Driven mostly by a dreadful result from top-tier pollster Galaxy, the Coalition suffers another substantial downturn in the BludgerTrack poll aggregate this week, to the extent of returning to the worst depths of the post-budget slump. The change compared with last week’s reading amounts to a clear 1% transfer on the primary vote from the Coalition to Labor, translating into a gain of five for Labor on the seat projection including two seats in Queensland and one each in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. With new figures added from Ipsos and Essential Research, the leadership ratings show Tony Abbott continuing to plummet, while Bill Shorten matching his post-budget figures on both net approval and preferred prime minister. Abbott hasn’t quite reached his lowest ebb on net approval, but he’ll get there in very short order if the present trend continues.
[— why has Sarah Hansen Young vanished from our TV screens?]
Please please please don’t jinx it. Has to be one of the most ghastly apparitions to have appeared in Parliament and she’s got some stiff competition.
Z
You’d make a great Lib strategist. Except I think the push is for Morrison to have an Immigration-Homeland Defense style superministry.
[In their first year in office, no less.
Stephen Koukoulas @TheKouk · 18h 18 hours ago
Joe Hockey 2012: “we will achieve a surplus in our first year in office and we will achieve a surplus for every year of our first term.”]
It’s not the promise, but the promising that makes this such an egregious statement.
Childcare will remain an issue until it is regarded as a parent issue rather than a mother issue.
Hockey was going on about job creation. How many jobs destroyed by this government so far? That is directly by their actions not the economic growth equals job formula Hockey is pretending to use.
They have a budget emergency so they need to make cuts – then why the expenditure on all the new propaganda?
Talk about mo idea. How gullible do they think the electorate is?
Tom.
[Joe’s self-congratulation over getting rid of income from the Alternative Energy sector makes me burn with anger. It’s foolish on so many levels.]
I use the analogy of the cosmetics industry. 99.9% of their product is snake oil. Yet it would be unthinkable for any government to close it down because all that money was being wasted on stuff that doesn’t work as advertized.
There were profitable companies in alternative energy. They employed many, many people, doing a good job producing products people wanted to buy.
That is where the analogy with the cosmetics industry deviates: alternative energy worked. Yet they have still substantially closed it down. Now all the technology developed locally will go overseas, so we can buy it back in later years.
Yet they closed alternative energy down, using justifications such as
* “It can’t replace baseload coal-fired power (who cares, as long as it replaces some of it, and more as time goes by?);
* Joe Hockey thinks windfarms near Canberra look ugly (others say they cause illness, proved incorrect time and time again);
“An industry should stand on its own two feet” (yeah right, like the low-employing mining industry and its fuel subsidies);
* and the zinger, “Coal is good for humanity” (which is about as big an non-sequiter as I’ve ever heard).
They pissed an entire economy up against a wall, destroying industries, putting people out on the street, because they couldn’t contemplate that their own bullshit stank.
I had joked about the Queensland LNP Government and King Canute but it seems fact is stranger than fiction:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-deputy-premier-jeff-seeney-controls-rising-sea-levels/story-fnihsr9v-1227155128499
ltep@1651
I think that’s a bit rough: while I can’t stand her politics, I personally find SHY strangely alluring.
It’s a nostalgia think: she reminds me of all the strident lefty chicks I used to hang about with on campus a few decades back…
PS. Any indication when Shorten or Bowen will respond to Grumpy Joe?
1622…pegasus
Yes It beats me why Andrews declined to take up Napthine’s offer of a margin in voting which would have eliminated the microparties…a short sghteded act which may cost Andrews dealy in the years ahead…and why ????
..and we know it is need for the Senate too
[It’s not the promise, but the promising that makes this such an egregious statement.]
When you watch the video of Hockey making that statement he’s sweating profusely. Mabye he knew back then just what an egregious statement it was.
upper house votes …1622…pegasus
Yes It beats me why Andrews declined to take up Napthine’s offer of a margin in voting which would have eliminated the microparties…a short sghteded act which may cost Andrews dealy in the years ahead…and why ????
..and we know it is need for the Senate too
[why has Sarah Hansen Young vanished from our TV screens?]
TG.
Also gone missing is Scotty’s chocolate soldier.
[Yes It beats me why Andrews declined to take up Napthine’s offer of a margin in voting which would have eliminated the microparties…a short sghteded act which may cost Andrews dealy in the years ahead…and why ????
..and we know it is need for the Senate too]
Not really needed if they abolish group voting tickets and allow optional preferential above and/or below the line.
Diogenes
Posted Sunday, December 14, 2014 at 11:09 am
[ Except I think the push is for Morrison to have an Immigration-Homeland Defense style superministry.]
Sounds very American.
[The government is mistaken to cast the climate negotiations in narrow commercial terms, and appear wary only of the potential cost to Australia. This attitude is unfortunately reflected at home in the attempts to wind back the Renewable Energy Target. Instead of seeing a chance to foster innovation and cleaner technology, the government appears stubbornly intent on protecting the fossil fuel industry.]
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-editorial/australia-needs-a-better-climate-story-to-tell-20141212-1263g3.html
[confessions
Posted Sunday, December 14, 2014 at 11:30 am | PERMALINK
It’s not the promise, but the promising that makes this such an egregious statement.
When you watch the video of Hockey making that statement he’s sweating profusely. Mabye he knew back then just what an egregious statement it was.]
That would fit nicely into the lie theme wouldn’t it – a very similar situation to Abbott’s big claims just before the last election that there would be no surprises and nothing was going to be cut. Hockey made a big promise about the surpluses he was going to deliver from day one and now he is doing the exact opposite.
Mumbles is too strongly wedded to his Incumbency and Authority Theory of Everything to do some actual analysis of the factors determining voting intention and what political and economic conditions are likely to develop over the next two years.
He’ll keep insisting, right up until a week or two before the 2016 election, that the Coalition will probably win, and if they lose he’ll rationalize it away by saying something like, “They didn’t really behave like an incumbent; they squandered their authority.”
Hockey’s out in the statement
is the qualifying phrase “Based on the numbers presented last Tuesday”.
BK @1618
Just saw that video you linked and loved it. Thank you!
An Aussie putting the yanks straight.
zoomster@1638
She has a PhD in Economics.
She might have some glimmer of understanding of the folly of Abbott, Hockey & Corman’s policies.
Darn:
It was a stupid thing for Hockey to promise. Such a clear, unequivocal statement as well.
Nicholas
[He’ll keep insisting, right up until a week or two before the 2016 election, that the Coalition will probably win, and if they lose he’ll rationalize it away by saying something like, “They didn’t really behave like an incumbent; they squandered their authority.”]
If i recall correctly. that is exactly what mumbles did with the Vic state election
[1632
lizzie
Hockey:
We will use the Budget as a shock absorber to compensate for the drop in terms of trade.]
This has been happening on a rolling basis ever since the terms of trade peaked in 2011. Since they’re still falling – and could fall a very long way before reverting to their 20th century mean – deficits will go on climbing. That is, income growth will be either very weak or negative in nominal and/or real terms for years to come.
The private sector has responded to this by increasing its savings rate. Were it not for public sector deficits (dis-saving) aggregate demand and therefore employment would fall – a recession would ensue.
This is all pretty clear and even the LNP seem to understand it. But it is an intrinsically passive approach to policy.
We need policies that will lift income growth in the domestic sector. To the extent that the LNP have any policies at all, they are not aimed at income expansion so much as at redistribution: they will have the effect of cutting the (widely-construed) incomes of the lower 4 quartiles of income-earners and favour the highest quartile. They clearly regard this as “fair” from the viewpoint of their base supporters, who still pay most of the personal tax collected by the Commonwealth.
The upper quartile are high savers. Effectively, public sector dis-saving is enabling increased saving by the well-heeled without also generating a recession – at least, not yet.
This will necessarily be negative for wider incomes, spending, demand, employment and fiscal collections. The LNP are trying to shrink the public sector. What they will achieve is likely to shrink the economy instead.
Re Sharman Stone: strangely, there seems to be quite a lot of love for this individual among the Labor-voting types on PB.
I’m sure that’s she a strong advocate for her electorate, but on a couple of occasions I have seen her up close, she has struck me as being a bit flaky, and have heard this view expressed by others who have worked with her more closely.
Sure, she’s got a PhD: so does Peter Phelps the NSW LC member, who is a profound ratbag. Not to mention David Kemp, Jim Cairns and Bert Evatt: ratbags all. I’ll need more evidence that this to convince me that Sharman is much chop.
Arbitrary quotas are not the answer. Abolishing group ticket voting is the answer.
Quotas are quite anti-democratic. Provided a party gets actual preferences written in by actual voters, and they have enough such votes (whether primary votes or not), they are entitled to be elected, and to strike them out because of some arbitrary number is wrong in my opinion.
Anyway, scrap GTV and let’s see if there is still a problem. I’d bet good money that the current problems would disappear basically overnight.
Inner Westie@1670: “based on these numbers” won’t really cut it, I’m afraid. The numbers change all the time.
The fact is that the Abbott Government has so far done more to increase the surplus than decrease it. They can lecture the Senate all they like about the urgent need to pass the Medicare savings: but these are all hypothecated to other expenditure. We seem to be about to have PPL Mk II unveiled: that sort of major spend hardly represents “heading in the right direction”, does it?
Labor should start adding up all the Budget one and offs since Sept 2013: I don’t think it would present a pretty picture.
[Labor should start adding up all the Budget one and offs since Sept 2013: I don’t think it would present a pretty picture.]
Who would report it?. the whole thing is a circle.
meher
my rearrangement of the Liberal cabinet is not an endorsement of any of them.
I lost a lot of respect for Stone (what I had was based on Joan Kirner’s praise of her) the day I heard her say that, on days of extreme temperature, power shouldn’t be cut to farming areas – her reasoning being was that this was hard on dairy cows but noone had ever died due to a power outage.
MB
Did you mean… more to increase the deficit than reduce it?
BK
Thanks for posting the comedian talking about gun culture. Too funny and insightful
Gecko: yes I meant deficit. Oops.
zoomster: that’s the sort of ratbag comment that Stone is known for in private. She’s usually got enough sense to behave better in public: she’s not all bad IMO, but not Cabinet material.
meher
She’s very very popular in her electorate. Out doorknocking, I’ve learnt there’s no value doing anything but smile and nod when her name comes up…
meher baba@1676
Jim Cairns was not a ratbag prior to a period of decline which seemed to commence with his infatuation with Juni Morosi. Probably a symptom rather than the cause.
Jackol@1677
Very noble sentiments there Jackol, but it is also a question of practicalities.
There is obvious gaming going on and the result is ever expanding ballot papers which increase informal votes, confuse voters and are generally disruptive to a proper conduct of an election.
I am curious how anyone could think someone commanding the support of a minuscule percentage of the electorate should be elected by pure chance.
bemused: Cairns was a bit of a mixed blessing throughout. He was a divisive far left figure in the 1960s – one of the people helping to make Labor unelectable – but he was actually surprisingly reasonable and effective as a Minister under Whitlam before he started bring led around by a certain part of his anatomy.
meher baba@1688
Cairns played a heroic role leading opposition to Australia’s role in the Vietnam War.
Yes, he saw Whitlam as being from the ‘right’ and therefore opposed him at times, but I do not recall him as a ‘divisive far left figure’. He did provide a lot of the intellectual power of the left in the sixties.
I think you have to look elsewhere for the true villains.
@SwannyQLD: When Labor used the phrase “responsible borrowing has acted as a shock absorber” Hockey called us fiscal vandals #youcantbelieveawordhesays
briefly
[This will necessarily be negative for wider incomes, spending, demand, employment and fiscal collections. The LNP are trying to shrink the public sector. What they will achieve is likely to shrink the economy instead.]
Surely the LNP realise this?
This tweet from PVO
[The Australian reveals that while the PM insisted Flanagan share the PM’s fiction literary award, he hadn’t read Carroll’s book. Oh dear…]
I think there are two telling claims in Warren Entsch’s criticism of Abbott which have significant implications.
1) That Abbott’s mouth is responsible for all their bad, daily headlines.
2) That members including ministers learn about policy “improvements” from the meeja.
These are very fundamental matters which if Abbott/Credlin do not address, either or both will be shafted.
Nevertheless I agree with others here ….. for the moment Abbott is Labor’s best weapon. It is all a matter of timing as to when Abbott has wounded the party so much that a new leader will be unable to rebuild before 2016 election.
The damage he is doing in the meanwhile to our nation is obviously also a consideration.
bemused – please read the comments you respond to.
What part of “abolish group ticket voting” don’t you understand?
If the micros can’t collaborate to magically funnel votes thither and yon, the whole point of having all these micros will disappear.
Let’s do that first and see what happens before we start erecting anti-democratic arbitrary barriers.
I remember Cairns at Mosman Town Hall educating the crowd about Vietnamese history, with a pile of academic tomes on the lectern from which he quoted. His purpose was to teach us about the wrongs that had been done, but his speech was firmly based on fact. I was hugely impressed at the time and I’ve never forgotten it.
Sadly, he was flawed, as are we all, but he certainly inspired me at the time.
@MichaelPascoe01: Think I was the first to say an Abbott govt would never deliver a surplus http://t.co/wClwV9bh8Q rhetoric @JoeHockey confirms it – karma bus
@SwannyQLD: The Good Fight shows that if this blowhard had been in charge during the GFC we would have had a recession #MYEFO http://t.co/BMxLnFxnfd
meher baba @1678
It won’t stop him trying!
It seems that the strategy of ramming the ‘debt and deficit disaster’ message down our throats in Year One to justify a wide-ranging set of unfair and ill-communicated cuts has come a lacerating cropper for Hockey and co.
The plan, I assume, was to turn all the austerity around in 2016, making the election year one of repeat-play ‘budget back under control’ boasts.
Now all we have is a pathetic bread-crumb trail of excuses that leads all the way to a dark desk cavity in Abbott’s office.
psyclaw@1693
And don’t the Libs know it too!
When working on pre-polls in the Vic State Election, I was engaging in some good natured banter with the Libs and made a comment about us deploying our secret weapon in Victoria – Abbott. 👿
The only response was silence and downcast eyes. 😆
Zoomster
Sorry I was out on a street stall, so could not reply.
I really LIKE your Cabinet assessment – although a little more dangerous for labor.
I am assuming Foreign Affairs is vacant too.