Like Essential Media before it, Roy Morgan‘s first poll of the year shows no significant change from the last polls of 2008. The face-to-face survey has Labor’s two-party lead steady at 60-40 and their primary vote down one point to 51.5 per cent, while the Coalition’s is down half a point to 35 per cent. The Greens have recovered two points from the curious slump they suffered in the first poll after the government’s emissions trading scheme announcement, which brought them down from 10.5 per cent to 6 per cent. What’s more:
• South Australia’s first state by-election since 1994 will be held tomorrow in Frome. Read and comment about it here, and tune in to this site for live coverage of the count from about 6.30pm local time.
• It appears a contest is on to fill Petro Georgiou’s Liberal preselection vacancy in Kooyong, with reports emerging that merchant banker Josh Frydenburg is not the shoo-in many had assumed. Frydenburg pursued a membership recruitment drive before the last election in an unsuccessful bid to topple Georgiou, but sources quoted by Andrew Landeryou at VexNews say two-thirds of these memberships have lapsed. This leaves Frydenberg vulnerable to opposition from Institute of Public Affairs director John Roskam, previously an unsuccessful candidate for Senate preselection (and more recently mentioned as a successor to Peter Costello in Higgins), who stands poised to garner support from Georgiou and the locally powerful Ted Baillieu/David Davis faction. Also mentioned is John Pesutto, described by Melissa Fyfe of The Age as “an industrial relations lawyer who led a rewrite of the Victorian Liberal Party’s constitution last year”.
• Liberal Senator Judith Troeth has announced she will retire when her current term ends in mid-2011, adding a new dimension to the Victorian Senate preselection contest for the next election. The Nationals are likely to secure an extension of the agreement that will give them second place on a joint Coalition ticket, leaving the Liberals with the safe first position and the dangerous third. Michael Ronaldson is presumably likely to retain pole position from the 2004 election; Troeth’s departure enhances Nationals renegade Julian McGauran’s chances of taking number three.
• Marc Moncrief of The Age on the race to fill Evan Thornley’s vacancy in the Victorian upper house region of South Metropolitan:
Labor’s factions are also in a battle over how to fill the vacancy in the upper house created by Mr Thornley’s departure, with confusion over whether the Southern Metropolitan seat will be delivered to Labor’s right-wing Unity faction or to the Socialist Left. Unity faction powerbroker Michael Danby, the federal member for Melbourne Ports, is believed to have collected a number of names including Julia Mason, former candidate for the federal seat of Goldstein. However, one member of the Right faction said the Left was more likely to have a claim to the post, as Unity now holds all three of the top positions in Parliament – Premier, Deputy Premier and Treasurer. If the Left is given the nod, it will have to ensure the choice is a member who can keep the relatively conservative seat at the next election.
• Other ructions in the Victorian ALP: forces of the Right associated with Bill Shorten and Stephen Conroy have formed an alliance with the Socialist Left, freezing out what The Australian’s Rick Wallace describes as “the portion of the Right aligned with state frontbenchers Tim Holding and Martin Pakula and the shop assistants’ union”. More commentary plus an intermittently interesting comments thread at VexNews.
• Large parts of the media remain convinced that Anna Bligh will shortly be calling a Queensland state election. Mark Bahnisch at Larvatus Prodeo/Crikey isn’t so sure, while fellow local Possum deems Lawrence Springborg to be no better equipped to pitch to Brisbane as leader of the Liberal National Party than he was as head of a fractious coalition.
• The silly season news cycle has been awash with talk of Barnaby Joyce seeking a berth in the lower house to assume leadership of the Nationals, at the urging of John Howard. Joyce himself has mentioned Labor’s 2007 gains of Leichhardt, Dawson and Flynn. More intriguing has been talk of a move south of the border to take on independent Tony Windsor in New England, which locals quoted by Matthew Clayfield of The Australian had no trouble recognising as a most courageous proposition. Possum notes that any such move might cost the Nationals Joyce’s Queensland Senate seat in the event that the Liberal National Party disintegrates following a state election defeat.
• Peter Tucker at Tasmanian Politics gets in early on this year’s Tasmanian Legislative Council periodic election action. This year is the turn of Derwent, a Hobart seat held for Labor by Treasurer Michael Aird; Windermere, which extends from outer Launceston up the eastern bank of the Tamar River to the sea, and is held by independent Ivan Dean; and Devonport-based Mersey, held by independent Norma Jamieson. Jamieson’s retirement after one six-year term sets the scene for an unpredictable contest likely to attract a Melbourne Cup field. Aird and Dean are almost certain to be re-elected, potentially without opposition in Dean’s case.
• The indefatigable Ben Raue at The Tally Room has moved to his own domain.
njl @ 132
When you say of Mr Turnbull that “… For my money he is the most talented member of the liberal party I’ve ever seen.”, are you offering that as a comment on the liberal party, or on yourself?
oh dear diog
just when you show ‘progress’ , there’s a relapse
Diogenes
#148
Diog “njl As a fellow seemingly uncommitted elitist progressive, I was quite hopeful that Turnbull would prove to be a good Opposition leader as he shares some of MY values”
“seemingly uncommitted elitist progressive’ , see…one minute you ar UNcommitted to this elitist progressive stuff , and th next minut you ar over zealously committed this elitist progressive cause i just don’t how th elitist proressive bretheran keep up with you
“as he (Turnbul) shares some of MY values” And with trepodation i ask , which ones
Dio, Turnbull’s whole policy as minister was to give $10 mill. to some pie in the sky plan to seed for rain, mind it wasnt all lost, he got a chunk of it back as donations for his election chest.
ruawake
I thought of you the other day. I made the mistake of buying a book for my wife, who seems to have become a militant, Marxist, post-modernist zealot recently. The book is “The Secret History of the War on Cancer”.
It describes how the economic interests of Big Pharm and Big Industry have controlled cancer policy by persuading the medical and political establishments to concentrate their efforts on treatment rather than prevention. It argues that many cancers are preventable but carcinogens made by industry are covered up with deliberately flawed studies.
I’m really copping a blast after each chapter. In the last one, the medical profession colluded with Big Smoke to support them on the Cancer Council in saying cigarettes don’t cause cancer.
Dio, i meant to tell you, Cherie has settled interstate just before the sht hits the fan here and she’s found a good specialist over there, she left in the afternoon, right after we did the last tv interview, i think it goes to air next month on ch9, at least they’re sending a cd of it to us beforehand and the police were there supervising the whole thing so it shouldnt be too bad.
Ron
The “seemingly uncommitted” comment referred to the fact that we would vote for anyone Labor, Lib or Green depending on policy.
“as he (Turnbul) shares some of MY values”
We both hate John Howard and like Tim Flannery.
Steve, I’ve said, once, twice, three times heck I’ve lost count, it’s very very unlikely that the liberals will win the next election. Theres a bigger chance of the economy turning pear shaped then the coalition taking government in 2010. ‘
Diogenes, my first impression of you is that you’re smarter than the average bear. The notion that Turnbull isn’t good at politics I think is quite unfair to be honest. His approval rating in opposition is higher than Nelson, Crean or Howard’s ever was, and for the large part he has done better than Beazley. His timing is horrible, why he wanted to lead the party straight after Howard is a mystery to me. When oppositions release policies a while out from an election they either get absorbed into government policies or they are picked to pieces as being impractical and dangerous, and nobody can prove to the contrary because they aren’t implemented yet.
As for his spell in government, Kyoto and the like were not ministerial decisions even if he agreed with them, they would have been cabinet decisions, it fell to Turnbull to sell them in public. But I am for the large part disenchanted in politics, I don’t believe Rudd or Turnbull or Nelson believe much of it, it’s just a case of being able to read the electorate and read which emotion/demeanour is appropriate and perform that emotion/demeanour convicingly. Being quickwitted and articulate also helps when inevitably from time to time they are caught out not really knowing what they’re talking about.
As for Hockey, he’ll move on, people have short memories. Who was the shadow foreign minister when Labor launched that ridiculous troops home by christmas campaign?
Pendant, whilst it’s fair to say I reckon I’ve seen more talented labor politicians than liberal ones, Turnbull ranks up there with the best from both worlds.
njl, i think your wrong about peoples short memories re Hockey, work choices threatened their working security and therefore their financial well being and he wont be able to throw that off, even now people are comparing how much worse off they would be with work choices as things tighten up, people know Rudd isnt responsible for job losses in the meltdown but blind freddy can work out how much worse off they’d have been and Howard’s government policy would have been to blame, Howard is gone but they’ll remember Hockey was in charge of selling it to them.
Judith, Selling it, exactly, not implementing them. Admittedly i never got put on one, but I think workchoices were exagerated as the cause for Howard’s loss. although not many liked them, very few who were going to vote liberal changed their vote because of workchoices, even fewer will continue to vote against the coalition with the policy dead and buried.
diog
#156
“Ron The “seemingly uncommitted” comment referred to the fact that we (th seemingly uncommitted elitist progressive) , would vote for anyone Labor, Lib or Green depending on policy. ”
And has there been a time in past when such extra extra-ordinary Liberal policy annoused has caused you to actualy vote for th Liberals !…..and does mrs diog a commited “greenie” reely know of your Liberel party treasons
njl
Approval ratings don’t mean much if they don’t translate into votes. 60-40 is dismal. And he could be accused of not over-performing as Environment Minister.
Where exactly is the evidence for this often trotted out line “Turnbull is a brilliant politician”?
He was a bland and pointless environment minister, he undermined the Liberal Party immediately after the election when they needed to pull together, he barely scraped through a leadership contest against the least popular leader in history, his poll numbers are woeful, he has zero policies and he ended the year with a party revolt against his strategy.
Regulation for Margin Lenders announced.
[AUSTRALIA’S corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), is set to gain more authority to regulate the nation’s margin lending industry.
Senator Nick Sherry, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law, said in a statement on Sunday that margin lending providers would have to be licensed by ASIC from July 1.
“There will be single, standard, national regulation and supervision of margin lending by July 1, 2009, which means much greater protection for investors as well as cost savings for product providers.]
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24929605-5003402,00.html
Ron
I said I would vote Lib if I agreed with their policies. It just hasn’t happened yet. 😀
[Where exactly is the evidence for this often trotted out line “Turnbull is a brilliant politician”?]
Oz, don’t be a queue jumper, I’m still waiting for evidence of an economic meltdown being more likely than the Liberals winning in 2010. The last bit I can understand but not the first.
well according to mrs diog , you ar not going to either ….and hav her…..and mrs diog says she is always right
njl, too many who had their fingers in the pie are still in the libs line up, dont kid yourself that the impact work choices had isnt huge, just about everyone knows someone who was affected by it, one of my grandies working part time at spotlight after school was affected, she was stashing her money for uni, she’s now started working elsewhere fulltime for this year as a gap year and building on her savings for uni next year, she has wanted to do pediatrics since she was about 14, in fact i know of quite a few who were affected, comes from being one of the great unwashed.
njl
I thought you’d been knocked down enough today , and let you go ….but geez this takes th cake
njl #160 “but I think workchoices were exagerated as the cause for Howard’s loss. although not many liked them, VERY FEW who were going to vote liberal changed their vote because of workchoices….”
but you’ve made all th 2004 Liberal voters who switched to Labor Rudd in 2007 disappear……when did they go to , they changed from howard to rudd for many reasonss….however polls show th overwhelming no swung to Labor ‘primarily’ ovar W/C …..AS SOON AS th ACTU add campagn started over W/C , [polls swung from Howard to labor…in fact too Besley Labor , even before Rudd took over (Rudd simply comnsolidated & then preserved that swing)
Now thingys like iaraq , Haneef , Hicks , NT intervation , CC Kyoto , evolution revolution , ‘sorry’ , Rudds hospital promises , ‘its time’ bllah blah had an efect contributors but th albertross that destroyed howards ‘trust’ in battlers swingers and his lagitimacy was W/C , and other factors reinforsed voters already made decision to switch aroo to labor
and i got some bad news for my friend dyno , th ronilpolitc revolution since occured…lots of lib voters stuck with Howard reluctantly as an incumant & fear of interst rates increasing like Howard scared in campaign in spite of W/C etc anf tink they regret it & see th non ancumbant Rudd now in charge , thinkgs OK and feel comfortable in th ‘change’ …and thats where some causes of big poll lead is today
steve @ 166,
What makes you think there won’t be a recession?
Or have I misunderstood your position?
Or are we playing word games with the term “meltdown”?
“th ronilpolitc revolution since occured”
What happens next Ron? Do I lose my head? Where do I queue for the unkindest cut of all?
60-40 against the most popular politician in the modern era barely a year into his first term. OZ if you really want to know why I rate Turnbull, he is articulate, he has a controlled, clipped way of speaking that creates a sense of stability and control. His views seem inline with where the electorate is, that says to me he knows how to read it, he manages to maintain a kind of civility when he gets angry and attacking yet manages to still seem concerned and passionate, he lectures as if he is horrified and dissapointed that the government would do such a thing. He has a nice face for camera, he knows how to dress and he knows where to look during interviews. Turnbull can recognise when his policy on something won’t be as popular as the governments and knows to duck, dodge and waffle rather than take the issue on headfirst when it is raised by an interviewer or the like, he can fake sincerity, he is not old and feeble nor young and erratic. He has nice teeth, good posture, and combs his hair nicely. He has those nice watermelon ties, he went to Oxford, he is a known republican campaigner, more so then labor who like to take the republican tag. He is rich so he can have expensive, expansive campaigns. I’ll give you the rest another time.
Oz
I agree Turnbull is a intelligent man but he has an impossible job. If Minchin open his mouth to resign instead of opening it to undermine Turnbull, the party and Turnbull may have some future.
Stephen, the economic meltdown isn’t likely, but seeing as a liberal win is almost conditional upon it their winning is even less likely. Ofcourse thats just me, Perhaps if you took an opinion poll people would say that it is far more likely Turnbull will be the next pm then we will go into recession.
dyno, whatever you call it voters will compare it with whats going on overseas and we’ll compare well, even the most pessimistic forecasters are saying we’ll get a soft landing compared to other countries, in fact few think we’ll even get as far as a recession, Rudd seems to be pushing all the right buttons and doing everything to keep us afloat, most seem to think things will bottom out after midyear and then head up by the end of the year–just in time for the election year.
Dyno
“th ronilpolitc revolution since occured”
What happens next Ron? Do I lose my head? Where do I queue for the unkindest cut of all?
Dyno , you can rely on me to giv you th kindest cut , as i’m a softiea t hart
I was explaining my theory of th extra ordinary poll diferences bwtween th Partys , and that clearly represents a swaggs of 2007 Howard Liberal voters….now happy with rudd for many reasons , one as said incumancy helped Howward as it did Keating & all predeccors (now rudd is incumbant and things fairly ok) , second interst rates were threatened in 2007 campaign to increase (they’ve droped) , third Rudd has made some credible polular decisions ..over GFC , sorry , apology etc and publicly seems in charge & unnerved & feel these ar ex 2007 liberal voters saying to Neewspoll I’ll vote rudd next time…..now we gonna get a recesion , unemployment will rise but rates will drop further , will voters blame rudd or GFC …suspect GFC is understood by voters to be world wide as its on TV every nite And as for “Ron Do I lose my head” ….nah you’re a ‘liberal’…only beheading is four th ‘conservatives’…as you wait for cycle to swing as it always done eventualys but feel Dyno that rudds got 2 terms pretty well in his pocket
njl,
I don’t doubt Turnbull has ability and I also suspect his views are, if not always the same as most people, at least tolerable to many. He’s also not tarred in any significant way with the WorkChoices brush, at a personal level.
I don’t know that he’s a very good politician, though. He’s ok at making arguments, but not so good at choosing which arguments to make. The classic example to date was the way he handled the GFC – spent weeks going on about the chronology of the discussions and e-mails between Rudd, Swan, Henry and Stevens. All well and good, but there were bigger issues at stake (Was the Government doing a reasonable job? Had the Govt done right thing with the bank guarantee? What should the Govt do next?) – and everyone in the community knew it.
The problem is probably lack of experience, but time is not on his side. They’ll get rid of him around mid-2009 unless things (ie the polls) improve dramatically.
As for Hockey, in my view he’s a special to be Opposition Leader at the 2013 election. How he will fare will depend much more on how Labor has gone than on what he does himself.
Judith I hope you don’t mind your comment is more or less demanding the same thing from me as Ron’s so I hope I’ll satisfy your qualm in my answer to Ron’s. Roughly 47% of people voted for Mark Latham at the 2004 election and roughly 52 voted for Kevin. You are talking about a whole 5 percent of Australians who changed their vote. A significant swing I know, but Latham was an exceptionally incompetent opposition. If we instead compare the swing to 2001 when labor mounted a decent opposition leader labor won roughly 49% of the vote making it a whole 3% of Australians who changed their mind.
If you are to compare the events in Rudd’s favour, or no longer in Howards favour between the two elections you not only have workchoices but you have
-Fresh, new faced leadership
-No tampa/crisis, infact with the facts now known Tampa hurts Howard instead of helps him.
-Climate change becomes more of an issue
-Iraq War has become unpopular
-Haneef
-Vanstones being forced out
-the anti terror backbench revolt
-The Barnaby revolt
I don’t believe all those issues tallied up to less than one percent, so at worst Hockey is conceding a two percent headstart overworkchoices, and that is talking six years of liberals saying that workchoices are dead and burried. Workchoices in my opinion was an issue that absolutely enraged people…who would never vote liberal in their life.
Dyno i think you are very right. I reject those who say Turnbull is a bad politician because I think he has alot of political talents but yes he does show inexperience a fair bit and I also agree that he won’t make it through the year, not with a caucaus that finds him too progressive and a government whose supremely popular.
Ron, perhaps your nickname should be “Robespierre” – anyway I’ll rely on a good word from you when the crunch comes!
Judith, I’m pretty sure we will have a recession, I realise we live in an era of unprecedented events but it would be truly unexpected for a commodity exporter like Australia to avoid recession when our trading partners have slowed down so much (even China, where growth is still well and truly positive, has slowed massively).
Having said that, your conclusion may well be right. Most people (including me, may I say) think the Govt has done a resaonable job on the GFC. If that keeps happening then there is no reason why a popular first-term PM ought to be punished too much, for what is basically a global phenomenon with local consequences. It’s only if he stuffs up (or starts being a smart-arse about the recession like Keating was) that he’ll have big electoral problems.
Dyno
“Ron, perhaps your nickname should be “Robespierre” – anyway I’ll rely on a good word from you when the crunch comes!”
robespierre …prsume typo eror and you meant ronspierre
njl
“Workchoices in my opinion was an issue that absolutely enraged people…who would never vote liberal in their life.”
Labor got a 5.8% swing in 2007 on primary votes , and is presently sitting on a furthar 6% swing , thats almost 12% swing TO Labor in Jan 2009 vs 2004 electon …these AR people who statisticaly DID vote Liberal and now do not wish to on PRIMARY votes One can not ignore such masive movements
Now th Bigest politcal issue soince 2004 was W/C , so to sugest th bigest issue has not primarily caused this massive swing defys not only poling , but from ACTUAL polling from ACTU adds reflecting th swing …and which started from those adds…so my vieww is suportd by actual stats ie polls
As for future , tink W/C is a generatonal chain Libs will carry four a few electons , and any existing leader (who was also a senior Howard cabinet minister up to 2007 ) will always wear th pain electoraly …and fataly …including Joe Hockey (although perhaps his afiable personality may frankley diminish that abit (but that also becomes a Besley death wish attritbute) which is why I reely tink a Hunt type is liberals future
[he is articulate, he has a controlled, clipped way of speaking that creates a sense of stability and control.]
No one’s denying he can speak fluently and eloquently. However, that’s a million miles away from being a good politician.
[His views seem inline with where the electorate is, that says to me he knows how to read it]
What are you basing that on? The only way of measuring how “in-line” his views are with the electorate would be the Liberal Party’s primary and his own approval ratings, which are, like I already said, woeful.
[He has a nice face for camera, he knows how to dress and he knows where to look during interviews.]
Ok look. Stephen Long, the ABC’s economic correspondent is a sharp dresser, eloquent and works the camera well. That does make him out to be a brilliant politician. You’re confusing media savvy with politics. The rest of your post is superficial nonsense. On your benchmark, James Bond is a brilliant politician.
Politics is not fancy suits, a Rhodes scholarship and an posh accent. Politics is what goes on in the party room and in the public sphere. In both those areas, you’ve failed to highlight anything that reflects well upon him, let alone anything that makes him out to be a formidable politician.
On the other hand, the fact that he needed to conduct a massive branch stack just to get pre-selection, only extremely narrowly won the leadership of the Liberal Party after the pathetic, incompetent and deeply unpopular Nelson, massively undermined confidence in the party during Nelson’s leadership, is polling very lowly in terms of Liberal primary, 2PP and personal approval and has come up with zero policies all demonstrate he’s a pretty rubbish politician and the BS the Murdoch press was spinning us about “Here cometh the saviour” was shown to be exactly that – BS.
Ron the biggest factor in terms of the swing from 04-07 was Mark Latham, the second biggest was Laurrie Ferguson. Those two were the most incompetent, polarising duo that took the leadership of a major party, they account for more than half of that swing and anyone who thinks Latham could have won in 07 had he stayed on and had workchoices up his sleave is a clearly a very ordinary person. Still a bigger factor then workchoices was that the Howard government, Costello treasury and Downer foreign office were now three years older and Rudd was fresh faced and new.
People said Beazley was too connected with Keating to have a chance against the supercool new Howard government, two years later he was winning the popular vote, hows that for your Australians with long memories?
Oz, I promise you I will get to your thing tommorow, but it requires more than a trigger reaction response like Ron’s nonsense does and I am tired. But you will have your response.
Goodnight
one thing sticks in my mind, when Turnbull was voted in as leader i happened to glance at Albrechsons column for the first and last time, she was gushingly lauding Turnbull and as she wrote ” ladies and gentlemen now it’s game on”, well Ms. Albrechson i’m still waiting and i cant help but wonder if she regrets that adoring article and that forcasting phrase.
Yes Judith, that sticks out in my mind too, the “game on” phrase she used. I actually agreed with her to some extent, thinking that Turnbull was far better leadership material than Nelson was. I still think he is, but it’s a whole different ballgame in opposition, and Turnbull has learnt that lesson time and time again since coming to the top Liberal job, not to mention he is up against a very formidable opponent in Kevin.
The Liberal Party has a serious political problem. After a year of talking down the economy at every opportunity, nobody takes any notice of a word they utter.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24928862-3102,00.html
Meanwhile the OO pushes the doom and gloom line. Hanrahan rules at the Australian.
[AUSTRALIA will go into recession this year with a budget that’s “buggered”, forcing Canberra to choose between its infrastructure priorities and more populist middle-class welfare and industry bailouts.
Leading economic forecaster Access Economics warns in its quarterly Business Outlook, released today, that the nation’s economic boom will “unwind scarily fast”, halving corporate profits, costing more than 300,000 people their jobs and blowing out the current account deficit to more than $100 billion.
“Batten the hatches. This is not just a recession. This is the sharpest deceleration Australia’s economy has ever seen,” the report says.
Thanks to China’s growth, Australia last year escaped the recessions that sent major economies such as the US and Britain into reverse.]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24929812-2702,00.html
Here’s Peter Martin’s take on it.
http://petermartin.blogspot.com/2009/01/recession-access-economics-breaks-dam.html
Here is a rather more serious piece of bad news from someone more credible than Mr Turnbull – Access Economics now forecasts a recession this year.
http://business.theage.com.au/business/swan-holds-back-on-recession-call-20090119-7k3x.html
Swan gave a sensible answer; neither denial nor pessimism. The good news is that we can recover by the end of the year if the govt. sticks to current investment plans and goes with a second stimulus if needed. That would still see the govt well placed for a 2010 election, especially if the coalition continues to have nothing constructive to say.
Steve – snap! I didn’t realise we were talking the same story. I agree with you; Peter Martin’s assessment of the story was fair.
I’ve got a dumb question.
Telstra is screwing up telecommunications in Oz because Howie let them keep everything when they were privatised, instead of splitting the company with the Government keeping the infrastructure and selling off the retail business.
Could Rudd buy Telstra back and sell off the retail business ❓
Is there a precedent for a Government to launch a hostile takeover of a company ❓
Dio
It could be nationalised. Logically I think you propose a good solution but I doubt we have the cash to do it now – Telstra is probably still worth over $40 Bn to buy back, and that is double the value of the entire proposed stimulus package. Its frustrating – when Howard had the cash he didn’t fix Telstra and now we have a government with the political will the surplus is gone.
Giving the broadband roll out contract to competitors is the best we could do, and that is sensibly the way Conroy decided to go.
It doesn’t make sense to nationalise it.
For half the cost of nationalising, the government could implement FTTH to 98% to the Australia population ensuring a publicly owned, open access fibre network capable of speeds of 100Mbps up and down and scalable to 1Gbps as well as allowing triple play (voice, internet and television).
That would actually force Telstra to compete on a much more competitive playing field and give Australian’s access to far better services. Telstra has admitted recently that it has had the capability to deliver faster services to more Australian’s for years now but it had no motivation to deploy that capability.
How much of Telstra’s $40B value is from it’s retail and how much is the infrastructure? I thought it was roughly 50:50. That would make it $20B to buy back the infrastructure.
Just when I thought their ABC had improved lately they come up with this false statement reporting on the following article. (I guess it’s expected, new parlimentry year starting and all)
ABC says
[A key economic forecast says Australia will definitely fall into recession this year and has described the Federal Budget as being “buggered”.]
here’s what the article actually said “a lot of things being buggered because of global economy ” they didn’t state that the budget was buggered, but that of course doesn’t allow ABC to insinuate that it is all Rudd and Swannies fault whereas saying key forecasters say the budget is buggered makes it sound like it is only an australian problem and the GFC is conveniently ignored in their highlighted bold 1st paragraph that a lot of people would read and be influenced by without going on to read the whole story.
from article
[“A lot of things are buggered because the global economy is in real trouble,” he said.
“Four years of boom has collapsed in four months of chaos.
“That has all sorts of implications here, including for the Federal Budget which has very much been propped by the strong earnings of Australia’s leading exports such as coal and iron ore.]
Notice they didn’t dwell on this part, wonder why/ (sarcasticly said)
[“That stimulus package was the right thing to do – it had all the things you want in a slowdown for a government policy,” he said.
“But these are diabolical circumstances and governments cannot protect us from what’s happening internationally.”
“It doesn’t however mean that the Government should stop doing what it’s doing.”]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/19/2468672.htm
[
ABC says….
from article…
]
Thanks Vera, I saw a similarly worded story on Sky Noos this morning and was wondering what the real story was.
BTW, do you have a link to the report?
Thanks again.
Oz the polling of the liberal party is not a reflection on the he who runs it at the moment. It reflects a new government, that is well organised, that has a charismatic man at the helm and that has just replaced a 12 year old government which was extremely stale. The Rudd government has been very careful and meticulous lest they upset the electorate and left the opposition with very little space to move.
What possible reason could there be for the people who voted Kevin in to now change their mind and reject him? The only people I can imagine who would do that are greenies and their votes will just filter back to the Labor party anyway except perhaps in the division of Melbourne, but Turnbull gets none of that for himself. So I think such polls are quite uninformative and that it is far more useful to look at issue polls, like the republic, and see where Turnbull stands. For example, on the republic I seem to recall although there were strong arguements on both sides at the moment, there was an overwhelming support to become a republic after Elizabeth is succeded, and what is Turnbull’s position? To push the referendum once the next monarch comes in.
The Australian people just voted overwhelmingly in favour of more progressive government, the liberal party is overwhelmingly more conservative than that and Turnbull’s position depends heavilly on placating the Minchin gang. He may well like to outflank Rudd on the left over climate change, republic, reconcilliation and gay rights but with the dry liberals holding as many party machine votes as they do he would pay dearly if he tried.
So to be a good liberal party leader at the moment I’m afraid means you can play the press, to be able to present yourself well. The shadow cabinet is in charge of policies he can’t force it’s hand he’s only been in parliament five years and he joined the minority faction. So dressing well, speaking nicely, attacking tactfully, choosing the right demeanour and performing it convincingly are incredibly important for an opposition leader. However despite the many skills of Mr Turnbull, just like the many skills of Mr Beazley, a new government generally enjoys quite a bit of political capital straight off the bat and the Rudd government is a very good government at that. If by some miracle Turnbull manages to make it to the next election he’ll probably reduce Rudd’s majority ever so slightly, but Rudd is still far too new and far too popular for Turnbull to make such inroads and by the time Rudd is old enough, I suspect the party will be sick of waiting and ask someone else to deliver the results.
all the news reports are saying the budget is buggered, Access Economics should get a whopping rap for using such inflammatory language, they even said their forecasting would probably make things worse, thers ways of saying things and ways of saying things, AE chose the dramatic punch ’em in the face way.
Flaneur Abc link
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/19/2468672.htm
This is worth a read too, says NSW could be in for an ‘economic revival’
also after concentrating on “budget buggered” storyline this part of Access Economics report has also been ignored. saying growth will go from .8% this year to 2.4% next year. That doesn’t sound like the sky is falling to me?
[Access Economics, in its latest quarterly forecasts, predicts Australia will enter a technical recession by the end of March, chalking up back-to-back quarters of negative economic growth. This is expected to slow the annual growth rate from 3.7 per cent last financial year to just 0.8 per cent this financial year, and then rise to 2.4 per cent the following year.]
sorry forgot link
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/nsw-set-to-recover-ahead-of-the-pack/2009/01/18/1232213448316.html