There’s quite a diversity of questions – from public perceptions of animal welfare when purchasing meat products, through to perceptions of the most important issues faced by rural Australia, through to social and familial connections of all Australians to rural Australia. It’s worth a squiz – some of the questions and responses are actually a bit of a giggle.

There were two questions though that stood out. The first asked:

Thinking of (most important problem facing rural Australia), who do you think is most responsible for providing solutions?

The responses are quite astonishing – here I converted the response frequencies to the same format that we’re used to seeing with polls, where refused/not completed are are removed from the pool.

80% of the public think government is responsible for solving whatever they believe is the most important problem for rural and regional Australia! Just what those problems are can be found in the survey itself – it’s quite a broad list.

The other question worth having a look at, or rather a set of questions, goes to public perceptions and expectations of the social values and behaviour of both rural and metropolitan Australia. Some of these too give a bit of a giggle. I’ve rounded the results up to nearest whole percentage point.

It’s also really worth reading the comments sections of the original articles to not only get a feel for the vibe of the day, but also to laugh at the nervous ALP supporters!

I’ll drop a link in to the original comments section at the bottom of each of these posts.

Today’s article is:

It’s true – they’ve gone mad and eaten Mark Textor.

OK, let’s try to follow the logic.

We have the Coalition that is well behind in the polls and where one of the primary reasons, if not the primary reason for the thumping the electorate is giving them is the impact (real and imaginary) of Workchoices on peoples lives.

It’s electoral poison. The policy that dares not speak its name is not spoken of for a reason – very bad things happen to the Coalition vote when it starts getting mentioned.

So Howard, in his current state of madness, thinks it’s a really spiffy idea to come out and not only throw the focus back onto Workchoices, but say:

“If we win on Saturday then the reforms that we have brought about will never be reversed by a future federal Labor government…. They will become part of the furniture. They will become so embedded in our business and workplace culture that no future Labor government would be able to reverse them.”

WTF?

Vote for us and the policy that you hate the most will be guaranteed to exist forever?

What sort of madness is that?

It makes Howard look like he’s not only arrogant, but that he hates the part of the electorate that changed votes because of Workchoices, and is hell bent on punishing them for it.

I don’t know what drug induced focus groups that intellectual gem came out of, but I’d be asking for my money back. Even if the Coalition is cutting its losses over the Workchoices vote in the east and is just trying to shore up support in WA where they think Workchoices plays better (as well as with the nonsense conviction vote spiel) – they’re still risking a further swing away from them in their soft vote in the East. Especially from those people that don’t like Workchoices but aren’t yet convinced to vote Labor. Looking arrogant, out of touch and having the whiff of retribution about you is simply not a good look.

When we take into account the fact that the Coalition knew that their Workchoices Mk II documents were going to be raised in public as they successfully blocked FOI attempts over them, and that this would inevitably make them look devious and untrustworthy over further IR reform – why would you say what Howard said above?

Either the Liberal strategy team are complete tools, or they’ve all gone mad and eaten Mark Textor.

UPDATE:

To add fuel to the fire, now we have Barnyard Joyce saying he’ll support the ALP IR legislation in the Senate.

What a circus.

————

The original comments thread can be seen here.

I’m usually spared this sort of third rate “Look at me!” piffle because our previous run ins have never ended particularly well for one us – but yesterday I too was roped into the latest dramaverse of Boltworld. Well, I was for a while, then I wasn’t, and then I was again! … but we’ll get to that bit of internet courage in a minute.

Andrew Bolt is actually a victim.

No, no, no, no… not a victim of conservative affirmative action that gets him the “lonely chair” on Insiders – a sort of special policy for special people – us idiots that watch the show are the true victims of that pernicious little act of ABC cowardice.

Uh uh. Andrew, you see, is a “victim” of terrible, gratuitous online insults that cause immeasurable hurt! You’ve got that arseclowns? It causes immeasurable hurt! But more shocking than that, if it’s even humanly possible to imagine something more shocking than being called names online by anonymous people, is that he’s the victim of rather unusual violent threats against his personal safety and that of his sphincter.

Andrew writes about your humble marsupial “one of [Jonathan] Green’s writers has urged in a headline that I be ’sodomised’ “ – referring of course to this little number from wayback, where keeping with the theme, he had his arse handed to him on a plate*

*Note to Andrew Bolt: I didn’t literally carve a chunk of your arse off and give it to you on a piece of fine China… just so we’re clear here and before you start wondering whether that’s why your jeans don’t quite fit properly anymore – it’s a metaphor.

The dramaverse of Andrew Bolt is so intense – and so extreme is the victimhood involved – that he apparently, in all honesty (who am I to question him), believed that particular piece “urged” people, *urged people* no less, to go out and stick calculators up his bum!

I imagine it made for some horrifically paranoid trips to the local Office Works – “is that bloke with the calculator a Pollytics reader”. Oh the humanity!

Now, apart from the spatial difficulties involved – with that particular area usually being filled by a head– what sort of drama queen actually envisages a world where people would chase him down the street, favourite Casio in hand, with the intent of unleashing unspeakable acts of deviancy and the odd long division?

Yes folks – it’s my solemn duty to inform you that we have reached Peak Wingnut.

But it gets even more pathetic, as all did not go well at Blog Bolt yesterday on this. Originally, the Bolt piece in question looks much as is does now – linking into my article with the word “sodomised”. So I thought I’d get up to a bit of mischief and added the following as an update at the very top of that post, guaranteeing that it would be the very first thing his readers would see as they came in from the link. If Bolt was going to be, well… his usual self, the least I could do was have a bit of fun.

To Bolt’s readers – let us hope that you’re a little sharper than the author of the site from whence you came, understanding both a well known political meme when you see one, and the importance of empirical reality guiding political commentary. If you can also manage to leave your dramaqueens at the door and spare me the poor little victim bullshit, you’ll be four points up on Bolt himself.

Not too long after, Bolt’s article was changed – here’s a grab:

The link had mysteriously disappeared! Those links eh, minds of their own sometimes. Particularly when things get a bit embarrassing.

I noted it on twitter at the time:

That caused much mirth around the traps – oh, how we all laughed… etc etc. Then, as the piss taking fallout was rapidly spreading across social media on the gutlessness of it all, you’ll never guess what happened.

The link miraculously re-appeared around 3:10 pm Qld time.

The whole thing is just 20 kinds of pathetic – to the stage where it’s starting to get utterly pointless to even joke about it these days.

On Monday, Bolt glowingly linked into a Sinclair Davidson piece (which I fully agree with BTW) on the nature of general internet and blog discussions, quoting this part in particular :

Some readers might baulk at my lofty descriptions of blogging vis-à-vis the rudeness, sarcasm and indecency that they may observe in the blogosphere. Indeed Catallaxyfiles where I blog is often singled out as being particularly nasty. Many of those making that claim, however, are social democrats who are simply not used to being challenged by articulate, educated and intelligent individuals. They live in world where disagreement with their ideals can only be due to corruption or stupidity.

To be fair, that isn’t the entire explanation. Blogging may be a conversation but it is not genteel. It is robust; it is frank. Just as markets can be a bazaar so a conversation can be a cacophony. It is well documented that individuals can be more aggressive online than in real life; but, on the flip side, they can also be more considered, more eloquent – and, with the ability to link to other sites on the web, they can back up their arguments with evidence.

So to reject the legitimacy of conversation on the basis of tone is to place form above substance.

Then on Tuesday, Bolt complains about his hurt feelings from the naughty bloggers and worries about people sticking calculators up his bum. It isn’t even farce anymore – it’s just pathetic. When serious media runs Bolt, they get in terms of audience quality exactly what they deserve – as they do with every other talking sock. If I see Bolt, I tune out – I can hear that shit anywhere.

And I’m not alone in thinking that.

It’s worth finishing with Annabel Crabb’s slapdown of Bolt on Insiders and now famous internet meme – The University of East Bumcrack:

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’d like to join the University of East Bumcrack Alumni – buy a shirt. All proceeds go to Annabel’s nominated charity, the Mallala Hospital.

The first question asked was “Which of the following is closest to your view about Global Warming?”. There were for possible responses, and we can track them across time:

The results here support what we’ve seen in both Essential Research and Newspoll polling on this topic over the last 12 months or so – a growing level of generic scepticism towards global warming. Yet, where it becomes interesting isn’t in the headline results (although they’re interesting enough), but in the demographic and party ID composition of those results.

Men (37%)  and non-capital city (36%) respondents are two largest and undoubtedly interrelated cohorts that believe concerns about global warming are exaggerated.There really is a substantial gender and geographic gap on global warming. On the political ID side of the equation, Labor and Greens voters have near identical levels of belief on the need to act, with the Greens having a slightly more “we’ll all be rooned” component and the ALP having a slightly larger skeptics component.  The 11% of Greens voters that believed concerns are exaggerated was a little out of left field. I’d imagine they’d be the life of the party and any Greens shindig.

Yet, this still doesn’t tell the whole story. We can compare these results from an identical poll Morgan ran on this topic 3 months ago, back in August. If we measure how the demographic and Party ID responses have changed over the period – we can see how how and where the campaign against global warming has been having it’s largest effect.

On the demographic side, the gender/geography polarisation has ramped up. The proportion of non-capital city respondents that believe that if we don’t act now it will be too late declined by 10% over the previous 3 months, shifting straight across on net to believing that global warming concerns are exaggerated (9% increase). Similarly, there was a 6% drop in the proportion of men that believe we need to act, with a 5% increase in the proportion of men now believing that concerns are exaggerated. The number of women skeptical of global warming didnt change over the period, although the intensity of female belief on the issue shifted, with a 5% reduction in women believing we need to act – all moving across to now believing it’s already too late.

On the political side, that shift in female intensity of belief on global warming was mirrored with Labor voters -  a 7% reduction in the proportion of skeptical ALP supporters occurring since August, and an 8% increase in the proportion of Labor voters that believe it’s already too late. The Coalition has reduced its “need to act” proportion by 7%, mostly shifting to the skeptical position.

Interesting here is the Greens – and not so much in terms of how the beliefs of their supporters changed over the period, but in how they did not change.

That 4% increase in the level of skeptical greens voters is probably neither here nor there (I hope so for their sake!) – but the absence of any real growth in the “It’s already too late” component of their voter base suggests that their nihilistic fringe on this issue has already maxed itself out for the time being. There appears to be much less political currency for the Greens in doom mongering over global warming than there is in being seen to constructively address the “If we dont act now it will be too late” part of the debate – something they might want to keep in mind when it comes to their media tactics.

The other question Morgan asked was on the CPRS legislation:

“There’s proposed legislation before Federal Parliament for a carbon emissions trading scheme to be introduced in Australia.Do you approve or disapprove of this legislation?”

We only have two polls worth of results on this question – so we don’t have any long term trends available, but we do have the three month change data.

While 50% still approve of the CPRS – there’s been a 5% drop since August, a 7 point increase in disapproval of the proposed CPRS and probably a slight reduction in the numbers that say they “don’t understand”.

On the results by demographic cohort and Party ID we get:

The demographic side of the CPRS issue is not far removed from generic views on global warming, with men and non-capital city respondents having the lowest level of approval, and women and those in the capitals having the highest. The large disapproval rating for men and the non-capital cities is highly likely to be driven by those over the 50 years of age – Morgan also has that data on their site in the links given at the top of the post for anyone that wants to check it out.

On the Party ID side, a majority of Greens voters approve of the CPRS – making the Greens the party that is most out of step with the actual views of it’s constituency. A clear majority of Labor voters approve and a plurality of Coalition voters disapprove – the Greens really are the odd one out here. As the Democrats demonstrated, minor parties need to be pay more attention to the way their policy aligns with the views of their constituents than the major parties – particularly over their core issues.

With the Coalition, the cost/benefit risk of their opposition to the CPRS is pretty dangerous – they’re almost caught in a lose/lose situation. If they pass the CPRS, 45% of their voters will disagree with the party’s actions, while if they prevent the legislation from passing, 37% of their voters will disagree with their actions – that is a substantial chunk of political grief lurking in the background regardless of what they ultimately do. If the Coalition block the legislation, it opens their predominantly female capital city flank up for electoral attack by Labor and the Greens at the next election – which really would be dangerous since we already know that the Coalition and Malcolm Turnbull are weak with female voters.

If we move on to how the demographics and  Party ID responses changed over the last 3 months.

Again, the big movement was in men and country voters, having a respective 9% and 11% reduction in approval responses over the CPRS. Yet while the change from approval on the CPRS for males went straight to disapproval on net, with country respondents it was split between an increase in CPRS disapproval and “Can’t Say”. Quite a few country respondents became skeptical skeptics.

Which is fair enough – I’d be loathe to believe a  word Barnaby said about anything more complicated than a cup of tea as well.

The other thing on the demographic side that stands out is how the “Don’t Understands” clarified their position into mostly disapproval over the last three months, suggesting the undecideds are breaking against the CPRS legislation, in both the capital cities and the country regions.

With the Party ID breakdowns, the biggest movement was a 19 point increase in disapproval of the CPRS legislation (from 16 in August to 35 in November) – although that also contains those strange “concerns are exaggerated” Greens and there was a large number of undecideds breaking into the disapproval camp. Labor had a slight bump up in support and drop in disapproval, while the Coalition had a 12% reduction in the proportion of their voters that approve the CPRS running with an 11% increase in those that disapprove.

All up, there’s quite a bit of info to chew over here.

UPDATE:

Elsewhere: Larvatus Prodeo

If we chart the first differences of each pollster since August – the amount that the two party preferred estimate has changed since the previous poll of that pollster – we get a good handle on the size and nature of the volatility. So if Newspoll came in at 57 up from 55 the fortnight before – that poll entry would have a value of +2. Similarly, if a Morgan face to face poll came in at 57 down from 60 in the previous Morgan face to face poll, that poll entry would have a value of -3. We’ll use the ALP for the two party preferred.

The polls were meandering along through August, through September and throughout October undergoing small changes within 3% each way. Suddenly at the very end of October, the polls all picked up significant movement.

Newspoll seemed to overshoot on the magnitude, but was the first poll off the rank to show a large, negative change for the ALP – coming in with the now infamous 7 point drop for the government. The other pollsters eventually followed, although it took some a little while to capture the zeitgeist, with Nielsen yawning at the whole affair. We can see the actual numbers involved if we table the behaviour since the beginning of November:

Interestingly enough, while the volatility has been pretty high, the actual polling trends tell a slightly more boring and probably realistic story story – the period where asylum seekers have dominated the media cycle has seen 2 points knocked off the government’s two party preferred on both the all pollster and phone pollster trend measures.

Boring is good because it’s more often than not, right.

Considering yesterday’s Essential Report, it would seem that whatever it was in the water is still there – polling volatility is the new black. A little later today we’ll take a closer look at this hypo behaviour from the pollsters over the last month or so.(UPDATE: Here it is)

This Newspoll looks a more historically consistent result with all the metrics now back in lockstep, particularly the net satisfaction/two party preferred nexus of the ALP:

On the individual satisfaction ratings, the asylum seeker issue (or whatever it is that’s been causing everyone to go berko on the vote estimates) has caused bit of grief for Rudd – but while his satisfaction is down and dissatisfaction up over the last month, a complimentary boost to Turnbull hasn’t eventuated. It becomes particularly obvious in the net satisfaction charts.

If you look at the preferred PM figures, it gets even more bizarre – almost as if no vote estimate volatility should have occurred at all!

It all begs the question of whether this was merely the “End of the Rudd Honeymoon” episode 422 or something else is going on.

This is the equal poorest result for the ALP that Essential has measured since their polls have been published, equaling the polls of mid November 2008 and late May of this year.

On the demographic cross-tabs of the vote estimates, Essential states that:

The major shift towards the Coalition in terms of primary vote is amongst people aged 65 years and over, and to a lesser extent those in the 55 – 64 year age group. There was no shift towards the Coalition amongst any other age groups.

With a Newspoll out tomorrow, I won’t run the new Pollytrend until those figures come in.

Additional questions this week concerned economic issues of major importance, best party to manage a set of given issues, the NBN, public perception of the power of various institutions,as well as the CPRS.

How concerned are you personally about each of the following economic issues facing Australia today?

On the cross-tabs we have:

Coalition voters were more likely to be very concerned about food prices and inflation generally (60%), jobs going overseas (57%) and Government debt (54%). Labor voters were more likely to be very concerned about executive wages (54%) and improving wages for low income earners (32%).

Females were more likely than males to be very concerned on most issues, in particular food prices and inflation generally (66% v 45%), improving wages for low income earners (34% v 22%) and unemployment (33% v 25%).

If we tally up the “Total concerned” and sort by order, we get:

It’s interesting here that the two largest general areas of concern are food prices and petrol/energy costs – which combined,  doesn’t bode well for climate change policy in Australia.

.

Between Liberal and Labor, which party do you think would be best at managing each of the following issues?

The cross tabs state that “Perception of which party is best at managing the economic issues listed followed party lines”. Labor is behind the Coalition on 9 of the 13 economic issues surveyed.

.

The Federal Government plans to build a National Broadband Network over the next few years. How important do you think it is for Australia to build a National Broadband Network?

The cross-tabs tell us:

Labor voters were more likely to think it is very/quite important (75%) while Coalition voters were more likely to think it is not so important/not at all important (36%). 60% of Coalition voters think the NBN is very/quite important for Australia.

People living in capital cities were slightly more likely than those living in regional areas to think the NBN is very/quite important for Australia (66% v 63%).

.

Who do you think will run the National Broadband Network? And who do you think should run the National Broadband Network?

On the cross-tabs we have:

32% of people surveyed don’t know who will run the National Broadband Network (NBN), 27% think the Federal Government will run it and 26% think Telstra will. Labor voters were more likely to think the NBN will be run by the Federal Government (38%), while Coalition voters were more likely to think it will be run by Telstra (34%).

40% think the Federal Government and 16% think Telstra should run the NBN. Labor voters were more likely to think the Federal Government should run the NBN (54%), while Coalition voters were more likely to think it should be run by Telstra (27%).

.

Which of the following do you think are the most powerful and politically influential organisations in Australia?

On the cross-tabs, Essential says:

Labor voters were more likely to think that the most influential and powerful organisations in Australia are the major banks (28%), while Coalition voters were more likely than the average to think trade unions are (16%). Green voters were more likely to think that most power and influence is vested with mining companies (18%).

People aged 55 years and over were more likely to think that media companies are the most powerful organisations in Australia (40%), while people aged 25 – 34 were more likely to think power and influence in Australia is held by mining companies (16%).

.

Thinking about climate change, the Government says legislation for an emissions trading scheme needs to be passed before the world summit on climate change being held in Copenhagen in December. The Opposition says Australia should delay making any decisions on an emissions trading scheme until after the world summit. Who do you agree with most?

On the cross-tabs, we see:

People aged 55 years and over were more likely to agree with the view of the Opposition’s view that the introduction of an emissions trading scheme should wait until after the world summit (55%), while people aged 34 years or less were more likely to agree with the Government’s view regarding the introduction of the scheme before the world summit (38%).

Males were more likely than females to agree with the view of the Opposition on this issue (44% v 34%).

That equates to an average swing of 2.7% to Labor in these six electorates (The Oz has it at 2.9 but that’s not what I get), which should put the Qld wide swing at the moment something in the order of 3-4% or more. If a party receives a given swing at an election, that swing is usually smallest in their own safe seats, largest in the safe seats of their opposition, with the size of the swing in the marginal seats falling somewhere in the middle.

If we use the last election as an example and measure the different swings in certain categories of seats, it tells the story.

So a swing of 2.7% in the marginals in Qld should equate to a slightly larger Qld wide swing.

Morgan released a tidbit of info in their usual face to face polling release about a telephone poll they took over November 11/12 that had the two party preferred slashed to 52/48 from a small sample of 573. If we feed that into our Pollytrend charts, we get:

However, without having the primary vote details I can’t calculate the poll averages – so we’ll use the result for our trend charts but not the averages.

Over the weekend, the Greens also released a small bit of polling they commissioned by Galaxy on public perceptions of emissions trading. Rather than simply repeat what Andrew Norton has said about this – since I agree completely with him – I’ll simply point you in his direction.

That makes all 4 regular pollsters having shown a drop in support on both the primaries and TPP for Labor over the last month, with 2 – Newspoll and Morgan – showing a considerable drop (although the former was still most likely an outlier while the latter has a pretty small sample size).

However, it’s enough to register a drop in both the phone poll and all pollster trend metrics of Pollytrend, which can be seen over the fold:

Next week we should have a new Newspoll – and of course our regular Essential Report, which should both give us a better handle on the likely size of the drop in ALP support.

Qld is the only State where unemployment hasn’t started to taper off, with NSW looking like it’s leading the pack on the employment recovery.

If we look at how the unemployment rate has changed in each state since January 2007, Tasmania has had a mighty fine economic downturn, having had their unemployment rate actually reduce over the period.

The resource states of Qld and WA were hit hardest, but should be expected to undergo a bit of volatility but overall strong decline over the next few years as the resource boom swings back into action.

The other stats worth looking at are the underemployment rates. The ABS defines underemployment as:

Employed persons aged 15 years and over who want, and are available for, more hours of work than they currently have. They comprise:

Persons employed part time who want to work more hours and are available to start work with more hours, either in the reference week or in the four weeks subsequent to the survey; or
Persons employed full time who worked part time hours in the reference week for economic reasons (such as being stood down or insufficient work being available). It is assumed that these people wanted to work full time in the reference week and would have been available to do so.

It’s a good addition to the usual unemployment rate as it catches a wider group of people that are still experiencing a lack of employment rather than a total absence of employment. People will often criticise the unemployment rate for defining someone that works as little as an hour or two a week as being employed. Yet the problem really isnt with the unemployment rate as a definition – unemployment is a total absence of employment -  we need to learn to use the right tool for the job!

First up, looking at both unemployment and underemployment by gender:

The underemployment metrics only go up to August, while the unemployment rates go up to October. It’s interesting that unemployment increased with the GFC while underemployment was still trending down. That is a pretty whacky labour market transition mechanism at play, suggesting that businesses might not have been reducing the hours of their workforce rather than sacking people by as much as we’d been thinking they had. Certainly after March of this year it looks like it was the total hours of the workforce getting reduced rather than reducing the over all size of the workforce – but in the early part of the crisis, that September 08 to March 09 period,  unemployment jumped while underemployment trended down.

If we track that underemployment metric over a longer timeframe, we pick up something pretty interesting as well.

The period from August 2002 through to December 2003 saw a dramatic jump in underemployment – almost as if some structural change had occurred in the labour market. I’ve never paid that much attention to it before and would be interested if anyone has an explanation. It’s also something we see across age cohorts, but particularly with the 15-24 year age group.

The sharp spike this year also suggests that, as happens with most downturns, the youngest in the labour market are the ones that get clobbered the hardest.