Bernard Keane at Crikey reports Essential Research has the Coalition’s lead unchanged on last week at 55-45, from primary votes of 34% for Labor (unchanged), 47% for the Coalition (down one to a six-month low) and 9% for the Greens (down one). The monthly personal ratings have Julia Gillard up four on approval to 35% and down three on disapproval to 54%, while Tony Abbott records his worst net rating yet with approval down four to 32% and disapproval up four to 55%. Gillard now leads 40-37 as preferred prime minister after trailing 38-36 last time. There are also the following findings on the present government’s reforms:
The introduction of a carbon price is the only major Labor reform with net voter opposition, Essential found. Only 28% of voters thought the introduction of a carbon price was good for Australia, with 51% rating it bad — indeed, 35% of voters rated it “very bad”. Otherwise, support for Labor reforms seems to split into three: highly contested reforms that have majority support, such as the mining tax (supported 49-25%); the NBN (43-28%) and the abolition of WorkChoices (42-27%); mid-tier reforms with widespread approval — paid parental leave (52-20%); stimulus spending during the GFC (54-22% – the BER program is supported 53-20%); accepting the recommendations of the Houston panel on asylum seekers (45-15%) and paid parental leave 52-20%.
Then there are the reforms with very high support: lifting the age pension (70-11%); increasing super to 12% (68-9%); lifting the tax-free threshold to $18,200 (75-4%); the NDIS (58-5%); marine reserves (controversial in some areas but with 67-8% support); dental care (77-5%) and the Gonski education reforms (54-8%).
Also canvassed are Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan and the role of unions in the wake of the HSU scandals and the CFMEU/Grocon dispute in Melbourne – matters which were also covered in a Morgan phone poll of 410 voters conducted Wednesday, results of which can be seen here and here.
[Morrison is a grub.]
[I know that’s not adding much to political discussion – he just makes me angry and there’s no one here for me to complain to. Sorry.]
No need apologise. Perfectly understandable.
Geeze Albo gave Turnball the rounds of the kitchen in the last question of QT today.
The lab benches were in fits of laughter. Pyne tried to counter it with a pathetic POO but in the end Albo just yelled across the box to Turnball, “Why don’t you put your mouth where you money is”
Loved it.
US Preparing for post-Israel future
_______________________
WOW A new report from the committee of the US intelligence community has declared that Isreal is a major liability to US policy..in thye ME.the major one in the area
Big news for some on the eve of the Pres Poll when Obama and Netanyahu are on bad terms already
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/08/27/258478/us-planning-for-a-postisrael-middle-east/
From the ASRC (Asylum seeker Resource Centre:
[Under the Pacific Solution (2001-2006), almost two thirds of all applicants were accepted as refugees and were given permanent visas. 62% were resettled in Australia and New Zealand, and 3% were sent to Sweden, Canada, Denmark and Norway, where the refugees were found to have family living outside of their country of persecution.]
[A number were assessed at “grave risk” and were taken to Australia because of their deteriorating mental health while numerous incidents of self harm and detainees suffering from depression and psychological conditions were reported]
This was of 1500 processed there. Others were offered inducements to return.
[In 2006 the Edmund Rice Centre tracked 41 returned Afghan asylum seekers from Nauru and found that 39 were in perilous conditions. Their report, ‘Deported Back to Danger II’, detailed that the Australian Government secured the return of more than half the asylum seekers on Nauru in 2003 by a “mixture of inducements and threats”. The report follows an earlier account by the centre that up to nine asylum seekers
and several of their children were killed on return to Afghanistan from Nauru]
Fran Barlow@147,
Thank you Fran. 🙂
Frankly, if I had the time, the inclination and the resources, I would take apart that speech that Morrison just gave in parliament, in support of the Amendments he was putting up to the legislation, and disprove, oh, about 90% of it.
Of course, that task would be made easier by the fact that he reiterated the same tired old Coalition talking points, interspersed with supercilious condemnation of the government, in as many different ways from Sunday that he could think of, without actually supplying any supporting evidence, properly contextualised, to validate it.
Thanks for that, Fran. 🙂
So, the question now becomes, where did Scott Morrison get the figure of <50% of Asylum Seekers sent to Nauru actually ended up in Australia?
Is there any way we can get to the bottom of that statement, as I'm sure it is one that Morrison will continue to make as it counteracts neatly a valid criticism of the original Howard Government Pacific Solution?
davidwh
apart from your desire to move the debate on from Abbott’s character, by dredging up the idiotic “lie” fallacy – (even though you, yourself, really truly believe JG lied, and that’s a lie in itself, but something you just want to believe because it suits your ideology) – there is the small fact that David Marr had already written an expose on JG’s student days, how her character too was formed in student politics at about the same time as Abbott.
The difference is that Gillard didn’t use physical intimidation but got on with the job.
Abbott has always been the same: a thug, and a rampant homophobe to boot.
And, all you can pathetically say is that you wish MT, himself apparently easily misled by the Godwins of this world, and I have been told, an arrogant thug in his own way, to be reinstalled as leader of the party you want to be in power.
Abbott’s character needs close scrutiny. And the more that is exposed the more disgusting it becomes. The blatant lies, the double-standards, the two-faced BS he’s allowed to get away with, because ah, well, he’s a bit of a larrikin, is not good enough to be the leader of this nation.
On another topic:
The tragedy of the death of a footballer in Vegas.
It is my opinion, and it is certainly not humble, that football trips away should be banned. If the lads haven’t bonded enough during the season, then bad luck.
All they do is reinforce bad behaviour (of the Abbott mould), encourage excess, and ultimately expound the so-called male value of disrespect towards women.
Morrison wants all asylum seekers to be transferred at sea and then taken to Nauru. How many friggin’ boats is he going to build? Has he not heard of aeroplanes?
c@tmomma:
[So, the question now becomes, where did Scott Morrison get the figure of <50% of Asylum Seekers sent to Nauru actually ended up in Australia?]
I've always assumed cherrypicking. A number went first to New Zealand and then subsequently came here. If you exclude those resettled in NZ IIRC the figure drops to 43%. Technically that would make the claim correct if they were New Zealanders, but since they can pretty much come and go as they please from here and even apply to be permanent residents and eventually Australian citizens, it seems to be a dissembling claim.
[ultimately expound the so-called male value of disrespect towards women.]
Males do not value disrespect towards women… stop talking with aliens.
Maybe they are talking about theirs and how much it has blown out too
[ What’s this $120 billion black hole crap that the Coalition was harping on about? ]
Its just a lookover there tactic because their own costings and funding of policies are going to come under more and more focus the the runup to the election.
These tactics work time and time again for the tories, thats why they are trying it on.
MYEFO, in November I think, is the one the Government has to nail though.
Given that the latest Essential Poll has indicated that the only policy area where the government is still being marked down is that of climate change mitigation, I thought it might be appropriate to reproduce something I wrote back in June. Obviously, the Lowy Institute poll was taken before the carbon pricing system went into effect but many of the responses are still pertinent today. I have tried to amend the text to take into account today’s date and apologise in advance if I missed a couple of verbs.
More evidence, if we needed it, as to why we should place very little reliance on commercial opinion polls. The Lowy Institute Poll has sections on the Emissions Trading scheme and Dealing with climate change.
http://www.lowyinstitute.org/…/lowy-institute-poll-2012-public-opinion-and-foreign-policy
The detail is well worth a look. All figures are as a percentage of overall respondents and not a percentage of a sub-group.
To summarise in a format that we would normally get from a commercial poll:
Against: 63%
For: 35%
And yet when further questions are asked by the pollsters we find that a sub-group of 33% of the 63% who are against the current scheme declare that their objection is that the scheme doesn’t go far enough. If the CEF scheme is not sufficiently robust for them I think it is reasonable to assume that the Coalition’s DAP (modelled at around $10 per tonne) would also be unacceptable.
If push came to shove and this 33% were told they could have either the CEF scheme, the DAP or nothing, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to assume that the vast majority of them would opt for the strongest of the three proposals. So if, for arguments sake, two-thirds of the 33% against the government’s carbon pricing scheme because it doesn’t go far enough opted for it as the only plan that will give them a halfway decent outcome we have: 66% of 33% = 21.78%. Let’s call it 20%.
New figures would be:
Against: 63% – 20% = 43%
For: 35% + 20% = 55%
Even if we allow for the perversity of human nature and contend that 15% (not 20%) would opt for the current scheme as being the best alternative when their options are narrowed, we get:
Against: 63% – 15% = 48%
For: 35% + 15% = 50%
Not such a bad outcome considering polling took place before the scheme was brought into practice and voters had an opportunity to have their fears allayed. Encouraging for the government is that if evidence becomes more readily available that more and more countries and constituencies around the world are adopting carbon pricing schemes, there is a very real chance that a significant proportion of the 38% Against who felt that we ‘ought not to act ahead of others’, might change their position to either indifference or at best a vote for the CEF scheme.
Even those who oppose the CEF scheme because ‘it will result in job losses’ (i.e. 52%) might well adopt a new position once it becomes apparent that the scheme is not the main driver of future job losses. Contained in this group are the people who are least likely to shift because the FUD approach of the Coalition has not abated after July 1 and every job loss is being blamed on the carbon price. Never-the-less, we can see that by digging a bit deeper into just why such a significant proportion of respondents stated opposition to the imposition of the current scheme we find that there are contradictions, especially from the ‘it doesn’t go far enough’ group.
To further muddy the waters:
This would imply that 6% of those who voted against the CEF scheme shifted to a position of not supporting the Coalition repealing it. A simplistic interpretation of this would be to say that of the overall 33% who oppose it because it doesn’t go far enough, a full 27% would rather have a weaker scheme than the one that we currently have – cutting off their nose to spite their face. I acknowledge that this is simplistic and unverifiable but there had to be a 6% shift from amongst the groups opposing the CEF scheme. A little less perverse would be for some of those who oppose it because we would be leading the world on this reform deciding that they could live with it. Somewhere in the middle of the perversity stakes would be those who feel it would lead to job losses but don’t want it repealed anyway.
As if these contradictions were not enough to have you tearing your hair out if you were trying to formulate public policy on climate change action, we have this:
So a full 81% of those polled feel we should be taking some reasonable steps to alleviate the causes of global warming. The fact that this figure falls away to 35% support for the CEF scheme indicates to me that the Coalition’s fear campaign has been very effective in exaggerating the possible costs and impacts of its imposition and the playing down of the degree to which other countries are acting. It also seems to indicate that the 45% who support gradual change at low cost do not fully understand the budgetary impacts of the DAP which might spend as much as $1300 per taxpayer to theoretically achieve the same reduction in emissions over a similar timeframe. By comparison, the CEF scheme will have zero to minimal impact on 90% of Australian households with emphasis for compensation placed on the least well-off and it requires no cuts to services.
This should be somewhat heartening for the government as some of this 45% are likely to shift as they come to realise that the CEF plan has minimal impact on their household budget and as the truth comes out about the budgetary impacts of the DAP and the subsequent cuts to other areas of the budget that would need to ensue in order to fund it.
All of the above are just my musings and have no basis in proper statistical analysis. However, it does make two things plain to me.
The lived reality of the scheme should calm the nerves of some of those who have serious concerns about its impact (cost, jobs, global competitiveness) and the government can take heart from that.
Human beings are strange and fickle creatures (some of whom would reject a half a glass of milk, preferring to risk having none because they wanted a full glass) whose idiosyncratic ways cannot be measured by some simple opinion poll.
They are adding the NDIS, Gonski, Teeth, anything else they can think of and multiplying it by the forward estimates then adding anything they hope will occur on the revenue side.
That is probably correct, it wouldn’t matter what the gov’t did, Morrison and the rest of the scum would still whinge. Just get in with it, I suppose and do what needs to be done.
For some gobsmacking insight to the US Republicans this is a doozy.
[Listen to the late Lee Atwater in a 1981 interview explaining the evolution of the G.O.P.’s Southern strategy:
”You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff……….and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is (that) blacks get hurt worse than whites. ……Ronald Reagan, the G.O.P.’s biggest hero, opposed both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of the mid-1960’s. And he began his general election campaign in 1980 with a powerfully symbolic appearance in Philadelphia, Miss., where three young civil rights workers were murdered in the summer of 1964. He drove the crowd wild when he declared: ”I believe in states’ rights.” ]
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E6DF1E30F935A35753C1A9639C8B63
Ashby update: CWealth applies to strike out case; Slipper applies to strike out ruling he pay some Ashby costs
http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/courtdocuments/ashby_cth.html
C@tmomma:
From a new document — Budget Estimates 23/5/2007:
[Pacific Solution 2001-2007
No. of asylum seekers sent to Nauru & Manus Island: 1637
Voluntarily returned (plus 1 death): 484 (29.5%)
Resettled to Australia: 705 (43%)
Resettled to New Zealand: 401 (24.4%)
Resettled (other) 47 (2.8%)]
[What’s this $120 billion black hole crap that the Coalition was harping on about? ]
Obviously they paid the hammock dweller another shed load of money to do an “audit” and this popped out of their eleventy seven calculator.
Being resettled in NZ is the same thing as resettled in Australia, so it is 67.4% or 2/3rds resettled in A/NZ.
C@tmomma
He fudged the figures by not including New Zealand recipients.
oops, re-settlements
No that is nonsense!
On one hand we were told that Labor could not afford to lose votes to the Greens therefore should embrace their lunacy.
Now we are told that Labor does not stand to gain by taking votes from the Greens therefore they should not be attacked.
What spin!
The truth is that voters have come to the realisation that our democracy does not function well where a loudmouthed minority protest group holds the balance of power and stubbornly refuses to shift on serious polical issues.
The Greens are gone!
They will be remembered for reaching a pewny peak.
R.I.P.
Re my 157
Don’t think I don’t speak from experience.
My father was the president of a small country football club. And a teetotaller.
It was his unfortunate duty to accompany the young folk, 18-30 year-olds, on these first end-of-season trips, heralded by the VFL. I’m talking 1965.
He was exhausted and disgusted with what went on, what he had to deal with, the scrapes he had to cover-up, the dealings with the cops in each and every port, and that was just the excess consumption of alcohol. Nothing to do with the introduction of the drug-of-the-moment of the 80s+.
I found myself up against the same shit 30 years later, in the 90s, when my oldest son, a natural at the game, who’d won the District B&F, playing in an Under 14s premiership team, was going to be taken “out bush with a barrel”. I protested. Said if it occurred I would withdraw my son from the club.
I got a “name” for being a wowser.
Don’t worry, the Club got me back the next year when he was 15. It was a mid-season party this time. They bought (using his money, of course) him a bottle of 90% alcohol – which he consumed within 20 minutes. He nearly died. And he never recovered his prowess in the game.
The stupidity of the end-of-season getaway, like these guys haven’t been pandered to for 6-8 months anyway, and then they need some more, is a part of Australian culture that I despise.
It’s as if the self-discipline they have had to endure during the playing season is blamed on their womenfolk, and they have to prove to their team mates that they’re manly enough to spit on that loyalty.
It’s a disgraceful attitude, but one that is promoted by our dominant sports, and by thugs like Abbott. Who profess one thing for men – i.e. have sex with any woman who comes along, deny parenting a child you think you have fathered, and then have the gall in the 2000s to say that virginity is the most special gift his daughters can offer a man. What an abject aberration of values.
Boewar
[Why would it notice an el Nino?]
Because its looking like its not going to happen. Its looks like its going to neutral over summer. No natural warming for you this year!
[Most of the dynamical models, along with roughly one-half of the statistical models, now predict the onset of El Niño beginning in August-October 2012, persisting through the remainder of the year (Fig. 6). The consensus of dynamical models indicates a borderline moderate strength event (Niño 3.4 index near +1.0°C), while the statistical model consensus indicates a borderline weak El Niño (+0.4° to +0.5°C). Supported by the model forecasts and the continued warmth across the Pacific Ocean, the official forecast calls for the development of most likely a weak El Niño during September 2012, persisting through December-February 2012-13 (see CPC/IRI consensus forecast).]
There tossing coins in the air at this point in time
Someone caught Abbott in an unflattering pose but interestingly, it is branded a Fairfax photo.
http://twitpic.com/at1f08
kezza
Yes, I have seen it too. Not first hand, but I have seen the smashed up motel room bills.
gecko
[Males do not value disrespect towards women]
Oh yes they do. It’s all tied up with proving their masculinity.
Have to be tough or be called a girl.
and I’m talking male footy culture here.
Bout time you woke up to reality.
Or, perhaps you could try to put a stop to it.
That’d be a real male virtue.
20% of Liberal voters do not know who their preferred PM is According to Essential’s Peter Lewis on Sky.
Go Julie. 😆
We want to know?
Has El Nino signed up for the climate change activists or not for this summer 😀
Normank
Thanks for reposting. Worthwhile read
rummel
cf ENSO indicators:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
NormanK:
An interesting analysis.
Speaking as someone who firmly believes that explicitly pricing emissions through a trading scheme is the most effective single policy measure (though not the only useful one) in abatement … and who is very keen on early, robust, ubiquitous measures to effect abatement
I now wonder whether, in purely political terms, it might not have been better for the ALP to have adopted, at least initially, a range of more politically crafty measures.
1. They progressively phase out tax deductions for business on dirty energy starting from 1/1/09
This would have required virtually no legislation — almost all of it could have been done as a set of regulatory measures within the tax act. It wouldn’t have been “taxing” emissions, but refusing in an incremental way to recognise them as legitimate business expenses. The tidy thing about that is that it could have started almost straight away (i.e. before Garnaut). One could present it as removing a subsidy. The argument would have been part won before Garnaut. When Garnaut came along, the scheme could have gone straight to permits under the cap, but since presumably all businesses would have been demanding and presumably getting lower intensity emissions, a cap similar to the one we have now would require fewer permit purchases, so the net extra cost would be small. The permit price might well have been $10 tCO2 and would really only go on the higher emitters. That would have sailed through.
The money could have been hypothecated to lower tax on the lower income sections of the population (and/or fund means-tested benefits) so the scheme would be closely connected with reducing taxes and providing valuable services.
There would have been virtually no controversy and we could all have moved onto the next policy area from 2009. There’d have been no Abbott challenge. The ALP would have won handsomely in 2010.
[Puff, the Magic Dragon.
Posted Monday, September 10, 2012 at 4:34 pm | Permalink
kezza
Yes, I have seen it too. Not first hand, but I have seen the smashed up motel room bills.]
Yep, the out-of-control aggro of men that results in smashing everything in sight is well known; it’s the rapes and abuses of women, that’s the untold story of these trips away.
My father was in tears with what he had to cope with. And it hasn’t changed since then, it’s only gotten worse.
That’s the bloody tragedy.
Thanks trawler
Puff, the Magic Dragon.
[oops, re-settlements]
It is a nice bit of irony that one of the Tampa Boys taken by NZ now works in Auckland as a Customs Officer.
Boarwar.
If my memory serves me correctly, it is the week Ninos that cause the most trouble for fires and such.
[ABC News 24 @ABCNews24 35s
#BREAKING: Port Adelaide AFL Club @PAFC confirms John McCarthy is the player who died in an incident in Las Vegas.]
kezza2,
I used to dread mad mondays. I went away for the week. Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to clean up the mess.
Gecko @ 160
[Males do not value disrespect towards women… stop talking with aliens.]
Hear, hear. Except of course for types like Abbott.
Re El Nino…Centre
________
See the most recent prediction from the BOM here (3 weeks old)
A new prediction is due out on the website below…tomorrow Tuesday 11th Sept
All the indicators are now in place for an El Nino summer and autumn
though one long-term prediction is for a wet Feb 2013…which might indicate an early end to El Nino…which is quite normal…though some drag on till early autumn
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/index.shtml
r
we get fires and droughts; it is useful that el Ninos affect other places which get things like floods.
The player was not with the other players when the incident occurred. In fact, the incident occurred at another hotel. Iow, not where they were staying.
whoops
it is useful = it is useful to think that
There is a good reason football clubs have a legal team on retainer.
Apparently, he was not with any other of the players he went on the trip with
r
BTW, congratulations on your efforts.
This spring is looking bad for SE Qld, very wet winter lots of fuel, now drying off rapidly with little or no rain for weeks. Plenty of grass fires already, worse to come as Newman cuts rural fire services.
Re end of El Nino
______
Often ends with lots of rain and a following La Nina
Will Qland get anolther dump in the auturm…and how will the Deniers op there like Barnaby et al.. cope with a third year of floods