Easter has meant that only the regular weekly pollsters have reported this week, which means Essential Research and Morgan. The latter polls weekly but reports fortnightly, which I deal with by dividing each fortnightly result into two data points, each with half the published sample size. Neither Essential nor Morgan is radically off beam, so this week’s movements involve a correction after last week’s Greens outlier from Nielsen. This is not to say that Nielsen’s Greens surge was measuring nothing at all, the 17% result perhaps having been partly a reflection of it being the poll most proximate to the WA Senate election. In fact, both of the new results this week find the Greens at their highest level since at least the last election, and probably a good while earlier. Their 11% rating in Essential may not appear too spectacular, but it comes from what is the worst polling series for them by some distance – indeed, the only one the BludgerTrack model does not deem to be biased in their favour. Nonetheless, their rating in BludgerTrack this week comes off 1.8% on last week’s Nielsen-driven peak.
The dividend from the Greens’ loss has been divided between other parties in such a way as to produce essentially no change on two-party preferred. However, state relativities have changed in such a way as to cost Labor three seats and its projected majority, illustrating once again the sensitivity of Queensland, where a 0.8% shift has made two seats’ worth of difference. The New South Wales result has also shifted 0.6% to the Coalition, moving a third seat back into their column. Another change worth noting is a 2.4% move to Labor in Tasmania, which is down to a methodological change – namely the inclusion, for Tasmania only, of the state-level two-party preferred results that Morgan has taken to publishing. I had not been putting this data to use thus far, as the BludgerTrack model runs off primary votes and the figures in question are presumably respondent-allocated preferences besides. However, the paucity of data for Tasmania is such that I’ve decided it’s worth my while to extract modelled primary votes from Morgan’s figures, imperfect though they may be. The change has not made any difference to the seat projection, this week at least.
Finally, I’ve amused myself by producing primary vote and two-party preferred trendlines for each of the five mainland states, which you can see below. These suggest that not too much has separated New South Wales and Victoria in the changes recorded over the current term, leaving aside their very different starting points. However, whereas the Coalition has had a very gentle upward trend this year in Victoria and perhaps also New South Wales, their decline looks to have resumed lately in Queensland. Last week I noted that six successive data points I was aware of had Labor ahead on two-party preferred in Queensland, including five which are in the model and a Morgan result which is not. That’s now extended to eight with the availability of two further data points this week. The other eye-catching result in the charts below is of course from Western Australia, which clearly shows the effects of the Senate election with respect to both the Greens and Palmer United. The current gap between Labor and the Greens is such that the latter could well win lower house seats at Labor’s expense on these numbers – not that I recommend holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
confessions@397
For you and Kezza2?
You are the only ones talking about any ‘Rose’ Batty.
Yes, the alliance comes at an extraordinary cost.
Gee, this discussion about the death of that poor little boy is becoming in extremely bad taste. kezza2, I think it would be much better if you stopped blaming the boy’s mother. She probably lies awake all night every night wondering what she might have done differently. I’d hate for her to see this discussion.
Is Chris Bowen on leave ?
[315
imacca
Some would see passing the PM on his bike as a missed opportunity. 🙁 ]
I did but see him cycling by,
and rued my lack of creamed turd pie
So who’s up at ICAC next week?
http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/images/Spicer%20PI/Witness%20List%20Week%20One%2028%20April.pdf
Witness #20 is a current Liberal Member of Parliament, though I’m sure her memory will be tested
And to round things off, Nathan Tinkler, a well known donor to all things Newcastle and environs
Rather than a dedicated thread, kezza may be better of spending her time chatting to a counsellor or psychologist.
psyclaw
[Because Rosie Batty was being appropriately kind to her son (allowing him to talk to his father while she sat quite close by supervising) Kezza sees her as being stupidly kind to the father.]
That’s absolute crap.
If my mother or my grandmother or my sister or my niece or my sister-in-law or any other woman for that matter was a threat to me, I would not allow them within coo-ee of my kid.
How do you know she “allowed her son to talk to his father while she sat quite close by supervising”? You don’t.
And as for me saying once upon a time something hearty about your balls, get over it. It was in the heat of the moment.
As I recall, I used the second bit because you refused to nominate the juicy questions that would always elucidate a lie.
Haw!
How did Hunt get on with Sarah on 7:30 tonight?
briefly
Posted Thursday, April 24, 2014 at 6:30 pm
A couple of weeks ago I thought I would check out the Direct Action website and see if I could do what they say they want, that is plant lots of trees to sequester carbon – and make some money.
A bit of history.
We have 300 hectares here of mainly degraded ex-scrub. In the last 20 years we have hand planted some 15-20,000 local native trees on this land and I was for several years associated with environmental NGOs funnelling federal and state funds to local environmental groups and thus I’m familiar with bureaucratic processes related to such.
So I thought we would be in with a chance to be a part of the “20 million Trees Fund” as part of the “Clean Land Initiative” which has a focus “to deliver practical change at the local level.”
That’s us, I thought, we fit the bill, we’re in on the gravy train, gonna get paid to do what we already do.
But there was no detail, just a nice blurb most of which I’ve quoted to you- it’s only about 5 lines with a pretty photo.
So I looked at the link to “Grants and Funding”.
But there was nothing there just a link back to where I had just come from. Circular.
So I thought maybe the relevant detail is ensconced in the section “Permits, assessments and licences”
But that was just a heading.
“Business with us” section, maybe?
Nup.
Maybe “Tenders”
Nup.
Basically the site told me nothing and sent me around in circles, at no stage did it drop a hint as to how I, as a landowner with an established tree planting practice could
“make a contribution to meeting Australia’s target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by five per cent below 2000 levels by 2020”
Its a con.
ps Aussie, we grow our own native tree seedlings – its the best way, although Trees For Life do a bloody good job, if you’re talking 100s of trees..
bemused@401
Jeez. Way to trivialize the debate you are losing, bemused.
meher baba@403
Hear, hear!
Unfortunately some people just lack insight.
The ICAC list bears remarkable resemblance to Central Coast Developers Inc, and the Dobell branch of the Liberal Party roll call.
The real action is in future weeks, in time to rain on Joe’s parade.
Hunt got off all his lines. Ferguson didn’t really trouble him much.
A pity.
Hunt will be pleased with his performance I think.
Mod Lib:
This pointless go-nowheresville argument has been going for two days now over the dead kid, his mother and his father.
William has tried gentle chiding to get them to reel it in, but no, it’s still frickin going.
bemused #412
those in glass houses…
Mad Lib@407
For once I agree with you.
But maybe a Psychiatrist would be more appropriate.
Oh, perhaps Player One could make an appointment too.
zoomster
[oh, right. She should have gone to the urinals with him. And into the changerooms (full of men, inherently dangerous). And stood beside him in the field while he batted.]
Here you go again.
We’re talking about a specific case where we know some of the details.
And none of the details were about change-rooms, urinals nor standing in the field while he batted.
That’s how you argue. Moving the goalposts constantly, when you don’t get your desired response.
For your information, I have been into change-rooms, and urinals and on the field, all for different reasons, not because I thought my kid was under threat.
[Can’t be too careful. There are men everywhere.]
Hey, there’s another unicorn.
New Clarke and Dawe, “The Caped Crusader in Full Flight”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru3esPXz0hU
[The relatives of four men who died installing insulation deserve answers, not apologies, from former prime minister Kevin Rudd when he fronts an inquiry, a lawyer says.
Mr Rudd will take the witness stand at the royal commission into Labor’s home insulation program on Wednesday, May 14.]
Well I’m prepared to call it now: there goes the budget coverage. And given the budget is going to be a nasty one, I’m betting the govt will be happy to see it overshadowed by the HIP.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/programs/clarkeanddawe/
tonight’s episode sent to me by a kind twitter follower, I had been out for early dinner with the family so missed it
T.P
I found that interview to be very interesting even if reading in Dutch subtitles was a bit mindbending.
Sprey indirectly addressed the central current issue for aerial weapons platforms: whether to go for manned or unmanned. The fundamental question for Australia is whether we should skip a generation of manned platforms and morph straight into UAVs.
Cultually, air forces are loathe to dispense with pilots.
Sprey opted for the pilot as being the single most important determinant of air superiority. (He then gave an example where this was not the case, but hey.)
Crucially, his view was that it is impossible reliably to identify friend from foe in the air, except visually.
This gets you down to ranges of 400m, which gets you down to the plane with the best manoevribility being the most deadly plane.
Just like in WW1.
OTOH, UAVs ultimately depend on the technology that identifies friend from foe electronically – precisely what Sprey declares to be impossible. (His rationale is that electronic counter measures would be effective.)
There are around 800 UAVs employed around the world.
The thing that most concerns me about the F35 decision is that it is premature becaue the platform is unproven, and that the decision locks us into a platform that is already fundamentally obsolete because it depends on pilots.
The difficulty for us punters in terms of assessing the F 35 is that we have very little real idea of what is happening in terms of electonic warfare.
For example, 8 million lines of code is what I would call a worry.
I might add that, while I would not venture to make an ill-informed interpretation of what happened in the Batty case, there is no question that there are many tens of thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of people in our communities who have severe mental illness that goes untreated, or else is inappropriately self- medicated with alcohol or illicit drugs.
People with severe, untreated mental illness can’t really be judged by the same moral standards as the rest of us. Nor can their motivations be explained in a rational way in terms of concepts like “revenge”. They are capable of believing things like that they can save someone from danger by killing them.
Perhaps Luke Batty’s father was this irrational, perhaps he wasn’t. The media reports make him sound like he was pretty crazed, but how can anyone know for sure.
Player One@381
So – no Greens on here tonight? Let’s forget about Clause 4, 16 and 17, and assume these clauses are (as they appear to be) completely meaningless.
So let’s look at clause 20:
[ No Australian participation in the sale of weaponry, the sale of weaponry components overseas or arms fairs. ]
So, that pretty much rules out participation in the JSF program right there, doesn’t it? Since the point of the program is to sell the JSF to many countries.
Anyone?
@Confessions/420
Doubt it, Hundreds of thousands to millions of people will be effected by this budget.
Pegasus
I am unaware of any evidence for Sparrow’s claim that the public does not support a significant spend on maintaining air superiority capacity over Australia’s sea/air gap.
If you put it in those terms I feel confident that the majority of Australians would support the spend.
The rest of Sparrow’s ‘analysis’ is, IMHO, practically incoherent.
Yeah, just like easter, xmas and new years. After the Howard govt did its best to make ANZAC day a mainstream, national commemorative event for everyone, rather than just for veterans and their families like it was when I was a kid, is anyone surprised it’s gone commercial?
Player One@408
zoid:
I’m still thinking OM will overshadow Hockey’s first budget with the rarity of a former PM fronting an RC as the main event.
I mean, we’ve already had half the budget nasties leaked over the course of the last week and a half.
I don’t hate men.
My father was very abusive to me, physically, not sexually, when I was young. I was abused sexually by a friend of my older brothers.
Although our relationship was fraught, I looked after Dad for the last seven years of his life. We fought long and hard intellectually. But when it came to care, I was very compassionate.
I also looked after one of my brothers before he died. Same thing.
And my mum.
I have two sons who both like me, if not love me.
I just wish men in general would become a bit more caring about their families than they are, rather than thinking that bringing home the bacon is all they have to do to make a family work.
And I know how hard it is to be a provider.
@Confessions/429
Exactly, but people already know about the RC, but they don’t know everything about the budget.
Ben Eltham: https://newmatilda.com/2014/04/24/air-superiority-what-cost
[The truth is that the US alliance has determined this decision. Much like the battleships we paid Britain to build for us in the 1900s, Australia’s strategic relationship with America means we are completely dependent on their military-industrial complex for the fighter jets we deploy in our defence. As Bernard Keane wrote yesterday, the real winner here is Lockheed Martin.
The F-35 decision is also interesting because of what it tells us about the way Australian governments make critical decisions. It’s instructive to examine the differences between costly decisions about defence, compared to other critical aspects of our national security, such as telecommunications and climate change.
In defence, our two major parties have a bipartisan commitment to go for the best option, no matter the cost. …
….To take just one example, a recent report by ASPI itself has suggested that much of Australia’s defence infrastructure is itself threatened by a warmer future: the F-35 will need air conditioned hangers and new heat-resistant runways, while the Navy’s port facilities are at risk of flooding.
Military spending is an excellent example of the precautionary principle. If all goes well, the F-35s will never be used in combat. How strange that the precautionary principle doesn’t apply in other areas of national security policy, like the threat of a radically warmer world.]
Scott Ludlam understands that AGW is a security threat requiring different priorities and approaches in defence and security.
(Link re-posted from last night) – http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australias-defence-election-issues/
[The 2013 White Paper devoted four paragraphs out of 148 pages to the security challenges posed by climate change. While providing a perfunctory acknowledgement that climate is a security issue, there is no indication that capability development is being informed by the changing nature of the security threats we face; we are left with the uncomfortable realisation that Australian defence policy is still geared to meeting the challenges of the 20th century.
Given the focus of very many other like-minded nations on climate security, Australia is unprepared and ill-equipped for the likely threats and situations we will face in the age of climate change. Australia’s security lies in preventing the worst impacts of climate change in our region and redirecting military expenditure to meet broader definitions of security.]
Retweeted by Stephen Koukoulas
Jamie McGeever @ReutersJamie 8m
RT @TimothyNoah1 @ObsoleteDogma: US income-derived wealth going to top 1% up from a third in 1979 to more than half: pic.twitter.com/J6j8PZWow7
Richer getting Richer, even after last GFC.
In the Batty case we do know that Ms Batty allowed her son to spend more time with the father on the night as she herself as said her son had asked for a few minutes.
Anyway its relevant as the police warrant system is the main fault as it’s silly procedures allowed him to slip though police’s hands.
Shock horror
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/prime-minister-tony-abbott-breaches-royal-protocol-with-an-arm-round-prince-william-20140424-zqz2g.html
The America problem isn’t that the richer are getting richer but rather government under investment in education and the long overdue increase in the minimum wage & Affordable care act have lead to about a quarter of the population being largely excluded from the economy.
@MB/436
It’s based on wages, not government polices or lack of (i.e. by Income Group).
victoria:
I await the outrage from the Murdoch media.
Zoidy
Yes and the minimum wage is set by the government hence the lack of wage growth is partly due to the approach to workplaces and wages.
Actually it is.
I quite seriously don’t understand why America holds together as a country. The power of the dream must be very strong.
[Fran Barlow
Posted Thursday, April 24, 2014 at 6:14 pm | Permalink
BW
We have at the moment 9 Federal MPs of which 8 are in the senate. We don’t qualify for defence briefings. If someone from a betting agency asked me to bet on the year that a Green would become a member of a Federal cabinet and offered me 100/1 I’d not be picking any year before 2020. Why in these circumstances we as a party ought to be stating a preference for this or that means of raining death upon Australia’s putative enemies is not obvious.]
This line of argument is disingenous. The Greens almost routinely have the BOP in the Senate. Thus they have power. Thus they have an ethical responsibility to exercise that power wisely.
To do so they have an ethical responsibility to know what they are talking about when it comes to Defence expenditure.
Instead we have a woolly Defence Policy and a SOP of attacking any and all defence equipment expenditures.
What we do have is a group of people (including, I assume, your good self) who have no commitment to major weapons systems in fact, the reverse.
I can see what the case might be for this position. My gripe is that it is covert and not overt. In other words, Greens voters do not know what they are voting for, defence policy-wise.
Not a clue, really.
[One might add that even if we were interested in how best to kill putatively dangerous foreigners the offerings in recent years have been unimpressive. Sea sprite helicopters, Collins Class subs, FA 18s … an odd assortment of things that seem not to be related to any clear idea of whom we would like to kill but rather, seem to be related to how we can help the US kill people.]
This is yet another example of the classic Greens modus operandi: criticise any and all expenditure on defence equipment.
[Recently, it Abbott announced that Australia will be doing joint exercises with the Chinese so it’s even less clear which death machines Australia ought to be buying.]
I agree that the strategic defence future for Australia is cloudy. This makes the appropriate defence equipment acquisitions more difficult. It is not an argument for foregoing any acquisitions at all.
[The idea of defence centres on identifying actual or potential threats to our legitimate interests, devising a timeline describing when these might arise and evaluating technically and temporally feasible solutions.]
Not a sentence.
[The further out the timeline, the less plausible the model.]
True. But, as above. Your argument seems to be that the greater the uncertainty, the less prepared in terms of equipment, we ought to be. Arguably, the reverse is the case.
[ Who, in 1967 would have bet on China’s posture in 1980 or their role in the world economy and politics in 1992 and been right? Imagine if you’d tooled up to fight the Warsaw Pact in 1977 only to see it collapse between 1989 and 1991?]
So, you have established to our mutual satisfaction that we live in an uncertain world.
[We talk a great deal in this place about evidence-based policy — in particular on climate change. That is a real threat and although Australia is a relatively minor contributor in jurisdictional terms we quite rightly advocate application of exemplary policies. Our basis for this is the incontrovertible evidence of the threat to ecosystem services from business as usual policies. There is nothing comparable to the IPCC in Australia identifying threats over five, fifteen or twenty-five years that would recommend purchase of fighter jets or submarines.]
You conflate climate with security and argue analogously. The result is certainly not a basis for making decisions about military equipment.
[Yet the sums involved are multiples of the money involved in the modest CO2 abatement programs we have here.]
As above.
[It’s the regime that needs to make the case for submarines and fighter jets, not us.]
In relation to this, I make four points:
(1) The Greens inveigle voters into voting for them on the basis of false pretences. I suggest that the Greens come clean and admit that they would get the ADF of fighters, subs and surface combatants. That IS the plan, is it not?
(2) The Greens have what they sell as a Defence Policy. It is online. The Greens should at least make some show of either accepting in principle the need for fighters, submarines or surface combatants, with the particular acquisitions to be determined once, say, the Greens Government develops a White Paper. In the interim the Greens should do this because they routinely exercise the BOP. As such they are in a position to have a direct impact on military acquisitions. Therefore the Greens should indicate their preferred options in terms of military acquisitions. But they are dodging this because they do not want Australian voters to know the truth.
(3) The Greens’ habit of sitting back and criticising others, and the actions of others, while exercising the BOP, and offering no real Defence acquisitions alternative demonstrates that, in this sphere, the Greens ethical cupboard is empty.
[victoria
Posted Thursday, April 24, 2014 at 8:17 pm | PERMALINK
Shock horror
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/prime-minister-tony-abbott-breaches-royal-protocol-with-an-arm-round-prince-william-20140424-zqz2g.html%5D
Hands off, Cobber!
Jachol
If the American government had over the past few decades done more to bring the 40 to 50 million Americans into the economy by ensuring that they had greater opportunities plus accessible health care than America would be economically stronger.
zoomster@441
They believe their own bullshit. Fervently.
kezza2@430. I do agree with your sentiments here. Many men could try a bit harder in their relationships with their families: I for one am no saint in this regard.
But, like most men I know, I’ve tried to do my best for my children. I really would like to think that men who want to abuse and hurt their children are a minority. Alas, I have known a few women who were sexually abused as children (including some by their fathers) and still more men and women who were injured through parental physical abuse.
The world of adults can be a very cruel and frightening place for children. Charles Dickens portrayed this as vividly as anyone. If I somehow could, I would protect all the children at risk of harm. But how?
None of our Liberal friends posting to say what a master stroke Direct Action is. Given the most seem not to believe that Climate Change is a problem, how do they feel about spending a couple of billion on a problem that doesn’t exist?
Americans for the most part just think they do it better than anyone else.
[Gee, this discussion about the death of that poor little boy is becoming in extremely bad ]
It is one or the stupidest and most disgusting things I’ve seen here – such ignorance and stupidity.
@MB/439
Setting the wages by the gov are only part of the issue when it comes to it, as per the graph, the top 1% has been increasing more rapidly since 1980’s.
Why bother fixing an issue that may or may not be there in the first place, if you don’t fix the top 1%?