The Australian has published a follow-up to its weekend Newspoll survey, showing issues rated most important and the party considered best equipped to handle them. Labor holds handsome leads on six of the eight listed issues, the exceptions being the economy and national security. Interestingly, the Coalition’s score on industrial relations has increased to 34 per cent from 31 per cent at the previous survey in June, after hovering around 30 per cent since the beginning of 2006. Industrial relations is also the one issue where there was no appreciable shift to Labor when Kevin Rudd became leader. The other issue to run against the overall trend is national security – it surged to Labor as strongly as any other when Rudd took over, but the Coalition has since recovered to levels near those of the Beazley era.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
Newspoll issues survey
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874 Comments
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Mmmm,
Quite a menu of topics on this thread. Let me see, I’ll have a double helping of Glen’s favourite dish – hubris – with the candelori (which like cannelloni must be rich and stuffed).
Anyone else notice the really strange osmosis thing happening between Abbott and Hockey.
Abbott is getting more and more thinner and gaunt each day, whilst Hockey is really beefing up and filling out.
Is this due to some kind of wierd Opus Die Exclusive Brethen ritual.
HH that argument is stupid because Liberal supporters could argue that left wingers on this blog are Labor trolls…
Adelaide’s Channel 9 News election coverage led with Rudd’s nurses announcement, then followed with the Liberals anti-union adverts, but included a short clip of Labor’s response advert.
ShowsOn, the figures are interesting, however, as with news website comments I’m sure talkback radio is stacked with party stooges. I recall a Liberal Party staffer rang up ABC radio in Perth in the ‘04 election to trip up Jann McFarlane. She even pretended to cry over the radio. It’s really crazy stuff.
I seriously can’t stand to look at the comments sections of stories, which seem to be pointless. What they’re meant to be is an insight into the readers’ reaction to the stories. However, with the political news all we get are staffers rehashing the same lines over and over again.
You have to wonder whether anyone reads the comments and thinks they’re genuinely other impartial readers.
Back to intelligent debate….
So when is the next poll out??
Does anybody know what “Please provide an amount and click Update Totals” means on William’s donation page?
Saw the anti-Union ads for the first time tonight. They look cheap and I can’t see too many people taking them seriously. I can’t understand this union bashing. It’s not going to work and just makes them look silly.
No. 686
Well of course you would say it looks cheap and silly. You’re a Labor voter through and through.
Why bother with intelligent debate, when party lines are the only way forth around here?
Goodness, it’s all got rather heated on here this week! Must be an election on or something….
I guess we won’t know until the next round of polls comes out (and we won’t know for sure until 24th November), but my feeling is that the Coalition’s big tax “plan” has been a bit of damp squib. If that’s the case, then what else have they got? The trouble for conservatives is that they don’t really know how to spend money, which is why they’ve pissed these record surpluses up against the wall purely to get re-elected, while as a nation, we don’t (as yet) have much to show for it all. All Tories have is “TAX CUTS!” (TM) and scare campaigns. So how are they going to fill in the next five weeks?
On scare campaigns, the main thrust appears to be “UNION BOSSES!” (TM), but I can’t see this having too much of an effect (it hasn’t so far; after all, it’s not the 1970s any more). Their other scare fave is of course “DIRTY FOREIGNERS!” (TM), which I guess we can expect to hear more about in the coming weeks. However, barring some sort of Tampa-like crisis (and you can’t do the same trick twice), it’s unlikely that these calls to the collective dark side will have much effect either.
The Libs have got the same problem that all long-term governments (especially ones that don’t renew themselves) have, which is, just what do they plan to do in the future? Anything big they’ve planned surely they’d have done by now. Howard hasn’t really given us a reason for re-electing him all year – it’s all been politicking and crisis management.
Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd has talked calmly and optimistically about “THE FUTURE” (TM ALP).
Are you suggesting that Abbott is being eaten by Hockey?
The figures at least give an idea of the effectiveness of the stacking campaigns
rcandelori
Please try to debate issues, we all know that you follow the latest Liberal talking points – we know them, why do you need to repeat them.
You are preaching to the converted.
Labor won today by a mile, the Ipswich motorway funding will swing votes, the nurse retention scheme has gone down well (so well Howard has backed it).
The Unions bad – boo scare was predictable and is counter-productive.
The Coalition are trying things that have worked in the past – shame the electorate have moved on.
what like Rudd saying he’s a fiscal conservative?
Because Howard and Costello have expanded the federal beurecracy more than any other Australian government. So by comparison ANYONE counts as a fiscal conservative.
Are you suggesting that Abbott is being eaten by Hockey?
perhaps he’s just taking a bite every time they pass in the hallway.
No. 683
The thing is Hugo, the Coalition has a number of future-oriented policies, its just that Rudd launches into spin-doctoring, and suddenly he’s the media darling talking about the future.
Well, so far we’ve heard about this plan, but nothing has come into fruition. We’ve only been waiting 11 months.
LTEP
“I recall a Liberal Party staffer rang up ABC radio in Perth in the ‘04 election to trip up Jann McFarlane. She even pretended to cry over the radio. It’s really crazy stuff.”
Couple of months ago Virginia triolli got ambushed by a stack of libs ringing in and reading off rehearsed sheets, at the end of she was quite stunned and said that they were not your usual callers.
But people rejecting tax cuts in favour of funding health, education and infrastrucute is not new, polls have shown similar results after each round of tax cuts and each announcement of a massive surplus.
Main reaction is spend it on fixing up services as that is where the surplus came from by ripping off services.
A necessary, if trite, observation that I would make is that not everyone perceives the world I the same way. Most comments I have seen say that John Kevin Rudd did a better job this week in being interviewed by Kerry O’Brien than did John Howard. I don’t see it that way at all. Kerry O’Brien interrupted and talked over Mr Howard to a far greater extent than he normally did. I understand the frustration that interviewers have when politicians do not answer their questions, but I think there is a limit that was stepped over here. By contrast, while the questions to Kevin Rudd were reasonable ones, there was no pressure from Kerry O’Brien to get an actual answer. Mr Rudd showed a bit of life in some answers, but mostly it was long-winded and boring and added no depth to the debate. He has to lose some of his academic background and encapsulate his answers in a more pithy way.
Those who have argued that the gap will not necessarily narrow are right, but the current Labor performance suggests to me that it will narrow. There is no law that says gaps narrow during campaigns, but it will in this one.
I remember the days of policy speeches and a sense of a party standing for some coherent vision of society. Now it is all guerrilla warfare:
“I’ve got an education revolution.â€
“So what? I’m putting $10 billion in to the Murray-Darling.â€
“Well, I’m gong to abolish AWAs…in 2012.â€
“That’s nothing; here’s $34 billion for tax cuts.â€
“So what? I’ll top that with 9,000 nurses.â€
Glen,
The next poll is out on Friday.
Exactly, and that is what the polls reflect and why they won’t change.
The way the voice over guy says secretary in the anti-union ads; more like ’sec-a-terry’, is the only thing that really gets my attention. There is nothing that influences my vote more than poor pronounciation…
Shows On (683) – thanks so much for that image!
Actually, it may not be so far from the truth. The Libs WILL “eat themselves” if this election brings about a defeat as bad as it’s looking.
Ii seems Seven News here in Perth won’t be doing any election stories if this is correct according top their Newsmail.
All Howard has ever had is the big bribe and the big scare.
Unfortunately for him, neither is going to work this time around.
No, I tell a lie that comment was @ 668.
Anyway, perhaps rcandelori is a clairvoyant and time-travel who responds to comments that have yet to be posted? Maybe he or she is really the “Nostradamus” who sometimes posts here?
All the folk of the left should admit it. You all have that horrible feeling …..that Howard will do it again.
Libs ‘face civil war’ in wake of defeat
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/17/2061702.htm
This news story is guaranteed to give Labor supporters ‘wet dreams’ and Liberal supporters ‘nightmares’….
Question for the anti-union bloggers.
Name one significant working condition that employers have granted employees out of their own initative?
Chris Curtis.@ 675
My elderly mother rang me immediately after that interview and said Howard had taken 10 minutes while Rudd had only 6. (Hmm yes she doesn’t get out much.) That may explain Kerrie’s impatience… he does take forever to answer a question.
Doesn’t anybody know what that thing means on the donation page?
Gees, even Howard has weighed into the Ben Cousins Affair calling it a “Personal Tragedy”.
hmm, does this means Howard supports Druggies ?
I’m currently in the process of purging this thread of some squabbling. Rcandelori has been banned for threatening another commenter with legal action.
William Bowe
http://www.pollbludger.com
rcandelori (670) – you seem to have this idea that elections are about policy. They are not, they are about narrative. Most people don’t pay too much attention to political comings and goings like we do here, and tend to be influenced more by the story that either side tells. Thus Howard wins in 1996 (by running against “special interests”) in 1998 (”the man with the plan”), 2001 (”defending us in scary times”) and 2004 (”keeping interest rates low”). Labor by contrast struggled to present a coherent story to the electorate (viz, 1996 – “don’t trust the other side”, 1998 – “don’t you hate Howard?”, 2001 – “save the furniture” & 2004 – “come on an adventure with Mad Mark”).
In 2007, fortunes have reversed. It doesn’t matter whether Rudd has a vision for the future or not. The point is that he’s talking about it, and raising some of the issues that we will need to confront. Howard, on the other hand, has no coherent narrative (”vote for me and I promise to retire” is probably not good enough) this year.
It’s also worth remembering that in 1996, one John Winston Howard went to the election with very few policies and very few points of difference with the Labor government (in fact just two – abolition of unfair dismissal protection for small business employees, and selling a third of Telstra). That did not stop him winning in a landslide.
I would be more scared of Extreme Brethren doppelgangers that stalk the hallways of Parliament house seeking out Ministers to invade. I can a few Ministers they have twinned already. Ruddock, Andrews, Nelson, Bishop, Howard – it is all becoming like a Blair Witch project.
Also interesting to not that Dr Hewson last night asked if the LNP lost the election if factions would take it even further to the right. Hewson laughed and said if it went any further right it would fall of the end of their flat earth.
Frank,
The way the Rodent’s been acting since he called the election, he must be on some sort of illicit substance. Of course the same can be said for his cheerleaders at the GG and the ABC.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22602274-5013947,00.html
Costello stumped by mortgage claim
‘FEDERAL Treasurer Peter Costello was lost for words today when asked to explain why interest rates will go up sharply under a Labor government.
The Liberal website says that under a Labor government people can expect to pay $3,276 per year extra on their mortgage, but Mr Costello doesn’t know why.
Quoting from a 2007 Econtech report, the website says Labor’s industrial relations policy will push interest rates 1.4 per cent higher than they are today.
“This means working families will have to pay an extra $273 every month on their mortgage repayments,” it says.
But asked by a journalist to explain such figuring, Mr Costello didn’t have an answer.’
Not the response you’d expect from dual headed leader and Treasurer of 11 years.
Please note that a lot of inoffensive comments were chopped because they were responses to comments that are no longer there.
William Bowe
http://www.pollbludger.com
Further to the discussion on the evolving campaign, I would propose that the heavy negative attack on unions and union connection to Labor, is further evidence that the LNP have got nothing beyond bribes, fear and smear, as correctly picked by Labor. Seems to me that Labor have got themselves prepared, and again if the long term trend in voting intention holds true, the LNP will gain little traction. I was pleasantly surprised this arvo to hear two callers to local ABC, after Joe Hockey had been on bamboozling the light weight Lindy Burns, telling two very different stories. The first person said he was a small business owner, in IT, who was fed to the back teeth with the attacks on unions, that he was quite happy with unions, and thought Hockey was a dill. The second said Hockey had been lying about what Workchoices actually enabled, in terms of reducing people’s actual real pay, quoting the case of the Priceline accountant who got fired, and the same position offered for, I think, $25,000 less. Lindy Burns is sweet, but utterly clueless about politics. Again, local ABC goes out across a lot of south east Australia, tends to be trusted because of critical role in disaster response, plus some other stuff, like acerbic Red. Though Jon Faine has been getting up my nose of late. Why can’t he stop talking long enough for the interviewee to respond?
.
.
If you’re talking about the Paypal page, you put the amount you want to donate in the box titled ‘unit price’ and then click the ‘update totals’ box.
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22602810-5005361,00.html
Paul K @ 688
Thanks mate. All done.
And who could disagree with Mr. Howard on this one Frank?
# 601 Glen Says: October 17th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I don’t trust any lawyers. At least with a union official, you know where his allegiances lie.
So… how much of the liberal front-bench are lawyers?
Apparently, the things that unite us are greater than our differences.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/cheney-obama-are-cousins/2007/10/17/1192300841165.html
Scary, isn’t it!
To our Tassie bloggers out there,
Wat happened on the 7:30 Report today?
Kerrie is giving Bob Brown a hard time.
Bob Brown is coping with it.
Greens’ supporters should be disappointed with their leader’s performance on the 7:30 report. Bob Brown looked and sounded as though he was advocating a vote for the Australian Labor Party.
Paul @ 695,
Yeah, he sure was. I don’t really understand quite what was going on there. But Bob took it in stride. Did you catch the line, though, that only 3 seats need to change hands in the Senate for the Greens to achieve balance of power? In that instance, they will work with Labor and then the Senate is out of the coalitions control any more. Only 3 seats nation wide. That is enough to convince me that I will vote Greens in the Senate.
697 comments on this thread in about 15.5 hours!! And we’ve still got 5.5 wks to go!! Looks like there’ll be 2000+ comments on the Night of the Returns.
Well, he is directing more preferences towards Labor than in 2004.
I think BB has realised that this is the best chance of Labor knocking Howard off since 1998 and he’s doing everything he can to ensure Howard goes down this time.
I figure he reckons that sacrificing some die-hards to the Socialist Alliance is worth it if Howard loses.
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