As reported by The Guardian, the latest fortnightly poll from Essential Research shifts in favour of the Coalition, who now trail Labor 52-48 compared with 54-46 in the last poll. While this fits the narrative of Labor taking a hit from dividend imputation better than Newspoll, Essential’s question on the subject produces a better result for Labor than Newspoll’s, with 32% supportive and 30% opposed (compared with 33% and 50% from Newspoll). Primary votes and full report to follow later.
UPDATE: Full report here. As with two-party, the Coalition is up two on the primary vote, to 38%, and Labor down two, to 36%, with the Greens steady on 9% and One Nation steady on 8%.
I believe the mystery of Newspoll’s and Essential’s different numbers on dividend imputation is solved: Essential’s question was preceded by another on how many people were beneficiaries of the existing policy (16% received a tax deduction, 10% a cash payment), which explained how the existing policy works and how much it costs. This is unfortunate in my view, because it put respondents on a different footing from the general population. Some of the “statements about imputation credits” that respondents were invited to agree or disagree with also seem a bit leading (“paying people money to compensate for tax they haven’t paid does not make sense”), although in this case it doesn’t affect the responses to the more important question of support or opposition to the policy, as it came later in the survey.
The poll also canvasses opinion on what other tax policies respondents might support or oppose, and as usual it finds that the public heavily favours a more redistributive approach (class war and the politics of envy, if you will). Nonetheless, 40% favour cutting the company tax rate to 25%, with 30% opposed. Twenty-six per cent trust Labor more to manage a fair tax system, 28% the Coalition, and 31% no difference. Only 7% reckon Australia’s gun laws too strict, 25% think them too weak, and 62% say they are about right. A series of questions on Facebook finds 79% agreeing it should be more regulated, with 12% disagreeing, but 45% finding Facebook “generally a force for good”, with 37% disagreeing.
bemused @ #1496 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 10:12 am
Have you ever seen official statistics for accidents and fatalities on Vietnamese roads?
No and you won’t!!!
It’s not good and with improved roads and faster speeds I can see it getting worse. 🙁
bemused @ #1496 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 1:12 pm
It is bizarre how we change in other lands.
Now as typical safety conscious Aussie parents we would no more have driven without the kids secure in seat belts than east can toads for dinner.
However when travelling in India we rode five to a mini motor bike rickshaw Me ex, eldest son squeezed on the seat, 17 year old skinny daughter on dad’s lap and the youngest perched precariously over the gear stick.
The scariest trip was a three hour intercity taxi ride with a clinically blind taxi driver!!!!!!
Zoomster
Again that is thinking as it is not as it could be.
Once you start changing work and school hours when the parents are working changes too.
As I said at the start of this discussion its not total flexibility. At the moment we have too much the human fits into the economic model a legacy of the first industrial revolution.
zoomster
I am talking practical change not change for change sake. However I get arguments as if I have suggested a black and white not nuanced approach.
My suggestion from the start has had a negotiation position. Just like Labor did under Hawke and Keating.
I don’t think negotiation due to evidence of what is practical is a barrier to looking at more flexible working hours. Just don’t confuse the word flexible as the code of the right to reduce wages.
The right did that in the Hawke Keating era and now flexibility means low wages no security in your job. Highlighted by the “gig” economy.
Unions and Labor need to take the word flexibility back. Penalty rates are part of the cost of flexibility. So is full time workers. Otherwise you get the flexible casual low paid workers so beloved by the neo liberals.
Just outside my window, here in the balmy mid north coast of NSW, sits what must be the happiest little butcherbird in the state. He is chirruping away with great gusto. His song is so positive and bright that it puts a smile on my face whenever I hear it (which today is often).
Wonderful little creatures are butcherbirds (except, obviously, if you are a moth or a grasshopper).
zoomster @ #1497 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 1:14 pm
Zoomster
I am inclined to think that this rather old fashioned 9-3 school system has had its day and needs to be phased out. It was great for the era of stay at home mums when kids walked home and were expected to do chores at night- milk cows, chop wood etc.
Now we have a 8-6 lifestyle with few parent available for the 3 PM pick up. Moreover we have an epidemic of obesity and reduced social interaction.
It seems to me time for governments to rethink the 3-6 period and integrate this more effectively into the school curriculum. What I am thinking is that the many after school activities are better organised and in a sense made a more formal part of the curriculum, but held in that post 3 PM period.
The most obvious one is school sports, now sadly mostly faded but potentially rejuvenated by formally holding sports practices and games after school. While participation would not be mandatory it would be strongly encouraged and provide a substitute for the expensive after school programs.
School music is already mostly held after hours as those of us who have taken kids to orchestra, band or choir practices well know. By making it semi compulsory to join a band or choir it would enrich kids lives.
Art, woodwork and drama classes after school would make sense too. Already many schools rent out halls for karate or ballet but I see no reason why such classes could not be better integrated with the school curriculum.
Obviously too properly organised remedial classes or extension activities could be usefully held after school.
Now obviously paying for such programs is the issue. Now some of it is ALREADY covered eg school bands, choirs, some sports practice and often the drama clubs. Parents currently paying for out of hours care could probably contribute something, with some programs such as sport being funded via existing health promotion or sports promotion budgets.
Myanmar has been doing this for a long time, young kids in the mornings, older ones in the afternoons, same buildings.
So you get the traffic problems with the parent drops 4 times a day!!
It can be crazy in Yangon at these times!!! 🙂
You mean even crazier than Yangon normally is?
But Yangon used to be crazy in a good way.
guytaur says:
Thursday, March 29, 2018 at 1:58 pm
Don
Then have a smaller school closer or the parents deliver the kids to school.
I can’t believe that anyone could be so stupid.
It is not economic to have a fully functioning high school in such an area. It is not going to happen.
And you are proposing the alternative that the parents do a total trip of 280 km per day to take their kids to and from school?
What planet do you live on?
guytaur @ #1499 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 2:17 pm
WTF is this about? It makes no sense.
Vogon Poet @ #1417 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 9:36 am
Nah. Individual cells uniting was the big mistake.
If you think Asian roads are dangerous check out Africa. Deaths per 100,000 vehicles, Australia 7 ,Cambodia 107 , Guinea 9462 !!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
Dan Gulberry @ #1509 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 1:33 pm
Much too advanced
It was the nitrogen and carbon combining to form proteins and DNA/RNA that caused the problem
Money saving exercise by the Fibs?
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/outage-locks-dhs-workers-out-of-child-care-system-487901
Bemused
It made sense in the past. Remember the time before privatisation became de riguer. The question was how to get the kids to school. Not how much it would cost.
The problem is many people are stuck in that first industrial revolution thinking.
We won’t go back to kids having no education as in medieval times or even only the elites of the Victorian era as the revolution started.
We will however be able to have work and education and other human activities a lot less reliant on the clock.
The clock will still be important but it won’t be vital to every part of business. Thats the difference that is coming.
The right wing has commandeered this change with the low wage push with the “gig” economy. Taking us back to the Victorian era of employing people.
We need to fight this not by fighting the changes but fighting the way the neo liberals are imposing the way those changes are coming. As the unions say this is an old model of employment not a new one.
Zoidlord
This government is rool good at IT stuff.
guytaur @ #1513 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 2:41 pm
Again, your ignorance comes to the fore.
Buses have long been run by private companies except for mainly in inner suburbs.
If buses are run by private companies and Govts. want them to carry school kids for free, then the Govt is going to pay. It has been ever thus, going back at least 60 years and probably a lot longer.
Don
No you are saying that. You are trying to paint my suggestion as unworkable. This is due to you being stuck in thinking in Office Hours terms. You stagger the school times you stagger the bus times.
Only if that gets too costly (your argument not mine) do you go to other alternatives. Why does a High School have to be large. Thats a modern trend mainly due to the lack of teaching staff.
The fix for that is to return to having more teachers and smaller schools.
Of course that means we should follow the Finland model of all public schools and respecting teachers as a profession as custodians of the future of our society.
adrian @ #1506 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 10:33 am
What the F@#K!!!!!!
Are you talking about the good old days when Yangon was still the Capital?
When military intelligence and informers abounded.
When every aspect of a persons daily life in public was being observed.
When the army would have no reservation about deploying at the first sign of civil disobedience.
When I would walk along the street and no one would acknowledge or look at me for fear of being stopped and questioned afterwards.
Yep, the good old days! 🙁
Dtt
Apparently you missed my comments a week or two ago suggesting that a total ban on ALL abusiveness should be implemented and enforced here with appropriate penalties.
I don’t class myself as a ‘gentleman’or want to be one, whatever the term means these days, but neither am I vicious or an aspiring thug, as you seem to imply and my track record is evidence of that. So yes, I would say your knee jerk reaction was a little unfair.
Bemused
Private companies can be cooperatives not for profit companies. I was arguing about where the cost was too high in response to someone else. I did give the example NSW has used for decades of students having free bus passes for travel on all public and private mass commuter travel.
All this trying to make out I am crazy and out of touch because I dare to suggest the time of our society being ruled by First Industrial thinking is coming to a close.
Once again Liberals failed Tasmania:
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/tasmania-sues-basslink-for-122m-over-outage-487785
Why should providers be refunding for a failed IT project?
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/vocus-to-refund-nbn-customers-for-slow-speeds-487604
Bushfire
Yes the butcherbirds are beautiful but it’s not only moths and grasshoppers they feed them.
I used to have some small honeyeaters breeding around my garden but not since a grey butcherbird started showing up a few years ago.
Away from the coast we have the pied butcherbird whose call is outstanding but they like to do it at night. A year so ago I was camped out in the bush and one started calling his mate from a nearby tree about 2 am. every minute or so until just before dawn. It was like he was perched on my swag!
Barney in Go Dau @ #1517 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 2:47 pm
No. Obviously.
Chris Bowen
Verified account @Bowenchris
1m1 minute ago
Malcolm, we know you are going to run a scare campaign on Labor’s policies but please stop lying to war widows. It’s just wrong.
Ben Eltham
Verified account @beneltham
20s21 seconds ago
Josh Frydenberg: resign.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/29/australias-emissions-rise-again-in-2017-putting-paris-targets-in-doubt?CMP=share_btn_tw
guytaur @ #1519 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 2:51 pm
So what? They are what they are and all I am aware of a privately owned companies or businesses.
Not so much crazy, but unable to discern between what is and all your hypothetical possibilities.
Does anyone know when Ged Kearney’s first speech was/has been scheduled? Nothing uploaded at the APH website yet – I thought she gave it the other day but maybe not.
https://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Parliamentarian?MPID=LTU
citizen says:
Thursday, March 29, 2018 at 12:25 pm
Barnaby, you beat me to it (regarding China’s official time).
Also, I read somewhere that the Trans Siberian express train keeps Moscow time on board although it traverses multiple time zones. Maybe to minimise the effect of jet lag on the passengers? {smily emoticon}
You are correct been on Trans Siberian, you travel across 11 time zones and each station shows Moscow time, most disconcerting
Confessions @ #1527 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 3:05 pm
I look forward to her outlining her push to end the systematic torture of asylum seekers in our offshore internments.
Bemused
Nope. Just denial by those who can’t see that change brings change.
The whole system changes. It does not stay as it is.
Remember I started this by pointing out the change is coming and that the right is using it to push the lower wages through calling workers entrepreneurs.
I suggested staggered times for people going to work and school. I included flexible working days if and only if penalty rates were to go.
The condition the unions should insist on. Of course that means penalty rates are more likely to stay in for now from the union point of view. Long term over a century from now its a different story. Or maybe not.
Yet the how will we do sports is run out as the goblin as an argument against this. Its as bad as saying how will we go to church. Of course practical experience will change those things. I never said that it was going to happen literally tomorrow.
What I did say was the the “gig” economy was here and that the neo liberals are using the change to undo centuries of union work on workers rights.
I did say unions and Labor need to address this or we will end up back in medieval times at the behest of the 1%
Thats a trend we have seen already a trend we know is being used by neo liberal companies like Uber to undo those workers rights. Recognising flexibility is coming is essential for unions and Labor to keep workers rights. Otherwise we get the neo liberal economic model.
Yet you want to say I am out of touch as I see this trend coming and that we have to face this as a society. We have a choice to make.
We have to recognise that neo liberalism is the enemy of equality for everyone starting with income and influencing all human equality.
That also means recognising we have a legacy from the First Industrial Revolution of how we think.
Technology is changing this. We are going back to deliveries not car travel for goods to the home.
We are going back to the days when soon most will not travel more than 30 minutes for work.
We are not going back to the days when Australia had no megacities. We are not going back to the days when almost everyone had a job except for the women excluded from the workforce.
We are going to be a very different society and that includes what hours we work and where.
Things like Uber and Deliveroo will be great as long as we get the people categorised as employees like the UK has and not entrepreneurs.
We should be doing this across the professions. The system is changing and we have to change with it.
Unions should be the ones defining flexible work not right wing employers.
Rex:
But do you know when her speech is/was?
Rex Douglas @ #1529 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 2:18 pm
Yes. And where’s that philosopher guy from Q&A? He needs to come and explain about how if people drown because they chose to get on an unseaworthy vessel and try to enter Australia illegally that’s 100% on them and 0% on Australia. But if Australia places people in indefinite detention against their will and then subjects them to inhumane conditions, that’s 100% on Australia.
Australia needs to do the thing that keeps Australia’s hands clean. If people choose to kill themselves by doing risky things to get to Australia, that’s sad but it’s also none of Australia’s responsibility.
Confessions @ #1532 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 3:22 pm
I’d have told you if I knew.
Are you eager to hear what she says re torture of children and adults in our offshore interments ?
I’ve heard her address the Press Club before in her ACTU role and she is a good public speaker. I am assuming her first parliamentary speech will also be as interesting and engaging.
Confessions @ #1535 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 3:32 pm
I’m sure there’ll be many interested eyes and ears from Batman taking careful note of her speech with a mind on next years election.
a r @ #1533 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 3:25 pm
Is this satire?
a r @ #1533 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 3:25 pm
There’s no easy answer re our refugee policy, but our first concern should be to end the tortuous treatment of children and adults in the offshore internments.
adrian @ #1537 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 2:36 pm
No, deadly serious.
The satire part was when the politicians (successfully, I might add) tried to convince Australians that Australia is somehow responsible and accountable for what third-party, overseas, non-citizen people-smugglers do.
With that I agree.
ACOSS
@ACOSS
6h6 hours ago
People have been surviving on the same rate of Newstart since 1994. Then, rents were lower, house prices were $180,000 and pizza hut was the only pizza in town. Living costs have increased. Let’s #RaisetheRate and increase spending in local communities. #RaisetheRate #auspol
All these absolutes. You’re beginning to sound like briefly.
Things are rarely 100% or 0% in reality.
Apparently Warner has spoken publicly about the ball tampering.
Japan offers North Korea summit, Pyongyang discussing meetings with Japan: Asahi https://reut.rs/2E3X8Kl https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/979219161934172160/photo/1
Confessions @ #1542 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 3:51 pm
On Instagram.
Cameron Bancroft will be holding a press conference at 3.30pm from Perth.
Steve Smith after that.
Dave Warner in a couple of days.
So begins the rehabilitation.
Current #MDMA trials could lead to the drug moving from the fringes of mainstream psychiatry to being recognised as a mainstream treatment option.
https://theconversation.com/is-psychiatry-ready-for-medical-mdma-94105
C@t:
Personally I don’t think Warner should play for Australia again. I don’t think Smith should ever hold a leadership position in the Australian team again. I believe this will be the end of Bancroft’s international career playing for Australia, whether one thinks he deserves that or not.
Sky News Australia
Verified account @SkyNewsAust
36s36 seconds ago
EXCLUSIVE: A Sky News/ReachTEL poll has found @AustralianLabor leads @LiberalAus/@The_Nationals 54 per cent to 46 per cent two party preferred. @TurnbullMalcolm prevails over @billshortenmp as preferred Prime Minister, 52 per cent to 48 per cent.
Well 54-46
Sounds like LNP failure.
Confessions @ #1546 Thursday, March 29th, 2018 – 11:59 am
You’re a hard lady.
Murderers get more compassion than that once they serve their penalty!!!
A big thank you to Shadow Attorney General @markdreyfusQCMP for making it out of APH and down to Politics in the Pub last night!
A night of enthusiastic & engaging conversation around politics, National ICAC, and what proposed changes to charities legislation could mean for Aus https://twitter.com/TheAusInstitute/status/979223990244814848/video/1
Good to see Labor still promising an ICAC. No wonder they are in front in polling. Good sensible policies.