No FuelWatch effect from Morgan either: indeed, their face-to-face poll conducted last weekend shows Labor’s lead up to 63-37 from 61-39 the previous week. Labor’s primary vote is down slightly from 53 per cent to 52.5 per cent, but the Coalition’s has fallen further – from 34 per cent to 31.5 per cent, their worst result since mid-March.
592
Antonio Says:
June 12th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
At my local supermarket, you can get two cans of baked beans for the cost of one can of Kit-E-Kat.
That’s all very well Antonio but some of those pensioners are buying the Fancy Feasts brand which is more expensive but offers delicacies such as Grilled Salmon Prime Filet – perfectly grilled salmon, delicately basted in a savoury broth.
Mmmmmm – makes my mouth water. 😉
Oh, stop Steve or we’ll have people falsifying their birth records just so they can get on the pension early! 😉
#601
Clearly, cat food subsidies are the way to win the pensioner vote in the next election. Perhaps Brendan Nelson could promise to remove the GST on pet food, and tax it at the same rate as people food (given that many Coalition-voting pensioners are eating pet food).
You’ll notice that some cat food is labelled “senior”, so clearly there’s already a big market for it in the Coalition’s only remaining demographic.
Mayo
While I don’t dispute the statistics you quote, I think such employment growth projections can be a little spurious when projected forward. The 1980s in particualr saw a huge increase in both casual/part-time employment, adn women remaining in the workforce. Areas showing the biggest increase were service industries such as child care, cleaning and even food where the work was previously unpaid in the home. We can’t have that revolution again, so I don’t think we have good reason to believe that employment growth in the future will be the same. The labor market economist Ironmonger has done a lot of work on this; worth reading.
Actual output from the economy grew far more slowly in this period and perhaps explains the decline in real wages through the 80s, which didn’t stop till the early 90s. I think the current reduction in unemployent is more due to the first cohort of baby-boomers entering retirement and the mining boom than anything to do with training or labor policy.
Bottom line – we are growing employment fast now but, regardless of who is in government, I’m not so sure this trend will continue at the same rate for long.
Some interesting cost comparisons here:
(from The Age) The cheapest hybrid available in Australia sells for more than $35,000
From the start of the year, in the USA (US dollar prices) this was the list price of a Toyota Prius:
Standard 4-door hatchback $20,950 US
Base 4-door hatchback $22,325 US
Touring 4-door hatchback $23,220 US
Given that our dollar is now trading at 95 cents to the US dollar, and the price of Toyota Prius’ has not gone down, the pricing police might well start asking questions about these vehicles. Either Toyota in the US are selling at a loss (ha!) or we are now paying over the odds here for these vehicles. Our dollar has not appreciated as much against the Yen as the US dollar, but it has still appreciated.
this is a letter to the editor of the OO –i don’t really expect a reply.
to the editor.
It’s with much regret my family and I will be cancelling our subscriptions to the Australian and all newsltd papers, I realise that the7 families involved –7 Australians and 7 Advertisers daily wont make much of a difference to your overall figures but it’s the only way we can protest about your constant Rudd bashing, all we need and can ask from our media is fair and balanced reporting, unfortunately your paper seems to have forgotten that there IS an opposition and it’s only by drawing attention to that hapless mob that they will be forced into taking stock of themselves and then giving us a viable alternative, since the wonderful Matt Price has died there isn’t a socalled columnist worth reading, Matt at least was so well balanced nobody could ever guess what party he voted for.
I think you’ll find I’m not the only person who thinks this way, I know of many others who are really fed up, your journos definately stick by the old adage not to spoil a good story with facts, maybe one day you and your story tellers will work out that we, the general public, unless we are fanatical party followers, don’t want bias either way, of course we want any government failings bought to light {a pity you didnt do that in the later Howard years} BUT we also expect the opposition to get a grilling as well, until you get rid of your stable of avid right wing journos and replace them with others such as Matt you’ll find this once proud paper’s credibility in the dirt, with Rudd, no matter what item is printed in this paper, if theres one negative line in it amid all the positives, that negative line is headlined.
The only reason I have persevered so far has been your excellent cryptic crosswords, but today, all I could think of after reading the plethora of Rudd bashing, is what the hell am I doing reading this crap, thats just it–I know its mainly crap, Shanahan has trumpeted the honeymoon is over umpteen times in the last 18 months, I would have thought that after his embarrassingly hysterical headlines last year about Howard’s so called resurrection after a minute 1% movement in the polls would have taught him and YOUR PAPER to be more realistic, the honeymoon will be over eventually but all of his trying to force it wont make it so, actually all it does with us is make us even more addicted to Rudd– but there it is, while he boasts being your political editor in chief it’ll be the same hopeless same old, same old.
I dont expect this letter or our opting out to make any difference –but if enough do it, as many have said to me they will, then maybe we can eventually get a factual balanced newspaper that’s something to be proud of.
Mrs. J Barnes, for the Barnes family.
Judy
Good letter and good decision; treat this publication as its quality merits.
I can’t believe the level of discussion here that focuses on media bias… I mean we all get it! Seriously…
$5.50 for half a kilo of prime mince today. It will feed two small dogs and 1 cat for two nights, so $2.75 per night. This is their treat because one of the dogs is sick and I put his pill inside a mince ball. Naturally if the other dog and the cat see mince, they have to have the same.
A tin of Fancy Feast is about $1.15 at our supermarket. Add in $1.60 for My Dog (serves two dogs) and we have, over two nights, $5.50 to feed the BB menagerie with pet food. Same price.
That same half kilo of mince with a large can of chopped tomatoes and some spices plus spaghetti would mean a big spag bol would cost around $8 and would feed 2 adults for three nights, running out to about $2.70 per night.
So there we have it: the animals eat like gluttons with mince for $2.75/night, with tinned food for the same, and the humans eat like wiseguys gone to the mattresses for $2.70 per night. Make that $50 a fortnight with some ice cream and toast for brekkie thrown in.
There’s no need for pensioners to eat dog food. In fact I’m thinking of applying to be dog myself. Spag bol, toast and ice cream every night can get awful monotonous.
Heh, the pill inside the mince ball will work only once
I was still at High School when the Australian first came out. It was a pretty good paper for quite some time.
609
Bushfire Bill Says:
June 12th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
….There’s no need for pensioners to eat dog food….
And you know what BB I don’t believe for one minutre that any of them actually eat the stuff – unless of course they’ve got a screw loose which is quite possible. Certainly the pensioners who stripped off outside Flinders St station weren’t living on a small can of cat food per day. Some of them were pretty large suggesting a healthy appetite and too little exercise.
Judy,
I made a similar decision about the Australian in 2001 or 2002. I’d been a home delivery customer for about 10 years prior to that. My letter explaining my decision (not submitted for publication) was ignored – not even an acknowledgement.
I understand that my decision was easier – having access to the Age, even with its considerable failings. I’m of the newspaper junkie generation, and I still find it hard to break the dead tree habit, although the internet clearly makes such a decision (to do without a print newspaper) feasible.
As always you have provided a measured assessment of the situation.
BB @ 609: Very funny about wanting to be a dog….I don’t know if you ever watched the TV series red dwarf but your line……[blockquote]In fact I’m thinking of applying to be dog myself[/blockquote]…..brings to mind an episode where the computer suggested to one of the characters who wanted to hide his identity, that he have a procedure called a “roverostomy”, and produced a picture of a labrador to show how effective the procedure was.!!!!
Damn, I can never get those quotes to work.!
We get THE AUSTRALIAN delivered to our house every weekend. I disregard the political coverage in there(especially Shanahan’s garbage), and enjoy their sports, entertainment and magazine sections, which are always good to read.
614 –
.
617….Thank you…!
601, 602 603 and Bushfire Bill
Oh you lot are awful! Don’t know when I’ve laughted so much!
You made that pet tucker sound so good that I couldn’t control myself, just had a fight with Bad Billy (my cat) over a tin of Ultimates whitemeat tuna with flaked salmon.
damn! those pensioners sure know how to live!
Progressive, nup i’m not even going to get the weekend edition {im crying when i say that–goodbye my favourite crosswords lol} i will continue to get the Sunday Mail because my journo pal is their chief crime reporter and he keeps agitating about the so called “family”, besides it’s cheaper than buying the TV books.
LTEP, there IS massive bias and at least i feel better for getting it off my chest, i’ve had a lot to do with the media over the years and i know only too well how they can twist something innocent and make it into something else again, we’ve been getting the Australian since my kids were in uni and it’s a habit hard to break, if we dont talk about it and complain then we are as bad as they are for letting it happen without a protest, we may not change things but we can at least let our opinions be known.
On the topic of price differentials with the US, I recently went shopping online for a digital voice recorder (Olympus). Best price online in the US, $103, Australia $495. Exactly the same machine, almost 5 times the price. How the hell do they explain that, certainly not freight. And our $ is almost at parity. Reminds me also that our very own Monaro, rebadged as a Pontiac sells for about half the price in the US, and we make them! We are being royally screwed.
Vera, you talk about laugh, I am still smiling at your analogy of Rodent as the happy hooker in the Cross when the sailors hit town 🙂
Vera, that rodent quote of yours was the quote of the year, i’ve shown that one around with great glee.
Libs can’t take a trick at the moment.
“Today’s report confirms what many of us suspected, that due to a massive failure of the Howard Liberal Government’s quarantine systems, appropriate protocols were not followed.” The report says it is most likely the EI virus spread beyond Eastern Creek after being imported from Japan.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23853634-29277,00.html
Released just in time for Gippsland by election.
NEW South Wales Nationals MP Andrew Fraser has been ordered to pay $70,000 to a union boss over a defamatory letter sent to nurses ahead of last year’s state election.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23853270-29277,00.html
Poor Andrew, I think it will have to come out of his own pocket.
Basil & Judy
The Rodent’s sneering, shifty sideways look he permanently wore as he lied his rotten head off used to make my blood boil.
Basil @ 621, do you suppose the Free Trade agreement would have anything to do with it? Or does it have more to do with market size, tariffs? Does anyone else know why there are such price discrepancies?
Meanwhile more strife for the WA Libs, and Brian Burke is involved 🙂
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/12/2272777.htm
And here in WA the Libs are again doing what they do best – self flagelation
MP McGrath was accused of doing Brian Burke’s bidding by asking Brian’s questions in Parliament, Omodei calls him a liar and they almost come to blows in the Chamber, Buswell refuse to sack McGrath, Rob Johnson thinks McGrath is a disgrace and threatens to quit the shadow cabinet, Barnett thinks that it is all too much, and Buswell keeps blathering about how robust they all are.
Of course you wouldn’t know it unless you really, Trully, deeply, listened to the Channel 10 news, after a story about how the town of Harvey abatoir killed a few less beasts yesterday, how if they’d pre-booked the gas explosion in the North West they might have avoided it, and how some dog went under someone’s house.
Ah the West, a place of beauty, wealth and wankers.
Snap Frank. OK, you beat me by a whisker.
[Of course you wouldn’t know it unless you really, Trully, deeply, listened to the Channel 10 news, after a story about how the town of Harvey abatoir killed a few less beasts yesterday, how if they’d pre-booked the gas explosion in the North West they might have avoided it, and how some dog went under someone’s house.]
And The West will downplay it because McGrath was one of their own before entering Parliament.
The never ending saga of the Netball Association funding and the moving of the TAFE has become even more bizarre according to Tuesday’s Gippsland Times. Can’t wait to see what developments will be in tomorrow’s edition.
[A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister later phoned the Times to point out claims the sports complex was going to be funded in the now-defunct Regional Partnerships program were incorrect.
She said an application was received for the Regional Partnerships funding right before the November 2007 election, but it wasn’t processed by the government and no money was committed to it.
“There’s a view it had been promised but it never was and it was never approved,” she said.]
http://sale.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/sport-funds-uncertain/786096.aspx
[Snap Frank. OK, you beat me by a whisker.]
But you said it so much better, I only linked to the ABC story 🙂 But at least CH 10 didn’t report on the Gas “Crisis” causing pensioners to die due to lack of heating, unlike TWAToady 🙂
It is some time since I visited this site. It used to be a site that dealt (fairly) rationally with politics and psephology.
Now it just seems to be ALP supporters bleating about so-called media bias. Get a life. The media is not biased against the ALP or against the Libs. The media just enjoys bashing whomever is in power.
For 11 years that was Howard (I don’t remember anyone complaining about the MSM’s obsession with 1. Iraq 2. AWB 3. Howard refusing to say “sorry” 4. children overboard 5. many other examples). Now it is Rudd’s turn. Get used to it.
I got into an argument with a bloke over the weekend. He was saying that the pensioners (he is not a pensioner) were completely overlooked in the budget. I was trying to explain to him that the Rudd Labor government were giving the pensioners more than Howard at his last budget or at any of his previous budgets.
His response was that I was being ridiculous “as if the pensioners would be complaining if they were getting more money” he laughed.
I said to him that they are complaining because it is not their hero Howard who was giving them the increase in allowances.
I hope that those pensioners complaining realise over the course of the next financial year how much more they receive under PM Rudd and feel like FOOLS!
Frank @ 627. Isn’t it passing strange that different parts of Oz have these weird regional variations on broader national themes? How to tear yourself apart, W.A. style vs. N.S.W style, whether Tory or Labor. It seems to mirror the slight but discernible language variations which have emerged over time, but have more to do with the historical and geographic variables. If there’s any proper psephy’s hanging around, such as that shameless purveyor of ABC election bias, Mr Antony Green ( and, really, Antony, the name’s such a give away), or historians, even, has there been any research in this area, i.e., State/regional differences in how political parties evolve?
633 center
Or how much political capital they will have spent when people realize that the pensioners that complained took them for a ride. Bit like the greens, you can go one step too far.
Centre the opposition with their MSM cheer squad, aided by dial-a-lib-pensioner, have done well to create a perception about pensioner’s treatment by the budget. I dont think Rudd and co have done enough to counter this. My prediction is that they will do something more obvious next budget
Stuart @ 633
You got it right. There is no media bias against the Libs. Never has been
Stuart, welcome back, and it would be great if you could stay around because this site does need more intelligent debate. The problem around here is we’ve had the likes of Glen and Tabitha carrying the Tory torch which has not made for much rational discussion.
I take your point. The incumbent does get alot of scutiny, and so they should. The issue here is balance though. For example, in the year leading up to the election we were continually told that the rudd honeymoon was over and Howard would win. Any poll movement in the coalition’s direction was trumpetted and movements back were ignored. Whilst the issues you mention did get scrutiny, the coverage was quite compartmentalised and it was not portrayed a government in crisis or trouble, even when they were behind in the polls.
Now we have a government that is miles ahead in the polls but stories about crises and problems as if they are in trouble, when in fact there is no contest.
637 “My prediction is that they will do something more obvious next budget”
Or maybe the one after since it will be an election year and these things are easily forgotten if delivered too soon in the electoral cycle.
There is an interesting piece in the current DISSENT magazine
by Ian McAuley who “shows by reference to Australian and international statistics that the greater the dependence on private health insurance the higher the total level of spending on health without any discernible benefit in terms of health outcomes.”
http://www.dissent.com.au/index.htm
Unfortunately you will have to buy the print version at the Newsagency. It does have a graph demonstrating that the higher total health care outlays are the higher the percentage that health care is financed by private insurance in that country. The USA is way out on the edge.
It does have the cute quote:
Those on the ‘right’ of politics, who are so quick to condemn the ‘nanny state’, have no difficulty in rendering people dependent of the ‘nanny corporation’.
Stuart @ 633
Agree it’s the media’s role to keep those in power accountable – but the Murdoch outlets are providing a dichotomy of reporting perspectives which any objective reader couldn’t help but notice.
BTW I’m not suggesting that pensioners dont have it tough, because they do. The issue here is that since Rudd’s election their pensions will increase with indexations, all bonuses were retained and I recall the utilities part was increased. So why so much noise since the election??
[The issue here is that since Rudd’s election their pensions will increase with indexations, all bonuses were retained and I recall the utilities part was increased. So why so much noise since the election??]
And the Utilities and Internet Allowance was extended to ALL Pensioners and Carers, and not just restricted to Age Pensioners.
Of course the MSM is biased. You would only have to check out Piers-Dessicated Rice Bubble-Akerman’s or Shama-hana-hana-ham’s (however the hell he spells it) columns and the like to realise that.
Why don’t the opposition and it’s MSM cheer squad fight Rudd on good conservative values?
Oh… they don’t have any! LOL
571 Mr Squiggle
I agree immigration should be used as a tool to control inflation and economic activity. I would suggest the right level is as hard to predict as the right level to set interest rates, and in my view it should be done in the same way, in fact why not expand the RBA’s role.
“This month we are dropping interest rates by 2 percentage points and increasing the skilled immigration rate by 100,000”.
And on that front I think Labors recent changes are about right, I think next year we will see a decrease in interest rates and an increase in immigration. But who knows.
643
Andrew Says:
“So why so much noise since the election”
all that dog food has got the buggers barking
Stuart, i suffer from severe chronic acute inertia {gee that sounds great} in other words i’m as lazy as, it takes a lot to make me pop my head up and push myself into taking any action, or come to think of it do much blogging,BUT there comes a time when even this old dear says ENOUGH!, i certainly dont want a media bias for Rudd, in the long run that won’t help him, all governments should be kept on their toes, all i want and expect from our media, be it print or TV is honest reporting, just a modicum of fair reporting will do, i KNOW what standing up and being counted can do and unless we start to be counted we will continue to be saddled with the one sided bias we have now.
ive tweaked a few tails in the past when it was important enough to me, gosh i’m barely literate but i’ve had a paper my daughter and i wrote read out at a U.N. symposium by our then state A.G.—my dragon slaying days are well past but at least this old dear can still raise a little whimper now and again, so i guess it wasnt much of a whimper cancelling the papers, but at least I feel better for it {except for losing my bluddy crosswords}–and i WILL continue to bog about media bias where i see it.
633
stuart
Unfortunately the media didn’t give Howard the beating he deserved before the election so the Liberal party didn’t start fixing their problems. After the election the media is not giving the Liberals the beating they deserve so they are not fixing their problems.
I often sit and wonder,why would anyone from Labor would complain about the current media circus:
1) The media is discrediting itself so media activity when something is wrong will have little effect.
2) See the first paragraph.
good one Charles, to have a good strong government we need a good strong opposition to keep them on their toes, unless the media presses the opposition to renew themselves and get rid of the dead wood and bring in new talent then we’ll end up with a copy of state politics, the only policies the current opposition can think of is to try and spoil or block anything the government tries to do be it good or otherwise, where are their big ideas?? 5 cents off petrol, pshaw!utter crap, they should be clever enough to pass the government bills and come up with different ideas of their own, thats exactly what Rudd did, again though we turn the full circle, the media isnt needling them and demanding better, instead it’s cosying up to them and as far as the coalition is concerned alls right with their world and they’ll climb up the poll ladder eventually, it’s like the umpire wearing one teams colours, that side will never ever improve because they’re not forced into it.
thats my rant for the night, this old fossel will now settle back and watch the blogs go by.