The Australian has published its regular quarterly Newspoll breakdowns by (mainland) state, gender and age group, from its combined polling over the period of July to September. With this big infusion of state-level data, later this week I will publish the BludgerTrack quarterly breakdown, featuring state-level primary vote numbers and polling trend charts (you can see the previous effort from the end of June here). Also later today should be the regularly weekly Essential Research poll.
In case you missed it, yesterday’s Roy Morgan gave the Coalition its best result since February, its primary vote up 1.5% to 40% with Labor down 2.5% to 35%. On two-party preferred, Labor’s lead was down from 54.5-45.5 to 53-47 on respondent-allocated preferences, and from 53.5-46.5 to 51.5-48.5 on preference flows from the 2013 election. The Greens were steady at 12%, and Palmer United down half a point to 3.5%, their weakest result since January. The poll was conducted over the last two weekends by face-to-face and SMS, from a sample of 3151.
UPDATE (Essential Research): No change whatsoever in Essential Research – Coalition 40%, Labor 39%, Greens 10%, Palmer United 4%, two-party 52-48 to Labor. A suite of questions on major government decisions over the past year turn in predictable responses, with turning back the boats, freezing foreign aid and dumping the carbon tax strongly approved of, and pretty much anything involving the budget disapproved of. The only neutral responses were for military aid to Iraq and dumping the mining tax. Thirty-nine per cent of respondents rated the economy well managed, against 28% for poorly. Respondents were most concerned about cost of living issues, and least concerned about national debt and the budget deficit. Other questions find an even balance between those who think income tax too high (42%) and about right (40%); more favouring less services and lower taxes (28%) than the opposite (19%), but with 35% preferring the current balance; and 59% thinking it would be good for the economy if corporations paid more tax, versus 17% for bad.
Zoomster
Whilst the polls indicate a Labor win, i am not convinced at this stage
GG
Yes, I remembered Alan Hunt as “steady and sensible”.
I do wish that sons of MPs would not go into the family business.
Bit of a discussion here yesterday about 3D printing.
Just what the US *needs* – more guns –
[ Goodbye Gun Control: The $1,200 Machine For 3D-Printing Guns Has Sold Out In 36 Hours
Americans want guns without serial numbers.
And apparently, they want to make them at home.
On Wednesday, Cody Wilson’s libertarian non-profit Defense Distributed revealed the Ghost Gunner, a $1,200 computer-controlled (CNC) milling machine designed to let anyone make the aluminum body of an AR-15 rifle at home, with no expertise, no regulation, and no serial numbers.
Since then, he’s sold more than 200 of the foot-cubed CNC mills—175 in the first 24 hours. ]
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-06/goodbye-gun-control-1200-machine-3d-printing-guns-has-sold-out-36-hours
Morning all.
I agree with those about the opposition needing to reset the debate back to domestic matters. Unfortunately I reckon we’ve got terror talk until the next election.
It was a crap idea that should never have seen the light of day. Good riddance.
[
Abbott government abandons plan to make job seekers apply for 40 jobs a month
]
Had to laugh at this.
[
A spokesman for Senator Abetz said dropping the plan showed the government was forming policy in consultation with the community instead of “on the run” like the former Labor government.
]
Sure it does.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-government-abandons-plan-to-make-job-seekers-apply-for-40-jobs-a-month-20141007-10r46j.html#ixzz3FP7Ii5c3
vic,
Originally, the Ring Road was supposed to go out back around Diamond Creek, Warrandyte and link up with the Eastern around Ringwood. (If you have an old Melways, the pathway is marked out.
This never proceeded because of Green Wedge issues and voter displeasure in the marginal seats of Yan Yean, Eltham and Warrandyte.
The Greensborough Highway was supposed to be another link to the Freeway to relieve traffic congestion through Heidelberg, Rosanna and Lower Plenty. As you know, many heavy vehicles get off the Ring Road and travel down through those areas to link up with the Freeway at Bulleen. That plan was to go through the Banyule Flats area and link up with the Eastern over near Bulleen Road.
At the last election, it was mooted that a tunnel be built from the bottom of Greensborough Road under the flats and come out at Bulleen Road. However, I’m sure that such an expensive construction would just have to join the queue of proposals that needs funding.
Can’t see anything happening in my lifetime.
Cyril
You laugh while you cry, don’t you. I wonder which Lib brain thought up the spin on that.
madcyril:
You’re right, that 40 jobs a month nonsense was a wacky idea. Good if they drop it.
zoomster
Those young “life is a game” players… I’m not of the group that supports the “old enough to drive, old enough to vote” theory. They don’t see the consequences of their actions.
Well, in this case, one of the consequences was that we got rid of Sophie Mirabella, and that is a Good Thing.
It’d be just a bit better if they’d thought and the ‘and then what?” scenario a little bit more – or hung around to continue giving their candidate the support she needs, instead of bolting back to Melbourne.
GG
Agreed. Cant see that happening in my lifetime either! At this stage, i am happy for the last bit of the current road to be fixed. It is ridiculous that this last bit remains in disrepair
[They don’t see the consequences of their actions.]
You could say that about any age group. I don’t think it applies exclusively to young people.
Confessions
I have had enough of listening to this terror talk. It is shitting me to no end
Something for Facebook users to bear in mind –
[ MasterCard has signed a two-year deal to mine Facebook Asia Pacific user data detailing consumers’ online habits to uncover behavioural insights it can then sell to the banks.
MasterCard plans to feed the data along with information from other sources into an analytics platform dubbed the Priceless Engine, and work with Australian banks, starting in early 2015, to serve up tailored online offers for MasterCard customers. The aim is to drive online sales. ]
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/mastercard-to-mine-facebook-user-data-20141006-10qrqy.html
Whilst recounting anecdotes from the mean streets, I met with an old friend who is one of the local Liberal stalwarts the other day.
She’s been involved with the Libs locally for about forty years, and worked very hard to have the seat shift from the Nationals to the Liberals. One of the ‘Hamer Liberals’ – a genuine ‘moderate Lib’.
Before I got much past hello and how are you, she launched into a very passionate, emotional speech about how shattered she was about the behaviour of the federal Liberals, how they were betraying all the principles she’d worked for and how helpless she felt about it.
She was nearly in tears.
(I told her to stick with it and work for change from within, mainly because I couldn’t see any other way to console her…)
victoria:
Yes, and the rabid cheering from sections of the media about how statesmanlike Abbott is looking is even more puke-making!
I wonder if we would have been better off without the mining boom. What did it give us?
A period of windfall gains that were squandered largely by Howard’s profligate pre-election middle class welfare?
An attendant structural deficit that no political party will have the will to dismantle?
The ridiculously high AUD that has in many cases irreparably damaged export industries?
The irrecoverable loss of key manufacturing capabilities?
The hugely disruptive drain on human resources by rapacious mining companies and the attendant overpricing of trades and other labour?
Taking our eyes off the ball with respect to what happens after the boom?
The rundown of finite natural resources?
I do wonder.
[Before I got much past hello and how are you, she launched into a very passionate, emotional speech about how shattered she was about the behaviour of the federal Liberals, how they were betraying all the principles she’d worked for and how helpless she felt about it.]
It’s because the Abbott government is not DOING anything.
They’re strutting around inventing “wars”, going on joyrides at huge expense, and dividing society.
The government is simply Abbott writ large: his personality, his ethos and his techniques transferred from one man to an entire parliament and executive. Mean, nasty and deceitful… and ultimately useless, in that they are not actually governing, just wrecking and pandering to tribal factions and crackpot ideas.
fess
It was the same when he was Opposition leader…he’d give an appalling performance in Question Time, and the news would be the one five second grab which made him sound vaguely sensible.
[Taking our eyes off the ball with respect to what happens after the boom?
The rundown of finite natural resources?
I do wonder.]
Norway, which today supplied this year’s Nobel Prize winners for medicine had a mining boom too. But they invested it and made sure their windfall worked for them.
We could have done the same.
Good Morning
@mashable: The power of Reddit: A Minecraft community helped talk a teen out of suicide this weekend. http://t.co/wfXsjYVSKc
I thought a good story was in order
BB
Labor to its credit does this. Hawke and Keating started it and Rudd and Gillard continued it.
Its just the shortsighted in the pockets of big business LNP that thinks you do not need revenue.
The LNP following the old Greek economic plan
[ It’s because the Abbott government is not DOING anything.
They’re strutting around inventing “wars”, going on joyrides at huge expense, and dividing society. ]
But abbott *fits* right in with the crazy stuff going on around the world –
[ As the Governor goblins at the Federal Reserve whistle past the graveyard of dead Quantitative Easing, and the US dollar magically expands like a prickly puffer fish, and Mario Drahgi does what it takes with Euro duct tape to patch all black holes of unpayable debt from Athens to Dublin, and Japan watches its once-wondrous economy congeal in a puddle of Abenomic sludge (with a radioactive cherry on top), and China chokes on its dollar-peg, and Russia waits patiently with its old friend, Winter, covering its back — and notwithstanding the violent chaos, beheadings, and psychopathic struggles across the old Levant, not to mention the doubling of Ebola cases every 20 days, which the World Health Organization did not have the nerve to project beyond 1.2 million in January (does the doubling just stop there?) — there is enough instability around the globe for the gentlemen of Wall Street to make one last fabulous fortune arbitraging the future before the boomerang of consequence circles this suffering planet and finally accomplishes what the Department of Justice under Eric Holder failed to do for six long years.
…Unemployment is down without employment being up. Candy Crush is making the world safe for democracy. We have the finest health care system in the world. ISIS is trying to compete with our homegrown videogame industry for supremacy in porno-violence (actually, I thought we already won that) but now we will obliterate all the bad guys in the world by remote control from the drone bunkers of Las Vegas, and that will show them. Thank goodness the long holiday season is almost upon us to juice the so-called economy ever-higher.
There has never been a crazier moment in history. The weeks before the outbreak of the First World War seem like a garden party compared to the morbid antics of these darkening days. America, you’ve been wishing fervently for the Zombie Apocalypse. What happens when you discover you can’t just change the channel? ]
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/must-be-the-season-of-the-witch/
John Oliver asks. How is Ayn Rand still a thing?!
Check out this video on YouTube:
http://youtu.be/oSk-C7W0L28
deblonay@969 on Galaxy: 51-49 to Labor | The Poll Bludger
Not really hard to work out deblonay.
While I respect and happily pick the brains of those who have real knowledge of topics that interest me, like BK and Socrates, I have seen through some of the more pretentious posters and don’t pay them the deference they feel is due to them (looking at you BB). I occasionally have the temerity to challenge or mock them. 😮
Then there is confessions… a class of her own.
Oh, I also occasionally express an opinion that is not approved of by those who like to think they set the PB agenda.
BK:
The West is reporting this morning that the Barnett govt is having to cut infrastructure projects because they can no longer be afforded with the downfall of the mining revenue. So yes, you have to wonder.
zoomster:
Yes, this is true. It seems to have inched up a notch when Abbott was up in the faces of everyone over the shot down MH flight.
lizzie@41
For a Liberal, Alan Hunt was relatively good and I can’t recall him ever being mentioned in a negative way.
His brother (I think) was a pilot in my fathers squadron in WWII and also well regarded by all who knew him.
Greg seems to arise from some recessive genes.
One of the problems with modern politics is that it has to be dumb, largely because of the way things are reported (and I include social media in that).
It’s very difficult to give a long, detailed, analytical speech (or answer) if you have to also consider whether or not one short phrase is going to be taken out of it (and out of context) and used to rubbish the other three thousand words.
(I’ve had personal experience of this – a very detailed analysis I wrote for a local paper wasn’t reported on at all. Instead, the editor used one sentence in the article to ‘show’ that I had inside knowledge that the State government was about to break a promise – despite the fact that, in context, the sentence didn’t even do that…)
We’ve seen it happen here – tweets posted which either take one phrase and blow it up into a major attack on the original speech, or which prove to have totally misrepresented what the person was saying.
And there doesn’t seem to be any corresponding benefit. A politician can give a long, considered speech and not only not have a word of it reported but find themselves under attack for ‘not having a policy’ when it was covered by that very speech.
Take Julia Gillard’s speech on climate change leading up to the 2010 election. Googling it is a very interesting experience. There are articles which make it clear she’s about to give a speech on climate change. There are (as far as I can find) no articles about the speech itself, let alone a transcript of it.
Labor was castigated at that election for ‘not having a policy on climate change’ – but the speech where their policy was spelt out, by the PM of the day, was ignored by the media.
Sorry, went off on a bit of a (relevant) tangent there – whether they’re reported honestly or not, politicians don’t seem to get any credit for delivering ‘serious’ policy speeches, either from the media or public.
This, coupled with the various pitfalls of trying to deliver such speeches in a way which won’t backfire on the speaker, is why three word slogans are becoming increasingly popular.
bemused
glad to hear that those who have left PB (mostly female) and said that your bullying behaviour was the reason were totally delusional.
zoomster:
That often happened with Julia Gillard. Remember all the column space dedicated to her glasses, her tripping, her clothes, her hair etc rather than whatever it was she had said or was announcing?
Abbott seems to have been soanxious to join the war he seems to have deployed 600 military personnel and some pretty expensive hardware half way round the world before the paperwork has been sorted out. Iraq doesn’t seem to urgently need our help. Why isn’t anyone saying how stupid this looks? Especially as the regional powers who are supposedly on the front line of any threat posed by Daesh don’t seem to be doing much if anything.
Bw
[Australia’s Wet Pantsmen fit right in.]
The second generation are confusing.
G1 decided here was good.
zoomster@81
And who were they?
I am usually the victim of bullying behaviour.
Re Mad Cyril @55: It was a crap idea that should never have seen the light of day. Good riddance.
You could say that about the whole Budget.
The Courier Mail has done an appalling front page.
Its demonising the victim in a murder suicide.
[ I am usually the victim of bullying behaviour. ]
Oh boo-fucking-hoo, bemused.
The Last Word.
PS. somehow I don’t think this will work
[I am usually the victim of bullying behaviour.]
lol.
“@political_alert: Greens Leader Christine Milne will hold a press conference at 11.15am in Hobart to discuss Iraq and the Renewable Energy Target #auspol”
gg
[go out back around Diamond Creek,]
Is Brock still around?
confessions
[ I don’t think it applies exclusively to young people.]
Research strongly suggests that teenagers “up to 25!” do not understand the full consequences of their actions, such as driving too fast, getting paralytic, etc.
For those over 25, it is a question of ignorance or foolishness, pigheadedness, or anything else you care to name.
lizzie
“Anyone remember what sort of Minister Greg’s father Alan Hunt was? Vague memory that he was local govt or similar?”
I was a local government councillor in Bendigo (Shire of Marong) in 1976/78 and attended LGA meeting in Shepparton. Alan Hunt was indeed Minister for Local Government. He opened the meeting with a fine address and I met with him afterwards to discuss piping all of the Loddon Campaspie irrigation water. He gave an assurance he would look into it.
Sadly, it came to nothing. Now they wish he had been able to twist Premier Hamer’s arm a bit more. Alan Hunt kept his word and wrote back to council that he had been unsuccessful. Most Liberals then were not like today’s deceivers!
BK
Re the mining boom and wondering about the benefits.
There have been few substantive benefits, as you imply, but rather a big, fat negative.
Mining resources provide a few jobs, some rail and port infrastructure that is only of use to the miners, and with the way investment has been structured in Australia, profits only benefit the mining companies and not the owners of the resources.
The mining boom has provided a bit of ‘sit down money’ while the rest of the economy has degraded.
Australians have been ripped off and fooled by a bunch of billionaires traipsing around in hi-viz and pretending to be the salt of the earth victims of a socialist mining tax.
We should stop subsidizing the diesel for these parasites immediately, and make the bastards pay for their own railway and port infrastructure.
Then we could afford a decent NBN, a fast transition to renewable energy, and proper investment in research and education.
ausdavo
There will have to be a hell of a revolution before we see the “old Liberals” back.
dave
[Russia waits patiently with its old friend, Winter, covering its back]
Love that. And good article.
P1
[Oh boo-fucking-hoo, bemused.]
Goosey Gander to bemused.
Ctar1,
Sadly, Peter Brock has gone to that great big pit stop in the sky. His brother Lewis was a Nillumbuk Councillor for a few years.
Last night’s QandA was interesting (my highest praise – I didn’t fall asleep!!) and it tried to tackle a broad subject.
I’m sure that Josh make some good points, because the others told him so. Am I the only person in the world who can never hear/understand what he is saying because he runs his words together?
CTar1@97
Sad thing about Player One, she cries easily.