JobSeeker payments, with 27% opposed, and 42% want a delay in “stage three income tax cuts, which predominantly benefits higher income earners”, with 25% opposed.

“Awareness of proposed Voice to Parliament” would appear to be fairly low, with 33% saying they had heard nothing of it in the past month and 32% saying hardly anything, compared with 5% for a lot and 29% for a fair amount. With the notion explained, 65% said they were in favour and 35% opposed. Seventy-five per cent supported a parliamentary pledge to “Australia and the Australian people”, with only 15% opting for the Queen. The survey was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1075.

Also out this week is a post-election survey report from JWS Research, conducted from a sample of 1000 in the two days after the May 21 election. Asked what was most important in deciding their vote, more chose for “the party as a whole” than for “specific policies or issues”, and fewer still for the leaders and candidates, but Coalition voters were most inclined to rate the first of these and Greens voters uniquely favoured the second.

On issue salience, there was a 53-10 majority for economic over environmental issues among Coalition voters, but a 36-29 majority the other way among Labor voters, both sets of numbers being hardly changed from a similar survey after the 2019 election. An exercise in which respondents were asked whether or not the election campaign possessed various qualities also produced results very similar to 2019: 56-16 for important over not important, 39-30 for not interesting over interesting, 38-27 for negative over positive, 42-24 for deceitful over honest, 51-22 for same old stuff over new and different. For whatever reason, impressions were more negative across the board in 2016.

Thirty-six per cent rated the Labor campaign positive and 35% negative, compared with 28% and 44% for the Coalition. From 44% who said they favoured a Labor government, 25% favoured a majority and 19% a minority government; from 33% who favoured a Coalition government, 24% favoured a majority and 9% a majority.

The Australian has published the first Newspoll since the federal election, showing Labor opening up a commanding 56-44 lead, compared with a two-party result of 52.1-47.9 at the election. The primary votes are Labor 37% (compared with 32.6% at the election), Coalition 33% (35.7%), Greens 12% (12.2%), One Nation 6% (5.0%) and United Australia Party 2% (4.1%).

Anthony Albanese’s approval rating has shot from 41% before the election to 61%, while his disapproval rating has fallen from 46% to 26%. The former exceeds honeymoon approval ratings recorded by Tony Abbott (47%), Kevin Rudd (59%) and John Howard (45%) upon Newspoll’s return after the three previous changes of government. The net result of plus 35% is the strongest since the early days of Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership in November 2015, and previously by Kevin Rudd in October 2009.

Dutton’s opening numbers are 37% approval and 41% disapproval, and he trails Albanese 59-25 as preferred prime minister, the widest gap in Newspoll since the early days of Rudd’s prime ministership in 2008. Debut results for past opposition leaders were 35% approval and 40% disapproval for Anthony Albanese in 2019, 32% and 24% for Bill Shorten in 2013, 40% and 35% for Tony Abbott in 2010, 50% and 25% for Malcolm Turnbull in 2008, 36% and 19% for Brendan Nelson in 2008 and 41% and 10% for Kevin Rudd in 2006. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1508.

In the absence of anything else to report:

• Former Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner formally retired from parliament on Wednesday, having relinquished the leadership in May in the wake of a heart attack. In contrast to its counterparts in Western Australia, who have still not fired the starter’s gun on a by-election for North West Central, the government has already announced August 20 as the date for the by-election in his Darwin seat in Fannie Bay, which he retained by 9.6% at the 2020 election.

• Labor’s five members of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters are Jagajaga MP Kate Thwaites, Hawke MP Sam Rae, Blair MP Shayne Neumann and South Australian Senators Karen Grogan and Marielle Smith, one of whom will be the committee’s chair. There were four opposition members and one from the Greens in the previous parliament, but I’m unclear as to how that will play out this time.

• The report of Operation Watts, the joint inquiry by Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission and Ombudsman into certain Labor state parliamentarians’ branch-stacking activities, offers a wealth of invaluable detail on the hard realities of the operation of modern political parties.

Still no sign of Newspoll, despite today’s resumption of parliament, nor of voting intention from the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll. As reported by The Guardian, the latter turns out to be the most discouraging set of numbers for the Albanese government so far, in that 40% were already prepared to rate the government as doing a poor job on relieving cost of living pressures, compared with 23% for good and 37% for neither. Apart from that, all the unusually spare report from The Guardian has to tell us is that “a majority of respondents believe the Albanese government can influence the direction of inflation and interest rates”, which seems unlikely to bode well. The poll was conducted from a sample of 1082, presumably from Thursday to Monday – the full report should be on the pollster’s website later today.

UPDATE: While “neither good nor poor” responses are high in each case, the poll also finds the government rated good on the pandemic by 36% and poor by 25%; good on education by 35% and poor by 18%; and good on climate change by 33% and poor by 21%. Forty-four per cent supported the government’s carbon emissions target while 40% said it did not go far enough, but no option was provided for those who felt it went too far. Fifty per cent said the Greens should support the government, with a question that emphasised Labor had been elected on that basis, while 25% said they should only do so if Labor agreed to changes consistent with its own policies. Full report here.

Also of note:

• Latika Bourke of the Age/Herald reports that Liberals Andrew Hastie and Simon Birmingham are looking at the example followed by David Cameron after the Conservatives’ 2005 election defeat to improve diversity in the party’s parliamentary ranks, which involved producing a leadership-backed “A-list” of diverse candidates and encouraging local party associations (which lack a clear equivalent in Australian party structures) to choose candidates through primaries open to non-members.

• The Australian Electoral Commission has deregistered the Liberal Democrats, belatedly giving effect to legislation passed last year that effectively prohibited minor parties from having the words Liberal or Labor in their names. The party was cleverly able to keep the existing name at the May election after withdrawing its application to change its name to the Liberty Democrats (officially the Liberty and Democracy Party) in late March, which compelled the AEC to initiate a lengthy deregistration process that has only now come to fruition.

• Two days after a Daily Telegraph report suggesting he has designs on Marise Payne’s Senate seat should she soon vacate it, the Milton Ulladulla Times reports Andrew Constance plans to run again in Gilmore at the next federal election, after falling 373 votes short of taking the seat from Labor’s Fiona Phillips in May.

With the flood of post-election analysis having subsided and opinion polling yet to properly crank up again (expect that to change when parliament resumes next week), there is not a lot to report. Roy Morgan’s weekly video update last week informed us that Labor leads 53.5-46.5 in its latest round of polling, out from 53-47 the last time it offered a full set of results in the middle of last month, but it didn’t deem fit to offer anything further. The international leadership approval tracking poll by Morning Consult suggests Anthony Albanese’s standing has continued to improve, his approval having cracked 60% and disapproval down to 24%, which compares with 57% and 26% when I last reported on it three weeks ago.

I do have another new entry to relate from the burgeoning field of online psephological tools, courtesy of Alex Jago and Ben Messenger, providing a triangular representation of the increasingly common occurrence of three-cornered contests between Labor, the Coalition and the Greens. This can just as easily be adapted to any combination of three parties or candidates you care to choose, as long as you have a reasonable handle on how preferences are likely to flow between them.

The starting point here is each party’s share of the vote at the second last preference count, to be identified henceforth as 3CP, or three-candidate preferred. The tool’s default preference splits are 80-20 against the Coalition when Labor or the Greens are excluded, roughly consistent with all past experience, and 70-30 in favour of Labor when the Coalition is excluded, which is about what happens when Coalition preferences are so directed. On the last relevant occasion I can think of when they went the other way, when Adam Bandt first sought re-election in Melbourne in 2010, they favoured the Greens 80-20. Happily, the tool allows you to set the splits however you desire.

To explain what’s going on here, I’ll stick with the defaults. The Coalition 3CP is on the x-axis, the Greens are on the y-axis, and the balance belongs to Labor. On the left we see the 3CP needed by the Greens to defeat Labor when the Coalition is uncompetitive, starting at 50% where the Coalition has no votes at all. At this end of the triangle, the dividing line between a Greens win and a Labor win is broken into three parts. As the Coalition’s 3CP increases from nothing to 29%, the Greens’ required 3CP falls gently from 50% to 42% while Labor’s falls sharply from 50% to 30%, reflecting Labor’s higher share of Coalition preferences.

Once the Coalition gets to 30%, they reach the point where they might make the final count in a race where both Labor and the Greens are competitive, without being competitive themselves. Such was the case in Brisbane and Macnamara at the May election, which is why the AEC conducted indicative 3CP counts to provide an early indication of who would ultimately win there out of Labor and the Greens. As this presents the Greens with a new winning scenario where Labor runs third, here their minimum winning 3CP quickly falls from from 42% to 34%. But once the Coalition 3CP is significantly over a third, there is no longer enough left over for both the Greens and Labor to be competitive. Here the 3CP needed by either reduces from 34% to 29% as the Coalition 3CP increases from 34% to 44%.

With the Coalition only receiving 20% of preferences, they need fully 45% on 3CP to be in contention themselves. Even here they only make it if the remainder splits about evenly between Labor and the Greens, since the preferences they receive diminish together with the 3CP of whoever out of Labor and the Greens drops out. From that point on, the Coalition’s chances steadily increase to 100% where their 3CP reaches 50%, at which point they win before Labor or the Greens are excluded.

The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll includes its monthly read on prime ministerial approval, but still nothing on voting intention or opinion of the Opposition Leader. Anthony Albanese maintains most but not all of his post-election bounce, his approval down three to 56% and disapproval up six to 24%.

The pollster’s now regular fortnighly question on national direction is effectively unchanged at 47% for right and 28% for wrong. Further questions relate to COVID-19, which find 55% believe we “need to get on with life and treat Covid like another form of flu”, but that 60% support the return of mask wearing in some settings 53% support the government rolling out of a fourth shot (which it began doing during the survey period).

About half the respondents felt Australia had handled the pandemic better than the United States, the United Kingdom and China, with between 16% and 22% opting for worse, while the result for New Zealand was broadly neutral. The poll was conducted Thursday to Monday from a sample of 1097.

Also out earlier this week was a brief release from the Australia Institute which reported that a poll it conducted on the night of the May 21 federal election found the Coalition had 37% support among men and 30% support among women, which became 28% to 38% when a further survey was conducted the following month. Given a list of 20 options to choose from as Coalition weaknesses, 67% tagged “the state of aged care” and 66% “the treatment of women in politics”.

UPDATE: The Australia Institute has now posted more detail from its polls. As well as a lot more detail on what respondents regarded as Coalition strengths and weaknesses going into the election, it has a set of voting intention numbers dating from June 14: Labor 34%, Coalition 31%, Greens 12%, One Nation 4%, United Australia Party 4%, independents and others 9% and not sure 7%. The first phase of the poll was conducted from May 21 to 25 from a sample of 1424, and the second was conducted “in June” from a sample of 1001.