An off week in the fortnightly cycles for both Newspoll and Essential Research, but we do have three fairly detailed sets of attitudinal polling doing the rounds:
• Ipsos has results from its monthly Issues Monitor series, which records a dramatic escalation in concern about the environment. Asked to pick the three most salient out of 19 listed issues, 41% chose the environment, more than any other. This was up ten on last month’s survey, and compares with single digit results that were not uncommonly recorded as recently as 2015. Cost of living and health care tied for second on 31%, respectively down three and up six on last month. The economy was up one to 25%, and crime down one to 21%. On “party most capable to manage environmental issues across the generations”, generations up to and including X gave the highest rating to the Greens, towards whom the “boomer” and “builder” generations showed their usual hostility. The poll was conducted online from a sample of 1000.
• A poll by YouGov for the Australian Institute finds 79% expressing concern about climate change, up five since a similar poll in July. This includes 47% who were very concerned, up ten. Among those aged 18 to 34, only around 10% expressed a lack of concern. Fifty-seven per cent said Australia was experiencing “a lot” of climate change impact, up 14%; 67% said climate change was making bushfires worse, with 26% disagreeing; and only 33% felt the Coalition had done a good job “managing the climate crisis” (a potentially problematic turn of phrase for those who did not allow that there was one), compared with 53% who took the contrary view. The poll was conducted January 8 to 12 from a sample of 1200; considerable further detail is available through the full report.
• The Institute of Public Affairs has a poll on Australia Day and political correctness from Dynata, which has also done polling on the other side of the ideological aisle for the aforesaid Australia Institute. This finds 71% agreeing that “Australia Day should be celebrated on January 26” (55% strongly, 16% somewhat), and 68% agreeing Australia had become too politically correct (42% strongly, 26% somewhat). Disagreement with both propositions was at just 11%. A very substantial age effect was evident here, but not for the two further questions relating to pride in Australia, which received enthusiastic responses across the board. I have my doubts about opening the batting on this particular set of questions by asking if respondents were “proud to be an Australian”, which brings Yes Minister to mind. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the poll is the demographic detail on the respondents, who were presumably drawn from an online panel. This shows women were greatly over-represented in the younger cohorts, while the opposite was true among the old; and that the sample included rather too many middle-aged people on low incomes. The results would have been weighted to correct for this, but some of these weightings were doing some fairly heavy lifting (so to speak).
Elsewhere, if you’re a Crikey subscriber you can enjoy my searing expose on the electoral impact of Bridget McKenzie’s sports sports. I particularly hope you appreciate the following line, as it was the fruit of about two days’ work:
When polling booth and sport grants data are aggregated into 2288 local regions designated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there turns out to be no correlation whatsoever between the amount of funding they received and how much they swung to or against the Coalition.
I worked this out by identifying the approximate target locations of 518 grants, building a dataset recording grant funding and booth-level election swings for each of the ABS’s Statistical Local Area 2 regions, and using linear regression to calculate how much impact the grants had on the Coalition vote. The verdict: absolutely none whatsoever.
E. G. Theodore @ #1997 Saturday, January 25th, 2020 – 7:51 pm
The “structural constraint” is that the LNP are a mob of mean bastards. Let’s not overthink this.
Stopping plane flights is the commonsense thing to do, if the shoe was on the other foot then the Chinese would have stopped flights from Australia to China.
ajm
Damned right about them wanting to impose ‘NSW Day” on the rest of the country. Especially on the Nieuw Holland bit 🙂
EGT
Part of the disruption is the agility, or otherwise, of existing or new service providers. In some cases perfectly useful existing service providers are disappeared.
As with everything, NDIS implementation is subject to various signals from the Feds about urgent and important.
The personal Plan approval processes appear to be neither agile nor responsive. One direct consequence is people dying before their plan could be either approved or implement.
The traditional Australia Day Pacific Highway traffic jam was in full swing today.
For those who know Sydney: 80 minutes to travel north from Lindfield to the Wahroonga entrance to the freeway. A further 140 minutes to reach Hexham today.
Confessions
Thanks for the reminder re the flags on cars. I had forgotten all about them such was their absence. They were bloody everywhere for a few years.
poroti:
Good to know it isn’t just here that’s lost the car flags. Such a cringeworthy thing to do.
Oakeshott:
That would make the current Mr Murdoch the Second Lord Southcliffe!
Was the First Lord Southcliffe a Nazi sympathizer like Lord Rothermere? (Northcliffe had died before he got the chance). It is known that he lied to the Australian Government in an attempt to undermine Gen. Monash and get him replaced
Apropos of those who include in their diet live mice and bats, I’m sure we’ll be okay?
The NDIS does appear to have been rushed without any real strategy to develop the organisation’s operations. It is a real pity our politicians are so poor at building what should be a fairly straightforward orgnaisation. I say straightforward because the Government had several existing organsations to model the internals on.
beemer @7:08pm
This is the heart and soul of Labor’s problems. Labor doesn’t actually have a strategy to reach “low information” voters and disabuse them of ideas such as these. Labor doesn’t defend its record. Labor doesn’t attack the bad government under Howard. Labor lost the last election because it attempted to address these issues in the wrong way – having sensible well costed policies and then being able to constantly repeat “the budget surplus will always be bigger under Labor”. As if anyone is going to give Labor kudos in advance for that.
I would very much love to see the intellects on PB actually tackle this problem, rather than engaging in pointless bickering. So, ladies and gentlemen, have a go, please.
On points 3 and 4. Paradoxically, Labor could have actually used these to its advantage. Had Labor come up with a nation building plan. New industries, medicare for all, etc.. Stuff that engages people’s imaginations, Labor would have won and the reason why is because it resonates with what people already think about Labor.
Having a strategy that includes building new industries but also talking the language of finance. Co-investment. Underwriting etc. Using the model already successfully used with ARENA. That is a way to address point 6. Indirectly point 2. Major government led investment can be played as a way for people to enhance their personal wealth. It provides opportunity to small business for one thing.
One idea that has emerged in the last couple of years that is useful to Labor is the idea that business, especially retail and services does depend on individual spending and does depend on wages growth. What Labor needs to do is to educate people about economics. Tax cuts are inefficient at creating spending and growth. Why isn’t Labor hammering this one?
I’ll go even further. Had Labor “me tooed” certain parts of the Liberals’ tax cuts and instead doubled down on the message that “this will come back to you in the form of better schools, better health care, new industry etc etc..” people would have bought it. Labor’s mistake is thinking that everyone just wants tax cuts and no one relates to government spending in terms of how they individually, personally benefit. Many do, actually. And to the extent that its not known, one of the things Labor badly needs to do is to communicate to the “low information” voters that their rational selfish interest really does lie with big government.
Anyhow lots more I could say. I just think its time for Labor as an organisation to realise it needs to rethink its strategy and stop trying to win the same war over and over. It needs to reach out to voters and actually change hearts and minds, starting with educating them on what is actually in their own selfish best interest. Educating them that there is no Government Budgetary Constraint (ie: we have to tax in order to raise revenue) is perhaps a step too far. But simply things like repeatedly telling people that a dollar spent on a university comes back to the economy twenty fold. Things like telling people that the NBN that the Liberals wasted 50 billion dollars on is temporary and will have to be scrapped and replaced. This and many other simple and obvious points of fact that it needs to get out there.
EGT
Field Marshal Monash?
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/push-to-promote-australia-s-greatest-citizen-soldier-to-highest-army-rank
Looks like Trump was gunning for the Ukraine Ambassador as early as April 2018.
I daresay it wasn’t just the Biden angle he was working on.
Expect more to be revealed
Dumb suggestion by Tanya P. today.
I thought we left brainwashing and indoctrination to the Churches.
Also dumb because it will create a small distraction allowing some of the CPG to focus on something other than the Government’s problems.
Beemer
The NDIS in fairness was a complex thing to get right. It should have been an exercise in slow, deliberate culture building. Creating a service oriented culture rather than codifying and bean counting everything. Its a symptom of a wider disease.
My view is that every single Left individual should stick an Aussie flag out of their car windows.
Why not?
We have much to be proud of.
Why turn the flag into a Left v Right culture war icon?
Mexican:
Mr Morrison is in danger of converting some common and garden variety political graft (which “everyone” does) into something much more serious.
Clearly he’s not very bright, but those of his staff who are involved in this make the corresponding Rudd (v1) staff look like fonts of wisdom.
Boerwar says:
Saturday, January 25, 2020 at 9:00 pm
EGT
Part of the disruption is the agility, or otherwise, of existing or new service providers. In some cases perfectly useful existing service providers are disappeared.
—————————————-
In whose eyes were they good providers because the evidence in the first productivity report which did not surprise in the slighted was damming on the existing system. For far too long the disabled have been treated as second class citizens for others benefit and that has too end.
Victoria
Do you reckon the Democrats can get around the problem of the Repuglicans not allowing documents and witnesses by releasing as much as they can into the public domain and then hounding Senators with that?
Boerwarsays:
Saturday, January 25, 2020 at 9:11 pm
My view is that every single Left individual should stick an Aussie flag out of their car windows.
I’m with ya Boerwar…
” For those who know Sydney: 80 minutes to travel north from Lindfield to the Wahroonga entrance to the freeway. A further 140 minutes to reach Hexham today”
Sydney’s geography doesn’t favour communication. It’s a bit like an island connected to the rest of the continent by about 6 or 7 bridges. It’s probably the ideal location for its original function – an open-air prison. The metro area was almost isolated by bushfires in 1994.
Even in normal times it’s bad enough. I often drive to Newcastle (150 km) or the Central Coast (100 km). I tend to see the journey in two halves: the 14 km to the Freeway; and the rest.
He lives on in Sandgropia.
————————————————-
Northcliffe, Western Australia
named it after Lord Northcliffe, owner of The Times and the Daily Mail in London, and Director of Propaganda in the British government during World War I, who had died in 1922
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northcliffe,_Western_Australia
Steve777
Maybe we need a new movie
“Escape from Sydney”
🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_New_York
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_L.A.
Steve777
On a more serious note.. would you like to see Sydney connected with Newcastle by high speed rail?
Vic:
As always the devil is in the detail.
Cud
Further to your comment about the ALP, Howard was a higher taxing PM than Rudd/Gillard or Whitlam yet the ALP are silent on it while the Liberals run around telling people the next ALP government will be big spending like Whitlam was.
Image an ad “the Liberals say the ALP will spend like Whitlam, yep taxes and spending were lower under Whitlam than this Liberal government” then show a graph.
On the NDIS
Yep, it should have been more strategically rolled out with a focus on ensuring it had the service channels in place.
Cud Chewer:
Saturday, January 25, 2020 at 9:06 pm
Yet another long post, dear. Reference is made to old GG’s dictum: keep it short, even better, witty. Theses are better served in academia, not on a blog.
Mavis
To help CC you should provide them with the link to the style guide you wrote for WB’s blog .
Cud chewer
New information is coming out each day.
The Republican senators are starting to feel somewhat uncomfortable with this reality.
At present, there doesn’t appear to be the four Republican votes required to subpoena additional evidence to extend the trial.
ajm:
I’ll put you down as a supporter of the “malice” theory then…
I worked in the NDIS as a support coordinator essentially to broker services to achieve the clients goals. I also advocated for those stranded in small federally funded mental health programs to be given access. The NDIS staff at that time were clueless about many disabilities particularly psychosocial ones and rejected many deserving folk. One example a depressed woman with schizophrenia was asked why she couldn’t get out of bed, shower and clean her home. She replied she couldn’t and was told but you could if you wanted to. Depressed and devalued a decent person even more. The bastardisation of the NDIS to give the government a surplus is the worst I’ve seen in 35 years of health and community service.
Mavis
I’m perfectly happy if you don’t read it.
Bit disturbing that the Chinese are doing such a large lock-down?? That and some of the footage of hospitals there kinda makes me think that they may be under-reporting numbers just a tad. 🙁
Seems that the long incubation period of 14 days is a prob as people can catch it and have two weeks to get quite a ways away before they start spreading it. I would think that over the next couple of weeks we will know how dangerous it is as infected people die in numbers..or dont….
Interesting the ABC report i saw yesterday about a group in QLD working on a DNA vaccine for this.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-24/coronavirus-vaccine-work-starts-with-queensland-researchers/11896346
If that works and scales up then not going not be a big killer here, but would not write it off as a problem where nutrition and living conditions aren’t as good as here and people dont have the same support to just get over it when sick.
poroti:
[‘To help CC you should provide them with the link to the style guide you wrote for WB’s blog .’]
I’m nonplussed. All I can say that one this site, some tend to show how intelligent they are. What can be said in a sentence is often expanded to paras – too many words.
Mavis
Feel free to edit my post and show how it could be contracted down to a sentence.
Cud Chewer @ #2034 Saturday, January 25th, 2020 – 9:43 pm
“Labor is not very good at winning elections.”
Its labor’s fault
There you go a nice short slogan.
Cud Chewer:
[‘I’m perfectly happy if you don’t read it.’]
I always read your posts with interest, my point being is reductionism. Call me old fashioned, if one can reduce the quantum of words to make one’s point, all the better.
Lots of theorising about assessments of Labors financial competence.
From studying surveys of voter attitudes over decades, what sticks in my mind is that, generally, people think at a visceral level the LNP look after business and Labor looks after people.
The LNP is tolerated to run the place as long as the economy is travelling OK and there aren’t major perceived threats to things like Medicare, pensions, etc. The environment may now be getting a look in.
A lot of the survey reports being referenced directly or indirectly in this thread that relate to perceptions about fiscal competence are not really tapping that visceral level and responses are likely to be heavily skewed depending how the questions are asked.
Albanese seems to by trying to operate at this visceral level.
It’s all very well to talk about educating voters but voters are likely to be suspicious of this. The education really only happens when Labor is in power, which is why we have things like Medicare.
The problem with writing short comments on forums is you find people taking pot shots because they assume you are ignoring details. I think it really depends on what the comment is responding to and if its too someone that has made a number of points then a longer comment is justified unlike a long random comment that bares little with the conversation.
Mavis, if I had all the time in the world I’m pretty sure I could have edited that down to about half the length. I don’t. Its there for those who want to read it. It is actually an important topic. A complex topic. And there’s a lot of further information that I left out.
You could otoh choose to engage the substance. That would be nice.
Victoria @ #2028 Saturday, January 25th, 2020 – 8:31 pm
Additional evidence? I thought they’ve blocked subpoenaing any evidence. And also witnesses.
There will be a vote on whether the trial will call witnesses. Democrats need 4 GOP senators to support this.
And that’s assuming no Democrats vote no to witnesses.
AJM
From studying surveys of voter attitudes over decades, what sticks in my mind is that, generally, people think at a visceral level the LNP look after business and Labor looks after people.
———————————–
That would be a fair assessment.
ajm
Mostly agreed. Except that Labor doesn’t have the luxury of being in office and needs to communicate with voters on a number of matters of fact. It may be hard to shake the basic idea that Labor is weak with money/business. But what Labor could do more of is talk about how its in their own rational selfish interest to vote Labor. And that does mean a lot more hard, detailed work on policy development that Labor hasn’t done.
Short version. Labor can either wait for the the voters to get either totally annoyed (will take a deep recession) or just plain bored (and vote the Liberals out rather than Labor in). Or it can figure out how to talk to voters. Having a leader that communicates well is one thing. Having positive, hopeful things to communicate is another.
One final thought. If Labor were to accidentally fall into office it still faces the challenge that the voters hold a bunch of wrong ideas in their heads on lots of simple things. Case in point – Labor cannot act to fix the NBN until the voters finally get the simple fact that its irreparably broken. Stuffed.
James Muecke is a great guy to win Australian of the Year. As nice as Richard Harris who won last year. Is going to go after sugar (retinopathy blindness).
“ South Australian eye surgeon Dr James Muecke has vowed to use his platform as Australian of the Year to advocate for a tax on sugary drinks. ”
CC @9:21. ”On a more serious note.. would you like to see Sydney connected with Newcastle by high speed rail?”
Well, I’d use it. I have doubts about the economics of high speed rail for Australia. France has it – with 65 million people in an area half the size of NSW. Or Japan, 120 million in an area a bit bigger than Victoria. But I am open to persuasion.
Re Newcastle, the NSW Govt let spivs to dig up the last few kilometres of the Newcastle line to “develop” while building a dinky little tramway about 100 m South of the old route.
One of the biggest problems for the Chinese Government is that now, the Lunar New Year, is the time that huge numbers are travelling to be with family for the holiday.
It couldn’t really happen at a worse time of year.
Steve some basic untruths about HSR…
– Its there to replace aviation. No, its not. That’s a peculiarly Australian obsession. Nowhere in the world has HSR been established with the primary objective of replacing aviation.
– You need very large city pairs. No, you don’t. You compete with motorways and make it accessible and affordable. In other words its not the size of the city that matters so much as the number of people who want to use the train.
– Its hard to make economically feasible. No. All you have to do is get cars off roads. The cost of the road pavement not laid pays for the rail line.
As a matter of interest, where in Sydney would you be coming from and where in Newcastle/Hunter etc would you be going to?