Before we proceed, please note posts below on British and French elections, and a bumper post on Tasmania that encompasses newly published federal and state electorate boundaries, today’s three elections for seats in the state’s upper house, and a state poll result that provides good news for the new Labor leader, Rebecca White.
The only new addition to the BludgerTrack aggregate this week is the usual weekly Essential Research result, an all too common state of affairs in Newspoll’s off weeks that should finally be rectified with YouGov’s imminent entry to the Australian polling caper. The trendline is now doing something it hasn’t done since the election – bending back slightly in favour of the Coalition. The Coalition have also picked up two this week on the seat projection, one apiece in Victoria and South Australia. The other trend worth noting is that One Nation are down for the seventh week in a row. Nothing new this week on leadership ratings.
I’ve had two paywalled articles this week in Crikey, which is well worth your subscriber dollars if the state of the Australian news media is of concern to you, as it should be. One of these tackled Peta Credlin’s revisionism concerning the electoral gender gap:
In defiance of the conventional wisdom, Credlin sought not just to dispel the “myth” of the Tony Abbott “woman problem”, but also to argue that the charge could more properly be levelled at his successor. The implications of Credlin’s claim run well beyond the small matter of the Turnbull-Abbott rivalry, as gender has been the most volatile demographic element in the federal electoral equation since the knives came out for Kevin Rudd on June 23, 2010.
The other considered One Nation’s recent fadeout and its implications for the looming Queensland state election:
The One Nation renaissance is once again inviting comparisons to Groundhog Day, as the party faces the possibility of deregistration in Queensland over irregularities in its legal structure. The latest development adds to an accumulation of bad news not just for One Nation, but also for Queensland’s Liberal National Party opposition, which has been hoping that One Nation will provide the key to a quick return to office after its shock defeat in January 2015.
Bowen summary: “falls short on health, education and housing affordability”.
I agree. Add fake growth forecasts and he has it all.
Bowen’s attack –
*Health
*Education
*Housing
No one, no bloody one, mentioned climate
@Bemused
Centre of lala land?
doyley @ #1696 Tuesday, May 9, 2017 at 8:32 pm
Should abolish the rebate for private health insurance.
Kezza:
I’m interested in seeing some response to climate change which is arguably the most pressing issue our country is dealing with. But nada on that front.
mikeh:
Figures. That’d be a bridge too far for the numpty faction in the partyroom.
The most important issue of all. Wonder if the Greens will mention it.
Poroti
“They have been assuming Yuuge wage growth for years. Obviously on zero evidence.”
Maybe Morrison thinks we are all paid like politicians? Hockey thought so too.
I thought Leigh Sales quite effective. (I don’t usually watch 7.30, and she gets pretty bad notices on PB.)
Interesting to see what the ratings agencies think about the budget.
AA+
@socrates
Yeah, Hockey thought he had everything right, like when he was smoking his cigar while bitching about those on welfare, Morrison is no different..
Sounds good first up, the devil is in the detail, this budget might get them a point in the polls.
tehetehetehe
Getting the Libs to do the dirty work on tax collection so the ALP does not have to is always a win.
In terms of credibility (or lack thereof) they’ve done a 180 on the 2014 budget.
Should they, by some mischance, win the 2019 election then it’s easy to predict that the 2020 budget would be a rerun of 2014.
10
Question: Is Chris Richardson smiling? After the Abbott/Hockey Budget he thought all his Christmases had come at once.
Meanwhile, when it came to big ticket infrastructure items proposed by Labor, the LNP hard heads demanded “cost/benefit analyses” and “business plans”. Having totally ignored all these when it came to the Alice Springs-Darwin link, now a new Choo-Choo line between Melbourne and Brisbane – again without any kind of C/B analysis put up by Barnaby and his mates – is going to pork barrel many NP electorates.
I relation to a the new tax on banks, this still does not stop Labor demanding a Royal Commission to rub salt into the wound.
Boerwar,
Whar are you counting?
Is that Great Big New Bank Tax something Labor can increase down the track?
Is that Great Big New Bank Tax something Labor can increase down the track?
Bill Shorten MP
4 mins ·
Turnbull’s own budget documents include a handy graphic showing how his Government is making uni students pay more for degrees.
He’s making education more expensive for young Australians, and he’s proud of it. So out of touch.
@Puff
I would think so, they did with Medicare Levy and others.
itzadream @ #1708 Tuesday, May 9, 2017 at 8:41 pm
You can safely ignore a lot of those judgements on PB.
The problem for the Libs doing a Lab budget is exactly the same as Lab trying to do a Lib budget. The voters will simply say if we’re going to get the other mob’s budget anyway we might as well make them the government – they’ll do it better.
The Libs have effectively torn up everything they’ve said about economic management since Costello (at least). All of the attacks on Labor’s spending, Labor’s taxing, Labor’s priorities on health and education and infrastructure etc etc were all just a steaming pile of bullshit. Any future crap along said lines will just be laughed at.
This is the acknowledgement that the Liberal Magic Pixie Dust theory of economic management is dead. This is the acknowledgement that the entire Howard/Costello project was nothing more than pissing a windfall gain up against a wall.
Who knows, maybe this will turn their polling around, but these morons are so stupid I doubt it. It’s more likely to lead to further fracturing on the right as the loons who still cling to the stupid of trickle down and austerity lose their shit. One thing is for certain though. The Liberal Party is virtually pointless. Yes they will still shovel maximum to their base (twas ever thus) but they mean nothing more than a redistribution upwards. Big spending, big taxing, debt and deficit. They own these now. Of course they always did, but now even the dummies should be able to see it.
tricot @ #1714 Tuesday, May 9, 2017 at 8:48 pm
What value do you put on saving lives by getting a lot of freight off roads and onto rail?
Zoidlord
Right. Why even bother mentioning drug testing a few thousand welfare recipients, maybe “save” a few million, when we have one third of our largest corporations paying no tax on multi billion dollar profits.
You can also add in uni students, who are being harshly punished for their uppity tendencies. How do they think we will get wage growth without more education?
To the extent it confirms Labor’s been controlling the agenda, was always right in direction, and annuls that as an attack point, it’s a good budget for Labor. Labor calls them out as not far enough, not funded, and not fair. And blows hard on housing.
If the Libs have abandoned “neo-liberalism”, will that leave the Labor Right, the last holdouts for this ideology?
(actually, i don’t believe the Libs have abandoned it. This is short term cynical survival mode. It will be back in the 2019 budget, as Citizen says above.)
Fess
Despite some fairly positive policy settings, a lot of people – including climate carers & tertiary students, to name but a few – aren’t going to like it.
And what I care about, at the moment (apart from CC), I need to see the detail.
PS. You know, every time you post a link via Facebook, I get bombarded with invitations to join, so that when I decline to do so, I end up with a couple of square inches of view (must be via your facebook account, although I’m not sure about that assertion.) Just letting you know.
RATSAK – Well said, as usual. The electorate will see this budget as total political desperation from a party that has lost its way. Malcolm hasn’t managed to pull the Libs back to the centre. They’ve all raced back towards it because they face electoral Armageddon. Dutton lost his purity about the time he realised he was going to lose his seat. Now they are just an incoherent mess with an incoherent treasurer trying to sell that mess.
Oh, and they still want to give tax cuts to major multinationals. How dumb can you get.
The Liberal Party is virtually pointless
They only ever had one point, like all Tories – keep the others out. And your mates and your own selfish welfare in.
Kezza:
If you don’t have a facebook account and view a facebook post or page you are going to get invitations to sign up. It’s nothing to do with me, just one of the settings in facebook. Just ignore or say no or whatever and you should be fine.
gippslander @ #1493 Tuesday, May 9, 2017 at 3:12 pm
Sorry, I have no idea what that means.
Bolt’s judgement on the budget – ‘pretty bad’. He seems very agitated.
Bolt says Labor has won the economic argument.
Darn
Tuesday, May 9, 2017 at 9:09 pm
Bolt’s judgement on the budget – ‘pretty bad’. He seems very agitated.
———
I wonder if Morrison slipped Bolt a tenner to say that!!
Bolt would be right. Evidenced through Morrison’s and Turnbull’s budget.
Anna Bligh explains that we’re all going to pay the bank tax for the banks. Thanks, Sco-Mo:
So the banks are going to pass this cost on?
“The banks don’t have a secret stash of money. …there’s only three places they can get this from – borrowings, deposits or shareholders or a combination of all three and every Australian has an interest in one of more of those parts of a bank’s operations.”
Anton,
The company tax cuts for big business are the linchpin for labor plus the removal of the deficit levy. They can build their attacks around these two decisions. Fund the NDIS by getting middle income earners to pay more tax while handing big business a tax cut. Rip billions out of education and give millionaires a tax cut. From a political viewpoint the big end company tax cut is a huge bonus for labor.
As well, the bank Levy has handed labor $6 billion more to spend and no skin off them at all. Pass it in a act of bipartisanship and complain when the banks increase charges and perhaps interest rates to pay for it. Win win.
Cheers.
Completely doing a 180 on previous statements. I’m sensing this is going to be LOLworthy going forward. And that’s without the peanut gallery of Abbott, Credlin, Bernardi and co jeering from the sidelines!
Morrison could have had a shorter speech.
“After 4 years, we admit that Labor was right. We are sorry”
Terry McCrann has called the budget a disgrace.
Bankers Association’s Anna Bligh: there is no secret stash
The former Queensland premier says the bank levy on the big five banks is risky policy.
It’s policy made on the run and it’s policy that’s inherently risky and it’s something that every Australian is going topay for.
———
God i love (not) Labor politicians and their (publicly funded) career paths.
With them its “You can bite yer arse, cause I’ve got the bosses job at last”
BTW De Natale was correct on the lack of climate change action. Even the rail fund Morrison trumpeted is tiny. Next year rail funding is $1.2 billion, road funding $7.2 billion. The rail funding is window dressing for another giant batch of freeways.
Grog goes through he numbers.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2017/may/09/australia-federal-budget-2017-10-graphs-you-need-to-see-greg-jericho
““After 4 years, we admit that Labor was right. We are sorry””
No Liberal will ever say the S word, or the E word (equality).
So in Lib world those earning over $180k getting a 1.5% tax cut whilst everyone earning less getting a .5% tax increase, is classified as fair….sounds legit
This creates some political headaches for Labor, surely. They risk siding with the far right of the LNP if they decide to oppose some of the broad sweep of the Budget.
Been away from the media for most of today. Haven’t had a chance to ge up to speed with the Budget. But the Big Banks hate it. Andrew Bolt hates it. So it can’t bee too bad.
Bolt says Labor has won the economic argument.
Even Bolt can get it right sometimes.
Turnbull has at least gone all in. This is clearly an acknowledgement that singing the loonies tunes wasn’t going to work any better for him than it did Abbott. He and ScoMo have thrown the entire Liberal Budget Surplus = Good Economic Management mythology into the garbage (where it belongs). That wins him some credit even if it is nothing more than desperation driving it.
BUT…
If it doesn’t turn his polling around in the relatively short term he is fucking toast. The right and the IPA and Murdoch loons that own them won’t tolerate it without the compensation of retaining government.
I suspect too many people have drawn a line under Turnbull for it to work. If I’m right the Liberal economic dries will gleefully kill him off and blame him for everything. The right will see this as proof that he was Labor-lite all along, and without polling supremacy to protect him they’ll stone him as a heretic. They’d rather lose government and keep all of the debt and deficit attack lines for use against the next Labor government than lose and have all those attacks neutralised by their own behaviour in government. Hypocrisy never stopped em before, but they’ll know it will be noticeable unless they burn Brian Trumble at the stake.
Alias,
This budget creates no problems at all for labor. Support the bank levy,scream when the banks pass the cost on and as a bonus have $6 billion extra to invest.
Tax cuts for millionaires, company tax cuts for big business. All fodder for labor.
Cheers.
Jeezus H Christ! What has Crabby Annabelle been smoking?
This Liberal budget is great because it’s a Labor budget?
FFS!