Fairfax-Ipsos: 51-49 to Labor

Ipsos delivers the government its best poll result since early November – and unlike Newspoll, it has Tony Abbott’s personal ratings up as well.

The year’s second Ipsos poll for the Fairfax papers seems to confirm two things: the government’s poll recovery from the depths of the leadership spill, and the pollster’s relative lean to the Coalition. The poll records a straight four-point exchange on the primary vote, with Labor down to 36% and the Coalition up to 42%, and the Greens up one to 12%. This gives Labor a lead of just 51-49 based on 2013 election preferences. There will presumably be another respondent-allocated result to come, and if past form is any guide it will have Labor further ahead (UPDATE: It does, though only to the extent of 52-48.)

The obligatory bad news for Tony Abbott is provided by a preferred Liberal leader question, which places him third at 19%. Malcolm Turnbull tops the leader board on 39%, with Julie Bishop second on 26%. Unlike Newspoll, there is also improvement on Tony Abbott’s personal ratings: his net approval rating is up eight to a still dreadful minus 30%, and Bill Shorten’s lead as preferred prime minister is down from 50-34 to 44-39. After a somewhat quirky result in his favour last time, Shorten’s net approval rating slumps from plus 10% to zero, with both approval and disapproval on 43%. The poll was conducted from Thursday to Saturday, with a sample of 1406.

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.

1,075 comments on “Fairfax-Ipsos: 51-49 to Labor”

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  2. Labor have supported the coalition on national security and also the meta data legislation that will be put before parliament shortly. The improvement

  3. Oops should have added

    That the improvement in the polls must surely reflect the fact that the voters expect Abbott to be dumped

  4. I know i am quoting Richo a lot lately. 😀

    Anyhoo, after Newspoll last week he said that the champagne corks were popping in the Labor camp cos it meant that it would make it diffcult for the coalition to act on leadership. I would suggest that this latest poll, would make it even more so. Obviously Labor would prefer Abbott to remain leader

    How hilariousment!

  5. Poor Tone

    [The fact that Mr Abbott now even trails Julia Gillard on questions of competence, economic policy, trustworthiness, and strong leadership – all issues on which he relentlessly challenged her credentials – must be particularly galling and show just how much trouble he is in]

  7. The first part of this article points out that Morrison has largely been above the fray, and then comes out with this–

    [If Labor had to face him in next year’s federal election, at least as Treasurer, it has shown little evidence it can match him in debate, or policy formulation, or confronting the damage caused by cynical, pain-free policies built on debt-and-deficit politics.]

    Um, what opportunities has Labor had to match Morrison in any of these areas?

    Morrison shuts down debate, declaring issues matters of security when they’re not, and withholding vital information. Hard to debate someone when you don’t have the data (harder still to debate someone who has declared debate off limits).

    ‘Policy formation’? Morrison had one policy, the bare bones of which he inherited from Labor. Makes it hard to argue against the policy when it’s basically still yours (the only tack Labor could take would be ‘but we would do this more nicely’ which is always met, rightly or wrongly, with a ‘well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” response).

    As for the last bit, why would anyone be debating Morrison on that issue? In his present role, he has nothing to do with it. You could just as well turn the tables back on him, and say that he has no proven economic credentials.

    [Despite a minority position in the Senate, the government has been productive, not engulfed in scandal, and is trying to confront Australia’s growing economic stasis. ]

    Gillard managed a minority government in the Lower House far more effectively than Abbott is managing the Senate – and the Senate was supposed to be a Liberal-friendly one.

    We will, apparently, ignore that there’s been a strong suggestion the PM’s daughter has had benefits thrown her way; that major policies seem to have been shaped solely to benefit friends; that a Minister has had to step down, and is still under a cloud; etc.

    As for confronting economic problems, when the main one is the state of government revenue, and your only achievements so far is to cut revenue sources, the less confronting of economic problems the Liberals do the better.

    [Gratuitous internecine upheaval on the eve of a NSW state election would be absurd, especially given the Liberal Party preaches so often about stability. It would be a capitulation to panic not to give the Prime Minister and Treasurer time to bring down a second budget and rehabilitate their economic reform message.]

    I’m quite happy for Abbott to stay as leader until after the next budget, and I’m sure I speak for Labor in general here.

    [The Prime Minister’s criticisms of the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs, was ill-conceived, given that the battle was already being carried robustly by the Attorney-General, George Brandis]

    Ah, so the attacks on Triggs were fine, they should just have been left to that master strategist, Brandis.

    Er — if the attacks on Triggs were fine, why would the PM getting involved not be a plus for him?

    [Events are also breaking Morrison’s way. He has established a reputation as an excellent administrator.]

    ‘Dictator’ might be a better word. Cover what you’re doing with a shroud of secrecy and it’s easy to look good.

    [ He is already shaking up the giant Social Security portfolio after just two months on the job. ]

    He hasn’t done anything yet except give a couple of in depth interviews and a speech.

    Of course, he’s used those to say what he might be doing, but like Josh Frydenberg yesterday, every time a hard question got asked, he’s still consulting.

    Let’s wait before Morrison actually makes and implements a decision before judging whether or not he’s shaken up the Department.

    [He is a forceful performer in Parliament. He delivered the most difficult election promise of the Coalition, amid a blizzard of abuse and lawfare.]

    Easy to look good in QT, when there’s no opportunity for the other side to take you on.

    And yes, he did ‘stop the boats’. The way he did it doesn’t exactly suggest he’s in favour of openness, transparency, compassion, humanity, or a raft of other things we’d really, really like to see in a leader.

    ‘Ruthless efficiency’ isn’t really an admirable trait.

    [Crucially, Morrison can shape and deliver a complex narrative in simple terms.]

    Absolutely. Can’t get much simpler than “I won’t comment on on water operational matters.”

    [On big policy changes, he can take the electorate with him in explaining the need for reform. ]

    On issues where they’ve already made it clear they think reform is needed.

    (Oh, it’s Sheehan. All is explained…)

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/in-this-game-of-thrones-scott-morrison-is-now-key-20150301-13rwdj.html

    I tip Morrison to be leader of the Liberal party, either after Abbott or after Abbott’s replacement. The longer the Liberals draw out the whole getting rid of Abbott thing, the more likely Morrison is to be the next leader.

    But that’s based on a very different assessment of his qualities and qualifications than Sheehan.

    Morrison is a ruthless b*stard who will do whatever it takes, without conscience. His cleanskin status means he can remake himself in a way Turnbull can’t (forget ‘real Julia’, which version of Malcolm Turnbull is the real Malcolm?). He can appeal to the Right of the Liberal party and keep them on side.

    His downside is much the same – he is inexperienced, an unknown quality. Yes, he can follow orders and implement them – we don’t have much evidence he can lead.

  8. face it…tony is back…all this talk of him being gone is a massive overestimation of the moral substance of the australian electorate…australians are in the main vile greedy and fearful little people who gravitate towards vicious thugs like abbott becuase he is them…this is just the beginning of the abbott era…this country will not escape unscathed from the vengeful rending of its national fabric…in 10 years when he is taken for granted as the natural leader this place will be unrecognisable…a large working poor…massive inequality…croneyism of an order we have never imagined…and we will all deserve it…it’s time for the end of parliamentary democracy…most people are not fit to vote

  9. No policies from the ALP? Here’s one.

    [The federal opposition has proposed a $1.9bn package targeting multinational tax avoidance, with most of the savings slated to come from changes to the amount of debt for which companies can claim deductions in Australia.

    Bowing to sustained government pressure to start spelling out alternative budget savings, Labor’s leader, Bill Shorten, said the measures were designed to ensure everyone paid “their fair share of tax”.

    The opposition said the Parliamentary Budget Office had assessed the measures as bringing in $1.9bn in revenue over three years from July.

    They include $1.65bn from changing the current “thin capitalisation” rules to ensure companies could no longer claim up to a 60% debt-to-equity ratio for their Australian operations. The relevant test would instead be the ratio of the company’s entire global operations.

    The Labor policy brief said: “This means that if a company has an average 30% debt-to-equity ratio across its different subsidiaries, it will only be able to claim tax deductions up to that level.”]

  10. Morning all. I find this Ipsos poll almost incomprehensible. The bounce back to the coalition seems remarkable in magnitude goven that leadership talk has barely stopped. Like Victoria I could understand the 2pp in the context of voters already assuming the Libs will switch to Turnbull. Yet why would Abbotts personal satisfaction improve when he is still a distant third in the lib leadership stakes. This makes no sense to me.

  12. Rua 155

    Nice point. That is exactly why I find the poll bounce so hard to understand.

    The policy to crack down on multinational tax avoidance is also a constructive one. Labor could go a lot further there if they wanted to.

  14. Socrates

    [Yet why would Abbotts personal satisfaction improve when he is still a distant third in the lib leadership stakes. This makes no sense to me.]

    We always talk about polls as if they’re set bunches of people e.g. when we talk about, say, a 4% shift from Labor to the Greens, we assume that all of that 4% came from Labor.

    This is shorthand, not reality; reality is a number of diverse individuals making decisions for diverse reasons.

    In our example, a 4% shift from Labor to the Greens may involve – Liberal voters shifting to the Greens and Labor voters shifting to the Liberals, Green voters shifting to Liberal/Labor and being replaced by Liberal/Labor voters shifting to the Greens, etc etc.

    So what’s likely happening here is that one lot of voters is giving the Liberals a big tick for confronting their leadership (and therefore, by implication, other) problems, whilst an entirely different bloc are getting behind Abbott because they don’t want Turnbull, while former Labor voters are shifting their vote to Turnbull.

  15. A revision of childcare with ‘average’ costs being funded may not help as much as the boffins believe.

    [Ms Osborne said she loves her suburb, but would ideally have stayed at work in health, a field she loved and had expertise in. The poor roads and public transport system in her area meant getting to and from work became too hard to manage indefinitely.

    “It became clear,” she said, “that when we were both trying to commute back and forth into the city, it was just going to take a huge stressful toll on our family life.”

    She also said the $200-a-day cost of childcare had made it not worth her travelling to the city to work.]

    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbournes-planning-disaster-jobs-boom-in-cbd-while-affordable-housing-grows-ever-outwards-in-suburbs-20150301-13oksj.html

  16. The Greens understand the need to increase revenue and have long been highlighting the need to tackle corporate tax evasion and tax minimisation by Australian companies and multinational companies.

    2 October 2014: http://greens.org.au/node/6153
    [The Senate has just voted in favour of a Greens motion to launch an inquiry into corporate tax evasion, in the lead-up to the G20 summit.]

    Terms of reference are included.

    Christine Milne, 1 December 2014:
    http://greensmps.org.au/content/video/christine-milne-treasurer-failing-tackle-corporate-tax-evasion
    [Australia has a revenue problem. It is not a budget emergency; it is a revenue problem. The biggest contributor to the revenue problem is the failure of corporations in Australia and multinational corporations to pay an appropriate amount of tax. ]

  17. Ross Gittins on the new Head of Treasury. (Looks as if Joe’s sweating and shouting blurred the more sensible parts of his budget.)

    [The lefties never understood that Joe Hockey’s first budget was carefully crafted to involve minimal net cuts to the deficit in the first three years, with the big hit delayed until 2017, when the economy was expected to be back growing strongly.

    So, is true austerity about to come to Oz under the advice of the new Treasury boss? You might think so. Fraser says “we need to start now” and repairing the fiscal (budgetary) position is “an immediate priority”.

    But I’m not so sure. Later in his speech he advocates “committing now to savings measures that build over time to deliver a return to surplus over the medium term”. And asked if now was the time to cut savagely considering the weak outlook, he said the coming budget would have to be “tailored to the situation”.

    While much of what Fraser has said so far is what you’d expect of an Abbott appointee, some of it isn’t. His summary of how the budget got into its present state doesn’t put all the blame on Labor, but acknowledges the role of excessive tax cuts and spending by the Howard government.]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/treasury-under-new-management-20150301-13rkp4.html#ixzz3TAqQD5rJ

  18. I’ve told everyone I know to register support for the Liberals and Abbott in any polling. That’s the best chance we have for making this a one-term Government.

    I wonder how many others have done the same.

  20. lizzie

    thanks for that.

    It appears that the new Head of Treasury espouses many views which, when they have been implemented, have made the situation worse, not better.

    Which suggests he puts ideology ahead of reality, so he fits right in to the Liberal government.

  21. Good Morning

    I note that the panic merchants are about demanding Shorten do soemthing anything differently.

    Someone even suggested Labor is doing small target strategy.

    In my opinion no need to panic Mr Shorten is travelling well. Also those claiming small target strategy have not been paying attention.
    Unusually for an opposition Labor has already put policy out there. Look back at Mr Bowen’s speech at the NPC.

    This week Mr Shorten has not been invisible. He has been all over the nightly news updates with his attacks on Abbott over the government’s appalling shoot the messenger response to child abuse findings by the HRC.

    One of the panellists on Insiders said Abbott is governing for his base not the country. It appears the base is small enough that TBA could be a typical example.

    We also know Mr Shorten has said Labor will release policy to its timetable not in reaction to opinion polls or presser from political opponents or the media. Very sensible.

    So panic merchants remember this is a marathon not a 100 metre dash

  22. …and, right on cue, Bowen on SKY announces that Labor will be releasing a policy on taxing multi nationals today.

  23. i have been banging on about this for ages

    [workers need to pay rent to live in some of the world’s most expensive housing.

    Business costs are high because business needs to rent some of the world’s most expensive office and commercial space and pay wages to workers who need to feed the mortgage machines that our major banks have become.

    Wages for most of the past year have been declining in real terms. They’ve only recently slipped back into positive territory because inflation has fallen.

    A wage cut or a reduction in penalty rates may provide a shot to profits in the short term. But discretionary spending would be hit. Defaults on home loans would rise. And our banks would find themselves in a world of pain.

    According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, wealth inequality has been on the rise throughout the western world since the 1980s.]

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-02/verrender-housing-policy-is-eating-away-at-our-economy/6272672

  25. Kroger ruling out a challenge in the next few weeks.

    Brilliant. This will depress the Liberal vote in the NSW election, Abbott will up his gaffe count, the leaking will continue, Morrison will have time to shore up his numbers, the Liberals will lock themselves more firmly into upcoming Budget measures, Labor will be able to elicit more ‘of course I believe in every policy we have’ statements from putative leaders, Labor will have the time to ‘game’ potential leaders and the Liberals will look even more vacillating and indecisive.

  29. victoria

    the mystery to me is why many businesses – who do almost all their customer interactions on line – still insist on plonking themselves down in the CBD.

    They could conduct their businesses just as effectively from a regional city.

    Nothing to prevent their administration offices being in the CBD to maintain a prestige location, but no need for the ordinary grunt workers to be there.

    (This isn’t a new idea for me. I worked at AAMI as a student, doing telephone enquiries – I couldn’t see any reason then for my job to be based in the CBD).

  30. Ray Hadley is on the big issues. Dining habits.

    “@latikambourke: Scott Morrison reveals he ate lamb roast with the PM last night. PM ‘couldn’t care less’ about ScoMo dining twice with MT last week.”

  31. zoomster

    It is very difficult to make cultural changes. The major cities in this country is where the population is concentrated

  33. victoria

    Business could relocate at least to outer suburbs. eg In Sydney the State government has identified regional hubs for transport. So these suburb would be excellent for that purpose.

    Thats Hurstville Parramatta Penrith Chatswood Hornsby Cambelltown and others. I am sure Melbourne has the same. Such centres are in populated areas where the regional cities are not.

  34. Zoomster

    The RBA has done some great work on this. Its mostly about requiring a very large pool of skilled workers.

    You’ll find that a lot of the “grunt” work is already done in outer suburban lacoations (Parrmatta in Syd, Clayton in Melb) but if you place yourself in a non-CBD location you make it much harder to fill the more specilaist slots.

    The tricky bit is finding a ratinoal place to be able to pull in enough skilled and non-skilled workers if they need to be in the same location.

  36. [ This gives Labor a lead of just 51-49 based on 2013 election preferences. There will presumably be another respondent-allocated result to come, and if past form is any guide it will have Labor further ahead (UPDATE: It does, though only to the extent of 52-48.)]

    Throw in the 1.2% adjustment that William applies for the house effect and its more like 53-47, an easy win to labor and in the same ball park as all the other polls.

  37. Those who think Abbott is safe, or even able to claw his way to respectable Prime Minister status ..may have missed this “obviously notable” & “devastating” negative feedback from voters:

    “But the obviously notable feature of the poll is that, while the party vote has recovered to its late 2014 levels, the Prime Minister’s relationship with voters is not following quite the same path. While the party vote is effectively back to where it had become entrenched, Tony Abbott’s net approval rating now is minus 30 compared with minus 19 in December, and minus 7 in November.

    He is doing better on the preferred prime minister ratings than he was in December, lagging Bill Shorten by just 5 points compared with 8 points in December.

    But his approval ratings remain abysmal, and in comparison with Malcolm Turnbull, voters’ views of his attributes are devastating.”

    Laura Tingle is among the few political commentators who did not miss this vital piece of information (not pay-walled):

    http://www.afr.com/p/national/politics/voter_views_of_tony_abbott_attributes_vE0pCC2UKXjUaupp3CCceO

  38. zoomster

    Re CBD bases. One of the first things the NZ gov did with their FTTH network as it started rolling out was moving workers from CBD office blocks. Many working from home. The depts. that have done it so far have saved a fortune in rents.

    Workers also took the opportunity to relocate to regional centres that had FTTH installed. Doing so to take advantage of the cheaper rent/ homes and the lifestyle. Not to mention the avoidance of the rat runs to and from work each day.

    This saw the small towns revitalized from the injection of new people . Which is exactly why the National Party vegetables should have been screaming for FTTH.

  40. “@ABCNews24: Scott Morrison: The leadership speculation surrounding Tony Abbott is a storm in a teacup #libspill2 #auspol”

  41. markjs

    PVO who has been a critic of Abbott said on twitter, that this latest poll will give Abbott a reprieve. He also suggested that perhaps the poll is factoring Abbott going. In any case, PVO reckons Abbott is still “cooked”

  42. The Official Denial

    “@ABCNews24: Scott Morrison: We are focused on good government not the leadership #libspill2 #auspol”

  43. The surprising thing about the Coalition recovery is that it is largely driven by female respondents. Coalition primary increased 5% among females and 1% among males. Abbott’s approval rating is higher with females than with males (nett approval -26 compared to -32)

    What has he done to produce this result?

  44. lizzie

    The report confirms that the most jobs are concentrated closer to the city centre. It would require a great deal of work and planning to reverse this trend

  45. Haydn

    As expected, when things go south for Abbott, Margie is everywhere with him. She worked overtime this past few weeks. Could it be the Margie factor?

  46. I very much doubt that Robb would have come out making the comment that this IPSOS poll shows Abbott has support unless there were very big ructions. How often do we see Robb making statements?

    Tom.

  47. Latika Bourke on twitter

    [Ray Hadley decides to call a ‘spade a spade.’ @TurnbullMalcolm has been white-anteing he tells @ScottMorrisonMP – he’s cultivating you.]

  48. Tom

    There are huge ructions within the Liberal party, but as is always the case, if the polls are improving, it tends to settle them down for a while

  49. [Peter Brent @mumbletwits · 24m 24 minutes ago
    Rarely look at Bolt blog, but boy so many words, so much effort to guard the Libs’ soul by stopping Turnbull. The base,long may it prosper]

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