Another three things

A bluffers’ guide to Saturday’s elections in Queensland, plus further items of marginal interest.

No Newspoll this week it seems. News you can use:

• Queensland’s elections on the weekend are covered in extensive and ongoing detail here. To cut a long story short: the state by-elections of Bundamba and Currumbin resulted in victories for the incumbent parties, namely Labor and the Liberal National Party respectively; Adrian Schrinner of the LNP was re-elected as lord mayor of Brisbane; and the LNP have almost certainly retained a healthy majority on Brisbane City Council. In Bundamba, the LNP ran third behind One Nation (and probably shouldn’t have bothered to run), whose presence in the field also took a bite out of the Labor primary vote. Labor did manage to improve their primary vote at the LNP’s expense in Currumbin, where One Nation is a lot weaker, but the latter’s presence means they will get a lower share of the combined preferences and thus fail to bite into the LNP’s existing 3.3% margin. There has been no notional two-party count, but scrutineers’ figures cited by Antony Green suggest Labor received an uncommonly weak 71% share of Greens preferences.

• Roy Morgan’s promise that it would provide further detail on its half-way intriguing findings on trust in political and business leaders (see here and here) has borne disappointing fruit. Rather than provide the trust and distrust scores as most of us would have hoped, a follow-up release offers only blurry impressions as to the specific attributes that caused the various leaders to be trusted or distrusted, in which “honest/genuine” and “integrity/sincerity” were uselessly listed as distinct response options.

• The Tasmanian government has delayed the date for the periodical Legislative Council elections, which this year encompass the seats of Huon and Rosevears, but only from May 2 to May 30. The Tasmanian Electoral Commission says this will give it more time to “ensure electors have access to the voting process and to maintain the integrity of the 2020 Legislative Council elections during the COVID-19 pandemic”, which presumably means a greater emphasis on postal, pre-poll and maybe telephone voting.

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.

1,029 comments on “Another three things”

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  1. Josh now telling porkies – aggregates all the loans, giveaways and promises into $320b over the forward estimates, and creates a ratio against current year GDP.

    Why do it Josh? The only people who understand it know it’s porkies. Those who don’t are oblivious.

    Why Josh?

  3. Ben Eltham
    @beneltham
    ·
    3m
    Interesting that the JobKeeper payment appears to be available to sole traders. This could potnetially be very helpful to many gig economy workers

  5. So the company is out of pocket for a month?

    Annabel Crabb
    @annabelcrabb
    People will be paid by their employers from today, says PM. The reimbursement in arrears happens from May 1.

  6. Smart move using the ATO, give aways to Business – and trust them to keep their jobs.

    You need to have a downturn in revenue by more than 30% to qualify

  9. E. G. Theodore @ #548 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 3:18 pm

    In PB we also have a graph:
    – posters as nodes
    – edges between nodes (posters) representing both durable animus and (in the form of posts) transient abuse

    You’d need to train some sort of classifier to distinguish abusive posts from ‘normal’ ones and infer the target of each abusive post. Don’t see any other practical way of getting a meaningful amount of edge data quickly.

    Results will be interesting, if you manage to get that far with it.

  10. I wonder what changed Scrott’s mind re kiwis , it wouldn’t be his conscience. Ardern specifically asked him about this several days ago and he said ‘nyet’ . Australians in NZ were and are entitled to all subsidies and assistance available to NZ citizens

  12. Bucephalus:

    meher baba

    I had a temp of 39.5 (measure by a modern stick in your ear thermometer) for 2 days plus almost all the other symptoms. The GP would only talk to me on the phone and because I didn’t meet the Overseas Traveller and Confirmed Case Contact protocols there was no testing.

    If your GP doesn’t think you have COVID19 then why prohibit you from coming in?

    Presumably you are fit. You might have some other serious respiratory illness which needs swabbing (and in SA this would automatically result in COVID19 testing of the swab)

    GP (or some doctor) needs to make a diagnosis, not just rule out COVID19 (GPs are not COVID19 test admissions clerks) – another serious respiratory illness could land you in hospital

    Perhaps you should force the issue by turning up – they can’t really turn you away. Maybe try to get your GP to send you to the ED of a private hospital that has one:
    – if they let you in, they can diagnose
    – if they won’t let you in it must be on the basis of suspecting COVID19, in which case the ED doctor must order a test…

  13. yabba @ #495 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 3:51 pm

    C@tmomma @ #473 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 3:30 pm

    MILAN (Reuters) – Italian researchers are looking at whether a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019 may be a signal that the new coronavirus might have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought.

    Hmm, seems to be saying it originated in China to me. But that’s just being a Sinophobe I guess. 😐

    Just perhaps, the Italian researchers are loath to imply that the virus originated in Lombardy and spread to Wuhan via an Italian tourist who visited a fish market in Wuhan, or stayed in an Airbnb with a family whose grandmother shopped in a fish market in Wuhan. Any of those, and countless other ‘maybes’ is perfectly possible. You have no idea whatsoever whether any are true or not, so stop pretending that you do.

    My theory is that it started in Austria or Bavaria in a wildfleisch restaurant, of which there are literally thousands, and spread via a Swiss tourist to Lombardy, and from there to Wuhan. Wildfleisch is often served rare, to preserve the flavour and the contained bacteria and viruses. Everybody surely knows about the primitive eating habits of Austrians and Bavarians. You will notice that I did not refer to Germans, as that would be racist.

    You don’t do flippant well, Yabba. Asinine, yes.

  14. Re ICUs: apart from the expected reduction in usage due to less surgery going on, the key question is not the total number of ICU beds, but the total number of ventilators. Not all ICU patients require a ventilator.

    But, however you cut it, there’s a pretty limited supply, and that’s why action to flatten the curve is essential. Everyone, including the Federal Government, agrees on this point: there are just difference of opinion in how strong the restrictions on activities need to be in order to achieve the desired result.

    The good news is that there are some signs that the actions taken to date, even if some people think they should be stricter, seem to be making a difference.

  16. It’s more than ironic that Morrison’s at the tiller during the worst crisis to confront the nation since WWII – arguably worse. After hounding Labor for nearly eight years for being “profligate” during the GFC, the Tories are now facing a ginormous hit to their bottom line. No, it’s not Morrisson’s fault but karma can sometimes be a bummer.

  17. This is far from the worst piece of policy the LNP have come up with.

    IMHO they still need to directly stimulate aggregate demand by purchasing labour.

  18. sprocket_

    “Job Keepers” went CLANG for me as it immediately brought to mind these chaps.
    ………………………………………………………………………………………..
    Promise Keepers -is an Evangelical Christian parachurch organization for men.
    The organization places particular emphasis on godly manhood,
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promise_Keepers

  19. Right, so it is a wage-subsidy – so employers will have their employees covered for up to $1500 a fortnight, and then they chip in the rest.
    So for minimum wage earners, it will be covered 100%. If you earn more, then the employer will have to keep in the rest.
    It does not include superannuation.

    Some interesting unintended consequences in this. Some good some not. Give it a burl Scott. It aint the worst idea you have come up with.
    And as Josh says, companies will do the right thing because they are so interested in the great future good.

  21. However critical I may sound, I am sincerely sorry for everyone who has lost their job and now has to go through more paperwork in order to receive money. And for all the businesses which will have to prove their turnover has fallen by at least 30%.

  23. Mark Duckett
    @MarkRDuckett
    ·
    4m
    Aust Business Council will been forensically looking at every detail of Jobkeeper policy to see how much business can skim off without paying their workers. Just like Modern Awards..

  24. “IMHO they still need to directly stimulate aggregate demand by purchasing labour.”

    Yup. TBH now probably isn’t the time to start projects, Of course excepting those that have an immediate need.

    What would be useful is to start announcing projects that will be started once this settles down. Whether construction projects, IT or just provision of extra services, announcing these will encourage companies to keep staff on. Even starting the tendering process – that will keep people working.

  26. Wee Scoot seems to be doing a good impersonation of the school kid who has not done their homework. Borrows the homework from people who have (NZ/UK etc) then copies it with a few changes to make it look like his own work and then hands it in late for marking.

  27. One suspects the low-information public will have more sympathy, indeed even gratitude, for the spending measures on the ground of medical emergency/pandemic, as opposed to a financial market emergency of their own making (GFC).
    This is how they will try to differential their spending now, compared to Labor’s during the GFC.
    However, these wage guarantees should have been done sooner (and better). And I suspect will lead to more confusion, stress, and lack in confidence. Nice announceable for short term trading though…

  29. Doesn’t look like the Barristers are going to be able to stay living in the style to which they have become accustomed.

  30. Shellbell:

    EGT

    Anecdotally it the large number of people returning to Singapore which is the source of the rise

    Are they not quarantining and testing everyone arriving? That would leave a linear effect that can easily be removed to a distinct count, and not have the appearance of exponential growth.in the total… It’s a separate process to whatever’s going on inside Singapore and needs to be kept separate if at all possible…

  32. “My son said that Scott Morrison needs to go the full John Howard.”

    My sympathies will be with all the hairy caterpillars that Scotty from Marketing would have to keep gluing on his eyebrows.

  33. The Liberal party’s embrace of not just the language of collectivism, but also big government and colossal debt is truly remarkable.
    How long will this bolshie bon homie last once we cross the bridge?

  34. Dandy Murray @ #567 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 3:36 pm

    This is far from the worst piece of policy the LNP have come up with.

    Can’t tell if everyone is being serious or sarcastic right now.

    People like that the “wage subsidy” is being paid to businesses instead of directly to (current and recent) wage earners, or they don’t?

  35. poroti
    “Promise Keepers -is an Evangelical Christian parachurch organization for men.”

    I once met a Promise Keeper when I lived in the US. Yikes, he was a sanctimonious bore.

  37. So if your business has no work, and no revenue, how are you supposed to keep on workers who have income above the minimum wage? E.g. where pay rates are set by an EBA or award?

    Do they just go, or take a (temporary) pay cut? How will this be administered in our current IR regime?

    Is this a way to drive everyone’s wage towards minimum wage?

  39. Scomo and Josh really enjoy saying the big words like ‘unprecedented’ and ‘billions’. Sweeps everyone off their feet but without detail.

  41. Dandy Murray @ #590 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 4:50 pm

    So if your business has no work, and no revenue, how are you supposed to keep on workers who have income above the minimum wage? E.g. where pay rates are set by an EBA or award?

    Do they just go, or take a (temporary) pay cut? How will this be administered in our current IR regime?

    Is this a way to drive everyone’s wage towards minimum wage?

    It’s not going to work because it rubs up against people who use their investments in property to make an income. They won’t want to decrease rent charged now in order to conform to a total Minimum Wage scenario.

  45. E. G. Theodore

    It’s not a matter of whether or not the GP thinks I have COVID19 or not. Testing in WA has only been for those recently returned from Overseas or confirmed contact with a diagnosed case. That was it until I think Saturday when they expanded to a range of categories none of which I fall into.

  46. Dandy:

    This is far from the worst piece of policy the LNP have come up with.

    IMHO they still need to directly stimulate aggregate demand by purchasing labour.

    I agree they need direct purchase, but not necessarily labour.

    Typically a B2B business will sell to both private sector businesses and government. Often sales can be delivered remotely (work from home).

    Private sector business are out of the market due to fear.

    Normal government purchases take ages

    What’s needed (in this case) is:
    – fast track government purchases
    – government subsidy to private sector purchases
    In both cases the purchase is proper sale which the business must deliver (without physical presence, or at least minimal). This keeps the business operating as a business (albeit in a different way) instead of hibernating, and in particular avoids the costs of recovery from hibernation.

  48. So, basically it’s just paying unemployment benefits through employers?

    If you get paid more than 1500 per fortnight and my employer isn’t bringing in enough to keep me on, does that mean my salary drops to 750 p/w? Rather than being made redundant and getting a payout, I now just go straight to Newstart?

  49. Dandy Murray @ #587 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 3:50 pm

    So if your business has no work, and no revenue, how are you supposed to keep on workers who have income above the minimum wage?

    Businesses should retain some cash in the bank for when they fall on hard times, similar to how everyone else is generally expected to do the same with their personal finances?

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