The latest weekly Essential Research survey has two-party preferred unchanged at 53-47, with Labor up a point to 37%, the Coalition steady on 47% and the Greens down one to 9%. Also featured are a refreshingly well-framed set of questions on the AWU affair, which find:
• Thirty-one per cent claim “a lot” of awareness about the issue, 29% “some”, 25% “a little” and 12% none (you can presumably boost the latter with the 3% “don’t know”).
• On perceptions of how the matter has been handled, Julia Gillard has a slight net positive rating (39% good and 35% poor), but the opposition (20% and 49%) and the media (20% and 37%) get the thumbs down. However, respondents who thought themselves better informed tended to view Gillard less favourably, which is interesting because there was no significant tendency for Coalition supporters to be more inclined to make such a claim for themselves.
• Thirty-eight per cent say the issue has given them a more negative impression of “Julia Gillard as Prime Minister” against 11% more positive and 59% no difference.
There were also questions on “leaders’ positions on asylum seekers”, the overwhelming point of difference concerning the matter of whether the leaders had been “too soft”, on which a 14% gap in Tony Abbott’s favour in October 2011 has grown to 23%.
UPDATE (4/12/12): Morgan has published a face-to-face poll from its last two weekends of surveying, which has the Coalition up two to 40.5%, Labor down half a point to 36% and the Greens down one to 10.5%. This pans out to 52.5-47.5 to the Coalition on the respondent-allocated preferences measure, which seems to have recovered its Coalition lean this survey. Morgan’s previous election preferences figure is still forthcoming, but it should come in at around 50.5-49.5 to the Coalition, after Labor led 51-49 last time. Morgan has also published further figures on leadership from last week’s small-sample phone poll, which had Kevin Rudd leading Julia Gillard 34-22 as preferred Labor leader, and Tony Abbott trailing not only the overwhelmingly favoured Malcolm Turnbull (50%) as preferred Liberal leader, but also Joe Hockey (18% to 15%).
Preselection mail:
• The long-awaited Liberal preselection has Greenway has been postponed into the new year, which is apparently down to the determination of factional moderates to thwart the bid of 2010 candidate Jayme Diaz, an associate of the David Clarke faction of the Right who is said to have decisive levels of support among local branches. Nick Soon of the Blacktown Sun quotes a source who dismisses the chances of both Diaz and high-profile entrant Gary “Angry” Anderson, instead identifying Brett Murray, Mark Taylor and Yvonne Keane as the front-runners. Murray is “a highly sought after speaker and an expert in cultural change and developing corporate workplace culture”, Taylor “a former police prosecuting officer”, and Keane a Hills Shire councillor. However, Imre Salusinszky counts Murray as one of two candidates associated with the Alex Hawke faction of the Right (the other being Ben Jackson) who do not have the numbers. It was earlier reported that Tony Abbott has approached former rugby league player Matt Adamson, whose plans to run in Lyne were thwarted by a coalition agreement which has reserved the seat for the Nationals, but this prospect is dismissed by Salusinszky’s sources.
• The Northern Territory Country Liberal Party’s preselection for Lingiari has proved a troublesome endeavour for Tony Abbott, following his unsuccessful attempt to recruit Alison Anderson, the Labor-turned-CLP member for the remote electorate of Namatjira. Nigel Adlam of the Northern Territory News reports that Anderson was “believed” to have accepted the offer, but was rebuffed by the party’s central council’s refusal to grant her a waiver to submit a nomination after deadline. Abbott’s approach to Anderson copped a rebuke from Chief Minister Terry Mills, who accused him of having “misread” Anderson and the party. The preselection was instead won by Tina MacFarlane, owner of a Mataranka cattle station, ahead of Lawson Broad, a staffer to Terry Mills. MacFarlane’s win, reportedly by a large margin, constituted a defeat for Mills, as MacFarlane is said to be close to his potential leadership rival David Tollner. Abbott also got into trouble for saying Anderson would provide parliament with “an authentic representative of the ancient cultures of central Australia” that was not provided by the “urban Aboriginal” Ken Wyatt, his party’s member for the Perth seat of Hasluck.
• Peter van Onselen of The Australian reports that a Labor powerbroker who addresses him as “mate” has told of grim polling for Labor in suburban Sydney, but better results in regional NSW marginals such as Eden-Monaro and Robertson. Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald says “Liberal Party research is picking up the same patterns and senior Liberals have been told to campaign in Labor seats held by margins of up to 10 per cent in the belief that they all are vulnerable”. George Hasanakos at Poliquant considers the ifs.
• Van Onselen also relates that Labor fears a wipeout in Tasmania, “which even the PM’s office admits to”.
Queensland Qorner:
• The Liberal National Party determined its Senate ticket last weekend, which required that successors be chosen for the retiring Sue Boyce and Ron Boswell. Incumbent Ian MacDonald has been confirmed in the number one position, with state election campaign director James McGrath in number two and Matt Canavan, former chief-of-staff to Barnaby Joyce, in number three. Former Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive David Goodwin takes the theoretically winnable but highly unlikely prospect of fourth place. Amy Remeikis of Fairfax reports unsuccessful candidates out of a field of 16 included party vice-president Gary Spence, who if successful would have sat as a National.
• Bundaberg businessman Keith Pitt has won LNP preselection for Hinkler, which will be vacated by the retirement of Paul Neville. Other nominees, at least in the preliminary stages, included “Len Fehlhaber, a primary school principal, Cathy Heidrich, a media/research officer, Chris McLoughlin, an electorate officer, Greg McMahon, a probation and parole officer, and Geoff Redpath, an accountant”, according to an AAP report.
• Sarah Vogler of the Sunday Mail reports John Bjelke-Petersen, son of Sir Joh and twice-unsuccessful state election candidate, “is being lined up as a federal election candidate as the likelihood of billionaire businessman Clive Palmer launching his own political party gathers momentum”. A Galaxy poll of 350 respondents, conducted at the behest of a “consortium of businesses”, reportedly showed 43% of Maranoa voters saying they would vote be “likely” to support Bjelke-Petersen against Bruce Scott, whose determination to seek another term as LNP member deprived Barnaby Joyce of a hoped-for entry to the lower house. Kevin Bonham in comments harbours his doubts.
• Kirsten Livermore, Labor’s member for Capricornia since 1998, has announced she will bow out at the next election to spend more time with her family. The ABC reports her successor will be chosen through a new preselection process in which branch members will choose from a selection of nominees deemed appropriate by head office. Paul Milton Butler of the Morning Bulletin reports that Paul Hoolihan, who lost his local seat of Keppel at the state election, fancies himself as a starter, although being 65 may prove an obstacle.
• There has been talk around the place, including from Dennis Atkins of the Courier-Mail on Insiders, that Chris Trevor will again run for Labor in the Gladstone-region seat of Flynn, which he won upon its creation in 2007 before joining the party’s Queensland casualty list in 2010.
• The Newman government’s difficulties have encouraged talk of the federal election prospects for Katter’s Australian Party. The Financial Review reports the party is hopeful local businesswoman Bronwyn Walker can win the Townsville seat of Herbert from LNP incumbent Ewen Jones, and also rates its chances in Dawson and Capricornia.
[some obsessive from the National Obesity Counctil (or wtte) was on, telling all and sundry that Julia Gillard was responsible for all the fat people in our society.]
Waist lines will always be smaller under a Coalition government.
Fran
For Nested quotes
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You lay it out like a Burroughs system manual ‘tracks’ – it’s kinda cute.
🙂
meher baba
What Abbott has done is open pandora’s box. Now there are people looking at his past. This as he has two court cases in an election year.
It will be interesting what comes out of things like the Kingston inquiries into Abbott regarding Hanson.
[Von Kirsdarke
Posted Monday, December 3, 2012 at 3:32 pm | PERMALINK
I just find politics really upsetting lately, mainly because my family is pro-Liberal and lately I can’t stand being around them.
I have shouting matches with my grandmother over things like climate change (the mere mention of ‘Carbon’ sets her off), Israel (anything less than unquestioning admiration of the ‘Chosen People’ is not good enough for her), and many other political things, and the rest of my family ignore me when I tell them how worried I am about an Abbott government (a low-income progressive shy gay student concerned about the environment would hardly be better off under this jerk).
Sure I could keep it all bottled up, but I’m an honest person and I honestly feel sick at the thought of having a vile bullying misogynist gay-bashing thug being rewarded for every filthy deed and lie he’s ever done by possibly becoming Prime Minister next year.]
You know in your own mind you are right, so take comfort from that, I know I came from a very conservative family who thought I had turned “pink” when I stopped working for a chartered accounting firm and went to work for a union instead, so don’t worry about your family you can’t change their minds, so just ignore it
Ponting gone: a rather sad end to a wonderful career. A rather cranky and not very likeable bloke in my limited encounters with him (and the reports I’ve had from those who’ve had more to do with him), but an amzingly gifted player.
Vale Ricky. You were absolutely top drawer: your innings in the 2003 World Cup final is the performance that will most stay with me. You looked absolutely unbeatable that day (and on so many others).
Tony Abbott was most responsible certainly in an indirect way for the jailing of Pauline Hanson was he not?
“@sspencer_63: @MrDenmore Given how badly most Gallery members misread misogyny, one wonders how they will react to polls showing AWU boosted Gillard?”
“@bengrubb: “END OF THE WORLD IS COMING,” yells http://t.co/qDBljuPT. “Are you prepared?””
That was quick!
With a bit of luck this baby will miss son, daughter in law and grandson:
http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/wp201226_sat.html
[Bushfire Bill
Posted Monday, December 3, 2012 at 3:19 pm | PERMALINK
I sent an email to the AEC address supplied in the last thread, asking for certain details…etc]
Good on you, I have also tweeted and sent an email, with more flesh in it to AEC. Margo K is such a lovely person and replies to these sort of tweets etc So let her know by tweet what you did
Am I the only person who swore at Ponting when he got out?
VK, you’re not the only one worried about Abbott as PM-still the most likely outcome, although not seeming as likely as it did at one point.
Right now I’m happy that my potentially broken wrist can largely be dealt with under Medicare. God only knows how I’d fare otherwise. Typing left handed isn’t easy…
guytaur@53 I don’t think Abbott’s past will be much of a factor going forward. The Abbott of the here and now is more than enough of a target for Labor and I still think he is carrying too much lead in his saddlebags to be able to lead the Coalition to victory: even over the unduly (and, IMO, unfairly) disliked JG.
Margo Kingston is a very endearing sort of character, but is a bleeding heart to the borders of naivete (although I can recall how very excited she was about John Howard winning back in 1996: she is no Laborite, more of a ageing Trotskyist than anything else). IMO Margo is about as likely as Humphrey B Bear to be able to pull off a Woodward and Bernstein sort of act of investigative journalism.
Some good pseph news from NZ.
[Poll boost for Labour and David Shearer
Labour has risen three percentage points to 35 per cent of the party vote, its highest level since last year’s general election.
With the support of the Greens, which rose one point to 13 per cent, Labour would hold 62 seats – enough to run Government were an election held today.]
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10851609
@MrDenmore: Send hack to Java. Set up photo of refugees hailing Julia. Confect quote. A case study in manufacturing outrage. http://t.co/UGQHUOfS
“Thirty-eight per cent say the issue has given them a more negative impression of “Julia Gillard as Prime Minister” against 11% more positive and 59% no difference.”
So the smear campaign has been successful. That’s what this was all about. Expect more on this and anything else the Coalition and its media alloes can dig up, make up and beat up in 2013.
VK
Keep your cool. You only get one family.
Ignore the bits you don’t like.
Your new course settled, I hope.
Ahem, my mother received a full disability pension when she was registered as “legally blind” as was my elderly neighbour.
The Disability pension for blind people is not means-tested and they get a health care card. Both women received pensions from their dead husbands Commonwealth Superannuation. Both women were grateful to be on a wind-fall as they both knew how the other half lived from professional experience and caring for profoundly disabled son in the other case.
Disability advocates have been fuming about this state of affairs for a very long time and the situation arose because in 1948 blind people went to Canberra and embarassed Parliament into giving them a non-means tested pension. Other groups aren’t as mobile and as their appliances and aids are costly they have less money to spend.
What do I mean by their appliances are costly. The federal government used to provide a new wheelchair every 5 years. They wear out faster than that and cost $5000+ which is a lost out of an income of $10,000 per year. Then add shower chair, transfer mat, extra grab handles, ramps to doors and they have to pay tradesmen to install these items cause they can’t use a tool and you get the message.
Clearly I don’t think the Heckler was wrong, because our shallow media only relay the latest embarassment to our Prim Minister. I think she is big enough to cope. I hope she is a great advocate for disabled and the publicity will give them a better life.
Q&A last week
Barnaby Joyce said “We can’t afford to pay for an NDIS”
As Stella from Ramp-up said when seated next to Barnaby Joyce “Am I only entitled to 2 showers a week?”
NB Incontinent people need 2 showers a day
[Steve777
Posted Monday, December 3, 2012 at 3:48 pm | PERMALINK
“Thirty-eight per cent say the issue has given them a more negative impression of “Julia Gillard as Prime Minister” against 11% more positive and 59% no difference.”
So the smear campaign has been successful. That’s what this was all about. Expect more on this and anything else the Coalition and its media alloes can dig up, make up and beat up in 2013.]
Doubt if that 38% would ever have voted for PM, the 59% no difference is the one I take notice of
37% of people said they had heard none or little about the S&G stuff. What a sad indictment of our media.
meher baba@62
Maybe, maybe not. But Margo is the right kind of person to plug into and get support from the increasingly vast and influential resource that is social media, and a collaborative result might be interesting.
BK@49
Thanks for that.
So what can be done?
Catch you later people.
Lynchpin@51
She should give them Doc Martin’s answer to obesity and losing weight. “Keep your mouth shut!” 😀
Yes, I am a fan of that show.
Michael Kroger may need some very deep pockets.
[Ramjan has assembled a stellar legal team to run the case, instructing Patrick George from Kennedys solicitors, who has briefed Matthew Richardson and the leading defamation silk in the country, Bruce McClintock]
http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/12/03/kroger-defo-case-revives-stories-of-abbotts-uni-past/
BB
[For the genuine refugees among the boat people I do feel some sympathy, but why we should advantage them over even more desperate and disadvantaged people simply because they pay to jump the queue, is beyond me.]
Your reasoning is ostensibly paradoxical. I don’t know what “some sympathy” means in this context. Either you accept that “genuine refugees among boat people” should be treated like genuine refugees among non-boat people or you do not. If it is the latter, then saying you have “some sympathy” for them is misleading because you would haver them treated as unsympathetically as non-genuine refugees amongst boat people and worse than non-genuine refugees amongst airplane people.
The Refugee Convention does not make poverty or imminent death from causes other than persecution a condition fo refugee status, so whether there are, amongst FDPs, more or less desperate people who might qualify as deserving of protection is moot. Being a refugee is a boolean — you either are or you are not.
When you think about it, it’s obvious why this must be so. Being at imminent risk of death or torture or some other life-altering harm from a person or persons who mean you harm is something that warrants obligations amongst the humane that are entirely distinct from our genuine concern for people for all those with poor life chances associated with poverty. You could fill every refugee place many times over with people who were poor, but for better or worse, this is not the preferred way of dealing with poverty.
One often hears about the destitute in camps, but if we are to start grading misery so as to determine who in practice should get more than what you put under the heading of “some sympathy” then where would we draw the line. Would we need to hold a worldwide survey to find the most miserable person on the planet? Perhaps we could hold a World’s Most Worse Off” competition, with people vying with each other to show that they were indeed far worse off than those other destitute.
[1st contestantOooh … I dream of living underneath a rusty water tank.
2ndRusty water tank? You were looky!]
In practice, you could never place anyone, or if you did place them they’d all be at death’s door and when they died you could grab the next in the queue. It would be farcical and an ugly caricature of humanitarianism.
Refugee policy has to be timely. It has to attach to people who are refugees. If one wants also to have a humanitarian resettlement policy, then by all means, I’m for that, but let us not confuse the two. Places in one program are not to be traded for places in the other.
You say that “people smuggling” is “a racket”. It is certainly ad hoc and doubtless, criminal gangs make money out of it, but the fundamentals of the service are in human need — the desire to escape persecution. In so far as the smugglers enable people to do that, they are, in the grand scheme of things, well down the list of miscreants. Of course, if one thinks people have no business escaping persecution, and that they should perhaps suffer and die some place else, or at least suffer enough to be really derserving, like those people in Africa, then perhaps “people smugglers” really are heinous criminals.
I don’t see it that way.
Speaking about the evaporation of Manufacturing Capability in this country, comes the sad news today that Rozella has been put into Administration.
As we commented to each other here(as I was ‘teaching’ #1 Son how to clean the oven 🙂 ), we should be trying really hard to keep these Food Processing companies in Australia, so that we can value add to our product, if indeed our aim is to become ‘The Food Bowl of Asia’.
It’s just not good enough to be the producer of the raw materials, when the profit is to be had in the Secondary Industries.
Not to mention Tertiary, Quaternary and Quinary Industry, which Australia should be also encouraging so that we can make money back from the rest of the world.
JustMe@70: but I don’t want Margo K or anyone else starting a campaign about Abbott’s past in the social media. To me that would be almost as bad as all the rubbish from Michael Smith and Larry Pickering.
As far as I am concerned, anybody trying to put Pauline Hanson and One Nation out of business wasn’t exactly doing the devil’s work. Margo spent a lot of time hanging out with Pauline and I think she developed an undue level of empathy with her. What Abbott did back then was a long time ago and can be portrayed far more nobly intentioned than what Bruce Wilson and Ralph Blewitt were up to.
Abbott in 2012 is a totally flaky and largely stupid man who I wouldn’t want to have running the P&C at my kid’s school, let alone the country. That’s enough to focus on, forget about things that happened long, long ago.
[Von Kirsdarke
Posted Monday, December 3, 2012 at 3:32 pm | PERMALINK
I just find politics really upsetting lately, mainly because my family is pro-Liberal and lately I can’t stand being around them.]
I share your pain.
My brother-in-law chucked YET ANOTHER tanty the other day.
This was his THIRD at the “family dinner table”.
This time I wasn’t present (Thank God!).
My wife went to his house last saturday week for a lunch with his family and her mother. They got to talking about something-or-other to do with politics. From the sounds of it, it was pretty benign, as HI HATES talking politics intra family (they are all Liberals from Bronwyn Bishop’s electorate, poor sods).
Up he got, pushing his chair back loudly, pointing a finger at her telling her, “Don’t you dare say that at my table!”
What she’d said was a general comment, not directed at him personally in any way. Something to do with Labor introducing Medicare, and how the NBN would be seen inthe same light eventually.
She was perplexed. What had she done to offend him?
He went on about Pink Batts and School Halls, saying Labor had wrecked the economy (this is the bloke who had his sorry excuse for an arse saved by Gillard’s intervention in the Child Minding industry).
She said she felt like leaving.
He said he’s see her (his own sister) to the door to “make sure you’re off the premises”.
His mother later told a tearful HI that he’d been very strange lately. He listens to 2GB from morning to night (yes, even Brian Wilshire).
The previous occasion where he chucked one of these tanties was at his older daughter’s wedding reception, where he accused me of being “disrespectful to Alan Jones” (I wasn’t even talking! It was someone else!).
And the occasion before that was at his middle daughter’s 21st birthday party, where he had a go at his mother’s “gentleman friend” for being a Labor hack (this “Gentleman friend” by the way is a double-Order Of Australia recipient and universally regarded as one of the great men of sydney society). This accusation also involved Alan Jones, who the “gentleman friend” knows and loathes personally.
So, come to last Saturday and we were all out to lunch for Xmas. “Gentleman Friend” and I started talking about how he had reduced the electricity bill at a couple of his businesses and an institution he is chairman of, and I chipped in with some info on how we had done similar things here.
Brother-in-law smarmily tells us both that we must be lying, as HIS electricity bill had gone up 30% on last year’s, all dues to “Greenie” solar cells and “The Carbon Tax”.
As I was about to deny I was lying (ours went DOWN 15% or so on last years), I got the “kick under the table” from HI. Reluctantly, I desisted, simply reiterating that I’d not been making it up.
I got the sarcastic laugh from him over this. Just another Labor snake-oil salesman spruiking a tax that was ruining the country.
At this, “Gentleman Friend” had had enough. He told this bloke that HE (the G-F) was paying for this meal, and that if the Brother-In-Law made it impossible for people to have a perfectly normal conversation without him chucking a fit, then HE could leave. He accused him of being a bully.
B-i-L went quiet, so G-F persisted: “Well, are you going to shut up or leave?”
Faced with this, B-i-L got up to leave, noisily. His own wife (also present) then told him to “Bloody-well sit down and stop ruining our lunch.”
It was an important lunch. For reasons I won’t go into (involving the health of G-F) it may have to be the last lunch we all have together for a while, if ever.
So he sat down and glowered for the rest of the time, refusing to eat, making it difficult for us to eat as well.
What a dickhead. I DO feel your pain.
He’s proof positive that 2GB really does rot your soul.
[Von Kirsdarke
Posted Monday, December 3, 2012 at 3:32 pm | PERMALINK
I just find politics really upsetting lately, mainly because my family is pro-Liberal and lately I can’t stand being around them.]
I share your pain.
My brother-in-law chucked YET ANOTHER tanty the other day.
This was his THIRD at the “family dinner table”.
This time I wasn’t present (Thank God!).
My wife went to his house last saturday week for a lunch with his family and her mother. They got to talking about something-or-other to do with politics. From the sounds of it, it was pretty benign, as HI HATES talking politics intra family (they are all Liberals from Bronwyn Bishop’s electorate, poor sods).
Up he got, pushing his chair back loudly, pointing a finger at her telling her, “Don’t you dare say that at my table!”
What she’d said was a general comment, not directed at him personally in any way. Something to do with Labor introducing Medicare, and how the NBN would be seen inthe same light eventually.
She was perplexed. What had she done to offend him?
He went on about Pink Batts and School Halls, saying Labor had wrecked the economy (this is the bloke who had his sorry excuse for an arse saved by Gillard’s intervention in the Child Minding industry).
She said she felt like leaving.
He said he’s see her (his own sister) to the door to “make sure you’re off the premises”.
His mother later told a tearful HI that he’d been very strange lately. He listens to 2GB from morning to night (yes, even Brian Wilshire).
The previous occasion where he chucked one of these tanties was at his older daughter’s wedding reception, where he accused me of being “disrespectful to Alan Jones” (I wasn’t even talking! It was someone else!).
And the occasion before that was at his middle daughter’s 21st birthday party, where he had a go at his mother’s “gentleman friend” for being a Labor hack (this “Gentleman friend” by the way is a double-Order Of Australia recipient and universally regarded as one of the great men of sydney society). This accusation also involved Alan Jones, who the “gentleman friend” knows and loathes personally.
So, come to last Saturday and we were all out to lunch for Xmas. “Gentleman Friend” and I started talking about how he had reduced the electricity bill at a couple of his businesses and an institution he is chairman of, and I chipped in with some info on how we had done similar things here.
Brother-in-law smarmily tells us both that we must be lying, as HIS electricity bill had gone up 30% on last year’s, all dues to “Greenie” solar cells and “The Carbon Tax”.
As I was about to deny I was lying (ours went DOWN 15% or so on last years), I got the “kick under the table” from HI. Reluctantly, I desisted, simply reiterating that I’d not been making it up.
I got the sarcastic laugh from him over this. Just another Labor snake-oil salesman spruiking a tax that was ruining the country.
At this, “Gentleman Friend” had had enough. He told this bloke that HE (the G-F) was paying for this meal, and that if the Brother-In-Law made it impossible for people to have a perfectly normal conversation without him chucking a fit, then HE could leave. He accused him of being a bully.
B-i-L went quiet, so G-F persisted: “Well, are you going to shut up or leave?”
Faced with this, B-i-L got up to leave, noisily. His own wife (also present) then told him to “Bloody-well sit down and stop ruining our lunch.”
It was an important lunch. For reasons I won’t go into (involving the health of G-F) it may have to be the last lunch we all have together for a while, if ever.
So he sat down and glowered for the rest of the time, refusing to eat, making it difficult for us to eat as well.
What a prat! I DO feel your pain.
He’s proof positive that 2GB really does rot your soul.
b
The government bosom is inadequate to meet all needs and that it is going to get worse and not better over the next few decades as the (western) population pyramids bulge at the baby boomer generation.
The spending issues are about queuing: not about everyone getting everything they need, or want.
[ What Abbott did back then was a long time ago and can be portrayed far more nobly intentioned than what Bruce Wilson and Ralph Blewitt were up to.]
Just ‘noble’.
😆
Thanks for the help.
I do try to ignore them most of the time. I just wish that the threat of Abbott would just disappear from the public so it won’t be something I’m actively trying to ignore anymore.
Also, yes, I’m enrolling for my new course tomorrow. I’m disappointed that I’ll be studying for an extra semester because the core subjects I need to do have awkward prerequisites and times, but it looks like I’ll be finished by 2015.
That is if Abbott doesn’t come to power and decide to do some ultimate bastardry and do something like abolish HECS and introduce US style student loans or some other crap the Libs have in store to punish Labor supporting demographics to get their surplus.
BB
How old is the raver?
[37% of people said they had heard none or little about the S&G stuff. What a sad indictment of our media.]
All that effort. All that “context”. All that Labor’s greatest crisis”. All those good things done that got no attention or explanation or analysis.
What a flop!
poroti
Wouldn’t it be luvverly?
Read this, helps explain it. Good timeline.
http://www.kingstribune.com/index.php/component/k2/item/1643-casting-the-first-stone-tony-abbott-and-the-awu
[Casting the First Stone – Tony Abbott and the Slush Funds Featured
By Justin Shaw
03 December 2012
I am hugely indebted to former Fairfax journalist Margo Kingston for most of this piece. She covered the issue in great detail on the Fairfax Webdiary ten years ago and in her 2004 book Not Happy, John! (Penguin), from which I have précised the Timeline.
She has assisted me in fact-checking and been invaluable in finding all the archived stories that would normally take days to find using the hilariously-named “Search” function on most news websites.
All of that is my way of saying it is mostly her work, but she is more than happy for The King’s Tribune to publish because, where the AWU “scandal” probably should go away but won’t, the following incident shouldn’t have but did.
I’ve put some links through the article and a link to the SMH archive at the end – to truly appreciate the AHP issue you’ll need to read more than I can realistically put on this page. Margo Kingston’s book, if you can get hold of a copy, is the best resource on this – and other Howard government topics.]
We assume that there will be a Newspoll published next Monday evening (or maybe Sunday evening, if it’s a bad one for the Coalition) so they should go into field on Thursday through to Sunday, if they follow the usual schedule.
What anti-Gillard beat-ups will the Murdoch Circus wheel out on Thursday and Friday, do we think?
Certainly more AWU fear and smear is in the cards, and we can bank on the usual screaming triumvirate of Boats, Carbon Tax and ‘where’s the money coming from?’
As regular as clockwork, the News Ltd propaganda machines are cranking up as we speak, clearing the front page of ‘The Daily Telegraph’ for some shrieking headlines about the hoards of reffos storming ashore on Bondi Beach, and ‘The Australian’ with more revelations courtesy of Hedley Thomas concerning ‘new’ documents implicating PM Gillard in a conspiracy relating to the Petrov Affair, or her hitherto secret association with Ananda Marga and the Hilton Bombing.
The Murdoch-dominated media in this country has sunk to so many new lows in recent times that absolutely nothing would surprise me any longer.
Bushfire Bill,
Fran Barlow has proven today that she is capable of making an infinite number of self-serving posts about the asylum seeker issue in order to swamp any dissent from her point of view.
The Inconvenient Truths are just massaged away with more words than you can come up with in return. If you try.
Some people equate that with intellectual superiority. She appears to equate such verbal chaff with victory.
[BB
How old is the raver?]
About 57, I think.
He takes any slight against 2GB very personally.
He’s otherwise a cruisey guy: he surfs, rides a bicycle, dresses casually, is pretty laid back in his general demanour… EXCEPT when it comes to 2GB, when he turns into a dinner table bully.
I told HI I don’t want to go to dinner or to his house again, as I don’t like being kicked under the table for looking like I might be about to express an opinion on something that might – just MIGHT – set him off.
That is no way to conduct a social occasion. In his own house he’d be even more insufferable, as HI found out the other day.
BB
[He’s proof positive that 2GB really does rot your soul.]
But first it rots your brain.I’ve been dipping into 2GB a few times over the last couple of weeks and it really is a toxic soup. The theme music for Hadley is an hilarious accidental (?) piss take with its prominent banjo picking 😆
Thanks to BK, I think, for the link to the corporates demanding that Mr Obama do something about the Mississippi running too low for barge traffic.
Somewhere between 7 and 10 million tonnes a year gets freighted along Old Man River.
If it gets much drier, it will be the dryest the Mississippi has ever been.
These are, we presume, the same sort of corporates who have been funding denialist ‘institutes’ and supporting the right wing US OM who are in total denial about AGW.
You can bet your bottom dollar that the denialist economists of the stamp of Mr Lomborg did not calculate the economic impact of freight stopping along the Rhine, the Danube and the Mississippi when they did the cost/benefit comparisons between AGW prevention and AGW ‘adaptation’.
Only around 500 runs to go and it will be a historic victory.
Lynchpin @51
Is that why candidates for the COALition front bench have that lean and hungry look of the marathon runner. It doesn’t suit Malcolm Turnbull.
VK
[I’m disappointed that I’ll be studying for an extra semester]
Bugger.
On The upside a warning – I’ll be around in the quadrant between Charlton and Melbourne before Christmas.
So if you see a silver Merc coming don’t step out on to the pedestrian crossing.
I might deploy the anchors for Scringlers’ dogs but the rest of the inhabitants should be wary.
BB
The bullying behaviour is interesting political behaviour. I had guessed older, BTW.
If you see him again, could you please let him know for me that his behaviour is actually more typical of 70+ males who have some dementia, who have lost their social flexibility, who feel threatened by things they no longer undestand, and who are fearful of a world they no longer dominate. Typically, the response is emotional rather than rational. They appear to believe that bullying and emotional blackmail makes a political difference.
You could add for me that if he thinks his life will improve under Prime Minister Abbott, he is dreaming.
ru
[37% of people said they had heard none or little about the S&G stuff. What a sad indictment of our media.]
I must say I envy those 37%.
77
meher baba
It’s a good chance to further expose Abbott’s hypocrisy and mendacity (and that part of his past is highly relevant to the current situation), and to also do it without relying on the OM.
win/win 🙂
I do agree that Labor should largely (though not entirely) leave it alone and let others do the most of the hard yards.
Margo has already done most of the research and collation previously. More an issue now of spreading the word. Which is where the social media side kicks in.
[The Refugee Convention does not make poverty or imminent death from causes other than persecution a condition fo refugee status, so whether there are, amongst FDPs, more or less desperate people who might qualify as deserving of protection is moot. Being a refugee is a boolean — you either are or you are not.]
The refugees taking boats from Indonesia have already been displaced and are not being persecuted in Indonesia. So what does “deserving of protection” mean in their context?
[I must say I envy those 37%.] 🙂
The Essential survey is web based remember. 😆
[The Big Ship
Posted Monday, December 3, 2012 at 4:07 pm | Permalink
We assume that there will be a Newspoll published next Monday evening (or maybe Sunday evening, if it’s a bad one for the Coalition) so they should go into field on Thursday through to Sunday, if they follow the usual schedule.
What anti-Gillard beat-ups will the Murdoch Circus wheel out on Thursday and Friday, do we think?
]
COAG is meeting at the end of this week, so some beat up from the Liberal boys might be a good one.
“Gillard Fails COAG Test” could work, the PM with a dunce hat (digitally enhanced).