An institute you can disparage

A poll for the Institute of Public Affairs shows mixed views on the ABC, but it may be showing its age. Also featured: updates on by-elections in the Northern Territory and Queensland.

Way back between December 6 and 8, an online poll of 1016 respondents was conducted by Dynata for the Institute of Public Affairs covering myriad issues, results of which have been apportioned out piecemeal ever since. The latest serving seeks to counter the consistent finding of other pollsters that the nation’s most trusted news organisation is the ABC. The results have naturally been received with skepticism in some quarters, although asking respondents if they feel the ABC “does not represent the views of ordinary Australians” only seems dubious in that it’s framed in the negative for no clear reason. The poll found 30% in agreement with the proposition versus 32% who disagreed, leaving 38% on the fence.

The result has been elevated to a vote of no confidence in the organisation by Coalition Senator James McGrath (who I suspect might be surprised if he learned how many of its critics are on the left), while a News Corp report seizes on the result for the 18-24 age cohort to suggest the ABC has lost the esteem of the young. The latter overlooks a sub-sample size that would imply an error margin upwards of 10%. The survey period also predated the worst of the bushfires, which have presumably been good for the broadcaster’s public image. Previous results from the survey have covered the date for Australia Day, local councils making political statements and the powers of unelected bureaucrats and removing references to race from the Constitution.

Some news on state (and territory) affairs, including updates on two of the three by-election campaigns currently in progress, guides to which can be accessed on the sidebar:

• The Northern Territory by-election for the northern Darwin seat of Johnston will be held on February 29, an unwelcome development for Michael Gunner’s struggling Labor government ahead an election on August 22. Much attention was focused on the Greens’ decision to put Labor last on its how-to-vote cards, but it may also prove consequential that the Country Liberals have Labor ahead of the Territory Alliance, the new party formed by former CLP Chief Minister Terry Mills. The party’s candidate, Steven Klose, has been boosted by suggestions the party could emerge as the official opposition if it wins the seat, since it would have three seats to the Country Liberals’ two if Mills is joined by Klose and Jeff Collins, an ex-Labor independent who says he is a “50-50 chance” of joining the party. Tune in to the blog on Saturday for live results reporting with more bells and whistles than you might think the occasion properly demands.

• Labor’s candidate for Queensland’s Bundamba by-election will be Lance McCallum, a former Electrical Trades Union official and current executive director of the Just Transition Group, a government body to help energy workers whose jobs might be lost amid the transition to renewables. Michael McKenna of The Australian ($) reports McCallum was nominated unopposed after winning the endorsement of the Left, to which the seat is reserved under factional arrangements. A rival candidate for the Left faction’s ballot, Nick Thompson, had the backing of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, whose state secretary Michael Ravbar has disputed the legitimacy of the result. The only other known candidate is Sharon Bell of One Nation, who was the party’s federal candidate in Blair last year. No word on a Liberal National Party candidate, but The Australian reports the party is “expected to run”, despite the 21.6% Labor margin. Nominations close on Tuesday.

• A Tasmanian parliamentary committee report has recommended restoring the state’s House of Assembly to 35 seats, from which it was cut to 25 in 1998. Each of the state’s five electoral divisions have returned five members under the Hare-Clark proportional representation system, compared with seven seats previously. An all-party agreement was previously in place to do this in 2010 and 2011, before the then Liberal opposition under Will Hodgman withdrew support as a riposte to government budget cuts. No recommendations have been made in relation to the Legislative Council, which was cut from 19 to 15 in 1998, except insofar as the committee considered the possibility of it have dedicated indigenous seats.

Also, note below this one the latest guest post from Adrian Beaumont, covering recent developments involving the nationalist Sinn Finn party in Ireland and the far right Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany, along with yet another election in Israel.

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.

1,556 comments on “An institute you can disparage”

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  1. poroti

    I suppose I meant that she is so caught up in her own “personal journey” (horrors!) that she takes no notice of the effect on the rest of the community, including her supposed family of indigenous.

    I remember when she first appeared on The Drum I was quickly repelled by her manner. She tends to begin every sentence with “What I know is…”

  2. The systematic avoidance of answering questions in Senate Estimates, routine lying, systematic avoidance of accountability, hundreds of millions spent on government spin, billions in corrupt grants given away willy nilly, conflict of interest routinely ignored, large grants to mates, senior officials who change their evidence or destroy evidence, ministers who are not interviewed by the AFP in relation to criminal matters and document alterations are all part and parcel of Australia now being ruled by the most corrupt prime minister since Federation.

  3. Boerwar

    Anne Ruston objecting to the word “rorts” as unparliamentary in Estimates.
    Other senators “Since when?”
    A. Since now.

    Roars of cynical laughter.

  4. BW,

    In my humble and completely uninformed opinion, my guess is that an equivalent of number 3 is playing out in China at the moment too.

    Who wants to end up in a conference centre mega-ward full of sick people? Why submit yourself to testing if that’s the risk/cost?

  5. lizzie @ #1285 Monday, March 2nd, 2020 – 12:49 pm

    Has this woman any real idea what she’s doing, other than support RW Libs?

    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    She’s rumour mongering. Like pathetic RW shills do in order to ingratiate themselves.

    I know for a fact that Mike Kelly isn’t going anywhere. He had a medical problem which was easily resolved with treatment at the end of last year.

    Josephine Cashman doesn’t even live on the South Coast. She lives in Sydney.

    ‘Bring out the mob to vote for Jim Molan’!?!’ They wouldn’t even vote for one of their own, Warren Mundine, that the Liberals tried to impose on them in Gilmore. Let alone an Arch Conservative Pale Male and Stale Liberal who only ever did what he was ordered to by government when he was in the Army.

  6. ‘Dandy Murray says:
    Monday, March 2, 2020 at 1:18 pm

    BW,

    In my humble and completely uninformed opinion, my guess is that an equivalent of number 3 is playing out in China at the moment too.

    Who wants to end up in a conference centre mega-ward full of sick people? Why submit yourself to testing if that’s the risk/cost?’

    I don’t know. There are lots of questions.

    Do antivirals make a difference if administered in the early stages? I you have other conditions is it wise to take extra risk in order to at least get those treated? Does suppression of some symptoms, for example body temperatures, change your risk profile? Does having a mild dose but still being a shedder have ethical implications? When do you shift from being a mild to being seriously sick to being critically ill to being dead or survived?

  7. Boerwar @ #1288 Monday, March 2nd, 2020 – 12:53 pm

    Norman Swan is doing C19 on the Health Report this afternoon on RN.
    He just made four points about the possible situation in the US. Not sure if I heard them correctly:

    1. The first is that Trump has gutted a lot of the bureaucracy what would have been very handy right now.

    2. The second is that the first test put out by Atlanta was faulty.

    3. The third was that it is so expensive to turn up to ED for a test (I came, I was tested, I was charged $US3000) that there is massive potential for people not to avoid ED and continue shedding instead.

    4. The fourth is that they have six unexplained weeks in which two Washington (or Oregon?) peeps both somehow both ended up with a C19 infection which were linked (genetically?) but which could not be explained by any known pattern of contacts. The possibility is that for six weeks C19 has been spreading undetected.

    SARS-CoV-2 started infecting humans in mid to late November 2019. Most had a mild ‘flu-like illness (FLI) or “cold” (if anything), but passed it easily to others, as most FLIs do in the contact constraints of winter, no matter what the cultural prejudices & behaviour predominate. We have never seen anything like SARS-CoV-2 before.

    Covid-19 is just the tip of the iceberg – but can kill anyone (including those <60 yrs, with no underlying disease) – mainly by causing a late (7-21d) T-lymphocyte response in the lungs – in ~0.5 – 5% of those with symptomatic disease. There is no proven effective treatment other than ventilatory support.

    The unicorn bolted before the world woke up ~ mid-January. Containment was never possible. There is about to be an awful lot of late stable-door slamming (some with extreme prejudice), particularly from the anxious Masters of The Universe, whose wealth cannot protect them from biology.

  8. Itzy The Idiot strikes again:

    Ah yes, the grim reaper reference. I remember now. That was me pointing out that BB was incorrect (BB doesn’t like that) with his assertion that the HIV panic was because it was highly infectious was arse up (as they say) and that it was actually very hard to catch…

    It’s not Itzy’s naive focus on whether HIV is “hard to catch” that matters.

    It’s the number of people you can infect, due to the delay in onset of symptoms (sometimes years) that caused hundreds of millions to be infected by asymptomatic sufferers.

    HIV has an R0 of 2-5. That is each infected person infects between 2 and 5 others.

    Coronavirus IS tentatively thought to have an R0 rating of 1.4-3.8.

    Comparing these two numbers, it’s pretty obvious that each HIV infected person, on average, passes their virus on to more people than each coronavirus infected does.

    I didn’t think I said HIV was more infectious than coronavirus. But I do recall pointing out that each HIV carrier on average infected more people due to the indolence of the disease prior to the onset of actual AIDs.

    If you want to have a semantic argument about the meaning of the word ” infectious” be my guest, but it won’t change the fact that people with HIV infections on average infect more other people than those carrying coronavirus… or so it is thought.

    The common factor between HIV and coronavirus is the long, but infectious latency before symptoms appear (obviously MUCH longer with HIV). This makes it easier too pass it on, unaware that you are infected yourself.

    There are of course differences too: severity of symptoms (on average) in serious cases, method of transmission etc.

    Each may prove equally deadly in the long run: HIV infection can be easily avoided, but is far more deadly. Coronavirus is easy to catch, because it’s very infectious and “sneaky” (latency period), but is not so deadly. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

    I didn’t think the post that Itzy referred to was too controversial. It’s more a matter of Itzy wanting to join in what he/she/it thinks is a pile-on before it’s too late to make an impression.

    When you’ve lost both parents to pneumonia, seen other family members nearly taken by it, and seen how badly they suffer (and suffered from it yourself), you won’t think Itza dream, mate.

  9. In the past several decades, greetings have progressed from nods and smiles or handshakes to air kissing and cheek kissing and now people have a tendency to go straight for a hug.

    I think we might need to step back a bit.

  10. RHW

    Thanks. We’re ready. The main known unknowns are: will it catch us unawares, when to decide to self-isolate, and what to do about extended family members if C19 proliferates that far. Other than that it might turn out to be fighting boredom while hunkered down. Fortunately we are extremely good at living in closed quarters with each other.

    We are also trying to get into good habits.

    I have a lot of time for Mr Swan. I wonder whether you are in a position to comment.

  11. So far I have seen no recommendation for telephone or video conferencing instead of pollies and reporters gathering in one room (for example).

  12. Thanks, rh

    > There is no proven effective treatment other than ventilatory support.

    So widespread infection is basically unmanageable?

    When is it too late to stock up on beans and rice?

    Should I invest in a brood of hens?

  13. Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are retesting a patient they discharged from isolation at a Texas medical facility after the person spent several hours in the general public and later tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

    The patient, who had been quarantined for weeks after returning from China’s Wuhan province, tested negative for the virus twice and was not showing any symptoms while being quarantined at the Texas Center for Infectious Disease in San Antonio.

    The CDC released the person to a local hotel on Saturday but had to retrieve the person hours later when a third test sample was “determined to be weakly positive,” according to a CDC news release. “Out of an abundance of caution, CDC decided to bring the individual back into isolation.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/03/01/coronavirus-live-updates/#link-3EQQ6DFSSVADVHUWZYVRPBUGCA

  14. C@t

    Since we’re talking rumour, I thought John Barillaro (State MP for Monaro) was eyeing off Eden-Monaro for the Nats? More as a stepping stone for the federal Nats leadership.

  15. Bushfire Bill @ #1312 Monday, March 2nd, 2020 – 1:26 pm

    Itzy The Idiot strikes again:

    Ah yes, the grim reaper reference. I remember now. That was me pointing out that BB was incorrect (BB doesn’t like that) with his assertion that the HIV panic was because it was highly infectious was arse up (as they say) and that it was actually very hard to catch…

    It’s not Itzy’s naive focus on whether HIV is “hard to catch” that matters.

    It’s the number of people you can infect, due to the delay in onset of symptoms (sometimes years) that caused hundreds of millions to be infected by symptoms sufferers.

    HIV has an R0 of 2-5. That is each infected person infects between 2 and 5 others.

    Coronavirus IS tentatively thought to have an R0 rating of 1.4-3.8.

    Comparing these two numbers, it’s pretty obvious that each HIV infected person, on average, passes their virus on to more people than each coronavirus infected does.

    I didn’t think I said HIV was more infectious than coronavirus. But I do recall pointing out that each HIV carrier on average infected more people due to the indolence of the disease prior to the onset of actual AIDs.

    If you want to have a semantic argument about the meaning of the word ” infectious” be my guest, but it won’t change the fact that people with HIV infections on average infect more other people than those carrying coronavirus… or so it is thought.

    The common factor between HIV and coronavirus is the long, but infectious latency before symptoms appear (obviously MUCH longer with HIV). This makes it easier too pass it on, unaware that you are infected yourself.

    There are of course differences too: severity of symptoms (on average) in serious cases, method of transmission etc.

    Each may prove equally deadly in the long run: HIV infection can be easily avoided, but is far more deadly. Coronavirus is easy to catch, because it’s very infectious and “sneaky” (latency period), but is not so deadly. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

    I didn’t think the post that Itzy referred to was too controversial. It’s more a matter of Itzy wanting to join in what he/she/it thinks us a pile-on.

    When you’ve lost both parents to pneumonia, seen other family members nearly taken by it, and seen how badly they suffer, you won’t think Itza dream, mate.

    Where do you get your biological acumen from BB – Poorline or her pet Martian?

  16. Dr Wombat and I are starting to find at least some tentative common ground.

    He probably still thinks (or wants to think) I just don’t like Chinese people, but I can put up with that misapprehension.

    The unicorn bolted before the world woke up ~ mid-January. Containment was never possible. There is about to be an awful lot of late stable-door slamming (some with extreme prejudice), particularly from the anxious Masters of The Universe, whose wealth cannot protect them from biology.

    In the meantime, “Continue your lives as usual” as advised by Our Glorious Prime Minister, who never lied to anyone (he was just regularly misquoted).

  17. Dr Wombat, if you’re mocking the death of my mother and father, go ahead. They’re beyond caring, and I don’t.

    It’s just not all that appropriate for a medico who’s presenting himself or herself as the official infectious diseases guru around here, I would have thought.

  18. Cormann constantly attacks Wong over everything she asks, either by “you don’t vote for Morrison”, or “you’ve already got your face on the evening news.” He never shuts up. He definitely has that manner that needs a good smack in the face.

  19. Wong. “Can we move to give Senator Cormann five minutes to get it off his chest?”
    Actually Patterson is doing a reasonable job chairing this rather explosive committee sitting.

  20. I don’t know about BB being pale and white, but he is entirely transparent. We can all see through him. His anti-chinese Coronavirus commentary reinforced his previous comments about getting out of Sydney. And the double entendre in his “seen one seen them all” was deliberate, it was an opportunity he could not pass up.

    Now he plays the victim card – he has been cruelly mistreated by viruses, so we must understand his political incorrectness in this case. Poor him, what a wowser.

    Still, he might end up being right on this prognostication. Which would be a first.

  21. Bushfire Bill @ #1322 Monday, March 2nd, 2020 – 1:47 pm

    Dr Wombat, if you’re mocking the death of my mother and father, go ahead. They’re beyond caring, and I don’t.

    It’s just not all that appropriate for a medico who’s presenting himself or herself as the official infectious diseases guru around here, I would have thought.

    I’m not mocking them BB. I’m mocking you. I’m not the official anything around here (or anywhere else in this particular persona), but I do have to deal with some of the consequences of self-indulgent bullshit like yours in the real world. Can you get past your personal insecurity?

  22. No the Democrats need another uninspiring neo liberal clone….wait….wait… so why did Buttigieg quit again?

  23. @ Meher responding to fess:

    “ Confessions: “Two down, three left to go. And I hope they go very quickly to stop sucking away votes from Biden, the only viable non-Bernie candidate.”

    Good plan, if Biden were actually a viable candidate. I look at all the remaining candidates, and the only ones I think have any talent are Warren and Klobuchar. Sanders would be poison to the broader electorate, Biden continues to embarrass himself whenever he opens his mouth, and – thanks to Warren – Bloomberg’s candidacy became a joke five minutes after he first stepped onto a debate stage.

    I think Trump 2020 is looking like a pretty safe bet.”

    What you said.

    but also #draftOprah

  24. I think it’s time the senate started going after public servants.
    Im really sick of them carrying water for the gov.

  25. Morrison in QT

    And what the Australian people are getting a lesson from, from the Opposition at the moment, is they are more interested in the trivial politics of Canberra than the serious issues that are confronting the Australian people.

    The point is that the question of parliamentary honesty is not a trivial matter except to people like Morrison and Cormann.

  26. For those not paralysed by insecurity or sesquipedaliophobia, 2 of the better epidemiology papers from Lancet (both available free – apart from the need to comprehend some irreducibly complex science & uncertainty)
    Sun K et al. Lancet Digital Health Feb 20, 2020. – which is fascinating as much for how they did their work in real time, as it is for their age distribution (Fig 1), and “flask” diagrams (Fig 4).

    Hellewell et al. Lancet Global Health Feb 28, 2020, which is a modelling exercise, so unsuitable for Coal Spivs and other vulnerable miners. Both are from suitably Pale institutions, so can be read without a fit-tested N95 mask.

  27. Albo having a bit of fun.

    Anthony Albanese: Today the minister representing the Prime Minister told the Senate that the cabinet office policy committee is made up of just one permanent member, the Prime Minister.

    Can the Prime Minister advise in relation to this one-man cabinet committee do the committee’s discussions take long?

    Is there a lot of disagreement in this committee and are the meeting of this committee held in the Prime Minister’s head?

  28. And the double entendre in his “seen one seen them all” was deliberate, it was an opportunity he could not pass up.

    At least now you’re not so sure that the very common phrase “seen one seen ’em all” exclusively refers to just Chinese people. You at least admit the possibility of “double entendre”.

    We’ve made some progress since your convoluted certainty of the other night.

    It wasn’t a reference to Chinese people at all (as I explained at the time, or soon after). It was a reference to posters here with monikers like “Pegasus” and “Lovey” (surely dead giveaways) all making essentially the same post, all the time.

    You’re like every Holy Joe, Lovey. You’re so obsessed with race and racists, Boomers, homophobes, Coal Huggers, males, age, gender, and Labor fanatics, that you find them everywhere, even where they don’t exist.

    You need them to justify your own presence here: labelling, condemning, insulting (with the very same insults that you condemn others using) and passing judgement.

    Even when you know you’re being stupid, you persist, because it puts you in the position of imagined moral superiority you feel you are entitled to be in. You’re hooked, mate.

    “Seen one, seen ’em all” is perfectly appropriate in your case.

  29. “ Joe Biden can now run as the youngest male candidate left in the field.”

    Haha.

    And also the most dopey.

  30. rhwombat

    It seems to me that covid19 is going spread widely in failing states with compromised health care systms – such as the US.

    Is that the view of the medical community?

    My next question is about Australia. Serms to me Australia will be able to contain the virus with increasing travel bans (and cost) but only for some time. For how long? Seems to me that number has a high uncertainty.

    So will we slow the spread of covid19 long enough for our health care system not to collapse. Or will we slow it long enough to start using vaccine (at least for the vulnerable)?

  31. “ Dopey. Seriously. You may as well include Sleepy as per Trump”

    I usually do.

    Worst Presidential candidate ever.

  32. Andrew-Earlwood

    Yeah like Oprah being drafted is the way to go.

    I know everyone is entitled to an opinion, but some are just plain idiotic.

  33. I guess you can keep asking, but looks like no answers will be forthcoming.

    Mark Dreyfus
    @markdreyfusQCMP
    Labor won’t stop asking about this until the Australian public find out who was responsible for Angus Taylor’s forged documents. #righttoknow
    Quote Tweet

    Kristina Keneally
    @KKeneally
    · 1h
    On the @AngusTaylorMP doctored document saga, I think the public has a #righttoknow what happened during the AFP’s investigation.

    After #estimates today, it seems we’re still on notice to get answers… #auspol Down pointing backhand indexDown pointing backhand index

  34. Dr Wombat, I thought we were making progress, but alas…

    I’m not mocking [the deaths of your parents] BB. I’m mocking you. I’m not the official anything around here (or anywhere else in this particular persona), but I do have to deal with some of the consequences of self-indulgent bullshit like yours in the real world. Can you get past your personal insecurity?

    My “self-indulgent bullshit” amounts to:

    ● pointing out that “the unicorn bolted before the world woke up ~ mid-January. Containment was never possible. There is about to be an awful lot of late stable-door slamming…” (YOUR words, just slightly upthread);

    ● there is a lot of REAL bullshit coming out of government and their Public Service flunkies – neither of whom are known as truth tellers – at the moment;

    ● medical “authorities” are so contradictory and/or tangled up in their own medical jargon as to be incomprehensible to the man in the street, who just wants to know whether he, his family, his elderly parents, or those he comes within 2 metres of are going to get sick and die;

    ● castigating the attitude of those like (the presumably young and bulletproof) A R who, safe in their “age bracket”, are happy going out into society, copping a mild case, and in the process of living their thrill-seeking, measles party of a life, infect others who may not be so resilient;

    ● advocating caution (even over-caution for a while) until we know a LOT more about C19 and its medical and social implications.

    Nothing too controversial there, I would have thought. The confusion surrounding this disease, and the alacrity with which it spreads, demands more caution and less name-calling. You yourself said that gates are going to be slammed shut too late to catch the bolting horse.

    So why wait to find out you’re on the wrong side of that gate?

    Any “personal insecurity” stems from the fact that in my family people tend to die of pneumonia, both sides of the family, and I am in my sixties: a high-risk demographic. Are you suggesting I’m being irrational? Are you mocking that too?

  35. There’s a high likelihood that community spread of coronavirus has been going on for weeks: Outbreak expert

    There’s a high likelihood that the community spread of coronavirus has been happening in the upper west for weeks, according to Jeremy Konyndyk, who served the WHO Advisory Group on Reform of WHO’s Work in Outbreaks and Emergencies with Health and Humanitarian Consequences from July 2015 to January 2016.

    “Now seems highly likely that there has been undetected community transmission ongoing in parts of the upper West Coast for weeks, at least,” Konyndyk explained in a Twitter thread Sunday.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/theres-a-high-likelihood-that-community-spread-of-coronavirus-has-been-going-on-for-weeks-outbreak-expert/

  36. BB

    Sooner than later there will be effective anti viral meds and vaccines.

    In meantime, controls and containment are the way to go.

    On a personal level, if possible avoid crowded areas and implement a strict hygiene regime.

    For those in the older age bracket who are retirees, they are not compelled to be out and about unlike people requiring to go to work for income.

    People can have all manner of food and goods delivered to the front door now. So there are a plethora of ways to minimise exposure.

    In the meantime the economy is also going to take a very big hit. No one will be immune from that either.

  37. Trump’s mental impairment is the real public health problem: Yale psychiatrist

    The moment we feared has come: in a real emergency, the president’s inability to stay with reality and to resist the need to conform the world to what is in his head will now result in a tangible loss of lives. People are asking: Is the president capable of functioning in a crisis? Why is the messaging more important than the actual job of protecting the country and responding to a health crisis? Why does he care more about looking or acting like a president than actually performing the job of president? In all these questions, there is an implicit assumption of mental capacity.

    Almost three years ago, my colleagues and I embarked on publicly warning against the dangers of the president’s mental impairments because of our concerns for public health. As mental health experts, we found it important to inform that, when a president is mentally incapacitated, it becomes a matter of public health, with potential life-and-death consequences for whole populations.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/trumps-mental-impairment-is-the-real-public-health-problem-yale-psychiatrist/

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