The Guardian reports on yet another fortnightly Essential Research poll with no voting intention numbers, but we does at least get the monthly leadership ratings. These show Scott Morrison down a point on approval to 39% and steady on disapproval at 52%, after the previous poll respectively had him down five and up nine. Anthony Albanese is respectively down two to 41% and up one to 31%, and he has lost his 39-36 lead as preferred prime minister, with the two now tied on 36%. The BludgerTrack trends on the sidebar have now been updated with these results.
Further questions on bushfire recovery, sports rorts and coronavirus don’t seem to have turned up anything too mindblowing, but the publication of the full report may turn up something hopefully later today.
UPDATE: Full report here. The most interesting of the supplementary findings for mine relate to the budget surplus, the consistent theme of which is that respondents aren’t that fussed about it: 79% agree spending on bushfire recovery is more important than maintaining it, with 11% disagreeing; 65% say it would be understandable if the coronavirus impact meant it wasn’t achieved, with 18% disagreeing; and 57% agree it was wrong for the government to discuss the surplus in the present tense before the election, with 24% disagreeing.
“Trains VS Cars debate is noise. A train going past your back door makes a LOT more noise than a car, especially cars these days and looking into the future of cars, which is that they will be virtually silent EVs. Just sayin’.”
Absolutely false. Freeways generate far more noise than rail lines. The problem is when you build a rail line it has capacity for 50,000+ people per day. The equivalent road is a freeway carrying 40,000+ vehicles per day, of which at least 5% will be commercial vehicles. One car does not make much noise. 40,000 make a lot. 2,000 trucks a day makes even more. It is enough noise to affect the educational performance of any child living within 100 metres.
Noise for road vehicles depends more on speed and tyre noise than engine type. At speeds above 80 km/hr an electric car with rubber compound tyres on a bitumen road makes plenty of noise. See https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/traffic-noise-health-impacts-second-only-air-pollution-new-who-report-says
https://theaimn.com/the-sheer-idiocy-of-barnaby-and-the-joycettes/
C@t
Best way to silence a train is stick it in a tunnel.
Btw the trains you’re used to are needlessly noisy. I’ll go imto that if you want.
Socrates. Depends on the pavement but yeah EVs aren’t silent at speed.
C@tmomma @ #340 Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 – 2:39 pm
The stereo in the EV is far from silent! 😀
The future is going to be both trains and electric vehicles.
Many more trains.
Already the LNP is doing a privatised version of train building. This is the party that loves roads. Increased population density demands it.
“The media only pretends those two states pick the nominee because it makes for a ratings-friendly narrative.”
Bill Palmer is correct. A lot of Sanders supporters are busting their guts to tell us that Sanders winning Iowa and NH means he is suddenly on track to be the Dem nominee. Some of Sanders giddier fans even think it’s the start of a new progressive era in American politics.
As someone who intends to vote in the “Democrats Abroad” primary, I can say that Sanders will NOT be getting my vote. I want a Dem nominee who can WIN! I don’t care if it’s goddamn Bloomberg.
Cud Chewer @ #352 Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 – 3:55 pm
So, you are advocating train tunnels along every train line for the length of the line? Some of them will have to surface to pick up passengers at train stations and those train stations have been co-located with new developments so I can’t see them being put underground anytime soon. Especially new lines, but most especially old established stations. Though I will admit, I have been to Macquarie Park train station. Those escalators! Whoo!
Oh dear.
The Sanders can win denial is still in full force I see.
Cud Chewer @ #353 Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 – 3:57 pm
This area is becoming Tesla and EV central lately! I can tell you that the only noise I can hear, when I want to pull out onto the road from my house, is their tyres!
To complete.
https://humantransit.org/
He had some good words to say on Brisbane’s bus-only bridge (lowering costs of living), and as well makes interesting points on rail and road design principles, uber (thumbs down), driverless cars (thumbs down), Elon Musk’s Boring Company (all the thumbs down), etc.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/10/politics/sanders-leads-national-quinnipiac-poll/index.html
Kakaru,
Bernie Sanders also bellyached loud and long between 2016 and 2020 to get the Democrats to add the Satellite Caususes for Iowa in places like Florida, with it’s large Latino population, and in University towns, where he is especially popular. Then when he doesn’t win Iowa in 2020 it all becomes a conspiracy by the Democrats to get him!
#SoreLoser
Hmm, maybe the massive hordes he expected to come out for him didn’t show up? 😆
I think you’d have to say though that his strike right was pretty high, by PB standards.
Cat
The noise levels INSIDE cars are very low, thanks to very good sound insulation. (Same inside a modern passenger train). But the noise level OUTSIDE a car at speed, especially in large volumes, is very different. Please read the link I listed above; it explains it quite well.
I would agree that many Australian rail authorities, short of cash, skimp on noise barriers and run trains that generate much more noise into the adjacent suburb than they need to. Also if they have not acquired an adequate alignment and run trains too fast around too tight curves, then you get wheel squeal. But that is all avoidable with competent rail engineering. We need to begin the journey towards competence.
I see no comment on my unit costs quoted. I take it nobody is pretending that we are building freeways because they are cheaper.
Here’s the thing, guytaur…
Occasionally in US politics the Republican party base nominates an extreme Tea Party candidate for the Senate, in a swing state or a blue state. (Examples are Sharron Angle in Nevada, or Christine O’Donnell in Delaware).
The GOP conservative base loves these wingnuts – they are What America Needs, and They Speak To our Values. But the GOP establishment scratch their heads, and think these candidates are going to lose. And guess what – they lose. They lose badly. Moderate voters don’t want extreme candidates.
Bernie Sanders is an extreme candidate – but on the Democratic side. He has enthusiastic (even rabid) support from a sizeable part of the Dem base – especially the most progressive elements of the party. That doesn’t make him any more electable. Moderate voters don’t want extreme candidates.
You may not think Sanders is extreme. He’s What America Needs, and Speaks To My Values, etc. But by US standards, he’s extreme. That’s why he will lose.
Kakuru says: Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 4:02 pm
“The media only pretends those two states pick the nominee because it makes for a ratings-friendly narrative.”
As someone who intends to vote in the “Democrats Abroad” primary,
*********************************************************
Totally agree with you Kakuru –
As someone who intends to vote in the “Democrats Abroad” primary – I will vote with the candidate with the greatest chance of ANYONE BUT TRUMP
Super Tuesday (March 3, 2020) : – might make THE candidate more obvious
Still a LONG way till Nov 2nd 2020 – ANYTHING and ANYONE may still happen
Kakaru
Exhibit A.
Donald Trump.
You can do denial all you like.
The fact is that the person who wins the Democratic Primary is electable. It’s the definition of electability winning elections.
Saying Sanders cannot win is just ideological stupidity.
zoomster @ #345 Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 – 2:45 pm
Yep. Bonus is she might decide paying such a large expense for so small a benefit doesn’t make sense, and switch to public transport/Uber/etc.. Which as has been pointed out many times would reduce her carbon footprint.
Sometimes Legal Judgements transcend dense legal prose. The following is an extract from Justice Gordon’s Judgement in Love (omitting paragraph numbers and citations):
“ Contrary to the assumption that ran throughout the argument of the Commonwealth, whether either or both of the plaintiffs can lawfully be removed from Australia does not turn only on the operation of the Australian Citizenship Act or the Migration Act.
Nor does it turn only on the vagaries of foreign citizenship laws. The determinative point in these cases is constitutional rather than statutory.
Whether either plaintiff is an alien or a non-alien is fundamentally a question of otherness. As Gummow, Hayne and Heydon JJ said in Singh, that more fundamental question is not answered by deciding whether either plaintiff meets the statutory description of “Australian citizen”.
As will be shown, Aboriginal Australians occupy a unique or sui generis position in this country, such that they are not aliens.
And, because the determinative question is constitutional, not statutory, no assistance can be drawn from the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) as it can and must be understood in connection with the application of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth).
Neither of those Acts (nor any other Act of the Parliament) determines the proper construction of the Constitution.
Aboriginal Australians are not outsiders or foreigners – they are the descendants of the first peoples of this country, the original inhabitants, and they are recognised as such. None of the events of settlement, Federation or the advent of citizenship in the period since Federation have displaced the unique position of Aboriginal Australians.
Aboriginal Australians have a long history in and with “country”. Deane J estimated the period of Indigenous settlement as “at least” 40 millennia before the arrival of the British settlers. However, the period of Indigenous settlement is likely to be tens of thousands of years longer.
From the time of European settlement, the Crown has progressively asserted sovereignty over the land and waters that together now make up the territory of Australia. As Brennan J observed in Mabo [No 2], “Aboriginal peoples have been substantially dispossessed of their traditional lands” by the Crown. It was the dispossession of Aboriginal Australians, starting in 1788 and expanding “parcel by parcel”, that underwrote the development of this nation.
Whether there has been an acquisition of territory by the Crown is not justiciable, but the consequences of acquisition are justiciable. Specifically, the connection of Aboriginal Australians with country was not severed by European settlement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The assertion of sovereignty by the British Crown over the land left Aboriginal Australians’ connection with the land and waters intact.
…
“This connection with land and waters survived settlement. Settlement and Crown radical title did not extinguish that connection, one legal consequence of the connection being recognised by native title.
…
“That connection is not a species of what European law understands as ownership or possession499. It is a connection with land where the land “owns” the people and the people are responsible for the land500; a two-way connection rather than the one-way connection common lawyers identify as rights with respect to or over an article of property. It is that two-way connectedness that the law has tried to capture by speaking of spiritual connection. It is wrong to see the connection to land and waters through the eyes of the common lawyer as a one-way connection.
The connection of Aboriginal Australians with land and waters was not severed by Federation and the formation of the Commonwealth. Nothing in the Constitution purports to sever Aboriginal Australians’ connection with the land or waters. And nothing in the Convention Debates purported to treat Aboriginal Australians as aliens or within the reach of the aliens power.
Otherness, or being from outside, was the focus in the Convention Debates when discussing the aliens power. …
“ As the events of the Stolen Generations would later show, Indigenous societies in Australia have long included, and accommodated as members of their community, persons who were not born of parents who each traced their ancestry entirely through Indigenous ancestors. Indeed, the whole premise for the programs that created the Stolen Generations (so flawed as they were) was to remove children who would otherwise have taken their place in the Indigenous communities from which they were taken.
…
“ Aboriginal Australians have a unique connection to this country; it is not just ancestry or place of birth or even both. It is a connection with the land or waters under Indigenous laws and customs which is recognised under Australian law. The Australian Citizenship Act has not removed or modified that connection. Nor has the Parliament removed or modified that connection by other legislation.
…
“ It is a connection to this country that means that Aboriginal Australians are not foreigners within the constitutional concept of alien under s 51(xix). And it is a connection which means that even if an Aboriginal Australian’s birth is not registered and as a result no citizenship is recorded, or an Aboriginal Australian is born overseas without obtaining Australian citizenship, they are not susceptible to legislation made pursuant to the aliens power or detention and deportation under such legislation.”
________
What I found astonishing is the zealotry of the Minister in pursuing removal of two men who had been residing in Australia since early childhood because of “assault occasioning bodily harm” convictions and sentences. That each was aboriginal – an in Queensland it is a virtual right of passage for aboriginal males to have adverse and often appalling criminal records is to rub salt into the wounds.
But what does one expect from a former Queensland jack who brags about kidnapping aboriginal youth from fortitude valley, driving them miles out of Brisbane before dumping them on the side of the road at night without their shoes without any care or due regard to their safety. Beyond a turd.
guytaur @ #369 Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 – 4:21 pm
Kakaru is another of those with the 4k UltraHD crystal ball that I mentioned earlier. It’s absolutely beyond belief the crap some people are dishing up at the moment.
C@t
Horses for courses and sauces for horses.
We’re now at the stage where most new rail within Sydney will have to go underground.
The irony is, I actually like Bernie Sanders. He seems like a real decent guy. I agree with almost all of his policies. His manifesto would make the US a better place. But he can’t win. His socialist credentials will turn off the majority of voters.
Bellwether says: Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 4:25 pm
Kakaru is another of those with the 4k UltraHD crystal ball that I mentioned earlier. It’s absolutely beyond belief the crap some people are dishing up at the moment.
**************************************************************
Still a LONG way till Nov 2nd 2020 – ANYTHING and ANYONE may still happen !!!!!
Bill Shorten is looking even thinner in the face. Too much exercise?
‘.Bonus is she might decide paying such a large expense for so small a benefit doesn’t make sense, and switch to public transport/Uber/etc.. Which as has been pointed out many times would reduce her carbon footprint.’
Well, if she only has one car she seldom uses, her carbon footprint is minimal.
If she lives in an area like ours, she doesn’t have access to public transport or Uber….even if she lives in town.
Kakaru
You are wrong.
See Kansas.
The Socialist Label doesn’t scare the voters.
Trump tried using Sanders and AOC as his boogeyman. It failed.
** and how does using Uber instead of her own car reduce her carbon footprint anyway??
**************
William
If only we’d realised, we could have replaced all of those threads about polls with posts from Wayne!
Andrew_Earlwood
Didn’t three dingbats find in favour of the Minister?
I don’t disagree with the point that the media over hype the early primaries. What is unarguable though is that Sanders is now starting to lead in national polls and has a very realistic chance of clinching the nomination. I know that thought makes a lot of heads explode around here, the same posters that assured us all what a great candidate Hillary Clinton was I might ad, but it is the reality nonetheless.
gutaur
“Donald Trump.
You can do denial all you like. ”
Trump is not extreme. Yep, he’s racist and sexist, and an inveterate liar. He’s an utterly hideous human being. But politically and economically, he tacks quite close to the centre.
Kakuru
“The GOP conservative base loves these wingnuts – they are What America Needs, and They Speak To our Values. But the GOP establishment scratch their heads, and think these candidates are going to lose. And guess what – they lose. They lose badly. Moderate voters don’t want extreme candidates.”
Any thoughts on why moderate Dem Claire McCaskill lost her senate seat during the 2018 blue wave?
guyatur
“See Kansas. ”
What about Kansas?
phoenixRED @ #375 Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 – 4:28 pm
Absolutely correct and also completely obvious! Except to the Kakarus here, I don’t want to insult him/her but really, stop with the absurd assumptions.
Kakaru
Sanders held a rally there with AOC during the election campaign.
The candidate and Trump went all “Boo Socialists”.
The Democrat became the Governor.
Bonza @ #383 Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 – 4:32 pm
She must have been a closet social democrat?
Bonza
“Any thoughts on why moderate Dem Claire McCaskill lost her senate seat during the 2018 blue wave?”
Coz it’s Missouri, a deep red state. Moderate Dem Senators also lost in Indiana (Joe Donnelly) and N.Dakota (Heidi Heitkamp) the same year, for the same reason.
“ Didn’t three dingbats find in favour of the Minister?”
Justice Gaegler at least had the decency to apologise for the application of his legal conclusions.
As a matter of policy the line taken by Oberst-Gruppenführer Kartoffelkopf is simply a disgrace.
There is nothing crypto or neo about it. Fucking fascist.
Matt
The argument that Americans won’t vote Democrat unless he/she is “centerist” I find lacking.
If Bernie wins then of course he’s going to be pelted with “socialist” attack ads. And if Biden wins it will be “crooked Biden”. And so on.
A lot of polls say say that Americans are far more left leaning than some assume.
In the end I don’t know. I just don’t think its as clear cut as some here suggest
zoomster @ #379 Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 – 3:30 pm
Once less car, in total, to have to build and ship to Australia and service/maintain. And increased utilization rates for the cars that are already here (which might be EV’s even if the hypothetical old lady would never consider buying one for herself). Assuming that someone doesn’t buy an ICE car just to be her Uber driver, of course.
Today’s High Court decision (Love & Thoms) could’ve easily gone either way. That it went the way it did is pleasing (at least to me) – a judicial fetter placed on Dutton, who, with a stroke of a pen, has sent so many criminals back to their country of birth, a form of extrajudicial punishment. That’s not to suggest that some felons should not be sent back from whence they came but to return someone to a country where they have no family ties, little knowledge of the country’s culture, language, etc is the pits, bearing in mind you only need to be sentenced to 12 or more months imprisonment for the instant section of the Migration Act (s.501(7)(c)) to come into effect. Take, for example, the offence of common assault in Queensland (characterised by inflicting minor injuries or where the defendant has threatened to assault someone), the maximum sentence for which is 3 years’ imprisonment. Few if any are sentenced to the maximum penalty, but some would get 12 months in the slammer, giving rise to the ministerial discretion. If the defendant is an Australian citizen, on the expiration of the sentence, that would be the end of the matter; but if the defendant’s not, he/she could face deportation based on something akin to a lottery – eg, you were eligible for Australian citizenship but you didn’t get to around to applying for it, as is the case with many. Dutton is the worst possible person to have such power, reveling in his well-earned reputation as a hardass.
Sorry guytaur, the election of Laura Kelly as Governor of Kansas had nothing to do with Sanders (pro or con). My guess is that the disastrous policies of former Gov. Brownback had more to do with helping her election.
lizzie
“Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.” Norty 😆
poroti
Hmm. I bought that, didn’t I?
I always think people look healthier when they have a little flesh on their bones.
They feel nicer to cuddle, too.
Does anyone know the name of the creature that has decided to make a nest atop the Minister ?
Laming also said that they needed a study to advise them what to do because they don’t know.
Never read, never listen, never consult experts?
Kakaru
You can deny all you like. The then Governor and Trump tried to make it about socialism. They specifically used Sanders and AOC as boogeymen In the rally.
Edit: that is the GOP socialism is communism definition of course.
lizzie
There is a bit of truth in the “lean and hungry” though among pollies here. When they are on the hunt weight loss and jogging seems the go.
poroti
Agreed. Barnaby and Turnbull are examples.
Now that Morrison has attained his goal, he’s putting on the pud.