Voters believe some people should have their rights and freedoms curbed for the security of other Australians, and support detention without prosecution, according to today’s Essential poll. However, recent terror raids have yet to translate into a polling bounce for the government.
With the Prime Minister recently calling for “more restrictions on some so that there can be more protections for others” and a shift in the balance between freedom and security, the poll shows 50% of voters agree that “there should be more restrictions on rights and freedom for some people” (unspecified, but you know who), while 34% believe the current laws strike the right balance. Coalition voters split 66%-21%, while Labor voters split 48%-38%; Greens voters split the other way, 14%-72%. Support for further restrictions is highest among over-55s (68%) and people who haven’t completed secondary education (66%), while younger voters (43%), men (41%) and tertiary-educated voters (43%) were more likely to believe the current balance is right.
There’s even stronger support for detention without charge, with nearly 60% of voters supporting it in relation to terrorism, as the government moves to extend draconian Howard-era laws relating to preventive detention and control orders. Coalition voters, older voters and voters who haven’t completed secondary education much more strongly support detention than university-educated voters and Greens voters.
However, the relentless focus on national security has yet to deliver the government a noticeable polling bounce: the Coalition’s primary vote is up a point to 40% but Labor remains on 39%, the Greens on 10%, and PUP on 4%. The two-party preferred result has shifted down a point to 52%-48% in Labor’s favour, the same level as four weeks ago, despite the media focus on the Sydney raids of the week before last and the shooting of an 18-year-old man by police in Melbourne. This might suggest that because national security plays more to the fears of older voters who already back the Coalition, it may only serve to lock in the government’s core support rather than expand it.
The poll also shows that the recent trend against climate denialism is continuing; 56% of voters agree that “climate change is happening and is caused by human activity”, the equal-highest result ever recorded by Essential (it was 56% in April as well). Only 30% believe “we are just witnessing a normal fluctuation in the earth’s climate”, the lowest level Essential has recorded and down from 35% earlier this year (and as high as 39% in 2012). However, a majority of Coalition voters (51%) continue to deny climate science. Fifty-two per cent of voters say they have become more concerned about climate change in the last two years; 35% say “about the same”; even 34% of Coalition voters say they have become more concerned.
Incentives for renewable energy continue to be the most popular option for climate action, with 50% of voters backing them (with surprisingly little difference between voters – 52% for Labor voters, 45% for Liberal voters). And emissions trading scheme is backed by just 12% of voters, but that’s more than the 10% who support Environment Minister Greg Hunt’s “Direct Action” scheme (including just 12% of Liberal voters). Indeed, more voters (11%) prefer to do nothing at all about climate change rather than see Hunt’s policy adopted. The government’s war on the Renewable Energy Target appears to contradict an electoral preference even among the government’s own supporters.
If only our intelligence services were?
there was a pretty elitist subtext in this vitriol bernard, dissappointed
As an over-55, tertiary-educated woman, I also think you could have avoided the elitist tinge.
The lying, censoring, Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI-perverted Mainstream media are complicit in this new “terror hysteria”, this new illegal Iraq War, this new illegal Syria War by the war criminal US Alliance and the further erosion of our liberties. .
Thus by way of example, on 30 September 2014 The Guardian Australia had an article on the new “subversion” terror laws: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/30/counter-terrorism-laws-to-target-people-who-subvert-society-in-other-countries .
I attempted to post the following comment but it was CENSORED, presumably because it offended a Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) agenda within The Guardian Australia:
CENSORED COMMENT. “One notes that all these “subversion” law proposals, with the possible exception of the disruption of an electronic system, have been and will be violated by:
1. successive Coalition and Labor Right (aka Lib-Lab, Liberal-Laboral) Australian Governments in the illegal and war criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq (2.7 million Iraqi deaths from violence or violently-imposed deprivation; Google “Iraqi Holocaust Iraqi Genocide” ) and the renewed illegal and hence war criminal invasion of Iraq, again without UN sanction;
2. militant extremist Zionist Australians involved as “foreign fighters” for Apartheid Israel in war crimes in Occupied Palestine in connection with the ongoing Palestinian Genocide, war criminal attacks on neighbouring countries, and indeed in Mainstream media documented Israeli attacks on Australian citizens (e.g. the bombing of 25,000 Australian citizens in Lebanon in 2006 and the various tasering, shooting, robbing and kidnapping of Australian citizens on Gaza Flotilla vessels); and
3. militant extremist Zionist Australians involved in subversion and perversion of Australian MPs, journalists, academics and institutions in the interests of a nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, apartheid rogue state (for a detailed dossier I have sent to media, MPs and the AFP Google “Racist Zionism and Israeli State Terrorism threats to Australia and Humanity”).” END CENSORED COMMENT.
There is deadly silence about militant extremist Zionist “foreign fighters” in the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted Yellow Press of White Australia,whether from The Guardian, Murdoch, Fairfax or bottom-of-the-barrel ABC presstitutes.
Of course The Guardian Australia is not alone in pro-Zionist, pro-war, pro-US censorship. For details of media-derived malreportage, censorship and lying by omission by the global Murdoch media empire, Australian Fairfax media, the Australian ABC, the UK BBC, and the Australian universities-backed web magazine The Conversation in Neocon American- and Zionist Imperialist-perverted and subverted Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy and Corporatocracy Australia and elsewhere in the West see “Boycott Murdoch media”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottmurdochmedia/ ; “Censorship by the BBC”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbythebbc/ ; “Censorship by The Conversation”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by ; “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home ; “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ ; “Censorship by The Age”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-age ; “Censorship by ABC Late Night Live”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbyabclatenightlive/ , “Censorship by ABC Saturday Extra”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbyabclatenightlive/censorship-by-abc-sat and “ABC fact-checking unit & incorrect reportage by the ABC (Australia’s BBC)”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/abc-fact-checking-unit , “Censorship by The Guardian UK”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-guardian-uk , and “Censorship by The Guardian Australia”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home/censorship-by-the-guardian-a .
Once liberty is eroded it is never restored.