The latest Essential Research result appears to have Labor leading 54-46 (it says 52% to 46% in the report, but it also says there is no change). GhostWhoVotes was somehow able to relate that the primary votes were Coalition 35% (down one), Labor 38% (steady), Greens 9% (steady) and One Nation 8% (steady). The poll finds 47% saying the government should run its full term, compared with 37% who favour an early election. Thirty-six per cent said they expected Labor to win the next election, compared with 20% for the Coalition, and 18% for a hung parliament.
The poll also found 63% of the view that marriage celebrants should be allowed to refuse to officiate at same-sex weddings, with 27% opposed. Other related issues were finely balanced: 48% opposed the notion that businesses should have the right to refuse service to gay weddings, while 43% supported it; 42% supported parents being able to remove their children from classes that did not reflect a traditional view of marriage, while 44% were opposed.
A Zanetti cartoon that doesnt criticize Labor, Shorten?
What is this?
Morning all. AR, Elgaufein we have had fibre optic cable for control and coms along many if not most rail lines and arterial roads in all capital cities since the 1990s. If nobody in the NBN considered its potential to assist in a network before now I am aghast. Was no consultation or planning done before we plunged headlong into $30+ billion of expenditure?
BK thanks, the Turnbull cartoons are particularly good. I like the ones of him bailing and the Murdoch editorial room.
With Skye Kaloschke Moore now gone, the obvious question is, who else has already been notified they are a citizen. Pretty clearly everyone has had time to get confirmation. This only underlines the cowardice in delaying parliament. A good questionwould be to ask Turnbull if any Liberal MP has had their foreign citizenship confirmed and not announced it?
Trog Sorrenson @ #1433 Thursday, November 23rd, 2017 – 7:33 am
Well, he’s no longer there, so that must mean Bill has changed his perspective, right? 🙂
Some therapy for all PB contributors:
https://www.alternet.org/environment/12-therapeutic-plants-can-boost-your-brain-power-health-and-happiness
With Turnbull a good chance of being our next PM, may I suggest he start developing some new transport policy? At present we are wasting billions building roads that will fill with traffic again in under five years – in some cases less time than the construction took. We really need better public transport, especially rail lines to poorly served outer suburbs. How to pay for them? This is the answer.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-23/congestion-tax-road-use-how-might-it-work-in-australia/9169032
Trog
Let’s face it, nobody does sanctimony like the Greens Party politicians and political hacks. It is a signature tune. Everyone else smeared with bad. Greens Party good. Two legs bad. Four legs good.
Nowhere have I said that Labor is good on the environment. In fact, my view is that Labor is preferred on the environment because the Liberals are terrible on the environment and the Greens Party is irrelevant for the environment.
Nowhere have I said that Labor is perfect.
Nowhere have I said that the Labor Party does not behave like a political Party.
Nowhere have I said that Labor politicians do not behave like politicians.
Nowhere have I said that Labor political hacks do not behave like political hacks.
All that is, IMO, self-evident.
What I have said is that Labor is more interested in economic matters than it is in the environment.
And that, for as long as the Greens Party neuters the environmentalist votes, for so long it is not in Labor’s political interest to put more emphasis on the environment.
It is a purely transactional reading of the structural realities of party politics.
There have been some very useful contributions to this discussion, including several last night. These include in particular the reference to Jones’ comment that economic circumstances had a big impact on the environment v the hip pocket as a priority in the nineties. (my apologies, I have forgotten who provided the reference). S777 also came up with the useful insight that Big Money put large resources into the counter-environment movement. These are useful historical insights.
But while they are useful in understanding why it was harder to make environmental wins, they do nothing to alter the basic formulation here.
By moving away from the campaign/election deal model to a competing party model, the Greens Party has been bad for the environment.
Catmomma
Unfortunately Milner is reportedly now working in Labor’s Qld campaign.
“Nowhere have I said that Labor is perfect.”
Indeed. I have given up hoping for ethical. I’d settle for law-abiding.
Who was the bastard that linked to the guy with the steam-powered rocket who’s trying to prove the Earth is flat?
You knew I’d click on the YouTube links, didn’t you?
And you KNEW I’d follow the links further right up to the video where they said that if the Earth was round then airline pilots would be dipping their noses every 5 minutes to account for the curvature.
And you absolutely knew that they’d interview a Delta Airlines pilot who swore he’d never had to dip his nose in 25 years of flying… DIDN’T YOU?
Come to think of it, that pilot’s right. The Earth is now flat by my reckoning.
I’m off to watch videos on Trickle Down economics. That theory’s got a lot going for it.
Socrates
I’d settle for any party that actually delivers the big environmental outcomes instead of half-delivering on some of them.
For the nonce, I would die happy if the Greens Party environment policies were adopted and implemented in toto.
But by neutering environmentalists, the Greens are making sure that the Great Barrier Reef will be dead before there is even a remote hope of their policies being adopted.
BB
T
The trick is to understand that not only is the earth flat, it has two sides, not one side.
Once you get to the edge the pilot has to finagle the plane around the edge and then fly upside down on the far side so that the coffee does not spill out of your plastic cups and make a mess on your tray.
BK
OMG ! When did this start happening on the Gold Coast ? 😀
Anyone coming forward at the parliamentary show and tell session who has not yet admitted to ineligibility needs to be strongly pressed on when they suspected, when they received confirmation, what steps they took to confirm and when, who else knew and why they misled their constituents by omission. The media should be chasing them down like dodgy kitchen installers and demanding they front up to the people and justify their mendacity.
As a councillor, I realised that at least some ethics need to be ditched in favour of outcomes.
Personal ethics, at least, are often about you feeling good about yourself rather than you feeling good about what you’ve achieved. If compromising on your personal ethics leads to the building of a school or a hospital, then the selfless thing to do is to compromise on your personal ethics.
I had an instance of that when it came to cattle on the High Plains. There was a motion before council to support the retention of High Plains grazing. The movers of the motion assumed they didn’t have the numbers, whereas I knew they had.
I could have voted against the motion, of course, following the pure ethical, aren’t I a fantastic person path, but I used the knowledge I had to trade my vote for a motion which was so watered down as to be absolutely meaningless.
I didn’t feel great about doing it, but I got the outcome I wanted in the only way I could. Feeling crappy about myself afterwards was a minor consideration, given the ultimate environmental aim.
Boerwar
Your entire argument seems to be based on the premise that minor parties, such as the Greens, don’t carry political weight because they cannot aspire to government. This is ridiculous.
In the (highly) unlikely scenario that they were to do a deal with the Libs, then it would be in a situation where Labor would not be a contender, and they would then be in a position to modify government policy just as they would in a Labor/Greens alliance.
BB
I cannot tell a lie (well, I can, but…) it were me.
I hope you are donating vast sums to that brave individual on his quest for truth.
Boerwar
Should read..
By supporting Adani, QLD Labor are making sure that the Great Barrier Reef will be dead before there is even a remote hope of sensible carbon mitigation policies being adopted.
(Fixed it for you.)
I pegged Cameron Milner as a huckster the first time I met him a couple of decades ago. Nothing since has changed my opinion of him. I’ve always been amazed that people can’t seem to see through his front.
https://theconversation.com/the-sound-of-silence-why-has-the-environment-vanished-from-election-politics-59658
“With their rising power, both sides of politics initially courted green voters. But this tactic quickly fell out of favour, first with the Liberals and then with Labor. In 1992 the Greens, despairing of being able to influence either of the big parties, formed their own.
By late 1992, Keating was lashing out at green groups, saying:
…the green movement was extremist and not listened to any more … The environmental lobbies have no moral lien over the environment. The issue belongs to the Government, to the nation.
It’s perhaps unsurprising then that, according to a source of scholar Joan Staples, Keating reportedly walked into an election planning meeting and announced that “the environment will NOT be one of the priority issues in this election.”
”
In other words the Australian Greens were the result of the inability to make progress, not the cause.
‘Trog Sorrenson says:
Thursday, November 23, 2017 at 8:40 am
Boerwar
Your entire argument seems to be based on the premise that minor parties, such as the Greens, don’t carry political weight because they cannot aspire to government. This is ridiculous.
In the (highly) unlikely scenario that they were to do a deal with the Libs, then it would be in a situation where Labor would not be a contender, and they would then be in a position to modify government policy just as they would in a Labor/Greens alliance.’
I did not say that the Greens don’t carry political weight.
They do, but it is in the nature of BOP politics that the weight is at the margins and that it is ephemeral.
The campaign/election deal strategy generated large environmental outcomes at every election. The BOP delivers at the margin only while the BOP exists. For the 25 years of its existence, the Greens Party has seldom had a BOP.
You appear to be putting the following case. that Labor is bad and that the Greens Party is good; that the Greens Party would always do things honestly but that Labor (at least sometimes) does things dishonestly; that Labor has bad people in it but that the Greens Party only has honest people in it; that Greens Party environmental policies are good and that Labor’s environmental policies are bad.
All those considerations, even if 100% true, are fundamentally irrelevant for as long as the Greens Party neuters environmentalist’s power by insisting that a competing party model is more effective in achieving environmental outcomes than the campaign/election transactional model.
So, what we come down to is this: What major, lasting outcomes has the Greens Party generated in a quarter of a century?
On a continental scale: a few bits and pieces and those only when Labor was in government.
On a systemic scale: none at all.
More on the brilliance of Turnbull’s NEG, and the uncritical media -such as the ABC – who repeat Coalition bullshit and lies as though they were fact.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/esb-modeling-confirms-neg-designed-to-shut-door-on-renewables-74093/
Bakunin
… and by 1996 what Keating thought was irrelevant.
And the Greens Party had institutionalized the lock up of the environmentalists votes.
White House adviser Gary Cohn faked bad connection in conference call to get Trump to stop talking
White House economic adviser Gary Cohn faked a bad phone connection in order to fool President Donald Trump into hanging up — because it was the only way to get him to stop talking.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/white-house-adviser-gary-cohn-faked-bad-connection-in-conference-call-to-get-trump-to-stop-talking/
pR
The self-parodying presidency.
“And a South Australian government minister who watched his mother “slowly waste away” says he’s determined for South Australia to follow Victoria’s lead and legalise voluntary euthanasia. Google.
/news/south-australia/after-victoria-sa-government-minister-kyam-maher-vows-to-pass-voluntary-euthanasia-legislation/news-story/9dd97d8728a68e57a6917211e4038e6b”
Oh, wow. I didn’t hear that Viv had died.
She and her husband Jim have been great party stalwarts over decades. That’s really sad to read 🙁
Everything the Trump campaign told you about the connections between Trump and Russia was a lie: Bill Moyers
Editor’s Note: The news is coming so fast and furious, from so many sources and in so many fragments, that it takes more than a scorecard to keep up with the Trump-Russia Connection. It takes a timeline — a “map,” if you will, of where events and names and dates and deeds converge into a story that makes sense of the incredible scandal of the 2016 election and now of the Trump Administration.
We keep hearing, “Yeah, but Trump was still legitimately elected, he won the election fair and square.” Now we’re realizing that that may not even be true. I don’t personally believe that to be true anymore. I rankle every time somebody says he won fair and square, because that’s become less obvious every day
MORE : Very Long and Detailed Report :
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/everything-the-trump-campaign-told-you-about-the-connections-between-trump-and-russia-was-a-lie-bill-moyers/
You’re hilarious Trog – so Shorten is suspect because a previous member of his staff has since taken up a job with Adani and is pushing the Adani line? Last I heard, people, when employed, are supposed to endeavour to foster their company’s aims.
Was Shorten supposed to have known that his staff member was intending to do something opposite Green’s policy and condemn him, for it before said employment commenced?
This guilt by association crap is just that … crap.
Greens espouse such strong philosophical views on topics and then their party votes according to expediency in parlt. Is that any different to any other political party? I think not.
It’s like saying that au pair couldn’t hire an au pair later in life because the damage her previous job did would preclude her from doing so.
Boerwar
Trying to verbal me by implying I see this as a black and white issue between Greens and Labor is not going to work. You need to argue from first principles, not from ideology.
I support either Labor or the Greens, as do many voters with an environmental priority, and the decision is strategic in each instance.
Trog
OK. Let’s call all previous corro water under the bridge.
The first principle is this: environmental outcomes.
Over to you.
jenauthor
You write as if this guy was forced to take up this job or lose his Centrelink payments. He was the head of the fucking company FFS. In turn, lobbying firms are employed by clients according to their domain expertise. They are, almost by definition, biased in favor of the client’s cause.
Boerwar
I have to go and catch some yabbies.
Interesting.
One Nation doesnt want Adani to get the NAIF funding either. They want the railway in government hands.
Trog
Ah, yabbying. I used to love it.
I spent the first few years on PB arguing the Greens Party is a political party, and was met with derision. “The greenies are not a party, they are a fringe, protest group who are irrelevant…a rabble…..etc.”
The mainstream media and the political duopoly relentlessly hammered “the extreme Greens” meme.
How times have changed and the rhetoric to suit.
As the Greens Party increased its vote share, it suffered brand damage in some quarters because it is now seen as ‘the same as the two major parties’ with all their associated negative traits.
At the same time the Greens are either irrelevant or are so almighty powerful they have ensured neither major party needs to pander to environmentalists or achieve outcomes on environmental issues.
The problem is not the existence of the Greens Party. It is the existence of a political duopoly who cling to power by pandering to the swinging voters in a minority of electorates, rather than governing for the good of the nation.
peg
Yeah, that about sums it up – a party like any other party, but without any actual achievements.
‘If you believe Boerwar, then support for Adani is just a cunning Labor plan to save the reef.’
Trog, your comprehension skills are indeed lacking. He never said that.
Jen, Milner was lobbying for Adani before he became Shorten’s COS. His choice seemed strange to me at the time. Some in Labor seem to think he is a Wiz Kid, many don’t.
Doesn’t a party need to win something like 40% of the vote in order to even attempt to have achievements? And then the ‘other’ party gets elected and demolishes or upends the achievements of said party just for sh*ts and giggles with a healthy dose of spite and ideology.
Coming to a head on Manus.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-23/police-move-in-to-manus-island-detention-centre/9183044
“Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has confirmed a police operation at the Manus Island detention centre on Papua New Guinea this morning, saying hundreds of men will be moved from the centre.”
The IA article written by Klaus Woldering is silly from start to finish.
First he asserts the black letter approach of the HC is an unwise decision because MPs found to be ineligible could “hardly be seen as in any way as active citizens of another country.”
As the HC knew this was the result of its “unwise decision” having specifically disqualified Joyce who, as was found (ahem), didn’t even know he was a NZer, a closer examination of the HC’s reasons for its decision is required before describing it as “unwise”.
The most obvious explanation for adopting a black letter approach to any interpretation is that such an approach enhances certainty. Certainty in the application of the law is usually seen as a good thing. And, despite the bluster of doubts thrown up in the cases of K, L and S, certainty has been achieved.
Better than certainty, compliance is straightforward.
Secondly Klaus asks this question:
“Does the effective power on critical issues such as this rest with the High Court or the Parliament? Interpreting a Constitution that is clearly an archaic document has its severe limits for proper governance. ”
It is a surprising question. Under the separation of powers doctrine upon which our system of laws is based the interpretation of the Constitution is entirely a matter for the HC. Whilst many (often valid) criticisms are made about our form of representative democracy I was hitherto unaware of any disquiet, let alone debate, about the utility of the independent supremacy of the Courts, the Executive Government and the Legislature over their separate, though inter-locking, areas of governance.
Klaus thinks his question is raised by the citizenship fiasco. He doesn’t explain how except for not liking the HC decision in Canavan. When the ease of compliance with the dual citizenship requirement (which I am happy to agree is archaic and unnecessary) involves nothing more than making simple enquiries and/or filling out forms in a timely way, it is hard to see this as a paradigm case for disrupting a Constitutional principle that has been AFAIK unquestioned in its importance to governance under the Rule of Law.
Thirdly Klaus recognises that the Constitution can be changed by referendum but alleges the amendment procedure to be very restrictive “even quite contrary to the intentions of the founding fathers”.
Klaus doesn’t explain why the referendum procedure set out in s.128, which is restrictive, is contrary to the intentions of the founding fathers. For myself I suppose the founding fathers had hoped to write an enduring document. They might also have hoped that the peoples governed by that enduring document could know that in 20 years time the fundamental system of laws (i.e. the Constitution) would be much the same as they are now. One does not have to be a Conservative to see the value in such certainty. I would wish for such regulatory certainty for renewable energy.
Klaus idiotically raises as an example of the restrictive difficulty of amending the Constitution the Turnbull about face on the Indigenous Voice amendment proposal. To be clear, I like the Indigenous Voice proposal and would happily vote for such an amendment.
The reason it is an idiotic example is because as a proposal it does not even get over the first hurdle in the democratic race it has to run. The first hurdle is obtaining an absolute majority in both Houses. Since the LNP oppose it and they have a majority (sort of) in the Lower House, that is the end of it. I do not want to be governed by laws that do not have the democratic support of both Houses, let alone want for there to be Constitutional change because some minority of our population thinks (however worthily) such change is a good idea.
Finally Klaus lists a grab-bag of complaints about the Constitution, some of which (like a Bill of Rights) can be readily agreed with but some of which (like a claim that “Parliamentary democracy is not in fact protected in the Australian Constitution”) are so stupidly ignorant that he should have failed any former student of his (he was an Associate Professor of Political Science(sic)) who uttered such garbage.
In the decision of Canavan et al the High Court itself recognised at [39] that a system of representative and responsible government was established under the Constitution. It was on the basis of that recognition that the “Constitutional imperative” was invoked in the interpretation of s.44, namely to prevent the laws of foreign countries from unreasonably limiting or interfering with the rights of candidates to stand for election.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/23/marriage-equality-no-vote-reflects-religion-not-ethnicity-says-tim-soutphommasane
Anyone coming forward at the parliamentary show and tell session who has not yet admitted to ineligibility needs to be strongly pressed on when they suspected, when they received confirmation, what steps they took to confirm and when, who else knew and why they misled their constituents by omission. The media should be chasing them down like dodgy kitchen installers and demanding they front up to the people and justify their mendacity.
Yar shiftalang, get current affair on the job to hound them like they do the dole bludgers as others have said. ambush barney at his front door of wherever he is living now, cameras in his face asking why he took government money when he knew he was a dual citizen.
Boris @ #1490 Thursday, November 23rd, 2017 – 9:59 am
Ha! In the end the true elites, in this case the media, will come down on the side of the born to rule bludgers every time.
Boris:
Absolutely!
Agreed Peg. But there’s little benefit in feeding the jihadis.
BB
the major problem I see with the greens is that they dont negotiate and dont compromise like with the RET.
abbott killed investment, labor settled on a lower target to get the industry moving, the greens opposed this.
The two parties met in Melbourne this morning and agreed to lower the RET from 41,000 gigawatt hours to 33,000, to fully exempt trade-exposed industries from the target and to scrap the two-yearly reviews which threatened to derail the deal.
Opposition environment spokesman Mark Butler said the impasse over the RET had stalled investment and brought the industry to the brink of collapse. “That reckless attack saw investment plummet by 88 per cent.”
Greens leader Richard Di Natale slammed the new RET deal as “irresponsible” and also opposes the plan to include timber waste in the target. “Simply put, this deal between the Labor Party and the Abbott Government means more pollution and less regional investment. It means more lung disease and fewer 21st century jobs,” he said.
There were almost no jobs due to the standoff, no jobs no investment, none, zero zilch nadda.
The agreement by labor kicked started a massive renewal of investment, including measures by the Vic, SA and ACT labor governments and at a later stage by the Qld labor gov. And as noted
Mr Butler said Labor viewed the 33,000-gigawatt-hour figure as a “floor” and the party planned to increase the target if it won government.
The agreement saw jobs in manufacturing, roadworks, construction, transport and support, around $15 billion in actual and planned investment.
The greens opposition and intransigence if they had had their say in the agreement would have seen renewables set back years as investors turned their back on Australia.
I dont mind voting for the greens but they need to realise compromise, stop playing politics and that from little things big things grow.
Super started at 3% under Keating and has grown to 9.5 with labors aim of 15%, I feel if the greens had had a say in super in the early years it would still be stuck in parliament with the greens insisting they would not support it unless it started at 15%.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-18/breakthrough-in-renewable-energy-target-deal/6477748
adrian, Mr Newbie
That was shiftalings comment on the pollies and kitchen installers, he posts good stuff, I just mentioned they should get current affair involved.
Oh, peg is a jihadist, too.