The latest ReachTEL poll for Sky News is the Coalition’s worst result from that pollster this term, showing Labor with a two-party lead of 54-46, out from 52-48 at the previous poll on January 25. On the primary vote, the Coalition is down a point to 33%, Labor is up one to 37%, the Greens are up one to 11% and One Nation are down one to 7%. Malcolm Turnbull’s lead on the forced response preferred prime minister question is 53-47, down from 54-46. The poll was conducted on Thursday, the evening before Barnaby Joyce’s resignation: it found 57% thought he should indeed resign, against 32% who thought he should remain. A question on who should be Nationals leader had Joyce on 23%, Bridget McKenzie on 15%, Michael McCormack on 11%, Darren Chester on 6% and “don’t know” a formidable 40%.
UPDATE: As noted in comments, the Coalition have done well to make it to 54-46 on ReachTEL’s respondent-allocated two-party preferred result. If 2016 election preference flows are applied, the result is around 55.5-44.5.
Greensborough Growler says:
Tuesday, February 27, 2018 at 6:48 pm
For those who saw today.
Oh….bring back Jed Bartlett!!!!
sprocket_ says:
“Tuesday, February 27, 2018 at 7:17 pm
C@t
ABC7.30 has been nosediving for some years with Liberal Leigh in the chair, and a cohort of YoungLibs infesting the production side of the house. And the Tory Andrew Probyn is dyed in the same cloth as the DLP tragic Chirs Uhlmann.
Maybe Laura Tingle will move them back to the centre?”
Seriously!!! They are Tories
‘Player One says:
Tuesday, February 27, 2018 at 7:03 pm
Boerwar @ #1718 Tuesday, February 27th, 2018 – 6:36 pm
Without any agriculture? Good luck with that!’
As noted above, it is entirely within current technologies for H. sapiens to survive. Of course traditional agriculture would largely but not completely disappear. Goats are likely to continue to do well. They live everywhere from the icy wastes, through the hottest deserts to the most humid sweltering lowland tropics in the Philippines. Their guts are pre-progammed to turn almost any plant fibre into food. There are many species plants that will survive a five degrees plus world. There are many species of rodents and invertebrates which could be harnessed to food production.
Integrating fish protein production with indoor plant production already happens and has huge untapped potential.
Food would be grown in climate controlled dark/cool houses. If you want massive bulk, most of it would probably be in the form of non-vascular plants – GMOed to ensure that the range of dietary requirements are all present.
Of course more energy would be needed to provide shade and cooling but humans have thoughtfully put together renewable technologies that will generate almost endless cheap energy.
IMO you appear to be confusing the probability of the loss of the majority of H. sapiens with the probability of the loss of all of H. sapiens.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=aerial+images+of+dutch+glass+houses&client=firefox-b&dcr=0&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=c4nA2ZJy8KLQgM%253A%252Cj1qpma1CtbE_MM%252C_&usg=__slO4hlwh0MZl_5j4kx6VGumRvzg%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVv86B1MXZAhUW6LwKHeQAC1cQ9QEIMTAE#imgrc=c4nA2ZJy8KLQgM:
LU not logged in @ #1746 Tuesday, February 27th, 2018 – 7:20 pm
About the only thing that will thrive is fungi …
http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm
Boerwar
Bearing in mind the integration of the Maori and ‘invaders’ in NZ this was only a matter of ‘when’.
It actually happening ‘now’ is not the result of some particular event in NZ but just a political party having a ‘clean out’ of their parliamentary ranks after being defeated in a general election.
The date it happened is only ‘meaningful’ and/or ‘useful’ if the Kiwi version of Trivial Pursuit gains a question on it.
Shorten and Adani is the scoop
http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2134815/us-man-cut-woman-he-met-online-and-left-her-body-parts-scattered
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-27/new-zealand-pm-jacinda-ardern-not-fazed-by-60-min-interview/9488296?pfmredir=sm&sf183095202=1
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-27/barnaby-joyce-doesnt-rule-out-political-comeback/9488064?pfmredir=sm&sf183088115=1&smid=Page:%20ABC%20News-Facebook_Organic&WT.tsrc=Facebook_Organic
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-27/victoria-police-assistant-commissioner-brett-guerin-quits-force/9487658?pfmredir=sm&sf183081975=1
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-27/dance-musicians-sharing-degrading-photos-of-women-on-facebook/9469942?pfmredir=sm&sf183076227=1
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-27/chained-women-jewish-wives-hostage-in-abusive-marriages/9464038?pfmredir=sm&sf183065954=1
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-27/should-deputy-pms-previous-comments-about-gays-be-forgiven/9486684?pfmredir=sm&sf183065114=1
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/uni-responses/9477920?smid=Page:%20ABC%20News-Facebook_Organic&WT.tsrc=Facebook_Organic&sf183015423=1
We have a male problem
Geoff Cousins accompanied Bill Shorten to NQ to ‘firm up a position on Adani’.
Dio
Almost the best fun in the National Gallery is to go to the Indigenous galleries. It is not just the superb barks but contemporary Indigenous art pieces which are vibrant, witty, searing, entertaining, thoughtful, insightful, rude, confronting and zany.
CTaR1
Good point. I was a bit more fixated on our situation by way of contrast.
Liberal Leigh is out of her depth
Sales and Cousins, darlings of the Coalition and the Greens, doing a hatchet job on Shorten just before the Batman by-election.
Quel surprise.
Cousins appears to be a stalking horse for Shorten to announce the boning of Adani
BW, if it is a hatchet job, it is the most pathetic effort possible. I’m going stalking horse
briefly @ #1751 Tuesday, February 27th, 2018 – 7:28 pm
The best fake President ever!
Me too sprocket. I thought it was good for Shorten.
geoffrey @ #1731 Tuesday, February 27th, 2018 – 2:59 pm
Only one possible solution;
Elect Labor!!!!! 🙂
the statement from shorten’s office was interesting.
The first pert was Shorten was deeply sceptical of the mine progressing because of economic and environmental issues.
The end bit was labor is not in the business of tearing up contracts.
So, the pressure is now on the Coalition to get this deal over the line before the next election!
Boerwar + CTar1
To give you an idea of how Meh having the two Maori leaders is in NZ this is the first article on it in the NZ Herald. Not even near the top of the page either !! As you say Boerwar it’s the compare and contrast.
.
Game on: Simon Bridges brings out mongrel in Jacinda Ardern
27 Feb, 2018 3:05pm He may be Oxford educated but it was pure Te Atatu, writes Audrey Young.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12002970
Donald Trump Wants to Make It Easier to Start a Nuclear War. This Should Petrify Us.
SHE DID TRY and warn us.
“Imagine, if you dare … imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis,” Hillary Clinton said in her speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2016, referring to her then-Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
Yet four months later, in November 2016, almost 63 million of her fellow Americans voted to put the short-tempered, thin-skinned former reality TV star in charge of their country’s 6,800 nuclear warheads. Never forget: As president of the nuclear-armed United States, Trump — Trump! — has the power to destroy humanity many times over, while rendering the planet uninhabitable in the process.
If that wasn’t terrifying enough, last week, less than 72 hours after the State of the Union speech, in which Trump ramped up his war of words with North Korea, his administration announced that it wanted to make it much easier for the president to start a nuclear holocaust.
You might have missed that rather important piece of news. Last Friday, while cable news channels rolled on the Nunes memo, the Pentagon published the latest Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR, which includes two pretty alarming new components.
First, while Barack Obama’s 2010 NPR for the first time ruled out a nuclear attack against non-nuclear weapon states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, Trump’s NPR goes in the opposite direction and suggests that the U.S. could employ nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances” to defend the “vital interests” of the United States and its allies. The document states:
Extreme circumstances could include significant non-nuclear strategic attacks. Significant non-nuclear strategic attacks include, but are not limited to, attacks on the U.S., allied, or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.
Got that? Trump wants to be able to retaliate against a non-nuclear and perhaps even non-military attack on U.S. infrastructure — say, a cyberattack on the power grid? — with a nuclear strike that could kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions. To call such a move disproportionate would be a severe understatement.
Second, the new NPR calls for the development of a new generation of so-called low-yield nuclear weapons. These smaller nukes, the document suggests, would be tactical, not strategic; deployed to the battlefield, rather than dropped on a city. The problem with this argument is that the atomic bombs used against Hiroshima (200,000 dead) and Nagasaki (70,000 dead) could also be considered low-yield nuclear weapons, in terms of their explosive capacity.
There is also the clear lowering of the threshold for nuclear weapons use: It becomes easier to justify the launch of a small nuclear weapon on the basis of a supposedly lower explosive force. Yet “a nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon,” as Ronald Reagan’s former Secretary of State George Shultz testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee the day before the release of Trump’s NPR. “One of the alarming things to me is this notion that we can have something called a small nuclear weapon … and that somehow that’s usable,” Shultz added. “Your mind goes to the idea that, yes, nuclear weapons become usable. And then we’re really in trouble, because a big nuclear exchange can wipe out the world.”
It would be a worrying development if any president of the United States announced, with little debate or discussion, a plan both to build more tactical nuclear weapons and use them in response to non-nuclear attacks; a nuclear strategy that makes the use of nukes more, not less, likely. But when that president is Donald J. Trump, it should be deemed a national, if not a global, emergency.
Lest we forget, this is a president who, during his election campaign, displayed complete ignorance about the “nuclear triad”; called for an “unpredictable” nuclear weapons policy, while refusing to rule out using nukes against the Islamic State or even in Europe (because “it is a big place”); and asked a foreign policy adviser three times, during a single hourlong briefing, “Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?” This is a commander-in-chief, who since coming to office a year ago, has demanded a tenfold increase in the number of U.S. nuclear weapons; casually threatened North Korea “with fire and fury like the world has never seen”; and began 2018 by bragging on Twitter about his “much bigger & more powerful” nuclear button.
“Giving Trump new nukes AND new ways to use them is like giving matches and gasoline to Curious George,” wrote nuclear weapons expert Tom Collina of the Ploughshares Fund on CNN’s website last Friday. “It will not end well.” Or as one retired senior Army officer told the American Conservative, the NPR provides Trump with “a kind of gateway drug for nuclear war.”
Indeed. And even prior to the publication of this hawkish nuclear strategy document, a Washington Post-ABC News poll in mid-January revealed that 60 percent of Americans did not trust Trump to responsibly handle his “authority to order nuclear attacks on other countries,” while 52 percent of them were “very” or “somewhat” concerned the president “might launch a nuclear attack without justification.”
Remember: The courts may be able to strike down his executive orders as unconstitutional, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller may be able to indict him over collusion or obstruction of justice, but there are no checks or balances on the president’s authority to wage nuclear war. None. Zero. To quote Bruce Blair, a former nuclear missile launch officer and research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University: “We all need to confront the fact that [the U.S. political system] gives one person the God-like power to end the world.”
The questions, therefore, that matter far more than any other in 2018: Does the narcissist-in-chief plan on using this “God-like power?” Will an impulsive and aggressive Trump get us all killed by launching a nuclear war? Everything else is noise.
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/08/donald-trump-nuclear-war/
Cousins is a Greens.
The Greens attack Labor at over four times the rate of their attacks on the Liberals and the Nationals.
When the Greens can tear themselves into being critical of the Liberals, 90% of the time they ALSO wack Labor while they are at it. In other words the Greens believe that it is Labor and not the Coalition that must be destroyed.
It has taken them a quarter of a century and the Greens continually gift government to the Reef killers because the silly bastards believe that eventually they will either change Labor or destroy it.
Cousins is one of the largest donors to the Greens.
Sales has din dins with the Empty Leather Jacket and Lucy on the Ground with Diamonds.
This was a hatchet job by Sales and Cousins, the Coalition and the Greens just in time for the Batman by-election.
The Coalition and the Greens in bed together, again.
poroti
Thanks. I just wish Australia could grow up and be a bit more mature than New Zealand.
Donald Trump’s nukes strategy could see US ‘blundering into nuclear war with Russia’, critics fear
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-14/donald-trump-draft-nuclear-strategy-russia/9327620
GG, and all cousins wants is for the ALP to add that on current evidence ditching Adani won’t require ripping up contracts.
There was also the bit with Shorten doing his union background. Do the CMFEU really want to cost Shorten?
The US always blunders into its wars, blunders during its wars, and then fucks up its war exits.
USA = SNAFU.
North Korea and Donald Trump may be a recipe for accidental nuclear war — here’s how it could happen
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-miscalculation-preemptive-strike-trump-2018-1?r=US&IR=T
Nuclear war became more likely this week – here’s why
The Trump administration’s nuclear policy review loosens constraints on the use of nuclear weapons. We should all be worried
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/13/nuclear-policy-review-war-risk
Q
All Cousins wants is to do is to destroy the Labor Party.
All other matters are details of timing and method.
If it is not Adani it will be some other wedge.
The net result? The ALP is weakened, the Coalition is in power, the Greens go powerless for another quarter of century, and our environment is going down the tubes.
I have it on good advice from my cat that the “football” they let Trump play with is a fake.
Foreign nations have issued dire warnings in response. China’s Ministry of National Defense in January urged the Trump government to abandon a “Cold War” mind-set, and view matters more “rationally and objectively.” Russian President Vladimir Putin in December accused the U.S. of violating a landmark Cold War–era nuclear arms deal and carrying out an aggressive military policy that “seriously affects security in Europe and in the whole world.” Both China and Russia are upgrading their nuclear weapons. Other nuclear powers, such as North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel, continue to build new systems.
Rather than dissuading such efforts, arms-control experts from both political parties say, Trump’s moves will accelerate them. A new nuclear-arms race would not be limited to two superpowers seeking strategic balance in a Cold War but would include many nations, including foes in regions where hot wars are a regular occurrence.
http://time.com/5128394/donald-trump-nuclear-poker/
Question @ #1774 Tuesday, February 27th, 2018 – 8:03 pm
It’s the Goldilocks sceanrio.
Not too Greeny. Not too Ginary. Just about right!
“So, the pressure is now on the Coalition to get this deal [Adani] over the line before the next election!”
Complete with poison pills no doubt.
Question
Given how ruthless inter union rivalry and enmity can be I hope bloody not but nor would I be surprised.
Cameron
Xibot are you? Russbot, maybe?
There is nothing that the US has done that violates the last big nuclear arms deal.
What we DO know is that the peace loving Putin is a murderous imperialist who kills the truth with a ruthlessness not seen since Stalin and Beria.
He destroyed the Chechen capital and all who lingered in it with a barbarity not seen since the Soviet victory in Berlin.
He simply grabbed the Crimea.
He is underpinning a desolate and desolating civil war in the eastern Ukraine.
He is polishing his CV with the routine gassing of women and kids in Syria.
What we DO know is that China currently occupies a sovereign nation (Tibet), has invaded and militarized contested land and sea belonging to half a dozen different nations and routinely abuses its economic power by blackmailing small states.
No wonder a US carrier group is being welcomed with open arms by the Vietnamese as we post.
The Kiwi national sport/religion is Rugby, at which the Maori excel. I’m sure that has played an important part in reconciliation.
GG, it will be interesting to see what happens. I am fairly sure Shorten is positioning to ditch Adani (with the contractual caveat).
VP
You left out the bit about the woolly things.
The danger with the ABC Adani story is that Shorten will be now be marked as a liar after his recent visit to Queensland and his failure to tell Queenslanders of his ” plan. ”
Could turn marginal Queensland seats where Shorten has been campaigning right against him and labor. Cannot be trusted etc etc.
All Adani has to do now is blame Shorten for any holdup, any failure to get funding etc etc.
A big get out of jail card for Adani.
No matter what those down south think plenty of regional Queenslanders are putting their hopes in Adani. Could play out badly for labor in those must win seats.
I am not as optimistic as some here appear to be.
Whatever the outcome it appeas to me to be a huge dog act by Fousins.
Anyway, time will tell.
Cheers.
Could someone please tell me what Cousins did and what Shorten said?
Thank you. 🙂
Btw, I’m sure Bill Shorten was well aware of who Geoff Cousins was.
Doyley
‘Whatever the outcome it appeas to me to be a huge dog act by Fousins’
Yep. Classic Greens stuff.
Did Cousins or Sales bother to mention Liberal and Nationals NEW subsidies for coal exports, their constant spruiking of coal power stations and their well-known desire to tip $1 billion of NAF monies into coal mining.
No fucking way. This was a Sales/Cousins hatchet job on Labor.
By their actions the Greens are making it perfectly clear that they prefer the Coalition to be in power in order to tip $1 billion into Adani.
I know a few places Queenslanders can put their hopes for Adani.
Vogon Poet says:
It is a small country so proximity was always assured, settlers came with different intent and the “natives” were well versed in organised warfare in guerrilla warfare warfare friendly landscape, got themselves well armed early on. So getting to know and being nice to the ‘neighbours’ was a bit more common, willingly or otherwise .
Also lots of Scots settler who would have been very happy to find someone else who thought the poms were a bunch of bastards 🙂
p
‘Also lots of Scots settler who would have been very happy to find someone else who thought the poms were a bunch of bastards ‘
LOL
Cat,
It is either a cunning plan by Shorten or else it is a huge dog act by Cousins to reveal private discussions.
Anyway, we shall see tomorrow when Shorten and labor replies.
More of a feel then.
Cheers and a good night to all.
Doyley,
It is either a cunning plan by Shorten or else it is a huge dog act by Cousins to reveal private discussions.
What is? I’m sorry but I’ve been internet gaming with my son until now.
Lizzie
Within his department ‘The Pez’ insists on being referred to as ‘Mister Secretary Pezzullo’ …
A real ‘whipper snipper’!
mikehilliard,
That may well be the case re Adani and Queenslanders but unless you live there you would not realise how much hope a lot of Queenslanders are putting into the mine going ahead.
I am very uneasy as to how this will play out in regional Queensland.
Rightly or wrongly people have been relying on the mine and there is a big danger Shorten will be painted as a liar and will get the full blame when Adani goes arse up.
Anyway, time will tell.
Cheers.
Question @ #1786 Tuesday, February 27th, 2018 – 8:16 pm
There was also the bit about the deal transferring jobs from the Hunter to Central Queensland for no overall nett gain. What will investors in the Hunter have to say about sovereign risk in that situation.
Adani is the frontispiece for a Gina boondoggle!
Boerwar
Only half joking. My lot came from Nova Scotia and arrived as Gaelic speakers to start a new settlement . Dare say the townsfolk had much in common with the local Maori when it came to “So what do you think of the English ?” 😆 . The number of mixed marriages from earliest days suggest both communities got on rather well !
According to ABC news it was a SECRET meeting that Shorten held with Cousins.