The latest weekly Essential Research survey shows no change on last week, bar a one point drop in the Greens vote to 10 per cent: the Coalition is on 49 per cent of the primary vote and Labor on 32 per cent, with the Coalition’s two-party lead at 56-44. Essential also found plenty of interesting questions to ask about the Labor leadership. Respondents were asked to evaluate the performance of various actors during the challenge, with Kevin Rudd coming out least badly (33 per cent good, 35 per cent poor), “Labor Party ministers” the worst (10 per cent and 52 per cent), the media also very poorly (14 per cent and 43 per cent), Julia Gillard not well at all (23 per cent and 49 per cent) and Tony Abbott hardly better even if it might be hard to recall what he did exactly (25 per cent and 40 per cent).
Sixty-two per cent of respondents said the leadership challenge was bad for the government and 47 per cent that it has made them less likely to vote Labor (64 per cent among Coalition supporters, obviously including many who wouldn’t vote Labor in a pink fit), against 13 per cent who said it was a good thing and another 13 per cent (or perhaps the same 13 per cent) who they were more likely to vote Labor. A question on Kevin Rudd’s future produces a miraculously even three-way split with 29 per cent saying he should stay in parliament and again challenge for the leadership, 28 per cent saying he should stay in parliament and not challenge for the leadership and 30 per cent saying he should resign from parliament.
Respondents were asked to indicate whether they supported the Australian system of leaders being elected by MPs (36 per cent), American-style presidential primaries (31 per cent) and British-style election by both MPs and party members (11 per cent). Fifty-six per cent believed MPs should be guided by public opinion in leadership contests against 30 per cent by who they believed was the best person. The poll also points to a slight increase in support for an early election since the end of January, up three to 44 per cent with support for a completed term down two to 46 per cent.
We have also had Newspoll publish results from last week’s polling on the most important political issues and the best party to handle them. Such figures are invariably very closely associated with voting intention, and since this was a 53-47 poll result, it finds Labor improving considerably since the question was last asked as part of the poll of October 7-9, which was a 57-43 result. Labor has recovered big leads on its traditional strong suits of health, education, industrial relations and climate change, and closed the gap on the economy, interest rates and national security. Full tables from GhostWhoVotes.
bemused
[Boerwar’s obsessions are becoming tedious.
Added to which he can’t even get Kitchener’s name right.]
Speak to some South Africans about Kitchener. He is the devil incarnate to many. Even back then three future PM’s including Churchill and the Hague Commission condemned him for his barbarity.Time to dehabilitate the man who gave the world concentration camps I’d say.
[A report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boers (of whom 22,074 were children under 16) and 14,154 black Africans had died of starvation, disease and exposure in the concentration camps.]
[Lloyd George commented: “It is a war not against men, but against women and children.” ]
[Another future Prime Minister, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, declared in Parliament on June 14, 1901: “When is a war not a war? When it is waged in South Africa by methods of barbarism.”]
[The basic principle behind Lord Kitchener’s tactics had been to win, not so much through direct operations against fighting commandos, but rather indirectly by bringing the pressure of war against defenceless women and children.”
“… This violation of every international law is really very characteristic of the nation which always plays the role of chosen judge over the customs and behaviour of all other nations.”]
http://angloboer.com/about.htm
A few years ago the flight for me from Singapore to Sydney was 6 hours 45 minutes going at 1100kms per hour (ie big tail winds).
Exciting going for a white knuckled flyer.
BW – If you’re quick you can be home and ready to harry the enemy by lunch time tomorrow. As long as you can move your ar#e quickly enough!
[when the black hole is $70 billion what’s a billion or two more?]
Good point. When the holes so big that Hockey and Robb can both run around inside it without bumping into each other, small % changes dont alter the actual absurdity of the situation.
[I bet he will. It is part of the Coalition strategy to sandbag military seats. ]
No he will fluff it, from memory it is about $4 billion a year.
I thought Bruce baby was helping the Queensland premier
Centre I think in a democracy we all have the right to pursue self interest and influence public opinion. The court of public opinion will judge.
I also think on PB I have a right to express an opinion so won’t be pulling my head in.
DWH
The $70 billion black hole includes provision for changes to service pension indexation. You might recall that they cocked up the costings during the last elections. They were under by literally billions in the forward estimates. They had to resile from their costings during the election campaign. By then it was too late to resile from the policy.
Curiously, the MSM and the public are prone to letting such costings SNAFUS slide when they are done by the Coalition. I presume that this is so because everyone knows that the Coalition are really excellent at managing the economy.
[Are we still getting sudden and unexplained leave without permissions in our Fukushima clean up workforce?]
BW, yeah, i heard they have gone fishing the glowing & growing Tuna. Many giant tunas have been sighted just off the coast of Sendai.
Giant, size of a small whale apparently, been dubbed Godziltuna.
Alan Jones interviews Bob Carr. Unbelievable!
http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=11847
CTar1
Don’t even start me on Harry.
F
Love Godziltuna. Have copyrighted. It is going to be a Japanese comic book hero.
I hope Abbott keeps making promises.
Because we are going to make him 1 great big promise?
Oh yeah his policies are going to get costed, oh boy are they gonna get costed 😡
DavidWH –
But is it fair/democratic/whatever for someone to have a vastly increased access to the channels to influence public opinion?
Why should Gina Rinehart have orders of magnitude greater access to these channels than you or I?
The mega-rich already have a vastly disproportionate ability to control resource allocation in this country, why should they also have vastly disproportionate ability to control media reporting as well?
That fails the democratic test in my opinion.
Just checking to see if I’ve done some italics thing.
Seems ok.
BW – Got you on ‘harry’.
But something we might agree on – Keep Penny Wong in Finance so she can ratsh#t the opposition on budget costings a great idea.
(The superanuation v pension stuff lost on 99% + of the population.)
Poroti
Thanks. It is good to see that some decent Britons could not stomach him. So, why does Crikey?
Plus they are defined benefit schemes as Swan pointed out today. To change these arrangements would cost many billions and repeated reviews have recommended against changing the schemes.
Swan was adamant that abbott could not deliver what he is saying. Interestingly abbott has not been saying “when the budget permits these changes” he is just saying he will do it. Locked in yet again.
So which bill did the Liberals propose to bring the indexing of military pensions into line with aged pensions?
I always assumed that military pensions were more generous than aged pensions
CTar1
Agree on Ms Wong – great talent in the right place at the right time.
the best advert blocker (bar none) is the multi-browser supporting Ad Muncher, coded right here in Australia
You misunderstood me, Room 101 was 1984, I’m not indoctrinated (which by the way is the longest word I have ever seen you post) I do know though that the dark lord is getting the upper hand.
So much of the promulgated trash is now in the ether. They will win unless the ALP and the Union movement unite.
I’m interested in powerful red haired female trailblazers in political history.
So I watched a movie directed by Shekhar Kapur, there is a glaring error in the opening titles of ‘Elizabeth’, I checked all the 1550’s spelling but the English version is still wrong.
The opening titles, someone stuffed up.
DavidWH I meant get your head out of licking the arse of billionaires 🙂
No, it is undemocratic to stage propaganda campaigns in the selfish interests of a few at the expense of the nation as a whole which lay the foundation for prosperity. 😛
So you are in favour of a wealthy dictatorship???
Jackol I never said it was a balanced playing field but can’t agree with a view that some people should be censured just because they have the capacity to attempt to influence opinions. They have a right to put their opinions out there but it doesn’t mean people accept those opinions as shown by polls that show a majority of people support a mining tax.
Look my beef with what Swan wrote, is not that he raised the issue of influence, but why he singled out three people only when many people, organizations and groups have challenged the mining tax. Also the fact his own poor handling of the issue is relevant in the debate.
[DWH – The $70 billion black hole includes provision for changes to service pension indexation.]
BW, pls dont make things up, we’ll leave that to the #MSMhacks.
Abbott’s Blackhole, it’s not $70B, it’s $75B – Axing $27B Carbon Tax & $11B Mining Tax, $37B Last Election Promises –
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3291711.htm
@173 was for gusface.
forrest
you’ve lost me comrade
Boerwar
[Poroti
Thanks. It is good to see that some decent Britons could not stomach him. So, why does Crikey?]
I never paid him much notice until I saw the reaction of a couple of Seffas from Transvaal when his name was mentioned. It was a reaction of real horror one immediately said “He’s the devil” in a tone you knew was serious.Truly surprised his name could invoke such a reaction after so long I decided to read up on him. Not pretty reading.
Centre 174 you obviously are only reading those parts of all I have written that suit your own personal biases and opinions which makes it impossible to answer the challenges you have thrown at me.
BW – Not exhibiting envy for your midnight flit home. Always a flight I can’t sleep on and get home very ‘over it’.
The only question I can see at 174 is
So you are in favour of a wealthy dictatorship???
[forrest
you’ve lost me comrade]
gussie, you need to see the forrest from the trees, else you be lost in the woods
finns
a chip off the old block?
Fins the $70 billion is a premise built on an inaccurate saet of assumptions. Basically what those who use the figure assume is that the Coalition will repeal a swag of revenue raising programs and retain all the spending programs that go with them. Now I don’t for a second believe that can and will happen. Now like many people here I don’t have a clue how the Coalition is going to reverse all those programs and doubt they actually can.
Thats the point Swan made today. Most pensions these days are not defined benefits because they cost too much. The employer takes on the investment performance risk for the life of the pensioner.
About the only defined benefit schemes left are for the commonwelth public servants (and politicians) for example. Defence defined benefits are already even more generous already.
Its just that Labor has inproved the indexation treatment for aged pensioners and others now are lining up as well. Its not going to happen though, it will cost too much, that the bottom line.
No matter how the libs juggle their budget black holes they cannot pay for it.
Joe Hockey’s contribution to political debate today.
[You don’t grow the pie by shooting the chef.]
He must be winning in the useless men race.
Now like many people here I don’t have a clue how the Coalition is going to reverse all those programs and doubt they actually can.
You and Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb, all.
DavidWH, Forrest and Palmer do have the right to advertise in a manner they see fit, however, people also have the right to call on that advertising for what it is – purely self interest ahead of the national interest.
As for Rinehart and Murdoch, media ownership laws must be changes to allow for a greater representation of ownership in the community.
It’s TIME!
You should look at it positively. If the Liberal Party was treated without bias, they might be required to actually form a decent policy. 😎
We can agree on that Brian.
gusface@178
All I’m saying Gus is that there is too much stuff going on and the average person does not understand. If there was a war or a moment of crisis, there would be a common goal, a common enemy. The enemy here is obvious to ALP members and those interested in widening and expanding the great world. But to the people who matter, the people we all know, they are not engaged, they think politics is for wankers. They vote grudgingly, without passion, the best of a bad lot type scenario.
Someone in the ALP has to breakthrough this barrier. Lead and keep leading so we know where we are going.
Centre 189 I am happy to agree with your last comment.
They probably support the Australian style of electing a PM because its Australian!
Ridiculous question, but interesting result considering the timing.
Centre
[ Forrest and Palmer do have the right to advertise in a manner they see fit, however, people also have the right to call on that advertising for what it is – purely self interest ahead of the national interest.]
Which is exactly what Swan is doing.
[ “Yet another Labor lie”. Abbott today in Bendigo. ]
BK.
Holy M mother of … that explains a lot! Bendigo is just a bit down the track.
It was foul weather this morning. Blowsy. The dogs have a finely tuned sense of smell.
They were agitated. Now I know why.
+++
PS: Is the Crikey contraption working? Or should one just wander off into the sunset and seek an alternative diversion.
Actually and your first comment as well.
I’m not sure about the media ownership comment as it would depend a lot on what is being proposed.
[I never paid him much notice until I saw the reaction of a couple of Seffas from Transvaal when his name was mentioned. It was a reaction of real horror one immediately said “He’s the devil” in a tone you knew was serious.]
Who is this person?
I’ll take that “censured” literally, although it could be confused with “censored” in context.
If, by “censured” you mean being subject to public statements that they are throwing their money around to unduly influence public debate, then you and I will have to agree to disagree.
I don’t think there can be any dispute that some very narrow sectional interests have used their funds to distort public debate beyond what could be considered “reasonable discussion”.
The Clubs NSW/Australia campaigns were a good example of this – their input into the debate wasn’t about having a reasoned debate on the merits or otherwise of the proposed policy of mandatory pre-commitment. Their campaign was firmly based on lies and misinformation.
Andrew Forrest buying full page advertisements in newspapers is obviously beyond most people in the community; I will agree that I can’t see this type of obvious campaigning actually being particularly effective.
Gina Rinehart seriously considering buying a controlling interest in Fairfax, though, has huge public policy implications. A pervasive change to a media outlet’s editorial and content policies can impact public debate in many under-the-radar ways, and is very unhealthy for a democracy.
There are many issues here, and to simplify it all down to some notion that it’s their money and they can do what they like with it is simply a failure to step up to the plate to recognize the danger to our democracy.
Sectional interests should not be allowed to control public policy debates.
Traditionally it has been up to a diverse and independent media to ensure that this doesn’t happen.
When the media is concentrated enough and compromised to such an extent that modest amounts of money thrown around can radically alter the public debate, we have a system that has stopped working in support of our society.
183
[ The Finnigans
Posted Monday, March 5, 2012 at 5:30 pm | Permalink
gussie, you need to see the forrest from the trees, else you be lost in the woods]
Golly, here’s me thinking Dolphins were smart. 😉
Finns
I have washed my mouth with our patented MSM Cleansing Soap and when I said, ‘Coalition black hole’, out popped ‘$75 billion’.