Six weeks into the campaign, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate is where it was at the start of the campaign, and has been at every point since – with nothing at all to separate the Coalition and Labor on two-party preferred. The only changes since a week ago have occurred at state level, where the Coalition is down two on the seat projection in New South Wales, but up one each in Queensland and Western Australia. The latest addition to the aggregate is your regular weekly Essential Research, which is unchanged on two-party preferred at 51-49 in favour of Labor. On the primary vote, the Coalition is down one to 40%, while Labor, the Greens are the Nick Xenophon Team are steady on 37%, 10% and 4% respectively. Speaking of the Nick Xenophon Team, it should be noted that the BludgerTrack model ignores its existence so far as the seat projection is concerned, so the following should probably be interpreted as pointing to a hung parliament:
Meher
Just noted Victoria’s 9.01am.
Where is Ms Ley?
Why is she not defending agains the “phony war”.
Here’s a suggestion.
In the last 18 months she’s put too much anti Medicare rhetoric on the record, and Labor will make mincemeat of anything she says along the lines “i love and support Medicare”
Meher
About rents rising after changes to Negative gearing. You ask why wouldn’t they rise.
Perhaps some of the rent market will buy their own homes.
One of the great “sleeper” issues with flogging off “back room” Govt operations of things like Medicare are the privacy implications. Putting medical information about 24 million Australians in the hands of a private mega business has huge implications for us all.
We have been going through a process of creeping privacy loss anyway, with privacy protection laws left far, far behind the game, but privatising ( sorry “outsourcing” is the new euphemism, isn’t it) the Medicare payments system, with the inevitable consequent passing of vast quantities of deeply personal information to the private sector, will be just about the final death knell. 🙁
Labor’s proposed negative gearing changes could see property prices fall by up to 15 per cent and rents rise by 6 per cent, according to the worst-case scenarios in a new independent analysis shows.
http://www.domain.com.au/news/federal-election-2016-house-prices-to-fall-rents-to-rise-under-labor-negative-gearing-policy-20160621-gpoae4/
Though this is targeted as a scary headline against labors changes there are four main positives if this were to happen.
1. For investors if you started on a index of costs of 100 for investment property against returns of 100 for today then you would see costs drop to 85 and returns increase to 106. IE, from a net zero return to a 24.7% increase in ROI, ((106-85)/85). This would also encourage investment in new housing which is exempt from the changes.
2. For the government the proportion of investment properties that are making a profit will increase, increasing tax receipts, decreasing tax losses and improving the budget bottom line.
3. For those wishing to buy houses to live in there is a double bonus of homes becoming more affordable and the gap between buying and renting decreasing by 25% as per the above for ROI.
4. For families with kids there is a multiplier effect as it increases with each child. For a family with one child you could say the effect was neutral as the parents house decreases in value but the child has to pay less for their house and needs less support from their parents in buying a house.
Meher baba
I cant take any of your crap seriously at all.
You think the medicare stuff is not important and PHI is the ants pants. I gave you two clear examples yesterday of the cost impost for someone who has top private health insurance requiring treatment for complications for a kidney stone. His out of pocket expenses was $6,000 and was unable to work for a few months.
The other was someone diagnosed with breast cancer and required immediate surgery and treatment. She too has been unable to work at present, but as a public patient, her out of pocket expenses are zero as she was treated at the Olivia Newton cancer centre. She will need ongoing treatment and if she had been treated privately, $6,000 would look like loose change.
And on the other hand, you want taxpayers to continue to subsidize those on the top end via their negatively geared investments.
K17
Maybe the “angry” will come to Labor eventually but they will go to One Nation or Katter or Lazarus or anyone else first. This I guess is the same group as Briefley’s “rejectionists” which is not a bad name for them.
Everywhere I look on the Internet, I’m bugged by “Vote Zed” advertisements. It’s as if I’m being tracked by the Libs because I live in Canberra, read political news and post on PB. There’s no escape while driving as roadside corflutes now proclaim “Vote Zed” in addition to the usual Seselja/Turnbull corflutes.
The time, effort and money spent by the Canberra Liberals on promoting Seselja must be very substantial. He is 100% certain of retaining his senate seat without any advertising while the two HoR Liberal candidates are almost invisible.
Victoria
While I almost never agree with Meher, I really welcome his contributions. They are intelligent and well thought out, but come from a TOTALLY different perspective than most of us here on PB. Meher makes no secret of his (I am pretty dure it is his) fairly conservative economic positions and in a sense I see him as a real “liberal” in the sense of Adam Smith.
Given that most of the very few non/labor/greens here on PB are whacky loonies, I welcome the comments of Meher. He is what he says he is a swinging voter, although probably swinging to the right mostly. He is one hell of a lot smarter than most Liberal voters who come out with midless Murdoch rubbish.
Liberal friendly commentator in the West newspaper, Paul Murray, is pulling some strings together today. In a jittery mood, while not conceding Labor can win on the 2nd (“could win” is the best he comes up with) he rakes the coals over. Firstly, he perceives that if the LNP get back they are going to have a terrible time with the Senate which, according to Murray, could be even more diversified than the current one. He then looks to why the LNP are not having the cake walk that was on offer – so say. To him, it is all down to Turnbull’s “timidity”. After plotting how far Shorten was down and Turnbull up at the time of knifing of Abbott, he makes a brilliant conclusion that Turnbull should have gone to an election soon after he took up the reins. I thought this way myself a la FPJG. He then goes on to blame all of the LNP woes on two things…Turnbull’s timidity and Labor’s scare campaign. The one on Medicare he thinks is biting. I am no fan of Murray but I think he may have a lot right. His comment that scare campaigns are some kind of low trick from Labor of course flies in the face of his total silence at the time of “Stop the Boats”, “No More Big Taxes” “Axe the Carbon Tax”, $100 roasts and the pending obliteration of Whyalla. Win, lose or draw for Labor, the discomfiture of the LNP to a pretty basic scare-the-pants-off-the-punter by Labor, is to be savoured at least for a few days more yet.
From the Guardian. What a total self-centred grub.
Scott Morrison feels Wong’s fear: I have experienced hatred and bigotry
Scott Morrison is asked about Wong’s fears that a plebiscite will give licence to hate speech against the LGBTI community.
“I respect Penny’s fears that she has raised. Equally, there are many who have a different view to Penny and to others over what should happen to same-sex marriage. I have a different view to that and people have strong religious views, they have also been subject to quite strong hate speech as well. It is not confined to one side of the debate. That said, I have a bigger view of the Australian people more broadly which says we can once and for all deal with this issue where everybody gets their say.
Morrison says he can’t represent the view of everyone in his electorate – most are against marriage equality – but he thinks others should have their say.
Morrison says he understands Wong’s fears because he has experienced hatred and bigotry for his own views.
“I know it from personal experience. I have been exposed to that sort of hatred and bigotry for the views I have taken from others who have a different view to me but I think the best way is for all of us to have a say on this, deal with it and move on.”
TRICOT – This election could be a real watershed for Medicare – in a good way.
Victoria
I will however 100% agree with your comments re PHI. Economic circumstances meant that I could not afford PHI after having had it for 60 years from parents through to present. When I became seriously ill a three years ago I had no choice but to go public.
I was truly impressed by the quality of service. There were some glitches but not many.
However I have felt forced to take out PHI again (althpugh it is really not within any rational budget) because of Campbell Newman and his destruction of the hospital system. The brilliant surgeons I had have now left the public sphere all together, so to get that same quality of care I would need to go private. Given that these were also the trainers of new surgeons I fear for quality of care.
dtt
So what is your point??
@ Citizen. The ACT senate was reasonably close to being Labor + Greens in 2013, and should be even closer this time with swings away from Lib and towards Greens in BludgerTrack.
The Liberal HoR in the ACT have a 0% chance of being elected, and no amount of advertising will help that. Zed has a 50% chance, and advertising will help.
Excellent response from Gabrielle Chan to Morrison in The Guardian’s live Election piece:
“There really is no way to describe the lack of awareness in Scott Morrison’s comments – conflating his experience of fear and bigotry with a gay Asian woman. For someone who has never felt prejudice based on the way they look, for someone who has never felt hatred based on the way they or their family members were born, it is hard to describe the visceral feeling in the pit of your gut. It runs deep and it causes fear and anger in equal measure.
I have watched the evolution of Penny Wong as a politician. When she first hit the public stage, she was loathed to talk about her private life, most likely because she didn’t want to be known as the that “lesbian Chinese” politician before she was known for anything else. She established herself in difficult portfolios like finance and water and little by little, she increased her interventions on issues around marriage equality. She established a formidable reputation and even Coalition MPs regard her as one of Labor’s best performers. With the birth of her two children with partner Sophie, I sensed both an increase in confidence and an increase in trepidation it that’s possible. When you experience prejudice as a child, protective stance becomes a reflex. It is no surprise that she is in the senate, for example, where her constituent interactions can be more managed.
In the last few months, she has become more and more public, speaking out for the LGBTI community. The Orlando massacre ratcheted that intervention up again. But this latest debate must be getting under her skin. At a doorstop on Monday, when asked about the Coalition argument in which white men in power are trusting the debate to proceed in an orderly fashion, she visibly flushed.
Penny Wong is at the intersection of a number of prejudices. For Scott Morrison, a straight white man with a fortunate life cocooned in the Sutherland Shire, to claim equivalence of hatred and bigotry, really must take the cake.”
The NSW government is also saying it expects and wants house prices to fall as the number of new dwellings increases, 70,000 approvals this year and more to come.
The surge in new buildings coupled with the 25% increase on ROI under labors policy is good news for investors and those wanting to enter the housing market.
It will see a housing boom based on a real return on money rather than a taxpayer funded speculative driven surge.
“Meher baba
I cant take any of your crap seriously at all.”
Rest assured, you are not alone.
Mr Barber’s modus operandi seems to be to post inordinately long and verbose posts, complete with at least one outrageous and totally unsubstantiated assertion.
When asked substantiate the wilder of these claims, he usually disappears.
dtt
I still dont know what your point is about my comments directed to meher baba?
I heard Morrison on AM. His comments are truly astounding. What a pathetic little man!
The Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australasian College of General Practitioners say the extended freeze ( by the Turnbull government) will place greater pressure on GPs, and could lead to many abandoning bulk-billing to charge patients a co-payment.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/federal-election-2016-yourvote-gps-patients-should-not-be-hit-to-run-medicare-survey-says-20160621-gpoaqo.html#ixzz4CG9U3gO2
So we pay more for health under turnbull, more to visit to doctor, more to get tests, more to get essential care.
privatisation by stealth, where medicare is slowly defunded
Paraphrasing Morrison’s comments to Wong:
Let me tell y’all what it’s like,
Being male, middle class and white….
Burgey
Spot on!!
The wonder of Medicare Medicare has greatly benefited me. Bad back pains resulting in a major back operation with screws plates at no cost which included free accommodation for my wife whilst I was in hospital. I could of claimed travel costs if I had wished. Total cost less than $ 200 for gap fee for specialist consultations.
A friend has continuing Prostate cancer (gleason 8 ) same story with him.
AND to think thy wish to make it “better” Total bull shixx by the libs
Rod Hagen
Thanks for posting. I was still trying to take in ScoMo’s asinine and thoughtless comments when I read Gabrielle Chan. These male bullies just don’t have any emotional intelligence, do they.
Adrian
Well i am still waiting for meher baba to respond to the PHI and out of pocket expenses.
From my perspective the only good thing about PHI is that you never use it
LIZZIE – Whenever I look at Sco-Mo, I think: “Bodies in the freezer”.
Oops
I meant to say “that you would hope that you never need to use it”.
Cos as soon as there is a health issue requiring treatment, the finances take a big hit.
psyclaw: “Attempted co-payment, freezing doctor rebates for 6 years,”
I have posted many times previously about the potential savings to be made by reducing the temperature of the large corporate GP and pathology providers in the larger cities. Labor was onto it: the freeze was originally their idea. The co-payment would have helped too: the commercial operations would have thought twice about ordering heaps of tests of marginal value (kaching!), demanding patients come back for a consultation to hear the results of negative tests (kaching!), giving no repeats on scripts (kaching!). This stuff goes on and it’s a rip-off of the taxpayer.
“hiving off payments to their private mates”
Well, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea (if I explain why, Adrian will criticise me again for overly long posts) but Turnbull has stated unequivocally that he isn’t going to do it.
“Do you think the Conservos support medicare, 100%, no doubt, it’s in their DNA?”
They certainly didn’t in the Fraser-Peacock-Howard era, but times have changed: as we are seeing, Medicare is a political sacred cow and I think the majority of Libs recognise this.
There is probably a small IPA-loving group in the party (not so much Abbott, but the likes of Josh F, Kelly O’D and their mates) that would dream of selling Medicare off to the US HMOs.
Just like there is probably still a small group in Labor that would love to nationalise everything in sight, and quite a large minority group that would like to shut down offshore detention and open the borders. Do you think it would be fair for the Libs to run campaigns saying “You can’t trust Labor with border protection, it’s in their DNA” when Shorten is adamant that his party’s policy is the same as that of the Libs?
Victoria: I posted yesterday in response to your post. Yes, there are many very serious conditions in which you get better treatment in public hospitals than privates: quick admission, top specialists, etc. But I can give you a long list of procedures/tests – hip replacements, knee replacements, colonosocopies where the symptoms are only minor, various mental health conditions, non-urgent heart problems, etc, etc. – where you will wait a very long time to be treated in a public hospital and/or will not get your choice of doctor (which can certainly matter in some cases). This is why so many chronically ill people have private health insurance: these people aren’t deluded, they know they get a much better deal with it.
That they get a better deal in this way might seem unfair in an egalitarian sense. But the truth is that there is a very large range of expensive procedures/treatments available which don’t cure life-threatening illnesses, but which can greatly improve the quality of life for many people, especially older people: hip and knee replacements are classic examples. I don’t think we as a society could ever hope to afford to provide them all to everyone immediately: it would cost many more billions than we currently spend and, even then, there are new treatments coming along all the time.
So I reckon we have three options: 1) try to ration them all (probably unconstitutional); 2) go to full user pays for private health (which will shut out most middle to lower income people from that system); or 3) continue with our community-rated, partly-subsidised private health insurance system, which gives anyone who is prepared to stump up the fees (including many chronically ill aged pensioners, for whom it still represents good value) to get a bit of highly-welcome relief from their pain and disability.
Victoria: sorry, again I suffer from a tendency to write overlong posts (I know it’s a bad idea, I need to work on it, but I’m usually in a hurry, which tends to make me more verbose).
I responded to your question in the second half of my post responding to psyclaw.
Meher Baber is a conservative in the Edmund Burke mould. Concerned above all with preserving the existing social order, as flawed as it may be. Favors incremental change; regards fundamental change as too risky. Comfortable with privilege and inequality as an apt reflection of people’s different capabilities and worth.
He has had some tough times Burgey.
Went to sydney boys high, most likely had public school kids say nasty things to him because of where he went to school. school kids can be cruel.
lost the preselection big time 82 -4 to a bloke who looked like he immigrated here. And this was in the bastion of britishness,whiteness and maleness, that would have hurt so much to be rejected so emphatically. even though the preselection result was overturned the hurt remained.
copped criticism for approving the where the bluddy hell are you ad when he was tourism boss, why the criticism, why, a nubile bouncy young girlie was the centre of the ad, he took it so personally, it was so unfair.
Have to agree with Rod Hagen. Once you pass the data to big corporations it is inevitable that all privacy protections will be subverted. Such a huge pile of personal data will be irresistable to insurance companies and they will try all sorts of tricks to get hold of it; either openly or under-the-table.
I could see some US giant trying through the ISDS trade provisions, claiming that non-access to the data is hurting their bottom line. Who knows what process will work but they will try them all – even a quietly facilitated hack of the data is not beneath corporations if they set their minds to it.
Brexit/Trump/NXT/Pup etc are all symptoms of a similar effect, I think.
Post GFC especially, ordinary people have felt powerless for control of their world. In US and Britain it hit harder than here so the effects have been felt harder.
But instead of taking aim at the institutions that caused the GFC, they have been manoeuvred into focussing on ‘saviours’ who might remedy that powerlessness. Brexit/Trump and to a lesser extent NXT are symbols.
Because the targets of grievance are fairly broad and amorphous, the large group of people who are attracted to the equally broad and amorphous rhetoric each sends out. Hope for hope’s sake.
NXT here has no real platform. Trump is words … and only words.
Big banks, big data etc – they are the real targets but are so powerful and integral to our way of life, they can hide behind that.
meher baba
Simply.
How about everyone contribute according to their capacity, to a universal health system?
The simple point I am making is that PHI is only good until you need to use it.
Once a person has serious health issues that need several procedures and treatment, the out of pocket expenses mount up, causing serious financial imposts. So not only is someone having to deal with a health crises and perhaps unable to work, they have medical bills to contend with.
Private health insurance is a waste of money. I have it, so I know how much it costs and how little it is worth.
Case in point: My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year. Surgery in the private system, medicare picked up a fair bit, private health some more, out of pocket in the low thousands of dollars from memory. Not too bad, PHI picked up the bill for the bed and crap food, but at least we didn’t have to spend any time trying to dodge golden staph at Nepean or having a registrar do the surgery on 3 hours sleep.
Next was radiation. Nepean Hospital had a six week waiting period for radiotherapy, regardless of urgency. So, private again. Radio is outpatient though, so PHI picked up a grand total of zero. The majority of the cost was picked up by Medicare, the rest (bloody thousands) by me.
Public health insurance is a scam. Liberal governments pretending to support public health are a contradiction – plenty of cash for roads, cancer patients can pay up or run an increased risk. Bastards.
Boris: “The NSW government is also saying it expects and wants house prices to fall as the number of new dwellings increases, 70,000 approvals this year and more to come.”
Yes, this is good, but I reckon that the main driving forces for house prices in Sydney are
migration rates and the influx of Chinese money (which seems to have reached even Hobart now!)
“The surge in new buildings coupled with the 25% increase on ROI under labors policy is good news for investors and those wanting to enter the housing market.”
Sorry, what’s the 25% increase in ROI under Labor’s policy? Have I missed something?
“It will see a housing boom based on a real return on money rather than a taxpayer funded speculative driven surge.”
As I tried to explain earlier, I can’t see how housing can provide a real return on money other than with much higher rents, or if land prices were to fall far more dramatically than anyone is expecting. Rents currently average at around 4 per cent of house prices and, when non-interest costs are deducted, that falls to around 2.5 per cent per annum. Taking away negative gearing won’t change things by that much, but increasing CGT to 75 per cent of marginal tax rate certainly will. There will simply have to be better investments than rental housing in these circumstances, unless rents increase by a substantial amount (and possibly not even then).
BludgerTrack has Coalition at 76 seats without considering NXT.
All the polling shows NXT winning Mayo and less polling has shown NXT in with a real shot in Grey and Barker.
Losing all three would put the Coalition on 73 and needing support from 3 cross bench MPs.
BludgerTrack is not predicting that Hindmarsh will be won by Labor, I think it will go to Labor.
So that would be Coalition 72, Labor 71 and a lot of cross bench MPs. Very interesting to see would emerge from that as the government.
Given that most of the very few non/labor/greens here on PB are whacky loonies
Sometimes it’s a challenge to be a non/Labor/Green here on PB. I think the Medicare scare campaign is mostly political but as I said yesterday Abbott set the standard for scare campaigns so the Libs can hardly complain. They just have to answer the charge as best they can and voters can decide on the issue. That’s our democracy in working.
citizen @ #57 Wednesday, June 22, 2016 at 9:10 am
They must have a lot of loose money. Alternatively, it could be part of a process of establishing the Libs in the mind of voters before the ACT election in a few months.
Short answer to Mr Barber:
Don’t say we can’t afford this that or the other, particularly regarding health care.
It’s a question of priorities. You know, the idea that we allocate available funds according to the things that we value the most.
David,
Fwiw I always appreciate your contributions here, along with those of CC and Meher. You don’t have to agree with people all the time to acknowledge their POV and input.
And at least none of you buy into the ALP-Greens thing!
This election is feeling eerily like the QLD election where the voters wanted to punish the incumbent but didn’t particularly want the alternative elected. Given that sentiment it is impossible to predict how things will play out on the 2nd July.
It still is looking like some form of minority government unless sentiment switches/has switched in the last two weeks. Have no real feel for how sentiment will switch if in fact it does.
DAVIDWH – You think that the Liberals have a strong and firm commitment to free public health care? Pull the other one.
The Daily TurdBurgler is showing itself to be ‘agile’. This is the new poster gracing the streets of NSW
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Clg3T_8VYAA5YCI?format=jpg&name=large
As for Medicare ‘scare campaign’
It is not a scare campaign because it is based on truth. On past and current behaviour of this government.
I know the ABC expects us to believe Mal’s guarantees, but then they expected us to believe Abbott and Howard before him.
Surely better to look at the facts, and the facts are damning.
The Labor Medicare campaign is all political, it is not about a stated difference in opinion, Turnbull has spoken very clearly on the matter. However the general feeling in the community, and one with quite a bit of basis, is that politicians will lie to get elected, so Labor can exploit that and win votes. It is not a particularly nice tactic, one which ideally would not work because people should be able to take politicians at their word, but it is one both sides use when needed.
So Australia’s democracy is decided by negatives not positives, surely a bad thing.
Brexit – leave or remain – who do you think will win?
I would be quite happy to see an even more diverse senate after this election.
Australia is supposed to have a representative democracy.
There is no right to have a senate that is easily managed, controllable and compliant to the wishes of the government of the day.
For all the times i disagreed with many of the positions on the cross bench in the last senate (not to mention those of the major parties); at least they were articulating the views of a segment of our society that they represented.
We are a better society for having a messy senate.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-22/jericho-why-south-australia-is-proving-a-major-battleground/7531754
Autocrat
Hope your OH is doing well?
The example I gave earlier of person having breast cancer treatment.
She is being treated at the Olivia Newton Cancer Wellness centre which is part of the Austin hospital here in suburban Melbourne. State of the art facilities. Out of pocket expenses. Zero.
You can check it out here
http://www.austin.org.au/cancer/