Two new polls, including the first Newspoll conducted under the wing of Galaxy, show no signs of change in the relative standings of the two major parties, and record both Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten sinking on personal approval.
The latest monthly Ipsos poll for the Fairfax papers also adds to the weight of surging support for the Greens, but is otherwise largely unchanged on last time. Both major parties are down on the primary vote – Labor by two points to 35%, and the Coalition by one to 39% – making room for a two point increase for the Greens to 16%. Labor’s two-party preferred support is at 53% on both respondent-allocated and previous election measures, respectively amounting to a one-point drop and no change. Both leaders have taken a hit on personal approval, with Tony Abbott down four points on approval to 36% and up five on disapproval to 59%, while Bill Shorten is down six to 35% and up eight to 55%. Shorten’s lead as preferred prime minister has nonetheless widened from 42-41 to 43-39. The poll was conducted from Thursday to Saturday from a sample of 1402.
The Newspoll result for The Australian has Labor leading 52-48, from primary votes of 40% for the Coalition, 37% for Labor and 13% for the Greens. Tony Abbott’s personal ratings of 33% approval and 60% disapproval are the worst he has recorded from any pollster in about two months, while Bill Shorten’s respective figures of 28% and 54% slightly shade the last Newspoll as his worst numbers ever. The two are level on preferred prime minister at 39% apiece. Given that this is the result of an entirely new methodology, combining automated phone and internet polling with a sample of 1631 (compared with the old Newspoll’s interviewer-administered landline phone polling and samples of around 1150), comparing it with previous results is more than usually unilluminating.
[“According to the guardian, a lot of analysts in Greece are predicting a solid “no” on the back of the youth vote”]
It’s The Guardian…. so take that with a grain of salt.
I think it will be a close YES/NO Vote with the YES vote winning by a nose simply for the fact people realise they are about to lose all their money in the bank if they vote NO
‘Labor should attacked Abbott on ‘give me 6 months’ as well, they failed here.’
Labor should have declared martial law and called out the military to carry out a coup.
On the other hand, Labor could stick with the feasible in a modern pluralistic democracy.
[I know she got panned this morning but Ms Murphy is on the money here]
But that’s the problem with Murphy. She’ll post a tweet like this or a short thing on the daily blog, but she’ll be back on the groupthink bandwagon in short order. Not for her to come out and produce a long form piece pointing to the bleeding obvious that the gallery has extended Abbott a wholly undeserved benefit of the doubt (again), pumped up his tyres with bullshit (again), and so made themselves look like the idiots they are (again).
Katherine notices that something isn’t quite right every now and again, but she’s far too dense to ever work out exactly what it is.
@GhostWhoVotes: #Ipsos Poll Constitutional recognition of Aboriginals as 1st inhabitants of Aust: Support 85 Oppose 11 #auspol
And Abbott and his Neo-cons will be sandbagging this as well
[“The youth turn-out will be critical. Fingers crossed.”]
Fingers crossed for what by the way?
You do realise if they vote NO Greece is farked.
Actually they are farked either way, but they are more farked with the Socialists in charge defaulting on their loans.
No one will lend them money, they will not have free trade with the EU anyone, the Drachma will suffer hyper-inflation Zimbabwe style and the country will be in financial ruin.
I mean why don’t you lefties put your money where you mouth is and buy Greek Bonds?
Fairfax continuing to beg for lieberal business
Judging by the TBA posts the no vote is a shoe in
‘Katherine notices that something isn’t quite right every now and again, but she’s far too dense to ever work out exactly what it is.’
Katharine Murphy is not dense – but she still lives in the groupthink world of the Press Gallery and cannot break free of it.
ratsak @ 53
Like the line about pumping Abbott’s tyres up with bullshit, never heard that. Can I use it meself?
@TPOF/52
You mean the current heads in sand approach? Yeah that’s working well with it’s citizens rights being removed!
TrueBlueAussie@55
Any talk of Labor leadership change is just simply miles from reality. The dissatisfaction/disapproval ratings for Shorten are not a particular concern for him and Labor imho. We saw with the Reachtel breakdowns recently that unsurprisingly, their is considerable disapproval of Shorten on the left. But we can be very confident that those people are neither going to vote for, or preference, the LNP.
I’m no fan of Shorten, and do not vote Labor. If I were asked by a polster whether or not I approve of the job Shorten is doing, my answer would be no, because of some of the issues already mentioned that Labor have supported the LNP on. But am I going to vote for or preference the LNP? No chance.
To me, there are only two scenarios where Labor should even consider a change of leadership. One, Shorten’s TURC appearance going extremely badly. This scenario seems particularly unlikely to me. The only other scenario would be Labor actually falling behind in the polls, something which also at this point also seems unlikely. For Labor to switch leaders while leading in the polls would be the biggest gift imaginable for the LNP and Newscorp; the attacks would write themselves.
ratsak @ 37
[No Labor marginal seat holders are in fear for their political lives]
Absolutely, utterly relevant. Nobody in the reps needs to think about their seat. All they need to think about is what they will do in Government – and make sure they make it there.
@TBA/55
Coming from a person who uses tax cuts?
In relation to constitutional change, Abbott&Co are desperate to keep changes to symbolism and hence in the preamble only, and out of the guts of the Constitution where changes would make substantive differences.
Noel Pearson has already split from Abbott on this, I believe.
My view is that it would be better not to have a change in the preamble.
It would take the sting out of any real change.
[Katharine Murphy is not dense – but she still lives in the groupthink world of the Press Gallery and cannot break free of it.]
A distinction without a difference.
Ancestors
Malcolm Farr
27m27 minutes ago
Malcolm Farr @farrm51
Hey @sspencer_63 . You were right
Stephen Spencer
Stephen Spencer – @sspencer_63
@farrm51 one summer does not make a swallow etc.. But I cannot understand how the gallery keeps getting this so badly wrong.
https://mobile.twitter.com/PGgrenoble/status/617429582220763136
Looks like the German “get up” (I assume) has projected a huge No onto Schaueble’s office building in Germany.
Andrew Catsaras @AndrewCatsaras
@farrm51 @sspencer_63 About what? Manly having bought their first four premierships in the 1970’s?
Stephen Spencer
Stephen Spencer – @sspencer_63
@AndrewCatsaras @farrm51 that Abbott is not Howard and that the Gallery’s near unanimous forecast of a poll turnaround would be proved wrong
3:46 AM – 5 Jul 2015
1 RETWEET
BSA Bob, go for it old son. All my work is public domain licence 😉
If by German Get Up you mean German Socialists then yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_%28Germany%29
Ahhh Socialism… it gave us countries like East Germany, Cuba and North Korea.
We all remember how that turned out
ratsak at 66
[A distinction without a difference.]
Maybe not to you but definitely to me.
The MSM will try and try to talk up the end of Shorten for as long as it amuses them then they will move on to the next group think.
Firstly it will be his appearance at TURC then when that comes and goes with nothing much happening they will move onto National Conference as the next big test.
As I posted earlier I think the MSM will be shattered at the result there as well with a few heated debates but a united result on the more contentious issues.
Anyway time will tel but I think the MSM will be caught once again with its pants down and shown to have no real idea of what is really happening outside its bubble of group think.
Cheers.
TBA
Typical right wing tool. Socialism is not dictatorship. No matter how many dictators put socialism in the official names of their country
@TBA/71
And Australia is fast becoming North Korea with it’s TPP and National Security heroics.
Re Greece: those with money in the bank will be inclined to vote yes, those without financial assets will be inclined to vote no. The wealthy will have long since moved their money out of the country.
Someone joked about this in the morning:
sceptic@1586
You may laugh, but I think this is globalisation in general, except somewhere down the line, somebody’s hoarding all the $100 bills.
[Maybe not to you but definitely to me.]
When reality is smacking you around the head to pay attention, but you keep ignoring it to follow your lemming mates over the cliff, well you can call that what you will, but dense gets to the heart of the matter with a minimum of fuss.
[“Re Greece: those with money in the bank will be inclined to vote yes, those without financial assets will be inclined to vote no. The wealthy will have long since moved their money out of the country.”]
Bingo.
Idiots here think everyone will vote NO because of the Vibe of the thing.
Seriously if you had $100K sitting in a Greek Bank Savings Account right now which were your retirement savings you would be absolute bat shit crazy to vote NO because come Monday all of it will be defaulted on.
TrueBlueAussie@71
Ahhh Socialism… it gave us countries like East Germany, Cuba and North Korea.
We all remember how that turned out
And China.
Remember how thats turning out ?
Peter Wicks has a cracker of a story on Jackson/Lawler, with this gem
[I can think of at least one time where Lawler has rocked up to the office well outside office hours and perhaps he should be commended for making this effort. Not only this the occasion even occurred on his son’s birthday.
You see, Lawler and Jackson held an 18th party for Lawler’s son. Kathy knew Lawler’s son well as payslips prove, she had previously employed him at her union, paying him a higher rate than most of her members earned and during Xmas holidays. Jackson did this despite Lawler’s son being located in a different state. Just for good measure she also employed Lawler’s other son also.
Anyway, the party was held on the Sydney premises of Fair Work Commission in one of the hearing rooms and it has been alleged that the mess left behind after the boozy episode required the cleaners to be called in on a Sunday.
So clearly Lawler can show up to work when it is something important.
This episode also shows Lawler’s obvious respect for government and taxpayer property. I certainly hope the taxpayer didn’t pick up the cleaning bill for dragging cleaners in on their day off.
]
[GhostWhoVotes @GhostWhoVotes 28m28 minutes ago
#Ipsos Poll
Constitutional recognition of Aboriginals as 1st inhabitants of Aust: Support 85 Oppose 11]
Fantastic
[ TrueBlueAussie
Posted Sunday, July 5, 2015 at 8:59 pm | Permalink
Idiots here think everyone will vote NO because of the Vibe of the thing. ]
No one knows how it will ‘turn out’.
79
Lots of people have already withdrawn their savings from the banks, in anticipation of a loss of value, that is the main reason.
And the Peter Wicks link
http://wixxyleaks.com/limo-wreck-the-kathy-jackson-federal-court-case-to-continue/
matt31 @ 62
[To me, there are only two scenarios where Labor should even consider a change of leadership. One, Shorten’s TURC appearance going extremely badly. This scenario seems particularly unlikely to me. The only other scenario would be Labor actually falling behind in the polls, something which also at this point also seems unlikely. For Labor to switch leaders while leading in the polls would be the biggest gift imaginable for the LNP and Newscorp; the attacks would write themselves.]
I am not quite as sanguine as you regarding the TURC appearance (only because the salient feature of the unknown is that it is unknown) but otherwise spot on. For Shorten to be deposed, leaving aside the improbability of negotiating the process set in place by Rudd, there would have to be an alternative leader who demonstrably presents a much more likely path to success. Quite frankly, there are no pretenders. There may be future candidates, but nobody at all is actively undermining Shorten as leader within his Parliamentary Party. And that is all that matters.
James Massola may put the most negative interpretation on the IPSOS poll, but the hardheads in the Labor Party will be more interested in the TPP and the marginally increased lead over Captain Chaos as preferred PM (which is pretty unusual for a first term opposition leader over a first term PM). As will the hardheads in the Coalition trying to work out why the tried and true old tactics have stopped working (major hint: Abbott is not Howard).
TBA Idjit
Thank you for your 4 posts about Greece on the Ipsos thread.
I haven’t been following Greece closely, so I defer to your posts to ascertain that what’s going on there is the opposite of what you say.
BTW, wasn’t the Ipsos 2PP spot on .
Regarding the plebiscite for SSM, I note that you, Bolt, Reith and Georgie Christensen have now been joined by Pies Angerman. What a momentum!!!!!! Since you 5 bright sparks want it, I’m sure it won’t happen.
Cheers mate!
Dave – True Blue isn’t a small businessman. That’s all bullshit. He’s on welfare of some sort. That’s why he’s so bitter.
Slight diversion
Yoko Ono on fracking…..
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/05/yoko-ono-to-be-an-artist-you-need-courage#img-1
Labor Party leadershit is the ice or cocaine of the mainstream media. Circumstances may well force it off the drug eventually, but a whole lot damage will be done in the meantime.
Raaraa @77
That is based on an old fairy tale. I remember it from primary school. . A stranger turns up in a village, a purse is passed around in much the same way and everyone’s debt is cleared. After the stranger leaves, the villagers wonder if the purse even contained any money. Can’t remember the name of the story, though
Continuing from my previous commment:
One of the main reasons the Greek banks are in such trouble.
My favourite SYRIZAN threat to date has been to nationalise the Greek banks…
Oi! … d’oh!
But, hell, why not?
Big call
[Jane Caro @JaneCaro
@MrDenmore It capitalises on that swing. But my prediction in 10 years? Greens, Nats coalition, LNP, ALP minor parties unless change fast]
[Mr Denmore
Mr Denmore – @MrDenmore
@JaneCaro Politics on the verge of a major realignment for sure. Nats & Greens should be talking for one.
2:52 AM – 5 Jul 2015]
Raaraa @ 77
Reminds me of cow economics:
http://journals.worldnomads.com/simon_monk/story/24276/Australia/21-Economic-Models-Explained-With-Cows
TPOF and Matt31,
Yep. The Labor backbenchers have somewhere between the square root of and 3/5s of fuck all interest in leadership change. They all know that barring something very unforeseen that they will be back for another term, and will have lots of new mates to play with. They also know that no matter how bad Shorten’s approval numbers that by sticking solid and not showing any form of disunity that they’re very very probably heading to the seats on the right of the speaker.
The R-G-R disaster will have scarred them and with nothing but downside risk involved in reopening that can of worms they are going to give Shorten at least as much unity as Abbott enjoyed in opposition.
They are quite prepared to get into government on the back of Green prefs from all those who want more than they can give from opposition and stay realistically in the game but wouldn’t vote for a second Abbott term short of a full frontal lobotomy. A few in the inner city seats that could become Greens targets will make a few statements on the fringes to keep their votes up but that’s about it.
If Newspoll and the next round of polling shows Abbott’s recovery has petered out or reversed though there are plenty of Libs and Nats who are going to be considering their options. Many will also be wondering if maybe passing a redefinition of marriage in the act might not be something that could help them hang on in a tight race. There’s going to be some fun times in the not too distant future I predict.
KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN@88
TBA IS all bullshit – thats certain.
wtf is a Socialist when it’s not a redundant 20th Century concept?
Some snippets from Henry Ergas in The Australian:
[But the longer-term consequences would be every bit as material. As two of the leading scholars of modern Greece, Mark Mazower and Stathis Kalyvas, have argued, the recurring pattern in the country’s history, from its 1821 war of independence on, has been one in which Greece periodically attempts more than it can achieve, only to be rescued through the intervention of friendly powers.
Independence itself, for example, was secured only thanks to France, Britain and Russia, whose navies destroyed the Turkish and Egyptian fleet at the battle of the Bay of Navarino in 1827.
Equally, it was the European powers who salvaged Greece after it was defeated by Turkey in the war of 1897, and stabilised its finances in the tumultuous decades that preceded and followed that rout.
As for the no less disastrous Greek invasion of Turkey in 1921, it was an international humanitarian effort — arguably, the first of its kind — that allowed the country to smoothly absorb the 1.3 million refugees forced out of Turkey in its wake.
And it was international intervention, led by Britain and the US, that defeated the communist insurrection in the savage civil war of 1944-48, and ensured, as the war ended, that Greece’s economy got back on its feet.
Little wonder then that Greece looked to Europe when the military junta, which controlled the country from 1967 to 1974, collapsed after an ill-judged attempt to impose union on Cyprus.
Faced with a domestic and international backlash, Konstantinos Karamanlis, the great Greek statesman who was called on to clean up the mess, sought to entrench the liberal democratic institutions he was putting in place by bringing Greece into what was then the European Economic Community.
Karamanlis saw the EEC’s emphasis on binding rules, along with powerful supra-national enforcement mechanisms such as the European Court of Justice, as imposing vital constraints on a nation that constantly failed to reconcile aspirations with realities. Greece’s accession in 1981, which made it the first country of the European periphery to join the EEC, not only signalled its anchoring in what was perceived as modernity, but was also viewed as reaffirming the European powers’ willingness to acknowledge Greece’s special importance, including through generous financial support.
It was in much the same spirit that Greece sought entry into the euro. As finance minister, Kostas Simitis had tried but failed to curb the worst excesses of Andreas Papandreou’s socialist government in the run-up to the 1989 elections. When he became prime minister in 1996, Simitis made adoption of the euro a priority.
Simitis was not just seeking the benefits that would come from vesting control over monetary policy in the ECB, which was regarded as a supra-national version of Germany’s legendary Bundesbank; rather, the euro, and the fiscal commitments on which it was based, were portrayed, at least in the economic policy debates, as a way of strapping Greece to the mast of fiscal and monetary rectitude.
But Simitis’s decision was a fatal miscalculation. Far from mimicking cautious Ulysses’s ploy for safely sailing past the sirens’ call, Greece’s entry into the euro smacked of the hubris of Icarus, soaring towards the sun without any precautions against a fall. And while Simitis had made progress in balancing the books, much of the consolidation was achieved by concealing liabilities rather than by addressing the crippling burdens the government of Papandreou had left behind.
Until that government, and even more so before the coup of 1967, Greece had a small public sector, with welfare benefits that were meagre by European standards. Papandreou, the first Greek politician of the television age, transformed it, bestowing benefits on new constituencies, while also encouraging those constituencies to organise themselves into lobby groups he could affiliate with his Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK).
One of Papandreou’s earliest and proudest achievements, for example, was Law 1285 of 1982, which not only extended full pension entitlements to 400,000 people who had (or claimed to have) fought with the communist-aligned EAM/ELAS in the resistance and civil war, but accorded privileges to their descendants.
Decisions such as these helped double the ratio of public spending to GDP while pushing public debt from 28 per cent of GDP in 1979 to 120 per cent in 1990.
But Papandreou’s legacy was far worse than that. Although Greece had never had an efficient public administration, much less one free of corruption, the small size of the state limited the harm that caused. But Papandreou used the greatly expanded public sector as a source of patronage, eliminating the however thin layer of reasonably neutral, technical experts Greece once had. Instead, already by 1984, it was estimated that close to 90 per cent of PASOK’s card-carrying members had some form of paying connection to the public sector, while corruption had reached epidemic proportions.
Those flaws were never corrected, as successive governments added more beneficiaries to the vast numbers their predecessors had graced. Indeed, Simitis himself vigorously resisted measures to curb patronage and corruption, most notably in the preparation for the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Greece therefore went into the euro with a bloated public sector, chronically loss-making government enterprises, persistently high public debt, and an inept, often venal, administrative and political class, along with some of the best-organised claimants’ lobbies in Europe. More than any other euro country, it was vulnerable to adverse shocks, and very poorly placed to absorb them on its own.]
…
[But it is also important to recognise that assistance to Greece has been lavish compared with that generally provided to countries in similar difficulties. During the Latin American debt crisis, for example, IMF support to affected countries averaged 76 per cent of their IMF “quotas”, which reflect a country’s maximum financial commitment to the fund; equally, when the countries of eastern Europe managed the wrenching transition from communism, the IMF loans they received averaged 43 per cent of their quotas. In contrast, Greece has been granted loans amounting to an extraordinary 1860 per cent of its quota.
Moreover, effective interest rates on Greece’s outstanding loans are now extremely low, with interest payments (on what is close to 180 per cent of its GDP) amounting to as little as 2.6 per cent of GDP.
Greece’s complaints are therefore exaggerated. In essence, they amount to the demand that Greece should, once again, be treated differently, including by having other European taxpayers, many on incomes lower than those in Greece, shoulder the costs of forgiving Greek debt. With Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who leads a party of the extreme left, clumsily prosecuting that claim, it is hardly puzzling that his European counterparts have finally had enough.
Whether that ends Greece’s special relationship with the European powers remains to be seen. If the Greeks vote no, Greece, for the first time in the modern era, would be truly on its own; with all the dislocation that involves, it could be many years before even the flicker of a recovery emerges.
That is not to ignore the hardship a yes vote, and the resulting acceptance of the proposed package (assuming it remains unchanged), would also entail. Yet there is every reason to think it could help set the foundations for an eventual return to growth.
Greek voters might learn a lot from the Balkan neighbours they have always despised. They too underwent harsh adjustment programs, marred at times by deep conflicts with the IMF; but once far-reaching domestic reforms had been carried out, the gains proved material and sustained.
Bulgaria’s per capita income, for example, was barely a quarter to a third of Greece’s when communism fell; now, after the market-oriented changes made under finance minister Simeon Djankov, it is 70 per cent of that in Greece, despite Bulgaria having a currency board that is required to keep its exchange rate pegged to the euro.
There is no reason whatsoever Greece could not match that performance. After all, from 1961 to 1973, the Greek economy grew at a spectacular annual rate of 7.4 per cent, thanks to fiscal prudence, monetary restraint and wage moderation; with ample underused resources and plenty of scope to increase efficiency, it should be able to return to the expansion Greeks once took for granted.
But that outcome will not fall from the skies; it requires reforms the Greek electorate has consistently rejected. There is a real risk that come Sunday, the Greeks, instead of peace, may find they have unleashed the furies.]
That’s not a snippet, it’s an avalanche of tripe