A recent flurry of opinion polling today reaches a climax with results from ACNielsen and, unexpectedly, Newspoll, which normally reports on Tuesday. The former rains on the recent Coalition polling parade somewhat with a survey of 1403 voters showing no change in the primary vote situation from last month: Labor on 48 per cent, Coalition on 39 per cent. Nonetheless, the two-party result has narrowed just slightly, from 58-42 to 57-43, while Kevin Rudd’s preferred prime minister lead is down from 51-43 to 48-42. Bryan Palmer’s newly updated graphs can be viewed here.
Newspoll offers a similar result, with Labor leading 56-44 on two-party preferred. However, it’s better news for the Coalition in relative terms – the previous Newspoll three weeks ago had Labor with a quirky-looking lead of 60-40. The Coalition primary vote is up from 35 per cent to 39 per cent; Labor’s is down from 52 per cent to 46 per cent; Kevin Rudd’s preferred prime minister lead is down from 47-38 to 46-40.
430 Comments
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What concerns me about Howard’s actions is that they have a purely indigenous focus.
Having spent most of my working life in the outer west of Sydney, I know that their is a significantly sized white underclass for whom all these issues: Drugs and alcohol, truency, unemployability, generational welfare, child abuse, lack of male role models, are present. They are a large part of Mount Druitt society and this is as much a disgrace on Australian society as is indigenous poverty.
To concentrate on and apply special resources only to the Indigenous population is wedge politics which actively demonises one sector of society based purely on race. It is ideally placed for the wedge and appeals particularly to whites just above the underclass who have their belief in superiority over blacks confirmed. Pauline could not have done better. On the down side for Howard – one of the underclass’ grievences with Labor is that it gives Blacks ’special treatment’ (I love the Paul Kelly song). Now even Howard is doing that, albeit with paternalistic and prohibitive actions.
I am also concerned by the policy that all under 16 year old aborigines will undergo medical examination – what will be examined? – compulsory vaginity checks in the girls? a lax an*l sphincter in the boys? perhaps the famed ‘Mongoloid spot’? We really are regressing.
This is called the “we can’t do anything because we can’t do everything” fallacy.
No, its the “look in your own backyard” approach
The swing in Mitchell will be about the same as the national swing. If he is as religious right wing as he has been painted he is a perfect fit for that electorate.
I have relatives who live there – they will love him.
Well I’m going back to my corner, but the proof will be in the pudding, kinda Howard deserves to win, I can’t wait to see the success of this ‘policy’.
The approach that you support Howard on in the Northern Territory – if it works, which I doubt- could just as well be applied to Mount Druitt (and state equivalents).
The response from the parties, if this was suggested would be significantly different. If it was suggested I would also prohibit all gambling including scratchies and lotto and forcibly close that Gommorrah of the west – The Rooty Hill RSL.
OK the corner needed cleaning … it is called the we can’t do anything because we don’t have any clue how to fix the mess and going in stupid circles that ignore the realities of history it always stupid.
Add to stupid here we a plan that is clearly for political purposes, has all the back of an envelope expertise of the water initative and is in the run up to a Federal Election; it does not bode well for the victims of this ‘policy’.
Howard and Costello have the massive surpluses let them give each of the States 1 billion dollars next financial year for them to implement as broad a range of solutions as they can.
Oh wait that might indicate a serious proposal to help people, not just an election gimick.
Latest Morgan face to face poll – Labor 58, Coalition 42 TPP
I was going to say something about how Howard’s Outback Solution struck me as politically motivated but then I found this on The Piping Shrike, which sums it up pretty well for me:
“There used to be a straight-forward way of stopping child abuse, lock the offenders up. But we are talking here of Aboriginal children, so, of course, the solution cannot be that simple. Indeed getting around to finding the perpetrators, either Aboriginal or white, and arresting them, seems to be the last thing being talked about here. Instead the discussion is entirely focussed on the eternal Australian question, what is wrong with the way Aboriginal people organise their lives?”
http://thepipingshrike.blogspot.com/
Morgan is actually 57.5-42.5.
“Welfare curbs could extend to all parents: Howard” says [i]The Australian[/i].
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/
Amazing – the first thing I said when I heard Howard’s plan was that everyone on welfare would cop the same treatment.
Leopold – it depends on which and how Morgan distributes the prefereneces. If the preferences are distributed by how people preferenced last election, the TPP is 57.5 – 42.5. If the preferences are distributed by how people say they will vote, the TPP is 58.5 – 41.5. I rounded the figures off.
id go with 57.5
in 2004 morgan got the primary vote right. However it borked the prefs.
in any case
1. same old big margin
2. events of last night, today change this … or does it?
Today’s stories about personal debt, among young people especially, makes Possum Comitatus’s graph, taken from RBA data, worth looking at again.
http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/2007/05/24/why-howard-is-rooted-in-one-simple-graph/
Could this be an election sleeper?
Just imagine if the ALP had been in government for the last decade.
By now we would have Opposition Leader Howard stumping the country warning the punters of Labor’s Debt Dragon about to devour them. The Oz would carry cartoons of Treasurer Swan with his finger in the cracking, trembling Dyke of Personal Debt. Letters to the Tele and Herald Sun would tell of children unable to sleep because of nightmares of the Debt Banksia Men. Galaxy would be reporting an 80-20 TPP in favour of the Coalition.
So why is it not happening? The Government would answer that people’s assets have swelled correspondingly. True, but does this compensate for the debt worry? Are people happy with a life plan to use their super to finally pay off their debt, something that is getting harder to do anyway, as lump sums become a feature of the past?
The Government’s other answer is that interest rates would be higher under the ALP. Assume this is true. It is still only a partial remedy at best. The water will be up to your neck, but your chances of drowning are, well, less than with the ALP.
A Treasury-approved answer to the personal debt problem would be to increase productivity. A more contentious approach would be to move the wages-profit share in a direction opposite to where it’s headed now.
Work Choices is of course intended to accelerate the share more towards profit, for the great majority at least, in the interests of efficiency (and consequent productivity).
In the process however a lot of people with modest skills, or where supply of the skills outstrips demand, are going to be hurt. The personal debt burden will seriously aggravate their situation.
As far as I can see the ALP has not made this explicit connection. Maybe it will.
While I agree with a lot of the policies suggested to “save the children” in the NT, like so many things offered by this government, they contain a bitter poisoned pill and a healthy dose of craziness.
Banning pornography? Are they serious? And “privatising” the native title-held land is supposed to help indigenous children how? The community rejected that policy just a few months ago.
Seems like the government is just implementing what it wants, under the guise of helping people. Kind of like building nuclear power stations and expanding uranium mining to “save the environment”.
I think Howard is about to do some high stepping over the indigenous policy: (this all from the ABC news site)
1) He has called for volunteer doctors and the AMA has responded by saying “not without appropriate training” and the question of consent for examination will “take months and months to work out” i.e. not in this election year
2) The federation of police associations says it has not been “thought through”, won’t work and will lead to police shortages country wide – apparently Howard has responded by suggesting the military can be used (sweet mother of Jesus!)
3) The authors of this report say Howard’s response will lead to suicides and more violence.
I think this may now be quietly dropped, although if the public mood turns Rudd has the excuse that he was waiting for a ministerial briefing. I don’t think any of this was actually about indigenous welfare.
Congratulations are due to Mr Howard and Mal Brough for their principled and strong stand on indigenous affairs in NT. This is exactly why he will be re-elected – and we all know that even though he had no choice but to meekly fall into line, Rudd (or any other Labor leader for that matter) would never have the balls to adopt measures like this. Never. And I’m sure that behind closed doors the majority of Labor MPs are furious with their leader.
About the latest Morgan – once again, the unwary and gullible all too quickly take it at face value. Firstly, ignore the 2PP figure and just concentrate on the primary votes; secondly, automatically adjust the Labor figure down and the Coalition figure up and you’ll find they’re practically neck and neck. And to think there’s still 5 months until the election!
Interesting that Stanhope and apparently Macklin have condemned the policy.
Stanhope said it is racist. An interesting view from the cultured cafes of Manuka to say the least. You can always rely on the Left.
Gary: You should use the 57.5 figure – you’ll notice Morgan itself uses it in its graphs.
Here is where I feel that there is some cognitive disonnance with the basic dogma of secular humanism which undergirds Australian politics across the spectrum. We tend to be wary of the imposition of prohibition on things shown to be harmful to society. The reason? An infringement of basic (individual) rights. This dogma is accepted as an International and political foundation, though, just like Newton’s laws of gravity, don’t work practically in some circumstances.
Now, these rights relate to adults of (appropriate, and mind you, variable) age, depending on the practice to engage in particular activities. These include drinking in public, smoking, sexual activity, possession of or access to porn and gambling. Most posters here would agree that some of these activities are OK in moderation, though we might argue all day about which ones.
What seems to be ignored is that ALL of these activities have SOME consequences for society every day. These consequences, often, affect the innocent, whose rights are subjugated under this philosophical basis.
Proof? Our society as is. Secular humanism undergirds policy on every single issue above and it is difficult to argue that ANY have declined in significance since Federation. Certainly true for Indigenous issues on BOTH major sides of politics. Troubled people don’t magically “get right” by self-determination and enshrining individual rights, absolutely regardless of colour (Oakshot, my father taught in Campbelltown for years and I concur with you about the state of Western Sydney).
Rights of the individual will always undermine the rights of society, at times, because rights overlap. It is the fallacy of humanistic utopia. We can’t ALL get what we want without affecting others. “I have a right to smoke!” says one, “I have a right to clean air” says another. Neither is right, neither can have exactly what they want in public. (If you think the latter does, then would you also take cars off the road for this person?).
In the present case, the rights of individuals must be subjugated to the rights of children. I am not a fan of prohibition, but it is a re-writing of history to suggest that it “didn’t work”. Of course people still got alcohol and it did breed organised crime. Alcohol induced crimes, however, plummetted. Hospitalisation of alcoholic-related disorders such as Cirrhosis dropped. Domestic violence under the influence also dropped.
Is is wrong to drink alcohol? Most of us would say no. Can it contribute to social dysfunction? Yes. If a community suffers a majority of children bearing the brunt of this lack of self-control, then is it not acceptable to subjugate these rights for adults who seem unwilling or unable to be responsible for the sake of breaking the cycle for the next generation.
The same, only moreso, with porn. I have yet to find anyone of any political persuasion promote the responsible benefits of porn in the same way as one would defend alcohol and yet it is significantly more available than alcohol.
It is not enough to cry “moralist”. We are ALL moralists, with varying tolerances for destructive behaviours. Are you a “moralist” because you don’t like murder, or violence? Then why is someone a moralist if they have the balls to say that porn is not a good thing for us as a society and needs regulation in the same way that illicit drugs are currently regulated.
The dogma is wrong. Humanism, like communism, does not appear to work for human societies. It has had almost 300 years to prove it.
Steven Kaye – why not just produce your own figures. You know, the ones you want to see.
I can’t understand why it is more reliable to use preference flows from the last election instead of the preferences indicated by those polled. There must be an explanation. Any ideas?
If Morgan isn’t relying on preferences indicated by those polled (and clearly he isn’t for his graphs) why bother with publishing this figure?
Steven Kaye – using your philosphy, since three polls have shown Galaxy to be somewhat generous to the coalition what we need to do with the last Galaxy Poll is to take off 3% from the coalition primary vote and add at 2 to 3 percent to the Labor vote to get a more accurate reading as to what is really going on out there. Oh and forget about the TPP because who cares what the others think.
Last election Morgan got the primary figures very close but was way out on its TPP. Now I don’t know for sure, but I think the repondents were asked for their preferences in that last poll. That might explain why he is giving two figures.
“Stanhope said it is racist. An interesting view from the cultured cafes of Manuka to say the least. You can always rely on the Left.”
Let’s be fair and balanced here, and not condemn all the Left! The sentiment apparently expressed resonates with Marxism of the Frankfurt School. György Lukács described it best:
“A considerable part of the leading German intelligentsia, including Adorno, have taken up residence in the ‘Grand Hotel Abyss’ which I described in connection with my critique of Schopenhauer as ‘a beautiful hotel, equipped with every comfort, on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity. And the daily contemplation of the abyss between excellent meals or artistic entertainments, can only heighten the enjoyment of the subtle comforts offered.’ ”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/theory-novel/preface.htm
Gary: Morgan got a couple of Elections wrong, despite having reasonable-ish primary vote figures due to relying on what people said with regards preference distribution. Using the previous election’s flows was shown to be more reliable.
As an example, look at how people told Morgan they were going to preference in this recent poll:
Democrats to ALP – 96% Looks waay to high, 70%? is more like it.
Greens to ALP – 90% Should be 80 or less
Family First – 51% to ALP, Will probably favour the coalition in an election
One Nation – 63% to ALP, Will probably favour the coalition in an election
Don’t you agree the figures look a tad wrong ? Do you think 96% of Democrats will preference the ALP ? I don’t.
This isn’t a tiny fragment of voters either, 15% of those polled chose minors.
Bryan at OzPolitics and Mumble did some good work on this topic a couple of years back.
They probably use both techniques for two reasons, continuity with the previous polling technique and to cover their a#s if they are way off.
The Speaker – I take your point. Thanks for the explanation.
Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, mr Speaker (no, I mean it, maths and statistics are not my strong suite) but doesn’t your argument pre-suppose that respondents are telling the truth in nominating their primary vote and then lying when nominating their preference?
What is the justification for this assumption? Surely they could equally be lying in nominating their primary voting intention?
I agree that on any analysis of previous elections the preferences stated here are grossly at variance with reality , but does that give any objective substance to your assessment?
My point is, don’t you have to accept the whole result, or not at all?
So Macklin has condemned the PM’s indigenous policy, Edward? Didn’t take long to show her true colours, and I bet she speaks for a lot of Labor MPs.
Forgive me but I missed the class where the thing we are trying to save the children from was caused by alcohol and p*&n*graphy.
I do know that offenders are more likely to have p$%nogr*phy (I went to that class), but again I missed the class where taking away the alcohol and reading material of choice cured the offender. Why do we send them to jail when the cure is so very very simple?
I know this site only attracts a narrow class of very informed people. But I ask you again, why would you think for a minute that such simple homespun remedies would work? If it were so simple why was it not done before?
Oh and taking away welfare payments … dead set winner as a way of curing social dysfunction and disadvantage. Lets cut out social welfare all together and all of society’s ills will be solved.
If you are doing political analysis – fantastic – we can all stand back applaud the PM’s brilliance and wait to see if the polls shift, and maybe they will.
But if you care at all for the children and the adults of these communities, and many posters are saying they do, please think a little bit. If you want to tell them the way the will live in this country and whether they will live in community ghettos or jail fine say that, but don’t pretend to care while at the time embracing such apparent absurdity.
Are we talking Jenny Macklin?
The one and only Macklin
So Howard was confronted by Aboriginal leaders 5 years ago about this crisis and he did nothing. Why am I not surprised?
Edward can you point me in the direction of Macklin’s comments please? I’ve looked and can’t find them.
Opinion polls provoke bewilderment in lead-up to Australian election
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jun2007/sep-j22_prn.shtml
More ‘thugs’ are marked for sacking.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21947544-601,00.html
ETU still waiting for return of donations
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21947546-601,00.html
I agree Adam that the Greens will be hard pressed to win Senate seats.
Fulvio Sammut said:
Neither do I
Actually No, they lie about their first preference vote as well.
To quote (roughly) Bryan Palmer at Oz Politics (I think, maybe it was Mumble – however I can’t find it ATM):
“Voting for John Howard is like m—-bation, everyone does it but no one admits to it”
When asked who they will vote for, some JWH voters are scared that the pollster will judge them negatively, so they say Labor, however when in the anonymity of the polling booth, they vote Liberal.
This goes a long way to explaining why the Telephone Morgan is always 2% lower than the in-person Morgan – people are more worried about the negative opinion of someone who is sitting in their living room than a telemarketer on the phone, however the problem is present in phone polling as well.
Some people in these comment areas like to talk about “Pro-Labor Polling Bias” and there is some truth in it, however the degree of bias is a matter of some debate.
See below:
http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/2005/03/24/opinion-polls-pooling-and-smoothing-techniques/
I’ve digressed from minor party preferences..
There are other factors as well:
- The face-to-face technique used by morgan may bias towards Greens voters in inner city seats where it’s easier for Morgan pollsters to operate. Outer suburban or rural greens may be more likely to preference coalition but are under-represented in the sample.
- The voter may preference differently on election day when exposed to HTV material from their party of choice. (ie Family First voters)
Probably some more I can’t think of but I’m tired of typing.
Anyway using 2004 preference distribution levels is an objective enough way to do it.
Gaz, I think it was the World Today on 2BL.
There is some truth in that people are embarrassed to vote for Howard and the Liberals but do so anyway. Back when I was a wee lad in the school system, the politics teacher (quite the social democrat) always went on about his disappointment in teachers who he knew “voted Liberal but would never admit to it”.
One example I suppose, but something to think about.
I know that years ago very few admitted to voting Liberal yet they always won but I think that type of thinking has changed. Just take a look on the blogs, in the newspapers and and listen to radio talkback. They no longer hide behind the bushell so I’m not convinced of that argument.
Edward, I don’t doubt your source (I still can’t find it) but I’ll tell one thing, it made no impact anywhere else – zip.
I found Stanhope’s criticism though.
Gary, while many of the Liberal-voting stereotypes may proudly state they vote Liberal on the airwaves and in the ‘papers, the great mass of people are not involved and keep their political ideas to themselves. These are the people who may be ‘ashamed’ (sigh) to state they vote Liberal.
Only a tiny minority of voters are writing blogs, sending letters to the paper, and going on talkback.
I know many people who proudly say they vote Liberal. As a matter of interest how does this theory apply to the state scene when it comes to opinion polls? The polls have been fairly accurate in predicting wins for Labor.
The best example of this was the 1992 UK election (where admittedly polling is more difficult because of voluntary voting). Every poll said that Kinnock would beat Thatcher. Even the exit polls said that Kinnock had won. But he hadn’t. There was a big “secret Tory” vote among traditional Labor voters in English towns who (a) didn’t want a Welsh PM and (b) did want Thatcher’s tax cuts.
bill weller Says:
June 22nd, 2007 at 6:43 pm
I agree Adam that the Greens will be hard pressed to win Senate seats.
Are you saying none in 2007 Bill, nationwide ? Most ‘experts’ I read say the remainng Democrat Senators are doomed, for one reason or another, and their seats will go to the ALP (VIC/SA/WA/QLD) or the Greens. Do you have the time to expand on this prognosis ?
Kinnock probably would have beaten Thatcher in 1992. That’s why the Tories changed leaders.
“The same, only moreso, with porn. I have yet to find anyone of any political persuasion promote the responsible benefits of porn in the same way as one would defend alcohol and yet it is significantly more available than alcohol.”
I’m a Democrat and I happily defend people’s right to view pornography. A healthy and active sex life is an essential part of healthy living and successful relationships, and pornography can have a role to play in that.
So there you go, someone of a declared political persuasion promoting the responsible benefits of porn!
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