The latest Newspoll survey has Labor’s two-party lead down from 56-44 to 55-45, with Malcolm Turnbull enjoying a dead cat bounce on his personal ratings after the disaster of a fortnight ago. Turnbull’s approval rating is up six points to 31 per cent, while his disapproval is down three to 55 per cent. However, Turnbull continues to rate behind Peter Costello (36 per cent) and Joe Hockey (20 per cent) on the question of best person to lead the Liberal Party, with 16 per cent. What’s more, Essential Research finds 46 per cent believe the Liberals should find a new leader against only 29 per cent who want Turnbull remain. Essential Research otherwise shows a modest improvement for the Coalition, with Labor’s two-party lead down from 59-41 to 57-43. Also featured are questions on the “most important action” of the Rudd government so far (action on the global financial crisis leads a crowded field), opinions on the government’s income tax cuts (positive) and a somewhat obscure question on education policy.
Spanking? Sounds very Tory!
Scarpat, to give you an indication of the difference in standard between the two codes, a NSW or QLD Rugby League team could beat the Waratahs or the Reds in a game of Union – easily!
Whereas the Nationals would say that what a man does in the privacy of his own stable is nobody else’s business.
[I don’t think there are too many people who could have survived the sort of spanking that we saw tonight.]
You’d be surprised. I’ll lend you some videos.
*on that tasteful note I will depart*
Centre, Unfortunately, you need the ball to win the game and the Rugby League team would never win a scrum or lineout.
BTW for anyone interested in economics, I have started reading Animal Spirits by Akerloff and Shiller. So far its very good. Anyone frustrated by the disconnect between economic theory and real world behaviour of human beings would enjoy it. It is supposed to have profound policy implications, but I haven’t got that far yet.
And for all the Leigh Sales Tragics – she’s on Twitter 🙂
http://twitter.com/LEIGHSALES
Scarpat they probably wouldn’t need to win a scrum or lineout. It could be safer to just give them the ball. 🙂
*crashing*
Centre, yes indeed!
MB
lets just say we shall wait and see.
aamoi
I understand certain events [beside your b/day] are planned.
if I was a cautious, rational man, I would get all my ducks in a row
(or bsd’s)
I find it astounding that the Oz can sink that low that it can allow comments such as this to be published on Paul Kelly’s blog. Someone left open the door of the asylum again it seems!
Paul Kelly takes a few liberties with this piece also, considering the potential ramifications if this issue escalates out of control.
[Paul, this Hu issue possibly reflects upon another much more sinister proposition. Kevin Rudd is an acknowledged Sinophile. His brother Greg is leaving Australia to live in the Chinese capital and nephew Lachlan is already ensconced there. Could the Rudd family be a Chinese controlled fifth column in Australia? Where does Ms Rein fit in? Would the US be foolish to supply Australia with any new military equipment? Particularly the Raptor. Your proven, unbiased, professional Australian journalistic viewpoint would be welcomed by those disturbed by this possibility.]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25783304-12250,00.html
That comment was so funny when I read it I was wondering whether some smart-aleck wasn’t baiting Kelly.
Wouldn’t do any good, because today was a good day for Kelly. His article was reasoned, and reasonable. OK, so it was written from a mildly critical slant, but you couldn’t say it was particularly unfair. He made some quite valid points and the article hung together as a rational piece.
What with George Megalogenis’s recent efforts, the inimitable Jack The Insider, Kelly today and even occasionally Shanahan (of late) it seems they’ve heeded some of the criticism (perhaps some self-criticism too, per Hartigan) levelled at them lately and are attempting to clean up their act a little. One swallow doth not a summer make, of course and it could all just be a fluke. But fingers crossed that we might get some proper analysis, as opposed to the usual incomprehensible braying they usually dish up as “brilliant journalism”.
Milne and Albrechtsen are now being positioned as the Looney Right columnists at the OO, with perhaps Michael Stuchbury coming up the rear (as it were).
Psephos @ 564
Agreed. It makes working out a sensible way forward difficult.
BB @ 612
The last line of Kelly’s article is intriguing. What concessions?
Exxon to invest up to $600 million in researching the use of algae, including possibly pond scum, to make biofuel. GMO algae may be critical. Gives relative figures for biofuel production from various existing crops:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/business/energy-environment/14fuel.html?em
Figures on the extent to which drop in participation rate and increase in part-time work are masking employment reality in the US:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/business/economy/15leonhardt.html?em
[Exxon to invest up to $600 million in researching the use of algae, including possibly pond scum]
So you can make biofuel out of the Journalists of the OO (excluding George of course)?
Tom
All that Rugby chat & nary a thought for the great Head Master who started it to give his lads an all-weather outlet (somewhat less deadly that Eton’s wall-game) for all that pent-up teen energy …. taught Tom Brown & sacked Harry Flashman … borrowed the Mandarin Chinese exam system to give the same boys the same thrilling competition in the classrooms (no, I didn’t make that up)… and sired Matthew, who (as well as writing a dozen or so excellent poems wrote volumes of the most dreary) introduced those exams (and rugby) to public schools through all England and well beyond .. tho I remember the father for the first versions of schoolbooks that turned Latin into an exciting trip through the funniest, wildest, goriest, battle-strewn episodes in Roman History.
Let’s hear it for Dr Tom Arnold, the answer to the questions, “Who invented exams?” and “Who invented Rugby (both codes)?”
Here we go. As predicted, the media circus has begun.
* An innocent pommy boy got “lost” in nasty Aussie bush
* “Lost” for 12 days surviving on nuts and berries.
* “The search, described by police as one of the largest in recent memory”
* A media friendly and chatty father – potential of a media tart
* a dorky looking mother
* all is lost, father at the airport, then bang bang bang, last minute rescue. how dramatic.
* It’s all from mother England
It’s all there, just as a Hollywood script would have been:
[THE remarkable return of a missing British teenager after almost two weeks lost in the Blue Mountains has turned a family’s darkest day into one of their brightest, and become front page news in England.
Mr Cass also rejected that his son had not actually been lost, though he also expressed frustration that his son had gone walking without a mobile phone, distress beacon or food.,/b>
British newspapers are already trying to secure an “exclusive” with the north London teenager. Frank Thorne, who writes from Sydney for The Sun and The Evening Standard, said it was page one news in England.
Any money made from the story would be donated to rescuers or the hospital, Mr Cass told Channel Seven yesterday.]
http://www.smh.com.au/national/my-boy-x2026-back-from-the-dead-20090715-dlj2.html
Just watch the millions and millions. He should have got stuck in and chomp a live wallaby to survive, if so the price tag would have gone thru the roof.
Excuse me from puking.
“AFL teams get the same result by jumping off piers into freezing water. It’s a Sydney/Melbourne cultural difference, I guess.”
Pfft! Tell that to Carlton, Melbourne…or any team pre the Demitriou revolution actually. Not including the amateur club which just had its pre game warm up performed by a stripper.
I can’t believe all you ALP romantics aren’t all over League! Classic working man’s under dog story, full of great characters and sticking it to the establishment. A taster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rugby_league
Another sort of interesting historical RL site: http://www.rl1908.com/
Proof that Rudd cant win with the media. After two weeks of critcising Rudd for not intervening, jennifer hewitt in the OO saying his harsh tone yesterday may misfire….
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25788837-5013404,00.html
I agree with Andrew that politicians will get criticised whatever they say and do, but that is a good thing. As the good book says
Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors
did to the false prophets. (luke 6:26)
Lack of criticism means the person has no principles and is simply seeking to be popular.
The Finnigans @619
I found your reaction the nth degree of nasty, and hope you’re not actually an Australian, because I’m ashamed that any fair-minded Aussie would stoop to that.
If it were your son?
[Lack of criticism means the person has no principles and is simply seeking to be popular.]
And that couldn’t possibly be Kevin “economic conservative and keynesian” Rudd could it…
He’s the least principled of all Labor PMs. But at least he has more principles than Liberal PMs like howard.
[He’s the least principled of all Labor PMs. ]
Ho hum. Exactly what the far left / old left said about Hawke, Whitlam, Chifley, Curtin, Scullin, Fisher and Watson. Plus ça change…
[Ho hum. Exactly what the far left / old left said about Hawke, Whitlam, Chifley, Curtin, Scullin, Fisher and Watson. ]
Maybe that’s because with, more or less, each one, Labor moved progressively to the right.
Guess I can’t be that far off if the left agrees.
[He’s the least principled of all Labor PMs. But at least he has more principles than Liberal PMs like howard.]
Now, anyone with real conviction on this would back that comment up with detail.
Gary,
Bob doesn’t do detail or justification. That would require some sort of thinking.
[Lack of criticism means the person has no principles and is simply seeking to be popular.]
[Bob – And that couldn’t possibly be Kevin “economic conservative and keynesian” Rudd could it…]
I’m assuming bob that you use this comment to show Rudd has no principles? Does that mean a peace loving man that would harm no-one under ordinary circumstances but goes to war and kills is also a person without principles?
The clique gets so defensive whenever I question Labor. So predictable.
Bob,
You get so defensive when we question your moronic abuse. So predictable.
[The clique gets so defensive whenever I question Labor. So predictable.]
A very weak response bob. All I was doing was asking you to justify your contention and obviously you can’t. Enough said.
Because I see no point. Whenever I justify I just get more abuse. Why waste the time when nothing productive comes of it.
[Because I see no point. Whenever I justify I just get more abuse. Why waste the time when nothing productive comes of it.]
Well why bring it up in the first place? I realise you didn’t start the “topic” but why make a general statement without being prepared to back it up with justifications? Is it just to get the response you rail against?
[Well why bring it up in the first place? I realise you didn’t start the “topic” but why make a general statement without being prepared to back it up with justifications?]
Because i’ll make my point like everyone on here does. But i’m not going to waste time with the back and forths.
[Because i’ll make my point like everyone on here does. But i’m not going to waste time with the back and forths.]
I see where the chip on the shoulder comes from now bob. You’re prepared to do the “one liners”, get the response you know you’re going to get and fight back by trying to denigrate people rather than arguing a fully worked justification.
[Because i’ll make my point like everyone on here does. But i’m not going to waste time with the back and forths.]
T R O L L
bob1234 @ 627 wrote:
.
In both cases, that would be overly-simplistic.
Phone call. Excuse errors.
By 1980, with the world moving into post-industrial production, management and workforces, and many of the old working classes’ children & grand-children heading for (or, in my case, graduated from) universities, the ALP and TUs, both products of the Industrial Era, having achieved most of their original goals, faced a future of declining relevance unless they adapted.
By then, studies had been undertaken of other institutions facing similar problems; in particular the fate of certain RC teaching orders whose aim – to educate children (usually Irish RC in anglophone colonies & former ones) – into the same positions WASPS occupied in the PS and professions (esp law) had been fulfilled, and who had been challenged by Vatican II to modernise and widen their scope.
Among the many studies I read (as a background to the Hawke’s union & political reforms) were several based on intensive studies at a Victorian provincial Christian Brothers’ school. CB’s original aim was also the one stated above, and they had achieved it, and these were fascinating ethnographic studies of what takes place as people watch familiar ground shift from under them, to be replaced with the unfamiliar, and the knowledge that the shift would continue, and continue to be ever more unfamiliar.
Whitlam’s reforms had achieved most of the “old” ALP’s aims; though some (esp Medibank) were weakened by Fraser. But as the 70s switched to the 80s, the underlying “realities” of ALP, Liberal and Country/National parties were shifting as far and as swiftly as those of the Christian Brothers’:
* The computer-based production & communication revolutions heralded the changes that are now part of our reality – although many have yet to grasp that ‘robots’ can be small, have no resemblance to any living thing and becoming ubiquitous.
* Post-industrial “roboticised” factories, a shift in major employment from industrial to service industries, “off-shoring” improving computer & communication technology etc, would significantly reverse industrialism’s “huge factories” until much work could be done “from anywhere” (inc at home) presaging a rise in individual contractors.
* Reforms needed to keep Australian Higher and Further Ed & Training would massively increase the cost of education.
* Broad-acre farming and other new machine technologies (and drop in the number of farm employees), a rising Green movement – originally to reverse salinity, then to conserve water – “animal activism” and seed, hormone, antibiotic & other patents, as well as GM technology and others changed the nature of farming – and of the pool of potential Country/National voters.
* NeoCon ascendancy replaced the old “patent, but share for the world’s profit” research ethic with a “patent for my/our own outrageous enrichment” “ethic” (if you could call it that). Cost of medical diagnosis & medications skyrocketed. Lifespans, especially of the ill, increased rapidly, as did the cost of keeping the ill alive.
And the above are a small part of the whole (currently) and still shifting bases on which political parties build their platforms.
Joh BP was probably the first to notice the possible effects of “new farming” on the Country Party, ensuring that his new “National Party” had a non-urban base. While he had a gerrymander – and hatred of the Liberals & some Libs’ cupidity – to achieve it, at least he saw the problem.
Hawke-Keating reforms created the conditions and economic reforms needed to make the shift from Industrial to post-industrial, and I assume Rudd will continue that.
Liberals, on the other hand – like their USA & UK colleagues – reverted to what was, in essence, Victorian-Era commercial & industrial practices, smashing industry (in the UK so fast that, in only a few years between visits, one watched whole shipyards & factory-towns close down) resulting in a return to Dickensian conditions of unemployment, poverty & homelessness. Whle hewson might have taken Libs to the future, Howard took it back to the 1950s, hence its current problems.
If you’re still thinking in terms of “right” and “left” as they were before 1983, you’re “doing a Howard”, thinking in terms of a past as irrevocably gone as England’s industrial might – which is what created those terms, their denotation & connotation. There is no going back, as, in 1809, there was no going back to a pre-industrial past and its Whig /Tory politics as they were refined by C18’s Willamite and Jacobite realities.
Here’s the new question: What are the characteristics of the post-industrial “centre”, “left” and “right”?
Until you can define those, you really can’t judge.
I don’t waste my time because I know the clique won’t listen. I have the right to express my views on here just like everyone else, even if I don’t have the pollbludger conformist opinion.
Dario, in all fairness to bob he is a regular and contributes to conversations.
[Dario, in all fairness to bob he is a regular and contributes to conversations]
Doesn’t make him any less a troll
[I don’t waste my time because I know the clique won’t listen.]
bob this very statement shows a “victim” mentality. The old “I’ll stay and fight back by underhand sniping” rather than the “attack full on and try and convince people that what I say is true” attitude.
Don’t get me wrong when I say this bob because I’d rather you stay than go but why do you stay if you, firstly, really don’t want to engage in any real way and secondly, you don’t like the responses you get? Hell, I used to engage and argue on Bolt’s blog until I realised I was pushing the well known up hill and decided I’d had enough. I wasn’t enjoying it at all so I left.
It’s one thing to say you don’t agree with Rudd, but to say he has no principles is just ridiculous. If he had no principles he’d have stayed with KPMG and made himself very rich. Instead he went into politics, which meant that his wife had to give up business as well. It meant exposing himself and his family to an endless cycle of abuse and denigration by ignorant and malevolent people. He did this because he has a lifelong commitment to Labor and its principles. Of course he’s also ambitious and pretty ruthless, but those qualities are harnessed to very clear ethical and political values.
What you really mean, bob, is that Rudd doesn’t share *your* values, and you in your arrogance think that *your* values are the only ones any decent person could possibly hold.
[attack full on and try and convince people that what I say is true]
Tried and failed.
[What you really mean, bob, is that Rudd doesn’t share *your* values, and you in your arrogance think that *your* values are the only ones any decent person could possibly hold.]
So is hey an economic conservative or keynesian?
We really still don’t know Kevin Rudd. How do you define his views? More complicated than ever.
Did anyone watch ‘Australia Story’ over the last 2 Monday nights?
It was about Peter Andrews and how he can re hydrate the land. He is not an academic, he just uses the lie of the land and like a Beaver he blocks the natural water flow so that when it rains the water is caught and dispersed to the surrounding land area. He also plants, mulches and lets vegetation grow so that the water remains on the land. He is supported by the previous GG and also Hervey Norman.
I thought that the Greens would be out their supporting Peter Andrews as the work he is doing is working. Even though the bureaucrats are against him as they don’t like the way he lets all sorts of vegetation grow, they would rather clear the vegetation which of coarse then after it rains the water just runs away and takes the soil with it.
The expression “economic conservative” can have two meanings. It can mean “an adherent of classical conservative economic theory”, or it can mean “one who is in favour of fiscal prudence.” To my knowledge Rudd has never claimed to be the former, and it would be pretty odd for someone who held such views to be leader of the Labor Party, since Labor has always been the party of state intervention in the economy – one of the few things on which Labor policy has not changed for a century. Rudd made it clear during the campaign that he is an economic conservative in the second sense. It was certainly clear to me that that was what he meant. That position doesn’t preclude resort to Keynesian stimulus when the circumstances call for it, as they clearly do at present.
You’ll have to do better than that bob.
[Maybe that’s because with, more or less, each one, Labor moved progressively to the right.]
Strangely enough, if you look at it in depth, it seems to co-inside with a gradual trend by the community in general. ie. Labor rarely moved too far ahead of where the community stood or were prepared to go.
The move may have been to the right, but it always seemed to end up somewhere in the “centre” not to the right of the centre where the conservatives almost always seem to trend. ie. Radical Industrial Relations laws etc.
[Maybe that’s because with, more or less, each one, Labor moved progressively to the right.]
That would suggest that Labor under Chris Watson in 1904 was the furthest “left” Labor has ever been. And what was Labor’s policy in 1904? White Australia, the British Empire, protectionism, compulsory arbitration, universal military training. What view do you think Watson would have taken of multiculturalism, the family law act, same-sex couples, indigenous affairs, abortion law reform? It’s true that Labor at that time had a rhetorical commitment to “socialism” (a term capable of many definitions), but – as Lenin rightly pointed out – it was no more a real socialist party then than it is now.