With new results from Morgan and Essential Research added to the mix, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate records a slight move to Labor of 0.3% on two-party preferred. The main mover on the primary vote this week is the Greens, who got an unusually strong result from Essential Research. Evidence continues to accumulate that the Coalition’s recent recovery has been strongest in New South Wales and weakest in South Australia, although both are unchanged on the seat projection this week, with Labor’s two gains drawn from Victoria and Tasmania. Nothing new on leadership approval this week, and it seems likely we have a quiet week ahead of us due to the Anzac Day long weekend (UPDATE: Turns out that’s only true in some states, but it’s certainly the case that Newspoll won’t be polling this weekend).
I’d much rather have the local school children around Villers-Bretonneux do the close weeding against the tombstones rather than us build another crap tourist attraction. Some things should be left alone.
[In May-June 2010, Australia’s big miners led a $22 million ad campaign against the proposed resources super profits tax that ended when prime minister Kevin Rudd was deposed. Their campaign was built on the claim that they already paid their fair share of tax. What they didn’t say was that BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto were under investigation for suspected tax avoidance at the time.
BHP and Rio pay a great deal of tax. They are Australia’s largest two taxpayers, on the back of the booming iron ore price. And it may be that their tax position in Singapore is entirely legal. But when you run a campaign, based on your exemplary tax record, which ends with the replacement of a chief of state, no matter how minimal your role may have been, then it’s imperative that you are completely transparent about all your tax arrangements.
It doesn’t mean that you’re wrong. But you have to make full disclosure.
Rudd appeared to be on borrowed time anyway: the miners’ campaign wasn’t what killed him. But arguably, it helped bring the date of his demise forward. Which is to say it helped indirectly to determined the timing. That timing in turn dictated the manner of Rudd’s exit. It was the manner in which he was deposed and the bitterness it created that overturned Julia Gillard’s election campaign and led to three years of precarious minority government.]
http://www.afr.com/opinion/our-writers/disclosure-lacking-in-fight-over-resources-tax-20150407-1mfvs1
CTar1,
$100 mill gets you some quality weeding!
TPOF@1675
That is indeed how the Constitution is framed – and the way it will always be given that Tasmania would not consent to reducing its representation – but in my view it is a product of history and not an arrangement with net intrinsic benefit or one that can or should be defended.
It is fundamentally undemocratic that each Tasmanian has over ten times more voting power through the Senate than each NSW resident. This would be a much bigger issue if Tasmania ever worked out what to do with that power by setting up and electing a Bloc Quebecois or SNP style regional party.
There is no such protection for distinctive areas within larger States even though these areas may be more populated and about as distinctive in community-of-interest terms. It could also be argued that, for instance, unemployed voters have a stronger community of political interest than Tasmanians and much more need for protection, yet they do not get 12 Senate seats to protect them from the will of representatives of the majority.
WWP @ 1697
My fundamental problem is with the death penalty wherever it is enforced. I have come to that view over time. I, like most people, am aware of some people whose behaviour and lack of any ability to change was so awful as to leave the world a better place for their absence. However, this case (and I include all of those facing the death penalty, not Chan and Sukumaran in particular) has reinforced just how pointless and inappropriate it can be, despite the show of due process that has applied.
Similarly, the argument that a nation is entitled to make the decision or value judgement for itself is a fair one, there is always a line which almost anybody will draw (although there will be big differences as to where that line is). Extreme examples are the judicial processes of Nazi Germany for political prisoners and the show trials of Stalin. Similarly, we can look to North Korea as extreme examples.
We are drawn into this case, not because it is Indonesia, but because the men in the firing line, literally, are Australian citizens. We did the same with Malaysia and Singapore in similar instances. I cannot imagine we would not do the same for an Australian convicted of murder in, say, Texas or Florida, even though Australians regard murder as more heinous than drug trafficking. At least in the case of murder, though, there is an absolute standard – a dead body. With drug trafficking or, dare I say it, treason or economic crimes, the measure of the criminality is much more subjective – as we are seeing in Indonesia with the people now facing judicial murder.
I didn’t hear the RN report – my comments on corruption were my own. And while I fully get your point, my point is that Indonesia pretends not to have an utterly corrupt legal system while allowing corruption to proceed with little restriction and with high level protection. This makes a naturally arbitrarily imposed penalty like the death sentence even more arbitrary, when it appear that the capacity to buy your way out is as much a consideration as the level of culpability.
Nobody is without sin. But Australia stands on incomparably higher moral ground than Indonesia (as a nation, not the Indonesians as a people) on this issue.
[Last week Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, announced the winners of the Carbon Abatement Fund, the bright, shining light of the Abbott government’s Direct Action policy.
Rarely have we seen so much excitement about the spending of taxpayers’ dollars. $660 million and was set aside or 47 million tonnes of carbon abatement at $13.95 a tonne. Huzzah for the government! Huzzah for the way they spend other people’s money!
It was, Mr Hunt asserted, “a stunning success.”
Direct Action is and remains a smoke and mirrors exercise. There is so much smoke the government should consider putting itself up for the direct action carbon abatement auction. If Greg Hunt promises to never speak again, oceans may shrink, storms abate and temperatures tumble.]
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/carbon-policy-smoke-and-mirrors-of-direct-action/story-e6frg6zo-1227322892469
Surprised this was let through to make it onto the Oz homepage!
KB @ 1704
All of that is true. In the same way, I’m of the strong view that the Federation is a load of crap and should be abolished and replaced with a single polity – especially given how short our history of settlement is. Much of the difference between the states is manufactured by state politicians to justify them having their jobs.
But there is no chance of changing that – so we might as well live with it and change those parts of the electoral system we can change – like the current senate voting system which results in the election of candidates with the votes of people who had no idea they were contributing to the election of said candidate.
GG
The school children do the bits that War Graves Commission mowers can’t do. Schools on rotation but once a week in summer and every second week in winter.
We’d be dumb as to deprive them of something, so many generations later, that they still feel the need to do.
It’s an honour for us and for them.
TPOF
Been wanting to say this for a while – I enjoy your posts.
Cracking stuff by Bernie Fraser. I can understand how from his perspective as the recipient of a government-funded defined benefit pension under the extremely generous pre-1990 Comsuper scheme, it is outrageous to see younger people who were born too late to get into a defined benefit scheme getting some sort of tax concession on their savings for their retirement.
It’s all their fault for being young.
As I have said before, it is quite noteworthy how all the public critics of the current rules re super tax concessions seem to be people who have managed to be old enough to get into a defined benefit scheme and therefore their savings wouldn’t be touched by the removal of concessions on contributions.
I think they’re a bunch of hypocrites.
MTBW
Why, thanks. I try to mount a good argument. Sometimes I get a bit too cross – but leave those emotions for some of the idiots who post at the Guardian.
MB
Maybe you should have made a long choice rather than taken the short term money.
Interesting outcome for this matter.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/parole-board-chief-bill-gillard-stands-down-after-mafia-link-20150427-1mudy1.html
TPOF
You are welcome!
I have never seen an angry post from you. You simply state what you think.
1704
Quebec and Scotland are considerably more different from the rest of Canada and the UK than Tasmania is from the Australian mainland. They have different legal systems and different national traditions. Quebec even speaks a different language to almost all of the rest of Canada. That makes a BQ/SNP regional party harder in Tasmania.
The system of proportional representation in the Senate and House of Assembly and preferential voting in the HoR and Legislative Council (with the added hurdle of the tradition of independents) make political domination in Tasmania harder than it is under the first past the post in Canada and the UK.
The malapportionment of the Senate is a problem but it is unlikely to be fixed because of the triple majority requirements. The lower quota that would result from any reduction in the size of the Tasmanian Senate contingent creates minor party opposition. The last time the ALP and Coalition tried to change the constitution to the disadvantage of minor parties in the Senate and smaller states, trying to remove the nexus clause at the Parliament Referendum 1967 (same day as more famous and more successful 1967 referendum), the referendum crashed and burned, partly because the DLP campaigned against it heavily (causing their stronghold of Victoria to vote significantly more against it than the relative population size/yes vote ratio would suggest). There are more minor parties now, across a broader spectrum and with more acceptance from the general population. Decreasing any states representation would not work.
It may be possible to try increasing the representation of the larger state though. There is an outside chance of a referendum doing that.
The attempt to create a new state of New England is the closest that Australia has come to reducing the gap between NSW and Tasmanian voters in the Senate. Dividing up NSW into new states is the easiest way to reduce Senate malapportionment.
1710
The main criticism is the poor distribution of the super tax concessions. If there was a flat 15% discount, there would be a lot less fuss. The problem is that most people get 15% but many richer Australians get 30%. Many people on the bad end of that arrangement, such as the 10 year old girl will probably be when she grows up, are unhappy about it.
GG
Ah Madafferi’s name always seems to pop up around the traps. I have posted these in the past. But what the heck
[An investigation by The Age last week uncovered Mr Gillard’s recent role in offering tips to alleged crime figure Tony Madafferi, who has extensive connections to major drug traffickers and money launderers.]
[The revelations come after Fairfax Media reported in May how MrMadafferi and his associates have donated thousands of dollars to the Liberal Party for more than a decade, including at a March 2013 fund-raiser at which the now state Liberal leader Matthew Guy was the guest speaker]
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/police-in-crown-casino-ban-on-mobster-antonio-madafferi-20141210-124heh.html
And who could forget this
[businessmen donated about $100,000 to the Liberal Party in return for helping to keep an alleged Mafia figure in Australia.
Investigators were told a Liberal Party insider had revealed the party was to receive the money from businessmen in return for helping to get a visa for the alleged criminal, Francesco Madafferi, who faces drug trafficking charges after being arrested last August over the world’s largest ecstasy bust.
More than a dozen relatives or associates of Madafferi, including his brother…]
Re the article by Paula Matthewson…it has been amended…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-27/matthewson-the-greens-have-become-the-very-thing-they-hate/6423420
[At the last federal election Motoring Enthusiasts’ Ricky Muir was elected with 17,122 votes, or 0.51 per cent of the state’s vote. In 1996 Bob Brown was elected to the Senate having secured 26,830 votes, or 8.68 per cent*, of the less populous state’s Senate vote.]
Editor’s note (April 27): This column has been amended to show that Bob Brown won 8.68 per cent of the Tasmanian senate vote in 1996, rather than 0.25 per cent of the national senate vote.
Link
http://www.smh.com.au/national/libs-link-to-mafia-visa-inquiry-20090222-8er5.html
Twitterversy
Scott McIntyre’s sacking highlights our confusion about social media
BY SEAN KELLY
http://www.themonthly.com.au/the-monthly-today/sean-kelly/2015/27/2015/1430115260/twitterversy#round-up
[Malcolm Turnbull @TurnbullMalcolm · 4h 4 hours ago
Response to Crikey’s questions regarding tweets by Scott McIntyre | Malcolm Turnbull MP: http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/response-to-crikey-on-questions-regarding-tweets-by-scott-mcintyre … ]
vic,
Very concerning that a prominent legal and judicial figure is caught up with organised crime figures.
Guy and the Libs need to be very careful with whom they associate. I’m sure they monitor this sort of thing in the Liberal Party.
GG
Going back to the visa story, it was fed Libs involved too.
[also recognising that the smaller states needed some form of protection from the will of the majority.]
Except that not only does the HoR not work by governments being formed by large majorities in NSW & Vic dominating the rest almost the precise opposite happens – parties seeking to form government spend a lot of time tailoring policy to suit the smaller states (and W Sydney) fearful of losing seats in those regions.
[Public Record Office Victoria competition unearths historic photographs held by everyday people]
Could this Steven Haby be our very own SGH?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-27/steven-haby-prov/6423840
Getting past the Australian fire wall
I use windows 7 and firefox
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/carbon-policy-smoke-and-mirrors-of-direct-action/story-e6frg6zo-1227322892469
The way I do it is to select (press and drag) part of the address as below
carbon-policy-smoke-and-mirrors-of-direct-action
Place this in google search and it comes up with the article (press to select)
1725
In the closest post-war elections, 1961 and 2010, it is Victoria not following the trend in NW Queensland and WA (and in the case on 1961 Tasmania and South Australia as well, although in 2010 they were with Victoria and were also crucial to the outcome).
Pegasus@1719
Yes. In terms of the merit of her argument, Brown was elected by overtaking Labor on Dems ATL preferences. Dems Lower House preferences in Tasmania at that election had a close to even ALP/Lib/Grn split so there’s an argument that Brown wouldn’t have won under any form of voter-directed preferences.
That said I remember that campaign well and it was particularly nasty between the Democrats and Greens towards the end – from the Greens side especially – as it was clear they were fighting for a seat. Had there been better voter control over preferences the Greens might not have been so vicious towards the Dems and the Dems voters might have preferenced them more strongly. They took the Dems’ ATL preferences and spent much of the campaign attacking them knowing that the preference allocation was locked in.
All the above said there’s still the issue that parties have to try to get elected, and just because Brown was elected under that system doesn’t mean his party is inconsistent in opposing it.
Simon Katich @ 1726
Yes I am one and the same.
In case you were wondering my father Murray Haby who took the picture at Camberwell was also involved in the Azaria Chamberlain case… we camped adjacent to Michael and Lindy.
The
I’m not entirely sure I follow your point.
Obviously in the closest elections you can point to just about any seat in the country and say that its result was crucial.
My point was that as a matter of political operation the major parties do not ignore the interests of the smaller states, and, if anything, the reverse is closer to the truth.
Zoomster,
[Anna Burke, for example, explains that she voted against same sex marriage because she firmly believed that was the best way of retaining her seat.]
What vote are you talking about?
If on fed bills…she didn’t vote because she was the speaker at the time.
http://www.australiavotes.org.au/conscience/ (All MP votes are listed here)
According to: http://www.australianmarriageequality.org/whereyourmpstands/states/Vic/ her position on marriage equality is “undeclared / undecided”
She has stated: ““I will not determine my position until I see the actual bill and have a greater appreciation of my community’s sentiment.”
She has canvassed public opinion in her electorate with results reported as:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/mps-slow-to-gather-views-on-samesex-marriage-20110326-1cb3g.html
[Further from the city, things are different. Labor MP Anna Burke, who represents the marginal seat of Chisholm – covering suburbs such as Box Hill and Mount Waverley – requested feedback on the issue and 76 per cent of emails, letters and phone calls to her office were against same-sex marriage.]
Anna Burke is my fed member which I am happy about. She is catholic and I have heard her declare at a public forum that her catholic values inform where she stands on issues. Kudos to her for her honesty.
Regardless, Anna Burke believes she is representing the views of her constituents.
SGH
Oops Meant to say well done your dad!
Email I received from Anna Burke about a public forum on refugee rights
——————————
On behalf of the Waverley West and Ashwood branches, I would like to invite you to come along to our Refugee Rights Public Forum on Thursday May 7th. This event is for branch members, locals, students and anyone interested in learning more or contributing to the debate around Refugee Rights. The ongoing need for a more humane approach to refugee intake and settlement in Australia has never been more pertinent.
There will be a number of highly qualified speakers to answer your questions on party policy, the situation on the ground and the changes that ought to be made, and they include:
Anna Burke MP, Federal Member for Chisholm
David Mann, Human Rights Lawyer and Migration Agent, and Executive Director of the Refugee & Immigration Legal Centre (RILC)
Jill Ruzbacky, Social Justice Office at UCA Synod of Victoria, Justice and International Mission Unit
The event will be MC’d by the 2014 Candidate for Burwood Gavin Ryan
To RSVP, please contact myself (0425 771 648) or the Waverley West Branch Treasurer, Sarah Christie (0459 220 826).
For more information about the forum, please see the flier enclosed.
I hope to see you there!
Warm regards,
Sheldon Oski
State Conference Delegate for Chisholm
Waverley West Branch Secretary
M: +61 425 771 648
Thanks Victoria @ 1734
[Nobody is without sin. But Australia stands on incomparably higher moral ground than Indonesia (as a nation, not the Indonesians as a people) on this issue.]
Maybe, maybe not, but you don’t lift people up by bullying (stop the boats) standing over them grandstanding on superiority and yelling down abuse (bali 2 of 9), you lift them up by getting down to work with them. The ‘higher’ you consider yourself the more duty you have to do the right thing. We are provoking them to invade us not working with them to inspire them to better things (where ‘better’ is an objective better not a social / cultural construct).
Wow what has Liberal Party done to NBN?
http://www.theage.com.au/business/nbn-is-costing-us-millions-says-councils-20150426-1mtcln.html
Oh wait, continuing to screw Australia 😀
[Wow what has Liberal Party done to NBN?
http://www.theage.com.au/business/nbn-is-costing-us-millions-says-councils-20150426-1mtcln.html
Oh wait, continuing to screw Australia :D]
All according to plan and in the case of the NBN their election mandate.
SGH
I wasnt wondering, already felt I was invading your privacy by linking you to the photo.
But that sounds like a heck of a story – perhaps for the smoking room over a port after a dinner party.
peg
going by what Anna Burke herself said to the Labor Women’s Conference. You’d have to ask her for clarification, I’m just reporting what she said.
and you miss the point, peg – or the context.
Guytaur seemed to be stating (he assures me he wasn’t) that the conscience vote on same sex marriage was driven by factional warlords, and that any Labor MP wishing to keep their seat/improve their vote would support ssm.
I used Anna’s statement to show that not only factional warlords supported a conscience vote, and that a marginal seat MP thought it was better for her to vote against ssm in order to keep her seat.
zoomster
In an ABC interview (I think) she said she voted the way she felt her constituents wanted her to. Sam as ‘retaining her seat’, I suppose.
zoomster
I only “seemed” to in your view. My first post was plain. I made no reference to Anna Burke at all. That was all your doing. To try and make up a point about something I never said.
Shouldn’t have intruded into someone else’s discussion. Sorry.
[Shouldn’t have intruded into someone else’s discussion. Sorry.]
Don’t be silly Lizzie if they want a private discussion they should have a private discussion, if they want to post here it is hard to imagine how it could be less private and we are all entitled to join right in. surely that is the beauty!
WWP
Spot on with your 1746. Never a truer word spoken.
“@MikeCarlton01: Think I’m on @ABC730 tonight with the odd cogent thought about SBS’s Scott McIntyre being dobbed in and fired for TweetCrime.”
The dominoes are starting to fall, even in the business ‘community’.
[Now, in a submission to the government, the Australian Industry Group (AI Group) has warned that using Direct Action to achieve the deeper emission reductions after 2020 – which Australia will be required to do in any agreement at the United Nations conference in Paris in December – will impose an increasingly onerous burden on the taxpayer.
The AI Group also notes that the “safeguards mechanism” – which is supposed to ensure that industrial emissions do not rise and cancel out any reductions bought primarily from avoiding tree-clearing and capturing gases from landfill – would need “substantial amendment” if it was to help reduce greenhouse emissions.]
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/27/meeting-low-post-2020-emissions-target-could-cost-20bn-under-direct-action
@lenoretaylor: Indonesian AG in key post when alleged intervention led to Bali 9 death penalty http://t.co/uaTSZpYHGu via @smh