Essential Research: 51-49 to Labor

More dissonance between two-party preferred and other poll movements, this time from Essential Research.

The Guardian reports the fortnightly Essential Research poll has followed Newspoll in recording the Labor lead narrowing from 52-48 to 51-49 – and also in doing so from primary votes that you would think more likely to convert to 52-48. Labor are actually up two points from an unusually weak result last time, from 35% to 37%, while the Coalition are up a single point to 39%. The explanation for Labor’s two-party decline must lie in the two-point drop for the Greens, from 11% to 9%, and the attendant weakening in their flow of preferences. One Nation are up a point to 6%; no response option has been added for the United Australia Party, and there is nothing to suggest their ascent in the combined “others” tally, which is down a point to 9%.

If preference flows from 2016 are applied to these crudely rounded numbers, Labor starts with its 37% primary vote and gets 7.4% from the Greens (82% of their total), 3.0% from One Nation (50%) and 4.4% from others (49%), plus a 0.1% boost to correct for preference leakage between the Liberals and the Nationals. Add all that together and Labor comes out on 51.9%. Since this is, to the best of my knowledge, more-or-less the formula Essential uses, the explanation must lie in rounding. Dial Labor back to 36.6% and the Greens to 8.6%, and boost the Coalition to 39.4%, and you get primary votes that round to the published totals, but which produce a Labor two-party result of 51.4%, rounding to 51-49. There can’t have been much in it though.

The poll also features Essential’s occasional measure of leadership ratings, but all we are given at this stage is preferred prime minister. Scott Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is 40-31, down from 44-31 when the question was last asked in early March. So here too the poll reflects Newspoll in finding leadership ratings headed the opposite way from the two-party headline.

We will have to wait until later today for the full report, but The Guardian report relates that 59% expect Labor to win compared with 41% for the Coalition (so presumably a forced response); that “voters have logged news stories about the Liberal party’s preference deal with the controversial businessman Clive Palmer’s United Australia party, and are noticing the debates about tax and healthcare”; that the top rated issues were health, national security and the economy; and that 19% reported taking no interest in the campaign, 29% a little, 33% some, and 20% a lot.

UPDATE: Full report here. The preferred prime minister is the only leadership ratings result – nothing on leaders’ approval and disapproval.

Further poll news:

Roy Morgan, which either publishes or doesn’t publish its weekly face-to-face poll in irregular fashion, has released its results for a second successive week. Polling conducted over the weekend had Labor’s two-party preferred lead steady at 51-49, according to both respondent-allocated and previous election preference measures. Both major parties are up half a point on the primary vote, the Coalition to 39.5% and Labor to 36%, while the Greens are steady on 9.5% and One Nation (which doesn’t do well in this series at the best of times) down two to 2.5%. Also not doing well in this series is Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party, steady on 2%. The poll was conducted face-to-face on Saturday and Sunday from sample size unknown, but probably around 700.

• The Advertiser has a YouGov Galaxy poll of Sturt, the Adelaide seat being vacated by Christopher Pyne, which had the Liberals leading 53-47, compared with their post-redistribution margin of 5.4%. The primary votes were 42% for the new Liberal candidate, James Stevens (44.7% post-redistribution); 35% for Labor candidate Cressida O’Hanlon (23.1%); a striking 9% for the United Australia Party (triple what Palmer United managed in Sturt in 2013); and 6% for the Greens. The poll also gives Scott Morrison a 45-31 lead over Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister; finds 40% less likely to vote Liberal because of Malcolm Turnbull’s replacement by Scott Morrison, compared with 25% for more likely; and finds only 22% more likely to vote Labor because of its franking credits and capital gains tax policies, compared with “almost half” for less likely. The poll was conducted last Wednesday from a sample of 504.

The Age yesterday related that Labor internal polling had it leading 55-45 in Dunkley, 54-46 in Lyons, and by an unspecified margin in Gilmore.

• The weirdest poll story of the campaign so far turns out to be the revelation that a supposed ReachTEL poll of the Curtin electorate, provided by independent candidate Louise Stewart to The West Australian and run as a front page story on Saturday, was fabricated. The Liberals reacted to ReachTEL’s denial that any such poll had been conducted by calling on Stewart to withdraw from her campaign, but Stewart says she believes she is the victim of a trick by her opponents. However, a follow-up report in The West Australian relates that Stewart told the paper she had “committed two polls from ReachTEL/Ucomms before election day”, and is now refusing the provide the email she received either to the paper or to ReachTEL. ReachTEL principal James Stewart said Louise Stewart had told him the email had been “deleted somehow”, but Louise Stewart says this is “not true”. Alex Turnbull, the son of the former Prime Minister, who has loomed large in independent candidates’ efforts to unseat sitting Liberals (though not, so far, in Stewart’s), said he believed he had been impersonated as part of the ruse. Stewart tells Andrew Burrell of The Australian that Turnbull’s investigations linked the distribution of the fake poll to a source “close to a senior conservative WA Liberal MP’s office in Perth”.

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.

923 comments on “Essential Research: 51-49 to Labor”

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  1. Barney in Phan Thiet says:
    “Everyone’s o.k. as long as they know their place and stay in it. Aren’t you a hypocrite living within different cultures?”

    Is it hypocritical for the Japanese to maintain their ethnic majority in a land that originally belonged to the Ainu whom they dispossessed (and who still exist)?

    Is it hypocritical for Albanians to maintain themselves and their majorities on lands that were once Greek and Christian – who still locally exist?

    Do you understand the concept of self-determination and why it is considered a great human rights crime to support its removal?

    Do you understand genocide is considered the most heinous human crime and that genocide, as acknowledged by the United Nations, can include implementation of conditions the eventuate in genocide outside of pure physical violence?

    Is there justice in depriving those innocent by birth, of self-determination in the lands their ancestors are connected to for generations, not to hand them out to the people originally dispossessed but to just repeat the dispossession of the current resident group?

    Does repeating a wrong, with new victimiser and victim, cancel a wrong or double it?

    If John harms Joan. And then Andy comes in and harms John’s grandchildren with the basis that this is right because John harmed Joan (even though Andy and Joan have no connection) is this justice?

    Or does it require mass propaganda to convince anyone this would be justice?

    Is it wrong to dispossess people A only because they were there first or because there is something inherently wrong in dispossession itself?

    If someone said to leftists and diversity proponents in Germany in 1925 that their approach to multiculturalism and ethnic interests were going to deliver a breakout in the opposite direction and future serious violence was that person an idiot or prescient?

    If someone repeats that pushing it again, and seeking to smother resistance might lead to a similar reaction (if not here then Italy, if not there than England..) are they prescient or evil?

    Is it truly anti-racist to say people A do not deserve to retain their self-determination & demographic majority but people B do? No, White Australians, Yes, Palestinians?

    Is that really more anti-racist than to say ALL PEOPLE deserve some space for it? White Australians and Palestinians and everyone else.. To try to maximise the people with it? (demographic safety and retained self-determination).

  2. Public money for private irrigation companies as outlined in Guardian Australia today shows the neo-liberal outcomes resulting from losing control of water leads to what amounts to corruption.
    The corruption associated with the inland river system should result in the LNP governments turfed out of office for a generation.
    Neo-liberal controlled mainstream media has hardly acknowledged the extent of the corruption with water.
    Remember Sydney water and the plans to take control of water for Sydney by a private company.
    I believe a LNP Federal minister was involved somewhere.
    At this point in the election campaign, the MSM have hijacked the issues that are most in need of addressing.
    Perhaps we will see more at the Labor campaign launch on the weekend.
    The National party, like its coalition partner, represents big business and get rich schemes. The farmers ard starting to realise just how badly they are been done over by the Nationals.
    Thd Adani mine development will permanently deplete ground water reserves and destroy farming in that area.
    Morrison’s LNP government is a third world corrupt regime aided and abetted by a compliant media sector and their big business masters.
    LNP corruption should be the main focus of the up coming election.

  3. William Bowe says:
    “If LGH ever says anything actionable, I’m screwed.”

    I am not sure what exactly this means but I assume something that could successfully be prosecuted as hate speech or an incitement to violence?

    It is amazing how ideologically corralled by globalism, propaganda & fear everyone is to have a person argue for self-determination for all groups, be interpreted as potential hate speech because it extends such for Whites as well as all others, rather than all those except Whites.

    Seriously, it would not make anyone worried if I said “I think the West should embrace multiculturalism because it is the right thing to do but everyone else should be able to embrace it or reject it according to their own wishes”. It IS the fact my speech requests it for all, rather than for all minus Whites that puts people on edge.

    In any case we all have no choice but to walk the tightrope human ignorance takes humanity towards.

    We are not smart enough as a group to be properly resistant to the use of propaganda pushed by the self-interested where they have the field and all the means to reinforce and repeat their messages.

    We are not good as a species following rationality and justice when we are told and have it reinforced by propaganda and reward that the harm we undertake to prosecute on others and for others is moral & good. I measure my ability to be balanced by swapping out every mention of White or White Australian for mention of Jew, or African or Liberian and vice versa.

    Liberians deserve to maintain their unmolested self-determination on the lands they are deeply connected to, and demographic safety and majority on those lands. Controversial? No? To the UN? No. To anyone here? Not many. My belief, if not controversial for one, not controversial for another.

    Hypocrisy requires being inconsistent. I am not. I don’t think justice can ever be delivered by inconsistency or the hypocritical.

    My posts here always resolve around immigration because it is the most marginalised issue under discussion but the one with the largest effect within its own portfolio and all others.

    House prices have greater linkage to immigration levels than taxation policy, as taxation policy can provide no impact where demand equals supply. And demand cannot possibly meet supply in a high migration environment (without a significantly lower historical birth rate than we have).

    So people wax on about Labor’s policy good for workers that, Labor’s policy good for workers this…

    ..failing to understand the incidence on effect on prices, in a high migration environment is significantly different based on the geographic location of the house.

    Inner city areas will continue to grow in price (after a temporary drop) because elevated levels of demand are retained. Rents significantly increase because while investors have left in some numbers, they have been replaced by migrant interest, and yes, new local purchases, but overall reducing the number of family friendly lots close to the city.

    Locals in Toronto were still forced to the urban fringe (with capital heavy locals making a killing) without Australia’s property tax breaks because of mass migration. It is such a sop that works because people do not understand economics properly.

    Joe blow inner city average income worker is not likely to be able to afford an inner ring home after the change. He is also now likely to face increased rental competition because what little investor impact there was, was snapped up by new people living in their homes. (So you think another accommodation freed up right? NOT with mass migration! The new property seekers arrived!).

    Did you know Australia settles more high net worth individuals that the entirety of the USA per annum and higher than any other individual nation?
    Link is from 2017, the 2018 results (lost the link) show an even higher level of disparity

    https://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/hindi/en/article/2018/06/11/worlds-millionaires-are-migrating-australia-claims-report

    Can anyone really not understand that settling more high net worth individuals that any other nation, even other much larger nations, will quickly monopolise attractive property outside of non-capital rich “average” Australians whatever the taxation policy is?

    Do you really think average Australians working mid range jobs will have greater access in 5 years time to inner city family friendly property if hundreds of thousands of foreign professionals & highly educated individuals are settled each year? Where do most foreign dentists and doctors and businesspeople that settle in Australia end up living – outer urban subdivision? Or inner ring high cost property? I don’t know about you but my Malaysian (ethnicity) dentist lives in one of Perth’s most expensive suburbs.

    Where do people of “means” buy houses? Where they are relatively more expensive or less? If a continual supply of these of maintained how possibly can finite inner ring space not grow in price above average wages over the long-term (then the next ring, then the next…)…

    Does it suck that Pacific Islanders no longer own their beachfronts and best locations (and cannot live-on them) because cashed up corporates and individuals snapped them up? Yes? Does it suck any less for average Aussies? No.

    Migration rates intimately affect wages, environment, quality of life, self-determination, house prices, cost of living, infrastructure costs…

    100,000 per annum parental visas at net cost to Australian taxpayers of -$400,000 each over their lifetimes is a $400billion cost over 10 years years of sustained flow at this level. Australia’s single largest election promise ever made. Productivity Commission link contained in linked article:

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-13/family-reunions-australian-migration-visas-living-costs-report/7838362

    Oh Labor is going to support kicking them out if they get ill or cancelling visas? Come on they can’t do that and be humanitarian can they? The said it is immoral to deprive immigrants from cheap and full access to all of their parents or be made to wait if it was their choice to come here.. it is a human right Labor said.. there shouldn’t be limits they said. So surely they won’t withdraw the program if/when oversubscribed?

    Is there not echoes of re-opening the door to boat arrivals here? We have to do it -it is the right thing to do – we can’t turn our backs – oops way more people want to take advantage of our generosity than we forecast we have to shelve the policy or earn a hard pushback in the opposite direction an election term or too later?

    Good policy requires honestly looking at the consequences of mass migration without calling racist at everyone that outlines some of what those issues are. Australians are being significantly let down by politicians obscuration of this issue. Utopia is not in the offing with the incoming Labor government.
    Increased tax and debt load, and displacement of local born interests are. Not partisan here, Liberal would follow the same recipe with only slightly different details.. less foreign “little guy”largesse, more foreign “big guy” largesse but negative impacts from poor migration policy here from both.

  4. @LGH: What does self determination for a group mean? A group can not be a self, as a self is an individual. More to the point people often simultaneously belong to many groups. Determinations made by majorities in two groups to which an individual belongs might be contradictory. Then what? The rules of which group then apply to this individual? Not all situations would allow the individual to choose.

  5. If it ends up being 10,000 parental visas per annum, rather than 100,000 (not 100% sure if Shorten promised/forecast up to 100,000 over a period) or if it was annual.. but his commentary was about “removing human rights barriers & unfair caps & wait periods” so if the policy in detail matches the rhetoric it is a large number and it is not intended or likely they will cast out the sick & needy when they need help..

    …but lets say it was 10,000 per annum at $40 billion net present value imposition over 10 years of sustained flow (rather than $400 billion) is that really short of being a bamboozling and irresponsible promise? Unethical for its unsustainability even?

    What is a fair level of impost on struggling Australian tax payers $40 billion? $4 billion? $400 million?

    In what ways could more be provided to our own elderly or welfare recipients if that money was redirected?

    The world is having a feeding frenzy on Australia. Labor can’t rule out (nor Liberal) a foreign multi-national with an appalling environmental record from destroying some of our best farmland, near one of our best tourist features, where the majority of the profits will go overseas, and serve a massive increase in Co2 in the atmosphere.

    Environmentally friendly? No. Serving the broader Australia interest? No. Serving select selfish Union entities and its members? Yes. Selling out Australia at very low bids to foreign vultures? Yes.

    Oh even the gall that many Labor supporters would oppose a Palmer Coal mine while approving Adani!
    Better make sure an Australian doesn’t get the profit if he may be tarred with the racist and nationalist brush eh? Palmer underpays workers? What is Adani’s human rights record? Better?

    Everyone is so rapped up in “nationalism bad” they allow the rape of this nation and its people.
    If you do not think this is by design by those that stand to benefit I have a long list of global capitalist abuses of captive and disempowered & disenfranchised populations to show you.

    You are not reversing or combatting that process by voting in such a way as globalist left, then globalist right, take turns governing the country, you are just not.

  6. DVC says:
    @LGH: What does self determination for a group mean?

    If a population of Aborigines split 7 to 3 on a particular issue, and overtime newcomers are introduced, that can vote, and the resultant vote remains 7 to 3 (or falls to 6 to 4) amongst that population but the new population break 2 to 5 on the issue are you really in-doubt as to what group self-determination is and how migration can effect it?

    Voting patterns split on demographics. Introducing external demographic changes can meaningfully change vote outcomes. If a resident population is unable to vote their way to the policy they would otherwise have, they do not possess, or are not able to realise their group self-determination.

    An area this is particularly exposed is in regard to the issue of free speech and the right to bare arms in the USA. Overwhelmingly locally born Whites, if regarded as a group, support retaining these rights.
    Overwhelmingly non-Whites, and immigrants oppose those rights. With the balance of the former shifting increasingly to the latter state by state, the numbers of states passing laws that contravene the constitution in these areas is increasing and the overall realisation of these rights under significant pressure and threat.

    If support for reducing mass migration in Australia sits around 30~60% depending on the survey (more commonly outside the higher extreme), do you think that equates to new (voting) immigrants also breaking in the same ratio on the issue, or it is more likely (racist) White Australians?
    Note I am not saying no voting immigrants vote against mass migration, many do, but with the same ratio as others?

    The UN understands what group self-determination is. The left does if I say “Inuit” group self-determination is inhibited by their relatively smaller demographic number in Canada and encroachment of commercial and other interests from other parties onto or close to their ancestral lands. No-one has any doubt the “tar sands mining” is against the wishes of local Inuit tribes (not all, but more than half) and a breach of their rights, and would not be in existence if they retained FULL self-determination & demographic safety on their own lands.

    Words don’t suddenly change or lose meaning when they are applied to a White group over another (or vice versa), you would think they do when you get blank looks from the left on discussing plainly any ethnic issue or right that involves Whites though. This isn’t an accident. It would not have occurred two decades ago, three, or at any point in the last multiple centuries of Australian history. Now though, because ignorance is programmed, because it is hard to get rich off savaging the rights of others if they are not kept ignorant of their proper rights or are not made willing participants in their rape. Global rape of populations hasn’t been reversed by any leftist action, rather the cover to expand it to all groups has been obtained, including the groups that had previously escaped it (or only had it to lesser degrees).

    I would say justice would be stopping the rape of all populations as much as possible. Some on the other hand are convinced it is wonderful when new populations are exposed.. their turn.
    Note my resistance to globalist rape of people didn’t start with the realisation my own nation and people were targets, it began when I looked at how others were raped and supported their resistance.
    And yes I do believe rape is a suitable and fitting term for how globalists manipulate public opinion to enable their physical rape of a people and nation. It suits what they have done to ALL receiving people and nations.

  7. Hello from Fontainbleau,

    The news about polling from Oz is not inspiring.

    I think I, sadly, got both Essential and Newspoll correct: 51:49, ALP:Coalition.

    Here is FDOTM’s take in the coming federal election:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/30/clive-palmer-has-40000-zillion-banillion-cliverinos-in-the-bank-and-he-doesnt-care-what-you-think?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0ZpcnN0RG9nT25UaGVNb29uLTE5MDQzMA%3D%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=FirstDogOnTheMoon&CMP=firstdog_email

    FDOTM seems to have decided that democratic choice, which would deliver a less brutal regime that our current Coalition government (i.e a Labor Government), is no longer useful. Apparently the system just needs to be destroyed.

    I engaged with FDOTM and Jon Kudelka on twitter, around the time of the Medivac legislation, when they both said “Labor does not deserve your vote”. I asked them if they would advocate for preferencing Labor over the Coalition. I got a big “NO”, and at that stage decided to dis-engage with a discussion I could not influence. I tweeted back to them that we would have to agree to disagree.

    I actually really admire FDOTM and Jon Kudelka, but am really sorry to realise that they would prefer a Coalition government until Labor becomes perfect.

  8. Over and out. Enjoy the election on the day.
    I know the result I desire isn’t in the offing but the flow of numbers is always interesting regardless of winner.

    My particular belief is a Labor win, close to a hung parliament or up to the current Bludger projection – never had account to seriously doubt its methodology or accuracy.

    I personally wish for a “hung” senate where Labor and Green (and other leftist parties) are deprived of the ability to pass legislation without at least one of centrist, right or hard right support. I think this is most likely of all senate outcomes.

    Both parties can come out with “shockers”of policies on their own, and Labor requiring Green support only can push things to another extreme I don’t think serves the nation. I like parties being forced to negotiate and think it is appropriate in democracy as it is formulated here.

    In future I’d love to see annual, or least linked to every election, public referenda on any major issue that presents itself (and citizen generated referenda).

    Nothing would make it clearer to all where the public sits on any issue than this process.
    Each party has so many policies, and takes so many positions that I am sure very few truly get to express a vote for the optimal policy mix they support by voting on a party basis (who ever got 100% on the ABC political tracker/matching thing?! not I).

  9. Also from The Mercury, Albo will be down in the GerryMander state announcing $1.3billion in road upgrade funding. They sure know how to milk the pork.

  10. Some more on Braddon from KB

    #Braddon @AFPAonline commissioned ReachTEL 51-49 Liberal off raw primaries of Lib 38.2, ALP 33.5, Green 6.3, UAP 5.3, Nat 3.5, ON 3.9, Other 4.8, “Undecided” 4.5 (who were leaning slightly to Keay). Brakey not named in readout. #politas

  11. Getting rather pessimistic here that Labor will struggle to get 80 seats, so much for the prediction game guess. Yes, they have a huge media machine against them but with so much incompetence and corruption from the current Government, laying out the facts should be straight forward as they come.

  12. LGH @ #328 Tuesday, April 30th, 2019 – 1:24 pm

    Barney in Phan Thiet

    “magic 3rd way pudding”

    I work in business consulting helping businesses be more efficient (lower input costs, lower output, higher profit), my experience getting there touches on various areas of government waste.

    Multiple degrees at 3 universities: Curtin, RMIT, Deakin (eye on education spending waste). Experience in the medical system 9 (as user, witness to waste). General manager of a national solar system installer (witness to fraud and government contracting practices). Consultant with a firm specialising in government R&D claims (witness to fraud & government contracting practices).

    1. Universities are admin heavy, engage in useless research, pad degrees with useless units, and overpay many of their staff.
    2. The medical system is overrun with fraud, unnecessary procedures & overpaid staff.
    3. Government programs from both sides are generally poorly configured and victims of massive amounts of fraud.

    In my role working for an organisation that specialised in gaining government funded R&D credits for business I can tell you this: if you wrote reports and provided accounting statements that claimed you were doing R&D you got paid. Almost all clients of the business were coached by the business to make up information for maximum return. The government employed consultants would also be very assistive in telling you what to write to be approved. It was immaterial whether you were actually doing R&D.
    E.g. if you booked a staff member as engaging in 400 hours of R&D work, and 20 hours of income earning, non-R&D work, when they actually worked the reverse there is/was ZERO PHYSICAL check to see that what was noted on paper matched physical reality. Fill in the forms, answer the right way in an interview and you got hundreds of thousands to millions in funding. Multiply by hundreds of businesses…

    Governments contract poorly. They contract in a manner that would put a private business out of business. They overpay, they under police & check. Society is not made up of 100% nice peoples & 5% of dodgy people can result in 40% of government spending in well-intentioned programs going to fraud.
    Note the childcare industry.. I guarantee you what they have uncovered to date is less than 1~2% of actual fraud. Again, there are no physical checks. Make the paperwork “look” right, get paid.

    The highest paid professions in Australia are medical workers. If the AVERAGE surgeon is paid $350,000 what do you think the top quartile might be paid.. $450,000? $500,000?
    Do you honestly feel if mechanisms were in place to bring that top quartile & average income down $100,000 whilst increasing the intake of suitably qualified students at university (increasing supply), that we’d have a shortage? If you do why DIDN’T that occur in the aviation industry? If you think quality was decreased in the aviation industry why did Australia’s aviation safety record retain its ‘top of the world’ positioning after the breaking of the pilots union and the relative re-alignment of their salaries & productivity?

    Are million dollar cancer treatments for 80+ year old pensioners a valid use of public funds?
    Are million dollar cancer treatments for 80+ year old pensioners originally brought in on parental visa’s appropriate use of taxpayer funds?
    If the government determined that the average net cost to the Australian taxpayer per parent brought in via a parental visa was over $400,000 (over what they contributed) largely due to medical & welfare costs and this was decreased what would be the annual saving to the medical system? (Hint: it is measured in billions per annum, ten’s of billions if Shorten’s new parental visa policy is instituted).

    Answering fully would take tens of thousands of words.. but I hope this is a sample of personal experience of waste. Note I am non partisan on this: both Liberal and Labor do the same thing in slightly different areas.

    And I know when people hear someone say “overpaid” staff they freak out. And I get cost of the necessities of life, in the current regime, require ever expanding high salaries to stay on top.
    But consider if the policy mix brought down the cost of housing by 30%, cost of financing by a further 30%, and taxation was reduced 15%. What would be the relative cost of living & living standard of a person in the current regime earning $90k vs a person in the “reduced cost, higher % post tax income share” $75k earning environment? What about if other costs in society were reduced because businesses were paying less tax and less rent and less wages?

    Reduced land costs: lower immigration, higher capital gains taxes.
    Reduced goods/services costs: lower land costs, lower wages
    Increased share of retained income after expenses & taxes: lower taxes, lower housing costs, lower goods/services costs

    In an Australia where people can earn less because things cost less.. what does that mean for our export potential?

    More exports > more jobs.

    The cycle Australia is trapped in is unsustainable, and hey, I get that everything I say here would require a tonne more links & argument support to have a chance at being accepted. All I ask is that this line of thinking be accepted as a possibility worth consideration.

    There is a lot more to worker satisfaction than end salary. Have a business put in the right tools and practices to reduce unpaid overtime and worker stress and dissatisfaction (e.g. with managers, not feeling heard, being forced into less efficient practices than they know would work) can often see worker morale improve and productivity without a pay increase. The worker is happier, and his job is easier and more fulfilling, the business is happier because it is more profitable & sustainable.

    Families earning $100k and being majorly stressed over life expenses is not an improvement on families earning $75k and being majorly stressed over life expenses if those expenses & taxation have swallowed the entirely of the income gain.

    Interesting talking points and valid. Corruption is rife. Try the Aged Care sector!
    It is the rising earnings/costs gap and inequality between lower and upper income which is the problem for people.

  13. sprocket_ @ #914 Wednesday, May 1st, 2019 – 6:12 am

    Also from The Mercury, Albo will be down in the GerryMander state announcing $1.3billion in road upgrade funding. They sure know how to milk the pork.

    ————-
    I will say it again. Ucomms in Tassie is like geisha girl in gay bar- it never works out on election day – Bass, Braddon and Lyons. Remember the three Amigo’s having a celebratory dinner with the cyborg Senator in Burnie a week before the 2016 election ? Their internal polling and Ucomm’s said they had those seats in the bag..gone, gone gone after the election. They won’t be back anytime soon.

  14. LGH,
    I’m going to have to block you soon, not for what you have to say-I don’t know what you’ve said, I haven’t read it-but for how long you take to say it. This is a discussion board, not a place to share essays.
    Or as Shakespeare said “brevity is the soul of wit”, meaning don’t waste my fucking time.

  15. LGH @ #379 Tuesday, April 30th, 2019 – 3:11 pm

    It’s okay Briefly. I think you forgot who I was 😉 Used to be a heavy poster (never under any other name), that had a few doozies with you 😉 Have not posted in about 2 years.

    There are four fracture lines currently at play in politics although some of them not nearly as much as they should be:

    nationalism vs globalism (left may find the term more suitable if we use newspeak to call it humanism)
    marxism vs extreme capitalism
    right to impose regimes & views on others vs maximising local sustainable group self-determination
    putting humans above the environment vs putting humans within it

    On every one of these we are at opposite poles except economic where I would be in the middle of the two. Interestingly my views are probably the most marginalised and demonised in terms of propaganda (free & paid). Considering the power structure of the world this is interesting.

    If a view is demonised above all others by propaganda, and propaganda is devised by members of the elite (in various guises) is it likely it is the most hostile (in reality & ideology) to a global elite class increasing and retaining its power?

    Nationalism, and with it maintenance of national cohesion & self-determination and restrictions on movements of capital and people is not conducive to globalists increasing their global reach & power.
    What nations in history have been attacked and destroyed? Those that were open to global power or those that resisted? If your policies do not threaten global capital (and neither Labor’s or the Coalition’s do as evidenced by their ties and acceptance of global capital) then how much are they truly aligned against their interests and for the people?

    Globalists make hay by having the hoi-polloi vote according to their produced propaganda from the institutes they control: universities, media, entertainment industries, financial institutes, think tanks…

    The best approach a slaver can take is to have his slaves embrace their servitude. Workers in the USSR, Cuba and Venezuela did not receive their worker’s paradise, at the end though global capital did make huge gains from the mop-up (or will).

    The only way to bring the global elite to heal is via national cohesion. National cohesion is not possible with mass migration especially where it is racially & culturally different. A sustainable quality of life is also not compatible with mass migration or full socialist policies (it requires balance). Sustained national cohesion is also not possible unless sustained quality of life improvements are provided or maintained sustainably at a high level. This means policy must deliver beyond rhetoric and in the real world. We’ll continue to tumble until we fall hard enough to have it out and/or tyranny is imposed. Sad people get invested in “what they want to be” over “what is”.

    OK, you lost me now. You sucked me in with your first post, as I give new contributors a go.

    But this is, in my opinion, an argument that veils racism.

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