Stephen Murray tweets that the fortnightly Newspoll in tomorrow’s Australian shows no change on two-party preferred, with Labor maintaining its lead of 54-46, and next to no change on the primary vote, with the Coalition steady on 36%, Labor down one to 36%, the Greens up one to 12% and others steady on 16%. However, Tony Abbott is up five on approval to 36% and down seven on disapproval to 53%, and has drawn level on preferred prime minister at 38-38 after Bill Shorten led 41-36 a fortnight ago. Bill Shorten’s personal ratings are also improved, his approval up four to 38% and disapproval down two to 41%.
Martin B
True, those would reduce the effectiveness of profiling and increase its cost, but its an imperfect probabilistic technique to start with so they aren’t fatal flaws.
Diogs,
I admire your attempts to inject a bit of probablistic logic in to the discussion.
I always say if you want to catch fish, you go where the fish are biting.
I’m in no position to comment one way or the other but a security expert who has modelled a number of systems says that they are indeed fatal flaws insofar as they make real-world performance at fixed cost less than a system of random screening.
victoria
the original story, when the leak first came out, was that another ‘Age’ journo was the source.
Tomazin’s carelessness makes that very plausible.
MartinB
That’s ‘The Age’s allegation, I believe.
If Andrews’ office is denying that happened, I’d go with Andrews.
The ALP knows that the cover up is always worse than the crime.
…Samaris’ statement is that he acted on his own initiative.
Dio
What you are saying is statistical nonsense.
If you want to limit it JUST to planes then the number of incidents is so small that statistics is a nonsense and you should know that.
Secondly the only serious terrorist concern about planes I have ever encountered involved travel on Sri Lankan airlines where the suspected terrorists were Tamils. I spent an hour or so on a Colombo tarmac while a plane was being checked.
I think even if you add in plane hijackings you would find that the dominant group were nutters with a few communists and Irish and Muslims but no clear racial or religious profile.
Dio the reality of suspect terrorists is related to WORLD CONFLICT zones which happen to relate to Muslims mostly at the moment because of the Middle east mess but in my memory were more likely to be Jewish and Sikh in the 40s, Croation versus communists in the 50s, Bader Minhoff anarchists in the 60s, Irish in the 70s, with Muslims emerging only in the 80s but with Tamils riding high in the 90s.
I wold predict that in the next decade other than ongoing problems stemming from the ME war, Ukranians (both Russian and Ukranian) might problems with problems too in India and possibly more tea party nutters in the USA.
Noah Carroll:
“@political_alert: Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is in Melbourne today and will visit Doutta Galla Aged Services before a brief doorstop at 10.15am #auspol”
dtt
Its clearly a fluid system and each country would have its own target population which would change over time.
Martin
Agree that cost-benefit analysis would be almost impossible given the low incidence.
absolutetwaddle@200
are these white enough for ya?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-harris-muslim-animus
http://www.vice.com/read/new-atheism-needs-to-get-out-of-its-old-rut
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/dawkins_harris_hitchens_new_atheists_flirt_with_islamophobia/
WHISTLEBLOWER Kathy Jackson kept spending thousands of dollars of union money she held in a secret bank account — even after she was explicitly told to return any accounts she controlled containing union funds.
Ms Jackson, whose exposure of former Health Services Union colleagues Michael Williamson and Craig Thomson led to their convictions over large-scale fraud, was given a short deadline to hand over all accounts related to her union when an administrator was put in charge of its messy financial affairs in June 2012.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/union-whistleblower-kathy-jackson-kept-using-secret-account-after-warning/story-fn59noo3-1227005010983
z
Its pretty fanciful to suggest that the exact recording that was stolen from lost property, listened to by many people and then destroyed just happened to be sent out by someone else at the Age.
vic
It wont be long before they stop using the word “whistleblower” as a descriptor for Jackson.
daretotread
That is why no one is proposing we only screen Muslims, instead what’s being advocated here is a completely random layer of screening (and targeted behavioural screening) and, on top of this, a more thorough screening of Muslims, however this is ascertained.
I for one think this is largely unworkable except to say it’s obvious that youngish ‘Arab-looking’ Muslim men justifiably attract more attention from airport security. As things stand now it is very likely the next person who gets on a passenger plane with a view to blowing it up will fit this particular profile.
It must be a pain in the ass for totally innocent Arab-looking Muslim men but they have their coreligionists to blame for that.
MartinB
my point exactly – they listened to the files. They also said the files were on a USB device.
Diog
1. When the leak originally happened, ‘The Age’ reported that another one of their journalists had been named as the source of the leak.
2. Hey, I said I was going tin foil hat!
Dio
We here on PB knew she was not a cleanskin from day dot. But of course, she served her purpose for the tories
zoomster
the Age reportage on this matter has been shrill to say the least
Re Newspoll, and the difference 12 months makes.
Back in the bad old Labor days just a zephyr of difference – particularly if it was Labor down and LNP up – was blared news on nearly every outlet.
Nothing to be heard at all on ABC early news, nothing in the West (no surprise) and nothing in Yahoo news on line.
It is true that we are 2 years and 2 budgets away from an election – not to mention the mayhem yet to occur in the Senate – but the almost total absent of any comment is interesting.
It is also true that with such a slender majority Labor was subject to attack -as Tony Windsor used to make the point – that Tony Abbott could have been PM any day back then.
In retrospect the work of PMJG to hold Labor together and complete a comprehensive legislative program makes her performance all the more admirable.
Meanwhile,I think this is the first time in about 10 days that neither Abbott nor Woman of Steel gets any real mention in our local rag.
p m z
Don’t let me dissuade you from your state of permanent handwringing, jowl-quivering outrage and frantic Googling. It seems you quite enjoy it. I’m quite aware there’s a sizeable population out there – of every colour and creed of the rainbow – who see fit to call Harris a ‘human scum’, a racist or a fascist or whatever without bothering to read what he has to say.
The rest of us are quite happy to discuss the issue without attacking the messenger. Largely.
“@latikambourke: PM Abbott being asked if he’d prefer @JoeHockey hadn’t taken part in the authorised bio. Hard to stop someone keen to write a book, he says.”
“@latikambourke: PM Abbott – I think its perfectly understandable that someone would want to write a story about Joe – the Hockey story is a great story.”
I see Abbott again does not really answer the question
Maybe the Federal Government is applying the same principle to those who seek unemployment benefits as they are to asylum seekers. Make life so unpleasant for them that they will hopefully desist. Do anything rather than claim the dole. Be supported by parents in the case of young people. Take a job in a massage parlour. Scratch a living through dodgy activities, not all of them legal. Sleep rough.
When is the Government going to reintroduce the Poor Laws and Workhouses.
Diogenes
Embattled whistleblower progressing to ‘Disgraced whistleblower’ ?
vic
I still dont understand why she made such a lot of noise about it when she appears to have been much the same as Thomson and Williamson.
It was almost suicidal.
absolutetwaddle@220
tbh i’m not really interested in small minded morons that give the time of day to bigots that hide their hatred in word spew
victoria
everyone here is aware of my bias on this, but certainly ‘The Age’ isn’t helping!
I get back to – 1. Knowing the ALP people involved, I also know how careful they are with language (and can say that I bear them a bit of a grudge for it, because they’ve used careful language to dud me in the past….but they weren’t dishonest, so I can’t claim they lied to me…) 2. The ALP knows perfectly well that the cover up hurts you more than the crime; 3. There are ways of dealing with situations like this, if you are guilty, which are a lot more decisive than the actions the ALP have taken so far.
All that suggests to me that the ALP is (i) guilty of receiving the dictaphone (ii) guilty of listening to some of the tapes (iii) guilty of the destruction of the tapes/dictaphone but not guilty of the various other charges.
It would be a lot simpler were the ALP actually guilty of everything ‘The Age’ is alleging. In that case, someone like Kosmos would just confess to all of it, say everyone else in the picture had recoiled in horror from his actions, and that would be it. It’s because they’re partially guilty and partially innocent that they’re finding it difficult to handle.
Why Twitter is my social media platform of choice:
http://www.bordermail.com.au/story/2447955/social-media-has-the-answers/?cs=14
@political_alert: CHOICE says leaked anti-piracy paper sidesteps the Australia tax issue + fails to deal with the real causes of piracy http://t.co/OBY84zZb5o
zoomster
As mentioned. The Liberals should now focus on who was responsible for distributing the leaked audio
It’s hardly a surprise the LNP have made up no ground. They clearly hate the young, the old, the sick, the low-paid, the unemployed, the environment, education, science, the health system, the welfare system and the public sector in general.
The LNP seem to have held on to a core of primary support around 36%. Unless there is very far-reaching revision of LNP policies, this number is unlikely to improve. As time goes on it’s more likely to shrink as the baleful effects of LNP rule filter through to people.
221
guytaur
bourke asking the really truly hard questions..!
p m z
Well, thanks to your hyperbolic and juvenile comment in the last thread, I know of at least one poster here (probably more) who were exposed to Sam Harris and his thoughts for the first time.
As a fan of his I must thank you.;)
psyclaw
Thanks for the extra analysis re Adani.
My point is why would Hunt issue an environmental permit to such a financially shaky project. If the project is likely to fail financially, it is likely to fail in environmental compliance as well.
I guess its only the Great Artesian Basin and the Great Barrier Reef at risk, no real cause for concern.
But destroying all copies of the files – the “collective decision” – included destroying the device.
these jokers are beyond satire
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/tony-abbotts-strong-mh17-response-rewarded-newspoll/story-fn59niix-1227005009220
the headline should be: “Despite a week of the Murdoch media telling you Abbott is the greatest statesperson of this and all other generations, you still won’t vote for the prick; you just hate him a bit less than you did”. too long I guess.
some of the pieces abbott and the ‘true man/leader/demi-god’ revealed by his ‘Very Very Serious Man posturing’ are vomit-inducing. To quote WC Fields (I think – or was it Groucho) again – “The most important thing in life is sincerity – once you can fake that you’ve got it made.”
I was half hoping the polls would turn and he’d rush to a DD on the back of them. I guess he’ll wait for the unions RC to damage Shorten (although that seems to be blowing up on them at present, with the greatest damage being to the credibility of their star witnesses).
“@margokingston1: .@AussieRock great question!! Yes, if O found newsworthy illegal recording I would use it. Journos in frame in this amazing story. #springst”
victoria
and so should ‘The Age’!
That’s the crux of the matter – and not even ‘The Age’ seems to be suggesting that the leak came from the ALP, but that the ALP passed the information on to the Liberals.
As I’ve said before I find that highly unlikely – and the ALP is denying they’ve done so.
Cross party friendships are often discussed on this blog. They do exist, but they are (a) rarer at State level than they are at Federal and (b) rarer at the party organisational level than they are in Parliament.
For the ALP to hand over tapes to a Liberal, they would have to trust that the person wouldn’t put the blame back on them if the source of the leak came out (otherwise the ALP might as well have gone the whole hog and used the tapes themselves).
That means knowing a particular Liberal operative well enough to know that they would handle a sensitive issue with tact and that they would protect the ALP over themselves.
That’s a high degree of trust.
(I used to get info fed to me from the Nationals about Mirabella. I never used it, because I couldn’t trust the source. So there had to be a degree of trust from the Liberal operative as well…)
What i would be doing re dictaphonegate is ascertain whether Liberal party operatives were in possession of the recording prior to the actual dictaphone being lost at the Labor party conference.
Looks like this govt is even losing the Business Council of Australia. According to the AFR the BCA got McKinseys to prepare a report which recommends “ïndustry development, job creation and encouraging entrepreneurship
involves going back to the sectoral approach favoured by the Labor Party.”
BCA president Catherine Livingstone is “pushing back against the “let the free market rule” approach put forward by other prominent business advisers including Tony Shepherd and Maurice Newman.”
So even the BCA is starting to see that these guys are total duds.
I sincerely doubt that when the Victorian state election rolls around a significant portion of the electorate are going to base their vote on what the ALP did with the lost and found box.
Is anyone paying attention to dictaphone gate except you blokes? I’m from NSW and I can tell you that I’m not deleting any other data in my brain so I can store some of that stuff.
Martin B
You can destroy the tapes without destroying the device.
You can listen to the tapes after the device has been destroyed.
You can listen to tapes and not be aware of where the tapes came from.
I am sure that if the CIA or ASIO found Putin’s dictaphone they would listen to it before giving it back.
“@latikambourke: Hadley began interview with PM Abbott saying he wasn’t sure if tape was on so it could just be a private chat ‘between two mates.’”
k17
The Age and the Liberals here in Vic have been in overdrive since last week over this
Re Zoomster @181: It would be interesting to see how a Liberal government which delivered on Labor policies would fare.
Historically, they fared fairly well – Menzies and his successors, Fraser. There used to be bipartisanship on what the two big parties wanted Australia to look like. Both believed in Keynseian economics and a social safety net, government ownership of key utilities, free education and so forth. The Liberals were more pro business, more socially conservative, more gung ho about the American alliance. Labor believed in a higher safety net and more government intervention.
The consensus seems to have started unravelling in the 90’s, with the pestilence of neoliberalism taking hold. Even so, the Liberals have to pretend they will implement Labor policies that the voters want (NDIS, Gonski), even if, as in the case of Abbott, they have no intention of implementing them.
kevin-one-seven
I’m with you on dictaphones keviny-one. I had to delete all of last night’s Q&A before I could even understand what the fuss was about.
Z:
Samaras says he destroyed the device “after some consideration” when he decided it was not appropriate to disseminate the recordings.
Carroll says that Samaras, McLindon and himself collectively decided not to disseminate the recordings.
Those two statements fit together in a very natural way.
From recollection, the interview with ballieu was recorded in February. The audio could have been provided to some other party any time after this date. Of course, the journo carelessly lost the dictaphone with the recording still on it a few months later at a labor party conference. How convenientment
Viewed from afar, the Age version of events with the missing/stolen/lost and found recorder looks suss.
Perhaps the reporter could answer two questions: did she ever play the recording of her talk with Ted to anybody else? Did she make a copy?
I won’t hold my breath for an answer.
Tinfoil hat time. How do we know that Ted wasn’t also recording the conversation.