I’m most of the way through a thorough overhaul of BludgerTrack, which I’m commemorating here with a new post despite there having been no new national polls – although the latest state breakdowns from Newspoll are newly added to the mix. What’s different is that the Scott Morrison era trends are now being determined separately from the Malcolm Turnbull era. I haven’t yet brought the display on the sidebar up to speed, but follow the link below and you will observe separate, disconnected trend measures for the two periods (you may need to do a hard refresh to get it working properly). Where previously BludgerTrack was recording the post-coup period as an amorphous surge to Labor, now there is nuance within the Morrison-era polling – namely, a brief period of improvement for the Coalition after the post-coup landslip, followed by a shift back to Labor.
Other than that, the back end of BludgerTrack is now a lot more efficient, which means I will no longer have any excuse for not updating it immediately when a new poll is published. My next task is to get the leadership ratings back in action, as these have been pretty much in limbo since the leadership change, for a want of sufficient data on Scott Morrison to get a trend measure out of. There should also be further state-level data along soon-ish from Ipsos, which will be thrown in the mix whenever the company we must now call Nine Newspapers publishes it.
PeeBee says:
Tuesday, January 1, 2019 at 9:44 pm
Peter Stanton, as someone close to the waterfront confrontation perhaps you can enlighten us on the corruption (if any) that occurred there.
I was not particularly close to the stevedoring industry but was an active trade unionist. The Painters and Dockers were two things. A great rock band and a dodgy work occupation. The painters and dockers worked on a casual pickup system. They were general labourers on the warves. The docker bit came from them being the workers who tied the ships up to the wharf . The painter bit came from them being employed to chip away rust and repaint ships whilst they were docked. There used to be a criminal offense of having no visible means of support. It was a bit like vagrancy. petty criminals would avoid it by being signed up as painters and dockers. The painters and Dockers became famous when the Fraser Government tried to stitch up the unions with a Royal Commision into the painters and dockers union. It backfired when the RC exposed major organised tax dodging by business. Look up the Costigan enquiry if you want to read more. this was many years before the Patricks’ dispute and was in no way related to it. The rock band with the same name was also formed some years later. The recorded a lovely anthem to tolerance and understand called Die Yuppy Die.
Petty theft used to be common one the warves but mostly disappeared with the introduction of containers. This was long before the Patricks’ dispute. The Waterside Workers Federation was a very well organised union with a strong and loyal membership. This came from the early days when working conditions on the warves were every bad. They used this strength to gain very good working conditions and a wage level that was probably far more than the work justified.
Non of this justified the thuggery that Howard created. At the end of the dispute most of the workers were re employed and the scabs went back to bashing kids in nightclubs.
Socrates,
Soul mates, except for the bit where my second son was born severely disabled and I had to leave the workforce to look after him, as his father couldn’t, even though I earned more than him, as he had broken his back in a car accident in Victoria in the 1970s, with a drunk driver driving on the wrong side of the road, funnily enough. 🙂
nath @ #1700 Tuesday, January 1st, 2019 – 6:36 pm
Something new and original is always more interesting than repetition.
steve davis says:
Tuesday, January 1, 2019 at 9:46 pm
The Liberals have always hated the working class.After all thats what unions are,working class people.Trouble is there are too many working class people who think they are CEOs of the company nowadays.I know,I’ve worked with enough of them.
I went from being a working class kid to being a director of a $8 billion company.
nath
no
Being locked up in a Moscow flat; unpaid; is obviously messed up your view of the world.
frednk
says:
Tuesday, January 1, 2019 at 10:43 pm
nath
no
Being locked up in a Moscow flat; unpaid; is obviously messed up your view of the world.
__________________________________
You have a rich fantasy life frednk. Tell me more.
Cat
Sympathy and I understand. Some of the smartest people I knew at school and uni dropped or chnaged careers for all sorts of personal reasons. There is an amazing lottery effect in how well our careers work out that successful people rarely acknowledge. I am not saying successful people are not smart or do not work hard, but they forget how many other smart, hard working people just don’t get the same opportunities.
For what its worth, that wrong side of the road accident is exactly the kind the Vision Zero approach seeks to prevent.
BTW I just caught up with the Sydney trains fiadco today. WTF? Did they put on one of the world’s largest fireworks displays, encourage people not to drink drive, then not expect people to catch the train? Conservative governments really don’t do transport policy well. It requires a concern for collective outcomes.
I wonder if they also do kids parties?
Unbelievable!!!!!!!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-01/us-strategic-command-apologises-for-tweet-about-dropping-bombs/10677554
PS
Good for you.The trouble with the ones I met were that they would sell out anyone as long as it benefited their efforts to climb the ladder.
nath
It’s your flat, come on out with the details
@Peter Stanton
Did you pay your workers correctly? and Your Taxes, paid? While climbing the golden ladder?
.
C@momma
Well there you go, a Sydney Uni Pharmacy graduate. I work in the Faculty (well School now), research but do a few tutorials, and I must say I’ve always been impressed with the quality of undergrads. Shame more of them don’t go into research but I can’t blame them, although the opportunities in Pharmacy aren’t what they used to be.
Verified account @samanthamaiden
16m16 minutes ago
D’OH. @PeterDutton_MP has announced he’s stripped this terrorist of his citizenship because he could obtain Fijian citizenship. Fiji says: yeah, nah, he’s not Fijian. Sorry.
BULA
Bid to strip Neil Prakash of Australian citizenship hits hurdle
Zoidlord @ #1714 Tuesday, January 1st, 2019 – 7:15 pm
Very good.
He’s our problem, so we need to deal with him.
I doubt Australia will ever have to deal with him.
Twenty plus years in a Turkish prison will see to that.
I wonder if Abbott was ever convicted of a crime would they take HIS citizenship away……..one can always dream…..lol
Zoidlord says:
Tuesday, January 1, 2019 at 11:12 pm
@Peter Stanton
Did you pay your workers correctly? and Your Taxes, paid? While climbing the golden ladder?
I was never an owner just part of management. I also spent some years as a union official.
Workers were usually paid above award rates and all taxes were paid. I have always understood that the most valuable asset in any company is its workforce. A well trained and loyal workforce will always pay a dividend.
One of the things you find as you get older is the stupid things your parents told you turn out to be very true. The harder you work the luckier you get. Protect your integrity, it is the most valuable thing you have. Treat the people you meet on the way up well. You may need their help on the way back down. Never forgot where you came from. I am still just a working class kid from the bush.
“I think Labor should adopt it nationally as policy if elected. It would be great if we could become a road safety leader again, as we were in the Whitlam era.”
Really interesting read on the wire rope barriers. Not something i have heard of before. Can see that properly planned (account for the firefighter access issue) and with a few more passing lanes ( a good idea anyway) could save lives. Recent crash in W.A. on Indian Ocean Drive would not have happened on a stretch with barriers like that, and its a stretch of road with lots of frustrated passing of caravans, campers and boat trailers going on.
If it got Nationally funded hey there is a program that would actually employ people to do something immediately beneficial. Wonder if the poles get made out of recycled plastic??
“Treat the people you meet on the way up well. You may need their help on the way back down. ”
Lol! Have had a few lessons in that where i work. Certain people who have basically been rude to those under them (dont see them as useful to career path), sucked up to those above them (until they overtook them on the local “ladder”) then had a fall from grace and wonder why everyone flips them the bird on the way out. 🙂
@Peter Stanton
Good Work 🙂
Down from the ridge, down to the West, in the morning the sea is still grey. These mornings, when the wind comes in from the east with the coming sun, the waves are flattened off, held back; and the swell is at rest, on its knees and bent down, head on its forearms and eyes half shut; and the grey’s not broken, but breathes out softly.
a question re the bludger track model……….. I understand the sd is the extent that the swing may deviate from the state wide swing I presume this can be positive or negative…. is there a short hand method of working this out within a high degree of certain
eg……….. say the swing in a state was 7% what would the upper and lower extent of that swing be?
Small boats launch from the ramp, run with slosh off their trailers; in a hurry, and motors fire up, props chopping the grey into green and white bubbles; and their crews hoik aboard and off they go; nasally and revs up; and out past the breakwater, past the granite shanks. They race. They face the West, noses high and asses down and cool spray lifting off the bows; and they head for the bouys, for the pots.
Barney in Go Dau @ #1707 Tuesday, January 1st, 2019 – 9:55 pm
The worst part about it is the #ready. Wtf is that supposed to be about?
The Nats on the nose in the bush from the SMH…
Emerging anti-National Party organisation Anyone But Nats will start the new year with $60,000 in the bank and a mission to take on the perennial rural party at the NSW and federal elections, with Barnaby Joyce as its prime target.
The group’s foundation, and growing support, comes after the National Party’s scandal-plagued 2018, starting with former leader Mr Joyce’s affair and ending with Mallee member Andrew Broad’s “sugar baby” controversy, where the former assistant minister sent messages to a younger woman with the online alias “Sweet Sophia Rose”.
Anyone But Nats will support viable candidates in National Party-held seats. Beginning in the NSW town of Mudgee in February, the group will run a series of community forums at regional centres in key electorates to whip up support, including Armidale, Tamworth, Gunnedah, Narrabri and Broken Hill.
Anyone But Nats co-founder Rohan Boehm believes the National Party is facing an existential election.
“Those blokes aren’t untouchable,” he said of the party’s elected MPs. “And they will be unelectable in the face of new attitudes. The idea that regional people are somehow backwards, non-progressive, non-interested and not terribly smart is a fabrication based on the sort of people that represent us.
“A change is on the way, and we’re facilitating that. We’re creating a space.”
Anyone But Nats is backed by fellow co-founder Charles Tym, an IT businessman who contributed $20,000 to the group at its outset.
Mr Boehm says he is talking to prospective independent candidates “all the time”, many of whom are asking Anyone But Nats to run supporting forums and fundraisers. Key issues motivating the candidates include the National Party’s support for coal seam gas projects, discontent with the party’s water management and Murray-Darling basin plan, and the belief that this year’s scandals underline the party’s “arrogance”.
“Women are incandescent about this sort of behaviour – it’s the arrogance, I guess,” Mr Boehm, who ran as an independent candidate in the NSW seat of Barwon in 2015, said. “The scandals to me are not the problem, they’re really the symptom … Particularly women and younger voters, they just find that the Nats have created a political class that is totally against their own approach to life.”
“There hasn’t been any movement into the 21st century. Their approach and their arrogance seems to be moored in the ’50s or ’60s.”
There are signs Anyone But Nats could gain traction: in August, National Farmers’ Federation chief Fiona Simpson countered the National Party’s position by declaring climate change was worsening drought conditions in Australia.
“It is the effect of climate change we need to be aware of that makes the impacts of a drought even worse,” she said.
National Party seats have progressive credentials, too: a majority of all federal National Party seats voted “yes” in the same-sex marriage plebiscite.
Party leader Michael McCormack was not fazed by the emergence of Anyone But Nats.
“Minor and independent candidates, and those who represent a single protest issue, have come and gone over time, and apart from making big promises that they can’t deliver on and making lots of noise, they do little other than dilute the voice and influence of regional Australians in federal politics,” he said.
Mr Boehm, who lives in Narrabri – bordering the Pilliga forest, where Santos operates a controversial coal seam gasfield – said the National Party’s support for coal seam gas was a flashpoint in regional communities, and one that challenging candidates will look to exploit.
“For the last 10 years the Nats have been very, very clearly in favour of coal seam gas,” Mr Boehm said. “The Nats have been absolutely going really hard on supporting new mines and new gas fields, and the community has been universally against those proposals.”
Mr McCormack said his party’s approach to coal seam gas was level-headed.
“Rather than outright opposition to coal seam gas, The Nationals have fought to protect the interests of land-holders, and have a policy where coexistence and scientific evidence are guiding principles,” he said.
In the federal election, Anyone But Nats will primarily target Mr Joyce’s seat, New England.
“I think that with the right candidate or two in New England he’s vulnerable,” Mr Boehm said.
“He’s probably the most important electorate to change next time around.”
Mr Joyce has a 23-point buffer, helped by the fact former New England independent Tony Windsor did not run against him in the 2017 byelection.
Mr Windsor, who held New England from 2001-2013, has not ruled out contesting this year. He said he would make a final decision after seeing which other independents had raised their hands to run.
“Anyone But Nats has a shot at making a difference,” Mr Windsor said. “The Nats don’t represent [New England] any more. They don’t represent us on coal seam gas, or on water issues.”
@booleanbach: As ever, “TruthOut” is misrepresenting the situation – which is quite awful enough without them adding more Orwellianism to it – and adds heaping layers of hyperbolic outrage to the problem.
The school district, according to original reporting, demanded that the teacher sign an oath not to participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. As the school district is a public employer and the BDS movement is not on any terror-group lists, making such a demand is clearly a contravention of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of association, so props to the teacher for refusing to sign.
The oath demanded was not to Israel; it “only” demanded that the signatory not join a specific group critical of Israel and advocating nonviolent measures to address Israel’s behaviour. Some may consider that a distinction without a difference; I do not. The oath demanded negative action – specifically, that the signatory (teacher) refrain from a specified action or set of actions (joining the BDS movement). An oath of loyalty to Israel, as a State, inherently demands positive action; that the teacher commit to actively taking steps to promote Israel and its interests.
In a sane world, the fact that a U.S. school district is making such a demand would be triggering alarm bells all over the place – but the world is not sane, as the 2016 “election” of Trump proves.
And yes, I wonder how long it will be before Scummo sees this and decides to ram it through Parliament.
I believe I’ve determined that swings vary more between seats when there’s a big overall swing, and have calculated the relationship, based on historic observation, at SD = (0.131 * the overall swing) +0.019. So where you’ve got a swing of 5%, which is about where it is now, the standard deviation becomes roughly 2.5%. About 95% of values fall within two SDs of the mean, so where you have a statewide swing of 5%, BludgerTrack will determine a roughly 2.5% chance that any given seat will actually swing in the opposite direction (however slightly) — and an equal chance of it going just as far in the other direction, i.e. more than about 10%.
I love this understated headline describing an event today.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/31/new-horizons-heads-for-flyby-of-space-rock-ultima-thule
The standard deviation of sleep these nights is about an hour after sleeping for 4, and there’s a 50% chance of sleeping for less than that, such that the more broken the sleep, the less there is. The longer the phase, the better the chance of sleeping until the sun rises or of sleeping in til 6. Sleep is lost, they say. Well where did I put it? Did I lose it on the train or while walking from the mercury lake? Is there a Lost-and-Found box for Missing Sleep, in which unused minutes of shut-eye can be placed for safe-keeping, to be returned to their rightful owners? I was musing in the afternoon about my lost Q. Perhaps I left them together, the sleep and the Q and the I. Perhaps, as small birds do, they have flown off together and sit in the tree outside my window, out of reach and high up. Djidi-djidis waiting to jump between boughs when the sun comes in, when the sun comes in with the morning wind before it. I have djidi-djidis at work. They live in the callistemon out the front of the block. They visit my front door occasionally, usually when I’ve been out. They put on a dance for me and come very close, a duet with many curtsies and bows. They have perfect etiquette and are always decked out in formal black and white, tails up, elegance in a pas de deux. Soon the night will withdraw. The beauteous red land to the east will be warming and will let its lungs relax and will breathe out and will blow softly as the day begins in pale blue. The nights are too short now, too short for sleep. Time has flown too,
The wire barriers have come in for a lot of criticism up here as they made it impossible for those driving along the Hume when the flash floods hit to get to safety. It’s difficult enough to get off a freeway in an emergency situation as it is.
However, the floods were a freak event and no lives were lost, so the net benefit probably outweighs the possibility of incidents like that one.
briefly
You prose is like poetry. Better than some poetry, because it is beautiful and I can understand it and feel it.
Well, over here in the East, the bloody cicadas wake us up at sparrow’s fart every morning!
/(ò.ó)┛彡┻━┻
Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
The AFR tells us that a Shorten government has been tipped to initiate an overhaul of National Broadband Network policy within months or even weeks of a federal election.
https://outline.com/SGReny
Amy Remeikis writes that Morrison has turned his back on 2018 but Shorten won’t let him forget it.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/01/scott-morrison-turns-his-back-on-2018-but-shorten-wont-let-him-forget
Jacob Saulwick reports that by the end of 2018, the state government was supposed to confirm the number and location of stops of its much-vaunted Parramatta to central Sydney rail line. But the business case is missing. After all it’s only a $20b job.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/with-costs-climbing-to-20b-metro-west-business-case-runs-behind-20181228-p50olv.html
Emerging anti-National Party organisation Anyone But Nats will start the new year with $60,000 in the bank and a mission to take on the perennial rural party at the NSW and federal elections, with Barnaby Joyce as its prime target.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/an-anti-nationals-group-is-rising-and-wants-barnaby-joyce-gone-20181231-p50owg.html
Simon Holmes á Court writes that while the federal government dithered, business, the states and the public took matters into their own hands to dramatically change the energy picture
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/31/2018-australian-government-energy-more-hopeful-story
The Australian reports that so far only 28 sex abuse victims have been compensated under the $4bn redress scheme, despite 2335 people applying.
https://outline.com/EuFyh4
Michael Pascoe reflects on 2018, the year of failures, none of which was disastrous.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2018/12/30/michael-pascoe-2018/
A nice touch from the Third Test.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/best-babysitter-rishabh-pant-comes-good-on-looking-after-tim-paine-s-kids-20190101-p50p53.html
The Sydney rail system appears to have been managed to a point of fragility.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/new-year-rail-chaos-underscores-vulnerabilities-in-sydney-network-20190101-p50p20.html
Energy Australia is owned by a company in the infamous tax haven of the British Virgin Islands. For the fourth year on the trot, the gas and electricity behemoth paid zero income tax; that’s according to the corporate transparency data released by the Tax Office earlier this month. Michael West reports.
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/energy-australia-four-years-30-billion-zero-tax/
A fierce and public blame game has erupted between the developer and the builder of the cracked western Sydney high-rise Opal Tower, with the parties positioning for an expected legal maelstrom over who will bear liability for the damage and economic loss to unit owners.
https://www.outline.com/Nt5NCx
Tough new laws to punish bad drivers and take dangerous trucks off the road if they fail safety inspections have yet to be enacted — a year after SA’s Parliament passed them.
https://outline.com/VRGdKE
Dutton’s attempt to strip citizenship from an alleged recruiter for Islamic State has been thrown into doubt after Fiji reportedly said he was not one of its citizens.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/dutton-s-bid-to-strip-islamic-state-recruiter-s-citizenship-hits-snag-20190101-p50p56.html
Stephen Bartholomeusz begins his article on the excessive amount of leveraging worldwide with, “If a steady tightening of global central bank liquidity created havoc in equity markets in the closing months of 2018 imagine what it might do to global debt markets in 2019.” Quite frightening really.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/leveraged-to-the-hilt-the-world-has-a-264-trillion-problem-20181231-p50oyw.html
The median economist agrees with the RBA that the next move is up, but a rate hike to 1.75 per cent is now seen arriving by June 2020, according to the Financial Review’s quarterly survey. Three economists are calling for rate cuts.
https://outline.com/XckWhM
Fiona Nash spruiks regional Australia as the nation’s best kept secret.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-nation-s-best-kept-secret-regional-australia-20181221-p50nn6.html
Australia’s cricket board should take a leaf out of India’s book when it comes to taking the long view in managing juniors.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/twenty20-vision-how-india-have-got-system-right-as-australian-cricket-flounders-20190101-p50p2v.html
The daily White House press briefing seems to be disappearing.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/31/white-house-press-briefings-demise
Ross Gittins says we need many more trees.
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/what-the-economy-really-needs-more-of-trees-20181231-p50p06.html
Before you strip off you might want to read about what Australian law says about public nudity.
https://theconversation.com/avoid-a-bum-steer-this-summer-heres-what-australian-law-says-about-public-nudity-107525
2GB is being sued again – this time by a minister of the crown.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/minister-sues-over-developer-claims-20181231-p50ox4.html
Workers on the Manly Fast Ferry could receive as much as a $1 million in total in back pay following the Fair Work Commission’s rejection of their workplace agreement after it found that some workers would have been better off under the award, the CFMMEU has said.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/absolute-wage-theft-manly-fast-ferry-20190101-p50p3x.html
Cartoon Corner
Some perspective from Cathy Wilcox.
Matt Golding.
Jon Kudelka perfectly sums up the Coalition’s energy plan.
https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/ea9ecf1ffe5faf770f4b7e098e30695b
I can understand the wire barriers down the center, but the edges? The barriers are way too close in my view. If you need to stop you can’t get off. You now see people far to close to the traffic changing tyres, in my view it is bloody dangerous.
The people killed going to sleep running off the road must exceed the people killed changing tyres.
There was a case on the western highway. Truck pulled over as far as he could; had to engine died; because of the barriers. Car ran into back, death toll up by one.
Detaching from reality: Trump’s lying reaches new heights — but the truth is catching up to him
President Donald Trump’s second year in office was massively consequential. From the steadily beating drum of the special counsel investigation into Russia, to the national firestorm over migrant family separations, to appointing a man accused of attempted rape to the Supreme Court, to presiding over the biggest midterm election year loss for House Republicans since Watergate, Trump has had to navigate a minefield of self-inflicted disasters and public outrage in 2018.
He has responded by ramping up the lies and disinformation to a truly breathtaking level.
An analysis by the Washington Post Fact Checker shows that Trump made over 7,600 false statements in 2018 — a rate of more than 15 lies per day, or nearly triple the rate in 2017
The small consolation is that the public does not seem to be falling for Trump’s lies. In December, a Fact Checker survey showed people 18 paired statements, 11 of which were false claims Trump had made. Fewer than 3 in 10 Americans, and 4 in 10 Republicans, believed a significant number of them, and even most self-identified Trump supporters didn’t believe all of them.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/detaching-reality-trumps-lying-reaches-new-heights-truth-catching/
Nasty people, connected by threads of influence. I have never forgotten or forgiven Corrigan, the dogs and Peter Reith’s lies.
The White House press office has become too ‘afraid to do anything’: report
The White House Office of the Press Secretary is scared of trying to explain President Donald Trump’s agenda, according to one prominent correspondent who spoke to The Washington Post.
“He [Trump] makes it up every few seconds, so they’re afraid to do anything. . . . It’s not a place where being a freewheeling thinker is valued and rewarded. It’s all about the whims of one man,” the correspondent, who wished to remain anonymous, explained.
The White House press office has also reportedly shrunk down to half of its size from last year.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/white-house-press-office-become-afraid-anything-report/
And when you don’t get to sleep until late at night because it is hot, it kinda truncates things a little bit. So, no open windows in Summer.
However, I have employed mind over matter, it is possible to do so, and after the first few days of it I just told myself, no more! And now I am back to waking up about an hour later.
And I could wax lyrical about the gentle susurrations of the cicada song, but when you hear it all day long even the sweetest cadences have a habit of not sounding so sweet by the end of the day.
Funny thing though, I am reminded of jingle bells at Xmas whenever I hear them. 🙂
Trump’s tweets have degenerated from ‘pithy insults’ into ‘rambling’ and ‘unintelligible’ nonsense: analysis
If you’ve found that President Donald Trump’s tweets haven’t been as successful in dominating the news cycle lately, you aren’t imagining things.
An analysis of the president’s tweets by reporter Joanna Weiss published by Politico has found that the quality of Trump’s tweets over the past two years has gone down significantly, as his usual “pithy insults” have been replaced by “rambling” and “unintelligible self-absorption.”
“His feed by now is clogged with tweets piled on tweets, rambling rants; he’s a guy standing on the street corner whose constant patter you can’t ignore, but you can’t actually follow, either,” she writes.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/trumps-tweets-degenerated-pithy-insults-rambling-unintelligible-nonsense-analysis/
However, I’m sure their long suffering lawyers will be doing nicely.
https://outline.com/EuFyh4
The SmearStralian has got a real Exclusive today!
Lizzie,
The Coalition always pay those willing to do their dirty work for them, very well. With taxpayers’ money of course.
Thank goodness for the Hawke government pushing for the release of Cabinet papers after 20 years and not 30 as it used to be, such that some of the miscreants are still about to be embarrassed by their behaviour.
And perhaps as a sign that internal focus group data is showing Murdoch’s Liberal Party the bleedingly obvious, a 2nd piece in the SmearStralian reinforces the ‘we don’t have a problem with women’ trope.
An opinion piece by Linda Reynolds…
“As I have regularly publicly and privately observed, the Liberal Party has a challenge in engaging with women on policy outcomes and seeking more women for preselection and election. The Liberal Party shares this challenge with other centre-right parties including Britain’s Conservative party and the Republicans in the US.
The reasons for this are complex, particularly as quotas are not an option. The Liberal Party is not a party of formal quotas; we have never been and I believe never will be. The reason for this is not well understood, however. As a party grounded in democratic principles, we believe in equality of opportunity. Conversely, quotas, which are designed to engineer equality of outcome, are a fundamentally socialist concept and an anathema to Liberal values.
To realise genuine equality of opportunity often means providing differing needs-based support — a hard concept to grasp but an essential one to provide true equality of opportunity as an alternative to an equality of outcome.
Quotas in and of themselves are a quick fix, but they do not change the structural and cultural barriers in an organisation. In the absence of other organisational transformations, when quotas are removed the changes do not stick. While I do not pass judgment on the Labor Party’s gender quotas, I believe if removed the present mix would not last.
It is for these reasons I believe the only way to realise lasting change in politics is through genuine organisational and behavioural transformation. It’s always the harder journey to embark on and sustain but the only way to realise enduring reform. I know this through experience with reforms within the army.”
http://outline.com/tumHUn
First blurry pictures of Ultima Thule:
As long as you have the right relatives, social contacts and money behind you.
‘The Liberal Party is not a party of formal quotas; we have never been and I believe never will be.’
Cough.
‘It was Menzies, when the modern Liberal Party was being formed, who insisted on quotas so women were guaranteed equal representation on the party’s governing bodies.’
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/john-howard-trashed-mentor-robert-menzies-legacy-on-gender-equality-20160915-grh4vc.html
lizzie says:
Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at 7:18 am
Thank you, Lizzie. I have had a few days off and been able to relax and find the words are coming easily. It’s a great pleasure for me and I’m very pleased that bludgers might enjoy it too.
Peter Stanton (last night)
…the most valuable asset in any company is its workforce.
It is amazing how many people just do not realise this. I have seen massive mistakes made by public and private organisations all because they did not appreciate this fact.
It was 23 years ago today!
https://twitter.com/i/status/1080052492539387904