Poll Roundup: 2015 Budget Polling

2PP Aggregate: 51.8 to Labor (-0.5 in a week, closest since last October)
Labor would probably win election held "right now", with small majority or in minority

Apologies for the boring heading.  I was going to call this piece "Poll Roundup: Budget Less Than Random Noise" but passing judgement on a week of polling with only four of the six polls released would have been risky, and thus it proved once Morgan came out.  With two polls implying a budget bounce to the Coalition and three implying no change, my aggregate moves to its best position for the government since the week of 20 October last year.

It's possible that there is really no bounce and that the two good polls are just down to sample noise, but the results are consistent with a slight Coalition gain from a budget that has been fairly well received by voters.  Still it is nothing so far as dramatic an impact as the usual storm of Budget-poll-fuelled commentary might suggest.

This isn't unusual at all; last year's shocker was the exception that proves the rule.  Budget polling is a vast source of excitable nonsense but most budgets aren't a big deal immediately to the average voter; see Mark Graph's first and second laws of budget analysis for more of this.

That's not to say that the noises surrounding the Budget are necessarily meaningless in the long term, and this week we did get some insight into possible election strategies concerning economic management.

Andrews' Phantom Welfare Spending Crisis

Advance Summary

1. An "unsustainable" level of welfare spending has been asserted by Human Services Minister, Kevin Andrews, in flagging a review of the system.

2. However, the number of people on welfare has not increased over the past decade when it is measured on a per capita basis rather than in raw-number terms.

3. Furthermore, when the age pension is excluded the proportion of people receiving welfare payments was consistently lower under Labor than in most of the second half of the Howard Coalition government.

4. Recent increases in the number of people receiving Newstart are explained largely by classification changes through the forcing of parents off parenting benefits, and increased unemployment.

5. While it would be more productive to investigate other areas of the welfare system, unemployment and disability benefits are a more politically convenient target.

6. Any investigation of whether "perverse incentives" are encouraging potential jobseekers to apply for disability support instead should consider whether the conditions under which Newstart allowance is made available, rather than just the disparity in payment amounts, might contribute to the problem (if it even exists.)

Liberty, Abortion and the "Salamanca Declaration"

Warning: this article may offend some readers. 
(Not much pseph in it either; a little bit in the Emily's Voice section mainly.)

It has been, for the most part, an unedifying fortnight in Tasmanian public debate, and I am not about to make it better.  I generally dislike writing about abortion-related issues at all, because there are too many people who appear to believe that being emotional on behalf of "unborn babies" trumps not only every opposing philosophical argument, but also the most basic responsibility of understanding the existing legislative situation and understanding what changes are actually being proposed.  Admittedly, understanding the existing legislative situation has been too much for not just ranting objectors, but for many doctors as well, and that is exactly one of the reasons why the Lower House has attempted to change it.

Abortion Law Reform: The Vote

Finally late last night, abortion law reform was passed 13-11 by the House of Assembly and is off to the Legislative Council.  The bill that was passed has the following key features: