Shock Poll: Albanese Nearly As Unpopular As… Peter Dutton!
Yep, apparently it’s all bad news for Labor with their leader, Anthony Albanese only leading the preferred PM stakes by a mere 45 to 37…
Now, I know some of you will remember that I’ve always maintained a few simple rules about opinion polls:
- The preferred PM question is interesting but, in the end, means nothing. Frequently the incumbent leads and it’s really all about the two party preferred vote, so I would have thought that the 50/50 two party preferred was more important.
- The two party preferred vote means very little for an individual poll because the margin of error is so great that almost all elections fall within the margin of error so that even if a party was leading 52-48 and the end result was 49-51 the poll was still within the margin of error even though it went from a comfortable win to a loss.
- Country-wide polls can be misleading because the election is decided by individual electorates and every election has the potential to throw up a handful of out-of-kilter results that save or damn a government. A case in point is Chisholm in 2016 which saved Turnbull even though the Liberals were so sure that they’d lose it that they picked Gladys Lui to stand…
- Because 90% of polls are done well before an election, they’re virtually useless because most people aren’t paying attention and it’s only when the election campaign starts that people suddenly decide that the government isn’t so bad because it just gave them a tax cut or that the opposition are worth a go because they’ve just promised to get rid of the great big tax on everything which will bring their energy bills down by $500.
Having watched the way the electoral cycle works for over half a century, I’d suggest that what happens is that – after a period where the Liberals are in power, people eventually realise that when they say that they’re good at economic management what they mean is that they’re good at managing to steer money into the pockets of their supporters and that they couldn’t give a stuff about most voters – people eventually vote Labor into office. This usually coincides with some economic problem such as the stagflation of the 70s, the GFC, or the recent runaway inflation. Hawke and Keating may have had a recession but that wasn’t as bad as any of the other shocks. After a couple of elections, people become disappointed in Labor and start saying things like: “They’re no better than the other mob and at least the other mob didn’t cause the GFC!” At this point, the other mob is voted in and people gradually start to remember that, while Labor may be no better than the other mob, the other mob are somehow worse than Labor. After a period where the Coalition use the excuse that they’re fixing Labor’s mess, people suddenly remember exactly why they threw them out in and put Labor back in to have the whole process start again.
When it comes to economics, of course, no government can ever win. At best they can convince people that this is good for them in the long run and all their decisions will pay off if you’ll just be patient. This worked for Malcolm Fraser and his treasurer, John Howard, who convinced people that they were working to contain the inflation and unemployment that Whitlam caused by creating a world-wide oil crisis, but eventually people started to notice that inflation, unemployment and interest rates were all worse than when Fraser came to power.
If we take the recent argy-bargy over interest rates and the poor state of growth, we have the rather interesting scenario of a Reserve Bank raising rates with the idea of curbing growth and putting downward pressure on inflation, only to have some commentators suggesting that the poor rate of growth in the economy may land us in a recession and that the government should do something but not anything that adds to inflation… which is potentially anything which goes against the RBA’s policy of trying to rein in inflation by suppressing growth. Of course, anybody paying attention to economic data would notice that the rate of inflation has gone down significantly. This doesn’t mean that prices aren’t going up still; they’re just not going up by as much as they were a couple of years ago and they may even hit the target range by the end of the year. Unless, of course, something happens and they don’t!
For example, to end winter we had the rather interesting weather patterns of record high temperatures up north and extreme winds down south. As yet I haven’t heard Chris Uhlmann explain that the winds were caused by South Australian wind farms causing the weather to be blown into Victoria and Tasmania. Whatever, this was not one of those times that Dutton likes to talk about where “the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow”… (On a side note, has anyone ever pointed out that the sun is always shining and that it’s only not shining on a particular spot because it’s night-time or cloudy. I mean it’s the height of egocentricity to suggest that the sun isn’t shining just because it isn’t shining on you…)
Anyway, economically speaking days like that make the cost of electricity so cheap that it’s not profitable to run your coal-fired power station but it’s too expensive to temporarily shut it down so you have to keep it running even though you’re losing money. As more renewables come into the system, coal has more and more days where it’s not profitable, so we need to restrict renewables in order to make coal viable or else we won’t have power if the sun ever explodes and there’s no more solar energy. This means people could argue that renewables are too expensive because soon they’ll lead to a situation where we need to subsidise coal-fired power stations in order to keep them going. While I’m not sure that you’ll agree with that, it’s basically the argument that Peter Dutton is using when he suggests that we need to halt their spread and that the government should build nuclear power stations to replace coal and that the government needs to do it because the market can’t raise the sort of money that would enable a nuclear plant to make a loss on a long term basis.
See, economics means that there’s never an easy answer for a government!!
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16 comments
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Bert -
ajogrady -
John C -
Terence Mills -
Peter F -
Cool Pete -
Ron H -
GL -
Michael Taylor -
Clakka -
paul walter -
Terence Mills -
Arnd -
Steve Davis -
Cenrelink customer -
paul walter
Return to home pageNever an easy answer…. bloody hell Rossleigh, what are you saying, that we need politicians who can think?
I do wonder whether the RBA is a branch of the Liberal Party though. The people most affected by the increase in interest rates are those who can least afford it, those with mortgages for example, not those who own their homes, plus a few rentals, holiday homes etc and shareholding in banks and other business institutions.
That said, I was recently reminded by a friend that the super annuation account I carefully nurtured so I could afford to continue living in retirement is dependent on the capitalist system to ensure meeting on going cost of living things, like rent and food and fuel….
No easy answers.
Albanese Labor’s inhumanity will not be forgiven at the ballot box.
The tragedy of Gaza was set aside by the Albanese government’s prioritising its groveling
subservients to Zionism by the
appointment of an envoy for anti Semitism. How can apparently responsible leaders preside over this charade which attempts to prevent Australians from engaging in real debate about an international humanitarian crisis?
Nobody is as unpopular as the chrome domed spudhead unless you count previous ‘leaders’ of the despised LNP. To name a few; Scummo, Budgie-smuggler, rotten Johnny, Fraser, Menzies, the list is long…
They say that Albo dropped the ball when he interfered with the census question on sex and gender identity particularly the bit about ‘what were you born with ?’ which Labor considered would encourage some in the community to be drawing ‘cock & balls’ graffiti on what is supposed to be a serious national census document.
We saw what happened when we started asking people about their religious beliefs and all of a sudden thirty percent of the population declared themselves to be adherents to the Jedi Code as a religion with Yoda as their legendary Jedi Master. There was even a bloke who was a member of the International Church of Jediism, whose doctrine decrees members should be allowed to wear hoods, who said he was a victim of religious discrimination after he was thrown out of his local Centrelink for refusing to lower his hood or park his light-sabre after being politely requested to do so.
The supplementary questions on gender now to be included in the census will extend over twenty-five pages with graphics and a Youtube video (in twenty six languages including galactic-basic as spoken by some Jedi Knights).
Albo needs to consider the implications and ramifications of interfering with these issues, it could lose him votes in the non-binary quadrant !
I am waiting for Dutton to nominate the address in his electorate where he intends a nuclear power station to be built.
In response to AJ O’Grady, yes, you’re right, but that probably won’t translate into votes for Potty Boy and Liarberals unless, of course, people preference them ahead of Labor. Most will go for the Greens.
Most of us understand that economics are global not local.
Hi 🙂 I read about as far as the comment that Gough Whitlam caused the world oil crisis but when I researched it I found the Arabs created it against America and any countries supporting Israel. If we hadn’t supported Israel we wouldn’t have had any oil problem. You also mentioned how Malcolm Fraser tried to give the illusion of trying to fix unemployment and inflation caused by Gough Whitlam after he created the world oil crisis (which he didn’t) but unemployment only rose from about 2.5% to 4.7% whereas Malcolm Fraser kept taking it through the roof at one stage later in his term to over 12%. As for inflation there was a world oil crisis while he was in power so oil fuel would have gone through the roof yet he kept inflation to under 5.5% with his last full 3 months of the CPI showng 0.6% which I’m not sure how long before 1970 it was when anything lower was achieved but after him thy don’t achieve a lower % until about 1984 approx. and Malcolm Fraser had worse quarterlies. Regards…Ron
I gather the “poll” was run by the ever so honest, completely above board, terrific and truthful Resolve Hard Core Liberal Political Monitor for their pay masters at the non-bias SMH?
Ron, Rossleigh writes satire. 😀
Yes, and we know on his departure Mal Fraser turned the lights out, just as, recently those pesky winds from the SA wind farms turned the lights out in Vic and Tas. Darn it, reliability can never be taken for granted.
Terence Mills:
“What were you born with?”.
For god’s sake, untie your trackies and LOOK DOWN!!
Paul
That’s the point – well spotted !
Well, Bert:
Interesting conundrum, isn’t it?
I had just arrived in Australia for the first time when the push for compulsory super by Hawke and Keating gained momentum, back in the late 80s. With reference to my introduction to the Marxist analysis and critique of capitalism a decade earlier, I couldn’t help but realise at once that this idea is a double-edged sword: sure, it provides sorely needed access to retirement benefits for workers! But it does so at the expense of making them complicit in their own commercial exploitation!
It took me another half decade or so, before I resolved that conundrum to my satisfaction. As for discussing my solution, I never found anyone who was particularly interested. Probably because the problem itself wasn’t, and still now is not that well recognised.
Arnd, the problem was recognised by Chomsky way back. Can’t remember his solution.
If the federal budget directed a decent amount to healthcare, public transport, funding of the arts etc, we would not need a fortune to retire.
The money’s there, just take it from defence.
CEO of ACOSS Cassandra Goldie,
Your office refused to acknowledge or take action in relation to 2 illegal debt schemes administered by Services Australia. Your office refused to provide the rules of the schemes and advised me to pay off the debts or apply to AAT.
Scheme # 1. Fake Review Scheme. Services Australia did not conduct a formal review I applied for 2 years ago. they used a void decision (AKA an objection letter) to abuse and rob me.
Scheme # 2. Family Assistance Office automatically issue debt notices for 100% rent assistance payments if a parent was ineligible for FTB. They waived over $4000, but they had not right to issue them in the first place.
Cassandra Goldie, you have to ensure that all schemes affecting welfare payments are publicly available.
Re Albo, methinks he may have been put in it by another and left to untie the knot.
For Centrelink customers, I hope your post had a good read. Wasn’t the gov supposed to put an end to this sort of thing?