The latest Newspoll result has Labor’s lead back to 52-48 after a one point move in the Coalition’s favour a fortnight ago, from primary votes of Coalition 38% (down one), Labor 38% (steady), Greens 9% (steady) and One Nation 8% (up two).
On personal ratings, Malcolm Turnbull is steady on 39% approval and down one on disapproval to 49%; Bill Shorten is up one on approval to 34% and steady on disapproval at 55%; and Malcolm Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister increases slightly from 46-32 to 47-30. There is also a question on preferred Labor leader that has Anthony Albanese on 26%, Bill Shorten at 23% and Tanya Plibsersek at 23%, but I gather the favour hasn’t been extended to Malcolm Turnbull.
Also featured is a poorly framed question as to “when should company tax cuts be introduced”, which primes responses favourable to cuts both in the wording of the question and the structure of the response options, two out of three of which are pro-tax cut. For what they are worth, the results are that 36% favour such a cut “as soon as possible”, 27% do so “in stages over the next ten years” and, contrary to polls that haven’t privileged a positive response in this way, only 29% want one “not at all”.
The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1591.
Confessions @ #2241 Thursday, May 31st, 2018 – 9:28 pm
I actually think the Liberals will be praying for it to be a reasonable hike. I think they realise that their jihad against wage rises has gone too far.
You give them too much credit, I’m sure.
confessions the point about a well designed UBI is that no one claims it. Its there for everyone.
And in a sensibly designed UBI, the tax system would reclaim the UBI before you get to twice the median income (roughly speaking).
Puffytmd @ #2245 Thursday, May 31st, 2018 – 9:31 pm
I think so too. When he wrote his first book, it was a best seller. His ideas were iconoclastic and he wrong-footed Howard, fcs! However, for one who had had success after success, the loss of the 2004 election just sent him spinning off his axis and into a different universe, from where he has never returned, back to earth.
a r @ #2252 Thursday, May 31st, 2018 – 9:35 pm
You could very well be right.
Its all rather catechistic bemused.
The potential increase does raise the spectre of how would today’s Liberal party respond?
On the one hand they have the govt which would no doubt love to rub up against an increase in minimum wage. OTOH there are those in the partyroom which would rail against it.
The Coorey article on the partisanship of the ROC isn’t bad, but I suspect the article is written as much in sorrow as anger.
The IPA and AFR would love nothing more than an effective body to police the unions. Something with a motto like ‘cruel but fair’.
Okay I’ll rephrase: why should a taxpayer funded UBI be available to be accessed by people who have no need for it other than to supplement their already comfortable household income?
First order approximation.
20 million people. 25,000 dollars. That’s $500 billion. Its not trillions.
And as has already been pointed out, the actual figure is less and a very large fraction (over half) immediately disappears in terms of removing existing payments of various kinds.
But the real genius of a UBI are all those indirect benefits of having a society where people a genuine, effective, universal, stigma free safety net. Where there is higher productivity, lower costs related to poverty (health care, crime and so on). And where otherwise creative and productive people actually get to contribute because they haven’t fallen through the cracks. That’s actually worth something.
Pseudo Cud Chewer @ #2251 Thursday, May 31st, 2018 – 9:36 pm
Wouldn’t it have to do even more than that? I mean, mathematically speaking?
If half the population is at or below the median income and therefore creating a net deficit, the other half has to do more than just cover their own share of the UBI. To balance it out it seems like you’d need to reclaim something more like double the UBI by the time you reach double the median income. So hopefully the median income is fairly high. Which, in Australia, it kind of is.
Steve777
Thank you, I lifted most of that and posted it verbatim. 🙂
If you genuinely have no need for it then you’ll be earning enough to be paying it back through a progressive tax scale. The point is having a safety net with no holes and a very much lower cost of administration.
According to Murdoch:
C@tmomma@8:54pm
You cannot just blame only Latham. ALP should take a lot of blame for that like we are now blaming republican party for collaborating. Colluding and allowing Trump to do what he wants. Because Latham was LOO LNP got majority even in senate and we got work choices in the process, which changed Australia irrevocably for worse. We are still seeing and feeling effects of that even though Rudd-Gillard governments watered it down.
Crean got incensed with Beazeley and completely lost the plot by helping Latham become LOO.
Brilliant, just brilliant! A tale of two Fox News’s!
https://twitter.com/mmfa/status/1001841898632474624
This is why it should be seriously analysed. Its fairly obvious (to me) that the wealthy will be paying more. However the wealthy also get to live in a society where there is more spending, less insecurity, less money wasted on health care, less crime and higher productivity.
If the ALP hold its conference in December and the election occurs in August, this doesn’t really affect the policies taken to the election does it?
The Piranha Brothers?
http://www.montypython.net/scripts/piranha.php
*Raises eyebrows*
So instead of just bolstering our existing welfare safety net system, making that something that genuinely meets the needs of recipients, you’d opt for the Gina Reinhardts of the country being able to access taxpayer funded welfare during a mining downturn, and ‘tax n churn’ getting it back off her?
The simplest and most cost effective option is to just make our welfare safety net effective and meaningful.
Another completely different topic, I am watching a true crime show, where a woman killed her husband. She is supposed to have ‘multiple personaltiy’ disorder and was someone else when she killed him.
She is supposed to have developed this in childhood due to physical and emotional abuse by her mother.
I call bullshit on this. I do not believe MPD exists.
I do not know yet know how it ends, but I would convict anyone claiming this as a defence.
Is that going to be Bananaby’s defence. Or Malcolm’s? Tophat’s gentle centre-right personality has been locked in the dungeon by his Right of the Right Wing worser other self?
Steve777@9:24pm
Good one 🙂
No, its not. A payment system that requires everyone to be vetted according to their income is inherently a costly one to run. Its also inherently one that introduces stigma and will have unavoidable holes.
There is nothing wrong in giving Gina Reinhardt free money. If its money that comes back from her through the tax system. Can Gina cheat? Yes in the current tax system. That’s why a tax system under a UBI has to be improved so that people who are actually making an income cannot employ complex tax evasion. That’s another tick in the UBI box.
ABC article on how Amazon’s changes would affect Australian consumers. Most issues already covered but a useful summary.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-31/amazon-blocks-australia-shopping-deal-how-it-affects-you/9820312
Puff
I remember seeing a doco based on a similar story, where the perp was later exposed as a fraud.
One of the psychs who originally assessed him was interviewed years later. He had since spent some time working in a prison – where he was surprised to discover that patients lied to him.
He had always assumed that people told him the truth.
Pseudo Cud Chewer @ #2268 Thursday, May 31st, 2018 – 9:48 pm
Exactly. However, I am slowly coming to the opinion that the election will not be in August because it seems as though Turnbull has mapped out a series of policies that will, hopefully for him, bear positive fruit into next year.
UBI is IMO not good. It is something similar to flat tax but other way round. Life is complicated and complex problems need complex solutilnd.
Ven @ #2265 Thursday, May 31st, 2018 – 9:46 pm
There was certainly a concatenation of unfortunate circumstances that occurred to the ALP as a result of a mistaken belief in hereditary rule viz Crean and Beazley. They had their good points, but astute political judgement wasn’t one of them. Latham seemed like the breath of fresh air Labor was after. With new ideas and who could take it up to Howard tactically. It was all going very well for a while, until the Coalition did their oppo research and came up with the taxi driver’s broken arm and Latham’s first wife. It went downhill from there, via a beat-up of monumental proportions over a handshake.
zoom and puffy,
I recommend ‘Mindhunter’ on Netflix. 🙂
This also came up a little while ago so I’m going to repeat it.
My sister is sadly unemployable. She suffers from a complex state of emotional dysfunction that prevents her from even acknowledging she has a problem. Basically she suffers so badly from anxiety that she’s reverted to her 12 year old self. But in her own mind everything is fine and the world hates her and she can’t understand why you need to be competent. She does understand the idea that having a job means being valued as a person. But she cannot cope, literally, with the problem solving that comes with having a normal life.
She used to be on Newstart. Now that was pointless. She was incapable of doing the basic things. She tried but she just couldn’t fill out forms or organise interviews, or actually be a functioning adult. She cost the family a lot of money supporting her. We ended up in court over the actions of Centerlink which they later admitted were heavy handed. We also lobbied to have her moved to DSP which she resisted because “there’s nothing wrong with me”. Even the staff at Centerlink pointed out that they had a duty of care and helped her into a DSP.
Now, the present government is trying its hardest to get rid of people like my sister. If they are allowed to continue my family will end up broke.
This is the logical outcome of a social welfare system (hope you’re taking notes, confessions) that isn’t universal or all inclusive, but has to decide who is genuine and who is not. Coupled with a desire to shove people down the cracks and pretend it aint happening.
There will always be people who just cannot cope as normal functional adults who can be expected to act in their own best interests. My sister is lucky in a way to have a good family. There are others who just end up on the street, on drugs, or fucked up in some other way.
We don’t have to do this (have a social security system that vets and stigmatises).
The best way to deal with the “they don’t deserve it” issue is to make sure that those that don’t deserve it, like Gina, actually pay their fair share, and that’s where the administrative resources and the rules should be focused. Things like deeming rules that prevent people from claiming zero personal taxable income.
But please. Consider people like my sister, and my family, and others worse off. Because the current idea of a system that fairly identifies those in need, is broken, badly.
Ven complex problems require a better taxation system, not a broken payments system.
If not, try explaining it to my sister.
Pseudo Cud Chewer Thursday, May 31, 2018 at 9:42 pm
http://www.scottsantens.com/the-cost-of-universal-basic-income-is-the-net-transfer-amount-not-the-gross-price-tag
This explains why calculations based on UBI multiplied by adult population does not give a correct cost. The real cost is about one third. On Pseudo Cud Chewer’s costs it would reduce to about $170 billion. Then further savings follow from increased economic activity, lower community costs etc.
I especially recommend Boerwar having a read. Maybe he’ll make more informed comparisons in the future.
c@t
Mindhunter is top of my charts.
I fundamentally disagree with this. The Gina Reinhardts of the world will always be okay – look at Trump.
I will never agree that handing out free money to these people is a good idea simply because these people already use our system to further wrangle the system to work in their favour. A UBI would be just another way they worked it to their benefit while the poeple who actually needed it went without.
Now I get why Pauline Hanson backflipped on the Corporate Tax Cuts:
The blow up over the business tax cuts has been triggered by One Nation’s concerns over its fortunes in the looming byelection in Longman.
Labor had been campaigning against One Nation – which polls well in the Queensland seat – using Hanson’s previous support for the tax cuts for Australia’s largest companies.
Under pressure from its constituency, Hanson launched an abrupt about face, breaking a deal with the government to support the package.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/31/pauline-hanson-says-brian-burston-tried-to-defect-to-shooters-party?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet
🙂
Puffytmd @ #2283 Thursday, May 31st, 2018 – 10:16 pm
I think you’ll be able to cope with it. You seem inured to real life. 🙂
It’s just brilliant.
The sums need to be more complex than that – a true UBI also factors in children, for example. One that didn’t would result in adverse outcomes, just as one which paid disabled people the same as abled would.
Of course, as soon as you factor in – as you really must – different needs, you’re back assessing people, something a UBI avoids.
So either a UBI has to be high enough to allow for the fact that not all people have the same needs, which would mean some people would have cash to burn whilst others would be struggling, or it has to be assessed differently for different situations.
I’m all for a UBI. Bring it on.
The BS that the Daily Telegraph runs almost every day about welfare cheats is just that, BS.
In our economy, everyone is paid into a bank account & our transactions are heading towards completely electronic. It’s harder & harder to cheat the system.
A simple UBI paid to anyone who needs it makes administrative sense & if you get work in the mean time it is dealt with at tax return time.
The savings in not persecuting welfare recipients would be in the billions.
jenauthor from this afternoon:
Have a read of this meta-analysis from 2013, which, while acknowledging its limitations, concludes that, based on the studies analysed, low-carbohydrate diets long-term were associated with an *increased* risk of all-cause mortality.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0055030&type=printable
Psuedo CC@10:11am
I know a woman who is a relative of mine almost similar to your sister. Currently She may not be as bad your sister but she getting there because she refuses to acknowledge she has a problem and refuses to take any treatment for that.
I understand how you feel. My relative was not that bad till she gave birth to her first child. After that it is all downhill. I geel for your sister
confessions what you’re saying is that you give up on having a tax system that fairly and adequately taxes Gina.
C@t
And Criminal Minds is one of my favourite fictional series. I started on Silent Witness, years ago.
This is one of the best true crime podcasts going, winner of awards, and it is Australian. http://casefilepodcast.com
It is about 50/50 Australian/overseas crimes.
Interesting cases include:
case 24 The Russell Street Bombing
case 34 The Catholic Mafia, (Father John Day )
CASE 40: JOHN NEWMAN
This one will have you thinking twice about taking young people on a cruise.
CASE 59: AMY LYNN BRADLEY
And for a glimpse into the ‘dark web’, this is almost unbelievable.
CASE 76: SILK ROAD
as well as the Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist case for which there has been a recent arrest.
There are s the more well known ones, Moors Murders, etc. and a discussion group on Facebook, of course.
Ven such people exist. In fact the bottom 5% of the population really should never be forced into the work or starve welfare system we have now. They should have a UBI and allowed to drift into voluntary work where they will actually be doing something useful for society rather than feeling stigmatised and being a drag on the economy through their families, if not the courts and drug rehab.
Her defence did not work, she is supposed to have confessed to faking MPD to a cell-mate while in gaol. She denies she made the confession.
Guilty and sent to chokey.
zoomster a UBI will never be ridiculously simple or absolutely perfect.
And I for one would prefer a system that at least separates out basic living needs from housing needs.
And a system that acknowledges that children are a special case.
But all of this is still simpler and less harmful than the current system.
SilentMajority @ #2286 Thursday, May 31st, 2018 – 10:29 pm
Agree.
As for giving handouts to the wealthy…well it seems better to give them something and then claw it back (and then some!) than to give them nothing and then have them exploit loopholes so that they contribute nothing as well.
Besides, $25k/year is nothing at all to a Trump or a Reinhardt. I’m fine with them getting a relative pittance if it means that people who actually need that money can get it too.
Pseudo Cud Chewer @ #2342 Thursday, May 31st, 2018 – 8:36 pm
No I’m not saying that at all.
Pseudo and Ven
The strength of UBI is in removing the opportunity for decision makers to discriminate. Compassion is sadly lacking under the LNP (talking to some of their supporters shows me that they also seem to have a lower compassion index).
As for the “no money for Gina Hancock” – it comes as part of the simplicity deal – but they pay it back in much higher taxes as part of the wealthy “being encouraged” to show greater compassion.
Things have to change or our society will continue to unravel as neo-liberalism dismantles all the socially progressive measures of the last 100 years.
Silent Majority. The bludger rhetoric denies the simple fact that very few people are every happy literally sitting around and doing nothing. Almost everyone wants to be doing something meaningful and productive.
confessions if Gina is made to pay her fair share of tax, I don’t care if she gets free money. Not if her tax paid is a lot more.