The only poll this week was a Newspoll that gave the Coalition its best result since last April, but given the pollster’s stability over that time, that isn’t saying all that much. Certainly it hasn’t made much difference to BludgerTrack, on which the Coalition improves only on the primary vote, and that at One Nation’s expense rather than Labor’s. The Coalition is up one on the seat projection in Queensland, but down one in Western Australia. The change is more noticeable on the leadership ratings, which find Malcolm Turnbull’s net approval trend picking up sharply, and confirms his recent uptick on preferred prime minister.
BREAKING: Government under fire after it was discovered Barnaby Joyce’s new girlfriend was given a six-figure, taxp…
How would a Labor Minister subject to these sort of allegations be treated? He’d* be hounded day and night until he resigned from Parliament. Barnaby would be one of the chief witch hunters.
Think Craig Thomson, basically a CEO who did the equivalent of misusing a company credit card, as countless senior executives have / are doing, many for the same purpose. Thomson did not misuse taxpayer money.
Barnaby deserves the same treatment.
* and with this sort of thing, it’s nearly always a ‘he’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/09/i-travelled-11-hours-with-my-two-year-old-to-tell-our-leaders-stop-adani
Good morning all,
Bill Shorten is up north in Queensland today announcing millions in funding for regional infrastructure projects.
Where labor lands on Adani itself will be interesting.
For all those opposing the mine it should be remembered that unemployment is a huge issue in northern and central Queensland. It is easy for those down south to say renewerables and tourism will save the day but try telling that to a 50 year old unemployed miner or tradesman with a family to support. Offering to train them up as a barista will just not cut it !
Adani has offered hope to these workers and rightly or not the perception is hundreds of jobs will be offered on the project.
Labor needs to offer legitimate real alternatives to Adani. Not programmes to ” retrain” workers for jobs in tourism etc but real jobs and real opportunity.
Shorten and labor are doing exactly that with their announcements over coming days. Real projects, real money, real jobs.
It is not as easy as saying oppose Adani and other jobs will magically appear.
Cheers.
I see that Catherine McGregor is off with her delusional fairies again.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/bill-shorten-has-peaked–and-malcolm-turnbull-has-him-in-his-sights-20180208-h0vrnm.html
really……..Truffles on his way back just any time now and Tony just such a unifying force……
She is an whiny idiot. Bit like Molan in being the kind of intellectual wasteland our military is probably better off without. All her focus is on the beauty contest, not policy or substance. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty good reflection of where the Libs are at and why they are there.
That Catherine McGregor column in Fairfax.. I had to skim to the end to check if it was satire… She seems to have a personal issue with Shorten. Reminds me of Michelle Grattan’s columns about Gillard – dripping with personal hatred. I wonder if she has had a run-in with Shorten in the past – maybe he pushed in front of her in the coffee queue of something.
Is Dow Jones back to pre Trump levels yet (allowing for inflation etc)?
10% in 2 weeks is some correction.
What ESJ mentioned earlier this morning:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/jane-garrett-considering-a-run-for-melbourne-mayor-20180208-p4yzsd.html
TeaPain sums it up in the US and for the Libs/Nats here in Australia :
Tea Pain @TeaPainUSA ·
Laws and rules don’t seem to apply to the GOP anymore. Thanks to Trump, Evangelicals now call the Ten Commandments the “10 Suggested Guidelines.”
Simon
No it’s dropped bigly again.
Down 4%.
https://www.google.com.au/search?num=100&safe=off&rlz=1C1GGGE_enAU437AU437&ei=utV8WvegBomA8gWtkYjgBw&q=dow+jones&oq=dow+jones&gs_l=psy-ab.3..35i39k1j0i131i67k1l2j0i67k1j0i131k1l2j0j0i131k1j0l2.597977.599425.0.600728.9.9.0.0.0.0.523.1364.2-2j1j0j1.4.0….0…1c.1.64.psy-ab..5.4.1363….0.anpZjHlFCWE
“For all those opposing the mine it should be remembered that unemployment is a huge issue in northern and central Queensland.”
There is also a case to be argued that the Adani mine complex would cause unemployment elsewhere, like the Hunter Valley. Biggest coal mine ever dumps massive supply into a declining coal market. Price plummets and existing mines elsewhere in Australia go under.
So, are possible votes gained in North Qld, based on possibly dubious claims about employment opportunities and job numbers, worth transferring Nth QLD unemployment to NSW?? AND pissing off the rest of the country that doesn’t want Adaini to go ahead??
I’d be expecting Shorten to maintain the “skeptical” line that it has to stack up, without Govt assistance, both financially and environmentally. Frankly, i reckon that even IF the Govt came up with $ and or approvals it wont go ahead. Adani want a short term sugar hit that the approval of this project would give them.
“Actually, the Coalition is turning into quite a salad. We’ve got a potato, a beetroot, and with Turnbull, a wet lettuce.”
Turnbull is fruit salad. Just all Durian.
Here is a happy thought for Poll Bludgers:
Having first been elected to the senate in 2004, and taking his seat after June 2005 Beetroot is NOT eligible for the old rolled gold Parliamentary super scheme. He has to slum it on the 15% contributions scheme that all senior publi servants are entitled to, plus whatever he had in kitty before he went into Parliament, plus whatever he has saved from his salary and Gina kickbacks since then. I’m not sure however, whether he is entitled to any Ministrial pension. Perhaps someone can check this for me?
In any case Beetroot’s nest egg is likely to be well stretched given how expensive messy divorces are and the fact that once he stops being Gina’s useful fool in Canberra the chances of him picking up a bunch of nice little earners post politics is probably pretty slim.
I suspect he’ll have to go back to his trade as a book keeper for all the unsuspecting tradies on the Sunshine Coast. Did he swipe Joe’s eleventy calculator? It might come in handy …
Now Turnbull has committed fully to the full $65b of company tax cuts, with personal income tax cuts “dependent on the budget’s return to surplus”, I wonder if there is an opening for Labor to offer significant personal tax cuts in lieu of the company cut?
“Having first been elected to the senate in 2004, and taking his seat after June 2005 Beetroot is NOT eligible for the old rolled gold Parliamentary super scheme. ”
LOL! could not happen to nicer bloke.
And, i reckon he has out himself in a position where he will get financially eviscerated in any settlement with his ex.
I am going to post this link for those of you willing to get out of Barnaby’s bedroom for a while.
You are of course (or most of you under 50) “sweet summer children” and have no grasp that “winter is coming”
However the following is a very different take on the situation in the Levant which if nothing else is interesting
First some disclaimers. I am not arguing that all or any of it is true, however the author is a Russian speaker, that formerly worked as a military intelligence analyst (For the West).
His background is WHITE Russian ie fiercely anti communist and he appears to be very strongly religious ie Russian Orthodox. While probably actively opposed to the Soviet regime, he appears to have largely switched allegiance with the new regime, probably because it does in fact now work closely with the church. he was particularly upset about the US attack on Serbia (again probably because of religious connections)
OK so that is the history of the guy so you read it making the usual mental adjustments for bias etc
http://thesaker.is/russias-new-preemptive-move-in-lebanon/
What is interesting about this particular article is that it discusses Lebanon and Israel in a way that is quite new to me. Certainly I was aware that Russia maintains good relations with Israel – puzzling given Israel’s close ties to the USA. This partly explains this.
He leaves three open questions at the end which are quite new thoughts for me, and I assume that most of our current journalists think Lebanon is at Eddie Obeid’s house.
Anyway summer children, it is at least a positive sort of article. Not predicting immediate doom or nuclear war.
Perhaps poor Barnaby could move in with his future father in law ….
I think the problem most on here have with Joyce is that he brought his bedroom into his office.
Simon Katich @ #111 Friday, February 9th, 2018 – 7:11 am
You sick pup!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
“You are of course (or most of you under 50) “sweet summer children” and have no grasp that “winter is coming””
There are times dtt when you come across as an arrogant twit.
peg
‘the same sentiment needs to be applied to Peter Whish-Wilson who has repeatedly been criticised by some here because of his work experience prior to entering parliament as a Greens senator.’
He has? And if he has, has it been in the context of explaining why he might hold a certain position on an issue, rather than just a drive by swipe?
The CEO of GM should be publicly flogged. These bastards have been on the public teat for years, yet refuse to accommodate Sanjeev Gupta’s plan for SA to carry on car production.
http://www.manmonthly.com.au/news/holden-gm-reject-british-billionaires-automotive-assets-bid/
Summer’s children? That might be an older age group. When I finished school, unemplyment was something my parents’ generation remembered but which basically no longer existed. A high school certifcate (after 3/4 years of high school and especially after 5/6 years) virtually guaranteed a good, steady, well paying job. Apprenticeships, from private industry and Government departments & utilities were abundant. Unskilled / semiskilled jobs were plentiful. Anyone who was employed and passably competent at managing money had a full expectation of buying on house on a single income. Wages were increasing year on year, all the graphs were going up (the good ones). The cold war / international situation looked a bit iffy, but apart from a brief period from about the late 80s to 2001 it always has.
Trog – I wonder whether Elon Musk may be about to make a play for the Adelaide GM operations …
imacca,
The labor position on Adani will be known soon.
What I was trying to get at is alternative employment opportunities need to offered. Real jobs, real projects that you can smell and touch need to be put on the table.
It is easy to say ” we understand your pain, hold hands with us, jobs will magically appear, Kum bia”. That will not cut it in the real world despite what the greens and others tell us.
Labor will make a decision on Adani. At the same time, either way, Shorten is offering real world alternatives and opportunities not simply platitudes.
Cheers and a good day to you.
Voice Endeavour @ #77 Friday, February 9th, 2018 – 9:32 am
Yes, and once again it
imacca @ #119 Friday, February 9th, 2018 – 10:21 am
Too many times.
Fulvio Sammut
Or with Gina. Although this might not work out. She is probably jealous, and when Beetroot loses his Ministry, his value declines to a net zero.
Seriously, something to employ 1,564 people in Central Queensland, as an alternative to Adani, shouldn’t be too hard. Claims of tens of thousands of jobs are bullshit.
Renewable energy projects perhaps? Infrastructure?
Andrew
Adelaide may be a logical place to set up a factory. Access to resources, big electricity market, and the factory could build cars as well as batteries, but Tesla needs to focus on completing its first Gigafactory and delivering the Model 3 before further investment.
Not sure Tesla would want to buy a car plant in Adelaide. GM might have some other ideas and may be reluctant to sell to that other guy who wants it.
I wonder whether Elon Musk may be about to make a play for the Adelaide GM operations
I actually suggested before the last election that Shorten and Kim Jong Carr should sit down with Musk and work up a deal.
Steve777
Cheap power means you can develop value-added processing to mining products.
e.g. I think we will see some of this starting up around central and northern SA, in the same vein as steel processing and manufacture at Whyalla. Port Augusta also is becoming a major energy hub.
We need to look beyond just renewable power reducing consumer electricity costs, and beyond to what can be achieved when power becomes really cheap, with generation, storage, and manufacturing being co-located.
Imacca
Sorry you are so thin skinned.
Since I was referring to nuclear war or simply world war my comment was not particualrly offensive. those of you who reached the age of political awareness AFTER the collapse of the Soviet Union really have no innate grasp of the Cold War or the world wide tension it created.
Most will not have been involvd in or even aware of the Anti Vietnam war movement or the protests and political upheavals that it created.
Most will not be aware of the real tensions between “capitalists” and socialists that dominated politics from the 20s-60s.
Hence the “sweet summer children” (GoT reference for those few of you not aware). So if you get all upset about such a reference which is based on you ages alone, then truly you need thicker hides.
Steve you point is valid but I really was trying to get at the fear of nuclear war (or just WWII) that was a real and present danger from the 50s- 80s. Australian troops were fighting in Korea, Malaya, and Vietnam throughout that period.
It was generally understood that MAD kept the Soviet and US military from confronting one another. proxy wars were all the go eg Vietnam.
Then came the collapse of the USSR and for those of you still at school in 1989, your world view has been shaped in the comfortable “summer” where WWIII was unthinkable.
This comfortable reality has now been challenged – firstly be the rise and China and more recently by the revival of Russia
Who could have predicted that Trumble’s week of glorious recovery ver 34 could have turned to shit by Friday?
Oh yeah, pretty much anyone who isn’t a complete dickhead desperate to spin a good news story for the Coalition in complete denial of what a pack of arseholes they are.
Arseholes all the way down.
doyley says:
Friday, February 9, 2018 at 10:02 am
Good morning all,
For all those opposing the mine it should be remembered that unemployment is a huge issue in northern and central Queensland. It is easy for those down south to say renewerables and tourism will save the day but try telling that to a 50 year old unemployed miner or tradesman with a family to support. Offering to train them up as a barista will just not cut it !
Yes, jobs are an issue. However, the problems in the environment are very great. It is not a matter of choosing between the environment and employment/incomes. Unless we act to protect the environment it will not sustain the economy and incomes will fall right across the population, not merely in the short run but in the very long run, not merely for a few but for the very many.
We really must begin to understand environmental destruction as a form economic liquidation.
There should be no barrier to protecting incomes/employment by adopting relevant investments. After all, financial, physical, social and cultural capitals are produced resources. We can devise them more or less at will. But what we can only very rarely do is recreate or refurbish the natural environment. It is in fact far “scarcer” than other endowments or potentials and yet is assigned a nil value for most purposes.
We should set out to create a capital-rich economy that does not rely on environmental depletion and which does not forward-feed into systemic instability. We can already see these effects in parts of the marine environment – effects that are truly enormous in their scale and which are seemingly irrevocable.
The economics and the politics of environmental resource reservation/depletion – use/misuse – are still only scantily understood. This is a threshold problem.
Ides
When the government(s) originally doled out money to GM, they should have been smart enough to put some sort of lien on their assets. As investors in GM, we should have rights.
(A bit like hard rock mining companies. They are supposed to clean up but rarely do.)
Pegasus @ #93 Friday, February 9th, 2018 – 9:52 am
Yes, which is why you shouldn’t have brought the Catherine MacGregor thing in the first place.
One reason I speculated that Musk may be interested in the GM factory is the difficulties that he faces in ramping up production of the new Tesla to the 10,000 units per week he needs just to fill back orders by 2020. I would have thought that the factory, redundant workforce and supply chain of parts manufacturers would hold some attraction – ie. something that could potentially be used to give him a production run of say 2000 units per week
Adrian
If you want me to treat you with respect – earn it.
You will find that I am very supportive and even obsequious to those who demonstrate a capacity to think.
There are some here who while not agreeing with me can engage in a rational way and for them I will not be in the least arrogant.
To get all teary eyed about a GoT reference is truly pathetic.
Precisely Trog.
Sure, close your plants, but the Commonwealth has shoveled money at you for decades, so we’ll require a return.
Just terms obviously needs addressing, but that should have only been a speed hump, not a road block.
doyley
I know where we could find a lazy billion to kick-start industry in the area. The money for the railway to nowhere. Should be easy to replace 1500 jobs with that sort of money.
Only problem is that Canavan and Beetroot want to spend it on dams that will generate nothing but salt and environmental degradation.
Governments shovelling money at business really do need to make sure they get equity in return.
Turnbull Mk1: Green shoots, crashes and burns, News Ltd runs interference.
Turnbull Mk2: Green shoots, crashes and burns, Fairfax and ABC run interference.
Eagerly awaiting the next sequel.
I don’t get the criticism of Whish-Wilson. He’s not some Tory scion ‘playing’ at being a hipster to impress his friends in his inner city share house, before running home to daddy and joining the Liberal Party
He went the to Wall Street and was fully embedded into that culture first THEN he changed his view.
It seems like a genuine ‘road to Damascus’ conversion to me. Good on him.
Excuse me, but what’s with the “Lucy and I”.
He mouths off with the usual pompousness about not wishing to inflict more hurt, as if there is more, by commenting on the adultery of his deputy moralist and by way of emphasis co-opts his wife into some marital empathy cocoon. Just why exactly is what I’m wondering.
Andrew_Earlwood @ #137 Friday, February 9th, 2018 – 11:02 am
SA is about to send another $300,000,000 in Elon Musk’s direction, so I’d say this would be a reasonable quid pro quo!
I think Shanghai is the proposed site of Tesla’s big Asian region factory.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-strikes-deal-with-shanghai-to-build-factory-in-china-1508670181
Andrew,
Exactly. He has the technology, the designs, and the market. He doesn’t have the production capacity.
A smooth transition from Commodores to Model 3s would have taken a bit of investment but not nearly as much as starting from scratch.
Adelaide could have say filled the RHD, markets for him and supplemented others as required. Plus added engineering and design capacity.
Should have been a proposal he would have at least thought about.
Opportunity to also tie in battery and rocket tech if you got creative.
But we don’t do creative. We take it up the butt from the Minerals Council and their political puppets.
Re Cate McGregor: IMO she has always been a bit of a lightweight, and, since her gender shift, seems to have been increasingly an attention-seeker (a tendency I’ve noticed in several transexual women I have known throughout my life: not that I’m necessarily suggesting a connection).
I have long thought that the Turnbull Government – if it can hold itself together (which is not certain) -has long been better than 50/50 to retain government. McGregor, like many in the Press Gallery, has been blinded to this by their undue preoccupation with, and overrating of, Tony Abbott: another lightweight who was extremely lucky to be elevated to the leadership of his party by the concerted efforts of a group of ideological dinosaurs and then found himself undeservedly sitting on a rainbow when the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd battle commenced. Against a Labor Party that was truly united behind an effective leader (which, for different reasons, neither Rudd nor Gillard was capable of being), Abbott would have received the sort of crushing defeat in 2010 that would have sent him out of politics entirely.
The Press Gallery, McGregor, etc. have long been wetting themselves at the prospect of Abbott making a comeback to challenge Turnbull. It was never going to happen, but it’s only now that they are waking up to the fact that there is a reasonable chance that the Coalition might go into the next election as a united team and that this, as I said, would give them a better than 50/50 chance of holding on. This is because, in my assessment, unless they are obviously dysfunctional (Libs in 1972, Lab in 1975 and 2013) or clearly past their use by date (Fraser in 1977, Keating in 1996, Howard in 2007), Federal governments in Australia are always a little better than even money to be returned, and I reckon Coalition Governments are always slightly more likely to survive than Labor ones.
I reckon none of this has anything whatsoever to do with Bill Shorten, or some nonsense about Turnbull getting his measure. IMO, Shorten is a moderately high performing Labor leader. He’s not the most charismatic of men, but his political position on most issues (just to the left of centre) is where it needs to be to lead Labor to victory at the Federal level: although, as I have posted before, I do worry that the party behind him is drifting slowly to the left, and this won’t help him.
But, in the end, if Labor does lose the next election, don’t blame Shorten: the result will be primarily due to the perennial difficulty of dislodging a generally acceptable government – no matter how mediocre – during a period of economic improvement.
from the previous thread:
frednk:
Wow. Way to completely misinterpret my post. Surgery can (note: can) be the ultimate placebo, because you are more prone to experiencing a placebo effect when more-invasive procedures are done. Just as people (as a group) are more susceptible to a placebo effect with injections or acupuncture than they are with pills; because it seems more likely that ‘something is being done’ that is going to work.
I am not at all saying that surgery is useless; just its benefits for many (mainly chronic) procedures are likely to be overstated, because recipients are more susceptible to the placebo effect due to its invasive nature. That’s why surgical procedures should ultimately be subjected to randomised controlled trials to see whether they actually work. Just because someone is cutting into you doesn’t mean it will be of benefit. The patient feeling as though their health has improved after a surgical procedure is not in itself proof that it works.
As an anecdote, in the early 2000s, my dad had surgery on his nasal cavity to make it easier to breathe through his nose. It did nothing.
Itza Dream: “Excuse me, but what’s with the “Lucy and I”.”
He’s done this for many years. It comes across as being a bit reminiscent of the Queen’s “My husband and I.” I find it rather a turn off and I think he’d be better to stop doing it.
That said, Obama used to indulge in a fair bit of “Michelle and I.”