Morgan has published its first face-to-face poll conducted on Julia Gillard’s watch, other recent efforts having been phone polls. This one combines polling conducted over the last two weekends, and it shows Labor’s two-party lead up from 53-47 in the last poll under Rudd to 56.5-43.5. Those of you who have already looked at the Morgan press release might be surprised to learn this, as the headline figure is 55-45. This is because Morgan has apparently decided to switch from the “preferences distributed by how electors voted at the 2007 election” measure to “preferences distributed by how electors say they will vote”, and as has been widely noted this is less favourable for Labor. The Morgan headline’s statement that Labor has picked up a 6 per cent swing is based on comparison with last week’s anomalous phone poll result. Interestingly, the poll reports the opening of a huge gender gap, with Labor leading 60.5-39.5 among women and trailing 50.5-49.5 among men. The primary vote has Labor up 4.5 per cent on the last poll under Rudd, with the Coalition down three points to 38 per cent and the Greens down two to 10.5 per cent. Curiously, the sample was only 299 for the first of the two weekends, immediately after the leadership change, which explains the lack of a face-to-face result last week. The more recent weekend’s sample was a more normal 879.
A bit of federal news:
• South Australian Labor Senator Annette Hurley, who had the top position on the Senate ticket for the coming election, has instead announced she will retire. Her Right faction must now decide who will replace her as candidate for one of the two unloseable positions, the other of which is held by Left faction incumbent Anne McEwen. Another incumbent, Dana Wortley of the Left, is expected to remain in third place (UPDATE: I am informed Wortley is now in the Right, which has mostly absorbed the “Duncan Left” sub-faction of which she formed part).
• Denis Atkins of the Courier-Mail last week quoted a “senior Queensland LNP campaign official”. Herbert and Petrie in particular are nominated as seats Labor is now likely to win.
• Andrew Wilkie will be making yet another bid for parliament, this time as an independent in Denison. He narrowly failed to win one of the five Denison seats at the March state election, polling 8.4 per cent of the vote.
New South Wales news:
• State Greens upper house MP Sylvia Hale has failed to win her preselection bid for the inner-city seat of Marrickville, which the party is expected to win at the election in March. They have instead nominated the candidate from the 2007 election, Marrickville deputy mayor Fiona Byrne. The NSW Greens have also been struggling with the revelation of Lee Rhiannon, currently in the state upper house and endorsed to run in the Senate at the coming federal election, has used state parliamentary resources on her federal campaign. Bob Brown has called on her to resign her upper house seat sooner rather than later, but she is insisting she will resign when the election is called.
• The Wentworth Courier has published a list of Vaucluse Liberal preselection hopefuls which includes former Malcolm Turnbull staffer Anthony Orkin, together with previously noted “PR professional Mary-Lou Jarvis, Woollahra mayor Andrew Petrie, Woollahra councillor Peter Cavanagh, restaurateur Peter Doyle”.
• The Daily Telegraph reports on nightmarish opinion polling for the NSW Labor government.
Generally speaking from the 1930s to recent years Victorian Transport has been badly run and badly managed.
Thankfully that has changed in the past few years.
I really cannot understand the logic behind closing Trainlines to Mornington, Whittlesea, Healesville and Warburton Trainlines
[I better go make dinner now and then its off to games night with friends and a bottle of wine. Call me a geek but I thoroughly enjoy it]
Socrates, there is nothing geekful about enjoying a bottle of wine 😉
Phes can you tell me a good book to read about the occupation of Holland
i am getting the race of a life time soon about obama i noticed julia reading in in a photo.
Tom
As Socrates said earlier, because the land off freeway has been sold, the cost of providing rail (light or heavy) would be enormous. Maybe if some politican was “courageous” , they would sanction the removal of traffic lanes – the roads around Doncaster are often wide and dual carriageway – and put light rail down the middle on a reservation – Victoria Parade style. That would be an improvement!!
Dan Curtin Member for Kingsford Smith 1949-1969.
He was widowed by the time he was elected and when he took my Mum my sister and I to Parliament House to see and hear him speak we had to take a note to school saying we would be absent for a week.
When the nun saw the reason for us being absent and asked us his name she near fell through the floor in horror!
There are some things that you just never forget.
o and julia and catholics my daugher just rang and told me, she was surpirsed when a very catholic italian man said he was over the moon re Julia and very labor he is.
thinks she is just great. So there what a mix of opinions i would say mostly postive.
He is in his 80’s
That SNIP has to be an historic first.
Property prices in the Doncaster area are very high and I agree with Blackburnpseph for I believe it would be a better option to explain the Tram network out to Doncaster.
explain = expand
Mexican
I think you judgment on the management of Victorian PT is rather harsh. From what I gather, the trams were very well run through the 50s and 60s despite being starved of funds – apparently the CEO of the time had to go in every few years and justify why the system – now Melbourne’s pride and joy – should not be closed down.
Some of the train lines you mention (Mornington and Healesville excepted) were closed down in the 50s so it is hard from a current day need and perspective. Warburton was a narrow gauge line so destined to go. Mornington in particular is a mystery.
851
The depression caused halts to infrastructure in Melbourne and Sydney that have not all been filled today. In Melbourne the extension of the Kew line to Doncaster was cancelled and in Sydney the Bradfield plan was stopped work on meaning that massive gaps were left that have not been filled. The Sculling Government should have called a DD in 1930 over the bill the Senate vetoed to provide money for pre-Keynesian Keynesianism which would likely have meant more public transport infrastructure building.
[Dan Curtin Member for Kingsford Smith 1949-1969.
He was widowed by the time he was elected and when he took my Mum my sister and I to Parliament House to see and hear him speak we had to take a note to school saying we would be absent for a week.]
what a great story.
you must of been so proud.
Yes there are some things we never for get us catholics that is why the majority these days are very broad minded. I think its a good thing but i am also mindful of the lovely nuns who gave me so much hope about life and kindness to others.
At a school reunion recently one of the girls piped up and said,” do you all remember larder day, yes we said, well you thought that went to the St vinnies didn’t you,
yes we said. she said no only a little did the nuns had no income and some times had no food. so that was what larder day was about.
I often think of that now as we would mostly give cans of pineapple and beetroot ect all the things you ate in the 50.s. and yet on the whole they gave us so much.
But these days is different of course and the ones i know now are very modern in their thinking.
I believe Chamberlain is an unsung hero of WW2.
If Britain had gone to war in 1939 the RAF would have had to fight a Battle of Britain with slow Gloster Gladiator biplanes and only a handful of operational Hurricanes and Spitfires which had only begun rolling off the production line 3 months before Munich. Indeed, the RAF’s 1935 Air Plan envisioned that the service wouldn’t be prepared for war until the quarter 3 of 1939. The Army also was far less prepared in 1938 that it was in 1939. As was the RN (both Home Fleet carriers were undergoing refit in 1938/early 1939).
The time Chamberlain bought Britain probably made the difference between victory and defeat. Nor should it be forgotten that it was Chamberlain who raised taxes years before to finance British rearmament while Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Much of his bad press is thanks to Churchill who lived long enough to ensure he got the lion’s share of the glory.
Books about the Fall of France in 1940 are full of interesting tidbits, a lot relating to decisions that were made in the 20’s and 30’s that came back to bite them in 1940.
I find a curious one that all their tanks except (one model that was mainly used by the Belgians) had one man turrets of a pretty standard layout. They expected the poor bloody officer to guide the tank, load the main gun, look out for targets/threats, coordinate with other units.. the lot!
As well, the poor bugger had no top hatch. The commanders hatch was in the rear of the turret an folded down to mke a seat. Left him prett vulnerable to getting shot.
Yet, in many accounts of those days you still see references to the French having the best tanks in Europe at the time and only losing because their tactics were poor. In fact many of the since mailigned Brit tanks were more effective.
History is a funny thing.
My Say, the books I have on this are
* Werner Warmbrunn, The Dutch Under German Occupation 1940-45, Stanford 1963
* Jacob Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry, Souvenir 1965.
Both are quite old but I don’t know of more recent ones. Presser has been released in a new paperback edition recently.
thank you pesphos will do a check on line at the lbrary and have a look have your read the the one about obama i do beleive its under another name in the u.s.
There was a long and bitchy letter to my local paper today asserting that the top job in the land should go to a person of Christian conviction. The contention seemed to be that the country was “founded on Christian principles” so every leader should ipso facto share those principles. The concepts of Freedom of Religion and separation of Church and State of course never got a mention.
It is interesting that the issue of Julia Gillard being an atheist should be an issue at all – after all Whitlam, Hayden and Hawke – were all agnostics or atheists. For what it is worth, my deeply catholic and rusted on liberal voter mother always believed that Paul Keating was a dreadful hyprocrite as she believed him catholic only when it suited him. The only other PM I recall having the conversation with her about was Hawke – and she was fine with him because there was no pretence.
Frankly, Julia G handled the issue extremely well, enough said. At least no more of those awful, contrived post church doorstops.
#
Ron
yes, comrade, but we oldtimers on this web are used to the Greens avoiding answering straight questions…if I remember, the great flame war of a couple of years ago began with me asking a fairly innocent question about windfarms.
Strange how the answers we get to these questions tend to confirm the suspicions which made us post them in the first place!!
indeed Zoomster !!
putting up detailed practical , rather than theory idealistic solutons , seems to meet avoidanse or silence or a neg labor post , Pity
BK
Posted Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 6:27 pm | Permalink
“I must say that discourse today on PB has generally been very courteous and constructive.”
I do bring warmth with a gentle approach Its th Amigo way , to ride to fight to love
Cuppa
Unusually amongst British colonial settler foundations, there was no religious element to the settlemnt of Australia. Purely secular and expedient.
morewest
Chamberlain sold out the Czechs.
A war in 1938 would have been different to the war we had in 1940.
I cant see Germany winning such a war.
You’d have Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, Holland, Belgium and Britain all lined up against Germany who I might add wouldnt have Mussolini as an ally (not that it would have helped much).
Also quite possibly the Soviets could have got involved too.
At war in 1938 would have probably ended with Adolf taking a bullet in the neck from the German General Staff.
Glen and others
If I recall also, the British could not have gone to war in 1938 as the rearmament program was not yet up to speed. 1940 was a close run thing, so it is unimaginable what would have happened if they had gone earlier.
*Dinner and Footy Time*
– Nick Riewoldt back tonight!!!
Rubbish of course they could of.
Germany wasnt full armed by 1938 either!
Just ask Harry Turtledove and his novel Hitler’s War (2009).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_That_Came_Early
I agree that no-one seems to care a straw that Gillard is an atheist or that she lives with a man she isn’t married to. Many people on the other hand seem to have found Rudd’s religiosity a bit off-putting. Chris’s comments about Catholics seems to confirm that. Certainly Don Farrell, who is one of the most serious Catholics in Caucus, worked hard to get Rudd out and Gillard in.
One of the interesting consequences of Germany taking over Czechoslovakia was that they aquired the Skoda works. An awful lot of the tanks that invaded France and later Russia, were ex Czech army or of Czech manufacture. They were overall better than the vast majority of German vehicles at the time.
blackburnpseph – I didn’t mean to be harsh, I admit to being a little disappointed at the short sighted approach this country sometimes get from its leaders.
Trams – I agree they did run well in the 1950s and to think there was a time when some parts of Government, even as late as the early 1980s wanted to replace it with Buses.
In many ways the Tram network is underutilised; and in my view has the potential to become an even more important part of Melbourne’s Transport system than it is already is. Whilst Melbourne’s Bus network is larger, it still has a much lower number of passengers than the Trams currently carry and I just don’t see the Bus network ever overtaking the Trams on this level.
Yes Tom, both Depressions altered the policy directions of this country. In hindsight Scullin should have gone for a DD but would the voters have accepted his position, the older generation would have been scared for they had lived though the 1890s Depression. I would argue that the Kew line was a silly Train line that was only built to feather the nest of a few speculators, the better option was a Train line down the Eastern Freeway or an expanded Tram network.
Interesting side note Melbourne’s first Tram was ran though Doncaster on a street that is now called Tram Road
Good to see Nick back on the park, The Saints have done very well whilst he was out injuried.
860
Whittlesea was closed in the 1960s but the land has been kept. The Healesville has a lot of wooden bridges that were poorly maintained at the end and Mornington was indirect and avoided a lot of the population along the direct route (gradient was the reason for this diversion) and the passenger service was cut during the second world war but not restored until 1966..
ok,…what was the question, I know how difficult it is for you ‘oldtimers’ to go to the correct web-sites and look up information yourself or even to actually define your main beef (other than the fact that there are people who disagree with you)
Don’t forget I live in redneck land, so as I say when lecturing, “there’s no such thing as a dumb question…of course I’m here mainly to watch the polls and see what’s happening in the “Political” sphere. I realise I’ll never turn anyone into a bleeding heart, femmanazi, do-gooder, I’m not here to fight or ride or love..but to gauge the opinon of informed bloggers.
BTW, my comment on having processing boats was exactly what someone said, a theoretical idea, I could spend hours costing the idea or taking it to a green working party before it went to committe stage etc,.. but I won’t cos it was an idea, mine..you know…thinking outside the square.
NO religious element to the settlement of Australia????!!!! The first government act in Australia was Phillip taking the oath of non-transubstantiation. Catholic priests were banned entering the colony until 1807 and they were then deported after the unfortunate incident at Vinegar Hill. They did not get back till 1820. I think the government of NSW had a very strong religious start.
In a vox-pop in the Port Macquarie News 3 out of 4 said they would not vote for an atheist. Thank God they did not ask about miscegenation or my namesake might be in real trouble.
no luck on line with the library but have emailed them may be they can come up with something else. I heard so many stories from that time re the happenings in Holland from day to day living and also a little about the resistance but they did not talk too much about that,
But if ever any of you have seen the show Hello Hello you know Rene with the restaurant in Paris and you see where the radio was hidden under the bed of the mother in law well beleive it or not that was exactly where it was at my in laws
when we visited the house in 2005 the present owners took as through and up in the attic there was the trap door. where the radio had been , my mother in law told me and she had a name for them that some people would walk up and down the street with wire coat hangers and try to find where the radios where.
I am just sorry i did not ask her a lot more, my father in law worked in the rail way or pretended to as he had a double life and they sent back airman to England etc.
there was often bombing in this area. and i want go on but what she told me about this was so fascinating.
They also hid young dutchmen including her brothers in that attic so they did not have to go to germany to the army and they all shared the one ration card.
we should all hold our heads in shame these days we have no idea.
Correct Tom Mornington was indirect but the irony is if you look at Frankston’s growth since the 1970s, it has grown outwards therefore looking at todays population spread Mornington line if active today would not look that indirect.
A lot of the Train lines that were built in the 1880s were done so with the first concern being the impact on property prices rather than actual good design although over time Melbourne has grown to match the general direction of the Railway system.
– Nick Riewoldt back tonight!!!
a tassie boy and his cousin jack also a christian brs boy also and a southern boy
877
The extension of the Kew line would have been very useful and would have meant much better public transport for that part of Melbourne. Light rail is to slow and not high enough capacity to provide the Doncaster area with proper PT. The Eastern Freeway should not have been built.
The Kew Line was poorly designed and was never that widlely used, I read that during peak times in the 1950s that it struggled to attrach enough passengers to run with a full carriage.
Light rail might be slow but there are two causes, one being traffic and the other being the need to stay within the Timetable.
For our Greens Bretheren 🙂
http://www.facebook.com/angieandgarry?v=wall&story_fbid=125116190864748#!/pages/Greens-want-seats-not-change/136638936360881
Blackburnpseph #860
Actually, the Warburton rial line was built in broad gauge (5’3”). However, it was originally intended to be built in narrow gauge line (ie 3’6” – like that at Puffing Billy):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrow_gauge_lines_of_the_Victorian_Railways
Jules
Check out the size of the VR rail system at one time (click on the different year for corresponding rail maps of the VR):
http://www.vrhistory.com/VRMaps/index.htm
The VR went ‘nuts’ earlier on. The Melbourne to Bendigo/Echuca line (or Melbourne to Murray River Line as it was originally called) was built to ‘British standards’. All the stations, goods sheds and bridges on the line were constructed from hewn stone and masonry. Indeed, many impressive brick and bluestone arched bridges were built in the middle of paddocks (ie out of sight form the general public), simply to allow farmers to move stock etc. It nearly bankrupted the colonel government of Victoria, as the large income from gold mining withered and expenses associated with the project skyrocketed. (I suspect that this is the reason that the Victorian Parliament building only ever being half completed.)
There were many branch lines that only remained open for around 10 years or less after construction, as their projected traffic proved to be nothing more than hopeful thinking. (Although the appearance of the motor car wouldn’t have helped matters.) There were many more rail lines that were planned and/or surveyed, but never made it off the desks of the VR Engineering Department.
It wasn’t that long ago that the local residents of Mansfield could walk down to the local station and catch the twice weekly direct railmotor service to Melbourne. In fact I think it only stopped in the early to mid 1970’s. A different time.
Bushfire Bill@857
I was sure I felt a twinge of sharp pain around the ears at 5:00pm when I was out in the kitchen. 😆
In the context of the subject matter, I think we can call that snip a circumcision.
colonel = colonial
Anyone seen the movie The Hurt Locker? It has been borrowed overnight here and I would like to know if it’s worth watching.
There’s a book called ‘The Land Boomers’ on the early history of Melbourne (years since I’ve read it) which makes the point that the railway system in Vic was designed by parliamentarians who were land developers (remember, it was the days when you didn’t get paid to be a parliamentarian and had to have property!)
Thus the railway tracks tended to lead (for some mysterious reason) to blocks of land owned by parliamentarians and awaiting development, rather than to places where people were actually living.
At the time I read this, I was living on the sole occupied block in a subdivision over a century old…but we had a very nice rail line within easy walking distance!
z
Phillip Adams interviewed someone who had apparently written a biography of someone who was an editor of the Age. The discussion got around to the founder of the Age – David Syme – who spent years terrorizing pollies who were boondoggling the building of the rail network in Victoria.
The patch of bitumen in the middle of nowhere, or the bitumen that stops at the front gate of a local mover and shaker, are reminiscent.
The Age Newspaper and the Department of Railways have had a long love-hate relationship ha ha
The irony of the Age newspaper in recent months has been complaining that the Minister for Transport does not have more direct control over the Railways when at that earlier time the Age Newspaper lead the campaign against the Ministers for Railways having direct control over it.
Piers Akerman has declared on his blog today that our new PM is a dudd just like Rudd. If he said it, it must be true.
victoria
Akerman cannot alter today’s score which was a clear win to Gillard.
Zoomster @893,
If you look at the 1870 VR Map below, you will notice that the Bendigo line ‘bows’ over to pick up Castlemaine. Originally the fair residents of Castlemaine were to be service by a branch line. However political ‘pull’ changed this – which is evident today by the ‘bulge’ of the rail line.
http://www.vrhistory.com/VRMaps/Vic1870.pdf
At the time of the line’s construction (1870’s), Castlemaine still had historical influence as a major gold rush location (it remains today as the largest alluvial gold field in the world, in terms of ounces won) – a fact that many local politicians would have heavily traded on, no doubt. I think one of Victoria’s early Premiers was the MP for Castlemaine. A state seat that no longer exists (Psephso?).
Jules
[Interesting side note Melbourne’s first Tram was ran though Doncaster on a street that is now called Tram Road]
I find that hard to believe. Doncaster would have been farmland when the Melbourne tramways were established.
The seat of Castlemaine was held in the 1880s by premier James Service
Yes Pesphos I too was surprised but I think it was horse drawn or something.