BludgerTrack: 52.9-47.1 to Labor

Despite Labor’s strong headline figure in this week’s Newspoll, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate records a move in favour of the Coalition, while also correcting a recent downturn in Bill Shorten’s personal ratings.

Last week, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate disappointed Coalition fans by failing to respond much to the morale-boosting poll result the had received from Ipsos. Now it’s Labor supporters’ turn, with a shift to the Coalition recorded despite Labor’s strong two-party result from Newspoll. This reasons for this are that a) BludgerTrack goes off the primary vote, and the numbers provided by Newspoll were scarcely different from those that produced a two-party result of 53-47 a fortnight ago, suggesting that much of that two-point shift came down to rounding, b) numbers added this week for Essential Research and Roy Morgan were both soft for Labor, and c) the very strong results Labor was recording at the time of the leadership spill have now entirely washed out of the system. All of which adds up to a solid move to the Coalition on two-party that brings with it four seats on the seat projection, numbering one each in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.

Newspoll and Essential Research both provided numbers for leadership ratings this week, and they collectively find the Tony Abbott dead cat continuing to bounce, to the extent that he’s nearly back to where he was at his previous all-time low after the budget. A surprisingly sharp deterioration in Bill Shorten’s numbers has also moderated with the addition of the new numbers, returning him to a more familiar position just below parity. The new figures also knock some of the edge off Abbott’s recovery on preferred prime minister. Full details as always on the sidebar.

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.

2,662 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.9-47.1 to Labor”

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  1. @ psyclar, 550

    Arrnea old son, I was simply describing a past true case I know of, from a common garden variety of relatively minor sex crimes whereby perps take the opportunity to do low level touch ups in crowded settings.

    If a person was convicted without evidence that puts their guilt beyond all reasonable doubt, then I would call that a failure of the police investigation and court process, not a failure of the sentencing system.

    Obivously, letting a person who might be a sex offender go for lack of evidence isn’t nice, but in a system with due process, it is inevitably going to happen – it’s one of the trade-offs we make for the benefits of having due process.

  2. [Arrnea Stormbringer

    Posted Friday, March 13, 2015 at 12:45 am | Permalink

    @ Barney, 546

    The only fear a prison should project is the fear of losing your liberty.

    When homeless people have an incentive to commit petty crimes to get sent to prison in order to get looked after better, prison is not adequately terrifying.
    ]

    1) Completely irrelevant to your original proposition

    and

    2) If this is the case, it highlights how appalling it must be to be homeless and destitute.

  3. 547

    Giving the toughest sentences in such circumstances is not a good idea because there is hen nothing left to discourage the offender from not killing their victim to cover up the crime.

    Life without parole prisoners are also generally much harder to control.

  4. 548

    Homeless people committing petty crime to go to prison for food and shelter shows that our anti-homelessness programs are woefully inadequate.

  5. @ Barney, 552

    1) Completely irrelevant to your original proposition

    That you don’t like a line of argument doesn’t make it irrelevant. My argument earlier was that prison should be feared. If homeless people think prison is better than homelessness, it means two things – that prison is not sufficiently terrifying and that homelessness really does need to be addressed.

    2) If this is the case, it highlights how appalling it must be to be homeless and destitute.

    You don’t say.

    @ Tom, 553

    Giving the toughest sentences in such circumstances is not a good idea because there is hen nothing left to discourage the offender from not killing their victim to cover up the crime.

    So you’re arguing that we should incentivise child molesters to not kill their victims by dangling the prospect of release in front of them?

    I want some of whatever you’re smoking.

    Life without parole prisoners are also generally much harder to control.

    All the more reason to keep them away from each other like we do patients in a mental ward.

  6. Arrnea #547

    Now I understand where you’re coming from.

    You simply have no understanding of what the phrase “sexually assaults a child” means. If you did you would recognise the utter nonsense of prescribing the same punishment for all offenders of the many acts that are captured by that phrase.

    Here you are discussing a subject matter you simply do not understand. A mixture of 1% knowledge and 99% ignorant prejudice creates a product called nonsense.

    I am not going to waste any more of my time in reading or replying to your posts. Come back in 20 years when you have acheved a minimal level of insight and wisdom.

  7. @ psyclaw, 557

    You simply have no understanding of what the phrase “sexually assaults a child” means. If you did you would recognise the utter nonsense of prescribing the same punishment for all offenders of the many acts that are captured by that phrase.

    Then my problem is not one of understanding, but semantics.

    If there is no offense listed in the statute books that captures the act of willfully engaging in sexual intercourse with a person who is obviously a minor and does not capture the act of (perhaps accidentally) touching a minor’s breast, then I would suggest that one should be created.

    The police and courts are surely capable of telling the difference between the two, after all.

  8. 556

    You want there to be more dead children?

    Solitary confinement, except as a short term punishment, is torture. Torture is wrong.

  9. @ Tom, 559

    Solitary confinement, except as a short term punishment, is torture.

    So what you’re saying is that it’s OK to torture child molesters in prison to save them from being tortured by other inmates who don’t like child molesters?

    I think I’ll pass on whatever it is you’re smoking, in that case.

  10. Not sure where this Arrena Stormbringer came from, but his/her rants are almost as tiresome as WWP/bemused’s Rudd love.

    Spare us!

  11. @ Tom, 559

    You want there to be more dead children?

    Of course I don’t – but I don’t want our justice system to let people who have chosen to molest children back out into society either.

  12. @ Darn Lever, 561

    Perhaps you could write yourself a script for your browser to automatically remove my posts from BludgerTrack comment threads? It might be useful for filtering the comments of other posters here as well.

  13. Too much hate from AS…way too much…maybe AS is bringing their own experiences to bear on the matters of crime and punishment…in which case this is more about sadness than anger…

  14. 560

    They are not kept in solitary, just with other prisoners segregated from the general prison population such as other prisoners who have committed similar offences.

  15. @ briefly, 564

    in which case this is more about sadness than anger…

    It’s a bit of both. Injustice is not acceptable and efforts must continually be made to eliminate it. I’m always open to alternatives. Make your case and with you all the way (unless someone else makes a better one). That’s how I work.

  16. @ Tom, 565

    They are not kept in solitary, just with other prisoners segregated from the general prison population such as other prisoners who have committed similar offences.

    This assumes that they won’t be the target of abuse from other people who have committed similar offenses. Hypocrisy isn’t exactly something prisoners are free of.

    Still, I haven’t the heart to continue this line of argument here.

  17. 567
    Arrnea Stormbringer

    Perhaps you might ask why hate should be permitted to dictate both to justice and mercy; whether prisoners have any rights and who (since prisoners are by prescription defenceless and vulnerable) is responsible for protecting these rights.

  18. [Arrnea Stormbringer

    Posted Friday, March 13, 2015 at 1:00 am | Permalink

    @ Barney, 552

    1) Completely irrelevant to your original proposition

    That you don’t like a line of argument doesn’t make it irrelevant. My argument earlier was that prison should be feared. If homeless people think prison is better than homelessness, it means two things – that prison is not sufficiently terrifying and that homelessness really does need to be addressed.

    2) If this is the case, it highlights how appalling it must be to be homeless and destitute.

    You don’t say.
    ]

    You’ve been watching too many American movies.

    Prisons are not about terrorising the prisoners.

    Prisons are a means society uses to remove from society those breach its rules. The punishment is the removal from society, that is what we as a society, we deem appropriate.

    We no longer flog prisoners, put them in stocks or execute them, they are no longer deemed appropriate forms of punishment by society.

    As to your irrelevant proposition I’ve already answered it the other night, tonight and again in this response when I say that terrorising of prisoners is not part of the sentence handed down by the judge and so prison should hold no element of terror beyond that as a result of the loss of ones freedom.

    You and I had this same discussion in the wee hours the other morning and as you can see tonight other PBs are making the same points as I did then.

    You really need to go away and reassess your thoughts in this area. You views appear to stem from a desire for vengeance and retribution. That is not how or system works.

    Your views are what I would expect to hear from a shock jock or one of their callers.

  19. @ briefly, 569

    whether prisoners have any rights and who (since prisoners are by prescription defenceless and vulnerable) is responsible for protecting these rights.

    At some point in the development of a society’s legal system, that society has to decide (by some method) what rights (if any) a person convicted of a crime should have withdrawn from them. That is the basis of punishment, whether it be levying a fine (limited withdrawal of the right to property) or executing the convicted person (withdrawal of the right to life).

    Somewhere along that scale is the right to be protected against the violence of others. If we, as a society, decide that this is a right prisoners should retain while some of their other rights are revoked as punishment for a crime, then we should make every effort to protect that right (as I have said). On the other hand, a society might make the decision that this is a right that convicted criminals ought to forfeit as part of the punishment allotted to them.

    To my mind, a society can legitimately choose to make either decision, but it is asinine for a society to choose one of these options and not enforce it with all possible efforts.

  20. @ Barney, 570

    Prisons are a means society uses to remove from society those breach its rules. The punishment is the removal from society, that is what we as a society, we deem appropriate.

    And the deterrent to crimes for which there is the possibility of a prison sentence is that you may be subject to prison if caught. If being imprisoned is considered a preferable situation to any person who has not committed a crime, something is clearly wrong.

    @ briefly, 571

    This is not “work”. It is a conceit.

    So the idea that I will support a line of thinking that someone has convinced me of through reasoned argument is conceit? What bizzaro-world did I wake up in today?

  21. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11466701/Greco-German-relations-reach-breaking-point-as-ECB-warned-to-stop-asphyxiating-Athens.html

    [Relations between Greece and its creditors reached breaking point on Thursday as the country’s finance minister accused the European Central Bank of “asphyxiating” the cash-strapped economy.

    In a series of traded insults, Yanis Varoufakis said the ECB, which has tightened the noose since on the Leftist government, was “pursuing a policy that can be considered asphyxiating toward our government.”

    His comments came before Germany’s Bundesbank chief said Athens had “lost the trust” of its European partners.

    The European Central Bank is due to discuss the funding it provides to keep banks alive later today. According to early reports, the central bank will move to raise the limit on Emergency Liqudity Assistance (ELA) by €600m.

    Germany’s Jens Weidmann, who sits on the ECB’s governing council, added that the funding had to be “temporary” and could only continue as long as Greek lenders remained solvent.

    As one of Greece’s main three international creditors, the ECB has also refused Athens’ requests to raise short-term debt in order to meet its funding obligations over the coming weeks. The cash-strapped country, which has yet to be granted access to €7.2bn in bail-out funds, is scrambling to pay €1.3bn in loans to the IMF before the end of the month.

    In a further sign of a rapid deterioration of relations between both parties, the Greek government submitted an official complaint against German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble for comments he made about his Greek counterpart.

    Mr Schaeuble, who has insisted Greece must submit to eurozone conditions over its bail-out, was quoted as saying Mr Varoufakis was “foolishly naive” in his communication with creditors.

    “As a minister of a country that is our friend and our ally, he cannot personally insult a colleague”, said Constantinos Koutras, a spokesman for the Greek finance ministry, who confirmed Athens had lodged a complaint from its ambassador in Berlin.

    Germany’s Wolfgang Schauble – the eurozone’s disciplinarian – has called on all members to respect the rules of the union

    Trust between the indebted country and Europe’s largest creditor nation reached a nadir after incendiary comments made by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras earlier this week.

    Mr Tsipras reiterated his government demand that Germany pay back more than €160bn in Nazi war reparations and touted the possibility of seizing German assets as compensation for the country’s Second World War occupation.

    Former Belgian president Guy Verhofstadt accused the Greek Prime Minister of “fuelling hatred between Greeks and Germans.”]

    Syriza’s game is falling apart.

  22. 573
    Arrnea Stormbringer

    [@ briefly, 571

    This is not “work”. It is a conceit.

    So the idea that I will support a line of thinking that someone has convinced me of through reasoned argument is conceit?]

    It’s a conceit to imagine there is any point in trying to reason with you. You are clearly already persuaded of your own case…a case that boils down to allowing hate to have its way.

  23. Greece needs to stop stuffing around and just default already.

    Get it over with. It’s probably inevitable at this point.

  24. [Arrnea Stormbringer

    Posted Friday, March 13, 2015 at 1:41 am | Permalink

    If being imprisoned is considered a preferable situation to any person who has not committed a crime, something is clearly wrong.
    ]

    As I said before, all this highlights is how abhorrent it must be to be homeless. That is the wrong, how we deal with homelessness, not prison.

  25. @ briefly, 575

    It’s a conceit to imagine there is any point in trying to reason with you. You are clearly already persuaded of your own case…a case that boils down to allowing hate to have its way.

    Well excuse me for not being convinced by a stream of posts that pretty much all attacked my person, not just my arguments. The latter’s fine, but the former is not going to make me inclined to be receptive to what you’re saying.

  26. Most “prisoners” are prisoners for minor crimes (not paying fines, drug use, etc etc)

    Most prisoners have mental issues but prisons are cheaper than medical care.

    NSW under the previous Labor Government had the highest (?) rate of imprisonment in Australia, certainly in NSW history. (I suspect ALP corruption and high imprisonment are connected)

    Except for a tiny number of “criminals”, most are there because they are poor, uneducated, abused and desperate.

    It has always been this way.

    The tragedy is that we have right-wing arsehole parties like the LNP and the NSW ALP Right that, recognising that they can only win if they rely on feeding lies to up-tight middle class insecurity.

  27. @ Barney, 577

    As I said before, all this highlights is how abhorrent it must be to be homeless. That is the wrong, how we deal with homelessness, not prison.

    The government has the power to make homelessness history. It needs only the will to do so.

  28. @ swamprat, 579

    Most “prisoners” are prisoners for minor crimes (not paying fines, drug use, etc etc)

    Ooh, this is an easy one – stop jailing people for not paying fines (consider levying fines based on the income of the person being fined) and decriminalise possession and use of drugs, treating it instead as a medical problem (like Portugal does).

    Most prisoners have mental issues but prisons are cheaper than medical care.

    Indeed – and it’s an utter disgrace.

  29. [578
    Arrnea Stormbringer

    Well excuse me for not being convinced]

    I couldn’t care less whether you are convinced or not. You’re verbose, inflammatory and, for one who seems very young, tiresomely pompous.

  30. [Arrnea Stormbringer

    Posted Friday, March 13, 2015 at 1:51 am | Permalink

    @ Barney, 577

    As I said before, all this highlights is how abhorrent it must be to be homeless. That is the wrong, how we deal with homelessness, not prison.

    The government has the power to make homelessness history. It needs only the will to do so.
    ]

    Possibly true, certainly they need to do more than they are doing now. Too much is being left to the NGO sector.

  31. OK, I have read Arrnea Stormbringer’s posts here with interest over the last few weeks.

    I can now only conclude that Arrnea is nothing but a more subtle troll than TBA. In fact, I have concluded that s/he is actually Joe Hockey – see below for reasoning.

    Arrnea@548:
    [When homeless people have an incentive to commit petty crimes to get sent to prison in order to get looked after better, prison is not adequately terrifying.]

    All this says is that you have no understanding of how desperate the plight of homeless people is, and also that you have no idea that people who end up in jail are mostly the poor, the uneducated, the mentally ill, and the brain damaged (see e.g. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome).

    When s/he said a week or so ago, when asked as a parent if s/he had any empathy for what the family of the Bali2 were going through, awaiting execution, her/his answer was “I would bring my children up so that they would never be in such a situation (or similar words).

    At the time s/he wrote those words, I was reminded of Joe Hockey, interviewed shortly after his 2014 budget announcement that people under 30 would be denied the dole for 6 months if they became unemployed. The interviewer asked how he would cope in such a circumstance – his answer was, “Firstly, I would expect to have a job.” I guess if you come from a certain background of privildge, the idea that you could be jobless does not compute. there is a ways a wallthy “mate” to find you a sinecure to tide you over.

  32. I have to vote in a few weeks.

    I certainly don’t want the LNP back in but i certainly have zero faith in the NSW ALP after their last stint when they closed our ralway, handed over 100 year old community land for corporate profit and were, sadly, the normal two-faced unprincipled arseholes you expect from NSW labor.

    Despite ICAC, I doubt anything much has changed with either the LNP or the ALP in NSW.

  33. @ Douglas and Milko, 584

    Well gosh, you caught me. Trolling places like this is what I get up to when I’m not too busy crapping out Intergenerational Reports that I know damn well are full of rubbish or trying to sue Fairfax for doing to me what I did to Kevin Rudd.

    Unlike you, on the other hand, I can go smoke a cigar outside Parliament House with my friend Matty.

  34. @ swamprat, 586

    I have to vote in a few weeks.

    I certainly don’t want the LNP back in but i certainly have zero faith in the NSW ALP after their last stint when they closed our ralway, handed over 100 year old community land for corporate profit and were, sadly, the normal two-faced unprincipled arseholes you expect from NSW labor.

    Despite ICAC, I doubt anything much has changed with either the LNP or the ALP in NSW.

    I don’t envy the decision you’ll have to make – to preference one of the majors, or to effectively vote for whoever’s ahead at the final count (unless you happen to live in Balmain or something). I would be inclined to agree with you that the stench of corruption still pervades the halls of NSW Labor.

    If I were voting in NSW, I would probably vote 1 for the Greens or an independent and then hold my nose and grudgingly preference Labor above the Coalition – Baird’s privatisation plans are bottom-of-the-barrel stupidity.

  35. [Douglas and Milko

    Posted Friday, March 13, 2015 at 1:56 am ]

    You could be onto something, I can’t remember seeing Arrnea on PB when Joe was in the witness box, and last couple of days he’s just been sitting in court watching and Arrnea has been very active.

    😉 🙂

  36. Arrnea Stormy

    I will probably do something like that but not sure whether I will give a preferrence to Labor candidate.

    To me the ALP needs radical clarification and precision in its ideology.

    I gather it opposes social-democracy now and supports neo-liberalism, and has moved from the centre left to the centre right.

    I know it supports USA military bases in Australia and opposes Australian independence from colonial control except for symbolic remnants of British colonial control, which it ‘fiercely’ opposes. (I assume this is a very imp[ortant “unicorn” to the ALP)

    I know it supports the careers and job prospects of Union Secretaries.

    Apart from that i have no idea what the ALP stands for.

  37. AS

    [If I were voting in NSW, I would probably vote 1 for the Greens or an independent and then hold my nose and grudgingly preference Labor above the Coalition – Baird’s privatisation plans are bottom-of-the-barrel stupidity.]

    At the risk of damning with faint praise…you appear slightly less lacking in clues than swamprat.

  38. briefly

    [586
    swamprat

    I have to vote in a few weeks.

    Actually, you don’t.]

    Actually, I do.

    It is an imperative.

    I voted for the ALP in the 2013 Commonwealth elections in the Lisbon Embassy, even though I did not like Rudd. 🙂

  39. [At the risk of damning with faint praise…you appear slightly less lacking in clues than swamprat.]

    Good one. I agree.

  40. http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2015/03/12/Export-of-Iran-s-revolution-enters-new-chapter-says-general.html

    Our allies in Iraq…

    [Iran’s top general said Wednesday his country has reached “a new chapter” towards its declared aim of exporting revolution, in reference to Tehran’s growing regional influence.

    The comments by Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the nation’s powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps, come amid concern among some of Shiite Iran’s neighbours about Tehran’s role.

    “The Islamic revolution is advancing with good speed, its example being the ever-increasing export of the revolution,” he said, according to the ISNA news agency.

    “Today, not only Palestine and Lebanon acknowledge the influential role of the Islamic republic but so do the people of Iraq and Syria. They appreciate the nation of Iran.”

    He made references to military action against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Iraq and Syria, where the Guards have deployed advisers in support of Baghdad and Damascus.]

  41. 589
    swamprat

    Since the events described occurred in 1943, the heading should use the past tense. It was a long time ago, has nothing to do with the Federal Republic and has been the subject of past reparation.

  42. [594
    swamprat

    It is an imperative.

    I voted for the ALP in the 2013 Commonwealth elections in the Lisbon Embassy, even though I did not like Rudd. :-)]

    You evidently enjoyed the act in spite of everything. I feel like that about eating chocolate biscuits.

  43. 598
    William Bowe
    Posted Friday, March 13, 2015 at 2:30 am | Permalink

    Glenn Lazarus quits Palmer United, apparently just because.

    Excellent!

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