The weekly Essential Research result records no change in Labor’s 52-48 lead on two-party preferred, with Labor down a point on the primary vote to 39%, while the Coalition, Greens and Palmer United are steady on 41%, 10% and 1% respectively. The poll also finds Joe Hockey’s standing improving since the budget, with his approval rating up four to 34% and disapproval down to 44%, and strong support for the end to paid parental leave “double dipping”, with 56% in favour and 27% opposed. Another question finds 42% in favour of more US military aircraft in Australia, presumably boosted by the inclusion in the question of the words “to counter China’s growing military power”, while 32% were opposed. There are also questions on climate change and voluntary euthanasia (72% in support, 12% opposed).
We also have The Advertiser reporting on a ReachTEL-commissioned poll of 690 respondents in the Liberal-held Adelaide marginal of Hindmarsh, conducted for the ACTU. It produces the somewhat surprising finding that Labor has gone backwards since the election, with the Liberals leading 48.1% to 36.3% on the primary vote after exclusion of the undecided, compared with 46.2% and 38.0% at the election.
[This is your problem in defending ratbags like BK on this issue.]
No, BK has shown himself to be anything but a ratbag on this or any other issue. You on the other hand….
P1,
You first.
But being convicted as a blithering idiot would not look good on your resume.
GG
I’m hoping Pell fronts up to the commission, not because I want him to be found partly responsible, but so that it can be established if he was or not, and if the answers he give might lead us to those who are responsible.
‘fess
[It kind of leaves Abbott scrambling to decide whether to allow a conscience vote.]
The ‘new consultative Tony’ will be forced to break cover.
Vote 1 BK.
GG
1. There is new evidence coming out of the Ballarat hearings. In particular, several witnesses gave evidence that Pell was advised that Ridsdale was engaged in pedophile acts against children in Catholic schools. These witnesses were not tested by the RC lawyers who made it clear that they were not going to cross-examine victims. I assume that this is because the Church copped a puzzling for bastardising previous known and accepted victims through the courts. The lawyers’ rationale was that this would involve even more pain and suffering for any victims. The Commissioner said that that was up to them. It would not stop him from making findings based on the available evidence.
Thus you need to know that whatever formal findings have been made to date, they have been overtaken by events. Pell has new evidence against him. This includes the testimony of not one, but several first-hand eye-witnesses.
2. Whichever way the legal processes sort themselves out, Pell was certainly within easy sniffing distance of the Devil at Ballarat. And he could only smell roses.
3. At the very least, Pell was asleep at the wheel. Negligence, a lack of duty of care, a lack of devotion to pastoral care where it was most needed means that regardless of his actual participation in criminal obstruction of justice, he failed miserably.
4. Pell has yet to present to the court the documentation relating to abuses relating to Australia currently held by the Vatican. Why?
5. Pell may be innocent, as you say.
6. But until he demonstrates a willingness to present all relevant evidence, he may reasonably be inferred to be hiding something.
7. This is, indefensible for Australia’s spiritual head honsho.
GG
Have a rest.
GG
[ You first. ]
Me first … what?
[ But being convicted as a blithering idiot would not look good on your resume. ]
Convicted of what?
Sorry, I don’t get it.
GG @ 142: “Pell has a frank, abrupt style once common in Australian men of action. Today it is seen as lacking in empathy.”
Australian men of action normally don’t want to wear coloured frocks. You should back off, you are living in a glass house.
I’m actually afraid of Shorten’s private members bill being a premature effort that will result in a second failure of legislating SSM into marriage.
With a non-binding conscience vote, it’s doomed to fail, and even if they can get all Labor and minority members to vote for it, getting 16 Coalition members to cross the floor is a big ask.
BW,
I stopped reading your stuff on the Catholic Church when you announced that the little old ladies that assist in the St Vinnies Op Shop were evil.
My mum and her mates could not stop laughing when I told them.
Keep posting if you like. But, it won’t be me reading it.
[Actually I AM dismissive of that poll until further evidence is produced]
Erm, that is literally the definition of sceptical…
I do hope that that group of priests who made the decision to shift Ridsdale to a greenfields site of vulnerable children are subpoenaed.
In the absence of documentation currently being withheld by the Vatican they are the ones who will be able to state with considerable clarity what Pell did, or did not, know.
Apart from Pell’s role, they would be able to state with absolute clarity why they considered it so very necessary to shift Ridsdale.
Again. And again. And again.
CTar:
Maybe he’ll just ignore it and keep on with his terror this and terror that campaign.
pedant,
So you think that wearing a coloured frock is wrong?
Now we have the fashion police on the job. Charges against humanity cannot be far away.
[ I’m actually afraid of Shorten’s private members bill being a premature effort that will result in a second failure of legislating SSM into marriage.
With a non-binding conscience vote, it’s doomed to fail, and even if they can get all Labor and minority members to vote for it, getting 16 Coalition members to cross the floor is a big ask. ]
I think Shorten has been very clever on this one. Take a third order issue that Abbott was trying to use to hide his budget woes, and make it front and centre.
Abbott has to put up (i.e. allow a conscience vote) or shut up – forever.
Either way is a win for Shorten.
GG @ 165: I didn’t say that, as you know.
I did say you should back off. You are living not just in a glass house, but in a stained glass house.
GG
Not to worry, comrade. Always glad to give the cultists a laugh.
I understand perfectly well how cult members operate in their us/them world. It is the cultists who make ignoring abuse possible, blaming the abused the first port of call, and protecting abusers a matter of the first importance.
I have first hand experience of serial sadism and the way the cult operates to ignore the sadism, blame the victims, and to protect the sadists. This is currently under investigation by the police. Fingers crossed, eh?
Fortunately, the days of cultists putting their fingers in their ears and going, ‘Nyah, nyah, nyah!’ and the cult getting away with it are gone.
It would be lovely to see Pell in jail if he even suspected the truth about Ridsdale, but I am not hopeful that he would ever be convicted.
After all, he holds the relevant evidence close to his particular version of Jesus.
pedant,
So, who are your first targets in the eradicating bad fashion from Australia?
Player One @ 166: Mr Abbott does, however, have the option of not allowing the Bill to be debated or voted on, as the government has the numbers in the House, and probably could hold them together on a procedural vote to adjourn debate.
[Until you clarify your situation, you really can’t have any credibility on this matter.]
GG, I don’t have to clarify my situation to anyone, much less to you.
I’ve seen a million deluded fools like yourself. They beat their breasts, they tell themselves how without sin they are, they point the finger at others, they condemn, they wallow in the pomp and ceremony of the Church… all in the name of an imaginary sky fairy who doesn’t exist and never did exist.
You put far too much faith in Cardinal Pell. He doesn’t know who you are, and wouldn’t care if he did know. He also probably doesn’t know why his church is losing so many members. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the obscene, luxurious lifestyle he leads, or with the documented fact that his beloved institution has been finally exposed as a haven for kiddy fiddlers and serial rapists… fiddling with and raping the most vulnerable people: those who believe in their authority and little kids.
I haven’t read one post of yours so far that actually condemns this kind of behaviour. You sound like one of those legal hacks the church hires to intimidate the poor victims who finally work up the courage to complain. The hired guns vilified and insulted the victims ands their supporters, just like you have insulted and vilified them. Of course you don’t have any authority. There’s no Cardinal or sacred order behind you, like they had. But I get the picture of what it must have been like when those kids, grown up, finally approached their belived church and tried to find some solace there.
What they got was putrid, rancid vilification and abuse, more of it to add to that they’d already suffered. They were threatened, and blind-sided, and stood over. They were bullied and shamed.
All you’ve done is play interference for your beloved chuch, tossing insults around where they are most undeserved, kicking in any direction except inwards.
You’ve shown us here just what these people had to put up with, for years, decades until some of them soulldn’t take it anymore.
People like you are the reason this Royal Commission was called.
CTar1 + confessions
I think Abbott will play multiple bats in his attempt to hold onto power.
SSM one day, terror the next. One day consultative the next wrapped in the flag. There’s no format or reason.
Abbott is like a grenade going off in a small space, no hope of escaping damage.
GG @ 169: That I might have such targets is merely a figment of your (fevered) imagination. For all I care, priests or even Cardinals can wear itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikinis, and some probably do.
GG, I don’t know what’s come over you. In your zeal to defend the Catholic Church against any slight – real or imagined – you’re really crossing the line in the way you deal with other people – personal attacks, abusive language, all of it. You’re burning a lot of bridges on PB, and turning a lot of opinions against you.
As one poster to another, please reconsider your approach to this – you can certainly defend the Church without resorting to personal abuse.
[ I think Shorten has been very clever on this one. Take a third order issue that Abbott was trying to use to hide his budget woes, and make it front and centre. ]
Yup. Openly and brazenly exploit the mood after the Irish Referendum and get the issue of SSM over and done with. Win for the ALP. Wedgie for Tony and his nastier ilk. They HAVE to either oppose it or offer a conscience vote.
I really dont think the Libs would get a Party room position in favor. But……that would be an interesting political move if they had the discipline to achieve that??
Cant wait to see Beastie Boy Bernardi speak to this one. 🙂
And…it makes a point of difference between the parties. The ALP looking to do something most people see as positive. The Libs doing terror, boats and bad finance.
[ Player One @ 166: Mr Abbott does, however, have the option of not allowing the Bill to be debated or voted on, as the government has the numbers in the House, and probably could hold them together on a procedural vote to adjourn debate. ]
Still a win for Shorten, since it prevents Abbott from using it as an ongoing distraction. And probably draws fire on his head from a very vocal minority in any case.
Note: I have no preference either way for what the outcome of any such vote should be – I just don’t like seeing it being used as a distraction from more important issues.
[ have the option of not allowing the Bill to be debated or voted on ]
He’d be brave to do that. 🙂 I think the Libs would be better off getting it dealt with ASAP and clearing it off the decks completely pre-election whenever that is.
I’m wondering if they will try and trump Shortens bill (harhar) with one of their own??
BB,
So much blah from one normally so eloquent.
However, you didn’t answer the question in the end did you?
Your continued non response about Polanski is your Achille’s Heel here isn’t it?
I hope that most readers of this blog realise that many of the comments and replies GG makes on Pell and the Church are exactly the same as those that many of the rusted-on Laborites make about Labor.
Pursuant to my earlier point, GG: Here’s a piece from the Guardian taking a more balanced perspective, and actually noting that the incidence rates are much lower among priests than other professions:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/mar/11/catholic-abuse-priests
And one from the WaPo, noting both the prevalence and why it’s more likely to be revealed on the part of the Church’s wayward priests:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/16/AR2010041602026.html
Or from the ABC, noting that the Church as “embraced” the Royal Commission:
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2014/s4045403.htm
The evidence is out there to make your point, GG – there’s no need to make it personal with other Bludgers.
Player One@166
I have to agree that with Ireland in the news, and history on his side, it might give some momentum to make Abbott’s government look backwards in comparison, but should we move ahead, Abbott will take it and say a second failure will bolster his cause.
Diogenes @179:
They even have media relations in common! The commercial media outlets’ hostility to Labor, individually and collectively, is proverbial.
[Another victim giving evidence at the inquiry was identified only as BAV.
He told the commission that the then Father Pell had come close to walking in on him being sexually abused by Pell’s housemate, Gerald Ridsdale.
BAV said this happened when Pell — then living at the St Alipius presbytery in Ballarat — arrived home just after Ridsdale had abused him.
‘I saw the back of Father Pell, but did not know if he saw me and Father Ridsdale or not’.]
Even if the Liberals are not given a conscience vote I’m assuming front benchers can still abstain from the vote, which would be an out for Turnbull, JBishop and co. Not that there are many moderate Liberals anymore, but still.
imacca @ 177: From a purely political viewpoint I think it would be in the interest of the government to allow its members a conscience vote on the issue. To do so would further advance the theme of Mr Abbott having become a reformed and reasonable man of the centre (right) after his near death experience. A neat piece of triangulation. But somehow I don’t think it will happen.
pedant,
I am delighted I can rest comfortably in my Kaftan and Ugg boots.
Your obsession though with Priests in flimsy clothing though is of concern to all.
It’s like you think there is something wrong with how people choose to dress.
Dio
Mate, mate, mate.
Were you caned by the holy ones until the blood ran down between your fingers?
No?
No false equivalences, please.
[ Your continued non response about Polanski is your Achille’s Heel here isn’t it? ]
I have to say, with all the really nasty stuff coming out the RC here, who actually gives a stuff about something Roman Polanski did?
This is about large scale ongoing abuse that happened here and how institutions covered up and seemingly facilitated that abuse.
Diogs,
People should also be aware that many of the comments and responses made by you are simply the utterances of a fickle aesthete that has never committed to anything in his whole life. Yet, seems more than willing to criticise those who pursue their beliefs with passion and commitment.
In simplistic terms, the problem the Catholic church has with those who have perpetrated gross actions against the young/vulnerable/innocent/ignorant, is who to support?
A bit like any of the big banks sorting out who is most important – customers, employees or shareholders?
To use this crude analogy, the Church decided the shareholder had to be protected most – Mother Church – while the employees (clergy) were hidden away from too close inspection.
The customers (adherents)were offered prayers.
The complete humiliation of the Catholic church in Ireland and the destruction of most of its integrity has was one factor in this once very conservative and Catholic country repudiating the moral position of the church in the recent plebiscite.
We in Oz have had a choice of Catholic, Protestant and secular organisations to pick from as the group which has lost most dignity and trustworthiness.
Matt @ 180: With great respect, the first article you cite does not note, as asserted by you, that “the incidence rates [of abuse] are much lower among priests than other professions”. The strongest statement it contains on that issue is that “There are, however, some fragments of figures from the outside world suggesting that not many professions do better.” The only such figure cited are from a study of Sweden in the 50s and 60s, which scarcely tells us much about anything.
mike
[SSM one day, terror the next.]
And back flips on the alternative days as well.
imacca,
Oh, alright that makes Polanski’s paaedophilia, conviction and flight from justice all OK.
[ To do so would further advance the theme of Mr Abbott having become a reformed and reasonable man ]
Agreed.
[ But somehow I don’t think it will happen. ]
Agreed. Their cunning gets over ridden by their stupidity on a regular basis.
Just watch, Abbott will skew the whole SSM marriage debate to suit his own agenda and the chance for progressive thought will be lost again – such is life in Australia now.
[ Oh, alright that makes Polanski’s paaedophilia, conviction and flight from justice all OK. ]
Not going to participate in your piss-weak distractions on this GG.
GG
With comment like this …
[ Your obsession though with Priests in flimsy clothing though is of concern to all. ]
… and …
[ People should also be aware that many of the comments and responses made by you are simply the utterances of a fickle aesthete that has never committed to anything in his whole life. ]
You are not covering yourself in glory here tonight, comrade.
Senate Estimates grilling PM&C on flags, why so many? $104,000 in one order
and the PM flag explosion on now
GG
I prefer to think of it as not following a dogmatic, Manichean view of life. Life isn’t a simplistic black and white; it’s brilliant shades of grey. 😀
GG @ 189: All you are proving with comments like that is that from the smorgasbord of abuse, you have made a lifestyle choice for the verbal variety rather than something else. But you are no advertisement for your faith.