The latest monthly Ipsos poll for the Fairfax papers is better for the Coalition than the last, recording Labor’s two-party lead at 52-48 on previous election preferences and 53-47 on respondent-allocated preferences, compared with 55-45 for both last time. The Coalition is up two points on the primary vote to 37%, with Labor down one to 34% and the Greens down two to 13%.
Despite the Coalition’s improvement on voting intention, Scott Morrison is down two on approval to 48% and up three on disapproval to 36%, while Bill Shorten is respectively down one to 40% and two to 47%. Morrison’s lead on preferred prime minister is 47-35, little changed on the 48-35 result last time.
The poll also finds 46% support a reduction in immigration from Muslim countries, compared with 14% for increased and 35% for left unchanged; and that 47% believe the government’s first objective in energy policy should be to reduce prices, compared with 39% for reducing carbon emissions. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1200.
I don’t think Simon Benson knows what the word “centre” means.
Zoidlord @ #681 Monday, November 19th, 2018 – 8:38 pm
Maurice Newman stating the world is at risk of being handed to George Soros because GetUp is campaigning in Warringah, Dickson and Canning. It’s right there in black and white, but still. WTF? I’d bet most Australians have never heard of George Soros.
Benson has jumped the gun. It isn’ t full moon until Friday.
Nath asks, of a particular anthology of Israelite/Jewish texts, “If it’s not meant to be taken literally, what’s the point of it, or of calling yourself an adherent?”
The point of the Bible is not that it is meant to be taken literally. For instance, if you take the first two chapters literally, you discover that humans were created before birds; and than humans were created after birds. In fact, each of the stories were particular redactions of common stories known throughout the area, and it’s important to know that people could recognise the redactions. Take the following story as an example. It is clearly not doing the same thing as the original text. Some people may prefer it, whereas other people might find it offensively misrepresents their community. If a community chooses to preserve this text, we know something about their experience.
Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived with his mother and sister on a farm at the edge of a forest. He always wore a little red cape, so he was called “Little Red Riding Hood”. There was a church deep inside the forest where his grandmother was staying because she was sick. One day, his mother told him to go and take some food to her.
While he’s walking, he’s spotted by a beast. The beast says, “Give me your food”, but he says “no, it is for my grandmother, who is sick at the church, go away from me”. And so the beast goes away. The beast has long legs and he can run much quicker, so he runs to the church where he dispatches the boy’s grandmother.
The boy reaches the church, and finds the nook where his grandmother is staying. The beast has put the boy’s grandmother’s clothes on. It’s dark, but he sees him lying on a makeshift bed. But she doesn’t quite look right: “O grandmother, what big eyes you have!” he says. “All the better to see you with my boy!” the beast replies. “And O grandmother, but what a big mouth you have!” he says. “All the better to kiss you with my boy!” the beast replies. “And O grandmother, how large your hands are!” the boy says. “All the better to caress you with!” the beast replies, and he leaps out and attacks the boy.
Some texts are clearly allegorical; others include clear marks of fictionality (Nath lives in Canberra, a city so large it takes three days to drive across it; President Trump was talking one day with Winston Churchill and Otto von Bismarck) which should dissuade anyone from taking them literally — except would you really have any idea about such a detail? To say it takes three days to drive across Jakarta, I could believe that. But Canberra, no.
When people write texts, they are rarely seeking to convey a literal sequence of events. Even when they do write a literal sequence of events, there’s a reason to pick these particular events—they’re trying to make some point—and there’s a reason an anthologist chose to include this particular recounting of them. Two people could tell two different stories of Trump’s presidency (using nothing but actual facts), and the one we chose to preserve tells us something about who we are.
As to being loyal to God, if a person requires a literal bible to be loyal to God one should question whether they are, indeed, loyal to God. It’s a very strange requirement anyway. If I told you I would not accept citizenship of New Zealand unless the Queen of New Zealand could give me an infallible text, you would presume I never wanted to be a Kiwi in the first place. It’s not obvious why this standard should change just because it involves a being alleged to have created the world. (Do note that not all people who accept some of the texts in the aforementioned anthology actually believe in resurrection and judgement, so the universally agreed upon abilities of the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob by God’s adherents are fewer than you think.)
And if that makes you ask, “well, what’s in it for me? Why should I profess loyalty to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?”, it is easy to retort: that was never the point of the texts in the first place. No part of it was designed to make Nath loyal. Nath may choose to be loyal and find out something about what that means from these (or other) texts; or Nath may choose not to be loyal and ignore the texts. An offer has been made; it is up to you whether you think God is capable of vanquishing his enemies and rewarding those who are loyal.
There’s many grounds on which you might base a decision, yea or nay. But the texts were not written to be taken literally to convince you of that. So it would be a completely unreasonable standard to read them in that way, and require that of them.
Fact-checking Trump’s claims of crowd numbers at his rallies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/19/president-trumps-crowd-size-estimates-increasingly-unbelievable/?utm_term=.c3eeed381d0e
It’s no mystery how he arrives at these numbers, or any of the stuff he asserts. He just makes it up as he goes along and tells the fans what they want to hear.
So the Bible is a confused collection of made up stories originally invented to frighten children?
Makes sense.
chud
don’t overstate it does no credit to whatever point you might be making
FFS! This cartoon (over yet another Kevin Donnelly rant about the superiority of ‘Western’ civilisation and danger of left-ish pluralism and tolerance and not considering themselves as superior to all other cultures) is outrageous and belongs in a museum for paranoid nationalisy right wing propaganda like White Australia propaganda the The Bulletin circa 1890-1960s. The reader of the little ‘cultural left’ books sits on massive tomes of ‘western civilisation’ while the threat of Islam (the crescent moon) rises behind them. The Oz is rapidly becoming Fox News print edition.
.https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/1b1866143c227d2a32ba00e0ce37e01a
Felix, as an atheist, I salute you.
In 1700 I believe India produced a quarter of the world’s GDP. It was very rich. Britain became rich by creating and exploiting an empire made up of India and parts of North America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, plundering their wealth, resources and production. By the time of independence India was a poor country.
The UK no longer has an empire. The British may dream of restoring lost glory but it’s not going to happen. They don’t have an empire to exploit any more. Brexit will just make the country poorer and accelerate its decline. It’s also highly likely to see Scotland leave the union to join the European Union.
No idea what you are trying to say jack
The campaign advantages that Getup have are its very broad donor base, which involves large numbers of individuals making small contributions, and its ranks of volunteers, who are numerous and highly motivated.
A top-down reactionary outfit will not be able to match Getup in either respect. Like the LNP, of which it will be a clone, it will be narrowly based and reflect the obsessions of its originators/sponsors. It will certainly fail.
Maurice Newman stating the world is at risk of being handed to George Soros….
….carries antisemitic inferences…the further explication of this is that “left” projects arise because of an international Jewish conspiracy, of which Soros is used as an emblem by the Right…
I attended WA Labor’s State Executive meeting tonight….great meeting, with business including the employment conditions of bus drivers, the future of Australian-flagged shipping, online gaming, the affiliation of a new union, fracking in WA, the redress of indigenous dispossession, the election of office-bearers, the progress of Labor Women….among other things.
Democracy is alive and well in WA Labor.
The thing is, needless to say, such matters would almost never arise at a Liberal meeting, let alone on a monthly basis, as occurs in the great party of Australian working people.
@briefly
That’s awesome, exactly things that matter to us as a party.
Gorks….it is a great credit to the leadership of WA Labor over many years…leadership from both the Left and Right…and to the indestructible commitment to social and economic justice of the unions.
“I honestly don’t care what thoughts run through men’s minds about Pamela Anderson. She’s spent her professional life making hay while that particular sun has shone. What got up my nose was Morrison doing the FM jerk schtick. I just pine for the days when politics was about….politics.”
C@t. Comrade. I think you are being a tad precious. Shorten does a tonne of FM radio, even Schtick – who can forget his rap-off with Ray Hadley on the breakfast show of 2GB’s sister FM radio station. Let’s face it: given the MSM “kill Bill” crusade, its been an effective campaign. All ScoMo is doing is joining battle in a field hirtheto largely vacated by his predecessors. That said, doing “opposition leader” stuff – like the bus tour, his signature “baseball cap of the day” and now the FM Radio circuit is not actually Prime Ministeral conduct and he’s lost the real advantage of incumbency by looking ridiculous.
ScoMo is not (yet) hated by punters in voter land: he’s something worse – a joke. Take solace in the fact that this is not going to end well for him comrade (and hope and pray to Hitchens that he doesn’t his schtick doesn’t have too many real world consequences along the way – like his unfortunate Australian embassy move to Jerusalem thought bubble).
@sustainable future:
“Andrew, his actual words were that he had lots of mates who wanted to be special envoy and ‘go and sort her out’ (nudge, nudge, wink, wink – ‘SORT her out’ if-you-know-what-i-mean).”
I don’t think the additional word really add much, or if they do, its only because of the actual career of Ms Anderson evokes the sexual imagery in many people’s mind: I’d suggest that just mentioning the words “Pamela Anderson” would conjure up “soft porn” in most punter’s mind and Ms Anderson has agency and has carefully culturated that image over her entire career.
So I call shenanigans on her faux outrage over ScoMo’s FM radio comments.
So much for dissing the Ipsos:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/20/labors-lead-over-coalition-narrows-in-guardian-essential-poll
https://www.facebook.com/bbcthree/videos/2168932530015034/
New thread.
Monday, November 19, 2018 at 9:06 pm
On top of anything else — how many real-world fair-dinkum red-blooded Aussie blokes have made a sleazy comment about Pamela Anderson at any point in the past 15 years?
I am told by someone that knows her that she is a very intelligent women. Given the success of her “brand”, she is obviously no bimbo. Scot Morrison, clearly not a women and clearly having trouble with his brand. Haven’t met anyone that has described him as intelligent.