UPDATE: This post was originally called “Newspoll minus three days”, but has been changed after Roy Morgan broke their normal fortnightly pattern by issuing results from last weekend’s face-to-face polling (i.e. before the stimulus package was announced). From a sample of 853, it shows Labor’s two-party lead down from 59.5-40.5 to 56-44. Labor’s primary vote is down four points to 46.5 per cent, the Coalition is up two to 38 per cent and the Greens are up half a point to 8 per cent.
The excitement of the past few days has quickly overloaded Tuesday’s thread, while adding real interest to the next set of opinion polls. Unless ACNielsen and Galaxy have something planned over the weekend, the next ones up are the regular Monday double of weekly Essential Research and fortnightly Newspoll. John Hewson tells Crikey he’s expecting an election later this year, presumably a double dissolution:
You’d have to think that the odds are narrowing on the possibility of an early election, towards the end of this year. At best, the Rudd Government’s second stimulatory package will just buy some time – simply delay the inevitable. As long as the global recession continues to deepen and, as a consequence, China’s growth continues to stall, the best Rudd can hope for is to hold up consumer spending by the cash handouts sufficient to avoid a technical recession – namely, two consecutive quarters of negative growth … Moreover, the ETS is to be introduced next year with all the scaremongering opportunities that carries for the major polluters. So why not go the people for a “mandate” to continue with the strategy, especially now that Turnbull has so clearly nailed his colours to the mast, becoming such a fixed target, from both outside and within?
Of course, there’s much here that might be contested, not to mention the lack of a double dissolution trigger at this stage. In brief:
• Possum dissects the electoral impact of the stimulus package here and here.
• Antony Green analyses the finalised federal redistribution boundaries for Western Australia.
• The Senate has amended legislation abolishing tax deductible political donations, which will instead be limited to donations from individuals rather than companies. Deductions applied for donations of up to $100 from individuals before the Howard government’s 2006 “reforms” jacked it up to $1500 and extended it to companies. The legislation as amended maintains the $1500 threshold.
Judith if the law is not about justice what is it about?
[Sometimes Glen I think their is hope for you and then you go off and start prattling neoconnery again such as jail being a holiday camp.]
Glen is pretty moderate compared to the recession loving G.P.
Glen they have the justice system you want in the good old USA, 686 per 100,000 (1/2 the worlds prison population, 0.67% of their population in jail), we only manage 116 per 100,000 a pathetic 0.12%.
Now I wonder, does the USA have a higher prison population because their prisons are hotels or because their judges are elected and the winners win using tough on crime rhetoric, along with a federal policy of zero tolerance on drugs, oh and perhaps access to guns helps.
Glen there a wide open fields for the liberal party here, get tough on crime, increase the cost of prisons to above the cost of tertiary education ( the USA has why shouldn’t we), remember to push the fact that the cost of running prisons adds to the GDP. Go for the road gang, make their life a misery, generate those social outcasts as fast as you can, you want those statistics to rise, once you get them in the system you want to keep them there.
I just don’t understand however, the USA has 0.68% in jail and they still have the homeless, is 0.68% enough, go for broke, aim higher, lock people up for sleeping on a park bench, nothing less than life.
Dio, i find that perplexing too, they must be coping or perhaps some have been transferred to Sydney, dont we have one of the best burns units in OZ here?
[Dio, i find that perplexing too, they must be coping or perhaps some have been transferred to Sydney, dont we have one of the best burns units in OZ here?]
Ten news had a Dr on saying they are in all the major metro hospitals. He didn’t mention any being sent to Sydney.
Well, if you think the media’s coverage of the bushfire disaster is over the top, I’d say the same thing about their “coverage” (and I do mean coverage) of the global financial crisis. For almost a year now, it’s been headline “news” in every bulletin, every day. And it looks like being the same way for years to come as the stupid thing unfolds. Big yawn! Did anyone see Richard Glover’s piece in the Sydney Morning Herald about how the media is contributing to the overall sense of doom and gloom?
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/richard-glover/kicking-an-economy-when-its-down/2009/02/06/1233423492151.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
He makes the point:
[The media has to report the news, good or bad. But it also has to try to rise above the mood of the moment, rather than simply reinforce it.]
Herald Sun says the official toll is now 84.
Cuppa @ 1206
Yes. I do agree that there is generally too much negative coverage from the media in this day and age. Thats why good news is always reported at the end and not the start.
“Most “lefties” are like that-open honest debate without in the main backstabbing and destabilisation”
Gusface, presumably the NSW Labor Govt are not “lefties” according to your definition?
[Yes. I do agree that there is generally too much negative coverage from the media in this day and age.]
I don’t think the proportion has changed, there is just a lot more media now, so it is more visible / audible and accessible.
Glen,
You ought to read Archer’s prison diaries. They make the point pretty clearly that prison sucks, big time.
JB and ShowsOn
Melbourne only has one Burns Unit, which is at the Alfred. A burn bigger than 15% needs to be in a Burns Unit. The major hospitals can look after ones smaller than that. The resources to look after a big burn are enormous, mainly in nursing time and expertise. They must be really struggling at the Alfred. They’ve got a great director there and she’ll do a good job.
There is a ENORMOUS reluctance for Health Departments to admit that they cannot cope with a disaster and send patients interstate. The politics is horrendous.
Glen, obviously some must be for punishment, but when it comes to premeditated murder then the punishment becomes secondary and the safety of the general population comes into play, there is no such thing as a justice system –we have a legal system, justice is an emotive term, unless you can raise a murder victim from the dead, or place a person in the exact position they’d be in if it wasnt for the crime then there is nothing that the law can do to give justice, hence Glen we have a legal system to try and right wrongs bumbling as it is at times.
Winston
You clearly have not been near a bush fire. Given the circumstance the outcomes are actually amazingly good and in my view the CFA is an amazing organization. Claiming you can stop a bush fire being driven by 30km wind on a 45 degree day is like claiming you can stop a hurricane, or hold back a tidal wave, you can’t.
[There is a ENORMOUS reluctance for Health Departments to admit that they cannot cope with a disaster and send patients interstate. The politics is horrendous.]
Surely a major disaster like this would be one of the only times they could get away with it?
I mean it would be pretty low for an opposition to get up in parliament and try to make a political point out of it…
It was said that some fires that had been bought under controll had been relit by firebugs. In this situation where somebody knowing there have been deaths allready but still starts the fire going again wouldn’t you have to say they intended to kill? just asking
For all it’s faults the Justice ( or legal if you like) system beats shotguns at 50 paces.
There was a day recently when the media kept going on about the (alleged) fact that 80,000 jobs had been lost, worldwide, that day. This is clearly not good news: however it was reported as if the apocalypse was upon us.
Whereas if you do the maths, I’m not sure that this figure is all that exceptional during a 12 month period when we know unemployment is going to rise by (say) 2-3 %age points throughout the Western and emerging economies.
[Gusface, presumably the NSW Labor Govt are not “lefties” according to your definition]
was Al capone?
but seriously..
Dyno
I wish there was a word or phrase to describe NSW labor.
vera, you raise a reasonable point which perhaps ought to be tested in court.
Of course they’ll have to send the alleged offenders to Mars to give them a fair trial, but that’s a problem for another day.
[For all it’s faults the Justice ( or legal if you like) system beats shotguns at 50 paces.]
Of course, you can’t have a liberal democracy without a functioning justice system.
[I wish there was a word or phrase to describe NSW labor.]
Opposition in waiting?
This quote may shed some light on the number of patients at the Alfred (from the lead story on The Age website, ’tis about 2 hours old) :
[Ten people remain in a critical condition in hospital after being burnt in the state’s bushfires.
A spokesman from The Alfred hospital said 10 patients were in a critical condition in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. A further 10 were in a stable condition.
The hospital had received two new patients from the Austin Hospital on Sunday, the spokesman said.
He said no one at The Alfred had died from the fire.]
I don’t really agree with Glen (prison is crap – I wouldn’t want to go there under any circumstances) but I do have sympathy on one level – it is infuriating when quite serious offenders get away with token non-parole periods.
The law has to dispense justice for all, including victims. Otherwise society will develop a different way of dealing with criminals (and this wouldn’t be pretty).
It’s time @ 1196. Your right. I’ll say nothing more.
There’s at least 4 justifications for locking people up.
Punishment
Rehabilitation
Deterrence i.e. as an example to others who might commit crimes.
Prevention of crime – i.e. can’t re-offend if they are in jail.
There is no universal agreement on which is more important – although one thing we know is, the longer we keep them in jail the less likely they are to re-offend. Crime is generally a young man’s (person’s) game.
[Ten people remain in a critical condition in hospital after being burnt in the state’s bushfires.
A spokesman from The Alfred hospital said 10 patients were in a critical condition in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. A further 10 were in a stable condition.
The hospital had received two new patients from the Austin Hospital on Sunday, the spokesman said.
He said no one at The Alfred had died from the fire.]
I am assuming that patients who are well enough are either discharged or are being transferred to a General Ward.
dyno i suppose it dosen’t really matter thinking about it, not sure about other states but it can be 25yrs jail in NSW if someone dies in a deliberately set fire. that’s the same as a murder sentence anyway
You’re that is.
fredn, amen to that.
if any here had to get up close and personal with our legal system no matter what side of the fence you’d be on i think you’d be stunned at just how complex the law is and how many fine lines there are where a judge can decide either way and it seems the luck of the draw just what way he/she will go.
[Surely a major disaster like this would be one of the only times they could get away with it?
I mean it would be pretty low for an opposition to get up in parliament and try to make a political point out of it…]
It’s not the Opposition who would be the problem. Saving face is very important to politicians and top bureaucrats. The media and relatives would not be impressed if it happened.
Fredn @ 1214
Agree – absolutely no criticism of CFA and others involved.
My point is that we need to question whether (given that the state government had already told us this would be the worst day in Victoria’s history) everything possible was done to avoid the terrible consequences.
Gordon Brown has offered the UK’s help
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jL-HT68zkiAEB-BNkWY1B6fD6lLQ
[My point is that we need to question whether (given that the state government had already told us this would be the worst day in Victoria’s history) everything possible was done to avoid the terrible consequences.]
I would be shocked if there isn’t a state royal commission to determine questions of that sort.
ANTONY GREEN
Posted Sunday, February 8, 2009 at 11:39 pm | Permalink
#1225
“It’s time @ 1196. Your right. I’ll say nothing more.”
Antony you made a incorrect claim in your #1182 stating I’d put a view in my #1136 addressed to you criticising all 2004 Labor preference deels, which i did not put at all
I pointed this out to you #1198 reply , pointing out my #1136 specifcaly criticised only th 2004 Vic pref deel on risk grounds , and that i did NOT criticise th 2004 NSW pref deel
Your repsonse is a flippant reply supporting Its Time similarley styled one
Now is th time for you to put up ….support your claim quoting my #1136 words
[ANTONY GREEN
Posted Sunday, February 8, 2009 at 11:39 pm | Permalink]
LOL 😀 Stop it Ron, you’re killing us.
Dyno, theres always the option of trial by judge alone, it would be up to the defence counsel to apply for it, on emotive cases where theres been a lot of publicity that would probably the best way to go, counsel sometimes tries it on by asking the judge not to let a case proceed because of a lot of adverse publicity but thats a road to nowhere, it’s up to the defence counsel to decide the best option for the accused.
Geez Ron, there are a few more important things in this world right at the moment right now than a navel-gazing recitation of who said what to whom in which post. You really do not like being naysayed, do you? On this night, mate, you are (for once) not the centre of attention.
to be quite honest i blew up and threw a tanty once from the body of a court {it made the front page of the paper to my shame} and the magistrate would have been quite within his rights to ban me indefinately, bless magistrate Gurry, the next day when i crept into court he just smiled and nodded to me, i was on my best behaviour after that.
Judith
without going into detail, I used a set of expletives to a pompous SC,who instantly complained to m’lord.
I said I was using language of the street.
mlord said “quite rightly too”
😉
Looks like most of Order in the House is going to be devoted to the stimulus package.
Bushfire Bill
#1238
1/ It is not your business that I point out to Antony Green in my #1235 pointed out he’s wrongly misrepresented me
Further he used his mis-claim to ridicule
(usualy you rely on a fact before one ridicules)
2/ you then santimoniously try to claim high moral ground invoking a terrible fire tragedy “On this night, mate, you are (for once) not the centre of attention.”
had you had th decency to read my #1140 , i directly am aware of death of a young lady from these fires (and I’ve spent 2 days acytualy consoling people including my daughter , aclose friend of th deceased young lady
…. so how dare tou use such a shocking tragedy as some flippant cheap debating shot
SNIP: See Article 2 of comment moderation guidelines (among others) – The Management.
Winston @ 1192
There will be an enquiry for sure. There always is. Here are my predictions:
(1) The enquiry will be a political, legal and very expensive circus. You and I will be paying for this circus.
(2) Lawyers will get their snouts in. They are increasingly getting their snouts into the bushfire trough which means that a greater proportion of the available fire management funds will go to the legal ‘industry’ rather than to making a difference on the ground.
(3) In terms of fire management, the enquiry will make a series of recommendations that will be similar to the recommendations of all the other enquiries which have followed by all the other major fires in the last thirty years. Any reasonably competent fire manager could write the recommendations within a week or so after the fire has gone out.
(4) It will not be enough to have one enquiry. Coroners, who are virtually all care and no responsibility, will make a series of independent recommendations that will mostly either be impractical to implement or blindingly obvious. It will cost taxpayers a fortune to get coroners to make these recommendations. Lawyers will represent various parties at the coronial. Another example of the legal industry taking money from the main thrust of fire management.
(5) Because labor fed and labor state governments are lined up, there will not be a separate federal enquiry, as there used to be when Howard was trying to beat up on the states. So there is one enquiry saved right there.
(6) The media will distort the process in the usual ways. The first example is that someone will have to be blamed. Human interest drama will be preferred over sensible discussion. Some individuals who have lost homes or family, or who are members of a CFA unit, will make utterly outrageous claims which will be treated uncritically as sacred by credulous reporters.
(7) The politicians of all stripes will treat fire politics like they treat all politics. It will become party-political. Populist grandstanding will occur. (In fact, has already started if you look at the conflation between murder, terrorism and the acts of a mentally unwell person). I think it might have been Tuckey who suggested that concrete was the best solution for bushfires.
(8) Special interest groups will blame the government, posture, and jockey for more resources.
(9) Farmers will blame conservationists and the government.
(10) The timber industry will blame conservationists and the government.
(11) Graziers will claim that running stock in all the catchments, national parks and state parks will reduce fire intensity and will blame conservationists and the government.
(12) Conservationists will wring their hands because they know that biodiversity is going to hell in handbasket in Australia and that poor fire management is one of the reasons. They will have conceptual difficulty in trying to reconcile deaths of individual humans with the extinction of species.
(13) Lawyers will lick their lips and persuade people to follow class actions. Fat fees to follow for all. (There is a very juicy remour doing the rounds on the Murrindindi fire that would just about have lawyers wetting their pants.) Anyway, the net result – more resources diverted to the legal ‘industry’ away from actual fire management activities.
(14) individuals will continue to make crazy decisions about where they put their houses and what kinds of houses they build.
(15) councils will continue to be slack in implementing appropriate building regulations.
(16) The insurance industry will jack up rates
Having made my predictions, I would suggest that there are some real issues, that is, ones that will not go away despite all the enquiries, recommendations and government responses. These are:
(1) We have not had serious law reform and, as a result, the legal industry is snaffling an ever-increasing share of available fire management funding.
(2) People have totally unrealistic expectations about fire management. The reality is that very hot, very dry, very windy conditions and an ignition point, will nearly always lead to extreme risk of property damage and deaths in bushfires.
(3) I am not sure why many people are blind to a basic reality about bushfires. Perhaps because economists have tended to treat the environment as an externality? Perhaps because politicians like to pretend they are in control of the environment? Perhaps because people live in ‘climate-controlled’ homes, cars and offices, they have tended to make the faulty assumption that climate-like things, like fire, can be ‘controlled’. However, fire can not be controlled. It can be ‘managed’ to a rather limited extent. Governments will be judged as if fire can be ‘controlled’.
(4) Whether it is because of ** or for some other reason, fire behaviour around the world has intensified in terms of the number, extent and extreme nature of fire events. It is becoming increasingly difficult for fire managers to get fuel reduction or control burns in at all. In any case, there are mixed views about whether fuel reduction burns actually work. Intuitively they do. But the grasslands to Canberra’s west that burned like lightning on the day that Canberra lost hundreds of houses had been burned the year before. That is to say, fire behaviour will continue to get more and more unmanageable
(5) The opportunity cost of controlling each and every fire event to such the extent that there is no risk to life or property is absolutely prohibitive. People find this very, very difficult to accept. Yet dopey reporters will talk as if the only reason stopping total fire control from happening is government incompetence or funds.
(6) our culture now has such a fetish about zero risk that it lacks the capacity to say that risks will happen, as will bad luck.
(7) governments will continue to do their best. The current fire may provide some small lessons about organisation, tactics, priorities and so on. My view, second hand or third hand as it is, is that an enquiry should find that the responses have been well-managed.
Fortunately, despite the circus, and the despite the fact that they are paying additional taxes to support all of the above, hundreds of thousands of ordinary, sensible people will get on with their lives, with their fire fighting practice, and with keeping their homes ready for the next one.
Gusface the thing to remember that the judges and magistrates are only human too and they can understand at times, i used to wonder how they could sit there day after day, listening to the most dreadful details, until thinking it through i realised the only way they could stand it and do their job properly is to disassociate themselves from it all, i wouldnt have their job for the world.
Glen at #1201
“Judith if the law is not about justice what is it about?”
If I may.
Glen, law and justice are not necesarily directly related.
Do you think that the days when laws were enacted that demanded the return of runaway slaves to their ‘rightful owners’ was just?
Or when laws denied women the vote, was that ‘justice?
Or when it was legal to pay indigenous people less than others, appropriate their terra nullus lands, was that ‘justice’?
Or when it was illegal to criticise the monarchy, called treason, as in Thailand today, is that ‘justice’?
The law is about polical control in a society it may not necessarily reflect all the visions of ‘justice’ of those within that society, only those who have the power to pass laws at that time.
Debate and discussion, shifts in power structures, may cause laws to be changed, what was ‘just’ in one era may change to being considered ‘unjust’ later.
Or vice versa.
Law and justice are related concepts, but not identical.
[Gusface the thing to remember that the judges and magistrates are only human too and they can understand at times, i used to wonder how they could sit there day after day, listening to the most dreadful details, until thinking it through i realised the only way they could stand it and do their job properly is to disassociate themselves from it all, i wouldnt have their job for the world.]
And yet the naysaysers say that Judges are too soft – well the media only reports a fraction of the evidence presented and so we don’t know the full circumstances of the case.
I just saw Order in the House, was Costello speaking in the parliament at like 4.30am?
[I just saw Order in the House, was Costello speaking in the parliament at like 4.30am?]
Sad wasnt it Bree- no more relevance,just a lonely voice howling at the moon 🙂
You saw it too, Gusface.