We’re about half-way between the weekly BludgerTrack and when I’m anticipating the next opinion poll, this being the period of pre-budget calm before the storm, and a new thread is wanted. So I’ve decided to hang this one off the latest ANUpoll survey, an exercise conducted by the Australian National University two or three times a year to gauge the public mood on a specific area of public policy, and track the salience of various issues over time. The subject of the latest instalment, which was conducted by phone from a sample of 1200 in February and March, is tax and equity in Australia. Among various findings on tax that would be familiar from those who follow Essential Research, the report also finds support for increased spending on social services at its highest level since the series began in 1987. The report also finds that, in spite of everything, 56% consider the existing system “moderately fair”, on top of another 4% for “very fair”, while 22% rate it “not too fair” and 18% “not at all fair”.
The survey also features regular questions in which respondents are asked to name the first and second most important political problems, out of a list that presently includes 27 options. To make this easier to interpret, I’ve condensed results into various categories, which are hopefully generally self-explanatory (particularly economy/budget, environment and better government – security/external covers wars, terrorism, defence and immigration, while services covers health and education and such). The progress of these results since 2008 is shown in the chart below.
From which a number of points are clearly worth noting. Concern about service provision mounted to giddy heights after the 2014 budget, but promptly returned to normal after Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister. The combined result for the various economic issues is at a low point in the latest survey, having peaked in the years immediately following the global financial crisis. Security/external and crime/society, which are largely conservative concerns, are on an upward trend. “Better government”, I’m guessing, was a popular response among Coalition supporters while Labor was in power, but is not a correspondingly popular choice for Labor voters now it’s the Coalition’s turn.
Re property: I don’t wish harm to anyone, especially those ‘investing’ modest savings in good faith. On the other hand I don’t give a stuff about those owning 15 properties. Let them burn.
We need to get the speculators out of the market for an essential need – accomodation. Let them gamble at the racetrack or ‘invest’ in vintage cars or ‘fine’ art if they can’t be risk-taking entrepreneurs.
But the property market in Australia, especially the big cities, is thoroughly corrupted. It can’t be fixed overnight without harming common people (especially recent purchasers). However, the situation needs to be unwound gradually, to the point where the property market more closely resembles the market for, say, motir vehicles or furniture.
Bemused@900
Good answer. Also, he could just turn up and vote informal. I mean how hard is that!
My best guess is that the people who want to end compulsory voting will definitely vote themselves. They just want to dis-enfranchise a large number of working class voters.
The parable of not putting all your eggs in one basket comes to mind here.
[The threat of an independent campaign could also focus the minds of super delegates at the convention, who will likely be in a position to determine the nominee.]
Bzzzzt, but hey thanks for playing.
Hillary will go close to not needing a single super delegate to win the nomination. She will absolutely win clearly the pledged delegates and total votes by a big margin. The supers aren’t going to overturn that. The simple fact is that every other challenger as far behind as Sanders had dropped out a long time ago. He can’t win the nomination.
Tom the first and best @ #898 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 9:40 pm
Okay. Here’s another article from 5 days go that reaches the same conclusion as the 538 article.
Polls Say Bernie Is More Electable Than Hillary. Don’t Believe Them.
What they really show is a candidate who hasn’t been attacked.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/polls_say_bernie_is_more_electable_than_hillary_don_t_believe_them.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top
Douglas and Milko @ #902 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 9:53 pm
He just stood there bewildered. 😀
Hilary kept going in 2008.
compulsory voting is is actually having your name ticked of on the register, as Douglas and Milko said you do not have to vote you can put a blank ballot paper in the box. i personally think it’s a waste of your democratic right but if if that’s what you choose to do that’s your right.
Memo to WarrenPeace read your posts before you submit them.
Only two more sleeps before the happy-clapper euthanizes this govt. Night all.
ratsak
Yes, I agree. Hillary will win by a large margin. About the only thing that could prevent this is if she gets run over by a bus. But even if that happened, Sanders would also most likely win against Trump. I think this must be very heartening to a lot of Americans at the moment … and not just to Democrats!
D&M @ 9.44
We have had the discussion before here.
For what it’s worth I’m a great fan of compulsory voting. I think that a real democracy is too valuable for people to just not even make an effort to turn up at the polling booth. At the same time, nobody should be forced to vote for someone they don’t want to vote for.
Personally, I think that nobody has a right to complain if they didn’t even express their views (bearing in my that if one doesn’t like any of the candidates they can always stand for election themselves). However, they can express their distaste for all candidates by voting informal.
But not turning up is not a statement of disagreement; it is a statement of laziness and rejection of democracy, not just the candidates.
KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN @ #910 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:04 pm
Sadly that idiot is on a safe margin. I would love to see him booted.
Labor has previously held Cook, can anyone enlighten me as to what has made it so safe Liberal?
I wish to express my thorough disapproval of this new ‘public beta’ thingy. How dare anyone alter Poll Bludger. It was perfect, and now it’s ruined. Completely ruined.
The soft pastel colours, the nerdy pic of William – uurgh.
All change is bad. Give us back the Poll Bludger we knew and loved, you bastards.
[Labor has previously held Cook, can anyone enlighten me as to what has made it so safe Liberal?]
Money i.e. the gentrification of the Sutherland Shire.
Me too. But I was talking about the US where voting is not compulsory, and the likely impact this has when the general sentiment is one of a likely landslide to one candidate.
Jake @ #915 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:12 pm
I guess I don’t go there often enough to have noticed.
But demographics do shift a lot of seats as do redistributions.
I am surprised though to see it right up there with North Sydney.
So it looks like the good news has been released early by Morrison, Turnbull and Cormann. All that will remain on Tuesday is the bad news. The mechanisms by which Morrison will make the Budget ‘Revenue Neutral’ now that we know, without the fine detail, what the goodies are.
Well, they aren’t really goodies, I see them more as placatory gestures to an unhappy electorate who have become grumpy with the Wide Boys of the Turnbull government.
They will use these to paper over the more ideological elements of what will be billed as a ‘Jobs and Growth’ Budget. I guess that tissue paper thin layover will be used to disguise the ideological fine print behind the flim flam.
From his performance today with Laurie Oakes it seems to me that Scott Morrison has been spending his down time in the lead-up to the Budget learning the Economic lexicon so that he may deliver it on Tuesday with the supposed gravitas expected of such an occasion.
All the flim flam will be a sham of course, emanating from an overweeningly-ambitious politician with no actual expertise in the area Turnbull has chosen for him as his beat.
But then, according to the lengthy expose of Morrison we read this weekend, it seems that he is not a man who has bothered himself much with expertise, but instead, as a man in a hurry down the political road, he has taught himself how to wed his core ideology to any job he has been given in the political sphere and then craft the form of words and the bumptious style of argument by way of prosecution of that ideology in the public space in order to advance it, and him into positions of greater and greater national power.
I guess the analogy is getting a bit shop-worn by now, but Scott Morrison, more than any other Australian politician currently in the game (and I’m sure that’s how he views it), reminds me of Australia’s version of Donald Trump. A relentless prosecutor of his position without actually spelling it out, by force of verbal barrage. And a seemingly unshakeable belief in the rightness of it.
Frankly, on both sides of the Pacific, in the upcoming elections I hope that voters don’t allow this tidal wave of verbiage to bowl them over and bamboozle them all the way to the ballot box because neither man in a position of national power, nor their coyley-hidden and thus far undisclosed agenda, waiting, as I expect, to be sprung on us after the election, will be in any way positively beneficial for the societies they wish to mould in their image.
So, on Tuesday, I will take in not the text, but the subtext of the Budget speech. For this Evangelical Christian’s devil will be hiding in the detail.
C@t:
I reckon you can bank on some more sweetners in the budget on Tuesday.
Well it looks now as it trump will be the Republican nominee – somewhere i read it is about 97% based on recent votes.
Hilary wil be the demopcrat nominee (unless excluced by indictment or some such.
So in the race between Hilary and Trump, who will win. It is actually very close. Too close for comfort. However it is now more than possible that next January we will have President Ttump (El Duce).
Jake @ #915 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:12 pm
Not all Labor voters are without means. The assumption that wealth only votes Coalition is a total furphy. Greed on the other hand… is a different story.
Not everyone in Cook is a Liberal voter but 60% are. The other 40% are effectively dusenfranchised in the HOR by the single member electorate system, just as I am in North Sydney. Bring on PR and Labor-Green coalitions.
confessions @ #895 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 9:34 pm
Now here’s the problem. It shouldn’t be personal. The real issue should be what is in the public interest; nothing more and nothing less.
Speaking as a property investor, my view is that negative gearing is no longer serving the public purpose it was supposed to do – which was to provide privately managed accommodation at a reasonable rent to people who were not in a position or did not want to buy their own homes.
Now property investors cover a very wide gamut of circumstances. But there is no doubt – and Greg Jericho’s article made it clear – that most of the actual tax concession spending is finishing up with the wealthiest people buying the most expensive properties and, in the process, outbidding younger people who see the hope of home ownership always being dragged out of their reach. It is typical of what lying bastards Morrison, and now Turnbull, are that they use the examples of middle income people buying relatively cheap properties and claiming little by way of tax concessions being used as cover for the incredible rorts of Turnbull’s wealthy mates who make so much more out of this.
It’s been the same all my life. The Liberals have always wheeled out some atypical heart-rending example for keeping some concession or not doing something about a rort and using that as cover for all their filthy rich mates who get some huge undeserved concession or avoid a means of tax that has disproportionately benefited them.
The only good thing is that this bunch of Liberal shonks are the most politically tone deaf bunch of politicians I have ever seen in my life. Labor usually provide the politically tone deaf politicians – but this lot take the cake. Whether it’s ‘poor people don’t drive’ or ‘you can’t take away the right for someone to negative gear a property for their one-year old’, this mob is amazing.
But back to my main point. Having a go at someone who legitimately takes advantage of a tax concession is not right and actually is counter-productive because it gives a false base for allegations of class warfare. Attack the concession if it is no longer appropriate, but not taking advantage of a concession simply leaves more for those who actually benefit the most.
Don’t wind Bemused up. He never gives in and will not concede a point.
His latest favourite word is “projection”. He applies to to everyone but himself.
Steve777 @ #922 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:37 pm
No thanks.
Bushfire Bill @ #924 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:39 pm
Why its ol’ Foghorn Leghorn again come to try to stir up an argument.
Not biting dickhead.
I’d rather a coalition with the nationals.
From the SMH
Right. Let’s just forget the last three years, shall we? Oh look, we have two new contestants for government for the next three years. The old government has been whitewashed from history and we have two oppositions now.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/federal-election-2016-malcolm-turnbull-rules-out-gst-change-for-at-least-three-years-20160501-gojk4t.html#ixzz47PKE1ZoZ
[I’d rather a coalition with the nationals.]
Holy Moley..!
[Not biting dickhead.]
You just did.
Re negative gearing: if it is intended to help ‘battlers’ as right-wingers insist (arrant nonsense if you think about it for more than 3 nanosecords) then lets phase it out for higher income earners, say between the median full time earings (about 65K) and about 1.5 times that value (about 100k). In claiming, people need to disclose any income they hide offshore or they’re not eligible. Anyone who is the benificiary of a trust is also ineligible without full disclosure.
Gecko @ #927 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:43 pm
If you want to deal with Barnaby Joyce and also the consequences of that, go for it.
bemused @ #917 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:18 pm
And it has gentrified because Cronulla is the only suburb in Sydney with a beach and a train line to the CBD.
TPOF @ #928 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:43 pm
This actually is a real issue for Labor. The perception of a clean slate was very much in the reporting by the MSM when Turnbull came to power. Labor need to maintain the link between the current players and the total balls-up of the past 3 years. I’d suggest the NBN as a good point to start.
Libertarian Unionist @ #933 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:54 pm
It’s been that way as long as I can remember.
When visiting my parents and brother at Revesby in the past we used to go for a swim at Cronulla in the morning before the crowd arrived. Great beach.
Steve777 @ #922 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:37 pm
What a terrible idea!
TPOF 928
And the Prime Minister has declared his government will be judged by voters on its “new agenda” at the election – rather than being bound to all of the promises made by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Until after the election when they will all resurface.
Actually it seems crazy that more of Sydney’s beaches don’t have a train service.
daretotread @ #920 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:31 pm
If Trump wins we can leave the US alliance. No bad thing.
Jake @ #929 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:47 pm
No crazier an idea than a coalition with the extreme numpties at the Greens. The Nationals are too stupid to recognize Labor policy as better for them than what they’ve got now. Climate/water/mining/NBN/Education and Health etc… Windsor and Oakeshott opened the blinds to the concept of a successful collaboration but you can lead a horse to water etc.
confessions @ #919 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 10:27 pm
Yes but they will be like those Sour sweets.
This came up a lot during the Cronulla riots. Cronulla does have a train service, which made it easily accessible to Lebanese from the western suburbs, as Bondi and Manly and the rest were not.
From Now to the election the government should be referred to as the Abbott/Turnbull Government .
Gecko @ 10.54
I agree it has that potential. But Labor is on to it, if the past few weeks of comments from Shorten and his team are any indication. The other thing is that it can cut both ways – hence my comment about two oppositions, rather than a government and opposition.
Turnbull has a number of serious problems in prosecuting this line. First is the extent to which he has signed up to what was Abbott’s agenda (as Abbott is happy to point out to everyone). Allied with this is the sense that he has thrown overboard everything he has ever believed in to get into power. Another problem is that there are things from the last three years he is desperate to keep playing – especially stopping the boats.
On top of all that, they are the same bunch of incompetents. It does not matter what they come up with in the budget, they are simply not up to selling it. Just look at the hash they have made of the negative gearing debate. On top of the fact that the real swinging voters are much more likely to be people who see themselves as middle class but are nevertheless priced out of the property market, he goes and Malsplains how prices will plummet.
To win an election a party has to be on top of its game. Too many mishaps and unexpected negative events happen for a party to be able to afford going in already on a wing and a prayer. If the party does not have a solid, fully worked out policy base going in, then even small events will knock it off course. Big black swan events will knock it out of the ground. And that is not taking into account self-inflicted wounds, which this mob has been incredibly efficient in producing.
Either the budget will be underwhelming or it will be too ambitious. Either way, you can bet it will be full of mistakes because it has been cobbled together in such a haphazard way. And then they have to sell it, while opposed by a Labor Party which suddenly has equal billing as they move immediately into an official election period.
Yes, but in the meantime, the time-cost of travelling by car to the CBD from any other beachside suburb has gone through the roof.
Have to agree that the beach there is a lovely spot, even if it is sullied by pictures of Scott’s mug as you walk up the northern end of the mall.
William Bowe @ #942 Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 11:07 pm
Seems passing strange that the Eastern Suburbs line did not go at least to Bondi Beach and preferably then swing south to serve Coogee and other beaches as far as Malabar.
And didn’t Bradfield have plans for a railway up to the northern beaches? Crazy that was never built.
tpof @ 10:43
What new agenda? They don’t have a new agenda.
clinton
emails, emails, emails, emails * 70,000 plus the 60,000 she destroyed
the utter arrogance of the act and her attitude to it
bill got into serious trouble for a lot less than this
are the republicans asleep on this?
Unless and until the Turnbull government removes the 2014 Abbott Budget Expenditure cuts then they will be the same old Coalition government whose ‘new agenda’ will be the same as the old agenda just dressed up in new clothes and cloaked in pretty little, feel-good ads.
You go right for the jugular, don’t you Bemused? There’s no wind-up for you. You just tear in and rip throats out (or try to).
Your main technique is to quote someone’s entire post and then launch into the abuse. Amazingly you always end up champ.
But it’s not because you’re good at the language, because you can hardly put two words together. You aren’t witty or subtle, that’s for sure. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you say anything that isn’t rude or offensive, pugnacious or self-serving.
You just shout louder than anyone and you have the one gift that all egomaniacs require: you never run out of steam. You’re always up for throwing around personal abuse and judging others. You never quit and you never get tired of proving over and over again that you’re No. 1, on top, in charge, better and louder than everyone else, sticking your nose into everyone’s business, telling them how they’re getting it wrong.
It’s quite pathetic. You are really a case, mate.