There seems to be a hardening view that Scott Morrison will take advantage of what he hopes will be a positive response to tonight’s budget by calling the election later this week, for either May 11 or May 18. Whenever the election may be called, its proximity makes this an awkward time for us to go a week without new poll results. Newspoll is set for a highly unusual four-week gap, having held off last week due to the New South Wales election and this week due to the budget, while Essential Research is in an off week in its fortnightly cycle. The dam is set to burst next week, with Ipsos joining the two aforementioned with post-budget poll results.
For now, all I can do for you in the way of poll news is to relate what James Campbell of the Herald Sun offered on Liberal internal polling last Thursday: that Pauline Hanson scores net approval ratings of minus 62% and minus 63% in the Melbourne seats of Deakin and Chisholm – and, incidentally, that Peter Dutton has been known to record minus 50% in Melbourne. Beyond that, there is one item of important preselection news to relate, in that the New South Wales Liberals are set to endorse child psychologist Fiona Martin as their successor to the retiring Craig Laundy in Reid. The Australian reports Martin has been chosen ahead of Tanveer Ahmed, a psychiatrist, and Scott Yung, candidate for Kogarah at last week’s state election.
The Government looked like they knew they were watching their replacement give his first speech as PM tonight.
They are right.
MM @ #2096 Thursday, April 4th, 2019 – 8:57 pm
A Liberal True Believer, I am guessing 🙂
Didn’t get to hear the budget reply so am very happy to come here and see Nath’s reaction :-). Must have gone down well.
One reason why Scotty will wait till Sunday, and not Friday to drive down Dunrossil, is that taxpayer funded government advertising ceases when the election is called.
So another weekend of blatant electioneering on the taxpayers tab. Won’t do Scotty any good.
Remember
Much more to come from Labor in the campaign.
I noted the comment about Centrelink and face to face meetings. That sounds to me returning to the old social security. That could mean a return of the CES.
I could be wrong but the immediate summary always misses stuff while complaining about the lack of detail.
zoomster
says:
Thursday, April 4, 2019 at 9:00 pm
Bill acknowledged Albo, at which point the camera panned to him.
__________________________
The members choice! Not the factions’.
The only people watching the happenings in parliament today and tonight were political tragics. It’s about as ‘fewer people’ as you can get.
Ouch!
.@MsFionaScott on Labor’s Medicare plan: How is all of this going to be paid for?
@David_Speers: By not doing negative gearing and franking credits.
MORE: bit.ly/2Uu5BTn #Budget2019
guytaur says:
Thursday, April 4, 2019 at 9:04 pm
Remember
Much more to come from Labor in the campaign.
—
Let’s hope so
To be fair to the ABC commentators they did say this Reply speech was lethal for the government
Nath, ease off on the dirt, old chum, life will go on for you, even under PM Bill Shorten.
PS: I loved “Trainspotting” too.
Just catching up on budget in reply. Looking good so far
That was in reply to this:
Diogenes: “It looks like a big win for cancer patients, private radiology practices and private surgeons and oncologists. Should take some pressure off the public hospitals.”
Can something be done such that radiology is electronically accessible nationwide irrespeective of which practice does the scans. I.e. it should not be necessary to send disks from a radiology practice in state A to a consultant in state B (and then get the disks loaded in by techs) just because different software is being used.
nath
To get elected, Shorten needed – and got – votes from the Left.
The people who knew and worked with them both made a judgement.
SkyFoxNews pundits struggling to say anything negative about Bill’s speech
The ranks of has beens and failures are littered with those who have underestimated Bill Shorten.
nath @ #2105 Thursday, April 4th, 2019 – 9:05 pm
And it used to be 100% the Caucus’ choice. So your pettifogging point is!?!
Sprocket, maybe Bill got votes from them as well as from the left!! He showed what you can task the government with addressing when actually have some vision, as well as a level head.
Sprocket
Kroger gave it a red hot go … I seemed to hear the sound of a deflating whoops cushion while he was speaking (it might have been a metaphorical one … but it sure was loud! 😆 )
Nath, since you’re such a big fan of Albo, and would love to see him administer a portfolio, I take it you’ll be voting for his party, and publicly and privately campaigning for others to do the same?
Julie Kardashian has left the building…
sprocket_
Kroger gave it a go but struggled 😆
I have said it many times; Shortens strength is he knows how to run a team. It is a rear talent. He doesn’t win an election by being the preferred PM. He wins it by his team winning the most seats.
I saw Bill’s speech tonight as a giant non sequiter. He completely ignored the government’s challenge on taxes and fiscal responsibility. Just waved them away. Refused to be diverted. They got no argument from Bill.
Quite clever of him: he simply changed the subject.
Giving people the dignity they need to fight their potential end of life battle with cancer is a big thing. They say that stress is bad for you when you are fighting cancer, well, by taking away financial stress it can only help with the fight.
Murpharoo has some thoughts.
zoomster @ #2116 Thursday, April 4th, 2019 – 9:09 pm
Exactly what I was told.
BB, good observation. He could do this because all the Govt did Tuesday night was point repeatedly at some fictitious “scoreboard” of fiscal “responsibility”. This left the field entirely to Labor, to actually articulate what our Australian Government can be tasked with accomplishing for the Australian people, now and into the future.
zoomster
says:
Thursday, April 4, 2019 at 9:09 pm
nath
To get elected, Shorten needed – and got – votes from the Left.
The people who knew and worked with them both made a judgement.
_______________________________
You mean Shorten did a deal with Kim Carr to get his group on board? Yep, that happened.
When they go low, we go high!
nath @ #2130 Thursday, April 4th, 2019 – 9:19 pm
Oh, you poor, pathetic, embittered little man.
Chloe’s mum will not be amused.
Although Labor can’t realistically hope to win a lot of the lower house seats in the bush, it strikes me that the Medicare cancer policy could well stack up quite a few Senate votes from those seats.
Drops in to pollbludger, sees a bunch of homophobic “jokes” about Pyne, drops out of pollbludger.
If Albo had won over Shorten, do you think the ALP leadership would have been as stable as it has been?
I don’t know.
frednk @ #2125 Thursday, April 4th, 2019 – 9:16 pm
… and with winning policies. And boy, didn’t he tell Sales exactly that, after her ill judged question.
ajm:
Yes it will certainly mean a lot to people who have to add travel expenses to the capital city for cancer treatment on top of costs for their actual cancer treatment.
@samanthamaiden
“… cancer hits 1 in 2 people…”.
But I would guess 100% of people over 50 are touched by it in some way, through having family or friends who are affected. Even if you aren’t a sufferer yourself, you can see what a difference this could make to the lives of your friends who are doing it hard. So this policy also has the subtle effect of inducing people to vote not just for their own self-interest, but for the interests of others.
Very, very clever. Far more visionary than anything in the coalition budget which, I suspect, has just been knocked into the middle of next week.
Murpharoo quick out of the blocks with an article:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/04/labor-budget-reply-bill-shorten-pledges-23bn-cancer-care-package
“Can something be done such that radiology is electronically accessible nationwide”..yes it can, there is an industry standard software across imaging that makes it technically not that difficult. I have been on all sorts of committees to get NSW Health connected state wide, links to private services will come.
Not having a reliable NBN (scans like MRIs are huge data) doesn’t help.
Still on the cancer policy, it would have saved me a couple of grand over the last few months on skin cancer treatment. There will be an awful lot of people with that lived experience, either personally or with a close family member.
Shorten made specific mention of two by name:
Tanya Plibersek
Albo
Shorten did a deal with Carr’s group to guarantee that he could overcome Albanese’s advantage with the members. Carr’s group split from the left, but Shorten kept Carr in the shadow cabinet in return for support. Carr is now one of Shorten’s lieutenants in the FPLP and in controlling Victoria’s unions. Basically Carr sold Albanese down the river for a future ministerial spot. Something he’s done before!
From Crikey:
Carr voted for Shorten as leader and brought a few “Soft Left” members of caucus to sneak Shorten over the line. Carr was propped up in shadow cabinet by the national Right as a way of sandbagging Shorten’s leadership and seeking to protect the “Stability Pact”, rather than out of any loyalty or merit-based argument.
https://www.crikey.com.au/2016/08/23/labor-left-and-right-branch-stacking-with-kim-carr-under-threat/
I think Bill explicitly referenced Tanya, Albo and Bowen during his speech. A bit of research around that, I would think.
“Julie Kardashian has left the building…”
Good riddance.
The more the government goes on about how much Labor is taxing, the more stupid questions of ‘how do you pay for it become’ (and they are always stupid to start with).
4-5 years ago Shorten, Bowen et al have said, fuck it, let’s just make a virtue of taxing the bastards that aren’t going to vote for us any way. In the meantime the government has been out trying to pretend stupidity like lower taxes for businesses and the top couple of percent of earners some time in the middle of the next decade is ‘economic management’.
The Coalition needed to kill the Neg Gearing, Cap Gains arguments at the last election, and failed. They’ve also failed to kill the Imputation Credit refund removal. They also now need to kill off the idea that tax cuts for rich people in the term AFTER the next one are just nonsense that Labor can and will ignore. And again they will fail.
And they’ll fail because their whole pitch is to a small minority of the population that are already doing better than everyone else and are already locked in to voting Liberal. After the last six years of idiocy the swinging middle won’t be shedding a tear for the people Labor has targeted to give everyone else lots of nice things.
This week was never going to change anything. The government is still the same bunch of dumbarses trying to push shit up hill. Labor is still sitting on a massive warchest that they’ve spent years accumulating and planning on how to use.
Like I always say, Bill knows his Sun Tzu. The Coalition want to fight on tax. Bill says yeah nah, for the vast majority of people we’ll give em as much as you or more. We’re actually going to fight on the cost of dealing with Cancer, on getting into TAFE, on being able to actually access the NDIS, on giving three year olds free preschool, on fully funding Gonski. See ya on our chosen battleground.
ItzaDream @ #2148 Thursday, April 4th, 2019 – 6:29 pm
And Jenny Macklin, and I think Catherine King.
Nath, why keep scoffing down those sour grapes? Contrived Labor “leadershit”?? You’re missing the bus big time tonight, my friend!