The latest fortnightly Newspoll, courtesy of The Australian, has Labor extending its two-party lead from 53-47 to 54-46. The primary votes are Coalition 36% (down one), Labor 39% (steady), Greens 9% (steady) and One Nation 7% (up two). Both leaders’ personal ratings have improved slightly, with Scott Morrison up one on approval to 43% and down three on disapproval to 45%, and Bill Shorten up one to 36% and down two to 51%. Scott Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is 43-36, in from 44-35. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1610.
swamprat @ #78 Sunday, March 10th, 2019 – 9:40 pm
Strictly speaking, no. Or at least, according to the published NBN price list the AVC cost is the same for 25 and 50 on most technologies. The exceptions to this are FTTP and HFC, on which 25 costs $4 less than 50.
But since NBN uptake is reported by speed tier and since the network looks even more shitty if everyone just signs up to the lowest tier, I wouldn’t put it past them to offer some small incentives to ISP’s to push people towards the next level up. It makes their reports look better.
Possibly nothing. Try a speed-test first. If you can’t consistently get 90-95% of your advertised speed (so 22.5Mbps or above) then upgrading the plan may not do anything at all.
Or if you can, then you’ll get a decent speed bump, which you may or may not notice depending upon what you do aside from streaming videos and/or how many other people are also sharing your connection.
@swamprat
This is by design, you still using copper, so your bandwidth is limited, then you have overheads. Plus the ports/cards in boxes are limited in terms of speed upgrades per customer.
Bennelong Lurker says:
Sunday, March 10, 2019 at 11:03 pm
Last newspoll wasn’t there some poor Liberal twerp who avowed that its 53/47 result was really 50/50 when MOE of 3 was applied? Wonder how he’s dealing with this one.
___________________________
Chris Kenny
The Liberals, like conservatives everywhere, has catastrophically misjudged the climate issue. They presumably thought it was just another environmental fad, but the problem they have this time is that its real and pervasive effects are not going to just go away.
Stories like this one are scaring the crap out of people almost daily, and with due cause – they are genuinely upsetting and frightening:
http://climateguide.nl/2019/03/09/non-survivable-humid-heat-for-over-500-million-people/
The anger and engagement of ordinary people in relation to this issue is only going to snowball from here. We can only hope that the Liberals and their mates around the world who have led us to this disastrous position are swept away like the relics they are. The only shot we have is to collectively accept a radically different conception of how we live and how we interact with the planet.
I truly hope that this election is the start of that wave in Australia. Labor are on the right side of science and history on what is clearly the most important issue from now on.
davidwh
“Swampy the main difference we have noticed is consistency. We are not having many slow times. Also it doesn’t seem to take as long to load and run videos.”
——–
OK. I think i look at films etc so rarely that i do not notice.
But i have watched 3 over past few days and never had any problems.
I have 30 days free Netflix…. …..Nothing much of interest. I wont continue and pay. Netflix is just typically Yankee stuff aimed at 13 year old boys……. or Violence (same thing?)
Just garbage. Youtube is better!!
All’s well. Morrison has been blathering about things that annoy people but will not move many votes while proving he is a complete idiot at the same time.
Politics remains a matter of counting down the days till budget week and then knocking off the hours until the election. There are fewer than 11 weeks of torment to endure. The LNP can still make things worse for themselves. They can fight among themselves. They will. Joyce might try to seize the National leadership. Shorten could get that lucky.
There’s just nothing on the horizon at this juncture that is going to upset the results. If things really go bad for the LNP they will lose 40 seats. It can happen.
5G is not a single product. It can use similar frequencies to current phones, or much higher frequencies. At lower frequencies it is not much better than 4G. At higher frequencies propagation becomes a problem. It doesn’t go through walls well.
So every time you see something written about 5G doing 10 G bits per second that is not the full story.
I am getting thoroughly sick of this – as are the rest of the Australian people.
Peter van Onselen Retweeted Steve Georganas
Pretty sure Unley is in Adelaide not Hindmarsh. Georganas isn’t the member for Adelaide, he’s a candidate there. So why is he doing a Georgina Downer and handing out cheque’s as a candidate?
Steve Georganas
@stevegeorganas
At the @adelaide_fc women’s curtain raiser to present the community Grant of $10,000 towards the establishment of the Aboriginal & Torres straight Islander girls football academy where I also had the pleasure of tossing the coin
jeffemu @ #71 Sunday, March 10th, 2019 – 10:33 pm
They are only kids size bats. Hopefully the Americanisation of Australian sport will mean there are some full size ones available for the Buffon
Anyone on ADSL may as well make the jump from that to FttN: at least then your turd will be polished. I pity the people being shunted from Optus cable onto FttN though, delay as long as possible if your current connection is fine.
Last year NBN changed their wholesale pricing constructs. The new wholesale offerings force ISPs to provide adequate bandwidth (CVC) even at peak times. If a new 50/20 Mbps plan is cheaper than your existing 25/5 Mbps plan then it’s because TPG didn’t move you over to the new wholesale offerings with NBN until now, leaving you grandfathered on the old offerings. You can get 25/5 plans under the new offerings that would be equally/more free from congestion.
briefly
I honestly believe that the Nationals are going to gazump Budget week by reinstalling Barnaby Joyce.
(on Monday April 1st)
Won’t Morrison and Frydenberg love that?
Can the opposition and Tory independents force an election when next Patliament meets in April?
Rocket
I was of the view back in January that if Morrison did not go early Joyce would back at deputy PM before the election
Nath,
Yes, of course. Thank you.
Rockets….it does look like Joyce is tempted. I reckon there’d be the odd National that would refuse to run as a Joyce-National. He could split them.
He’d sure as hell disrupt budget week.
Gottabe a chance.
Maybe TPG used marketing 101 on me to get me to change but we are happy anyway and we have noticed an improvement in the service since the change.
calumniousfox @ #109 Sunday, March 10th, 2019 – 11:11 pm
Speaking as one of those people, I’d be interested in more details. Currently I get 15 to 23Mbps and the sales pitch is that I’ll be on an average of 70Mbps when I switch.
I see that Morrison was ‘hidden’ during Berejiklian’s election launch.
After this latest Newspoll will they put him in witness protection for the next fortnight?
Rocket Rocket @ #107 Sunday, March 10th, 2019 – 11:10 pm
Unley Oval is in Adelaide electorate now. Used to be Boothby. Bit foreign for Steve G I reckon. Looks like Nigel Smart on the right who stood as a Lib for state seat of Norwood. Go da Crows, Go da Redlegs.
If the other side of the street from you is getting fibre to the kerb and you are getting FttN, why not investigate using the Technology Choice Program to pay for the upgrade yourself? It probably wouldn’t be too dear if there is an existing fibre run to service the FttC right across the road.
Regarding 5G – it holds alot of promise for mobiles but would become congested if the NBN were not built and all homes and businesses in Australia tried to switch to it from ADSL/cable. People in FttN pockets of predominantly FttC/HFC/FttP suburbs will benefit greatly… Probably not so much entirely FttN suburbs. That is why Labor will have to upgrade FttN premesis if it doesn’t want to see the NBN undercut, probably as a 2022 election promise.
If you are a fully self funded retiree taking an Allocated Pension at 5% PA (of the Balance), you have not seen any growth in Capital at best since the GFC and the Share Market collapse (which was global)
The reason for this is the performance of the ASX (compare the graphs with Global Equity Markets, then factor in the depreciation of the AUD, down 30%)
The ASX is still some 5% below its pre GFC peak
Hence given Fund Manager usage (and not owned Australian interests including banks), you have at best funded your Allocated Pension draw downs (on which you live) courtesy of Global Markets and currency
The problem of course is that with no concessions due to not being an Aged Pensioner at least in part, expenses continue to increase starting from utility prices to Health Cover premiums, home and property insurance, Council Rates etc etc
Any benefit from a continuing growth in principal resulting in the 5% draw down increasing because of the growth in Capital is absent so the challenge has been to at least maintain Capital so your income does not reduce – in the face of an increasing cost of living base
The economic circumstances of Australia are the cause of this result, looking at when it was that the ASX first (again) challenged 6,000 Points post the GFC, then floundered whilst Global Equities continued their recovery, eclipsing their pre GFC highs
This disconnect was from the election of a right wing government wedded to the ideology that austerity leads to confidence and that confidence will trickle down (read Stiglitz, for starters)
And, of course, the National statistics say what they say – and the RBA Governor says what he says
The immediate problem is that if self funded retirees have money on Term Deposit, those Term Deposit interest rates will further reduce
So there is the outcome
A change of government and a differing ideology (and who they represent) will provide impetus
Currently, as reported, we see Business Lobby Groups continuing to present that business conditions do not allow wages increases – which confirms that profitability is the function of low interest rates (and borrowing costs) and recessionary wages growth – not business performance
It is akin to a Retailing business (or a bank!) losing Sales revenue, GP under pressure so reducing points of representation, inventory and the wages bill to not only make profit but to retain liquidity
There is no future – and your best loss is your first loss
That is the Australian economy
A differing focus will restore consumer confidence rekindling discretionary spending and giving impetus including adding value from trading to business
The trip down the slippery cylinder we currrently see will be in prospect to reverse with the building planks in place
THE building plank is consumer confidence, currently absent as confirmed by the National Accounts (and the vacancies on the High Street – absent restaurants and coffee shops frequented by a certain demographic)
Rocket Rocket @ #104 Sunday, March 10th, 2019 – 8:10 pm
Welp. You walk through a door nobody’s walked through before, you gotta expect people are going to walk through it after you.
Re NBN. Bought in a suburb that was NBN’d years ago. Bgr. Found that their were a few too hard spots that got bypassed. My bad for not checking. ADSL was rubbish. Had to get a 4G Mobile WiFi to support multiple users. That ran at about 40/20. A number of big towers nearby, but was quite variable. Now on NBN FTTP50 and rarely get less than 30/20. The ex is on NBN FTTN 50 and actually gets better than me. But new suburb new copper and node is 10m away.
Work To Rule, it depends entirely on four things:
– The length of copper from the node to your house.
– The quality and state of that copper.
– Whether your local node is suffering from congestion.
– The quality and state of the lines within your house.
You only have full control over one of these things. It’s possible you could get 70 Mbps down or even 100 Mbps but you could also get a 12 Mbps unstable/unusable service. The best place to go for advice on your specific circumstances is whirlpool.net.au
Re Steve G . His old seat is part Hindmarsh and part Adelaide. So if he is standing for Adelaide he is the local member. The name of the electorate is a detail. Not as if a name change makes the incumbent a newbie.
Zoidlord says:
Sunday, March 10, 2019 at 11:05 pm
@swamprat
This is by design, you still using copper, so your bandwidth is limited, then you have overheads. Plus the ports/cards in boxes are limited in terms of speed upgrades per customer.
———
Sorry. Zordloid.
I was away.
I suppose i have copper for about 20 metres. Is that significant?
The rest of your post i do not understand 🙁
“……you have overheads. Plus the ports/cards in boxes are limited in terms of speed upgrades per customer.” ??????????
Byron, if you are on FTTP and getting as low as 30 Mbps down on a 50/20 plan then I recommend contacting tech support or changing RSP. Aussie Broadband are excellent: https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/
5G will have it’s niche but it can’t deliver a national service. It is just the ‘last mile’. Or maybe the last 250m. As I mentioned a 4G Mobile WiFi worked fine for me for a while. With several towers nearby and a good live of vision. 5G will be great for high usage areas, but good luck to those in Tallarook.
One useful purpose of FTTN might be if a 5G base station is inserted on top of node.
Poll Bludger Federal Election Seat Count Sweep
Welcome to the Poll Bludger Federal Election Seat Count Sweep. Life has calmed down for me and its time for a much delayed update to the Sweep.
If you would like to join email your prediction for the number of seats that Labor will win to sjapplin@hotmail.com. Your email will be deleted after your prediction is recorded with my apologies in advance to anyone inadvertently caught by the spam filter. I’ll try to keep track of any predictions posted in the thread if you’d prefer not to email me, without a guarantee it’ll be included. I have a full-time job and a young family to keep me occupied.
The rules of the competition are:
• Your seat count prediction must be an integer
• All forms of cheating and capitalising on insider knowledge are encouraged
• Your first prediction is final
The prize is gloating rights.
Name__________Labor
Toorak Toff __________71
Davidwh__________74
Steve777__________80
Jenauthor__________81
Tricot__________81
Bennelong Lurker__________82
SandgroperWA__________82
Torchbearer__________82
Player One__________83
BH__________84
Edward Boyce__________84
Max__________84
C@tmomma__________84
Lizzie__________84
Gareth__________84
JPH__________85
Sonar__________85
Steve davis__________85
Hugoaugogo__________85
WeWantPaul__________86
Imacca__________86
J341893__________86
Outside Left__________86
Taz__________86
Confessions__________87
A Different Michael__________87
Kambah Mick__________87
The Silver Bodgie__________87
Lord Haw Haw of Arabia__________87
A R__________88
JimmyD__________88
Sproket__________88
A R__________88
Douglas and Milko__________89
BK__________89
Sohar__________89
Left E__________89
John Reidy__________89
Mari__________89
Quasar__________89
D_money__________89
Sgh1969__________89
Bert__________89
Harry “Snapper” Organs__________90
Onebobsworth__________90
Swamprat__________91
Poroti__________91
Bilko__________92
Pica__________92
Terminator__________92
Whisper__________92
Socrates__________93
Ausdavo__________93
Mavis Smith__________94
Yaba__________94
Jack Aranda__________94
Briefly__________94
Matt31__________94
ItzaDream__________94
Upnorth__________94
Nswtcsd__________95
Booleanbach__________95
Don__________95
Adrian__________96
Alpha Zero__________96
Libertarian Unionist__________97
Dan Gulberry__________98
Burgey__________98
Asha Leu__________99
Guytar__________100
ajm__________100
Puffytmd__________100
Golly__________101
Fozzie Logic__________102
Grimace__________105
Antonbruckner11__________106
Andrew_Earlwood__________127
calumniousfox @ #124 Sunday, March 10th, 2019 – 11:34 pm
Cheers
I can attest that point three is beyond my control given the relationship between bandwidth the number of that Millennials my kids have invited over.
davidwh @ #74 Sunday, March 10th, 2019 – 7:35 pm
One of my friends installs NBN equipment. They are currently busy going back to FTTN area’s they’ve previously “finished” to install more equipment because they didn’t install enough capacity. They are reducing the load on each node by about 80%, so 5 times the originally installed capacity.
NBN went live in my area three days ago. The ADSL service here is so bad that I’ve taken the risk on HFC NBN, the technician is booked in for Thursday next week.
That’s an interesting question regarding incumbents in SA.
If no sitting Members had retired, you would have had 11 Members fighting for 10 seats, so in one seat you would have had 2 Members standing against one another.
Who’s the incumbent?
The NSW State poll has the LNP PV at less than 29%. This is a dismal level of support. Labor are more than 7% ahead. It’s very difficult to see how the LNP can hold on to power, even in a minority, with such a low vote. A translation of this PV Federally is out of line with BludgerTrack but would imply very heavy losses of Federal seats by the LNP.
The LNP-leaning constituencies are crumbling right around the country.
Grimace, anyone on ADSL should definitely bite the bullet on HFC NBN ASAP. Same for FttC NBN.
Re NBN, if anyone has the option of Uniti Wireless I highly recommend it. We get about 5x the best speed we ever got on ADSL and it’s cheaper than NBN.
I see Mr Bowe gets a nod in this Age/SMH article.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/shorten-given-winx-like-odds-to-win-election-20190310-p5131y.html
Clem Attlee: “Andrew Earlwood, I agree that re nationalization of power should be restricted to lines and wires, not generation infrastructure.”
Bravo. Same thing goes for:
– water networks
– rail networks (railways)
– road networks
– data networks
Networks, networks, networks! The Common Wealth (and the Lockeian Proviso restricting property rights against the Common Wealth).
It’s not that hard unless one seeks a “moral justification for selfishness” on the right hand, or blindly follows a process method (rather than being guided by results) on the left hand.
And as a matter of seeking consensus, the process should be called “Restoration to the Common Wealth” not “Nationalisation” and certainly not Doc Evatt’s “nationalise the bastards” (even of they are bastards, it doesn’t help)
The HFC we had was pretty good going back 20 years.
We’ve had FTTB for several months and are paying about the same price but free VOIP calls with some exceptions.
We haven’t paid $30 pm line rental for maybe 10 yrs ?
Speed wise we get about 10% less then the package agreed most of the time, say 20% less then HFC – yet we pay about the same and NBCo spent what $50 – 60 – 70 billion for a lesser outcome ?
So WTF?
Telcos say they make bugger all because of nbnco pricing?
Plus it looks like a massive capital loss write down has to happen on nbnco expenditure ?
Abbott/ Turnbull etc all have questions to answer…..
davidwh@9:53pm
You think a good budget makes a difference. I hope you still remember that we are in per capita recession.
Burnside was a member of the Savage Club for forty years, and apparently got married to Kate Durham there too. He should have stuck by the principles that led to this behaviour, stayed in the club and defended himself; capitulating when caught out just makes him look flakey.
The whole thing reminds me of the 2007 Brian Burke affair, which resulted in Howard forcing a Cabinet Minister to resign from Parliament simply for the sin of once being in the same room as Brian Burke.
There is no particular reason to proscribe men-only clubs if there are equivalent women-only clubs available. For example in Adelaide there are:
– QAC (Queen Adelaide Club) – women-only (formerly it was the wives of rich men and the occasional independently successful woman without a degree, but most now have degrees);
– Lyceum – women-only (?), but must have degrees; now that the QAC members mostly have degrees I’m not sure what happens to the Lyceum;
– Adelaide Club – men-only (plus the Governor, even if a woman…) – best avoided in my view (I would far rather be a guest of a woman at the QAC than visit the Adelaide Club);
– Naval and Military (in one of the strangest buildings within the square mile), open to all with a services association;
In the Adelaide case, the QAC is the most desirable and perhaps men should seek to get in (perhaps nath will climb in through the window? I can tell you that the women in the QAC will be really pissed off at such an invasion.
The clubs that are problematic are those such as Bohemian Grove: all male (and mostly very powerful too) and there is no equivalent for women (nor realistically could there be: Bohemian Grove should accept both women and men, for the same reason as it decided in the 60s to accept non-white men.
grimace says Sunday, March 10, 2019 at 11:47 pm
I would be interested in knowing what change they are making. I thought the bandwidth to nodes was well underprovisioned at the beginning (2x1Gbps I think) and I’ve always wondered if some of the RSPs were being blamed for lack of CVC when there was also a node bottleneck?
Disclaimer, I’m fat and happy on FTTP.
No turn to polish.
The Smears front page headline for NewsPoll. 🙂
https://www.theaustralian.com.au
Benson starting to see the writing on the wall:
‘The drop in the two-party-preferred vote to 46-54 will be demoralising. It suggests a well-established trend and, instead of tightening, the numbers are breaking the wrong way.
The danger now is that MPs turn to Josh Frydenberg and the April 2 budget. Never mind this is the Treasurer’s first budget. For every dollar he puts in voters’ pockets, Bill Shorten will put in double. There is no denying that the picture is bleak for Morrison.’
Three things that really worry me about the “modern” Labor Party:
1, It is really a neo-liberal wolf in a sheeps fleece., and
2. I have never heard ONE Lab politician talk about what services should be publicly owned and how they will restore that.
3. i think that Serco, the profiteers that run a big prison in Brisbane, the subject of a 4 corners expose about their appalling and corrupt management, has been rewarded with a new contract by the ALP Qld Government!!!
I see that a Greens candidate with membership of an Old, White, Male misogynist club which openly brags of hints of anti-First Nations occupations and developing country realities has thrown up all kinds of delusional twists and obfuscations among the Greens supporters here. What a shame that you can’t simply own your candidate’s shortcomings in the same way you demand the same of Labor and Liberal candidates.
swamprat says Monday, March 11, 2019 at 12:20 am
I think that many senior public servants* have drunk the outsourcing cool aid, and companies like Serco specialise in, and are very good at winning government contracts.
* They’ve become too much like MBAs and forgotten the service part of public service.
swamprat: “I have never heard ONE Lab politician talk about what services should be publicly owned and how they will restore that.”
Here is a rather long article by Andrew Leigh describing his thinking (as Shadow Minister for Competition)
http://www.andrewleigh.com/competition_policy_and_inequality_building_on_lionel_murphy_s_legacy
I think I will definitely relinquish my hold on “Scomentum™”.
It is never going to fly.
Stand by for more departures.
shell bell: “Not sure I want to hope on a Boeing 737 MAX in a third world nation”
That’s tragic (Crash of Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX).
Despite what one might think (and some Youtube videos from the 90s), Ethiopian Airlines is now rather well run. Perhaps there’s a problem with 737 MAX. Cutting corners is after de rigeur in the Age of Trump…
https://www.airlineratings.com/ratings/ethiopian-airways/