The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll has Labor’s two-party lead at 54-46, up from 53-47 last time. Primary vote numbers will be with us later. Also featured are Essential’s monthly (I think) leadership ratings, and they find Malcolm Turnbull little changed at 41% approval (up two) and 41% disapproval (on one), but Bill Shorten improving to 37% approval (up four) and 44% disapproval (down two). Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister is 41-26, compared with 42-25 last time.
Other questions relate to Adani, on which 30% favour the Greens’ position, 26% favour the Coalition’s and 19% favour Labor’s, though it would be important to see the question wording on that one. Other findings related by The Guardian are that 42% support and 39% oppose company tax cuts; that regulating energy prices had 83% support, an “Accord-style partnership” 66% support and boosting Newstart 52% support; and that same-sex marriage is supported by 65% and opposed by 26%. Essential Research’s full report should be with us later in the day.
UPDATE: Full report here. Primary vote gains for the major parties at the expense of other/independent, with the Coalition up one to 36% and Labor up three to 38%, with the Greens down one to 9% and One Nation steady on 8%. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1025.
a r @ #1935 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 11:11 am
ar
I assume you do KNOW that Pompeo is fiercely anti Russian. You will just have to cut the Trump luuurrves Putin stuff.That was yesterday. Tillerson was the pro Russian one in the cabinet. (or to be more precise he was rational and thought that a good deal might be had with Russia over gas and oil).
Turnbull needs to step in and show some ethical leadereship here.
Ha. Funny man.
DrKayPatterson: The number of homeless Australian women over 55 increased by 31% between 2011 and 2016, and for men over 55 the increase was 26%, says the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We need to explore new strategies to combat this growing problem. buff.ly/2HxOB4I
https://twitter.com/drkaypatterson/status/974080370810466306
‘ratsak says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 12:20 pm
Turnbull needs to step in and show some ethical leadereship here.
Ha. Funny man.’
You got my point. It shows just how very far Turnbull has sunk into his personal moral turpitude that he is unwilling to publicly reprimand Dutton and Ciobo for their racist and sectarian shit stirring.
g
Yes, that is all very well but the NSW Liberals and Nationals are going to build a stadium for every homeless person.
BK says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 11:32 am
The more of Hayne that I see the more I like him!
He’s just destroying the basis of the use of percentage-based commissions to brokers.
_______________
If you are referring to share brokers, Bell Potter charges a flat $15 a trade, whether you buy $1000 worth or $100 000 worth of shares.
Cameron
May I politely say FARK OFF. I have always thought the Russians were almost certain to have done it. The guy had been convicted of high treason having sold out countrymen for money from the “enemy” . So naturally I thought the West were the real perpetrators. :sarc: Now off to your next HUAC assignment.
https://www.realestate.com.au/sold/property-apartment-nsw-rozelle-125683618
Followed that link don.
The poor petal. Sitting in a $255000 apartment with a disposable income of over $100000 (after the ALP’s proposed changes) contemplating the loss of what basically operates as a welfare payment??
FFS, these people need to get some perspective.
The more i see on this, the more i’m convinced that the ALP have already won the politics / optics of this. Don’t expect the polls to shift (except maybe a short term blip either way withing MOE) due to this at all.
If the ALP wins Batman, and the SA election this weekend will be mucho alarums ringing in Lib HQ.
And with the Truffles / Newspoll countdown happening……. 🙂
zoomster @ #1945 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 11:20 am
Zoomster
Cop out
If the cap fits wear it.
If you do not agree with me take the time to argue your case.
However you should at least have the intellectual honesty to read what i write and make a judgement about it. I think indeed I am sure, that any well reasoned argument will get my attention and I will modify my opinion if justified.
Fact is that that would take time and effort and you prefer to put it in the too hard basket.
You have two sons Zoomster and of military age. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Now I would hope that even in a hot war, Australia would be relatively safe, or at least Melbourne would be. However if we get involved in a land war in Iran or Russia then the need for troops including conscripts cannot be ruled out.
Zomster
War may at times be necessary, but only an idiot deliberately fans the flames of war, since the consequences of every conflict are unpredictable.
dtt,
Sounds like making your own rocket launcher to take to a pub fight!
You live in a very scary place!
meher baba @ #1943 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 12:13 pm
So that’s why you live there!?! 🙂
It shows just how very far Turnbull has sunk into his personal moral turpitude
Sunk?
Sunk implies a prior state of lower personal moral turpitude that there is no evidence to support having ever existed.
“The rates of land theft, rape, and murder of Rohingya were all far, far worse than what is happening to white farmers in South Africa.”
Dutton better hope that we don’t get a situation where a white sithefrican farmer and their family (who may have a valid legitimate fear for their safety in SA) decide to jump on their 55ft ketch, head for Perth, and claim refugee status. After all, that would be arrival by boat……………
The poor petal. Sitting in a $255000 apartment with a disposable income of over $100000 (after the ALP’s proposed changes) contemplating the loss of what basically operates as a welfare payment??
And you can bet your bippy she would be against Newstart being increased.
In a since deleted tweet, Mike Pompeo on 24 July 2016 pushed stolen Democratic emails and Wiki leaks. Pompeo was head of the House Intelligence Committee at the time. Three days later, Trump called on Russia, and “If you are listening” to get Clinton’s email. Pompeo is a climate denier, he has taken more money from the Koch brothers than anyone in Congress, supported keeping Guantanemo open, defended the CIA’s past use of torture, he is a bully, an islamophobe, a a homophobe and a Trump sycophant. So apart from all of that he is a great choice for SOS. https://amp.thedailybeast.com/mike-pompeos-disturbingly-consistent-friendships-with-anti-muslim-bigots?__twitter_impression=true https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/world/2017/11/30/16719690/mike-pompeo-tillerson-fired-haspel-cia-state-department?__twitter_impression=true
C@tmomma says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 11:59 am
guytaur @ #1925 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 11:53 am
Cat
If there is a nuclear war don’t worry we will be wiped out in the first strike. An advantage of living in and near Sydney. First Strike zone. All the capital cities are.
Nothing to worry about
Thank goodness! Imagine being left hanging around here with dtt saying, ‘I told you so!’
____________________
Wasn’t it Ava Gardner who said, while filming ‘On the Beach’ about a post nuclear war future,
‘On the Beach’ is a story about the end of the world, and Melbourne sure is the right place to film it!
ananavarro: So many Trump surrogate take-always from PA-18:
-Saccone, a terrible candidate
-Saccone = Establishment
-Saccone, not Trumpy enough
-Lamb ran like he was Republican
-Trump turned around 6% for Saccone
Really, there’s only 1 take-away for Republicans:
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Wasn’t it Ava Gardner who said, while filming ‘On the Beach’ about a post nuclear war future,
‘On the Beach’ is a story about the end of the world, and Melbourne sure is the right place to film it!
Not any more! One of the world’s most Liveable Cities now! 🙂
daretotread. @ #1949 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 11:20 am
What I know is that I haven’t heard anything whatsoever from Pompeo on the subject of Russia. I expect that to continue, and that if it changes then Pompeo won’t be in his new job for very long.
The main thing about Pompeo is that he’s a loyalist who will toe whatever line Trump tells him to. Like everyone else in this debacle, he only lasts as long as he’s able to stay that way.
Morrison braying in fear about Labor’s policy on my screen now
don
Yep, have watched “War Games’ several times, and noted how each major city in Australia gets blown out of existence nice and early.
From memory, only Madagascar didn’t get nuked.
The Putinographers seem to think that Russia has a civil government; that isin some way constituted and is responsible to its people in the same way as the democracies, or is even comparable to China, which at least is ruled by a civil organ.
Russia is run by a secretive military clique.
The authorities have less popular legitimacy than the Communist Party held during the Soviet era.
Didn’t Tony Abbott say ‘No, no, no, no, no” to the Rohingya?
“And you can bet your bippy she would be against Newstart being increased.”
Yup, probably completely oblivious to the concept that if you have a welfare system that supports people in decent fashion, then they are better able to find work AND there are fewer people out there who will get desperate enough to try and mug you or break into your house.
dtt
My sons basically started considering their options when Trump got elected.
We’re well under way with planning our post-Trumpian (used to be ‘post-lollipop’ because it was easier to pronounce than ‘apocalyptic’) existence.
meher baba @ #1940 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 11:13 am
Meher
Tassie is a good place to be in a nuclear winter. Now I am not one to believe all life will die. Sure it will be catastrophic but some will survive. They key is firstly to survive the initial blasts (Tassie should be safe there), then the fall out (Tassie again is well placed if not completely). The real danger lies in the nuclear winter effect and the loss of food crops. However hardy grasses will survive as will goats and other species. If people can make it through about three years by dint of stored foods and eating anything that moves (including the cockroaches and rats) then survival will be probable, albeit in a vastly changed world.
Cancers and mutations will of course be common but not 100%
Not quite right
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/21/nope-nope-nope-tony-abbott-says-australia-will-take-no-rohingya-refugees
zoomster @ #1969 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 11:37 am
Zoomster
Good for them – I am serious. However the conscription option would remain of great concern, well before we get to “lollipop” scenarios.
If you are referring to share brokers, Bell Potter charges a flat $15 a trade, whether you buy $1000 worth or $100 000 worth of shares.
______
Don
It is mortgage brokers and their relationship to banks that are currently under examination.
“The secretary of state is the chief diplomat responsible for guiding the foreign policy for the United States of America, and the face of America in the world — including the Muslim world. And soon, the man holding that job will be a former right-wing Tea Party congressman who once, among other Islamophobic statements and actions, accepted an award from a hate group labeled the “largest anti-Muslim group” in the country by both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In the aftermath of the firing of now-former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump wasted no time in naming CIA director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson’s replacement. But before his time at the CIA, Mike Pompeo was a no-name Tea Party congressman from Kansas who positioned himself as a right-wing uber-hawk, particularly in relation to foreign policy toward the Muslim world.
And, according to The Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University (where I serve as a senior fellow), Mike Pompeo once had the audacity to claim that all Muslims were “potentially complicit” in acts of terrorism collectively.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/mike-pompeo-said-all-muslims-are-potentially-complicit-terrorism-he-ncna856531
oz_f: People say the tabloid media has lost its power but all it took was two op-eds in The Daily Telegraph for everyone to start talking about white South Africans, leading to the immigration minister calling for a fast-tracked refugee visa.
Two op-eds. From Marcus and Devine.
Shellbell @ #1970 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 8:37 am
I think his full response was;
But they’re black!
And they’re Muslims!
🙁
Especially after Hodgman relaxes the gun laws. I mean, it will make hunting for your food easier won’t it & fending off other starving people. Can’t wait.
poroti,
may I repeat that you have been sprung as a disingenuous liar. Now you FARK off.
zoomster @ #1972 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 8:37 am
What, no lollipops?
AHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
BK says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 12:41 pm
If you are referring to share brokers, Bell Potter charges a flat $15 a trade, whether you buy $1000 worth or $100 000 worth of shares.
______
Don
It is mortgage brokers and their relationship to banks that are currently under examination.
__________________-
Thanks BK. Don’t know anything about those. We just went to the local building society to take out a mortgage for building our house, many years ago.
The Coalition has five issues here:
1. Fending off the racist sectarian nutters in the Party Room.
2. Fending off the racist sectarian nutters in PHON etc.
3. Fending off calls for less migration.
4. Fending off complaints that it systematically bastardizes human beings on Manus and Nauru.
5. Turnbull’s total inability to steer a moral course.
The classic triangulation solution?
(1) Offer succour to white christian south african farmers, bad mouth a black government while offering off the cuff anecdotes about rape and murder.
(2) Stir up racist hatred in relation to Sudanese migrants.
(3) Impose increasingly draconian conditions and regulations on migrants living in Australia.
People who think that Dutton is stupid need to do another hard think. The reason Dutton is truly bad for Australia is that he is a very smart political operator who has no ethics whatsoever.
Just to give you something to think about
And here in the US, Col. Lawrence Wilkinson, who was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff when Powell lied at the UN in 2003 to garner support for the criminal attack on Iraq, spoke to The Israel Lobby and American Policy 2018 conference ten days ago and said, speaking of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, that:
They’re both headed for war. Of that I’m convinced. They will use Iran’s allegedly existential (sic) to Israel presence in Syria which is becoming even more so from a military perspective every day, Hezbollah’s accumulation of some 150,000 missiles if we believe our intelligence agencies. The need to set Lebanon’s economy back yet again, that’s important. Look at what they’re deliberating right now with regard to the new very, very rich gas find in the Eastern Mediterranean with Israel claiming Section 9 and Lebanon claiming Section 9. Take that, Lebanon. We’re going to bomb you, then you’ll let us have it. And that will be their excuse.
Now Rex Tillerson is out as Secretary of State and the head of the CIA, the far more war minded Mike Pompeo slides naturally into the role. Musical chairs for the power elite. As Trump has said of Pompeo, “We are on the same wavelength.” Riding that same wavelength is Nikki Haley, a trio whose alliance bodes very poorly for Middle Eastern peace or for any rapprochement with Russia. The game turns deadlier as the Presidential Apprentice learns the rules and the empire prepares to shed more innocent blood in an unholy alliance with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other “team players.”
But this time the game won’t be, in the words of another CIA liar, “a slam dunk.” The opponents are ready this time. The game has changed. And in eastern Ukraine, the snow should be melting in the next 3-4 weeks. Play your hunch.
Edward Curtin, educated in the classics, philosophy, literature, theology, and sociology, Teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. http://edwardcurtin.com/
It was remarkably duplicitous of Aussie John Symonds to create a business based on caning the banks and then become their broker.
Barney
Some truths have to be faced.
Those who might disagree with me are all gormless fools who believe in unicorns and have the thinking capacity of a gnat.
Of course, I encourage their arguments anyway.
The more i see on this, the more i’m convinced that the ALP have already won the politics / optics of this. Don’t expect the polls to shift (except maybe a short term blip either way withing MOE) due to this at all.
Yeah that’s my argument. The examples doing the loudest whining are the best advertisements for why it should happen.
Bit like CEOs telling everyone that they shouldn’t get a pay rise, but company tax should be reduced. Everyone knows the bastards are on millions and will skim off even more in bonuses without a single job being created.
In the Howard years when he could piss billions against the wall to bribe the losers he could get away with sending even more to the winners he really represented.
Too many people aren’t getting anything for them to not notice the 1% are making out like bandits. These people aren’t going to be feeling sorry for people massively better off than them losing a benefit they will never have the chance to enjoy.
JohnWren1950: .@PeterDutton_MP’s asylum seeker priorities explained. #auspol pic.twitter.com/Gq80NWojmV
The near-death situation of the spy and his daughter shows the dirty under world of espionage. However, the West, in general, are/is? in no position to take any kind of moral high ground over this incident (and probably many other carried out by the Russians, North Koreans and others) when we had the Bond 007 thing to entertain us for decades – You know the gig, Bond as 007. He had a licence to eliminate all the Bad Guys – and these Bad Guys have included the Ruskies. I would think most governments have given authority to their secret services to eliminate opponents. The Israelis have been at it for some time…………………..
What is laughingly known as the Trump Administration is in a bit of a cleft stick.
On the one hand it wants North Korea to give up its WMD.
On the other hand it dearly wants to destroy Iran now that Iran has given up the development of its WMD.
zoomster @ #1636 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 7:46 am
I call BS. Who were these alleged people and what were their problems?
How peculiar! I was never aware of being friends on Facebook.
Oh how very school mistress of you! Commending me for improved behaviour. Can I have an Elephant Stamp please?
So some had a bit weep about me forming a compound word out of Green and dastard. Poor them. I am now spelling out both words in full and with the Greens latest behaviour over Labor’s perfectly reasonable tax change , they certainly are dastardly and deserve the title.
Anyway, thanks to you and GG and the rest of the gang for providing a perfect illustration of your bullying behaviour over the last 24 hours. Just don’t complain if I return fire.
Washington Post
“Britain is punishing Putin. America should join in.”
By Editorial Board March 14 at 7:34 PM
THE USE of a military-grade Russian nerve agent in an attack inside Britain shows that Western governments are failing to deter the regime of Vladimir Putin from increasingly audacious acts of aggression. The British government’s conclusion that it is “highly likely” that Russia carried out the attempted assassination of a former spy and his daughter follows by weeks a military assault, backed by artillery and tanks, by Russian irregulars on U.S. positions in Syria. That in turn follows Moscow’s attempts to interfere in multiple Western elections in recent months, and repeated incursions by Russian warplanes into Western airspace.
Mr. Putin keeps doubling down on his provocations — some of which are unprecedented, even by the standards of the Cold War — because he has concluded he will pay no significant price for them. Britain, which shied away from tough action after a previous Russian political assassination on its soil, on Wednesday announced a more robust response, including the expulsion of 23 suspected Russian spies. But it will take more than action in London to stop Mr. Putin. A concerted response by the Western alliance is needed.
It’s worth underlining the magnitude of the offense represented by the attack last week in the normally peaceful city of Salisbury. The chemical agent identified by British scientists, known as Novichok, was secretly developed by the Soviet Union beginning in the 1970s, in violation of Moscow’s subsequent treaty commitment to stop developing and producing chemical weapons. The agent is believed to be 10 times more powerful than other weaponized nerve agents, such as VX. That it would be employed in a civilian setting, endangering not just former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter but scores of other people, too, is not just a crime but also an act of state terrorism.
The distinctiveness of Novichok means that Mr. Putin must have calculated that Russia would be identified as the author of the attack. Perhaps he wanted it that way: He was head of Russia’s spy agency, the FSB, at the time that Mr. Skripal allegedly supplied information to Britain, and had publicly vowed revenge. Most likely, he was also encouraged by the relatively weak British response to the killing of another former spy, Alexander Litvinenko, in London in 2006. Eight months after that attack, Britain finally expelled four Russian diplomats; but a full inquest, which concluded Mr. Putin was probably responsible for the killing, was not completed for nine years.
Though the new British sanctions package is more forceful, it needs to be backed up by other Western governments, starting with the United States. All too characteristically, President Trump has equivocated about Russian responsibility for the Salisbury attack; and the administration has still not implemented sanctions mandated by Congress in response to past Russian offenses. Congressional leaders should insist that the sanctions go forward. It is imperative that the United States support its closest ally when it has been subject to such extraordinary aggression.
An adequate international response to Mr. Putin would push back against his ventures on all fronts: Syria, where the United Nations has found Russia complicit in war crimes; Ukraine, where Russian-backed forces continue to seek military advantage; cyberspace, where Russian hackers and bots remain ubiquitous. In the absence of such action, Mr. Putin’s ambitions, and his audacity, will only escalate further.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/britain-is-punishing-putin-america-should-join-in/2018/03/14/587f8fd2-26f1-11e8-bc72-077aa4dab9ef_story.html?utm_term=.e04dc4b3337d
zoomster @ #1988 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 8:53 am
You paint a very harsh reality!!!! 🙂
zoomster @ #1984 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 11:53 am
Zomster
You have nailed it. Fully agree. Did not know you believed in unicorns. No white Rhinos?
Cameron’s hurh!
War war, we want war,
Whe do we want it now.Now
Blowthe bugles, and the trumpets. The red coats are off the war.
The light brigade is ready.
w
Hurrah! Hurrah Its off to war we go
We are brave don’t you know
Lovey @ #1847 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 7:53 am
I implied nothing of the sort. You stated that if the stock market goes down, the ALP government gets nothing from this new policy. I correctly pointed out that share prices are utterly irrelevant to the new ALP policy as it is based on the dividends received by investors.
Of course asset value is of importance to investors, however if they’ve invested with a focus on generating income the share price(s) will not be as volatile as they would be had they invested for capital growth.
The stock market is not all reward. There’s risk involved as well. The dividends and/or capital growth is the reward. The potential loss of capital is the risk. If you don’t understand the risk/reward equation the stock market is perhaps the worst place to put your money, as it is ruthlessly efficient at separating fools from their money.