The Courier-Mail today has federal results from the Queensland poll by Galaxy, for which state results were published on Saturday. It has Labor and the Coalition tied on two-party preferred, which represents a 4.1% swing to Labor compared with last year’s election, and a one point shift to Labor since the previous such poll in February. On the primary vote, the Coalition is at 35% (steady since February, down from 43.2% at the election); Labor at 33% (up four since February, and up from 30.9% at the election); and One Nation at 15% (down three since the last poll; comparisons with the federal election are not meaningful as did not run in a majority of the seats). The poll was conducted Wednesday and Thursday from a sample of 850.
bk @ #530 Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 12:43 pm
Apparently. The remaining problems must just be a figment of my imagination.
I need to briefly vent re: University fees. A common line pushed by the Right is “why should poor taxpayers who didn’t go to Uni have to subsidise degrees for people who will end up earning much more money than them?”.
As an appeal to prejudice over logical self-interest, this is a great line. It’s the same argument used in the US to convince poor and middle-class voters to oppose public healthcare – “why should you have to pay for someone else’s hospital costs?”
The obvious response is that this is all taken care of through progressive taxation. IF a Uni student earns more due to their degree (which is usually – but not always – the case), they’ll be paying additional income taxes to retrospectively repay their education costs. This is my situation. My degree was valuable, and largely subsidised by taxpayers, but as a result I pay a lot more income tax than if I hadn’t gone to Uni. On the other hand, if a student uses their expertise to work in a relatively lower-paid job that benefits society in other ways (eg community work, nursing/teaching etc), then obviously they aren’t hit with the same income tax “repayments” as a higher paid worker. Seems fair enough to me, but then again I like Billy Bragg and ocassionally allow people to merge from side-streets in slow-moving traffic, so I’m not necessarily a normal Sydneysider.
This just seems so obvious to me, and yet I don’t see it used enough as a response.
P1
‘Anyone who has used the ‘new improved’ satellite service will be only too familiar with the random daily outages, poor customer service and ridiculously low bandwidth packages somehow being passed off as as a modern internet service’
Seriously, I keep saying this: my new improved satellite service doesn’t present any of these problems. The only outages I’ve had is when the weather doesn’t suit satellites (that is, a deluge of rain) — nowhere near daily, not even monthly – and the only problem I have with customer service is that they still haven’t taken away the old appendages, which isn’t really a huge issue.
I’m not saying that other people aren’t having problems, but my case shows it’s clearly a generalisation to state that anyone using the new satellite experiences those problems.
S-N
‘…and the people seem quite philosophical about what may be around the corner politically’
Ahem. I recently contributed some work to a book which, while it was quite directly targetted on a certain focus in relation to Pinochet years, did bear generally on this issue.
Actually, they ARE quite unphilosophical about it if it involves another round of the dissolution of democracy and mass torture and mass murder.
Boerwar
“When are the far left going to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions?”
Perfect is the enemy of good. The lunar left cling to their ideological purity. They never get anything done, but at least they have more to complain about, which helps keep the movement alive.
In another example, Nader’s Green party in the US actively campaigned against Al Gore, helping George W. Bush to win in 2000. In order to get enough signatures to register as a party in certain US states, Green activists would ask for signatures from traditional Republican voters, like truckers. The Greens told them every vote for the Greens was one less vote for Gore. Worked like a charm.
K
Clinton is the same as Trump; Shorten is the same as Turnbull; Le Pen is the same as Macron; Gore was the same as Bush.
What is it with the Left?
Do they actually like the planet cooking, the poor getting screwed and race hate being the core social aspiration?
I really recommend bludgers have a look at some of the work published by ECRI – Economic Cycle Research Institute. It puts the economic (and, consequently, political and social) evolution of the last few years into 200-year and 2000-year historical contexts.
Essentially, the economies of India and China are regaining their historical weight even more rapidly than they lost it during the phase of Atlantic industrialisation. The US share of the global economy has fallen by half since its peak at the end of WW2.
As well, given the slowdown in both population growth and labour productivity growth – secular trends that cannot be easily changed – the growth frontier in the Atlantic economies (and in its subordinates, such as this economy, NZ, Japan) has fallen to about 1% pa. In per capita terms, the growth horizon is even lower. This means it is literally impossible to “Make America Great” again. Likewise, it will be impossible to Make Britain Great Again or to Récupérer l’ancien France.
The world is being re-ordered. Whether we catch this now or later, we will have to catch it.
CTar,
It wouldn’t be economic to build a new fast rail line from the CBD to BC as a standalone airport link. However..
Building a fast, high capacity rail line from the CBD to Parramatta is a no brainer. TfNSW is already pushing its West Metro.
Extending that from Parramatta to the Western Sydney Employment Area has a business case in itself. It brings the WSEA within 20 mind of the CBD, making it Maquarie Park V2.0.
From WSEA to BC airport is an easy and logical extension.
That’s how a fast rail line to BC airport should work. But it won’t work unless it is actually competitive with access to Kingsford Smith. That means 25 minute transit.
What TfNSW should do is improve on West Metro. Increase its capacity and speed it up. This is only incremental cost and it avoids having to build a fast airport link fuplicating the route later.
Boerwar
Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 1:13 pm
And, in the same vein, pop-left and pop-right are alike….
C@Tmomma
Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 1:03 pm
Briefly,
I commend your devotion to the cause of the Creative Arts.
One of my sons has inherited his father’s creative juices. Thank goodness, not his mother’s lack of same.
That’s great to see, C@t. Recalling your husband….just really wonderful to see…
fuplicating? You know what I mean 🙂
AR: “So by “the left” I mean people who self-identify as left-wing and are expressing disdain for Macron or reluctance to get behind him because he’s “not left-wing enough”. Basically, the same kind of people who refused to get behind Hillary because what they wanted most was Sanders. Their hubris and ideological stubbornness earned them Trump instead.
Sanders wasn’t an option. Someone further to the left of Macron isn’t an option. The responsible thing is to get over it, vote for the non-fascist, and then try harder next election.”
I don’t buy comparisons between Sanders and the French far left. (I also don’t buy any suggestion that Sanders contributed significantly to Hillary’s loss: he was a symptom of Hillary’s fatal weakness as a candidate, rather than a contributing cause thereof: but that’s an argument for another time).
There is nothing at all unusual about politicians and voters who identify themselves with the union movement adopting an anti-immigration stance. One of the wellsprings of the Australian Labor Party was strong sentiment against the importation of Chinese and Kanaka workers. This is not necessarily driven purely by racist considerations: eg, in most parts of Australia, Aborigines were always free to join the shearers’ unions and their successor the AWU, but for a long time Chinese and Pacific Islanders were not. The question was not so much about race, than about what wages people were prepared to accept.
There is a lingering legacy of such sentiment in the French union movement, and this means that quite a few blue collar voters, in a two horse race that doesn’t feature a Socialist candidate, will choose FN over a centrist or conservative candidate.
A further consideration is the cultural challenge that many French people – particularly those who are older, less educated and/or living in rural areas – see in the supposedly rapidly-growing Muslim population of France. (I say supposedly, because until a decade or ago French censuses did not collect statistics on the religious or ethnic background of citizens, so we can’t really know for sure.) Again, these sentiments on the part of Le Pen voters are not purely racist in motivation. The feeling of cultural (and physical) threat that many Western people feel towards traditional Islamic communities in their midst has complex causes and the left are sooner or later going to have to find a way of addressing these fears rather than simply putting labels on those who express them. But that too is a debate for another day.
Bob’s Uncle
Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 1:08 pm
The compound real rate of return to investment in education has been estimated at about 9%. This is so far ahead of most other mass-scale investments that we are just crazy not to be piling into it. Part of these returns accrue privately. But the larger part accrues socially- across the economy as a whole.
Knowing this, investment is increasing very rapidly in Germany, where they know more than a thing or two about labour productivity, capital accumulation and opportunity costs.
We are governed by the economic morons of the LNP. The sooner we get rid of them the better.
Cud Chewer
Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 1:27 pm
fuplicating? You know what I mean
InBubitably
MB
‘I also don’t buy any suggestion that Sanders contributed significantly to Hillary’s loss…’
Sure, sure.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
Always free of the power to do anything other than provide real world support to the Right.
Always free of accountability.
Meanwhile, the Reef cooks.
Good afternoon all,
Turnbull will be announcing a new schools funding package later today. Apparently he had been contacting state Premiers , the Catholc and independent education organisations this morning re the package.
There has not been a COAG leading up to the budget, in fact Turnbull cancelled a proposed meeting so no discussion with the combined states and territories leading up to this announcement. If Turnbull is talking to states and had independent sector today just prior to his announcement the whole thing sounds like another cluster f**k waiting to happen.
The university package has gone over like a lead balloon and today’s announcement may well add to the disaster.
Cheers.
CC
= Lots of sets of tracks.
Boerwar
Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 1:13 pm
B, there’s just no doubt we are going to have to re-apply ourselves to the issues of economic distribution. In pre-industrial economies, where growth could be positive or negative from one season or year to the next, “distribution” was an existential problem. In the post-industrial economy, existential issues will have to be confronted. So much of our politics consists of a romantic attempt to escape this. This politics is obsolete and self-deceiving. We have to do much better…much, much better.
Briefly – the point is well made that investment in education has a fantastic rate of return – although it’s a more nuanced argument that may be harder to cut-through.
Surely pointing to the obvious fact that well-to-do Uni graduates pay more taxes as a result would pass even the drunkest pub test.. and have the additional benefit of reinforcing the logic behind progressive taxation (in a time where we can’t even assume that this fundamental concept will maintain broad political support).
Not sure if this segment will make the CH10 Stephen Colbert show tonight ???
WARNING – vulgar language ahead
Stephen Colbert on Monday defended fellow CBS host John Dickerson against Donald Trump after the president told the renowned journalist he refers to the (award-winning) news program “Face the Nation” as “Deface the Nation.”
“Donald Trump, John Dickerson is a fair-minded journalist and one of the most competent people who will ever walk into your office,” Colbert began during his opening monologue on “The Late Show.”
Colbert noted Dickerson has too much “dignity to trade insults with the president of the United States to his face,” adding “But I, sir, am no John Dickerson.”
“Here we go,” Colbert began, before ripping into Trump.
“Mr. Trump, your presidency? I love your presidency, I call it ‘Disgrace the Nation.’” Colbert said. “You’re not the POTUS, you’re the BLOTUS. You’re the glutton with a button. You’re a regular ‘Gorge’ Washington. You’re the presi-dunce. But you’re turning into a real prictator.”
Colbert said Trump “attracts more skinheads than free Rogaine,” has “more people marching against [him] than cancer,” and talks “like a sign-language gorilla who got hit in the head.”
Going all-in against the president, Colbert added: “Sir, the only the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c**k holster.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/trumps-mouth-is-only-good-as-vladimir-putins-cck-holster-colbert-brutalizes-trump-in-2-minute-blitz/
A timely reminder with the budget coming into sight. When he wasn’t selling all our gold at the bottom of the market or losing billions in currency speculation Dollar Sweetie had time to gift this disaster to the nation.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/15/peter-costellos-five-most-profligate-decisions-as-treasurer-cost-the-budget-56bn-a-year
I’d strike presi-dunce and Gorge Washington. Not sufficiently funny, clever, or insulting. Prick-tator is okay. Pretty much everything after prick-tator is great.
a r Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 2:03 pm
I’d strike presi-dunce and Gorge Washington. Not sufficiently funny, clever, or insulting. Prick-tator is okay. Pretty much everything after prick-tator is great.
*********************************************
US television has come aways down the track when it was “Leave It to Beaver” and Walt Disney ….
I hope Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten is taking note of Daniel Andrews’ Vic state budget ‘with a heart’.
zoomster @ #553 Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 1:09 pm
Many people are having problems, as the article points out. It is possible we are on different satellites (since they now have two in service) and that they behave differently. It is also possible you simply don’t notice the outages, since the daytime ones tend to be only a few minutes each, and the nighttime ones you may not be using the internet. In any case, if you are unaware of them, think yourself lucky. The minor outages (we get a few each day) are simply annoying. But the longer outages can last for hours. We get those every couple of weeks, usually (but not always) at night.
The service has been more reliable recently – but it has also been noticeably slower.
Turnbull has gone for the full bells, whistles, froth and bubbles announcing the new schools funding policy.
Just off the top of my head two things stand out straight away.
Firstly, dig down beneath the Turnbull words and promises and you will find that over the forward estimates spending will only increase by about $5 billion dollars which is far far short from that which was negotiated at the end of the labor government in 2013. Huge gap.
Secondly, Turnbull and Birmingham are talking about the brave new world under their guardianship, about how all students will be treated equally, about budgeted expenditure over the next four and ten years yet at the same time Turnbull is sprouting another review to be guided by David Gonski that will report back by December. Surely if he was serious about certainty for future decisions by the states and private sectors around education funding this review should have been done and dusted before this new policy announcement. In simple terms Turnbull is announcing education funding policy in May that could be obsolete by early next year depending on what the Gonski Mark 2 review finds.
Absolutely gobsmacking.
Cheers.
It’s all about the optics of David Gonski standing side by side with Malcolm Turnbull.
A very effective stunt.
Doyley
But not surprising. Just another Magnificent Mal announcement.
All this pre-budget talk about education makes me wonder what will be well hidden in the detail of the budget on other things.
P1
Perhaps the explanation is as you say – different satellites. I would certainly notice an outage which lasted hours – and probably would pick up most minor ones, as well. I certainly do notice when it’s raining heavily!
As I said, I’m not denying others are having problems. I’m simply saying it’s incorrect to assume everyone is.
Player One @ #575 Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017 – 2:15 pm
Those may be correlated. A more reliable service is going to have more people actively using it (instead of rage-quitting when their connectivity goes down for the fifth time in an hour), which will drive network congestion up and per-premises bandwidth down.
ctar1 @ #578 Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 2:23 pm
Delivered from the pulpit in Churchillian tones.
There is a lingering legacy of such sentiment in the French union movement, and this means that quite a few blue collar voters, in a two horse race that doesn’t feature a Socialist candidate, will choose FN over a centrist or conservative candidate.
For the same reason that I find it peculiar that people who self-identify as from the Left, cannot bring themselves to vote for or support a Banker in the upcoming French election (what? are there no ‘Good’ Bankers left in this world!?!), but instead would rather throw their support behind, in a two horse race, a fascist, a bigot and a racist, that these self-same supposed more enlightened thinkers than us of the Centre Left, cannot think hard enough about the consequences of their actions, especially when it comes to the causes they say they would die in a ditch over.
Let’s take Immigration for a start. The Socialist Left are all for Open Borders and a ‘Let Them Come!’ policy towards refugees.
The Banker is for Open Borders and a more enlightened policy wrt refugees.
The Fascist will snap shut the French Borders and turn away asylum seekers and repatriate refugees and immigrants in the most aggressive and violent and thuggish way.
The Banker would keep France in the EU Common Market, with it’s more enlightened Wages and Conditions and Industrial Relations policies for Workers.
The Fascist says she will have a policy that will keep French jobs for the French. Take France out of the EU though and what jobs will be left for the French? Certainly not high-paying ones that flow from being a part of the EU. She is also quiet about the jobs that Robotics and AI will take away from French Workers.
And that’s just for starters.
So, in a binary situation where the choice is between a Banker and a Fascist, either the Socialist Left are naive and/or delusional with their advocacy AGAINST the Banker, or they are complicit in advocating FOR the Fascist so as to cause the razing of the Global Capitalist Order. In which case they should hang their heads in shame because it will achieve no more than an unenlightened return to serfdom, from which they will get no benefit, no matter what they may think about the power of their ideas.
Brute force will always Trump that.
A R
don’t think satellite works that way.
Test.
Nope. Still won’t allow me to post what I’ve been trying to all morning.
Rex,
You and the MSM may wet your pants over David Gonski standing next to Turnbull but it is nothing more than a sad stunt by a government hiding the lack of extra funding in the announcement today.
Mr and Mrs Joe Blogs with three kids at a state school have no idea who Gonski is and what his claim to fame is. I have often thought the rush to label the equitable funding policy put forward by labor and endorsed by the states and teachers as the ” Gonski reforms ” was a bit self defeating. Fair and equitable education funding is far more digestible than ” I give a Gonski “. Just my take anyway.
Parents care about adequate and sustainable funding for their kids. The announcement today provides nothing and once again, in his rush to announce something,Turnbull will have his pants pulled down irrespective of some Gonski dude standing at the podium.
How can Turnbull declare certainty when in six months time this review may determine some different funding arrangement is the preferred way to go ?
Utter bullshit all round.
Cheers.
Cheers.
simon aussie katich @ #525 Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 12:37 pm
So you were there in the Pinochet days?
CTar,
Th bottom line is over the forward estimates education funding will increase by around $5 billion. Absolutely nothing in real terms and delivered with no COAG input from the states and territories.
While the MSM and others lather themselves with how smart Turnbull is to engage Gonski and how he has wedged labor, stake holders will be crunching numbers as we speak and the findings will not be nice.
Cheers.
C@Tmomma
Macrons policies include relaxing labour laws,cutting business taxes; reform of the unemployment system cutting public spending and shrinking public sector. We all know what those ‘reforms’ mean . So a vote for him is another ratcheting down of the vice on workers. Increasing the pressure just makes it more likely that extreme politics becomes more attractive. At some stage it will blow.
A big spending announcement with 2.0 in the name.
Can anyone work out why it was announced this week? And not announced last week, or when the budget is unveiled?
I’ll give you a hint. It starts with N, and ends in ewspoll.
zoomster @ #583 Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 2:40 pm
It does. For most users, a satellite is a shared medium. Buying a dedicated channel on a satellite is way too expensive just for home use.
VE,
The announcement is about an extra $5 billion dollars over the forward estimates. How it will be distributed is uncertain given the new Gonski review. Then there will be negotiations with the states and independent sectors and agreements negotiated. The process will take a long time and during that time there will be uncertainty and thus no ability by the stakeholders to plan budgets etc. The Turnbull government has fart arsed around and now they find themselves with no policy and no funding arrangement in place they have to resort to another review.
Cheers.
DG
This usually works for me if I run into trouble with Crikey’s firewall.
Put what you’re trying to post into a plain text editor like Windows Notepad. If there are any square brackets get rid of them or replace with curly brackets.
Putting it in a text editor will get rid of hidden characters in the text. Then copy and paste that into the ‘leave a comment’ box.
Good luck!
doyley @ #586 Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 2:48 pm
No Doyley I’m not wetting my pants over Malcolms stunt today, but you certainly seem to be in a lather.
@ Doyley – you’re right, fixed!
A big spending announcement with 2.0 in the name but no details as to how it would actually work and doubts that it will actually go ahead.
Can anyone work out why it was announced this week? And not announced last week, when the budget is unveiled, or when the govt has had time to think it through properly?
I’ll give you a hint. It starts with N, and ends in ewspoll.
B, I was there in ’89. I dont think it would be called the “Pinochet days”, but he was still in office.
Player One @ #591 Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017 – 2:56 pm
Yes. There’s some discussion (and a nice graphic) here:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/ten-cool-facts-about-nbns-forthcoming-sky-muster-satellite-service-20160202-gmjpow.html
Users within a region will share the bandwidth provided by one of 101 independent channels (or “spots”, I guess) on the satellite. More active users within a region means less bandwidth available for each individual user. As with any other networked technology, congestion can still occur.
Gloomy fun for the whole family. How well have the Libs done ? Draw it yourself and see.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget/draw-it-yourself-how-well-has-the-economy-performed-under-the-coalition-20170427-gvu9gl.html
rex douglas @ #574 Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 2:10 pm
Goodness me Rex, you are a monument to education under a Liberal Govt!
Only one of the two you mention is in a position to bring down a Federal Budget. Be patient grasshopper, Bill will be PM all in good time.
VE.
Now you are on the right track !
Cheers and a good afternoon to all.