The latest fortnightly Newspoll, courtesy of The Australian, finds Labor opening up a 52-48 lead after a 50-50 result a fortnight ago, with the Coalition down three on the primary vote to 38%, Labor up one to 37%, and the Greens up one to 10%. On personal ratings, Malcolm Turnbull is down two on approval to 32% and up two on disapproval to 55%, while Bill Shorten is up one to 36% and down one to 51%. However, preferred prime minister is little changed, with Turnbull’s lead shifting from 43-31 to 44-33.
UPDATE (Essential Research): Bit of movement in the Essential Research fortnightly rolling average, with the Coalition up two on the primary vote to 39%, Labor down one to 36%, the Greens down one to 9%, One Nation steady on 6% and the Nick Xenophon Team down to 3%. Despite the apparent move in the Coalition’s favour, Labor’s two-party lead remains at 52-48. Other findings:
• An occasional series of questions on leaders’ attributes reflects a slight deterioration in Malcolm Turnbull’s standing since it was last asked in May, with arrogant up five points, narrow-minded up four and visionary down five. Nearly every one of Bill Shorten’s 15 indicators are up slightly, positive and negative alike, which presumably reflects his higher profile after an election campaign. The biggest mover is “aggressive”, up six to a still modest 36%.
• A series of questions on “leader trust to handle issues” finds Bill Shorten favoured in almost every case, reflecting the fact that that issues identified are mostly on turf favourable to Labor. A curious is exception is “regulating the banking and finance sector”, on which Turnbull led 33% to 29%.
• The poll also finds strong support for voluntary euthanasia, which is supported by 68% “when a person has a disease that cannot be cured and is living in severe pain” and opposed by 13%.
• Strong opposition to liberalising of cross-media ownership laws was recorded, with 61% disapproving and 18% approving.
• Respondents were asked to evaluate the level of importance of five issues, which found climate change, a royal commission into the banking and finance industry and a treaty with indigenous Australians rated of high importance, and votes on same-sex marriage and a republic substantially less so.
• Fifty-eight per cent said they would support recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the constitution, with 15% opposed.
DTT – you raise very valid points, if not popular ones.
So, examples of wars we should never have fought? Obvious examples include Vietnam. The French should never have gone back after WW2 and the USA should never have taken it on after the French left. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 is another obvious example. The consequences of the adventure have been diabolical, far worse than leaving Saddam abd his sons in power.
Other cases are not as clear. But the consequences of starting or joining a war are always highly unpredictable. Who can see the downstream impacts?
I suspect it’s not possible to correctly price the costs of nuclear power or of fossil fuel use. This is because they entail irrevocable losses. How do we price irrevocable loss? What is the correct discount rate to use? It’s possible the losses that eventuate from irrevocable environmental loss will always eventually exceed the benefits that flow from environmental despoiling.
There is also the issue of equity over time. The losses and the benefits accrue in different hands. The market does not provide for the distribution of compensation to the losers of the future by the winners of the present. The market cannot do this because we cannot predict the incidence or value of future irrevocable losses.
We can compute the costs involved in preventing irrevocable losses, but this is not at all the same thing as computing the costs that will be incurred if such losses are not averted.
When Turnbull took over from Abbott I knew Labor and it’s supporters would have to show what a light weight he is. I just didn’t know how easy it would be.
What if the one in 100 years whatever hits the nuclear reactor instead of some power pylons. At least the power was on again relatively quickly, in the parts of the system not directly fed by those lines at least.
That’s what happened at Fukushima after all. I’d rather have the difficulties associated with building a distributed network and storage options with redundancy and local backups, than a nuclear accident.
Steve
Yes I think that we as individuals should each separately consider what is our acceptable trigger for war/rebellion. We would probably not all agree on the trigger but we should still have it, to prevent our emotions being swayed in the heat of the moment, as usually happens before all wars.
For me I think avoiding the death of children and other civilians is probably a key motivation but ONLY if you think more would be saved than killed in a war and there is not a realistic alternative eg payment, immigration,food aid etc. Preventing gross cruelty and torture might be another. While I think that avoiding mass death by starvation or long term enslavement would probably be adequate cause for rebellion against oppression, if there is a real risk of far worse retaliation I am not so sure.
Sorry to seem like a weakling, quisling, pacifist and 40 years ago I would have been horrified by such wimpishmess, but these days I am less gungho.
Perhaps soon we will be in a viable position to harness this wind, wave and solar to create hydrogen fuels. Instead of diesel backup generators, emergency power supplies could be guaranteed through zero emissions fuels created from clean, renewable sources
Shiftaling #2456 Sunday, October 2, 2016 at 11:45 pm
I agree . An efficient way of extracting Hydrogen an using it as fuel would be the ultimate solution, the waste product is water which can be used again.
Steve
Yes I rarely think that any war or even rebellion to remove a dictator is of any use whatever. 99% of the time the replacement will be worse and there will be many people dead. I firmly believe that countries get the governments they like and understand and therefore if they have been used to rule by a dictator, then after a period of chaos another dictator will fill the vacuum. Change in the political institutions of a country must be gradual and built of EXISTING foundations.
Democracy became established early on in England because of the ancient witans of the Saxons and because of the relatively egalitarian culture of the Celtic Clans (and probably their predecessors the even more Ancient Britons. There was a foundation of collective government on which to build.
Think oddly enough to the USA. When they rebelled against King George, they established a form of government that mimicked a monarchy, with an elected President, who is in many senses and elected King. One person rule but with limits placed on by an elected council. It worked well back in 1770.
DTT – again you make good points. I don’t think pacifists are cowards or ratbags. I don’t think that pacifism is practical given the current state of the world and indeed human nature, but I do think that the decision to go to war is all too often made on the basis of passion and pride without full consideration of the possibilities and consequences.
I’ll be signing off now. Good night all.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/newspoll/newspoll-country-voters-turn-on-coalition/news-story/1c2a5ce7773f86c80ad82c893defa092
We have Newspoll quarterlies!
https://theaustralianatnewscorpau.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/newspoll.pdf
Summary above.
I rarely think that any war or even rebellion to remove a dictator is of any use whatever. 99% of the time the replacement will be worse
It’s odd to see strenuous assertions against democracy/in favour of tyranny on a site dedicated to analysing political polls…
Agreed, and i rather suspect, that when all the relative numbers are done, there will be more jobs and employment in distributed generation, and networks fit for that purpose, than in our current structure with nuclear added. The public good in a broad context should, rationally, underpin the policy conversation that we need to have about networks and electricity delivery.
Will we get that under the Libs?? Of course we bloody well wont. They just don’t get the whole infrastructure thing if you’re not talking monopoly rent seeking on behalf of their donors. FFS sake, with bond yield so low we should be loading up on 10, 15, and 30 year bonds NOW and building shit that is going to give us a return and last decades.
Just coming online about to do some work and read the last few posts.
My two cents worth on nuclear.
Nuclear power is not economically competitive with current battery and solar technology. There is strong evidence for this in comparing the cost of the Hinkley C reactor in the UK which is massively expensive compared with wind or solar PV. Large scale solar costs are dropping like a stone.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/renewable-energy-versus-nuclear-dispelling-the-myths-48635
Nuclear power is highly centralised which also gives rise to concerns about energy security. It is hard to imagine how it could happen, but what if a strong wind came along and blew over the transmission towers!
It is also undemocratic. Who wants to be paying a bunch of investor spivs for power for the next 99 years? Much rather invest in my own energy independence.
My two cents worth on hydrogen.
Hydrogen sounds like an environmentally friendly fuel source or method of clean energy distribution, but in fact it isn’t. When hydrogen burns it produces water vapor which all sounds very clean and green, but the problems occur before that.
When hydrogen escapes it ascends to the upper atmosphere where it has negative effects on methane breakdown. It is in fact, indirectly, a greenhouse gas. What happens chemically is that it combines with hydroxyl radicals – turning them to water. Hydroxyl radicals are critical in removal of methane and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Surely, you might say, why let it leak? Well some leakage is unavoidable – connections and disconnections of supply lines and storage infrastructure. This is made worse because hydrogen being such a low molecular weight will find its way through any but the best quality pipe connection or seal.
Imagine an India powered by hydrogen, with lots of leaky, poorly maintained hydrogen infrastructure. An environmental nightmare.
Trog
you seem to know what your’e talking about and I accept that.
It’s easy, if not cheap to extract Hydrogen but I wouldn’t know how to turn it into a power source for generating electricity.
It’s a pity we don’t have a scientific body to try and find ways other ways to generate power.
Oh wait we did have the CSRIO until they were staved of funds.
shiftaling @ #2456 Sunday, October 2, 2016 at 11:45 pm
So, you take the electricity made by renewables, change it into hydrogen with losses, compress it with inevitable energy losses, store it (hydrogen is notoriously difficult and costly both in money and weight to store, and has an annoying habit of escaping the tightest of joints or indeed casings), then use it in vehicles with a driving range probably less than is useful, (there are problems with refilling the vehicle tank as well) and finally turn it into power for a vehicle, with associated losses.
Whereas we already have good electricity storage for cars, and the cost is coming down all the time, reliability because of simplification is much higher than the internal combustion engine, and they go like hell when you put the pedal to the metal.
Similar problems exist if you are going to use it just for backup electrical power, though weight of the storage unit at least is not a problem there. You are better off with other ways of storing the energy, or shifting it across state or national borders to where it is needed at the time of creation.
Because successive Australian Governments have failed on a continuing basis to tell the Americans that if they come into conflict with China we will not necessarily just ‘Go all the way with LBJ’.
This retired USN Admiral claims that the US will easily deal with Chinas’ outposts. So why does he urge us to participate … the orange quarters at 3/4 time?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-03/south-china-sea-us-china-misunderstandings-may-cause-conflict/7893012
New thread.
Good morning Dawn Patrollers. Apologies for my tardiness. I have arisen much later than usual and am just now starting to compile the patrol. The fact that it is our 47th wedding anniversary today played no part in it.