I had a paywalled article in Crikey on the conclusion of the Senate election result, which among other things had this to say:
The Coalition went into the election with 31 senators out of 76 and comes out with 35 — and may be about to go one better if there is anything behind suggestions that Cory Bernardi is set to rejoin the Liberal Party. That would leave the government needing the support of only three crossbenchers to win contested votes.
That could be achieved with the two votes of the Centre Alliance plus that of Jacqui Lambie, who is newly restored to the Senate after falling victim to the Section 44 imbroglio in late 2017. Lambie appears to be co-operating closely with the Centre Alliance, having long enjoyed a warm relationship with the party’s founder Nick Xenophon.
Such a voting bloc would relieve the Morrison government of the need to dirty its hands in dealing with One Nation — though it could certainly do that any time the Centre Alliance members felt inspired to take liberal positions on such issues as asylum seekers and expansion of the national security state.
Since then, talk of Cory Bernardi rejoining the Liberal Party has moved on to suggestions he will leave parliament altogether, creating a casual vacancy that would stand to be filled by the Liberal Party. Bernardi announced he would deregister his Australian Conservatives party on Thursday following its failure to make an impression at the election, and told Sky News the next day that it “might be best for me to leave parliament in the next six months”, although he also said he was “unresolved”. Paul Starick of The Advertiser reports that sources on both sides of the SA Liberal Party’s factional divide say the front-runner would be Georgina Downer, daughter of the former Foreign Minister and twice-unsuccessful lower house candidate for Mayo. The party’s Senate tickets usually pair moderate and Right faction members in the top two positions, and Downer would take a place for the Right that was filled in 2016 by Bernardi, with the other incumbent up for re-election in 2022 being moderate-aligned Simon Birmingham.
In other news, Simon Jackman and Luke Mansillo of the University of Sydney have posted slides from a detailed conference presentation on the great opinion poll failure. Once you get past the technical detail on the first few slides, this shows trend measures that attempt to ascertain the true underlying position throughout the parliamentary term, based on both polling and the actual results from both 2016 and 2019. This suggests the Coalition had its nose in front in Malcolm Turnbull’s last months, and that Labor only led by around 51-49 after he was dumped. An improving trend for the Coalition began in December and accelerated during the April-May campaign period. Also included is an analysis of pollster herding effects, which were particularly pronounced for the Coalition primary vote during the campaign period. Labor and Greens primary vote readings were more dispersed, in large part due to Ipsos’s pecularity of having low primary votes for Labor (accurately, as it turned out) and high ones for the Greens (rather less so).
What he said:
Labor and the Greens are forced to try to destroy each other because of pig-headedness on both sides: one that covetously clings either to a utopian but disappeared past, or the other that naively believes in a utopian but unachievable future.
Instead, they should form a coalition – a painful process for some, undoubtedly, but a fatal one for the conservatives, if forged.
If the ABC has Michael Rowland fronting Insiders, even if just for the brief period until Speers can slide out of his Sky contract, then may God have mercy on our souls.
Regarding primary vote percentages, it is difficult to determine those for the “Liberal” and National parties because they are merged in some states / territories and (unmerged) Nationals are mainly a NSW thing.
But in NSW, not exactly a jewel in Labor’s Crown if it had one, the primary percentages are:
“Liberal”: 32.2%
National : 10.3%
Labor — : 34.6%
Greens – : 8.7%
Notice anything?
I am getting heartily sick of the suggestions of some commentators on this site of a progressive alliance between the Greens and Labor. Leaving aside the atypical example of the ACT , the only place where that has occurred from time to time is Tasmania, and if you want to see how successful that is, just look at what happens in the ensuing state elections.
Notwithstanding how the alliance invariably breaks down midterm, the impact on Labor support from ‘traditional’ Labor voters is pronounced. Whilst media stories and commentators might talk about poker machine lobbies etc, the key factor that I hear constantly down here from many people who Federally would not think about voting anywhere but ALP 1 is that on a State basis, if the only prospect of a majority government is the Liberals, then that is where there vote is going. In other words, anyone but the Greens.
In essence, an alliance might help in a few inner city seats but it is sure going to be anathema in outer suburban and provincial seats.
4 corners the next 2 nights should be fun. who did what to who and in which order.
Hamilton is talking out of his arse.
As for ‘fatal for the conservatives’…
…here are the ‘election winning’ Greens policies for which Labor would be criticized if it formed a Coalition with the Greens. I invite the disinterested observer to consider whether Labor would ever again win a regional seat were it to go into coalition with the following policies:
1. Kill off the Cotton industry.
2. Kill off the coal industry.
3. Kill off the forestry industry in native forests.
4. Kill off all aspects of the uranium industry, including Olympic Dam.
5. Kill off the ADF leaving only a ‘light mobile force’.
6. Severely damaging rural production by eliminating GMOs and Round Up. At once.
7. Destroy all facilities that might facilitate the deployment of nuclear weapons.
8. Introduce the UBI which alone would cost more than the entire current federal tax take.
9. Strangulation by bureacratization. Have a look at the almost constant demand in the Greens policy statements for committees and boards etc, etc, etc, to consider this and consider that.
I could go on but it should be clear to even the most casual of observers is that the reason the Greens only get 10% of the vote is that 90% of the electorate gets it that the above suite of policies are insane.
Only 15 minutes until Newspoll? They’ll have to get back on the bike eventually…..
Confessions says:
Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 8:50 pm
This is on the front page of this week’s free local paper here.
The final count for votes in this seat at last month’s election was made official last week, with a close battle for fourth place coming down to seven votes.
In the end, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation candidate Dean Smith edged out the Greens’ candidate Nelson Blake Gilmour to finish runner-up behind the major parties.
Mr Smith received 7252 votes to Mr Gilmour’s 7245.
The pair were both first-time candidates.
Mr Smith said he was “incredibly surprised” to finish fourth in his party’s first contest for the O’Connor electorate, and in a vote he entered only weeks before polling day.
“Beating the Greens at the ballot box was an awesome feat,” he said.
Smith is a self-described National Socialist. He propounds a politics of persecution; of racial and religious purity; a doctrine of white-Christian supremacy. He is utterly unashamed in this. He described people such as me as hybrids and mongrels. I have heard this with my own ears.
The Far Right did very well in the recent election. They are very-well accepted by the Liberals, with whom they share resources. They campaign together. They are very comfortable with the politics of overt bigotry.
Bludgers should get the message. We are in trouble.
Mexicanbeemer says:
Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 8:45 pm
Briefly
I respect your passion but I think you are wrong to say the ALP are stuffed, sure they lost an election they were strongly expected to win but they were in a far deeper hole in the 1990s when they looked finished in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia but the ALP was able to turn that around and they did that by focusing on the issues that matter. Federal elections are fought on federal issues, not state issues so the ALP needs to focus on federal issues and they can be competitive.
Labor’s plurality has taken a steep dive since the 1990s. We may have been out of office, but the affiliation of voters to Labor was far higher than it now is. It is worth noting that since the 1990s, with the exception of the NDIS, not one single important issue has been resolved on terms favourable to working people. Not one. Our capacity to win and to implement our program has not been this weak since the 1910s.
It is not a coincidence that Labor’s decline has been matched by the rise of the Greens.
And get that up you Queensland!!!
Until eventually and inevitably, PB becomes little more than briefly talking to himself about how dire everything is, because everyone else has departed from boredom.
I am getting heartily sick of the suggestions of some commentators on this site of a progressive alliance between the Greens and Labor
I’d have once agreed with you. Until pretty recently, actually.
But now I’m not thinking of a loose alliance. More like a coalition, even a merger if possible.
Ironically the readon for this epiphany is what our resident pompous bore and manic depressive, Briefly, has had to say. If Briefly is the future of Labor, then please show me where they keep the razor blades. It’s quicker that way.
Lars Von Trier says:
Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 9:16 pm
Only 15 minutes until Newspoll? They’ll have to get back on the bike eventually…..
Sunday nights on Poll Bludger are a bit different these days.
Well, we just had a massive electrical storm here so I turned off the modem, watched Masterchef and then cleaned the Japanese paper and wood lanterns. I feel much better now. So glad to have avoided losing another modem to one of these dastardly East Coast Low storms. Also to have avoided the equally silly suggestions from bothe ends of the political spectrum on the Left that we should either merge with The Greens (a tongue-in-cheek suggestion I hope), or that, for the zillionth time, Hanrahan like, that we, the Labor Party, are rooned!
Perspective gained away from PB is a valuable thing. 🙂
shellbell says:
Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 5:28 pm
Loved seeing the seals at play off Cape Bridgewater
They are there now for the winter. Along with the baitfish, big tuna (169kg caught last week), humpbacks and the southern rights. The big blues arrive in Nov.
Well, Migaloo the Great White Whale came past our neck of the woods, heading for parts north, this week.
Not Sure
Spellchecker
Autouncorrect
Not tongue in cheek. A merger or coalition between Labor and Greens should be explored seriously.
NOT a loose agreement, or a half-arsed guarantee of supply, but something more… something binding that will enforce discipline on both and wrest government from the tories for a long time.
Both Labor and the Greens are cruelling the ground for each other. The only ones enjoying this are the libs and Nats. They are laughing, as they feather various cushy nests for their backers.
Labor needs to take a step away from the unions. The unions are dying. They no longer represent working people. This is numerically and morally true. Their day may come again but just having them there for old time’s sake is a losing bet. Not a divorce, but a distancing. Let’s see who blinks first.
On the Greens’ part, they need to grow up. BW’s thesis – that the environmental movement and the environment itself have gone measurably backwards since the Greens became a political force – is undoubtedly true. The Greens are too pure for their own good, and it’s clearly counterproductive. Purity makes you feel good but outcomes are vital, especially as regards the environment. From endangered species to the fate if the planet itself, holding out for perfection won’t save anything at all. “Gaia” doesn’t give a shit for Green perfectionism. She needs something to get started, not endlessly held out as the only way, or nothing.
It won’t matter what Murdoch or ScoMo say. A Labor-Greens alliance would be unstoppable. All it takes is men and women of good intent to replace the old suspicions and animosities with trust.
A rather humorous twitter thread re Folau , including “It would be a real shame if we couldn’t own a New Zealander”
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1142388552170237952.html
I’m not saying it cannot happen but there is one barrier to a ALP/Green merger. What happens to the blue collar industrial worker. The Greens wants many of their jobs gone on environmental grounds, this is something that the ALP cannot simply agree too but the real problem steaming from that is the Greens wouldn’t just accept that maybe the ALP has a relationship with those workers but would insist those jobs go. There may be big differences between the Libs and the Nats but they give each other and in many cases begrudgingly the ability to do their own thing.
Quasar,
Thanks! I haven’t laughed so hard in ages.
Briefly,
I agree with what you say, and I feel your pain. On the other hand, I am genuinely concerned that you are driving people away from this blog, and I do not think that helps your cause.
Pollbludger is one of the few places we have been able to get intelligent insights into matters psephological and political. Of course, this is interspersed with a lot of dross.
You may wonder why people do not pick up Nicholas and Pegasus for the same offence – driving people away from the blog. Nicholas and Pegasus, I have only mentioned you because I think it is relevant in this context. You both post on pretty much the same meta-topic all the time, and that is fine. However, people have calibrated, you, and take your posts in that context.
Briefly, it is because you are a real person on this blog, and you often post things worth reading. Also, you are falling foul of the idealist / pragmatist conundrum, on what I now think needs to be a 3-D political basis / set of axes. You are on the pragmatistic side.
The idealists point out why everyone else is wrong, with much fervour. They offer solutions, but they are solutions that will never be accepted by a democratic polity, without a lot of persuasion. Only pragmatists (such as you) can actually sell these solutions, as Whitlam and Hawke did over two decades. Medibank / Medicare did not appear as part of the Australian landscape out of nowhere. It took two decades of persuasion by Labor before it was finally implemented permanently in 1984. Ironically, before Whitlam could win an election, he needed to rid the Victorian ALP left of some of the same personalities that are now Green apparatchiks.
I wonder how many of the subsequent elections that Labor won under Hawke / Keating can be attributed to fear that the Coalition would destroy Medicare if returned to power, as Fraser finally did after winning the 1980 election.
Howard has to promise to “Not touch Medicare” to win the 1996 election.
Briefly,
I also remember you telling us here, about 2 weeks before the May 18th election, that your door knocking was telling you that Labor was nowhere near as popular as opinion polls suggested. I took note of that, and it added to my concerns about whether or not Labor would get over the line.
A quick shoutout to posters and lurkers who enjoy Pollbludger, and who do not enjoy the “outrage machine” that drives most of Australian media.
Please donate a regular amount to keep Pollbludger going. It matters not if the amount is $1 per month. If enough people do it, it will keep the site going.
Interesting watching Bill Maher this week, and his guest Allan Lichtman who has divined the 13 keys to predicting election outcomes.
https://macroaffairs.com/13-keys-to-the-white-house-2020-allan-lichtman/books/
One extra key which Bill Maher pushes him on, and which is very relevant to the Australian polity is the weight put on internal disharmony within a Party. I would expand this to broader Left disharmony, and the ‘splintering’ on the Right. In short, it means nothing – and is disregarded by voters.
If this is true, we can safely let the Green/Labor, RGR and similar spats through to the keeper. Similarly, the potato alligators nipping at Scotty’s heels have no meaning when election time comes along.
My comment above about the “outrage machine” media comes from seeing formerly reputable news sources such as Crikey shedding their centrist readers in favour of articles that generate outrange in the reader. Apparently this model works well for getting subscribers, but it is very bad for democracy – Crikey is very much into “all politicians (except Malcolm Turnbull, Socialist Alliance or Greens) are bastards, bastards or worse”.
I say this after commenting on a Crikey article, reproduced from the Conversation, to point out that Adrian Beaumont’s name was left off the piece reproduced, which he wrote for the Conversation about how education levels defined the outcome of the recent Federal election: https://theconversation.com/final-2019-election-results-education-divide-explains-the-coalitions-upset-victory-118601
I got terse response in to my comment saying that “There is a link at the bottom of the article”. I then replied that most people would not click on the link, and would not know that Adrain Beaumont had authored the article. I think made the silly comment “As Guy Rundle say, us knowledge workers..”, only to be picked up by someone saying if I really was a knowledge worker, I would have said “We knowledge workers”. I do note however that now the byline of the Crikey website has Adrian Beaumont – in previous times Crikey would have acknowledged a simple mistake in there “Comments, Clarifiers and F*Ck*ps section . The other comments on the article were pretty ordinary, with no facts and plenty of outrage.
My concern about casual plagiarism led me to comment on a Crikey article, and read the other comments there. It is not a pretty site (pun intended).
What made it particularly annoying for me is that, at that exact time, I was having to adjudicate on plagiarism cases as part of my job. None were as blatant as the Crikey one – even though I am sure it was just a lack of editorial oversight – and penalties were applied.
Meanwhile in Turkey, Erdogan’s man has come a gutser in the Istanbul elections – which just goes to show that the Clive Palmer model of carpet bombing every available billboard, YouTube and twitter slot with Binali’s images and outlandish promises means nothing when the boss is on the nose.
Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan congratulated opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu on Sunday for winning Istanbul’s re-run mayoral election according to unofficial results.
The High Electoral Board is yet to announce the formal results but Imamoglu is set for a comfortable victory over his rival Binali Yildirim, from the ruling AKP, with 54 percent of votes after more than 99 percent of the ballot boxes opened.
Sprocket,
Thanks for this Sprocket. It has been mostly gut feeling on my part, but now we know the Green / Labor wars are irrelevant, we need to start concentrating on what can be done to hold the Federal Coalition government to account. That is the role an opposition plays in Westminster parliamentary democracy.
D&M
I must admit I cancelled my Crikey subscription, due in part to their descent into outrage/click bait journalism. I get enough of that on twitter at no charge. My paid subs are now limited to Fairfax/Nine, some US specialist feeds and of course, this blog.
Btw, in Bratislava Slovakia at the moment after a sojourn in Poland. The EU vs nationalism dynamic is something else!
When are you going to Moldova, Sprocket?
Ash Barty’s eloquence and modesty is quite something.
Sprocket,
Bratislava sounds lovely. It is fantastic to be here (still in Hungary ATM), and to realise how seriously everyone takes being part of the EU. Different countries gripe about how the EU does not understand their unique situations, but so far I am seeing nothing but a very strong commitment to keeping the EU together.
Weirdly, Brexit has Brough the EU together.
Shellbell
Sadly, my exposure to Moldova has been limited to a bottle of Moldovan Cabernet I bought in a Tesco in Zakopane, Poland – sickly sweet, and apparently absent any alcoholic content.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-02/fukushima-radiation-has-contaminated-entire-pacific-ocean-and-its-going-get-worse
“If that weren’t bad enough, Fukushima continues to leak an astounding 300 tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean every day. It will continue do so indefinitely as the source of the leak cannot be sealed as it is inaccessible to both humans and robots due to extremely high temperatures.”
https://amp-cnn-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/06/23/opinions/amazon-jeff-bezos-tax-rate-unacceptable-mccaffery/index.html
“So, what is Amazon’s tax rate? According to The Week, it was at 11.4% from 2011 to 2016, which was apparently too much for owner Jeff Bezos’s tastes — Amazon’s 2018 income tax rate plummeted to -1%. That’s a minus sign in front of the 1, signaling a negative tax rate
Z
Why are you posting an article written 3.5 years ago by “Tyler Durden”?
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/medevac-panel-overturns-two-cases-in-four-months-despite-floodgate-fears-20190622-p5208u.html
@OC
Still very relevant since there was a recent discussion/debate on having nuclear power plant.
Oakeshott Country says:
Monday, June 24, 2019 at 6:35 am
Z
Why are you posting an article written 3.5 years ago by “Tyler Durden”?
Still hasn’t been fixed.
Do you know who Tyler Durden is?
Could the European contingent stop reminding us by proxy how beautiful the weather is in their neck of the woods right now? It’s bleeding cold, wet and windy here in NSW right now and the comparison is odious! 😆
Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
Ross Gittins says that Josh Frydenberg is not the first treasurer to be strong on party dogma but light on economic understanding, but he’s among the first to be heading into stormy weather light on expert advice from a confident and competent Treasury. He (almost) feels sorry for him. This is a worthwhile contribution from Gittins.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/poor-josh-frydenberg-caught-on-the-wrong-tram-heading-for-trouble-20190622-p520ab.html
David Crowe reports that Morrison will call for a “fresh look” at industrial relations reform as a way to boost growth at a time of rising threats to the global economy, putting unions on notice to expect tougher laws. He says the PM will also name government red tape as a top priority and declare his intention of speeding up approvals for major projects like mines, comparing his mission to clearing the “cholesterol in the arteries” for business investment.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/pm-outlines-economic-agenda-war-on-red-tape-20190623-p520j6.html
And according to Dana McCauley Sukkar is calling on the Opposition to support the government’s push to deregister the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/labor-gave-the-cfmmeu-a-free-pass-sukkar-20190623-p520gs.html
Katie Burgess reveals that legislation to enact the Coalition’s signature tax cut policy was not finished before the parliament was dissolved, and the Morrison government will not confirm whether the bill is ready to be introduced now.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6232744/coalitions-signature-tax-cut-bill-not-finished-before-election/?cs=14350
Sam Maiden says that Australia is set to legislate a 30-cents-in-the-dollar tax rate for all workers earning under $200,000, with the Labor Party preparing to announce it will not block the tax cuts.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/06/23/tax-cuts-labor/
This month’s national accounts show, relative to earnings, wages slumping to lowest on record. Compared to the rest of the developed world, Australia is now in record low territory when it comes to sharing the nation’s largesse with its workers. Alan Austin reports.
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/how-to-win-on-wages-lessons-from-australia-and-abroad/
The AFR continues to dig as it reports that a former top bureaucrat who previously ran the federal government’s offshore detention program helped Paladin win a contract for refugee services on Manus Island.
https://www.outline.com/fVFC9z
Meanwhile Labor is demanding Peter Dutton release the details of a review into contracts worth almost $500m to manage the Manus Island offshore processing centre, before the Morrison government approves the next one, expected to occur in days.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/24/unthinkable-labor-says-peter-dutton-must-release-secret-audit-of-manus-island-contracts
Michael Miller, Executive Chairman of News Corp Australia, explains why the fight for press freedom should unite us all. This is a lead up to the appearance this week of him and heavies from Nine and the ABC at the NPC.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/why-the-fight-for-press-freedom-should-unite-us-all-20190623-p520hv.html
Families are having to choose between paying private school fees and upgrading their home as banks ramp up scrutiny. This is a interesting development.
https://www.smh.com.au/education/private-school-fees-under-microscope-after-bank-probe-20190621-p5202v.html
David Crowe informs us that Dutton has infuriated the federal government’s potential allies in Senate negotiations over income tax cuts worth $158 billion, putting a “cordial relationship” at risk with his eagerness to repeal refugee medical transfer laws.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6236191/dutton-medevac-stance-threatens-crossbench-cordial-relationship/?cs=14350
Michaela Whitbourn reports that our peak legal body is looking at managing the standards of judges,
https://www.smh.com.au/national/serious-concerns-judge-faces-scrutiny-over-alleged-unfairness-20190619-p51z4v.html
Small and medium-sized businesses are getting ripped off $7 billion a year because bigger businesses are not paying them $115 billion on time. It has a domino effect on the economy – it goes right through the chain. It is a blight no less egregious than wage theft.
https://www.outline.com/Fg6yXE
The AFR explains how consultants, contractors and developers are trying to mitigate skills shortages, but the wave of massive projects is swamping the market.
https://www.outline.com/ruas6C
Former Australian captain Liz Ellis has hit out against Netball Australia’s stance on the Folau issue.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/serious-concerns-judge-faces-scrutiny-over-alleged-unfairness-20190619-p51z4v.html
Writer Kasey Edwards tells us that Folau’s views have made her husband and herself even more determined to keep his “lifestyle choice” of hatred and prejudice from infecting her daughters’ world view.
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/if-i-grow-up-to-be-gay-will-i-go-to-hell-20190621-p5204a.html
Free speech isn’t under threat. It just suits bigots and boors to suggest so, writes Martha Gill.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/23/free-speech-is-not-under-threat-it-suits-bigots-and-boors-to-suggest-so
Men’s “rights” are not human rights. Men’s “rights” are about maintaining a regimen of male dominance or control, usually over a woman, writes Mary Crookes on the wake of the Setka issue.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/what-loss-of-men-s-rights-exactly-are-we-talking-about-20190620-p51zlg.html
“Centre-left politics: dead, in crisis, or in transition?”, asks Flinders University’s Rob Mainwaring.
https://theconversation.com/centre-left-politics-dead-in-crisis-or-in-transition-119159
The Age reports that Victoria Police has removed a key member of its royal commission legal team because he did not agree with the force’s continued requests to suppress material from public disclosure.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/police-replace-qc-over-stance-on-public-disclosure-in-gobbo-probe-20190623-p520gf.html
Anna Patty writes that top advisers involved in mergers and acquisitions say payroll integrity has become a factor in corporate takeover deals, following a string of underpayment scandals involving Australian companies.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/payroll-integrity-now-a-factor-in-corporate-takeovers-after-wage-scandals-20190605-p51ups.html
Some of the nation’s biggest and best known superannuation funds are ignoring regulatory rules about fee disclosure and deliberately reporting figures in a way that make their administration charges look smaller.
https://www.outline.com/wChSBw
Adele Ferguson again turns her attention to the franchise industry as she tells us that Retail Food Group has been sending inflated invoices to its Gloria Jeans franchisees in the latest problem to hit the troubled group that operates brands including Gloria Jeans, Michel’s Patisserie, Brumby’s, Donut King, Crust and Pizza Capers.
https://www.outline.com/AZHZGD
The Conversation revels that Australia’s still building 4 in every 5 new houses to no more than the minimum energy standard.
https://theconversation.com/australias-still-building-4-in-every-5-new-houses-to-no-more-than-the-minimum-energy-standard-118820
What else can go wrong? Kate Aubusson explains how a cancer patient has had the wrong side of his bowel removed at Northern Beaches Hospital after a private-contracted laboratory botched his pathology results.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/wrong-body-part-removed-from-cancer-patient-at-sydney-hospital-20190621-p5204v.html
The New York Times says Trump’s slouching toward war with Iran is a disgrace, shot through with the twisting of truth or outright lies.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-s-slouching-toward-war-with-iran-is-a-disgrace-20190622-p52092.html
Michael Pascoe thinks that war with Iran could break the American alliance and force Australia to become independent.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/06/23/iran-war-american-alliance/
And Rebecca Barber posits that Trump’s Iran strike would have been illegal as well as disproportionate.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-s-iran-strike-would-have-been-illegal-as-well-as-disproportionate-20190623-p520g6.html
More than 400 pilots have joined a class action against American plane manufacturer Boeing, seeking damages in the millions over what they allege was the company’s “unprecedented cover-up” of the “known design flaws” of the latest edition of its top-selling 737 MAX.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2019/06/23/pilots-sue-boeing-over-737-max/
Cartoon Corner
David Rowe and Boris Johnson’s domestic problems.
From Matt Golding.
Pat Campbell on climate change inaction.
Mark David delivers a message to Barnaby.
A vicious portrayal here from Zanetti on Rugby Australia’s Raelene Castle.
Sean Leahy and Queensland’s big loss in the State of Origin.
From the US
C@tmomma,
Apparently we are about to get hit by a dangerous heat wave. I will let you know how my Australian self feels about such heatwave.
However, it seems to be the case that heatwaves of 30 degrees can actually kill. It is something to do with the human body getting used to the usual temperature, and a big step function in said temperature, like going from an average of 20 degrees to 30 degrees, can really put people under life-threatening heat stress.
To be fair, Tyler Durden didn’t know who Tyler Durden was either.
D & M,
I could pretty well say that a radical change from a cold, wet and windy 17C max today to a summer heat wave would kill me! 😆
Now there is a truly ‘First World problem’.
@lynlinking
“Seventy millionaires paid zero income tax last year. This is how they did it
There were 70 people who earned more than $1 million last year who reduced their income to less than $18,200 after deductions.”
https://www.theage.com.au/money/tax/how-a-millionaire-pays-no-income-tax-20190610-p51w5j.html
Douglas and Milko
Thanks for that little bit of common sense on comparative temperatures. I am always mildly irritated by the simplistic Oz attitude of “You call that a heatwave?”
Zoid – I’d be a bit careful of Tyler Durden/ Zero Hedge: here’s an edit of the opening paragraph on Zero Hedge in Wikipedia:
Zero Hedge or ZeroHedge is described as a “markets-focused” blog, that presents both in-house analysis, and analysis from investment banks, hedge funds, and other investment writers and analysts … While often labeled as a financial permabear, Zero Hedge is also seen as a source of “cutting-edge news, rumors and gossip about the financial industry”. Zero Hedge expanded into non-financial analysis, where its editorial has been labelled by The New Yorker as being associated with the alt-right, as well as being anti-establishment, conspiratorial, and showing a pro-Russian-bias. Zero Hedge in-house content is posted under the pseudonym “Tyler Durden” …
One of their lovely articles from 23 June 2019, “Violence Erupts As West Turns Its Sexual Subversion Weapon On Georgia”, is about how the LGBTIQA marriage rights movement is really aimed at destroying the traditional Christian marriage institution and wants to turn your pet hamster gay. Or something, I really can’t be arsed reading such dross.
Zoidlord
And that is why Morrison’s quoting income without qualifying it as before or after tax is so misleading. Deliberately? Probably.