The latest result from Essential Research has both major parties a point down on the primary vote, in both cases from 40% to 39%. This makes room for increases of one point for the Greens and two points to others, both now at 10%, while Palmer United is now at 2%, which I believe to be a new low. Also featured are Essential Research’s regular monthly personal ratings, which offer yet another belting for Tony Abbott, who is down seven points on approval to 32% and up five on disapproval to 55%. Bill Shorten is down two on approval to 35% and up one on disapproval to 39%, and has opened up a 36-31 lead on preferred prime minister after trailing 36-34 last time.
There’s also results on how various politicians have performed over the past year, which are predictable in direction but very interesting in degree. Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and, more excusably, Christine Milne have equally poor net ratings of minus 22%, minus 24% and minus 23% respectively (Milne having an undecided rating quite a bit higher than the other two). The big eye-openers are Clive Palmer at minus 50% and Julie Bishop at plus 28%. Rather less interestingly, Bill Shorten is at minus 5%.
The poll also finds the issues respondents most want addressed over the coming year are improving the health system and reducing unemployment, with less concern for public transport investment, environmental protection, investment in roads and, in last place, free trade agreements. Respondents also deem it to have been a bad year for pretty much everything, most especially “Australian politics in general” at minus 53% (which is still an improvement on minus 62% last year”), the only exceptions being large companies and corporations (plus 14%) and “you and your family overall” (plus 3%).
A semi-regular question on same-sex marriage records weaker support than the particularly strong showing in June, at 55% (down five) with 32% opposed (up four).
WWP
I would like to apologise for that stupid argument we had last time. I was playing devil’s advocate and got a bit too into it.
Since Bishop is looking increasingly likely to become Australia’s next prime minister, it is worth having a look at just how much she can be trusted to take a sensible diplomatic lead on climate change:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/03/28/the-bishops-gambit-cutting-and-pasting-denialist-errors/
Merde.
In relation to climate change policy, Bishop also recently ran with the nuclear ‘option’.
Bishop has also argued the heavy emitters should take a disproportionate load in carbon emissions reductions.
She pooh-poohed any thought that per capita emissions had anything to do with anything.
Finally, Bishop is calling for any targets to be legally binding.
Even without Robb, Bishop was a safe emissary for the climate deniers.
Is Labor still in front in the Fisher by-election?
Bishop rather thought that Obama was wrong when he reckoned the Reef was endangered by climate change.
Bishop may know more about the Reef’s resilience to ocean acidification than the rest of us do.
Now on at the press club Obamas former climate adviser . Seems to bee talking mainly about oil and gas.
daretotread@331
Another LNP budget measure?
Boerwar
[Bishop may know more about the Reef’s resilience to ocean acidification than the rest of us do.]
Well timed. Chu at the NPC just talked about acidification.Half of our CO2 ends up dissolved there. Acid levels have increased 30%. For non science peeps, when CO2 dissolves in water it forms carbonic acid.
Apparently Labor are still 21 votes ahead in Fisher with only a few straggler postals to come and some provisionals. The last batch of postals unexpectedly broke heavily to Labor to put them back in front.
Darn
That could be described as karma (should ALP finish up winning).
People who were talking about AI the other day may or may not have seen this:
[In late October, we wrote about the Neural Turing Machine, a Google computer so smart it can program itself. In the time since, it’s become clear that this is only the beginning and we should expect a lot more from DeepMind Technologies, the little-known startup acquired by Google who developed the human-like computer and sports the mission “Solve intelligence.”
In discussing DeepMind Technologies’s delve into the future of computers with MIT, founder Demis Hassabis detailed the company’s research and mentioned that he wants to create “AI scientists.”
…
“One reason we don’t have more robots doing more helpful things is that they’re usually preprogrammed,” he told MIT. “They’re very bad at dealing with the unexpected or learning new things.”
DeepMind developed software that learns by taking actions and receiving feedback on their effects by combining “deep learning” with “reinforcement learning”—which researches have been tinkering with but failing to use as well as DeepMind for decades. DeepMind Software has learned to play the classic Atari games Pong, Breakout and Enduro better than a human expert without ever being programmed with information on how to play.
…]
http://betabeat.com/2014/12/ai-scientists-could-be-next-project-for-lab-that-built-googles-self-programming-computer/#ixzz3LSC7WX3W
There’s not alot in the article, could just be PR but it is interesting.
[says Feeney, who has ordered the removal of climate change effects on sea level in planning scheme.]
Seeney.
Although I’m sure Feeney is also staunch in his defence of property rights.
booleanbach
[We may have a completre (be polite!) dill for a PM but we also have far more variety in representation from independents and individuals than just two main parties than we have had for a long time. I like it a lot; even if i disagree with them from time to time.]
Well I for one do NOT like it. Some of these individuals garner a tiny proportion of the vote. Yet, as crossbenchers in the Senate, they end up with a huge amount of de facto power. It’s bad for democracy.
This Press Club talk in one hour kneecaps the Coalition Government from woe to go, without even mentioning the Coalition Government.
360, 361 – Apparently there’s also some talk of the independent candidate launching legal action so there may be a bit of room to go on that front yet. I wouldn’t think there’d be much poitn in challenging it as a loser as the electorate would be unlikely to be thankful of having to vote again.
Here we go again with more talk of information campaigns. The Government may change, but the lines keep repeating:
[Yesterday, Mr Abbott did not rule out launching an advertising campaign about the changes, despite having to defend a recent campaign explaining the higher education overhaul.
This morning, Health Minister Peter Dutton said there was an argument for it but no decision had been made.
“If we need to provide information we will,” he told the ABC’s AM program.
“I think it is very important, frankly, that we counter much of the misinformation that’s about because this is a balanced package.”]
Re politicised government advertising, there’s an obvious way of dealing with the problem.
(1) Have a strong set of guidelines.
(2) Require the Auditor-General to certify whether every element of a campaign complies with them.
(3) If every such element isn’t so certified, require the Auditor-General to certify the cost of the campaign.
(4) Amend the Electoral Act so as to provide that the Prime Minister’s party’s public funding entitlement will be reduced by that amount at the next election.
I dare the ALP to commit to this.
Boerwar
Will Speers be able to get his head around the answer he got ?
[pedant
Posted Wednesday, December 10, 2014 at 1:23 pm | Permalink
Re politicised government advertising, there’s an obvious way of dealing with the problem.
(1) Have a strong set of guidelines.
(2) Require the Auditor-General to certify whether every element of a campaign complies with them.
(3) If every such element isn’t so certified, require the Auditor-General to certify the cost of the campaign.
(4) Amend the Electoral Act so as to provide that the Prime Minister’s party’s public funding entitlement will be reduced by that amount at the next election.
I dare the ALP to commit to this.]
It is just as well we have an Australian Greens Party Government to look after stuff like this.
p
He did rather have the air of someone whose head was hurting him.
pedant, another way might be to make the funding for ‘information campaigns’ conditional on approval by a majority of both houses of Parliament – and not just via the usual mechanism of an appropriation. At the very least this would stop advertising being run on something that hadn’t secured the majority required for passage. Part of this could be a requirement that a report from the Auditor-General on whether the proposed campaign met certain guidelines.
Information campaigns with broad support might be able to be ticked off by agreement of the PM and Opposition Leader.
This is a really worrying trend.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/how-the-right-to-deny-the-existence-of-god-is-under-threat-globally-9913662.html
ltep @ 372: Yes, but it wouldn’t work if a government had a majority in both houses, such as when WorkChoices went through.
I can’t say I expect a crackdown of this type; my point is rather that it’s easy to see how it could be done. Personally about the only thing that ticks me off more than taxpayer-funded propaganda is parties which cry crocodile tears on the subject when in opposition, then do the same thing in government.
Incidentally, people doing international election observation in other countries invariably view this sort of thing – typically characterised as “misuse of state resources” – as derogating from free and fair elections.
BK
Meh.
The article focuses heavily on Islamic governments.
Our own Government sacks scientists, pays priets to ‘train’, allows government-funded religous organisations to discriminate against non-religous staff, and forces religious counsellors onto school communities.
I under reported the quals of the guy giving the press club a reality check on renewable and fossil fuel energy . Not only did he win a Nobel in physics he was Secretary of Energy rather than mere advisor for Obama.
SLAP. Asked for a “true or false” call of Abbott’s claim about coal being good and having a good future he answers “False. Really false” . Now explaining why coal is cactus globally.
poroti
Very impressive. He just goes on what is being measured.
BW
The stuff from Scotalnd was surprising.
Pity JulieB wasn’t listening to the Press Club. Tony’s ears would be too full of coal dust to understand.
BK
Canny?
Given the precipitous drop in public regard for Mr Abbott, it will be interesting to see how many “Tony Award” knighthoods are handed out in the New Year list. I suspect that they will be hard to give away, and Sir Peter and Dame Quentin must be feeling some regret at having said Yes.
Of course, they might, in the great British tradition, be sold to party supporters. Or used to encourage Dame Peta to jump ship.
Incidentally, has there been a more delightfully amusing idea floated than the suggestion that Dame Peta could take Senator Sinodinos’s seat? Nothing like taking the dysfunction from the PMO and moving it into the Senate. She would be just the person to negotiate with Senator Lambie.
The little toddler who ran out of the house has been found, drowned.
One of the Howard Government’s well-based claims to infamy was that it was involved in torture denial. (There is an article on the US Senate investigation into the use of torture by the CIA. But the Howard Government was specifically involved in the cover up of torture during Iraq War Two. In this sense it was preparing the Liberal’s moral platform for the by-now serial viciousness (with concomitant secrecy) by Morrison.
[CIA interrogation techniques included not merely waterboarding but physical abuse: shackling, standing or sitting to walls for extended periods, cramped confinement, stress positions, sleep deprivation, “use of insects”, hypothermia, rectal feeding, mock burial, Russian roulette, threats to harm detainees’ children and threats to rape and kill detainees’ mothers.]
lizzie
very sad. small kids often seek out water.
years ago one of my kids wandered off at relatives’ farm and I found them on edge of dam – very frightening.
Sorry
The article is in today’s Crikey.
[ The little toddler who ran out of the house has been found, drowned. ]
Bugger. 🙁
Shorten slaughtering the gotchas. Well on message – probably too many messages – such a smorgasboard.
The zinger: The Abbott Government is all barnacles and no ship.
Two suggestions:
Shorten’s eyes appear to be light-senstive. He screws up his whole face to protect them.
Shorten should ensure that pressers are in reasonable light.
The second suggestion is that he says less words in any one answer. Too prolix. He doesn’t need to kill Abbott – Abbott is doing that to himself. All Shorten has to do is to present himself at the funeral.
Bw
Local never ending saga:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-10/giralang-shops3a-high-court-upholds-challenge-to-development/5956928
[Finally, Bishop is calling for any targets to be legally binding.]
Just a thought… it would indeed be amusing if she got what she was demanding.
Does it bother anyone that Abbott might be gone too soon? That the sheeple will unload their anger/frustration on him and not notice that nothing has changed?
Which would you rather..
1. Abbott gets challenged. Bishop takes the reins and has 18 months to prove she is clueless too.
2. Abbott fights on, gets challenged in January, wins by a small margin, and carries on embattled into 2016 only to be replaced a few months before the election.
Personally I’d like to see 2, only goes all the way to the election. Sadly that’s looking less likely now.
[The second suggestion is that he says less words in any one answer]
I think you’ll find it better if he says fewer words….
BK
Please make it stop raining at the Adelaide Oval.
Thank you
BB Just a thought… it would indeed be amusing if she got what she was demanding.
That has brightened my day – and just imagine the heroine’s welcome she would get from Abbott when she returned!
adrian
One of my favourite pick-ups. So universal as to be lost, now.
cc – I think the anti-Abbott forces in the Liberal Party are just biding their time. They want him to be associated with as many “barnacles” as possible so that if they dump him (my bet is Nov 2015) they can rid themselves of as much of his detritus as possible and give the new leader a fresh start with a summer “honeymoon” and then less than a year until the election.
[ BB Just a thought… it would indeed be amusing if she got what she was demanding.
That has brightened my day – and just imagine the heroine’s welcome she would get from Abbott when she returned! ]
LoL! BB fantasising i see. 🙂
Would certainly make life interesting to see how they would then try and dodge around a legally binding target.
I would rather Abbott be gone as soon as possible.
Sure that might narrow the polls, but at least business might pick up again.
Abbott clearly doesn’t have a clue about economics, or Budgets, or how industry works.
If they put someone in who does know these secrets, we might get consumer confidence back up again, at least for a while, so I (and many others) can move some stock.
Toddlers
One of my boys, seeing a flat stretch of calm blue, set out confidently to walk across a river. He actually made a few steps before he started to sink, and his brother ran in and hauled him out.
Rocket,
That makes good rational sense.
But rationality and this mob are complete strangers.