Another rough weekend for the conservatives (vid. the Fisher by-election) gets even worse with the latest Galaxy poll for the Sunday News Limited tabloids. This one has Labor leading 55-45 on two-party preferred, compared with 51-49 in the last such poll in early October, and 41% (up five) to 38% (down four) on the primary vote. The poll also finds that 41% would prefer Malcolm Turnbull be Treasurer against 21% for Joe Hockey.
Next cab off the rank should be Ipsos in the Fairfax papers this evening.
pritu@498
I happily criticise Labor when it is justified.
No way would I defend the likes of Obeid, MacDonald and those that put them where they were.
I also think we should have an ICAC in each state and also Federally. If that reveals any wrongdoing by people in the ALP, then they should be dealt with.
As any mature member of a ‘real’ political party knows, you can’t expect to have the party align 100% with your preferred positions. I support Labor overall, but not 100% in every policy detail. That’s life in the real world.
But the really big thing is that Labor is on the side of fairness and the underdog. Our opponents don’t, and the Greens just run interference by distracting our resources and telling blatant lies about us.
No doubt you will continue to do so.
[ Have to say this level of hubris is concerning. There is still time for the coalition to turn things around, win voters’ confidence, and get re-elected. ]
Yeah, objectively true, but then again its nice to see the Tories frightened and confused. 🙂 Politics has its ups and downs. We will assuredly suffer on the downs so rejoice and have fun during the ups.
BW
[It is a fine thing that you fulminate against Murdoch. Who wouldn’t?]
Well the ALP, actually. I am reminded that the ‘golden years of Murdoch support for the ALP were co-extensive with their cooperation with his takeover of almost all private mass broadcast assets in the major cities and regional towns.
So for all your remarks about shags on rocks, when the ALP had power over media policy they used it to write rules that helped him position himself to screw them.
We Greens at the time weren’t even a Federal party, so powerless to influence the ALP not to take this course.
[But remind me what the Australian Greens Party has actually done to curtail the power of Murdoch…]
If we had any power to curtail Murdoch’s influence, we’d have to outmanoeuvre the ALP to deploy it, so again, the question is perverse.
That beam in your own eye aphorism comes to mind …
JD:
This graph tells a story, one that Labor will try to capitalise on:
https://twitter.com/GordonGraham/status/541001832676347904/photo/1
There are so many opportunities.
GhostWhoVotes @GhostWhoVotes 16m16 minutes ago
#Ipsos Poll 2 Party Preferred: L/NP 48 (-1) ALP 52 (+1) #auspol
imacca:
True, but I’m totally loving the deer in the headlights blathering from so many Liberals, including the absence of their annoying, baiting presence here.
But still.
Fran Barlow@451
Sadly, the answer is a lot simpler than that …
There is no point in being a crook in the Greens because there is no possibility of the Greens actually influencing anything at all.
There is purity only in impotence, to paraphrase many others.
Fran
[If we had any power to curtail Murdoch’s influence, we’d have to outmanoeuvre the ALP to deploy it, so again, the question is perverse.
That beam in your own eye aphorism comes to mind …]
Thank you for reminding us all of the central importance of the Australian Greens Party’s powerlessness…
…as but a mote floating in a shaft of sunlight… is an aphorism that comes to mind…
Time to do some bedtime reading.
Good night all.
The Greens have an effect on Australian politics. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.
Let me just read up the last few pages counting.
DisplayName@510
The greens certainly have an influence here on PB … but fortunately in few other places!
I really want a rolleyes emoticon.
[501
bemused
I support Labor overall, but not 100% in every policy detail. That’s life in the real world.
But the really big thing is that Labor is on the side of fairness and the underdog.]
Very well said bemused. That is exactly the same reason I chose Labor over the Greens. Labor is imperfect, but worth perfecting. I worry for people who choose the Greens for reasons based on their ideological purity, as at some point in the Greens’s quest for government, and the power and influence that entails, the Greens are going to have to make choices that inevitably some of their supporters will not like. Where will that then leave those supporters?
Ipsos seems to be a bit of a …maverick?
I would certainly think the Ipsos house-effect has to be considered pro-LNP for BT… but that’s not my call.
Re Dan Gulberry @469: (more laugh emoticons)
One difference is that the Keystone cops and Basil Fawlty were by and large well intentioned rather than malevolent.
confessions – wow! They can’t even get a majority on border security! That’s gotta worry the Libs. Not only that, but it seems that this government is doing incalculable harm to the (undeserved) Liberal reputation for good economic management. In 2016, all people will be able to remember was how good the Rudd-Gillard years were: low unemployment, low interest rates, low inflation and good wage growth. Now we’ve just got a sh*t fight.
DisplayName@512
Yeah? There are a few I would like too. Vomiting for a start. Stunned disbelief for another.
JimmyD
yes, indeed – and what would be the point of joining a party you agree with 100%? It’s obviously getting along very well without your input.
A party which is imperfect but striving gives you something to work with (and for…)
https://twitter.com/bevanshields85/status/541539549483003904
[Bevan Shields @bevanshields85
Fairfax Ipsos poll out tomorrow. Shocker for Prime Minister Tony Abbott #auspol @PoliticsFairfax
9:27 PM – 7 Dec 2014]
bemused
We should start a petition ;).
JimmyDoyle@513
I leave ‘perfection’ to the Greens and other nutters. It is unachievable.
Striving for progress and improvement, and making gains, is what counts.
P1
[Sadly, the answer is a lot simpler than that …]
What you offer not so much simpler as simplistic. It is a fact that we are unappealing to crooks and careerists because we make very few careers and don’t have the capacity to deliver benefits to criminals. It’s also the case that our party is composed entirely of people who believe in our principles and want good process. That’s the flip-side of the above reality. Any crook or careerist who stumbled upon us would stand out like the proverbial canine’s testicles. There would be nobody with whom he or she could cut a deal.
That’s no bad thing, and of course it substantially reflects our organisational culture. In time, we will become the majority left of centre party, and these years of being tested will prove invaluable in resisting the hectoring from the outside to go where the ALP went, and with similar consequences.
DisplayName@521
I wonder if Musrum and Darius can assist… 😀
Naaah, I don’t think so – it would need something done to the website proper I am pretty sure. Pity about that.
It really would be great to see the full set of EMOJIs implemented.
[519
zoomster
what would be the point of joining a party you agree with 100%? It’s obviously getting along very well without your input.]
😆 very good point!
Fran Barlow@523
I really wish I had some of what you are smoking!
[522
bemused
Striving for progress and improvement, and making gains, is what counts.]
I agree that perfection is unattainable. That does not mean that striving for it is not worthwhile, especially if in the process you achieve improvement and progress.
[wow! They can’t even get a majority on border security!]
It’s on the economy and finances that they’ve really lost it. This used to be a stronghold area for the coalition, but not anymore.
Sudden changes in the polity are rarely predicted or understood at the time.
For me a defining moment was catching a commuter train into Melbourne recently and observing not a single soul reading a daily newspaper.
Five years ago more than half would have been reading a Herald Sun or The Age.
Both Melbourne’s Age and Hun editorialised against the ALP in the recent State election yet their pleas fell on deaf ears. The once dominant influence of the MSM is in serious decline.
This trend can only accelerate in the years ahead as the current retirees LNP bias declines and the tech savvy boomers, gen xrs and ys become dominant. Despite the despair of the last year, the Victorian State election result marks the turning point. And Fisher was indeed the cherry on the cake.
For those of us on the centre/left the future looks much brighter today than a year ago.
Keep the faith comrades.
Fran – The Greens are a party of the upper middle class left who care little for issues of economic justice and fairness. I understand perfectly well that the Greens are here to stay, but count me hugely sceptical of the claim they’ll become the main party of the left.
https://twitter.com/bevanshields85/status/541542987633676288
[Bevan Shields @bevanshields85
ABBOTT v SHORTEN: Sneak peek at some of the Fairfax Ipsos poll findings. Full link later tonight #auspol #ipsos
9:41 PM – 7 Dec 2014]
Click on the twitter link to see the image with the leader attributes
JimmyDoyle
[Labor is imperfect, but worth perfecting. I worry for people who choose the Greens for reasons based on their ideological purity, as at some point in the Greens’s quest for government, and the power and influence that entails, the Greens are going to have to make choices that inevitably some of their supporters will not like. Where will that then leave those supporters?]
This is a strawman on two grounds. Firstly, my party’s policies are not, in my view, ‘perfect’. I doubt any other party member thinks them perfect either. I have openly expressed my disagreement with my party’s policies here at PB on multiple occasions. Fairly obviously, I am a socialist operating in a party that is pro-capitalist. Amongst the things I’d like the party to do is to revisit the question of how we can build authentic community, rather than a less inequitable capitalism. My party however is not hardened against progress and its processes are inclusive.
The ALP is not simply imperfect but deeply flawed, institutionally as well as culturally. Changing that for something qualitatively better is a far bigger challenge.
[Click on the twitter link to see the image with the leader attributes]
Abbott simply not trusted. How to turn this around?
..and, of course, if they became the major party of the Left, the kind of spivs and con artists who hover around the edges of the major parties at present (encouraged or not) will join the Greens.
[Brad @piltzbp 8m8 minutes ago
Barnett confirms Nalder will remain in Cabinet despite conflict of interest claims – It’s how they roll #wapol http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-07/nalder-to-remain-in-cabinet/5950088 … ]
Ipsos can’t be that bad for Abbott if the 2PP is 48-52.
Unless his personal ratings have tanked even further that is.
Rossmore@529
I read my iPad version of The Age.
I expect many others do too.
There are probably even a few knuckle draggers who look at the pictures in the Herald-Sun iPad version.
Fran – I agree that I’d like to see a party, any party, propose ideas to rebuild civil society and our mutual sense of obligation to one another. I personally feel Labor is the best party for this. You may disagree, but regardless, I think the most important thing for the Labor Party to do, and for the left all over the world, is to abandon neo-liberalism and it’s reduction of people to mere units of production. The Labor Party is indeed deeply flawed but it has been the vehicle of progress since Federation and that is a legacy worth continuing and building upon. I commend you for having your eyes open to the failings in your party, just as I have mine open to the failings in mine.
No party is free of ideological conflict. The process might be conciliatory and inclusive, but the Greens are not immune to that kind of bickering and tension.
Plus the point has already been made, if the Greens do become the dominant left/centre-left party, they will suffer the problems of a large institutional force.
confessions
Watched a part of a program called Viewpoint tonight on Sky. Chris kenny is the host. Abbott had margie with him today when he announced changes to PPL. According ro Kenny and Janet Albrechtsen, he should do this more often including his daughters. It will help him like it did during the election campaign. This mob are bloody hilarious!!
Yes, Rossmore, I noticed the same thing re no-one reading newspapers on trains – often not one in a crowded commuter train carriage. A good thing. Another thing I noticed was that, while middle-aged women were still reading eBooks, younger people were reading real books again. This gladdened me.
You have distorted view of Greens members Jimmy.
I suspect it may come from the media.
I move within both Greens and ALP circles, old history versus recent.
Many of the Greens I meet, a hundred or more, a fairly representative sample of the membership, are disenchanted working class ex-ALP members, mainly unionists and often not white collar unions at that, younger than the ALP people by a fair margin and many more women than the ALP.
Of course that’s simplistic and generalised, they are a mixed bunch but no more middle class than the many ALP members I know.
Ipsos can say what they like but we’ve two REAL polls which have indicated that the Abbott government is electoral poison
Morgan must be happy that Ipsos has arrived on the scene – now someone else has even less credibility… oh, wait… forgot about Essential.
victoria:
OMG seriously!
victoria@540
Abbott’s wife and daughters are likely to be amongst the biggest beneficiaries of his changes to the PPL.
Sadly for him, I think the punters are onto this one as just another Abbott rort.
All I know is that they sip lattes.
Yep.
Darn
If i recall correctly, Ipsos had vic election poll at 50/50
victoria @ 540 – when in doubt, the MSM will always resort to the shallow spectacle, because it’s easy and doesn’t require much thought, especially when all you have to do is ‘keep score’ and ‘conduct tests’. The Press Gallery has long lamented the trivialisation of politics, but stubbornly refuses to recognise, let alone accept, that it is they who are implicated in this crime.
Bemused 537
True enough, but you and the rest of the commuting public will look at a whole variety of other information sources,
Whether it be the Huff Post, Buzzfeed, sports sites, Facebook, fashion pages ad infinitum. My point was that the influence of the MSM on the voting public is declining. Yes it still has weight and influence, but that influence is no longer the predominant force it was five years ago.