What I believe will be the farewell Nielsen poll for the Fairfax papers shows no dividend to Tony Abbott of the carbon tax repeal or (so far) the MH17 response, with Labor’s lead up from 53-47 at last month’s poll to 54-46. The poll of 1400 respondents was conducted from Thursday to Sunday, from which you can draw your own conclusions about its likely responsiveness to what’s occurred over that time. Labor is up three points on the primary vote to 40%, with the Coalition steady at 39%, the Greens down one to 12% and Palmer United steady on 5%. However, Tony Abbott’s personal ratings have improved: his approval is up three to 38% with disapproval down four to 56%, the gap on preferred prime minister narrows from 47-40 to 46-41, and while Bill Shorten is down one on approval to 41% and up three on disapproval to 44%. Even more entertainingly, there are personal ratings for Clive Palmer (approval 37%, disapproval 51%) and a preferred treasurer poll (Joe Hockey’s lead narrowing from 51-34 in a poll conducted I-don’t-know-how-long-ago to 42-42 now.
UPDATE: Phil Coorey in the Financial Review relates results on the leaders’ personal characteristics; more from Michelle Grattan at The Conversation.
[Posted Monday, July 21, 2014 at 8:35 pm | PERMALINK
Beautiful, The Business on ABC reduces the whole MH370/MH17 issue to a financial struggle for the airlines survival.]
I wouldn’t bother with their ABC these days. Just as crass as the commercials these days.
Sell off its 24 News and donate the procedures to the MH17 victims or some other cause.
Darren L:
Clive’s been using twitter to make all sorts of claims since the by-election result.
Not sure he’s a reliable insight into the mind of the Newman govt.
[Sell off its 24 News and donate the procedures to the MH17 victims or some other cause.]
*proceeds
Straight guys can wear pink too.
http://www.news.com.au/national/gallery-e6frfkp9-1111120034541?page=2
@Darren/551
That’s exactly what the LNP and thinktanks want to do.
If a baby has been exposed to any television at all the boys and girls are already trained to the concept that pink is for girls and that it is not a ‘male’ colour. Marketing starts as soon as a child can see shapes.
“@CliveFPalmer: If @theqldpremier doesn’t call an early poll Lawrence Springborg is ready to take over as @LNPQLD leader #polqld #qldvotes #auspol #palmer”
[zoidlord
Posted Monday, July 21, 2014 at 8:22 pm | Permalink
Clive getting cocky.
Clive Palmer @CliveFPalmer 1m
Facts are Campbell Newman has lied before and will lie again. As he heads towards an early poll the state looks forward to a new government]
I can’t think of any reason why Newman would want to bring on an early election in the present circumstances.
An early election in Queensland would be an interesting call on Mr Newman’s part. There would be no real justification for it, and the LNP would plainly be going to lose a lot of seats; so it would be easy to portray it as nothing more than a desperate move from a government which was in fear of an even worse result if it went full term.
But the really interesting question will be whether there’s a preference swap between the ALP and Mr Palmer. Unless PUP polls first in a rural or regional seat, it will need preferences to win, most likely Labor ones. In urban seats where Labor runs second to the LNP, Palmer preferences could be very helpful. So there’s a likely convergence of interests there. If there’s a hung Parliament, such a deal would make PUP support for an ALP government more likely.
It would also do terrible things to Mr Abbott’s head: he would still need to try to keep the PUPs onside in the Senate, but doing so would no doubt send Mr Newman pig-biting mad.
Bikies wear pink also; it would seem the voters have the same message for Newman.
http://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/brazen-bikies-pink-protest-proves-infectious/2080312/
@Conffessions & Others
This is what his is talking about:
Clive Palmer @CliveFPalmer 3m
If @theqldpremier doesn’t call an early poll Lawrence Springborg is ready to take over as @LNPQLD leader #polqld #qldvotes #auspol #palmer
frednk
I did use a capital G…
A four year old girl who insists on pink or a boy of four who refuses pink is already thoroughly brainwashed. The differences between the genders rather than their similarities as human beings has successfully been made prominent.
There was a brief vogue where teenage boys wore pink in the mid ’80s… and swore to me that they would still be doing so when they were adults.
At the moment my granddaughter’s favourite toy is a small green frog. Which I thnk has nothing to do with politics.
Puff
I would have been with you all the way on that until my neice came along — but in a family of all boys, with a feminist role model mother, with her TV watching dictated by a sporting mad family, she’s the girliest thing I’ve ever met.
As far as we can tell, it’s her – she was experimenting with fashion (mainly by wearing teatowels and stockings on her head) before she could walk.
[564
zoomster
Posted Monday, July 21, 2014 at 8:58 pm | PERMALINK
There was a brief vogue where teenage boys wore pink in the mid ’80s… and swore to me that they would still be doing so when they were adults.]
I made no promises for the future
zoomster @ 564: So how many friends do you now have in the College of Cardinals?
“I’m sorry today, if I’ve done things that have upset people.” Pathetic. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/queensland-government-to-review-bikie-laws-after-stafford-byelection-defeat
Now this is an elegant French protester…
https://twitter.com/GuardianJessica/status/491068373585772544/photo/1
I see it reported in the Courier Mail that Mr Newman wants to “seek meeting [sic] with judges in a bid to mend its fractured relationship with the judiciary”. I would have thought that for the judges to meet in such circumstances would in itself be a political action, which they could (and perhaps should) rightly refuse to undertake. If I were a Queensland judge, I would be much inclined to say to Mr Newman that he should meet with the Chief Justice, and thereby leave him hoist on his own petard.
[Bikies wear pink also; it would seem the voters have the same message for Newman.
http://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/brazen-bikies-pink-protest-proves-infectious/2080312/ ]
And so the discussion about pink clothing comes full cycle to where it began however many hours ago.
pedant
” If there’s a hung Parliament, such a deal would make PUP support for an ALP government more likely.”
You don’t think Abbott would love the resultant sales pitch.
There they go again Labor doing dodgy deals to get power….
Pedant
No judges, not even the deservedly maligned CJ, should be having clear the air meetings with the premier
Wear blue, wear pink, just don’t wear green!
Newman…
“We recognise that there are things we have done that have annoyed or upset Queenslanders,” the premier said after a Cabinet meeting on Monday.
“I’m sorry today, if I’ve done things that have upset people.”
So please please please vote for us & we will do you proper after the election..
Are Queenslanders really that dumb?
I have a niece who has flatly refused since day one to wear skirts or dresses, and who doesn’t favour the pink and fluffy look, but who is otherwise a normal adolescent girl, far as I can tell.
sceptic @ 573: No doubt he would give it a go, but it’s hardly an iron law of Australian politics that you should never form a minority government, Ms Gillard’s experience notwithstanding. When Mr Kennett lost his majority in 1999, there were commentators saying then that it would be better for the ALP not to form a minority government. My view at the time was that you should never give a snake a second chance; and the ALP, of course, thereafter ruled for 11 years.
zoomster,
i am in wangaraata this week so let’s meet up.
Shellbell @ 574: That’s certainly what I would have thought: to do so would be to concede the point that the relationship between the Executive and the Judiciary is somehow important.
And it’s really quite rich on Mr Newman’s part to suggest that voters didn’t understand his policies. In the case of the various attempts to unwind the Fitzgerald reforms, for example, it’s clear that the voters understood them all too well.
Pedant
Plus it would be followed up some statement by Newman about how both sides agree to communicate with each other better when the whole judiciary less one probably think he is an A grade knob.
Puff
it’s a date!
frednk
[There is your problem kessa2; there is not such thing as a boy’s only isle, and if you think there is it is your problem; and if you think it is marked by blue you have a real colour issue.]
No, your problem.
Or you haven’t been shopping for the past 30 years.
shellbell @ 582: If he can’t get them to come to the swearing in of his hand-picked boy, it’s hard to see how he will get them to a meeting of the type suggested. In which case, by even floating the idea, he’s just poked himself in the eye again. (The image of Prince Ruprecht in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, with the cork stuck on the end of a fork, springs to mind.)
So the three things Newman has put his hand up for are all in the AGs dept. Is he preparing to throw Bleijie under the bus?
Morrison surrenders before defeat… the first of many?
Immigration minister Scott Morrison has granted a permanent visa to a refugee who arrived by boat, despite fighting the boy’s case in the High Court and signalling he would not be swayed when the court found against him.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/scott-morrison-backflips-and-grants-visa-to-boy-who-arrived-by-boat-20140721-3cbju.html#ixzz386OZ6nD4
[I was questioning why western media concern over MH 17 dwarfed that over the Israeli assault on Gaza.]
1. Because Westerners were killed in one, not the other
2. Because we identity more with people on a plane than living in Gaza
3. Because ME violence isn’t news. It happens every day
You could ask why the Left or Right concentrate so much on ME violence when it is trivial compared to violence in Africa.
[So the three things Newman has put his hand up for are all in the AGs dept. Is he preparing to throw Bleijie under the bus?]
I’m guessing this, more so than replacing Newman with Nicholls would go a longer way to restoring trust with voters.
sceptic @ 587: At least one lawyer to whom I have spoken had a sense that Mr Morrison’s proposed reliance on a policy of not granting visas to people who had arrived “illegally” might have turned out to be an own goal, since it gave rise to the possibility that the whole concept of “illegality” of arrival could then be challenged in court. A successful challenge on those grounds could potentially leave a lot of people, including perhaps Mr Psephos here, with some egg on their faces.
[After a savage defeat at Saturday’s Stafford byelection, the government will no longer force convicted bikies to wear pink uniforms, or serve their time in solitary confinement.]
Id missed this part of it.
What a heady mix of pointless and straight out weird.
lefty e @ 591: Well, that should shore up the bikie vote.
pedant@592
Do the ones in gaol get a vote?
GG
Trigg to leave the Crows to be CEO of Carlton.
Good luck with that and may he bring you just as much success as he has showered on us. 😉
zoomster
[I would have been with you all the way on that until my neice (sic) came along — but in a family of all boys, with a feminist role model mother, with her TV watching dictated by a sporting mad family, she’s the girliest thing I’ve ever met.]
And what’s that supposed to mean?
There’s ya problem. Right there.
If you get a sentence of less than three years you can vote.
bemused @ 512
That is a nonsense, a fig leaf to hide the true intention. How do you plant tens of thousands on people on someone elses land without infringing the locals’ civil rights?
What right did the British government have to even announce a policy for an area over which it had no control, and which is could not have made under international law even if it had been the mandate power.
If you want that implemented then all the Jews will have to leave, or pile onto the relatively little land that was owned by Jews at the time, plus allow all the Palestinian refugees to return home. Good luck with that.
Its a rubbish government, with half-baked draconian ideas, an outright w*nker for a leader, who no one likes,least of all his own MPs, some of the least competent ministers ever seen in this country, and mystifyingly arrogant about it all to boot.
Strong Choices! #WTF
And this, sadly, is Australian politics. Two major parties: one side with decent intelligent politicians as a rule, but utterly hobbled by insane medieval factionalism; the other a bunch of complete drongos, loudmouths and third-raters, but generally unified.
Who will prevail? Sadly, that remains a serious question at most elections.
[Fran
BW
My main point was that if you are going to argue by way of comparing situations you should do a fair comparison. All you do here is to reiterate your original position.
My comparison drew upon the most salient considerations.
(b) Did MH17 fire 1,000 plus rockets at whoever happened to be under the rockets?
If you are doing comparative analysis then you cannot ignore that MH17 was a threat to no-one, whereas HAMAS is firing thousands of rockets at Israeli civilans.
I repeat: if you are going to do comparative analysis then you have to take all the relevant issues from BOTH incidents – not cherry pick the items that suit your view.
That’s not relevant here. Firstly, the rocket fire from Hamas is a response to being occupied and regularly brutalised. The missiles cause very few casualties and very little damage, especially since the Iron Dome defence system has been in place.
But in any event, the MH17 atrocity was a one-off atrocity that may well be the result of an act of criminal stupidity and which few would have predicted. Israel bombing Gaza is something one expects on any given day. In between that time, most of what Israel does to the people in the occupied territories gets scant if any reporting here. It has taken deaths in the hundreds to get above the typical levels of interest, and now this aircraft downing has once again diverted attention onto something of apparently greater interest to westerners at a time when the Israelis are escalating their assault.
And yet, unlike MH17, where there’s very little that western attention can do to achieve an end to the suffering of the bereaved, the west might, if it wanted, bring an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict by simply isolating Israel until such time as it chose to negotiate a viable agreement with the Palestinians.]
I agree that there is little correspondence between MH17 and Gaza. Yet you chose to compare the responses to them, carefully selecting as ‘salient’ the elements that suit your purpose.
In looking at the two incidents you simply cannot erase as ‘non-salient’ that the MH17 passengers were not firing over a thousand missiles at anybody. Hamas was, and is. You might be able to justify Hamas firing missiles off in the general direction of Israeli towns but that is a separate matter. You might also be able to argue that Israel is evil in respect to Gaza but that is another matter as well.
As for identifying who is responding to whom in any particular iteration of violence in Israel, Gaza or the middle east in general, and trying to derive an ethical stand therefrom, good luck with that.
As for your other discussion: yes there is an assymetry of power between Hamas and Israel and between Hamas and, say, Gazan christians and, say, ISIS and Mosul Christians.
Assymetrical power, whether of strength or weakness, ought to bring with it certain ethical considerations.
It has long intrigued me about myself that I have more or less automatically ascribed evil to the stronger party and good to the weaker party. I suppose that the assumption is that the stronger party has more choices. With respect to the middle east in particular, I am no longer so certain about this.
IMHO, it would be reasonable to say that the stronger sides in the middle east to some greater or lesser extent abuse this strength. Examples are: Israel v Palestinians, Hamas v Gazan Christians, ISIS v Mosul Christians or with Syrian rebels versus Syrian christians, Sunnis with Shiites when Sunnis are ascendant, and vice versa when Shia are ascendant.
The general rule in the Middle East appears to be that if you have disproportionately strong power you abuse it to a greater or lesser extent. This principle, arguably, applies to ethnicity, nation, sect, gender, and, man and master.
OTOH, if you have weak assymetrical power you abuse that as well – by suicide bombing, firing rockets off at random, murdering those who don’t follow your program, your sect or your politics, using your kids and your youths to throw rocks at policepersons, and so on and so forth.
‘Let he is without sin cast the first stone’ seems to cover most of happens in the middle east. If strictly applied, ME stone throwing would stop entirely.
No pollies on Q&A?