First up, BludgerTrack has proudly moved into the twenty-first century with a new fully interactive feature, offering hitherto hidden detail on state-level primary votes and the seat result probability estimates that are used to calculate the final result. Also included are the leadership rating trends, and there’s a facility for viewing raw opinion data throughout the current term.
The results as shown are updated to include the ReachTEL and Essential Research results, and the former has had a particularly big impact on voting intention, the primary numbers being even worse for the Coalition than the headline two-party result suggested. However, despite the 1% lurch to Labor on two-party preferred, there is little change to the seat projection, as the Coalition has had some stronger numbers lately from all-important Queensland, and Labor was largely punching into thin air with its gains in New South Wales and Victoria this week.
Then there’s the regular fortnightly result for Essential Research, which is notable in having both major parties at the low ebb of 35% on the primary vote, with the Coalition down one on a fortnight ago and Labor down two. This helps One Nation recover two points to 8%, with the Greens steady on 10%. Also unchanged is Labor’s two-party lead of 53-47.
Further questions relate mostly to the Barnaby Joyce situation, with a question conceived before his resignation on Friday finding 34% wanting him to leave parliament, 26% thinking he should resign as leader but stay in parliament, and only 19% thinking he should remain leader of the Nationals. Forty-four per cent expressed approval of “media reporting on politicians’ private affairs”, with 41% disapproving.
The poll also finds more respondents than not in favour not only of the ban on sex between ministers and their staff, but also on politicians having extra-marital sex altogether, and between managers and staff in the workplace. Twenty-two per cent even favoured a “ban on sex between workmates in general”, with 55% opposed. A rather particular question on health insurance policy finds 48% supporting removing the subsidy on private health insurance premiums and using the funds to include dental care in Medicare, with 32% opposed.
Seriously, Rex? You think Labor giving members more of a say are terrible reforms?
imacca @ #3150 Sunday, March 4th, 2018 – 10:31 am
I will take your advice – naffing off now to have a great day with granddaughters. 😀
bemused,
Have a good day. I will be going shortly to have lunch with friends made during the Your Rights at Work campaign.
The Gs lost lots and lots of votes and a commensurate number of seats in Tasmania and yet not a day passes before the Lying Tories return to their favourite devices – postulating on the Labor leadership and making false claims about Labor democracy.
There is a reason the anti-Labor plurality is 2:1 in Tasmania and that is because the Tories attack Labor on two flanks all the damned time. Labor has to fight the blue Tories as well as the green ones.
I think O’Connor and White made similar speeches. Congratulated Hodgeman but made points about the vast sums of money being spent on the campaign.
Good morning
Good go by Labor last night in Tassie. Pity the swing was not bigger. Doing the anti pokies policy worked. Being first was always going to be hard.
It did expose the failure of political donation reform.
As I said yesterday a major reason I am voting Labor this Federal election beside the fact my local member is Linda Burney is those policies of accountability Labor is going to bring in.
With all the media against Labor (worse coverage for the Greens of course) big time those reforms are necessary for voters to have a fair chance of making an informed decision.
I also hope Labor and the Greens combine to get us a Canada style law on truth in the media as well. Those laws did not stop Stephen Harper’s conservatives gaining government. So its not a partisan position to have.
It does seem to stop the worst excesses of the media we see here.
In the UK the calls for Leveson 2 are getting louder.
I noticed the panel on Insiders were blaming twitter for the bad tone of politics.
Social media and twitter especially is not a hotbed of partisan views. What is happening is the journalists like Coorey are claiming hyper partisanship so they can dismiss the fact that their views are challenged daily because they are not doing their jobs but instead defending the government all the time
I say that with Insiders being more critical of the government. However they still went on about the sex and almost brushed aside that the AWU Estimates questions Cameron was asking about was about abuse of power.
So to me the lessons are crystal clear it is essential Labor keeps to its promises on accountability when it gets in government. I am glad they have been outlined as part of the policy platform for going to the election and I think are going to be a big part along with tackling the inequality in our economy that will see Labor win the next election.
So, not so much America First but America Alone.
On campaign finance, it goes without saying that Labor has to try to match the budgets of the green Tories as well as the blue Tories. The green Tories have nothing to complain about. Their blue siblings, their coffers over-filled, are in power still.
This tells you where all the tax break money will go if Turnbull has his way with tax breaks for corporations:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/nobody-could-have-predicted
Labor in Tasmania tried imitating green Tory policies…and made no impression whatsoever on the Liberal vote. The G vote imploded, which is a highly desirable outcome. But the facts remain – the anti-Labor plurality in Tasmania is 2:1 in favour of the baddies.
Well what did they bloody expect? Of course that was going to happen, as sure as night follows day. It’s no good crying in their beer about it now after the very predictable damage has been done.
Perhaps if they had watched a few episodes of “Yes Minister”, the ones where Sir Humphrey tells the Minister he is being “very courageous” when what he really means is that the Minister’s new brain fart would be courting political disaster, they might have a better understanding of just how utterly stupid they have been.
Briefly
Political Donations. A Federal ICAC. PBO doing forecasts independent from Treasury. All good policies by Labor.
I want and fully expect Labor to keep these important promises. This is one area where you can shove your anti Green rhetoric where the sun don’t shine. This is about what Labor is promising and praising Labor for putting it forth as policy. I think it will do a lot to help Labor win.
Darn
Labor got a swing to it of 6%
It got it because of its anti pokies policy not despite it.
The only problem was not doing donation reform first.
Labor now has to show the vested interests its not going to change. Those vested interests will lose the battle long term. Labor will win. Its just how long it takes.
really. Is it hard to understand what a self absorbed buffoon Barnaby truly is?!
Samantha Maiden’s twitterfeed is worth a look
Hard to understand really why you would give an Interview that delivers these sort of headlines but cest la vie
Embedded
12:48 AM · Mar 4, 2018
63 Retweets
https://mobile.twitter.com/samanthamaiden
Barney in Go Dau @ #3134 Sunday, March 4th, 2018 – 6:17 am
Why the silence? 🙂
Rebecca White and Labor in Tasmania have started the process of gambling reform across Australia.
Congratulations to White and Labor for their stance.
An all too common occurrence now exists in Australia where vested minority interests will use their influence and money to maintain their position of dominance against the common good.
Unfortunately our politicians and their elected members will after contact with these vested interests succumb to the same disease. Just look at Xenophon and poker machines. Nothing.
The fight against unrestricted and socially destructive gambling will be a fight of massive proportion, needing incredibly strong disciplined advocates to make headway against money.
The outright lies and use of exaggeration and domesdaying by the vested interests is not to be underestimated. Neither is the ‘see nothing hear nothing’ attitude of many within the community.
When state governments took on the role of licensing control of gambling to eliminate the extensive illegal avenues of gambling which existed, never was it intended that self-interest would again be the only beneficiaries from the profits from gambling. What irony! We are back at that point.
The privatization of TABs and Lotteries was never envisaged when they were first introduced. Poker Machines were to benefit clubs and certainly not multinationals!
The havoc caused by gambling, none more so than poker machines is beyond the comprehension of most.
Families,both women and men, and particularly children suffer the devastation of the addiction associated with poker machines. Big numbers of workers toil all week only to find themselves divesting of their wages to computerised machines intent on taking their wages. Does anyone wonder why alcohol is so much cheaper in clubs and pubs whose main income is poker machines.
Childred starve, don’t attend school excursions, don’t join sporting organizations and often skip school as a consequence of poker machines.
Fraud is rampant. Employees in cash businesses are often prosecuted for stealing to feed poker machines and many more cases of fraud go unreported.
Poker machines contribute to violence in households. Much of which goes unreported due to shame.
Families lose houses to poker machines!
Tasmanian Labor have lost a battle but I’m confident they have done an incredibly good job of beginning the undoing of a manipulative and exploiting poker machine industry which is nothing more than a mordern day industry of illusion.
Steve777 @ #2984 Saturday, March 3rd, 2018 – 8:32 pm
I agree to only a limited extent.
Advertising, in the short term, isn’t effective at changing minds very far. It’s really only effective at persuading people about something they already accept. Regardless of the merits of pokies, the presence of pokies is well supported in the community – people’s minds are made up.
Conversely, regardless of the facts behind taxation of multinationals, there is a widespread perception that multinationals are not paying their fair share. An advertising campaign that starts a few weeks before election day won’t be effective because minds are made up.
IIRC there was a poll a few days ago on the pokies issue to the effect that the change in policy was not an important factor in voting decisions.
guytaur says:
Sunday, March 4, 2018 at 10:47 am
I regard Tories as public enemies, whether they are dressed in Blue Suits or Green T-shirts. They are opposed to the programs, the organs and the successes of working people.
Clinton used to talk about “triangulation” as a way of building the Democratic vote in the US. In Australia, we experience triangulation and it is aimed at defeating Labor. It works a lot of the time. The green Tories and the Blue Tories represent 2 points on the triangle. Labor has to outperform to surmount the combined values of 2-Tory geometry. It is a very hard ask. It is made more difficult by the idiots, suckers and other dupes who are defrauded by the Lying Tories who run the G party.
And I would think that Labor would continue to put pressure on the govt to ascertain all the taxpayer money wasted by Barnaby as well as policy decisions that were not implemented properly or with a conflict of interest.
Come on Labor, get real!!!
zoomster:
From what I’ve managed to gather from previous posts on the subject, it all – as usual – comes down to Bill Shorten. Had the leadership reforms not existed, it would have been easier for someone to challenge Shorten, and he would – in Rex-world – have been replaced by now.
Completely ignoring, of course, that Shorten is still leader in large part due to the support he commands within the Labor caucus (and, you know, being likely to win the next election in a landslide), and that if a majority of the Labor caucus did really want Shorten gone, he’d already be gone
Golly says:
Sunday, March 4, 2018 at 10:53 am
Rebecca White and Labor in Tasmania have started the process of gambling reform across Australia.
Congratulations to White and Labor for their stance.
Nah. Once again the gambling industries have won. The sacrificial lambs yesterday were Labor voters.
guytaur
‘Labor got a swing to it of 6%..’
Labor shifted votes from one side of the leftie column to the other. Whilst as a Labor person this should please me, as someone who wants Labor to actually be a party of government, able to implement its policies, it’s a bit of a hollow victory.
So we’re now trading Tasmania forests for the faint possibility that, maybe, in four year’s time, pokies might be restricted.
The two clear leadership failures in Australian politics ATM are Turnbull and Di Natale.
Yes, mainly from the Greens. In the meantime the Liberals gratefully pocketed the cash from the pokies industry and walked off with the election. Not exactly a resounding success l would say.
BiGD:
I am, a little. There are degrees of bastardry, and this seems a few notches lower than Barnarbby’s previous, er, personal troubles.
Patriots Rise As Eric Holder Argues That Trump Is Committing Treason
A consensus is building that if Trump hasn’t committed treason, he is dancing with a close relative of crimes against his own country. Holder did make a case for treason in his answer. America was cyber attacked by a foreign enemy to benefit Trump, and the President Of The United States has done nothing, but encourage and enable future attacks. If that is not treason, then at a minimum it is grounds for impeachment.
https://www.politicususa.com/2018/03/03/patriots-rise-eric-holder-argues-trump-committing-treason.html
Asha
Yes. Rudd brought in the rules without having them go through the processes; any Labor caucus dissatisfied with their leader can change them just as easily.
Chiming in late here but it is human nature to bet. If there were no pokies, those people who are driven to bet will simply find another outlet.
Hong Kong is a classic example. Horse racing is the only legal form of gambling (part from casinos, of course) and it is really big there.
Here, we have SO MANY possibles for gambling through all sorts of sport, as well as pokies and lotteries, the amount of money flowing through these industries is nothing short of phenomenal.
I’d say it is naive to think we can get rid of pokies and all problem gambling will be solved (when I was a kid organised crime played a big role in gambling because of the illegal bookmakers).
Better to restrict and highly regulate, so the chances of addiction with big losses is lessened and it keeps the industry in the ‘light’ and mostly out of illegal hands.
Briefly
You are unhinged with your rants on the Greens. They are progressives. The policies they keep presenting at elections are progressive policies not regressive ones.
You cherry pick a couple of areas where the Greens have voted with the LNP to make out they are conservative.
Yet you complain about the Greens pointing out the many more times Labor votes with the Liberals on policies.
I agree that the same same rhetoric of the Greens is wrong. So too are your anti Green diatribes about how they are Tories.
The Greens have their problems as a party but being Tories is not it.
Boerwar says:
Sunday, March 4, 2018 at 10:58 am
The two clear leadership failures in Australian politics ATM are Turnbull and Di Natale.
They wouldn’t see it that way. Turnbull is ruling for the plutocrats and the vandals. DiN is facilitating that. The bourgeoisie are doing what they most enjoy – plundering wherever they can.
Meanwhile in Batman, the well organised Labor campaign is killing it on the ground. I especially like the Richmond jersey themed t-shirts with Ged in the yellow slash on black.
Pegasus @ #3153 Sunday, March 4th, 2018 – 10:32 am
Big F. Deal!
briefly: “The Gs lost lots and lots of votes and a commensurate number of seats in Tasmania and yet not a day passes before the Lying Tories return to their favourite devices – postulating on the Labor leadership and making false claims about Labor democracy. There is a reason the anti-Labor plurality is 2:1 in Tasmania and that is because the Tories attack Labor on two flanks all the damned time. Labor has to fight the blue Tories as well as the green ones.”
I don’t normally bother replying to your bollocks, but – for the benefit of other readers – I will just make a very clear historical point.
From the day Doug Lowe was torn down as Labor Premier in 1981 through to the decision by the Giddings Government in 2012-13 to support the forestry agreement, the Labor and Liberals in Tasmania have mostly been in lockstep on the most important political issue in Tasmania: the protection of the environment. Both sides of politics supported the incredibly destructive Franklin Dam proposal and, more recently, the destruction of large forest areas for woodchipping.
The shared Lib-Lab view of the environment was totally antipathetic to Tasmania’s long-term interests. I’m not generally a Green supporter, nor a fan of Nick McKim, but, when he pointed out last night that the tourism, lifestyle and niche food production sectors which are contributing significantly to the current economic boom down here would not have been possible if the Greens, sometimes backed by Federal Labor, had not fought the Franklin Dam and the destructive elements of the forestry industry every inch of the way. While this was happening, the Tasmanian Labor Party -apart from the tiny Hobart inner-city faction which produced Duncan Kerr, Lisa Singh and now Bec White – were on the side of darkness all the way.
So, the fact today that, unlike South Australia, Tasmania still seems to have the slightest vestige of a chance of once again standing up economically on its own two feet some day, the people to thank for this are Bob Brown and Christine Milne and their colleagues. They certainly had to fight on two flanks: against the twin political parties represented the vested interests of the forestry industry (and, for that matter, the gambling industry as well).
I suppose it’s true that, if the environment had been completely trashed and the economic good things had never come, then business would have fled the island and a huge proportion of Tasmanians would now be living on welfare. Under such a scenario, Labor would probably be in government most of the time. And, to someone as biased as you (and many others who post on PB), maybe that’s more important than good government and a sound economy.
And that’s why someone like me who, on most issues, is to the right of almost every poster on this forum, still has a lot of respect for the Tasmanian Greens (but not, I should hasten to add, for the perpetually-adolescent campus commos who seem to dominate the party’s branches on the mainland).
sprocket_ @ #3181 Sunday, March 4th, 2018 – 11:03 am
They also reference the way Batman used to be called to help out Gotham City. A light in the sky with his image on it. 🙂
jenauthor @ #2963 Sunday, March 4th, 2018 – 11:00 am
It’s you and I against the rest, jen. 😉
antonbruckner11 says:
Sunday, March 4, 2018 at 9:52 am
It has obviously dawned on Trump that he has booked several members of his family into prison and his only hope of saving them is to hang on as President and pardon them
Doesn’t work that way.
To be pardoned, you have ipso facto admitted guilt.
Having escaped the frying pan, you jump into the fire – the State Judiciaries are waiting, salivating, to get their hands on you for State crimes to which you have just admitted guilt.
Get the handcuffs and orange jumpsuits ready.
Asha Leu @ #3170 Sunday, March 4th, 2018 – 6:57 am
There is little difference now in bringing on a leadership vote now than before the changes.
If 50% + 1 of the caucus do not support the leader a spill is initiated.
The difference now is how that spill is resolved and that it is possible for the current leader to survive if they have significant support amongst the Party membership.
guytaur says:
Sunday, March 4, 2018 at 11:02 am
Briefly
You are unhinged with your rants on the Greens. They are progressives.
There are two kinds of Tories – the ones in Blue and the ones in Green. I know. I’ve met them. They are kinfolk. They share one unifying thought – that Labor has to be defeated. I don’t care at all abut the purported “progressiveness” of the green Tories. This is an illusion. Essentially, it is a lie. Another Tory Lie. It is a lie the green Tories may tell themselves. It is certainly a lie they traffic to the electorate. They are frauds who exist to keep Labor from office.
Tasmania is the most corrupt state in Australia. Both major parties are up to their necks in corrupt dealings with the logging and gambling industries. How many former premiers of both major parties became lobbyists for those industries? Rebecca White deserves credit for challenging a powerful industry that has long had excessive influence over her party and the Liberals.
Federal Group and Woolworths won this battle but they will not win the war. There is a strong national movement against poker machines, and that movement was boosted by Rebecca White’s good policy. The movement won’t dissipate. There are promising signs that Woolworths’ reputation will be damaged by its connection with poker machines. Coles will be eager to emphasise that aspect of the Woolworths business model. There is scope to organise consumer boycotts of Woolworths and to present Coles as a simple alternative for shoppers who don’t want to add to the social harm of gambling addiction. The anti-pokies movement will be able to make Woolworths pay a heavy price for its toxic behaviour.
Contrary to the ahistorical assumption of certain posters, valuable social reforms that hurt powerful interests take time and effort to enact. Medibank and Medicare didn’t emerge seamlessly from one campaign launch followed immediately by an election win and a smooth path to implementation. The suffragettes didn’t launch one campaign and then drop the subject when they didn’t immediately succeed. Positive social change is not as simple as proposing the policy and expecting to win an election immediately. It is historically ignorant to conclude that just because the Tasmanian Libs won this election, that Tasmanian Labor was wrong to campaign on this policy at this time. There is no perfect time to take on powerful interests. You just have to do it now and keep doing it until you succeed.
meher baba says:
Sunday, March 4, 2018 at 11:05 am
I don’t normally bother replying to your bollocks
Nor I to yours….much obliged.
Is this the case in WA? I mean there aren’t pokies here so by this logic we’d be big gamblers in other streams. I have no idea what our rate of gambling is compared with pokies states.
Barney in Go Dau @ #2950 Sunday, March 4th, 2018 – 10:52 am
Sorry. I have no ‘interests’ in them as well as having no interest in them.
C@t, yes and the POW!, ZAP! And BAM! posters are pure comic book Batman.
It was interesting on Insiders that the panel, mostly led and prompted by Barrie Cassidy – who if nothing else is plugged into Melbourne politics – said that the Greens campaign was faltering.
The Darebin 18 were mentioned, and a grab of RDN saying the complaint had been examined and nothing untoward was found, a good achievement given the troika did not interview the 18.
A green Tory tries to insinuate themselves into the historical struggle for female suffrage. Oh, pull the other one. The Gs are Tories. They would have found a way to obstruct the reform and blame Labor at the same time.
zoomster @ #2936 Sunday, March 4th, 2018 – 10:32 am
No. Just ditch the union affiliation.
1 member = 1 vote.
Darn
Of course the Liberals did that. Of course the votes were swayed by the money pouring in and the advertising saturation.
Yet Labor only fell one seat short of winning. Thats a good not a bad result. Not the result I wanted. I wanted Labor to win. The advertising avalanche had its role but despite that Labor did well.
Now Labor is set up to fight the next term and in the meantime push on donation reform in a big way.
Eric Abetz looked like a goose arguing against it.
That two issues of a battle Labor is going to win on. Good on them.
As for the Greens their vote collapsed because they did not have an issue to fight on. Labor had all the focus and thats why the Greens vote collapsed.
Remember Labor in Tasmania knows its territory and the tactics team knows full well Tasmania’s political landscape. They made that decision after seeing the mining industry campaign against Labor’s resource tax. They made that decision having seen Labor change its position on Wilkies pokie reform after seeing the gambling industry lobby undo that policy.
Labor may have a few failings but saying they are ignoring evidence like that before they made a policy decision on pokies like that is to not understand what Labor Tasmania was doing. They made the decision on good grounds. Not bad ones blinded by reality.
Confessions says:
Sunday, March 4, 2018 at 11:13 am
Chiming in late here but it is human nature to bet. If there were no pokies, those people who are driven to bet will simply find another outlet.
Is this the case in WA? I mean there aren’t pokies here so by this logic we’d be big gamblers in other streams. I have no idea what our rate of gambling is compared with pokies states.
Online betting is big. The TAB is almost broke. The lotteries commission seems to do very well.
briefly
Thanks for proving you are unhinged about Greens progressive policies.
Rant and rave all you like. The Greens are a progressive party not a Tory party. One Nation is a Tory party.
This is just reality. No matter your fantasy
Rex Douglas @ #3195 Sunday, March 4th, 2018 – 7:17 am
Why?
You really do sound like Malcolm and the Liberal shrills!!
What have the Unions ever done for anyone?
Di Natale is probably the most ineffective leader the Greens have had.
The Party is torn by internal strife.
Indiscipline has become both endemic and public with open rebellions in NSW and Vic.
The polling is flatlining at best and is declining at Federal levels and most states and territories.
The Greens have lost more reps than they have gained under Di Natale.
Di Natale’s policy credibility is in tatters following the total failure of the Massive National Campaign to Change a Date.
Di Natale has lost several senators because he runs a Party with inadequate internal processes.
On top of that he is building a million dollar plus mansion in a leafy inner suburb by way of demonstrating his commitment to eradicating poverty…
But worst of all, under Di Natale, half the Reef died, wages are going backwards and access to public health, education, housing and transport are all under threat.
Di Natale is a panto politician: all show and no go.