It’s been a disappointing week for poll junkies, with the phone pollsters including Newspoll evidently waiting until after the Australia Day long weekend before ending their New Year hibernation. Since this is an off-week in Morgan’s fortnightly cycle, that just leaves Essential Research. All told, there have only been three poll results published so far this year – two from Essential and one from Morgan – so you’re more than welcome to take BludgerTrack with a bigger-than-usual grain of salt for the time being. For what it’s worth though, the one new data point has driven the Coalition to a new low of 39.3% on the primary vote, and pushed Labor’s two-party lead to a new high of 52.5-47.5.
That might seem counter-intuitive given that the one new poll had the Coalition leading 51-49, but there are three factors which have made it otherwise. First, in adjusting the pollsters for their house biases, a unique approach has been adopted for Essential Research to acknowledge that its bias is in favour of stability, rather than one party or the other. For example, Essential overshot on the Labor vote during the election campaign as momentum swung towards the Coalition, but it’s been doing the opposite since the Coalition started heading south in November. So rather than the usual method of determining bias with reference to past performance in late-campaign polls, I’m plotting a trend of Essential’s deviation from BludgerTrack so its bias adjustments change dynamically over time. With Essential stuck at 51-49 to the Coalition while other pollsters are being fairly unanimous in having Labor leading 52-48, you can pretty much work out for yourself what the Essential bias adjustment currently looks like.
The second point is to do with rounding. While Essential’s two-party result was unchanged this week, the primary vote had the Coalition down two points, Labor down one and the Greens up one. Most of the time that would mean a one-point shift to Labor on two-party preferred, but this is one of those occasions where the shift went missing after the remainders were pared away. However, BludgerTrack doesn’t actually use pollsters’ published two-party results, instead determining primary vote totals and deriving a two-party result from them using 2013 election preferences. So the Essential result looks like a slight shift to Labor compared with last week, so far as BludgerTrack is concerned. The third point is that Essential’s numbers are a two-week rolling average (though last week’s result, being the first from the year, was a sample for that week only), so any change that occurs in a given week is a bigger deal than the published numbers suggest.
So it is that BludgerTrack gives Labor a 0.5% gain on the two-party preferred projection and a boost of three on its seat tally. The state relativities haven’t changed much since last week, so the Labor seat gains are evenly spread, with one each provided by Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. Full results as always on the sidebar.
[And he was really saying that the ends CAN justify the means, which is obviously true.]
Of course the ends can justify the means.
As a utilitarian, you just look at whether overall it turned out for the best for the most people.
As a trite example, if someone had’ve snuffed out Pol Pot before he went nuts, the ends (avoiding The Killing Field) would have justified his murder.
How do they decide Australian of the Year?
What might one think is a part of the Job descriptions of the Mayor of New York De Blasio
cleaner streets.
better parks
safer neighbourhoods
garbage collections
libraries
…well not only thoese how come you might ask He says one very key point is…”is to be a defender of Israel” huh ??? The mayor of New York defending a foreign state …how come???
only in America !!!
DN
It’s voted for by a distinguished committee. Currently the cricketer Adam Gilchrist is the chairman.
I don’t know who chooses the committee.
Argentina is looking very shaking, CNN reported last week that there is an idea to move the capital away from Buenos Aires
Not sure if it is a serious suggestion or not.
The Mayor of New York goes to the defence of Israel
___________________________
http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/some-days-it-is-all-just-too-much-remember-i-post-these-in
Dave,
Maybe I confused him with a comic/caricature
I saw the front page of the Daily Telecrap in the shop just now. Screaming headline “Shirker Alert” heading a story about an alleged need to crackdown young people rorting the disability pension.
This is a disgrace, attacking people who have the deck stacked against them. I didn’t read the story but I would be surprised if they provided a shred of evidence to support their claim. I have seen the dodgy statistics peddled by Liberal posters on this site in the last few days. This sort of campaigning is in the spirit of the usual class warfare peddled by the right – ‘downwards envy’. Many people with an authoritarian outlook, instead of demanding a fair go for everyone (including themselves), prefer to stop anyone who they perceive as being on a lower rung than themselves from getting a leg-up. Hence the paranoia over ‘boats’ and campaigns like this.
So we have another joint Murdoch – Liberal launch of a policy. When Labor gets back in it should treat Murdoch media as an enemy in the same way that the Liberals regard unions. Exclude it from the centres of power; strengthen laws that limit further concentration of media; where it is legal to do so exclude it from government contracts; call Royal Commissions that would be likely to harm it.
Zoomster
Cash for clunkers was sort of OK in a PR sort of way. Would not achieve much and in Australia would just push aup our import bills.
However as a person who is a candidate for office, you lack judgement if you think the Citizen’s Assembly was anything other than a plan to shelve all action on Climate Change. Sir Humphrey at his very best. The public saw it immediately and it was EXTREMELY damaging. It made Labor look weak and Gillard conniving. There had been rumours that Gillard and Swan had opposed the ETS and this confirmed it.
Frankly Zoomster if you and any of your cronies actually thought that it was a good idea, then it is not surprising that the Gillard years were bloody awful. It was the worst form of talkfest and guaranteed to destroy any chance of action on Climate Change. More damaging than Abbott. Sometimes I despair.
[The Mayor of New York goes to the defence of Israel.]
Well, how extraordinarily surprising. Who would have expected that?
zoomster@2063
In those cases, gut reaction was supported by subsequent analysis and public reaction.
I have provided a link to an economic analysis of ‘cash for clunkers’.
I can’t be bothered researching and footnoting all my comments. They are based on judgement and personal knowledge unless I choose to provide supporting evidence.
In this particular case, and the ‘real Julia’ and the banal campaign launch, my initial reaction was widely supported. I guess that says something for my judgement. But not much because these were so obviously bad policies.
There you go again with the Jews Deblonay!
On FB,
Megan Washington
Guess who was on stage with me and talked through my whole song? Tony Abbott.
(Yes, probably my last post for the night. Gone over my weekly quota)
@Steve777/2108
Murdoch likes to attack the weakest in the community, how do you think he got hold of the Tories in UK.
Bugler
Thats understandable.
Really.
mikehilliard@2068
A fair enough point too.
But I don’t agree with a lot of what BB writes and think he is entirely OTT about the media. He also has been rather unpleasant in the way he has referred to some journalists.
Yes he can string a few words together, as can others here, including myself if I can be bothered. But I use PB to exchange ideas with others in a conversational manner. If I am serious I write submissions to Parliamentary Inquiries or articles for the MSM.
A public forum, where the arguments and evidence were presented, and ordinary people had a chance to question and evaluate the information, would have sparked plenty of ‘water cooler’ conversations about climate change and the ways to tackle it.
It would have been a sort of reality show (which might not appeal to some of us here, but are widely popular in the ‘real world’) but with a real, worthwhile purpose – keeping climate change front and centre, whilst providing the public with sound information.
Need an alternative universe, however, to see whether it would have worked.
Quiz
Who wrote the treatises “Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants” and “On the Jews and Their Lies”?
Who Diogenes? Deblonay?
[Who wrote the treatises “Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants” and “On the Jews and Their Lies”?]
Somebody German, no doubt.
Bugler@2082
You were correct, Mike Smith is CEO of the ANZ Bank.
Zoomster
Only someone who is at heart a climate change denier would ever make that sort of comment.
The ALP had already made a decision on an ETS. The CA was just a polite way of ditching it – Abbott light.
@edj/2119
Why are you doing another hit list for liberals?
z
[
Need an alternative universe, however, to see whether it would have worked.]
We have one. It’s called PollBludger. 😀
fess
[ Who wrote the treatises “Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants” and “On the Jews and Their Lies”?
Somebody German, no doubt.]
Yes, it was a German. Martin Luther wrote them.
zoomster@2084
I recall Quiggin doing a more in-depth analysis but couldn’t find it quickly. There were others as well.
No, it was not a good policy, nowhere near good as encouraging Solar Panel installation.
I received the derisive treatment it deserved, much like Abbott’s Direct Action receives.
It was the kind of knee jerk policy idiocy that should be avoided at all costs.
Dio:
They were written that long ago?
Amazing.
Not sure why the right would be complaining about awards. Fred Chaney former Liberal Minister etc – bad luck that he is offside with the current Liberal establishment.
Adam Goodes likely to be pretty persuasive given his background.
[Only someone who is at heart a climate change denier would ever make that sort of comment.
The ALP had already made a decision on an ETS. ]
zoomster can hardly be called a climate denialist with any credibility, as her many comments here on the subject demonstrate.
And at the time Labor had already dropped the ball on an ETS courtesy of its then leader Kevin Rudd, whose actions left Labor in a rather perilous position on tackling AGW.
All of this is on the public record if you cared to look. There’s no reason to make snarky and baseless accusations against other commenters in order to make your point.
DTT –
You assert this, but that doesn’t make it true.
I was dismayed by the wishy washy confused 2010 election rhetoric from the ALP on the ETS, and because of that I voted Greens 1 at that election.
However, I think given subsequent actions in government the actual strategy was obvious. Think about what happened with the Houston panel on refugees, or the Gonski report – the outcome of the process was used by the ALP to legitimize their actions. Political idea laundering, if you will. I can well imagine that was the plan behind the citizens’ assembly – let there be a talkfest, knowing what the likely outcome was to be (never start an inquiry you don’t know the outcome of etc etc), do it in full public view and then say “we’ve talked about it, and this is what we should do based on what we heard the public express via the CA”.
I was unhappy the ALP didn’t express a 100% commitment to their ETS plan, but the CA didn’t strike me as a way of permanently weasling out of action – it seemed clear it was a strategy to try to take a different tack on the political problems the ALP were having with it.
Whether it would work or not, who knows – in the past conventions were a well understood way of working out what democracies should do about contested issues, and I was dismayed that the concept of people getting together to have a public discussion of the issues involved was dismissed as a bad idea. It’s not, fundamentally, a bad idea. I’m sure given the political performance of the ALP in the last term of government that the ALP could have stuffed it up. We’ll never know.
Try this link
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/look-under-the-bonnet-and-cash-for-clunkers-is-a-lemon-20100726-10sjp.html
It was a dog of a policy
dtt
[Only someone who is at heart a climate change denier would ever make that sort of comment.]
I wrote policy for the Victorian ALP on climate change back in 2000, introducing the then Minister to a friend of mine on the IPCC. I worked locally with Monash University over a number of years to produce climate models based on our local area (which resulted in several published scientific papers). My brother in law is a prominent environmental scientist, studying the impact of climate change on Alpine environments.
As a parent, I arranged for climate scientists to visit our local primary school and discuss their work.
When I started on local council, our shire was seen as one of the most backward in the state when it came to the environment (‘caring for the environment’ was one of the shire’s six aims; when I asked what that meant, I was told ‘rubbish tips’) – when I left, it was one of the most progressive.
Only a few days ago, I took on our local paper, accusing it of biased reporting when it came to climate change – and it has since taken steps to counter my objections.
As a candidate in 2010, I talked with Labor MPs and other candidates – none of whom, Julia Gillard included, showed any inclination to walk away from action on climate change.
You may be an old fraud, dtt – I’m not.
Mex Bedemer
_________
Re the question of BA and some alternative capital for Argentina…I think the story may be a joke M B
__________
BA is a vast…and wonderful; city…with about a third of the population of Argentina,….and with no other city of any comparable size in the country
Like all, great cities it has a kind of dominant influence on the politics of the state….as say Paris does in France
About the only way of avoiding a brawl in the aftermath of the naming of the Australia of the Year is to always give the award to a doctor. Pretty well everyone else is going to be subject to a tribal attack from one side or the other, as in Professor (believe it or not) Sinclair Davidson’s disgusting outburst linked earlier.
Incidentally, I note his website purports to be named in tribute to F A Hayek. I recall seeing Hayek on the old Monday Conference program on the ABC in the late 70s – he was visiting Australia to see the total eclipse of the sun. He was manifestly a gentleman of great courtesy, as was confirmed to me by some people who met him on other occasions. I suspect he would be appalled at the sheer vulgarity of some who claim to be inspired by him.
Abbott: “No country has ever taxed or subsidised its way to prosperity”
So the billions$$$$ to mining companies is going to stop????
Yeah right, what a bullshitter Abbott is.
Well bully for you Zoomster
They are all good actions.
Pity that when the real issues you come up you side with deniers. CA was a policy of deferral and you SHOULD have known that if you are as committed as you say.
Now I can go back one hell of a lot longer than 2000 and have been close to to the issue since 1980. Now I never regarded it as “the greatst moral challenge” but nor did I think th
Deb
I suspect that is correct, as CNN commented that it was most likely more a reference to directing the policies towards the Pacific rim rather than the Atlantic, apparently the western part of South America is doing better than the Eastern part of South America.
Now I can go back one hell of a lot longer than 2000 and have been close to to the issue since 1980. Now I never regarded it as “the greatest moral challenge” but nor did I think think it was a minor issue to be ignored. A stupid chat fest was about the worst idea ever.
And in any case, cash for clunkers and citizens assembly are totally irrelevant today given it was Julia Gillard who finally delivered on Labor’s policy of pricing carbon emissions.
Ruddists would have greater credibility on abating AGW if they turned their whingeing and moaning to the current government’s pledges to do away with pricing GHGEs altogether instead of carrying on about some supposedly god awful thing Labor promised over 3 years ago, yet failed to deliver.
[A stupid chat fest was about the worst idea ever.]
Gillard Labor delivered and implemented a carbon price.
Why are you still whingeing and gnashing teeth over a policy you claim was bad, but which was never implemented in the first place?
William, would it be possible to set up, and keep permanently open, a thread where all Rudd/Gillard partisan brawling would have to be placed, so that the many others here who find it as boring as bat droppings could be saved from the RSI in our mouse fingers to which it gives rise?
fess
[Gillard Labor delivered and implemented a carbon price. ]
True, but only because the Greens made her.
Confessions
The debate was about the electoral impact of the policy and how it was perceived and what its intent was.
Frankly the only rational reason for discussion what is now ancient history is to learn from mistakes and try to avoid making new ones. The problem is that if people do not even see it as a mistake we seem doomed to repeat it.
confessions@2140
In a clumsy way and then stuffed up completely on the politics of it, allowing the Tories to raise considerable angst and destroy popular support for a carbon price. No small feat.
Says she who frequently launches into an unprovoked tirade about Kevin Rudd.
dtt
[Pity that when the real issues you come up you side with deniers.]
Bollocks. I never have and I never will. I knew that Labor was committed to carbon pricing, because I was talking on a regular basis to people right across the party – the media painted a different picture, which it appears doofuses like you fell for — just as some here were saying only a month or so ago that Shorten was about to dump carbon pricing, on the same basis.
Pity that when you’re losing an argument you decide to go for the personal attacks instead.
bemused@2085
Yes, it’s rather hard to keep up with discussions on this blog, particularly when I’m intermittently looking after a three year old . . . a big part of the reason I don’t post more often.
I don’t think Abbott is a good comparison, in part because he’s so obviously bad that the cartoonists must relish looking at the incoming politics stories of the day for things that they can have some fun with. Also, though, because we’re currently living in a media environment that’s been horrendously debased by Abbott and his backers’ actions over the last four years. I’m sure there are a whole lot of left-leaning journalists and cartoonists who not only relish the ridiculousness of this government, but also feel that since Abbott and company have opened the privy door they’re due a bit back at them.
Going back before that period, though, I /don’t/ recall Howard, Beasley, Crean, even Latham being treated with anything like the disdain that Gillard experienced. Not simply the more obvious sexism that was out there, or the gender-driven perspective that was often displayed while dealing with her, but also the fact that so often the message that she was presenting was ignored in favour of unrelated trivia, gossip, and even her own personal presentation. No one in the media respected her enough to listen! And for no reason that I can discern. She came to the job with a very strong reputation for excellence, and as a very popular politician, and yet when all is said and done she was treated as if she was some hollywood starlet rather than the leader of her country.
I’m sure if you look far enough back you could find other PMs who totally lacked the respect of the media and general information gatekeepers (can anyone say Billy McMahon?), but you have to look for PMs who count among the worst the country has had, rather than someone as capable as Gillard.
Gillard had it for much of her time as PM, and showed many sparks of it during the early months – I’ve seen regular comments regarding the times she showed the fire people expected of her given her past performances. There was a period before the election where she was struggling to find her footing, but after that she performed well, and in fact she was often magnificent in full flight.
Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t actually expecting to become PM under the circumstances as they came to pass?
To my mind, although she was obviously far from perfect Gillard was an exceptional PM, under exceptionally difficult circumstances. I’m struggling to understand why so many people see things so differently.
himi
Dio:
The issue is doing something meaningful and constructive to abate our GHGEs. We currently have carbon pricing. If that is deemed to be the most effective way of addressing AGW in Australia, then it makes little to no sense to be obsessing over a policy over 3 years old which was never implemented to start with.
The current coalition govt want to abolish carbon pricing. Isn’t that the issue here?
Diog
nonsense. Gillard repeatedly committed to pricing carbon during the 2010 campaign. The notorious ‘no carbon tax under a government I lead’ was part of a sentence which included a commitment to put a price on carbon.
still going on about Ruud/Gillard….jeez take a chill pill…
If you are gunna talk about them talk about the great work of Rudd in saving Australia from the effects of the GFC.
Talk about Gillards key note policies – Carbon Price, NDIS and education reform that Pyne is undoing
Re The Mayor of New York De Balsio and his Israeli allies
________________
The New York jewish site”Mondoweiss” run by progressive NY jews…said that” he was pandering “to the the Zionist Lobby’ peak body AIPAC,,,which by it distribution of funds is” corrupting progressive politics ” in NY and elsewhere in the USA(and the Repugnants do well too…McCain got over one million US dolars in the last election from AIPAC..who spend tens of millions on buying politician..as a way of influencing AS foreign policies in the M East..often to disasterous lengths for us all
McCain follows the Israeli line of wanting a WAR WITH IRAN
Money well spent from the AIPAC point of view
“Mondoweiss” deplores this in this article
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/01/blasio-description-defend.html