The BludgerTrack poll aggregate this week records a strong move back to Labor, which partly reflects the Coalition’s soft Newspoll result this week. However, it’s also indicative of how sensitive the model is short-term fluctuations now that it’s using the start of the Turnbull era of year zero, and thus only has a small number of data points. The story on the primary vote is that the Greens have recovered some of the ground they lost over the previous weeks, with the Labor primary vote remaining steady. The difference all this makes to the seat projection is rather modest, with the Coalition dropping two seats in New South Wales and one in Queensland. The leadership ratings from Newspoll give a further boost to Malcolm Turnbull’s already strong net approval rating, but the other indicators are essentially unchanged. Preferred prime minister and Turnbull’s net approval are still being determined through weighted averages of all polling since the leadership change, rather than trend measures.
What’s more:
• The meeting of the New South Wales Liberal Party’s state council on the weekend, chiefly noted for the heckling delivered to the Prime Minister, saw the demise of a proposal for all preselections to be conducted by plebiscites of party members, in place of the current system where the vote is divided between branch delegates and head office. This was despite just such a reform being advocated by a post-election review conducted by a panel headed by John Howard. However, a compromise resolution will see plebiscites conducted in one federal seat before next year’s election, two for the subsequent federal election due in 2019, and two for the next state election, also due in 2019.
• Tom McIlroy of the Canberra Times identifies Christina Hobbs, a United Nations World Food Program program officer, as a possible starter for the Greens’ Senate preselection in the Australian Capital Territory. However, the report also cites a party source saying its resources were likely to be concentrated elsewhere, particularly on “potentially difficult fights in Queensland, NSW and South Australia”.
[nor any form of conflict of interest. ]
MT benefits from tax law by being able to legally minimising his tax. If that is not a conflict of interest I don’t know what is
[adrian@2041: Laura Tingle, Barrie Cassidy and Dennis Atkins are at the left end of the Gallery spectrum, and none of them seem to be too impressed.]
Now you’re also displaying a hitherto unknown sense of humour.
KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN@2024
A lovely wedge. 🙂
meher,
Datsyari reminds me much of Frank Spencer.
Tose journos would prefer Labor fight on policy grounds rather than personality crap.
[I don’t think anyone has accused Turnbull of not paying the tax due. ]
The question is how much tax was due and what avenues, especially those not available to the ordinary wage earner, has he gone down to make that amount as small as possible.
There are two separate questions that are being conflated deliberately by people who are interested in obfuscating the issues as a defence of Turnbull.
The first question is whether he has done anything illegitimate or illegal. There is absolutely no evidence to show this has happened and it has definitely not been claimed by Labor.
The second is whether the kinds of mechanisms he has used to minimise the amount of tax he has to pay in comparison with the income and available liquid assets he has in any given years should be circumscribed, especially where there is little or no objective public benefit from maintaining those mechanisms.
Labor is focussing on the second question. Defenders of Turnbull are ignoring the second question because the answer is very uncomfortable and focussing on the first. By doing so, they are avoiding the underlying question.
adrian
[ Been pointed out many times what the question is. Too bad that you chose to ignore it. ]
meher baba, like GG are both deliberately misunderstanding the issue. No amount of arguing is ever going to get them to admit that just because something is legal does not mean it’s moral. Or that the standards applied to a PM should be more rigorous and transparent than those applied to other people, since there is such a clear case for potential conflict of interest.
I don’t trust Dastyari, there is just something about him which I find questionable, I use to think he was sincere until he voted against having a royal commission into financial services.
Good afternoon all,
I think we really have to wait and see where labor now takes the Turnbull /Cayman Island issue before we start judging anything and or anyone. This coming week will be interesting to see how labor frames their tactics but politics is not about the instant it is about setting up groundwork and SHorten has shown he has the ability to wait and let things develop.
Re TURC and Shorten,of course the coalition and the MSM are waiting to go Shorten when Heydon hands down his findings. Shorten will be framed as perhaps having committed nothing illegal but being in charge while it all went on whatever that was.
However, the coalition have the sinodinos/ICAC issue coming soon I think and he may well face the same findings. Nothing illegal on his part but at the top when the issues arose. So I would think to attack Shorten too hard would have a simple blow back for them from labor. Remember Sinodinos is a Turnbull pick.
Anyway, it is nothing but speculation and tea leaf reading ATM. Time will tell where this all goes.
But it should be remembered Bill Shorten has been underestimated for the past two years by almost everyone and he is still standing.
Cheers.
[adrian@2041: Laura Tingle, Barrie Cassidy and Dennis Atkins are at the left end of the Gallery spectrum, and none of them seem to be too impressed.]
The gallery spectrum seems to stretch from the centre to the right. There are very few who would identify with the left, if for not other reason than their sense of professionalism means that their personal political leanings should not be discernible. Those on the right never seem to have such ethical qualms. They seem to think, for the most part, that they are in the media in order to advance the interests and public presentation of the party they support.
Of course some, like Hartcher, are politically placed squarely on their own oversized egos.
mexican:
I don’t trust Dastyari either. He always seems insincere to me.
2052
The key words are “of the Gallery spectrum”. It says more about the right-wingness of the general Press Gallery than about actual left-wingness of such people as Barrie Cassidy who is not more left-wing than the ALP right.
Presumably Essential will have some questions on the Caymans and MT’s tax avoidance investments so we will have some idea then of what the public makes of all this.
P1,
Because one does not agree with you, makes one deliberately misunderstanding. That’s a very quaint view of the world.
The fact that all the evidence that is in supports my point of view is deemed irrelevant as you strive valiantly to split straws and purchase red herrings.
Labor is a political party that wants to win the next election. This issue raised and prosecuted in the way Labor have done is going down like a lead balloon in the MSM and voter land everywhere and may cost Labor votes.
I hope that makes the situation perfectly clear.
As I said last week from what we know Turnbull, or in essence the trustees of his blind trust, have invested to maximize income rather than avoid Australian tax. There has been speculation here that income is being held offshore to avoid tax but nothing has been reported anywhere to show this is more than speculation or perhaps wishing.
[If you take an agnostic view of technology, then it becomes clear that your decisions to implement one solution or another should be driven by need.]
Who determines the ‘need’? What is the ‘need’?
With broadband, is it being future-proof or being cheap? Is the need to implement anything at all other than what Labor proposed?
With wind farms, is it the cheapest to build now? The most environmentally friendly? The prettiest looking on the landscape?
‘Agnostic’ is a word that has been taken from religion and applied to technology. It may have a role in the sense that, in deciding whether to go Apple or Microsoft in an office, you don’t simply follow the advice of an advocate of one or the other and your own emotion.
But in this context, both Turnbull and Frydenberg are doing what politicians do, especially Liberal politicians, in using words intended to create a sense of something but which are actually used to enable more objectionable action to happen out of sight. When used by a politician, the word ‘agnostic’ is nothing more than a weasel word.
GG
[Labor is a political party that wants to win the next election. This issue raised and prosecuted in the way Labor have done is going down like a lead balloon in the MSM and voter land everywhere and may cost Labor votes.]
Spot on!
The general voter will not be taking notice of this issue in the main yet we have had three days of this running on here.
To me, the point being is the Politicians are abusing loopholes, they should fix them, that is the conflict of interest.
GG
[ I hope that makes the situation perfectly clear. ]
What is clear is that you either don’t understand the issue, or you are being deliberately obtuse.
I guess I should give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former.
mexicanbeemer
[
I don’t trust Dastyari]
On that we are as one.
poroti
We are three!
P1,
What is clear is that you are resorting to self serving crap and personal abuse now because your argument has no merit.
I hope that fits you where the sun does not shine (obtuse angles a specialty).
@GG/2071
You’ve been self serving personal abuse for days, look in a mirror.
[Labor is a political party that wants to win the next election.]
Labor are not going to win the next election if it allows a Liberal Party led by Turnbull to position itself as owners of the centre. They put Turnbull in because he appeals to the centre, but they want to keep their divisive and inequitable policies while he plays Mr Nice Guy. If Labor step back and let him do that they will lose, regardless of who leads Labor at the next election and what the actual policies of the Coalition are.
zoidy,
Are you really that stupid and naïve!
lizzie@2042
The ONLY way to dispose permanently of asbestos is high temperature incineration.
Otherwise it is just dumped somewhere. Even a proper dump is really just hiding the problem to possibly emerge in the future.
confessions
Posted Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 4:50 pm | PERMALINK
mexican:
I don’t trust Dastyari either. He always seems insincere to me.
———–doesn’t he have VERY BAD rep in nsw right politics – his ascent into senate was also questioned —–
Stop that, GG.
meher baba@2045
So what ‘crime’ was Gillard supposed to have committed?
As I recall it was just smear.
It wouldn’t be wise for me to express my opinion of Dastyari other than to say he is Labor’s answer to Pyne.
TPOF,
Every election is fought on what voters perceive as the Party who will best serve their interests.
Labor lost the last election because the voters came disenchanted with the Leadership circus and even Tony Abbott was a preferred alternative.
Labor will only win back Government if they are united and have a policy agenda that voter’s will support. It’s nothing to do with being nice.
In other words, Labor must take up the fight on issues, build a constituency of interest and not be distracted or waste time and resources on blind gully strategies and tactics.
Turnbull can beaten. But, not the way Labor are going about it atm.
TPOF@2073
Labor should do their bit to help hem in Turnbull from all sides.
🙂
TPOF@2065
It means being driven by a proper scientific (including financial) evaluation of the choices and not any ideological positions such as Abbott, Hockey and Hunt were driven by.
I can understand confessions, but I don’t understand why you are making such heavy going of this.
[‘Agnostic’ is a word that has been taken from religion and applied to technology. It may have a role in the sense that, in deciding whether to go Apple or Microsoft in an office, you don’t simply follow the advice of an advocate of one or the other and your own emotion.]
I can possibly see (if I squint) a case for MT using the word agnostic to refer to how the NBN is rolled out, but only just. But Frydenberg’s statement that the govt is agnostic about wind turbines as a form of renewable is just ridiculous.
Player One@2068
You need to understand that GG comes at this from the perspective of a minor, low rent, financial spiv.
William,
zoidy kicked it off with his opening coribution at 1967.
I am simply trying to greet him in the language of his home planet.
But, if you want me to desist in my inter galactic goodwill mission, I shall.
Cheers
GG
[ What is clear is that you are resorting to self serving crap and personal abuse now because your argument has no merit. ]
No, the problem is that despite the argument being explained to you many times, and by several different posters, you refuse to even try to understand the issue.
You just insist that either there is no issue, or that the issue is actually toxic for the ALP. But even you have to admit that this issue has occupied both the msm and PB for the last few days, and has now irretrievably tied together the concepts of a “Cayman Island tax minimization” and “Malcolm Turnbull”, the man supposedly in charge of revising our tax system to close such loopholes.
See? It isn’t difficult to understand at all!
[So what ‘crime’ was Gillard supposed to have committed?]
It is interesting that there is some justification to spread a whole slew of prejudicial claims because there is a small technical possibility that if it could be proved after 20 years there might have been some minor criminal offence. But the same people argue there is no justification to discuss a factual situation around the current Prime Minister’s current financial arrangements to manage his wealth, even though it could well provide insight as to which sections of the community will benefit most from the tax laws under his government.
@GG/2085
I said it because it’s true.
And secondly, your saying it because you don’t want to discuss the problem of the discussion.
P1,
Actually, the evidence from Peter Hartcher’s article is that talkback and twitter interest were very low.
The voters are less than enthused.
Great work Player One. You have more patience than I !
William,
Well bemused is doing his best to charm and of course you completely missed Guytaurs opening greeting I was a liar which he repeated ad nauseum the other day.
Is there actually any moderation policy that applies to anyone but me?
GG strawman argument. That interest on talkback and twitter is low does not mean the issue is unimportant or not of long term tactical value.
Michael Pachi just reporting on 2UE that there is a poll out tomorrow which has Turnbull’s figures rising and the Party as well.
Roger,
You hold on to that dream!
Greensborough Growler@2091
I read your charming post yesterday dealing with the young woman smuggled back to Nauru.
In the TBA class of despicable.
GG
[ Actually, the evidence from Peter Hartcher’s article is that talkback and twitter interest were very low. ]
Talkback is for people with IQ’s less than 75 (BB perhaps being an exception). Twitter is for people whose attention span can’t cope with sentences more than 140 characters.
If that’s the extent of your argument, it is in serious trouble.
davidwh
[Dastyari other than to say he is Labor’s answer to Pyne.]
😆 But at least he is far less annoying.
bemused,
I never spoke about the young woman. It was actually about the enablers in the legal fraternity who seem more pre-occupied with making political points than the welfare of their client.
But, you keep smearing away. It’s all you’ve got.
[Is there actually any moderation policy that applies to anyone but me?]
Aww.
Greensborough Growler@2098
That is simply untrue.