It’s been a quiet week on the poll front, and indeed it’s worth noting that polling generally is thinner on the ground than it used to be – the once weekly Essential Research series went fortnightly at the start of the year, neither Sky News nor Seven has been treating us to federal ReachTEL polls like they used to, and even the Fairfax-Ipsos poll has pared back its sample sizes in recent times from 1400 to 1200. I suspect we won’t be getting the normally-fortnightly Newspoll on Sunday night either, as these are usually timed to coincide with the resumption of parliament, for which we will have to wait another week. I can at least relate the following:
• The Guardian has results from a ReachTEL poll of Wentworth conducted for independent candidate Licia Heath, conducted last Thursday from a sample of 727. After exclusion of the 5.6% undecided the results are Dave Sharma (Liberal) 43.0%; Tim Murray (Labor) 20.7%; Kerryn Phelps (independent) 17.9%; Licia Heath (independent) 10.0% and Dominic Wy Kanak (Greens) 6.6%. The poll also comes with a 51-49 Liberal-versus-Labor two-party result, but this a) assumes Tim Murray would not be overtaken by Kerryn Phelps after allocation of preferences, and b) credits Labor with over three-quarters of independent and minor party preferences, which seems highly implausible. The poll also reportedly finds “as many as 52% of people said high-profile independent candidate Kerryn Phelps’ decision to preference the Liberals made it less likely they would give her their vote”, but this would seem to be a complex issue given Phelps’s flip-flop on the subject.
• The Guardian also has results of polling by ReachTEL for the Australian Education Union on the federal goverment’s funding deal for Catholic and independent schools, conducted last Thursday from a sample of 1261 respondents in Corangamite, Dunkley, Forde, Capricornia, Flynn, Gilmore, Robertson and Banks. The report dwells too much on what the small sub-sample of undecided voters thought, but it does at least relate that 38.6% of all respondents said the deal made them less likely to vote Liberal.
• Back to Wentworth, I had a paywalled article on the subject in Crikey, and took part in a mostly Wentworth-related podcast yesterday with Ben Raue of The Tally Room, along with Georgia Tkachuk of Collins Gartrell, which you can access below.
“You had one job!”
Certainly looks like someone got a job. 😛
There is some common thread between Trump & Alan Jones ( and other Right wing nut jobs ) , something in their psyche .
Arrogant, rude, belligerent, ignorant & so sure of themselves.
Zoomster
“Which wouldn’t happen if, as Lovey claimed, signatory countries didn’t have limits on how many refugees they take.” You were talking about non-signatory countries as well… I asked you what the limits in Uganda, Jordan etc are… You still can’t tell me.
“Are you suggesting Australia should take every single refugee from these camps? If not, what’s your solution – we just take the ones rich enough to hire a people smuggler?”
This is typical bait and switch. Don’t be a moron. The key thing here is that Australia’s refugee ‘problem’ is tiny and that for all this bloviating crap about the hordes ready to travel to Australia, there just isn’t. It’s all crap.
“And, apparently, not too fussed about living there. After all, millions of Indonesians manage to do so very happily. And they can always leave Indonesia for another country, if it’s such a hellhole.”
Well the articles i linked clearly indicated they were NOT happy. And they CANNOT live like the rest of the Indonesians. This is my KEY POINT.
“f the countries you listed didn’t have quotas, there wouldn’t be camps there, because people would simply arrive and start living in the community.”
They’re not locked in Camps like Australia. And in many places they do get work etc. They do form part of the community.
I don’t know how you compare camps in Jordan where hundreds of thousands of people live are somehow comparable to the few thousand Australia takes in each year. The generosity of Jordan is immense here and to claim that Australia is better because we allow 20,000 refugees in, is ludicrous.
“Er, no I didn’t. I said Lovey’s claim that few or no countries had any limits at all was bollocks. Which it is.
However, you haven’t disproved that (mis) statement in any way. If the countries you listed didn’t have quotas, there wouldn’t be camps there, because people would simply arrive and start living in the community.”
Well now you’re re-writing history.
Bulldust
You were the one who listed a whole series of supposed “crimes” by russia
I replies with a list of exactly the same “crimes” by USA but you seemed not to know of them
It is called hypocrisy. I have no problem with you calling out the perpetrators of crimes of all kinds but remember if you call out an emmy for a ctime remember not to be hypocrrital and forget to call out your friends for the same crime.
Now first to the airliner. While the evidence suggests (but does not prove) that the Malaysian aircraft was taken out by a Russian missile, I do not think anyone suggests seriously it was fired from Russia or by Russian troops. The idea i think that it was Russian speaking separatists in Ukraine using Russian weapons. Possibly there were Russian trainers and possibly there were Russians acting as separatists but there is no thought that it was in fact a Russian military operated missile. Moreover I do not think anyone suggests that the act was in anyway deliberate ie they were not aiming for a Malaysian civilian aircraft. So in that sense the US equivalent of taking out an Iranian airliner was a fraction worse in that it WAS operated by their military, and they were targeting Iranian aircraft. However I am sure that taking down a civilian airliner was an accident, just as was taking out the Malaysian airliner. So sorry if you want to call what the Ukrainian but Russian supported rebels did a crime from Russia then charge the USA for the same crime against Iran. 290 people died on July 1 1988. This “crime” happened 6 years after Kavanagh was trying to get into Fords bathers, so it is clearly still very current.
William
Please try to understand context. My comment was a very specific reply to Bulldust
Bulldust talked of bombing so I stick to bombing. I am always in strife here for not being rigorously accurate so bloody unfair to call; me out when i am sticking to like for like.
Ahhh, but that was to liberate oppressed Russians. Kinda like a peacekeeping mission in order to create a climate for fair elections that they could rig to allow carving up of long established sovereign borders in their favour whilst also enabling strong arm control of the rest of the territory of said sovereign nations as well as advertising a lesson to others in the vicinity who may also wish to express their sovereign rights.
Astrobleme @ #403 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 3:50 pm
So the Greens proposal to have a numerical limit of 50,000 is completely justified because there are simply not enough refugees who want to come to Australia to ever reach this limit?
I guess this also explains why they never answer the question of what happens to refugee number 50,001 🙁
Socrates
Fair enough
I did not follow the Russia in Afghanistan too much but it did not seem to be on the scale of USA in Vietnam, although i have heard the two wars likened to one another. So I guess there was bombing by air but not on the scale of the B52s. They did not use agent orange or napalm so a few notches lower in the horror stakes.
Georgia was pretty short and sharp so while it happened it was not anywhere near the scale of the USA/NATO bombing of Serbia
Now I am pretty certain that Russia has NOT bombed anywhere in the Ukraine. They have been careful to avoid their military directly firing on the Ukrainian forces (there may have been a small bit in Crimea. Russia has supplied weapons and possibly supported “mercenaries” but as a nation I do not think they have bombed in Ukraine.
In Syria of course they have been “invited” and yes they have done plenty of bombing, although it is a moot question as to who has bombed most – Russia or the USA.
The Green Kool Aid is strong in some, eh? 🙂
1 Million refugees hightailed it to Germany but Australia wouldn’t even make it to 50000!?!
Any old piece of made up tosh so as to not have to confront reality, that seems to be The Greens’ motto.
I also wonder if there will be any changes (at the margin) in Chinese buying of US Treasuries…[-> higher rates]
by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Fitch Ratings has warned that global bond markets face a rude shock as the US Federal Reserve jams on the brakes to avert overheating, with grave implications for inflated asset prices across the world.
Brian Coulton, the agency’s chief economist, said investors have underestimated the Fed’s determination to drain excess liquidity and prevent the inflation genie escaping from the bottle. It can no longer wait as White House fiscal stimulus drives a surge in late-cycle growth…
https://www.afr.com/news/world/north-america/us-federal-reserve-interest-rate-hikes-will-trigger-debt-meltdown-20181004-h1699f
Player One
“So the Greens proposal to have a numerical limit of 50,000”
No idea why they chose that number… I don’t see it as particularly high
“I guess this also explains why they never answer the question of what happens to refugee number 50,001 ”
Well, perhaps because they don’t know…
I am not sure what point this is supposed to prove.
Equating Georgia with Serbia is not helpful to your argument.
C@t
50k is better than what Labor is offering.
And as PlayerOne keeps banging on about they haven’t said what they’d do with the possibility of more coming….
Astrobleme @ #411 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 4:14 pm
I think you just made my point for me.
Simon
Again while you are sort of right re Georgia, you are wrong on Ukraine. Since the main battle is in the east, Russia was never going to bomb for the obvious reason that most of the residents were indeed Russian ethnically and friendly. indeed i have read somewhere that there has been a 20% or more reduction in population in Ukraine. Many have gone to Russia so many in fact that the Ukrainian government has recently stopped direct train services. (Many have also gone to Poland and other parts of Europe)
As for Georgia I would see the best parallel being that of the Falklands where mother Maggie intervened to protect a tiny English enclave in the antarctic (almost waters). The sections of Georgia affected were/are indeed ethnically Russian.
C@t
I think your point about the German Refugee intake only makes Australia look worse, by comparison.
PlayerOne
“I think you just made my point for me.”
So, what is it?
Simon
Why not. The discussion was about bombing raids.
Georgia was raised as an example of Russian bombing. I replied that it was short and sharp in contrast to the much heavier and longer bombing of Serbia where again small European nation had a secessionist crisis.
The whole POINT of this argument is saying you cannot call out Russia for crimes if you do not callout USA (and UK and indeed Australia) for similar “crimes.”
It is about NOT being hypocritical.
“The poll also reportedly finds “as many as 52% of people said high-profile independent candidate Kerryn Phelps’ decision to preference the Liberals made it less likely they would give her their vote”, but this would seem to be a complex issue given Phelps’s flip-flop on the subject.”…
In fact, flip-flopping per se should make less likely that many people will either vote for or second-preference Phelps. Who wants to protest against a waffling Liberal party by voting for a flip-flopping candidate?
Labor has ground to be optimistic…. whether you like it or not.
Astrobleme @ #416 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 4:23 pm
That wasn’t the point I was trying to make but you have slid out from under it, as expected. Btw, Australia isn’t Germany. As a Green you should be attuned to the environmental differences, but, as I have observed before, The Greens don’t seem too concerned about the effect on the environment of various policies which they advocate.
However, what you have brought to mind is the effect on Germany that the acceptance of those 1 million refugees had. The rise in popularity of the Far Right. I would rather Australia dodged that bullet if you don’t mind.
C@t
The issue here, really, is about boat arrivals and how we treat them. That’s Australia’s issue.
the numbers attempting the journey are tiny – it’s not going to make any difference to Australia’s population or environment by taking them.
Which I agree with.
Serbia and Georgia are not even close to equivalent conflicts so comparing the bombing committed by Russia and the UN in those conflicts is pointless.
Serbia was in the process of committing genocide.
Astrobleme @ #417 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 4:24 pm
That the Greens don’t really have a better idea of what to do about the coming refugee crisis than anyone else does.
If they propose a limit that we will reach, then they don’t know what to do once we reach it – and if they propose a limit that we won’t reach, then it is effectively a “let them all come” policy.
The Greens seem to be just as guilty of politicising the refugee issue as the Liberals. It appears the only ones who are not – simply by not letting themselves be drawn on the issue – are Labor.
Player One @ #423 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 4:37 pm
Oh … and possibly “Sustainable Australia”. They have a proper population and migration policy, but of course there is no way they will ever get a chance to implement it.
Dare to Tread,
I do not regard the USA as choir boys by any means but this debate seems to have gotten right off track by comparing one against the other.
My main reason for posting was to express my concern towards Russia and their activities in and against other countries. Their activities seem to have escalated somewhat recently particularly since Trump arrived.
One would be a complete fool to think that the USA has clean hands after all of the conflicts they have been involved in but as far as I am aware they are not involved in overtly interfering in other country’s elections or poisoning so called traitors and scumbags in another soveriegn country ie Britain.
Yes, the bombing etc is there for the whole world to see and for them to see who does it but the shit that’s going on under cover is another matter. That’s what I’m referring to.
DaretoTread @ #417 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 4:28 pm
Okay, as long as we can all still call out Russia for making Trump president of the USA. Because the USA has never tricked any other nation into taking Trump as their leader, or even anyone remotely Trump-like in terms of being personally revulsive.
Chinese made rail carriages containing asbestos.
“the coming refugee crisis”
There’s one already…
“If they propose a limit that we will reach, then they don’t know what to do once we reach it – and if they propose a limit that we won’t reach, then it is effectively a “let them all come” policy.”
No, it doesn’t and it isn’t.
What you are guilty of is hyperbole.
There are few places in the world with a smaller refugee problem than Australia… NZ comes to mind.
SK@4:01pm
I think you are old enough to know that there was a thing called Soviet Union and Ukraine and Georgia were part of that Soviet Union. That Soviet Union existed till 1990
Did you read that article by Tom Englehart for which link was provided by one of the bloggers about what happened after Soviet Union collapse.
BTW, I did not get an answer why those 4 Russian cyber spies caught in Netherlands for trying to hack that Chemical organisation were expelled instead of being prosecuted in April 2018?
This is Russia’s Armed Drone, which it is selling to a country in the Middle East.
https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2018/08/23/russian-firm-may-sell-a-drone-resembling-the-us-predator-to-a-mideast-customer/
No. In Ossetia they were a mix of Ossetians and Georgians. Since the war the Ossetians vastly outnumber the Georgians as the massive numbers of displaced Georgians attest to.
I understand that the Ossetians in South Ossetia are different to those of North Ossetia. but it is not relevant. The mix of ethnic and tribal groups in that area (and well beyond) have mixed, mingled, spread, contracted with waves of migration and invasions. It is simply inconceivable that you can reshape international borders with nation states in mind, or preferences of allegiances with other states.
There isnt an international border more obvious and distinct than the one Russia has dissected to their benefit in Ossetia.
Astrobleme @ #428 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 4:49 pm
So you are a member of the “we will never reach 50,000 refugees” camp?
Which conveniently means you don’t have to answer the question of what happens to the poor sod who turns up as number 50,001 🙁
1991.
William Bowe says:
Friday, October 5, 2018 at 3:42 pm
BTW, note that George Newhouse (ALP) got 88.8% of all minor party / independent preferences (!!!). Also, Malcolm Turnbull got a TPP of 52.5% off a PV of 50.4%. If Sharma gets 10% less than that in PV, but Labor matches its 2007 30% PV in the penultimate (ie, 3-way) count this by-election, Murray is in with a very real chance.
Look at who was providing the preferences though — a 14.96% Greens vote plus 4.19% for assorted minnows. This time the preference pool will be dominated by independent Liberals (assuming Labor makes it that far). In my post I express what I consider well-founded skepticism that Labor will receive three-quarters of preferences, as per ReachTEL’s results.
————————————
Thanks for that response, William.
Before I go further, I should note that I made a typo in my original post: I meant to say Labor got 81.8% of Green/Other preferences, not 88.8%. (Labor got 87.1% of Greens, 63.1% of Others).
The reason I am referring back to 2007 is that this is the election, over the past 25 years, in which the overall Labor TPP lean across NSW most closely resembles what your BludgerTracker indicates is the case right now. In that environment, Greens preferences broke better than 85% Labor, Liberal Democrats broke 50/50, and even Family First broke 56% Labor! This indicates that, if the overall environment is hostile to an incumbent Coalition Government (as it was in 2007, and most likely is now), then very strong independent & minor party preference flows to Labor in Wentworth are not out of the question – and not just from Labor’s perennial electoral bedfellows the Greens.
William, one thing I am curious about with this latest ReachTel poll: is their 51/49 TPP respondent allocated?
Bulldust
The problem is that Russia has ONLY taken a few tiny expansionist steps say compared to other curent world conflicts but Russia phobes/warmongers only refer to those ones
OK Russia annexed Ukraine, but really the Falklands parallel is telling here. History and the population were with UK but geography with Argentina (sort of). The Crimea has long been part of Russia and saw themselves as Russian. The Ukranian government proposed banning the use of Russian in schools. It was a historical accident that Crimea was in the Ukraine and of course no one bothered to ask them in 1990 when i am guessing they would all have chosen to stay Russian (as would the eastern Ukrainians. Blame Gorbachev and I guess Bill Clinton for mucking up the disintegration of the USSR. Each of the regions bordering Russia SHOULD have been given a vote before being arbitrarily allocated to Ukraine.
As I pointed out the plane was an accident and even if it was a Russian missile, there is no question that it was an ACCIDENT. The Saudis bombed a school bus recently again i am assuming it was an accident.
As for other “aggressive” acts by Russia, the only one is Syria where it is a positive UN of bombing and attacks against civilians
Russia, USA, Turkey, France, Saudi, Israel, Jordan, UK, Iran and Hezbollaah are all bombing the place. Why single out Russia who at least have the advantage of having been invited.
Player One @ #431 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 4:57 pm
Two options:
1. They go into a queue, and take the first slot of next year’s 50,000 as soon as it opens up.
2. They win resettlement in NZ, or Malaysia, or any other nearby nation willing to take them.
The refugee chooses which.
zoomster @ #113 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 6:48 am
Thanks zoom,
Sad, but not surprising! 🙁
ar @4:41pm
Russia may have done a lot of hacking and churned out a lot of fake news on Clinton in facebook.
But 3 things are facts
1. Americans voted Trump as President and Russian voters have no say in that
2. Fox Channel and Murdoch are responsible for keeping repubs outraged against Clinton and supporting Trump.
3. It is not as if there was no bad news about Trump by MSM during 2016( for example, ‘grabbing by pussy’ for instance). Still as Bob Carr said about 1995 election, majority of people in majority of states voted in such a way that Trump got majority in electoral college.
a r @ #436 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 4:59 pm
So if they choose option 1, do they go into detention in the meantime? And if they choose option 2, do they go into detention in the meantime?
If not, what happens to them?
Yes – I don’t think a previous election preferences calculation would be much use in this by-election, for the same reasons I raise in relation to 2007, i.e. the minor parties and independents are a very different bunch this time. For what it’s worth though, if you give Labor 79.7% of Greens preferences and 51.8% of “others” preferences, as per the 2016 result, it comes out at 59-41.
“So you are a member of the “we will never reach 50,000 refugees” camp?”
I am not a member of any camp.
But history shows that it would be unusual.
AND 50k is not that many, so I would be in favour of taking more when there are more refugees.
But again, this doesn’t have anything to do with how we treat those who come by sea.
Astrobleme @ #441 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 5:08 pm
“Let them all come!” 🙁
Simon
The point is that it would seem that the Ossettians are happy. Surely that is the main thing.
Not sure what you mean about borders and tribes etc. I for one would support redrawing ALL national borders along ethnic /language lines wherever possible. You can then form federations of some kind but leave a lot of culturally related issues for more local rule. I know it is hard to do but not always impossible.
The collapse of the Soviet union was particularly problematic because those new nations had played such a key role in the psyche of the nation we now call Russia. For example who do we blame for the hated and feared Stalinist regime. Russia or Georgia. Was Russia or Ukraine responsible for the Cuban crisis.
William, adding to my last post, I do note that Labor’s TPP in BludgerTrack right now is 52.4%, 1.3% less than their 53.7% in NSW in 2007. So, this would give us a reason to expect a lower Labor TPP in Wentworth now than in 2007. (Most justified estimate: 44.8%, give or take effect of boundary changes since 2007.)
However, against this, the Liberal’s TPP in Wentworth in 2007 would have included a “sophomore effect” personal vote for Turnbull. It is a major understatement to say this personal vote will be absent from the Liberal TPP right now! If MT’s “sophomore effect” personal vote ran to 3.9% in 2007, then Labor would have won Wentworth in 2007! If it was 5.2%, Labor would have won, even if the overall TPP climate across NSW was exactly as it is now according to BludgerTracker.
P1
Indeed give ’em and inch and we would be , as Pauline would say, swamped. Those ‘asiatic hordes’ are always waiting to sweep down from the north. 🙁
Not really, no. A world system based on nation states is not nirvana even if you could magic one up. Furthermore, it is impossible. The world is just not ordered into geographical areas of ethnic happy joy. And it is certainly impossible to achieve without widespread violence, mass displacement and global instability.
I do not doubt (in fact I know) that Georgian groups were treating Ossetians badly in some areas. This is to be dealt with in other ways. Succession (with the encouragement of a superpower) is a slippery slope.
But the Georgian war was never about Ossetians or Abkhazians. It was about Russia and their control of neighbouring client states. Pure and simple. The fact they now have a defacto border 20km from Tbilisi says it all.
“Indeed give ’em and inch and we would be , as Pauline would say, swamped. Those ‘asiatic hordes’ are always waiting to sweep down from the north. ”
ohhh great, so you will refuse to acknowledge reality, on the basis that someone might misuse what you say…
And you say the Greens are politicising this… Hypocrites.
““Let them all come!” ”
This is how you politicise something….
Was just having a look at the numbers of people arriving by boat in Australia since 1976. What is telling is that in 2013, the number was 20,587, up from 17,204 the previous year. Now one needs to remember that arrivals slowed after the announcement of Kevin Rudd’s settlement deal with Papua New Guinea In late July, and continued to slow for the rest of 2013 to nearly nothing by the end of that year. So we were on a sharp increase. Now, I will say honestly, I used to be in the let them come camp. but I came to the reality that boat arrivals, especially in those numbers, are totally unacceptable to the majority of Australians. Had we continued to allow people to arrive by boat in those numbers, which remember were sharply increasing by 2013, the inevitable results would have been an evaporation of support for refugee settlement in Australia, and increased anti immigration sentiments more generally. Exactly the sentiment that has brought about the rise of far right parties in Europe. So, it is all very well for the Greens to scream let them come, close the camps etc, but as is all too often the case they do not think through the consequences of what they promote.
poroti @ #445 Friday, October 5th, 2018 – 5:20 pm
Now who’s doing “hyperbowl”? 🙂
The point is that the Greens policies in this area make no more sense than anyone else’s, and actually make less sense than some.