Three new polls this week, from Newspoll, Ipsos and Essential Research, all of them featuring leadership ratings as well as voting intention. As was widely noted, there was a big gap between the results from Newspoll and Ipsos, which has contributed to something of a two-track trend in polling, with one clump of results around 54-46 (Ipsos and ReachTEL) and another around 51-49 (two Newspolls and a bias-adjusted Roy Morgan). The middle ground plotted by BludgerTrack now has Labor’s two-party vote down to 51.9% – only a small change on last week, but enough to shift two seats on the seat projection, including one in New South Wales (which has done a lot of the heavy lifting in the recent Coalition poll recovery) and one in Victoria.
Leadership ratings are starting to look increasingly alarming for Bill Shorten, whose net approval has dropped a full 10% from the stasis it was in through most of 2014. Tony Abbott has now recovered to where he was before Australia Day, and while that’s still a bad position in absolute terms, the gap between himself and Shorten is rapidly narrowing. The same goes for preferred prime minister, on which Shorten’s double-digit lead after Australia Day has narrowed to about 3%.
Two polls warranting comment:
• I neglected to cover this on Tuesday, so let the record note that this week’s Essential Research result ticked a point in the Coalition’s favour on two-party preferred, putting Labor’s lead at 52-48. Primary votes were 41% for the Coalition (up one), 39% for Labor (steady), 10% for the Greens (steady) and 2% for Palmer United (steady). Also featured were monthly personal ratings, which found Tony Abbott up two on approval to 31% and down five on disapproval to 56%, Bill Shorten up one on both to 34% and 39%, and Shorten’s lead as preferred prime minister down from 39-31 to 37-33. Other questions related to asylum seekers, with 43% nominating that most were not genuine refugees versus 32% who said otherwise. However, a separate question found 49% allowing that asylum seekers arriving by boat should be allowed to stay if found to be genuine refugees. The government’s approach was deemed too tough by 22%, too soft by 27% and just right by 34%. In response to Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus leaving the Palmer United Party, 41% said those in their position should leave parliament and allow a new election to be held for their seat, with 19% favouring a new member nominated by the party and 24% saying they should be allowed to remain in parliament.
• Roy Morgan has published one of its semi-regular rounds of SMS state polling, finding the newly elected Coalition ahead by 54.5-45.5 in New South Wales, and Annastacia Palaszczuk’s newly elected Queensland government up by 52.5-47.5, after last month’s result and the weekend’s Galaxy poll both had it lineball. Labor governments are credited with leads of 54-46 in Victoria and 51-49 in South Australia, while it’s 50-50 in Western Australia. A 56-44 lead to Labor is recorded in Tasmania, which is more than a little hard to credit.
Preselection news:
• Murray Watt is set to win preselection for Labor’s Queensland Senate ticket after securing the endorsement of the Left faction at the expense of incumbent Jan McLucas, who entered parliament in 1999. Susan McDonald of the ABC reports that Watt’s position will likely be at the top of the ticket, reflecting the Left’s new-found ascendancy within the Queensland Labor organisation.
• It’s a similar story in the lower house Brisbane seat of Oxley, where Labor’s Bernie Ripoll has announced his retirement following reports he stood to lose preselection in any case to Milton Dick, Brisbane City Council opposition leader.
• Crikey’s Tips and Rumours section recently offered details on the Labor preselection in the marginal eastern Melbourne seat of Deakin, which has been won by Tony Clarke, manager of Vision Australia and unsuccessful state election candidate for Ringwood. His main opponent was Mike Symon, who won the seat for Labor in 2007 and 2010 before being unseated by current Liberal member Michael Sukkar in 2013. Symon narrowly defeated Clarke in the local party ballot, but this was overwhelmed by support for Clarke in the 50% of the vote determined by the state party’s Public Office Selection Committee. It was reported in Crikey that the Left abstained from the POSC vote, as it wished to let “the Right factions fight out between themselves”. For more on Deakin, see today’s Seat of the Week post.
It’s all well and good for Bill Shorten to smile with journos ..but, for heaven sake, you’d think he would smile BETTER than that!! ..and maybe show his best profile ..and while we’re at it, he needs to smile DIRECTLY into the camera..
What a useless LOTO he is!!!
lizzie
Yep. In all seriousness what do people expect Shorten to have done? Lecture the PM about the evils of drinking beer?
@liamvhogan: A country whose mediocrity is so pervasive we have actually celebrated our PM—a Rhodes Scholar—managing to drink a whole beer in public
So Shorten repeated twice that he thought WA should get $300 million and we get $600 million, shorten should have asked for a billion 5 times!
And we have an intelligence sharing agreement with Iran. We are sharing intelligence with the axis of evil, what is next a defence pact with North Korea? These neocons really need to get their warmongering straight and consistent.
Morning all.
On PMs drinking:
[After ALP and ACTU President Bob Hawke admitted to drinking too much, Whitlam satirically promised to drink more.
The future prime minister, and frequent critic of the Whitlam government, made his comments about drinking in a media interview.
Whitlam’s whimsical response to Hawke’s confession came in an exchange with Channel 9’s Peter Harvey.]
http://whitlamdismissal.com/1975/08/01/whitlam-promises-to-drink-more.html
A hilarious 3 min soundbite from Whitlam!
Anzac – living history gone: welcome myths and legends.
BK, I am one with Leyonhjelm, albeit for different reasons.
IMHO, the reasons for encouraging people to procreate has passed. We no longer need lots of kids for extra labour, replacing those that die early, as cannon fodder, so that there will be more of our kind of people than the others etc.
We are now faced with catastrophic environmental damage brought on my increased population resulting in all sorts of problems.
Leyonhjelm, argues that taxpayers should stop supporting people with children as it is their choice to have them. My point is that we should stop supporting people to have children as it encourages more people to have more of them.
Leyonhjelm misses the point. I think the statistic is something along the lines of every $1 spent on childcare saves $7 down the track.
There are wider benefits to society of encouraging those with children to remain active members of the workforce. Like most subsidies, this is not just about the person directly receiving the support.
Mari@1249:
I agree. I dislike what Anzac Day has become now that the commercial captains and their lackeys are in power. The old Lie is being shamelessly abused by the Murdorcs. I wonder what Rupert’s grandfather would have said?
My grandfather was a lighthorseman. He was evacuated from Gallipoli with “trench fever” (probably murine typhus) and went on to take part in the Palestine campaign (covered, quite well I thought, in last night’s “Australia’s Great War Horse”). He would speak about the Palestine campaign, of which he was quite proud, but never about Gallipoli. He died before Weir’s film came out.
I looked after several WWI veterans as a medical student and Registrar at Concord in the 70s & 80s. They were more Eric Bogle than Toady’s bogans.
Wayfarer, like all economists, you ignore the externalities. I am not disputing your figures of money saved by early intervention, what I am concerned about is the costs that you have not mentioned. Each child draws on resources and produces waste that the environment provides or deals with. I am not talking only about food and feaces, but industrial resources and industrial waste that the child will use over his/her lifetime that the natural environment can only provide for a limited time or something that it stores away.
The environment is not an unlimited resource or sink. Encouraging more people to have more children strains what the environment does for us.
Farmers are well aware of ”carry capacity’ of their farms and will limit their livestock numbers so they don’t have a catastrophic financial and ecological breakdown. We have to get our heads around the same concept for the world.
By all environmental indicators the world is ‘over stocked’ and therefore we should be focusing on discouraging people from having so many children.
Well, I really buggered up the haunting Bogle/Tabor reference in @1259.
Trying again.
rhwombat – My fathers eldest brother made it to the 2nd well at Beersheba.
He stopped to get his horse a drink. A Ottoman sniper got both him and his horse.
[West Australian Treasurer Mike Nahan claims his state will pocket a $600 million payment from the federal government to make up for a shortfall in GST revenue.
The deal was sealed in Canberra last week despite the perception that Premier Colin Barnett had returned to WA empty-handed, the ABC reports.]
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/04/20/wa-receive-600m-after-gst-argy-bargy
Abbotts not exactly self-conscious – no idea how silly he sounds with ‘death cult’ endlessly repeated.
CTar1@1262:
My grandfather survived having the heel of his boot shot off in the attack on the left flank of Tel el Saba, so he watched the famous charge from the NW heights.
rhwombat 1259
Posted Monday, April 20, 2015 at 9:46 am | PERMALINK
Thank you I feel very deeply about what is happening now,my mother told me he never spoke about Gallipoli and had terrible nightmares,waking up screaming. Your grandfather sounded the same as mine, re Gallipoli.
Confessions 1255
Loved your link to Whitlam put it on twitter, where it seems to be being enjoyed
mari:
No probs. I thought it was pretty funny myself. 🙂
Good Morning
Bill Shorten is having a presser in about an hour.
I agree with the comments about the MSM and others turning the ANZACS into a glorification of war instead of commemoration and a determination never to do again.
@shanebazzi: Refugee charter flight from Nauru to Phnom Penh delayed indefinitely http://t.co/ztgSrq1MD3
[1260
PeeBee
Wayfarer, like all economists, you ignore the externalities.]
That’s a strange remark, considering the “externalities” concept is taken from economics.
rhwombat and mari
I am with you on the ANZAC frenzy and find it appalling how the whole thing is being framed around making money for companies.
Very crass!
rhwombat and mari
I am with you on the ANZAC frenzy and find it appalling how the whole thing is being framed around making money for companies.
Very crass!
rhwombat – Palestine so very different to trench warfare.
Big sweeping movements. Allenby respected by the troops and and very good with tactics.
@abcnews: #ICYMI: “The Government believes it has the consent of the masses, but events like this show it’s not the case.” http://t.co/FKNJQeb04M
Not good news from down this way.
[After surviving one of Western Australia’s biggest bushfires, the town of Northcliffe now faces a spike in suicides and suicide attempts in the community.
The remote South West town was in the direct line of fire when a massive blaze tore through nearly 100 hectares of bush in February.
The townspeople were on tenterhooks for several nights, as the wind threatened to send the fire through the town, but the work of firefighters and some favourable wind changes menat the town was spared.
The ABC has been told two locals died by suicide in the weeks after the fire and several others have attempted to take their own lives.]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-19/northcliffe-western-aus-suicides-spike-after-bushfires-hit-town/6404362
@abcgrandstand: #BREAKING: ASADA won’t lodge an appeal against the #AFL anti-doping tribunal’s decision on 34 Essendon past/present players & Stephen Dank.
guytaur
How unsurprising. Asada have proven to be next to useless
And the fraud goes back on display for the credulous!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-20/turin-shroud-goes-on-show-to-public/6404626
Fess
Always terribily tragic when these things occur. 🙁
BK
I have maintained an interest in the shroud of turin insofar as to how it was created. Researchers are still unable to confirm how in fact it was done. That in itself is fascinating
MTBW
[I am with you on the ANZAC frenzy and find it appalling how the whole thing is being framed around making money for companies.]
In my household, we’re trying to avoid the ANZAC bandwagon. My wife and I both have relatives who fought and died in war. Those that came home were scarred for life. A soldier my wife knew very well took his own life after returning from Iraq.
To us, honouring the ANZAC spirit means reflecting on the horror and carnage of war. I’d rather the money being spent on ceremonies and gimmicks be spent on looking after veterans after they come back.
Cathy Wilcox nails it again!
BK
This article gives a balanced report on the Shroud of Turin. From a scientific point of view. Fascinating stuff
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/150417-shroud-turin-relics-jesus-catholic-church-religion-science/
vic
Yes it does, but it’s the mob that turns up that worries me.
victoria:
Very true. And in those small communities where you know everyone, it’s all highly personalised.
BK:
A brilliant, but depressingly spot on Wilcox.
MTBW
Posted Monday, April 20, 2015 at 10:27 am | PERMALINK
rhwombat and mari
I am with you on the ANZAC frenzy and find it appalling how the whole thing is being framed around making money for companies.
Very crass!
Thanks It reslly does make me mad
BK
By the mob you mean believers?
kakuru and mari
[To us, honouring the ANZAC spirit means reflecting on the horror and carnage of war. I’d rather the money being spent on ceremonies and gimmicks be spent on looking after veterans after they come back.]
You both say it so well!
The ongoing forensic demolition of Bishop Heenan continues this morning
http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/case-study/45935098-7d22-4a41-921f-166267c1da73/case-study-26,-april-2015,-rockhampton
vic
Yes – the ones that roll up in droves to see it.
Steven GH
I have just logged in to the RC feed.
BK
Fair enough
I was at my local RSL last night. There were lots of Aussie flags about, big ones on the walls and small ones strung across the cielings, with red, white and blue bunting. Tony Abbott would have been very happy to have held a press conference there.
Don’t get me wrong, I respect Anzac Day and the memory of those who fell and those who returned. My father was a WW2 veteran. But I thought that it was a tad overdone, more celebratory than commemorative.
Steve777
[Don’t get me wrong, I respect Anzac Day and the memory of those who fell and those who returned. My father was a WW2 veteran. But I thought that it was a tad overdone, more celebratory than commemorative.]
More celebratory than commemorative sums it up doesn’t it. I hope that on Saturday there is more applause for those who served than business looking for an edge.
[1260
PeeBee
…Each child draws on resources and produces waste that the environment provides or deals with. I am not talking only about food and feaces, but industrial resources and industrial waste that the child will use over his/her lifetime that the natural environment can only provide for a limited time or something that it stores away.
The environment is not an unlimited resource or sink. Encouraging more people to have more children strains what the environment does for us.
By all environmental indicators the world is ‘over stocked’ and therefore we should be focusing on discouraging people from having so many children.]
On the other hand, things are not as linear as your argumet implies.
We know (from 200 years of experience in industrial economies) that as incomes rise, birthrates fall. At its simplest, the best way to reduce birthrates is to strengthen incomes for women. The best way to do this is to spend money on family healthcare, education and social/economic network support, meaning things like childcare.
If we lift the skill acquisition and workforce participation for women their lifetime incomes improve and then two other forces change their behaviour. First, the opportunity cost of having children rises, so they will take steps to reduce their fertility. And second, because family savings will also go up, couples will have less need to have large families to provide for them as they age.
To argue in favour of reduced support for women (and their children) is really to accept that we will have larger families, lower incomes, more poverty and inequality, shorter lifespans, lower social, human, technical and intellectual capital creation, less social mobility and less personal and environmental security. Obviously, this is not an argument you’re going to win.
BK
What do you think of Bishop Heenan’s closing statements?
s777
Ready to get your feet wet?
kakuru 1281
Your final paragraph beautifully said I have condensed & just put on twitter. Hope you don’t mind
SGH
I had to go out for a while and must have missed them. I’m back watching now until I head off to the flatlands soon.
He has not gone well has he?