Essential Research: coronavirus restrictions and conspiracy theories

A poll suggests a significant proportion of the population believes coronavirus was engineered in a Chinese laboratory, but other conspiracy theories remain consigned to the fringe.

Courtesy of The Guardian, some headline results of another weekly Essential Research poll on coronavirus, the full report of which should be published later today. This includes regular questions on federal and state governments’ handling with the crisis, of which we are only told that respondents remain highly positive, and on easing restrictions, for which we are told only 25% now consider it too soon, which is down two on last time and has been consistently declining over five surveys.

Beyond that, the survey gauged response to a number of what might be described as conspiracy theories concerning the virus. By far the most popular was the notion that the virus “was engineered and released from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan”, which has received a certain amount of encouragement from the Daily Telegraph but is starkly at odds with the scientific consensus. Agreement and disagreement with this proposition was tied on 39%.

Thirteen per cent subscribed to a theory that Bill Gates was involved in the creation and spread of the virus, with 71% disagreeing; 13% agreed the virus was not dangerous and was being used to force people to get vaccines, with 79% disagreeing; 12% thought the 5G network was being used to spread the virus, with 75% disagreeing; and 20% agreed the number of deaths was being exaggerated, with “more than 70%” disagreeing. The poll also found 77% agreed that the outbreak in China was worse than the official statistics showed.

The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1073.

UPDATE: Full report here.

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.

3,318 comments on “Essential Research: coronavirus restrictions and conspiracy theories”

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  1. The crapola some go on with Sino/Australian relations is over the top, camouflaged as nuance.
    The fact of the matter is that without China, we’d be in an economic sinkhole. BB is not racist, but he/she (?) gives a stunning impression thereof.

  2. davidwh says:
    Friday, May 22, 2020 at 7:28 pm
    And when you get him there lock him away

    Generally we get along very well with Queenslanders. We wouldn’t want Clive to come between us.

  3. Catmomma,

    Casey Briggs has a problem with point 4. It is somewhat recognised as an assumption but still an error. ATO did not calculate the $130 billion estimate. It was done prior to registration. It is likely a Treasury estimate.

  4. BOB LYNCH says:
    Friday, May 22, 2020 at 7:24 pm
    I carry no brief for Clive Palmer but on the merits he must surely win his case as there are no health reasons whatsoever to stop him entering WA.
    QLD has virtually no cases.

    ————————–
    There are reasons for not allowing Palmer in WA

    1- The private jet he is flying in – has it been washed out and other de-coronavirus requirements

    2- The contacts Palmer been in contact with

  5. Douglas and Milko @ #2625 Friday, May 22nd, 2020 – 6:34 pm

    Pegasus,

    D7M

    There was one in Trot in particular, Lee Rhiannion, who was instrumental in taking over and destroying the NDP. Although, more correctly she can be termed a Stalinist.
    Do you have any authoritative references to support this claim?

    But, when I hear the name Hall Greenland, I do not think of the local Convenor of the Greens, I think of him as when I first heard about him as an Annandale ALP branch member.

    But this reminds me that we do not live forever, and perhaps I should try and get some of these stories down in text, from the original sources, after I retire at the end of next year. We have already lost some of our great locals to illness in the past few years.

    Hall Greenland was in my English class all the way through high school at Fort St Boys’ from ’57 to ’61. He was an extrovert ratbag, and one of the few at school who had strong political beliefs, as I remember. A line of four or five of us used to get together at Monday lunch to wander around retelling the previous night’s episode of The Goon Show to each other.

    Nick Origlass was also in our year, along with a few others who also ended up on Leichhardt Council. Hall’s mob called themselves Libertarian Left, I think, but I also seem to recollect that he ended up as an independent.

  6. WeWantPaul

    The question with respect to Treasury, is that what they think they are? As for the ATO, the upper echelon will be fine as you say. It will be the poor sods that provided the technical advice.

  7. Clive Palmer also has claim, to get out of going to court , he has medical conditions

    W.A could use that Palmer’s medical conditions against him

    Claiming it is for Palmer’s safety not to leave a safe haven as QLD

  8. The question with respect to Treasury, is that what they think they are?

    That is an interesting question. I had outside counsel telling me last week that anyone who knows anything about “particular complex issue” has long since left Treasury and only the ATO had any views, and those views were likely to be wrong but that Treasury was unlikely to be in a position to challenge them. Late neo-feudal capitalism is a blast.

  9. with Pauline Hanson ,

    Qld should counter- claim

    If there are cases of corona virus in Qld , if the borders are open

    Hanson should be held responsible , should be punish , fianically or time in prison , for each case of infection and severity of it , will determine the punishment

  10. WeWantPaul

    While I do not doubt this anecdote, this would mean that the APS has turned topsy turvy! I refer not to ability, I refer (sadly) to culture. Treasury usurps ATO knowledge. Hence the consternation should ATO show Treasury up as it has here.

  11. BW, are you listening? Adam Bandt has announced a mega plan..

    By David Crowe
    May 22, 2020 — 6.31pm

    Australians will be promised a mammoth investment plan to prevent the coronavirus crisis leaving the nation with a “lost generation” of young people, as the Greens demand more help for those being thrown out of work.

    Greens leader Adam Bandt will call for a national push for full employment by pouring money into “nation-building and planet-saving” projects that can be funded in part by repealing income tax cuts for wealthier workers.

    In a major speech to party members, Mr Bandt will warn the pandemic is inflicting the greatest economic harm on younger Australians who may struggle to get back into the workforce when and if the recovery comes.

    “The history of recessions show us that young people get hit the hardest and for the longest and they are often forgotten about,” he says.

    With unemployment tipped to double from its rate of 5.2 per cent in March, the Greens leader will call for a target of 2 per cent unemployment “so that everyone who wants a job, has a job” without forcing people to accept insecure work.

    “We will offer every young person a guaranteed job on one of these nation-building, planet-saving projects if they want one, or a free place at uni or TAFE or an income they can actually live on,” he says, in a draft of the speech to be delivered on Saturday.

    The Greens’ plan for an economic recovery includes a $12 billion fund to modernise manufacturing, a $6 billion upgrade to the electricity grid and a $6 billion Nature Fund to protect habitats.

    Other elements include a $1 billion package for live festivals and performance, a $500m program for creative industries and the construction of 500,000 community homes.

    The party’s policies also include making TAFE and undergraduate university courses free as well as making free childcare permanent.

    The entire recovery plan assumes an increase in net debt of $250 billion to $300 billion over the decade ahead.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/greens-mammoth-investment-plan-to-prevent-a-lost-generation-20200522-p54vkq.html

  12. Andrew_Earlwood
    says:
    Friday, May 22, 2020 at 7:33 pm
    “ Kate Ellis.”
    Obviously
    ___________
    I thought he meant Natasha.

  13. Casey Briggs has a problem with more than point 4, he seemingly has no understanding of how the JobKeeper reimbursement system actually works.

    For a start, the payments to the employers are not paid fortnightlty, but monthly, after monthly employer lodgements are made, and eligibility checks undertaken, if risks are detected.

    The first payments are still being made, and employers have until the end of May to register for the program, as the cutoff date for that was extended.

    Also some employers have registered but did not claim for the first month as eligability criteria (% drop in turnover) were not met – some of these will qualify and claim in subsequent months.

  14. A lesson out of this fiasco is that Centrelink recipients have professional expertise in understanding forms.

  15. ‘She is pretty much an LNP premier so of course you lust after her’

    It’s a boring mainstream Stare Labor Government. In my view a bit to the left of the median Qld voters views. If you think it’s an LNP government you obviously are not a Queenslander.

    As to the Treasury/ATO debate the current Treasury is much bigger and much weaker than it was in terms of staff quality. It was at its peak in the 1980s and has gone downhill since then.

  16. yabba:

    [‘Hall Greenland was in my English class all the way through high school at Fort St Boys’ from ’57 to ’61.’]

    I’m very happy for you, but is there more to come? I’m thinking, for instance, what did the old boys get up to in the ’60s?

  17. sprocket_ says:
    Friday, May 22, 2020 at 7:54 pm
    BW, are you listening? Adam Bandt has announced a mega plan..

    It’s a terrible waste….having these great aspirational ideas, far-reaching ambitions… being espoused by a Party that can never realise them; by a Party that deliberately sets out to make sure the only force that could implement them – Labor – is never elected.

    Such is the dysfunction at the heart of Australian politics. Libkin Garden: A Museum for Forlorn Hopes

  18. Peg

    There is nothing in that one article you supplied supporting your claim…

    There was one in Trot in particular, Lee Rhiannion, who was instrumental in taking over and destroying the NDP.

    Anything substantive to support your claim?

    I will take this question on notice, as it does interest me in the broader terms of how political activism feeds in to driving progress (Green Bans, Lake Pedder), but also inhibits it (The 1917 Russian October Revolution; the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s; the Soviet takeover of the central European nascent democracies around 1948, cleaving Europe in two; The Greens in Austria enabling the Austrian People’s Party* – see below for more on this developing story.). But I will step out to do this. I may take some time.

    But, as a quick outline:

    Senator Jo Vallentine was elected as a WA senator in 1984 for the NDP. She was the first nuclear disarmament activist anywhere in the world to be elected to a parliamentary position. Before taking up her senate seat on 1/7/1985, both she and the (unsuccessful) NDP senate candidate for NSW, Peter Garrett, resigned from the NDP, citing a takeover by the Socialist Workers party(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Disarmament_Party).

    I note that Jo Vallentine did go on to become a Greens senator for WA, so any association between Rhiannon and the Greens did not obviously put her off. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Vallentine)

    Lee Rhiannon joined the Soviet aligned Socialist Party of Australia in 1973, and probably left the party some time in the 1980s. When I say she was likely best described as a Stalinist, I mean that as an active member of the SPA she would know that the SPA supported the appearance of the Soviet tanks in Budapest, Hungary, in 1956, and the repression of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Rhiannon)

    Between 1988 and 1990, she made her living editing the magazine Survey: a monthly digest of trends in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. the funding of this magazine most likely came from the USSR.

    So, how did the Socialist Party of Australia, of which Rhiannon was a very active member, and the Socialist Worker Party, who destroyed the NDP relate to each other?

    The relationships between all these splinter groups are positively Byzantine. I rely on local knowledge, and will acknowledge that I have not found any smoking gun in the quick-search sources I have looked at to definitively say that Lee Rhiannon had a seminal role in the destruction of the NDP.

    But she certainly does not emerge as an obvious innocent.

    * So, the Austrian Greens enabling the right-wing, anti-immigration Austrian Peoples Party (OPP) to form government is a dangerous precedent for the Green movement:
    Since Tuesday Austria has been ruled, for the first time in its history, by a coalition government between the conservative People’s party (ÖVP) and the Greens. It is an unlikely partnership, not least because the ÖVP is one of the most rightwing of Europe’s conservative parties. Since taking control of the party in 2017, Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian chancellor, has transformed it into a hard-right, anti-immigrant outfit, successfully cannibalising the voter base of the populist far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), his coalition partner from 2017 until May last year.
    ……
    The Greens have spent the last two years vigorously attacking Kurz as a “Strache in disguise”, for lending a respectable face to inhumane policies against migrants, asylum seekers and minorities. During the recent election campaign, when asked how likely it was that his party would join a coalition government with the ÖVP, Green party leader Werner Kogler answered swiftly: “Zero per cent.” Last week, he stood next to Kurz, presenting their common coalition programme – in which a proposal to make Austria carbon-neutral by 2040 sits alongside plans to ban the Islamic veil for schoolchildren up to the age of 14 and introduce highly controversial preventive detention measures for asylum seekers.
    ……
    … this is more than just a marriage of convenience. It represents both a reaction to the growing popular awareness of the climate crisis, and an attempt to dissolve the climate movement’s demands in a greenwashed rightwing project. For all the ambition of the 2040 target, which goes far beyond anything any previous Austrian government has dared to do, only a few concrete measures, such as subsidies for public transportation and the phasing out of gas, oil and coal for heating have been proposed.

    The Green party, whose members take great pride in its anti-racist identity, is willing to pay a high price for all this. None of the economic reforms introduced by the previous, staunchly pro-capital government – such as the expansion of the legal working day to 12 hours and the working week to 60 hours – will be up for revision. The new coalition programme includes tax reductions for big corporations and a commitment to neoliberal trade agreements. And Kurz will not even have to adjust his image as an anti-immigrant hardliner. In his own carefully crafted words, the new government aims to “protect both the climate and the borders”.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/09/austria-greens-right-peoples-party-anti-immigration

  19. A tip for Clive.
    If you really want to go to WA drive a big truck with essential goods and you will be waved through at Eucla.

  20. Continually Insufferable @ #2726 Friday, May 22nd, 2020 – 8:10 pm

    sprocket_ says:
    Friday, May 22, 2020 at 7:54 pm
    BW, are you listening? Adam Bandt has announced a mega plan..

    It’s a terrible waste….having these great aspirational ideas, far-reaching ambitions… being espoused by a Party that can never realise them; by a Party that deliberately sets out to make sure the only force that could implement them – Labor – is never elected.

    Such is the dysfunction at the heart of Australian politics. Libkin Garden: A Museum for Forlorn Hopes

    I expect you then to move a motion at your next Labor branch meeting to adopt that plan you like so much.

  21. Rex Douglas

    So how long do Labor have to be no good for you to drop your membership ?

    So, luckily Rex, you have the perfect political party, that you do not even need to criticise in private, let alone on PollBludger.

    Give us a hint so that we can all drop our current party memberships and join this political party without sin.

    Ot are you just towing the Friedmanite line (aka the Chicago boys) that politicians are beyond contempt, and only a great disdain for all politician and politics is the correct reaction.

  22. Douglas and Milko

    If only the ‘fracking’ politicians reciprocated that feeling for the !@#!# Friedmanites !

  23. D&M

    I rely on local knowledge, and will acknowledge that I have not found any smoking gun in the quick-search sources I have looked at to definitively say that Lee Rhiannon had a seminal role in the destruction of the NDP.

    Thank you for acknowledging atm your claim re Rhiannon has no basis in fact. Local knowledge, dare I say, would not be particularly reliable.

  24. Scott @ #2709 Friday, May 22nd, 2020 – 7:41 pm

    Clive Palmer also has claim, to get out of going to court , he has medical conditions

    W.A could use that Palmer’s medical conditions against him

    Claiming it is for Palmer’s safety not to leave a safe haven as QLD

    Oh yes, he’s morbidly obese, isn’t he? 🙂

  25. Yabba

    Hall Greenland was in my English class all the way through high school at Fort St Boys’ from ’57 to ’61. He was an extrovert ratbag, and one of the few at school who had strong political beliefs, as I remember. A line of four or five of us used to get together at Monday lunch to wander around retelling the previous night’s episode of The Goon Show to each other.

    Nick Origlass was also in our year, along with a few others who also ended up on Leichhardt Council. Hall’s mob called themselves Libertarian Left, I think, but I also seem to recollect that he ended up as an independent.

    Thanks for this snippet. Some very impressive people went to Fort Street, including my late FIL. Died at age 96 last October, but with a well-deserved OAM to his name.

  26. Douglas and Milko @ #2734 Friday, May 22nd, 2020 – 8:22 pm

    Rex Douglas

    So how long do Labor have to be no good for you to drop your membership ?

    So, luckily Rex, you have the perfect political party, that you do not even need to criticise in private, let alone on PollBludger.

    Give us a hint so that we can all drop our current party memberships and join this political party without sin.

    Ot are you just towing the Friedmanite line (aka the Chicago boys) that politicians are beyond contempt, and only a great disdain for all politician and politics is the correct reaction.

    Why must one be locked into a party line ?

    Why can’t one just judge each candidate on their ballot paper according to one’s true values and standards ?

  27. yabba

    Hall Greenland has his own blog appropriately called ‘Watermelon Papers’:

    https://watermelongreenland.wordpress.com/

    Recently I posted an excerpt on PB from his latest contribution about Jack Mundey:

    https://watermelongreenland.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/jack-mundey-1929-2020-a-comrade-for-our-times/

    By then Jack had been elected president of the Communist Party, but it was a ‘hospital pass’ as they say in rugby league, as the party was in terminal decline. When the Party disbanded in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was more than natural that Jack and Judy, after an initial hesitation, joined the Greens. After all, its politics were theirs. The four founding principles of the Greens – ecological sustainability, participatory democracy, social justice and peace and non-violence – summed up Jack Mundey’s basic credo.

    The man of the Sixties had found his natural home. Right to the end he continued to support citizens in campaigns against the wrong kind of growth, whether it was coal mines, fracking, heritage demolitions or the expropriation of public land for upscale apartments. He’s gone, but his example remains. La lutte continue, as they say.

  28. “ I thought he meant Natasha.”

    Only if he thinks that Jagged Little Pill is the best Album of all time.

  29. Rex Douglas says:
    Friday, May 22, 2020 at 8:22 pm
    Continually Insufferable @ #2726 Friday, May 22nd, 2020 – 8:10 pm

    sprocket_ says:
    Friday, May 22, 2020 at 7:54 pm
    BW, are you listening? Adam Bandt has announced a mega plan..

    It’s a terrible waste….having these great aspirational ideas, far-reaching ambitions… being espoused by a Party that can never realise them; by a Party that deliberately sets out to make sure the only force that could implement them – Labor – is never elected.

    Such is the dysfunction at the heart of Australian politics. Libkin Garden: A Museum for Forlorn Hopes
    I expect you then to move a motion at your next Labor branch meeting to adopt that plan you like so much.

    Not so much. I will continue to advocate inside Labor that the Libkin be put next-to-last on our HTVs.

  30. ‘sprocket_ says:
    Friday, May 22, 2020 at 7:54 pm

    BW, are you listening? Adam Bandt has announced a mega plan..’

    Bandt’s promises are getting increasingly shrill.

    But without a migration and population element this is not a plan.

    No wonder the Greens are only polling at two thirds of where they were recently.

  31. Continually Insufferable @ #2744 Friday, May 22nd, 2020 – 8:34 pm

    Rex Douglas says:
    Friday, May 22, 2020 at 8:22 pm
    Continually Insufferable @ #2726 Friday, May 22nd, 2020 – 8:10 pm

    sprocket_ says:
    Friday, May 22, 2020 at 7:54 pm
    BW, are you listening? Adam Bandt has announced a mega plan..

    It’s a terrible waste….having these great aspirational ideas, far-reaching ambitions… being espoused by a Party that can never realise them; by a Party that deliberately sets out to make sure the only force that could implement them – Labor – is never elected.

    Such is the dysfunction at the heart of Australian politics. Libkin Garden: A Museum for Forlorn Hopes
    I expect you then to move a motion at your next Labor branch meeting to adopt that plan you like so much.

    Not so much. I will continue to advocate inside Labor that the Libkin be put next-to-last on our HTVs.

    You’ve still no idea of your true identity.

    A genuine centrist.

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