Australia's 'stolen children': Which poll would a poll-following prime minister have followed?

A report into indigenous Australian children taken from their families recommended that the Government apologize. Three polls on the question of whether the Government should apologize produced three quite different results: a 'yes', a 'no' and one which was more evenly divided. This paper shows why this happened. It relates the results to three quite different understandings of what opinion polls should model: opinion expressed through plebiscites; 'real' opinion; and opinion based on some sort of deliberation. And it explores the relationship between what a poll-following Prime Minister might have done and scholarly judgments about 'quality' in public opinion polls.