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.
Simon² Katich® @ #1538 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 6:31 am
Yep, yep and yep!
It has set the benchmarks in the World that developing Countries strive towards and has created a privileged position for citizens within it.
My own path is facilitated completely by this and I have multiple choices as to what I pursue next, something that is not available to the average Vietnamese person or people in many other Countries I have frequented!
Zoomster and Diog
While certainly life expectancy is a huge bonus I wonder if indeed in other respects we are better off now than in say the early 60s.
That was a time when even your average young worker could buy a house, raise four kids, have a wife at home cooking and doing the domestics, leave work at 5 PM and be home in time for 6 PM dinner (or 6;30 after the swill). At 7:30 PM either Dad or Mum could sit and watch telly or maybe go out to a voluntary meeting – the ALP for example or some other club or society. Sundays was always a COMPLETE family day. Dad and Mum at home with the Sunday roast or maybe a trip to the beach. Most families had a car, radio, phone, electricity and all the other mod cons. Clothing was expensive but better quality. Food was high quality and plentiful. It was also cheap – especially meat.
There were jobs for everyone. Unemplyment was about 1.5% and they were nearly all permanent jobs.
Yes there were social problems especially domestic violence and suppression of gays, but compared with today’s ice epidemic and high youth suicide rates I wonder which your average family would prefer. Actually I think the fear of road accident was the greatest, so i guess that is another area of improvement.
Anyway I am not making a major case on this, but perhaps am querying the assumption that this is the bet of all possible times.
ps The Collingwood Football Club, also use the motto, ‘Floreat Pica’ (Flourish Magpie), another reason I run with the term ‘Pica’.
KayJay @ #27574 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 9:45 am
Just how old are you, is the question I have for you ❓
2478.
To answer a question that nobody has asked.
The little Lithium batteries used by various computers
CR2032.
Are widely available. I picked up a couple yesterday at the local “El Cheapo” shop.
2 fer $1.50.
What to do with them. Dunno. Put em in the box with all the other batteries, I suppose.
Overcast day in Newcastle. Temperature – 13℃ heading for 19℃ ⛄
Cheers KayJay, 🙂
Some wise words but also a few ignorant ones.
These stood out for me.
The good!
The bad!
https://healthywildandfree.com/17-quotes-hippocrates-wisen-health-mind/
rhwombat @ #1552 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 10:01 am
Thank you, your reverence. Your memory has survived intact. I hardly had to break out my handy adder upper and the reincarnation seems be quite effective.
My chief medical concern today. How to convince my GP to accept my theory that the lump he cut out of me on Wednesday last was really not a cancer something but the result of a spider bite.
Oh me, oh mio. Never me mind. ☮ 😷
In those days of Hippocrates … Astrology was considered science
What Tony Abbott probably doesnt want us to know about Western Civilisation is that justice, equality, regulation, social cohesion, merit based success, welfare, independent democratic institutions, strong public institutions (like universities, ABC, CSIRO, PMG…), transparency, accountability, organised labour… are bedrocks. Abbott wants a dog eat dog world where the government is a weak plaything for the powerful; where the powerful reign and the rest wallow – creating a Hobbesian world the opposite to the supposed ideals of ‘Western Civilisation’.
adrian
As a history teacher myself, who was fascinated by Carr, I agree. It doesn’t mean one shouldn’t aim for objectivity, however, just that one should have some awareness of one’s own biases.
jenauthor @ #1556 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 7:16 am
As I implied amongst much wisdom there was still some ignorance! 🙂
Go Bill! Taking the Tories on by giving a speech in the Northern Territory, ‘The Barrunga Statement’, outlining how Labor will drive negotiations with Indigenous Australians for a Treaty!
Bugger ‘Western Civilisation’! We need to talk with our First Australians for our combined design of Australian Civilisation going forward, hand in hand, into the future! 🙂
Labor will legislate to establish a Voice for Indigenous Australians. They will establish a Makarrata process. It is about self-determination and that they are front of mind in Indigenous policy formulation. The solutions for Indigenous Australians must come from them. Labor commits to seeing more Indigenous Australians serving in the parliament. Double the number of Indigenous Australian Rangers working on Country. Labor understands what needs to be done. The time has come to finish the unfinished business of reconciling Australia. Equality, Respect, Recognition and Honour.
Barney in Go Dau (Block)
Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 10:05 am
Comment #1554
I guess that the gentleman – Hippocrates – would have adapted and learned over time.
The very late, great Isaac Newton may/not have been interested/practiced astrology.
Nevertheless – the subject is very interesting.
⭐ 💫 🌟
I understand (more or less) that the scientific method may be gaining currency in our great country (almost quoting a noted PB commenter) although pockets of resistance remain, apparently centred in the nations capital. 😇☕
dtt
Everyone always thinks the past was better than the present. It’s why we should look at data rather than anecdote.
I raise you: women dying from illegal abortions, or committing suicide because abortion wasn’t an option; the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of teenage girls; the unreported rapes and assaults (indeed, most of the cases being dealt with from the RC date from this era); higher death rates/shorter life expectancy, including deaths from diseases nowadays regarded as easily treated.
Yes, people had jobs and (probably) relatively higher incomes, but transport one of them into the house of a ‘poor’ person today and they’d swap in an instant – some of our smallest and disregarded items would be like the ‘white man’s magic’ of a cigarette lighter.
I was brought up in a very religious household, which meant direct involvement in the the dark underside of our community. Most children my age would have had no idea what was going on below the surface, and still don’t – it was all swept under the carpet. But I knew who had been raped, I knew who had gone away to have a child which was never to be brought home, I knew the children who had been sexually assaulted (in one case, a girl my age had a child to her father; he assaulted the baby sexually within months). I talked with girls who had slept in the long grass beside railway tracks and taken to parties which consisted of her and ten men.
None of this was talked about (except in households like mine) and you weren’t encouraged to ask questions.
Barney in Go Dau @ #27582 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 10:05 am
BiGD:
Bear in mind that the Astrology of 500BCE was not the pseudopredictive bullshit of today – it was one of the few ways of estimating duration and natural history (ie course) of symptoms in a time before written records. Age makes a big difference in the interpretation of many symptoms and signs. Hippocrates is credited with beginning the tradition of careful clinical observation and using it to both inform prognosis and not indulge in futile treatment. He also argued that disease was natural, ie not caused by disputing gods, and thus not subject to predestination.
…oh, and if any teacher had looked on without acting on the kind of bullying I was subject to, they’d be out of a job before the end of the day…
The purpose of the Ramsey Centre seems to be to promote ‘western civilisation’ (i.e. a hodge podge of earlier non-western cultures), interpreted as a particular brand of anglo, old testament ‘judeo-christian’, and brutalistic neo-classical economical neo-conservatism as somehow superior to other cultures.
The claim that they want western civilisation (why that world and not ‘culture’? because they think only the white man is civilised?) promoted is a bit rich given that western europe has been the barbarian peninsula of central asia and the Mediterranean for most of history, and that the conservative forces backing this are largely antagonistic to the more recent progressive elements of western culture coming out of The Renaissance, The Enlightenment and 19th and 20th century philosophy that could allow ‘the west’ to have developed something a bit special. They hate science. They hate humanism. They hate critical thinking. They hate feminism. They hate collectivism, socialism, Keynesian economics and welfare. They hate social democracy. They hate the arts. They hate environmentalism. They hate any post-Cartesian philosophical movement other than ‘philosophers’ such as Rand and Hayek (even Milton Freidman unsettles them because of his libertarian attitudes to drugs and sexuality). They hate free-thinking and free-speech that doesn’t conform to their propaganda. They hate tolerance and the questioning and accountability of authority. They hate true democracy and equal rights.
These are some of the finest fruits of western civilisation, but I get the sense they won’t be taught in a favorable light.
The idea that western values are being attacked at universities is such a straw man argument in their culture war. I’ll bet that they don’t plan to teach that 95% of what they think of as western culture comes from central asia and the middle east via Greeks and Romans and was preserved, maintained and adapted/expanded by the much more advanced Islamic civilisations for ~600-700 years before the europeans got introduced (not even re-introduced) to it and decided it was somehow ‘their’ heritage. I’ll bet the Ramsey mob want to teach the bollocks that Roman and Greek culture was preserved by british and irish monks, the pope and Charlemagne. They’ll ignore that many of our mathematical and scientific terms have arabic/islamic roots and that most of our translations of the classics come via islamic libraries and scholars.
The only pre-renaissance and pre-enlightenment elements of our culture that come from ‘the west’ are the germanic/viking drinking and warrior cultures – although it could be argued that Magna Carta traces its roots to viking systems of kings elected by clan heads and was a case of Norman kings (who had adopted the Frankish /Roman belief in the divinity/divine right of kings) bumping up against the older anglo-saxon and viking barons who reckoned kings ruled if they had their support.
Simon² Katich® @ #1557 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 7:18 am
The other point regarding Abbott and his ilk is that Western Civilisation has always been an evolving thing, constantly changing, right back to it’s roots on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
They have a picture of a “perfection” in the the past where that evolution should have been stopped and that ultimately shows the ridiculousness of their argument. 🙂
DTT @9:54 AM makes some good points.
Health and life expectancy is better – that would be a combination of several factors – medical advances, decline in smoking (nearly all adult men smoked in the 1960s and about 50% of women) and improved traffic safety (e.g. seat belts, drink driving). In the late 1960s, the NSW road toll was about 1,000 per annum in a population of about 4 million. Now it’s about 500 for 8 million.
However, not everything is better. 50 years ago, unemployment was something the older generation remembered from before the War.
Then on to yesterday’s 3.1% growth that Morrison was crowing about. That’s an average, like average earnings. Where did the growth go? Are average workers 3.1% better off? How much of the growth went to the owners of capital? Growth has been averaging about 2-3% over the last 10 years. But I’d suggest that very few feel (or actually are) 25% better off than they were in 2008.
Actually most modern astrology is less concerned with prognostication than ancient astrology, and is often more in the vein of a kind of mystical or spiritually based practice than a pseudoscience. It would make as little sense to call religion a pseudoscience.
There will always be exceptions to this, wherever gullible people have money to throw around.
Steve777
The population has grown 16.2% since 2008 so that chews up most of the supposed “25% better off” .
There are certainly a lot of people in the world who identify as Jewish who are critical of the Israeli Govts action
And they are up against it trying to be heard, but I’d jump in and say I don’t think ‘suck it up princesses’ is the effective approach, as understandable as it is, and I say that having just heard from someone whose been on the ground.
I went on Wednesday to the New Israel Fund meeting in Sydney to which I was alerted by a SMH article which I think Socrates posted, and thanks for that, and for the life of me I can’t now find. I subsequently posted the details of the Sydney and Melbourne meetings.
There were about 300 people, mostly Jews I think. I’m not. Debbie Whitmont was a fantastic chair, with speakers Geraldine Brookes (Australian American Sydney born journo and Pulitzer Prize winner and convert to Judaism), ex-IDF Avner Gvaryahu, and writer Assaf Gavron.
As for Jewishness, Brookes made the good point that it is very Jewish to come together and talk and talk and talk, and for every two Jews there will be three opinions.
The essence of the evening was that the occupation, the military control of people who do not want to be controlled, is of itself what imperils the existence of Israel and its moral authority. Breaking The Silence acts by trying to get the information out as best they can and raising public awareness, and by helping Arabs on the ground, with the basics of existence.
The Q&A at the end was at times a bit fiesty. Whitmont was a fair and formidable moderator.
Abbott and crew re “Western civilisation” are the same as those ‘Christians’ who, despite what may be in the NT, lurve to pick out hard line old school approaches in the OT. Quite by coincidence of course the old school bits they choose happen to be the ones that justify a bit of smiting and cursing of people they don’t like 🙂
Sean Hannity Could Get 20 Years In Prison For Witness Tampering On Fox
“Delete your emails, acid-wash your emails and hard drives on the phones, take your phones and bash them with a hammer to little itsy-bitsy pieces, use BleachBit, remove SIM cards, then take the pieces and hand them over to Robert Mueller..” -Sean Hannity
Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman said on MSNBC that what Sean Hannity did when he encouraged witnesses to destroy Russia investigation evidence was witness tampering and the punishment for that felony is 20 years in prison.
What Sean Hannity admitted to and actually was enticing people to do was to destroy evidence which is a violation of the witness tampering statute. It’s not just people who destroy testified but it’s also people who ask others to do it. If you look at the language of the statute. Whoever knowingly persuades another person to do so with intent to cause or induce any person to alter, destroy, mutilate or conceal an object with intent to destroy commits a 20-year felony. He’s doing it on TV.
https://www.politicususa.com/2018/06/07/sean-hannity-could-go-to-prison-for-20-years-for-witeness-tampering-on-fox-news.html
“…right back to it’s roots on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.” in what is now Iraq.
Barney
“Interesting news that Katy Gallagher “wants” to stay in the Senate and not run for the new seat in the House of Reps.”
This surprised me too, initially. But I wonder if she’s worried that the ACT’s 3rd HoR seat is precarious, and will be abolished soon after its creation (just like Namadgi before it).
Barney,
Indeed. They like to forget the importance of the Islamic civilisations in the birth of modern Europe and the resulting rise of the West. From maths, science, astronomy, education, agriculture, cities, architecture, trade….
Steve777 @ #1573 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 7:53 am
… and Syria, so what? 🙂
That feels uncomfortably close to a scene in the first star wars movie, where jabba something is dangling luke something over a pit filled with teeth.
Good stuff wombat.
Simon² Katich® @ #1575 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 7:56 am
Yes, Islam played a critical role in Europe regaining the knowledge of the Greeks but the importance of the region historically from a Western perspective predates any of the modern religions. 🙂
Good stuff, Itza! 🙂
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/23/good-idea/
Dear Quote Investigator: Mahatma Gandhi is credited with a brilliantly acerbic remark made in response to a question from a self-satisfied journalist:
Journalist: What do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any solid citations for this sharp exchange. The best I have located is second-hand information in the 1970s. Is there any good support for this quote?
The RW notion of Western Civilisation should be given its correct name: English Imperialism.
I am having trouble picturing Trump as Jedi master.
There were no upsides for Qantas in refusing to abide by the Chinese government demand that companies doing business in China remove any reference to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as separate countries. Possible loss of access to the lucrative Chinese market would be financially disadvantageous.
However China itself regards travel between the mainland and these three places as an international journey. China offers visa free 72 – 144 hour entry to certain places so long as you as you are ‘in transit’ to a third country. We took advantage of this provision by flying onwards to Taipei and did the same thing in reverse.
Qantas wouldn’t be too unhappy with the Taiwanese objection quoted below. While Qantas advertises Sydney – Taipei flights, they are actually flown by Taiwan based China Airlines under a code share arrangement.
Simon² Katich® says:
Friday, June 8, 2018 at 10:56 am
Barney,
Indeed. They like to forget the importance of the Islamic civilisations in the birth of modern Europe and the resulting rise of the West. From maths, science, astronomy, education, agriculture, cities, architecture, trade….
It’s stretching time to suggest these endeavours were pre-dated by the rise of Islam.
Simon² Katich® @ #1521 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 9:07 am
One of my favourite thinkers is Richard Feynman, the physicist. Among many things he said there was one I have to paraphrase. WTTE that you have to ask questions to get at the truth, and the corollary of that being that something that is not surrounded by questions cannot possibly be the truth. Therefore we have to question our civilisation to understand the truth of it.
“… and Syria, so what?”
Not much, but it goes down to what defines ‘Western’ Civilisation.
So you go back in history to the Roman Empire, which I think most would think of as ‘Western’, with Western Europe but also Eastern Europe including Russia able to trace much of their cultures back to Rome. Then Greece, then back to Egypt and the Middle East. Lots of cultures, including Islamic, can trace their roots back to there. Then there’s the ancient Hebrews, among whom Christianity arose and which went on to influence Rome and later Islam. Islam inherited much of the science and knowledge from ancient Greece and in a sense ‘re-gifted’ it to the West. Islam was also influenced by the cultures of Persia and India. We got our decimal number system from India via the Arabs.
So it’s all very complicated.
Now this is a crime against humanity by Israel!
When Donald Trump visited they gave him a portrait of himself made out of Mother of Pearl! Yeuch!
Back at you C@t.
During the Middle Ages, Islam encouraged the arts and sciences, at a time when ‘Western civilisation’ was obsessed with matters of religion. Islamic rulers tended to be far more tolerant of Jews and heretical Christians than their Christian counterparts, who routinely carried out persecutions and pogroms.
When the Crusaders first invaded the Holy Land, they found Christian communities living contentedly under tolerant Islamic rulers. At the time, most Christians in the Middle East actually preferred living under Islamic rule than the rigidly orthodox Christian Byzantine empire.
PeeBee @ #1516 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 8:59 am
I will watch with interest to see how it is possible to feed 12 billion people on hydroponic tomatoes, lettuce, celery and other high-water content, low nutrient value vegetables 🙂
Perhaps the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation is actually interested in promoting this version of “Western”.
Been in China a couple of times this year and the Chinese are very, very sensitive about what the world and China consider to be theirs……….Any mention of one of Taiwan, Hong Kong and the like as somehow separate and different to China has them getting in a real tizz.
Earlier this year some US firms copped a real telling off from China Daily for “insulting” China for suggesting Taiwan, in particular, was something more than the prodigal son/daughter waiting to come home to China. It says something of the insecurity of the Chinese leadership when they get in a huff about this stuff.
While there I was told that China was now “open to the world” and to some extent this is true. However, the sense of control, whether it be via the multitude of CCTV cameras keeping and eye on things or lots of people ‘guarding’ things, suggests otherwise. I don’t think Qantas had much choice but to toe the line – that is kowtow in China’s direction on this issue. I suspect we will see more of this as time goes on.
Simon² Katich® @ #1582 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 11:03 am
In Trump’s mind perhaps?
Big test of Turnbull’s leadership (my headline, not Fairfax’s):
It’s just like renewables, while a federal Liberal Government deflects and procrastinates over an issue the Labor States and Territories go out and act! 🙂
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/08/nt-signs-historic-barunga-agreement-to-begin-indigenous-treaty-talks
Q without notice for all the iPhone owners –
Are any of you having ongoing access problems due to the Telstra outage?
I can’t get on to an important call with one of your type.
Marker
This ‘high powered panel’ to unify Australian branding is what the ultimate ‘retail’ politician is all about. Malcolm is more interested in image than actuality.