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.
Lao:
You’ve missed a few Sydney storms the past couple of weeks.
Hey BK
How you doing? Saw your new site from the other day but haven’t really looked at it closely yet. Interesting subtle repositioning
Interesting times in SA. Do you have new member for Sturt pencilled in? 😛
It seems to me the Tories believed their own publicity on economic management.
and why wouldn’t they? were any of their cheerleaders in the media asking any hard questions in the six years they spent in opposition?
Howard and Costello remind me of the quote from Shakespeare: Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.
Howard and Costello had their reputation as economic managers thrust upon them and even then they stuffed it by wasting boom time revenues on tax cuts and middle class welfare
hockey as shadow treasurer thought all he had to so was huff and puff and sneer at Swan in QT and when he got the main gig everything would be fine and dandy just as had been when he was last in government. No need for policy, just axe the carbon and mining tax and all would be rosy.
He’s still huffing and puffing and sneering in QT while things go downhilll fast.
It’s time he either came up with a plan or got out of the way.
Rocket Rocket@1747
I was not well acquainted with Jim but did have some interaction with him and met him a few times. I think I only encountered Gwen once, she seemed to stay very much in the background.
I wasn’t aware of that nuances that you mention in relation to his assailants, but it certainly fits his character.
Poroti – yes indeed. And as someone else mentioned above, it is a long flight to and from Lima.
‘fess – hey. Yes I was actually there for several of those. All that humidity; not like the beautiful dry heat here in Perth 😀
bemused
Posted Sunday, December 14, 2014 at 3:46 pm | PERMALINK
[Is there anyone who does fit ‘exactly’? We are all individuals and come together in the service greater than any of us. It is unrealistic to expect the collective wisdom of many to align exactly with your opinions exactly.
Enjoy making your contributions and challenging anything you don’t agree with.]
I like ShowsOn.
He doesn’t bullshit.
The Jakarta Globe
[As economists debate whether Shinzo Abe can end Japan’s long funk, I can’t help but wonder if another wealthy, seemingly world-beating economy isn’t headed for its own lost decade: Australia.
This mere suggestion will strike many as hyperbolic. The economy Down Under has avoided recession for more than two decades. The government enjoys a fiscal position that inspires envy in Washington and Tokyo. There remain vast resource deposits underground, while new infrastructure is coming online to extract and ship that treasure to China and elsewhere.
Australia’s good fortune, however, looks to be waning. Slowing growth in China, driven in part by the government’s efforts to rebalance the economy, has devastated commodity prices: Iron ore, Australia’s biggest export, now fetches half of the $140 per ton it did last December; coal prices have tumbled as well. These are long-term, not cyclical trends. And unfortunately, the trajectory plotted by Prime Minister Tony Abbott over the last 14 months has left the country less prepared for that difficult future than when he took office.]
http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/opinion/australia-adrift/
Hi Laocoon
Yes they are interesting times in SA. Looks like there will be a recount in Fisher and the independent guy is pissed off with underhanded work from the Libs and may go the legal route.
The company repositioning has been an 18 months journey and had to be done looking to the future. We have become much in demand from governments and have been in on the ground floor with 3D printing (additive manufacturing) of metals working closely in association with CSIRO.
I have been mightily pissed off with the idiot Minister Johnston over the submarines.
We are very much in demand at the moment as a lot of long term market development is paying off.
Lao:
Apparently there’s a giant waterslide down St George’s Tce today.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/25769186/slip-sliding-down-the-terrace/
Thanks ‘fess
That is reducing my incentive to go into the office!
I love how when the state government here gets into a slightly sticky media patch, it trots out the “we wont have a congestion charge in perth” line…like it misses one of the pre-requisites for such a charge, viz. congestion
Abbott lost his shit when he introduced dames and knights.
Been mocked ever since.
Abbott:
[I’m not the peasant mocker
I’m the peasant mocker’s son
I’m only mocking peasants. . .]
Um, er, er, he ha he, How’s it go again, Pete?
[1757
guytaur
The Jakarta Globe
As economists debate whether Shinzo Abe can end Japan’s long funk]
While Japan’s GDP growth has been very low in absolute terms, real per capita incomes have been growing at around 2% pa….so not the “lost years” commonly supposed.
Lao:
Normally the WA govt picks a fight with the feds when it gets into trouble.
Lord Buffering of Wentworth has pulled off the magic pudding award for the year, perhaps for the millennium so far.
Although the copper network also traces Liberal policy…
1. Copper network largely paid for by taxpayers when the old PMG was a government agency, set up and funded by Malcolm Fraser.
2. John Howard sold Telstra, inclusive of copper network, to mostly taxpayers or their super funds. Proceeds to Future Fund.
3. Turnbull now buys the same copper network from Telstra, using taxpayers funds – both present and future promissory notes via banks.
So the taxpayer is paying 3 times for the same copper, whilst getting rich is the army of spivs and shirt tuggers through generations of Liberal Party governments.
And we will still have the slowest broadband in the OECD
In Swans book, he states that Howard/Costello had and extra 344 billion revenue as a result of the resources boom and they wasted all of that except for 20 billion. In Swans time, revenue fell by 160 billion. He also says that every spending programme was achieved by a savings elsewhere. Compelling reading.
sprocket
Didn’t NBN Co negotiate an $11b price with Telstra for the copper network, initially??
Now, 12 months later, Big Sir Dame Mal Turnbull has managed to renegotiate the sale for $11b.
Geez, what a trooper!
Why does Fraudband cost so much?
[NBN Co will assume ownership of Telstra’s legacy copper and hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) networks and Optus’ HFC network under revised definitive agreements with NBN Co and the Australian government signed on Sunday.
The original AU$11 billion deal with NBN Co signed in 2011 would have seen Telstra decommission its copper network and transfer fixed phone and broadband customers from both the copper and HFC networks onto the fibre-to-the-premises National Broadband Network (NBN) as the network was rolled out. A similar AU$800 million deal was also signed with Optus at the time for its HFC network.
Since the election of the Coalition government in September 2013, however, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has directed NBN Co to abandon the fibre rollout to 93 percent of Australian premises, and instead opt for a mostly fibre-to-the-node and HFC “multi-technology mix” network.
…….
Telstra CEO David Thodey said today that the agreements took over a year to finalise; much longer than anticipated by Turnbull prior to the last election, due to the complexity of the three technology types, rather than the value of the deal.
“The commercials were pretty straightforward. It has been the complexity of the technologies,” he said.]
http://www.zdnet.com/article/nbn-co-and-telstra-sign-amended-11-billion-deal/
Oh, and who benefits from the retention of HFC – the ugly black cables strung on telephone poles it some metro areas – as well as copper?
[Both Telstra and Optus do retain some use of their HFC networks, with Telstra keeping access to the HFC for the delivery of Foxtel pay television, while in the Optus agreement, the company will retain ownership of fibre to connect to mobile base stations and business customers.]
Beautiful clear day here in the Valley
31 degrees, overcast at times (almost stormy skies), now brilliant sunshine.
Gotta go make my bed – and then lie in it.
Makes me wonder what Dame Sir End-of-(En)titlement Toni thinks about, late at night, in his seminarian-type lodgings at Aus Barracks (for which he claims $300+ per night, but pays $0).
Probably gets the self-mortification for free, too.
[1736
boomy1
@1732 briefly
Politics has changed even in my lifetime.I vote Labor yet I once voted Green. I realised a vote for the Greens was embracing powerlessness.]
For me, voting Green is to divide the ranks of those that oppose the LNP.
But more telling than this – much more telling – it is also to buy into LNP-supremacism. It is to take to heart the Tory myth that Labor can never be any good because they are not drawn from the privileged.
Quite the opposite, Labor aspires to represent those who would never purport to be “elite”. Capable, yes. Serious, yes. Industrious, yes. Purposeful, egalitarian and modern, yes. But not, as Abbott would have us believe, in any authentic sense “elite”.
This insult is exactly what Abbott encoded with his recurring claims that the last Labor Government lacked “legitimacy”. This is just another disgraceful slur, of course. It is snobbery, all said and done, and should be contested for its own sake. The single most effective way to express this politically is to vote Labor.
The Greens, by contrast, might purport to be “for the workers” but certainly do not regard themselves as being “of the workers”. The best they can hope to do is to pick the pockets of the ALP from time to time.
[Makes me wonder what Dame Sir End-of-(En)titlement Toni thinks about, late at night, in his seminarian-type lodgings at Aus Barracks (for which he claims $300+ per night, but pays $0).]
Is this true? So voters are paying twice for Tony? Once to provide the bed, and once more for the hell of it.
adam abdool
You may be interested in a look at this from Per Capita
[AFTER THE PARTY:How Australia spent its mining boom windfall]
http://www.percapita.org.au/_dbase_upl/After%20the%20Party_Final4.pdf
Bob Ellis is sounding cranky with the Lying Friar’s regime. This quote the more sober, click the link if you want the full monty
[A hundred bank executives said the Joe Hole was ‘stalling the economy’. Having destroyed two hundred and fifty thousand jobs by telling Holden to piss off, Joe now proposed to close down a hundred and fifty government entities, they noted, thus abolishing hundreds more. Mateus Cormann, whom some now call ‘the Grim Reaper’, gleefully announced which entities they were, then was told to his amusement he had abolished ten of them already. ‘I love to count, heh, heh, heh,’ he chuckled in his well-beloved Belgian monotone.]
http://www.ellistabletalk.com/2014/12/14/the-three-worst-things-the-liberals-did-yesterday-138/
boomy1@1756
Seems a lot here don’t like him, including, dare I say, our host.
But I enjoy his posts and at his best he can be hilarious.
briefly @ 1770:
That sounds like a pretty fair assessment to me.
So, Sir Sweatalot is now the Lying LIAR about Sir Plusses.
Hockey: I never promised you a rose garden.
Pack: Oh, yes you did.
See here: Roll Traitor-ABC film of Hockey Press Club Address:
[. . . we will achieve a surplus in our first year in office and we will achieve a surplus for every year of our first term]
Hockey: I was non-PLUSSED, after being put in a choker-hold on the saw bench.
Pack: WTF?
Hockey: Dolly did it.
[Nine News Australia @9NewsAUS 2h2 hours ago
Tensions within the government reach boiling point – PM @TonyAbbottMHR responds. The EXCLUSIVE interview in #9NewsAt6
]
If anyone still watches Ch9 News, could they post a report on the Lying Friar’s demeanor.
[1765
sprocket_
1. Copper network largely paid for by taxpayers when the old PMG was a government agency, set up and funded by Malcolm Fraser.
2. John Howard sold Telstra, inclusive of copper network, to mostly taxpayers or their super funds. Proceeds to Future Fund.
3. Turnbull now buys the same copper network from Telstra, using taxpayers funds – both present and future promissory notes via banks.
So the taxpayer is paying 3 times for the same copper, whilst getting rich is the army of spivs and shirt tuggers through generations of Liberal Party governments.
And we will still have the slowest broadband in the OECD]
Unbelievable.
Yet there it is, stark as daylight, real as anything. A vindictive irrational wrecking of our basic critical telcom infrastructure, courtesy of the ‘Infrastructure Prime Minister’.
And I see Foxtel get a good deal out of it.
Only honourable thing left for Turnbull to do is resign and spill the beans about the inner workings of the Abbott government, offer a grovelling apology for his part in it, then leave the country.
🙁
Another delicious headline to savour.
[Bishop hits back at PM’s sexism claim over Credlin]
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/julie-bishop-challenges-tony-abbotts-claim-that-peta-credlins-critics-are-sexist-20141214-126qsf.html
briefly@1724
Great insight, thank you.
Anybody running a book on Abbott being garrotted by his own tribe before Xmas?
[:D]
What a great deal for Telstra. They still get the $11bn. But now they don’t have to pay for the remediation of the pits, etc.
This drives up the cost of rolling out FTTP significantly. It even drives up the cost of rolling out FTTN. It’s extremely short sighted. But when you’ve committed to rolling out FTTN and you don’t have a copper network you need to buy one from somewhere.
sprocket_@1765
I am not sure what you mean by your 1).
PMG included telecommunications and postal services within Australia. There was also OTC, the Overseas Telecommunications Commission for telecommunications beyond our shores.
Under the Whitlam Govt, PMG was split into Australia Post and Telecom Australia although this did not come into effect until early 1976. The were Govt owned corporations.
Under the Hawke/Keating Govt, OTC was merged into Telecom Australia, still a Govt owned entity.
Telecom Australia adopted the Telstra identity as its trading name overseas, but preserved the Telecom Australia name domestically (with a redesigned logo) until 1 July 1995, where it adopted the Telstra branding domestically as well.
I regret to say that Labor does not have entirely clean hands in our Telecommunications fiasco as it failed to structurally separate wholesale and retail activities of Telecom/Telstra and presided over the wasteful duplication of the HFC rollout for cable TV.
NBN would have redressed much of this past failure.
poroti:
The Liberals sure ain’t a happy camp these days! It’s fantastic to see them unravelling like this.
B.C.@1782
Anyone with a passing acquaintance with Telstra infrastructure would have been well aware of the asbestos cement pits and ducts.
It beggars belief that this was not brought to the attention of the Govt / NBN and taken into account from the very beginning. If Telstra actively concealed it by lying then be it on their head.
THE SO-CALLED BITCH-FIGHT BETWEEN BISHJ & CREDLIN
Whoa! Who to believe?
As the semi-(think B-double)-permanent(think rent in arrears) resident FEMINIST here, I guess you’re all wondering what I’m thinking. (That’s a joke, right)
Does BishJ looks like she’d call the shots, come hell or high water? Sure.
Does Credlin effect the same? Hell yeah.
I’ve taken many Toms to the vet, for property-ownership rights (usually the injury is where the tail meets the body proper)
But I have never seen two felines fight.
Reckon we should be looking at the fellas!
Has Turnbull bought the decrepit copper network from Telstra? The one that had about 5 years of life left in it?
Oh, okay, when i said two felines, I meant two female felines.
And, of course, that means, I’ve never seen two female felines fight.
They’re too busy mothering to be bothered with the stupidity of territory.
kezza
They say that you get the face you deserve (or something like that). The media may be picking all the most unattractive photos of JulieB, but she’s appearing harder, more severe, more ‘mannish’ day by day.
The Greens have come 2nd in another electorate in Victoria.
Follow the link to the relevant thread for details.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2014/12/08/late-counting-legislative-assembly/?comment_page=9/#comment-2096756
lizzie:
She’s lost weight and has started seriously jogging in recent years. To me runners always look austere and hard and older than their years.
I’ve seen bitches fight, though, so maybe ‘bitch fight’ is appropriate.
confessions
As a non-jogger, I’ll go along with that!
[lizzie
Posted Sunday, December 14, 2014 at 5:42 pm | PERMALINK
kezza
They say that you get the face you deserve (or something like that). The media may be picking all the most unattractive photos of JulieB, but she’s appearing harder, more severe, more ‘mannish’ day by day.]
Ouch! Lizzie!
Hats off to BishJ for being concerned about her health. Running, etc. Doesn’t mean I like her policies. OTOH, I don’t think she should be judged on her looks.
Likewise, Peta Credlin.
They’re tough and smart, just like JG. None would win a beauty contest.
But, BishJ sold her soul in her eager youth, when she demanded that asbestos victims not get advantage because they were “dying”. Dreadful.
Contrast with the legal firm JG worked. Helping the workers.
Peta Credlin, seems to have had a fairly easy time of it. In some ways a bit like Germaine Greer.
All are hated because they are powerful without having the requisite dick.
And I’ve notice, lizzie, that lots of men and women all end up looking like dessicated men, at the end, just as they do as babies.
1791
When the jogging gets media coverage I think it has a Howard`s walks like quality. It does look leadership-esque and thus a bit leadership-challengey. It also shows a ‘Howard good, therefore looking like Howard good’ mentality that is symptomatic of the Coalition`s view that they are a restoration of the Howard years, when they are not actually and it is part of the reason they are in such a mess.
[1780
don]
my pleasure, don
I’ve been blocked by our foreign minister, as well. Never been near her account until I checked just now. The question is, “who isn’t blocked?” Peta? Tony?
Ch 9 was running the Warren Entsch stuff we already knew about.
Bemused
[I am not sure what you mean by your 1).
PMG included telecommunications and postal services within Australia. There was also OTC, the Overseas Telecommunications Commission for telecommunications beyond our shores.]
I was simply making the point that the copper in the ground, or the bulk of it, was paid for by taxpayers. When PMG and its successors pre-privatisation dug all those trenches and laid the copper, created network, built the TEs etc etc it was a social good which should have persisted.
Instead, the value was passed to the private sector, with the consideration hypothecated to the Future Fund to “pay for public servants unfunded superannuation”. This is a crock. Moreover, its a gravy train for Liberal mates both ex-politicians like Costello, and the bevvy of merchant bankers clipping the tickets.
So Turnbull decides to sell the (impaired) asset again. And we pay for it. And the spivs get to line their pockets again.
this quote from above a couple of hours ago.
[@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%5D
I think it would give the ALP a great line of attack, and help to explain the deficit.