BludgerTrack: 51.5-48.5 to Coalition

Not much happening in terms of national polling this week, but a privately conducted poll finds Sophie Mirabella has little hope of recovering her old seat of Indi from independent Cathy McGowan.

The Easter weekend has meant the only poll this week has been the usual weekly reading from Essential Research, which records a tie on two-party preferred for the fourth week in a row. Both major parties are steady on the primary vote – the Coalition on 43%, Labor on 38% – while the Greens are down a point to 9%. There is accordingly not much change on the surface of the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, which records a gentle move to the Coalition that yields nothing on the seat projection. However, there’s a lot going on under the BludgerTrack bonnet, as I’m now doing it in R rather than SAS/STAT, and relying a lot less on Excel to plug the gaps. Now that I’ve wrapped my head around R, I can probe a lot more deeply into the data with a lot less effort – commencing with the observation that the Coalition’s two-party vote would be around 0.5% higher if I was using a trend of respondent-allocated preference to determine the result, rather than 2013 election preferences. I’ve also done my regular quarterly BludgerTrack breakdowns, featuring state-level primary votes based on results from Morgan, Ipsos, Essential and ReachTEL, together with the breakdowns published this week by Newspoll.

Further polling:

• The Essential poll found 44% would approve of a double dissolution election if the Senate blocked the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill, with disapproval at only 23%. Respondents also showed good sense when asked the main reason why Prime Minister might wish to do such a thing: 25% opted for clearing independents from the Senate, 30% for getting an election in before he loses further support, and only 14% for actually getting the ABCC restored. Other questions recorded an unsurprising weight of support for income tax cuts (62% more important, 61% better for the economy) over company tax cuts (16% and 19% respectively). Results for a series of questions on which party was best to manage various aspects of economic policy were also much as expected, though slightly more favourable to the Coalition than when the questions were last posed a few weeks before the 2014 budget. A semi-regular inquiry into the attributes of the Labor and Liberal parties allows an opportunity for comparison with a poll conducted in November, shortly before the recent improvement in Labor’s fortunes. Labor’s movements are perhaps a little surprising, with extreme up and moderate down, and “looks after the interests of working people” down as well. The Liberals are down vision, leadership and clarity, and up on division.

• The Herald-Sun has a report on ReachTEL poll commissioned by the progressive Australia Institute think tank in the regional Victorian seat of Indi, which Sophie Mirabella hopes to recover for the Liberals after her defeat by independent Cathy McGowan in 2013. The news is not good for Mirabella, with McGowan recording a lead on the primary vote of 37.3% to 26.9%, while the Nationals are a distant third on 10.6%. The report says a 56-44 two-candidate preferred result from the poll allocated all Nationals preferences to Mirabella, a decision that was perhaps made in ignorance of the level of support McGowan received from Nationals voters in 2013. The primary votes as reported would more likely pan out to around 60-40.

Preselection latest:

Andrew Burrell of The Australian reports the Liberal preselection for the new Western Australian seat of Burt is a tight tussle between Matt O’Sullivan, who runs mining magnate Andrew Forrest’s GenerationOne indigenous employment scheme, and Liz Storer, a Gosnells councillor. Storer is supported by the state branch’s increasingly assertive Christian Right, and in particular by its leading powerbroker in Perth’s southern suburbs, state upper house MP Nick Goiran.

• The Weekly Times reports that Damian Drum, state upper house member for Northern Victoria region and one-time coach of the Fremantle Dockers AFL club, will nominate for Nationals preselection in the seat of Murray, following the weekend’s retirement announcement from Liberal incumbent Sharman Stone. The front-runner for Liberal preselection looks to be Donald McGauchie, former policy adviser to the then Victorian premier, Ted Baillieu.

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.

3,289 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.5-48.5 to Coalition”

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  1. ltep
    A variety of education or health regimes may make sense, with general standards or some kind of interoperability/interfacing requirements set by the federal government.

    However, you don’t need it tied to states, except that they are conveniently, already existing structures. The core of the problem is we have 2 ballots, one that affects the funding of an activity and the other affecting the implementation of the same activity.

  2. [95
    meher baba

    So perhaps he is actually trying to wedge Abbott and the Right. After all, it’s they – rather than Shorten and Labor – who are the main obstacle between him and a second term.]

    The main obstacle to another T-term is the voting public.

  3. Regarding Peter Fitz and God.

    He has a habit of this. He once wrote the following about the Golfer Aaron Baddley..
    [Aaron Baddeley, after fire engulfed his parents’ house, tweeted: “2 min to get out 2 rooms were untouched! fam photos and my golf room with memorabilia! Amazed by God’s protection 22 years of memories there.” Good old God. A pity he couldn’t stop the Christchurch earthquake though, what while saving your photos.]

  4. If Malcolm wants to make the states “accountable” for hospitals and schools, what possible justification can there be for continuing to fund private schools. Surely, the citizens of a state should be allowed to decide whether they want to fund private schools and by how much. Wouldn’t that be interesting!

  5. The Greens on abolition of PHI and health funding:
    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/30/greens-propose-ditching-5bn-a-year-private-health-insurance-rebate
    [The rebate of up to 30% of the cost private health insurance is a $5bn expense in the federal budget.

    The Greens have released parliamentary budget office costings which show that phasing it out over the next two years could save $9.7bn by the 2018-19 financial year.

    Di Natale announced the Greens would restore the funding model where the commonwealth and the states share the rising costs in delivering hospital services evenly.

    The party would also enshrine the funding formula into law, to give states certainty about health funding and require parliament’s approval if a future government attempted to reduce the share of hospital funding from the commonwealth.

    “Private health insurance is a legitimate choice for many people, but the Greens want to build a world-class public health system, so that private health insurance remains a choice rather than a necessity.”]

  6. 104
    KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN

    I’ve said more than once that if the Liberals could get away with abolishing universal, compulsory schooling, they would.

  7. jrhennessy: i reckon you could pitch turnbull about replacing the entire school system with an ad-supported free-to-play iPad app and he’d go for it

  8. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-31/bradley-career-politicians-and-the-slippery-ideological-slope/7286784
    [I have a real fear that the modern crop of professional politicians like Tim Wilson have bought into a flawed adherence to capitalism that could harm our society, writes Michael Bradley.

    Personally, I think there’s much to be said for a rethink of how we define a successful society. The evidence that capitalism is an incomplete prescription is staring us in the face. My fear is that the Liberal Party and, to a lesser but still worrying extent, Labor, are increasingly captive to the narrowly doctrinaire school of thought which professional politicians like Wilson exemplify.]

  9. 105
    Pegasus

    A very frequently cited issue for voters is the cost of private health insurance. Abolishing the tax rebate may sound like good sense but voters will hate the idea. So let’s hope the G’s pursue it.

  10. I see the fundamentalist athetist ignorance and intolerance has broken afresh, I’ll return when you morons have finished your little chants of hate.

  11. [Regarding Peter Fitz and God.

    He has a habit of this. He once wrote the following about the Golfer Aaron Baddley..

    Aaron Baddeley, after fire engulfed his parents’ house, tweeted: “2 min to get out 2 rooms were untouched! fam photos and my golf room with memorabilia! Amazed by God’s protection 22 years of memories there.” Good old God. A pity he couldn’t stop the Christchurch earthquake though, what while saving your photos.]

    Well, he had a reasonably valid point in that case. The quote cut-and-pasted by Mr Mensa, though, was simply a stream of bilious ridicule, which in my experience is far more representative of the way Fitzsimons operates.

  12. The Clinton campaign is saying that they won’t agree to a debate with Bernie Sanders in New York because they’re offended by Sanders’s recent “tone.”

    This is plainly ridiculous.

    The reason Clinton’s people don’t want a debate before the New York primary is there’s no upside for them in a debate before the New York primary. Their polling, as of now, shows Clinton winning the state’s massive delegate haul, and a debate would simply be an opportunity to screw that up.

    ….

    The Democratic primary — including the debates — has been substantive and respectful. Sanders has, at times, bent over backward to run a positive race, as when he refused to hound Clinton over her emails. If any candidate has ever proven himself a fair and courteous adversary, it’s Sanders. The mockery Sanders’s supporters are throwing at Clinton is entirely merited.

    This is the Clinton campaign at its worst. The argument isn’t just false, it also insults the intelligence of voters. The message is that debates are something Clinton graciously concedes to rather than participates in as part of the democratic process.

    http://www.vox.com/2016/3/30/11333606/clinton-sanders-debate

  13. Like all good policy I believe in “hasten slowly”

    I could be comfortable with giving states accountability for school education and raising their own taxes to pay for it. It might well promote diversity and positive outcomes although obviously you would need to ditch “national curricula” etc.

    I say this because it is NOT life and death and if it turns out to be a failure, there is scope for corrective action. There is such a HUGE range of possible variability in the way we deliver education, that it does have merit in at least trying it. Class sizes, hours of schooling, night classes, teachers salaries, teacher training, years of schooling, integration with trade training/tertiary sectors, internet learning, home schooling, community schooling, senior colleges, size of schools, music, sport, art, home science religion etc are all areas where there are potential savings/expenditure which states may choose to adjust.

    However it MUST not be considered for health – at least not unless the education experiment proved an astounding success.

  14. Turnbull, PM:

    [“I suspect no federal government would retreat from funding and continuing to support the non-government school sector because there would be a concern that they would not get a fair go from state governments who obviously would have a competing interest with their schools.]

    What a dickhead. In other words, we will have accountability for the State schools, but none for our mates in the private sector.

  15. K17

    [ What a dickhead. In other words, we will have accountability for the State schools, but none for our mates in the private sector. ]

    As I said before – government for and by spivs and shonks.

    And the “for profit” school sector is one of their favorite feeding grounds.

  16. 115
    daretotread

    The T project is not about improving education it is about money. In particular, it is about ensuring the wealthy do not pay for the education of the poor. The wealthy are pleased to pour enormous sums into the schooling and grooming of their own offspring….the raising up of the children of workers, well not so much. That is, not at all.

    This is a project by which the already rich will protect and extend their advantage.

  17. Is this an admission of guilt of corruption?
    NSW developer ” donates ” to Free Enterprise Foundation to clear ” red tape”, yet there is no role for Fedral Liberals in that area.

    NSW property developer Tim Gunasinghe, who donated through his company Printban Pty Ltd, has not ruled out launching legal action against the NSW Liberal Party and said he was also unaware his donation would be directed to the state division.

    “We were approached by them as a lobby group to help developers try to get through red tape,” he told The Australian.

    if Mal wants to cleanup corruption in the building industry he should start with the Liberal Party machine

  18. Nicholas

    [The Clinton campaign is saying that they won’t agree to a debate with Bernie Sanders in New York because they’re offended by Sanders’s recent “tone.”

    This is plainly ridiculous.]

    And he maybe smarter than Clinton thinks he is.

    Dreadful isn’t it that a good bloke by all accounts may be able to create trouble for the dynasties.

  19. [Fitzsimons is an A-grade arseclown. He thinks he’s really clever …]

    I thought that piece was pretty clever. Your response is hysterical.

  20. Competitive federalism necessarily requires walling off/isolating state systems from each other, keeping interaction to clearly defined and understood interfaces.

  21. Another day of rest for Abbott today as Turnbull seems to have picked up his raison d’etre and decided to make it his life’s work too.

    Bill will show up somewhere just to provide some contrasting stability and reason, but the star of the show again today is Malcolm’s ego desperately seeking attention.

  22. ratsak

    [ Bill will show up somewhere just to provide some contrasting stability and reason, but the star of the show again today is Malcolm’s ego desperately seeking attention. ]

    I reckon Bluey could call the day already – and it’s only 11am!

  23. ratsak

    [the star of the show again today is Malcolm’s ego desperately seeking attention.]

    I had written something similar, but have deleted it in favour of yours.

  24. dtt
    There’s no reason why a federally run system couldn’t be designed with diversity, trials and experimentation in mind. If that’s an important requirement.

  25. autocrat
    Fitz is hit and miss. When he throws something at Warne for example, it tends to hit. Big slow moving target tho.

    I came across him once and he seems a little arrogant. He was nice enough to me but ruthless to someone who suggested he was a lazy wanker.

    When I lived in Sydney, reading his articles was a ritual and mostly very enjoyable. I havent ventured into his books yet.

  26. I wouldn’t waste too much effort on the state tax issue, because it’s not actually going to happen. It’s just a smoke bomb around hospital and education funding.

    However, if Turnbull is really going to be around for 10 years, and really is going to spend the better half of that implementing this, and the point really is to fix the funding… Then no matter how you mix up the state and/or federal taxes, they will have to go UP.

    There is a funding shortfall of $80 billion over the next 10 years. That is the real, actually happening, reality.

  27. I was just watching ABC24. I saw Turnbull ‘answer’ the reasonable question about states like SA that cannot raise enough income tax and will fall further behind. Then I saw Bowen and Shorten speak plainly, clearly and directly.

    I repeat. When people start paying serious attention to politics and start to see Turnbull and Shorten address any issue side by side, they will only understand what one of them is saying. And those who are genuinely undecided will almost certainly go one way, and one way only.

  28. [Tim Beshara ‏@Tim_Beshara · 20m20 minutes ago

    Has the Treasurer done an interview today about the “greatest proposed tax changes in a generation”?]

  29. [lizzie
    Posted Thursday, March 31, 2016 at 10:36 am | PERMALINK
    I’d like to see some sensible (not political) analysis of how these new Healthcare Homes will work.]

    Caring for people with chronic health issues outside hospital is a very good idea. Scarce hospital resources are currently used where people have a chronic but not acute or life threatening condition. I have two examples. My father spent over two months in a hospital bed before a nursing home bed became available; he did not need hospital care but was also not in a condition to remain at home. We also know a lady who had major surgery on her leg and ankle who remained in hospital for about three months until the bones healed. Both my father and this lady should have been residing in a more appropriate place than hospital.

    However by announcing this proposal now, Turnbull has inevitably invited people to regard it as an attack on hospital funding and the Medicare system. Australia deserves much better than this.

  30. Goodbye Gonski. It was nice to know you.

    [Eddy Jokovich ‏@EddyJokovich · 22m22 minutes ago

    Turnbull now wants Commonwealth to fund private schools, States to fund public schools. Gonski was meant to fix this problem. #auspol]

  31. Good morning all,

    I have little regard for Turnbull but I did not think he would be this stupid.

    Irrespective of whether the state tax plan is DOA or dead by 5pm tomorrow Turnbull has locked himself and the coalition into a policy position of reduced health spending and a complete removal of any federal government spending for the publics school system.

    Turnbull may jump around and retreat until the next brain explosion but it is now too late. No matter what the coalition attempts to salvage labor will be able to take the high ground especially when it releases its own health funding model and continues to remind the voters that it is the party that will not walk away from public school kids and it will roll out the full gonski, fully funded.

    Turnbull has comp,Steph left himself open and even if he screams each and every day “I was only joking ” labor can simply rinse and repeat ” this is what will happen if you elect a Turnbull government.”

    The stupidity of this policy direction by Turnbull utterly astounds me.

    Cheers.

  32. Further to my 135, I believe that people do not vote for parties on a popularity contest. There is often a cross-over between popularity and leadership qualities and thus pundits confuse correlation with causation. But undecided voters will not vote for someone they like if that person clearly is going to underperform (and lead a clearly underperforming party) as Government.

  33. The simple question to ask Turnbull is are you going to abolish the Grants Commission and/or it’s goal of horizontal fiscal equalisation.

    If he answers yes, then fair enough that at least supports his Brainfart TM. It gets him into a swamp of arguing why residents of some states should have poorer services than others though, so good luck with that Mal.

    If he answers no, then his whole point about this ‘competitive federalism’ rubbish is moot. The Grants commission would simply push more of the revenue from grants it controls like the GST to achieve it’s horizontal equalisation goal. The thing is the Commission doesn’t just look at actual state revenues, but also potential state revenues. If a state is under taxing say land tax compared to other states it doesn’t get any more from the Grants Commission. So if a state decided to discount it’s income tax rate compared to others it would simply lose revenue because the Grants Commission wouldn’t up it’s GST cut just to cover the loss of income tax.

    In other words Turnbull has to either admit his aim is to destroy one of the basic foundations of the reasonable level of equality we all enjoy today no matter what state we live in, or admit his Brainfart is a pointless exercise in additional red tape that won’t generate 1c extra for any state and will still leave vertical fiscal imbalance and the blame game intact.

  34. We already live in a world with competing states that allow you to vote with your feet. We call them nations or countries. 😛

  35. [I wouldn’t waste too much effort on the state tax issue, because it’s not actually going to happen. It’s just a smoke bomb around hospital and education funding.]

    Absolutely. The only question is when the funeral arrangements will begin, not if the patient is terminal.

  36. citizen

    [Both my father and this lady should have been residing in a more appropriate place than hospital.]

    We don’t have enough nursing homes. Is this an argument for more of them? Or a new type with a slightly lower intensity of care – sort of half way house. Rehab, I suppose.

  37. briefly

    Sadly I agree with you in terms of the motivation for the Libs, however there is no essential relationship between an idea and its ractical outcome.

    Now I was educated (as I suspect you were too) at a time when education was a 100% State responsibility and there were not tied education grants or State aid for private schools). The idea of returning education to circa 1960 does not seem so terrible to me. In NSW the state school education was excellent, class sizes were small and the standard highSome things were pretty average (eg music) and languages.

    Now only recently I have seen programs such as Julia Zamiro, which tells me the Catholic education system sometimes had class sizes of 100. Bloody terrible. However my NSW STATE education was not like that and was in my opinion excellent and BETTER than that achievable at the Private Schools (do not ask me ask Kate Grenville who once compared schools).

    By contrast (and this is serious) Qld schools seemed under resourced with many leaving at 15, however the musical education was EXCELLENT.

    So I guess I am not too horrified by the idea of states managing education and expenditure to go with it. They may prove innovative.

    I certainly so think our education system is set in a model that was dandy for 1900, but not in tune with the reality of modern times. In 1900, rural kids needed to be up to millk the couws, beeakfst walk to school for 30 minutes, and then be home in time to milk the cows and do other evening chores. Even city kids had to chop wood, help with the washing, deliver the groceries or mind the shop. 9-3:00 was reasonable. Mums were at home to make sure little kids were home safely from school and dad was home from work by 6 PM for dinner. Long summer breaks were partly to allow kids to help with the harvest.

    However in 2016, this time schedule is absurd. Most kids are in two income families and parents balance jobs around schopol, after school programs, holiday programs and various sporting and after school activities. kids who do go home stay indoors on their PCs

    I would extend the school day from 8:00 – 6:30, but have hours after say 2PM (or maybe mornings in some schools/years) optional. Compulsory subjects would be packed into the early part of the day, but all the extras – sport, music, drama, art AND REMEDIAL learning would take place after say 2:30. Those few remaining families with a stay at home parent can take their childrewn home but the others would have access to fitness programs, sport, music, art, dance, extension programs (eg science clubs, nature study, languages).

    In high school, it might be possible to use the afternoons for effective work/school integration programs.

    It would make life easier for parents. Kids who come from dysfuctional families would have less time to get into trouble and our kids would be healthier and probably happier.

  38. Adrian @ 128, can you either;
    1. Prove that there is a God, or
    2. Prove that there is not a God?

    If you can do neither of these things can you outline what the facts are?

    Thanks,
    Tom.

  39. [Then no matter how you mix up the state and/or federal taxes, they will have to go UP.]

    Yes and it’s time we had this debate. You get what you pay for at the end of the day.

  40. DOYLEY – It astounds me too. I thought the libs would try to weasel out of the gonski top-up. I never imagined that Malcolm would shift into hyperdrive and abandon the state school system. As Keating said: no judgment at all.

    I think Malcolm’s big problem is that, basically, he is and always has been a salesman who let others worry about implementation. When he was selling bullshit products to fundie spivs, he knew his audience. He doesn’t know his audience right now. He has no idea what the “average” Australian wants or thinks important.

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