First up, please note that immediately below this post is a new entry on developments in Queensland, which include one and possibly two looming state by-elections. With that out of the way, a brief collection of polling and preselection news:
• In the wake of a contentious poll on the subject for the Institute of Public Affairs, The West Australian has published a WA-only survey on attitudes towards celebrating Australia Day on January 26, conducted by Perth market research firm Painted Dog Research. This found 65% support for maintaining the current date with 21% opposed, breaking down to 55-26 among those aged 18 to 39, 67-20 among those 40 to 59, and 78-14 among those 60 and over. Although substantial, the headline figure is narrower than the 71-11 margin recorded by the Dynata poll for the IPA, which primed respondents with two leading questions on being proud of Australia. This poll was conducted from 842 respondents drawn from an online panel, with no field work dates provided.
• Cory Bernardi has followed through on his announcement last year that he would resign to the Senate, which means his South Australian seat returns to a nominee of the Liberal Party, for which he won the seat from the top of the ticket at the 2016 double dissolution. The Australian ($) reports the matter will be decided on February 1, from a field including Morry Bailes, managing partner at Tindall Gask Bentley Lawyers and former president of the Law Council of Australia; state upper house MP Andrew McLachlan; and Michael van Dissel, former state party treasurer. Bailes has the support of conservatives including Mathias Cormann and South Australian federal MPs Tony Pasin and Nicolle Flint, which is presumably good to have.
• Heavy duty psephological pundit Mark the Ballot examines the deficiencies of polling before the May federal election, to the extent that the industry’s lack of transparency makes the matter knowable. The thrust of the analysis is that the pollsters’ models were “not complex enough to adequately overcome the sampling frame problems”, the latter reflecting the fact that surveying methods in the modern age cannot plausibly claim to produce genuinely random samples of the voting population. As well as the models by which the pollsters convert their data into vote shares, this lack of “complexity” may equally arise from herding, the unacknowledged use of smoothing techniques such as rolling averages, and over-use of the same respondents in online panels.
The essential political challenge for the Greens is to get Labor up with enough seats to beat the Coalition in the House but still with small enough numbers so that it has to depend on a Greens BOP in the Senate. At the same time the Greens hope to achieve incremental gains by way of representation.
The inherent contradictions are obvious.
The practical resolution of the inherent tensions at the heart of Greens political ambitions is usually resolved by persistent and unrestrained slagging of Labor leaders and Labor whenever they deviate from Greens policy settings. The Coalition is basically left to its own devices. This makes sense from the point of view of gaining a BOP in the Senate. It makes no sense at all when the activities of the Greens help sink Labor in the House in election after election.
Paradoxically, when not slagging Labor, the Greens feel very compelled to offer much sage political advice TO Labor. How to fix the organization. How to campaign better. How to choose better candidates. How to appeal to enough people to form government. Again, the inherent contradictions at the heart of Greens Party thinking and behavour is exposed. Why would the Greens, who are in competition with Labor, offer useful advice to Labor?
The inherent contradictions leads the Greens to get into to bed with some strange bedfellows. They joined fully in the Kill Bill strategy pursued by such wonderful peeps as Morrison, Joyce, Abbott, Dutton, Hanson, Palmer and Katter. They were all Killing Bill.
So, to an extent, Greens political behaviours have been successful. Over time the Greens have eaten into Labor’s vote. The Greens have a number of Senators. The Party has an MP in the House. OTOH, since Labor has been too weak to form government in the House, the Greens electoral gains are, in the absence of a BOP, essentially meaningless. Further, there is no real sign that the Greens are going to do anything much outside the envelope 10-15% at the national level.
And here lies another political conundrum for the Greens. Their policy process is driven by ideological zealots. The latter do not see the Greens policies for what they are in the eyes of most Australians: extreme. And if you have one or two known extreme policy positions, what lies in wait in the rest?
As an example, the Greens are loaded with peace ideologists. The working assumption of these ideologists is that Australia should walk away from the US alliance AND disband the ADF. These to be replaced with an increased emphasis on peace studies.
It is simply impossible to envisage anything but a tiny minority of Australian voters supporting this combination of policies. There are other Greens policies, too numerous to mention, that alienate the vast majority of Australian voters – around 90% of them, in fact.
Barney in Tanjung Bunga @ #148 Sunday, January 26th, 2020 – 11:40 am
Well, they might not choose to listen to guytaur. But they sure as hell had better start listening to someone … because their own record has not been very good recently.
Barney
All I am saying is that Labor does not have to mirror the LNP to win elections. Appealing to the right is something Labor just cannot equal.
Being for science and accepting that expanding the coal industry is bad for the planet is not particularly left wing.
What Labor has to do is work out how to do that. I think trying to mirror the LNP on coal is a mistake. For the same reasons it can’t go as far right as the LNP. Its just not believable for Labor.
I think Labor needs to have a real campaign for the workers on how their economic future is going to be secure. Lying to them about the future of the coal industry like the LNP is doing and accepting the narrative of the LNP of accepting the science means you are for closing mines down overnight won’t do that.
It just tells the voters Labor is not authentic.
Boerwar
I find your analysis very persuasive.
Song for this morning.
https://youtu.be/l5Cqp3pnE98
lizzie
Thank you! As an aside my small community effort to raise money for endangered species impacted by the fire is coming good. Final figures will be in next week but we are looking at thousands of dollars. Many, peeps helped.
Last night Josh at a young Liberals dinner.
Only women photographed and one white supremacy signal.
Where did they hide the males, and what’s he trying to prove.
Player One @ #152 Sunday, January 26th, 2020 – 11:42 am
Labor will always disappoint you and we don’t care. One issue Wendys like you don’t have much push.
or it could just be an unfortunate way in which she’s holding her clutch!
lizzie,
I think there’s one Asian tucked away at the back.
Greensborough Growler @ #158 Sunday, January 26th, 2020 – 11:57 am
Do you actually enjoy not being in government?
lizzie @ #157 Sunday, January 26th, 2020 – 11:54 am
https://twitter.com/i/status/1220830523490070529
Boerwar
Spot on assessment.
Given the Coronaviris has up to a fourteen day incubation period, those who’ve flown to Australia from Wuhan should have been quarantined for that period:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/authorities-search-for-people-who-shared-flights-with-coronavirus-patients-20200126-p53urx.html
Player One @ #161 Sunday, January 26th, 2020 – 11:59 am
Do you actually enjoy being irrelevant?
masturbation is a mortal sin. Therefore GG substitutes it for PB.
Boerwar
I know you often sound irrational and angry, but I also know it is because of your deep feeling for wildlife, so I forgive you. (Is that too personal for William? 😮 )
I’m not sure how well prepared we are to treat large numbers of patients who ty coronavirus. How many isolation rooms do our hospitals have?
PS I’m pleasant surprised to see the Australia Day wars are a bit of a fizzle.
Irish Republic election on 8 February
Interesting polling: Finn Gael 23 Fianna Fáil 25 Sinn Féin 21 Labour 5 People before profit 2 Social Democrats 2 Green 8 Independents 13
If these results occur at the election there will be either a continuation of a supply and confidence arrangement of FG and FF, which has not been particularly successful, or SF will be invited into coalition, something both the traditional parties have previously said was impossible
lizziesays:
Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 11:47 am
Boerwar
I find your analysis very persuasive.
_________________________________
So do i, but still no mention of the massive own goal by Gillard after the 2010 election. She was that desperate to validate her decision to roll Rudd and hold onto power that she did not think of the long term consequences of a formal arrangement with the Greens.
lizzie @ #157 Sunday, January 26th, 2020 – 10:54 am
That if you’re a political hack women who wouldn’t usually give you the time of day will line up to hang off your arm, so who gives a shit about climate policy, or energy policy, or bushfire policy, or any other kind of policy?
Last night Josh at a young Liberals dinner.
_____
Were the ladies members or just members’ squeezes?
Greensborough Growler @ #165 Sunday, January 26th, 2020 – 12:02 pm
Yup. Just me … and a growing majority of the electorate.
Shame Labor can’t quite seem to grasp that … or perhaps just doesn’t want to. Now, I wonder why that should be?
Trump would be so jealous.
a r
Tough but fair. 😆
Player One
“Labor” is not just one person, just as we on PB do not think in unison. For example, Fitzgibbon seems to be playing a bit of a lone hand. Perhaps he has ambitions for leadership. (sarc but not quite sarc)
P1
Listening is exactly what Labor will be doing over the next few years.
You keep wanting them NOT to do this and leap to coming out with policies.
Listening first, policies second.
In other Irish News (something I missed last week) the Northern Ireland Assembly has met and a government formed 3 years after the election. During the hiatus Westminster has been able to impose same sex marriage and abortion reform but the “curry my yoghurt” problem has not been resolved.
The girl on the Josh’s left looks uncomfortable with his elbow’s position, whilst the one on his right looks much more comfortable and confident have turned her back on him.
Diogenes:
[‘I’m not sure how well prepared we are to treat large numbers of patients who ty coronavirus. How many isolation rooms do our hospitals have?’]
It’s said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That prevention might have included a quarantine period, not necessarily in isolation rooms, and the cancellation of flights from at least Wuhan. The Morrison Government fell well short of preparing for the bush fire crisis. I hope it’s not going to repeat the same mistake with the coronavirus, Xi Jinping describing the situation as “grave”.
I see that folk are getting antsy when parsing the 1932 German election results.
Many split hairs have fallen.
The Nazis clearly failed to achieve a majority of seats in both elections and indeed went backwards in the November election. This was important because unlike many other parties they lacked natural coalition partners. In fact the November election was held as a direct consequence of their inability to make good their dominant, yet minority, position in Parliament. The November results were a major disappointment for the Nazis. There is little doubt about that. However coalition talks continued and ultimately the Catholic Centrist Chancellor, van Papen – who had ruled via degrees since July – blinked and did a deal with Hitler which lead to the first Nazi administration being sworn in on 30 January 1933.
So, Boerwar would appear to be correct, from a certain amount point of view; but perhaps Bernie and the Sandernistas are also correct. From a certain point of view.
Ultimately, I’ve always thought the best way of describing Hitler’s ascension after the two 1932 elections as being the consequence of both the democratic expression of Germans and backroom political manoeuvring equally.
Perhaps be best way of stating history succinctly is to say that Hitler came to power democratically.
zoomster @ #177 Sunday, January 26th, 2020 – 9:18 am
But zoom, they only need to listen to P1, guytaur, Rex and Peg and their problems would be solved.
Diogenes
Should we be concerned with respect to this virus?
What a fool I am!
Just now heading off to the oval to play in the CFS vs the pub Australia Day cricket match.
Given China’s prior approach to pandemics (eg, SARS), you can bet your bottom dollar that when Xi Jinping describes the situation as “grave”, he’s not understating the matter:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/china-downplaying-sars-who-20030417-gdgm8s.html
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/china-coronavirus-spread-is-accelerating-xi-jinping-warns/news-story/d5c2e662c432acc1d8c281b0eda50028
‘Taylormade says:
Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 12:08 pm
lizziesays:
Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 11:47 am
Boerwar
I find your analysis very persuasive.
_________________________________
So do i, but still no mention of the massive own goal by Gillard after the 2010 election. She was that desperate to validate her decision to roll Rudd and hold onto power that she did not think of the long term consequences of a formal arrangement with the Greens.’
IMO, both Labor and the Greens have over the course of the last three decades made many bad decisions with respect to their political approaches to each other.
One of the issues is that, on the very, very rare occasions when the Greens get what they aspire to: Labor in government with a Greens sole Senate BOP, the inherent contradictions of the core Greens political strategies are forced to the surface. Some of these contradictions include:
1. It is impossible to implement pure policies once you are in government. Compromise is virtually inevitable.
2. So, the Greens find themselves supporting compromise policies. This causes inherent contradictions and tensions inside the Greens Party.
3. The Greens are still in open competition with Labor -especially while a Labor government/Greens BOP is in effect. The Greens claimed victory for the compromise wins and continued to slag Labor for the compromise losses. They will keep this up for decades, long after the original policy decisions were made, or blocked or, more often, destroyed totally by subsequent Coalition governments.
4. In practical terms the Greens find it difficult to be a party of protest AND to hold a position in a fully functioning part of Government. Do the Greens protest against themselves?
5. Many Greens policies simply do not get a look in at all during any BOP period. Essentially, the Greens depend on (any) Labor government taking a policy lead and the Greens trying to work that policy into something vaguely more satisfying in policy terms by the Greens using a threat not block any legislation in the Senate.
6. Apart from anything else there is now so much bad blood between Labor and the Greens that delivering a working arrangements based on a Labor House majority and a Greens Senate BOP becomes fraught. The Greens will have spent a substantial amount of their pre-election and election efforts slagging the Labor leader of the day, slagging Labor policies, and slagging Labor’s organisations, slagging the unions and so on and so forth.
Player One @ #173 Sunday, January 26th, 2020 – 12:12 pm
The most recent poll showed Labor in front and Albo the preferred PM. Now, you may want to argue whether that is indicative of futue election behaviour. But, on first impressions it seems to to be endorsing the current strategy and tactics of Albo and Labor. So, your alleged growing majority flocking to your cause seems to be another lost sheep Bo Peep!
Vic
It’s not my area but from what I can gather it’s similar to the flu but with a mortality rate about 3% instead of <1% for the flu. Unlike the flu, we also have no vaccine and no antivirals for it.
The flu quietly kills a couple of hundred thousand a year worldwide. They need to contain the spread of coronavirus to stop those sorts of numbers.
BK
Have fun!
BK
Opening bowler or umpire ?
In Wuhan they are building a new 1300 bed hospital in two weeks to cope with the extra patients!!!
Player One @ #173 Sunday, January 26th, 2020 – 9:12 am
Is that like the people flocking to your cause when opposing marriage equality and then advocating boycotting the postal thingy?
Diogenes
In Australia they would spend 20 years arguing about where to build it.
Diogenes:
[‘Unlike the flu, we also have no vaccine and no antivirals for it.’]
The Chinese are using HIV/Aids antivirals to treat those who’ve contracted the coronavirus:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047667/china-coronavirus-beijing-confirms-use-anti-hiv-drugs-some
And UQ researchers are working on a vaccine:
https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2020/01/uq-responds-coronavirus-outbreak
Diogenes @ #188 Sunday, January 26th, 2020 – 12:34 pm
There was a story on RN the other day about how Australian scientists were simply waiting for the Chinese to forward a copy of the gene structure of the virus and they would be able to create a vaccine and have it mass produced and in the market place within 60 days.
There is another inherent series of inherent contradictions in the Greens Party which are worth consideration.
The Greens policy platform is fully comprehensive. I have actually read it all. It covers all major current social, environmental and economic issues. The expressed aspiration is to form a Greens Party government with prime minister Di Natale at the head of such a government.
But the Greens do not predominantly run their Fed campaigns as if they are a government-in waiting. They run as if they are a single issue protest party. Last Fed election it was coal. The next Fed election it will be coal. To that end the Greens have been very, very busy stoking moral panic AND making a totally simplistic policy equation of fires/coal. No room for nuance. We can safely add huge amounts of personal slagging of anyone who disagrees with the policy simplisms. That is how single issue parties operate. One issue. Black and White. Pure or impure. Moral or immoral. I have yet to see a single Greens offer the slightest explanation of the impacts of reducing our exports by $65 billion a year. How easy is that?
One of the inherent tensions with running with pure and extreme policies is that the Greens peeps tend to talk to each other, and talk over all others. As an example, the Greens were so enthusiastic and so tin-eared about their fires/coal moral panic that they ran bushfire protests while the dead were still in morgues and while beaches were packed with peeps who wondered whether they were going to survive. Peeps who showed more mature political judgement were met with slagging about how it was never the right time to run that sort of protest.
The single issue party approch has significant political benefits and significant political costs. The benefits are that the Greens stand to win over a few hundred thousand more Labor voters in the next election. This will make little or no difference in the Senate vis-a-vis a Senate BOP because essentially the electoral system means that, failing a double dissolution, the Greens have to make large step change gains to gain an extra senator per state. The single issue coal campaign might also score the Greens Party another couple of Inner Urbs seats.
The political cost is that the vast majority of the Australian electorate will continue to consider the Greens as a single issue extremist Party not fit for government. After all the Greens are the Party that wants to walk away from the US and to gut the ADF. This is core business for the Federal Government and these policies alone ensure that the Greens are considered unfit for government in the eyes of 90% of Australians.
Further, the gains that the Greens make will nearly all be at the expense of Labor. And why not? We live in a democracy. But this will also certainly help ensure that Labor will not form government at the next election. And what price Labor failure and Greens success for another two, three, four or five elections? IMO, that is where we are probably all headed
More delayed progress in decarbonizing the economy.
Diogenes
Appreciate the feedback
Heat stress and the Australian flying fox
https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-51191849
Labor won in Queensland in 2015 because Cambell Newman was a fuckwit.
As Mavis said, the tipping point was the appointment of Tim Carmody as Chief Justice. If you look at the polls from that time onwards the ALP was essentially about even.
So Newman blew it all in his first two years.
The LNP might still have pulled it back but ran a shocking campaign in 2015.
I know, I was there.
I also know that any ‘progressive’ Labor
campaign in Queensland (at least with progressive defined in the usual environmentalist, culturally left terms) will not succeed. The demography and economic and cultural factors do not support such an approach.
Labor has been successful at a State level over the last 30 years because of conservative disunity and incompetence rather than any great pro Labor factors. If the LNP win the next State election and are reasonably competent they should be in power for a long time.
Mavis
I too was worried when Xi described it as grave. Normally China trivialised viral outbreaks.
I’m not sure how effective these cookie cutter vaccines are.