Only very slight movements on BludgerTrack this week, Labor’s strong showing in Newspoll having been dampened a little by a relatively weak result from Morgan. The seat projection is unchanged in aggregate, although the Coalition is up a seat in Victoria and down one in Tasmania. Palmer United has once again reached a new low. There’s quite a bit more movement on the personal ratings on the back of this week’s Newspoll numbers, which continue to show Tony Abbott’s net approval heading south with some velocity, and Bill Shorten’s lead as preferred prime minister solidifying.
William
Firstly, thank you for, again, being able to explain something much better than I ever could (re: the importance of an openly-LGBT head of government)
Secondly, thanks in advance on the Fisher front. I should actually get around to doing the whole subscribing thing (at least just to give back to the site that’s provided me with such interesting viewpoints for a long time). Something for after-Christmas.
BW 1067 – and more heat = more energy into storms.
Hope your family in The Phillipines are safe. Typhoon Hagupit would do everyone a favour if it just shifted course a bit and hit the Sierra Madre ranges on the North East Coast of Luzon.
AA
You beat me to it! 😆
zoomster – I don’t agree that Labor ‘being nice’ to refugees is a voter loser. Children in detention is no more a vote winner than people drowning at sea. I do agree that we can’t do nothing, and Labor’s policy response from 2007-2013 did not work. But a commitment to doing something does not mean we have to throw out everything that makes us a civilised country. There must be a solution that busts the people-smuggling business model, while at the same time allows Australia to fulfil it’s moral obligation to people in distress.
I think people are naive if they think ‘boats’ doesn’t represent as big a problem as ever for the ALP.
Labor have no solutions. The LNP have demonstrated that ‘stop the boats’ is possible, and anything less than maintaining that situation will prove politically unacceptable.
At the next election I’m pretty sure the ALP will vow to maintain all of the boat-related policies the LNP have implemented. It will cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth here and in parts of the ALP itself.
If the ALP fail to follow through, it will be an ongoing problem.
And the (seemingly many) commenters here who distil it down to ‘appealing to bigoted voters’ will continue to fail to understand that it’s about (seeming) order vs chaos.
ITS
Yeah Jimmy I meant to say People Smugglers not Asylum Seekers, tho the two go together.
Showing such bile against “people smugglers” as if they cause the “problem” of people wanting to seek asylum in Australia isn’t setting the sort of tone you can use to justify a moral rejection of the LNPs marketing of fear and self interest.
The vilest form of human life? Viler than the torturers and murders that refugees and Asylum seekers are trying to escape from?
How does that work? They’re not torturing and killing them.
Language like that sends messages, one of which is its worse to help people come here for help than it is to cause them to seek that help in the first place.
To everyone else who undoubtedly noticed and commented on that glaring error, yeah you’re right read the paragraphs above this one again.
Obviously except for those who live there. The population densities are so different to Northern Australia. I remember Cyclone Thelma bearing down on us in Darwin in 1999, very scary. But then it changed course and hit at Kalumburu in WA, population about 100 I think all of whom we’re evacuated.
Apologies for my bad grammar.
Jackol – again, as I said in 1104, “There must be a solution that busts the people-smuggling business model, while at the same time allows Australia to fulfil it’s moral obligation to people in distress.”
Fran. Apostrophe not deliberate.
Jules @ 1107 – Fair enough. I don’t disagree with you.
Agree with Jackol. The ALP will be mad to go to the election with anything other than bipartisan support for the status quo on boats.
[The trouble with proof-reading – one often sees what one meant to write, not what one actually did write. Rather like the silly voters remembering the promises they thought Abbott made.]
Steve – yeah. Funny how that happens.
[Apologies for my bad grammar.]
Pfft! Don’t worry about it. We understand what you’re saying – that’s all that matters.
Don’t let the self-appointed enforcers of whatever arbitrary rules they’ve settled on in this anarchistic language make you feel bad!
Also, there’s nothing more dull than a grammar pedant – especially in a place with no “edit” function.
Carey
As one of the “grammar pedants” (although I usually restrict my reaction to a wince and say nothing), an edit function does san fairy ann for someone who doesn’t recognise their mistakes.
RR
Thank you. For some reason or other there is a reasonaly well-known phenomenum in which part of the Pacific Ocean the east/south-east of the Philippines has been very, very warm.
This is where many of the typhoons that smash the Philippines come from.
ratsak – I have to say that if Labor continues to it’s commitment to a set of policies on Nauru and Manus, that:
– all but forces Australian workers at those camps to be complicit to torture and deprivation.
– sees children being subject to threats of rape and beatings
– withholds medical treatment to refugees
– has seen a spate of suicide
– and additionally we’ve seen refugees refouled to their countries of origin, where they WILL be subject to threats of torture.
I will be voting informal. And I am a rock-solid Labor voter.
William Bowe@1083
WRONG assumptions in that William.
I see no relevance in a persons sexuality. I do not judge them by it.
The sooner it is seen as not even worth mentioning, the better.
Meanwhile, feel free to obsess about such matters and make your wildly off target attacks on me. It’s your blog.
Immigration is an area that’s politically easily exploitable. It tends to be off the agenda if the major parties act in a bipartisan manner. This is generally the case in Australia. Both parties see the economic benefits of our migration program.
I say generally as there is an exception. We used to have a bipartisan approach to refugees. That disappeared under Howard. Since then the Coalition have sort to exploit the issue for political advantage. While they continue to do this I doubt we will ever see a return to the sorts of policies we had under the Fraser Government.
I think Labor would very much like to return to something closer to the the pre-Howard days on this issue. But they can’t while the Coalition continues to make it an issue.
I don’t give a rat’s about Barr being gay, while acknowledging the points William makes, upstring.
I do give a rat’s that Barr is a core part of the Light Rail shambles.
[ Friends of mine who were doorknocking at the time of Tampa stopped, because they were being met with slammed doors and abuse – because, whatever Labor was saying publically, they believed that Labor would be nicer to refugees than Howard was being, and they were outraged at the very thought. ]
I can remember being shocked and saddened around then at the comments in the ref at the Uni where i work. Students and some Staff being stupidly xenophobic and vicious.
[ but being nice to asylum seekers wins very few votes. ]
Yup. Sad and humiliating as that is, for now it is true.
What REALLY pisses me off with it though is that we send them to place like Manus, indefinitely, and we do not put the resources into the system to house them properly, keep them safe, and provide proper medical care while they are under our control.
Also, the removal of possessions like phones, spectacles, medications is completely nonsensical and an out and out act of vicious bastardry.
These are inexcusable and the Dept, Military, Contractors, and most of all the Ministers providing directions to them should have their actions examined by a Royal Commission.
Flegg’s flag flutters:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-05/flegg-receives-broad-support-from-parliamentary-colleagues/5947404
[Fran Barlow
Posted Friday, December 5, 2014 at 5:29 pm | Permalink
Jimmy
I’ve noticed that you are persistently using an apostrophe in the singular generic possessive (its). You may be doing this unwittingly though I suppose it might be a style choice.
Just letting you know.
It’s easy to do. To my disgust, I did the very same thing once in a post to BW yesterday. So annoying! ]
Fran
Do you think the term “anal retentive” might have some application here.
[As one of the “grammar pedants” (although I usually restrict my reaction to a wince and say nothing), an edit function does san fairy ann for someone who doesn’t recognise their mistakes.]
I can only speak from personal experience but, at times, I have made typos on here that I have not immediately noticed and it’s rather embarrassing. A couple of times, I have even been called up on them – to the detriment of the rest of the post I had made.
While I have been clear on the there/their/they’re rule (and similar rules) since childhood, occasionally I will type the wrong one without noticing and, with no edit function, they stay. That’s why I don’t stress over errors too much.
If there was one error that occurs on here that annoys me, it is probably when people write “lose/losing” as “loose/loosing” but, even then, I don’t say much because I don’t want to kill the flow of conversation with corrections.
I dont care to much about typo’s.
Carey
To be honest, I think that the standard of writing here is pretty high.
There is no convincing evidence that Labor has ever lost a general election because the voters perceived Labor as too humane towards asylum seekers. The electoral salience of asylum seekers is a myth propounded by a pundit class with its head up its rectum.
In other words, Labor could take a humane policy on asylum seekers to an election and still win even if that particular policy is not popular. Other issues are far more decisive in influencing voting behavior.
A political party does not exist to soak up and reinforce every ill-informed prejudice that exists in the community. The fact that brutality towards asylum seekers polls well AT THE MOMENT is irrelevant to the question of what a political party ought to say on the subject. Political parties can correct erroneous impressions which have taken hold in the community. But if both major parties support brutality, it gives brutality a credence and respectability it does not deserve.
Therefore Labor’s moral and political duty is clear: point out the facts on refugee flows and refugee resettlement; model the behaviours of a civilized country; leave the Coalition isolated on a non-election winning issue.
By far the worst dereliction of duty ever committed by Labor is to provide the Coalition with bipartisan cover for a profoundly stupid and irredeemably cruel policy. Deny them that cover, speak frankly with the voters, and win elections on the issues which decide elections (which don’t include asylum seekers).
mikehilliard – 😆
mikehilliard
Don’t be a smartarse 😉
Jimmy
Be fair to me – I think I’ve made it very clear that I wish things were otherwise.
There isn’t any evidence that the ALP won votes by being ‘nice’ to asylum seekers. There’s a heap of evidence to suggest that being nasty to asylum seekers won votes for the Liberals.
I’d like the world to be populated by people with the hearts and souls of marshmallows, but it isn’t.
That is, of course, no excuse to be nasty to asylum seekers – but we’re not talking about that, but what wins/loses votes.
As I have often said here, there may be solutions where asylum seekers can be treated with humanity AND the boats stopped, but I haven’t ever come across one which everyone agrees can do both.
The Malaysian solution is probably the closest.
Bemused, I well understand that your own exemplary standards of enlightenment negate any sense gay people might wish to express about their improving position in society, since this is in fact all about you rather than them. Hence “narcissism”.
[690
Rocket Rocket
jm 687
I had never seen that site – amazing graphics, and when you go to earth view you could imagine what these look like from orbit.
695
jules
Just me that is a great map.
Thanks very much for that.]
My pleasure. 🙂
I only discovered it recently and it is a beauty, almost hypnotic, and certainly useful (I have it in my bookmarks bar).
For those weather watchers who missed it (an interactive, real time, global wind map):
http://earth.nullschool.net/
Use your mouse/trackpad to move the globe around to set the location, and separately to zoom in/out to set the scale.
When you have the location and zoom set how you want, the URL will automatically have those settings added into it, so you can copy or bookmark it to go straight back to those settings later.
[I dont care to much about typo’s.]
Your so evil!
Nicholas – I think there’s some evidence that the boats issues played some role in the 2001 and 2013 elections. They certainly weren’t the only issues at either election, but in the case of the latter, it was the abrogation by Labor of it’s duty to lead the country in the morally good direction that led to the inhumane system we currently have.
William Bowe@1131
Your projection is becoming tiresome.
Just Me
In NZ a couple of media outlets use it to illustrate weather and upcoming changes in animated form. It is a great improvement on the usual.
Sorry. 🙂
[In NZ a couple of media outlets use it to illustrate weather and upcoming changes in animated form. It is a great improvement on the usual.]
The BOM’s graphics leave a lot to be desired, IMHO, and their website is not the easiest on which to locate information. Though the real time Doppler radar rain animations are good.
Godwin Alert
[I’d love that to be the case, really I would, but the evidence is that the Liberals game was the game the voters wanted.
They don’t like people drowning at sea, and they don’t like boats arriving either. Every single bit of polling I’ve ever seen says that very clearly.]
Righto – you can set an example and educate people, ie you can show leadership, or you can read the polls and follow them.
Do you see where this is going wrt labor’s leadership issues 5 years ago?
[Friends of mine who were doorknocking at the time of Tampa stopped, because they were being met with slammed doors and abuse – because, whatever Labor was saying publically, they believed that Labor would be nicer to refugees than Howard was being, and they were outraged at the very thought.]
That sucks for your friends, but what sort of society do we want to live in? I’ve been physically attacked by strangers (more than once) for not backing down or shutting up about how we treat refos and it didn’t stop me continuing to rant at people.
What did the polls in early 30s Germany suggest about the treatment of Jews?
zoomster
The determination of the Opposition to oppose any resolution of the problem, and to pretend that the increased numbers of boats were caused by Labor, and not by world events, ensured that no solution would be bipartisan.
I agree with you. The regional solution would have helped, and a little more humanity now would help to differentiate the two parties. Howard’s solutions eventually became obnoxious to many. Perhaps the same will happen to Morrison.
zoomster – I certainly never thought you were in favour of our current treatment of refugees, and I apologise if I implied that.
However, I am sceptical that anyone who voted Liberal because of the “stop the boats” campaign was buying completely into what the current Government is doing. I thought the Malaysia solution was good progress, but understood why the High Court did not, given that Malaysia is not signatory to the Refugee Convention.
I do accept that this is a vexatious issue for Labor, and one that provokes viscerally negative reactions in many people. But as the party of the fair go, it is profoundly Labor’s duty to argue to the Australian people that we must treat refugees fairly, while at the same time, doing something about people-smuggling.
I have never been able to understand why Australia does not set up or fund the UN to set up a refugee camp in Indonesia, with the promise of efficient and timely processing for travel to Australia.
Have you guys ever considered the electoral appeal of “stop the boats” is really being interpreted by the blue collars/low level educated as stop/reduce immigration?…this is the same play being used by the GOP re the illegal migrants….implied threat to jobs and living standards….just a thought
If my above observation holds true then and “education” program to show the number of real migrants vs 457 vs “boat arrivals” could diffuse the issue by showing how few actually arrive via “the boats”
jules
[Righto – you can set an example and educate people, ie you can show leadership, or you can read the polls and follow them.]
Right. So you’re shifting the goalposts.
Your original statement was that treating asylum seekers more humanely was a vote winner.
The implications of that is there’s no need for education – a shift in policy will see the masses yearning for a more humane approach switch their votes.
Now you’re admitting that that’s not the case – that there’s a lot more work to do than simply adopt a more humane approach (funny how being more humane means accepting deaths at sea as collateral damage).
Oh, and Godwin’s.
[ I have never been able to understand why Australia does not set up or fund the UN to set up a refugee camp in Indonesia, with the promise of efficient and timely processing for travel to Australia. ]
I dont think the Indonesians would accept that because it could make them a destination rather than transit country. There are a lot of people stuck in camps all over the world without access to UN processing at all, much less with a view to coming to a country like Australia. It would shift the problem not alleviate it.
My son tells me he was getting his hair cut today and another older customer was venting his feelings about the benefits paid to asylum seekers while pensioners get nothing and how “no one can get their super” (whatever that means)
Eventually my son challenged the guy anout some of the inaccuracy of his statements and was told he was just a “greenie poof wimp”
Good to see the standard of debate at the hairdressers is as high as it ever was.
Jimmy
[I have never been able to understand why Australia does not set up or fund the UN to set up a refugee camp in Indonesia, with the promise of efficient and timely processing for travel to Australia.]
1. Because the UN doesn’t actually see the kind of asylum seekers who end up in Indonesia as needing particular concern. (They’re not starving to death, for starters).
2. Because processing by the UN carries with it the chance of rejection, and arriving here by boat doesn’t.
imacca – it would “stop the boats” :P. Indonesia could be persuaded to support it with a substantial increase in foreign aid, I’m sure.
Jimmy
no, it wouldn’t stop the boats, because asylum seekers who thought their case was marginal – if not downright dodgy – would avoid being processed in Indonesia at all costs.
[ imacca – it would “stop the boats” 😛 . Indonesia could be persuaded to support it with a substantial increase in foreign aid, I’m sure. ]
Ah yes, and out FM has such a good relationship with her Indonesian counterparts………..oh………dear……..