The BludgerTrack poll aggregate this week continues its steady drift back to the Coalition, with new figures from Newspoll, Morgan and Essential contributing to a 0.4% shift on two-party preferred. Labor now barely maintains overall majority status on the seat projection following a further loss of two seats, one in New South Wales and one in Victoria. Tony Abbott has also recovered the lead as preferred prime minister on the back of new figures from Newspoll and Essential Research. His net approval rating also continues to get less bad in the wake of MH17, although the rate of improvement has slowed and he is still well into the negative. Bill Shorten’s loss of the preferred prime minister mantle is not on account of his own rating, which has been steady since March outside of a brief spike in the wake of the budget. Full details as always on the sidebar.
[ Bushfire Bill
Posted Friday, August 15, 2014 at 10:12 pm | Permalink
Friday is “That’ll Do” night.
Why not? Joe has provided most of us will a much-needed fillip.
What a drongo. Can’t bat. Can’t bowl. Never had any talent, except for chucking tantrums when he didn’t get his way.
Where’s his Mummy now? ]
But the maates are already polishing turds –
[ Hockey deserves credit for admitting he stuffed up and apologising.
There have been few bigger clangers from a senior politician in recent years – Julia Gillard’s “real Julia” moment was worse ]
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/one-of-the-big-clangers-joe-hockey-had-no-choice-but-to-apologise-for-comments-about-poor-and-cars-20140815-3ds5r.html#ixzz3ASivybsP
Player One@948
The ABC has had its budget reduced and Mark Scott is talking about trying to get by with less resources.
The News Corpse reports were, I think, based on a speech he gave to journalists. I heard a little of it on PM tonight.
I think, for a Lib, Scott is relatively good and actually believes in the ABC. But he has a dreadful Board to cope with on top of the funding cuts.
[
Really? That’s just plain disappointing.
]
confessions,
Yes, I was a bit disappointed when I found out. It had me fooled. lol
I think the ABC should be given to News Corp.
[881
Diogenes
I find attitudes to the ABC to be a good barometer of how rabid, biased and intolerant a person is.]
It is an interesting Rorschach.
[If you go to our sister sites of the Right,…]
No need, I already know the mindset. Grew up with it, still deal with it every day.
And you think you are a cynic? 😉
[ I think, for a Lib, Scott is relatively good and actually believes in the ABC. But he has a dreadful Board to cope with on top of the funding cuts. ]
Apologist.
Jake@954
Mad Lib will love you.
Just saw ‘the apology’ on Lateline.
Now all Joe has to do is apologise for the Budget.
Jake@954
It already has. That’s the problem.
[I think the ABC should be given to News Corp.]
I’d settle for not parroting the News Corp line at every opportunity.
Every damn last stinking one of the people who run for parliament are egotistical bastards, as far as I’m concerned.
Every last one of them.
You have to be. Else you’d die at the first hurdle.
But that was before ICAC, when we learned that it wasn’t those who most sought hubris who won, but those who sought to be full of hubris, with a bag full of cash, who actually won.
Yeah. The system wasn’t perfect, leastways not in Nthn Vic.
Hey, but didn’t it work, in NSW, either?
Until ICAC came along and blew it all apart?
The rotten stinking bastards. We always knew how rotten and stinking and bastardly they were, and now at last we had proof.
It wasn’t just the morass of self-interested Eddie Obeids types, it was the foul stench of the self-interested Lib pricks who turned a blind-eye to Eddie, so that they could reap every and any fast dollar.
I doubt whether the good people of Labor, or the Greens, or Libs, or Nats (for that matter) were going to prevail.
It’s up to us.
Yet, when you think about it, zoomster et al are trying to convince us that we should all be in together,
But when zoomster continually shafts Greens, you have to wonder “why bother” trying to get Greens onside?
It has never made sense.
And nor has the propensity for Labor to simultaneously hate and love Greens.
Make up your mind.
Craig Laundy being totally unconvincing babbling about ‘Team Australia’ to a Moslem audience.
[Now all Joe has to do is apologise for the Budget. ]
He needs to correct the budget. Words are cheap. And he is just looking for a way out – to ameliorate the damage to himself etc.
Correcting his many errors are much more important.
But he won’t do it – this is just garbage from a garbage slob.
[Greens are just the latest minor annoyance trying to peel votes off the ALP rather than attack the libs and win votes from them.]
As if the Greens Party and its parliamentarians do not attack the Liberals.
Perhaps if Labor fought for and implemented policies more appealing to voters like me, it would get my primary vote.
Perhaps Labor should not feel a sense of entitlement and take for granted the votes of progressive voters.
I have stated before that I do not care if the Greens Party do not exist so long as some of its progressive policies are adopted by the government of the day.
http://greens.org.au/magazine/vic/greens-target-liberal-seat-victoria
[The Greens often get accused of targeting Labor seats at election times. The seat of Melbourne, Sydney, Grayndler, Fremantle, Brisbane and Denison (now held by Andrew Wilkie) were all Labor seats vulnerable to the Greens as Labor moves to the right and disappoints its progressive base.
However, in the coming Victorian state election, a redistribution has put a Liberal seat within reach of the Greens. Prahran lost some of its safest Liberal voting areas to a safer Liberal seat, leaving the Greens with the best opportunity yet of snatching a Liberal seat.
The seat itself is progressive, with a young urban demographic which elected two Greens (nearly three) in the Local Council Elections, and one of those Councillors Sam Hibbins is the candidate for the Greens in November.]
Inside Story: http://inside.org.au/labor-the-coalition-and-the-problem-of-political-identity/
[Even more worrying is the number of Australians who no longer believe it makes a difference which party is in power – a rapid plunge from 68 per cent to 43 per cent in the same period.
In a politics in thrall to opinion polls and focus groups, the slightest shift in market share may well mean the difference between having power or not. The question of how to appear different without any substantial deviation from the consensual norm – that ever elusive political centre – becomes the all-consuming task. But this blurring of identity, or party convergence, is affecting the political marketplace in another way: consumers (voters) are turning away from the big brands in droves in search of difference
Labor, of course, has embraced neoliberalism just as much as the Liberals. (It was the Hawke government that embarked on large-scale liberalisation thirty years ago.) But if a scintilla of difference still remains between the two sides, it is a faint belief within Labor that a hand on the wheel of government can still modify the excesses of the untamed market]
kezza2@961
Greens are like annoying mosquitos.
You talk about 80% of their vote going to Labor as preferences. I talk about 80% (or more) of their vote being peeled off Labor in the first place.
We would be better off without the distraction they create.
[Bushfire Bill
Posted Friday, August 15, 2014 at 10:13 pm | PERMALINK
I’d like to see the ABC sold, or someone try to.]
Oh, but why?
The ABC is doing what it has always done: put the govt of the day under a microscope.
That this govt whinges everywhere and everyhow is usual. What’s unusual about the commentary is that the GG is still braying for ABC blood.
We must resist this siren call.
Tie yourself to the mast, BB. Plug your ears. Sing another song.
While the beat goes on.
If the ABC wants to survive its in Scotts hands… simple.. Unleash the dogs & take the consequences .
Reassign apologist journalists to looking after the tea trolley & demand hard unbiased investigative journalism a go…. he has nothing to lose. Murdoch will go mad & prove the need for an indie pent ABC by fighting it
The ABC should also go after Rupert for employing & condoning criminal actions by his journalists
If the ABC wants to survive its in Scotts hands… simple.. Unleash the dogs & take the consequences .
Reassign apologist journalists to looking after the tea trolley & demand hard unbiased investigative journalism a go…. he has nothing to lose. Murdoch will go mad & prove the need for an indie pent ABC by fighting it
The ABC should also go after Rupert for employing & condoning criminal actions by his journalists
Hats-off to Kevin Andrews for speaking out against ‘mischievous’ media reporting of the budget.
It’s high-time someone in the Coalition held the media to account. The bias and misinformation has been going on for far too long.
bemused
[You talk about 80% of their vote going to Labor as preferences. I talk about 80% (or more) of their vote being peeled off Labor in the first place.]
And why would that be?
The fact that Labor lost those votes because they didn’t appeal to that cohort.
We would be better off without the distraction they create. Yeah, righto, you’d be better off without a conscience, is what you mean.
[We would be better off without the distraction they create.]
Heaven forbid having other views and voices heard apart from the political duopoly whose primary aim is to ensure business as usual and maintenance of the status quo.
Pegasus@972
There are plenty of pressure groups pursuing single issues with great zeal and ideological purity.
Such behaviour doesn’t work well for a political party but is what the greens try to do.
I think there’s a high-risk/high-return case to be made for Joe Hockey adopting a novel strategy: “I apologise for being a wanker”.
F**K, is there anything more tedious than the ALP/Greens wars…
Sorry I forgot the Gillard/Rudd wars.
Shh, don’t mention the wars.
Jake
When you’re looking after farm animals, all you can think about is having sex with them.
While you’re mixing up their feed, getting in the pen with them when they’re newborns, teaching them how to feed without their mothers, what you’re really thinking about is SEX.
Oh Jakey, I can’t remember the amount of times I had to stop myself from fucking a calf. Or a piglet. Or a puppy.
And next best thing is thinking about Kevin Andrews’ fucked view of the world.
And then after that, yours.
We’ve been trolled by experts, Jake.
And you’re no expert, let me tell ya.
[….but is what the greens try to do.]
Codswallop.
The Greens have a coherent and cogent policies underpinned by principles that provide a vision for a better world.
Final thought for tonight: Maurice Newman. Beyond ridiculous.
Laurie Oakes lays into the Hockey Blimp
[IT was no contest for this week’s Goose Award. Joe Hockey is a runaway winner.
Plenty of his colleagues, though, think comparison with the Treasurer is unfair to geese.
The things being said about him in Coalition ranks in recent days have been remarkably harsh.
This, for example, from a frustrated Liberal MP: “We work our butts off selling the Budget. Then along comes Hindenburg Hockey.”
The Hindenburg, of course, was a German passenger airship — a Zeppelin — that burst into flames and crashed in the United States in 1937. The disaster cost 36 lives.
Another line from a Liberal yesterday was: “People criticised Joe for going on holidays to Fiji. Now some of us are sorry he came back.”
A cricket tragic on the Coalition side said: “The highest scorer for the Opposition is actually the “extras” column — and it’s mostly off Joe’s bowling.”
And so it went on.
]
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/smokin-joe-hockey-the-treasurer-is-a-lead-zeppelin/story-fni0fha6-1227026081518
Re Labor / Greens – here’s the real enemy:
Perhaps “butts” shouldn’t a word that Coalition MPs should be using, considering that Tony Abbott declared “I would do anything but sell my arse”….
Kiera @KieraGorden 4m
Liberal MP: “We work our butts off selling the Budget. Then along comes Hindenburg Hockey.” http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/smokin-joe-hockey-the-treasurer-is-a-lead-zeppelin/story-fni0fha6-1227026081518 … #AusPol via @LaurieOakes
If you also could work as hard every other time would help too!
Well said BB. I was just going to ask Jake why he has nothing better to do on a Friday night?
adrian@975
Yes, annoying mosquitos. 😛
The final series in the NRL has already started Bludgers.
South Sydney are warming into my pre season prediction of contesting the 2014 Grand Final and tonight, WOW that was serious quality stuff.
I confess I backed Parramatta!
Bastard Bulldogs, they were lucky and would have won for sure against the Broncos the week before on that performance 😡
Pegasus@979
No doubt. Dreamt up over many bongs.
[The Greens have a coherent and cogent policies underpinned by principles that provide a vision for a better world.]
Now all they need to do is figure out how to actually implement them out here in the compromise-soaked real world.
Otherwise their vision remains that, which benefits only the Abbotts of the world.
The Greens are the best friend Tony Abbott and Dopey Joe ever had – let’s get real!
Oakes makes the good point that Abbott has not filled the Assistant Treasurer job after Artie the Bagman’s ICAC appearances – so for many months Hockey has been on his own, when the sales job could have been divided up to some extent.
Another example of poor judgement by the Lying Friar.
[“People criticised Joe for going on holidays to Fiji. Now some of us are sorry he came back.”]
Ouch, that’s gotta sting.
http://johnquiggin.com/2014/08/14/hockeys-amazing-discovery-bigger-households-use-more-of-everything/
Quiggin adds a dimension to the information that poor households spend proportionately about 3 times as much of their income on fuel as rich households by noting the poor households have fewer persons than rich households, which exacerbates the impact per person.
He also notes that a fuel excise is not necessarily bad.
Ben Eltham at New Matilda independently noted that allied with cuts to the low end of personal tax the regressive nature of fuel excise could be removed.
Just like Labor did with its price on carbon with compo for those on low incomes.
Speaking of duopolies…
[That could make Aldi a real challenger to the Woolworths-Coles duopoly.]
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/retail/aldi-to-step-up-challenge-to-supermarket-giants-coles-and-woolies-20140815-104cml.html#ixzz3AStJJmpv
Unsurprisingly, I shop at Aldi 😉
[The Greens have a coherent and cogent policies underpinned by principles that provide a vision for a better world.]
That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen today, even trumps that Minister posing as an agony aunt in the UKers.
😆
[Oakes makes the good point that Abbott has not filled the Assistant Treasurer job after Artie the Bagman’s ICAC appearances – so for many months Hockey has been on his own, when the sales job could have been divided up to some extent.]
So I was right earlier. They don’t have an Asst Treasurer.
And with Cormann going missing, no wonder Hockey is left hanging out there, swinging in the breeze.
[The Greens are the best friend Tony Abbott and Dopey Joe ever had]
Might be going a little too far. But their political judgement needs to be hardened and sharpened up, for sure.
[Another example of poor judgement by the Lying Friar.]
Or a deliberate nobbling of Joe.
I mostly support Labor but I respect the Greens. Both have their faults. Labor is sometimes too afraid of frightening the horses. The Greens let the perfect become the enemy if the good.
Financial reporting season is underway on the stock market at the moment and that is really the best barometer to judge the true state of the economy.
CBA, Telstra and Suncorp reported this week and fair dinkum, the Greens or global warming couldn’t stop those companies the way they’re currently going.
Well, maybe the Greens could but global warming won’t 😀
Hell, the Greens have cost Labor two (2) Prime Ministers.
If that’s not the best friend Tony Abbott ever had, what is?
*shakes head in disbelief
Liberals doing badly so the usual suspects are back to Green bashing.
Maybe the commentary in the MSM is right and Mr Shorten is not doing well in the communication game if the MSM is to be believed.
Or maybe its a few deluded Labor supporters that think Green Bashing will win Labor votes from the right.
Those votes PUP has captured with its AS policy and the like. Why would they vote Labor when they have PUP.
By their policies you know them. I fall between the Greens and Labor because I think the right of the ALP has too much influence. With the Greens the “left” has too much.
The PMJG period was about right for me because it took those outer parts of those parties influence out. That government did not do everything I wanted. However to me it was a damn fine government.