Essential Research has two-party preferred at 50-50, with both major parties up on the primary vote: the Coalition by a point to 43%, Labor by two to 38%. The Greens are down a point to 8%, the Palmer United Party down one to 3% and others down to two to 7%. Also covered:
• Only 4% rate Peter Cosgrove “not a good choice” for Governor-General, with 30%, 34% and 11% respectively rating the choice excellent, good and acceptable.
• Forty-three per cent are happy for the Governor-General to be appointed by the government, with 40% favouring direct election.
• Sixty-one per cent think unions “important for Australian working people today”, compared with only 30% who think them not important, with 45% thinking workers would be better off if unions were stronger compared with 27% for worse off.
• In response to a question which first explains the specifics of the government’s policy, including the $150,000 ceiling and 1.5% levy, only 23% favoured the government scheme over 36% for the current policy and 32% for neither.
• There are also questions on the prevalence on various forms of intolerance, which you can read about in the report.
Grapes of Wrath revisited.
Zoomster
but that is the other Nat cliche. “Families just locking up and walking away from the farm” just as other small businessmen see their assets go down the drain this is not a problem unique to farmers.
Who the hell does this Paul Howes think he is?
He has done nothing but make it more difficult for the Labor Party and for the people he represents every time he opens his big mouth.
He has a lot in common with the Greens – they both don’t have a clue about winning!
Dio
There was no other self medication?
Just saw Howes on 7.30 and thought he did very well.
Boer/Diog/oh heck anyone really
also remember that most farmers left school at 15. That doesn’t give you many options, for starters, but also means (apologies) that you don’t have the skills to assess the science when it comes to issues like climate change.
Lots of local stories about how trusting of authority farmers are — in the days when we had a tobacco research station, they simply planted what they were told.
I remember being amazed to learn that many of our local tobacco farmers had no idea how tobacco was farmed in other areas of the world. You would have thought that was basic knowledge.
For the second day in a row I am having internet issues at this time. Some sites just refuse to connect. My ISP, iinet, says the problem has been identified as a “large spike of DNS traffic” originating in the ACT.
Any bludger know what this means? I am not into conspiracy theories but we know how the Tories feel about the internet and everybody having access to it it.
OC
no, it’s not a cliche. I live among farmers. I speak to them every day.
I’ve been through droughts here, and I’ve seen how small business people and farmers dealt with it, and the different options they had.
If you don’t get what I’m trying to say, I’m sorry – my bad.
BW
[Dio
There was no other self medication?]
None of those other medications would have had any interaction with scombroid poisoning.
Scombroid poisoning is usually very easy to treat, if managed correctly. I don’t know what medical treatment they received.
I should add, as I’ve said before — farmers have many skills, but these are (as a general rule) not supported by ‘evidence’ in the way of tickets or licenses, so they have difficulty finding off farm work.
Usually by the time they’re seeking it, so’s half the district, and potential jobs have been taken up long ago.
Darn
[
Just saw Howes on 7.30 and thought he did very well.]
Tony Abbott on Sky News earlier today was also pleased with Howes.
rossmcg – I’m in the ACT and an iiNet client.
I’ve got 5 or 6 tabs open and have just opened a couple more with no problems.
It might be localised to your telephone exchange.
Zoomster
I think the days of most farmers having left school at 15 might be an exaggeration.
These days some of them are running pretty big businesses which require a great deal of knowledge and the idea that they all learnt on the job is, I think a little simplistic.
Oakshot county
Another cafe closed at my local shopping centre the other day. This really was a mum and dad business. It is not a rare event and I often wonder what becomes of these people, particularly as you can see there has been substantial investment in fit out etc. do the Nats care about them?
CTar1
No, it is listed as a national fault on the iinet home page. Just strange that it has cropped up at the same time two days in a row.
If you have multi tabs open it might be your fault!
z
Farmers who farm like that are goners.
They simply will not last.
Several of my rellies have, from scratch, absolutely transformed their particular farming sectors. One one farm, no one actually steers the tractors when the tractors plough. The tractors steer themselves by way of lasers. This adds several rows of spuds to the centre pivots, maximising the yield. In ground sensors send a constant stream of technical growing information back to mission control. Leaf analysis tells them what nutrients and chemicals to add to the next irrigation event.
They routinely travel overseas to catch up on the latest trends. They invest heavily in university research which they then apply. They buy the best advice they can get hold of. They are all exporters in trade exposed commodities. They have become incredibly wealthy as a result. They are now essentially agribusiness covering land that used to be used primarily for going broke by several dozen farmers.
On our old road there used to be about a dozen dairy farmers, each farming around 40 cows. Now there is one farm, one farmer, and he milks around 400 cows. Each one of those cows produces around two-three times the milk that our cows used to produce.
Farming used to be, as some might say, a lifestyle decision. In a globalised world it is a cut-throat competitive business. You simply cannot be under-educated or behind the technical and market curves.
Boerwar
[On our old road there used to be about a dozen dairy farmers, each farming around 40 cows. Now there is one farm, one farmer, and he milks around 400 cows.]
Crikey Aus is behind the times. Those numbers are from my grand dad’s times. Parents milked 3-400 hundred from the 1960’s in NZ.
Paul Howes should shut the eff up. He really is quite ordinary.
He should have learnt after his involvement in the sacking of a PM to go and do something useful for his members instead of getting his nose directly involved in politics.
Why does he get so much oxygen?
Maybe he wouldn’t if he wasn’t so controversial!
poroti
Careful. We might have to invade to set things right.
poroti, CTaR1
You might enjoy the following. Warning: turn speakers up as high as you can get them or you might not enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlOYG-_Hly4
[Another cafe closed at my local shopping centre the other day. This really was a mum and dad business.]
Not commenting on this business, but it is common in payoutville. Lets take the payout and start/buy a business, mana from heaven for business brokers.
Boerwar
Mitre Ten have made sure we do not fear the Australians 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT6oZqYij8U
Hmmm – lost this post, looked like the 8pm thing, but it wasn’t 8pm. Apologies if this ends up being a duplicate:
Also on Badgerys Creek – I was also speculating that to me it seems logical that this government would be deciding to go ahead with Badgerys real soon now – in time for the May budget, anyway.
Abbott was proudly claiming the aspiration to be known as the ‘infrastructure PM’, and Hockey is faced with the budget that he has very little room to move on, and wants desperately to shift spending into infrastructure where he can legitimately put some debt spending “off balance sheet”.
Combined, that means they are probably running around desperately trying to find suitable infrastructure to fund, using the infrastructure spend (not technically adding to the deficit!) to stimulate the economy while taking a few percent of GDP out of the recurrent federal budget.
And while Abbott said he wanted to be known as the ‘infrastructure PM’ he obviously has no clue as to what good infrastructure is – he just babbled on about roads, roads and more roads, and explicitly ruling out metro train system funding.
The 2nd Sydney Airport seems to tick all the boxes to me. The Feds just have to overcome O’Farrell’s non-position, which given the NSW government has been poking the Federal LNP in the eye over education is probably not that inconceivable.
[poroti
Posted Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at 7:55 pm | Permalink
Darn
Just saw Howes on 7.30 and thought he did very well.
Tony Abbott on Sky News earlier today was also pleased with Howes.]
It’s what the Australian people ultimately think of Howes and Abbott that really counts and at the moment we know they aren’t very thrilled with Abbott and his constant attack dog approach. If Abbott thinks he’s on a winner with union bashing he just might be in for one hell of a shock.
Ruawake
Yeah I guess but the end result is the same. Somebody might lose their house.
Remember when Costello said that people who lost their jobs should just go and get a lawn mowing franchise? another true man of the people.
When he finally showed his lack of of courage and left parliament nobody would give him a job, until his Tory mates came good this week.
Centre
My favourite Howes moment was when he called a press conference to announce he wasn’t running for a Senate vacancy which wasn’t vacant yet.
I decided then that I’d call a presser to announce I’d decided that I wouldn’t accept the job of Governor General when Bryce’s term ended.
Libs I work with thought Howes was brilliant and expect unions to be voluntarily sacrificing penalty rates, holiday pay and any form of redundancy payment entirely. They are delighted and planing how to spend their increased bonuses. I have no idea what Howes said but I assume it was all about Paul – and entirely the wrong Paul.
[My favourite Howes moment was when he called a press conference to announce he wasn’t running for a Senate vacancy which wasn’t vacant yet.
]
Yes I think that sums Paul up.
The reason this looks very dangerous is because it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBQKrJh6O70
Victoria is set to follow Queensland restricting group protest
http://www.weareunion.org.au/napthines_silencing_act
[WeWantPaul
Posted Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at 8:19 pm | Permalink
Libs I work with thought Howes was brilliant and expect unions to be voluntarily sacrificing penalty rates, holiday pay and any form of redundancy payment entirely. They are delighted and planing how to spend their increased bonuses. I have no idea what Howes said but I assume it was all about Paul – and entirely the wrong Paul.]
WWP
If you had taken the trouble to listen to what he actually said you could have explained to them where they are wrong.
They stopped leaving at 15 here about ten years ago, when the tobacco industry closed.
I taught some of those who left at 15 to take over the family farm. The lucky ones ended up driving trucks.
Anyhoo, as most Australian farmers are about retirement age – and many are older – they come from the generation where leaving at 15 was the norm anyway.
There are very few ‘modern’ farms like those you describe in the whole of this region. Most farmers are farming much the same way their fathers and grandfathers did, with the addition of tractors.
Bw/poroti
The Swedish Navy have some explaining to do about their contribution to AGW!
[747
Boerwar
The link to denialism for this mob is, I believe, ideological rather than scientific.]
Since denialism can hardly be scientific (it is an attempt to escape from science), it must be driven by ideology, identity or personality.
The logic of climate change forces us to conclude that individual action is almost useless; that only collective action led by Governments – including foreign Governments and multilateral “entities” – can have any effect. Individuals are being told they should surrender their ideas of autonomy and their claims to personal success. The logic of preventing climate change requires us to trust the notoriously unscrupulous and the power-hungry. The implications are just preposterous to many a rural title holder, for whom it is so much easier to deny science than to cede to their natural enemies either righteousness or power.
[WWP
If you had taken the trouble to listen to what he actually said you could have explained to them where they are wrong.
]
They are liberal voters you do realize they don’t admit to being wrong any more than labor supporters do?
@billie/779
Like QLD, the libs don’t like loosing, so silence your opponent.
[CTar1
Posted Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at 8:25 pm | Permalink
Bw/poroti
The Swedish Navy have some explaining to do about their contribution to AGW!]
If they don’t go like the clappers, they die.
briefly @ 783
What you said.
[WeWantPaul
Posted Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at 8:27 pm | Permalink
WWP
If you had taken the trouble to listen to what he actually said you could have explained to them where they are wrong.
They are liberal voters you do realize they don’t admit to being wrong any more than labor supporters do?]
If they are just rusted on Liberals beyond the power of persuasion and with no prospect of ever being swinging voters, it’s totally irrelevant what they think of Howes isn’t it?
zoomster
Yes. I think the average age of Australian farmers is around 52 – maybe a bit more.
Not sure where you live but here’s my guess: around your way you would have hobby farms, irrigated farms, some well-watered cattle country on the slopes and then the rest.
The hobby farms are essentially capital soaks buttressed by capital gains tax free homes.
The well-watered cattle country is world-competitive because natural grass is world competitive.
The irrigation farms are capital intensive and grow global commodities. If they don’t constantly improve their plant genetics, their input costs, their capital management, and their marketing, sooner or later they are goners. The wine grape growers are a case in point.
The rest just mostly have their arses out of their pants and would be significant, albeit mostly temporary, carriersowners of Australia’s $70 billion of rural debt.
Something else to remember about the farmers is that a deep attachment to the land is not confined to Aborigines.
poroti
True.
[752
Oakeshott Country
Zoomster
but that is the other Nat cliche. “Families just locking up and walking away from the farm” just as other small businessmen see their assets go down the drain this is not a problem unique to farmers.]
Of course, OC, you are correct in your observations. Financial collapse is not unique to farmers. However, this does not mean that it’s not a real problem. Speaking as one who lost everything down to and including his shoes and socks, and who received no help but, at best, came to know the facial features of indifference, I have to say my sympathies lie with anyone who faces dispossession and all the destruction that flows from it.
787
Boerwar
great minds, boer…. 🙂
Boer
everything up here was based around tobacco — the vineyards (worth speaking of) have been established since we moved here (so less than twenty five years).
Tobacco was a brilliant crop. You could make enough off 50 acres to live very well and it involved about six months’ work.
The farmers who survived the loss of the industry tended to be those who had ‘old’ farms (original selections) and ‘did’ tobacco in one corner (so to speak). Very few diversified successfully otherwise, largely because of the distance to markets.
So it’s now mainly cattle grazing and fodder, with a few grapes.
779
At least the Member for Frankston has slowed down the passage of the bill by voting down the Government`s legislative program for the week (thus allowing filibustering).
RU
Payoutsville – absolutely. When I lived on the north coast it was a common event. Retire from the public service at 55, move to the coast and sink it into the business you’ve dreamed of. You’ve been in the public service all your life so you know how to deal with the public. Some of the dreams were true nightmares -my favourites in little and conservative Port Macquarie: a rugby league memorabilia shop, a shop selling French porcelain and a cafe which attempted nouvelle cuisine. Of course many attempts at failed businesses were yet more surf shop.
The vast majority fail within 18 months and the owners return to the city, go on the dole/pension or live on whatever is left.
The Nats tend to be not too concerned by this even though it involves their constituents
OC
the typical scenario up here are people who come up for a holiday, fall in love with the place and then buy a small business (when they haven’t run one before).
When it fails, it’s the fault of everybody but themselves.
Zoomster,
I wasn’t aware wine/grapes were big in NE Vic. Is it mostly food grapes? Or do they grow wine grapes for larger wineries based elsewhere (Mornington/Mildura/Yarra Valley)?
@OC/796
Government should provide free business/financial advise if that is the case – with access to Government Data.
100,000 Australians [roughly] lost their jobs when the GFC hit.