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.
ar
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/explosion-at-mortlake-gasfired-power-station-could-threaten-electricity-supply/news-story/4d9afd35c67b5ebe3302e848bbe0066d
a r
Yup and this time they took out half of Mortlake power station. That nice chap Chris Uhlmann will be along soon to explain how the solar panel menace did it.
P
Oxymoron gotcha: ‘Coalition scientists.’
Boerwar
Not so much of the ‘oxy’ required in their case.
@boerwar
Jeremy Corbyn’s position on Brexit as been astute and pragmatic. However a lot of his supporters in the electorate are remainders and increasingly hardcore ones at that. Especially among the legions of young adults he has attracted, the love Corbyn, hate Brexit crowd.
Pegasus 4:20
“An explosion has shut down half of Victoria’s largest gas-fired power station and it could be months before it is back to full capacity.”
It’s the renewables wot done it!
Maybe gas power is a “diabolically tricky engineering problem”?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-09/nsw-government-investigates-after-students-laughed-off-stage/11291028
A ‘technical glitch’ according to the Education Dept. But according to the govt, the real problem is people of religious faith being unfairly discriminated against, and being unable to freely express their religion.
‘Tristo says:
Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 6:04 pm
@boerwar
Jeremy Corbyn’s position on Brexit as been astute and pragmatic.’
That would be ‘position’ on any given day.
‘Astute and pragmatic’?
His satisfaction ratings, now down to the teens, are higher than Di Natale’s but is that really the sort of threshold you want to apply to the putative alternative prime minister of Great Britain?
C
‘Students said the crowd laughed at them, claim they heard racist remarks and were given various excuses as to why their performance was shut down.’
Tomorrow there will be seven articles in The Australian excoriating this.
SK
Orrrr someone could not resist this temptation any longer.
Simon² Katich® @ #257 Tuesday, July 9th, 2019 – 6:06 pm
Good point. Australia can no longer even build a reliable coal- or gas-fired power plant, and some people think we should go nuclear?
It’s time we faced up to the fact that we are no longer a country with the necessary technological expertise to build anything more complicated than a hole in the ground … or perhaps a tollway 🙁
P1:
We were only talking about this the other day, but in respect to China. Now Indonesia.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-09/indonesia-to-ship-back-contaminated-australian-waste/11292540
We live in a place where ‘client relationship executives’ in an engineering company get paid far in excess of ‘engineers’. Not to mention ‘cost managers’ and ‘contract standover executives’.
Poroti, is that a coffee press?
I want one of these for camping, hiking, picnics, and the office.
I wish they’d move Stan Grant on from the Drum. Off the MDBA storey quick smart & on to kicking Labor.
poroti
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g9aLLIUuaQ
mikeH
And Katrina whatsit is saying people didn’t want a retirement tax. Nobody corrected her.
Boerwar:
I think you’ll find their speciality is to do both simultaneously.
I remember going to Kalgoorlie for work about 12 years ago and my host taking me on a ‘tour’ of Hay St brothels. From the outside. Now there’s only one left standing, but the tales of their heydays are totally WTF.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-09/brothel-closure-leaves-last-bordello-on-historic-hay-street/11289954
mikeH
This sums it up better.
“Good point. Australia can no longer even build a reliable coal- or gas-fired power plant, and some people think we should go nuclear?”
I’m sure there’s some Liberal mates who’d be happy to build a couple of nuclear power stations. Nucleons ‘r us.
lizzie
If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes politics.
lizzie
Wronski says it.
He also grumbles that no one admitted Katrina Hodgkinson is VP of the Nats.
Of course. There are still Liberals and Nationals who spruik nuclear.
poroti @ #252 Tuesday, July 9th, 2019 – 5:56 pm
And that lovely Leigh Sales will have another story on the evils of solar energy. As in fairy story.
adrian
Awwwww. Tears.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/onethird-of-australian-pensioners-live-in-poverty-oecd-report-20160107-gm0uno.html
https://twitter.com/7NewsAustralia/status/1148505105144012800
Stan Grant on again tomorrow night. Ugh!
George Christiansen and Jacqui Lambie and Malcolm Roberts all potentially caught up in this new clause.
S44 should be reformed.
Stan Grant is the worst, and it’s a large field.
True, but I’m not sure that’s the best way of selling it.
adrian
I find it rather amusing (though very frustrating) that some panel adjudicators (SG is the worst) make their ‘question’ so long and detailed that you can see the responder opening and shutting their mouth as they anticipate they’ll be given an opportunity to reply, and then realising ‘oops, not yet’ while they try to hold an expression of enthusiasm.
William:
Perhaps not. But seriously is this where we are in this country? Not only having to deal with a section of our Constitution that is anachronistic and outdated, but now we find there are potentially clauses and sub-clauses that not only impact those disqualified, cleared and re-elected, but former PMs as well? It’s ridiculous.
Yes Lizzie, with Grant and his ilk, it’s all about them. The guests seem incidental sometimes.
“There is also the tale of a Dutch prostitute who reportedly holds the Hay Street record for seeing 72 clients in a 12-hour shift, ”
I think I’ve seen that movie.
This is obscene. The Pension is too low. We should lift the Age Pension and the Disability Support Pension to the level of a full-time minimum wage worker’s earnings. Currently that is $38,500 per year ($19.49 * 38 * 52).
In my view the minimum wage should be lifted to $49,400 per year ($25 * 38 * 52) to reflect average labour productivity growth since 1970. That year is when increases to the minimum wage started to lag consistently behind average labour productivity growth.
“S44 should be reformed.”
S44, or at least the citizenship aspect, should be abolished. If you’re a citizen of voting age you should be able to run for and sit in Parliament.
‘Nicholas says:
Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 7:26 pm
More than one-third of Australian pensioners are living below the poverty line, making the country among the worst performers in the world for the financial security of older people.
This is obscene.’
So, what do they choose to do with all the spare time that poverty gives them?
Dio:
The 1975 video in that article is fascinating insight into our culture back then. Even the Kalgoorlie shire president spoke with a plummy accent. Ditto the local GP, and not just the ABC journalist.
When did we become bogans in how we spoke?
S777:
That works for me.
“Poverty” is defined as under half median household income? That would mean over $42,000. This is not poverty. Something is wrong here?
Something like a ‘citizens assembly’ would be needed to develop constitutional amendments for repealing section 44,
recognising first nations people in the constitution and fixed four year parliamentary that can get up in a referendum.
Tristo:
The Uluru Statement divided many indigenous communities. I can’t imagine how constitutional reform on citizenship that sought to recognise the First Australians might be received not just by indigenous Australians, but the wider community.
‘Confessions says:
Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 8:00 pm
Tristo:
The Uluru Statement divided many indigenous communities.’
The general evidence is the contrary: the Uluru Statement unified Indigenous people from across Australia. It is arguable that, in historical terms, it is the first full expression of Indigenous nationalism.
Confessions:
[‘S44 should be reformed.’]
S.44 of the Constitution can only be reformed pursuant to a referendum requiring the support of a majority of people in a majority of states.
An issue such as parliamentarians failing to verify their personal antecedents (or any of the other prohibitions under sections S.44) is contentious; contentious questions have not passed muster, with only eight of forty-four referenda having been carried.
Like it or not, s.44 is here to stay.