Essential Research has released its fortnightly poll, once again without voting intention results. It includes a series of questions on Scott Morrison’s visit to the United States, with results generally more favourable than I personally would have expected. For example, the most negative finding is that 32% agreed that Donald Trump’s presidency has been good for Australia, compared with 49% who disagreed. By way of comparison, a Lowy Institute survey in March found 66% believed Trump had weakened the alliance, and only 25% had either a lot of or some confidence in him.
Only 38% agreed that a good relationship between Scott Morrison and Donald Trump reflected badly on Australia, compared with 48% who disagreed. Other results were probably too influenced by question wording to be of much value. Fifty-seven percent felt Morrison had shown “good diplomacy skills” during the visit, a quality that might be attributed to anyone who maintains a straight face in the President’s presence. The statement that Morrison “should have attended the UN Climate Summit, alongside other world leaders” is compromised by the words in italics (which are my own), but for what it’s worth, 70% agreed and 20% disagreed.
A question on the state of the economy likewise produces a result less bad than the government might have feared, with 32% rating it good and 33% poor. Fifty-one per cent supported Australian military involvement in the Middle East, after it was put to them that Australia had “agreed to provide military support to their allies in the Middle East to protect shipping and trade in the region”, with 35% opposed.
Essential has not yet published the full report on its website, so the precise sample size cannot be identified, but it will assuredly have been between 1000 and 1100. The poll was conducted online from Thursday to Sunday.
Adrian A….in the past I was offended by Green campaigning against Labor. Really very affronted by it. However, I have learned that the G campaign can serve Labor. It illustrates how far apart the two Parties are. This is a very good thing. One of the reasons Labor has been losing vote-share is because working people conflate Labor and Green policies. Labor can only profit by showing this is not the case. The Greens are so Labor-hostile these days that their campaign reinforces this message. The Greens are Labor-hostile.
There is only one thing better than being supported by the Greens and that is to be opposed by them.
AE
You said exactly that. I pointed out that while a Medicare Levy exists (you said I did not that it doesn’t cover all the expenses. That was not my point) the LNP will always label Labor as the tax and spend party.
Its a very simple statement about the attack on Labor that the Tories make. Nothing about the Greens in my comment nothing about the actual tax policies except for the facts around the core value of universal health care and how the Tories are attacking it.
Edit: Sorry and suggesting an alternative way to deal with that narrative attack.
“No, they don’t actually. You just incite them more by doing it. I thought you could have figured that out by now. If no one replies to guytaur and P1, they have nothing to reply back to. Except the sound of their own voices. Or the other Green numpties. Which isn’t half as exciting to them.”
+ about eleventy million……
C@tmomma @ #150 Thursday, October 3rd, 2019 – 11:39 am
The problem with Labor at the moment is that it doesn’t even seem to understand that it is still losing, let alone why.
It is a shame we don’t have any decent polling at the moment, because I think it would show that Labor is still alienating voters.
guytaur says:
Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 8:19 am
Good Morning
Labor moving away from tax and spend betrays its values. No more universal health care. No more social security and the list goes on. Thats what tax and spend is and why the right will always attack Labor on this.
———————————–
Sorry to burst the Green bubble but saying you no long just tax and spend does not equal no more universal health care or social security. Just taxing and spending doesn’t achieve much besides a warm fuzzy feeling and clearly billions are already being spent.
Mexican
Medicare Levy. Tax and Spend.
The whole concept of universal medicare is tax and spend. Its the vision of the collective society instead of individualism.
While it exists the Tories will always call Labor the tax and spend party. Labor needs to accept this reality.
RI
If wasn’t for Natals’ little outburst the other day I would have said you only have guytaur supporting your campaign, but it looks as if you are onto a good solid strategy.
Meanwhile the Greens are making inroads
@ShoebridgeMP tweets
no public money goes to private schools
no public money goes to private schools
no public money goes to private schools
no public money goes to private schools
no public money goes to private schools
https://theconversation.com/the-uk-labour-party-wants-to-abolish-private-schools-could-we-do-that-in-australia-124271
This is the Greens stealing Labor narratives. Labor lets this happen because its scared of the word taxes
C@tmomma @ #167 Thursday, October 3rd, 2019 – 11:58 am
If some posters here didn’t continue to post such utter nonsense, day in and day out, there would be no need for me to comment 🙂
Guytaur: not even the lnp are proposing cutting the Medicare levy. They haven’t used the levy to portrait labor as a tax and spend party. They haven’t had to.
You are simply deluded and without a basic ability to engage and stay on topic.
You keep bringing up Whitlam as an example of campaigning on tax and spend. In reality he campaigned on the economic growth dividend providing the money. if you want to draw tenuous historical comparisons then it’s actually a pretty easy exercise to draw the comparison between whitlam’s 72 campaign and the line that ScoMo and Josh took to the May election: in both cases it was argued that economic growth alone would deliver what was promised (in whitlam’s are it was The Program, in Josh’s case it’s a balanced budget and enough money left over to pay for the tax cuts later on).
Both Whitlam and ScoMo said ‘no nasties, growth is the answer’. That strategy did not work out too well for Gough in the long run and I suspect that the same strategy is likely to fall as a house of cards for ScoMo and Josh over the next two years. Labor needs to position itself in advance of that to capitalise (contrary to Puffy’s approach, which I do have some sympathy for, lol)
Yes Labour a putting in a grand effort to lose the next election.
https://theconversation.com/the-uk-labour-party-wants-to-abolish-private-schools-could-we-do-that-in-australia-124271
AE
You are deluded. No wonder Labor is losing elections. You can’t even have a simple conversation about who the Tories attack Labor. I never said what the Tories were doing. I thought Labor people knew. Its Tory it lies
Yes Labour a putting in a grand effort to lose the next election.
https://theconversation.com/the-uk-labour-party-wants-to-abolish-private-schools-could-we-do-that-in-australia-124271
Guytaur:
You couldn’t handle Norway
“Meanwhile the Greens are making inroads
@ShoebridgeMP tweets
no public money goes to private schools”
Inroads to what? Some us remember the election killer Labor’s private school hit list was at the 2004 federal election.
Oh, and you may not be able to appreciate it, Guytaur – given your blinding ignorance of all things Whitlam – but Gough’s policy of permitting federal funds to be spend on catholic private schools was key to putting the DLP out of business and ultimately securing government for Labor. … just saying …
EGT
😆
Thanks for confirming my point about the bullying for having a different opinion
PhoenixRed
Rubin is correct. Trump knows he is trapped.
And he always lashes out and hopes that everyone will be distracted
It wont work this time.
He should have taken deal to resign
AE
You may not appreciate it but Gough Whitlam gave the common people access to universities. No HECS.
Of course that was enough for the LNP to label it free education that has to be scrapped.
This is the problem you are in denial about. I am talking about how Labor will be attacked not what Labor’s policies are. I am talking about how Labor reacts to that attack is what lets them win elections.
Whitlam did not do that. Whitlam like Warren took tax and spend to the election.
Paul Kidson, having posed the question “The UK Labour Party wants to abolish private schools – could we do that in Australia?”, did not even try and answer it (or even explain why he could not answer it).
Player One @ #173 Thursday, October 3rd, 2019 – 12:05 pm
Lol. The polling, fwiw, at 51-49, is still within striking distance of victory, as Tony Abbott used to say when the Coalition were behind by that amount. It’s only YOU that wants to paint it as ‘still losing’ as far as Labor is concerned, by way of your boring as bat’s pee rants.
Frankly, Labor understands better than you and guytaur, what it needs to do to push on to victory. And if they don’t, as you and guytaur waste day after day with unparalleled glee advising them of their faults, well, they ain’t listening.
One thing is for sure though, extreme policy explicitness, as you and guytaur advocate for, is not going to happen. No matter how many epithets you throw Labor’s way because it doesn’t satisfy you or guytaur.
And it’s not gutlessness by Labor, either. It’s rational consideration of the field evidence, as John Howard was wont to say. And you know who knew how to win elections? That guy.
It also doesn’t mean that Labor need to become a pale imitation of the Coalition. What it DOES mean, is that Labor need to win elections, if they are to do any good at all.
Something you and guytaur just don’t get.
Now reply with your trademark snark again, I don’t care. I’ve said all I’m going to say. If you and guytaur want to waste your days, and contribute to the greenhouse gas problem, by carrying on as usual, that’s your choice. And my choice is to no longer respond.
And I know already, like the outrage drug you are addicted to, you won’t be able to give it up. Outrage junkies need their fix, just like any other sort of junkie. 😐
“In a series of essays published under Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, noted:
Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information on easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target’s patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the “sea lion” may seem innocent, they’re intended maliciously and have harmful consequences.
— Amy Johnson, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (May 2019)[7]”
frednk says:
Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 12:10 pm
RI
If wasn’t for Natals’ little outburst the other day I would have said you only have guytaur supporting your campaign, but it looks as if you are onto a good solid strategy.
fred…I have quite a few friends who are Green-identifying. They get the G-propaganda socially…all the time. They are filled with contempt for Labor. It’s a staple. The Gs absolutely detest Labor and they promote their resentments to their mob. I have lifelong friends – former Labor voters – who have been taken in by G potions and who now mouth hate for Labor.
I think this should be published. I have Lib-voting family as well. They are quite taken aback when Green assaults on Labor are pointed out to them. They think Labor = Green. They’re very interested when this is falsified. Labor will do very much better when it’s made universally plain…..
There’s a lot of hate in Australian politics. This is a very unfortunate thing….as any voter you care to ask will affirm.
@ClimateCouncil tweets
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/04/climate-change-world-war-iii-green-new-deal?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR3jC6Z2H7YJ5nx5BPFC2YpQ1xvsDKZdIIeDWdB_9YLaY9qytpKmhoUlu9o
Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz: “We will pay for climate breakdown one way or another, so it makes sense to spend money now to reduce emissions rather than wait until later to pay a lot more for the consequences”. @guardian
@caitoz tweets
Wealth Identity Politics: Billionaires Acting Like A Persecuted Minority Is Peak Capitalism
“If you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany,” Langone has said of the rising pushback against wealth inequality.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/wealth-identity-politics-billionaires-acting-like-a-persecuted-minority-is-peak-capitalism-5872cde64dfb
Kate,
I’m pretty sure there are sea lions on the South Coast of NSW. 😉
The Climate Council will do their cause no good at all by affiliating with the Green New Deal. They will automatically discredit themselves and disable their campaign.
@fictilius tweets
Queensland LNP breaks with federal branch to oppose nuclear power and says focus should be on renewable energy https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/03/queensland-lnp-breaks-with-federal-branch-to-oppose-nuclear-power
This is a case of the LNP following Labor
The QLD LNP are obviously very well aware that there is deep public support for renewables in their electorate, as there is everywhere. This is a very encouraging development for environmental politics. The LNP are moving towards Labor’s position. Excellent.
RI
The Climat Council was quoting the same economist that said Wayne Swan did exactly the right thing on the economy to avoid the GFC. I will take the Nobel winning economist view over that of yours.
___________________________________________
@MrKRudd tweets
I wrote in Financial Review in August that Australia faced a 1 in 3 risk of recession next year. Morrison and Frydenberg ridiculed the idea. US manufacturing data now hit by trade war with China. It’s time for Oz government to review its policy settings http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-03/asx-tumbles-3pc-in-two-days/11570156
My point regarding Norway was serious.
The Norwegians, like the Hawke-Keating government, create, trial, improve, refine and (where necessary) abandon policy sourced from all sorts of thinking, the whole point being efficacy rather than some notion of purity or conformance to some ideology.
That’s the way countries (occasionally) get good government. It’s also the reason why the Hawke-Keating goerment is the only actually to cut spending in the pat 50 years – not due to ideology but instead due to pragmatics appropriate for the economic circumstances at that time, and ignoring any bullshit about “tax and spend” being a supposed “core value”.
I like Stiglitz as well. I won’t hold your endorsement of him against him, g. He is a great thinker and writer. He has so much that you lack…..intellectual rigour, logic, honesty, clarity….
Guytaur
You are conflicting two totally unrelated issues. saying you wont just tax and spend is not the same as saying you don’t support services.
The ALP would know that it can simply redirect spending to its preferred areas unless you want to argue that all spending is special and needs to be maintained regardless of need which isn’t a logical way to run a budget and taxation is not the only way government funds itself and taxation all goes into consolidation revenue.
The ALP also knows that debt is so cheap that it can refinance older debt at the lower rates while taking on new debt without necessarily losing control of the budget.
On a separate topic, US election procedures, I received my postal ballot today for the November US elections. It’s not how we do it in Australia. To give you a taste here are the 31 questions I am being asked to help decide. To save space I’ve only typed a short summary. The full questions are each a small paragraph.
Referendum Measure 88: Affirmative Action… Approve/Reject
Initiative Measure No. 976: Limit vehicle taxes… Yes/No
Advisory Vote No. 20: Added wage premiums for aged care workes… Repeal/Maintain
Advisory Vote No. 22: Increased retail taxes on logging… Repeal/Maintain
Advisory Vote No. 23: New tax on vapour products… Repeal/Maintain
Advisory Vote No. 24: Increased general business taxes (various)… Repeal/Maintain
Advisory Vote No. 25: Increased financial business taxes (various)… Repeal/Maintain
Advisory Vote No. 26: Expanded existing taxes to further businesses… Repeal/Maintain
Advisory Vote No. 27: Increased taxes on petroleum products… Repeal/Maintain
Advisory Vote No. 28: Increased “sales and use” taxes on non-residents… Repeal/Maintain
Advisory Vote No. 29: Increased real estate excises tax… Repeal/Maintain
Advisory Vote No. 30: Increased taxes on travel agents… Repeal/Maintain
Advisory Vote No. 31: Increased taxes on investment management services… Repeal/Maintain
Constitutional change: Add “catastrophic incidents” to emergency powers. Approve/Reject
County taxes: Replace expiring emergency services levy with property taxes… Yes/No
County offices: Assessor (circle the person you want or write in a name)
County offices: Director of Elections (circle the person you want or write in a name)
County offices: Councillor (circle the person you want or write in a name)
Court of Appeals: Judge 1 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
Court of Appeals: Judge 2 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
Port of Seattle: Commissioner 1 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
Port of Seattle: Commissioner 2 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
City offices: Councillor 1 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
City offices: Councillor 3 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
City offices: Councillor 5 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
City offices: Councillor 7 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
School offices: Director District 1 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
School offices: Director District 2 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
School offices: Director District 3 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
School offices: Director District 4 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
School offices: Director District 5 (circle the person you want or write in a name)
The politics of the ballot are interesting too. Each “Advisory Note” is “costed” for 10 years and worded to make it sound like a money grab by the government.
EGT
Hawke and Keating and Norway taxed and spent to support Medicare. I remember the Kerry Packer attack on the universality part that was defended by Labor.
Thats not being afraid of the tax and spend mantra of the Tories.
Thats directly confronting it. Packer was arguing for means testing to reduce taxes.
People want to vote early – get out of the way!
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/03/calls-to-cut-pre-poll-voting-amid-claims-it-is-eroding-integrity-of-elections
Mexican
No I am saying the Tories will attack Labor like this as sure as night follows day
Its just as certain as the GOP attacking the Democrats for being socialists
Australia has an elected government, the LNP, with policy settings based on the hope of further hyper-inflated house price rises, building dams to hold non-existent water, extracting coal for another one hundred years, ignoring the conspiracy of climate change, sucking up to a madman in the USA, alienating China, enslaving the poor and disadvantaged and privatizing the public service.
Various contributors to PB, having removed themselves from reality and fight it out, as the real world gallops past with its illusion of well being carefully manicured by PM intent on making his mark.
A mark first inked by Howard and Costello, leaving
Australia with a massive burden, a better place mostly unrecoverable and prosperity unattainable for many.
It’s difficult to now regard PB as a positive force for the good guys. (Whoever they are).
“Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information on easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target’s patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the “sea lion” may seem innocent, they’re intended maliciously and have harmful consequences.”
———————————
Sounds exactly like the ALP partisans on here, particularly the BS idea that any of the most prolific and boring laborites here have any genuine interest in reasonable debate. Frankly that’s why it’s not even worth responding to their BS almost all the time.
If nothing else the level of time and energy expended by the ALP partisan gang here really seems indicative of how petty and inane their political aspirations are. Happy to expend never ending energy on their pet obsession the Greens on someone else’s blog. That is the sum of their political aspirations. Spewing their predictable tripe here for ever and a day. As I’ve said previously some of the most prolific ALP posters here are the best advertisement against the ALP as their historical circle jerking and stunningly ridiculous rationalisations are clear to anyone who reads through a few threads.
So even the Qld LNP can see the validity of the Greens No Nuclear policy. Wonders may never cease.
At least they have the courage of their convictions to even say it publicly, rather than the obfuscation and fence sitting of the ALP because they’re scared of their own shadow being used against them by the big bad bogey man of the LNP, apparently.
“This is the problem you are in denial about. I am talking about how Labor will be attacked not what Labor’s policies are. I am talking about how Labor reacts to that attack is what lets them win elections.”
The problem will this sort of feckless jibba jabba is that it is made without any regard to the sort of policy areas that I have suggested labor carve out for itself over the next two years. Policy areas that to its detriment (IMO) Labor has largely ignored or paid scant regard to over the past two decades, as the new middle class that Hawke-Keating created waved Labor goodbye, as labor threw itself a decade long pity party after 1996 and lurched into the dead end of identity politics and redistributism.
The purpose behind what I am suggesting Labor now spends its time doing is so that Labor positions itself ahead of the LNP, so that is not reactive. Being proactive means that you get to set the agenda. If it is the right agenda politically then I’m betting labor can win on prosecuting it.
I want Labor to break fallow ground. Not repeat past mistakes. To till soil that labor hasn’t tilled for two decades.
It’s pretty hard in those circumstances to mount the argument that in some way I’m stuck in some sort of denial, that ‘everything is ok’ when clearly I’ve identified a missing demographic chunk of voters that labor needs to target.
In fact, it’s pretty obvious Guytaur that you are in denial: for you the voters I want Labor to target are verboten scum, even though they determine who wins. That kind of thinking inevitably leads to an election outcome where the ‘good guys’ end up with less than the required 77 seats in the House and less than 39 votes in the senate.
Focusing on jobs and job security and on familiies’ disposable incomes are the key areas of policy that matter, because they are the policy areas that in my view will bring back those missing voters in the outer burbs and regions to Labor.
I may well be wrong. That’s fine. I am at least trying to identify (1) the problem and (2) posing policies that address those problems that are (3) labor to its bootstraps.
Andrew_Earlwood says:
Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 11:28 am
…if cutting Qld and WA from the federation had actually occurred then Labor would still be an election winning machine: by my quick reckoning, sans Qld and WA, Labor won 8 of the last 10 federal elections. How good is that!”…
Even better, the citizens of your Great Southern Workers Paradise would all starve to death because you can’t produce enough food to feed yourselves and all the export income earned from your second rate minerals extraction industry would be spent buying water from Queensland at $1 billion per gigalitre.
How good indeed.
Thanks Quoll….we know you resent and stand against Labor. Good.
Remember Labor
Daniel Andrews won election from opposition.
Labor NSW has been out of the game for quite some time.
Queensland Labor is going to be caught when the LNP federally fund Adani. Thats whats going to kill Labor. It won’t fall over precisely because the LNP are going to subsidise it and Queensland Labor with its weak environmental approvals is going to be up to its neck in it.
For Labor as a party nationally thats a lose lose no matter what the fossil fuel lobbyists are telling you.
Blind Freddy can see it coming. Labor wedging itself again.
Lols, Not sure. I’m actually guessing that the points you make are also ‘not true’. Agriculture in qld and wa are both export orientated and have little to do with feeding southerners. NSW coal is the best in the world.
Besides, you are forgetting, if Qld and WA succeed from the federation we can always invade and conquer them and run their economies as vassal slave states. How good would that be: all their resources, none of their votes!
Geez. I reckon nath may be onto something!
@PunsAndQuotes tweets
Legend has it that if you say the name Greta Thunberg three times over a vegan sausage roll, an angry middle-aged man’s willy drops off.
Via @Britainforall on Facebook.
Late Riser,
I think you’ll need until November 2020 to consider all of that! 😆
The Do Nothing Democrats should be focused on building up our Country, not wasting everyone’s time and energy on BULLSHIT, which is what they have been doing ever since I got overwhelmingly elected in 2016, 223-306. Get a better candidate this time, you’ll need it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2019
Have a Snickers. https://t.co/vrWGo4Folw
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) October 2, 2019
😀
Andrew_Earlwood says:
Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 12:58 pm
…”Agriculture in qld and wa are both export orientated and have little to do with feeding southerners”…
Exactly right, and the Great Southern Workers Paradise will make for a lucrative and convienient new export market.
But don’t forget, YOU HAVE NO WATER.
I personally have three 25,000 gallon tanks and can fill them twice in a good wet season just from the roof of my house and a 2 car shed.
Would you like to buy some?
C@tmomma @ #170 Thursday, October 3rd, 2019 – 12:22 pm
I hate to be the one to point this out to you C@t, but Labor was ahead in the polls for the last 2 or more years …. and still lost the election. The current polling is probably about as reliable.
As for the rest of your post, I will give it the response it deserves …
Since about a fortnight ago, I’ve been extremely diligent in chopping drive-by insults and tidying up flame wars. However, I came to today’s disturbances too late, which meant it was not possible to neatly excise the malignancy. As a result, there may be the odd comment up thread that appears to be either responding to nothing, or reacting angrily to very little. This is because the comments they were responding to are no longer there.
Many commenters have been subject to the chop, with varying levels of culpability. However, the blame for the disturbance overwhelmingly lies with one person: Andrew Earlwood. At the minimum, his next dose of unprovoked nastiness will land him in the sin bin.
“But don’t forget, YOU HAVE NO WATER.
I personally have three 25,000 gallon tanks and can fill them twice in a good wet season just from the roof of my house and a 2 car shed.
Would you like to buy some?”
Mate, I’m from Sydney and my rain tank is still full as even though the catchment is drying out. Plus we have desal. No worries. Besides, as my vassal slave I don’t have to buy yours, I an just take it by right of conquest
How good is that!