 Hi and welcome to week three of Off the Hill at the ANU. The second week of the election campaign and I think for me personally it's the week where I realised just how long this election campaign is going to be. Today we're going to talk about immigration, we're going to talk about polling and what we need to know and then we're going to talk about the campaign narratives and how this sort of seems to be playing out for the two major parties. So let's get started. Ryan. Jill, you're the expert on polling. We've been seeing on the ABC for example this week a lot of stories, news stories about their vote compass feature which is this device that lets you figure out which parties policies you're closest to, which just seems fair enough, but there's then been these news stories about what that polling, as they call it, means about what Australia thinks and what Australia values. Should we be paying attention to that sort of polling and really I guess in general what should we be wary of in polling, what should we be looking out for? Okay, it's a big question, right? My short answer with regard to vote compass is no, it's not a news story, right? Things like vote compass are designed as voting advice applications so that people who don't really know where they sit can log in all their information about how they stand on various issues and it will spit you out an answer, saying where you are closest to a party. The problem with things like vote compass is obviously I think we've all done it probably, our colleagues have done it, but regular voters don't do this. They just don't log on to the ABC website and feel like answering a self-administered poll. So while they wait to demographics and we try to make those samples look as much like the population as possible, what they can't account for is the lack of political engagement, right, that most people have and you know, this is your job is to reach out to people to make them more engaged. When we see opinion polling generally, that doesn't have that problem because you're actually reaching out to people and asking them whether they want to be asked or not basically. The thing to look out for with opinion polling is that we're seeing this sort of convergence on 50-50, right, that they've been up and down and up and down and we're seeing a sort of reversion to the main, you might call it. And it's another way of describing it is a homing tendency that, you know, we kind of flip with the idea of changing parties between elections, but really what we do is we come back to our home party. And that's what we're seeing now, is we're getting closer to 50-50 and so that's what we'll see at the election. The bookies have it not so close, though, I mean, the sports betting agencies seem to think that the coalition are favourites. Are they wrong? Are they better at football than they are at politics? The bookies tend to do pretty well on this, right? I mean, they've got money at stake, so they've got sort of skin in the game. What the bookies tend to take into account is, well, first of all, money, money that gets put in, and also that there's a seat by seat game, you know, and that 50-50 opinion polls don't mean that that's going to be distributed evenly across the population. You know, that moves up and down in electorates, which is all kind of stuff that we know. But, you know, in terms of Vote Compass, what are your thoughts as a marketer? Yeah, no, not very good at all, because as a marketer, I'm looking for engagement. I don't know that you're awake and listening to what I'm talking about, and that I'm actually engaging with you directly and I get some sort of feedback from the market on that. So Vote Compass doesn't do that. I mean, the gauge is where your interest might be, but at the same time, that's just where you are at that point in time. How do you think of that point in time? It can change really quickly and, of course, it will change quickly because of a policy announcement. If you make a certain policy announcement, you go, oh, yeah, now, hang on, that really gets to me. Even though these other things are important to me, I know I have to still live life. Yep, absolutely. So, you know, a good example, that's the child care policy. You stay, anyone with kids who has to put their kids in child care, that's probably usually up there as rating number one on the issues. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and the other thing I'll be looking at too, which doesn't get picked up a lot by the surveys, which as a marketer, I find distressing, but I know the parties do it, is recall of information. So, if I'm doing all this big messaging campaign, I'm doing the advertising campaign, I'm getting the leaders out there every day of the week. What are people talking about really? Yep. What are they really recalling about what I've just talked about that week? So, on that sort of, you know, more substantive issues, right? We've seen Peter Dutton this week say, I think what we would all think of were fairly uninformed, maybe ill-advised comments on humanitarian intakes and what refugees contribute to society. What are your thoughts on that, Ryan? Well, the comments were offensive, and I think offensive to a much broader group of Australians than Peter Dutton might have expected. And I just can't help but wonder, as some people have been speculating this week, whether this was what's known as a dead cat strategy, which Linton Crosby and the UK Tories perfected, whereby when the campaign is in a way talking about things you would prefer it wasn't talking about, where it wasn't going as you'd like, you throw a metaphorical dead cat on the table. And all of a sudden, the dead cat may be unpleasant, it may not be pretty, but everyone's talking about the dead cat. And we saw this morning, Malcolm Turnbull had a Fairfax op-ed all about border security. This was not what Malcolm Turnbull was talking about a week ago. And so the hope must be that the debate has changed. Absolutely. And I think here we need to remember that it's, we don't always represent the population at large, right? I mean, there is a genuine concern among the community that immigrants, you know, may take jobs from Australian-born, you know, workers, to the extent that this is a genuine threat is, you know, I think we might say questionable, but this is a legitimate concern that voters have. And I think we really need to at least acknowledge that, right? That it's not as maybe not a stupid strategy as we might think. Yeah, but let's have a debate that's not involved in vilifying people and denigrating people. We can have a debate about migration. We can have a debate about asylum seeking numbers. And maybe we should have those debates. But the way that Peter Dutton is doing it is just a terrible way for the country. So we've found, we've found when we've asked people in the ANU poll, which I author on behalf of the ANU, that Australians are really good at distinguishing between refugees and the sort of regular migrant intake, right? What Australian voters really don't like is the idea of regular arrivals. So say, last year we asked an 83% of Australians believe immigrants make positive contributions to the economic and cultural life of the country, but then 65% support tougher measures to exclude illegal immigrants. So there is a disconnect there. But people are pretty good at passing out the differences. Yeah, and I think this is like, this is a really important part of messaging to during a campaign. You're speaking, you might be speaking to everyone, but everyone is made up of distinct groups and identities and segments and everything else in between, right? So when you speak, you can actually end up upsetting people you didn't intend to upset. But also, sorry, messaging off of TAC all together. Like for example, Turnbull wants to be known as progressive. How can you be progressive when one of your ministers speaking like he's from the 1950s? Well, because it's jobs and growth. So this is the narrative, right? Yeah, exactly. But at the same time, like, getting back to what Ryan was saying, if you throw the dead cat in front of people, for sure they'll look. But also, that could be horrified run the other direction back to where they think, oh, hang on, they're not talking like that. They're talking like, you know, a lot better talk than what I'd like to hear. I'll go back to them instead. So I think that's been picked up a bit in the polls, too, that Labor really at two party preferred, they've just edged ahead by one or two points and some of the polling out this week. I think that's picked up on that sort of thing, too. I know it might drift back again during the campaign. It is a long campaign. It's a long campaign. Long campaign. Labor want to talk about Medicare, the coalition want to talk about jobs and growth. That's it. What's what's going to, who's going to win out? Yeah, look, and this is where it comes back to maybe where people go to vote compass for is identify, you know, where people are at right now between the social investment and the financial investment. Who do you go for? Do you go for somebody who's talking about economic leadership? So all the polling picks up on the economy being really important. And therefore that's a coalition strategy now based on that importance. But does it really reveal that importance? The polling here can be playing tricks with the parties. Right? Is it really that important preference? Why? So as a marketer, I know there's certain things where we call them decision rules. So it could be one up the very top here, which dominates everything. So for example, buying a car has to be fuel efficient. You look at the fuel efficient cars, right? So whatever it happens to be. But then next one down could be something else the stereo system, not so important as fuel efficiency. So if you find a car, great stereo system, bad in the economy, you'll go for the one always going in the economy. And it's all about the economy. So where does that leave Medicare for the ALP? Well, look, I think on Thursday and probably into Friday this week, we've seen a debate where Bill Shorten is saying, I'll save Medicare. I'll save Medicare. And Malcolm Turnbull is saying, I'll cut the taxes for certain companies in Australia. And I think Labor will be happy if that's where the debate's happening. I think the Labor is very proud of its record on Medicare. Thinks that that will matter to voters. And I think they'll be happy if that's where the debate is. Final thoughts for the weeks? Well, look, I want to say this to the people out there. Number one, get out and make sure you enroll to vote. The polls, they're all sorry, close very soon. Make sure you enroll to vote. I think they close actually next week. So make sure you're on the list. It's your voice, your vote, your voice, your vote counts. So yeah, get out there do it. The political scientist says that, you know, it's never that rational to vote. Your vote's never really going to make a difference but you get to eat a sausage. You know, you get to be part of the festival of the election. There are lots of close seats. Everyone should enroll to vote. Don't listen to the political scientist. No, definitely enroll to vote. My final thought is this. It's been about 18 months now since the Liberal National Party room said that there would be a plebiscite on marriage equality. Labor's promising that it'll be legislated in the first 100 days. There are still almost zero details from the coalition on what that plebiscite will look like. And that's going to matter to a lot of young people in some crucial seats of this election. My final thought is that I've been in the US for a week and we should be very, very thankful for our democratic system, the way our elections are set up, the kind of candidates we get. You know, sometimes this can all seem like a bit of a drudge. You know, it can seem like we don't get the best choices. Good grief will be lucky. So thanks, you all. Thank you all for listening and for watching. You're scientists and you're saying that quite seriously. Yes, I am. We're very lucky in Australia. And we'll see you all next week for week four of Off the Hill and week three of the campaign.