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. lizzie says: Monday, March 30, 2020 at 9:53 am
    Isn’t it a tragedy that USA doesn’t have a Governor-General who can take over and dismiss Trump in a crisis?

    Our GG won’t do anything either unless Scotty from Marketing lets him.

  2. I’ll point out that the red line in the image above* assumes a growth rate falling to 1.101.

    So far, the measures we have put in place have returned a minimum daily growth rate of 1.119, while the five-day average to yesterday is ~1.15. This can make a huge difference to the peakiness of the peak infection rate and the total number of concurrent infections.

    This is not a criticism of the work, just pointing out that the real situation might be somewhere between the red and blue curves.

    (*From https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/flattening-the-curve-to-help-australia-s-hospitals-prepare)

  4. [‘Kiwis crash website to dob in neighbours.

    New Zealanders are embracing their inner cop, crashing a Dob-in-a-Kiwi website within a day of police opening it.

    Police established the http://www.105.police.govt.nz website during the country’s coronavirus lockdown to allow members of the public to give tip-offs of non- compliant activities.

    Commissioner Mike Bush said police received 4200 reports in the first 24 hours.

    “It crashed our system. So we put it back up again. And it’s working,” he said.

    The website was created after thousands of Kiwis flooded the country’s emergency number, 111, to provide the same information.

    Around 1000 of the submissions relate to businesses operating in defiance of the lockdown, with the rest relating to individuals.’]

  5. It’s Time @ #347 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 1:32 pm

    C@tmomma @ #337 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 12:26 pm

    Tricot,
    The problem with your admonishment is that some of us are being called racists, or similarly but slyly, Sinophobes, simply for identifying where COVID-19 likely originated. And if it turned up in Italy about the same time as in China, then that may have had to do with a returning traveller, though we are not even allowed to suggest that, simplistically we are being told to believe it just popped up there too and may have even originated there, with no proof given.

    I, for one, will continue to challenge such spurious assertions. Unchallenged the accusations suggest tacit approval.

    As I have said before, use you language precisely to distinguish between the government of China, the population of China, Han chinese ethnicity and those of east asian appearance instead of just throwing “”Chinese” around with gay abandon. Then you won’t sound like a racist; unless of course if you do want to.

    1. There’s no way I would be referring to the government of China, so why waste my time eliminating them when I comment?

    2. I wouldn’t know a Han Chinese and where they lived, from a hole in the ground, so, sorry but I can’t misdirect and make a mistake by trying to do that.

    3. Do you honestly believe, when people from another country are talking about Australia’s residents, they refer to them specifically wrt what region, state or ethnicity within the Australian population they are a part of? I think you’ll find that they mostly refer to us as ‘Australians’. If you want more granularity, go for it. I’m just going to keep calling them Chinese.

  6. Simon Katich

    Was that the one with Freemason pilots flying a plane owned by the Illuminati or was that another flight ?

  8. Mexicanbeemer @ #350 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 12:35 pm

    It’s Time
    That is being picky and we don’t need to be this picky with any western country and with how the CCP rules then there is less reason to be picky when it comes to China.

    How many other cases are there where “race” and a country are the same adjective?

  9. Simon Katich
    Was that the one with Freemason pilots flying a plane owned by the Illuminati or was that another flight ?

    Russian freemasons.

  13. Is it too soon to start talking about the coalition’s debt and deficit disaster and question whether the 2nd and 3rd stimuli were really necessary.

    Sorry, just channeling my inner Monkey.
    Got cabin fever.

  16. Simon Katich says: Monday, March 30, 2020 at 10:46 am

    KayJay. Someone put your fence up way too far back!
    That looks suspiciously like a black skivvy.

    I’ll be the message on the shirt/skivvy/whatever says “Oldie but not mouldy.”

    The reason I’m commenting now on posts made earlier is because I was in town this morning for a doctors appointment.

  17. Mexicanbeemer @ #360 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 1:40 pm

    C@T
    Every Chinese person that i know calls themselves Chinese.

    Yep. Since Primary School, a loooong time ago, every Chinese family we have been friends or acquaintances with, has done the same. Some of them though, whose family had been here since the Gold Rush, simply called themselves Australians, or Chinese-Australians.

  18. It’s Time
    There are quite a few countries that could tick that box but then it depends how one sees race because many countries see themselves as a standalone race.

  21. Bushfire Bill says: Monday, March 30, 2020 at 11:52 am

    Regarding Dutton’s disappearance, Marise Payne is still missing too. Morrison blustered his way through yesterday’s question about her.

    She’s hiding in her personal submarine?

  24. It’s Time

    All the reports I’ve read say the virus originating in Wuhan. Wuhan is in China. It isn’t in the government of China.

    The bloody thing came from China. It’s not remotely racist to say so.

  26. Dandy Murray @ #335 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 12:21 pm

    This is excellent:

    https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/flattening-the-curve-to-help-australia-s-hospitals-prepare

    Thanks for the link. Interesting article. I wonder if they’ve published their model somewhere. It seems just about complex enough to be meaningful and simple enough to be usable.

    Couple of observations:

    for symptomatic people to realise they are sick, see a health professional, get tested and get their result

    I thought I needed to check travel related boxes as well as feeling unwell. How might this affect the values for lag?

    This is the extraordinarily challenging task of our politicians, chief medical officers and scientists.

    Ahh yes. Back to the erosion of trust. Trust in science and politicians is a team sport these days.

  27. Holdenhillbilly says Monday, March 30, 2020 at 12:46 pm

    One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has slammed returning Australians complaining about tough conditions under state-funded hotel quarantine, telling them to “stop their bloody whingeing”.

    Pot, meet kettle.

  28. US coronavirus cases via @CNN:

    Four weeks ago: 89
    Three weeks ago: 558
    Two weeks ago: 3,485
    One week ago: 32,502
    Right now: 139,773

  29. Last weekend I felled two dead trees on my (semi-rural) block. This weekend just gone I cut the tree into logs and offered them on Gumtree as free firewood.
    While I was cutting the tree yesterday I spoke to one of my neighbours on the other side of the fence, he was laid off on Friday.
    Late last week I spoke to the neighbour over the road (literally over the road, we were on one side, he was on the other), he’s been working as a Drone compliance instructor and was told there would be no more work for him in the foreseeable future.
    A guy rang up about the firewood and I delivered it to him in Caboolture (which is closer than the tip, which is where it was going if no-one wanted it). He’s a mechanic normally working in Redcliffe, he was told by his boss to take leave without pay until further notice. He does have long service leave accrued but didn’t want to take it if he didn’t have to.
    So … I ONLY spoke to three people outside of family on the weekend (not including shop attendants etc) and every one had lost their income. My daughters boyfriend advised his step-father lost his job on Friday and his father had to close his indoor cricket business and probably won’t open it again.
    And here we are, four households with NO INCOME that somehow have to survive until, at the very earliest, the end of April. My understanding is the government won’t pay anyone with any kind of accrued leave so the guy I gave the firewood to will have to use his accrued LSL before he gets anything.
    Exactly HOW are people expected to self isolate with no income and no way to get necessities for a month? This is a slow moving societal disaster which may well become very very much worse rather quickly without taking into consideration mental health and other such issues.

  32. C@tmomma @ #355 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 12:38 pm

    It’s Time @ #347 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 1:32 pm

    C@tmomma @ #337 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 12:26 pm

    Tricot,
    The problem with your admonishment is that some of us are being called racists, or similarly but slyly, Sinophobes, simply for identifying where COVID-19 likely originated. And if it turned up in Italy about the same time as in China, then that may have had to do with a returning traveller, though we are not even allowed to suggest that, simplistically we are being told to believe it just popped up there too and may have even originated there, with no proof given.

    I, for one, will continue to challenge such spurious assertions. Unchallenged the accusations suggest tacit approval.

    As I have said before, use you language precisely to distinguish between the government of China, the population of China, Han chinese ethnicity and those of east asian appearance instead of just throwing “”Chinese” around with gay abandon. Then you won’t sound like a racist; unless of course if you do want to.

    1. There’s no way I would be referring to the government of China, so why waste my time eliminating them when I comment?

    2. I wouldn’t know a Han Chinese and where they lived, from a hole in the ground, so, sorry but I can’t misdirect and make a mistake by trying to do that.

    3. Do you honestly believe, when people from another country are talking about Australia’s residents, they refer to them specifically wrt what region, state or ethnicity within the Australian population they are a part of? I think you’ll find that they mostly refer to us as ‘Australians’. If you want more granularity, go for it. I’m just going to keep calling them Chinese.

    Yeah, all Australians are white racists.

  33. bc @ #377 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 1:55 pm

    Holdenhillbilly says Monday, March 30, 2020 at 12:46 pm

    One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has slammed returning Australians complaining about tough conditions under state-funded hotel quarantine, telling them to “stop their bloody whingeing”.

    Pot, meet kettle.

    She’s probably worried about them invading her patch.

  36. MSNBC had a panel discussion about Sunday about the ways in which President Donald Trump has ignored all of the intelligence that warned him that a health crisis was coming.

    Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice warned the NSC that the U.S. wasn’t prepared for such a crisis back in 2017 and her reports were ignored. Trump was given a 69-page report three years ago that warned the country wasn’t ready in case of a pandemic. Trump’s team failed to use the “pandemic playbook,” which could have also saved lives.

    He’s chosen to ignore intelligence community reporting that the Saudi crown prince was involved in the murder of journalist from the Washington Post. He’s chosen to ignore that Vladimir Putin was to blame for the hacking and the interruption of our and messing with our presidential campaign in 2016. He’s ignoring intelligence that North Korea continues to develop a nuclear program. And now it’s impacting all of us, and he had a pandemic playbook on the shelf. It was ‘Pandemic for Dummies.’ And he’s refused to pull that off the shelf, and we’re all suffering from it.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/msnbc-host-goes-off-on-trump-for-choosing-to-ignore-intelligence-on-coronavirus-thats-a-provable-lie/

  37. Yeah, all Australians are white racists.

    But not all Australians are White. 🙂

    Give up while you are behind, Its Time.

  40. I promised the Management I’d butt out of the “Racism” discussion, but it’s nice to see some push-back at last against the Thought Police.

  42. Barney,

    Tibetans are Tibetans, just like Koreans are Koreans, Japanese are Japanese, Vietnamese are Vietnamese, Mongolians are Mongolians etc.

    Your point?

  43. PB could contract Michael Gunner to deal with miscreants:

    [If you are starting to think I don’t want you here, you are right.
    Do not come here, we do not want you here. Sorry, but not right now.]

  44. poroti says:
    Monday, March 30, 2020 at 12:40 pm
    C@t
    .
    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.

    The first case noticed in Wuhan was in November, being a person admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia . But this does not mean it was the first case either in Wuhan or anywhere else. And it does not indicate the time of infection….which could have been 2 or 3 weeks prior to the development of pneumonia….or longer, or not. We will never know the case history, but that individual case may well have contracted the virus in October 2019, and most likely caught it from another human rather than from a bat. We cannot know the chain of transmission.

    It’s also possible – even likely – that the virus had been lurking below the horizon for many months prior to being identified. It’s also possible that having made the leap from bat to human the virus may not have been particularly contagious at first. The epidemiologist in my family suggested that after such a jump the virus would begin to ‘strengthen’, meaning it would adapt/mutate and develop the ability to spread in its new host. This could – probably does – mean the virus we now encounter is more transmissible than the virus that first crossed the bat/human boundary. DNA sequencing might reveal the story of the mutation of the virus, but until this history is described definitively, the origin and paths of transmission remain uncertain.

    Once again, it’s important to avoid reading history in reverse. While we now know that the November case in Wuhan was an example of what we now call Covid-19, this was not known at the time. Nothing much was known at all at that time, except that the illness was SARS-like. Needless to say, this observation was made by a Chinese doctor who, most likely being unaware of the high transmissibility of the virus, also contracted it and later died from the infection.

    We still do not know what lies ahead for us in the pandemic…what directions it will take, what the eventual toll will be, and whether the virus will eventually become ‘just another seasonal bug’.

  46. No need to panic.According to Andrew Bolt we should all be back at work in 2 weeks.
    ( I’m not going to link beause he’s a nutter and I refuse to be a clickbaiter for his benefit )

  47. What some people don’t realise is that repetition (especially if you’re not saying anything new) can change the “tone” of a message.

    Say something once, and maybe you’re just being factual. Keep repeating it over time, spend a lot of energy on it, emphasising it above others things (especially when you don’t spend as much energy on other similar situations) and now you’re demonstrating a bias. It’s not that it somehow stops being factual, but the question is why do you keep repeating this fact over all other facts? Why are you cherry picking a single observation? Why this specific emphasis?

    This, by the way, often happens even if your repetition is the result of responding to another’s repetition :-P.

    On a somewhat related note, repetition can change a reasonable statement into harrassment (when directed repeatedly at one person over time) or into or pack-bullying (when directed at one person by multiple other people simultaneously).

  49. Mexicanbeemer @ #360 Monday, March 30th, 2020 – 12:40 pm

    C@T
    Every Chinese person that i know calls themselves Chinese.

    My Chinese mate, born in HK, raised Aus is married to a Chinese lady, born in HK.
    When his eldest child was 11, and the family were having yum cha in Sunnybank, child looked around restaurant and said, ” Dad, we are the only Australians here “

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