This week’s big result for the Coalition from Ipsos has had a solid impact on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, which shifts a further 0.9% on two-party preferred and four seats on the seat projection, including one each in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia. The two other pollsters to report this week were essentially stable, but both are being downweighted by the model owing to their idiosyncrasies: Morgan for having the Coalition several points higher than the rest of the pack, and Essential Research for its characteristically sedate reading of the recent Coalition surge. New leadership ratings from Ipsos push Bill Shorten’s personal rating to a new low with no sign of the downward trend abating, whereas Malcolm Turnbull now appears to have reached his equilibrium point.
Other news from around the place:
• Sharon Bird, Labor’s member for the safe seat of Cunningham in the Illawarra region, faces a preselection challenge from Misha Zelinsky, described by Nick McLaren of the ABC as “an official with the Australian Workers Union, former NSW government policy advisor and criminal defence lawyer”.
• The Liberal National Party has preselected Nic Monsour, managing director of a consultancy and brother-in-law of Campbell Newman, as its candidate for the southern Brisbane seat of Moreton, which Graham Perrett gained for Labor in 2007 and did well to retain in 2013.
• The Nationals have preselected Marty Corboy, a manager at a Wangaratta stockfeed business, as its candidate for the seat of northern Victorian seat of Indi, which independent Cathy McGowan won from Liberal member Sophie Mirabella, who will also be a candidate again.
• Georgie Burgess of the Launceston Examiner reports that the Liberals’ Tasmanian Senate preselection is pitting incumbents Eric Abetz and Stephen Parry against Sally Chandler, a trade expert who was pipped at the post by Jacqui Lambie as the Liberals’ number three candidate in 2013, and Jonathon Duniam, deputy chief-of-staff to Will Hodgman.
• Roy Morgan had one of its occasional polls on the biggest issues facing the country and the world. Terrorism and war came back to life late last year after a long quiet spell, though more as an international than a local issue. The economy is on a long upward trend at local level, but the terrorism and war resurgence looks to have taken the edge off it in the international result. The results are from a phone poll of 647 respondents conducted a month ago.
Further to my last post,
800 respondents polled on Tuesday and Wednesday, last poll in August was 51-49 to labor.
Have a great afternoon all.
Doyley
All i can say is ouch!
[Defence and intelligence officials are set to advise the Turnbull and Baird Governments there is “no way” they can accept a Chinese bid in the massive $9.8 billion sale of the NSW electricity grid.
Amid escalating controversy over the sale of the Port of Darwin to Chinese interests and growing tensions over Chinese investments in strategic assets, the advice threatens to leave Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in an uncomfortable position with China.
The frontrunner for the NSW government’s sell off of TransGrid – with final bids due in on Monday – is a consortium comprising Macquarie Bank and the State Grid Corporation of China which already has extensive holdings of electricity and gas infrastructure assets in Australia.]
Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/politics/chinese-bid-for-electricity-grid-unlikely-to-pass-national-security-test-20151120-gl465e#ixzz3s675PxJG
Re the test of Tories vs Socialists.
Where do you place someone like me who wants to see a society in which there are lots of rich people sipping fine wines and all the other people of able body and mind studying, training or working hard because they too want to be rich. (And a really generous safety net for those who are not of able body and mind.)
Too many Australian lefties I meet seem to be more focused on dragging down the better off than in elevating the poor. I guess it’s the celebrated Australian “tall poppy” syndrome in action.
I’m with George Bernard Shaw when he said he didn’t want to help the poor, but eradicate them.
victoria,
that sums it up but all labor can do is ride it through.
Voters are in love atm with little interest in what the government is actually doing, it is all about Malcolm.
Labor just has to keep plugging away.
Too early yet to throw in the towel.
As they say in the classics, it is what it is.
Cheers.
[Where do you place someone like me who wants to see a society in which there are lots of rich people sipping fine wines and all the other people of able body and mind studying, training or working hard because they too want to be rich. (And a really generous safety net for those who are not of able body and mind.)
Too many Australian lefties I meet seem to be more focused on dragging down the better off than in elevating the poor. I guess it’s the celebrated Australian “tall poppy” syndrome in action.]
There is a basic economics problem here we can’t all be rich.
meher baba
Please don’t be conned into joining TBA’s silly games.
doyley
The longer it takes to go to next election, the more chance Turnbull is going to get caught up in the Abbott vengeance game.
[The longer it takes to go to next election, the more chance Turnbull is going to get caught up in the Abbott vengeance game.]
The more time he has to either disappoint his true believers or piss off those whom he has promised to obey.
WWP
Precisely. There are several scenarios that can play out that will work against Turnbull. Time will tell
[ No sniping’ Tony Abbott’s pot shots at Malcolm Turnbull plumb new low
First it was the republic, then climate change, now it’s terrorism.
…but back home the only difference in the bickering between Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott seems to be the issue.
……there’s something distinctly ordinary about politicians on the same side sniping during such a grave international crisis.
Abbott…..has dogged his successor during his first significant overseas trip as PM after renouncing his promise not to do any “wrecking,” “undermining” or “sniping”.
Abbott says Australia should be prepared to do more to defeat Islamic State, including stationing special forces – SAS and commandos – in combat zones.
Abbott would find it ironic that anyone was calling him out over a former prime minister sniping at his replacement.
In the almost four years that Abbott was Liberal Party opposition leader, and then his two years as prime minister, Turnbull was running an oh-so-clever lawyer’s campaign of “loyal” harassment.
Turnbull’s tactics were destabilising for Abbott and were meant to be…
…..Abbott said the butchery in Paris vindicated his recent speech in London that terrorists were infiltrating the flood of refugees fleeing Syria.
The lesson to be drawn is that the time for sniping in the governing political party has long gone. But who is going to be the first to man up and do that?]
Read more: http://www.afr.com/leadership/why-the-sniping-has-to-stop-20151119-gl2ywx#ixzz3s686rNaw
dave
we need clarification as to what constitutes a sovereign risk. Remember when Labor didnt allow a Chinese telco to get involved in the NBN, the coalition made a lot of noise about that. Subsequently it turned out that Labor had made the right decision
[Voters are in love atm with little interest in what the government is actually doing, it is all about Malcolm.]
Yep, but it won’t last forever.
[Where do you place someone like me who wants to see a society in which there are lots of rich people sipping fine wines and all the other people of able body and mind studying, training or working hard because they too want to be rich. (And a really generous safety net for those who are not of able body and mind.)]
Unfortunately that is not the direction that things are heading.
wealth inequality in America
So in Australia you have a choice between two main political parties. One is happy to see inequality increase (e.g. the first budget of the current government) and the other wants to reduce inequality (e.g. blocking the most unfair measures in the first budget of the current government).
Only reason why Truffles not going to an election now is it is too messy. Would need to be a DD and also there are some seats still to be realigned
Nicholas @961
We would if we had a robust land tax – this would brings significant foriegn money into the domestic economy, entirely at the foreigners’ expense…
Vic – I always look who is playing the “sovereign risk” card.
In too many cases it is also a ‘risk’ to the financial risk of the person making the claim.
I asked earlier – How many Chinese Ports will the Australian Government or their ‘associates’ be allowed to buy ?
Now I ask – How many Chinese Electricity Grids will the Australian Government or their ‘associates’ be allowed to buy ?
Then we also have this being ‘floated’ –
[ Like everything about Phoenix City – a gated community with a population of about 150,000 on the outskirts of Guangzhou, in southern China – the model is big. So big it covers a footprint larger than many of the individual dwellings on the 650-hectare site.
…Many of its 50,000 dwellings are high-rise units. But there are also about 7000 houses, many of them laid out in tree-lined, suburban streets
The residents live behind boom gates and pay a monthly levy to Country Garden for the maintenance and upkeep of their homes and neighbourhoods.
…Now the company has its sights on Australia.
…“We want to bring this concept to Australia.” ]
http://www.domain.com.au/news/chinese-developer-wants-to-bring-largescale-residential-estates-to-australia-20151119-gl2pqx/
Would ChAFTA allow such to be built in Australia by Chinese workers ?
victoria@925
+1
dave
[Would ChAFTA allow such to be built in Australia by Chinese workers ?]
Good question
[Would ChAFTA allow such to be built in Australia by Chinese workers ?]
Why wouldn’t it be a good thing if they built something like this?
victoria@1115: and yet I hear a DD is being considered. Really, after watching my fellow Tasmanian on that ghastly (yet irresistibly fascinating) Verdict the other night, it think a thorough cleansing of the Senate is in order.
meher baba
What excuse will Turnbull have for going to a DD, apart from opportunism?
New thread.
AussieAchmed@988
Yep. That is why they are coming after those on social security. Not because they are after them, per se, but because if they can knock the floor out from under that class, it will knock the floor out from the much much bigger class of wage and salary earners more effectively than any direct assault could. That is where the real profit lies for the 0.1% in this game. That is their real target, not a handful of poor schmucks already down the bottom.
They are running the standard age-old con: ‘If you let us kick those down the bottom, if you offer up some sacrificial lambs, then we won’t come after you and your wages and conditions and rights and freedoms.’
Well, good luck with that, suckers.
New thread/
WWP@1106: we can’t all be relatively rich, true. But even the average welfare recipient in Australia in 2015 enjoys an absolute standard of living way beyond that of even the richest people of 200 years ago in terms of nutrition, transportation, heating/cooling, access to labour-saving devices which do the work of a score of servants, entertainment options, etc, etc. If anyone living in 1815 could be brought in a time machine to the present, they’d think is all rich.
And I reckon that the best measure of the fairness of a society is not the level of inequality (the “Gini coefficient” if you like) but two other things 1) the absolute standard of living of the poorest citizen; and 2) the extent of upward mobility through acquiring skills and working hard. I think people around the world are focusing too much on the politics of envy and not enough on the politics of opportunity.
I agree that we should have a robust land tax – to minimize inequality of wealth, and to discourage speculative land purchases. But we don’t need foreigners to buy land here. Any additional spending that our economy needs can be provided by our national government in accordance with public needs.
BK @1030
Is it just me or does anyone else think Judith Sloan and Henry Ergas should get together? they’d be a lot happier and hence far less likely to stir up trouble and misery
I agree with meher baba, many on the left seem to think that the way to help the poor is to just attack the rich, I accept WWP’s point that we can’t all be rich but I see no reason why we can’t at least ensure everyone is living above the poverty line and is able to be an active member of the community.
I suspect the reason for this narrow mindedness comes from many who claim to be on the left as it feels all nice but really have no real understanding of the lives of the disadvantaged.
meher baba
I’m not sure people on welfare on better off than the rich of 200 years ago, it might be true that most people would be but people on welfare don’t have the financial freedom of the rich had even 200 years ago.
ESJ @1028
It would be much better to broaden the GST base (and lower the rate) rather than have a high rate with a narrow base
If there is a public purpose in discouraging short term capital holding then the appropriate tax mechanism is a penalty for doing the wrong thing rather than a bonus for doing the right thing: tax penalties work and are not able to be exploited; tax bonuses largely do not work as intended and are susceptible to exploitation. In this case I doubt there is public purpose: buy and hold of the index beats trading unless either arbitrage or insider information is involved. The former is better closed by ensuring market transparency; the latter is a criminal offense. Other than that if people want to waster their money (but perhaps entertain themselves) by asset trading then they should be allowed to do so.
It is better to lower the top marginal income tax rate (to 35% say) but eliminate all deductions excepting self education goods purchases and other personal capital (e.g. uniforms). Payroll tax should also be eliminated as this is borne by low paid workers through reduced real wages.
Death duties don’t work as intended. Reverse mortgages against land tax obligations do, due to the fact they are unavoidable.
The accumulation of assets in family homes is extremely harmful to economic efficiency as it creates a confused capital structure. Special status of “the family home” should be limited to access to a reverse mortgage scheme but it will take a very courageous leadership to effect this.
Company taxation was poorly understood until recently. It was assumed that it was a tax on capital and was thus bad for similar reasons to taxes on labour being bad (but shared the pain between labour and capital). However it turns out that company taxation is mostly a tax on labour and beyond that is a tax on supra-normal profits that arise due to a business succeeding through innovation. The headline company tax rate should be decreased, probably to 20% or even 15% and in addition there should be 150% or even 200% deduction of PAYG withholding to mitigate the incidence on labour (thus boosting real wages). According to the Treasury the marginal excess burden of this tax is zero at an average net rate of about 10% and this should be the target. Additionally there should be some sort of adjustment to eliminate the penalization of the success of innovative new businesses