Patriot games

Evidence a large majority opposes changing the date of Australia Day, even without the IPA’s thumb on the scales.

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.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

2,257 comments on “Patriot games”

Comments Page 41 of 46
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  2. Here’s another sceptical journo. She’s been silently screaming.

    Katharine Murphy
    @murpharoo
    ·
    5m
    The Australian accent needs to do more than talk, either loudly or softly, just quietly #auspol
    @PressClubAust

  4. @AnthonyCole68
    ·
    3m
    I repeat.There are already significant regulatory conditions on new buildings in firezones.
    Scomo is playing with himself

  8. lizzie @ #1704 Wednesday, January 29th, 2020 – 12:28 pm

    This is rather ironic.

    People are to be quarantined on C.I. and will be released on “medical advice”.

    Anyone else feel a shudder at that?

    Why? It’s no worse than what this country has been doing to refugees and asylum seekers for years without remorse. And with bipartisan support.

    If anything it’s slightly better. At least the people in quarantine have a pathway to release!

  10. P1
    “They can all now presumably be created from their genome sequences. ”

    How? Theoretically, you could use the genome sequence to artificially synthesise a strand of coronavirus DNA … but how do you produce the virus capsule that encloses the DNA?

    A naked strand of coronavirus DNA is not infectious. The capsule of the virus particle is needed to attach to human cells.

  17. Headline inflation rose 0.7 per cent during the December quarter ahead of economists expectations and lowering the chance of an RBA interest rate cut next month.

    The jump pushed the annual rate up to 1.8 per cent from 1.7 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms to land exactly where the RBA had forecast for the year to December.

    The Australian dollar spiked as high as US67.70¢ following the data release, up from US67.62¢.

    The key annual core measure watched by the Reserve Bank – the trimmed mean inflation – came in at 0.4 per cent during the quarter, keeping the annual rate at 1.6 per cent, in line with the central bank’s forecast of 1.6 per cent for the year to December.

    While the result further reduces the chance of the Reserve Bank cutting rate at its February 4 meeting, it is now the 16th consecutive quarter where the trimmed inflation rate has undershot the RBA’s 2 to 3 per cent target.

    The RBA has said it was reasonable to expect that “an extended period of low interest rates will be required in Australia to reach full employment and achieve the inflation target”.

  18. Kakuru @ #2010 Wednesday, January 29th, 2020 – 1:36 pm

    P1
    “They can all now presumably be created from their genome sequences. ”

    How? Theoretically, you could use the genome sequence to artificially synthesise a strand of coronavirus DNA … but how do you produce the virus capsule that encloses the DNA?

    A naked strand of coronavirus DNA is not infectious. The capsule of the virus particle is needed to attach to human cells.

    Happy to be corrected, but isn’t inserting foreign DNA into a cell exactly what CRISPR and related techniques do?

    I believe we are getting quite good at such things.

  20. “ I could be talking out my a$%^&…. but didn’t Australia get through WW2, including the bombing of Darwin, Broome, Cairns, Sydney etc… without these new Scommo powers?
    I suspect this is just a concocted (but convincing) straw man to get him out of the Hawaii problem.”

    The constitution has specific defence powers to deal with all of that.

    The reality is that there is no need for any ‘new’ constitutional powers for the federal government to respond appropriately to civilian emergencies.

    The commonwealth has the purse strings. That usually makes the states compliant with any national intervention thought desirable.

    The commonwealth also has a range of powers to intervene directly if it feels the states are getting slack or heading in the wrong direction. These include the corporations power (which is massive in its scope given the outcome of the Workchoices High Court case), the interstate trade and commence power, the telecommunications power, the industrial disputes power, the navigation power, the territories power, the defence power (still potent even in peacetime) and significantly the external affairs power – which gives the commonwealth power to make laws of domestic application IF such laws are in furtherance of a treaty, international agreement OR (according to the Franklin Dams case and other HC test cases in the 1980s) the subject matter of the law touches on an ‘international concern’ (half the continent burning to the ground is clearly a matter of international concern I would have thought).

    The fact is ScoMo and the whole government have been asleep at the wheel. They have deliberately taken us backwards in terms of research into forecasting , mitigation and prevention of natural disasters that have any link to global warming.

    ScoMo allowed our navy fleet to shut down for summer because there was no threat assessment done. That’s why HMAS Adelaide didn’t sail until January, even though thousands of people were left stranded on the beach for a week. That’s why the RFS and the Army reserves were both caught unawares about the reserves mobilisation stunt and why they still – to this day – haven’t been properly tasked with anything useful.

    The list goes on and on. ScoMo has the power. He’s always had the power. He just doesn’t have ‘leadership’ in his DNA – only marketing and stunts.

  22. lizzie @ #2013 Wednesday, January 29th, 2020 – 10:38 am

    a r

    That was my point. The medical opinion didn’t count before.

    I suppose the difference is that they will only be there for medical reasons, so when those medical reasons no longer exist, there will is no reason to keep them there.

    Whilst asylum seekers are there because the Government consists of complete bastards, so there is no reason for them to stop being complete bastards.

  23. Fess

    Jane Norman has just assured us that Scomo won’t be introducing any “wacky new policies”. That was her word. Says a lot about her attitude.

  24. ScoMo has the power. He’s always had the power. He just doesn’t have ‘leadership’ in his DNA – only marketing and stunts.

    He’s a negative-sense, unraveled, marketing virus. 😉

  28. Unbelievable spinning from my local Lib MP.

    ABC Great Southern
    1 hr ·
    GREAT SOUTHERN CLUBS MISS OUT ON FUNDING

    Boxwood Hill Sporting Complex, the Shire of Manjimup and the City of Albany were among a list of the highest ranked applications that didn’t receive funding.

    Member for O’Connor Rick Wilson said it was a competitive process, that was oversubscribed.

    “One in four people get rejected regardless.

    “[Merit score] is one factor. But I think there are other local factors that come into account that are not immediately obvious to bureaucrats in Canberra who do these assessments,” he said.

    He said he was proud of his lobbying for the clubs that were successful.

    https://www.facebook.com/ABCGreatSouthern/posts/2620439114672462?__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARAtt24lbH6sgg3bq5O5hODytpGwQNob2zIQhqG78lPGkmgQeMQ09DzraMH7XMjKkfP24LOvFTzzWf0WbE-_lRb2Jh_G4yvk1M2sflnpyzrL0DuErsNWQN7ZWcfJw99IRNX2gkZIunTFPmo_4kM53V9Ng3Jr-v4uLCu9ec9sU9bE2iFKDp0A8N2bVzBTtx1A9vkFRRFmXHVte-7fBmaSMO2qSh9JKCKQv5p2QEIl2Oa2708OwuEZp0u2lDBnIT_Ef-4YtxIfp57KOt8D7B3J8oNL-K8cUmJj7iNwkhIdIJRSVKhea56DgoWwx0LJpLakNeXnj9BwYhrVsYDycadt4jI3eA&__tn__=-R

  31. Who/Where gets the funding in this country?
    Under the current government, it’s not just the preferred sports clubs:

    There’s schools that get funds to build a new swimming pool over those who have leaking roofs.
    Private Health Insurance providers over Public Health.
    Climate Deniers over Science.
    Mates over everything else.
    Coal over Renewables.
    Road over Rail.
    (feel free to add)…

  32. Am I misinterpreting, or are you somehow under the misapprehension that I am DTT (who was, I believ, the Ebola fruitcake?)

    You’re probably right – I apologise for linking you to Ebola.

  34. “Nor has it been destroyed.”

    Anthrax never will be. Its out in the environment and persists for many, many years as spores in the soil wherevever it has been.

  37. Key senate crossbencher Jacqui Lambie will consider backing the Ensuring Integrity Bill if the government supports her proposed amendments, reviving Coalition hopes it could get the union-restricting proposals passed in weeks.

    Senator Lambie has held preliminary discussions with Centre Alliance crossbencher Senator Rex Patrick about her amendments, which the Coalition rejected last year after it wrongly assumed One Nation would deliver the Senate numbers to get the bill passed.

  38. Just in case anyone hasn’t caught up with who Josephine Cashman is, she is the one attacking Bruce Pascoe and Dark Emu who has suddenly found her new mentors and is featuring them on her page. (Perhaps Tony prefers blondes.)

  40. lizzie,

    You wouldn’t get appointed to PM Tony Abbott’s Indigenous Advisory Council without the “right’ credentials….

    https://au.linkedin.com/in/josephinecashman

    Council Member, Chair of the Safe Communities Subcommittee
    The Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council
    Dec 2013 – Jan 20173 years 2 months
    Australia
    Members of the Council were announced on 23 November 2013. Membership comprises Indigenous and non‑Indigenous Australians from a range of backgrounds and locations. The Council is not a representative body, and the twelve members provide a diversity of views and experience.

  42. Anyhoo, I’m glad I missed it, the speech by Morrison at the NPC, that is. Sounds like an empty vessel making a lot of noise from what I’ve read.

  43. Wonder how many received grants in these bushfire areas by now?A couple who tryed to get a grant for their business burning down, were knocked back. They were on the ABC this morning.

  45. steve davis @ #2043 Wednesday, January 29th, 2020 – 2:30 pm

    Wonder how many received grants in these bushfire areas by now?A couple who tryed to get a grant for their business burning down, were knocked back. They were on the ABC this morning.

    Nobody we know has successfully gotten a bushfire recovery grant. I believe farmers may qualify, but no-one else seems to. And (as far as we know) the acceptance criteria for the new “small business” grants haven’t even been decided yet 🙁

  46. “And (as far as we know) the acceptance criteria for the new “small business” grants haven’t even been decided yet ”

    What color is your electorate coded maybe?? 🙁

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