Another night before Christmas

Doubts the election is quite as imminent as all that, and a slightly dated poll result showing business as usual pre-budget.

Or maybe seven nights. According to Anthony Galloway of the Herald Sun, “speculation intensified yesterday about whether Mr Morrison will call the election tomorrow for May 11, or wait until the end of next week for a May 18 poll”. The latter would suit me better, if he’s reading. Liberal sources say the Prime Minister might be considering holding off “in the hope of a poll bounce after this week’s Budget”, which would be optimistic of him.

Also in the paper today is a rather unusual bit of opinion polling from YouGov Galaxy, which was conducted pre-budget – last Monday to Thursday, to be precise – from a large sample of 2224. The interesting bit is that Labor leads 53-47 on two-party preferred, discouraging the notion that the New South Wales election might have changed anything. However, the larger purpose of the exercise is to burrow down into voters’ perceptions of the party leaders, taken to include Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer as well as the usual suspects. I don’t find this stuff particularly interesting myself, but there’s a lot of detail in the report linked to above, if you can access it.

UPDATE: The poll appeared not to provide the usual forced response follow-up for the initially undecided on voting intention, thus includes an undistributed 8% “don’t know”. The remainder went Labor 34%, Coalition 33%, Greens 9%, One Nation 8%, United Australia Party 3% and Australian Conservatives 2%. Excluding the don’t know component, this becomes Labor 37%, Coalition 36%, Greens 10% and One Nation 9%.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,277 comments on “Another night before Christmas”

Comments Page 2 of 26
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  1. Jake TapperVerified account@jaketapper
    2h2 hours ago
    There’s a real divide among government officials about whether the border fence the president is visiting today is what it says on the plaque bolted to it: the “first section of President Trump’s border wall.”

    Here’s what I’ve learned. 1/

    https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1114254630488346624

    Hilariously among those things is that border officials have said the plaque could serve as a foothold to assist people climbing the fence!

  2. Scott call it on April 14th for a May 25th election. That will make the Labor supporters really happy.

    Penny Wong will be pleased

  4. Assange and his followers have been imagining the wolves have been coming for him for years now, even despite claims from the US that they have no interest in him.

    He’s just an attention seeker.

  5. On the topic of what a typical or representative income for an Australian is:

    I read a spreadsheet that was sent to me by Danielle Wood of the Grattan Institute. The spreadsheet presents the Grattan Institute’s estimates of taxable income for tax-filers by percentile (for financial year 2017-2018). They mostly use the 2 percent ATO sample file, which provides a lot of detail on distributional questions.

    Here are a few examples of the percentiles:

    If your total taxable income (from all sources – not just wages and salaries) is $152,000 per year, your income is higher than that of 95% of Australian tax-filers.

    The federal government keeps presenting public high school principals and police superintendents (whose salaries are about $150,000) as middle income earners. Public high school principals and police superintendents are in the top five percent of the income distribution. Nowhere near the middle.

    If your total taxable income is $91,000, your income is higher than that of 83% of tax-filers.

    If your total taxable income is $44,000, your income is higher than that of 50% of tax-filers.

    The true middle income in Australia is $44,000 per year.

    Yeah yeah I know people will say, “But what about people who use accountants to aggressively reduce their taxable income?”

    If we had good data on that phenomenon, we could incorporate that into the analysis, but it might result in the median income being even lower than $44,000.

    When you only consider wage income – if you exclude investment income – the median is higher than $44,000.

    Including investment income in the calculations actually brings the median down compared to focusing only on wage income.

    So we don’t really know whether taking aggressive tax minimization strategies into account would make the median higher or lower.

  6. #Galaxy Poll NSW Federal Primary Votes: LIB 36 NAT 4 ALP 32 GRN 9 ON 7 UAP 3 CON 1 Other 3 Don’t Know 5 #auspol

    #Galaxy Poll VIC Federal Primary Votes: LIB 28 NAT 2 ALP 42 GRN 8 ON 5 UAP 4 CON 1 Other 3 Don’t Know 7 #auspol

    #Galaxy Poll QLD Federal Primary Votes: LNP 28 ALP 32 GRN 12 ON 9 UAP 4 CON 3 Other 3 Don’t Know 10 #

    #Galaxy Poll SA Federal Primary Votes: LIB 28 ALP 33 GRN 8 CA 8 ON 7 UAP 3 CON 2 Other 2 Don’t Know 11 #auspol

  8. So I take it the test for donations the majors need to implement is to ask the organisation if it’s donating to the Greens.

  14. Victoria;

    We all know what Trump says has little do with reality… lots of people say they love wikileaks when they leak stuff on their opponents, but that love never last very long, the mere existence of Wikileaks will always be a threat to powerful people who fear accountability, it makes it more difficult for them to be in control.

    The fear is that if Julian leaves, who will be taken into custody for breaching bail, then an outstanding warrant will be served on him for the secret grand jury that will prosecute him over the collatoral murder leak, that Chelsea Manning is back in jail over.

    There are real concerns over his ability to get a fair trial in the US (or Britain), whever “intelligence” cases are involved there ends up being special procedures and Judges who take unusual steps and always find a in favor of the state.

    But irrespective of the outcome, it is likely he will be put in a dark hole for a long time before he even gets an unfair trial.

    Note, that Julian/Wikileaks havent been found to have mislead or misreported any news, the biggest claim is that they have opportunistic timing.

  16. Counterchekist
    @counterchekist
    ·
    7h
    tRUmpers like
    @DevinNunes
    have done a sudden 180 on the Mueller report. They went from “it vindicates tRUmp & Co!” to calling it the “Mueller Dossier” and exclaiming ”partisans wrote it!” on Fox News.

    Yeah, they’re totally not afraid of what the report says… Right. Sure.
    67
    781
    2.5K

    Counterchekist
    @counterchekist
    ·
    9h
    So far, one of the Biden “accusers” has turned out to be a Soviet Sanders flunky, and another one has turned out to be a vocal admirer of Vladimir Putin.

    … Bernie might as well become tRUmp’s VPOTUS on the GOP ticket at this point. “Make the Kremlin Great Again.”

  17. One thing the Liberal Party will know is the numbers not renewing their Party memberships – and plenty are giving their reasons!

    The Party is dysfunctional

    The government is dysfunctional as it holds onto the trappings of office including being referred to as pm when it comes to Ad Man from Mad Men

  18. Good Morning

    So a Labor MP is asked on News Breakfast ABC if Labor will get its budget through the Senate.

    Where was that question for Morrison?

  19. bug1

    So if he gets jail time how can it be any worse than being holed up in a room for the past seven years without sunlight. Seriously, he should man up and with the best legal representation he will no doubt surely get by duping his many supporters to fund it, he should be okay. But I unlike you, believe he has done some other deeds that he is not willing to face up to.

  20. @theAge tweets

    A joint Age, Herald and Four Corners investigation exposes ongoing efforts by the Communist Party to exert influence in Australia — from community media organisations and local councils to the top echelon of Federal politics. http://ow.ly/wOBx30olm4v

  24. Victoria

    So the GOP is using Russian troll farms to attack Sanders. What a surprise!

    Edit: Don’t forget I don’t think Sanders will win the nomination.

  25. So far, one of the Biden “accusers” has turned out to be a Soviet Sanders flunky, and another one has turned out to be a vocal admirer of Vladimir Putin.

    Jeez I thought Tulsi Gabbard was supposed to be the Putin candidate!

  27. @AnnaVidot tweets

    OMG NYT’S ‘THE DAILY’ TRYING TO EXPLAIN WHAT A JACKAROO IS.

    “Helps deal with… really manhandles the animals”

    “It’s like herding. Like, sheep and goat herding.”

    “We heard that he would literally, physically, vaccinate the sheep!”

    “So kind of a swashbuckler?”

    I AM SCREAMING

    (The New Daily was covering the Murdoch story)

  28. Assange is an ***hole. However he is ours. I agree with Milne here

    Julian Assange @wikileaks is an Australian citizen and the Govt should intervene to stop his extradition and move to bring him home. #auspol

  29. Assange is an ***hole. However he is ours. I agree with Milne here

    Julian Assange @wikileaks is an Australian citizen and the Govt should intervene to stop his extradition and move to bring him home. #auspol

  33. Victoria;
    I agree there would be benefits to him being in jail, certainly he would have access to better medical care, and be able to communicate, but he shouldn’t have to.

    The bigger point is, its not really about him personally, its that if the US can get to and convict a journalist who has never lied or misreported, and who should be outside US jurisdiction, then its not safe for any journalist, ever. There is a chilling effect.

    Wikileaks (and other leakers generally) is seen as a big threat to Intelligence agencies since the Vault7 release that disclosed their tools and methods they had developed over decades to spy, its not unreasonable imo to think that some powerfull organizations “are out to get him”, thats a good enough reason to fight it imo.

    There is an interesting video by an Australian clinical Psychologist, with a background in Media Studies and Sociology, talks about how people can be manipulated, she is sympathetic to Assange, but her points are more general and should apply to Assange supporters as well.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7WQMk-gbrA

  34. @AOC tweets

    Folks talking about my voice can step right off. Women’s March & Kavanaugh speech, same.

    Any kid who grew up in a distinct linguistic culture & had to learn to navigate class enviros at school/work knows what’s up.

    My Spanish is the same way.

    These conspiracy mills are . https://twitter.com/cmclymer/status/1114266976858378240

    @cmclymer

    I swear, every time y’all attack @AOC with this nonsense, it backfires spectacularly. She’s saying there’s just as much pride + honor in the labor of working class folks. She’s echoing Dr. King’s “street sweeper” quote. Yet, you project racist bullshit on her voice? Embarrassing. https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1114261450216755200

    @RealSaavedra tweets

    Ocasio-Cortez speaks in an accent that she never uses while telling a room of predominately black people that there is nothing wrong with them folding clothes, cooking, and driving other people around on a bus for a living. https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1114261450216755200/video/1

  35. There was a great article about MMT in the New York Times on 5th April 2019.

    I’d love it if one or two Australian politicians started to make MMT-informed arguments about fiscal policy.

    The article refers to the phenomenon of group think among academic economists.

    The key point is that real resource availability, not solvency risk, is the constraint on the spending of a government that issues its own currency and allows its currency to float in foreign exchange markets. And right now, there is a lot of unused real resources, and therefore a lot of scope for the US Government to increase its net spending into the non-government sector:

    “I don’t look at labels in terms of what’s on the left and the right,” said Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs. “I try to look at what makes me have a better chance of getting the forecast right, and I do find some of the ideas useful.”

    So does Paul A. McCulley, a former chief economist at the behemoth asset firm Pimco. Ideas like M.M.T. that rub against the grain of conventional economics, he said, have “for all of my career been a very useful framework for analysis.”

    That framework helped produce billion-dollar gains for the company after the 2008 financial crisis. Dismissing alarms about outsize government debt and white-knuckle interest rates, Pimco instead bet successfully that rates would remain low. When it came to decision-making during this period, Mr. McCulley said, M.M.T. and other unorthodox approaches helped him “get it right.”

    Richard C. Koo, chief economist at the Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo, said he had been telling his clients for years that “even with huge budget deficits in the U.S., interest rates would actually come down, not go up.”

    Wall Street is not immune to the herd mentality, but Mr. Koo and several other analysts argued that academic economists had a vested interest in certain theories and were, therefore, more likely to suffer from groupthink.

    In an article posted on Wednesday on the website of Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Company, known as GMO, the strategist James Montier wrote: “For me an economic approach must help me understand the world, and provide me with some useful insights (preferably about my day job — investing). On those measures, let me assure you that M.M.T. thrashes neoclassical economics, hands down.”

    And Daniel Alpert, a managing partner of the investment bank Westwood Capital, credited the theory with preventing him from panicking that rates would soar when the Federal Reserve set off a brief “taper tantrum” in 2013 and announced it was easing its stimulus program.

    Over the past couple of years, he said, the Fed tried everything — “it did a belly dance to get long-term interest rates up” — and it didn’t work.

    M.M.T., Mr. Alpert said, “successfully debunks 40 years of misassumptions of how markets and public credit work.”

    Progressive politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are among the most vocal supporters of M.M.T., but the theory’s appeal crosses political lines in part because it offers a narrative for a series of events that the established wisdom failed to anticipate or explain.

    Big government deficits, for instance, were supposed to mop up available pools of capital and drive up interest rates, which would, in turn, elbow out private investors, damage growth and feed inflation.

    But the last decade was different. When deficits soared after the recession, interest rates fell and savings rates climbed. Investors are awash in capital. The economy has been expanding, slowly, for 10 years, with unemployment and inflation rates ensconced at record-low levels.

    One reason for the misjudgments may be that the economic models that confidently strode down the mainstream were hammered out in the decades after World War II, when American companies had an enormous appetite for capital investment. “We don’t live in that world anymore,” said Mr. Koo of Nomura. Today, vast fortunes shift across oceans in an instant, currencies are untethered from gold, and your local coffee shop may no longer accept cash.

    Technological advances, demographic shifts and persistently lower interest rates have further altered the global economy. Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic adviser at the financial firm Allianz, wrote in an email that “modern monetary theory has merit in stimulating debate” on whether those changes provide “for governments to run larger economically sustainable deficits than was previously thought possible.”

    Besides the risk of government deficits, M.M.T. throws out a drawerful of other venerable assumptions with Marie Kondo-esque ruthlessness. To start, it instructs you to erase that textbook drawing of a white-haired Uncle Sam collecting tax dollars from the public and then using them to pay for military weapons, highway repairs, federal workers’ wages and more.

    Tax revenues are not what finance the government’s expenditures, argues Stephanie Kelton, an economist at Stony Brook University and one of the most influential modern monetary theorists. What actually happens in a country that controls its own currency, she says, is that the government first decides what it’s going to spend. In the United States, Congress agrees on a budget. Then government agencies start handing out dollars to the public to pay for those tanks, earth movers and salaries. Afterward, it takes a portion back in the form of taxes. If the government takes back less than it gave out, there will be a deficit.

    “The national debt is nothing more than a historical record of all of the dollars that were spent into the economy and not taxed back, and are currently being saved in the form of Treasury securities,” Ms. Kelton said.

    Ms. Kelton, a frequent speaker at business and financial conferences and the chief economic adviser to Mr. Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign, points out that every dollar the government spends translates into a dollar of income for someone else. So a deficit in the public sector simultaneously produces a surplus outside the government.

    The reverse is also true, Ms. Kelton maintains, and that can lead to trouble. The seven biggest American depressions or downturns going back 200 years, she said, were all preceded by government surpluses.

    Ms. Kelton complains that modern monetary theorists are often incorrectly described as contending that “deficits don’t matter.” Of course they matter, she said.

    What she disagrees with is the reason given. In her view, deficits are not a sign of excessive spending or necessarily a forerunner of inflation. They can be too big, especially if they are not used to increase the nation’s productive capacity, or if there is a shortage of labor, raw materials and factories.

    “If Congress authorizes too much spending and businesses are not nimble enough” to absorb it, there can be bottlenecks and price pressure, she acknowledged.

    But she argues that it is much more likely that deficits are too small, depriving the economy of critical investments. The best way to stabilize the economy and ensure full employment and a humming economy, she said, is to have the federal government guarantee every American a job.

    The notion that surpluses could cause economic downturns flips conventional thinking. Yet the idea of sectoral balances — that government or nongovernment deficits are offset by surpluses on the other side — is what some financial economists find so illuminating, even if they stop short of endorsing all of the theory’s tenets.

    “It is a great way of summarizing whether households and firms are living beyond their means,” said Mr. Hatzius of Goldman Sachs. “It is a great indicator of potential financial crises.”

    In his view, giant private-sector deficits are much more alarming than public-sector ones because households and companies are at much greater risk of losing access to credit in a downturn. Unlike the Treasury, they can’t print money — or issue bonds — when they run out.

    Mr. McCulley, now retired from Pimco, used the same kind of analysis to guide his investing decisions after the financial crisis. He figured the only way that private borrowers could shrink their vast storehouse of debt was to have the government buy up those assets. He was unconcerned that the federal deficit would balloon as a result.

    Pimco’s view during the crisis, he said, was “shake hands with the government,” because it had the largest checkbook. That is why the firm invested heavily, for example, in the federally guaranteed mortgage-backed securities that most other firms were shedding.

    Mr. Koo of Nomura has further developed the idea of sectoral balances to explain the most recent wave of recessions and argue for larger government deficits. The problem that major economies in Japan, Europe and the United States have today, he said, is that despite low interest rates, investment opportunities in domestic markets don’t offer sufficient returns to lure borrowers to go into debt, using the vast pools of available savings.

    That means “the government has to spend money to keep the economy going,” he said. And as long as the government invests in projects that produce an economic return greater than the yield on 10-year Treasury notes — currently about 2.5 percent — “this will never be a burden on taxpayers.”

    Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, made a similar point in a paper he released recently about saving capitalism. Without any specific reference to M.M.T., he noted that “policymakers pay too much attention to budgets relative to returns on investments.”

    …..

    If you put aside the theoretical disputations, Mr. Kocherlakota said, the important question is: How far is the United States from reaching the limits of its capacity?

    Even with a jobless rate under 4 percent, he believes there is room to maneuver.

    Mr. Kocherlakota said that compared to those within the Fed, chief executives, financiers and analysts who operate internationally tend to be more open to modern monetary theory in their analyses of government deficits and inflation.

    “Folks who take a global perspective are much more likely to see a lot of unused capacity,” he said. They realize “inflation is not built at home anymore, it’s built through global pressures.”

    Mr. McCulley, the Pimco alumnus, would put his money on that. Increasing the deficit so that the government could invest in infrastructure and the labor force “would not make me bearish on the stock market at all,” he said.

    “At all,” he repeated. “If anything, it would make me bullish.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/business/economy/mmt-wall-street.html

  36. bug1

    I was taken in by Assange in the early days, but over time I saw him for what he was. He is not one of the good guys.
    You can be sympathetic to him, as is your right.

  37. Thanks BK for your daily media updates. Your Outline from PvO was interesting as yet another commentator rolls over to admit Labors policies are in sync with what is called “the political zeitgeist”.
    Yet he still can’t help himself. In the last paragraph he states that while Coalition budget is more in line with “economic rationalist thinking” whilst Labors is in sync with zeitgeist, inferencing that “rationalist thinking” is still the best way forward. Hmm,thats drawing a long bow. Where has such economist thinking got us? “Trickle-down economics”? Underspending on the NDIS? Cutting spending on services?
    The “political zeitgeist” label, unfortunately for the Coalition and supporters like PvO, is the reality that people, not just the so-called “chattering classes”, so disparagingly addressed by right-wing commentators, but by voters across the board, that the focus has shifted from the economy to services, and many more voters are prepared to put their money,via government spending, to look after people. After all, a nation is all about its people and not about being a business. While Labor is in sync with the zeitgeist, the reality is that the Coalition is out of sync with the spirit of the times.
    Yes, it appears that the message is….”It’s Time.”

  38. The Australian reports Bill’s tin of tuna tax cut fails to swing voters. People on less than $37,000 a year will get $1.82 a week, just enough to buy a tin of tuna. At his IGA supermarket, Bill’s tax cut would buy him a 46g Picnic Bar on special at $1.69 or the 95g can of Greenseas tuna with 3c change. You got to laugh.

  40. Victoria

    The Swedish charges have been dropped. Its only jumping bail convictions that the British are using to keep Assange in the Embassy. Maximum sentence Ten Days Jail. You have to ask whats the point? The years of confinement in the Embassy way surpass that maximum sentence.

    Don’t let your theories about charges that Assange is not supposed to be facing blind you to the legalities.

  41. A student of body language agrees that ScoMo’s tears were not genuine.

    @_sara_jade_
    5h5 hours ago

    PM disability RC. Talks of brother in law no ‘emotion’ until, “And that you’re an Australian,” SMIRKS “ “That has meant a lot to me.” Fakes emotion BL No signs of sadness no down turned mouth raised chin or inner corner of brow. Smirking “Above politics,” Shakes head no. #auspol

    :large

  42. guytaur

    Dont know what you are getting at.
    I’m the one who said that Assange is better off leaving embassy as he only has to face skipping bail.
    Bug1 suggested he may face US charges that manning faced.
    I suggested that being in prison is surely better than being holed up in room with no access to sunlight

  45. Victoria

    Its the British government that is spending all those millions on a bail jumper instead of waiting for him to reappear in the UK is what I am getting at.

  47. When are we having the most important Royal Commission of them all – into Neoliberalism?
    Or would that cause cognitive dissonance overload amongst Labor voters because it was kicked off by Paul Keating?

  48. Guytaur

    It’s Assange that won’t leave the embassy to face the bail skipping charges.
    You do see that?

    Anyhoo, my opinion is that Assange ain’t the person anyone should die on a hill for. Cos he certainly wouldn’t. I reckon he would give Trump a run for his money in the narcissistic stakes

  49. “#Galaxy Poll NSW Federal Primary Votes: LIB 36 NAT 4 ALP 32 GRN 9 ON 7 UAP 3 CON 1 Other 3 Don’t Know 5 #auspol
    #Galaxy Poll VIC Federal Primary Votes: LIB 28 NAT 2 ALP 42 GRN 8 ON 5 UAP 4 CON 1 Other 3 Don’t Know 7 #auspol
    #Galaxy Poll QLD Federal Primary Votes: LNP 28 ALP 32 GRN 12 ON 9 UAP 4 CON 3 Other 3 Don’t Know 10 #
    #Galaxy Poll SA Federal Primary Votes: LIB 28 ALP 33 GRN 8 CA 8 ON 7 UAP 3 CON 2 Other 2 Don’t Know 11 #auspol”

    Greens 12 in Qld but 8 in Vic is weird.

  50. I wouldn’t put it past the Libs to adopt Magic Monetary Theory.

    Conservatives are much less likely to be open to MMT because MMT removes any excuse to tolerate an unemployment rate above 1 or 2 percent. Conservatives like to use the threat of unemployment as a tool to discipline workers and suppress wage growth.

    MMT is much more attractive to progressives because it shows that governments that issue their own floating currencies have a lot of policy flexibility. MMT therefore opens up a lot of progressive possibilities.

    But it is true that conservatives could embrace MMT and use its insights to drastically cut taxes and make the government’s size and scope much smaller.

    MMT is ideologically neutral. It’s a lens for looking at how our monetary system functions. You can use our monetary system to pursue progressive policy; you can use our monetary system to pursue libertarian or conservative policy.

    The size and scope of government is ultimately a political question.

    It’s important that we know and debate ALL of the policy options that are available to us. Neoclassical macroeconomics has prevented that from happening. That is the core problem with contemporary public policy.

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