Essential Research: 58-42 to Coalition
This week’s Essential Research poll gives Labor its worst result since the company opened for business in 2008: a primary vote of 29%, down two points on last week, and a two-party preferred deficit of 58-42. The former is particularly alarming for Labor, as Essential typically has Labor’s primary vote a few points higher than the phone pollsters. The Coalition and the Greens are steady on 50% and 11%.
With respect to the economy, 66% allowed that it had performed better than other countries’ over the past few years (although this was down from 70% in August last year), with 15% believing it to be worse (up from 10%). In the event of another global financial crisis, 42% would better trust the Liberal Party to deal with it than Labor, on 25%. Forty-six per cent anticipate the economy will get worse over the next 12 months against 23% who think it will get better (the figures when the question was asked a year ago were 37% worse and 27% better).
Sixty-two per cent believe a politician accused of an offence should stand down from their positions, against 27% who believe they should be allowed to continue. Questions on banking suggest the public to be well to the left of the elites on these matters: 55% would support the establishment of a government-owned bank, 74% forcing banks to charge rates in line with the Reserve Bank, 81% capping chief executive’s salaries, 92% limiting bank fees to the costs of the service and 59% a super profits tax on banks (the numbers opposed were respectively 23%, 16%, 12%, 5% and 21%). Fifty-nine per cent would support a levy on large transactions of currencies, bonds and shares, with 16% opposed.
Categories: Federal Politics 2010-
Bemused
I would much prefer the ‘member for manly’ or the Liberals as the label for discussing the opposition. They do it too much though. Takes out a bit of time for the pathos for why you are doing things.
The sale pitch should really be:
we are providing an extra $1000 for families this year (Feature)
The Member for Manly tried to stop you getting it (advantage)
This means you can breath a little easier with your families finances (benefit)
The connotation for the above is we care for families and Abbott doesn’t.
On comms- A little on the fringes. Quite a lot of direct community engagement though.
by bluegreen on May 10, 2012 at 10:58 am
I will resume watching 7.30 when Leigh Sales returns. It wasn’t so much Uhlmann’s perceived bias that drove me away. He just isn’t very talented.
by drake on May 10, 2012 at 10:58 am
Leigh is just better.
by triton on May 10, 2012 at 11:01 am
Heres the AFR Priest story (not Ashby)
About taking money off crims Al Capone style
I suggested that a while ago.
http://www.afr.com/p/national/budget/drug_money_fed_into_budget_surplus_2641OEUudjL97jWk6k6DqI
by bluegreen on May 10, 2012 at 11:01 am
lizzie
Maybe farmers have changed since my younger days, but back then farmers knew about farming, not how to care for the environment. Clearing every last tree for miles around for cropping, only to have the topsoil blow away in a drought, was common and I remember the same farmers bemoaning the effects of soil erosion.
I would hope modern farmers would be more aware but I doubt Barnaby would know a harvester from hernia.
by Puff, the Magic Dragon. on May 10, 2012 at 11:06 am
Drake.
Ulmann is boring.
KOB was good at the hard i/v, but he did it without reliance on rudeness, and treating people like crap. I think CU uses force to cover up his lack of talent.
by Puff, the Magic Dragon. on May 10, 2012 at 11:10 am
@Puff/5204
That be saying Malcolm Turnbull would know what the Telecommunications Industry would want.
by zoidlord on May 10, 2012 at 11:10 am
bluegreen @ 5200
I think you have better ideas than the PMs office seems to have. I wish you were working there.
by bemused on May 10, 2012 at 11:12 am
zoidlord
).
MT invested in Ozemail and made a lot of dosh, and that is it for his IT credentials, (or so other PBers have posted, and they seem a pretty cluey lot
by Puff, the Magic Dragon. on May 10, 2012 at 11:14 am
Unless the ideas were supported by the CoS and head of comms and press sec then I would be wasting my time
What is really going to change Oz politics is that one day a pollie is just going to talk frankly and like a human and all of Australia will pay attention.
Until that day, no other Ministerial Minder will encourage their boss to follow suit.
by bluegreen on May 10, 2012 at 11:18 am
Tasmanian ALP Senator congrats Obama for stance. Latika tries to be smart arse and highlights the shallowness of modern media
by bluegreen on May 10, 2012 at 11:21 am
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:25 am
bg
Is that the big yarn Priestly is talking about?
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:25 am
Vic
I dont know.
by bluegreen on May 10, 2012 at 11:27 am
Tony Abbott’s Blackhole is now on the BISONs and they are not happy – http://thefinnigans.blogspot.com.au/p/blackhole_10.html #auspol
by The Finnigans on May 10, 2012 at 11:27 am
Zenophon and Bishop just made good statements in the Senate re Qantas. A lot of the stuff should be front page news again. Appalling Qantas management and Board behaviour.
Joyce now having his say.
by BH on May 10, 2012 at 11:27 am
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:27 am
bluegreen @ 5209
Funny about that.
My experience at work has been rather similar in that I have found openness and honesty really does work. People do not like to be bullshitted to and would rather the truth, warts and all. The key think is when you say you will do something, you actually do it! And if something goes wrong, you admit it, commit to fixing it, and do so.
That creates a vital thing called trust which the government seems to be in short supply of.
by bemused on May 10, 2012 at 11:28 am
Mick77: you’re the one living in a parallel universe; presumably a politically right one, if you know so little about unions, esp professionals.
Mind you, the Liberal party, however much it tries to pretend it isn’t, is well aware of it. BTW In Qld, despite Joh BP’s ranting, all the many Nat teachers I knew were members of the union, inc one whose father was a Fraser Gov Minister, with some serving on State Council & Conference.
Most professional unions cover the gamut of political affiliation – the QTU’s Council covered the spectrum from rabid DLP to rabid Stalinist (sometimes difficult to tell the difference; imo they were both sexist fascists) and its presidents during my teaching career reflected the spread: Lyle Schuntner, liberal; successor Mary Kelly, feminist Labor. It was that huge spread of opinions which made the apparent drudgery of active membership (huge amount of reading, inc legal and financial documents; moving/ speaking to motions, summing up the debate) so exciting, and kept union Peak Councils so fascinating.
BTW, 1. The QTU has very close ties with the private sector union; which was, amusingly, considerably to the left of the QTU, esp CathEd, which was well into Liberation Theology at the time. Both backed the Industrial Court cases, as whatever the QTU won “flowed on to” the private sector union.
2. I think the same applied to the Nurses’ Union (offices in the old QTU Boundary St building) which made the teacher unions look downright wussy. Messing with the Nurses was considered A Courageous Decision.
3. Federated Clerks union, otoh, was DLP controlled. Members were mainly women, poorly paid, with such poor conditions many of us bent over backwards reworking their job descriptions so they could move into more progressive unions able to gain better pay & conditions – usually the “Missos” (Miscellaneous Workers Union).
Incidentally, it is all true. So I assume that, if you’ve ever been a member of a union, it wasn’t as an active one.
I don’t know the sources of your information, but they know absolutely squat about professional & paraprofessional “trade” unions.
BTW, to check out what was happening to the Qld branch of HSU, read HSU QLD Branch Note Kathy Jackson’s “megalomanic” {sic} intervention. Definitely NOT welcomed by members. Happened when OH was being treated in the Oncology unit (& pathology, x-ray and medical wards) Both locals who’d taught staff, we copped earfuls.
by OzPol Tragic on May 10, 2012 at 11:28 am
bg
I doubt that is the big yarn he is referring to. If it is, yawn
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:29 am
Ulman goe from 7:30?
Where/when was this announced?
by muttleymcgee on May 10, 2012 at 11:30 am
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:30 am
Comment has already been made about the headlines in the West about electricity going up again under Barnett in WA.
To date, the increase has been in the region of 54% – all from Barnett- and another 15% has been flagged today – of which maybe 8% could be from the CT.
However, the cunning West have put the blazing headline as, “Electric shock of $220 a year looms in the Budget”.
Get it? See, clever play on words “shook” but insidious is the linking of the $220 to the word “Budget” just a day or two after the Federal Budget.
This is normal for the West which is decidedly unfriendly to Labor, if not as toxic as the Murdoch rags.
The big laugh though, was in the editorial where there is a kind of plea to JG to “do the right thing” and somehow excise Thompson and Slipper from parliament and thereby “protect” the “good name” of the parliament.
This, mind you, in a situation where the conservatives have attempted to trash the workings of the place since 2010.
There is an admission – to appear to be even handed I suppose – that while Thompson is somehow Labor’s problem and that the conservatives kind of should have done something about Slipper, the PM should just kind of boot them out and hand the keys of the Lodge over to Abbott.
The hypocrisy conservatives is set deeply in their DNA.
They are great one about “rules” and “protocols” and “conventions” when it suits them, but as we have seen from history they will trash them in a trice for power.
The gem is the following:
“It is true, as the Government leader in the House Anthony Albanese stated, that the parliament is not a court and cannot convict members on allegations alone. But it should be a barometer of public feeling and the overwhelming feeling across Australia is that the government is trying to defend the indefensible in relation to Mr Thompson and Mr Slipper”
So there you have it.
There is a kind of feeling out there that these guys have done something wrong and whether they have or have not, they should be got rid of ‘cos we have feeling that they are sort of guilty of something.
You know things are getting desperate when the conservatives are appealing to some misguided sense of “play by the rules” and failing this, “do the right thing”.
Rubbish.
If, as all the pundits have convinced themselves, there will be no Labor party left in parliament after the next election, and we have a one-party conservative state, then what has Labor really got to lose other than to stick to its guns?
Those with long memories will remember the despicable role the OO played in the defeat of the Whitlam government in 1975.
But most sickening was the way the OO came out, and pontificated, after the election to Gough, that he “shouldn’t sulk” as “good government” was dependent on there being a “strong opposition”. This, mind you, from a newspaper owner, who did all he could to destroy the Whitlam government a few weeks beforehand.
It was a load of crap then as now from the conservative rags.
If the worst comes to the worst, and Abbott gets in, if he comes out with anything like the “I govern for all Australians” crap, he can have it shoved back right where it came from – along with all the whingers who will take just 10 minutes to come out of the woodwork!
At the moment, the progressive side is fighting for a better Australia. The opposition for nothing other than naked power and vested interest.
It is all day-by-day stuff right until the election next year.
by Tricot on May 10, 2012 at 11:30 am
O’Kelly will look a lot like BishopB when she gets to that age.
by This little black duck on May 10, 2012 at 11:31 am
Idiot financial talking head on Sky was rabbbing on about a certain increase in u/e from 5.2 to 5.3. Whoops – it came in at 4.9. FFS
by al palster on May 10, 2012 at 11:32 am
hey finns
Unemployment rate is now at 4.9%
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:32 am
al palster
You really have to laught at our msm!
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:33 am
Jobless rate falls to 4.9%
by dave on May 10, 2012 at 11:33 am
Wow! 4.9%employment figure Front page news? I wonder.
by BH on May 10, 2012 at 11:33 am
by Space Kidette on May 10, 2012 at 11:33 am
One can understand the occaisonal oversight in updating a Member’s Record of Interests (or whatever it is called). These things happen from time to time and I have been guilty of quite a few administrative over sights in my time.
However, for Thomo, who has been under immense pressure over alleged shonky admin as a union official, it beggars belief that he just forgot to update his register of interests.
Wouldn’t he want to be squeaky clean in accounting for every dollar he now spends on the public purse and ensure every i was dotted an t crossed in relation to his registe of interests? It is in both the intersts of Thomo, with the likelihood of upcoming court cases, and the ALP with the heat they are copping on this issue, for the Register to be squeaky clean.
One can only come to the conclusion that this failure to report was clearly an attempt to avoid scrutiny.
A number of obvious questions then come from this revelation that the NSW ALP has been paying his legal bills:
1. Is the ALP just copping it sweet and do not expect repayment or is this a loan?
2. If it is not a loan, then it is clearly undeclared income and needs to be declared to the ATO and taxation levied.
3. If it is a loan – what are the repayment and interst arrangements? Are ALP members going to end up being gouged like HSU members?
4. If he is liable for taxation – can he pay? Should he be bankrupted? Is the Commisioner of Taxation aware of this?
If I was the ALP and it was a loan I would be callign it in now because he appears to be bankrupt.
How pissed off must members of the ALP be about having their hard earned used to support this putrid mess??
by Compact Crank on May 10, 2012 at 11:35 am
SK
It is sickening how the conservative side is trying to undermine our democracy
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:35 am
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:36 am
Unemployment down from 5.1% to 4.9% and the Economists are wRONg again. Who would have thunk that
by The Finnigans on May 10, 2012 at 11:37 am
victoria,
Low interest, low unemployment, low inflation. All good in my economic textbook.
by Space Kidette on May 10, 2012 at 11:37 am
SK
Yes indeed.
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:37 am
Job Rate is 4.9% Unbelievable BISON – Is there any better BISON than this one?
by The Finnigans on May 10, 2012 at 11:38 am
I bet we’ll get crap like
“The opposition has claimed that the fall in the unemployment rate is a sign of a bad government, with Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey claiming that it will put pressure on interest rates”
by Von Kirsdarke on May 10, 2012 at 11:38 am
ABS re unemployment in April
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6202.0?OpenDocument
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:39 am
@5222 – tricot – given the WA ALP Gov stopped power price rises for 10 years – what is your solution for playing catch up?? Just don’t??
by Compact Crank on May 10, 2012 at 11:39 am
Victoria,
I laugh out-loud every day at the MSM – especially the HS. They keep talking about a “jobs crisis” – like the ABC. Every time a worker gets sacked its news . No news when a worker gets employed.
by al palster on May 10, 2012 at 11:39 am
al palster
The msm are are disgrace. Actually makes my blood boil
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:40 am
@5232 – Jesus!! Really!! Make Crean a Consultant – with insights like that he has a great future.
by Compact Crank on May 10, 2012 at 11:40 am
If the economy is cranking along so well – why are we pouring billions into the sclerotic car industry???
by Compact Crank on May 10, 2012 at 11:41 am
CC
Looking forward to the expose on your coalition friends and the Slipper saga.
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:41 am
@5244 – victoria – exposure of what????
Is that all you got?
by Compact Crank on May 10, 2012 at 11:43 am
Compact Crank@5243
Because we have an emotional attachment to it.
by ShiftyPhil on May 10, 2012 at 11:43 am
CC
You like me, will just have to be paitent
by victoria on May 10, 2012 at 11:44 am
Slogan for the next election:
Unemployment will always be lower under a Labor Government than a Coalition one.
Both sticks it up the Coalition and more importantly it is true.
by Geoff D on May 10, 2012 at 11:45 am
@5244 – expose what – advice to an alleged victim to take their complaints to the correct authorities – that’ll bring down an Opposition, if not a government if ever I’ve seen a political scandal – Kemlani like!!! The Paddingtonm Bear episode esque. . .
by Compact Crank on May 10, 2012 at 11:46 am