This week’s 51-49 Newspoll result has caused a slight moderation in this week’s BludgerTrack poll aggregate, which blew out to 52.2-47.8 last week on the back of strong result for Labor from ReachTEL. The 0.5% shift has had a bigger-than-usual effect on the seat projection, with Labor slipping four seats to barely make it to majority government status. This amounts to one seat each in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. There are two new data points for leaders’ ratings, from Newspoll and Essential, and they’ve caused the trendlines to continue moving in the directions they were already headed – inexorably downwards for both leaders on net approval, with a gently narrowing trend on preferred prime minister.
With the oil rig sighting and the satellite images both pointing to the same site, its pretty conclusive that is where the plane went down.
kezza2
After his latest blog there will only be one thing visible. The Great Wall of China just got blotted out.
Kezza
That is incorrect. You can’t see the Great Wall of China from space. 😉
CTar1@99
thanks. the report of a plane on fire in view for 10 -15 seconds from the oil rig worker looks to be way off the plane’s course.
mikehilliard
The mood I am in lafely, i would have pressed this person further on the attitude.
My mantra of late to those who engage in conversation re the state of the nation.
“No worries Abbott is going to fix us all up good and proper”
Funny to see the expression on some people when I say that.
Diogenes
Not any more 😉 ( @102)
[What is the logic for unimproved value? Is it to encourage improvement and minimize land use? ]
Yes. And the philosophy behind it is that a title to the land is held by someone so that they exclude its use from others, but ultimately, the land belongs to the community.
[In many ways it functions more fairly as a tax using market value – but that would dilute the impact on land use.]
The vast majority of property price increases over the last 15 years are due to land value increases. Building construction and other improvement costs have not gone up much at all. Given that, it’s easy enough to take the difference between the market price and a generally-agreed measure of construction costs to get the land value.
[It is fair it is smart it is efficient and also has a positive impact on all those horrible unused bits of land in cities where the holding costs are sufficient to force the owner to develop or sell.]
Yes yes yes!!
[It is also an indirect way of discouraging negative gearing.]
True, but you could just get rid of, or limit, NG directly.
[You’d need to phase it in to try and ensure there was no market shock.]
What, you cannot be suggesting that the market isn’t pricing land efficiently now? /snark
The coords of the satellite image showing floating junk is at:
105.63E, 6.7N
don
[rom the oil rig worker looks to be way off the plane’s course.]
Agree.
Amazed that ABC has taken until now to update their story to show these photos. I saw them at around 4 this morning on BBC News.
Re Mikehillard @94 – that bloke behind the counter probably calls talkback radio to say that the Australian Navy should sink asylum seeker boats.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/it-feels-like-i-have-lost-do-i-run-or-resist/story-fni0ffxg-1226852869552
Zoomster I’ll use that lovely old word, FLABBERGASTED’
or in the words of Kamahl/Bert Newton ‘Why are people so unkind’ 😀
Brendan O’Connor presser re the unemployment figures
Brendan O’Connor is stating that the WA unemployment rate is now higher than in NSW
Whose satellite image? Where is the link?
cud – ABC has them up now.
BH
As someone used to say
[Never has my flabber been so completely gasted.]
Abbott points to compromise on PPL
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-points-to-compromise-on-paid-parental-leave-scheme-20140313-34ny3.html
Driver’s may pay per kilometre
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/drivers-may-pay-per-kilometre-20140312-34n3e.html
victoria
[Abbott points to compromise on PPL]
Under last government it would read
[Gillard/Rudd forced to back down on PPL]
or
[Gillard/Rudd may beak PPL promise.]
poroti
Yep and that is where team Labor have to hold the weasel words of the coalition and their cheersquad in the media to account
I actually think that the charging per Km for road use makes a lot of sense.
From Bolt’s article:
[This time I was so bruised by Q&A that I didn’t go into work on Tuesday. I couldn’t stand any sympathy – which you get only when you’re meant to feel hurt.]
In writing this self-indulgent rubbish, Bolt may have outlived his usefulness at Murdoch media.
It is one thing to stir up controversy and have people hurl unfriendly missiles your way. It is entirely different to have people mock you for being a crybaby. Who wants to listen to a crybaby?
Quite taken aback by the ferocity of the softening-up process for a GST hike/broadening by the corporatocracy, especially the lobbyists who’ve infiltrated management and presentation at the ABC.
Are people being nasty to that great Australian intellectual Andrew Dolt again?
[I actually think that the charging per Km for road use makes a lot of sense]
I think it is an absolutely dreadful idea, you are immediately turning all road into toll roads.
I saw the satellite image. Problem is there’s no commentary to explain why its possibly that plane. No idea of scale, etc. Other problem is the ocean is full of junk.
The lobbyists diguised as journalists are very brazen in carrying out their tasks these days.
#127
“disguised”
This time I was so bruised by Q&A that I didn’t go into work on Tuesday.
What a wimp. He can dish it out but he can’t take it. Maybe he should take some stress leave, except that he probably doesn’t believe in it.
cud chewer
Re size. from BBC site.
[China’s official Xinhua news agency says the largest of the objects measures about 24m x 22m (78ft x 72ft).]
Abbott on his PPL scheme:
[When asked if Australia could afford the scheme, he replied that it was “fully funded” by a “modest” (1.5 per cent) levy on big businesses.
“It’s not something that would be paid for directly by taxpayers,” he said.]
Neither, of course, was the carbon ‘tax’ — it was levied on a (relatively) small number of businesses, who then passed the costs on.
[Palmer United, DLP senator John Madigan, independent Nick Xenophon and Family First – all of whom will be represented on the Senate crossbench come July 1 – have also signalled concerns with the Coalition’s plans.
The government has the most chance of success through the Greens, who have a plan similar to the Coalition’s, but with the six months’ salary capped at $50,000.]
I hope the Greens really aren’t silly enough to let this through.
[When asked if he would be willing to negotiate a $50,000 cap, as per the Greens’ policy, he said, “[the] point I will be making to anyone who comes to me [is], if you are a public servant, a member of parliament, a political staffer, you get parental leave paid at your wage.
“If your wage is $200,000, you get paid at that rate. If your wage is $300,000, you get paid at that rate. If it is good for Commonwealth public servants, if it is good for politicians, if it is good for [parliamentary] staff, why shouldn’t it be good enough for the rest of the Australian population?”]
If any public servant gets paid that amount for SIX MONTHS leave, that’s news to me.
As I understand it, a public servant would get paid commensurate to their salary for six weeks after the child’s birth. Then the payment would drop down to the present government’s PPL scheme, which is the same for everyone.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-points-to-compromise-on-paid-parental-leave-scheme-20140313-34ny3.html#ixzz2vnpP2tty
[Never has my flabber been so completely gasted.
poroti Bewdiful for future use. How I feel some times 🙂
citizen Thanks for the headsup on Mark Parton. I’d never heard of him but Andrew Leigh often gets good and factual info out through 2CC.
Didn’t Brandis say that with free speech the cure for bad ideas is ridicule, or something like that?
[I think it is an absolutely dreadful idea, you are immediately turning all road into toll roads.]
So?
Fuel taxes. Other fees and charges. Income tax. All sources for road funding. A distance based tax is arguably more equitable.
cudchewer @ 121
An exise on fuel does exactly the same thing, more simply.
“”I actually think that the charging per Km for road use makes a lot of sense.””
Sounds like the DEBIT TAX like withdrawing money from your BANK account.
Which would also solve our budget problems!.
[An exise on fuel does exactly the same thing, more simply]
And it also taxes gas guzzlers more too. But its crude in the sense that a distance based tax can also be tweaked to reflect how you use roads. Which roads, be they motorways or back lanes, urban congestion zones etc. There’s a lot of scope to make a distance based tax flexible.
cud – In the commentry I heard early one piece was described as 20m x 27m. I think there was some talk about the size of other bits but I didn’t take it in.
A bit fuzzy at that time in the morning.
I guess we’ll hear something about them in the next 24.
The ALP should be on the front foot early in this parliamentary term with a tax reform policy based on fairness that can be given time to be sold and understood by the voters.
Leaving tax policy to just before the election would timid and would deservedly be treated with cynicism.
cudchewer
If you drive further, you use more fuel and pay more tax.
All without the need for a fiddly centralised computer database.
zoomster – the important things an intelligent system could do are congestion charging and time-of-day charging. Neither would be directly reflected in basic fuel excise.
Also, of course, non-petroleum based vehicles still need roads and other infrastructure, and while they are a small proportion of vehicles at the moment that probably won’t be true into the future. Of course there’s an argument that these types of vehicles should be encouraged, but the correct way to do that is a differential through a carbon price, not avoiding paying for something that is used to pay for the necessary roads/traffic lights/etc etc.
But congestion charging seems to be yet another political no-go zone.
I forgot to mention earlier that I was robo polled on Monday night re CSG and whether I approved or not.
I can’t remember the questions now but it seemed to be a bit slanted towards getting a vote against it. I missed who was doing the polling.
This morning Fran Kelly interview a National Party bloke who was in favour and said wtte that new methods, unlike the old US method, make fracking safe.
That will be news to all the Nat supporters around here and at Gloucester where the protests have been noisy about the mining over there.
zoomster,
I sympathise. But if we were to be fair dinkum about using fuel tax we’d need to raise the rate. The real question is whether this is politically feasible vs just introducing a new system.
And as I said, a distance/location based tax is a convenient way to implement things like congestion zones.
Cud
They said the largest of the three bits is 22x24m.
Search and rescue have been sent to the satellite site.
Presumably they’d have to send search and rescue to not just the satellite location but over a wide area where it could have drifted to?
BH
I’m an agnostic on CSG at present.
I’m perplexed though why the Greens have stopped arguing for a moratorium – perfectly defensible, given the state of the science – to moving to an outright ban.
At present, CSG studies are based on the US experience, and apparently they mine a different sort of seam there, using different technologies.
As for the ‘it ruins good farmland’ and other environmental arguments, well, so does normal coal mining. Have a look at Morwell.
Of course, the coal mining/electricity generating areas of our country tend to be so ghastly that no one visits them, and so we can all bask in the idea that our present electricity is produced in ways that – apart from emissions — doesn’t hurt the environment.
(My dad worked at Yallourn in the early 1950s and still had friends there, so I visited it quite a lot during my childhood…)
IF CSG turns out to be less carbon intensive then coal, and can replace our present coal powered generators, then any environmentalist worth their salt should back it — but notice the IF.
A case of more research needed before anyone should be drawing lines in the sand…
140
Correct. Also auditing the fuel production of fuel refineries and fuel importers is much easier than the distance travelled by private vehicles.
By effect seems the following motives are there driving this:
Cementing the non-taxation of fuel for off-road use,
Taxing electric, natural gas and other home fuelled cars,
Reducing the proportion of usage related tax paid by fuel hungry drivers compared to fuel efficient drivers.
All at least partly bad and anti-environmental.
Darn
*WARNING*
Nice to see Chris Bowen today knocking a GST rate rise on the head and floating tax reform for the next term and beyond.
Now he has to get on with forming the policy and get it out there for public discussion ASAP !
cud chewer
[But if we were to be fair dinkum about using fuel tax we’d need to raise the rate. The real question is whether this is politically feasible vs just introducing a new system. ]
Well, of course. I didn’t think I needed to spell that out.
And raising an existing tax MUST be easier than introducing a new one – particularly a new one which would require ‘government tracking devices’ being placed in all vehicles.
Imagine how batshit crazy all the nanny staters would go!