New results from ReachTEL, Essential and Morgan have finally put some meat on BludgerTrack’s New Year bones. However, their entry into the pool has had very little impact on the voting intention numbers, which hopefully means the model was doing its job. Both major parties are up a bit on the primary vote after being down a bit last time, but only Labor has made up the difference, the Coalition still being 0.8% off their starting point. With the ups and downs of the minor parties amounting to minor statistical noise, two-party preferred stays exactly where it was following Labor’s half-point gain a week ago. Things are calm on the surface, but the infusion of new data has helped smooth out the eccentricities of recent state-level projections, most notably the extravagant swing to Labor that was showing up in Queensland for a few weeks there. That shaves three off a still ample tally of Labor gains, suggesting Bill Glasson has his work cut out for him at next Saturday’s Griffith by-election. The seat projection has the Coalition down this week a seat each in New South Wales and Victoria, which taken together with the Queensland adjustment makes a net gain of one seat nationally.
ReachTEL had personal ratings this week which I’ve yet to remark on, and can finally little to say about now that I am because the charges are very slight. The best headline writers could do was talk up a 1.8% increase in Tony Abbott’s “very good” rating and a 2% drop in Bill Shorten’s. The latter might be part of a trend, but there’s little reason yet to think that the former is. ReachTEL doesn’t get included in the BludgerTrack leadership polling aggregates, as its five-point scale and compulsory answering mean it can’t readily be compared with other outfits. Nonetheless, there has been a change in the BludgerTrack ratings this week, not because of new data, but because I’ve implemented a means of standardising the polls to stop the trendline blowing around in response to the house bias of the most recently reporting pollster. This has had the effect of moderating the downward turn in Bill Shorten’s net approval rating, which continues to hang off a single Essential Research result, the only leadership poll rating to emerge so far this year. Presumably that will be changing very shortly as the bigger polling outlets emerge from hibernation.
What you have stated @ 1948 is a specific version of it.
mexicanbeemer
Posted Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 3:29 pm | Permalink
AA
Not every kid that attends a non government school comes from a rich family.
I know of several kids who attend non-government schools who parents don’t earn huge money.
And Bill Shorten didn’t come from a rich family.
————————–
How fcuking dumb am I…not knowing that not all kids attending private schools come from wealthy families
Thanks for pointing out the obvious.
It took decades to broker a Tasmanian forests deal. Now the Abbott wreckers plan to ask UNESCO to remove 74,000ha from the 170,000ha world heritage zone.
Voters, what have you done?
DN, I should probably keep my nose out of this, but you are plainly and obviously flat out wrong about what a straw man argument is.
No I’m not. You replace one proposition with another in order to deny the new one, creating the illusion of having denied the first.
What dio did was a little more indirect, he replaced his own proposition in order to deny the refutation to it.
You can believe that if you like, I suppose.
Is there a specific authority where this is defined?
AA
I wouldn’t call you F’kíng dumb, actually far from it.
There are some non government schools which are home to a high number of richer kids and some of those schools don’t need government assistance.
Dio
You still need politicians to do the enabling (and you’re being a little harsh on people like Wilberforce there).
Of course politicians adopt issues which are already out there. Most people do, after all (very few can say “I am the person who started the world wide effort to achieve X” – all successful movements are group movements, and major changes can take generations from first impulse to delivery).
Most people who have an issue which concerns them recognise that they need to get politicians involved if they’re to have it resolved.
The basic role of an MP is to solve people’s problems. Every MPs office does this, every day. The problems may not be huge or glamorous or world changing, but they’re genuine for the person who has them.
Most of these problems are purely individual problems, so you’ll never hear about them. Doesn’t mean they weren’t vital to the person concerned, or that there was another way of solving them.
Most MPs work is like the proverbial iceberg – but just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there (and most MPs I know find this basic problem solving one of the most rewarding aspects of the job).
When multiple people have the same problem, that’s when policy steps in. Good MPs recognise patterns and use them to formulate (or guide) policy.
It’s not all about passing laws, doing meet and greets, or becoming a Cabinet Minister. Like all professions, it has its own rewards, many of which aren’t obvious to those who don’t work in the field.
(I still get a buzz looking at my town now and thinking back to what it was like before I became a councillor. Of course I didn’t achieve it all by myself – few people ever do — but I know I played an integral part in making it happen).
Maybe I’ve read the wrong books :P.
Humpty Dumpty, in your case.
DN
[It’s replacing one proposition with another, denying the second, pretending to have denied the first.]
Yes, someone else’s proposition. You replace their proposition with a “straw man” which you can easily refute, and therefore pretend you have refuted the original proposition when you haven’t actually addressed it all.
Changing your own proposition, that someone has refuted, has the same effect of changing how the refutation is interpreted (assuming one doesn’t follow closely what the original argument was). It’s still a strawman.
William
[Humpty Dumpty, in your case.]
Stop projecting.
z
I completely agree with you comments. I was more referring to how difficult it is to make large changes to the system, as someone suggested Fran should try doing rather than in effect not voting.
..to expand on 1960…I may not have been the only person involved in making these things happen, but on the other hand, I can say with absolute confidence they wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been on council.
Dio
point taken.
Of course, fran will make absolutely no changes to anything by in effect not voting. She MIGHT make at least some change to the system by being involved.
We know the first part of that is absolutely true. The second would need an alternative universe (the one with the involved fran) before anyone could make any authoratative statement.
DN
Actually all you did was quibble incorrectly about the use of the term “taxpayers money” which is an accepted term for money paid in tax to the government.
z
I was saying that Fran would be better off doing what she is doing very well, ie teaching kids, than giving that up for a million to one shot of changing our democratic system.
Dio
[They are saving the taxpayer money …]
Your words.
That makes your 3rd strawman.
The argument about parents ‘saving the government money’ by sending their kids to private schools (or perhaps state subsidised schools, for this is what they are) is about as valid as me saying I drive my car to work and not take the bus or train, thereby ‘saving’ money for the government.
What makes the 6 in 10 dollars various governments contribute to non-government schools, is that the “doing the country a favour” is trotted out by the likes of Diogenese and generations of supporters of the private school funding.
The argument is akin to me driving my BMW to work, claiming I am ‘saving’ the government money, but then ask for $6 in $10 to defray my use of my own car. Nice work if you can get it.
This argument has for ever been trotted out as a good reason to provide an every growing number of dollars the private school sector expects.
There are two major flaws in the argument. Firstly, many, if not all who chose to send their kids to private schools, do so as private choice. Thus they should pay for the right of choice and good luck to them.
Secondly, if these private choices are supported by government funds, then let us challenge those who send their kids to private schools to send them to the local government school and demand the 60% of funds currently given private schools be redirected to government schools.
Attached to this ‘saving the government money’ concept is the allied argument that ‘As I pay taxes I am entitled to some of these funds to support kids at my school of choice’. Sounds good in theory but then, I do not have any school age children so I am now, on the basis of this argument, demanding that the funds I have paid on taxes towards education be now diverted to areas which I need ….. greater hospital care perhaps?
If you want a private education for you kids – good luck to you and I think it is important to have a choice, but save us the whining about how much this is some kind of patriot and tax-saving activity.
It is a purely selfish decision.
Every since the days of Menzies and funds for School Science Blocks the expectation that the state will support a growing proportion of the private choices made by parents has distorted school funding which has seen, is seeing and will continue to see a two,three or more tiered system of education.
The term ‘Sink Schools” has not taken on here in Oz yet, but it is only a matter of time.
Actually, I think it is too late. The damage has been done and quality education from a government school can no longer be a broad expectation.
The current members of the Federal government, and to a lesser degree, Labor itself, are largely products of fee paying schools and thus we will not change things in the near to mid-term future.
If you want to send your children to religious or elite schools, then I don’t see why other people should pay for it. I don’t pretend for a second I’m not biased but to me it seems you’re removing resources from areas where they’re needed the most, as in high needs students, in favour of students whose parents would largely send their kids there anyway. If I may, Diogenes, I recall you saying you sent your daughters to a private school because you wouldn’t wish the education you had on anyone (side-stepping the fact you’re a surgeon), but so far as I can see, you have the funds to send them there regardless of Government, and taxpayer, support. What’s more, you asserted that this school was acceptable because it wasn’t elite and didn’t enforce an academically and socially discriminating policy, which, I imagine, makes it little different from your average Government run school. I apologise if that’s too personal, but it seemed the best way to make my point. (Also, from personal experience the local private schools didn’t do, academically, much better than the local Government schools, despite most of them having far greater resources).
Not only that, increasing Government support doesn’t and didn’t seem to arrest rises in independent and Catholic school fees.
As a P.S. I’ll also note that I was, until Zoomster’s comment, unaware Healesville HS had a pool. Interesting. I have only been there once or twice, though.
Diog
life is all about horses for courses. I’m a very good teacher, too — but I know I’d make an even better politician. Alas, it is not to be.
[..to expand on 1960…I may not have been the only person involved in making these things happen, but on the other hand, I can say with absolute confidence they wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been on council.]
You make an interesting point, while I was on Council there were somethings that definitely 100% wouldn’t have happened without me there fighting, but at the time I thought a large percentage of it would happen whomever was in the seat. Looking at those who followed me, it wasn’t to be, other councillors and staff worked out they didn’t have the fight, would make the yards and much that would have happened, without me even fighting for it would have happened just because i was there and they knew what a bitch I was if they didn’t do the right thing.
Of course, the ideal for any Labor MP should be to make public schools so good that private schools really do just become a choice parents are willing to pay for.
[The argument is akin to me driving my BMW to work, claiming I am ‘saving’ the government money, but then ask for $6 in $10 to defray my use of my own car. Nice work if you can get it.
]
No it’s not because that would cost the government a lot more money. The equivalent would be asking for 60% of the bus fare in compensation.
Bugler
[ If I may, Diogenes, I recall you saying you sent your daughters to a private school because you wouldn’t wish the education you had on anyone (side-stepping the fact you’re a surgeon), but so far as I can see, you have the funds to send them there regardless of Government, and taxpayer, support. ]
Actually that is far from correct. I sent my daughter to a public school for the first seven years and then to a private school as she has multiple disabilities and those schools were the best to provide for her special needs.
The school I would never send my kid to was the private school I went to.
[ Diogenes
Posted Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 3:01 pm | Permalink
Should private schools be treated like any other private enterprise and not get Govt subsidies?
Private schools are not “any other private enterprise” as they are performing a service which would otherwise be paid for by the state. They are saving the taxpayer money as the government contributes less to the education of a kid in a private school than a public school.
]
On that basis SPC should have got their 20 million as the unemployment benefits will cost more.
WWP
I basically achieved my purpose just by being elected! I didn’t realise it, but prior to that, councillors for my town came from the Rotary set.
They all genuinely believed they represented the views of the town, because they only talked to the same group of people. Proposals for the town’s future were constantly knocked back with “we know the town are against this idea’ to the point where council officers didn’t even bother putting forward options and had the attitude that the townspeople were anti progress in any form.
Soon after I was elected, the local police came up with an idea for a skatepark (they knew most juvenile crime in the area was boredom – related and sat down with the kids to ask what could be done). The Rotary councillor stood up and said that ‘no one in town wants this, not even the kids’ and everyone else was willing to believe her (closer questioning elicited that she had spoken to precisely eight people on the issue).
The mere fact that I disputed this made the council look at the town with new eyes. We called an on site meeting, attended by nearly one hundred people (impressive in a small country town). A straw poll saw only two people voting against the idea.
…and thus a mindset was broken!
Diog
hubby went to a private school. One of his friends still lives in the same suburb, and has great delight sending his kids to the local public school. He gets a reasonably constant stream of letters from his old school, asking why he doesn’t send his kids there. His answer – equally good education, much cheaper.
Zoidlord
[So, like Mod Lib, you are making the same mistake as she/he is, accusations before asking questions.]
I made no accusation. I just drew a compelled inference. If you give your primary to the ALP then it follows that you like them more than all those who don’t i.e. More than about 60% of the voter pool. If people who share your predispositions make it a policy to vote informal, then the ALP will not be able to count on being able to ignore your cohort and pitch at people inclined to vote LNP. they will be obliged to adopt positions much closer to those you prefer. For a time, the ALP might lose more often, but when they won, he results would be better and a new equilibrium around policies you’d prefer could emerge.
Your loyalty to them is subverting your policy preferences and so much as you say you don’t like politicians, in practice, you are privileging their victories over your policy wishes.
frednk
[On that basis SPC should have got their 20 million as the unemployment benefits will cost more.]
That may well be the case. The complexities and economics of bailouts is way beyond my pay grade.
The two main rules which Government should apply to spending
1-Is there a rate of return as in either a financial or social dividend to the government
2-Is it an efficient use of resources
The case could be made for supporting non government schools in middle to lower social economic communities particularly in regional Australia but can that case be made for schools which are well endowed financially.
frednk
And you also have to consider the income tax those people would have paid on the bonus side for bailing out.
I still haven’t got a good answer on when to bailout a company and when to let it fold.
The vast majority of businesses are allowed to fold with no bailout.
Zoomster
Well done on getting a skate-park up as opposition to those facilities do tend to focus on some poor reason to oppose.
The argument usually runs that it will devalue local homes which isn’t supported by any evidence, i do note Camberwell has a skate-park and it hasn’t hurt property values.
It is cheaper for the government of the day to subsidise private schools than it is to pay the full price of the children’s education if the private schools shut down, and those students turned up on the doorstep of the local public schools.
Follow the money.
@Fran/1983
I preference the ALP at some elections, but I don’t always vote for ALP, mostly because I am protesting my vote against the two main political parties.
So again accusation.
The recent years made me thinking more broadly that I may be doing that more again – especially now that Abbott is PM.
Most business are able to refinance though a financial institution either by extending overdrafts or other lines of credit.
Its all very good for a government to take the line that it wont continue to invest in business but it will need to ensure that it is consistent and that the financial sector is able to support business by not being too aggressive with its budget downsizing.
The government needs an economic strategy
Zoomster
Your #1789
🙂
DN
[Fran, if you want to change the system, become a politician.]
In some senses, I’m already a politician — just not a professional one.
frednk
[Fran given the perfectly good policies that the Liberals are now dismantling I can’t say I am that impressed with your position. Politics is not a game for the sanctimonious.]
Hmmm … It’s often the case that those who cry sanctimony are those who when asked to choose between their impulses and a coherent set of ethical principles, prefer the former. Without principles, it’s impossible for anyone to be certain who they are. One should never offend principles. One should either honour them or else reject them as flawed, repudiating them expressly in favour of better ones.
You may well be principled but careless in your use of words. Based on your posting pattern and your use of he term ‘game’ to describe politics (another hackneyed and vacuous term in this context) I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here.
Diogenes,
Sorry, was going completely off memory from a discussion I don’t think I was involved in. I don’t wish to cast aspersions on your decisions as a parent, something I’m not in a position to comment on. I probably was a bad way to explain my argument. I can’t deny the facilities in a lot of private schools trump those of Government schools, which in some ways is rather perverse. A point the retired Resurgent Turkeys made was that it doesn’t necessarily matter whether the school is public or private so much as who’s in it, a point that isn’t completely wrong (not that he was really making a point so much as trolling people into pointing out the fascist nature of his posts). Which is why I’d argue the resources should be best utilised in areas that most need them (though I also know that’s not something you’re against).
mb
Bailouts always seem to be on a case by case basis rather than the government saying, you meet this and that criteria so you get X but we expect Y. This ad hoc politicising is bad policy.
Diog
my husband (there we go again, I’m sounding very uxorious this afternoon) recently calculated that the benefit of his having a job to the government is about $35k (saving by no longer providing him with Newstart plus the money he now pays in taxes).
[It is cheaper for the government of the day to subsidise private schools than it is to pay the full price of the children’s education if the private schools shut down, and those students turned up on the doorstep of the local public schools.]
I’m not sure who did the maths and economics on this but I am not even a tiny bit convinced it is correct although a lot of people buy into it.
Dio
Which is why i think it would be better if the government actually had a clear set of economic policies which outlined a criteria for government investment decisions.
Some departments do have protocols and their are some general policy guidelines but i am not sure the government follows them and they do appear ad hoc
[It is cheaper for the government of the day to subsidise private schools than it is to pay the full price of the children’s education if the private schools shut down, and those students turned up on the doorstep of the local public schools.]
If it was true the State Government might put more into private schools than they do. I wonder if the Federal Government gave the State a choice to take the money and students, or have the money go into the private sector which they would chose if they were making a long term decision.
Fran
[In some senses, I’m already a politician — just not a professional one.]
That’s the point I was expecting. I was being a bit cheeky with the internet bit, after all you are here advocating the changes you want and you may even do so in other (offline) forums ;).
WWP
The government pays $15.5K per kid in public and $8.5K in private.
I’m sure it’s more complicated than that as the government kids might have more needs on average than the private kids but that is a big difference.