New poll this week from Newspoll (better for the Coalition), Essential Research (worse) and YouGov (about the same) add up to no change at all on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, except that the Coalition is up a seat in Victoria and down one in Western Australia. The leadership ratings from Newspoll cause Malcolm Turnbull to gain a little ground on preferred prime minister, but lose it on net approval. Full details at the bottom.
First though, some news on forthcoming by-elections, which will get dedicated pages and threads soon enough:
• A date is yet to be set for the by-election in the Victorian state seat of Northcote following the death of on August 23. There will presumably be no Liberal candidate, but the Greens are highly competitive in the seat, having fallen 6.0% short of unseating Richardson at the 2014 election. Clare Burns, a political organiser with the Victorian Trades Hall Council and former speech pathologist, has been preselected unopposed as Labor’s candidate. The Greens will hold a preselection ballot today.
• There are now three state by-elections looming in New South Wales, and the date for them has been set at October 14. Cootamundra and Blacktown were already on the cards, following the respective retirements of Nationals MP Katrina Hodgkinson and Labor MP John Robertson, and Murray was added to the list earlier this week after Nationals MP Adrian Piccoli announced his retirement.
And some localised polling snippets:
• There was a rare Northern Territory opinion poll a fortnight ago, conducted by MediaReach for the Northern Territory News and encompassing a sample of 1400. On the primary vote, the poll has Labor on 43%, compared with 42.2% last year; the Country Liberal Party on 38%, recovering from 31.8%; and “others” on 19%. The respondent-allocated preference result is 50-50, compared with 58.5-41.5 to Labor last year, which implies a near-perfect reversal of the 63-37 preference split in favour of Labor last year.
• (UPDATE: I had a report here on Tony Windsor’s prospects on New England, but I wasn’t looking closely enough and it was actually from before the last election.)
A polite, respectful conversation? Mal shows us how.
:large
daretotread @ #299 Saturday, September 9th, 2017 – 6:44 pm
Another re-write of history?
I wasn’t alive at the time so I don’t recall it, but there was a mass break-out by Japanese POWs at Cowra and a number of Australian guards killed as well as a couple of others in the subsequent round up. One of my mother’s uncles was killed.
It was not in any sense a massacre.
I decided not to google the CC Council election forms…. I know what C@t looks like.
dtt
What was heartening about the pushbacks against Trump’s attempts to ban residents of certain countries entering the US was that these suggested some lessons had been learned.
Cowra breakout: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowra_breakout.
During the escape and subsequent round-up of POWs, four Australian soldiers and 231 Japanese soldiers were killed and 108 prisoners were wounded. The leaders of the breakout had ordered the escapees not to attack Australian civilians, and none were killed or injured.
It was regrettable, it was war. But we couldn’t let hundreds of enemy soldiers and seamen loose in the Australian countryside and the Japanese were determined not to surrender.
A Japanese garden has been built near the site of the prison camp.
Have a look at the continuing procession of aircraft leaving Florida!
https://www.flightradar24.com/30.24,-81.67/9
Good luck Cat.
From Channel 7 coverage things not expected to go well for the LNP
…and apparently some of the escapees either suicided rather than be recaptured or were killed by their compatriots.
Where can we see NSW council election results?
Steve777 @ #307 Saturday, September 9th, 2017 – 7:22 pm
Steve, I have been to Cowra and located the site of the camp and visited the Japanese Garden.
Many of the Japanese killed were suicides and some were killed by other Japanese.
Shooting only started when the prisoners rushed the wire. What were the guards supposed to do, blow them kisses? They had armed themselves with weapons such as baseball bats with nails embedded.
There was no intent to massacre prisoners but many were shot attempting to escape.
http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au
Antony Green is running a NSW election blog
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2017/09/nsw-local-government-elections-live-results-site.html
Try again….
I know what C@t looks like
zoomster @ #310 Saturday, September 9th, 2017 – 7:26 pm
I read one rather hilarious story about one prisoner who decided to commit suicide by lying with his neck on a railway line. He came from a place in Japan where there were frequent trains.
After many hours lying there and developing a stiff neck, he gave up when no train came and meekly surrendered.
Arising out of all of this some of the prisoners acquired a new insight into the value of life and formed an association known as the “Cowra Kai” where the word “kai” means something like a graduate. I heard a very good radio documentary on the topic and have a couple of books on the breakout.
Kai in martial arts refers to your place of training.
VP
I thought that eas a Dojo.
Vogon Poet @ #317 Saturday, September 9th, 2017 – 7:37 pm
Google turned this up.
http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/AJRP/AJRP2.nsf/trans-print/2682BDC2AA7EFC2ECA256F6B001ACF14?OpenDocument
Haven’t read it but it mentions the Cowra Kai.
Bemused
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_(name)
A couple of these meanings look right
GT, dojo is the physical building . Kai more the spiritual
VP
I have seen Kai used as the word for a spiritual strength in Hollywood movies
Another amusing anecdote from that document.
A procession of hurricanes. The satellite picture in the article shows three hurricanes in a line: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/world/hurricane-irma-makes-landfall-cuba-as-a-category-5-20170909-gye4wc.html
Bernie on Colbert last Friday I think, that’d be yesterday, Bernie asking Hillary to join him in the Revolution.
https://youtu.be/tv-hgegVq0k
BK
The stream of planes leaving are from Jacksonville in the north.
Not many from or to Miami.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/alan-kohler/coalitions-retreat-back-to-coalfired-power-stations/news-story/16a5eebf15f656d4440fa6a4f9affc40?login=1
Alan Kohler hits the nail on the head again. The comments from the coal loonies are fantastic.
anton that’s paywalled
cud chewer @ #328 Saturday, September 9th, 2017 – 9:22 pm
Instead of opening it, right click and google it. Then open what google finds.
cud chewer
Google up the following
au/business/opinion/alan-kohler/coalitions-retreat-back-to-coalfired-power-stations/news-story/16a5eebf15f656d4440fa6a4f9affc40
All the Sanders folk who insisted that there was no difference between Clinton and Trump are not repeating that mantra lately.
poroti @ #330 Saturday, September 9th, 2017 – 9:31 pm
See my post immediately prior to yours.
Boerwar
A bit of “verbaling” there re Sanders. The claim for support of Sanders was not that they were the same but that Hilary = Business as usual. Business that ain’t working.
p
Well if they wanted to get away from business as usual, they got what they wanted.
Very interesting article. I wonder what is meant by the term “firming cost” in the graphs?
bemused
Is it different?
antonbruckner11 @ #327 Saturday, September 9th, 2017 – 9:20 pm
The comments are a hoot! But I always wonder at those that don’t pass moderation … they must be really funny!
CTar1 @ #336 Saturday, September 9th, 2017 – 9:44 pm
Simpler, but in essence no. That’s the point.
cud chewer @ #335 Saturday, September 9th, 2017 – 9:44 pm
Firming cost is the cost equivalent of making a renewable generation resource “dispatchable” – it may be some kind of storage, or some kind of subsidy for other types of generation.
Port and Weagles down to the wire.
Boerwar @ #340 Saturday, September 9th, 2017 – 9:52 pm
What?
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2017/09/thylacine-specimen-or-it-didnt-happen.html
Thylacine: Specimen Or It Didn’t Happen
My sceptical take on recent alleged thylacine (a la Tasmanian tiger) evidence.
I see. So the graph says wind with firming costs $90/MWhr, less than the cost of coal. And solar with firming costs about $120/MWhr, fractionally more than coal.
Yet there is a commenter saying “Show me a credible solar/wind + pumped hydro LCOE that isnt A$200/MWh”
Must be related to P1 🙂
pay no attention to him
cud chewer @ #343 Saturday, September 9th, 2017 – 10:04 pm
Yes, most of the comments were just a hoot and quite contrary to reality.
Those comments are ‘interesting ‘, our energy problems are all the fault of the RET, also there are 1600 clean coal fired power stations in construction around the world.
Also renewables are heavily subsidized, there are no subsidies for coal.
Alan Koehler in the article linked by AB11 @9:20PM:
So what happened in 2016? If the Coalition can chuck $80 million down the toilet in a union witch hunt targeting past and future Labor PMs, maybe an incoming Labor Government can set up an enquiry into Australia’s energy mess, a far more useful and productive endeavour, to include within its remit an answer to that question.
EAGLES….Yes!!!!!!!
Goodbye Eagles next week.
Great game. I’m no WCE or Port fan but it’s always good to see a great game of footy end on a knife edge.