Some of the news that’s fit to print

It looked for a while as if Roy Morgan had returned to its weekly polling schedule, but that may have just been a short-term response to the stimulus package kerfuffle. In any event, there was no poll today. That being so, this week’s news nuggets will have to survive on their own:

• Alicia Bowie of the Campbelltown Macarthur Advertiser reports on Labor aspirants for Macarthur, whose Liberal member Pat Farmer has long since stopped behaving like a man who cares if he gets re-elected. The narrowly unsuccessful candidate from 2007, local carpenter Nick Bleasdale, is again in the running, but faces competition from Camden councillor Greg Warren. However, “the ALP will wait until the new boundaries are decided late this year before selecting its candidates for local electorates”.

• Col Allison of the Hills News reports that David Elliott, former Australian Hotels Association deputy chief executive and staffer to John Howard – or as Allison would have it, “the ambitious Liberal Party stalwart lusting for a parliamentary career”, – has denied he will stand for preselection in Brendan Nelson’s seat of Bradfield. However, “insiders say he will try to win preselection for a State Liberal seat in the North-West at the May 2011 elections, upsetting the ambitions of other card-carrying right-wing conservatives, or even a sitting MP”. The seats mentioned are Riverstone, which is reasonably safe for Labor, and “even Baulkham Hills, in the unlikely event Wayne Merton, decides to step down”. Allison reports that Elliott “has the support of MLC David Clarke, controversial leader of the so-called Christian Right of the party and a back-room wheeler-dealer”, which is odd because he was put forward as the moderate candidate against Clarke protege Alex Hawke in Mitchell before the 2007 federal election.

• Peter Tucker at Tasmanian Politics reports that Michael Ferguson, defeated in Bass at the 2007 federal election, will run for the state seat at the March 2010 election.

• Matthew Franklin of The Australian reports that “Kevin Rudd has renewed his backing for four-year, fixed parliamentary terms but refused to criticise Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s decision to call a state election six months before it was due”.

• Alex Mitchell in Crikey tells us we should “forget the nonsense written in The Australian about an early election being impossible”, because “the advance of Costello has spooked Labor which is now quietly preparing for an early election later this year”. We’ll see.

• There is a Queensland state election campaign in progress.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,256 comments on “Some of the news that’s fit to print”

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  1. Diogenes,

    We in Victoria also had Jeff Kennett as Premier labelling anyone who opposed his policies of being un-Victorian. It was pathetic as well as BS.

  3. Ronald Reagan – GENIUS negotiator (not)
    [Reagan recorded in his diary that this large afternoon session [with Gorbachev] was “not nearly as good a meeting as this morning’s.” That was an understatement. After the session broke up, Shultz, Powell, and Baker went back to the Oval Office. “Mr. President, that was a disaster,” the secretary of state told the president. “You can’t just sit there telling jokes.”]
    http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/02/reagan-excerpt200902?currentPage=4

  5. Like many elderly people, Reagan was reasonably sharp in the morning, but useless in the afternoon. Petain was another example of this, although Reagan wasn’t as far gone as him. Churchill in his second prime ministership had the same problem. The real point about Reagan however was not that he was senile, it was that he was deeply, deeply ignorant, and not especially bright. That was why the cabal of California businessmen recruited him to run for Governor of California in 1966 – he would be the frontman and they would run the show. It was the same in Washington The Reagan administration’s foreign policy was run by Weinberger and Schultz, its domestic policy by David Stockman, Ed Meese and Don Regan. They weren’t very interested in domestic policy anyway, except for cutting taxes for their wealthy friends. The Republican Party actually *prefers* stupid candidates, because they’re easier to control. The only smart Republican president in recent times was Nixon, and that didn’t turn out well. Eisenhower and Bush Sr were averagely intelligent, but Reagan, Ford and Bush Jr were all dopes. In terms of *character* on the other hand Reagan and Ford were both admirable. Bush Jr combined the stupidity of Reagan with the viciousness of Nixon, with results plain for all to see.

  7. Fo0r someone who has so t , and whose party is so far behind inthe polls (and has been for 30 months and counting) Joe Hockey (just heard him on ABC Sydney radio in “The Political Forum”) sure is one of the most arrogant SOBs I’ve ever had the misfortune to stumble across.

    Nobody is right except Joe. Not only is nobody right, but they are egregiously wrong, according to the avuncular one. They are all either lefties, Labor toadies, irrelevant educators. He openly scoffs at anyone who disagrees with him. Not in a passionate, argumentative way that puts a contentious point forcefully, but in a totally condescending, “… everybody knows I’m right, who bother disagreeing with me?” tone of voice full of sad humjour that anyone could possibly get thongs so wrong. He has given a new meaning to “plonking tones”. Worse even than Turnbull – a hard act to follow.

    I console myself that he was just as arrogant and know-it-all with Work Choices, and look where that got him. why he’s seen as a skilled advocate for any policy issue is beyond my understanding. The guy has failed at almost every test put before him, except that lazy Liberal arrogance which seems to substitute for reasoned policy debate.

    I don’t know who’s been pumping Joe up, but he needs to sack them and get someone to advise him who is a least honest with their boss.

    I couldn’t believe he was still raving on about Labor “hyping-up” inflation early last year, when today’s figures – today’s figures – showed that, despite the GFC, inflation is still at 3.1%, outside the Reserve Bank’s comfort zone (or whatever they call it nowadays). The man lives in an alternative universe where it seems he and his Party truly believe that the people will wake up one day, as if from a trance, and rush back to the bunch of losers called the Liberal Party. His casual dismissal of the Governor of the Reserve Bank as a weak, suggestable vassal of Kevin Rudd takes the cake. That he continues to get invited onto talk-back radio and TV panels to spout his arrant nonsense truly amazes me.

  8. [Reagan then ventured further. The president switched from seeking to persuade Gorbachev of the value of religious tolerance to promoting a belief in God. Reagan did so by telling one of his trademark stories. According to the notes of their meeting, “The President said he had a letter from the widow of a young World War II soldier. He was lying in a shell hole at midnight, awaiting an order to attack. He had never been a believer,]
    [Sitting in a meeting with Reagan required patience—sometimes more patience than Gorbachev possessed. Reagan told anecdote after anecdote. He quoted from letters he claimed to have received. He repeated the same phrases and lines over and over again, never going beyond them or explaining their particular relevance to the point at hand. Gorbachev was a debater, a specialist in argument and refutation. Reagan was a storyteller. If he had a debating style at all, it was akin to Muhammad Ali’s “rope-a-dope” in boxing: let your opponent throw punches until he is exhausted. After a session with Reagan, interlocutors would often find that they had engaged in pleasant and superficial banter but had achieved nothing. They would be left wondering whether Reagan had cleverly deflected them from their purpose, or whether it had just turned out that way.]

  10. Last night some Bludgers were debating whether executive salaries should be capped or whether they should be determined by the shareholders. I tried to explain that it was impracticle for shareholders to decide how much to pay their executives and that it would never work. However, let the market decide how much to pay exectives, let the shareholders decide how much to pay their CEO’s, they cried. BOZOS. Caught up in their own little RIDICULOUS ideology stupidity. The same free market stupidity which has led to this global crisis I might add.

    Yeah let the shareholders decide. OK. Take Woolworths for example:
    – They have 367,871 individual shareholders. So you want them all to make a decision on not only who to employ as their CEO, but how much to pay him.
    – They have 206 individual shareholders with more than 100,000 shares for a total holding of 673,567,421 out of a possible 1,220,989,477 on issue. More than 50% of the total company.
    – The 5 largest shareholders, which includes the most voting rights, own 40% of the entire company.
    – The 2 largest shareholders, HSBC Custody Nominees Ltd and J P Morgan Nominees Ltd, own just under 27% of the entire company.

    Why don’t you NUMBSKULLS work out the percentage of shareholders required to overturn a decision of a majority of the 5 largest shareholders to pay their CEO an obscene salary?
    –
    –

  12. [- The 5 largest shareholders, which includes the most voting rights, own 40% of the entire company.
    – The 2 largest shareholders, HSBC Custody Nominees Ltd and J P Morgan Nominees Ltd, own just under 27% of the entire company.]
    This is why I think binding shareholder votes are just tokenism that won’t change much.

  13. It seems the Liberal Party HQ is using a lot of bandwidth today!

    i noticed you was there with bells on Bob, i always look for your input nowadays lol, are you watching ACA this evening?

  17. WOW only 9% of people think the ETS should be delayed.

    Oh, and the 10% of climate change deniers that don’t support it at all, but they wouldn’t support any scheme.

  18. Adam, I believe that the government should introduce a very high income tax threshold, nothing to do with coy tax, of say 80% above a certain amount to act as a restraining machanism. What that amount should be is debatable? Maybe 100 times above average full-time earnings. Heavens above, nobody is worth more than $5m a year. Especially when you consider most of them are failures.

  19. [Respondents aged 18 – 24 were more likely to think the Government should strengthen the emissions trading scheme by setting a higher reduction
    target (48%) while respondents aged 50 years and over were more likely to think the Government should abandon the scheme (19%).]

  21. [Adam, I believe that the government should introduce a very high income tax threshold, nothing to do with coy tax, of say 80% above a certain amount to act as a restraining machanism.]
    But if you did this CEOs would just demand bonuses in forms other than cash. Like cars, houses, shares etc. They’d do everything possible to get the same bonuses but in a way that avoids such a punitive tax.

  22. [the government should introduce a very high income tax threshold, nothing to do with coy tax, of say 80% above a certain amount to act as a restraining machanism. What that amount should be is debatable? Maybe 100 times above average full-time earnings. ]

    I don’t have any problems with that.

  25. [Ronald Reagan is often looked upon as the Republicans’ Franklin Roosevelt. But Reagan sold the nation a bag of goods. We can finally see clearly the failed results of this three-decade experiment in laissez faire capitalism. It has nearly destroyed the middle class in this country, greatly widened the gap between the super rich and everybody else, destabilized vital sectors of our society, and made the United States a laughing stock abroad. ]
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/socialism-for-the-rich-na_b_127121.html

  26. [Interesting question included on what Peter Costello should do]

    34% think he should bugger off. there’s a figure you can build on 🙂

  27. [ if you did this CEOs would just demand bonuses in forms other than cash. Like cars, houses, shares etc.]

    It’s not beyond the wit of the ATO to police these things. We’re only talking about a few hundred people after all.

  29. Whatever bonuses are paid a similar amount should be divided up among wage earners since they also participated in the success or otherwise of the company. A $3m bonus to an Exec of a company with 1,000 employees means each wage earner should get $3,000

  30. One thing i’ve never understood, why can’t ACA and TT just tell the story without the emotive background music…

  31. Hanson syas this is it:
    [SERIAL candidate Pauline Hanson says her bid to win a seat in Queensland parliament will be her final tilt at politics.

    The One Nation founder has formally launched her ninth campaign for public office, seeking to become the independent member for the Gold Coast hinterland seat of Beaudesert.

    “I think it’s definitely it. I’m really worn out,” Ms Hanson told reporters on Monday.

    “I’m getting to a stage where I’m tired, but the fight is still in me.” ]

  32. [“I think it’s definitely it. I’m really worn out,” Ms Hanson told reporters on Monday. ]

    Why the heck is she running for parliament if she’s worn out?

  33. The economic questions are a good summary of the last few months in politics.

    Labor is now leading the Coalition in every single category.

  34. [Why the heck is she running for parliament if she’s worn out?]

    Because she is energized to…err.. wait… wait… I got this… umm ok, because she is excited at the prospect of…errr…no… ummm nup… thought I had a reason there, but the logic is beyond me.

  35. Regardless of my disdain for Howard, in my experience NSW State Labor government is a major problem for good planning in Sydney

    Amen to that brother. Even the hardest Labor people I know agree that NSW State Labor is appalling and has not only failed NSW, they’ve actually hurt NSW and the party as a whole.

  36. [Labor is now leading the Coalition in every single category.]

    Not in “Keeping unemployment down” (-2%)
    and “Handling inflation” (-2%)

  37. Well the Liberal’s supposed natural advantage on economic management and especially with with their Holy merchant banker…. is sliding backwards, backwards.

    Keeping interest rates low Labor 36% / Liberal 24%
    Hahaha

    Making taxes fairer 41% 21%
    This will be useful for Labor’s tax review.

    BUT

    Handling the economy in a way that helps ordinary working people.. 48/25

    Handling the economy…. 34/33

    Do some thing managing the economy to help ‘ordinary’ working people isn’t really the best for the economy? Wonder what they think the ‘ordinary’ working people are.

  38. There shouldn’t be a problem Shows On @ 1121. Accounting records are audited and all kickbacks to an executive should be included in his taxable income.

    Of course that high tax threshold would only apply to corporate executives, not other high income earners.

  41. Bob that wasnt really ACA tonight it was SAPOL/crimestoppers using their spot without ads or diversions, actually that program is one of the best i’ve been involved with over the years and i’ve been involved with most, i’m amazed at how low 60 mins has come over the years, i very rarely watch any of them now.

  45. In looking at stuff on tax, I cam across this on Wkipedia on a “fixed tax”

    [Additionally, a fixed tax system saves a lot money that would otherwise have been spent on tax compliance, which hardly is very cheap. IRS alone employs over 80 000 people who could be pursuing something more productive like mechanical engineering or taxicab driving instead, if it weren’t for overtly complex proportional tax regulation. Also, these men would be able to make their living in a more decent way, instead of through looking at personal finances and violating the sanctity of private life.

    As corporations aren’t any true citizens (they don’t get to vote, they don’t get to stand for public office, in countries where there’s military conscription they aren’t drafted, etc) it could easily be argued that they should be exempt from taxes. Also, their owner already have paid taxes, and if he wants to use the infrastructure he’s paid for to run a corporation, there wouldn’t be any penalty to this under a fixed tax system.]

    Not surprisingly it has this at the top:
    [This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page.
    It does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve it by citing reliable sources. ]

    😆

  46. [It’s not beyond the wit of the ATO to police these things. We’re only talking about a few hundred people after all.]
    So do you mean if they get given $1 million worth of shares they should have to pay 80% tax on that value?

    I just don’t like the idea of punitive tax measures like that, if it is cheaper paying someone to work out how to minimise the tax than pay the tax, then that is what people will do. If it is just cheaper to pay the tax, then that is what will happen.

  47. I will let you all in on a little secret.

    If you own a business, you take it as your responsibility to be fully informed by your management as to the real progress of that business.

    I wonder WHY there nearly always seems to be major moves on stocks before good or bad announcements are made???

    Maybe I wouldn’t mind dishing out big bickies to my management for the good oil?

    All superannuation and ordinary investors get ripped off!

    Placing restrictions on obscene salaries is not only good for justice but even more so for integrity.

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