The Guardian reports the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll has Labor’s lead unchanged at 53-47 – as usual, we must await the full report to see the primary votes. Other findings: Scott Morrison is credited with a 35% to 28% edge over Malcolm Turnbull, which he appears to owe to Coalition supporters falling in behind the incumbent; only 20% believe the leadership change has “refreshed” the government, with 59% saying it hasn’t; 26% support moving the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, with 32% opposed; 56% say Australia is not doing enough to address climate change, with 23% saying it is; 63% express belief in anthropogenic climate change, compared with 25% favouring the alternative response attributing climate change to normal fluctuation. UPDATE: Full report here. No change whatsoever on the primary vote, with the Coalition on 38%, Labor on 37%, the Greens on 10% and One Nation on 7%.
Also:
• The Australian has published one of the occasional sets of Newspoll breakdowns by state, gender, age and metropolitan-versus-regions, aggregated from multiple poll results over a period usually consisting of three months. This time though, the July-September quarter suffered the interruption of the leadership coup in late August. So results from the last three polls under Malcolm Turnbull were published shortly after the coup, and now the first four polls under Scott Morrison have been aggregated, with one more set presumably to follow at the end of the year. The two-party results show the Coalition doing three points worse than the late Turnbull period in New South Wales and Victoria, where Labor respectively leads by 54-46 and 57-43; four points worse in Queensland and Western Australia, both of which have Labor leading 54-46; and fully nine points worse in South Australia, where the Coalition led 51-49 last time, and Labor now leads 58-42. The Labor primary vote in South Australia is up fully 12%, from 28% from 40%, with “others” as well as the Coalition well down, perhaps reflecting the decline of Xenophonism. However, it should be noted the sample in the case of South Australia was only 478.
• New Matilda has results of a uComms/ReachTEL poll for GetUp! from Tony Abbott’s electorate of Warringah, although it may be showing its age, having been conducted on September 13. The poll credits Abbott with a two-party lead of 54-46 over Labor, a swing of 7% – though in fact it was the Greens who made the final count in 2016, with a final two-party result much the same as it would have been against Labor. Perhaps more to the point, 52.6% of respondents said they would consider voting for an independent, although it was only 21.7% among Liberal voters. After allocating results from a forced response follow-up for the initially undecided, the primary votes were Liberal 41.7%, Labor 25.3%, Greens 12.7% and One Nation 4.4%. The kicker for Abbott is that 46.3% of respondents rated his performance very poor, and 10.3% the ordinary kind of poor, compared with 23.8% for very good and 10.4% for good, with a tellingly few 9.3% opting for average. The sample for the poll was 854.
• Counting in Wentworth continues, and will do so in steadily diminishing form until the end of next week. You can follow the action on the ongoing live count thread. For what it’s worth, Andrew Tillett of the Australian Financial Review quotes a Liberal source clinging to the hope that late postal votes arriving from Israel might yet yield a surprise. I had a fairly extensive look at the excitement that unfolded on Saturday and Sunday in a paywalled article in Crikey yesterday.
Good morning all,
If there is going to be some ” significant energy announcement ” by the government today then, based on recent form by Morrison, it will involve the dumping of a huge sack of cash.
Morrison has one solution for everything atm. Make some PR announcement made up of bullshit and, as a optional extra, mix it with a billion here or there.
Perhaps the revival of direct action plus a billion or so in new funds ?
Meets all of the policy parameters of the Morrison government.
Anyway, we shall how desperate he is again today no matter what is announced.
Cheers and a great day to all.
”
C@tmomma says:
Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 7:59 am
”
C@tmomma & sprocket
Is Peter Phelps anyway related to Ms. Phelps?
I encourage you to look at the Anglicare Australia 2018 Jobs Availability Snapshot.
http://www.anglicare.asn.au/our-work/research-reports/jobs-availability-snapshot
This is an annual study that documents the availability of jobs to people who face barriers and challenges to realizing their employment aspirations.
The main finding is that four or five people compete for every entry level job in Australia.
Pages 18 and 19 summarize material that I shared with the report’s author. Those pages discuss a federally funded, locally administered Job Guarantee that would provide minimum wage jobs on demand to all who want them.
Two of our service users agreed to have their circumstances briefly summarized as examples of how a Job Guarantee could design jobs flexibly to suit the job-seeker’s interests and abilities.
The report received good media coverage. Greg Jericho of The Guardian wrote a detailed article about it.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2018/oct/18/penalising-low-skilled-unemployed-who-are-already-doing-it-tough-is-absurd
https://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/anglicare-australia-jobs-availability-snapshot-warns-of-employment-squeeze-as-entrylevel-roles-disappear/news-story/85b043c245914851b231905ea72dcd97
https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/i-missed-one-day-and-they-fired-me-alex-joins-rising-number-of-low-skilled-jobseekers-20181016-p50a06.html
I’m wondering if the govt finally moving kids off Naru has more to do with the crossbenches than anything else.
McGowan has most probably said to the govt wtte…”move them or I remove you”…..
“Perhaps the revival of direct action plus a billion or so in new funds ?
Meets all of the policy parameters of the Morrison government.”
These parameters include:
1. Gives the appearance of doing something
2. Does not cost Liberal donors a cent
3. Does not adversely impact on the mining, use or export of coal
4. Does not promote or in any way assist the Renewables industry
5. Offers opportunities for selective porkbarrelling in key electorates
6. Offers opportunities for handouts to mates
The Saudis are going to be very worried when Erdogan gets up to speak in parliament today.
Of course, MacGowan could have made this the key to her support of Turnbull after the last election. Instead, she went for more office staff.
”
Dog’s Breakfast says:
Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 6:46 am
States are restless.
https://twitter.com/ghostwhovotes/status/1054338457626005504?s=21
”
It is very hard for me to believe Essential 53-47 poll in ALP favour after what went in various by-elections such as Wenworth, Longman, Braddon & Mayo
Also, Wagga Wagga & Young although state by-elections are an important pointer to regional voters mindset. My point is LNP got swings against them in the magnitude of above 25% in regional areas. As Morrison said Liberal voters are very angry and the anger is not captured in any of the opinion polls. Everytime after Liberals gets smashed in a by-election, commentators and psephologists just shrug their shoulders and imply that it is an outlier. The swings against Libs are getting worse with each by-election.
Steve777
Sums up Direct Action perfectly.
Just to clarify – if you’re talking about the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, it was set up under Labor, and definitely not set up to ‘get’ GetUp and Greenpeace. GetUp simply isn’t covered by the ACNC as far as I’m aware as GetUp doesn’t claim tax exempt status.
As I recall most people in the sector think the ACNC was a good thing to set up and has been doing its job well.
The Coalition has dicked around with the ACNC – in 2014 they were going to abolish it, but eventually decided not to. They controversially appointed Gary Johns (ex ALP, though, as he was) as commissioner, and he has said some dopey things, particularly around wanting to limit how much a charity can ‘advocate’ as opposed to planting trees or whatever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Charities_and_Not-for-profits_Commission
https://www.acoss.org.au/media_release/acnc-appointment-an-attack-on-the-charity-sector/
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/charities-express-alarm-as-longtime-foe-gary-johns-is-appointed-as-their-regulator-20171207-h00cr5.html
@zoomster……Turnbull had a majority and would likely have thought that they would win any by-election if the need arose. At the time McGowan and Katter were just backup plan b. They gave Turnbull gaurantees of supply and confidence.
Katter won’t support Labor at all. McGowan may privately have shifted after the weekend vote in Wentworth.
Ven
Kerryn Phelps has a brother called Peter, who is a well-known actor. But he’s not the politician.
I don’t know if Peter Phelps the politician is a more distant relative of Kerryn: cousin, second cousin or something like that.
Dickhead detector not required for this item.
$832 saving on energy?
I am still looking for Abbott’s $500.
She points to the Kavanaugh circus having woken up some of that silent majority, and I reckon that so-called caravan of migrants heading towards the US is an absolute gift for Republicans. No wonder Trump has been banging on about it.
That makes $1332 in savings.
Don’t you just love the Socialist intervention in the energy market by the LNP. A price on carbon market mechanism? Nope instead lets have Socialism. ANYTHING to keep propping up coal!!!
Good to see Labor is backing the move I hope they really mock the LNP for joining them in the socialist camp 🙂
Jackol: “They controversially appointed Gary Johns (ex ALP, though, as he was) as commissioner, and he has said some dopey things, particularly around wanting to limit how much a charity can ‘advocate’ as opposed to planting trees or whatever.”
Gary Johns was always a bit of a goose IMO, even when he was a minister in the Hawke-Keating era. Since leaving politics, he’s drifted a long way to the right and is now very chummy with the Caters, Roskams, etc of this world. Like other Labor figures before and after him, I think his judgement (such as it was) became clouded by being wined and dined by people from the big end of town, especially from the mining sector.
“Don’t you just love the Socialist intervention in the energy market by the LNP. A price on carbon market mechanism? Nope instead lets have Socialism. ANYTHING to keep propping up coal!!!”
ALP can probably support (depending on what the legislation ACTUALLY ) says with no down side. They do, the announcement fades away in the news cycle pretty fast, and the focus goes back to the ibs inadequate response to climate change.
And they are making this announcement when the focus will be on Nauru?? Media Ad visor FAIL ALERT on timing….again.
Confessions @ #65 Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018 – 8:22 am
The ‘silent majority’ is a myth. It didn’t, and doesn’t, exist. If it did Trump wouldn’t have lost the popular vote like he did. You don’t have any flavor of majority when your side has 3 million fewer votes than your opponents.
Valid point about the refugee caravan, though the Kavanaugh thing has well and truly been forgotten (and more’s the shame, because he totally has no place on the Court). And with the Saudis getting caught red-handed murdering a journalist and then running an exceptionally poor cover-up, and with Trump deciding he’s going to back the cover-up(s) anyways, I think any influence from the caravan is cancelled out.
I see the CNN commetary as more of a call to Democrats to not get complacent. They do still need to actually turn out and vote.
What the government is announcing today re pricing is apparently a recommendation of the ACCC report that labor supported over two months ago and which Turnbull and Frydenberg also supported at that time.
Nothing new at all here. Just more PR.
Cheers.
Hmm, unless I’m missing something this ‘default’ pricing stuff doesn’t actually change anything about the energy market apart from forcing energy retailers to have a consistent reference pricing that all of their deals are compared against.
It may help consumers better assess competing retail plans, but substantially change the actual pricing structure it will not.
Good Morning all. As usual, I dips me lid to you BK – sterling effort today!
As usual, Essential is lagging. After last week’s horror of a week for the coalition it hasn’t budged. Next time?
“63% express belief in anthropogenic climate change, compared with 25% favouring the alternative response attributing climate change to normal fluctuation.”
—————————————
Or, 63% accept the findings of those who have actually devoted years building up the technical expertise to validly study this question; whereas 25% dismiss the findings of those with such expertise, and positively prefer the opinions of those who have not devoted the time and effort to such patient study of climate change.
What sort of arrogance does it take, to so firmly reject the findings of those whose life’s work it has been to study this phenomenon? I can understand those 12% who say they don’t know: experts have been wrong before, although not as often as the anti-science brigade would have you believe. But to leap from that to the positive belief that the scientific consensus on climate change actually is wrong?
That is just insulting to the hard, diligent work of so many thousands of people from all corners of the globe for the past 30-40 years – not to say supremely boastful about their own powers of native, uneducated judgement.
I really cannot respect such a bigoted disrespect for higher learning, and celebration of glib off-the-top-of-the-head opinion.
And there’s also the nuclear arms treaty that Trump is pulling out of. That one seems to have come from nowhere, though there must have been some reason for it. But can’t see it being a net positive for Republicans. Most people don’t want more nuclear weapons.
That’s not what this section of the public are doing. What they are doing is buying the line that global warming is a political construction, and they are (constantly!) reassured by the various (to them) authority figures, like Jones or Bolt or Abbott, that there is nothing to worry about.
It’s not about assessing and rejecting the science, it’s about whose political voices you trust. If this section of the public genuinely believe it’s all about politics (and they live in an information bubble that tells them that it is), then making a personal assessment of the quality of the science doesn’t really come into it.
The reaction from my local member Andrew Laming re refugees is appalling.
On 21 Oct 2018, at 11:58,
Dear Andrew.
Amanda Perram @AmandaPerram
“A small refugee girl landed in Australia last night from #Nauru. She has been on a complete hunger strike for 3 weeks. She is so unwell she was intubated and put on life support _while still on the tarmac_.
She will need dialysis and probably even need a kidney transplant.”
This is totally appalling and disgusting. Your government are denying children their human rights. What are you going to do about it?
His reply:
Sent from my iPhone
You mean the right to hunger strike ?
On 21 Oct 2018, at 22:27, I replied
Imagine your child wanting or being allowed to go on hunger strike. These kids are in our care. They should not be imprisoned on an island.
Answer Sorry How is it a prison ? Have you talked to Nauruan kids. I find your analysis a bit limited
From: Laming, Andrew (MP) [mailto:Andrew.Laming.MP@aph.gov.au]
Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2018 6:58 PM
Subject: Re: Refugee children
“Law & Order” – sound familiar.
Here is an audio commentary on fascist politics, even if there is no fascist state and such a state does not eventuate.
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/we-should-be-very-worried-philosopher-explains-americas-history-fascist-politics
Jackol:
Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 10:01 am
————————————-
Good grief! That says something even worse about that 25% than my working assumption was! 1 in 4 of us are in the tinfoil hat wearing “climate scientists are hoodwinking the rest of us into a global communist one-world-Government by pretending to save the planet” brigade!
I think you are right to identify that as an element underpinning the beliefs of this 25%, but I sure hope it is a small one.
A further element occurs to me. If you are unconvinced by the science, but are convinced the economics of climate change action aren’t benign, it is easy to let your agnosticism regarding the science surrender to your opposition to the action that science entails. That is, you don’t like the political or economic conclusion of the scientific argument, so you jump from uncertainty towards the scientific premises across to active rejection.
Trump also poked fun of Cruz’s wife among other things he’d said about Cruz, yet when Cruz needs help warding off an electoral threat he gets on his knees and begs Trump to rally for him so he can kiss his ass.
What a fraud.
Jackol,
Thank you re the explanation wrt the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. Much appreciated. 🙂
Re the $832 in power savings. Sounds like a Goldilocks number cooked up in the PR PM’s office to me.
a r:
SE Cupp is a Republican, albeit an anti-Trump one.
‘fess,
Ted Cruz is a political whore and Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s pimp.
“It’s not about assessing and rejecting the science”
🙂 I have taken criticism on other blogs that i am more interested in the politics of this and not the science.
That’s from RWNJobbies who’s attitude is that its all a conspiracy, the “science is crap”, and we use so much coal now for power generation that can NEVER change no matter what anyone does….blah…blah…
My attitude is that i do accept that the vast bulk of the evidence we have, taken together, supports the consensus position that AGW is changing our climate much more rapidly than it has changed before. Rate of Change is a BIG issue for all life on the planet, and particularly for Humans, in terms of adaptation to Climate Change. We dont know how much we will have to adapt, depends on how far things go. But we do know that if we can reduce atmospheric CO2, and / or the rate at which its increasing then overall we and out descendants will have less adaptation to do and more time to do it in.
My interest is in how the Science informs Policy, and the kind of real, achievable policy we can get implemented in our system. Fascinating stuff.
“63% express belief in anthropogenic climate change, compared with 25% favouring the alternative response attributing climate change to normal fluctuation.”
And this is telling. The RWNJobbies…generally, they are convinced those figures are wrong, in fact just about reversed and that are the brave mavericks that are willing to be out there and represent the “silent majority”. Sad…….
Jackol, more on your point, you are also right to suggest that some of these 25% treat climate scientists as malevolently advancing “false” research findings, rather than mistakenly advancing “incorrect” ones. Such people are not arrogant, but they are pathologically cynical.
Michael A: “What sort of arrogance does it take, to so firmly reject the findings of those whose life’s work it has been to study this phenomenon? I can understand those 12% who say they don’t know: experts have been wrong before, although not as often as the anti-science brigade would have you believe. But to leap from that to the positive belief that the scientific consensus on climate change actually is wrong?”
It’s not arrogance IMO, but mainly a form of cognitive dissonance. I’ve spoken to many people – mostly older and retired – who refuse to accept that anthropomorphic climate change exists. If you push them, you tend to find that, deep down inside, they suspect and fear that it might be real. But they can’t deal with that possibility, because it upsets the way they were brought up to perceive the future as an endless story of human progress. It’s a phenomenon particularly affecting a large proportion of people who grew up in the 1940 to 1970 period. They’re not bad or arrogant people. They simply can’t deal with what they see as a suggestion that their children and grandchildren won’t be living in a world of ever more cars and factories and aeroplanes and so on.
In some ways, the political left has to take quite a lot of the blame for this situation. The rational way of looking at climate change is that it’s a practical problem, capable of being solved by pooling the expertise of scientists, engineers, environmental managers, etc. It’s not, as Kevin Rudd famously put it, a “moral dilemma.” The application of good decision-making and expertise should be able to create a situation in which economic growth and technological advancement can continue unchecked in a world with a stable or (ideally) declining level of carbon emissions. When the CFC issue came to the fore in the 1970s and 1980s, nobody sensible was saying anything like “you won’t be able to have refrigeration any more.” They said, “we’ll get rid of CFCs and replace them with a less harmful alternative.”
Unfortunately, the same thing didn’t happen with climate change. We got a certain amount of rhetoric from environmentalists and like-minded people along the lines of “we’re going to have to change the way we all live.”
When the older people I mentioned earlier hear this sort of rhetoric, they interpret it to mean things like “you’re going have to pay a lot more for your electricity, you’re not going to be able to run your heating and air conditioning as much as you’d like, you’re not going to be able to drive your car as much as you like, etc.” And this isn’t entirely incorrect, as there is an element of the environmental movement that would like us all to live in treehouses, restrict our diet to the fruit that falls down from the trees, ride bicycles and meet our energy needs with methane gas created out of our own crap. And some of these people have seized upon climate change as the banner under which they will create their desired new world. And that’s been incredibly counter-productive in terms of gaining the support of the older generations.
C@t:
The Republicans have moved beyond hypocrisy. Paul Ryan is another, a man who spent his entire life railing against government debt presides over Congress legislating to create the largest deficit the country has ever had!
And whoever thought we’d hear Rand Paul saying that Russia is trustworthy? A complete 180 turnaround.
Only idiot economists think that the NBN go back to it’s original form.
Economists by default want money and fame.
They don’t care about future proofing Australia.
That is why we are still are in Medieval Ages.
It takes alot money to build a country, it takes alot longer for policy makers to get off their asses.
I believe the actual figure to be $832.15
lizzie
says:
Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 7:48 am
I was never impressed by “The Killing Season” and lost a lost of respect for the ABC over it
__________________________________________
You watched ‘The Killing Season’ and it was the ABC you lost respect for?
Meher Baba, I’ll just bracket off to the side your point about the moral nature of the developed world’s responsibility to take steps to respond to the current escalating climate emergency. That is a topic I wish I had the time to discuss with you properly in this forum.
Cognitive dissonance is a mental state that human minds find inherently uncomfortable. They will be strongly inclined to alter one or other of the beliefs the conflicting beliefs they hold which form this dissonance. I agree that it is plausible that this is the mental phenomenon which is driving so many people to both observe the effects of climate change, but then to latch onto a morally benign explanation for it, in defiance of the explanation derived by the skilled, patient work of so many scientists from so many cultures over so long a period.
sonar
That’s how it turned out. However, there was a period of uncertainty, which led Turnbull to travel to Wodonga to meet with MacGowan and seek her support. She publically said she would do no deals for the electorate, but came out of these talks with an increased number of office staff.
https://www.bordermail.com.au/story/4204271/mcgowan-staffers-growing/
In the lead up to the election, she met with local refugee advocates and told them that, if they wanted action on refugees, they should vote Green.
https://wangarattachronicle.com.au/2016/05/23/indi-candidates-in-asylum-stalemate/
meher baba @ #87 Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018 – 10:21 am
Yes, I agree with this – it has also been my experience in discussions with others about climate change. It may not always have been so, but these days it is primarily fear that underlies most denial. If not fear of climate change itself, then fear of the consequences for their share portfolios.
The irony is that it is their very denial that brought about the reality they feared. This was a problem we could have averted 🙁
Saudi Foreign Minister on Khashoggi’s death:
Unbelievable!
And the video of the FM:
https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/1054499235402604550
A further thought re climate change. One development that didn’t help the cause, particularly in the Australian bush, was the great amount of noise made by Flannery and others in attributing the Millenium Drought to climate change.
That was always a load of crap. The Millenium Drought was one of the major droughts that come along every 50 years or so: there was one towards the end of WWII, there was a horrendous one in the mid-1890s (the Federation Drought), another in the 1840s that wiped out much of the fledgling pastoral sector and led to the collapse of the Bank of Australia, and also one in the early years of colonisation. When, as it was always going to do, the Millenium Drought broke in 2010-11 with record rainfalls and massive flooding, this sent a strong message to many Australians about the cyclical nature of our weather. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that it was at precisely this time that Abbott and Credlin began to gain a lot of traction with their anti-climate change anti-carbon tax mantras.
True climate science experts (which Flannery, despite his great strengths as a communicator, is not) understand that the impact of climate change is going to be observable over a longer-term period, and it was never going to be a good idea to point to major droughts, floods, cyclones, etc. as clear examples. It would have been better for proponents of action on global warming to work with sectors such as the fishing or wine industries, where the impacts are gradual, but bleeding obvious. Most fishers and winemakers are pretty right-wing on most political issues, but you will find that most think climate change denialism is silly.
The effects of climate change within human society are, fundamentally, economic effects. They include matters of production (income), capital (investment and asset preservation/allocation), and distribution (especially, the distribution of losses).
Vested interests will continue to fight to protect their incomes and assets and to defeat efforts to re-distribute losses.
People will fight over the cost of a cup of tea. They will fight over the negligible costs involved in picking up litter or turning off the lights in an empty room. As a species, free-riding is a highly evolved behaviour. We can be expected to fight forever over the costs of averting or shifting environmental, economic and social catastrophe. We are now experiencing the consequences of more than a century of neglect – of deliberate prevarication and postponement. The people who are responsible for our present difficulties are mostly long-gone. We are merely copying them. We are bequeathing catastrophe to our children on the basis that their future losses mean a lot less than our contemporary losses.
The willingness of the propagandists also proves the old maxim – everyone has their price. These voices have been paid for, and the cost is part of the expense involved in deferring change. They are the professional liars and snake-oil merchants of the 21st century.
We need technical solutions to climate change, but we also need political will. The propagandists exist in order to undermine the political will required to implement technical measures. So far, we have to acknowledge, the propagandists and those that own them are winning.
Just in case anyone has not already done so, you have only a couple of weeks left to opt out of having your medical records made permanently available online …
https://theconversation.com/report-recommends-overhaul-of-my-health-record-but-key-changes-not-supported-by-coalition-105290