GhostWhoVotes reports that the first Nielsen poll of the year for the Fairfax papers shows the Coalition leading 52-48 on two-party preferred, its first lead in a telephone poll since November and a reversal of the result in the previous Nielsen poll of November 21-23. The primary votes are 44% for the Coalition (up three), 33% for Labor (down four) and 12% for the Greens (up one). More to follow.
UPDATE: Personal ratings corroborate Newspoll in finding Bill Shorten’s strong early figures vanishing – he’s down eleven points on approval to 40%, and up ten on disapproval to 40% – while Tony Abbott is little changed at 45% (down two) and 47% (up one). Also reflecting Newspoll, this has made little difference to the preferred prime minister result, with Abbott’s lead up only slightly from 49-41 to 49-39.
UPDATE 2: Full details including state and gender breakdowns.
[DisplayName
Posted Monday, February 17, 2014 at 10:20 pm | PERMALINK
Wow, Mod is able to find hypocrites wherever he wants to find them! What an astounding ability!]
Well, it aint hard here so I shouldn’t gloat! 🙂
Yesiree Bob
I don’t propose putting Australia’s nuclear power plants on unstable fault lines or in the path of huge tsunamis (Fukushima) or having them run by poorly-paid and poorly trained Soviet technicians (Chernobyl).
The risks are vastly reduced here. It’s just a simple fact.
[Yesiree Bob
Posted Monday, February 17, 2014 at 10:36 pm | PERMALINK
OK so the risk of accident with nuclear is low, or so they tell us.
Still would you want to live in Chernobel or Fukishima ?]
I wouldn’t put the nuclear plant on a earthquake fault line.
Central Australia has rather a lot of room though…..
Tony Abbott really is a dope.
Of course nuclear power shouldn’t be ruled out.
However, nuclear power isn’t “cheap”, and as far as I am aware it is basically not competitive with renewables if you are starting from scratch, as we would be.
If the total costs of nuclear are honestly considered (including waste storage and decommissioning costs), and it ends up being competitive with other low emissions technologies, then sure, let’s do it. Everything I have heard indicates that the economics don’t add up – not without massive government subsidies and basically artificially hiding major costs.
Indonesia not happy!
Jinx!
The Nuclear risk debate should take on a whole new perspective when we experience easterly winds from India’s meltdown, given their fantastic quality control & low levels of corruption
Jackol:
….subsidising wind and solar is quite expensive too.
The difference is that nuclear could actually provide the power, whereas solar and wind, is, pardon the pun, just hot air at the moment.
Mr C. Crank (if that is your real name) 630
[“On what objective economic policy grounds does it matter?”]
Do I read you correctly? Are you saying that growing inequality in society has no negative economic impact?
I find it so LNP/Everything to want to spend billions on established power groups like nuclear power plant rather than supporting ‘unestablished’ natural energy.
@Mod Lib/953
A quick google search:
http://cooberpedyregionaltimes.wordpress.com/2008/09/26/faultlines-weaving-their-way-across-southern-australia/
swamprat
“nuclear power is a 1940s energy system.
We have the opportune to develop natural (sun/wave/wind/polly cycle) energy systems.
Why do you want to bring that old polluting system back?”
I don’t care if nuclear power has been in use since the Middle-Ages, it’s good technology. When carefully managed it’s safe, clean, efficient and would easily supply all our energy needs with next to no greenhouse gas emissions.
I’m not against all the other energy sources you mentioned, by the way, but as of now they’re incapable of meeting our energy demands.
@Mod Lib/959
Another quick search:
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/wind-and-solar-costs-challenge-fossil-fuels-in-us-88204
e.g.
absolutetwaddle@952
Yeah, they said that three mile island was relatively stable also.
Just because there is a low probability of disaster doesn’t mean that disaster will never happen.
Personally any risk is too high when it comes to nuclear.
It’s not as if you can clean the joint up and move back in a few weeks latter.
[Yesiree Bob
Posted Monday, February 17, 2014 at 10:19 pm | PERMALINK
Everything, Nuclear is no alternative when trying to combat AGW]
Why?
[ you twit.]
I am neither pregnant, nor a goldfish, so the joke is on you! 🙂
zoidlord 941
did you just lump me in with Everything?
Out of interest on a notoriously strife ridden reactor site.
[The costs of decommissioning and reprocessing at the Sellafield nuclear site are soaring to “astonishing” levels, with latest estimates putting the figure at more than £70bn, according to a committee of MPs.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10629219/MPs-attack-Sellafield-decommissioning-as-costs-hit-70bn.html
Renewables provide an increasing part of our energy mix. To say the significant wind power contribution to, for example, SA power generation is “hot air” is glib nonsense.
I fully agree that subsidies and costs for renewables need to be transparent and honestly accounted for as they should be for any analysis of nuclear power.
I think it is so depressing that Australia used to be an innovative, creative, cheeky, fair-ish country but now it is just a predicable “it’s all too hard” yankee shadow.
absolutetwaddle
Ok let’s all be economic rationalists and let the nuclear industry offer full indemnity against any failure, place the surety in the bank & include those costs in providing power
and if were talking about locating power stations in the desert,then solar is the obvious answer.
There was talk of building a solar station up in Hattah that was capable of providing enough base line electricity to power Mildura, 40 Kilometers to the north.
There are methods of nuclear power that are both incapable of having a meltdown, and impossible to turn into weaponry.
Nuclear technology has come along way since chernobyl.
@SK/967
No.
The telling thing about nuclear power in Australia is that the only people who are interested in it are armchair experts. There’s not a push from the actual energy providers for it, for example – whereas there is active lobbying for the development of renewables such as wind and solar.
The reason is obvious – nuclear would be very expensive to get off the ground here, and companies would rather invest in cheaper sources.
The only person of any note who I can think of who has advocated for nuclear is Ziggy S.
I can’t think of any pro-nuclear politicians, for example.
Such a pity Heather Ridout is not PM instead of Abbott
Yesiree Bob
I didn’t say there was absolutely zero risk, of course there is. Just that in Australia those risks are minuscule and can be effectively managed with elementary planning.
[I can’t think of any pro-nuclear politicians, for example.]
Howard
Zoidlord 974
good.
Mod
[Well, it aint hard here so I shouldn’t gloat!]
I think you should gloat! It’s not everyone that can figure out the type of car, food and suburb of a person just from their forum postings!
Everything
[We have a lot of people shouting at us that the Earth is about to die of global warming, yet they don’t become vegetarian, they still drive large off-road 4WD vehicles through the leafy streets of Sydney and they poo-poo nuclear which would solve the carbon problem.
My question: do you really believe this is a global catastrophe or do you just want to use it as a weapon to attack your political enemies?]
That’s an excellent array of strawmen you’ve pressed into service. I may well use this for a future class at school.
[Fran Barlow
…..That’s an excellent array of strawmen you’ve pressed into service. I may well use this for a future class at school.]
Please do.
I trust the youth of Australia to see through brain washing! :devil:
zoomster
“I can’t think of any pro-nuclear politicians, for example.”
This isn’t quite the compelling case you clearly think it is.
@Mod Lib/978
Howard is sooo 20th Century now (as much as other liberals are).
Everything@966
So, you want to know why I call you twit ?
Maybe you should read your thoughts on Nuclear power.
Perhaps Moron would have been more apt ?
I stand by an economic rationalist acceptance that if nuclear power can honestly be shown to be cost effective then we should pursue it.
I would point out that in the scheme of things nuclear power is swapping one finite energy source for another, so ultimately nuclear can only be a bridging technology. If it’s a cost effective bridging technology, sure let’s make use of it, but let’s not pretend that we can go “nuclear is the answer”, wipe our hands and say “job done”.
jimmyhaz
[There are methods of nuclear power that are both incapable of having a meltdown, and impossible to turn into weaponry.
Nuclear technology has come along way since chernobyl.]
Of course so has Capitalism, Catholic Church, Islam, Zionism and MacDonalds.
It is a stupid old energy system (LNP). Equivalent to developing a more efficient typewriter.
Nuclear Power will not be politically acceptable in Australia for some time.
Renewables will supply all our needs. Those that say it can’t are stuck to thinking of energy production as set up to cater for fossil fuel distribution.
Also renewables are improving all the time. Thus as efficiency improves so does its economics.
[Irish Sea
Sellafield discharges two million gallons of radioactive water into the Irish Sea every day at high tide. This includes a cocktail of over 30 alpha, beta and gamma radionuclides. BNFL admits that radioactive discharges in the 1970’s were 100 times those of today. As a result of these discharges, which include around half a tonne of plutonium, the Irish Sea has become the most radioactively contaminated sea in the world. Caesium-137 and Iodine-129 from Sellafield have spread through the Arctic Ocean into the waters of northern Canada and are having a bigger impact on the Arctic than the Chernobyl accident. Sellafield’s gas discharges of Krypton can be measured in Miami.]
zoidlord@984
I put it to you that Howie is more of an 1870’s type of bloke.
Abbott, on the other hand, is 1930’s
Everything
[Central Australia has rather a lot of room though…..]
Yes, but no water. One of the essentials for a nuclear power plant is lots and lots of reliable water (you do know that, don’t you? You’re just pretending to be ignorant for the fun of it…)
[DisplayName
…..I think you should gloat! It’s not everyone that can figure out the type of car, food and suburb of a person just from their forum postings!]
They are people I know quite well, not fellow bloggers. However, there are plenty of bloggers here who have spent years telling all and sundry about the immorality of not throwing oneself into a rage about global warming and scream down the street.
I just wonder how many of those people are now vegetarian?
I wonder why they are not out there shouting for nuclear (zoomster needs to hear you!)
I wonder whether they have sold their cars?
If they have done these things, please tell us all about it…..
@YB/990
I agree, some people like Howie needs to go in all parties, not just the libs.
I always advocate normal Australians who want to become Politicians into Parliament, and not to be bounced around by the party if they choose to be in one.
absolutetwaddle @ 977
By elementary planing , I guess you are thinking about no one being down wind / stream.. Macquarie Island maybe?
As I said up thread, Solar has come a very long way recently.
Australia should exploit its greatest natural resource, sunshine.
Mod, for someone who claims to be rust free, you sure are adhering tightly to the tired, old, hackneyed lines of the anti climate science industry!
Nash is now embattled.
[Labor and the Greens will use Senate estimates hearings next week to pursue the embattled Assistant Minister for Health, Fiona Nash, over her role in taking down a website relating to a new healthy food rating system.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/fiona-nash-labor-greens-to-pursue-senator-on-food-rating-system-fallout-20140216-32tzp.html#ixzz2ta1kiNaO ]
zoomster:
….and you don’t want to have the plants too far from where you want to use it….yes. However, the point I was making is that there is plenty of room in Australia. There are plenty of raw materials for nuclear. We are smart enough to create new jobs here, in something we actually need, rather than, perhaps, cars we can’t make efficiently here.
The idea that we can’t do nuclear here when so much of the rest of the world has been doing it for decades is a little patronising to Australians, don’t you think?
[One of the essentials for a nuclear power plant is lots and lots of reliable water ]
Nuclear advocates often used to say that ideally you’d have a nuclear plant co-located with a desal plan.
anyways, beddiebuys, nite all, and I hope to see all the Melbournian Bludgers down at the rally tomorrow