Another two bite the dust

Party deregistrations, issues polling, and locally relevant discussion of the performance of online pollsters in the US.

Some unrelated electoral news nuggets to keep things ticking over:

• The Australian Electoral Commission has announced the deregistration of two right-wing minor parties, the more newsworthy of which was Cory Bernardi’s decision to decommission Australian Conservatives. This party owed its party registration to Bernardi’s position in the Senate, rather than its having 500 members, so the matter was entirely in his hands. In a sense, this also means an end to Family First, which won Senate seats at the 2004, 2013 and 2016 elections and had a presence in the South Australian upper house from 2002 to 2017, when it merged with Bernardi’s newly formed outfit. However, Family First appeared to lose energy as evangelical Christians increasingly preferred to direct their organisational efforts towards the Liberal Party, and was dominated in its later years by deep-pocketed former Senator Bob Day. Even further afield, the Rise Up Australia party, associated with controversial pastor Danny Nalliah of Catch the Fire Ministries, has voluntarily deregistered.

• JWS Research has released the latest results in its occasional series on issue salience, recording only one particularly noteworthy movement over the past three surveys: defence, security and terrorism, which only 20% now rate in the top five issues most warranting the attention of the federal government, down from 23% in February and 29% in November. “Performance index” measures for the government across the various issue areas have recorded little change post-election, except that “vision, leadership and quality of government” is up from 35% to 42% (which is still the fifth lowest out of 20 designated issue areas). The survey was conducted from June 26-30 from a sample of 1000.

• In the New York Times’ Upshot blog, Nate Cohn casts a skeptical eye over the record of online polling in the United States. It notes a Pew Research finding that YouGov’s “synthetic sampling” method achieves the best results out of the online pollsters, by which it “selects individuals from its panel of respondents, one by one, to match the demographic profile of individual Americans”. Another survey that performed relatively well, VoteCast, did so by concurrently conducting a huge sample phone poll, results of which were used to calibrate the online component.

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.

1,381 comments on “Another two bite the dust”

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  1. Now, the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Change has issued a report predicting the end of human civilisation as we know it.

    The report, terrifyingly entitled Existential climate-related security risk, glimpses 30 years into the future to the year 2050 — and the results are grim.

    Authors David Spratt, a researcher into climate change, and Ian Dunlop, former chairman of the Australian Coal Association and chair of the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading, propose a scenario in which global emissions and climate threats are ignored, and the trajectory of environmental collapse goes unchecked.

    Their conclusions spell out a dire warning.
    …

    The report suggests the catastrophic chain of environmental disasters will climax with widespread pandemics, forced migration from inhabitable locations and a likely nuclear war due to skirmishing for limited resources.

    “Planetary and human systems (reach) a ‘point of no return’ by mid-century in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order,” the report predicts.

    Spratt and Dunlop sum up our disastrous fate with a harrowing thought: “Climate change now represents a near-to-mid-term existential threat to human civilisation.”

    https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/climate-change-doomsday-report-predicts-end-of-human-civilisation/news-story/36765cb4eedc989f6ad860e6eee405cf

  2. Another support kicked from under Morrison’s “strong economy”

    A flickering increase in business confidence appears to have been extinguished, and corporate Australia continues to lose momentum.

    Those are the key findings of NAB’s latest business survey, which has found business confidence tumbled back to below average levels in June after a brief bounce in May.

    Business conditions picked up marginally, but also remain mired well below trend.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-09/nab-business-survey-june-2019/11290978

  3. Tristo says:
    Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 1:15 pm

    @nath

    Labor’s changes to their negative gearing and franking dividends policies, I predict will be only the start of a massive review of policies, in order to make the party more electable to voters in outer suburban and provincial electorates.
    _______________________
    These are the sorts of policies you do slowly once you are in government. That’s my view. As an opposition you want to create as few ‘losers’ as possible. The ALP should go hard on tax deductions. Why should you get a tax deduction for traveling to buy an investment property? I think it would also be popular to alter the deduction system so as to remove alot of the ‘dodgier’ elements.

  4. ‘The ALP should go hard on tax deductions. Why should you get a tax deduction for traveling to buy an investment property? ‘

    Well, yes. But the amount raised would be miniscule next to the funds raised through negative gearing/franking credits action. And, of course, the negative gearing/franking credit changes have benefits beyond revenue raising.

  5. Trump biographer says the president ‘admired Epstein’s lifestyle’ — and warns of ‘Pandora’s box of embarrassing information’

    “The Last Word” host Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed Tim O’Brien, the author of the 2005 book TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.

    “What is the Trump problem in this case?” O’Donnell asked.

    “The Trump problem is there are possibly other shoes to drop about the relationship with Jeffrey Epstein,” O’Brien replied.

    “I spent a lot of time with [Trump] in the mid-2000s. He routinely spoke fawningly of Jeffrey. He admired Jeffrey’s lifestyle and his freedom and I think there is a certain synchronicity between these two guys — they aren’t too different,” he explained.

    “The other big mystery about Jeffrey Epstein is not just the video goods he might have on different people, no one really knows his sources of funding,” he noted. “That’s very interesting because it’s a similar issue that Donald Trump has. Where do the mystery millions flow into the Trump Organization? Where do the mystery millions fall into Epstein’s funds?”

    https://www.rawstory.com/2019/07/trump-biographer-says-the-president-admired-epsteins-lifestyle-and-warns-of-pandoras-box-of-embarrassing-information/

  6. zoomster says:
    Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 1:24 pm

    ‘The ALP should go hard on tax deductions. Why should you get a tax deduction for traveling to buy an investment property? ‘

    Well, yes. But the amount raised would be miniscule next to the funds raised through negative gearing/franking credits action. And, of course, the negative gearing/franking credit changes have benefits beyond revenue raising.
    _______________
    On that particular lurk yes. But they all add up. Many occupations can deduct newspapers, magazines subscriptions, the list goes on. A shake up of individual and business deductions would I think save a considerable sum. The Franking credits policy of the ALP I agree with, only after they implemented the Pensioner Guarantee, but I still think it’s a policy you bring in slowly in a second term or so.

  7. I’ve notice a change in the face of the homeless over the past few years. Not just bearded old men in filthy clothes or drunks/drug addicts sleeping rough, but quite a few young & reasonably well kempt people. I’m wondering if they have some form of income that allows them to look after themselves physically but they just can’t afford rent. It’s sad enough people are homeless but even more so when they’re young.

  8. Share markets returns will always be lower under Liberal governments.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-09/brokers-warn-of-imminent-market-correction/11289728

    People talk about a “contradiction” between bond and stock markets. IMO there is no mystery. Just after the election people bought shares imagining the second coming of Scomo would benefit the econmy.so shares irrationally went up. Now they realise the Libs have no plan to fix their mess. So shares are tanking. The bond market was correct all along.

  9. Well this government doesn’t really care about people under about 50.
    This makes perfect sense because their majority comes from the fact that they still get an overwhelming majority of the two party preferred vote amongst the over-65’s (and especially the over 75’s). People of working age probably have a slight edge toward Labor in the 2pp, but it doesn’t come close to making up for the huge advantage the conservatives have amongst the elderly.

  10. lizzie says:
    Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 1:18 pm

    Now, the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Change has issued a report predicting the end of human civilisation as we know it.

    FMD

  11. lizzie

    A comment from that article you posted, say no more 🙁

    Dafs
    1 month ago
    The climate has been changing for millions of years,nothing to do with our impact.

  12. ‘Pegasus says:
    Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 9:07 am

    The Greens party has been raising issues re MDB plan for a long time.’

    And…?

  14. So, $7 billion in drought aid, $2 billion in drowning cattle and busted fences aid, $1.5 billion in new railroad aid, $6 billion in concessional loans aid, $2 billion in diesel rebate aid, $4.5 billion in DIY new on-farm irrigation scheme aid, $5 billion in water buybacks aid makes rural and regional voters the most expensive on the planet. Add a few sweeteners like instant depreciation, income averaging and Australia has reached a new nirvana: farm prices going up and up and up while producing less and less and less.

  16. lizzie

    I’m afraid human history is replete with examples of human societies and civilisations that collapse due to environmental and/or social and/or economic factors.

    The quote from “Dafs” @ 1:46 pm illustrates the conservative human “logic” against change: i.e. changes in climate have occurred in the past which were not due to human agency, therefore no climate change can be due to human agency.

    The “earth” may have to wipe the slate clean of the most destructive species ever evolved to allow new more harmonious life forms to develop. 🙂

  17. If Howarth’s mother was not an AFP employee at the time then Howarth and/or his electorate office staff at the time have probably breached the Official Secrets Act.
    I assume that the police will now be gathering metadata, planning a seven hour raid on Howarth’s electorate office, and making sure that the raid is filmed by Mr Murdoch’s minions.

  18. ‘swamprat

    The “earth” may have to wipe the slate clean of the most destructive species ever evolved to allow new more harmonious life forms to develop. ‘

    The limited success of symbiotic evolutionary pathways suggest that your hopes are wasted.

  19. The report from lizzies post…
    https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_90dc2a2637f348edae45943a88da04d4.pdf
    With a foreward by the hipster latte sipping Admiral Chris Barrie.

    How many journos will actually read this. Will it make it to any of the commercial networks 6pm news?

    even for 2°C of warming, more than a billion people may need to be relocated due to sea-level rise, and In high-end scenarios “the scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to model, with a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end”.

    this is a scenario at the high-end of the range of possibilities… not a scientific projection of what will occur… but the consequences of that outcome are so immense and horrible that it is important to consider what it would mean, and understand that we must take every possible step to avoid it.

  21. ‘swamprat says:
    Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 2:14 pm

    Boerwar

    I did not say it was my “hope”.

    Just that random evolution could result in a better dominant species or group of species.’

    Define ‘better’.

  25. Well it might not be related to Rex Douglas, but one thing is true: simplistic crapola wins elections.
    Most of the electorate, worldwide, would believe that the sun rises from the west, if you spent enough time and money to convince them that.

  27. Swamprat
    Humans are hardly the only species that changes its environment, one of my favorite animals the Elephant is very destructive going around knocking over trees, turning ponds to mud, changing the direction of streams and so on and I would image some of Australia’s now extinct large animals did much the same here.

  28. Federal taxes don’t raise revenue.

    Proposed changes to federal taxes need to be evaluated in terms of their impacts on three key factors:

    The amount of non-inflationary fiscal space available for the government’s own spending. Or just say inflation.

    The distribution of wealth and income.

    The behaviours of households and firms.

    It is never about revenue. That factor only applies to state and local governments.

  29. I just received this email from Sally McManus. She has alerted us to these 2 Bills which are in the parliament this week. I didn’t even know about the second one. It sounds awful:

    What we are up against?

    Ensuring integrity – Scott Morrison’s new IR Minister Christian Porter introduced this bill to Parliament this week. The name “ensuring integrity” is being used because who would disagree with it as a concept! What they don’t want workers to know that it’s ensuring less democratic rights, weaker unions and ensuring record low wage growth and job insecurity.

    In a nutshell

    This gives the Government and bosses the ability to intervene in the running of unions.
    They could deregister, disqualify people from union leadership and block union mergers.
    This bill interferes with democratic rights of workers and erodes freedom of association.
    Worker Benefits bill – Another anti-worker bill introduced in Parliament this week. that would make it illegal for workers to run funds for things like insurance cover, redundancy protection, and training, just to name a few. The bill would shut down worker-run funds, while allowing employers to set up and run their own funds. It would create one set of rules for working people and one set of rules for the bosses.

    The same bill would give the Registered Organisations Commission (ROC) – Morrison’s union cops – an unprecedented level of power. Remember it was the ROC working hand in glove with the government, that was behind the federal police raids on union offices. Imagine what they’ll do if they have even more power.

    Funny how they had them ready to go so quickly. Not.

  30. As previously posted pre-election, related to that Breakthrough report posted by Lizzie

    The Homefront video put out before the election was essentially the same message, that it seems at least non-Greens voters chose to mostly ignore before thinking about casting their votes with the future in mind

    https://www.homefront.site/ part 1 – existential gamble

    Simplistic crapola works on some, but if the record of years and years of Lab partisan crapola here, the usual culprits already blathering, is anything to go by, then it certainly doesn’t work on everyone and not all the time.

  31. Mark Newton
    @NewtonMark
    Netflix needs about 4 or 5 Mbps. The #NBN was planned as a 100 Mbps network. The notion that Netflix has harmed the NBN is sensationally pathetic nonsense, streaming would be a drop in the ocean if the project hadn’t already failed.

  34. Even in economic depressed regions of the country, already going through regional recessions. Things have not gone as bad as America or Britain during the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, to make people receptive to ideas such as a Green New Deal, Modern Monetary Theory, Universal Basic Income or an Universal Jobs Guarantee.

    We need first to undergo an economic crisis like America and Britain did. Specifically a housing market collapse, leading to the banks (who are heavily dependent on residential property loans) facing failure. Such an event would mean hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people losing their homes, with some ending up sleeping in cars or living in tent cities. The sort of people who ensured the Morrison’s government’s reflection, right now feel they have a lot to lose, if such an economic disaster occurs, then these same people will feel they have nothing to lose, since they have lost everything.

    Also professions such as the trades would see much more higher rate of unemployment and decrease in wages than the workforce as a whole, due to their dependence on residential and commerical building. If there is an international economic downturn at the same time, the miners are going to face significant job losses as well.

  35. It would be an entertaining accounting exercise to tot up all the financial gains that Mr Patrick has been able to earn as a direct result of Coalition decisions.
    The ports and water domains come readily to mind.
    But there may be others.
    The icing on the cake would, presumably, be the reduction in income taxes over the next couple of decades, assuming that Mr Patrick lives so long.
    The burning question, and I mention no eyes of the needle here, is whether Mr Patrick can take any of it with him on his way to his tete-a-tete at the Pearly Gates.

  36. ‘Mexicanbeemer says:
    Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 2:53 pm

    Swamprat
    Humans are hardly the only species that changes its environment, one of my favorite animals the Elephant is very destructive going around knocking over trees, turning ponds to mud, changing the direction of streams and so on and I would image some of Australia’s now extinct large animals did much the same here.’

    All individuals and all species impact the environment all the time; and vice versa.

  38. Tristo,
    Exactly that scenario has played out in America, post-GFC and it hasn’t made a blind bit of difference to the receptiveness of the people to those ideas.

  39. The #NBN was planned as a 100 Mbps network.

    I don’t think that’s true.

    It was planned as a 93% FTTP network, and FTTP was installed using components that have no problem doing 1000 Mbps without any further upgrades.

    Of course that’s not what the Coalition built.

  40. Ronni Salt@MsVeruca
    2h2 hours ago

    Scott Morrison loves “quiet Australians”. The . . . government especially loves quiet charities, quiet scientists, quiet environmentalists, quiet journalists, quiet human rights commissioners, quiet workers in quiet unions and a quiet public broadcaster.

  41. Nicholas @ #178 Tuesday, July 9th, 2019 – 2:53 pm

    Federal taxes don’t raise revenue.

    Proposed changes to federal taxes need to be evaluated in terms of their impacts on three key factors:

    The amount of non-inflationary fiscal space available for the government’s own spending. Or just say inflation.

    The distribution of wealth and income.

    The behaviours of households and firms.

    It is never about revenue. That factor only applies to state and local governments.

    Do you have a comment re this – https://greens.org.au/platform/redistribution

  42. A wishin’ and a hopin’ and a prayin’ :

    Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is hoping Australians hit the nation’s shops and spend their tax refunds as signs grow that the surge in business and consumer confidence since the Morrison government’s re-election is starting to wane.

    Mr Frydenberg said he was confident the refunds, the first part of the government’s 10-year, $158 billion tax package, would be recycled through the economy, along with the money freed up by the Reserve Bank of Australia’s recent cuts in official interest rates.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/frydenberg-banks-on-tax-refund-boost-as-business-confidence-ebbs-20190709-p525j2.html

    I think people will keep it in the bank to make paying their winter power bill easier.

  43. a r @ #190 Tuesday, July 9th, 2019 – 3:26 pm

    The #NBN was planned as a 100 Mbps network.

    I don’t think that’s true.

    It was planned as a 93% FTTP network, and FTTP was installed using components that have no problem doing 1000 Mbps without any further upgrades.

    Of course that’s not what the Coalition built.

    Rightly so, but I would have been more than happy with 100mbps. 🙂

  44. @madeiraglow_kel
    2h2 hours ago

    Instead of practical solutions like housing and community support, let’s try to rebrand homelessness into a positive life choice…

  46. Rex Douglas @ #196 Tuesday, July 9th, 2019 – 3:34 pm

    https://www.sbs.com.au/news/albanese-says-confusion-about-where-labor-stands-on-tax-is-the-media-s-fault

    Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has denied capitulating on tax policy, blaming the media for “misrepresenting” Labor’s decision to vote in favour of the government’s three-stage package…

    Lib lite is in a lot of trouble if Albanese is fair dinkum with this.

    You’re just as guilty as the media for misrepresenting this. It has been explained to you time and time again why Labor voted the way they did but still you persist in bringing this up, followed by another simplistic comment.

  47. The atrocious behaviour of the Nats and the Govts handling of the MDB absolutely justifies a RC.

    So why aren’t we having one …?

  48. William Bowe says:
    Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 7:17 am

    C@tmomma, I’m increasingly wondering why it is that I allow you to post here. You’re inexcusably nasty, won’t shut up, and haven’t got a brain in your head.
    ________________
    Laughed? I nearly died! And yet she’s still nattering away. Totally impervious to both criticism or self reflection.

  50. BW

    I take it ‘Mr Patrick’ is in fact Mr Chris Corrigan, former head of Patrick Stevedores and famous for the Dubai, balaclavas and dogs on the waterfront episode.

    If you are after his other Liberal government largesse – the Moorebank Intermodal on prime Defence land in Sydney’s western suburbs somehow fell into his Cube company’s lap. And another lucky coincidence is his Websters company getting showered with MDB water buyback money to build dams in the MDB.

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