A ReachTEL poll for Sky News finds Labor maintaining its 54-46 lead from the last such poll a month ago. However, the primary votes are not quite as strong for Labor as last time, when Labor’s two-party lead was subdued by a strong flow of respondent-allocated preferences to the Coalition. This time the Coalition is up one on the primary vote to 34%, while both Labor and the Greens are down a point, to 36% and 10% respectively, and One Nation are steady on 7%.
The poll also finds 56% of respondents opposed to company tax cuts, with only 29% supportive, and only 26% thinking it likely the cuts will be passed on to workers, compared with 68% for unlikely. Not surprisingly, a question on whether Tony Abbott should return as Liberal leader after the next election finds little support, with 25% for yea and 64% for nay.
Together with the Newspoll and Essential Research, the ReachTEL results have been included in the lastest BludgerTrack update, which once again records essentially no change on voting intention, with ReachTEL’s strong result for Labor cancelling out a weak one from Essential Research. However, Labor is up two on the seat projection for Queensland, mostly because Galaxy’s 52-48 lead for the Coalition in that state in a Courier-Mail poll a month ago is no longer exerting its pull. Also included are the latest leadership ratings from Newspoll, which take a small bite out of Malcolm Turnbull’s net approval and preferred prime minister lead. We should have Newspoll’s quarterly state breakdowns next week, which will make the BludgerTrack state breakdowns a little more robust.
If you’re a Crikey subscriber, you can enjoy my piece today on how the recent halt to the rise of minor parties might play out in the Senate over the coming years. Below is a chart I knocked up to illustrate it, which I decided not to use. It combines federal and state election results, so that the reading at any point in time uses results from the most recent elections federally in each state, with each election weighted by its voting population.
There is no possible excuse, war crime pure & simple .. from the NYT ….
Abdul Fattah Abdul Nabi, a 19-year-old Palestinian, was fatally shot during Friday’s protests in the Gaza Strip.
‘He had no gun, no Molotov’: Gazans want probe after 15 die in protest against Israel
Abdul Fattah Abdul Nabi, 19, was shot by Israeli soldiers in the back of the head, his family says, as he was running away from the border fence with a tire. He was one of at least 15 people killed in the Gaza Strip during a protest on Friday, the bloodiest day in the 140-square-mile territory since the 2014 war between Israel and the militant group Hamas.
PtMD….
I have to say, your “solution” to conflict in the Mid-East is to see the population exterminated by inundation. To solve the Jewish problem, you’re also prepared to eliminate the Palestinian population. This is to wish for a holocaust by other means.
I’m sorry to repeat myself….but antisemitism is alive and lives in Australia too.
briefly @ #1188 Sunday, April 1st, 2018 – 11:12 am
Your response is pure ratbaggery.
You seem to have failed to see the point being made.
I think Jared Kushner can solve the Middle East crisis.
Vale Jocelyn Newman, former Howard government minister. Died this morning.
April Fools! 😀
Darn @ #1205 Sunday, April 1st, 2018 – 11:33 am
Mother of Campbell Newman and wife of the late Kevin Newman who was an MHR from Tasmania in the dark Howard era.
Darn @ #1205 Sunday, April 1st, 2018 – 11:33 am
80 years old. From Alzheimers disease.
….And…..once again bemused has shown that to object to antisemitism or to draw attention it is to invite criticism.
In attempting to impugn “briefly”, “bemused” has shown this morning, as they did yesterday in the company of “Clem”, that antisemitism is alive… and lives in Australia too.
lizzie says:
1 Tsar Bomba, whole region ‘sorted’ permanently.
bemused says:
Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 11:22 am
…”Yeah, with a 150mm shell from your tank. That’d show him!”…
.
His children will certainly understand why their father’s death was unavoidable consequence of defending the homeland.
C@t:
Jocelyn Newman was a moderate Liberal IIRC. The apple fell far from the tree with her son.
WWP
You do not think the PLA blowing up passenger planes is a crime against humanity? I do.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth hay.
Matthew (5:38-42). If you think the notion is bullshit.
Exodus 21:24. If you think it should be the foundation of current politics.
“WWP
You do not think the PLA blowing up passenger planes is a crime against humanity? I do.”
I think perhaps you are missing the ‘L’ in the PLA. It is a disgusting act of terrorism that I’m not going to defend. A crime against humanity is, from my point of view the crime of the powerful, not the powerless.
If Australia was taken from us by some kind of force, say a group from the Pacific Island people mostly suffering terribly from rising ocean levels, supported by a dominant Chinese sole superpower as Trump finishes his second term and the US republic’s fall is all but complete.
The invaders claim a millennia old link to Australia, blame Australia for deliberately refusing to help in the battle against climate change, in fact deliberately supporting coal even after renewables were already effectively cheaper, point out that the white English types who run Australia are cruel murderers who never did a damn thing to set the past right and didn’t really belong here.
In this invasion hypothetical invasion my kids are killed I lose my home, everything.
I probably wouldn’t be a terrorist who brings down or tries to bring down civilian airplanes, I’d like to think I wouldn’t be anyway. But, if you can, put yourself in that situation? Are you lining up to serve the new Australian government, no right to vote, not enough food unless you worked 18 hours a day as a kind of servant? You home a few pieces of wood and iron in a completely surrounded camp a few kilometres from beautiful streets and homes. Or would you see / feel some right / duty to resist?
If on the other hand I did (supported by some hypothetical Australian Liberation group) such a vile crime it would still be a very different thing in scale and in power to what those who came and took Australia and killed my kids did.
And you can try to see it from the invaders view, Australia was a problematic country resisting the desires of our new Chinese overlords, responsible for the destruction of their islands and way of life? You can just see the new Government’s propaganda efforts “we tried to give them the ACT, but then they threw boomerangs from the ACT so we went in there and took all the best land from it as well. ”
I just don’t see how the murdering invaders come off as the good guys, or at worst equal in a ‘pox on both your houses’ way but that is how good the Israel lobby is and they pretty much have won the propaganda debate. I’m just a bit of a rebel I’m not falling for that rubbish.
On the issue of Israel/Palestine, I am a heretic on the left.
Before I go on, my condemnation of violence and breaches of international law by all concerned is unqualified and I implore all parties involved to cease all acts of violence, immediately comply with all relevant international law and come to the negotiating table to peacefully resolve this situation.
I am completely uninterested in the politics of Israel/Palestine and cannot fathom why both the left and right in Australia have such a fixation on the issue. I also find the inability to discuss any matter related to Israel without cries of antisemitism to be tiresome.
Lest anyone think I am informed on the matter, for a while I knew an Israeli academic and he spent a couple of hours over a few months taking me through the history of the region and the current dispute, and I feel he did a good job of being as impartial as he could about it.
My conclusion: what a fucking mess.
Sadly, I can’t see the dispute being resolved any time soon.
Sceptic says:
Saw video of it. He was running away from the wall rolling/carrying a car tyre, no guns,no molotov cocktails. The cruel bastards waited until he was a few metres from the crowd and apparent safety before shooting him dead.
Confessions @ #1212 Sunday, April 1st, 2018 – 11:39 am
I don’t think her husband, former MP for Bass, Kevin Newman, was such a moderate though.
Sorry for all the typos but I need to go and sand some wood and varnish it before the long weekend is away.
My analogy isn’t by any way perfect, and I certainly see the Israelis believed they had a god given right to go in an murder and not spare the women and children (they had a documented history of God telling them to do specifically that so it isn’t like it is a new thing for them) that I don’t see the pacific islanders actually having. But to win a propaganda war you don’t have to have the right, you just have to ensure the audience that matters (in my scenario it would be the Chinese) is prepared to believe it, or at least let you keep going by pretending they believe it.
It is much more a study of power and might than rights, and I have that weird old fashioned notion that with great power comes great responsibility. But Trump and Israel are much more in the ‘with Great Power comes no f*cking responsibility at all’ mould, more an attitude of ‘we are going to leave the responsibility to 11 year old kids and shoot their brains out if they don’t submit.’
I’m not a big fan of that.
grimace
You summed it up beautiful.
Grimace
I keep out of the ME debate. If I was to engage I would say something like that.
I can remember Jocelyn Newman when she was minister responsible for social security.
Don’t recall thinking of her as moderate in those days.
But then again her successors have certainly ramped up the war on those who need welfare so by modern standards she might qualify as a moderate.
I am going to make a prediction.
In the Budget, be prepared to find out that a pork barrel-full of Infrastructure spending is going to roll towards SA. Not the sort Labor would approve of, of course. Maybe funding for the second Interconnector Marshall went on about.
It’s just that, according to this weekend’s AFR, in a story by Phil Coorey, Turnbull and Cormann have a new strategy to get the 39 votes they need in the Senate to be able to pass their $65 Billion Tax giveaway.
Target the 3 South Australian Senators that are holding out. The 2 from NXT and Tim Storer.
Nick Xenophon won’t be too far away from the negotiations either, and probably has already started same on behalf of his 2 remaining NXT Senators, seeing it, no doubt, as a way of shoehorning himself back into political relevance, in time for the next federal election.
Well yes, it is possible my perception of ideological standing of past Liberal MPs is skewed by the standards of today’s bunch, which make John Howard look moderate by comparison!
If you see my scenario in a book, just know now there will be no idea writing credits to PB 😛
briefly says:
Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 11:36 am
….”And…..once again bemused has shown that to object to antisemitism or to draw attention it is to invite criticism.
In attempting to impugn “briefly”, “bemused” has shown this morning, as they did yesterday in the company of “Clem”, that antisemitism is alive… and lives in Australia too”..
.
This now makes four people, the character of whom, you have impugned with your antisemitism bollocks.
You should retract, or attempt to put a cogent argument as to why criticism of the Israeli State is anything more than simply that.
grimace
“I am completely uninterested in the politics of Israel/Palestine and cannot fathom why both the left and right in Australia have such a fixation on the issue. I also find the inability to discuss any matter related to Israel without cries of antisemitism to be tiresome.”
—————
Ah.
The Australian ruling class (represented by both Liberals and Labor in this area) has always had a “fixation” on being the cat’s paw of the imperial motherland.
England having become sorely lacking in imperial qualities it (Australian ruling class) has transferred its fixation to the USofA.
The US’s obsessions become the Australian’s ruling class obsessions. Israel is one of those obsessions.
The sacrificing of a few hundred Australian soldiers is politically, the cheapest cost of this demeaning and immoral policy.
Absence of Empathy says:
Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 11:29 am
briefly says:
Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 11:12 am
…”You’re implying that if you too were Jewish there’s a probability you would shoot your neighbours without provocation. This is quintessentially antisemitic.
Antisemitism is real and it lives in Australia too’…
…
No.
The inference (not implication) was that one Semite, murdered another Semite, because he fertilized his vegetables with pig shit.
The implication being, that doing so should warrant summary execution.
I fail to see how that might be quintessentially anything…
This is an attempt at a deflection, but you’re repeating yourself and saying the Jew will murder their neighbour for religious reasons. You even go so far as to attempt to deny the Jew their very Jewishness.
That is nothing but antisemitic.
Absence of Empathy says:
Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 12:01 pm
This now makes four people, the character of whom, you have impugned with your antisemitism bollocks.
You should retract, or attempt to put a cogent argument as to why criticism of the Israeli State is anything more than simply that.
And this affirms the point. To draw attention to antisemitic expression is to invite condemnation. This is itself antisemitic, of course.
For the record, I have absolutely no intention of answering your call to defend my arguments other than to say we have not been talking about States. I have responded to characterisations made with respect to the Jewishness/Non-Jewishness of the figures involved.
You have depicted Jews as murderers on religious grounds. In what possible sense is that not antisemitic?
Is the definition of ‘civilized’ entirely self-referential?
Does any other term contain so many implicit assumptions?
IMO, ‘civilized’ is one of the least useful words in the dictionary.
And it is also one of the most dangerous words in the dictionary.
swamprat,
Still producing overly simplistic and outrageous bromides for the Doc Marten-wearing 50-somethings who never grew up I see. 🙂
Oops, sorry, I meant, ‘equal or not?’. 🙂
So, are the three dozen Labour MPs and Labour Lords wrong to express concern about what they perceive as Corbyn’s anti-semitism?
How much does that matter if Corbyn is a ‘Progressive’?
But is it possible to be a real ‘Progressive’ and a racist and/or an anti-semite?
And what is the real difference between racism and anti-semitism?
Is there a ‘semitism’?
Boerwar, as you are about, have you heard anything about CTar1 lately?
*asking for a concerned friend.
I’m simply anti-Netanyahu.
daretotread. says:
Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 10:59 am
Yes I think we can agree here – the racial integration in the UK and Europe has probably helped it achieve stability and some prosperity.
The underlying proposition here is that racial homogeneity is a some kind of real good thing. This is chauvinist, nationalist, phobic, supremacist and ultimately, given full expression… neo-Nazi.
briefly
Israel has just committed an unacceptable crime; like many of the other unacceptable crimes in the middle east. It is interesting that the classic defense of Israel is not to justify their actions but to label those that dare to bring the issue up as anti semantic.
I haven’t been trying to follow the ME ‘debate’ here and don’t wish to be seen as taking sides, but can someone answer this for me. Is it possible for Israel to use their nuclear weapons in their own region without shitting in their own nest, so to speak? Wouldn’t it be a little like the US dropping a nuclear bomb on Canada or Mexico, or Australia dropping one on Indonesia (assuming we had one to drop)? A little too close for comfort one would think.
Briefly as first to neo-Nazi, you lost.
briefly says:
Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 12:05 pm
…”This is an attempt at a deflection”…
.
You’re projecting.
It was in fact, an attempt to correct a deliberate bastardisation of the English language done by you, to twist something I said, so it fitted with the false religious bigotry argument you are (poorly) prosecuting.
…’You even go so far as to attempt to deny the Jew their very Jewishness’…
.
I didn’t mention Jews, you did, repeatedly.
I don’t even particularly care about Jews, Jewishness or Judaism.
This is why you continue to confuse yourself.
You are conflicted, it is quite obvious.
So, Netanyahu’s Israel has made a decision not to go for the old eye-for-an-eye nonsense.
There is a new policy afoot, IMO.
A teenager who spat at a soldier and kicked him and who urged violence against the State of Israel recently got eight months for her troubles. He Mum went into the slammer for good measure. Her cuz who was smashed by a rubber bullet is of no further legal interest to the State of Israel.
If a group of Palestinian standing on the Palestinian side of the border fence throws rocks in the general direction of the representatives of the State of Israel who are standing on the Israeli side of the border, then the representatives of the Sate of Israel are exempt for all laws relating to proportionate response, collective punishment, duty of care, and the status of non-combatants including children.
There is no such thing as collateral damage when you INTEND to mete out group punishment.
The Pipes’ Dream is turning into reality.
How will the Palestinians respond?
Will they finally accept defeat and accept the crumbs from table for ‘THEIR’ state? Four million people sharing some rocks and some sand but eff all water?
Or will they plug on in defeat for another generation?
The Israeli’s are betting that they can smash the Palestinians into submission.
Godwin’s Law is a crock of shit designed to stop people comparing modern nazis with the last lot of arsehats.
If the analogies work, they work.
If not, not.
grimace @ #1214 Sunday, April 1st, 2018 – 11:42 am
Grimace
Can you not see the huge flaw in everything you wrote.
Your information comes from an Israeli academic whom you thought was unbiased.
OK he may have been but would you accept blindly the work of an Irish academic about the causes of the “troubles” or indeed one from a unionist background. No you would not, however you are willing to trust blindly the impartiality of an Israeli academic.
I am not doubting the decency of your friend, but people are victims of their own preconceptions, and we rarely see the injustice in our own arguments. Indeed most of us only know history from the winning side. Take for example my little diatribe on the heptarchy in England this morning. The winners were mostly the southerners (from Wessex) so the history of Mercia goes unrecorded or treated as insignificant whereas we know quite a bit about King Alfred and his cakes. Yet he ruled at or around the same time as these kings of Mercia.
I say this because to be honest until just a few years ago I had never heard of Mercia.However in the early middle ages it was a big deal.
So my point Grimace is meet or read a Palestinain academic, compare his/her comments with those of your Israeli friend. accept all points where they agree and on all others do more research.
WWP has more than once used the term “extermination” to describe Israeli policy towards the Palestinian population. Despite the fact that the Palestinian population is growing (it doubled between 1990 and 2016), which makes the claim a falsehood, there is also the problem of the term itself. Given the holocaust, which was the result of a policy of extermination – an attempt to impose a “permanent solution” on the Jews of Europe – to accuse Israel of having a policy of extermination is to liken them to the Nazis. This is antisemitic.
Darn
The force of nuclear explosions can be carefully calibrated. The fallout can be reduced to a significant extent by the design. Wind patterns can be taken into account to ensure some other poor bastards cop most of it.
The Israelis have apparently threatened to use nuclear weapons in the past.
To date, their conventional weapons can deliver the war outcomes they desire.
IMO the Israelis WILL use nuclear weapons if that is the ONLY way they believe they can prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
This would make it almost impossible for Pakistan not to supply nuclear weapons to Iran…
… and so it goes.
As a side note, one of Blair’s self-advertised ‘nightmares’ is the strong eventual likelihood that Israel will eventually disappear under a nuclear cloud.
Absence of Empathy says:
Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 12:31 pm
And this is simply disingenuous.
‘extermination’ is IMO, a wholly incorrect word.
‘Ethnic cleansing’ is definitely a goer. There is a long history of this at the local and regional level.
There are significant numbers of Israeli MPs who believe that all Israeli arabs should be expelled from Israel.
The practical ‘reason’ that this is yet to happen may be that Orthodox Jews in Israel are philoprogenitive and have managed to keep Israel a majority Jewish state.
Boerwar
She slapped the soldier. For some reason she was upset “Just before Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi slapped one of the soldiers who’d invaded her yard, she learned that her 15-year-old cousin Mohammed had been shot in the head at close range”
An interesting comparison with treatment here.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-what-happened-when-a-jewish-settler-slapped-an-israeli-soldier-1.5630408
.
“The Story Behind Ahed Tamimi’s Slap: Her Cousin’s Head Shattered by Israeli Soldier’s Bullet”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-behind-ahed-tamimi-s-slap-her-cousin-s-head-shattered-by-idf-bullet-1.5729500
One other point to remember is that the main Palestinain protagonists are CHILDREN.
If you watched the little video I posted yesterday of the tiny toddler held by the Israeli army guys, you will see that the father approached the soldiers pleading for them to release his wailing toddler. The dad did nothing brave or provocative.
By contrast watch the 8 year old boy, who bravely ran behind the soldiers and dragged away the child who was i guess his little brother.
Most of the stone throwing is by children.
out of interst are you OK with the fact that an Isralei soldier who shoots a Palestinian in a wheelchair gets no punishment but a very pretty 17 year old girl who slaps an Israeli soldier who has invaded he home (we can probably guess the context of the slap) gets 8 months jail.
Now feminists on here. Where are you on this one. Pretty girl slaps guys face. He is in here home and soldiers have recently killed a cousin. If as probably happened he made some sort of sexual reference (she is a pretty girl) did she have the right to slap him?
briefly says:
Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 12:16 pm
…”For the record, I have absolutely no intention of answering your call to defend my arguments other than to say we have not been talking about States’…
.
I was talking about States, specifically what crimes certain States might be willing to commit against each other in the name of their country, using the veil of a debatable historical ethnicity and/or religion.
This is an entirely different proposition to a simplistic religious argument.
This is what Australian international cricket success looks like.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-01/australian-women-set-international-t20-record-score/9608318