The first ReachTEL poll of the year for the Seven Network supports Roy Morgan and Essential Research in finding nothing too radical has happened over the new year break. The poll records the Coalition’s two-party lead at 55-45, unchanged from the last poll on November 26. That’s all we have at this stage, but hopefully full results will be on the website soon.
UPDATE: Here we go. On the primary vote, the Coalition goes from 48.8% to 48.5%, while Labor goes from 31.1% to 31.8%, and the Greens go from 11.2% to 10.8%. A little surprisingly, Malcolm Turnbull’s lead on the all-or-nothing preferred prime minister question has widened considerably, from 71.3-28.7 to 80.8-19.2.
UPDATE 2 (26/1/16): The latest fortnightly face-to-face and SMS poll from Roy Morgan, which went from being the Coalition’s worst poll series to its best when Malcolm Turnbull took over, has given the government its weakest result since September. The Coalition is down 3.5% on the primary vote to 43.5%, but Labor is likewise down a point to a dismal 28%, with the Greens up two to 15%. On the headline respondent-allocated two-party preferred figure, the Coalition lead narrows from 56-44 to 55-45, while the previous election two-party result goes from 55.5-44.5 to 54-46. The accompanying press release also informs us that the Nick Xenophon team is outpolling Labor in South Australia, where the primary votes are Coalition 31.5%, Labor 21.5% and NXT 22.5%. The poll was conducted over the past two weekends from a sample of 3247.
Also out yesterday was a Galaxy automated phone poll of 506 respondents from Clive Palmer’s electorate of Fairfax, conducted for the Courier-Mail, which recorded primary vote support for the beleaguered Palmer at a risible 2%. This compared with 50% for the Coalition and 27% for Labor, compared with 2013 election results of 41.3% for the LNP, 26.5% for Palmer and 18.2% for Labor.
Cat
I had a diamond python on a bedroom a few years ago. Someone (not me) put in in a pillow caseand took it outside.
I had one at the front door last year – wanted to come inside. The cat was hissing.
[The ALP is also shedding members because they have had enough of the party. ]
Labor has always shed members, and I assume it’s the same scenario for most parties: people join up, stick around for a year, get bored and don’t renew when their first year is up.
That’s been the pattern for as long as I’ve been in the party.
Indeed, I would have been amongst them if, before the end of my first year of membership, I hadn’t accidentally became a candidate!
WeWantPaul@2636
That is false.
Provide your evidence that any Labor economics spokesperson has ever likened running a country to running a household budget.
Assuming we have a GST election and Labor win based on no GST where will the new Labor Government get the $80 billion they need to replace that $80 billion allegedly taken out of the states for health and education?
JD,
(I am not for sighing 😉 )
Labor’s attempts to appear ‘Green-lite’ on issues is in response to pressure from the Greens and its ability to win seats. (Provocative, I know).
As more Greens become elected, Labor will have to change its direction, including its asylum seeker policy, if it is to remain ‘competitive’. (Provocative, I know).
[ where will the new Labor Government get the $80 billion they need ]
Well, they can start with going through the IPA’s membership list…. 🙂
Unisex toilets should be the norm. Stalls only. Problem solved.
WWP I agree with what you are saying.
‘Credibility’ is about whether people actually do believe you, not whether you are actually right. It would be counterproductive for Labor to try to turn around what is now decades of ‘deficit=bad’ public understanding in the course of the next nine or so months til the next election, especially when, for whatever reason, the leader finds it hard to be taken seriously by the nightly news, let alone have the opportunity to present a reasoned and relatively complex argument.
If proposing a 2% GST rise is what it would take to get significant progressive tax reforms in other areas (CGT, ultra high incomes, progressive taxation of superannuation, large deceased estates; leaving broad based land taxes instead of stamp duty to the states) and funding for an expansion of social democracy (particularly the Gonski reforms, protection of Medicare, better subsidies for higher ed, protection of legal aid and social housing funding), I’m all in.
And anyone who thinks putting up Abbott saying ‘big new tax’ in an ad is an election winning strategy has forgotten that Labor’s most important policy difference from the coalition is carbon pricing.
davidwh
[ … to replace that $80 billion allegedly taken out of the states … ]
I think the key word here is allegedly.
Oh? So it was Labor that suggested putting my right to marry the person I love up for a referendum? Wait no, that was the Greens (provocative, I know :P)
My comment at 2660 was directed to Pegasus at 2655
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/i-was-35-and-made-the-wrong-turn-noel-pearson-reveals-his-greatest-regret-20160127-gmezc7.html
[Australia’s most prominent Indigenous leader and activist, Noel Pearson, has said not entering politics is his greatest regret and called for a new centrist political force to fix a political system failing Indigenous affairs, which is in “deep crisis”.]
What political party would he have joined fifteen years ago?
Prefix
[ Labor’s most important policy difference from the coalition is carbon pricing ]
Which Mal the Magnificent supports. Or has Mal recanted on this one as well now?
Pegasus
[ What political party would he have joined fifteen years ago? ]
Interesting. What political party would have him?
Pegasus@2662
He says he was twice offered pre-selection by Keating.
I have real problems with that as that is now how ALP rules on pre-selection work.
bemused
[ He says he was twice offered pre-selection by Keating. ]
I think the ALP dodged a bullet on that one … twice!
Player One
[Which Mal the Magnificent supports. Or has Mal recanted on this one as well now?]
He’s on record saying Direct Action is the right policy. I don’t think he’s specifically responded to his post-LOTO comments about it being a piece of ****.
Speaking as a biologist I do have problems with those who assume that gender is just a matter of self identification. The reality is that men have a Y chromossome and only 1 X chromosome. In other words rought 1/50 (46) or 2% of their genome is different. No matter how much hormone you take you can never change this cellular DNA. Now this Y DNA or lack of an X probably represents something like 500-1000 different proteins that a male body makes or does not make because of this DNA. It will affect the way you breath, muscles, sensitivity to drugs, food metabolism, probably neuron pathways, blood flow etc. It is NOT just about producing testosterone or not. Obviously most men who reassign their gender to female will be very much taller than other women, but there will be thousands of other differences, including smell, digestion etc.
So while it is fine by me if a man wishes to live and dress as a women and have surgery if they choose, it is actually remarkedly stupid to assume that this alone will make the the same as most other women. The minor problem of 1000 genes in every single cell of the body behaving like a bloody male, makes this impossible.
Player One@2666
I was impressed by the early Pearson, but became very wary of him when he flirted with the forces of darkness.
JD
http://greens.org.au/LGBTI
[The Greens have always stood up for full equality for LGBTI Australians, and always will.
It was Christine Milne’s Bill that decriminalised homosexuality in Tasmania in 1997, after more than a decade of campaigning and negotiating.
Only the Greens are resolute in standing for full equality for LGBTI people in Australia. Every Green MP has voted for marriage equality, every time it has come before a Parliament.
The Australian Greens have always known that inequality in our marriage laws is a matter of discrimination, plain and simple.
In 2004, when Labor MPs voted with John Howard’s Coalition to define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman, the Greens stood proud to vote for equality.
The first Bill that our South Australian Senator Sarah Hanson-Young introduced into Parliament was for marriage equality. Since then, every time the issue has come up for a vote, every Green MP has voted for equality – every time.
We’re now closer than we’ve ever been before, thanks to tireless advocacy driving changes across the community, in the Parliament, and in the hearts and minds of everyday Australians. But the old parties still hold LGBTI Australians back from equality nationwide.
The Labor Party’s decision to allow its members to vote for discrimination in our laws will stop Australia from achieving marriage equality. During the last vote on equality, more than 47% of Labor MPs voted to keep inequality in our marriage laws – nearly half.
While the Prime Minister’s recent conversion to the side of equality is welcome, Labor is still committed to giving its MPs free reign to vote against equality – and that will only hold Australia back.]
A matter of discrimination is reason enough for a binding vote.
Labor not having a binding vote is an indication of how beholden it is to the religious conservatives within its ranks and its need to pander to the bigotry of swinging religious conservatives in marginal seats.
davidwh, some suggestions, some of which were raised in discussion tonight:
– carbon price
– end to super concessions for very wealthy
– reform tax-planning structures and tax trusts
– end corporate tax avoidance
– wealth-based taxes such as a land tax
– high volume trading tax (admittedly requires international cooperation)
– end to diesel fuel rebate
– reform of CGT to minimise exemptions including on homes above a certain value
– abolition of negative gearing (ambitious I know)
– end subsidies for private education and private healthcare
Prefix
[ He’s on record saying Direct Action is the right policy. I don’t think he’s specifically responded to his post-LOTO comments about it being a piece of ****. ]
I have trouble keeping up with Mal the Malificent’s core beliefs. He seems to change them more often than his tax havens.
Nicholas
No unisex toilets Ugghhhhh!!!!!!
You may be surpised to know that mady of you males actually do not raise the toilet seat and leave little puddles for the next person. I really do not want to spend the day with a mans urine on by bum.
However unisex chinese style toilets might work.
Pegasus is, as usual, running her Greens recruiting drive, trying to peel off ALP members and supporters.
It illustrates clearly the parasitic nature of the Greens trying to feed off the ALP as the host organism.
I see it as fairly self limiting.
daretotread – you are confusing gender and biological sex. Please read my post at 2549.
Warren Mundine, former national president of the Labor party president, quit the Labor Party in 2012. He was then appointed to the position of chairman of the Australian Government’s Indigenous Advisory Council by Abbott.
What regrets would he have now?
Any move towards fiscal surplus requires either or both of:
a – private domestic account to move towards deficit (i.e. households and businesses spend more than they earn, as happened under Howard and which was in fact the entire reason for all the surpluses in those years)
b – foreign account to move towards Australia running a surplus with the rest of the world.
Swan was an ignoramus if he didn’t know that, an idiot if he thought either of the above was likely or a liar otherwise.
I’d go with ignoramus.
And in 2016, why would someone think that increasing the GST will have either of the necessary effects listed above; “do the math” as they say in the U S of A.
Pegasus
[ Labor not having a binding vote is an indication of how beholden it is to the religious conservatives within its ranks and its need to pander to the bigotry of swinging religious conservatives in marginal seats. ]
Democracy is a bugger, ain’t it?
JimmyDoyle
I agree. Bernie Sanders’ candidacy is incredibly important because it expands the Overton Window – the range of policy options and arguments deemed acceptable for mainstream discussion. Even if he doesn’t win this election, he has reinforced policy options and arguments that were previously dismissed as too unconventional to be considered. The public, think tanks, non-government organizations etc are getting primed for policy debates that may not be resolved favourably in this election cycle but will lay the foundation for future victories and better-than-expected deals. Conservatives have been so much better at grasping this dynamic in politics. You should always advocate boldly and cogently and vigorously for all that you want, and push the debate onto turf that is favourable to you. You don’t do what US Democrats and the ALP have spent the last thirty years doing: negotiating with themselves, second-guessing themselves, putting half-arsed compromises forward as starting points in negotiations, timidly refraining from making the case for ideal policies, coming across to the public as milquetoast incompetents. That kind of approach lets conservatives win, even when they aren’t in office. The nominally left-wing major parties have ceded the terms of the debate to conservatives.
dtt
The Y chromosome is very gene-poor. There’s less than 100 genes on the Y chromosome that actually code for anything.
Pegasus@2676
Obviously less than Judas Iscariot. He hung himself.
Pegasus – Labor is teeming with young LGBT activists, and an overwhelming majority of the parliamentary ALP is in favour of marriage equality. Unlike you, I can freely acknowledge that my party is not perfect, but it’s still pretty damn good.
Diog
[ There’s less than 100 genes on the Y chromosome that actually code for anything. ]
Does one of them code for leaving the toilet seat up or down?
bemused,
People can think for themselves. No one has to persuade others to quit the ALP. It’s their choice to eschew the ALP and gravitate towards a party that offers them policies and a vision they can support and fight for.
The problem lies with Labor if it can not retain people who have loyally served the ALP for years and who now prefer the Greens.
Having a coherent and principled policy platform and vision, rather than scapegoating, would serve you better.
Pegasus@2684
Oh, that’s really rich coming from a Green.
With all due respect to transgender people, as a woman I find it a bit hard to understand how a man can have an operation and turn into one of us. But it is a hard subject to get one’s head around, so I go with the flow.
[If proposing a 2% GST rise is what it would take to get significant progressive tax reforms in other areas (CGT, ultra high incomes, progressive taxation of superannuation, large deceased estates; leaving broad based land taxes instead of stamp duty to the states) and funding for an expansion of social democracy (particularly the Gonski reforms, protection of Medicare, better subsidies for higher ed, protection of legal aid and social housing funding), I’m all in.]
Well there are two risks here, firstly that it isn’t enough to get elected and the libs do their thing anyway, or that labor does win but doesn’t do nearly as much of the good things as you or I might hope.
But in any scenario I can think of a Labor win is better than a Liberal win.
I agree with the herd here that a labor win with buckets of progressive change and no GST increase is the best, I just think it is less probable than current labor odds of about 1 chance in 6.
dtt, 2668
Gender and sex are not the same thing, else all intersex people would be genderqueer (and vice versa)
Anyone watching the ISIS doc on SBS? Some really heavy video. Is this new or a rerun, don’t watch a lot of tv.
JD
[Unlike you, I can freely acknowledge that my party is not perfect…]
Oh, I can freely acknowledge the Greens Party is not perfect.
There is no such thing as ‘perfection’. Such constructs are relative in nature.
I would rather be a member of a political party that truly supports ending discrimination and votes accordingly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CtghCwnOM4
Looking up the Big Girls Blouse, and found this Liberal Ladies. Funny how the leadership instability was on the other foot in the 90s
Jimmy
I had read your post but it does not change the reality. Our genes determine our core physiology, be that height, hair colour, or gender. We can play around these days with artifical proteins that mimic those produced in cells under the coding of the genes, but we only do a fraction of the actual genes.
Without trying to be tite or mock those with a real gender based personality crisis, there are lots of us trappped by genetic heritage in bodies we do not like – small guys wanting to be tall or fat women wating to be slim. The phycholofical damage of a slim girl trapped in a fat body, or a tall guy in the body of a small guy, can be just as devastating as those of those who feel they have a wrongly assigned gender. However if a small guy declared he was really a tall fella and wanted to be trialled for the basket ball team or a fat girl the ballet lead we would laugh at them.
dtt
[ However if a small guy declared he was really a tall fella and wanted to be trialled for the basket ball team or a fat girl the ballet lead we would laugh at them. ]
But if both of these problems could be rectified by surgery or drugs (which is in fact the case), should we still laugh at them? Or should we allow them?
PTMD
Here is an insight….Victorian Greens senator Janet Rice – her story…
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/02/06/i-still-love-her-we-can-stay-married-senator-and-her-transgender-wife
[Janet Rice is one of Australia’s strongest campaigners for marriage equality and her passion has a very personal backstory. The Greens Senator talks to SBS about her relationship with her transgender wife, Nobel Prize winning climatologist Penny Whetton.]
The Bludger lounge is in dire need of a new poll.
daretotread @ 2692 – are our characters and personalities purely determined by genes? I understand that epigenetics may play an as yet undetermined role in determining who we are as individuals, but for the most part, we are more than the sum of our body parts. Yes, of course as self-aware animals we have a complex relationship with our bodies and of course our conception of self is inextricably linked with them.
However, having said that, if we were to think as you do that genes determines gender (and all the complications that arise from that loaded concept) then what you are in fact suggesting is that men and women are hard-wired to be masculine and feminine, with men being dominant over women. Putting aside that this is nonsense (how do you explain different cultures having different conceptions of masculinity and femininity? How do you explain matriarchal cultures?), this view of hard-wired gender raises very awkward questions about issues like domestic violence and sexual assault.
By confusing gender and biological sex you ignore how conceptions of gender and the social constructs around it are changing all the time. For example, it was once socially unacceptable for a father to take the nurturing role in a child’s life while the mother became the primary earner. This is now perfectly acceptable, at least in some sections of society, these days. If men are hard-wired to be masculine (i.e. to be the breadwinner, to provide for his family in return for sexual favours) then how does one explain men beginning to take on what once would’ve been characterised as the feminine responsibility of child-rearing.
The best that can be said is that gender is much more complex and fluid than you suggest.
Airlines
Not at all. Intersex people are those who have a genetic or occasionally developemental condition that gives them the features of both male and females. Mostly they have physiological dysfunction to some degree and with many conditions associated intellectual disabilities. This is because those with an extra chromosome XXY or XYY will produce more of the proteins coded on the extra chromosomes. Generally this causes severe physiological issues including mental impairment. Many of the features we associate with Downs syndrome will be present, although because a differenct set of proteins is involved, the manifestations of the condition will be different. Lucklily because the Y chromosome is small, the extra proteins usually only cause mild physiological disability. XYY males for example are often at the lower end of intellectual ability range. Of course this group are not unuall intersex.
Those with the XXY phenotype will often be intersex and will usually carry quite a heavy extra protein load. They will have mild problems in school academically and in sports as co-ordination is affected.
New thread.
Player 1
Ask again when the drugs are safe. Actually you cannot grow taller once you are an adult.
Pegasus
It is a lovely story, and I wish them well. But I am probably one of the women for whom Penny will always be Peter with Surgery, in the deepest back of my mind.
I am not sure I am happy about men suddenly deciding they can take on womanhood, my state. It is almost the ultimate, I can’t quite get the word, the feeling…