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.
JD@2093: “Why is it so important to you that he be portrayed as a terrorist?”
It isn’t. I’m just shooting the breeze on PB, as is my occasional wont.
“Safe to say, if he really was a “terrorist”, he wasn’t your average “terrorist”.”
I don’t know what an “average” terrorist would be. I’m accepting that he was a highly-erratic ratbag. But he did try, in an incredibly inept way, to portray what he was doing as having something to do with Islam.
If he’d demanded $100,000 in cash, or a pardon for the crimes for which he was being tried, or something like that, then I would agree he wasn’t a terrorist.
[Ancestors
Lucy Stanton
8m8 minutes ago
Lucy Stanton @louinoosa
Looks like Turnbull had a tricky time of it in #qt today. Scrutiny on the #NBN Keep it up @JasonClareMP Voters deserve answers #taxdollars]
[Rowan
Rowan – @FightingTories
@louinoosa @JasonClareMP And wasn’t little Pyne quick to try and gag, much like the Ashby matter. Someone has something to hide, again.
9:32 PM – 3 Feb 2016
1 LIKE]
[2090
Compact Crank
Clearly Joe Williams never learnt that you have to respect others for them to respect you.]
Yeah right, because when you characterised his culture as “stone-aged”, and made the implication that his people had been “advanced” by European “settlement” and technology, you were being “respectful”.
You think that British colonisation materially improved the lives of Indigenous Australians. That’s textbook white supremacy.
Why thank you. I do try.
.It must be very challenging being so unhappy all the time.
I’m very happy. Ecstatic even. After all, I’m a flaming homosexual who is far more embraced by mainstream society than a racist like you.
It must be very challenging for people like you, being so irrelevant to modern civilised society.
jimmy
[Why is it so important to you that he be portrayed as a terrorist?]
Having Monis portrayed as a ‘terrorist’ allows our government to push for even more repressive ‘national security’ powers.
That’s the only import of it.
kakuru
[ Fun police, my arse. This is just another ‘Get Clover’ meme. ]
Agreed. Much as I despise Clover Moore and blame her for many of Sydney’s faults, the lockout laws are not one of them.
I endorse these laws wholeheartedly, and (being an occasional resident of inner Sydney) I can see directly the good that they have done. Sydney is a much better and safer place to be late at night since these laws were introduced.
The campaign of blaming every failed restaurant or bar on the recent lockout laws is a deliberate misrepresentation to try and stop these very successful measures being adopted more widely.
CTar1@2104
Well I hope the Coroner puts and end to that game.
[2094
adrian
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 ensue.]
Spot on Adrian. It would seem we have our very own version of “Malsplaining” here on PB. I think I’ll call it “Mehersplaining”.
[ CTar1
Posted Thursday, February 4, 2016 at 4:41 pm | Permalink
jimmy
Why is it so important to you that he be portrayed as a terrorist?
Having Monis portrayed as a ‘terrorist’ allows our government to push for even more repressive ‘national security’ powers.
That’s the only import of it.
]
Abbott – used and abused – the ‘terrorist’ theme – with his 3000000 flags and speeches and utilising extreme RWNJ’s useful idiots like Crank to this day – to espouse fears of all our impending doom according to the Mencken principle :
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken
jimmy
[Well I hope the Coroner puts and end to that game.]
I doubt the coroner will make a finding that he either was or wasn’t a terrorist and if he did what difference would it make?
JDoyle
[You think that British colonisation materially improved the lives of Indigenous Australians. ]
This is the alibi of imperialists throughout history. The Roman Empire was founded on this belief. Augustus truly believed the German tribes would be so much happier being ‘civilized’ under Roman rule. Arminius had other ideas.
Ok Meher, whatever you say. But generally if you’re just “shooting the breeze”, you don’t demand definitive explanations and proof of inherently subjective matters, and then purport to have the only possible explanation:
My 2109 should have been to bemused.
bemused @ 2096 – thanks 🙂
CTar1@2109
There are certain matters of fact that a Coroner must make a finding on such as identity of deceased and cause of death.
Not sure of the NSW law, but they can make findings, or at least comments, on the circumstances surrounding the death.
It could have insurance or other payment implications.
The lockout laws have worked. However they are simply too extreme.
I am in my mid-thirties and live in the ‘zone’. It is very frustrating not to be able to buy a bottle of wine after dinner.
Gareth@2115
Plan ahead.
P1
[I endorse these laws wholeheartedly, and (being an occasional resident of inner Sydney) I can see directly the good that they have done. Sydney is a much better and safer place to be late at night since these laws were introduced.]
I’m a permanent resident of inner Sydney. My OH and I do feel safer when we venture into the CBD at night. The scariest thing about going out in Sydney is the price of a meal at the average restaurant. (And by average, I mean ‘average’ in every sense.)
[2110
Kakuru
This is the alibi of imperialists throughout history.]
I vehemently agree with you. And right-wingers persist with the myth, despite all evidence that imperialism and colonisation has wreaked havoc the world over.
phoenixRED@2108: “Abbott – used and abused – the ‘terrorist’ theme – with his 3000000 flags and speeches and utilising extreme RWNJ’s useful idiots like Crank to this day – to espouse fears of all our impending doom according to the Mencken principle :
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
I’m an enormous fan of HL Mencken (who in no way could be considered to be anything other than a man of the political Right). And I agree that Abbott’s umpteen flags and endless attempts to stir up fears of terrorism were abhorrent and ridiculous.
And it didn’t work for him: the public didn’t get scared, they just got embarrassed about the way he carried on. Indeed, the Monis incident contributed to this: I think a lot of ordinary people were astonished that a known and (suspected) violent nutter could write to more than one part of the government suggesting that he was considering “joining” ISIS and – despite all the flags and heightened alert levels and rabbiting on about “death cults” – this clear evidence warnings were filed away in the folder marked “no further action”. And then, when an inquiry was set up into the incident, the relevant documents failed to be delivered due to a pretty basic sort of clerical error.
It made Abbott’s approach to fighting terrorism look a bit like Team America World Police, without the funny bits (the bizarre sex seen, Kim Jong Il singing “I’m so Ronery”, etc.)
But having said all that, Islamist terrorism is not in anyway an imaginary threat: the events in Paris have illustrated that. Yes, if the type and frequency of terrorist acts do not increase significantly, the average inhabitant of a Western country is far more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed in one of these incidents. But that doesn’t make them unreal.
And the terrorists would like to make these incidents a lot worse: especially by getting their hands on a nuclear weapon. There are credible stories around that Osama did get hold of a nuclear weapon at around the time of 9/11, but attempts to make use of it were bungled.
The threat of something like happening that really scares me. If it doesn’t scare the rest of you, then you’re lucky.
Gareth
[It is very frustrating not to be able to buy a bottle of wine after dinner.]
What time do bottle shop sales stop?
CTar1
What time do bottle shop sales stop?
10PM
Monis wasn’t trying to attain a political goal, hence he wasn’t a terrorist.
The guy who killed the police accountant was so he was a terrorist.
meher baba
Posted Thursday, February 4, 2016 at 5:09 pm | Permalink
But having said all that, Islamist terrorism is not in anyway an imaginary threat: the events in Paris have illustrated that. Yes, if the type and frequency of terrorist acts do not increase significantly, the average inhabitant of a Western country is far more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed in one of these incidents. But that doesn’t make them unreal.
]
A touch of reality of the US Home vs Terrorists :
Guns in the US: The statistics behind the violence
Mass shootings: There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which catalogues such incidents. A mass shooting is defined as a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant.
School shootings: There were 64 school shootings in 2015, according to a dedicated campaign group set up in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in 2012. Those figures include occasions when a gun was fired but no-one was hurt.
All shootings: Some 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured. Those figures are likely to rise by several hundred, once incidents in the final week of the year are counted.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34996604
bemused
I think the identity and insurance can be ruled out. The possibile culpability of police actions will certainly be a major point.
JDoyle
[I vehemently agree with you. And right-wingers persist with the myth, despite all evidence that imperialism and colonisation has wreaked havoc the world over.]
And along with it: urbanisation. Hand-in-hand with the introduction of new diseases came the rise of the urban slum to help spread them.
This example has the causality mixed up.
1. Gates moves to Perth, this causes
2a – Growth in the Perth economy
2b – An increase in inequality in Perth
2a and 2b are events with a joint cause, neither (in this example) causes the other.
However, it has been shown in economics that (unless saving is somehow impossible) demand creates supply more than supply creates demand. That is, Say’s Law is incorrect. Or rather, it is irrelevant: Say assumed that sustained saving was impossible, which is clearly not the case. Inequality is a demand side factor – reduced inequality in an economy of a given size transfers money from those with a lower propensity to spend to those with a higher propensity to spend and thus increases demand which in turn induces additional supply (i.e it causes growth). This is not some theoretical idea: the US in the 1940-60 had lower inequality and grew faster than the US in the 1980-now.
bemused@2116
I have but why should I have to. However occasionally, I will have dinner with a group of friends. We leave the restaurant and head to someone’s house for a few drinks. An impulsive night out is ruined because Baird and Co. thinks I should be tucked in bed by 10:30.
More Young Americans Now Die From Guns Than Cars
The United States is one of the greatest nations in the world. But compared to our peers, we’re one of the worst when it comes to gun violence.
In America, you can be shot at an elementary school. You can be murdered at a church or movie theatre.
You can even be executed on live TV — and yet there’s no real expectation of gun reform.
Gun-related violence and death is a real public health problem in America, researchers say :
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/08/26/americas-gun-violence-problem-in-three-charts/#456e6e7958b7
Gareth – 10 a bit early!
You’d think 1 or 2 hours before the bars close would be OK.
Death and guns in the USA: The story in six graphs
(CNN)—The shooting rampage at an Oregon community college occurred in the most heavily armed nation in the world, a society with a firearm for nearly 90% of its 321 million citizens.
U.S. leads world in guns per capita
Civilians in the United States own about 270 million guns, according to a 2007 report by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey. That’s almost the population of Indonesia, the world’s fourth most-populated country. America ranks number one in firearms per capita.
MORE : http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/03/us/gun-deaths-united-states/
Gareth
[ We leave the restaurant and head to someone’s house for a few drinks. ]
It takes only a few minutes by taxi to get outside the ‘lockout’ zone.
meher baba@2119
Well, yeah. There is a threat and pro-active measures need to be taken just as they are.
But in the present climate the sort of ranting and raving Abbott behaviour doesn’t help. It is much better to listen to people like Dr Anne Aly and keep up the flow of intelligence from the Islamic community.
And there is every indication that it is working in Australia.
Diogenes@2122
Very simply and eloquently put.
Why not midnight, regarding lockout laws?
CTar1@2124
In most cases identity is only a formality.
Yes, the police actions and possibly the actions of political leaders will be of interest.
Player@2131
Again, why should I? I bought within the ‘zone’ because I enjoyed the nightlife and all that came with it.
kakuru
[ The scariest thing about going out in Sydney is the price of a meal at the average restaurant. (And by average, I mean ‘average’ in every sense.) ]
Yes, I agree. Sydney used to be renowned for having a wide variety of good restaurants in every price range. Now they are all average at best, and very expensive. Melbourne beats Sydney hands down on this one.
Gareth@2127
I am astonished that you and your friends don’t have the odd bottle or three stashed away at your respective homes.
Maybe you should be tucked in by 10:30pm. 😛
Gareth
[ Again, why should I? ]
Because lots of people – including me – got sick of the disgusting mess and the violence.
phoenixRED@2130
By any rational analysis, the major terrorist organisation in the US is the NRA.
Re the impact of British settlement on Aborigines.
Of course it didn’t improve their circumstances, it ripped apart the very fabric of their existence.
Before 1788, Aborigines lived in a network of culturally interconnected communities which alternated between uneasy peace and bouts of warfare. Their economic model involved reaping a very moderate harvest from a wide variety of food sources across large areas of land.
Then Whites arrived and started taking hold of large parcels of land to run sheep and cattle, more efficiently hunting birds and kangaroos with guns and more intensively fishing rivers and estuaries. It became no longer possible for Aborigines to harvest food from these areas as they once did. Moreover, the Whites quickly developed readily available ways of supplying meat and flour which were vastly superior to the time-consuming ways that the Aborigines had traditionally accessed these.
As the Whites encroached on their lands, the warriors bravely fought, but were beaten not so much by superior weapons (a skilled Aborigine armed with a spear often showed himself to be more than a match for a colonist with a musket) as by the ravages of communicable disease and by the increasingly superior numbers of the British.
And then the defeated warriors, having lost their land and, increasingly their women, also began to lose their culture and their self-respect. And they became dependent on the readily-supplied food and, later, welfare payments, from the colonists. And, slowly, the alcohol and gambling came along.
Some of them got work in the pastoral industry, but growing mechanisation (eg, the replacement of horses with vehicles) combined with the well-meant but catastrophic impact of White-led struggles for equal wages, meant that they eventually became shut out of that industry. The young people increasingly lost interest in learning their language and religion and, most importantly, in becoming initiated and choosing their partners through the traditional rules.
In the memorable words of the insightful Australian writer David Foster (who I’d strongly recommend to those who can cope with his rather right-wing world view), “there should never be such a thing as a defeated warrior people”.
And that’s the circumstance of most Aboriginal people today. Many are still rightly proud of their identity and culture, but in the modern world the raison d’etre of that culture – its meaning in supporting a hunter-gatherer lifestyle – is lost. Perhaps a new raison d’etre for Aboriginality can eventually be found: that’s very much the business of the Aborigines, not us whitefellas.
Indeed, I can’t help feeling that Aborigines would be able to sort out their problems a lot better if the whitefellas could just butt out a bit more. When, as I sometimes do, I travel in Aboriginal areas, I’m only interested in asking questions and listening. But I come across a helluva lot of whitefellas – both governmental and private – who think they have all the answers to the Aborigines’ problems and go about trying to solve them. The Intervention was definitely a mistake, although more well-intentioned than men on the left (hi there Adrian!) give it credit for. Before that, so-called self-determination under ATSIC didn’t work too well either.
I still think the best thing that was ever done out in the Aboriginal communities was Clyde Holding’s CDEP scheme, which gave people some sort of structure to their lives beyond collecting their welfare payment every fortnight and drinking, f—ing and fighting, but doing it in a gentle way rather than trying to push them into the sort of full-time whitefellas’ work which they weren’t really up for.
But the CDEP is long gone and I haven’t yet seen anything better come along. So maybe us whitefellas could stop trying to solve the problem and let them have a go.
Gareth@2136
So let me see if I understand this.
Governments should make laws to fit neatly with your lifestyle and daily schedule? 😮
This is the Chief Exec in charge at the CSIRO. Story July 2015.
[Larry Marshall, the chief executive of the multi-billion-dollar CSIRO and one of the nation’s highest-paid public servants, is being sued by a group of angry investors over the collapse of a technology company of which he was managing director.
Shareholders in failed laser technology company Arasor claim Dr Marshall was a central figure in the company’s collapse, alleging he and other directors engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct, as well as serious breaches of the Corporations and ASIC acts in relation to the company’s financial reports and a disastrous $81 million float.
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane touted Dr Marshall’s significant private sector experience as a major reason for hiring him to drive a newly business-minded CSIRO. Dr Marshall has been serving as the agency’s chief executive since January.
The CSIRO receives just over $5 billion in funds from taxpayers and the private sector over the forward estimates period. According to its most recent annual report, the chief executive of the scientific research agency stands to earn up $800,000 in salary, superannuation and bonuses.
Dr Marshall, a former technology entrepreneur and physicist, was a managing director and executive director of the China-based Arasor, a company that sought to promote laser technology in television and telecommunications.
He was also previously head of a series of other start-up technology companies, as well as managing director of technology venture capital firm Southern Cross Venture Partners.]
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/csiro-head-larry-marshal-sued-over-technology-firm-collapse/news-story/c3dd0c265d69dd8cb776950c53eba877
[ bemused
Posted Thursday, February 4, 2016 at 5:33 pm | Permalink
phoenixRED@2130
Death and guns in the USA: The story in six graphs
By any rational analysis, the major terrorist organisation in the US is the NRA.
]
The people in the US who support the NRA are their own worst enemy – and are worse than ANY terrorist organisation
THEIR SLOGAN : “I’ll give you my gun when you pry (or take) it from my cold, dead hands” is a slogan popularized by the National Rifle Association (NRA) on a series of bumper stickers.[
P1
[It takes only a few minutes by taxi to get outside the ‘lockout’ zone.]
A short walk is often enough. The lockout zone is actually quite concentrated.
[Now they are all average at best, and very expensive. Melbourne beats Sydney hands down on this one.]
Indeed. My mates and I often just grab a bottle of scotch and some takeaway, and stay in Friday night.
CTar1
NSW Coroner’s Act
Objects of Act
The objects of this Act are as follows:
(a) to provide for the appointment of coronial officers,
(b) to provide that Magistrates are coroners by virtue of office,
(c) to enable coroners to investigate certain kinds of deaths or suspected deaths in order to determine the identities of the deceased persons, the times and dates of their deaths and the manner and cause of their deaths,
(d) to enable coroners to investigate fires and explosions that destroy or damage property within the State in order to determine the causes and origins of (and in some cases, the general circumstances concerning) such fires and explosions,
(e) to enable coroners to make recommendations in relation to matters in connection with an inquest or inquiry (including recommendations concerning public health and safety and the investigation or review of matters by persons or bodies),
(f) to provide for certain kinds of deaths or suspected deaths to be reported and to prevent death certificates being issued in relation to certain reportable deaths,
(g) to prohibit the disposal of human remains without appropriate authority.
S81
(1) The coroner holding an inquest concerning the death or suspected death of a person must, at its conclusion or on its suspension, record in writing the coroner’s findings or, if there is a jury, the jury’s verdict, as to whether the person died and, if so:
(a) the person’s identity, and
(b) the date and place of the person’s death, and
(c) in the case of an inquest that is being concluded—the manner and cause of the person’s death.
Player On & Bemused.
Both one-hit murders occurred before current lock-out times. The lock-out would not have stopped these deaths. More street police or community policing would have. The lockout is a knee-jerk reaction and have killed off many businesses in the area.
There has been a spike in violence in Double Bay, Newtown and at the Casino. St Vincent’s might be loving it, but Prince of Wales and Price Alfred are not.
Gareth@2147
I appreciate your argument for expanding the area.
If a business is reliant on a drunken hoon clientele, then its closure is a good thing.
Out in the car, I heard one of the Coalition dinosaurs in the Senate speaking about the CSIRO cuts. Apparently this is part of their rational for the cuts.
Summary: CSIRO have done their work on climate change and don’t need any more funding for it. Now we have to find ways to deal with it, as we have done every time the climate has changed in the past.
😛
Gareth
[There has been a spike in violence in Double Bay, Newtown and at the Casino. St Vincent’s might be loving it, but Prince of Wales and Price Alfred are not.]
Easily solved. Expand the lock-out.
As for the Casino… jeez, cry me a river.