Probably not much doing in the land of polling over Easter, but The Australian as always takes advantage of the situation to unload Newspoll’s quarterly aggregates, providing breakdowns of the combined polling so far this year by state, gender and metro/regional. The results strongly suggest the Coalition’s recent downward movement has been driven by Victoria.
Also of note:
• The Australian has results from a privately commissioned poll by MediaReach which suggests Bronwyn Bishop would suffer a heavy defeat if Dick Smith ran against her as an independent in Mackellar, as he says he will do if she again wins Liberal preselection. The poll of 877 respondents showed Smith on 54% of the primary vote, compared with just 21% for Bishop. Sixty-nine per cent of respondents said Bishop should retire, and she recorded a net favourability of minus 30% compared with plus 59% for Smith. A report in the Daily Telegraph this week said support for Bishop was rapidly waning ahead of the preselection vote on April 16.
• A poll conducted for Sky News by Omnipoll, a new venture involving former Newspoll director Martin O’Shannessy, suggests the federal government will have a difficult sell with its mooted company tax cut. Out of four budgetary options offered, this one was most favoured by 3% of respondents, compared with 46% for fixing the bottom line, 27% for spending more on education, and 25% for personal income tax cuts. Respondents also faced a forced choice question on whether Malcolm Turnbull had lived up to expectations and Prime Minister, which broke 62-38 against. A table at the Sydney Morning Herald features breakdowns by age and, interestingly and unusually, income. The results suggest the most indulgent view of Turnbull’s performance is taken by the young and the wealthy.
• An intra-Coalition stoush looms in the rural Victorian seat of Murray, following Sharman Stone’s retirement announcement on Saturday. Stone gained the seat for the Liberals upon the retirement of Nationals member Bruce Lloyd in 1996. Rebecca Urban of The Australian reports candidates for Liberal preselection will include Duncan McGauchie, “a Melbourne-based communications specialist and former policy adviser to previous Victorian premier Ted Baillieu”.
[The MAIN THING though is that Morrison and Turnbull are ONCE AGAIN on a different page. The policy difference here is not a minor point. It is a major point of policy difference. SHAMBLES.]
Yep I totally agree with Bluey. Left hand clearly not talking to the right hand.
tpof @ 1494
That would likely be open to political games. Whoever is in power, the other side could campaign for some ridiculous figure that wouldn’t even meet their own requirements. If it’s held at the same time as an election, at the very least it has to reasonably match their promises – else they get in and find they can’t fund their stuff and look like dills.
BW
[I suggest grand theft continent by way of an endless series of individual murders and massacres combined with theft of the means of life which started in 1788 and continued until 1930.]
You forgot the silly pant wearing.
The only way I can work Turnbull’s income tax policy into something that vaguely makes sense is to assume that what he means is that states should receive a fixed proportion of income tax collected by the federal government.
That could more reasonably be seen to make sense – there is only one national tax rate, and states receive a set proportion of it in funding based on the location of the payee’s.
I know that if all states were to keep (picking a number) 40% of income tax collected & all of their share of GST that could play well in certain states (like WA).
The remainder could be used to balance needs between states and take care of federal responsibilities.
But that isn’t what he is proposing is it…
If the polls go south, we will not be getting a Election until September!.
If we don’t get an election until September isn’t the cat already out of the bag?
Like we will be in full on election mode from now to then.. and that is a very long campaign!
Actually, rather than vote for tax rates, maybe it’d be better to vote for an overall amount budgeted for the term, that is then translated into some multiplier over the set of taxes to produce the correct amount. Or maybe vote for a multiplier.
Gawd. I went into Twitter to get some of the reactions to the Tax Reform (sic) and Twitter kindly asked me if I wanted to follow – Malcolm Turnbull. Can’t think what gave them that idea.
ltep – I’m well aware of the difference between federalism and centralism thanks. A strong Federal government that plays a prominent role in health and education serves Australia well, and Turnbull’s attempt to push health and education back to the states is doomed to fail.
Yesterday, I told you of my view of the NSW Government, which at the moment is appalling in its treatment of the Hunter. They’ve cut health mental health and drug/alcohol services to the bone (we’ve gone from seven mental health facilities to just one, and that single hospital is badly underfunded and understaffed), opened private prisons, exposed the possibility of CSG drills in our backyards and farmlands, allowed coal mine expansions to go ahead without proper environmental approvals, pulled up rail lines in order to sell off the land to property developers, they’ve cut cultural funding, and now they’re proposing to create chaos in Hunter local governments, as well as entirely privatise public transport across Newcastle and the Hunter Valley.
I do not know where you’re from, but in my opinion the Hunter could only benefit from greater involvement from the Federal Government. The Hunter is entirely disenfranchised in NSW.
[Simon Katich
Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2016 at 4:15 pm | Permalink
BW
I suggest grand theft continent by way of an endless series of individual murders and massacres combined with theft of the means of life which started in 1788 and continued until 1930.
You forgot the silly pant wearing.]
I lived in the Victoria River District in the mid-seventies with people whose parents and grandparents were involved in resisting the invasion and who, as individuals, were suffering the terrible consequences of armed defeat. I mean terrible. The stories were then as freely available as post-footie chat is of a Monday morning.
I lived next door to a survivor of the Coniston Massacre. In my experience it is always the small but vivid details that validate massacre stories. His Mum hid him under a bush and ran for it. The killers galloped past the little boy. They murdered his Mum.
BTW, if you want tight pants, talk with Mr di Natale. You might also ask him when the Greens are actually going to stop snagging all the gravy and share some of their safe seats with Indigenous candidates.
[ L G H
Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2016 at 4:20 pm | Permalink
If we don’t get an election until September isn’t the cat already out of the bag?
Like we will be in full on election mode from now to then.. and that is a very long campaign!
]
We can only hope !!!
Liberal MP Russell Broadbent warns PM 8-week election campaign would be “longest suicide note” in history
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/early-election-would-be-longest-suicide-note-for-turnbull-government-mp-russell-broadbent-says/news-story/a53dbbd84538c57aad2f07be7e3806d9 …
Lizzie
Don’t feel bad. Twitter once mad a recommendation to me to follow Barnaby Joyce.
the issue of history is too diverse to be reduce to homilies in an undergad handbook – first point of very many – cook did not want to claim country at all, that was banks. there was also the little matter of the enligtenment which stopped french doing do beforehand. the british claim would have been contested vigorously except for revolution and napoleon in france – there was no map of continent least of all plans to settle it or invade for first decades – the fact cook was armed is a long bow (forgive pun) to plan an invasion … there is a bit of bad history swimming around – for while it looked to white and black that co-existence might have been possible but the pastoral age (along with illness etc) put paid to that —-
[I went into Twitter to get some of the reactions to the Tax Reform (sic) and Twitter kindly asked me if I wanted to follow – Malcolm Turnbull. Can’t think what gave them that idea.]
Clearly he’s in need of more friends right now. 🙂
[A strong Federal government that plays a prominent role in health and education serves Australia well]
Some minor role perhaps, counterbalanced by strong state governments. I accept that this is something we’re not going to agree on.
[ The only way I can work Turnbull’s income tax policy into something that vaguely makes sense is ]
If the Feds can convince the States (and voters) to carry the can on huge lumps of ever increasing outlays – they will have pulled off a huge move.
The States may think in the short term they are having a win but I very much doubt it will work out that way.
The states campaigning together during an election against the tories trying to walk away from health education etc would have been far more effective IMO.
But the tories will have a huge job convincing voters – I mean when have voters ever voted against their own economic interests before?
Hang on…
From the Tingle article:
[Cabinet formally agreed this week to examining the idea of a tax-sharing proposal. The prime minister was given licence to explore it with the premiers in-principle.]
This sounds like Turnbull wanting to spread the joy when the whole thing goes belly up. We need to know if Morrison was at the cabinet meeting and, if so, what did he say?
Dan G
I’m sure you could have withstood the Beetroot Barnaby effect. 🙂
Re the idea of state income taxes.
It’s a nonsense idea – sometimes described as “competitive federalism” – which has long been favoured by mad scientists of the IPA/Centre for Independent Studies ilk.
In its most extreme form, “competitive federalism” would mean that the Commonwealth would get out of all the areas of service provision that it entered after the public voted for the 1946 amendments to section 51: ie, health, education, pensions and benefits, transport and infrastructure, etc, etc. as well as most forms of regulatory activity affecting business (consumer protection, environmental protection, industrial relations, etc.).
The remaining rump of the Commonwealth Government would focus on “national” issues such as defence, immigration, foreign policy, regulation of business, etc.
Then states would be able to “compete” against each other to offer the lowest taxes.
In its full form, it would immediately lead to some pretty absurd consequences: the most obvious one being that each state and territory would immediately implement “residence” requirements for the pensions and benefits for which they are responsible. Basically, in order to become eligible for, say, an age pension, you would need to have lived in the state for a significant period of time. However, once qualified you’d certainly have full portability of your pension, as it would be strongly in the state’s interests for you to go to another state who would then be responsible for paying the cost of your health and age care.
The scope for gaming is why the policy would never work in practice, even in a modified form (eg, States fully responsible for funding health and education, which is probably what Turnbull is aiming to achieve).
If States become fully responsible for funding health services, the first thing that all states would do is require every Australian visiting from anywhere else to pay the full cost of any health services they use while they are there: even something as simple as filling a pharmaceutical script. It would quickly get out of hand.
We have been so badly served by our political leaders over the past decade or so. And it only seems to be getting worse. I have to confess that, against my instincts towards stability, I’m really warming to the idea of another change of government at the next election.
From an email from 350.org
[The hottest February in recorded history. The northern hemisphere 2 degrees above normal 84 years too early. A winter-less Arctic. The Great Barrier Reef turned a deathly white.
This is not the description of a horror movie. It is happening right now. And it’s caused by the mining and burning of fossil fuels.
Yet despite this, Peter Costello, the Chairman of our Sovereign Wealth Fund (the Future Fund) is meeting with India’s Finance Minister in two days time to discuss investing our money in one of the world’s largest coal mines.
]
http://act.350.org/sign/costello-adani
Is there no end to the insanity?
BW
As a former student of the history of the spread of western europe I am aware of the horrors. I am also a poster of comments here that argue strongly that developing nations are still struggling to deal with the consequences of this – that there is no used by date for these consequences.
My jesting was not to downplay this but downplay the importance of who exactly invaded Australia and when exactly this took place.
And dont slip in digs on the evil wiggle in reply to me. Yer preachin to the converted (although I am a fan of sarahinthesen8)
[geoffrey
Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2016 at 4:29 pm | Permalink
the issue of history is too diverse to be reduce to homilies in an undergad handbook]
Except when you want to insist that it was ‘settlement’ and not ‘invasion’, eh?
[ – first point of very many – cook did not want to claim country at all, that was banks.]
There is nothing about any possible definition of ‘invasion’ that necessitates the claiming of territory or of settlement.
Invasion can be strictly temporary and can have any one of a huge number of objectives. Your insistence that it could have been invasion if it meets your extremely narrow range of purposes has no support in logic.
[ there was also the little matter of the enligtenment which stopped french doing do beforehand.]
The problem with this extremely peculiar point of view is that when Cook landed an armed expedition on Botany Bay without either the permission or welcome of the locals and that he then proceeded to pillage their country has absolutely nothing to do with the Enlightenment. It has everything to do with armed might.
[ the british claim would have been contested vigorously except for revolution and napoleon in france – there was no map of continent least of all plans to settle it or invade for first decades]
Wow! Napoleon was on the side of the warriors of the First Nations! But did he let them in on this secret?
[ – the fact cook was armed is a long bow (forgive pun) to plan an invasion]
He had cannon and muskets, not long bows. And he was perfectly willing to use them as expressions of force.
[ … there is a bit of bad history swimming around – for while it looked to white and black that co-existence might have been possible but the pastoral age (along with illness etc) put paid to that —-]
‘a bit of bad history’
Well, let’s not exaggerate, shall we?
What is your estimate of the numbers of Aboriginals either killed directly or indirectly as the result of the armed invasion?
Lizzie
I did. I sent @Twitter a polite declination by letting them know I’d rather stick my head in a deep fryer.
Lenore Taylor @lenoretaylor 14m14 minutes ago
Apparently if you give states the power to increase a proportion of income taxes you won’t see an increase in tax http://gu.com/p/4tvq8/stw
ltep – no we’re not and furthermore, your idea of health and education being devolved to states with taxing power to rival the federal government is a right-wing fantasy.
[Simon Katich
Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2016 at 4:39 pm | Permalink
BW
As a former student of the history of the spread of western europe I am aware of the horrors. I am also a poster of comments here that argue strongly that developing nations are still struggling to deal with the consequences of this – that there is no used by date for these consequences.
My jesting was not to downplay this but downplay the importance of who exactly invaded Australia and when exactly this took place.]
I recall the fervour with which Anglophones assured everyone that THEY were the best people to get colonised by.
I beg to differ. One million Irish starved to death. Several million Indians starved to death during World War Two. Both as a direct result of deliberate British policy.
While the Belgians excelled at boutique cruelty of the most savage kind, and the Spanish basically carried lethal germs to probably kill off over 100 million people, it was the British who excelled at deliberate mass murder as a matter of colonial policy.
Ltep @1515
I fear there has been a confusion of ends and means.
States having a significant and solid tax base from which to fund the majority of their expenditure is an end, and most would agree it is highly desirable.
State income taxation is a supposed means to that end. The desirability of the end does not make the means desirable and in this case the side-effects of state involvement of income taxation are so highly undesirable as to render any advantages irrelevant.
You need to find another means to your end – one problem with State income taxation is that States are not sovereign in income; I suggest you look for something in which States are sovereign and which they can thus use as a tax base.
party at geoffrey’s house!
Make yourself at home, everyone!
[Trog Sorrenson
Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2016 at 4:38 pm | Permalink
From an email from 350.org
The hottest February in recorded history. The northern hemisphere 2 degrees above normal 84 years too early. A winter-less Arctic. The Great Barrier Reef turned a deathly white.
This is not the description of a horror movie. It is happening right now. And it’s caused by the mining and burning of fossil fuels.
Yet despite this, Peter Costello, the Chairman of our Sovereign Wealth Fund (the Future Fund) is meeting with India’s Finance Minister in two days time to discuss investing our money in one of the world’s largest coal mines. ]
1. February. True. Whether 80 years too early is a matter for discussion. Not certainty.
2. The Arctic has had a winter. It has been unseasonably warm but nevertheless huge swathe of the Arctic duly froze over this winter.
3. Less than half the Great Barrier Reef is suffering coral from bleaching. Within that expanse some corals and some reefs are not bleaching. It is simply untrue to state that ‘the Great Barrier Reef has turned a deathly white’.
4. It is not a description of a horror movie. We need to be cold and clinical. In particular we need to avoid hyperbowl of extreme rubbish as detailed above.
5. That Australia (whether Federal Coalition or QLD Labor, is prepared to approve and expedite ANY coal mine, let alone a monster mine is irrational, foolish, short-sighted, greedy, and very, very stupid.
Whaaa?
[CFMEUWA
@CFMEUWA
ABCC = UP to 6 months jail if you don’t tell what was said at a union meeting…. is that fair? #auspol #cfmeu ]
ltep – just to demonstrate why your idea is so terrible, let’s imagine if it were true, that health and education were completely devolved to the states and states allowed to collect income tax to fund them.
Then let’s imagine a “Sydney Party” takes power by winning most, if not all, seats in Sydney on a platform of “Sydney incomes should fund Sydney only.” They privatise and gut services in regional areas while gold-plating services in the Sydney region. There would be nothing to stop the decimation of health and education in regional parts of NSW.
You may consider this unlikely, but it’s not far from what already occurs now. The NSW Government is essentially the Government of Sydney.
The federal government, at its best, acts as a countervailing force against state government failures, and state-based inequalities.
I don’t think we need to be devolving powers to the states, nor do I think we need to abolish them. We just need to get rid of Turnbull and the LNP and their stupid brainfarts masquerading as policies.
Of course everyone knows that comparing colonisers is an ethical dead end.
There are no good choices.
Except, of course, for the Boers who were gentle and kindly towards the people who moved into Boer territory for employment, access to Christianity, and secure living conditions.
Thanks EG Theodore, and I accept you may well be right. Can you explain this to me:
[States are not sovereign in income]
Apologies for not grasping your point here.
[Phillip Coorey Verified account
@PhillipCoorey
@ScottMorrisonMP says @TurnbullMalcolm did not say states could increase their income tax share as the saw fit. But the PM did, twice]
Suppose (in our agile new economy) a teleworker living in State A is employed by a business in State B.
To which State is that worker’s income tax paid?
And at which State’s income tax rate is the tax paid?
lizzie:
I would hope that would be in instances where criminal investigation is underway. But with this lot you never know.
Re the state taxes, it isn’t just the taxation level, but the deductions.
Let’s say a particular rate is set to 33%, as per Morrison efficient states could go under this but not over.
Then in an election budget a government proposes additional deductions, say negative gearing, or a ‘children in private schools’ allowance, even a low income tax credit.
This results in a lower accessible income and less tax for the states and less money for hospitals.
Also does this include education? If not will it be extended to include education?
Jimmy, your argument suggested further devolution to the region’s (which may have merit) rather than centralised power. The question will always be where to draw the line. I don’t see how logically a national government is more likely to look after a particular region that provides them less seats than that region would provide a state government. Further, the multiple layers of government mean that if one government is failing a particular region, another layer can step in, advocate and protect the interests of those people. Handing all power to the Commonwealth would result in less safeguards for the people, not more.
Sometimes the oddest ‘facts’ are throw up in Twitter.
A comment on Wyatt Roy:
[Maud the FRIGHTBAT
@Confused_Maud
Maud the FRIGHTBAT Retweeted Eddy Jokovich
What calibre
Dropped out of uni in both Victoria & Q’land
No intelligence, No commonsense, never got his hands dirty ]
Theodore, that would all be sorted out by jurisdictional clauses in legislation and MOUs between governments wouldn’t it? I’m not seeing an insurmountable hurdle there. I’d also suggest the vast majority of the population wouldn’t fall into those corner cases.
Of course you are right that the system would be more complex. I suppose this is all a academic given this thought bubble is unlikely to ever be legislated.
EG Theodore
The answer to your question is Gujurat
ltep @1533
[Can you explain this to me:
“States are not sovereign in income”
Apologies for not grasping your point here.]
Pull out a “pineapple” (for example). Upon it is written:
“This Australian Note is Legal Tender Throughout Australia And Its Territories”
Income is a secure tax base only for the issuer of currency (as the slow motion train wreck of the Eurozone is revealing)
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/9/9/policy-politics/real-story-behind-icac-peta-credlin-and-brickworks
Turnbull’s tax was lead item on Ch 10 news. Coverage was not flattering.
OK thanks Theodore.
[1540
ltep
Handing all power to the Commonwealth would result in less safeguards for the people, not more.]
I’m not the one that has suggested the current arrangement should be changed – you are. I’m quite happy with how things are, with a mix of federal and state involvement in health and education.
For the things I’m not happy about, I’d rather see practical, evidence-based reform, not radical changes that we don’t really know will fix the problems they purport to fix.
Incidentally, that is exactly Labor’s position.
[Mark Colvin @Colvinius · 52s52 seconds ago
Treasury website: State income tax led to “complexity and inequitable taxation of income across states.” http://archive.treasury.gov.au/documents/1156/HTML/docshell.asp?URL=01_Brief_History.asp … ]
https://www.themonthly.com.au/today/sean-kelly/2016/30/2016/1459314925/fool-me-twice-prime-minister
Good article
boerwar
i dont have a lot to argue with you …. if you believe cook ‘pillaged’ then you are welcome
what was purpose of his journey? why didnt he put down flag at botany bay? did he think think the land was settled and did not think he could claim it under instructions from british at time (cook actually thought he would have to make treaty with aboriginals to settle here) — the french unless distracted would have made war on learning british had seized a land mass they had refrained from doing so – yes enlightenment did influence terms on which encounters with indigenous could occur, the full effects of colonialism were not there in 1788 at least with regard to australia …
i think you better join the greens
I live in a town with over two thousand aboriginal people and I have no doubt that quite a few of them feel like there country was invaded but I also believe that everyone of them would put employment, health, education, housing and a shitload of other things that come under those banners a long way before recognising that Captain Cook invaded Australia. The QandA audience type need to come out here and live for just a few weeks and see what it is really like and then they may then use there time and energy on more productive measures that may help indigenous Australians.