The New Year poll drought has been brought to an end by Essential Research, which will henceforth be conducting fortnightly polls, dispensing with its long establishing practice of polling weekly and publishing two-week rolling averages. As related by The Guardian, the poll has Labor’s lead unchanged on the final poll last year at 53-47 – as usual, primary votes will have to wait for the publication of the full report later today. Both leaders’ personal ratings have weakened: Malcolm Turnbull is down three on approval to 38% and up one on disapproval to 45%, Bill Shorten is down four on approval to 32% and up four disapproval to 49%, and Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister is out from 42-28 to 42-25.
Other findings: 53% support a tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, with 38% opposed; 44% support and 29% oppose “Australia becoming a republic with an Australian head of state”, which is all but identical to when the same question was asked a year ago (44% and 30%); and society is widely seen as going to pot, with crime perceived as on the rise across all categories, regardless of what the official statistics might say.
UPDATE: The primary votes are Coalition 37% (steady), Labor 38% (steady), Greens 9% (steady), One Nation 6% (down one). Full report here.
Meanwhile the biggest scam in road tunneling since the Boston Big Dig grinds on in Sydney. This lemon will cost taxpayers billions.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/22/labor-warns-of-sydney-road-toll-hikes-as-transurban-circles-westconnex
Have a good day all.
The Dawn Patrol is on the previous page.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/22/its-convenient-to-say-aboriginal-people-support-australia-day-but-its-not-true
Just turned in the to to see Ms Downer telling me real wages have grown.
Waiting for her to tell me black is actually white.
She also can’t wait until the tax breaks for business because the CEOs of big companies have promised to pass on the benefits to the workers by employing more workers and giving pay rises and bonuses to existing workers.
She then went on to say that electric cars cause more pollution than petrol fuelled cars.
She said all this with a straight face, but even Virginia was having trouble not laughing at her.
Thanks as always BK. You do a sterling job.
In other news, Grigor Dimitrov celebrated his victory over Australia’s Nick Kyrgios.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.
Oh great. Another day of The Greens’ luvvies trying to tell us that IndigenousX is the voice of the Aboriginal Australian people.
They are a noisy little group, with their own suite of concerns, that do not speak for the vast majority of Indigenous Australians.
And just like any discrete group in society, Indigenous Australians have a spectrum of views. IndigenousX are not in the mainstream of that.
PeeBee,
It seems Ms Downer has been learning to lie with a straight face from her father over the break.
It really stinks though that she has been given every nepotistic opportunity that her father and his political party could provide, from the Foreign Affairs Department scholarship, even though she only got a Third Class Honours degree at Uni, to a posting in an Embassy overseas, to a sinecure at the IPA where she was groomed, to now having the blue carpet rolled out for her at the ABC.
My kids should be so privileged.
Flat Eathers and dtt exist to show just how crazy those outside the 2 percentiles are.
Even a cursory glance at what’s been going on in Russia for the last decade or so would show that Putin is obviously a pretty ruthless dictator. Not nearly as bad as some, sure, but that has more to do with how monstrous and/or stark raving mad many other despots have been than any compliment to Putin.
Parliament’s Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit has ordered an inquiry into consultancy spending after seeing the findings of a first-of-its-kind analysis of government procurement contracts by the Australian National Audit Office.
I’ve got a good word about the Turnbull government that Labor can start throwing around till our ears bleed:
Profligate
It applies to the salary increases for Turnbull’s ‘Squaddies’ too!
Asha Leu @ #2959 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 7:33 am
Crazy like a fox. With ice in his veins.
I can’t stop thinking he reminds me of an Authoritarian one of these though:
C@tmomma:
Unlike some dictators, Putin strikes me as being completely sane and very intelligent and competent. Which makes him much more dangerous than many of the lunatics who wind up in charge of some places.
Australians are borrowing billions to buy cars.
We had a Surf Carnival yesterday at our local beach and, fair dinkum, the car park was stuffed full of so many big, bruting cars it looked like a Monster Truck rally! Like this imported Dodge:
C@tmomma:
Well, I’m glad to see that you haven’t started disempowering Indigenous Australians with different views on Australia Day to you.
Asha Leu @ #2962 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 7:43 am
Although I don’t think he has thought through the endgame very well. I mean, what do you do once you have subjugated the world to your will, co-opted the West via a feeble-minded and complicit American leader, and gained access to all the resources of the world?…
But that world dies before your eyes due to the one thing you and your Resource Tsar cronies cannot control-Climate Change? And those criminal networks that thrive beneath you, such as the one that BiGD, I think it was, reported on here the other day, that is killing without conscience, for money, the world’s elephants and rhinos? Just to bring those obscene trophies, their tusks, to old men like Putin and Xi, and their simulacra, to sustain that which they should naturally allow to ebb away, their virility?
It just makes me ineffably sad to think about it.
Also on Putin:
The extent to which his government has been persecuting homosexuals in recent years is genuinely disgusting, to the point where I cannot fathom how any decent person aware of this could praise the man.
Asha Leu @ #2964 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 7:50 am
No, no. Just pointing out that, IndigenousX, which has got quite a run here recently, has every right to express their view, but it is just one, and not the only one, among many, many more in Indigenous Australia.
Confessions put up the perspective of Dr Robert Isaacs. I put up that of Senator Pat Dodson. Linda Burney has been quoted. Ken Wyatt too. They all have a right to have their opinions be as respected as that of IndigenousX and the writers who write for that company.
If you only listen to one voice you get a distorted perspective. That’s all I’m saying.
Putin is 65 years old. He will have died of old age before the effects of climate change truly start to bite. Whether he believes in its existence or not, I doubt he gives a shit about what will happen once he’s gone from the world. I would suspect the same is true of many other prominent climate change deniers.
Want to be completely amazed at the top-to-bottom way Putin is reshaping Russia?
Then read this:
One morning this spring, Sarah Blesener, an American documentary photographer, got a chance to visit a school in the Moscow suburb of Dmitrov, where lessons in basic military training are available to students a few times a week. She was expecting to see kids in uniforms, saluting the flag and doing drills, much like the courses one might find in U.S. high schools that offer programs for cadets. Instead she found a classroom of students, some as young as 11, learning to assemble and load Kalashnikov assault rifles. Out in the schoolyard, a safety lesson focused on the proper use of biohazard suits in the event of nuclear or chemical fallout.
Her photo of one the students that day, who stood for a portrait in a gas mask and bulky rubber gloves, became the first in Blesener’s study of what Russians refer to as military-patriotic education. Through a series of speeches and official decrees, President Vladimir Putin and his government have recently made this curriculum the norm across the country, offering adolescents a range of instruction in ideology, religion and preparedness for war.
http://time.com/4516808/inside-russias-military-training-schools-for-teens/
C@t:
Well, okay, nothing wrong with that.
Except that your original post didn’t really say that, instead outright accusing the “Green luvvies” of stating this website is “the voice of the Aboriginal Australian people,” while also snidely referring to IndigenousX as a “noisy little group”, all in response to Bakunin simply sharing an article from the Guardian without comment.
Putin is 65 years old. He will have died of old age before the effects of climate change truly start to bite. Whether he believes in its existence or not, I doubt he gives a shit about what will happen once he’s gone from the world. I would suspect the same is true of many other prominent climate change deniers.
In that Time article I linked to, you will see that Putin isn’t about Putin so much as about the Motherland, Russia, being at the apex of the pyramid. Let everyone else deal with the fallout, death and decay, as long as Russia survives, after he is gone. That appears to be his plan.
Asha
Some references please (and not from News Express or Breitbart or WaPo). Actual journalists without a national bias.
NO dictator whether in Russia or ME or Asia or Africa can stay in place without the active support of their military or some equivalent. This military needs to support the ruler solidly or there will soon be an internal coup.
However there is a more fundamental concept in politics which underpins just about EVERY system whether it is dictatorship, monarchy or democracy.
It has a name and it is called “legitimacy.” (Yes I learned this while getting my HD in political theory at ANU). I found it very useful in understanding politics.
Essentially it says that governments exist because the population accepts the legitimacy of their right to rule. Once this legitimacy is taken away or reduced rebellions or coups start.
Now what follows is theoretical and complex. I do not expect any of you to read it let alone understand it.
The most obvious example (that even a nasty twit light Fred might grasp) is Monarchy. For roughly a 1000 years in Europe this was the tried and true system of government. Once the rules were codified eg passage to eldest son the transition was usually smooth and the people accepted the “legitimacy” of the ruler. However when the monarch was weak or incompetent or when the rules of succession were unclear eg a daughter or only a distant relative the legitimacy was reduced and trouble arose. Even so most claimants manufactured a “legitimate” excuse to strengthen their claim and give stability once in place.
Thus William the Conqueror (with some justice) claimed right by descent or if in doubt the strong military claimant married the daughter of the old guard to cement their “legitimacy.”
When the transfer system is not codified or in some form of transition then trouble arises.
We may for example be about to witness a modern day monarchy going through the throes of a legitimacy crisis. In Saudi the throne has passed from older brother to younger but generational change is about to happen. It has already resulted in most claimants being murdered or locked in the Ritz but its stability is now in doubt.
Now with a dictatorship the SAME principle applies. The dictator must be accepted by the people, especially the powerful groups, usually the military and moneyed class, but the people also have a role and serious disquiet will trigger revolution. now the main difference between a dictatorship and a monarchy is that the Dictator may not have a claim by birthright and must secure legitimacy, usually out of the barrel of a gun. However they need to deliver for the country and fast or their rule will be short and bloody. So they need to keep food in the mouths of peasants, pay or bribe sufficient of the powerful forces to keep then happy and pay the military enough to stay loyal. A bit of emotional hype and unity talk also goes a long way, so parades and military excursions are often favoured along with jingoism.
However as history and any observer of reality will realise that very, very often Dictatorships try to become monarchies. Thus we see the attempted succession by sons, wives, daughters etc. Thus there is some sort of legitimacy conferred by being the son or daughter of a previous dictator. In our modern world daughters seem all the go in Asia – Myanmar, Pakistan, Indonesia, India, South Korea have all seen this phenomenon. This love for a monarchy seems deeply ingrained in our souls, so that even in the USA you have love of dynasties eg Bush, Kennedy, even Clinton seem to have more legitimacy because of familial associations. There is absolutely no rational reason why Michel Obama (lovely lady though she is) would make a better president than some Michelle Jones with a successful career and a depth of political experience and a passion for social justice. Yet here on PB we have had a heap of Michele for POTUS stuff. There is a reason for this. Blood and family relationships give a sense of legitimacy which strengthens claims. Wacky but still true.
More later if I can be bothered. This might look at elected dictators.
Except that your original post didn’t really say that, instead outright accusing the “Green luvvies” of stating this website is “the voice of the Aboriginal Australian people,” while also snidely referring to IndigenousX as a “noisy little group”, when in response to Bakunin simply sharing an article from the Guardian without comment.
Because The Greens’ posters never seem to share any other perspective. I just find it incredibly frustrating, and blinkered of them.
Most enjoyable show I’ve seen all week. Tears away the longstanding myths of trickle-down theory (can anyone with a brain really believe it any more – unless they’re rich?), but also shows that Australia’s economic problems are by no means unique and the Cayman Islands are not the choice of real billionaires. Malcolm, eat your heart out. A gold leaf face massage, anyone?
2014 BBC documentary
BK
Thank you.
‘ I do not expect any of you to read it let alone understand it.’
Whew, thanks for the head’s up. Obviously no point reading any further.
If one were in a position to nominate a single issue as the most important single issue for a Massive National Campaign, what would it be?
Would we look at symptoms such as the Dying Barrier Reef? Or such as the increase in Australian wealth disparity? Or the ruthlessness with which businesses are treating workers? Ice? Street crime? The desubstantiation of words?
What?
Oh, and Scott Morrison needs to get out more…
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/scott-morrison-ramps-up-rhetoric-on-company-tax-cuts-amid-jobs-bonanza-20180121-h0lq1z.html
…actually, I did read it, and there’s absolutely no point in doing so.
You’ll understand it, but, because it’s on the level of ‘hot air rises’.
Re the massive giveaway so that companies have to pay even less tax than they already do, which in the most egregious cases is zero, all Labor has to do is use Trump’s own words back at the Turnbull government. Once the tax cuts were enacted in America Trump said to his cronies at Mar-A-Lago:
“You all just got a lot richer!”
Is that what we want to entrench in Australia!?!
Nope, nope, nope!!!
Boerwar
Too many to choose. 🙁
C@tmomma
Russian school kids getting such training is not new at all. At least until the 80s,maybe still, in your senior year you could get machine guns and grenades lessons. Invade the place and you will have to fight the whole population. Borat’s kindergarten scene in his home town had ,in spirit, a smidgen of truth.
Sure.
Firstly, there’s the Economist’s Democracy Index, which lists Russia as being on the lower end of the Authorian Regime category: https://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index https://www.yabiladi.com/img/content/EIU-Democracy-Index-2015.pdf (Scroll down the page 29 of the second link for information on Russia.
Additionally – and this is far from an exhaustive list, simply the first reputable sources I could find in a quick online search – we have:
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2005/russia
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russia-once-almost-a-democracy/2011/08/12/gIQAMriNOJ_story.html?utm_term=.ffdb591a3f83
https://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/putin-really-is-a-dictator/
https://newrepublic.com/article/145446/democracy-didnt-work-russia-masha-gessen-book-traces-rise-repressive-nationalism
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879366510000345
Are you seriously trying to suggest that Russia isn’t currently under an authoritarian regime??
No shit, sherlock. That’s how dictators generally hold on to power. What’s your point?
Okay. I wouldn’t dispute this, though I would add that this legitimacy is often aided by vast quantities of propaganda and misinformation from a government controlled media and complete supression of opposition forces.
Now, what this has to do with my original point, I’m not sure.
Against my better judgement, I did actually read the entire thing. I guess others can judge whether my feeble brain was capable of keeping up with your mighty intellect.
…okay?
This is all true, but what the hell this have to do with whether or not Putin is a dictator?
All true.
What the hell this have to do with whether or not Putin is a dictator?
I’m not sure this argument is actually supported by historical fact. Yep, there are plenty of examples of authoritarian governments who were deposed by an angry populace. There are also lots of examples of despots who reigned for decades despite the people starving and suffering through human rights abuses. Just look at North Korea.
I’d say that what’s more important is that a dictatorship maintains the illusion of competent government, rather than the reality.
Additionally, I’m still not sure what the hell this have to do with whether or not Putin is a dictator.
All true.
What the hell this have to do with whether or not Putin is a dictator?
Super.
Should Labor call out the “Starve the Beast” strategy for what it is? Deliberately damage the national budget so as to force cuts to health, welfare (including pensions) and education, dismantlement and privatisation of government programs, huge layoffs of public employees, massive increases to charges. Remember the Medicare co-payment? Remember massive hikes to uni fees that teh Government tried to foist on us s part of its ‘deregulation’ package?
Another possibility, which would be done in parallel to retain revenue for things the Government does want to spend money on (defence, ‘border protection’, private schools, pork-barrelling) would be to transfer as much of the tax burden as they can get away with from corporations and the wealthy to ordinary Australians via a GST increase. Remember the discussion two years ago? How keen big buiness was on a GST increase?
Make Trade not War – what a novel concept!
https://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Make-Trade-Not-War-is-C-by-Pepe-Escobar-Belt-And-Road-Initiative_China-New-Silk-Roads_China-Politics_Middle-east-180118-624.html
Steve – i suspect that is why the LNP have undertaken such a massive ramp up in defence spending – it takes scarce dollars away from infrastructure, health & education.
daretotread @ #2900 Sunday, January 21st, 2018 – 10:22 pm
Pot, meet Kettle.
b
“all under heaven” or Tianxia in Mandarin.
But whose heaven?
C@tmomma @ #2969 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 8:08 am
Well, I didn’t read the link but going by your post there is not much in that causing me alarm.
When I was in high school, my state high school had cadets and those in cadets did all those things with rifles, including shooting on a range while on camp. They also carried their rifles to and from school.
We do not face a level of threat equivalent to what Russia does. And learning to use gas masks and other protective gear is hardly a sign of aggressive intent.
It smells like a beat-up to me.
Putinyunoshi
What could possibly go wrong?
Asha
I think you missed the point. Dictatorships survive BECAUSE they have legitimacy. You might not like it and it would not work in Australia but the NK regime survives fundamentally because its population accepts it and grants it legitimacy. The transfer father to son actualy confers the legitimacy of monarchy. Can you not see that.
I really realy had to laugh at your “sources.
The Economist for crying out loud, the organ of the free marketeers and anti socialists of the British upper class. Sure it is erudite and informative but when it comes to anything about Russia or socialism you would have more luck getting Ian paisley to say nice things about the IRA.
Then you cited a whole lot of US propaganda arms without even a nod to your own unblinking acceptance of propaganda
Then WaPo (which despite Merryl St was a fairly RW enabling paper as it still is.
I did say unbiased sources did I not.
As a starting base you can more or less assume that if it is based in the UK or US it is fundamentally biased against Russia and probably China. Now obviously if it is RT or Sputnik we assume it is biased against the USA and UK, but too many people of which you seem to be one, cannot recognise that propaganda happens here too. The close relationships between the media and the politicians – marriage, siblings, sex as portrayed quite well by Merryl, mean that US media is as much a voice of the government as is Russia today -at least it is on the things that count like national security. Private media in the US are corporations and as such are wedded to no deeply ingrained with and proselytizers for the capitalist/free market/existing order. Everything they publish needs to be treated with the SAME caution you would use if reading from RT or Sputnik or these days sadly our ABC.
Now that does not mean it is wrong but it does mean that you need to check for inherent bias.
Your list was amusing in that you did not even notice how deeply enmeshed in the US propaganda soup you are.
Cat
Can you not see what that article is saying!!!!!
I have written here many times that Russia fears an invasion and a nuclear first stike.
Many here (what is new) cackled like banshees about paranoia, but this story totally confirms what I wrote. Russia has provided nuclear fall out shelters for most of its urban population and is now you tell us advising little kids how to protect themselves.
all I can say is that is what any good government does if it fears an attack.
To be brutally honest I thin we should be looking at something similar in Darwin.
poroti @ #2982 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 8:50 am
True, but that was in the pre-re-embrace of religion, Russia. Now the kids do it for God, King Putin and country! Plus Putin still has designs on the ‘Back in the USSR’ band getting back together. So, he’s no harmless pussycat, that’s fer sure!
I have written here many times that Russia fears an invasion and a nuclear first strike.
And I have read in equally authoritative journals that Putin has an expansionist zeal that is not yet quenched.
I think Putin can walk and chew gum at the same time.
* Protect the Motherland.
* Expand the Motherland.
daretotread @ #2991 Monday, January 22nd, 2018 – 9:21 am
Now DTT, something has been puzzling me for some time. Now, perhaps you can explain it to me? Now, why do you start so many sentences with the word “Now”?
Now if I can get an answer to this I will find myself less distracted when wading through your turgid prose. 😆
Interesting this one:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/electric-car-plans-spark-showdown/news-story/e7f060f5b2a4371a4e0b202a5c61ab06
Libs stupidly go into conniption fits at the mere mention of anything that may reduce CO2 emissions over time.
Tax breaks for big business fine….. tax breaks that apply to other people?? ….oh no what a waste…….wankers. 🙁
ALP response is interesting though. 🙂
Labor energy and climate change spokesman Mark Butler said the government must “take their own advice and finally adopt vehicle emission standards for Australia”.
““Vehicle emissions standards would boost the supply and demand for electric vehicles.
“Australia is the only advanced country without such standards in place,” Mr Butler said.
“The government has sat on advice about the need for vehicle emissions standards for over three years, and they still haven’t committed to implementing standards.” ”
So Butler comes back with something like..”Hey we need an underlying policy that supports this. Get standards in place that should be there anyway and maybe the market will sort out an efficient solution once the Govt signals policy direction. ”
ALP do policy and governance. Lib / Nats do sweet FA except worry about staying in power and even that they are fwarking up.
NYT political analyst: ‘Diminished’ Trump is hiding from shutdown mess ‘holed up in the White House’
“Oddly, the president seems somewhat diminished throughout this entire process,” said Peters. “He’s somebody that holds himself up as a master negotiator, but he’s been largely invisible. He hasn’t made a statement, he hasn’t appeared in public.”
“He’s been holed up in the White House as all of this unfolds on Capitol Hill,” Peters said.
The New York Times said Sunday that Trump spent most of Saturday ignoring the crisis and watching old videos of himself trashing then-President Barack Obama during the 2013 shutdown.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/01/ex-cia-official-diminished-trump-is-hiding-from-shutdown-mess-holed-up-in-the-white-house/
Here’s someone who gets it.
Quite a thunderstorm last night. It went on for ages and ’twas very loud and it felt like the distant ones were louder than the nearer ones – that old inversion trick again. But then the nearer ones became…like…next door close and I realised just how loud it could be.
Anyways – it was 4 in the bed and the little ones kept kicking me in their sleep.
Coffee anyone?
I was looking at a map of North Korea last night and came to its northern border with Russia and China.
Completely bizarre!
China’s infiltration along the border looks like a US gerrymander electoral map.
How did this come to be?
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4717734,130.5587768,11.25z