The latest – or some of it at least:
• It is now reckoned beyond doubt that the Liberals have held on in Chisholm, thereby guaranteeing a parliamentary majority of at least 76 seats out of 151. As related in the latest update in my late counting post, I think it more likely than not that they will supplement that with Macquarie and Bass, and wouldn’t write them off quite yet in Cowan. You are encouraged to use that thread to discuss the progress of the count, and to enjoy the reguarly updated results reporting facility while you’re about it.
• If you only read one thing about the collective failure of the opinion polls, make it Kevin Bonham’s comprehensive account. If you only read two, or don’t have quite that much time on your hands, a brief piece by Professor Brian Schmidt in The Guardian is worth a look.
• The three major polling companies have each acknowledged the issue in one way or another, far the most searching example of which is a piece in The Guardian by Peter Lewis of Essential Research. A statement released yesterday by Ipsos at least concedes there may be a problem with over-sampling of the politically engaged, but Monday’s offering by David Briggs of YouGov Galaxy in The Australian was defensive to a fault.
• Note the guest post below this one from Adrian Beaumont on tomorrow’s European Union elections in Britain.
I know it’s not really approved of by WB, but I’m now up to 6 posters blocked using the Pb-Comments plugin. Makes reading the blog much more pleasant although I sometimes encounter one of the blocked ones when someone else has quoted them.
It may be easy for some to simply scroll past certain posters but I have long had such a voracious appetite for reading that I can’t help myself noticing something on the screen.
I think that the only way to test whether Albo will make a good leader is to actually make him one and then evaluate down the track. Given how appalling most of us have been predicting recent political events, I think it’s a bit silly to take anyone (including ourselves) seriously when they prognosticate how X will/would go as leader.
When all is considered, there was very little movement from the 2016 election, in either votes or seats, far from a wipe-out. We will see how Morrison’s supreme authority goes, especial as the right of politics in Australia is still totally fractured.
Finally we have Harold MacMillan’s famous statement when asked what can blow governments off course: “Events, dear boy, events”. Although the revisionists now reckon he didn’t say that, the insight is still very penetrating.
Election campaigns are no longer about who has the better policies (to our detriment in my opinion), but who has the better presentation. Everything is relative and the party with the shiny, glossy, catchy look & feel with (of course) some fear of the other thrown in, is the one the public will go for.
As Indigenous and now Progressive Australians are wont to say: “Poor fella my country”
C@tmomma @ #1289 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 1:31 pm
You say that with seemingly little awareness of your own contributions at times.
Can I come along? I’d really like a blog where BB doesn’t call my poor old mum an ugly slut.
Suddenly The Nath Thing gets all hurt, or at least it pretends it is. It has no problem at all cheapening anybody else’s mother, or wife, but cheapen its own ersatz memories and it acts all offended.
Watch it & weep….
ANDREW THOMAS
@andthomsydney
That voter in Corangamite
https://mobile.twitter.com/andthomsydney/status/1131079954962165760
Treat this as just venting, but “same / same”
“Scrapping the Medevac laws is one of the first priorities for the Morrison government.”
The, ‘oh I was just having a larf’, is the shitcan poster defense du jour. It’s also bullshit covering vile slurs. Once you scrape the ‘joke’ shit off, what you are left with is the unvarnished reality of the comment.
ajm
That’s my problem, too.
Rex Douglas @ #1302 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 1:46 pm
As do you.
Who has seen the front page of the Australian today? “Albo vows to end class war” is the big headline, with a big grinning Albo. Getting off to a great billionaire-bootlicking start.
***
Sceptic @ #1304 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 1:47 pm
“I want a new PM, so I’m voting Liberal”.
Well, there you go.
Scrapping the Medevac Law?
Go on Dirty Dick!
Go on Bastard Bandt!
Hold Morrison (and your lousy selves) accountable.
Show us all some of the wonderful Greens ‘Thought Leadership’!
Make the Greens Grate again!
Just do it!
@Watermelon
I am more waiting on what he has to say on the issue of Climate Change, if Albo turns out to be a fence sitter than Labor are going to lose the next election I am confident of that and The Greens vote will skyrocket. Also he represents the division of Grayndler, which has state seats which are represented by the Greens, he might lose his seat as well.
Strange this class war crap!
How many comments & print slagged off at Shorten because he had private education.
His ex father in-law is a billionaire, Liberal. He has rich friends FFS!
Apparently, this was a disqualification for leading the ALP?
Watermelon @ #1309 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 1:50 pm
Watermelon @ #1309 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 1:50 pm
Yeah, well fuck it. Labor needs to win first before they can change anything.
Dan Gulberry says: Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 1:25 pm
phoenixRED
Trump’s tax returns and finances were always going to be his downfall.
******************************************
Dan – whatever else gets thrown up – I have always believed that IF Trump goes down it will be for ‘money’ issues BEFORE he became President – and the offices of SDNY and others no doubt have him in their sights for RICO ( Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ) – offences such as mob association, money laundering, tax evasion. wire fraud etc …….. the type of crimes that eventually did in Al Capone ….
This is Murdoch’s interpretation, for Murdoch’s own reasons.
Albo’s aim is to achieve electoral success for Labor and the MSM can interpret that any way it likes.
I’d hazard a guess and say one of the reasons the left are struggling around the world right now is that their class concerns seem less like genuine compassion based on experience/observation and more like they’re just advocating some critical socio-economic theory they learned at uni.
phoenixRED @ #1317 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 12:01 pm
Yep.
If you believe the science then anything short of ending all new fossil fuel projects (and closing existing ones) is “fence-sitting” on climate change. So yes, Labor will be fence-sitting on climate change. Unless they go full “stop the boats” and adopt the LNP’s climate policy.
From The Shovel
http://www.theshovel.com.au/2019/05/21/peter-dutton-believes-he-has-numbers-to-win-labor-party-leadership/
Good Afternoon
Watermelon
Exactly right. For Queensland Labor to intervene to keep Adani going would be a betrayal of real action on climate change. The science has to rule above economics.
We are not talking here of shutting down existing coal mines and stopping current coal mining. We are talking about no new coal mining and putting transition plans in place now for when the jobs disappear in a few years time.
Edit. Sorry Not closing existing exports down is the compromise
“…short of ending all new fossil fuel projects …”
So, how do we do that after the last election? If the answer is “educate the voters” I don’t think there is any chance of that working in the time frame needed.
What’s the alternative?
“We are talking about no new coal mining and putting transition plans in place now for when the jobs disappear in a few years time.”
Ok, let’s follow that through. QLD ALP continue to block Adani. They lose the next election. Adani gets built.
How about this as an alternative? ALP make notes that they sorry Adani, of Adani can finance it. Apparently it doesn’t have the financial backing, so what’s the issue.
Rex
nath uses you as a useful idiot. nath isn’t a Green – no Green would suggest brown coal should continue to be mined or that the Coalition’s NBN is OK. He’s a Lib, pretending to be a Green because he knows people like you will side with him, whereas if he said he was a Lib you wouldn’t.
This was mentioned earlier today but bears repeating. Decisions on mining in Queensland are, and have long been, basically driven by external factors outside the control of governments.
Rubbish.
Democrats focusing on this kind of stuff is exactly what will ensure a Trump (or other Republican if he doesn’t run) 2020 win.
None of his base cares about this kind of stuff. None of the swinging voters care about this kind of stuff. You don’t win the politics by focusing on some complex financial argument that is irrelevant and incomprehensible to most people and can be defeated by simple sloganeering.
Any actual court action would be years away and would take years to resolve, and with the complexity of this kind of financial matter could well not result in any outcome.
The Dems will not win by chasing down that rabbit hole, and the fact that it is a Brer rabbit hole signalled by Trump should give everyone involved pause.
guytaur @ #1323 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 2:08 pm
The Australian voters have decided that mining and exporting thermal coal will continue until lack of demand kills it once and for all.
Labor may choose to politically re-connect to its blue collar base and just let that take it’s course.
It’s an opportunity for the Greens to campaign on actually establishing new clean energy industry jobs in the short to medium term for those coal mining regions.
zoomster @ #1326 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 2:13 pm
Exactly.
Are you retired Nath or unemployed?
Part of the benefits of a real leadership challenge would be that we’d get to see what the potential leaders were going to do. At the moment, I have no idea what Albo will stand by and what he won’t. I hope to be pleasantly surprised, of course, but I’d like to know.
“…short of ending all new fossil fuel projects …”
So, how do we do that after the last election? If the answer is “educate the voters” I don’t think there is any chance of that working in the time frame needed.
At risk of repeating myself. There were dozens of reasons the ALP lost the election. As they lost it by 1% it is reasonable to say they only need to address certain reasons for the loss… not all.
The ALP stance on climate change did lose them votes, but it also won them some. I wouldnt change tack on that one.
Blobbit
If Qld Labor speeding up the approval process does not compromise the environmental laws then yes there is no problem
zoomster @ #1326 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 2:13 pm
Pick your lip up off the ground and harden up zoomster.
Ending the class war is the right way forward because looking at the marginals, many of them have pockets of middle or high income and I know many on the left refer to billionaires as if we have hundreds or thousands of them when in reality we have less than a 100. I think this is due many seeing Australia as being similar to the U.S where there is a far larger population of super rich and a far weaker social welfare system. By talking up inequity the ALP undermines themselves when in reality they should be celebrating the success of their policies and putting forward policies for those who are yet to benefit and that can be done without class war or envy, now that isn’t to say the ALP can’t put forward some redistribution but do it without the bulldust that comes with it.
C@tmomma @ #1330 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 2:15 pm
parrot
MexicanBeemer
What class war?
Don’t fall for the right wing narrative. Labor was for tax cuts. Not for increasing taxes. Got them nowhere. They just looked Liberal lite so people voted for the real thing.
Bollocks, Rex.
I hope Albo’s not silly enough to get sucked into a ‘class war’ narrative…
Blobbit @ #1324 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 2:12 pm
The sooner voters in the North understand that Adani is not going ahead (for financial reasons) the better for Labor. That is the best way to kill it off. Then they will realise that they need serious help from the federal govt (step in Labor!)
Clare O’Neil is considering a run.
That’s very rational, Rational
Rex couldn’t care whether nath is a Blue-Lib, a Yella-Lib, an Orange-Lib, a Nat Soc-Lib or a Dr-Who-Lib. As long as they post against Labor, they’re useful to RD.
The propaganda campaigns of the pop-left play into the hands of the Alt-Right…quite deliberately at times.
The hate for Labor is unrelenting.
Someone just pointed out to me over lunch just how brilliant Dutton’s challenge for the leadership was (from his perspective). He knew, after Longman, that if Turnbull was still leader of the party he would lose his seat. If he wanted to survive, Turnbull had to go. If Turnbull had remained leader, Labor probably would have done quite well in Queensland. As it turned out, in his seat, it was a toss-up between Mr Baseball Cap and the Union Guy from Melbourne with the plush wife.
Labor losing Turnbull did not help it at all.
guytaur
The ALP’s ad campaign did bring up class with its references to the “top end of town” and the ALP or its supporters did dismiss retirees as “rich” and the ALP had wage policies aimed at certain workers “child care workers” the ALP did play class war and it blew up on them.
A pause in the class war would be a good thing. Labor’s losing it.
briefly @ #1344 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 2:27 pm
You left out the gizmo bit…
zoomster says:
Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 2:26 pm
Clare O’Neil is considering a run.
I don’t know O’Neil, zoom. Any thoughts?