There haven’t been any new polls this week, so the headline to this post isn’t news as such – the point is that a new thread is needed, and this is it. Developments worth noting:
• We do have one new poll, but it was privately conducted and so doesn’t count as canonical so far as BludgerTrack is concerned. The poll in question was conducted by uComms/ReachTEL for Greenpeace last Wednesday from a sample of 2134, and has primary votes of Coalition 38.8%, Labor 36.7%, Greens 9.7% and One Nation 6.1%. A 53-47 two-party split is reported based on respondent-allocated preferences, but it would actually have been around 51.5-48.5 based on preferences from 2016. The poll also features attitudinal questions on carbon emissions and government priorities, which you can read all about here.
• The Greens have landed a high-profile candidate in Julian Burnside, human rights lawyer and refugee advocate, to run against Josh Frydenberg in the normally blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Kooyong. This further complicates a contest that already featured independent hopeful Oliver Yates, former Liberal Party member and chief executive of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
• The Liberal preselection to choose a successor to Julie Bishop in Curtin will be determined by a vote of 60 delegates on Sunday. Initial reports suggested the front-runners were Celia Hammond, former vice-chancellor of Notre Dame University, and Erin Watson-Lynn, director of Asialink Diplomacy at the University of Melbourne, which some interpreted as a proxy battle between bitter rivals Mathias Cormann and Julie Bishop. However, both have hit heavy weather over the past week, with concerns raised over Hammond’s social conservatism and Watson-Lynn’s past tweets critical of the Liberal Party. Andrew Tillett of the Financial Review reports that some within the party believe a third nominee, Aurizon manager Anna Dartnell, could skate through the middle.
• Tom Richardson of InDaily reports moderate faction efforts to install a male candidate – James Stevens, chief-of-staff to Premier Steve Marshall – in Christopher Pyne’s seat of Sturt are prompting a slew of conservative-aligned women to nominate against him. These include Deepa Mathew, a manager at the Commonwealth Bank and state candidate for Enfield last year; Joanna Andrew, a partner with law firm Mellor Olsson; and Jocelyn Sutcliffe, a lawyer with Tindall Gask Bentley. However, Stevens remains the “overwhelming favourite”.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/07/whole-thing-is-unraveling-climate-change-reshaping-australias-forests
I immediately paid attention to Dr.(Prof) David Bowman – because of his Jupiter-exploring namesake!
Whoever is leader of the Opposition in June will be pretty irrelevant. For the leader of the “Liberals”, even one term of Opposition is like one of those multi-generation multi-decade starship journeys to another Solar system that appear in some science fiction (faster than light being impossible). Those there at the start of the journey don’t live to arrive at the destination.
If the coalition is routed at the election Morrison won’t be forgotten or forgiven by the Libs.
There is a classic line from the movie The Dish where the PM says to the mayor when he gets the party nod for pre selection………”We have one rule in the party….you don’t fuck
up”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSxl3OAwxps
If Morrison and the coalition go down the party will look at it as a giant f-up…bye bye Scott.
That well known PB Laborite Davidwh said……………..
Interesting that Nikki Savva said that Matthias Cormann has had the stuffing knocked out of him, is a diminished figure and will likely stand down after the election. I have no reason to doubt her.
sonar
The tragedy of “The Dish” is that they didn’t get John Gorton to play himself.
I think he would have done it.
Confessions
Porter isn’t on my radar, but I can see why he might be anointed as next in line. BludgerTrack has Porter winning Pearce by 3.6% compared with Frydenberg winning Kooyong by 12.9%. With the polls the way they are running Frydenberg looks a better bet as the next LOTO. (And I can understand Labor’s intent.)
C@t
“Interesting that Nikki Savva said that Matthias Cormann has had the stuffing knocked out of him, is a diminished figure and will likely stand down after the election. I have no reason to doubt her.”
He’s been pretty invisible since The Challenge.
So has Michaelia, although maybe for different reasons.
Rocket Rocket says:
Thursday, March 7, 2019 at 9:45 pm
Fess
Yes I tend to agree – and any ‘moderates’ left will be too scared to rock the boat.
Leadership thoughts if they lose election-
1. Abbott – unless he loses Warringah, in which case it is
2. Dutton – unless he loses Dickson, in which case it is
3. Morrison – for about a year until someone steps up to topple him
—
Abbott – Karvelas says he has stood on too many toes and is not forgiven after his self-destruct leaks;
Morrison – No way in hell – an undignified exit awaits this clown;
Dutton – He won’t be around if he stays in Dickson;
Maybe Freydenberg is the only option with Littleproud deputy opposition leader until McKenzie switches to the HOR . The NSW branch of the Liberals and Nats will be a basket case after the State and Federal elections.
Tones might be able to drum up enough ‘we need to lurch back to the right’ to win back the “true believers” a year out from 2022 but I doubt it – I think he will aim for 2025 because the gap Labor put on them in this election it looks like a ‘two election’ victory is afoot. That’s my tea leaf reading outer limits.
There was a vogue about 20 years ago for algorithm-based management of a few conditions, suspected DVT being one and suspected appendicitis another. They just didn’t work in real life. As has been pointed out, there are just too many variables and non-binary values to be able to trust them. I think there are programs which will look at a dermatoscopic image of a suspected skin cancer and are very accurate at diagnosing it. You can use a technician to take the images and send them to the server which diagnoses them.
David @10:29PM. You’re speechless?
Turnbull trusted Cormann and found out that was unwise.
What would really bug Cormann I reckon is that for a bloke who was said to be the consummate power broker and numbers man he got it so horribly wrong.
Not his first mistake either. He was said, along with Cash, to be an architect of the disastrous WA Lib flirtation with One Nation.
I doubt either will stay in the senate long in opposition.,
I’m still thinking Steve.
Godel, Escher Bach.. One of my all time three favourite books.
Read it as a teenager. Came back and read it again a few years ago.
Its the reason why I fell in love with AI and with all things cyber.
don’t do any damage, davidwh..
“Interesting that Nikki Savva said”… My gosh, she is still alive, after the demise of M. Turnbull… but surely she is writing from an undisclosed bunker, somewhere in a lost corner of this vast country…. Abbott’s henchmen must be looking for her everywhere….
Too late Cud.
Davidwh
Well done for having a laugh at yourself. I appreciated it.
We should all do that from time to time Goll.
Late Riser, put me down for a.l.p 55 to 45 in both newspoll and essential and 57 to 43 in ispos. thankyou
Isn’t it simply the case that the human body, for all that we know about it, is simply unpredictable? For example, the lifelong non-smoker who didn’t even come into contact with sidestream smoke, that dies of lung cancer.
And AI is all about the predictable.
cc
“Godel, Escher Bach.. One of my all time three favourite books.”
What are the other two?
Frydenberg looks miserable and broken these days, he is an appalling communicator, gets confused and frustrated, and he can’t pull off the endless optimistic smiling chutzpah needed by an opposition leader.
Labor would tear him to pieces.
So a good choice then.
C@t
“Isn’t it simply the case that the human body, for all that we know about it, is simply unpredictable?”
Some things are very predictable, mainly purely genetic diseases. Quite a few cancers can be predictable based on genetics. There are lots of causes of lung cancer besides smoking and one common type of lung cancer is no more likely to occur in smokers than non-smokers.
There is a lot of work on looking at tailoring drug treatment based on DNA microarrays and refining the treatments using AI based on outcomes. I think some clinics in the US are doing this in patients currently.
The Coalition might split completely apart if Morrison and the Nats get thrashed. They will all turn on each other and it wont be Shorten that gets the blame anymore.
Nuts…
London: Malcolm Turnbull has dumped on his former Liberal colleagues for ousting him as prime minister during a wide-ranging interview with one of Britain’s most prominent political interviewers.
Speaking to the veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil, whom he has known since the Spycatcher days, for the BBC’s Politics Live program on Tuesday, Mr Turnbull described the August coup as a “peculiarly Australian form of madness”.
He said he had been removed by his own party because he was on track to beat Labor leader Bill Shorten.
“Basically you could argue that their concern was not that I would lose the election but rather that I would win it,” he said.
Are you telling me your own party didn’t want you to win the next election, that’s not credible is it?” a clearly stunned Neil asked.
“Andrew you’ve only got to look at the facts. I mean the facts are, there were, if you have, if you are level pegging in the polls, if you are two points behind in the public polls,” Mr Turnbull said.
“You had 40 consecutive polls in which you were never ahead of Labor, 40,” Neil interjected.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/peculiarly-australian-form-of-madness-turnbull-dumps-on-libs-in-bbc-interview-20190307-p512la.html
I remember the bit in G.E.B where Hofstadter discusses Fermat’s last theorem obliquely as “fermant’s last theorem”.
Written before it was finally proved in 1994, 357 years after Fermat proposed it – by linking it to an entirely different branch of mathematics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem
I love this anecdote about Andrew Wiles, the Englishman who proved it.
Wiles states that he came across Fermat’s Last Theorem on his way home from school when he was 10 years old. He stopped at his local library where he found a book about the theorem. Fascinated by the existence of a theorem that was so easy to state that he, a ten year old, could understand it, but that no one had proven, he decided to be the first person to prove it. However, he soon realised that his knowledge was too limited, so he abandoned his childhood dream, until it was brought back to his attention at the age of 33 by Ken Ribet’s 1986 proof of the epsilon conjecture, which Gerhard Frey had previously linked to Fermat’s famous equation.
When we did maths we joked about nearly every famous mathematician’s best work being done before the age of 25 (not sure how true that was!), but Wiles finished this at 41.
It’s all about probabilities. Smoking doesn’t guarantee you get’ll lung cancer and not smoking doesn’t guarantee you won’t. However, not smoking greatly shifts the odds in your favour. Same goes for other lifestyle choices.
Turnbull is as delusional as the others.
LR I am going to plump for 55-45 in Newspoll, 56-44 in IPSOS
Many thanks
I’d love to get inside the heads of the 1% of Greens supporters who think the government is doing enough to lower emissions and combat climate change. I mean – I wonder what motivates them to vote Green?
The timeframe is the bit that no-one knows, but we should start preparing for it. It’s a good argument for a UBI.
https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/world-problems/stephen-hawking-you-should-support-wealth-redistribution/
That’s a benign outcome, where redistributing wealth is the hard part. Where the robots remain happy to be our slaves and we only have to adjust by not defining ourselves by our work.
At the more scary sci-fi end you get the “singularity” where AI starts building smarter and smarter AI at an ever increasing speed and makes us as relevant as a dodo bird.
NEWSFLASH
pm Morrison says it will be Shorten and Labor’s fault if Winx gets beaten
d-money @ #683 Thursday, March 7th, 2019 – 9:55 pm
OK. (I’m recording Essential too.)
L R,
You can put me on a default setting of ALP 55-45 on all polls if you like.
The Nationals know they are in trouble. That’s why they have made noise today about “The Big Stick” energy policy.
My view is that if that Waleed Aly interview resonates in rural seats the Nationals speaking up in an attempt to support coal won’t help them.
So I am making zero predictions about who could be leader of the party even as speculation due to not knowing who will survive.
Ditto for the Liberal party because Wentworth Labor Longman and the Victorian election have shown for the reactionaries there are no safe seats.
From early this morning………..
Dutton allocated himself a close personal Federal Police protection squad soon after the establishment of the super ministry.
This means that a Federal Police Detachment of at least two officers and a police car follows his government car on a trip from, for example the airport to parliament. This is to assure his safety.
This security service had previously been the reserve of the PM, the Queen and other dignitaries.
Dutton has serious problems with reality and his contribution to parliament.
What has Dutton done that warrants such security?
……….probably not for his safety but to keep him from emerging from his human cloak and feasting on some of the locals.
Dio,
My point was, that the AI, by examining a patient would not be able to diagnose those patients with those genetic causes of those diseases. Unless they were programmed with the information to detect them and a gene profile of the patient.
Though, now I come to think of it, I guess it may be possible to design a machine that could do that, especially when combined with other diagnostic machines which fed their results into the database for the patient.
Then again, patients don’t go to the doctor until they get symptoms and AI can’t make them do that before the symptoms become manifest and obvious to the patient!
Question
On AI. The singularity scenario includes up loading human consciousness to be part of the AI.
So if that comes to pass we will be alright mate.
Cat
Wearables. Not too far into the future your toilet will be running diagnostic tests as well. 🙂
Question @ #688 Thursday, March 7th, 2019 – 10:05 pm
I like. 🙂
(Re AI, my vision is dystopian. A few humans control the AIs and the rest maintain them.)
Corman being “best mates” with Dutton indicated to me his very poor judgement.
His knifing of Turnbull after the latter poured praise on Corman as his “rock” showed his treachery.
Funny ain’t it – very little msm talk about backstabbing, knives, blood on hands etc etc pulsating internal hatred, score settling, disunity and rats jumping ship etc.
That gets trotted out wall to wall 24/7 if Labor are involved.
With Tories it might get mentioned then dropped.
C@tmomma, don’t forget your shopping habits and other habits too can be tracked and diagnosed. AI oversight may spot your health troubles before you do. (For a shiver on how this might work search on China and Social Credit.)
I read somewhere today that there was an investigation going on over several Wallabies throwing international rugby matches.
Anyone know more?
Allegedly.
guytaur,
I like the idea of uploading my consciousness, but the AI would be so smart, and constantly updating, that I’m not sure I would be able to keep up 🙂
L R,
Stephen Hawking seems to agree with you in the article I linked above. Humans are too stupid to even get the easy stuff right. Of course the robots will maintain the robots and put the rest of us down when we revolt.
FS
Investigation means no conclusion. So the allegedly is unnecessary.
The fact you felt the need to say it shows how bad and broad our defamation laws are.
essential 55-45 LR
Question
Would you or would you merge to become part of a greater consciousness?
After all AI is networked. So many possibilities to run the imagination down.