The diversion of Super Saturday meant I fell out of my habit of running weekly posts on the latest BludgerTrack numbers, although I have been updating them as new polls have come through. As no national polls appear likely this week, now is a good time to resume.
There have been three national polls since the last BludgerTrack post, each of which has registered some sort of improvement for the Coalition: the Ipsos poll three weeks ago had Labor’s two-party lead closing from 53-47 to 51-49, and its respondent-allocated preferences result was 50-50 (as it was in the Ipsos poll from early April); and, more modestly, last week’s Newspoll and Essential Research results both had Coalition up a point on the primary vote and Labor steady.
We also had yesterday a Western Australia only poll from YouGov Galaxy, which gratifyingly supported what BludgerTrack was saying already. On voting intention, it had the Coalition on 42%, down from 48.7% at the 2016 election; Labor on 36%, up 3.5%; the Greens on 10%, down 2.1%; and One Nation on 5%. The published two-party result is 51-49 in favour of the Coalition, which is presumably based on previous election flows, and compares with 54.7-45.3 in 2016.
Other findings of the poll: Malcolm Turnbull led Bill Shorten 47-32 as preferred prime minister; they were tied at 40% on who was most trusted to “change the distribution of GST revenue to ensure WA receives a fairer share” (which might be thought presumptuous wording, though few in WA would be likely to think so); and 36% supported and 50% opposed company tax cuts, in response to a question that specified beneficiaries would include “those with a turnover above $50 million a year”. The poll was conducted on Thursday and Friday for the Sunday Times from a sample of 831.
Together with the existing BludgerTrack reading, this poll tends to confirm that much of the air has gone out of the boom Labor was experiencing in WA polling through much of last year and this year. The BludgerTrack probability projections now have Labor likely to pick up Hasluck, but Swan and Christian Porter’s seat of Pearce are now rated as 50-50 propositions.
At the national level, recent polls have produced a movement back to the Coalition on two-party preferred, with Labor’s lead down to 51.1-48.9, its lowest level since late 2016. However, this has not availed them much on the seat projection, which actually credits Labor with a bigger majority than it achieved in 2007, when its two-party vote was 1.6% higher.
Partly this reflects continuing weakness in the Coalition’s ratings in all-important Queensland, consistent with the Longman by-election result. Labor has also made a gain in BludgerTrack against the national trend in Victoria, netting them two projected seats, which is balanced only by a one seat loss from a slightly larger movement against them in New South Wales. BludgerTrack is now registering a small swing in the Coalition’s favour in New South Wales, but thanks to adjustments for sophomore surge effects in all seats the Coalition could conceivably gain from Labor, it’s not availing them on the seat projection.
Ipsos and Newspoll both provided new results for leadership ratings, which have made a small further contribution to the existing improving trend for Malcolm Turnbull, both on net approval and preferred prime minister. Full results through the link below.
From lizzie’s link .There’s that number again…
“Universal Access to Early Childhood Education will conclude from June 30, 2020. That’s a saving of more than $440m.
Yes of course they do lizzie. It gets in the way of making money for their mates.
zoomster @ #285 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 1:47 pm
Diogenes @ #256 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 1:08 pm
Dio
I have long thought it might be a cost saving and practical option to basically have medical students complete (and pass with a very high grade theoretical papers before embarking on the more costly practical training.
You could for example have people from overseas or even those wishing to upgrade skills first complete written exams, Very low cost – even studying independently without high cost uni fees. If and only if they pass a number of related theoretical units would they enroll in the more costly practical courses – histology, hands on anatomy etc. I know the Gamsatt sort of already does this, but it is still necessary to enroll in log med courses.
Also I do not see why drs must be both MDs and BS. If you separated the two you would get more people involved. i know that I opted NOT to do medicine because I was petrified of surgery.I would have been happy as a skin specialist, physician, shrink or even a GP. Surgeon no way!!
I can’t speak for all degrees but, IIRC, the subjects related to practical application of skills earned in degrees are usually pass/fail, rather than graded – especially in fields where competency can mean the difference between life and death for people.
I know in a few degrees (like Nursing and Aviation), failure in some practicals can put you up for instant preclusion too (students can appeal those, if there were special circumstances that led to the failure, of course.) I vaguely recall Aviation (well at least for those that are studying it to fly) is very strict.
Confessions @ #248 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 12:54 pm
They have an end ? 🙂
zoomster @ #296 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 1:57 pm
Are you now arguing that students must get 100% on their exams to pass?
Harsh! 🙂
DTT and guytaur
That’s completely true. As a doctor, you only use a fraction of what you were taught. Most of what I knew/know is irrelevant to my daily practice. The only time I use it is when a friend etc asks me. We waste a huge amount of resources training doctors so they know about lots of areas which they later forget. If someone agreed to practice in a more defined area, the training and cost would be a lot less (that is basically what happens with nurse practitioners some of whom so endoscopies now). If you got a motivated, high functioning RN, (s)he could be trained to do quite a lot of the work GPs and even specialists do.
In NSW, aspiring medical students go through a pretty intense interview process pre-final school exams
P1
Oh, if you’re happy with someone performing a procedure on you when they only scraped a bare pass on how to do it, knock yourself out.
(Which is – of course – why doctors don’t get to do procedures on that basis…they do an awful lot of practical stuff under supervision. Some of our local doctors are still under supervision of some kind after ten years in the country…)
Right wing thugs in Britain are ransacking bookshops. They might as well wear brown shirts.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/05/far-right-protesters-ransack-socialist-bookshop-bookmarks-in-london
At this point the similarities between the alt-right and national socialism are so great that they cannot be ignored. Anyone who thinks we can ignore them has no right to blame Germans for letting the Nazis rise to power.
Basically, however, any education system ‘works’. It just depends what kind of outcomes you want on the other side.
Our modern world demands people who can go beyond rote learning, who can question and investigate and come to conclusions by themselves, so that they can solve problems as they arise and adjust to new situations.
A lot of ‘facts’ we learn turn out not to be so. Approaches to tasks change – I’d bet lots of money that some of the engineering techniques my son is being taught now will be obsolete by the end of his working life – we discover new drugs, new approaches, new techniques. So mere learning of a set of facts (particularly in secondary school) may ultimately be counter productive.
Learning how to learn, and (equally importantly) being willing to learn, ultimately is a better fit for the world as it is now.
For how much longer will the LNP go without a stuff up or brawl? It is weeks since they have made a serious blunder or serious internal fight – this is unprecedented for the Turnbull government.
I’m hoping the NEG will result in a decent brawl and get defeated by joyce, abbot and Co crossing the house OR that it passes the with labor support for a better NEG that can be fixed once the LNP are out of office and a crossing of the floor by the loons (& so labor looks non-partisan). Labor should be able to push for a sensible outcome here – making it clear that the LNP cannot pass decent climate legislation due to it’s deep divisions and enslavement to the far right. it is a win win for labor – if the NEG passes with amendments to make it useful in the future, the LNP will have a public brawl, the greens will oppose and the ALP will be the champions of the sensible middle ground. If the LNP refuses amendments, the NEG will not pass and Labor can claim only they can deliver sensible environmental and energy policies because the LNP is hamstrung and Turnbull too weak to lead a divided party. Labor should be on the front foot with this – loudly proclaiming they will support sensible policies and selling their proposed amendments. They can also point out that GetUp and the Greens are against the NEG that they negotiate, placing themselves as in sensible centre.=m, saying it is better than nothing and that once in gov they can fix the NEG. It would not be a ‘win’ for turnbull, who’d likely face a leadership challenge over labor-amended legislation.
The other thing labor needs to start pushing is Turnbull’s arrogance and ego – point out that he is a weird combination of weakness and arrogance whose vanity means that he’s not prepared to make hard decisions that might cost him his job. The lines to push are “Because of Turnbull’s weakness, Tony Abbott still leads the liberal party” and “Turnbull is too arrogant to listen to the community, but too weak and vain to stand up to Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce” and “What’s the point of Malcolm Turnbull?”
Here in SA York Civil, a medium-sized local construction company, has gone into administration:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-06/contractor-york-civil-goes-into-administration/10077988
The rate of progress on their tram job has been painfully slow, but it is a shame for their workers.
So that great Infrastructure Premier and Infrastructure PM are not actually doing much in SA now are they? That will teach us for having no marginal seats. Roads are just a flavour of pork to the Liberals, while rail projects are even worse – what leftie electorates want.
zoomster @ #309 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 2:20 pm
I have no idea what you are trying to say here … and I suspect you don’t either.
Your original contention was that simple competence was not a good enough yardstick for your performance to be deemed “satisfactory”, and simple incompetence was not enough for it to be deemed “unsatisfactory”. It apparently depended on how you were doing against your “potential” – which of course is something that you can apparently judge independently of performance (but based on exactly what, I have no idea!)
You now seem to be arguing the opposite.
‘P’s get degrees.
That was meant to say that our great LNP will win the next election by a landslide and Malcolm Turnbull will be a good leader for our great nation
Further on York Civil, they say they only have 131 staff in Adelaide. But with contractors included the number of locals would be more like 400.
https://indaily.com.au/news/business/2018/08/06/york-civil-voluntary-administration/
Whoever is pretending to be Wayne is getting laughable now
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/aug/06/josh-frydenberg-spurns-emissions-compromise-in-national-energy-guarantee
Shorter Hungarian National: please kill this Labor states so I don’t have to suffer having my own backbench kill it.
Sprocket ~ @ #313 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 2:32 pm
I see the socially conservative SDA still have their influence in Labor
Doesn’t a great nation deserve a great leader? Why settle for a “good” leader? Hm…
Sorry to be seem to be over-egging my daughter’s single release. But, the 3JJJ sight where it is posted went down over the weekend and some PBers expressed disappointment that the track would not load for them. This has been fixed. So, I’m linking it again for anyone interested in having a listen.
https://www.triplejunearthed.com/artist/douzey
jenauthor @ #319 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 12:39 pm
The words “getting” and “now” are superfluous in the above sentence.
@Wayne,
Didn’t you say the same thing in the by elections?
Tim Buckley
@TimBuckleyIEEFA
18h18 hours ago
So @TheEconomist nails it – #coal and corruption go hand in hand, in India as in . No wonder our LNP promote coal like there is no tomorrow. But this article misses that coal demand will likely flat-line as #renewables take all new demand growth.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/08/02/india-shows-how-hard-it-is-to-move-beyond-fossil-fuels
GG:
Thanks for that. The music isn’t to my taste but well done to your daughter on her achievements! She should be proud.
Greensborough Growler @ #323 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 12:43 pm
A couple of questions on her song, which I think is brilliant BTW:
Did she write it herself, or was it co-written with someone else?
Did she play any/all the instruments, or does she have a backing band, or is she just one member in the band?
Did she/they self produce/engineer the song or hire an external producer and/or engineer?
These are just matters of curiosity. If she/they maintain that kind of standard for future works the future looks exceedingly bright for her/them.
The only thing I dislike about those SA preselections (other than Gallacher still hanging around) is that Butler is contesting Hindmarsh and Georganas is contesting Adelaide. It should be the other way around (if you’re going to have such a factional deal), as Georganas has spent the good part of his life working hard for that electorate in one capacity or another.
Also, I know Nadia Clancy. She has little chance of winning Boothby but she’s a great person and I sincerely hope that, should she not win this time, she’s a candidate for a winnable seat (federal or state) in future.
Zoom
“A lot of ‘facts’ we learn turn out not to be so. Approaches to tasks change – I’d bet lots of money that some of the engineering techniques my son is being taught now will be obsolete by the end of his working life – we discover new drugs, new approaches, new techniques. So mere learning of a set of facts (particularly in secondary school) may ultimately be counter productive.”
As an engineer for several decades I can assure you that is so. In Engineering we develop a theory/practice, find better data or technology, and develop a new practice, realising the flaws in the previous one. In my field (transport), freeway building is being largely abandoned in most OECD countries. Not here of course…
Economics is even worse. In economics we get better data but half the profession DON’T change their practices. So in the 1980s fighting inflation was the raison d’etre. Now underemployment is the real problem, but we still have right wing economic loons out there urging policies designed to fight inflation.
No 2 on the SA Senate ticket, also used to work for FPMJG
Marielle Smith is an experienced board member and public policy adviser. Ms Smith is currently a member of the board of Australia’s largest private operator of franchised public transport. She also works as a Senior Adviser on international public policy issues.
Ms Smith has extensive experience in Federal Government, having worked as a policy adviser to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the former Minister for Employment Participation and Childcare. She has held senior private sector management roles in business development and government relations, where she has worked extensively on procurement and tenders. Ms Smith has also volunteered her time working on policy issues in West Africa.
Ms Smith holds a First Class Honours degree from the Australian National University and a Master of Public Policy and Administration with Distinction from the London School of Economics.
http://newpolitics.com.au/2018/08/06/the-political-assassination-of-emma-husar/
I thought BuzzFeed was a serious media outlet like Crikey, but obviously not.
Zoidlord @ #327 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 2:47 pm
The chart in this article says it all really. I’ll try posting it here …
Coal is still king. The surge of renewables has been almost entirely at the expense of nuclear, not coal.
Net benefit to the planet = zero 🙁
Is anyone watching Royal Commission into financial wroughts?
Seems Retail Super funds are admitting some fees for survices are really commissions … & now look to be REFUNDABLE . If I have it right.
Maybe Leigh for Sale can ask Mal why he opposed the RC.
Buzzfeed is basically socially liberal trendy news. It’s good for calling out Nazis and bigots and drumming momentum for socially progressive campaigns but is still upper middle class and still pushes right wing economics (bar a few intellectually abstract discussions about socialism that is divorced from anything meaningful.) It’s a favourite of trendy, inner-city types (usually Greens voters) who call themselves leftists but take stances like preferring Malcolm Turnbull over Bill Shorten because the former is a “silver fox” and the latter is boring.
zoomster says:
Monday, August 6, 2018 at 12:46 pm
P1
Indeed. So let’s acknowledge the important difference between the lazy b*stard who could do better if they weren’t an arrogant tosser, and who will cost you potentially thousands because of this, and the hard worker who will work their guts out.
..
Your the one wasting the tossers time teaching him/her stuff they already know.
P1
Near enough is never good enough! (and some tasks are simply yes they can do it, no they can’t).
I’m objecting to the simplicity of 50% is good enough, not endorsing it. I’m objecting to the idea that a grade tells you all you need to know, as well.
I’m obviously thus arguing for a more complex system, and certainly a more individualised one.
P1
Germany is interesting.
?itok=SfQ590JK
Rational Leftist @ #336 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 3:12 pm
Then why are they running the Husar gossip?
If that’s their idea of how to run a politicized media campaign for the left, they’re not very smart. Or is that ‘liberal’ as in ‘LNP’ liberal, where it actually means “conservative”?
frednk
No, I’m extending the tosser by telling them that near enough isn’t good enough and he needs to extend himself if he wants the S.
Coal in global energy mix is still high because of China.
Simon² Katich® @ #340 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 3:14 pm
Yes, it has been mentioned here before (by me) that Germany is the classic case of doing it wrong – sure, they are growing their renewables … but at the expense of nuclear, not fossil fuels. Yes, new demand is being satisfied by renewables, but coal and other fossil fuels are not reducing much at all, hence little or no reduction in C02 emissions.
It was a conscious decision of the Greens in Germany to abandon nuclear and move to renewables. A monumentally stupid decision 🙁
I’m confused about what exactly in my post you’re objecting to, ar.
zoomster @ #339 Monday, August 6th, 2018 – 3:14 pm
I’m no longer sure what you are arguing, except that you want to grade students as “unsatisfactory” – even if they pass easily – should they fail to live up to your idea of their “potential”.
I am certainly glad I was not one of your students 🙁
Not objecting, more confused about why a liberal media outlet would think it’s in their interest (or the interest of their preferred side of politics) to lead the pack with the Husar story.
sustainable future…
Its a fascinating conundrum. Any NEG that allows higher targets will be opposed by Abbot and his ilk.
Any NEG that locks in low targets won’t pass COAG. Turnbull is screwed and I wonder why all those clever journalists don’t notice.
Turnbull’s best bet is to kick the can down thr road. But I hope he persists and gets a brawl from the lizzards.
Trump tweeted what?!?
President Trump is a lawyer’s client from hell. He lacks self-control, cannot tell the truth and will not absorb legal advice he doesn’t like. Most clients don’t incriminate themselves in public. Again and again. Trump does, however.
Trump fails to understand that the very meeting he is acknowledging is collusion — or conspiracy, if you will — to break campaign-finance laws. Insisting that it is legal to get dirt from a foreign national is politically and morally offensive (Trump was picked by the Kremlin) and contradicts his claim the Russians didn’t want him to win (another lie in the coverup). He knows they did — they had a meeting to help his campaign.
Trump’s insistence that the meeting was perfectly legal and perfectly normal is wrong on both counts. No presidential campaign has gone to a hostile foreign power for help in winning an election. It’s a invitation for a foreign power to help pick our elected leaders, a constitutional abomination and a repudiation of the very concept of democracy (i.e., we pick our own leaders).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/08/05/trump-tweeted-what/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5ea87b87efa8