The ten-week silence of Newspoll – and indeed Australian polling in general, so far as voting intention is concerned – has ended with a result of 53-47 to the Coalition, as reported by The Australian. To this, naturally, must be added the qualification that the pollster never once recorded the newly re-elected government with a lead in the entire three years of the previous parliamentary term. The poll has the Coalition at 44% of the primary vote (41.4% at the election), Labor at 33% (33.3%) and the Greens at 11% (10.4%). The report seems to be saying One Nation is at 3%, which compares with the 3.1% they scored at the election when contesting 59 out of 151 seats.
The leadership ratings have Scott Morrison’s approval at a new high of 51%, up five on the pre-election poll, and down nine on disapproval to 36%. Anthony Albanese’s Newspoll ratings are 39% approval and 36% disapproval, which is a) “the first net positive approval rating for an Opposition leader since 2015”, as noted in the report since Simon Benson, b) the worst Newspoll debut for an Opposition Leader since Andrew Peacock in 1989, as illustrated in this earlier post, and c) the equal lowest uncommitted rating for an Opposition Leader on debut, perhaps mitigating b) a little. Morrison leads 48-31 on preferred prime minister, compared with 47-38 in the pre-election poll, which we can now presume was flattering to Bill Shorten.
No indication at this point as to whether and how Newspoll is doing anything differently. Certainly it looks like business as usual to the extent that the poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1601, with The Australian’s report trumpeting a 2.4% margin of error that is less than the size of its error at the election.
Historyintime:
The cost from privatising Telstra (after Mr Beazley had structured it in such a way that privatisation didn’t make sense unless it was further restructured prior) is much larger.
Holding CBA in public hands doesn’t make sense if there are other commercial banks owned privately, so the whole economy cost of not privatising CBA was non-zero.
Asset trading is just about the last thing that should be government run (if it is subject to any political interference whatsoever). The government interference in the sale of the Telstra asset was large and significant, and highly detrimental over the following decades. There’s no merit in the Commonwealth government trying to make money from asset trading; instead it should try to get public/private allocation right at the start. State governments are in a bit of pickle; this leads them into asset trading, but that’s just a bad consequence of the underlying problem they face (no revenue base).
Andrew_Earlwood
But does that postie always ring twice?
Historyintime @ #900 Tuesday, July 30th, 2019 – 9:14 pm
The merchant bankers who clamoured for its sale, and convinced the government to sell it in the first place.
That’s nothing though compared to the sale of the old Commonwealth Serums Laboratory (CSL). Sold to the public at $2.30 a share in 1994. Check out what it closed at today:
https://www.google.com/search?q=csl+share+price+today&rlz=1C1CHMD_en-GBAU545AU558&oq=csl+share+price&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j0l5.15407j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
A reasonable job of the duo of Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de Perles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_pêcheurs_de_perles
A reasonable job of the duo of Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de Perles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-v-DZjZ9iY
Oakshott
Complainant on the stand from Monday after lunch and currently. Probably end early-ish tomorrow. Depends on when cross exam finishes. (It may have ended late this arvo ……. I wasn’t there till very end.
Then witness evidence …… I think about 7 more. Think it could go into next week, perhaps.
You may recall the outcry (“special treatment”) when result of 1st Pell trial was under a no-publication order, to protect 2nd trial from contamination.
That is routine and this non publication had been also applied during this guy’s several trials in last couple of years.
Don’t know whether I told you but in this case, judge ruled that tendency evidence is admissible (ie his past is not totally insulated from present case as is common practice). Pretty much expected since it is judge only trial and defendant’s history was known by judge and already in his mind; this wouldn’t be so had it been jury trial and maybe tendency evidence would have been probably 100% precluded from their minds.
Psyclaw @ #904 Tuesday, July 30th, 2019 – 11:50 pm
Outstanding. Past performance is a good indicator of future performance when it comes to people who molest children.
I shall add that Domingo attended Joan’s final performance with the AO, in awe of her. But that was post the post office incident. I don’t, however, think she was racist? – thinks she was.
Psyclaw:
We note with concern that you failed to address my concerns supra.
New thread.
Puffy and Lizzie,
Thanks to both of you for your posts. I will look for Travellers on Netflix.
Sci Fi is my special subject, and in about 18 months, when I am happy that my current, totally unrelated, project is in a fit state to hand on to others, I will write the book about Sci Fi and what it tells us about the future and our current situation that I have been planning for 20 years.
One of my concerns has been that most Sci Fi is actually dystopian rather than utopian, by at least a 75% / 25% ratio. I had thought this was unnecessarily gloomy.
However, I am now reappraising this. At times of great political and technological disruption, wars become more common, and authoritarian / totalitarian rule becomes more likely. Democracy is very fragile, I fear. In the era of machine learning (aka distributing fake news to the people it will influence most) we have seen this with the Brexit / Trump / Bolsanaro / Morrison / Johnson successes.
The news from the UK and Ireland, where I have spent the past few weeks working in Galway, is bleak. The Tory press in the UK (according to an article I read today in the Irish Independent) is painting Leo Varadkar, the Irish PM, as the villain stopping the good people of England exercising their free choice to leave the EU. I have since confirmed this while watching the BBC in the Bates Motel under the flightpath at Heathrow, where I am staying before the 24 hour trek back to Oz tomorrow. I note that rather than the Irish government, we have a specific person as a villain – someone upon whom to focus hate I guess.
anyway, the “Machine Learning” disruption is but a small foretaste of the AI (Artificial Intelligence) disruption that will be on us within a decade I suspect.
Skynet here we come!