(Cross posted from What the people want) Only 38% of Australians favour passing the government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) before the Copenhagen climate summit, with 46% opposed. 42% of Australians are absolutely opposed to the CPRS, while only 40% support it.
This is the quantitative result of our online survey of 1022 Australians on global warming. The sample was balanced to reflect the voting patterns of Australians at large.
The survey provides a deep insight into how people view the global warming issue. We first asked questions to ascertain whether respondents thought that CO2 was a greenhouse gas, whether they thought man’s production of it was causing climate change, and whether they thought there was an unacceptable risk of catastrophic climate change.
When asked whether increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase earth’s temperature, 62% agreed, 23% disagreed while 15% neither agreed nor disagreed or were unsure. Effectively less than two-thirds of Australians believe or are sure that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
The next question tried to determine how many believe that man’s emissions of CO2 are having an effect on the environment. In this case 58% agreed that they are while 28% disagreed.
The third proposition asked the “so what” question. Do “increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere pose an unacceptable risk of a catastrophic change in earth’s temperature in the future?” In this case 55% agreed with the proposition while 31% opposed it.
When the data was further dissected it became clear that voting intentions were highly predictive of belief or skepticism of catastrophic global warming. 93% of Greens believe that there is a risk of CO2 induced catastrophe, compared to 82% of Labor voters, 17% of Liberals and 5% of Nationals. (Table figures are slightly different to those above because minor parties are not represented in the dissection.)

Age was also a factor in whether respondents believe there is a significant risk of catastrophe.

Income was mixed. Those earning $75,000 p.a. or more were less likely than average to believe in a potential catastrophe, as were those earning $35,000 p.a. or less.
The controversy over whether there is a scientific consensus was also partially resolved by this research. 72% of scientists agree that there is an unacceptable risk of catastrophe.
There was also an industry split with those in Wholesale Trade least likely to see an unacceptable catastrophe coming (64%), followed by Mining (58%), and Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (49%). Educators (75%) were the most likely to see the risk of catastrophe as unacceptable.
Attitudes to the CPRS varied in some significant respects to what might be expected given the figures above. Only 40% support the CPRS while 42% oppose it. Strongest support comes from Labor voters (70%). Only 42% of Greens support it, 5% of Liberals and 2% of Nationals. This means that a significant number of those who believe there is an unacceptable risk of catastrophe do not support a CPRS.
The same holds true for the issue of whether to delay legislation until after the Copenhagen Summit. 46% of respondents believe it should be delayed.
The two tables below dissect these two propositions. 13% of those who strongly believe there is a a risk of catastrophe oppose the CPRS, and 22% support delaying the legislation until after Copenhagen.

(Cross posted from What the people want)
If they had a vote in the Liberal Parliamentary Party room Malcolm Turnbull would be the favoured choice of most Australians. Their second choice would be Peter Costello who resigned from parliament yesterday.
After preferences Turnbull would have won 59% of the vote.
We ran a virtual ballot using full-preferential voting as part of our last survey weighted to reflect voting preferences in the community. It included Tony Abbott, Julie Bishop, Peter Dutton, Joe Hockey, and Peter Costello on the ballot and instructed voters to number all squares.
Turnbull scored 40% on primaries and Costello 29%.
First out was deputy Julie Bishop followed by Peter Dutton (both on 3%). Tony Abbott, who won 8% of the first preferences, went out next followed by Joe Hockey (17%). Preferences favoured Turnbull over Costello by a margin of approximately 5:3.
Interestingly, when a similar ballot was conducted using just Liberal Party voters ,Turnbull’s margin decreased to 56%. A closer look at voting intentions showed that the main reason for this was that Costello was favoured over Turnbull by Liberal National Party voters.
Liberal National Party voters were also the least likely to vote for Peter Dutton, which may explain his loss in the MacPherson preselection recently.
The ballot confirms that as far as the public is concerned Turnbull is safe as Liberal Party leader. His only real competition was Peter Costello who is now definitely leaving parliament. 34% of those who gave Costello a first preference gave Turnbull their second preference.
Without Costello Turnbull should therefore have had a majority on first preferences alone.
If you want to register to be included in future polls, please click here.

Memo to Malcolm Turnbull: you can’t do government from opposition.
Good opposition leaders know it is not their job to produce comprehensive policy. That is the job of government. Not only does government have the resources to research policy properly, and to turn it into legislation, but it is the entity that needs to be held accountable because unlike the opposition it has real power.
This morning I awoke to hear that there is a $3 billion hole in the Opposition’s ETS policy. The government is jubilant.

“[The] figures don’t add up and of course the whole approach of the Liberal Party doesn’t add up either,” Mr Swan said.
“The Opposition has had two years to get a credible, financially responsible proposal together and they have failed miserably.”

It is almost as though the Opposition and Government have swapped places. Instead of Labor being criticised for its lack of action it is the Opposition which is being held to a higher level of accountability than those who ought to be accountable.
The last time the Liberals in Opposition made this type of strategic mistake was when John Hewson was leader and he spent a million dollars commissioning outside consultants to produce his radical economic reform package – Fightback!.
There are a lot of similarities between Hewson and Turnbull, that don’t just stem from them both representing Wentworth. They are both smart, charismatic, wealthy and had little background in politics before entering parliament. They are both technocrats with an impressive grasp of policy. And they were both accelerated into the leadership in despair at the lack of alternatives.
So similar are they, that in echoes of Fightback! Turnbull even commissioned his own tax policy during the last term of the Howard government which was produced by outside consultants.
Paul Keating claimed that Fightback! was the “longest suicide note in history”, and it was. But the real reason that Hewson lost the “unlosable election” was the desire to be positive in Opposition and to be an “alternative government”.
This expressed itself in Fightback, and is expressing itself in this Opposition through strategic mistakes like the alternative ETS scheme.
The phrase that more than any other sank Hewson was “Jobs not GST”. I’ve always credited this to Wayne Swan. So it is no wonder that Swan was quick to pounce on the $3 billion black hole.
The question is: Will history repeat itself or can Turnbull curb his enthusiasm for government and learn to be an opposition leader before it does?

Political parties that lack professionalism can only win by luck. On the evidence from the McPherson preselection, the Liberal Party should hope it has a lot of luck, because it is completely lacking in professionalism. The whole thing was a debacle from start to finish. Here is a list of the basic errors made by both the parliamentary Liberal Party and the LNP organisation (and as the LNP is a division of the Liberal Party, they are the same thing).

1. Allowing Dutton to vacate Dickson. This is the least serious as there is a good case to be argued for allowing members with skills to swap seats to preserve their parliamentary careers. This argument is mitigated by the small negative margin that Dutton faced in Dickson (notionally just over 1% to the ALP), and the incompetence in finding him a new seat.
2. Not sorting out the power brokers in McPherson properly. Apparently Margaret May had agreed to go, but like many federal members she did not control her area. This appears to have been under the influence of two women: state politician, Jan Stuckey, and ex-state politician – Judy Gamin. Neither supported Dutton’s move. In fact Gamin wrote a blistering email to Party President Bruce McIver which was leaked to the Gold Coast Bulletin opposing the move. You cannot make a gift of something to someone if you don’t own it.
3. Dutton seems to have taken his success more or less for granted. While a number of the less-favoured candidates were campaigning by phone, email and in person Dutton appears to have been conducting his campaign via the pages of the Gold Coast Bulletin. That’s not how you win internal votes. Added to that he attended a shadow cabinet meeting in Adelaide in the last week, demonstrating that he had his priorities completely wrong. To be a power in Canberra he needs a seat.
4. Lacking control of the management. State President Bruce McIver was apparently party to the deal to move Dutton, yet the state executive members who attended the preselection actually split against Dutton. So, not only couldn’t he deliver on the ground amongst the rank and file, but the management of the party wasn’t onside with the move either.
5. Malcolm Turnbull and the federal party should have been involved before the preselection, not after. Turnbull would object that he provided a letter of support to Dutton, but nothing beats hitting the phones and talking to preselectors and power-brokers. In the event Turnbull has now issued an edict that Dutton must be found a seat, putting his own credibility on the line for something over which he has no control. Federal leaders are best delivering these sorts of edicts behind closed doors rather than via doorstop or media release.
6. Allowing the LNP merger to go ahead in the first place. A demonstration as to how damaging this has been is the claims that Dutton lost because he was a Liberal. This is completely nonsensical given that one of the camps opposed to him centred on former Liberal Jan Stuckey who was supporting former Liberal Party adviser Minna Knight, but demonstrates how poisonous relations within the party are. And has anyone any idea how Barnaby Joyce knows which side of the bed to sleep on at night. One minute he is pushing the National Party to differentiate or disappear, the next he is laying the law down to Turnbull on a Liberal Party preselection. This is the sort of cross-dressing that the camel masquerading as a horse called the LNP facilitates. This will provide great fodder for the ALP in Queensland at the next state election.

The only way the party is going to save face from this is to organise a seat for Dutton. That won’t be easy. Dutton is being picky – he apparently won’t consider Wright which is a neighbouring seat to McPherson and notionally Liberal. In which case, the options are to get Peter Slipper or Alex Somlyay to vacate their Sunshine Coast seats. Both have been in parliament long enough to qualify for their pensions, so might be amenable, and neither is likely to get significant promotion in the future. However, they have to be persuaded because under the LNP constitution they were automatically re-preselected for their seats for this election. This was a deal that was done to get the merger done and keep sitting MPs onside.
As they say, if you can’t govern yourselves, you can’t govern the country. The Liberal Party at all levels desperately needs a dose of competence. Not sure where they can buy that!