Three new polls this week have collectively taken the shine off the Coalition’s recent recovery in the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, and returned Labor to absolute majority territory on the seat projection. Labor is recorded as gaining six seats, including two in New South Wales and one each in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania. Its primary vote is little changed, but there’s an intriguing uptick for the Greens – something Essential Research contributed to, as well as the widely noted three-point lift in Newspoll – which quite possibly has something to do with major party bipartisanship on Iraq. Meanwhile, Palmer United is recorded as heading the other way, falling to a five-month low. Newspoll and Essential Research both provided leadership ratings this week, which have brought Bill Shorten nearer to parity on net approval, levelled off the positive trend to Tony Abbott, and left preferred prime minister much as it was, with Abbott narrowly in front.
William,
1598 fails on all counts.
(a) He tells a total lie repeatedly without compunction.
(b) Bemused plagiarises other posters in nearly every post.
(c) No one has ever accused Bemused of having character.
Diogs,
So you agree with what the Government and Opposition propose at this stage?
Extent of Antarctic sea ice reaches record levels, scientists say…. Looks like the article was written by a committee , more adapt at designing a camel than explaining increased ice sheet flow, the corresponding piece on ABC TV didn’t make the same mistake.
Greensborough Growler@1601
Still no denial GG, just your normal bluster.
@MailOnline: Malaysia Airlines jet forced to turn back due to auto-pilot problem http://t.co/mEsanLhb5M
[1590
sceptic
Any PB want to speculate on Greens vote increasing as a result of lock step idiots ( Billy & Tony ) restarting what they couldn’t finish.]
What is pretty clear is that Labor are not going to be wedged by Abbott on the issue of national security.
Just in case anyone thinks Labor might make themselves – rather than cruel death, fear and terror – the issue, imagine that Labor were to oppose the deployment of forces. Labor would instantly become the party that is soft on the “death cult”. This will not happen. Labor are not going to hand Abbott so easy a victory. Sadly, this is the grave calculus of war-making.
Abbott may well end up with a policy catastrophe in Syria and Iraq. Most likely, he will. If so, it will be a catastrophe of his making. Imagine that Australian personnel are captured and their ritually killing is webcast by ISIL. There has to be some chance this will happen. Imagine too that this goes on for years and years. This is also almost inevitable. But Labor cannot be open to the accusation that it does not support Australian forces or that it is cowardly in the face of horror.
In any case, if Labor were to try to obstruct Abbott, it would most likely only incite him to increase Australia’s deployment. In this case, for Abbott the more distance between him and Shorten the better. Labor opposition would practically be encouragement to send the whole army to Iraq,
Abrams tanks and all. As we have already seen, Abbott needs no extra inducement to go warring. He’s hungry for it.
guytaur
What did a PB say in reaction to Abbott’s recent actions?
“A polling behaviour.”
Diogenes
“Secondly I support air strikes to prevent genocide”
Does this apply to the 200,000 dead Syrians as well?
If so do the targets wear anything special to identify them as targets for missile strikes from 5000 meters.
For the life of me, I can’t explain how my green waste bin is now half full.
I’d blame it on temporary amnesia but I don’t even have the equipment to neatly pack freshly cut grass into the green bin.
Alas I have to blame it on an unknown trespasser with nothing gone missing from my back yard except my sanity.
Bemused,
I see you have to steal my post to pad yours out, again.
Why don’t you come up with your own words instead of riffing on the intellectual property of others?
Bemused, please ensure that future total lies are made with compunction.
GG
Yes. We are partners on the war on terrorism. 🙂
Raaraa,
Ah, that eternal question.
Is my Green bin half full or half empty!
sceptic
[If so do the targets wear anything special to identify them as targets for missile strikes from 5000 meters.]
You have to rely on intelligence and surveillance to determine the target, just as you do in any air war.
Either that or just bomb anyone carrying a decapitated head around.
Diogs,
There is nothing like a war on a concept.
Makes all the death, destruction and disruption worthwhile.
And yet it turned out Simon Crean was right in 2003.
Funny that we are sending 8 Super Hornets to the UAE, when they have 79 Hornets and 68 Mirages sitting on the tarmac doing nothing.
Maybe a bit of negotiation and pressure on the UAE might have got them to fight their war?
steve
Just proves that being right is no guarantee of success in politics.
Greensborough Growler@1610
A bit too advanced for you I know GG / ESJ, but I use cccp which Musrum and Dario have put together and it automatically quotes what is being responded to.
To use the Crikey Clear Comment Preview script, install in order:
Firefox
Greasemonkey
cccp
or:
Google Chrome
Tampermonkey
cccp
GG
Although it’s better than a war on an emotion as in the War on Terror.
sceptic
An excerpt from an email sent to a journo by a Sunni friend who was recently humanitarian bombed in Mosul. Sounds like it’s going to be SANAFU .
[………..The bombing hurt civilians only and demolished the generator. Now we don’t have any electricity since yesterday night. Now I am writing from a device in my sister’s house, which is empty.
The government bombardment did not hit any of the Isis men. Now I have just heard from a relative ……. He says that because of this bombardment, youngsters are joining Isis in tens if not in hundreds because this increases hatred towards the government, which doesn’t care about us as Sunnis being killed and targeted]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-impossible-war-isis-cannot-be-beaten-as-long-as-there-is-civil-war-in-syria-9727847.html
William Bowe@1611
Aye aye captain! 😆
Sprocket
[Just on your JG ‘shoulda, coulda’ rant, no first term Labor PM has ever been booted out by his own party.
In fact for a long time, the accepted wisdom was to support the leader come hell or high water. The alternate is what we have sadly seen play out.]
Indeed. My point was that the party should not have allowed matters to degenerate to the point where the hitherto unthinkable became thinkable. The party’s failure to manage Rudd back into more typical usages reflected poorly on them and at the head of that failure was Rudd’s deputy, Gillard, and to some extent Swan and Tanner and the other leading members.
If they had tried and failed then swinging the axe earlier and making a clean breast of why they had done it would have been the way to go. This would have implied a prior return to typical cabinet processes of course, precisely so the situation could have been normalised.
They failed multiply in organisational terms.
ru
It’s just as well we don’t have to send any submarines…..
Diogenes@1624
Yes, they don’t work too well in deserts or mountains.
Diogs,
Bringing up adolescents is a rite of passage in this life.
I’m disappointed you can’t cope.
[ru
It’s just as well we don’t have to send any submarines…..
Yes, they don’t work too well in deserts or mountains.]
Ours have trouble once they leave the dock. The ocean is beyond most of them.
Diogenes@1627
Hmmmm a tad exaggerated I believe.
bemused
Which means they will do only slightly less than what the Hornets will end up actually doing.
poroti@1629
Perhaps they could patrol that Mosul dam?
I assume the “Hornets” will buzz in, drop a few laser guided bombs at $20,000 each (for the cheap ones), and after 2 refuels will lob back in the UAE, 4,000 km away.
Why aren’t our NATO bestest buddy from Ukraine (Turkey) rolling out the tarmac for our ‘planes?
[Ours have trouble once they leave the dock. The ocean is beyond most of them.]
That is only because of the South Australian influence … design and build them in WA and problem solvered.
Lets be clear about the stupidity of the strategy Abbott has just signed us up to: to counter the threat of ISIS, we’re going to be supporting groups allied to ISIS.
‘ISIS Strikes Deal With Moderate Syrian Rebels’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/isis-deal-syria_n_5814128.html
Dio
You have to rely on intelligence and surveillance to determine the target, just as you do in any air war.
That’ll be the same intelligence & surveillance that gave us the WNDs then?
As they say Millitary intelligence .. oxymoron
briefly
[Fran has contrived to stir up the internecine. She’s a shrewdie, fer a greenie…]
Hardly. I mentioned the handling of Rudd in passing. It was one of a number of failures on her part, IMO, and though indicative of her competence, was not her worst failing.
[Thinking about shields, Fran…we cannot help recalling that Labor lacked a majority in the last Parliament. As well, while the Green-Labor bargain helped secure Labor in office, the LNP were able to exploit this connection in their attacks on JG.]
They were, and again, that reflected in part her pandering to the right, and her attempts to mollify Murdoch.
[Now I can see how the Greens – in common with the LNP and the Ruddophiliacs – want to assign the failings and the burden of defeat of the last Government to the former PMJG. These are surely fabrications told with more of an eye to the future than to a fair and accurate telling of the past.]
You will struggle to find within my party anyone with a relatively good word about Rudd these days. At the time of the election I regarded him as poor a choice in qualitative terms as Abbott. Throughout 2008 and part of 2009 I was amongst those arguing within my party that he ought be given the benefit of the doubt on matters like climate change. That didn’t make me popular because by 2009 he was attempting to shut out our leader from consultation. After September of 2009 Rudd’s standing within our ranks dropped like a rock and I had to admit to others that I’d been too generous in my estimation of him. His willingness to treat climate change as a silly political game in which he could wedge all his rivals destroyed all of his credibility. After that, none of us wanted anything to do with him.
So this is an odd claim. We did think rolling him was a bizarre thing, but then we had no idea that he was as insufferable with his colleagues as he was with us. It seemed to some of us that rolling him had been a concession to Big Dirt, which as much as we disliked him, struck us as being entirely the wrong message to send the enemy, since the election was shaping as ‘who runs the country?’ — Murdoch and the miners, or the people? Had Rudd survived, I’d probably have held my nose and given him a preference. When Gillard replaced him and let the miners off the hook and started talking about abandoning climate change policy until ‘a deep not parliamentary consensus’ was achieved and talked about shipping asylum seekers off to East Timor, all of us were utterly scandalised.
The picture is far more complex than you allow.
Well, we just caught up with the latest.
Thumbs down Shorten!
Surely the balance of probabilities says that sending our young to fight in a war will most likely result in more deaths than any threat of terrorism.
Dee@1636
I have been reflecting on this for a while before commenting and I agree with you Dee.
Labor needs to both differentiate itself from the Libs and also not support getting into anything stupid.
I think the main focus should be on humanitarian aid and taking steps to prevent idiot Australians from getting involved with ISIS or any other lunatic bunch.
[The smart thing for Western leaders in the wake of John Kerry’s session with Arab leaders in Jeddah on Thursday last, would have been to bide their time. And it would have been smart too to bide their time a bit more after Sunday’s grim reports of another Westerner beheaded by these crazed thugs who strut as Islamic freedom fighters in the deserts of Syria and Iraq.
But Tony Abbott leapt straight in – committing 600 Australian military personnel and more aircraft to the conflict, thereby giving the Arab leaders good reason to believe that if they sit on their hands for long enough, the West will fight their war for them.]
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/fools-rush-in-tony-abbott-joins-a-war-without-definition-20140914-10gtib.html#ixzz3DHiUCxmv
Under a headline of fools rush in.
confessions@1639
Best headline for a long while… 😆
bemused@1638
briefly@1606 identifies a conundrum. Abbott will flay Labor if it even smells like they are stepping back from his idiotic war.
Shorten needs some carefull wordsmithing here, better than he has to date.
As some people been saying, Labor are no different to the Coalition Party, and the war business is no different.
The deployment of forces to the Middle East is most disappointing but the numbers involved are very much in the “token” category. Nevertheless it can only increase the likelihood we will become the targets of terrorism in Australia.
I notice that Shorten thanked the government for “engaging” with the opposition on the matter. This sounds more substantial than just “briefing”. Hopefully Labor has advised the government it will not support a major deployment and this may have limited what Abbott has committed to. I think I also saw that our forces will only be active in Iraq (whose government has invited help) and not in Syria.
I really can’t see that the deployment is going to win Abbott votes. I think most Australians are tired of these sort of military adventures. While Labor has to be sure it doesn’t get wedged, I suspect it’s going to rebound on Abbott, with the effect increasing with time.
One thing Shorten is doing very well at the moment is ensuring Labor is not the issue. Anything that goes wrong either at home or overseas is going to be seen as the fault of the government.
Fools rush in: Ti would seem we have more than one.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/fools-rush-in-tony-abbott-joins-a-war-without-definition-20140914-10gtib.html
This is why the alert just went to high.
[The deployment is an escalation from the other side of the world that likely will put the IS madmen on the lookout for Australian targets.]
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/fools-rush-in-tony-abbott-joins-a-war-without-definition-20140914-10gtib.html#ixzz3DHkuOOMO
mikehilliard@1641
I agree about the caution and good wordsmithing, but Labor took a stand against the Vietnam war which was initially unpopular but won in the end.
I would be prepared to follow the same course but I am fairly sure the turn-around will come faster this time.
Yes, Shorten dosnt want to stick too close to the flawed strategy Abbott is brainlessly signing blank cheques for.
Supporting the Kurds is one thing. Getting involved in the ill-thought through Syrian mess is another.
fran
seriously, that post of yours makes the Greens sound like a cult….all that ‘we’ stuff.
Personally, if Australian involvement is limited to what we have committed to, I support the commitment. The decision has bi-partisan support from people who have much better information than anyone here. The decision resulted from a direct request from the US. Something needs to be done to slow IS down.
zoomster@1648
Maybe the royal plural?
Fran, Queen of the Greens. 👿