The Guardian reports that the latest reading of the Essential Research fortnight rolling average, which has been delayed a day due to Monday’s public holiday, has Labor’s two-party lead unchanged at 52-48, after it fell from 53-47 last week. Primary votes will have to wait until later today. UPDATE: Full report here, with primary votes at Coalition 38% (down one), Labor 36% (down one), Greens 10% (steady), One Nation 8% (up two).
Other reported findings focus on terrorism and a low emissions target, with the former including a 47% approval rating for Malcolm Turnbull’s handling of the terror threat, compared with 56% in October 2015, and 24% disapproval, compared with 17%; 74% saying the terrorism threat in Australia has risen over recent years; 46% saying the government should be spending more on counter-terrorism, compared with only 9% for less; and 44% saying there should be more restrictions on rights and freedoms to combat terrorism, with only 12% saying current restrictions go too far, and 19% believing the current balance is right.
With respect to carbon emissions, 44% favour a low emissions target and 20% an emissions intensity scheme, with 36% opting for don’t know; and 27% saying capture and storage from coal generation should count as a low emissions energy source, compared with 29% who disagreed.
Also this week:
• The Australia Institute has published a ReachTEL poll of the Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg’s seat of Kooyong, which after incorporating prompting responses for the undecided finds primary votes of Liberal 48.9% (58.2% at the election), Labor 25.5% (19.8%) and Greens 17.0% (18.9%), and a respondent-allocated two-party result of 56-44 to Liberal (63.3-36.7). The poll also records a 77.9-15.5 split in favour of a clean energy target,
• Western Australian Senator Chris Back has announced he will retire as of the end of July, leaving a vacancy for a three-year term that runs to mid-2019. Andrew Burrell of The Australian identifies two possible successors: Slade Brockman, former chief-of-staff to Mathias Cormann, who is rated the front-runner; and Matt O’Sullivan, chief operating officer of Andrew Forrest’s GenerationOne indigenous youth employment scheme, who ran unsuccessfully in the southern Perth seat of Burt at last year’s federal election.
simon katich @ #1144 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 2:28 pm
Hehehe…
The only thing that makes this country prosperous is the Rule of Law and Independence of the Judiciary. It’s not the minerals in the ground, the education of its workforce or, surely, the intelligence of its politicians. Yet these dickheads happily threaten that.
Agreed Bemused.
But these nutters who like you use religion as an excuse for their thuggery do present a method by which we can assess them for parole. In the case of Brighton a little federal oversight would have been useful.
question @ #1153 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 2:45 pm
Huh? I don’t use religion for anything, let alone thuggery.
zoomster @ #1147 Friday, June 16th, 2017 – 2:42 pm
Exactly this. If there’s a case ongoing and you’ve got legislative or executive officials criticizing judicial officials and whipping up public sentiment in favor or against a particular course of action, that’s an attack on judicial independence and separation of powers and should be aggressively shut down.
Free speech is fine. Interfering with ongoing judicial matters is not.
@ Simon Katich
Friday, June 16, 2017 at 11:46 am
“The government buys and installs rooftop solar on suitable houses (poor or rich – with owners/tenants permission). A massive installation project. These rooftop Solar cells would act as a defacto government owned and run power station. The government is the owner of the solar power and they would be the ‘retailer’ for the household and the ‘wholesaler’ for the grid.”
I part own a company with an interest in power purchase agreements.
The short answer is that very few households have the required electricity metering technology to engage in this arrangement, and in the context of a 5kW solar system now averaging under $5k (in WA) the purchase, installation and commissioning of the required metering and associated software is cost prohibitive, and gets worse the smaller the system. You then add on top the associated administrative requirements of a second electricity invoice and the cost of the electricity ends up higher than just relying on the grid.
We’ve looked at doing residential PPA’s and it’s not viable. If the government wanted to get involved in this area, a financing lease which was negotiated and backed by the government would be a far more cost effective option.
What have they spent the money on?
Bemused
Typo
“Like TO use”
not
“like you use”
: )
Read with a grain of salt at this stage :
Donald Trump’s DOJ puts out panicked press release about leaks, so here comes the biggest leak yet.
By Bill Palmer
Donald Trump’s Department of Justice put out a brief, bizarre, panicked press release tonight, which carries the name of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein but doesn’t sound like it was written by him, essentially begging Americans to ignore any leaks from overseas intelligence agencies. Even in a surreal time in politics, this move is startling. And now we know what’s next.
The press release tonight from Trump’s DOJ is only three sentences long, but here’s the one that tells you everything you need to know: “Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous ‘officials,’ particularly when they do not identify the country – let alone the branch of government – with which the alleged sources supposedly are affiliated.” link). It’s not difficult to read between the lines here: Trump has gotten word that something devastating about him is about to leak from a foreign intelligence agency, and he’s twisting the DOJ into preemptively debunking it.
Based on the fact that this was released late at night rather than first thing tomorrow morning, our educated guess is that the forthcoming leak is coming from the European intel community. Due to the time zone differences, the day starts five or more hours earlier in Europe than in Washington DC. So if the leak surfaces first thing in the morning in Europe, there would be no way for the White House to beat it to the punch with a morning press release. Hence why the panicked press release is coming out tonight.
As for what the leak might be? Several people across social media are hoping it’s the mythical “Pee Pee Tape” but there’s no proof that even exists. However, it’s got to be something so big that Trump has pulled this panic move tonight in the feeble hope of discrediting it. So here comes the biggest leak yet.
Talking of WordPress, a very high proportion of the links we receive in emails to phishing or malware sites, are to site sites running WordPress. I don’t know whether it’s a case of the crooks using WordPress, or whether it’s because they’ve hacked existing sites running WordPress. I suspect the latter.
@ ratsak
Friday, June 16, 2017 at 2:25 pm
My God. I know all members of this government are fucking imbeciles, but I am stunned. Even the GG was smart enough to grovel.
Maybe I was wrong and these idiots will get a bit of porridge. Unless they have decided to try and engineer a crisis I can’t for the life of me see what they’re playing at. One side or other is going to have to back down or this is going to get ugly real fast and the end is impossible to predict. But playing chicken with the CJ in the hope she’ll be the one to back down seems very high stakes and shows absolutely no regard for who might get hurt if she doesn’t.
.
.
.
These three imbeciles have just started a fight with someone who is appointed for life and has a material interested in being both perceived to be and actually being impartial. It’s not going to end well for them or the taxpayer, who is stumping up for the cost of their legal defence.
If I were the judge the three miscreants would be spending a period as “guests” of one of the Victorian government’s finest facilities, sans any sort of special protection or privilege.
If it is the piss tape, I hope literally everyone on Twitter throws Trump’s “disgusting sex tape” tweet right back in his face.
phoenixred @ #1159 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 2:51 pm
I wonder if this post by Sprocket is actually about the same thing?
****************
Sprocket_
#1107 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 1:16 pm
Gotta love this tweet from Gov Mike Huckabee
“Yikes! Robert Mueller called me; wants to talk; Don’t know what it’s about, but it will be leaked in NY Slimes or Wash Compost tomorrow.”
Shows the mentality of the blind followers of the emerging treasonous kleptocracy which is Trumpistan.
*********************
antonbruckner11 @ #1152 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 2:44 pm
I beg to differ.
Our highly inefficient legal system imposes a considerable burden on the economy.
It badly needs reform.
grimace @ #1156 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 2:48 pm
I responded to your message last night early this morning. East coast – west coast dialogues get difficult as the evening wears on.
Earlier today I posted about the possibility of a Fairfax journo giving a email from Joel Fitzgibbon to Julie Bishop and she used that email to attack Fitzgibbon in QT.
I came to that conclusion because I could not think of any other way that Bishop may have been able to quote part of that email. However, a friend of mine has read my post just now and she has given me a slap. The quote Bishop referred to in QT was actually contained in the Fairfax article published earlier this week. My bad.
Goes to show one should always proceed with caution before rushing down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. The sad part is I read the article numerous times when it was published but did not remember.
Anyway, my friend is now happy I have owned up to being a dill. Happy friend happy life as they say.
Cheers and a great day to all.
Bemused – I’m sure the legal system needs reform to make it more efficient. But what’s that got to do with the rule of law and independence of the judiciary?
Thanks Grimace.
Doyley – no need to apologise for getting something wrong. Nobody else does. This is not that kinda blog.
Bemused
Deluge of words?
Better to rebut the points rather than resorting to glib dismissal.
antonbruckner11 @ #1167 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 3:14 pm
Nothing, but let me remind you what you said:
I have highlighted the offending section.
The highly archaic and inefficient legal system is an enormous economic burden on the economy. It needs reform urgently.
trog sorrenson @ #1170 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 3:20 pm
Your points did not address the issue. They represented mere obfuscation of the type P1 engages in.
More from Bill Palmer …… GOS warning ….. could be as reliable as Trumbles NBN ….
Pee Pee Tape intel chatter picked up three hours before Donald Trump’s DOJ statement about leaks
Sometime after 9:00pm eastern time, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice put out a brief three sentence press release whose sole purpose was to ask the American public to ignore any leaks to the media that might be coming from foreign intelligence communities. But what stands out is the intel community chatter that picked up roughly three hours before the press release went out.
For instance political insider Claude Taylor – whose inside sources have correctly predicted Trump Russia grand juries and other events – posted the following: “A lot of us are hearing similar chatter-that a certain US ally has a ‘compromising’ tape of Trump and is debating if/when/how to release it.” . Taylor posted this at 6:46pm eastern time, hours before Trump’s DOJ sent the press release.
So it’s not as if this sudden online buzz around the mythical “Pee Pee Tape” is mere speculation as a result of the DOJ press release. Instead, intel community chatter about the compromising tape surfaced online first, and only then did Trump’s camp put out the statement begging the public to ignore any foreign leaks to the U.S. media. So it sounds a lot like the Trump administration heard the same foreign intel community buzz that political insiders heard, and believes that something is indeed about to be leaked.
So now we wait to see what the European or other foreign intel communities have up their sleeve that’s got the Donald Trump administration panicking, and precisely when they’ll end up releasing it. Tonight’s late-night and seemingly rushed press release suggests that the Trump team fears it come as soon as tomorrow morning. But it’s important to keep in mind that these kinds of things almost never seem to adhere to a predicted schedule. However, we can count on it being something that Trump fears will be devastating to himself
Bemused – The rule of law and independence of the judiciary are not burdens on the economy. The inefficiency of the legal system may well be. I would love to see the system reformed. But improving the efficiency of the system would require a lot of money (to pay for more judges, more money spent on legal aid, etc etc). Further, the govts know that if they make the system more efficient, more people will use it (rather than settle their cases) which will add to the burden on the system. But I agree on the need for reform. But, like everything, it’s a question of money.
Doyley – Don’t worry about it.
Re the contempt hearing in Victoria. I note the comments of those who don’t agree with me, and attempt to respond to them.
The Victorian Court of Appeal was considering an appeal by the Commonwealth against the sentence imposed on Sevdet Besim, one of the Anzac Day plotters. In the course of this appeal, the Chief Justice, who was presiding over the appeal, making some comments that seemed to suggest that she did not in any way consider sentences such as that imposed on Besim to be too light. And another of the three judges hearing the appeal made some more ambiguous commentary (it’s a bit hard to work out whether he thought the disparity between NSW and Victorian sentencing was more of a problem for NSW or Victoria).
I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t really understand all the legal niceties of this issue. But it seems to me that, although the Court of Appeal was reserving its judgement on the Besim case, the Chief Justice in particular had used the case as an opportunity to make some broader public commentary about the appropriateness of the sentencing practices of the Victorian courts vis-a-vis the NSW courts in relation to accused terrorists. So, as I see it, she chose to launch a public debate on a matter not directly related to the Besim case and Hunt, Tudge and Sukkar had chimed in with their opinions in response.
And, from my perception of what’s fair and what isn’t, if it’s ok for the Chief Justice and another judge to make these sorts of comments while the case is still open, then why isn’t anyone else who isn’t a judge permitted to join in?
But, as I said, I’m not a lawyer so perhaps I’m missing an important point here.
Grimace: “These three imbeciles have just started a fight with someone who is appointed for life.”
Actually, I think Chief Justice Warren recently announced her impending retirement.
BTW, to be fair to her, I have to say that – although I suspect her political worldview is rather different to mine – she has rather impressed me over the years: particularly in her refusal to play dress-ups in court.
antonbruckner11 @ #1174 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 3:34 pm
Courts whinge about being clogged with their case load but then drag cases out so that a matter that should be resolved in a couple of hours can drag on through numerous hearings over a period of 2 years and end up inconclusive. Actual experience. All aided and abetted by the lawyers seeking to extract as much as they can out of it and Magistrates letting them play their games.
And we have the idiotic situation where cops are getting statements from a thousand or so witnesses in the case of the guy who allegedly killed 6 people in Bourke St Melbourne. Are they going to call them all? At least in that case they got a ‘hurry up’ from the bench.
As it currently operates, our legal system is a leech feeding on our prosperity, not a cause of it.
What a bunch of non-apologies:
“In a statement read out in court, the ministers said they did not intend to undermine the judiciary.
“We regret using language that is capable of conveying that meaning,” the statement said.”
and
“Will Houghton QC, representing The Australian, offered an apology to the court but urged it to take into account that the newspaper did not endorse nor adopt the minister’s comments.”
Now the moronic trio and Murdoch will have to wait until the verdict is handed down. “The court has reserved its decision in the case today.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/ministers-withdraw-criticism-of-victoria-judiciary/news-story/a95ec8c50fabe75827525c980d448810
Zoomster
Please explain?
meher baba @ #1177 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 3:39 pm
What is your “political worldview”?
Bemused
So what do you think will be the trajectory for solar pv from here on? Exponential or linear growth?
Even more fundamental than the rule of law is the voluntary acceptance of standards that the law attempts to codify and enforce. If every single interaction had to be litigated or at least somehow mediated we’d grind to a halt.
It’s the near universal acceptance of these norms that allow our society to function. The ‘Law’ then is only needed to intervene in rare cases.
It is a particularly malignant symptom of the right that they are happy to trash these standards whenever they think they can get a short term advantage.
Bemused – and you would be the first person to complain if you didn’t think you were getting enough court time to put your case.
Bemused – Don’t get me wrong. Litigation is hell for litigants. I always tell people that litigation is a desperate last measure. But most of the judges I deal with are pretty bright (some very bright) and very conscientious. We just need a hell of a lot more.
trog sorrenson @ #1182 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 3:56 pm
I do not have the gift of prophecy, but it cannot continue exponentially for any length of time, assuming it is for the sake of argument. As saturation is approached it will slow.
Large scale solar thermal will be interesting as it does not need batteries.
**Exponential or linear growth?**
A clothoid that transitions into a parabola?
Drinks!
antonbruckner11 @ #1184 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 4:03 pm
Has that ever happened?
The norm is that a couple of flatulent windbags face off and drag the case out as long as they can. After all, their income depends on it. And they get away with it despite supposed ‘overarching obligations’ to narrow the issues in dispute.
simon katich @ #1187 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 4:08 pm
I would be surprised if it was a clothoid. The mind boggles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_spiral
Maybe the three Ministers might claim cerebral flatulence a defence…!
Maybe the three Ministers might claim cerebral flatulence a as defence…!
Sorry about the double post folks.
Probyn:
Or how about “A lot of commentry …”.
So much of it written by supposedly professional journalists, just like you, when the average punter doesn’t give an FF about it.
Antonbruckner11
I do like the style of Judge John Deed. One of my favourite TV shows.
He actually seems to be interested in justice.
greg mcauliffe @ #1192 Friday, June 16, 2017 at 4:16 pm
Flatulence?
At the moment, approximately 17% of Australian households have PV systems on the roof. We are one of those.
We are about to install another 4 kW. We are not alone, the people we are getting it from tell me that the uptake with this round of installations is filling much faster than before, the lady used the word ‘exponential’. Our upgrade will happen in another month or so, and when it does this local company will have installed 500 mW of PV in our area (Northern Tablelands).
This leaves an awful lot of slack in the system for the exponential uptake of rooftop PV. We are at the bottom of a sigmoid (S shaped) curve, not at the top.
Bemused…unfortuneatly….yes !
Bemused
Agreed.
Don
Keep an eye on the old sigmoid flexure. 2017 will be the exception that proves the rule.
bemused
I have addressed the deficiencies in the education system many times; that you chose to portray me as a blind defender of the system and ignore my many criticisms of it is your problem, not mine.