The Australian has brought us the first Newspoll result of the year, and it supports the trend of other polling in suggesting nothing much has changed over the new year break. The Coalition’s two-party lead remains at 53-47, from primary votes of Coalition 46% (up one), Labor 34% (up one) and Greens 11% (down one). Bill Shorten has at least made up ground on preferred prime minister, which Malcolm Turnbull now leads 59-20, down from 60-14 in the last poll in December. The poll also records 54% opposition to an increase in the goods and services tax to 15% accompanied by tax cuts and compensation, with 37% in support. Stay tuned for Turnbull’s and Shorten’s personal ratings.
UPDATE: The Australian’s report relates that Turnbull is on 53% approval and 31% disapproval, which is up a point on both counts since the last poll, while Shorten is up two to 25% and down one to 60%.
UPDATE 2: A second tranche of results from the poll finds 71% favouring an election late in the year compared with only 21% for an election in the first half of the year. Opinions on Tony Abbott’s future are finely balanced: 46% would have him remain in politics (26% on the front bench, 20% on the back bench), while 45% want him to bow out at the next election.
UPDATE 3 (Essential Research): The latest two-week rolling average from Essential Research has the Coalition lead back to 51-49 after its brief stay at 52-48 last week, from primary votes of Coalition 44% (steady), Labor 35% (steady) and Greens 11% (up one). Further results suggest a curious drop in support for a republic since Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister, with support down three since September to 36% and opposition up two to 31%. When specified that the change might occur at the end of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, support goes up to 45%, with opposition at 29%. Fifty-six per cent think it likely that Australia will one day be a republic, compared with 24% unlikely. Despite this, there is broad opposition to changing the flag (33% support, 55% oppose), the national anthem (28% support, 54% oppose) and the date of Australia Day (23% support, 59% oppose).
A semi-regular question on trust in various media sources finds a slight across-the-board improvement since June last year, without disturbing the usual pattern of public broadcasting being viewed more favourably than the commercial media, and straight news being rated higher than opinion in its various forms. However, a question on individual newspapers finds opinions of The Australian, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald-Sun have improved, while the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Courier-Mail have not. This all but eliminates the gap between The Australian and the Fairfax titles, although the News Corp tabloids (particularly the Courier-Mail) continue to trail the pack.
[2026
meher baba
I don’t see how the fact that someone is 1) a nutter and 2) attention-seeking disqualifies them from being a terrorist these days. Nor does the fact that, in Monis’s case, there wasn’t a clear political objective to the terror.]
Calling Man Monis a terrorist is like calling a psychotic ice-addict who harms several people because they’re all part of a global conspiracy against them a “terrorist”.
You can call Man Monis a “terrorist”, but that won’t ever make him one. He was severely mentally ill, and the fact that he was able to do what he did is not so much an indictment of our “terrorism” preparedness, but our mental health system.
Meher
I do not see Muns any more of a terrorist than Julian Knight or Martin Bryant or indeed Ivan Milat. They were deranged people who killed. Mons latched on to terrorism in his last weeks but it was no more part of him than any other odd friendship he made.
It actually causes incompetence if we incorrectly call people terrorists when they are nutters. I think it is questionalble if the 15 year old was really a terrorist in the real sense, or just a mixed up kid, but I do not know the details so will still class him as a terrorist.
To be a terrorist you need to have a political or social cause. You need to be part of a bigger picture and of group, not a lone wolf nutcase.
Meher, disturbed individuals will often latch onto any cause that gets them at a moment in time. Now mostly they go for family, ex girlfriends or employers but sometimes they grab a cause , any cause – religion, anti abortion, anti green, anti psychiatrist, anti family court judge, anti RSPCA, anti communist or anti green. However the fact that they wrap their insanity in such a cloak does NOT make them terrorists.
A terrorist will normally be SANE. They may be passionate and misguided but they will have come to a considered view that their actions will benefit their cause. There will be many who share their world view and will help them. They will never act alone (except at the very end if they think their cause is lost and they choose to go down fighting).
Secondly a terrorist is not someone who joins a fighting group, but rather someone who once in a group chooses to use deliberate injury to civilians as their tactic to win. to frighten the people.
Now when does a nationalist or separist guerilla fighter become a terrorist. When does a member of a militia, or indeed an member of Special ops branch/commado goup or even a bomber pilot become a terririst. These a re not simple questions.
To me it seems that when someone takes up arms in an insurgency or war, to attack military or government or police they probably qualify as guerillas, militia or soldiers. The primary target are military enemies. When that someone takes out a home or hospital or school or kidnaps civilians, that defines them as terrorists. When someone does a random killing with no clear military/strategic objective, other than to create fear, they are a terrorist.
I used to love going out on the town in Sydney when I visited.
Well Done Clover Moore – you’ve destroyed it:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/would-last-person-sydney-please-turn-lights-out-matt-barrie?trk=pulse-det-nav_art
climatecouncil: #mediarelease CSIRO cuts a devastating blow for science https://t.co/JSUV4lJC8r #climate #CSIRO #CSIROcuts #auspol
mb @2042 The UN is already dysfunctional if you hadn’t noticed.
While I have no specific evidence, it seems to me to be quite conceivable that Keating – who was a champion at ringing up and abusing journalists and editors whose political coverage irked him – would have at some point rung someone in a management role at the ABC to complain about a story about him.
However, I also believe that, if Keating ever did do this, his complaints would have fallen on deaf ears.
What’s extraordinary here is that the ABC responded to Turnbull’s complaint by seemingly shutting down Nick Ross’s ability to comment. Followed by bowing to pressure to shift control of Q&A from one unit to another. There’s no question that the door has now been opened to direct political interference in the ABC’s operations.
If I were advising Turnbull, I think the best thing that he could do now would be to make a statement along these lines:
“Yes, I certainly did complain about coverage of the NBN, because I thought it was outrageously unfair.
However, I’m mortified to discover that my complaints actually led to some form of internal censorship within the ABC. All I was looking for was a fair go for my side of the story, not the suppression of comment.
I therefore intend to appoint a committee – INSERT NAME OF EMINENT PERSONS HERE – to look at ways of ensuring that the ABC is editorially independent and unbiased and that there is an effective way of dealing with complaints about bias that does not result in undue self-censorship.”
Yes, I know, pigs might fly. But, while it is essential for Turnbull to try to keep the Liberal Right on the bus, he’s also got to worry about maintaining his own image as a moderate. If that image becomes too tarnished, then he’ll lose his political identity and people will turn away from him/.
jimmy @2043
Are you saying Aboriginals in 1788 were technologically and economically advanced?
What’s you problem with the truth?
oz_f: This is like a reverse Gretch situation. The whistleblower is actually right and Turnbull’s on the receiving end. He’s been reverse-Gretched
Meher
The question of rudd’s competence should rest entirely on his achievements – not the whining of opponents.
He does have the GFC to his credit – complex, swift and decisive action.
He prety much was the instigator and major player behind setting up the G20, so he can take credit for that.
He had some failures too but so does everyone.
The reality of course is that Rudd’s appointment or non appointment will come down to whether there is an alternatice candidate acceptable to all parties. There are several Bulgarian women in the mix – they will need support from BOTH USA and Russia. This will be challenging. Helen Clarke is in the mix which is good. she should have support from most.
Why is it so important to some of you for Monis not to be portrayed as a terrorist?
Islamic terrorists are all ratbags by definition. Only a ratbag could possibly think it is a good idea to go around killing lots of innocent people without any clear political objective: to create fear simply for the sake of it.
They choose to become Islamic terrorists for all sorts of reasons, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that many – perhaps even most – have significant mental illness.
If it looks like an Islamic terrorist, behaves like an Islamic terrorist, kills like an Islamic terrorist, then it’s a terrorist. They’re all over the western world at the moment: Monis wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
phony @2050 – On fire today hey, champ.
Do you do stand up?
I see the CSIRO are playing the political game – threaten to cut where it gets the most publicity rather than making the decisions based on a rational process.
Wouldn’t Scott have made a note of that conversation with Turnbull, to protect himself?
[ meher baba
Posted Thursday, February 4, 2016 at 3:59 pm | Permalink
If it looks like an Islamic terrorist, behaves like an Islamic terrorist, kills like an Islamic terrorist, then it’s a terrorist. They’re all over the western world at the moment: Monis wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
]
Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq
Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq
Gen. Wesley Clark: “ISIS Got Started With Funding From Our Closest Allies”
…at least according to General Wesley Clark, ISIS was created and funded by our “closest allies.” As the General said: ISIS got started through funding from our friends and allies… to fight to the death against Hezbollah.
Which friends and allies, he did not say. But he did suggest that it has become a “Frankenstein monster.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/gen-wesley-clark-isis-got-started-with-funding-from-our-closest-allies/5432707
The poor LNP being threatened by the CSIRO – “Please don’t throw me in that Briar Patch”
meher baba@2060
Why are you so desperate to portray Monis as a terrorist when he was so clearly mentally ill and of the wrong branch of Islam to be an ISIS supporter? His pretence that he was formed part of his attention seeking.
He did not behave like an Islamic terrorist. Just a common or garden hostage taker and murderer but trying to dress up his actions to give himself more credibility.
K17
I don’t know but I dfo think Labor has a smoking gun. The government response to the question was telling. Pyne was all ready to go the suppression straight away.
Compact Crank@2065
Yep, get on board people!
Attend the next book burning.
March boldly forward with the LNP to the Dark Ages.
phony @2064
Nice little attempt at deflection – so, I’m assuming you have perfect decision making and are a bored Billionaire just here for a little light entertainment.
Managed to ignore Obama’s disastrous decisions to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
[kills like an Islamic terrorist]
Except Monis didn’t – he had plenty of opportunity to kill most of those in the Lindt Café and instead spent something like 16 hours not killing anyone.
[ Compact Crank
Posted Thursday, February 4, 2016 at 4:00 pm | Permalink
phony @2050 – On fire today hey, champ.
Do you do stand up?
]
DAMMED by your OWN words – its just not fair or no contest – like shooting fish in a barrel – a piece of piss ….
As my service friend Bubba in El Paso Texas says – “If you can’t hang with the big dawgs, get off the fuckin’porch!
bemused@2066: “and of the wrong branch of Islam to be an ISIS supporter? His pretence that he was formed part of his attention seeking.”
His background is surely irrelevant. More than a few ISIS members are from non-Muslim backgrounds. He claimed to be a recent convert to Sunni Islam, and ISIS were happy to accept him as such. Yes he was bonkers, but aren’t they all?
“He did not behave like an Islamic terrorist. Just a common or garden hostage taker…”
I don’t get this distinction at all. Is it that he didn’t behead them?
[CC 2053
I used to love going out on the town in Sydney when I visited.
Well Done Clover Moore – you’ve destroyed it:
]
Clover Moore? The article clearly regards the State Government as the culprit.
[“Sydney, once the best city in the world, has become an international joke thanks to the NSW Liberal government.”]
CC
[I used to love going out on the town in Sydney when I visited.
Well Done Clover Moore – you’ve destroyed it:]
During your fun-filled forays in Sydney, did you ever pop by an emergency department at St Vincent’s Hospital in the wee hours? If you did, you might have seen the carnage that unfolded due to alcohol-fueled violence on the streets.
The new laws have the backing of doctors, nurses, paramedics, police, and residents. I won’t cry myself to sleep because a bunch of McDonald’s franchises have down in the CBD.
The pubs are also doing it tough in my part of Sydney – and we’re outside the lockout laws (and well outside Clover’s jurisdiction). What’s killing business here is over-priced drinks and crap food.
Fun police, my arse. This is just another ‘Get Clover’ meme.
Compact Crank@2069
Oh this is rich!
What of the even more disastrous decisions to go into each of those countries?
Cranky, you are a comic genius. 😆
Terrorists write to Attorney Generals asking for advice all the time. Usually they are just ignored and the letter is lost in the inaccessible second tab of a spreadsheet.
Compact Crank – if I thought an unrepentant white supremacist like you were capable of being reasoned with, let alone capable of having a sustained intellectual conversation, I would respond to your question with my genuine thoughts.
But in reality you a little more than shallow, stagnant pond of base right-wing ignorance. All you’re capable of is taunting and baiting with crappy insults, cheap racism, and debunked IPA talking points.
You ask a question like that, and you wonder why Joe Williams refused to stand for the national anthem? Your capacity for stupidity and abusiveness is without limit.
meher baba@2072
I know you are not as dumb as you are pretending to be today.
He didn’t set about killing as many as he could as all the others have.
Entirely different MO.
[Mike Carlton
Mike Carlton – @MikeCarlton01
That’s $243.8m for school chaplains and $160m for the SSM plebiscite.Total: $403.8m. So let’s sack 350 CSIRO scientists to pay for it. Mad.]
guytaur
Wonder why Labor waited to ask about the Nick Ross gag until today?
[ Compact Crank
Posted Thursday, February 4, 2016 at 4:06 pm | Permalink
The poor LNP being threatened by the CSIRO – “Please don’t throw me in that Briar Patch”
]
Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!
victoria
I would assume Labor was doing its research as they would not want to do a Gretch.
Anyway, none of you have yet explained to me why you are so determined to “prove” that Monis wasn’t a “terrorist”.
So I’ll give you all an explanation again. It comes from that bizarre partisan sort of mindset that is so common among some on this forum. Tony Abbott endlessly made a big deal of terrorism, with lots of flags and so forth, and at one point looked like making a big deal about Monis: although, in the end, he held back a fair bit.
The desire of many on the left to declare that Monis wasn’t a terrorist therefore comes out of a desire to deny Tony Abbott being able to make a meal of the onshore terrorist event that he sometimes seemed to be almost inviting.
Well, Abbott’s gone, Turnbull (with all his faults) doesn’t go in for all this sort of stuff, so we can now calmly look back at the events of Xmas 2014 and say, yes, they were the work of a terrorist.
Yes, he acted alone without any instructions from the leadership in Syria. But he wasn’t the first or last to do that.
Yes, he was a bonkers attention-seeker. But, once again, that’s par for the course with this lot.
I think he had a little bit in common with the Boston Marathon bombers, who the FBI found were not connected with any organised Islamic group and didn’t have any specific goals, but are still usually described as “terrorists”. I’m pretty sure they were bonkers too.
Question
[Clover Moore? The article clearly regards the State Government as the culprit.]
As a card-carrying RWNJ, Crank is required to Hate Clover. So everything bad that happens in Sydney (and Newcastle too, where the lock-out laws were first trialled – successfully) is down to her. Or to the ALP. But Clover is is still Lord Mayor, so she carries the can for this one.
No matter that the article he cites shafts the blame to his LNP mates in Macquarie St
guytaur
Yep. That had crossed my mind….
[Bernard Keane
Bernard Keane – Verified account @BernardKeane
.@TurnbullMalcolm was different from previous Lib & Labor Comms ministers: he contacted ABC MD directly to complain about content]
CC
[Managed to ignore Obama’s disastrous decisions to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan.]
I almost fell off my chair laughing at that one. 😀
Oh mercy…
jimmy @2077
“white supremacist”? WTF?
You are the full leftist parody.
It must be very challenging being so unhappy all the time.
bemused@2078: “He didn’t set about killing as many as he could as all the others have.”
So people are only terrorists if they kill everyone right away? So all the hostages taken by Islamists in the Middle East over the last few decades can sleep calmly in their graves comforted by the thought that “thank goodness the people who kidnapped us weren’t terrorists”?
I think my explanation in 2083 is the correct one. You and others don’t want Monis to be seen as a terrorist because you see that as a poke in the eye for Tony Abbott.
jimmy @2077 Clearly Joe Williams never learnt that you have to respect others for them to respect you.
meher baba@2083
It is impossible to prove a negative so the burden of proof rests with you.
Go ahead and provide your proof that Monis truly was an Islamic terrorist linked or in communication with a terrorist organisation such as ISIS.
[Bernard Keane
Bernard Keane – Verified account @BernardKeane
.@TurnbullMalcolm also forced his dept to investigate the ABC, rather than engaging an independent consultant – another unprecedented move
8:17 PM – 3 Feb 2016
34 RETWEETS13 LIKES]
[2060
meher baba
Why is it so important to some of you for Monis not to be portrayed as a terrorist?]
Why is it so important to you that he be portrayed as a terrorist?
Well yes for a start. He took hostages (terrorists don’t generally do that), he didn’t behead them, he didn’t make a propaganda video, he dropped one of his bags on the way in, he managed to let most of the hostages escape, he thought people were watching and listening to him, loved to rant about the Queen, was dismissed by police as not a genuine terrorism risk, considered himself a spiritual healer and expert in black magic, tried to join to the Rebels bikie gang, wrote poison letters and had never interacted with IS.
Safe to say, if he really was a “terrorist”, he wasn’t your average “terrorist”.
[The desire of many on the left….blah blah blah]
Look Mr Baba, I know that this is a particular obsession of yours, but really like most obsessions it gets really tedious really quickly.
I can just imagine you at parties ‘Look, I have no proof of this but if it wasn’t for the bleeding heart lefties, we wouldn’t all be drinking this cat’s piss Sauv Blanc from New Zealand. In my opinion…’
20 minutes later mass departures enue.
phoenixRED@2064: “Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq”
Absolutely no doubt about it.
Partly a consequence of the criminally naive and imbecilic decision to embark on the 2nd Gulf War in 2003.
Partly due to post-Cold War thinking that says that backing the enemies of Putin’s mate Assad was a good strategy.
Partly a gesture towards Israel’s strong desire to see its neighbours weakened by continual insurrection.
And partly out of some incredibly naive (worse than the necons re Iraq) BS from the Obama administration about the “Arab Spring”. Blind Freddy could see that Islamists were the only likely winners out of the tearing down of secular dictatorships in Middle Eastern countries: it had already happened in Iraq and Algeria, but the gumbies in Washington either didn’t understand or didn’t care that it would also happen in Libya, Syria, Egypt and Tunisia.
But, regardless of what caused them to become as powerful as they are, ISIS are despicable terrorists: a Frankenstein’s monster indeed.
JimmyDoyle@2093
Excellent post JD.
I really don’t think MB has a feather with which to fly.
ensue
adrian@2094: if only it was as simple as blaming the political left for that disgusting NZ Sav Blanc that tastes like lime cordial with added grass clippings.
[ JimmyDoyle
Posted Thursday, February 4, 2016 at 4:14 pm | Permalink
Compact Crank – if I thought an unrepentant white supremacist like you were capable of being reasoned with, let alone capable of having a sustained intellectual conversation, I would respond to your question with my genuine thoughts.
But in reality you a little more than shallow, stagnant pond of base right-wing ignorance. All you’re capable of is taunting and baiting with crappy insults, cheap racism, and debunked IPA talking points.
]
Genealogy itself is something of a privilege, coming far more easily to those of us for whom enslavement, conquest, and dispossession of our land has not been our lot.
It is vitally important for a society to understand the difference between a terrorist and the mentally ill and the plain criminal, because the 3 different cases requires 3 very different solutions or strategies.
Is there a law and order response required, or a national security response or a mental health response? All very different.
A mad man acting alone, trying to drape themselves in a flag at the eleventh hour is probably just a criminal, and this case a mentally ill one.
He is hardly a terrorist- he wrote to the Attorney General about contacting ISIS, and far from quietly plotting a terror act with international assistance, he spent the last 5 years ranting on national TV news!