In a week where only Essential Research reported a national voting intention result, BludgerTrack records a tick to Labor – although it’s actually due to me finally being able to add last fortnight’s ReachTEL to the mix, for which I hadn’t previously been able to get full primary vote numbers, and which was actually a bit of a shocker for the Coalition by the pollster’s standards. As for the state breakdowns, all I can really offer at the moment is apologies for how screwy the Queensland numbers are looking. Whether because of state election static, or simply a freakish accumlation of outliers over a very short period, six of the last seven results I have from Queensland have the Coalition primary vote at 30% or below, compared with 43.2% at the 2016 election. It will be interesting to see what we get from the Newspoll quarterly aggregation, which should be along in a week or two. Essential had its montly leadership ratings this week, which have givenn Malcolm Turnbull a bit of a lift. Full results on the sidebar.
Maude:
I really doubt it. For one thing, I’d think that if Menzies House (or the IPA or the Liberal Party or the Greens or whoever else gets routinely accused of being responsible for half the posters here) really were to bother spending time and resources infiltrating this blog, surely they would have the common sense to send people capable of writing in coherent english, constructing vaguely convincing arguments, and generally not being laughably embarrassing to the conservative and/or anti-Labor cause.
Wayne was probably a bot (or perhaps just very dump), but I reckon that the vast majority of people here are true believers.
Except ESJ. He clearly just enjoys trolling Labor supporters. He even admitted last night that he doesn’t care which party wins government
@Briefly
Dream on mate.When Labor took power in 1983 Union membership was 60% by 1996 it was in the low thirties.
Whether by accident or design it was Labor that drove a stake through the heart of the private sector unions with enterprise bargaining the final thrust of the sword.
It was also Labor that gave us neoliberalism not Frazer or Menzies, the Hawke Keating government was little different to the Thatcher government really,.
geoffrey,
You go on-and-on about Shorten, as if he’s personally responsible for your opinion that there is no leadership in the country, or that the system is broken, or it’s not like the good-old-days, or something.
And then you think it makes some kind of important difference that you haven’t said something explicitly. What bloody difference does it make to the obvious intent of your posts?
I personally find the ALP-GRN wars as tedious as hell, but the way GRN’s go after Shorten has to be the most tedious. It’s what makes ESJ so comparatively refreshing.
If you like moaning about leadership, look no further than Turnbull. He’s so bad nobody has any idea what his agenda (apart from survival) is, after he’s been leading the country for 2 years.
ctar1 – go ahead and link it. I posted 2 comments on the topic along the same vein. I don’t have a reference to them but I stand by what I said, and I’m sure that I drew a distinction between sending people to jail vs people getting pulled up at work, and yes, maybe lose their careers.
The basic point being that the ‘niceties’ of people being able to use their power and the law as it stands with respect to defamation law, being able to make and enforce non-disclosure agreements, had allowed a totally unacceptable culture to flourish, and that the culture needed to change. If that means that some men with power and money end up needing to look for a new career, then that is what needs to happen.
I have never argued that people should be jailed or have assets seized without due process and all the safeguards that the laws and the courts provide, and I explicitly said that in at least one of the comments I wrote.
IIRC, I’m pretty sure Geoffrey isn’t a Green (or a Lib, for that matter.) He seems to be a Rudd supporter who still hasn’t forgiven Labor and Shorten for the events of 2010.
‘…surely they would have the common sense to send people capable of writing in coherent english, constructing vaguely convincing arguments, and generally not being laughably embarrassing to the conservative and/or anti-Labor cause.’
Setting the bar way too high there…
If true, that’s about as sad as the tone of his posts.
Did he see Shorten on the phone? Every ALP MP was on the phone!
Some of us post here just because we enjoy the company and discussions. It’s a safe place to hang out most of the time.
Maude:
I would doubt it. I mean for one thing most commenters here are rusted on Labor voters who are hardly likely to be swayed by some drive by moron with poor grammar and spelling.
Agree.
There is little comfort for the government in the Bennelong result, beyond not losing a very safe seat. Truth is they just got lucky that it was a seat with a 10% buffer. If it had been an average margin Coalition seat, they would have lost it, and control of the Reps.
The harder heads in the Coalition will not be kidding themselves otherwise, let alone seeing it as an endorsement of the government or Turnbull himself.
Just the primary swing to Labor is quite bad news for them on its own.
And for another, consider the energy wars. All the effort expended on that front over the year and nobody’s opinion has changed at all.
I expect to get in arguments after Labor win the next election 🙂
For now there is not a lot of substance I can argue about.
Newspoll tonight?
“A rule of law society treats each case as important for both the accuser and the accused. That is a bedrock principle of a rule of law system. We can’t convict people on the basis of statistical reasoning. A person’s life is not just a statistic to that person.”
There has been quite a lot of what I’d consider silly and ill-informed comments on the sexual assault issue but this one takes the gold kenny, or its leftwing alternative, for just really really dumb and uninformed, the criminal justice system is 95% about the offender and the offence, it has only taken minor and largely cosmetic steps towards including the accusser / victim in the last 30 years. Nothing quite so stupid as having such a strong opinion about something one clearly has no idea about at all. Good work Nicky, I’d have said you’d struggle to keep up this uniformed passionate teenager stuff more than few months but you’ve done it for years.
It’s always easiest to complain about the mob in power, but they have the power, so stuff ’em 😉
We don’t usually have a Newspoll this late in the year other than the three month averages.
I would seriously doubt there’d be a Newspoll. Parliament is finished for the year, we’ve just had the Bennelong by-election and xmas is a week away 🙂
Confessions @ #511 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 6:44 pm
Actually, not true. My own opinion has changed considerably because I know a lot more about the issue than I did when I started posting on it. Part of that is because I have learned a lot from other PB posters, part of it is my own research. I hope that in turn some PB posters have learned a few things from my posts, even if I have not managed to change opinions.
This is an issue so complex that you can never really be fully informed, but where you will almost always come to the wrong conclusion if you blindly accept some of the rubbish posted (here and elsewhere) on the subject.
P1:
Well that’s good if you’ve learned something from it. But honestly to us bystanders it isn’t obvious that opinions are being influenced from all the argy-bargy, much of it bordering on abusive.
Charles, the decline in compulsory unionism – preference for unionists – is largely responsible for the decline in union membership. This decline has been a feature of the Australian labour market since the 1970s.
https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/15610/6615.pdf;jsessionid=4D5A01927A7C428BA6DB27D671E480FE?sequence=1
During the late 1970s and 1980s, the incidence of compulsory unionism amongst employees was declining at nearly one percentage point per year. During the 1990s, it has been falling at double that rate. This trend will not abate; the new Federal Workplace Relations Act makes union preference and compulsory unionism illegal both for employees covered by the Federal system and for those outside the Federal system but within the reach of other Commonwealth powers.
We would expect that employers would initially have sought to remove compulsory unionism where it was easiest to do so. Hence the loss of compulsory unionism would tend to be concentrated in those workplaces where employees were already weakly attached to unions, particularly where the loss of closed shops arises from employer behaviour rather than legislation.
It’s illegal to compel union membership.
Of course, the very far-reaching changes in the international division of labour and the capital-intensity of work have also played a part in this, as have the liberalisation of foreign exchange and capital markets and the delegation of most monetary policy-making to the RBA.
But feel free, blame Labor. Everything is in every case and at all times Labor’s fault.
JM @ Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 6:48 pm Comment #513
I think they’re done for the year.
Confessions @ #519 Sunday, December 17th, 2017 – 7:03 pm
Then don’t be a bystander! 🙂
France 24 is running Australia’s ‘North Korean Agent’ story.
Yes, the political Year is pretty much over until Australia Day, barring ‘events’. No more Newspolls in the meantime I expect.
Watch out for the traditional putting out of the trash next Friday (Festivus). Also all the confected outrage when someone says they are less than enthusiastic about the date of Australia Day.
briefly
glad to get some feedback
yes i am rudd supporter and anti gillard and anti greens for that matter in flaming instability
i’m also seeker after future in politics in this country (now you can laugh)
however memory would fade if shorten inspired. so many ostriches here – just go out your door ask neighbours or workmates re shorten – i dont make these things up and you can’t silence criticism in any direct way
shorten might win, should win … but he is not teflon coated as yesterday showed
one way or the other i chose to look beyond him – he is no mountain
of course turnbull is no great shakes although is he smooth performer. why then is he still there, and will he go away? there a lot to do in oz
P1:
Lol!
I’m a supporter of the country (and the world ftm) transitioning to renewable energy sources and away from those which increase our carbon footprint, and that’s all that really matters for me. How we do that, and how we get there is for people with greater technological knowledge and expertise than me.
@Ctar
I looked at that earlier and thought LNP needed another poll booster, so of course the AFP friends are gladly helping.
Stupid media of course is ignoring the fact who is helping the increase of terrorism/spying/etc reports.
ABC Facebook police comments say to hang or deport him.
Typical Trump style BS.
Not to mention last week they had on ABC NK man wanting to go back to NK.
Steve777:
The Treasurer is releasing the mid-year budget forecasts tomorrow I believe. And after that it’ll be shut down apart for the taking out the trash as you say.
South Africa: Many of the delegates are taking turns to declare Zuma as the worst ANC President and a disaster for the ANC –
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/replace-zuma-battle-anc-heart-starts-171216133448718.html
Wrong, It was Howard that ended closed shops and unions were in serious decline before Howard became Prime Minister.
It was the neoliberal economic project introduced by Hawke and Keating that slowly strangled them like a python.
I do blame Labor. they were the ones that were (still are) caught up in anglo saxon liberal economics mania and with it began the massive transfer of profit share from Labour to capital They laid the foundations for the whole IPA project so as far as I am concerned guilty as charged
Jacol – Sorry, I didn’t see your second comment which may have put the context of what you were saying differently.
@Confessions
MYEFO has already been leaked or released with Moron Treasure denying linking to Bennelong by-election.
Re-posting…
Doyley, Grimace…..
If SDA is so great at securing workers’rights, pay, etc why was the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union formed in 2016?
http://www.raffwu.org.au/
On energy, I’ve just had a look at NEM Watch and WA is generating 428MW of electricity from wind. That’s just about 100% of our wind capacity. We’re in for some wild weather tonight!
Zoid – Yep, saw the ‘returner’ story.
Bemused – Gotta love those double standards, railroading, and false equivalencies.
“I would deplore any situation where an innocent man was falsely accused, convicted and punished.” Can you give me any examples and statistics of when this has actually happened in the modern era? Because it’s a bullshit argument, like those hypothetical Christian bakers who didn’t want to make cakes for gay weddings.
What is real: women being sexually harassed and assaulted. Tonnes of stats and proof on that – here’s an article on the occurrence in the past year alone http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-08/sexual-violence-and-harassment-going-up-abs-survey/9129342
“Apparently this would cause you no discomfort.” When did I say anything in favour of convicting and punishing innocent men? Fact: when our legal system can’t even convict men who ARE guilty of sexual harassment and assault, there is little to no chance of them ever convicting an innocent man for it.
Furthermore, we were talking about the Doyle news. There is no court case involved. And, how often do you hear about a workplace sexual harassment court case that has a “conviction” as the outcome (workplace sexual harassment cases are usually tried in the civil court rather than the criminal court)? You are showing your ignorance here.
[For those who raised points about how our courts need to be impartial – since when is Pollbludger a court? How many of the comments on PB pass the impartiality bar you are creating for this topic? Why must discussion of sexual harassment meet a higher bar of “innocent until proven guilty” than political corruption, or pedophile priests, or any of the other topics discussed here? Do you realise that Bemused derailed a conversation about a specific news item about Melbourne Mayor Doyle taking leave after a workplace harassment complaint (no court case involved) to shit talk about women making up fake accusations? Does that meet your bar for impartiality?]
Bemused, if you have trouble understanding this issue because of the male/female divide, perhaps think of it like the double standards our society has with race: If a violent incident happens, and the perpetrator is a Muslim, he will be called a “terrorist”; if he is black American he will be called a “gang member”; if he is white, he will be called misunderstood, and some attempt of empathy will be extended to try to understand “why” – he was depressed, he’d lost his job, his wife left him, he’d been bullied, or abused, etc. Overall we blame people of colour for their actions (and present them as evil), while being more lenient on white men who commit the same atrocities. The fact that more white men commit terrorist acts in the United States than Muslims doesn’t make a difference to most people’s incorrect perceptions when they pre-judge others (e.g. being anti-Muslim because they think Muslims are terrorists, using this to argue against taking in refugees, trying to ban halal, etc).
I think most people on PB would look at the above race situation and agree that mainstream media and society suck when they do the above – because we ourselves don’t think it’s okay that people of colour are discriminated against. We wish people would be less biased and look at the facts.
With gendered incidents, in a he-said/she-said situation, our system is stacked to support the male version of events and provide empathy and support to him, while inferring that the woman is lying or mentally unstable. Even when the statistics clearly prove that the opposite is most likely to be true. When we are discussing a news issue related to sexual harassment, and your contribution to the conversation is that women lie about this stuff, you are judging the woman prematurely. You are extending that man a level of empathy and trust, the benefit of the doubt, that you refuse to provide in equal measure to the woman. And yet, you think that you are the one who is being level headed?
It is not impartial or even handed to suggest the woman is lying and that it would be terribly destructive for a man to have a false accusation made against him. That, when you hear of an accusation of sexual harassment, your empathy automatically goes to protect the man who might have been falsely accused, while not sparing a thought for the woman who might have been sexually harassed, suggests an unconscious bias. When you add to this the statistical improbability of it being a false accusation…
When the default position is to defend men while questioning women, and you double down on that, and ignore all the statistics and evidence that shows what the real problems in our society are….? Seriously, need I say more?
Those few people on this board who have nodded their head in agreeance with Bemused might want to do some soul-searching about how they may inadvertently be contributing to gender inequity and a culture of sexual harassment and violence against women. If you didn’t understand #Metoo, please educate yourself. Enough of this men-protecting-men-while-standing-idly-by-as-women-are-harassed-and-assaulted bullshit.
FYI I didn’t step into this discussion to cast judgment on Doyle. I stepped in when I saw Bemused claim that women lie about this stuff. And his evidence? He heard from one person about one incident in which apparently a guy had been falsely accused (no mention of conviction however). This is apparently more convincing that “women lie” than all the facts, statistics and evidence that sexual assault and harassment is rampant and under-reported, and that false accusations are rare. Bemused seems to think that women get sexually harassed and abused by invisible fairies. It’s so much easier to believe that women lie, than face the fact that men abuse us.
If you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
grimace:
Have you had much rain in Perth? We haven’t had much here, although the wind seems to be increasing, but hasn’t been that bad so far.
Forgot about MYEFO. All the good stuff and stuff that can be spun to look good will be owing to the Coalition’s brilliant management. The bad stuff will be Labor’s fault. And Bill Shorten’s.
As someone who had been involved for more than 2 years in the Your Rights At Work campaign, it was a and is a complete myth that Labor totally dismantled WorkChoices.
In their first term after being elected in 2007, Labor did not get rid of the ABCC. The slow action by Labor p$ssed off many unionists like me who campaigned hard in our communities to essentially get a Labor candidate up. Never again.
Subsequently, who can forget Gillard who reiterated wtte we need a tough cop on the beat, just like a true neoliberal.
What gets me upset the most, when opinions are given here for or against Unions, are the self-described people of the Left who constantly attack the SDA, and the AWU because Bill Shorten led them, and bray that, either/or, they did not get the ideal outcome for their members. It is just a constant drum beat of attack, attack, attack those Unions. With the cumulative effect being a negative perception about Unions and Union leaders, every bit as corrosive as the constant contempt of Unions displayed by the political representatives of the Employer class.
Yes, Unions are unable to achieve everything you pie in the sky ideologues of the Left would like, but they achieve a lot more, under difficult circumstances in the present IR environment, than if there were no Unions at all to represent those who are generally powerless in the workplace.
And a little bit more acknowledgement of that fact from the critics supposedly from the Left would be great once in a while.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-17/consent-and-sexual-assault-prevention-program-in-schools/9266634
Rudd was a self-absorbed treasonous wrecker. Shorten is just self-absorbed. Both unfit to be PM.
Charles kind of politics. says:
Sunday, December 17, 2017 at 7:20 pm
It was Howard that ended closed shops and unions were in serious decline before Howard became Prime Minister.
Yes, and it was Fraser that legislated against secondary boycotts. Fraser’s government passed section 45D and then 45E of the Trade Practices Act. Howard took this further in 2001-2.
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/bd/bd0102/02bd134
History of Sections 45D and 45E
The Fraser Government
In April 1976 the Fraser Government established the Trade Practices Act Review Committee (known as the Swanson Committee)(10). The Committee s report expressed concern about the lack of protection for traders against secondary boycotts and recommended that the law provide an effective avenue of recourse for affected traders. Secondary boycotts were defined as a situation where employees of one employer place a boycott on the dealings of that employer with another person. The Committee did not express a view on whether this avenue should be provided by the TPA or industrial legislation.(11)
Responding to the report in 1977, the Government inserted the original section 45D into the TPA prohibiting boycott conduct which had the effect or likely effect of causing either: substantial loss or damage to a targeted person or; a substantial lessening of competition in a market. In introducing the provision, the then Minister for Business and Consumer Affairs (Mr Howard) stated that:
boycotts have been used by some trade unions in this country to dictate the business arrangements of independent businessmen. In some instances these boycotts have resulted in higher prices to the consumer. The most common instance of a secondary boycott occurs where a group of employees collectively acts for the purpose of interfering with supply of goods and/or services by their employer to a company. (12)
Subsection 45D(3) provided for a defence if it could be shown that the dominant purpose of the conduct related to employment matters. In practice this provision was often interpreted narrowly and there were very few cases where a union was able to successfully invoke the defence.(13)
In 1978 section 45D(1A) was inserted which prohibited primary or secondary boycotts which have the purpose or effect of hindering or preventing interstate or international trade and commerce.
In 1980, the Fraser Government introduced section 45E following the Laidely dispute. Leon Laidely Pty Ltd, an independent haulage contractor, distributed bulk fuel and was supplied by Amoco. The employees of Amoco driving Amoco delivery trucks were members of the Transport Workers Union (TWU). The union argued that Amoco s practice of supplying Laidely denied work to their members. In February 1980 the TWU placed a black ban on Amoco supplying petroleum to Laidley. Amoco, in order to keep its depots open, agreed to TWU demands that Laidley not be supplied.
While Laidley was successful in obtaining an interlocutory injunction against the TWU under section 45D, the Fraser Government was of the view that the TPA needed to be strengthened so that companies did not succumb to union pressure and therefore inserted section 45E.(14) The section prohibited collusive agreements between unions and corporations that hinder the supply or acquisition of goods or services by or from a third party.
The Hawke-Keating Governments
The Labor Party has maintained a long opposition to sections 45D and 45E. While the ALP has expressed disapproval of secondary boycotts, it has argued that they are essentially industrial relations matters that are best resolved through specialist industrial courts or tribunals rather than through competition law or by the competition regulator. It has argued that the focus of regulation should be the resolution of the underlying dispute and that litigation under the TPA may frustrate this outcome.
The Hawke Government attempted to repeal sections 45D and 45E in 1984 however the legislation was defeated in the Senate. Another attempt was made to amend the operations of the sections in 1987 but the proposal was abandoned.
Asha and ‘Fess
my comment was partly facetious, but I am genuinely mystified about some of the commenters who just appear to be trying to wind people up, with very little in the way of evidence or argument for whatever they say.
The ‘sew the seeds of doubt about Bill Shorten’ is a constant theme which, I suspect, comes from LNP focus groups. It’s just far too consistent to be random. And since they will clearly not influence anyone here I could only conclude they are polishing their arguments for elsewhere.
Anyway, they all add colour and keep it from getting boring; as long as they don’t get offensive then I’m happy.
Tony Burke on the outcome in Bennelong:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/17/tony-burke-says-dastyari-controversy-hurt-labor-in-bennelong
Will the two major parties go down the MAD path. Somehow I doubt it.
Self-interest and self-entitlement rule!
Luci:
And don’t forget too that a lot of the violence and abuse perpetrated against women still occurs out of sight in homes across the country. Those women suffer in silence, often with nowhere to go to escape, or believing that nobody will accept their experience as truthful.
Good on you for sticking to your guns on this.
It would seem that Donald Trump (with quite a bit of help from various parties – GOP, Corporations etc) is in the process of dismantling the USA’s democracy; what with his “fake news’ labels of much of the MSM and now his attacks on the FBI, calling the special prosecutor’s investigation a ‘scam’, and stacking a great many of the judicial appointments with far-right and totally biased people.
Now is the time to be concerned for US citizens, because in two years time it will probably be too late.
This article is a timely reminder of what can happen and how it happens; small steps at a time:
https://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Uncanny-Frightening-W-by-Thom-Hartmann-America-Freedom-To-Fascism_Hitler_Nazis_Obama-171216-349.html
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-slams-fbi-before-visiting-fbi
I believe that Australia is not immune – what with Peter Dutton soon to be in charge of all intelligence bodies here.
UK – Brexit:
It’s a mess!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-second-referendum-latest-poll-remain-ten-points-leave-bmg-a8114406.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Australian_Building_and_Construction_Commissioner
Abolition[edit]
On 16 February 2012, legislation to abolish the ABCC passed the House of Representatives by 71 votes to 70. The legislation passed through the Senate on 21 March, and the agency was officially abolished on 31 May 2012. On 1 June 2012, a new independent regulator, Fair Work Building & Construction, was created to take on many of the functions of the ABCC.
If we instituted judicial processes along the lines proposed by our resident philosopher king, We Want Paul, decisions about people’s guilt or innocence would be determined by general statistical maxims rather than the particularities of the case. It is sad to see people fail to understand why that would be stupid and unfair. I suppose that statistically a pompous blow hard like WWP is highly likely to expound stupid ideas. However, if WWP’s reputation, livelihood, and / liberty were at stake, he would want the decision to be made on the merits of the particular situation, not on his general tendency to be wrong.