NOTE: Apologies for the ongoing situation with the formatting in comments. This is not intentional and the former state of affairs will be restored, hopefully soon.
The latest Newspoll result from The Australian moves a point back to Labor after an outlier result a fortnight ago, leaving its two-party preferred lead at 53-47. Both major parties are on 36% of the primary vote, with the Coalition down a point and Labor up one, and both One Nation and the Greens are on 10%, with the former steady and the latter up one. Still waiting on approval ratings, but Malcolm Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister has narrowed from 43-29 to 41-32. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1708.
UPDATE: Malcolm Turnbull is steady on approval at 30% and up two on disapproval to 59%; Bill Shorten is up three on approval to 32% and down three on disapproval to 54%.
mb
if you only go through ‘periods’ of feeling negative about politics then you should be thankful. I wish I had your positivity.
Then again, being cynical has its comforts.
good post. I would argue that the issue the ALP is pushing isnt poor vs rich, but powerless vs powerful. That those with a lot of money have access to power (or more likely just simply power) and the powerless are left disenfranchised. This is not only true and a worthy cause but it is also a foot in the door to a demographic who the ALP lost during the Howard years. These people do not trust ‘elites’ and I believe the ALP are trying to redirect some of that animosity towards big capital and its shady relationship with government.
meher baba
No, you hope it might do.
Good luck with that.
lizzie
Insert John McInroe “You can’t be serious ?!!!” emoticon. FMD how out of touch is he ?
It’s a moot question.
True, I’m not a subscriber (although God knows I tried enough times,only to be defeated by the subscription form). But I’m not whingeing or making any demands of Crikey, e.g. that it immediately updates its free service, or I go elsewhere.
As if they would care.
I also disagree with the question’s premise: that a “freeloader” is someone who “pops up occasionally and offers nothing but vitriol towards other posters.”
A freeloader is someone who takes but does not give back. Offering vitriol has nothing to do with it.
There’s an almost proprietorial air around here that PB is “the posters'” site. It’s not. It’s owned, lock, stock and barrel by a corporation in the business of sellingnews and commentary. If they switched this service off right now you wouldn’t even have anywhere to complain where someone could listen. That’s how much “power”and”influence” you have.
Back to Crikey, on the side it gives away some free bandwidth, but is rarely thanked for it, either in words or via subscriptions. It seems that the only time any substantial comment is made here about Crikey is when something breaks down. Noted, there are some exceptions (like C@tmomma who pays up and has a right to complain), but the majority of posters here do it on the cheap, for nothing. That’s freeloading, in my book.
I find it amusing that my defending Crikey in this situation is regarded as tantamount to trolling. You seem to be able to dish out the abuse, but can’t accept that there might be another point of view of the way many of you whinge and bitch, not only at major schemozzles like the present one, but also at the slightest glitch or hiccup as well.
It’ll either be fixed or it won’t. As this is not a democracy, the whingers who fancy they are doing the proprietor a favour by their very presence, will have no say in either path. So why bother whingeing, and in particular why be so ungrateful?
Spurious argument. Anyone operating a public webservice, whether free, paid, or ad-supported, has at least some basic obligations. For instance, they should not do things like transmit passwords or other sensitive information is plaintext. They should ensure that the storage of passwords is secure, for instance by recording just the salted hash of each password. They can’t pass on user data to third-party entities for fun or for profit, and should have (and follow) a reasonable privacy policy. Strictly speaking they can’t necessarily even use HTTP cookies without getting consent first, thanks to some overreaching EU laws.
Which isn’t to say that anyone is obliged to offer any particular feature or to structure any feature in a particular (or even, user-friendly) way, however “it’s free (except for advertising, the fact that some people have paid subscriptions, and the general commercial bent of the site), so get over it” is basically a nonsense argument. Being free doesn’t excuse the service from basic requirements and expectations. Doubly so when the “free” thing is actually both ad-supported and commercial.
One only needs to look at Facebook, Google, Twitter, or any other popular free service and the sort of trouble (both social, and legal) they get themselves into sometimes over seemingly minor things to see that “free” is not a license for “I’ll do whatever I damn well please and everyone else can sit there, shut up, and like it”.
This really is the most dangerous treasurer we have had in memory.
Hockey couldn’t do basic maths, ScoMo probably can, but simply declares he doesn’t want to.
Yes, the average bogan in a pub doesn’t want to look at economic modelling. He wants public servants to do the modelling, the government to base their decisions on it, and the media to ensure that the previous two do their job.
Brexit aside, governments very deliberately have economic policy chosen by a small number of people who do pay attention to economic policy, so that the rest of the country doesn’t have to.
Wakefield
“What had Labor done to move to the left.”
The terms “left” and “right” have little real meaning today, if they ever did. I mean, Hilary Clinton was/is called “left” wing by some. To me, to call an arch capitalist supporter “left” is beyond parody. But there you go.
To my mind both the ALP and the LNP are far more right wing than they were 20 to 30 years ago.
To the extent the terms have any meaning, I would call the current ALP a centre-right party and the LNP a rightwing party. The ALP is now totally dominated by US style capitalist loving “liberals” who call
themselves by that meaningless term “progressives” for god’s sake. If the LNP ever moved to the centre the ALP would have no space to occupy.
In my local pub be hard to find someone who pays tax.
most of the drinkers are either cash only tradies and or pensioners.
MB:
“But he personally is seen by a large proportion of voters as sitting firmly in the centre ground of politics, ”
Is this a joke? By a “large proportion of voters…”?? Really? Which voters? Give me a name.
Turnbull is seen by a “large proportion of voters” as having been yanked far to the right by the conservatives in his own party. You name the issue. Climate change. SSM. Housing affordability. The Republic. Banking royal commission. There is Turnbull and there is “the centre”, and in between is a whole lot of daylight.
BTW, wanting to own a house in Sydney or Melbourne is not a ‘left-vs-right’ issue. You don’t have to be a raging leftie to see that the entire housing market is distorted in favour of investors.
So if Scott Morrison now says that Treasury Modelling is superfluous, will he sack his Treasury Secretary and all the Public Servants in his Department and outsource his advice to some randoms down the pub?
ar,
Yes the right to whinge is one of the most sacred tenets of PB.
It’s the right of Crikey to ignore the whingeing and manage the site as best they can with the resources and personnel they have.
A major promotion to pre-eminence for Bushfire Bill and his site.
at my local you would be hard pressed to find anyone who pays tax.
the front bar is the domain of cash only tradies and pensioners and the superannuants are in the lounge.
BB
I try not to dish out abuse. I am challenged that you think I do and I will need to re-examine my posting.
And I do not recall ever whinging about the site.
I remain committed to the belief that your posts of recent times have been focused on people whinging, to the detriment of your more worthy contributions. But hey, that is your choice. Its all fluffy ducks and meadows of flowers and butterflies.
Oh shoot. I see my problem. I have been caught out whinging about someone whinging about people whinging. Well bugger me.
I will get my coat and go wait in the car.
Simon,
Check your mobile devices at the door!
But I need it to play Angry Birds. Cant you leave me to my own devices?
Obviously Morrison must think the Peter Costello and his charter of budget honesty was all nonsense, since he is jettisoning rules formed by a former Liberal Treasurer.
You answer my “spurious argument” with a “straw man” about the duty of a web sitenot to give awaypasswords.
WTF? Who said Crikey were publishing passwords?
I also reject your argument that Crikey owes you or anyone else, except subscribers, anything at all. You might expect a modicum of organization, but you have no right to it.
Even a public park is governed by laws.If you get attacked by a savage dog in a public park, or your kid injures herself on a poorly maintained swing, you might be able to sue the council for damages.
But show me where you can sue Crikey – even theoretically – for anything at all if you don’t pay a subscription. What damage could you demonstrate? What harm or hurt? What fiduciary relationship has been breached? None. The logical extension of your argument would be that you would have a right of action if they closed down the site completely. Do you? A subscriber might, but not a drop-in, no matter how regular, no matter how onerous having to dodge the ads had been. It is entirely up to Crikey to deliver the free service they wish to deliver. And it is entirely up to bloggers here to either like it or lump it. But not to make threats born of entitlement, or to treat Crikey as some kind of public service, which it definitely ain’t.
You’ve just had something you’ve taken for granted temporarily (by all accounts) taken away from you, and out come all the arguments about entitlement, and duty, and “living in a society”. Seems like a pretty one-way society to me, where everything is expected of Crikey and nothing is expected of those who freeload on it.
If I was a Crikey executive I’d look at the performance of its not-so-loyal bloggers, aghast at the impatience and ingratitude, and I’d think to myself, “Why bother?” Why bother employing staff, organizing servers, sending and paying invoices, seeking donations or investors with this lot of non-paying ingrates whining at the slightest opportunity, asserting that I owed them something? I’d think that the more they whinged and bitched the longer I’d take to restore the service, if I ever restored it.
But maybe this Crikey exec doesn’t understand his public duty, a duty that apparently encompasses providing precious bandwidth to a bunch of anonymous bloggers who spend their time deluding themselves that anyone reads their commentary, or cares about it, except themselves.
I don’t think the problem is basic maths, so much as basic honesty.
Another example – in his student days Peter Dutton was perfectly capable of writing a scientifically coherent essay on climate change. Look at him now. In both cases, the problem is not lack of knowledge.
You’re in rehab! It’s a part of the 12 step process.
If an angry bird whinges in the car and doesn’t post it, did it really happen?
Is Pauline Hanson about to contribute to recidivism statistics?
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australian-electoral-commission-asked-to-investigate-serious-allegations-pauline-hanson-failed-to-disclose-plane-20170404-gvd7sz.html
Time for some plane speaking? If Barry O’Farrell had to resign over a bottle of Grange, what does Pauline have to do over a $100K plane?
I am bewildered that this rabble are polling at 47%, so each to their own wishful thinking I guess.
I think if an election was called today there would be some tightening, but the ALP would still win 53-47. That is because I think the polls are underestimating the ALP vote.
Evidence for this has been the WA result. Where polls that almost got as high as the actual ALP primary vote overstated the L-NP vote by 2%, and those that got the L-NP vote about right underestimated the ALP by 2%.
Then there are the few National polls this year that have given respondent allocated preference flows. Those flows have been better for the ALP than using flows from the last election, which Essential and Newspoll use. The (growing) minor party vote may not return to the L-NP in the same numbers as the polls suggest on 2PP.
To deliberately mangle a few metaphors, there is a lot of water to wash over this slow motion train wreck of a government before your gut or my wishful thinking can be tested.
This site has come to resemble a campfire in a hollow. There’s a small brazier and it’s hot enough to boil the billy, but not enough to roast so much as a rabbit. So the fiends have wandered off, looking for other pyres on to which they can throw their rocking chairs and their vanities.
I like it. The smouldering, the charcoal, the half-light, the smoke in the eyes and the hair….it fits Crikey!!
@ Socrates – Barry O Farrell ‘chose’ to ‘resign’ due to pressure from his own party. He did this because he was given a promise of something down the track that would pay him well if he shut up and got out of the way. This was done to protect the reputation of the Liberal party. If he chose to keep on, there would have been a leadership spill. If he had done the NT thing and refused to step down then, Labor would have pushed votes of no confidence and the Liberal party would have eventually had to vote ‘no confidence’ to end the story, which would have been very damaging for them.
PH will not resign, because there is no-one on this planet she gives a shit about. Leaders of real parties can be voted out by the other MPs, other MPs can be asked to resign by the leader. The only people that can’t be coerced into standing down are independents and people who ARE the party (Nick X, PH).
She is on a 2 term senate spot, and has known from the start that ON would be dead and buried before she is next up for election, so she doesn’t care about keeping her reputation amongst voters.
She is also too unemployable to bribe with a diplomatic posting or business job. About the only place with low enough standards to take her would be Sky News, and they’re likely to be laying low after Latham.
The economy is going “so great” that the RBA has left interest rates at a record low for the eighth month in a row. So great!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-04/reserve-bank-holds-interest-rates-steady-at-1.5-percent/8414446
Glass of port anyone? Or maybe a cup of Russian Caravan?
BB
Most of us would be happy if crikey dumped Pollbludger, as long as William continued it.
We were here before crikey, we’ll be around after..
Simon, FWIW you’re not a particularly abusive poster, if at all, and I’m sorry if I conveyed the impression that I thought you were.
My point in a nutshell is that the more complaining there is here, the more Crikey is defined as some kind of public service organization with some kind of holy responsibility to provide a free platform for amateur commentators – or else suffer the consequences – the more they are unlikely to go to any great trouble to fix the site.
There are plenty of other places to go if you don’t like the new look, however temporary it might be. And I’m not talking about “over the road” either. The Pub went to great trouble to weed out the trouble makers (no names,so please don’t think I’m referring to you, whoever “you” are) and if the result is a little bland, at least there are no PB-style vendettas taking place over hundreds of comments, page after page. So, if you want a punch up,please doNOTgo there.
The Guardian offers a very lively and amusing comment function. Some of the comments there are first rate, but because there are hundreds of commenters, the work of individuals tends to get subsumed into the mass.
Even Bolt’s blog allows dissent nowadays, although the moderation delay can be irksome.
However, my best advice would be to stick with Crikey, but to also tone down the complaints, lest they decide it’s all too hard to please their non-paying customers and leave things how they are today.
William does a stirling job and is an acknowledged and sought-after expert in his field. It might be that, despite good intentions, you aren’t really helping him keep the place together by constant moaning about the format.
Yup, despite a massive real estate bubble forming (or maybe because it’s already formed!)
New thread.
It’s much worse than that, Kato.
You found yourself whinging about someone whinging about whingers whinging about his whinging at them whinging.
That, sir, is not a mistake one makes by accident.
How about some Stones Green Ginger…
Tom.
VE
Very nicely said.
No, I answer your general (and spurious) assertion that free service operators have no obligations whatsoever with some examples of obligations that even truly free services can have. And then I go on to agree that those obligations don’t generally extend to providing a user-friendly (or even working) comments feature.
Or in other words, while I wholly disagree with your “whomever provides a service that they don’t (always, directly) charge for is beyond reproach” attitude (there’s no pass just because something is free, doubly so when the “free” thing is unquestionably commercial in nature), I agree that nobody has to do anything specific with respect to comments. Which is not to say that people can’t or shouldn’t complain if they want to. Or complain about the complaining, if that’s what makes them happy.
Although “precious bandwidth”? WTF? Bandwidth is cheap and plentiful. Less so in Australia than elsewhere; but nobody is forced to host their server in Australia if they’d rather not put up with Australian ISP’s gouging on bandwidth prices (and in fact this blog is actually hosted in California; look it up if you want). And even were that not the case we’re talking maybe 1-2kB of text data per post, which will compress down to a small fraction of that thanks to HTTP compression. Meaning that even if (Californian) bandwidth is precious, precious little of it is actually being provided.
Next you’ll be saying that we should all bow down to the ad providers, because with their video, flash, and multimedia-heavy ads that they don’t charge a dime to view they’re providing us with tons of delightful free content.
What consequences? You’ve said yourself that nobody actually pays attention to any of these comments anyways. If that’s the case, why get so worked up about whether or not people use the comments to whinge about the comments in the first place?
That’s ridiculous isn’t it? Ad providersbombard us with ads, many despite ad blockers. The solution is to go somewhere else where you can block ads. I do this myself at the Fairfax sites: I always try to disable to videos before that clock thing they use gets around to “Play Video”.
But I accept the inconvenience as part of the Fairfax “experience”and don’t complain to them about it. It’s their site.
Web site like this one of course DO have legal obligations that they must comply with. We as taxpayers and citizens DO have a right to complain if they infringe any legal proscriptions.
But blog formatting is another matter. It’s not illegal to have a kludgey blog layout, and unless we’re paying for it we shouldn’t dream of complaining about it, or asserting some kind of right to have it fixed. Or asserting any rights at all, such as mobbing a new poster until he or she leaves.
I was thinking of Nicole,who as far as I was concerned may have been forthright in her views, but not a troll in any way, shape or form. Yet she was hounded out of PB by the usual suspects. I don’t think you realize how clubby and proprietorial you’ve becomewhen it comes to strangers.
I goes back to that “proprietorial” attitude I mentioned before. You exercise “rights” that you don’t have (this is the royal “you”, not anyone in particular). Some poor lost soul wanders onto the site and a small cadre of self-appointed thought police harass and pick on someone who dares to disagree with them.
This is probably OK for trolls who only come to make trouble and provide no arguments for their positions, just assertions. But for someone like Nicole (and there have been several others) who reasoned her points out (even if you didn’t agree with her reasoning) I thought a number of you were a bit too tough on her, finding fault, in the end, with almost everything she said. And that’s besides the known bullies, who just do what bullies do. Nicole didn’t come here for a punch-up, but she got one whether she wanted it or not. She tried several times to accommodate the bullies, but never succeeded, so she left. That was a shame.
Greg Hunt?
Oh god, the ‘Free Nicole’ brigade in full flight! Looking back at her contributions, just a teensy weensy bit, like a hell of a lot, through rose-coloured glasses.
To put it in a nutshell, and as much as the sympathy brigade will call me a bully for pointing it out, but like I care, Nicole was given every opportunity to respond to robust analysis and debate around her, hmm, ‘well-argued’ points, and she couldn’t cope! She literally turned to water and cried all over the blog when her source material was analysed and interpreted and found wanting when it came to intellectual rigour.
If you want to call that ‘bullying’, well fine, but maybe if you do you should go start your own milquetoast blog elsewhere where contributions don’t need to stand up to rigorous challenge and you are given a fluffed pillow to recline upon instead. Just so no one’s feelings get hurt.
Oh, that’s right, you run one of those. Except, when your feelings get affronted that’s a different thing altogether and you feel you have the god-given right to call those whom you decree don’t fit your ‘standards’ to be called ‘idiots which needed to be weeded out’.
One rule for Bushfire Bill and another for those he chooses to pour scorn on.
Finally, an example, to put to bed, once and for all, the Nicole saga.
Player One was promulgating a similar line to Nicole about the Census screw-up. P1 argued her case forcefully and is still here. She is up for robust debate. Nicole wanted a featherbed.
Which is all anyone who posts here seems to want. Good, solid, robust debate based on provable facts without hyper-emotionalism. That’s also why daretotread chose to leave. She couldn’t stand up to the pressure to prove her points with valid evidence either.
And if that sort of attitude to other posters here makes me a ‘bully’, then so be it. Because I don’t believe I behave that way in general, and that, to me, IS what a ‘bully’ does. Throws their weight around to make themselves top dog at the expense of all else.
Testing.
Now is the time for testing
‘
Testing again.
Dan Gulberry
Wednesday, April 19, 2017 at 12:27 pm
First Dog On The Moon’s guide to preparing for nuclear war. Are you ready?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/19/first-dog-on-the-moons-guide-to-preparing-for-nuclear-war-are-you-ready
I don’t know you youngins, what do they teach you at school.
Please both feet firmly on the ground;
Put you head between your legs in the full brace position;
And kiss your A** good buy.