Democracy in the time of COVID-19

Queensland council elections and state by-elections to proceed in spite of everything; two polls on attitudes to coronavirus; and Josh Frydenberg off the Section 44 hook.

I had a paywalled article in Crikey yesterday considering the implications of coronavirus for the electoral process. For what it’s worth, the New York Times today reports that research finds no evidence that elections act as vectors for disease. Apropos next Saturday’s local government elections and state by-elections in Queensland, my article had this to say:

According to Graeme Orr, University of Queensland law professor and a noted authority on electoral law, it is still within the power of Local Government Minister Stirling Hinchliffe to postpone the council elections. The byelections for the state seats of Currumbin and Bundamba could also theoretically be called off if the speaker rescinded the writs. Since a state election will be held in October in any case, it might well be argued that filling the latter vacancies for a few months is not worth the bother. However, the official position is that neither pre-poll nor election day booths will experience activity amounting to a gathering of more than 500 people, as per the latest advice of the chief medical officer — advice that will surely be showing its age well before next Saturday.

In other by-election news, the Liberal National Party has put Labor last on its how-to-vote cards in Currumbin and Bundamba, and thus behind One Nation, a move that has evidently lost its taboo since the issue of One Nation preferences tore the state’s Coalition parties apart around the turn of the century. This could potentially be consequential in Bundamba, where it is conceivable that One Nation could outpoll the LNP and defeat Labor with their preferences.

Elsewhere:

• The Federal Court has dismissed a Section 44 challenge against Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s eligibility to sit in parliament on grounds of dual Hungarian citizenship, to which he was allegedly entitled via his Hungarian-born mother. The petitioner, Michael Staindl, initially pointed to Australian documentation suggesting her family arrived in Australia in 1950 with Hungarian passports, having fled the country the previous year as the post-war communist regime tightened its grip. However, it was established that this arose from loose definitions used at the time by the Australian authorities, and that what the family actually had was “a form of single use emigrant exit passport”. This led Staindl to twice reformulate his argument, eventually settling on the contention that Frydenberg’s mother was left with the “shell” of a citizenship that had been emptied only by the communist regime’s arbitrary and capricious “pseudo-law”, a factor that ceased to apply with its demise in 1989. This did not impress the court, which dismissed the petition and ordered Staindl to pay costs.

• The Age/Herald has polling results from Newgate Research on which aspects of coronavirus are of greatest public concern. The results are reasonably consistent across the board, but top of the list is “the overall economic impact”, with which 41% express themselves extremely concerned, 36% quite concerned, 19% slightly concerned and 4% not at all concerned. “Regular health services not being available” produces similar results of 35%, 32%, 25% and 8%. There are slightly more moderate results for other questions on health impacts and “shortages of food, toilet paper and other essentials”, although in all cases the combination for extremely concerned and quite concerned is well above 50%. The poll is an “online tracking study of more than 1000 Australians, taken between Wednesday and Saturday last week”.

• The West Australian ($) also has a WA-only coronavirus poll, which finds 66% supporting cancellation of large sporting events, 45% for night venues, 35% for cinemas and theatres, 34% for gyms and leisure centres, 29% for schools, 28% for universities, 22% for shopping centres and 16% apiece for restaurants and cafes and public transport. Fifty-one per cent of respondents agreed the government had been fully open and honest about the risks and implications of the virus, with 25% disagreeing. The poll was conducted Friday and Saturday by Painted Dog Research from a sample of 890.

• The count for the Northern Territory’s Johnston by-election was finalised on Friday, with Labor’s Joel Bowden winning at the final count over Steven Klose of the Territory Alliance by 1731 votes (52.6%) to (47.4%), in the absence of any surprises in the full preference count. With no candidate polling more than 29.9% on the primary vote, the latter was always an abstract possibility, but the result after the previous exclusion was not particularly close, with Bowden on 1275 (38.7%), Klose on 1110 (33.7%) and Greens candidate Aiya Goodrich Carttling on 907 (27.6%). It seems unlikely that preferences would have favoured the Greens even if it had been otherwise. My live results facility now records the final numbers – there will be more where this came from on this site with the Queensland elections on Saturday week, certainly with the state by-elections, and perhaps also for the Brisbane City Council elections, depending on how things go.

Note also two new posts below this one, one dealing with a new poll of state voting intention in Tasmania, the other being Adrian Beaumont’s latest contribution on the Democratic primaries in the United States.

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.

3,538 comments on “Democracy in the time of COVID-19”

Comments Page 56 of 71
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  2. I’m still reading and thinking about that article.
    https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

    If an outbreak like South Korea’s can be controlled without mandated social distancing, Western countries can definitely apply a Hammer that controls the outbreak within weeks. It’s a matter of discipline and execution.

    Discipline and execution is a cultural thing. How disciplined are we?

    Some regions will see outbreaks again, others won’t for long periods of time. Depending on how cases evolve, we will need to tighten up social distancing measures or we will be able to release them.

    This reflects Morrison’s statements yesterday about responses tailored to specific areas. “That is an encouraging thought.”, Gandalf, LOTR (movie)

    What if Churchill had said the same thing? “Nazis are already everywhere in Europe. We can’t fight them. Let’s just give up.” This is what many governments around the world are doing today.

    This is the one issue I have with the article. I can appreciate why, but he has fallen into the trap of framing this as a war. How many “wars” have we had against still unsolved problems? (It is a separate question as to why this comes naturally to him.) If you need an analogy to stir people to action then how about fire (wild-fire, fire-storm, etc.) with embers flying everywhere and us as fuel.

  4. 278,445 cases and 11.402 deaths as of now.

    Italy now at 47,021 cases and 4,032 deaths
    Italy isn’t just doing badly in terms of cases, its doing badly in terms of outcomes. Health system overloaded, or other factors?

  6. ‘fess,
    True story. The other day when I took advantage of Seniors Hour at Coles (about the only good thing turning 60 has brought with it), I ran into an old friend whose daughter works 5 days a week and he said he just came down for the TP because his daughter couldn’t get her hands on any and she has gone through what she already had because she uses it to remove her makeup every day!

  8. frednk

    Yep, not mincing words..

    “Let’s cut to the chase,” he fires down the phone line, before even being asked a question. “They were warned 12 weeks ago by WHO [the World Health Organization] and others what was coming. They did not accumulate test kits. They did not accumulate the necessary emergency equipment. They did not undertake a public education campaign. They gave no money to science, no money to research, no money to the International Vaccine Institute, no money to WHO. They diligently did not do anything useful.”

  9. C@t:

    Why on earth is she using toilet paper to take her makeup off? Your friend should start buying 1 ply toilet paper, that will solve that problem!

  10. I’m a little surprised there were so many people at Bondi. I went through the Bondi Junction Interchange 4 times yesterday and far from the usual crowds lined up waiting for the 333, there appeared to be tumbleweed blowing through the place compared to even an average day.
    I had buggar all people on any of my trips even to Coogee beach. My school run was under 50% yesterday. The bus I had holds 41 seated. I had about 4 standing.

  11. Pegasus @ #2467 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 12:56 pm

    KayJay

    Where do i find the “dashboard” on my laptop? I have looked in vain without success. Or, do I have to download an app?

    TIA

    “Cripes me hearty” he said with a lear “what sort of laptop are you using. What browser ❓

    This is what it looks like on my Windows 10 Desktop machine using “Firefox”

    Very similar using the new “Edge” with Windows 10 and therefore similar with “Chrome”

    Uno momento while I have a look at my mini tablet using
    “Firefox” and “Adroid”.

    The placement may be top or bottom or on my machine – the RH side – have a play around it will be there somewhere. Because I use C+ there will be displacement of posts newest on top my machine.

    Time for old fogies to have sleepy byes. 💤
    Although new movie on TV at the moment
    “Kind Hearts and Coronets” 1949. Ah yes, I remember it well. You were in blue. rave rav ra f

  13. Donald Trump survives by counting on the eternal sunshine of the spotless minds of his followers. It’s all sunny uplands, stoked by Fox News for them. And the circle turns between what Trump sees on Fox, what he Tweets and what his Followers read and see. A seamless circle of deceit and brainwashing.

  14. Boerwar

    lizzie
    It is looking more and more like the supply chains are catching up with the speculative hoarders.
    There are going to be an awful lot of people who are seriously overprepared for diarrhea.

    Ya reckon ? local IGA cleaned out of toilet paper nigh on two weeks and still shelves are barren.
    Must be quite an army of people on the road scouring through super markets. Popped in to the local IGA store this a.m. in the forlorn hope of loo paper and instead of the usual 7.00 a.m Sat. morn crew of regulars consisting of a few older locals and a smattering of young families there was crowd of ‘newbies’ . Not sure what everyone was after but they all carried a hand basket rather than a trolley virtually everyone normally uses here no matter how little they get. Perhaps they too were on the doomed Operation Dunny Paper mission.

  16. Rick Wilson Daily Beast – FULL column now available – dumps on Trump BIGLY

    You Cheered as He Fucked Up. No Take Backs, Trumpists.

    Donald Trump and his fans are learning that karmic externalities are a bitch. They’re learning that you can get away with a chain of scams, business failures, bankruptcies, and branding disasters and win the presidency but still fail utterly as a president and a person.

    It took a global pandemic, the bursting of the Fed-fueled stock market bubble, and an opponent Trump can’t face. It doesn’t read Twitter, watch Fox, or respond to derisive nicknames. It took a plague to peel back the scales from his eyes finally, and even now, too many Trumpist Republicans insist this is fine.

    Heckuva job, Trumpie.

    His enablers know the truth and have tried to turn the battleship of bullshit toward it. They know Trump didn’t just mishandle the Coronavirus crisis, and he did so with his political standing and benefit in mind. Trump spent six weeks claiming to his soft-minded followers that the worst public health crisis since the 1918 H1N1 Spanish Flu was a fake news Democratic media hoax

    The evidence before the election of 2016 was utterly clear to see and every damn minute of his corrupt and chaotic reign of misrule smacked Americans in the face like a cast-iron frying pan yielded by a vicious ex, but Republicans kept defending him. They kept excusing him. They kept cheering every fuckup, every crime, and every insult to America’s charter and our character.

    They excused every lie, forgave every incompetent utterance and ideological heresy. How’s that working out now that the feces has impacted the rotating blades?

    When tested by the fire of crisis, Trump showed us what he’s always been: a weak, spoiled, intellectually vacant conman who has stumbled through a life of betrayal and failure papered over by bullshit and public relations.

    There are good leaders, bad leaders, and lucky leaders. Sometimes good leaders have bad luck. Sometimes bad leaders have good luck. This time, we’ve got a bad leader whose luck finally ran out, and whose reservoir of trust outside his base is essentially zero.

    And we’re not even at the end of the beginning of this pandemic. God help us.

    MUCH MORE : https://www.thedailybeast.com/you-cheered-as-he-fucked-up-no-take-backs-trumpists

  17. Interesting comparison.
    Germany population 84 million confirmed cases 20,000 deaths 67
    Washington (State) population 8 million confirmed cases 1,400 deaths 74
    Is it fair to compared first world and third world health systems?

  18. I just went to Coles and for the first time this week it was reasonably well supplied, except for toilet paper and pasta.

    They even had paper towels!!

    But the price of vegetables ….. capsicums $15 /kg ….

  23. KayJay

    Thank you for responding. I am using a HP laptop, windows 10, google chrome.

    Nothing like what you have appearing on RH side of my screen.

  24. Four senators sent a letter to Amazon urging the company to better protect warehouse workers during the coronavirus outbreak.

    In a letter sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Friday, Sens. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, urged him to provide paid sick leave and time-and-a-half hazard pay for its workers, among other measures.

    “Any failure of Amazon to keep its workers safe does not just put their employees at risk, it puts the entire country at risk,” the senators wrote in the letter. “Americans who are taking every precaution…might risk getting infected with COVID-19 because of Amazon’s decision to prioritize efficiency and profits over the safety and well-being of its workforce.”

    The senators included a list of questions for Bezos seeking more information about what steps Amazon is taking to protect its employees from infection, with a deadline for Amazon to respond by March 26.

    The letter also asks whether Amazon would consider covering the cost of testing workers for the coronavirus and whether it would ease disciplinary measures and its “strident efficiency” to give workers enough time to wash their hands. The senators asked Bezos whether Amazon would consider temporarily shutting down any facility where a worker tests positive for the virus.

    The letter comes one day after Amazon temporarily closed a Queens, New York delivery station, known as DBK1, after a worker tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus. The case marked the first known incident of a U.S. Amazon warehouse employee contracting the disease. On Monday, Amazon confirmed that at least five workers at Amazon warehouses in Spain and Italy contracted the disease.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/20/senators-to-bezos-give-amazon-warehouse-workers-sick-leave-hazard-pay.html

    I’ve never bought anything from Amazon. I will continue that policy until Amazon’s conditions of employment come up to scratch. Bezos is reputedly the world’s richest person. If so, he’s certainly made his fortune by exploiting his workforce.

  25. KJ

    I have logged out of and logged back in again to PB. I have shut down laptop and re-booted. Then logged into PB. Nothing.

  26. Late Riser @ #2771 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 10:42 am

    If this image works it is a graphic explanation of why herd immunity will fail. SARS-COV-2 is mutating quickly. (Can we shorten that to SC2, or something?)

    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

    It also shows that the strain in Australia is not the strain in other places.

    Yes I found that chart interesting. Admittedly it was hard to read and took me a bit to work out what I was looking at.

  27. Pegasus @ #2773 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 12:45 pm

    KayJay

    Thank you for responding. I am using a HP laptop, windows 10, google chrome.

    Nothing like what you have appearing on RH side of my screen.

    If it helps, you may see a solid black frame across the top of the page. The top left looks like this on my comp.

    Clicking on the dial takes me to “The dashboard “.

  29. Coronavirus tally in Victoria hits 229 as casino exemption revoked, schools and police ramp up measures

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-21/coronavirus-cases-in-victoria-rise-to-229-as-police-run-checks/12077596

    During today’s press conference, Mr Andrews said that Victoria’s schools were remaining open.

    “It remains the advice of both the chief health officer and every other health officer across the country, and the chief medical officer Brendan Murphy, that schools should remain open,” he said.

    “That is the health advice.”

  30. Late Riser @ #2777 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 12:51 pm

    Pegasus @ #2773 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 12:45 pm

    KayJay

    Thank you for responding. I am using a HP laptop, windows 10, google chrome.

    Nothing like what you have appearing on RH side of my screen.

    If it helps, you may see a solid black frame across the top of the page. The top left looks like this on my comp.

    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    Clicking on the dial takes me to “The dashboard “.

    And if that fails this link might work, after first logging in.
    https://www.pollbludger.net/wp-admin/

  31. Player One @ #2750 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 12:09 pm

    Pegasus @ #2740 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 12:52 pm

    RD

    After seeing GG’s repeating my post (which I always appreciate>, it’s Cat’s way of megaphoning she has me blocked.

    C@t always makes a loud noise about how she blocks certain people – completely contrary to William’s guidelines, BTW – but in fact it is obvious she reads every post 🙂

    William’s guidelines #2:

    Talk about politics, not other commenters.

    Just in case you missed it….

  32. Soap has mild antibacterial properties, but it does not kill viruses. It does remove dirt, though

    This doesn’t align with other information … other reputable sources of information indicate that soap is actually pretty good at making viruses inactive:

    The short story: because the virus is a self-assembled nanoparticle in which the weakest link is the lipid (fatty) bilayer. Soap dissolves the fat membrane and the virus falls apart like a house of cards and dies – or rather, we should say it becomes inactive as viruses aren’t really alive.

    and in this case the author suggests soap is actually superior to alcohol for the purpose:

    Alcohol-based products, which pretty much includes all “disinfectant” products, contain a high-percentage alcohol solution (typically 60-80% ethanol) and kill viruses in a similar fashion. But soap is better because you only need a fairly small amount of soapy water, which, with rubbing, covers your entire hand easily. Whereas you need to literally soak the virus in ethanol for a brief moment, and wipes or rubbing a gel on the hands does not guarantee that you soak every corner of the skin on your hands effectively enough.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/12/science-soap-kills-coronavirus-alcohol-based-disinfectants

    So, yeah, don’t be looking down on good old soap.

  34. C@t, do what I do when I don’t know what to do on the computer, I press every word, button or icon on the screen. You never know what you will find.

  36. I am fully against live export. I am somewhat of a hypocrite because I eat meat, I suppose. but my saying
    is, I might want to eat some animal, but I do not want them to suffer. I expect the law to be enforced to prevent that. That is first world privilege. I know.

  37. NSW breaking yesterday’s record..

    NSW has recorded another 83 cases of COVID-19 since 8pm on Friday, pushing the state’s number of confirmed cases to 436.

    NSW Health, in a statement updating the state’s coronavirus statistics, identified four separate cruises affected by COVID-19, in addition to the Ruby Princess.

    These include a 67-year-old man on the Ovation of the Seas ship, a 66-year-old man on the Voyager of the Seas and a man on the Celebrity Solstice cruise.

    The passengers aboard the three cruises are being contacted and are advised to self-quarantine and be alert for symptoms.

    Meanwhile, a woman in her 20s aboard an earlier trip by the Voyager of the Seas also tested positive for COVID-19. The ship left Sydney February 25 and returned March 7.

    “It will be 14 days on March 21at 6.30am since the ship arrived. Although self-isolation of well passengers is no longer required, all passengers are being contacted with advice to seek COVID-19 testing if unwell,” NSW Health said in a statement.

    NSW Health said there were no known linked cases nor evidence of any respiratory illness outbreaks on the ship about all four cases.

  38. KJ and LR

    Thank you for your help. Problem solved. I had JavaScript blocked on PB. Disabled….now edit and remove facility is visible.


  42. NE Qld says:
    Saturday, March 21, 2020 at 1:59 pm

    Australian cases passes 1000…from ABC News 24.

    Shit hits the fan in about 14 days.

  43. Snap BK!

    And it should be noted that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For one it gives a clearer picture of the disease prevalence, and therefore helps us better target particular groups or demographics.

  44. The NSW numbers can be a bit confusing because there is a figure given for the 24 hours to 8pm (like the 436) and then, later on, a figure for the 24 hours to 11am the following day.

    From the two most recent grand figures, we can calculate that there were 54 more cases diagnosed (or recorded) between 11am and 8pm yesterday. The next announcement will enable us to calculate the additional cases to 11am this morning.

  45. C@tmomma:

    Angela Merkel is a Chemical Engineer, iirc. She could nail it better than any world leader, I reckon.

    You could be onto something.

    Lee the Younger (Hsien Loong) the PM of Singapore was an outstanding mathematician (he was Senior Wrangler – top of the year in Maths – at Cambridge in 1973), and Singapore too appear to be performing very well.

    The War on Science in the Murdoch Countries has consequences – we mostly get lawyers (who are innumerate, as recently demonstrated by Mr Bret Walker and Justice Weinberg), alternating occasionally with complete tossers.

  46. Victoria’s chief health officer Dr Brett Sutton said he wants to do significant amounts of testing even though Australia is already doing “ten times more testing than the US” for its population size. He said there had been a significant increase in testing capacity in the past week, and mentioned there was now a wider definition for testing. There are now 229 cases in the state, with 51 confirmed yesterday.

  48. Pretty sure I’ve seen 1 cruise ship each day this weekdocked at Circular Quay including the one where people were free to wander the streets of Sydney.
    The streets of Sydney have been pretty empty when I’ve gone home.
    Trains in the morning and evening peak hour have been fairly lightly occupied on my trips to and from home.

  49. The Guardian

    There are now 969 Covid-19 cases and seven deaths in Australia, and health minister Greg Hunt says about 115,000 tests have been carried out.
    ————

    Victoria’s chief health officer, Dr Brett Sutton, said he wanted to do significant amounts of testing even though Australia was already doing “10 times more testing than the US” for its population size. He said there had been a significant increase in testing capacity in the past week, and that there was now a wider definition for testing. There are now 229 cases in the state, with 51 confirmed yesterday.
    :::
    Sutton was also asked to comment on NSW on the docking of the Ruby Princess cruise ship in Sydney – all passengers are now isolating after four people on board tested positive. He said:

    The lesson from Japan [the Diamond Princess cruise ship] was the crew continued to have cases and may well have brought it to others on that ship even though they were isolated. I’m sure NSW have done the right thing. I’m not here to judge NSW public health. They’re acting to the protocols for cruise ships.
    ———-

  50. Vogon Poet @ #2781 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 1:58 pm

    Player One @ #2750 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 12:09 pm

    Pegasus @ #2740 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 12:52 pm

    RD

    After seeing GG’s repeating my post (which I always appreciate>, it’s Cat’s way of megaphoning she has me blocked.

    C@t always makes a loud noise about how she blocks certain people – completely contrary to William’s guidelines, BTW – but in fact it is obvious she reads every post 🙂

    William’s guidelines #2:

    Talk about politics, not other commenters.

    Just in case you missed it….

    Someone has an inflated opinion of themselves and it ain’t me!

    Fyi P1, because you obviously read every one of my posts, and you are a little bit thick it seems, the only time I come across a post by someone I have Blocked (and I don’t know where you got the silly idea that it is against Mr Bowe’s guidelines, otherwise why does he allow C+?), is when they are quoted by someone I do Follow.

    And, yes, I am super happy with myself for no longer following the posts by you or Pegasus. Life’s too short. Not that I ever learned anything useful when I did.

    Now, stop talking about other posters like me with Pegasus, as IS stated in Mr Bowe’s guidelines.

    And that is the absolute last thing I am going to say about you!

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