Big news on the polling front as Newspoll unveils its first set of results based on what The Australian describes as “an improved methodology following an investigation into the failure of the major published polls”. The old series had been limping on post-election with results appearing every three weeks, but this latest result emerges only a fortnight after the last, presumably portending a return to the traditional fortnightly schedule.
The poll credits the Coalition with a two-party lead of 51-49, compared with 50-50 in the result a fortnight ago, from primary votes of Coalition 41% (up one), Labor 33% (down two), Greens 12% (steady) and One Nation 5% (down two). Interestingly, both leaders’ personal ratings are a lot worse than they were in the old series: Scott Morrison’s approval rating is at 43% (down three) with disapproval at 52% (up nine), while Anthony Albanese is at 38% approval (down four, though he was up five last time) and 42% disapproval (up five, though he was down seven last time). No news yet on preferred prime minister, which is presumably still a thing (UPDATE: Morrison’s lead narrows from 46-32 to 46-35).
On the methodological front, the poll has dropped robopolling and is now conducted entirely online. The sample size of 1519 is similar to before (slightly lower in fact), but the field work dates are now Thursday to Saturday rather than Thursday to Sunday. In a column for the newspaper, Campbell White of YouGov Asia-Pacific, which conducts the poll, offers the following on why robopolling has been abandoned:
A decade or so ago, most people had landlines and they tended to answer them. There was very little call screening. This meant getting a representative sample was easier and pollsters did not need to be so skilled in modelling and scaling their data. The truth is, the old days are never coming back. In order to do better, we need to consider what we can do differently. We’ve seen a consistent pattern overseas where telephone polling has become less accurate and online polling more so as fewer people answer phone calls and more and more people are online.
White further notes that “annoying and invasive” robopolling is “answered largely by older people or those who are very interested in politics”, while “busy people who are less interested in politics either don’t answer or hang up”. He also reveals that the new series will “weight the data by age interlocked with education and have precise quotas for different types of electorate throughout Australia”, consistent with YouGov’s methodology internationally.
Hopefully the restated commitment to “greater transparency” means we will shortly see comprehensive details of demographic breakdowns and weightings, a commonplace feature of British and American polling that Australian poll watchers could only envy. Stay tuned.
One of the great historical fiction novels is Birds Without Wings. It is set in a fictional village in the region of Anatolia during the final 20 years of the Ottoman Empire.
I’m sure the insurance companies will do so, and probably increase premiums to cover increased risks.
Should make for an interesting discussion between constituents and their local member – Paul Fletcher.
N
Are we looking at a Kurdish region, an Armenian region, or a Turkish region?
lizzie
One for you
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=birds+without+wings
Parties with aspirations to be a major party of Government need to be able to address the question that excercises the majority of voters: “what’s in it for me?”. They are not idealistic. They might have concerns about the climate or asylum seekers or the environment but they are much more concerned about their after tax income, their mortgage, school fees, etc.
So yes, Labor has to go after a share of the Centre. The Greens don’t. Nor do One Nation.
I actually support Proportional Representation. The idea of a “local member” representing you is a polite fiction. My “local member” will always be a “Liberal” who won’t represent me in “this lifetime or the next”.
So PR with a threshold of about 3 or 4% in a Parliament of about 150. Labor get about 50 seats, hopefully a bit more; the Greens about 15; the Nationals get about 7 or 8. Maybe the “Liberals” split up into a hard right party and a centre-right party. One can dream.
E. G. Theodore @ #841 Tuesday, November 26th, 2019 – 6:38 pm
Actually she grew up on her families dairy farm.
Plenty of cattle.
All I know is that The Greens always put up a candidate in my seat and they always end up with ~10% of the vote. You can’t win with that.
C@tmomma @ #857 Tuesday, November 26th, 2019 – 7:17 pm
Perhaps not. But you can decide who wins.
Boerwar, Birds Without Wings is set in southwestern Anatolia in what is now Turkey. The village comprises Muslims who are ethnically Turk, Orthodox Christians who are ethnically Greek, and they all speak a dialect of Turkish. The emotional climax of the novel is when the government of Kemal Attaturk forces the ethnically Greek residents to move to Greece, even though they don’t speak Greek and have no ties to Greece.
In case it’s missed people’s notice.
The court ruling about Trump not being above the law will reverberate to here too.
Not only does it say in democracy corruption is verboten or you have a king or dictatorship. It also says that the Democrats will win the election against Trump or Pence.
The manifest destiny of the minority dictatorship Trump is trying to impose is going to fail. This will mean election loss. This will mean Morrison will be sitting out in that famous creek in his canoe on climate change sooner rather than later.
Yes I am assuming SCOTUS will so rule. I just don’t see them turning their back on the Republic
Edit: Referring to the Don Mcghan case of course
Unfortunately it is a polite fiction that many people seem invested in. I think it might help if we completely separated the constituency work that MPs currently perform from the legislative work of MPs. Elect a district-based Citizens’ Advocate who does the constituency work – helping people to navigate bureaucracies and so on – but this person isn’t a Member of Parliament. Elect the parliament on a proportional basis. Legislating, done well, is a full-time job. Constituency work / bureaucratic troubleshooting, done well, is a full-time job. I think it is completely arbitrary and unhelpful that those two distinct roles happen to be combined in the same person under the current system.
Here are some of the Greens policies that ensure, while they hold them, that the Greens will never ‘connect’ to the farmers, rural and regional communities:
Close down:
Beef feedlots
Piggeries
Poultry sheds
Biofuel operations
Native forestry industry
Rodeos
Camp drafts
Dog racing
Trots racing
Jumps racing
Live exports of beef
Live exports of sheep
Live exports of goats
All uranium mines
Lucas Heights reactor/radiation medical production
All uranium exports
All coal mines
All conventional gas production facilities
All coal seam gas production facilities
Deep sea bottom trawling
All oil production facilities
Beef farming
Sheep farming
Cotton industry (on current indications, might as well add the irrigated olive and almond industries because the chief thresholds for those industries are the same as those for the cotton industry).
Warship manufacturing
Fighter component manufacturing
Infantry fighting vehicle manufacturing
The Singapore Air training facility in Queensland
The three joint spy bases
Around a dozen major fleet, air and army bases
All facilities that enable the deployment of nuclear weapons – whatever that means.
‘Nicholas says:
Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 7:23 pm
Boerwar, Birds Without Wings is set in southwestern Anatolia in what is now Turkey. The village comprises Muslims who are ethnically Turk, Orthodox Christians who are ethnically Greek, and they all speak a dialect of Turkish. The emotional climax of the novel is when the government of Kemal Attaturk forces the ethnically Greek residents to move to Greece, even though they don’t speak Greek and have no ties to Greece.’
Ah. The story of a last eddy of the great going out of the tide of Greek Constantinople.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsUYqF32EdU
I believe I would be happy with a unicameral proportional representation system with fixed terms of four years. Get rid of the states and territories to go with it, of course. They generate terrible inefficiencies.
Imagine having only a couple of hundred politicians instead of over a thousand!
“This will mean Morrison will be sitting out in that famous creek in his canoe on climate change sooner rather than later.”
With no means of propulsion…
Me too.
I’m not sure about abolishing the states and territories. I’m skeptical about their value but I wonder whether they may provide a measure of subsidiarity, of decision-making that is somewhat closer to the people than what a national government can achieve.
It’s not just about us …
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-26/nine-people-killed-as-deadly-rainstorms-hit-parts-of-europe/11740482
Welcome to climate change, 2019 style. But, of course, it only gets worse from here 🙁
Nicholas
‘I think it is completely arbitrary and unhelpful that those two distinct roles happen to be combined in the same person under the current system.’
I disagree. You only become aware of issues if you are dealing with their consequences.
I wrote a lot of policy on the basis of people contacting me with a problem. I could then work out if the problem was unique to them or whether there was an underlying issue which meant that others (who weren’t coming forward) would likely be experiencing the same problem.
Legislators have to assume that the legislation they’ve produced is as perfect as it can be. The loopholes, the unintended consequences, the problems with wording etc etc only become obvious later. If the legislator is dealing with these, it is easier for them to understand that the law they thought was perfect isn’t.
Separating the functions would mean that legislators didn’t understand what needed legislation in the first place and didn’t experience the direct consequence of the legislation in the second.
Bowrwar @7:31pm
I agree with closing down, or at least curtailing, about a third of the things on that list.
Pretty sure no one would mistake me for a Green.
Nicholas @7:29. Interesting idea that seems to have merit.
“I’m sure the insurance companies will do so, and probably increase premiums to cover increased risks.”
I’m sure that our esteemed Prime Moron will have a word to them about that. Exploiting FEAR to jack up premiums!!! Should be a law against it!!!
Nicholas, what the Ataturk did in the early 1920s was similar to 1948 in India/Pakistan.
Something like 3 million ethnic Greeks were expelled to Greece, and Turkey took back around 1.5m ethnic Turks. They neglected Cyprus, though the British were complicit in the post WW1 carve up and resettlement.
After 100 years, the Greeks and Turks are barely on speaking terms, grudgingly sharing the NATO table.
BW – much as I understand your anger re the Greens, I don’t think they are going to go away. They are not a type of latter day Australian Democrats party of the soft middle. Their vote may well not go beyond 10% but they are here to stay. In Germany they are actually making ground. Biggest problem for the Greens is that they are spread thinly over most electorates in Oz and where there are a lot of them, they are a threat to Labor and not the LNP. I have some sympathy for their starry-eyed optimism but they would make lousy government. That said. the Greens are hated with a passion by the conservatives and in that regard, I am pleased they are out there doing their stuff…..
This is how our LNP rulers and their running dogs get their Jollies. Kevin Donnelly had a book launch in Sydney today, and putting a J. Leak cartoon on the cover was marginally worse than inviting Abbott to launch the tome..
I do think we need too update our democratic system to cope with the rapidly changing polity that is the 21st Century.
I wish I knew how to do this
update to our democracy softwarefind a new system that provide democracy in our 24/7 interconnected world. The new system would need to cope with a social space replete with fake news, successfully aimed at capturing the low-information, low-education demographic. They may only be 15% of Australia, but capturing that vote is enough to swing elections.I am tending to think that Multi-member electorates combined with broader proportional representation might be a good thing.
And literally, a new group of MPs (or similar) who would be elected on a six-monthly basis, and who had a real influence on government. The people (Volk?) are impatient. they want quick input into the political process.
If we could get things right, the Greens could play a useful role in saying things that Labor can’t – rather like One Nation for the “Liberals”.
No, no, no, no, NO!!!
That’s exactly the line Bowen went with in 2013, and the public response was basically “Aha, so you admit that your spending got us into this mess!” Even among those who conceded that some spending was necessary, the common belief was that it was excessive and poorly-targeted. In my eyes, this widespread view was quite clearly the main cause of that election result, as much as certain elements in the party self-servingly try to put it all down to climate policy and/or asylum seekers.
And it’s not even true! The fact of the matter was that the GFC-driven collapse in revenue meant that Australia was doomed to go into the red no matter what. However, the stimulus measures, by ensuring that we avoided a recession, actually served to stop these figures from being larger than they already were. That is what needs to be drummed into the skulls of the great unwashed, but for the past decade, Labor seem to have regarded this to be too hard a task (with the honourable exception of Lindsay Tanner – plus Rudd himself after regaining the leadership, but only for the first month or so, after which he sealed his fate by drifting away from this message).
William summed it up well during the 2010 campaign – I can’t find the exact quote, but it was something like: “They have a good story to tell on the economy, but it didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t bother telling it.” And so it continues…
‘Andrew_Earlwood says:
Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 7:53 pm
Bowrwar @7:31pm
I agree with closing down, or at least curtailing, about a third of the things on that list.
Pretty sure no one would mistake me for a Green.’
You miss the point entirely, I am afraid.
My point is not the worthiness or otherwise of the individual policies. My point was that the sum total suite of the Greens policies are massively destructive of current rural and regional economies and societies. In fact, I have just discovered another suite of Greens bans: duck hunting, deer hunting, pig hunting, and even your humble potting a rabbit.
There is a bit of a grey area. The Greens policies do not outright specify banning flat racing or recreational angling but it is difficult not to believe that their catchall principles on sentient beings would not include banning flat racing or recreational angling when they get around to it. But the votes! What about your inner urbs Compleat Angler type flyfisher! As a matter of geographical interest a lot of urbs people go out and do a bit of casual fishing during the Christmas break and at trout opening.
My point is this. Basically the total suite of Greens policies would absolutely hammer the regions. The regions know it and vote accordingly. The notion that the Greens will ‘connect’ with farmers is absurd. Under Greens policies tens of thousands of existing farmers would be on Newstart.
For Labor, being associated with the Greens has already led, IMO, to electoral disaster in the regions.
That is the point.
The Coalition, had they been in power in 2008, would simply have allowed unemployment to go into double digits, as it did in so many other countries. It would have helped their agenda.
EDIT: William summed it up well during the 2010 campaign – I can’t find the exact quote, but it was something like: “They have a good story to tell on the economy, but it didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t bother telling it.”
Great observation.
‘Tricot says:
Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 8:00 pm
BW – much as I understand your anger re the Greens, I don’t think they are going to go away. ‘
I agree.
The Green have not achieved anything for thirty years and they are still there. Why would we expect them to do anything different for the next thirty years?
Boerwar:
Did you watch Qanda last night? If so I’d be interested in your thoughts on the discussion if you wanted to share them.
Boerwar, Birds Without Wings is set in southwestern Anatolia in what is now Turkey. The village comprises Muslims who are ethnically Turk, Orthodox Christians who are ethnically Greek, and they all speak a dialect of Turkish. The emotional climax of the novel is when the government of Kemal Attaturk forces the ethnically Greek residents to move to Greece, even though they don’t speak Greek and have no ties to Greece.
I visited an abandoned greek villiage near Fethiye. It was… weird. The local Turks wouldn’t go near it out of respect, it seemed, but were happy for us go through it as tourists.
‘Steve777 says:
Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 8:10 pm
If we could get things right, the Greens could play a useful role in saying things that Labor can’t – rather like One Nation for the “Liberals”.’
This would only work if:
1. Labor had never had working agreements with the Greens when in government.
2. Labor will never have a working agreement with the Greens when in government.
3. The Coalition stops painting Labor as being in bed with the Greens.
4. Greens leaders like Di Natale stop boasting about how the Greens will use the BOP to force Labor to adopt their policies.
My assessment: an interesting idea but not very likely.
C
I did not see Q&A last night.
DM
The traces empires leave are, IMO, fascinating.
I suppose it is personal because I am a living trace of of a lost empire.
I am happy for that empire to be gone. It was exploitative, based on racism, and maintained by force.
But it is, nevertheless, an empty place in my psyche, filled with the shades of people long gone, with silenced voices, and with broken social threads.
IBAC – Seven Labor candidates took donations from a man who’d been front-page news. Had they never heard of Google?
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/seven-labor-candidates-took-donations-from-a-man-who-d-been-front-page-news-had-they-never-heard-of-google-20191126-p53ed2.html
“Utter stupidity.”
That was the verdict last week on the Liberal staffers who allowed their leader Matthew Guy to attend his now infamous lobster dinner with an alleged mafia figure in 2017.
When the tale was revealed in The Age, it was the sensation of the year in state politics, and according to last week’s official review of the Liberals’ subsequent electoral drubbing in November 2018, the ill-fated meal followed the Liberal leader all the way to the polls.
So, who is going to carry the can for the “utter stupidity” of six Labor MPs and one candidate, including the Deputy Premier, taking donations from a company controlled by John Woodman, a man publicly associated with that very same suspected crime boss?”
Sprocket,
I really feel like vomiting when I see the below:
How Kevin Bloody Donnelly ( the integrated adjective – “He was out at Tangma bloody Langa shooting kanga bloody roo) has turned learning to read into a culture wars game astounds me.
I note something that came to my attention today, from a communication book between teacher and friend about friend’s kindergarten child:
“Your kindergarten child doesn’t seem to be interested in phonics. Most mornings he doesn’t settle, however, one Literary Groups start he gets on task [sic]. He did some great work during literacy groups.”
Friend called me to ventilate. What can I say – what sort of kindy kid, especially one who can already read the books at school reserved for “Year 3”, is “interested in phonics”. Also WTF is a “Literacy Group”?
Also, for the many knowledgeable people here, “phonics” to me means taking a syllable and mapping a sound to it. Am I missing something? This was useful when I first started reading, and to be honest it is still useful today when I am not sure how to pronounce a word – the international phonics code is helpful – but apart from these two extremes, why is phonics so important for kids in kindergarten to master.
DM
Apart from specific general regional shifts of populations there has been a europe-wide emptying of whole villages. The drivers are generally economic: leave the harsh toil of peasantry and get an easier and better paying job in the urbs. Ageing populations are a co-driver.
Boerwar @ #880 Tuesday, November 26th, 2019 – 8:18 pm
And so are you and the other Labor partisans here going to spend the next thirty years moaning about how everything is the Greens fault, instead of addressing the failures in your own party and policies?
No, on second thoughts, don’t bother – I guess I already know the answer to that one 🙁
Ensuring Integrity Bill being debated in the Senate. Senator Keneally has her say, worth watching..
https://mobile.twitter.com/kkeneally/status/1199202163987116033
“Utter stupidity.”
That was the verdict last week on the Liberal staffers who allowed their leader Matthew Guy to attend his now infamous lobster dinner with an alleged mafia figure in 2017.
When the tale was revealed in The Age, it was the sensation of the year in state politics, and according to last week’s official review of the Liberals’ subsequent electoral drubbing in November 2018, the ill-fated meal followed the Liberal leader all the way to the polls….
So, who is going to carry the can for the “utter stupidity” of six Labor MPs, including the Deputy Premier, taking donations from a company controlled by John Woodman, a man publicly associated with that very same suspected crime boss?
It’s not like it was a secret that Woodman and his consulting firm Watsons were linked with Tony Madafferi. It was in The Age. Front page.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/seven-labor-candidates-took-donations-from-a-man-who-d-been-front-page-news-had-they-never-heard-of-google-20191126-p53ed2.html
Firefighters union leader: ‘There are no climate sceptics on the end of a fire hose’
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/firefighters-union-leader-there-are-no-climate-sceptics-end-fire-hose
“United Firefighters Union national secretary Greg McConville, together with representatives of the local Indigenous community, Farmers for Climate Action and The Greens, addressed the “Our federal government fiddles while Australia burns: Let’s put the heat under them” event outside federal parliament in Canberra on November 25. This is what he had to say.”
D&M
Time for me to come out of the closet: I am a phonics man.
One of the things I had (have) pleasure with is helping my grandkids encode and decode all sorts of stuff. On his last visit my five year old grand child was going through the house and applying a magnet to everything. He would come back to me and report things like: ‘Does not work with paper. Works with some pots. Does not work with some pots.’
Very early in the piece I inserted the notion that one way of coding and decoding words was phonics. For a while we would go around and he would have a go at turning spoken words into phonics. We would play robot talk which was substitute phonics talk. We would go past shop fronts and I would decode words for him. He would the hunt for more of the same.
Needless to say, he is already reading.
[‘The prime minister told parliament on Tuesday, after a conversation with the NSW police commissioner, Mick Fuller, there was no need to take action against Taylor at this time.’]
This is why Fuller’s judgment is highly questionable and why it’s probable that the investigation is tainted as it gets off the ground.
What the hell is Morrison doing by contacting Fuller about an active police investigation? – neither having a clue. Fuller’s a political player – there being no doubt about that. This will have legs.
Apart from specific general regional shifts of populations there has been a europe-wide emptying of whole villages. The drivers are generally economic: leave the harsh toil of peasantry and get an easier and better paying job in the urbs. Ageing populations are a co-driver.
For sure, I saw it all over Europe. But this was different, because it was surrounded by thriving Turkish villages and pretty close to a booming tourist town. But this was left relatively untouched – the almonds and olive groves were still there, as was the well and the church.
Anyway, it’s interesting to see the effects of big historical decisions like this for yourself.
Douglas and Milko
Ah the Forever War aka Phonics vs Whole Language. I first became aware of it in late primary school. And for the best part of 50 years since it has been a “hardy annual’ in the literacy ‘culture wars’ . Dare say it will be for a few more decades to come 🙂
Firies, farmers want climate change action
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6508417/firies-farmers-want-climate-change-action/?cs=14231
“Farmers and firefighters have backed a Greens push for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to declare a climate emergency after recent bushfires ravaged two states in an early start to the bushfire season.
Federal politicians returning to Canberra for the final parliamentary fortnight of the year were greeted by climate activists, including federal Greens climate change spokesperson Adam Bandt.”
My view is that we are in for a Menzies period of around another 15 years of Coalition Government and that winners are grinners, and losers can look after themselves.
Even where Labor ekes out a one or two seat majority in the House for a government or two, the lag Senate right majority will generally fuck up any real progress.
As noted previously, I don’t expect the Greens to change at all. It is not their fault, really. Doctrinaire folk usually just double up when presented with some cognitive dissonance reality or other. Why change the habits of a lifetime?
That leaves Labor, and Labor’s scope for evolution in any policy direction at all is strictly limited by the Coalition/Greens wedge.
Maybe we will all get lucky and the Coalition will really succeed in destroying the economy? Now THAT is something to look forward to, no?
Peg
Cutting and pasting changes nothing. Adam Bandt and the Greens have zip cred among the majority of real farmers. Posturing as if he is their leader is, like, fake news.
DM
Stuff being left alone is unusual, alright. Usually the prior owners move back in and pick things up from there.