The latest Morgan face-to-face poll has Labor’s lead at 59.5-40.5, up from 58.5-41.5 a fortnight ago. Primary votes are Labor 50.5 per cent (up 1.5), Coalition 35.5 (down 0.5) and Greens 7.5 (down 1). Elsewhere:
The redistribution of Tasmania’s electoral boundaries has been finalised. Several amendments have been made from the original proposal, which you can read about here. Antony Green calculates the new boundaries have increased Labor’s margin in Braddon from 1.4 per cent to 2.5 per cent, while reducing it in Denison from 15.6 per cent to 15.3 per cent, Franklin from 4.5 per cent to 3.7 per cent and Lyons from 8.8 per cent to 8.4 per cent. Bass remains at 1.0 per cent.
A bill to introduce fixed terms was introduced to the Northern Territory parliament on Wednesday. David Bartlett says similar legislation will be introduced in Tasmania next year, confirming the next election will be held on March 20, 2010 and setting up an ongoing clash with South Australia’s elections (to Antony Green‘s dismay). I’ll have much more to say on fixed four-year terms next week.
Tomorrow is Victorian local government election day, which in most cases means today is the last day for submission of postal votes. Read and comment about it here. Ben Raue at The Tally Room has council and ward map files for viewing in Google Earth.
In Queensland, poll-driven decisions on water policy are being seen as a harbinger of an early election.
On the North South pipeline….
It doesn’t steal any water from anyone.
Under the Murray Darling agreement, each state has an allocated amount of water, which is capped. If Victoria saves water through infrastructure renewal, then Victoria is entitled to use that water any way it sees fit – it doesn’t affect SA.
Victoria is planning to send an equal amount of water down the Murray as it takes for the North South pipeline and for its own farmers, as an environmental flow. No other state is entitled to use that water for anything else – it might be travelling through SA but it’s Victoria’s water. Obviously, it will benefit the SA environment at no cost to South Australians.
So (to play devil’s advocate) Victorian farmers can argue that they are being robbed by SAs, who gain by the infrastructure improvements (environmentally, at least) without making a contribution to it.
As for moving water between catchments, if you really think that’s a sin we should de-commission the Snowy River scheme and let the Snowy flow as nature intended it to, rather than diverting water for the benefit of irrigators.
Anyone want to bet that Wong and Rudd go for a pitifully inadequate Emissions reduction target to appease the Business lobby? At least if we had Howard in we wouldn’t have bothered to get our hopes up that the Murray and Climate Change would have been taken seriously. After the largely symbolic signing of Kyoto, which meant basically nothing in terms of actual policy, the Labor Government has been almost indistinguishable from their predecessors.
[CLIMATE Change Minister Penny Wong has defended her decision to renege on a commitment to present a 2020 target to cut greenhouse gas emissions on the grounds that it suits business to wait.
The Greens have attacked the decision today as a “complete shemozzle”, but Senator Wong said there was no imperative to release the target ahead of the UN climate change talks.
Senator Wong has confirmed the government had previously planned to present the target ahead of talks in Poland on climate change, but has indicated today that business wants the target and design decisions on an emissions trading scheme at the same time. The targets will now be released on December 15. ]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24733305-2702,00.html
Dio, save your tirade for when/if such a decision is made. You may just be going off half cocked.
I note that the latest Essential Research Poll pitted Julia gillard up against Malcolm as preferred PM. He got 34% and Julia 39%. Oh dear.
Diogenes, when it comes to climate change I am at ease with Rudd & Wong. This is a serious issue and there are serious consequences to the economy involved. They must be careful and they must get it right.
If the sceptics were in government we could be facing a disaster in future or if we did what the Greens wanted god help the economy. No, I have total confidence in the right party to get climate change right.
Gary
There’s no point waiting for a bad decision to be made to complain about it. You have to complain before the decision is made. I’m going to use 20% as the benchmark for the 2020 reduction. Anything more shows a serious and brave commitment to addressing CC and puts Australia in the leadership category. Anything less than 20% will be a cave-in to business and leave Australia in the US/China/India/Russia League of CC Denial Nations.
Zoomster
Try running that argument in any pub in Murray Bridge. I understand that that might be how things are under the agreement, but as Mike Young comments I posted show, in real world terms it is a nonsense. Just because “leakage savings” don’t count, doesn’t mean they don’t matter. The fact is Victoria is diverting 75 billion litres per year out of the system. The fact that they could do that under the agreement shows it was a badly worded agreement, not that there is no loss.
The sooner states stop hiding behind entitlements under arcane agreements and face the consequences of their bad past water management decisions with honesty and accountability, the sooner the Murray Darling will stop from turning into a series of salt marshes.
As for the Snowy, that is raising a non-sequitur since it is not a dying system. Even so, if it was appropriate to return some flow to it then I’d say do it.
The “economy” vs. “acting on climate change” is a false dichotomy.
If one doesn’t act on climate change there will not be an economy to worry about.
Anyway, I’m a bit over Mumbai being talked up as if it heralds some massive paradigm shift in the way the world works.
The Herald had about 439 feature articles on it today but a tiny little article, barely a paragraph, about how Christians had killed 400 Muslims, and injured thousands, in riots in Nigeria.
Centre
The EU is committing to a 20% reduction by 2020. They claim this will only cost 0.5% GDP of the block. I think we can manage the same. Business will squeal because they are obsessed by growth and hate having any regulations imposed on their ability to do whatever they want.
[I’m going to use 20% as the benchmark for the 2020 reduction.]
20% of 1990, yes?
Not this 10-15% of 2000 rubbish. Give us a couple more years and it’ll be 5% of 2010 levels.
Dio
We agree again. On CC targets, teh economic downturn is reducing emissions in China about 5% anyway (lower steel use in manufacturing) and would be similar here. No reason to make targets lower – they should be easier to reach.
If one does act on climate change (without proper regard to the economy) there will not be an economy to worry about!
Diogenes, what I am saying is that I trust Rudd & Wong to get it right much more than either the sceptics or the Greens.
Centre
Can you prove that? The whole point of the Garnaut report was that the opposite is true. Business always says this but its rarely true, except for businesses that are dying anyway. Thanks to our black coal Australia has some of the cheepest raw electricity prices in the western world. If we can’t compete its got nothing to do with power costs. A $50/tonne carbon tax would result in a 20-25% increase in retail power prices, which represents no more than 1% on inflation. In fact in the present (economic) climate, the extra work from emission reduction schemes will probably be a net economic gain. Business always counts the costs without counting the benefits to shoot down such ideas, but its usually a false argument. If we always listened to what every business lobby group demanded, we’d still have children down coal mines.
[If one does act on climate change (without proper regard to the economy) there will not be an economy to worry about!]
There’ll be a planet.
Centre
I agree with that but I remain to be convinced that the end result will be any better. They might well get there by a more sensible, educated route but if you end up at the same place, it’s a bit irrelevant that the route was better.
Oz
Yes. The 2020 target is 20% reduction from 1990 levels.
[If we always listened to what every business lobby group demanded, we’d still have children down coal mines]
No doubt
OK, let’s not worry about any economic impact. Let’s cut emmissions by 100% from 2/12/08.
“children down coal mines”
But then child-powered extraction would slow the coal economy!
Frank
#343 You missed Amigo FINNS correct analogy point Obama was prepared to trash his own (white) grand mother to score a politcal racial point on TV live to 300 MILLION
“I can no more disown him (Pastro Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html
Disgusting & indecent …Now FINNS was simply saying similorly by analogy that Indian politcans ar more interested in money and power than facing th Mumbai terrorist problems and I agree …Overseas politcans ar below Aussie politicans standards
New thread.
Socrates – OK, so why should Victoria spend all that money on water savings? It seems a little harsh to expect Vic to expend $1 billion without thought of return. If it’s to benefit SA, then surely SA should kick in some.
And as for the Snowy – yes, it is a dying system. That’s why Vic lobbied NSW and Canberra so hard to have water returned to it. The only way that this could happen was by Victoria finding water savings elsewhere, equivalent to the extra amount going down the Snowy. Haven’t heard anyone complaining that this water is being ‘stolen’ from SA but it’s a very similar scenario.