The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll sharply reverses a recent trend away from Labor, who are back to leading 54-46 on two-party preferred after their lead fell to 51-49 in the previous poll. This is apparently driven by a four point drop in the Coalition primary vote, but as usual we will have to wait until later today for the full numbers. However, it’s a curiously different story on leadership ratings, on which Malcolm Turnbull gains two on approval since last month to reach 42% while remaining steady on 42% disapproval, while Bill Shorten is down four to 33% and up five to 46%. Turnbull’s lead over Shorten as preferred prime minister is unchanged, shifting from 40-26 to 41-27. Like ReachTEL and unlike Newspoll, Essential has posed a straightforward question on company tax cuts that finds approval and disapproval tied on 37%. The poll also finds 68% support for an increase in Newstart.
UPDATE: Full results here. The Coalition primary vote crashes from 40% to 36%, Labor’s rises one to 37%, the Greens are steady on 10% and One Nation are steady on 8%.
UPDATE 2: Further details from those ReachTEL polls for Sky News, which were conducted last Wednesday. In the national poll, after allocating results from a forced response follow-up for the 5.1% undecided, the primary votes were Coalition 36.5%, Labor 35.3%, Greens 10.7%, One Nation 9.3% and others 8.2%, translating into a 52-48 lead for Labor after respondent-allocated preferences favoured them by 54.8-45.2. Malcolm Turnbull’s lead on the forced response preferred prime minister question was almost exactly unchanged at 54.6-45.4 (54.5-45.5 last month); his very good plus good rating went from 29.9% to 30.8%, and his poor plus very poor from 32.6% to 37.0%. Bill Shorten went from 28.4% to 27.7% on good plus very good, and from 35.5% to 39.9% on poor plus very poor.
In the poll for the Braddon by-election, after allocating the forced follow-up results from the 5.9% undecided, the primary votes were Liberal 48.2%, Labor 34.5%, Greens 6.6%, independents 7.2%, others 3.5%, resulting in a 54-46 Liberal lead on respondent-allocated two-party preferred. In Longman, with the 7.1% initially undecided likewise allocated, the results are Liberal National Party 40.4%, Labor 37.3%, independents 5.5%, Greens 2.7% and others 14.1% (confirming there was no specific option for One Nation), resulting in an LNP lead of 52-48. Respondents for these polls were asked how they would vote “if a by-election in the federal electorate of X were to be held today”. The by-election polls were conducted last Wednesday, from samples of 824 in Braddon and 810 in Longman; the national poll was conducted Wednesday and Thursday from a sample of 2523.
Now you’re straining credibility.
They won’t be going to America – Trump’s tariffs.
daretotread. @ #1499 Thursday, June 7th, 2018 – 10:38 pm
What I said was Obama had the final call on things like that. Naturally Hillary would be looped in, but her options were to either go along with whatever Obama decided or start looking for a new job. The authority to make the call, and thus the responsibility for making it, is/was Obama’s.
So it sounds like we completely agree 🙂
If there’s one lesson which all Australian universities will have learnt from the brouhaha about western civilisation at the ANU, it’s that the Ramsay Centre is bad news. They will have figured out that once you start talking to them, if you want to stop, the usual claque of right wing polemicists will line up to share their bile with you. And the brightest VCs will also realise that while Dr Haines at Ramsay is a distinguished scholar, he could be doing deals with them one day, and out the door the next. And they will have figured out that regardless of what agreements may have been reached on paper, if the Ramsay people don’t get their way on something, the claque will be quite capable of trying to relitigate the issue on the front page of the Australian. (One could run a sweep at the moment on which commentator there is going to be wheeled out next: I’m not sure Mr Kenny has had his tuppence worth yet.)
The good thing about the whole affair is that it has showed just how much the right enjoys wallowing in a sense of grievance, a failing which they normally attribute to people on the left.
Rex – Mayo is a disaster unfolding for PM MT. The by-election weekend will see TA and friends sharpening the knives. Dutton may be the last RWNJ left standing. Then we will see how many of your mates stand with you as the L/NP go over the cliff.
If you were enrolled in a Bachelor of Western Civilisation would you admit it to your friends?
Anyone who says they remember western civilisation wasn’t there.
Confessions:
It was amusing to see that guy from ACU on The Drum suggesting that the course should have been taught at Masters level (no doubt so they could charge more/full fees), and that undergraduates don’t critically question things and just accept what they are told.
Confessions @ #1385 Thursday, June 7th, 2018 – 8:26 pm
Why not?
It’s a legitimate area of study but like anything it comes down to the content and whether it is academically rigorous. 🙂
TrumpLandia is essentially a banana republic. I assume that isn’t the kind of western civilisation that would be acceptable to the Ramsay Centre?
Mr Newbie:
A Masters of Western Civilisation?
The jokes would write themselves.
Barney:
It’s an ideological crapshoot.
I bet the Ramsay Centre would have little to no content from an indigenous perspective in its curriculum. I recall reading that Ramsay Centre board members include John Howard and Tony Abbott, which says volumes about the ideological route it would want to pursue: male, pale and stale.
Democrats lead Republicans 50%-40% in latest NBC/WSJ generic ballot poll. Up from 47%-40% in April.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna880721?__twitter_impression=true
Confessions @ #1391 Thursday, June 7th, 2018 – 8:38 pm
They doesn’t mean the the subject isn’t relevant.
This is about the University maintaining control over the curriculum! 🙂
Isn’t Western Civilization a bit of appropriation? It feels like an attempt to take credit for the world now having a ‘western civilization’, and west Europeans, the white guys, get to be special. Hasn’t there been one global civilization for many millennia? One that is ‘merely’ getting more integrated and homogenised as the world shrinks? Maybe it is an attempt to take credit for the ‘good’ bits?
Actually, ANU did some of the best work around on the study of western civilisation, via the History of Ideas Unit in the Research School of Social Sciences, led or inspired by the late, great Professor Eugene Kamenka from 1969 until his death in 1994. It attracted first class brains from around the world, from both the left and right: I recall as a graduate student going to seminars there from people as diverse as Fredric Jameson and Norman Podhoretz, and the list of people who were based there or made the effort to visit there was quite stellar: John Plamenatz, C B Macpherson, J G A Pocock and the ANU’s own John Passmore, among many, many others. Kamenka, an Andersonian, was close to the Quadrant crowd, when they were intellectually respectable, rather than polemicists unemployable elsewhere. (Martin Krygier, son of Quadrant’s founder, drew a scathing contrast between the early and more recent Quadrant here: https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2006/december/1165812126/martin-krygier/usual-suspects.)
Late Riser, Michael:
The Ramsay Centre proposal smacks of ideology rather than academic or intellectual rigour. I think the ANU was right to knock it back, as Barney said.
“Which companies now in Australia will leave Australia if they don’t get a tax cut?”
Well, whichever they are, hopefully they’ll remember not to let the door hit their bum on the way out. Actually, scrub that.
Seriously, they can accept Australia’s taxes and regulations or they can bugger off. Why do we pay attention to their bleating?
It all comes down to whether the private health care mogul who set up the bequest for the Ramsey Centre wanted an institution to generate op-eds for The Australian and right wing guests for shows like the Drum, or whether he wanted to set up a centre for free and independent enquiry into ‘Western’ Civilisation.
Confessions @ #1466 Thursday, June 7th, 2018 – 11:55 pm
Without seeing a curriculum (and I haven’t looked for one, so I am saying this from ignorance) I couldn’t say, and actually I lack training in the social sciences in any case, so my opinion is worth nought academically. But given who is making the noise I would agree that this feels driven by ideology. I would need a good description of and reason why Western Civilization needs to be it’s own discipline, or even a field within a discipline. It feels like a need to reassert a failing superiority in the sense that “My culture is better than yours.”
Watching the Drum.
Shit, Gary Marks is a complete loon.
The World’s problems have all been solved, so there is no need for any new ideas!
I can’t believe it but I kind of miss the usual IPA Muppet. 🙂
D&M
The guy is Carlo Rovelli (book is The Order of Time). His special area is loop quantum gravity (he mainly published with Lee Smolin). He is in Marseille. He’s not from the fringes, although I’m pretty convinced that string theory and loop theory have strayed well beyond science. Incidentally he discusses the book “Your Brain is a Time Machine”, which frankly sounds like a better book than Rovelli’s.
As a guess, the shit jogger is probably a sociopath expressing his contempt and superiority over society, a bit like a mini-serial killer.
Anyway, thanks for the ideas. Bed time. Give my regards to W’ if they show. 😉 Good night.
Confessions
I agree, not least because I take at face value Professor Schmidt’s statement that the Ramsay people wanted a degree of control which the ANU wasn’t prepared to abandon just for the money. Dr Haines at Ramsay has a strong record as a fine scholar: he was formerly Head of the School of Humanities at ANU. But it’s anyone’s guess what sorts of characters the more conservative types at Ramsay might have been hoping to foist on ANU.
If you look at the evolution of liberal or conservative western political thought in the 20th century, it was much influenced by people who were far from being Marxists themselves, but who spent a lot of energy in disputing Marxism intellectually. Someone like Raymond Aron springs to mind, but there were many others: serious thinkers who were prepared to debate ideas. In that sense, you couldn’t really get away from talking about Marxism, and magazines like Encounter in Britain published many really outstanding commentators on the subject. But I doubt very much whether the Ramsay people would have countenanced any mention of Marxism in their courses, except as something worthy of abuse.
Actually, Australia has produced one of the best scholars of liberal political thought and western civilisation around, namely Professor Chandran Kukathas, who is Head of the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. He’d be a great leader of a course at ANU (where he was an undergraduate a year ahead of me, 40 years ago), but not too many people in the broader public here have heard of him, because he’s a scholar and teacher, not a polemicist. For that reason I rather doubt that he’d fit the bill for right wingers at the Ramsay Centre, nor, I suspect, would he be tempted to throw in his lot with them.
That was my initial reaction as well.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-07/nbn-consultant-labor-candidate-for-mayo-by-election/9844032
I love the choice of Labor candidate
Diogenes @ 12.11
Sheldon Glashow, a Nobel laureate in Physics, once described string theory as recreational mathematical theology, not least because of the well-known paucity of falsifiable predictions to which it gives rise.
Like Godwin’s Law, if you have to resort to string theory you’ve lost the argument.
The LHC Has Detected The Higgs Boson Again, This Time With a Massive Twist
https://www.sciencealert.com/top-quark-higgs-boson-coupling-strength-discovered-large-hadron-collider
Great post Michael.
In Berlin at the moment learning a lot about Western Civilisation ”superiority”….especially recently between 1939-1945.
Not to mention the complementary ”Judeo -Christian” values, that seemed to involve Christians murdering millions of Jews…
Someone summed it up here well- Western Civilisation is supposedly all the good stuff in the modern world (regardless of its source- Chinas 1000 year old merit based public service for example), while ignoring all the bad bits (like the holocaust or colonisation).
The Australian
Front Page
The Daily Telegraph
Front Page
The Sydney Morning Herald
Front Page
Thanks Michael good read
: https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2006/december/1165812126/martin-krygier/usual-suspects.
“Where Quadrant once appreciated the complexity and variety of motives, options and choices, exhibited curiosity and even occasional puzzlement, raised the tone and enriched the vocabulary of debate, its central role now is as radical vulgariser and simplifier. ”
I used to buy it to read on the plane but it just became very heavy going. Angry old men; and yes they were probable white.
Thanks KayJay , they are all there this morning. And they wonder why circulation is falling.
KayJay @ #1483 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 6:41 am
I still think Andrew Hastie has questions to answer. I can’t remember what the result of the investigation into his time as a Commander of SAS Forces in Afghanistan was. It just seemed to fade away into the ether when he became an MP.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/sas-soldiers-committed-alleged-war-crimes-in-afghanistan-official-report-20180531-p4zikl.html
frednk @ #1485 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 7:05 am
Agreed although the war crimes article is worrying. The ABC website has an article also.
C@tmomma (Block)
Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 7:07 am
Comment #1260
KayJay @ #1483 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 6:41 am
I don’t think I’ll say anymore about this.
I have a very low opinion of the gentleman you mentioned and that colours anything in relation to him.
Would somebody turn up the thermostat please.
About 11℃ Newcastle this morning.
Me for my bed (after I make a fresh cup of coffee, of course.)
And talking about quadrant is seems o have moved to the front page of the Australian; what a collection of crap. The bar code looks good.
The Age
Front Page
Pica: “Yes I am a social scientist.”
But not an ornithologist it seems; your Gravitar is Gymnorhina, not Pica. 😉
“Free speech” now being redefined by the Right.
It’s not ‘Free Speech’, it has a cost. It takes a toll on the innocent women who are subjected to the harassment they get but didn’t ask for, outside the Womens Health Clinics.
lizzie
Of course, what pro choice people should now do is stop pregnant women on their way into their doctor’s, and start waving grotesque posters at them, highlighting the damage the baby is doing to their bodies, the stats on how having children impacts on women’s lives financially, etc etc, whilst telling them that it’s OK to have an abortion….
Let’s see how long the right to free speech argument would stand up to that…
Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
What a great way to start the day! Georgina Downer will struggle to win the South Australian seat of Mayo in July’s federal by-election, new polling suggests.
https://outline.com/yjTraw
Some members of Australia’s elite special forces allegedly committed war crimes in Afghanistan amid a “complete lack of accountability” from the military chain of command, a confidential defence inquiry has found.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/sas-soldiers-committed-alleged-war-crimes-in-afghanistan-official-report-20180531-p4zikl.html
David Crowe says Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten are heading towards a battle of wills on the floor of parliament, where one of them must give way on a central policy contest at the next election – income tax cuts for 10 million workers.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/incomes-tax-cuts-to-spark-battle-of-wills-in-parliament-20180607-p4zk1u.html
David Fickling reckons the accused ANZ bankers are more Keystone Cops than they are criminals. He says the responsibility for clearing up the rules in financial markets should rest not with litigators, but legislators and if Australia wants to create a better environment for shareholders, its politicians must get on with passing the laws to create it.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/accused-anz-bankers-are-more-keystone-cops-than-criminals-20180607-p4zjxo.html
The SMH editorial says that the ANU has outraged an outspoken group of culture warriors by rejecting funding for a chair of western civilisation from a pressure-group organisation, the Paul Ramsay Foundation for Western Civilisation.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-end-of-western-civilisation-as-they-know-it-20180607-p4zk3i.html
An ex-leader of Britain’s Conservative party put a tough question to Benjamin Netanyahu, and he didn’t like the answer.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/why-do-you-have-to-kill-them-former-tory-leader-confronts-benjamin-netanyahu-20180607-p4zk6w.html
David Crowe says that Australians will instantly understand what their politicians cannot say about this new law against foreign interference: of course it is about China.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/of-course-it-s-about-china-20180607-p4zk5z.html
Michelle Grattan tells us what’s behind the need for legislative change.
https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-government-and-labor-unite-to-erect-the-barriers-against-foreign-interference-97960
Waleed Aly talks about the use of the term “dangerous times” to introduce new security measures. He concludes by putting it to us that Ii media companies ultimately fail in their quest to temper the final legislation sufficiently, it will be because there is no longer a cultural bedrock on which these sorts of concerns can be prosecuted. And that will be partly because media concern for such things has been sporadic and convenient.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-problem-with-dangerous-times-20180607-p4zk0z.html
Executives and lobbyists connected to private multinationals will be spared from having to register as foreign agents as the government seeks a bipartisan compromise to get its foreign interference crackdown through Parliament.
https://outline.com/4B4mfh
Michael Pascoe writes that Morrison’s ute-led boom doesn’t hold up under investigation – light commercial sales in the first five months of this year are pretty much in line with the same period last year.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/finance-news/2018/06/07/ute-delusion-gdp-scott-morrison/
Jenna Price tells us that Vicki Campion is too good for Barnaby. It’s one HELL of a serve she gives Joyce!
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/vikki-campion-is-too-good-for-barnaby-joyce-20180607-p4zjzi.html
Michael Koziol reports that Labor has vowed to crack down on child brides and forced marriages.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/labor-vows-to-crack-down-on-child-brides-and-forced-marriages-20180606-p4zjv1.html
Bloomberg has published that Trump is stumbling toward inevitable disaster with his trade moves. It says the president’s belligerence has not been matched with intelligence. Sadly, it’s the American factory worker and the American consumer who will have to suffer for it.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/trump-is-stumbling-toward-inevitable-disaster-with-his-trade-moves-20180607-p4zjxw.html
Anna Patty tells us how a Sydney childcare operator is facing legal action after allegedly failing to pay two migrant workers for a year of work. Mongrels!
https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/childcare-workers-allegedly-unpaid-for-a-year-of-work-20180607-p4zk5c.html
Next Thursday, federal court judge Jonathan Beach will deliver his judgment on Michael Kroger’s dispute with the Victorian Liberals’ biggest donor, the $70 million Cormack Foundation, which is currently chaired by Melbourne establishment figure Charles Goode, the former ANZ chairman.
https://outline.com/UwTM47
The enormous task confronting the banks if they are to repair their risk systems has been illustrated by data from the corporate watchdog, which showed it has been taking banks more than four years to identify events that would trigger a breach report.
https://outline.com/dA3K7L
Phil Coorey pours scorn on Barnaby Joyce’s stewardship of the Agriculture portfolio. It’s a pity he had to wait until he had resigned from it.
https://outline.com/aLZ3aN
Meanwhile David Littleproud says the climate is changing and the transition in the energy market – with renewables displacing traditional power generation sources – is “exciting, not only for the environment but for the hip pocket”. Does he have a political death wish?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/07/move-to-renewables-a-good-thing-says-nationals-agriculture-minister
Abortion clinic ‘safe access zones’ become law in NSW after a bill easily passed through parliament.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/abortion-clinic-safe-access-zones-become-law-in-nsw-20180607-p4zk18.html
Judge Judith Gibson writes that the way we communicate has changed – so the law must change too. In the article she examines the new Defamation Act.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/way-we-communicate-has-changed-and-law-must-too-20180607-p4zk52.html
Australia’s $50 billion Future Submarines were never going to have 90 per cent Australian content, French designers Naval Group have confirmed. Surprise, surprise!
https://outline.com/e9nBhk
There is a new ideological war in tech – and Apple and Facebook are on opposing sides.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/apple-joins-the-war-on-facebook-over-privacy-20180607-p4zk3n.html
Bob Murray, chief executive of Ohio-based Murray Energy, sent the Trump administration drafts of executive orders for withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, according to documents obtained by E&E News. All the President had to do was sign them. Figures!
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/coal-executive-drafted-orders-for-trump-to-withdraw-from-paris-climate-accord-20180608-p4zk7j.html
A holiday resort called Vacationland on Hawaii’s Big Island has disappeared after lava poured into two oceanfront subdivisions, smothering hundreds of homes and filling an ocean bay, effectively creating a new foreshore.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/entire-hawaii-suburb-vanishes-as-lava-gushes-in-20180607-p4zk3a.html
Katy Gallagher will attempt to take her seat back at the next election.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/politics/federal/katy-gallagher-to-run-for-senate-again-after-disqualification-20180608-p4zk7y.html
Target will close dozens of stores in an effort to reduce its footprint by 20 per cent over the next five years and create a “boutique” fashion chain competing with fast-fashion giants H&M and Uniqlo.
https://www.theage.com.au/business/companies/target-to-close-dozens-of-stores-in-boutique-shift-20180607-p4zk58.html
The safety of a wall that collapsed and killed three people in Melbourne six years ago was the responsibility of site owner Grocon, a coroner says.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/state/vic/2018/06/07/grocon-fatal-wall/
The Department of Human Services has completed a trial with Woolworths where payroll information about employees was sent straight to Centrelink in order to calculate their welfare payments, and it’s a sign of what could come on a larger scale.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/politics/federal/employers-to-give-earnings-data-straight-to-centrelink-20180606-p4zjpz.html
A more efficient plan is needed to prevent Sydney and Melbourne from becoming too congested, writes David Williams.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/we-need-to-talk-about-integrated-national-planning,11575
A New South Wales obstetrician and gynaecologist has been accused of performing an unnecessary hysterectomy and other irreversible surgeries on women without their consent, a tribunal has heard.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/08/surgeon-performed-unnecessary-hysterectomies-without-consent-tribunal-told
Cartoon Corner
Mark David gives us another ripper poem.
Peter Broelman has some fun with the poo jogger.
Zanetti with Porline.
A guide to Trumpspeak.
From Alan Moir.
David Pope has really been on a roll lately!
https://www.smh.com.au/national/act/david-pope-20120214-1t3j0.html
Jon Kudelka and electoral interference.
https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/a34101abdae01ae803450f4638d9e8e9
More in here.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/best-of-fairfax-cartoons-8-june-2018-20180607-h113hp.html
The beauty of the Downer poll is that the Libs will now have to expose her more to the electorate.
That’ll turn out well, for Sharkie…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/07/canada-death-homeless-man-tim-hortons-vancouver
DDT –
“What can have been going on in the head of the poo jogger?”
Maybe he read someone’s posts on Pollbludger and just lost his shit?