Essential Research: sports rorts, ICAC, Australia Day

The latest from Essential finds majority support for removing Bridget McKenzie, but with a third saying they haven’t been following the issue.

Essential Research has not allowed the long weekend to interrupt the fortnightly schedule of its polling, which continues to be limited to attitudinal questions. Conducted last Tuesday to this Monday from a sample of 1080, the most interesting question from the latest poll relates to Bridget McKenzie, whom 51% felt should have been stood down by the Prime Minister. Only 15% felt he was right not to do so, while a further 34% said they had not been following the issue. The question included an explanation of what the issue involved, which is always best avoided, but the wording was suitably neutral (“it is claimed she allocated $100million to sporting organisations in marginal seats to favour the Coalition”).

The poll also finds overwhelming support for the establishment of a federal ICAC – or to be precise, of “an independent federal corruption body to monitor the behaviour of our politicians and public servants”. Fully 80% of respondents were in favour, including 49% strongly in favour, which is five points higher than when Angus Taylor’s troubles prompted the same question to be asked in December. Also featured are yet more findings on Australia Day, for which Essential accentuates the positive by framing the question around “a separate national day to recognise indigenous Australians”. Fifty per cent were in favour of such a thing, down two on last year, but only 18% of these believed it should be in place of, rather than supplementary to, Australia Day. Forty per cent did not support such a day at all, unchanged on last year.

Note that there are two threads below this one of hopefully ongoing interest: the latest guest post from Adrian Beaumont on Monday’s Democratic caucuses in Iowa, and other international concerns; and my review of looming elections in Queensland, where the Liberal National Party has now chosen its candidate for the looming Currumbin by-election, who has not proved to the liking of retiring member Jann Stuckey.

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.

2,092 comments on “Essential Research: sports rorts, ICAC, Australia Day”

Comments Page 36 of 42
1 … 35 36 37 … 42

  2. Victorian wildlife authorities are investigating reports of a “koala massacre” in the state’s south-west, with hundreds of the marsupials alleged to have been starved when their habitat was logged, their bodies then bulldozed into waste piles.

    Volunteers and government workers were on the scene at Cape Bridgewater on Sunday, trying to rescue dozens of surviving koalas.

    The deaths are believed to be the result of clear-fell logging of a plantation of blue gum trees in December, according to conservation group Friends of the Earth. The operation left hundreds of koalas to starve.

    …The department said it was prepared to prosecute over the events.

    “We are extremely concerned about these reports of a koala population on private land near Cape Bridgewater where animals are showing signs of starvation and injury,” a spokeswoman said.

    “The conservation regulator is currently investigating this matter, with the department.

    “If this is found to be due to deliberate human action, we expect the conservation regulator to act swiftly against those responsible.”

    The departmental spokeswoman said the rescue and recovery operation was set to continue in the coming days.

    “Wildlife welfare assessment and triage will continue with qualified carers and vets,” she said.

    “[The department] will be onsite ensuring resources and expertise is available to continue to care for wildlife injured.”

    https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/koala-massacre-feared-in-victoria-s-south-west-20200202-p53wyn.html

  3. Could McKenzie be looking for a big padded pork barrel to help protect her as she goes under the Bridget over troubled waterfalls?

  10. beguiledagain @ #1736 Sunday, February 2nd, 2020 – 1:55 pm

    PB has been unavailable on Firefox and Edge for more than 24 hours. This is coming to your courtesy of Opera. I hope my scoop hasn’t already been scooped.

    —————————————–

    I understand the delay in announcing Bridget’s departure is because they are still working out the details of her appointment as Consul in the new Australian consulate in Wuhan.

    Every sports club will get a free Coronavirus from Bridgie? 😆

  11. Not Sure:

    [‘Merlot: The Hyundai Excel of grape varietals.’]

    There are some very good Merlots. I find them to be very soft on the pallet, esophagus, as opposed to other reds.

  12. Well said Bushfire. Wokism is all about throwing prejudicial labels at people who are perceived as the enemy, (white, elderly and male) but getting all sensitive if anyone replies in kind. My socialist working class father was the enemy to these nut jobs, being male, pale and stale to them. Clementine Ford… Sooty Morrison says thanks heaps…how good is woke culture…oh Pauline says cheers too.

  15. Just looking at the map of that Clear Range fire..

    Not too far away is a place called Strike-a-light Nature Reserve

    I kid you not

  19. lizzie

    The policy of a certain Party is that all native hard wood will be sourced from plantation timber.

    This laudable policy is fraught, in practice. By and large, making a reasonable return on capital from hardwood plantation timber has proven to be extremely problematic.

    When subsidies are added to the mix, plantation schemes are often designed to harvest the subsidies and the mum and dad investors, with the speculators baling out at some stage or another – often leaving a shambles.

    The risks – including climate risk – are huge over the lifespan of a single hardwood cycle of the investment.

    Now, suppose Koalas invade your plantation and you go ahead and harvest your trees…. you could end up in jail…

    https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/koala-massacre-feared-in-victoria-s-south-west-20200202-p53wyn.html

  21. PhoenixRed (quoting Steve Schmidt):

    “I do think there is a danger when you look at some of the ideology that we’ve seen front and center in this field. In America, a sociopath will beat a socialist seven days a week and twice on Sunday,”

    Quite a clever contrast, but more precisely it is “a woke sociopath will beat a woke socialist seven days a week and twice on Sunday.”

    What’s needed is less woke and more poke!

  23. Cud Chewer
    I’m not entirely convinced that it actually is in Labor’s best interest to pretend to certain groups of voters that coal has a future. The reason is that doing so undercuts Labor’s ability to sell new policy that would see new industry developed. Its something that can differentiate Labor and reinforce its brand in a way the Liberals cannot respond to. As I said, new steel making for Newcastle. That kind of thing. It can’t be sold if you’re simultaneously going “move along, nothing to see here”.

    I wholeheartedly support the big vision proposals you’ve suggested over the last few months, but from my conversations with certain people in the party, that kind of thinking is being put in the too hard basket. Hence short term politically expedient strategies.

  24. BK
    says:
    Sunday, February 2, 2020 at 2:20 pm
    nath
    Might she fall on the pork sword?
    ____________________
    I didn’t know you worked Blue BK! 🙂

  26. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bridget saga goes the way of Michaela Cash, Kathy Jackson et al….stonewalling every inch of the way.

  27. Mavis says:
    Sunday, February 2, 2020 at 2:32 pm

    …”There are some very good Merlots. I find them to be very soft on the pallet, esophagus, as opposed to other reds”…

    ……………………………..

    Some people will also tell you that there are some very good un-oaked Chardonnays.
    Coincidentally, those people also believe that Hyundai’s are an a acceptable and reliable method of transport.

  29. clem atlee
    but getting all sensitive if anyone replies in kind.

    What, you mean replying by saying something racist, sexist, or homophobic – thus proving the original point in the first place?

    Let’s not pretend that bigotry in Australia is not statistically over-represented in a certain demographic – those being white, older, and male.

  30. I didn’t think koalas ate blue gum leaves (I could, of course, be wrong). I know that they eat a limited range of eucalypt species.

  33. From Wikipedia:
    McKenzie is a shooting enthusiast, and is chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Shooting.[9] She is opposed to same-sex marriage, and publicly campaigned for the “No” vote in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.McKenzie’s gay younger brother confronted her on her views in a letter to the Bendigo Advertiser and on the panel discussion program Q&A.

  34. Cud Chewer says:
    Sunday, February 2, 2020 at 2:37 pm
    Just looking at the map of that Clear Range fire..
    Not too far away is a place called Strike-a-light Nature Reserve
    I kid you not

    SE of Clear Range is the Good Good Fire. Can’t be much good about a bushfire but who knows?

    Meanwhile the Orroral fire has just been downgraded again to “advice”.

  35. steve davis
    says:
    Sunday, February 2, 2020 at 3:00 pm
    From Wikipedia:
    McKenzie is a shooting enthusiast, and is chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Shooting.[9] She is opposed to same-sex marriage, and publicly campaigned for the “No” vote in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.McKenzie’s gay younger brother confronted her on her views in a letter to the Bendigo Advertiser and on the panel discussion program Q&A.
    ________________
    Yet she parties at a Pride Night event? Perhaps the shooting anti-SSM stuff is just an act. I’ve seen people go to greater lengths for money and a career.

  36. In 2017, McKenzie was accused of using parliamentary travel entitlements for personal benefit, in a weekend trip to the Gold Coast in September 2014. Also questioned was a February 2017 trip to Sydney to speak at a Shooting Australia awards ceremony, which was claimed as “electorate business”; media reports suggested that it did not fall under the usual category of parliamentary business, and the city of Sydney is not located in the state of Victoria which Bridget represents.

    McKenzie’s electorate office was in the regional city of Bendigo, and she was described in media headlinesby whom? as “Bendigo-based” on a number of occasions. In 2018, after maintaining the office in Bendigo as “a National Party campaign office” for some months following her ascension to Cabinet, McKenzie relocated her electorate office to Wodonga, some 250km away in the federal electorate of Indi, which she initially intended to contest at the 2019 federal election but declined to do so when she realised she had negligible public support in the area despite years of privately insisting otherwise. This ultimately purposeless self-indulgence cost taxpayers more than $500,000.In 2016 it was noted that her primary residence was a flat in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Elwood, and she stayed in hotels when she visited Bendigo.

  38. steve davis
    says:
    This ultimately purposeless self-indulgence cost taxpayers more than $500,000.In 2016 it was noted that her primary residence was a flat in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Elwood, and she stayed in hotels when she visited Bendigo.
    ______________________________
    plus the 2 million dollar pad in Middle Park.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/bridget-mckenzie-buys-2-million-house-as-second-melbourne-investment-property-20200123-p53twh.html

  40. This could be said about any party really:

    Nowadays, there is no discernible difference between the factions. They exist only as grubby job-creation schemes for those within the factions, who would, metaphorically speaking, kill their own mother to become an MP and, from there, a millionaire ,then later, if you are halfway smart, a multimillionaire.

    https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/branch-stacking-and-dirty-tricks-in-melbourne-ports,12097

  42. steve davis
    says:
    Sunday, February 2, 2020 at 3:09 pm
    And the age of entitlement is supposed to be over.Only for everyone else but pollies.
    _____________________
    It’s why I believe in term limits. To have some useless pile of shit sit in a seat for 20 years just racking up cash and perks is an insult to us all.

  44. bakunin
    Not slagging it off. I was merely pointing out that if the policy is to rely on the private sector to grow hardwood timber in order to exclude hardwood logging from native forests, then there are certain policy parameters that must follow. Almost none of them are palatable to the peeps who want to exclude native forest hardwood harvests. So they are conflicted and this conflict is at the heart of the response to the koala deaths in the harvested blue gum plantation.

    The particular policy setting here is that it is almost inevitable that over the life of the plantation native fauna management (ie killing and/or excluding) will be necessary. This generally starts with killing browsers like wallabies. Over the life of the plantation it would include spraying to kill off native insects and perhaps shooting birds. etc, etc, etc.

    Unfortunately the reporting in this particular article, the response of interest groups, the response of the koala and animal rights advocacy groups, and the behaviour of the government appears to be determined to turn investment right off. The question then becomes whether we want to use hardwood timber, or not.

    There are numerous other fraught policy issues including changes to hydrology, changes to social relations at a regional level, damage to competing industries by hogging good soil/rainfall areas, etc, etc, etc.

    I am not particularly arguing one way or the other. But it is seems to me to be clear that if you want peeps to put a lot of money into hardwood growing you are going to have to accept that along the way and in the broadest sense of the word, koalas as a proxy, etc, will have to be killed.

  45. bakunin

    The example of “koala slaughter” given seems to indicate that in is not simply the planting that is at fault, but the harvesting practices by owners, who regard the trees as equal to any other crop, to be cut down when “ripe”.

  47. For those of you who haven’t had a go at clay pigeon shooting, may I recommend it?
    It involves a very satisfying bit of hand/eye coordination with instant feedback when the thing shatters upon being hit.
    There is no particular reason to assign the various pleasures of shooting to the Right.
    Unless you are particularly woke, I suppose.

  48. This afternoon every time I update PB or post a comment, a file “index.html” is downloaded. I’m using a Macbook Air and Safari. From memory it hasn’t happened before. Otherwise PB works OK.

    Any comments from the tech specialists please?

  49. citizen says:
    Sunday, February 2, 2020 at 3:19 pm
    This afternoon every time I update PB or post a comment, a file “index.html” is downloaded. I’m using a Macbook Air and Safari. From memory it hasn’t happened before. Otherwise PB works OK.

    Any comments from the tech specialists please?

    Just to make me look stupid, after I posted the above comment, the phenomenon stopped!

  50. Bellwether:

    Concerning Biden, can you not tell that he is a fake. His Dulux brilliant white teeth are a clue (not genuine). I could pick him as a fake from 2 klms away in thick bushfire smoke but we all have different radar.

    Being fake is part of the Presidential job description with very few exceptions. There have been no non-fake presidents since Truman (aptly named). There have been a few non-fakes since the civil war: Lincoln, US Grant, possibly Grover Cleveland, possibly Teddy Roosevelt, and Truman.

    FDR is a special case in they he was a non-fake except in relation to his disability (which fakery is entirely admirable)

    The real problem is to distinguish the really evil fakes (e.g. Messrs. Wilson, Nixon and Trump) from the merely pragmatic fakes. The pre-civil war eras was more or less overrun by evil fakes, including fakes who routinely fooled themselves.

Comments Page 36 of 42
1 … 35 36 37 … 42

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *