Labor picks up a point in this week’s reading of Essential Research’s fortnight rolling average, which did not allow the Easter long weekend to interrupt its schedule. The major parties exchange a point on the primary vote, with Labor up to 37% and the Coalition down to 36%, while the Greens and One Nation hold steady at 10% and 8% respectively.
Also included are approving ratings for cross-benchers Senators, which I like to think they asked because I suggested it to them a few weeks ago, and it’s turned up the finding I was fishing for when I did: namely, that Jacqui Lambie, at 32% approval and 30% disapproval, is more popular than the overrated Pauline Hanson, at 32% and 48%. Still less popular are David Leyonhjelm, with 9% approval, 28% disapproval and a forbiddingly high “don’t know about them”, and Cory Bernardi, whose respective numbers are 10%, 34% and 41% (“not sure” accounts for the balance). At the top of the charts is Nick Xenophon, at 35% approval and 25% disapproval, followed by Derryn Hinch at 35% and 27%.
The poll also records 38% support for allowing superannuation to be accessible when buying a home, with 50% opposed, and has a suite of questions on the American intervention in Syria: 41% approve of last week’s bombing with 36% opposed; 37% say they would support US ground troops being sent, with 39% opposed; and 31% saying they would approve of an Australian contribution, with 50% opposed.
Righto, the railways beckon.
C@Tmomma
Andrews LNP as normal is bullshit as usual.
Perhaps he should read that the cashless card trial costs $4000 per person to admin (not sure if it’s per person each time though).
So Dr Andrewsc can stick that claim up theirs arses.
DanG,
How much are taxes going to have to rise to pay for the increase in the number of people receiving Newstart?
Well, we do know that taxes would rise $17000/person to pay for a UBI.
However, as I said to guytaur, I wouldn’t worry too much about the dislocation that AI and Robotics will cause because I think that we will just morph into a society that creates millions of little Microbusinesses doing the things that AI and Robotics cannot at the local level, plus developing Services to supply to our communities and the world.
That’s why it’s so important to support a healthy Minimum Wage, not a UBI I think. We will all have money to go around to pay for these things. However, if there are those that can’t transmogrify their working lives to accommodate this new paradigm, then they can likely still be supported by a generous Social Safety Net.
On the qt, between you, me and the bed post, I think the GST should be increased to 12.5% to keep pace with these changes. 🙂
bemused @ #770 Friday, April 21, 2017 at 7:06 pm
These are two of the things that a proper NBN would have enabled. At the time Labor outlined their proposal for an NBN, I said that this would enable businesses to move out of the various CBDs and move out to the suburbs, and even regional centres. That would kill several birds with one stone.
1) Reduce, and perhaps eliminate congestion in the CBDs;
2) Be good for business as rents would be a lot cheaper outside of the CBDs
3) Workers wouldn’t need to commute as far as the do now
4) A huge economic boost to regional areas as businesses relocate to them….
… and many other benefits.
It is a disgrace that we will now never have a proper NBN and so all of these benefits will never eventuate.
15%
Boerwar,
I have much more faith in people’s desire to keep themselves busy, find a new source of income, and their entrepreneurial spirit.
bemused
Just before I go. Yep, they seem to be standard gotcha stupid questions, but he doesn’t do a Leigh Sales on the answers. He does the same to Libs., however.
It’s a weird line of questioning, that’s for sure.
Nevertheless, I thought Shorten handled it well.
imacca @ #784 Friday, April 21, 2017 at 7:23 pm
Please do not use those square brackets. They are well known to cause a problem.
Cate McGregor was the idiot.
I am still recovering from hearing it.
boerwar @ #789 Friday, April 21, 2017 at 7:30 pm
They are concentrated in some sectors.
I haven’t really followed this because, as expected Turnbull over-reached and messed up.
But there was an advert in the local paper from one of our nursing homes advertising for personal care attendants. The advert said 457 visa applicants were eligible to apply. I remember a recent conversation with the director of the aged care facility and she said their staff is heavily weighted towards overseas applicants because Australian residents don’t want to work those roles.
Fairfax Media has been told major elements of the government’s affordable housing package have not been bedded down and key * decisions will not be taken until the eleventh hour
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/malcolm-turnbull-dampens-talk-of-affordable-housing-focus-in-budget-20170421-gvph9r.html
Totally on the back foot. Thrashing about like drowning toffs. Jumping at shadows. Completely outplayed. Adults in charge my arse.
* key = political
Apart from self-interest, the only decisions they make are political. The country can go f*ck itself.
C
There are several classes of visas. I suspect the most numerous by far are student visas.
I
It does rather look as if all the migrant bashing and all the reffo bashing was done in the absence of anything more sensible to do.
dan gulberry @ #804 Friday, April 21, 2017 at 7:39 pm
Good stuff Dan. I completely overlooked the possibilities of a real NBN.
Perhaps I have repressed all thoughts of the NBN since discovering I will get a variation of Fraudband.
I must seek therapy.
Bemused
“1. Spend big on public transport to provide fast commuting from far outer suburbs.
2. Develop alternate business centres such as Parramatta in Sydney, Box Hill in Melbourne and also make them a public transport hub easily accessible from surrounding suburbs.
3. Develop regional centres with fast (r)ail connections to the CBD.”
I would agree with 1 and 2 especially, partly 3. An even bigger one is overhauling existing city town planning rules. We need more high quality medium density residential to stop the sprawl and offer people quality housing in sufficient quantity. At present we only get low density (if residents win) or high rise (if developers win). The middle (4-6 stories with public space) is much better. In area, Melbourne is already slightly bigger than Paris (pop 12 million). We have plenty of space, but we waste it.
Cost should not be an object, because our house prices/costs are already higher than in cities with world class public transport and accessible housing. If these prices go on, states should go back to building and selling off state housing to first home buyers to undercut them. The purpose of our housing market should not be to allow every developer to become a billionaire.
C
We may have to promote indolence and idleness as virtues.
The key issues are decoupling money from work and controlling capital in a globalized environment.
c@tmomma @ #803 Friday, April 21, 2017 at 7:39 pm
Sloth would need to be upgraded from a deadly sin to a cardinal virtue.
Taxes would probably have to be decoupled from work as well.
C@Tmomma
Problem is that increasing consumption taxes increases effective tax on the poor more than it does the well ‘orf’.
Nice one Monica I think ‘George’ as a first name suits Turnbull perfectly.
HEAR YE HEAR YE
SA CHAPTER KNEES UP
SAT 06 MAY 2017
in Kapunda SA.
To get your invitations email me via
tuckerboxdog@hmamail.com
and you will be sent all the details.
Remember, what happens in Kapunda stays in Kapunda.
Puffytmd.
Cate McGregor is a political numpty. She has friends in high places, has risen through the ranks of the Defence Forces but has a political tin ear. She can’t help that. I just don’t know why people take her political opinions seriously. Especially as she is politically compromised, or conflicted due to her confirmation biases.
Bemused (sorry for the ramble)
“3. Develop regional centres with fast (r)ail connections to the CBD.”
I agree with this one if you mean nearby regional centres, say within one hour. So Sydney-Newcastle-Wooloongong, Melbourne-Geelong, and Brisbane-Gold Coast-Sunshine Coast. Not Sydney – Goulbourne which, even with HSR, is too far. In a suburban area even HSR will not average above 150kph, so over 150km is not a viable commuting distance/time.
For example, in highly serviced European areas of Holland or Germany, regional cities are still only an hour away. Melbourne-Geelong is about the same distance as Stuttgart-Karlsruhe. There are some beautiful forests and wilderness between the second pair, but not sprawl or “rural residential” chewing up space.
Boerwar:
On a related side note, many farmers use backpacking holidayers as labour because they can’t get Australians for that work when they want them. The so-called backpacker tax was an issue here.
Damn. My reply to c@tmomma was truncated. And now I’m buggered if I can remember what my reply was.
Part of it though was a thanks for contributing to the discussion. We’ll leave it at that until I remember what the rest of my reply was. :insert sad and angry at limitations of Crikey emoji here:
BW,
We may have to promote indolence and idleness as virtues.
The key issues are decoupling money from work and controlling capital in a globalized environment.
I can’t see it, the indolence and idleness stuff. Maybe it’s because I live in a tourist mecca but every 2nd person here wants a piece of it! As opposed to wanting to indulge for free in what others are paying $500/night to experience. 🙂
C@t:
I’ve never heard of Cate McGregor. If she has friends in high places, they haven’t helped her raise her profile.
Boerwar
Or redefine what “indolence” and “idleness” are. There are people now who play online games and make a living. Giving lessons, guides or playing in pro competitions. Playing “Space Invaders” would be muy “idleness” back in the old days but now ? Not so much.
DanG,
Don’t sweat it. 🙂
Just beware of the emoji that turns into a comment pac man! 😀
I do hope there is some sort of space between the transport engineers who design Canberra’s roads and the transport engineers who are over seeing the slaughter of trees as a preliminary to the Great Light Rail thingie.
Yesterday morning I drove north along Northborne Road. It is, I believe, the city’s main transport artery.
I came to a vast roundabout which had, for the past several years, been the scene of huge earthworks and roadworks and the like.
It took me two sets of lights to get into and then out of the roundabout. (Of course both sets were red at arrival.)
Is there anywhere else on earth that roundabouts have traffic lights, let alone multiple traffic lights?
The net result is, of course, that it now takes at least three times as long to move along that particular bit of the City’s main exit artery.
Poroti,
Got it in one! Who would have thought you could make a handsome living Unboxing on You Tube, playing video games on You Tube, or being a professional E Gamer!
Boerwar,
According to my rudimentary mathematical skills, on current unit and house approvals, we will build about 1 million dwellings in the next 5years
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/8731.0
P
‘Making a living’ will have to be decoupled from ‘living’.
There will simply be no need for most of us to ‘make’ a living.
We already have 1.1 million ‘underemployed’ and 760,000 ‘unemployed ‘and a couple of hundred thousand who have abandoned the labour market altogether.
And we all know that the definitions of ‘underemployed’ and ‘unemployed’ are skewed to keeping the numbers at the low end for political reasons.
IMO, these stats are more likely to signal the introduction of the Unwork/UBI Society rather than being the platform for ‘Full Employement’ of the Work/Dole Society.
SGOS
A lot of numbers there! Did they get it right or do they disagree with me?
Puff
Thanks! Love to finally meet SA bludgers. I will try not to talk about light rail (much) 🙂
socrates @ #824 Friday, April 21, 2017 at 8:03 pm
That’s one of the things that hits you when you leave Australia, how huge (area wise) our main cities are.
Here in Asia a city with a million people is relatively tiny.
We received a word of caution from Elders Insurance Arm (or WTTE) based in, I seem to recall, Benalla.
It warned of a very high incidence of wombats striking rapidly moving cars putting upwards pressure, one presumes, on car insurance premiums.
Having just returned from New Zealand, which is absolutely riddled with deliberately imported ferals like stoats, weasels and ferrets, I noticed that they lack a largish, burrowing, feral herbivore.
I sense opportunities for an export market in wombats.
From today’s Crikey email on the last couple of days from the govt:
And meanwhile it’s Labor opposition who is doing the policy hard yards. Even Latika Bourke announced on facebook that Chris Bowen has been doing some very heavy lifting as Labor’s treasury spokesperson.
socrates @ #824 Friday, April 21, 2017 at 8:03 pm
Yes, I certainly wasn’t thinking of Mildura!
Ballarat would be about the outermost limit. Geelong should be easy. Seymour and Warragul doable and there are already regular commuters from all mentioned.
I note in passing that the wily wombat’s pouch faces the rear end.
Otherwise it would rapidly fill with dirt during wombat excavations.
Boerwar
“Is there anywhere else on earth that roundabouts have traffic lights, let alone multiple traffic lights?”
Yes a few places; quite a few in France and UK. It is normally a last resort though, after capacity of the roundabout under conventional priority rules has failed, and you want to stop it jamming up. It manages congestion, but doesn’t eliminate it.
C@Tmomma
There was a comment I read in the early 1980s that has always stuck with me. Computers were just starting to enter the workplace and fears of automation was a topic of the day . The comment by some computer expert at the time was that people will only be replaced in their jobs where people are being employed as robots.
It is the logical place for a flyover because of major cross traffic issues.
But when you have bet the bank on a Light Rail there is not enough for minor things like traffic flows along our single biggest transport artery.
It ‘manages’ congestion by increasing the length of the queues and by slowing the flow.
I asked my MD the other day whether he would consider retraining as a nurse when doctors are replaced with automated diagnosis and prescription tellers in Colesworths.
He just smiled.
BW, I think the issue is getting houses, people and jobs outside of Sydney and Melbourne rather than not building enough to cover population growth
Boerwar
They may have them but a Fatwa against them has been declared and a jihad waged. Jihadis doing OK so far. The Scientific American look at the jihad. Scientific American seems almost an oxymoron these days 🙁
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/behind-new-zealands-wild-plan-to-purge-all-pests1/
How hilarious! Assange pitches the mother of all drama, holes himself up for years in the Ecuadorean embassy in the UK supposedly scared out of his mind that Obama’s administration would come after him under cover of his extradition to Sweden on rape charges, bends over for the Russians only to see Trump elected, and in return Trump’s mob come after him.
In a scavenger hunt from my uni days one of the items on the list was a wombat.
2 were obtained , one from Featherdale Wildlife park (don’t ask), another from a farm, courtesy of a tennis net pinched from one of the courts.
confessions @ #848 Friday, April 21, 2017 at 8:39 pm