A promised initiative to restore confidence in opinion polling has came to fruition with the establishment of the Australian Polling Council, a joint endeavour of YouGov, Essential Research and uComms. Following the example of the British Polling Council and the National Council for Published Polls in the United States, the body promises to “ensure standards of disclosure”, “encourage the highest professional standards in public opinion polling” and “inform media and the public about best practice in the conduct and reporting of polls”.
The most important of these points relates to disclosure, particularly of how demographic weightings were used to turn raw figures into a published result. The British Polling Council requires that its members publish “computer tables showing the exact questions asked in the order they were asked, all response codes and the weighted and unweighted bases for all demographics and other data that has been published”. We’ll see if its Australian counterpart to sees things the same way when it releases its requirements for disclosures, which is promised “before July 2020”.
Elsewhere:
• The West Australian has had two further local polls on coronavirus from Painted Dog Research, one from last week and one from this week ($). The McGowan government announced its decision to reopen schools next week in between the two polls, which had the support of 22.7% in the earlier poll and 49% this week, with opposition down from 43.3% to 27%, and the undecided down from 34% to 24%. The earlier poll found remarkably strong results for the McGowan government’s handling of the crisis, with 90.0% agreeing it had been doing a good job (including 54.2% strongly agreeing) and only 2.9% disagreeing (1.2% strongly), with 7.1% neither agreeing or disagreeing. No field work dates provided, but the latest poll has a sample of 831.
• The University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Institute conducted a 1200-sample survey on coronavirus from April 6 to 11, and while the published release isn’t giving too much away, we told that “about 60% of Australians report being moderately to very satisfied with government economic policies to support jobs and keep people at work”, and that “more than 80% expect the impact of the coronavirus pandemic to last for more than 6 months“.
• The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage political science blog examines local government elections held in France on March 15, two days before the country went into lockdown: turnout fell from 63% to 45%, but the result was not radically different from the last such elections in 2016. Traditional conservative and socialist parties holding up well and the greens making gains, Emmanuel Macron’s presidential vehicle La République En Marche failing to achieve much cross-over success, and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National losing ground compared with a strong result in 2014.
@abcnewsradio tweets
CORONAVIRUS Q&A:
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor @MichaelKidd5 will be answering your questions about #COVID19 live on @ABC_NewsRadio tonight at 6pm AEST.
What would you like to know?
Post your questions below and we will put a selection of them to him.
Michael
The problem with golf is the club house environment and it brings a large number of people close together. If golf was allowed then next you would want cafes or pubs opened and i suspect golf is being used as a stalking horse because once its okay to have drink there then why not in a pub. Walking around the course should be fine and allowable but the club houses should be restricted.
My favourite Covid moment…. at one of those right-wing -crazies rally in the US the journalist asked a protester what freedoms are you denied….. he thought about it, thought about it, then pointed across the road and said ”I like to get my burgers over there”. That was it…..
You could substitute ‘I like to play golf over there”…just as stupid. To think our soldiers were in Gallipoli/ Western Front/ The Pacific for years, yet people cant go without a around of golf for 2 months without whinging.
It is also not true that a group playing golf doesn’t meet up because they do on every green and at the next tee.
8 cases in NSW yesterday out of 5000+ tests (less than NZ)
1 extra death in nursing home
3002 total cases (52 aged 5-17)
198,000+ total tests
303 active cases
182 under treatment
38 in patients
19 in ICU
15 ventilated
The LNP want restrictions listed fast because every day is a day of collective action.
Next you might see unions doing general strikes to raise the rate of Newstart
I would suggest all state jurisdictions remain in tight lockdown if the reaction to Insiders this morning is an indication of the pent-up potential reaction within the general community.
Australian has become illogically politically tribal, winning is everything, whatever it takes!
Morrison’s every decision is politically motivated.
Morrison will attempt to have the schools opened because he’s a gambler. Morrison is attempting to cover his jobseeker/jobkeeper wager, that is blowing in the markets, each day as it unfolds. Morrisoon is hoping everything “gets” back to “normal” and somehow the economy survives. Morrison is gambling with kids and schools not kickstarting the second wave of the virus and somehow the accolades keep coming his way in the polling.
There is some confusion between “snap back” and “brainsnap”.
What is obvious is that federal parliamentary LNP government is struggling with every decision. Caution, facts, clear leadership and independent scientific evidence are needed, certainly no more devisions on a federal/state level and no blatant self-interest by big business.
Mordern day politicians have little patience and even less statesmenship.
Morrison is depending on his faith and his church and not much else.
Hopefully the states and territories depend on science and facts.
@hughriminton tweeted
This is important new #COVID19Aus modelling from @unimelb – if only to sharpen our discussions. Maintaining current restrictions into July gives Australia a 90% chance of eliminating the virus. As for easing, read for yourself… https://twitter.com/agent_jase/status/1253608494084714496
@DougCameron51 tweets
How much more can be traded away said @LaTrioli on @InsidersABC when talking about enterprise bargaining.
Workers in Aus face some of the most restrictive bargaining laws in the world. This has led to wage stagnation and increased financial stress.
No more attacks on workers!
Mexicanbeener the clubhouse is closed and social distancing is maintained. Its low risk, but Daniel Andrews thinks not unlike the rest of Australia.
Goll @ #1801 Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – 12:16 pm
‘Morrison’s every decision is politically motivated.’
Labor’s decisions are never politically motivated. But always beautifully nuanced.
Scrooter is toast!
Toast I tells ya!
It can all be traded away, so long as the “no worse off” test is satisfied, I thought?
guytaur
Thank you so much for that link. Their results show PRECISELY what I’ve been on about here.
Torchbearer @ #1797 Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – 12:13 pm
Mundo’s least favourite Covi moment.
Where Comrade Morrison rises from the bushfire ashes to become ‘Father of the Nation’
A matter of weeks separates a high probability of elimination, with all the benefits that entails including being able to restart the economy almost entirely, and abject failure. An economy that can only be partially reopened for a long time.
And I might add, I think they are being conservative. I don’t think we have this in the bag, but I do think that we are 3 weeks away from seeing runs of zero cases nationally – if we don’t do anything stupid.
ar
Precisely the problem. Workers need to be better off.
Guytaur
There are things that could be reformed. the labour market does have a few weaknesses with the cost of employing needing to be looked at maybe MMT could be used to fund super and payroll tax should be abolished and there is a pathway issue between training and employment. The industrial relations system needs to be reformed because the current system is neither productive nor helpful.
Newspoll tonight.
Mundo has a good feeling.
That nuanced tone Albo has set should yield big dividends.
Mundo is so excited!
Thanks Cud for the link. Its looks as though all the Taiwan cases for the last 4 weeks are imported. So sorry you are right. But the bar chart does not show all the cases on the imported case bar chart. On the Worldometer, Taiwan has had 1 case for the last 4 days. The chart does not show that. They are struggling as well to get to zero cases.
Mexican
Agreed. Collective bargaining is a right. We should be looking at being France without the violence or looking at the Nordic model. They seem to do well there with the less inequality and happiest people.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nordic-model.asp
Golf is certainly on at Everglades in beautiful downtown Woy Woy.
Played a couple of rounds there. Max 2 players, only 1 to a cart but who would ever use 1.
No rakes in bunkers, No touching of flagsticks etc etc. A lot safer than Bunnings.
Q: The industrial relations system needs to be reformed because the current system is neither productive nor helpful….
Hasn’t Australia enjoyed the longest sustained growth period in OECD history? Cant be that broken. I suppose it could be skewed more towards workers as their share of GDP has plummeted in this period,
Guytaur
Collective bargaining is still part of the process and that isn’t the issue but how the system operates is an issue. Workers should not need to go on strike to trigger FWC when that goes against how common law usually operates.
Imagine if Jacinda Ardern adopted Australia’s Policy of Mid March of allowing cruise ships like the Ruby Princess dock in NZ with special ‘bespoke restrictions’ (remember that in the case of the Ruby Princess this comprised giving passengers a leaflet asking them to self isolate – with no compulsion or monitoring).
You would rightly think JA was an idiotic moron with shit for brains.
Now think of what Scot Morrison is advocating – Opening all schools and getting the kids back to learning. What he wants to do is adopt a policy that caused one of NZ’s biggest COVID19 outbreaks originating in a school, Marist College.
You would have to say SM is an idiotic moron with shit for brains. Especially as he has the benefit of someone else’s experience and should know better.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bible-belt-us-coronavirus-pandemic-pastors-church-a9481226.html
How does golf (a round by yourself) cause any risk of COVID 19 infection or transmission?
At some point there needs to be rationality in this whole thing.
On the app, I am not concerned about it’s privacy and freedom implications in itself. It’s a reasonable cause. But if it works, what about the next time?
So suck it down michael.
Yes, elimination is actually possible.
Other MB: “Listening to KK and Speers. It isn’t a bad interview except for the bit where Speers was trying to make KK agree it was NSW Health’s decision when she was actually correct in her answer.”
I don’t believe she was correct: Border Force had control over whether or not the ship could dock, but they relied for advice on the safety of this from quarantine and health authorities (with in this case, the health authorities having precedence because the ship was carrying humans and not plants and animals).
I note that Paul Barrett, who once ran the Quarantine Authority (as it then was called), says that the responsible health authority is the Chief Medical Officer of the Commonwealth. I actually believe that these powers of the CMO were delegated to the CMOs/CHOs of the States and Territories around 25 years ago (when the Australian Department of Health stopped employing doctors practicing medicine, as opposed to doctors who act as policy advisers). So I think a pretty good case can be made for NSW Health having stuffed up with this responsibility: they certainly have been behaving like they think they did.
At risk of copping abuse from her large fan club on PB, I would suggest that KK’s whole performance re the Ruby Princess this morning was largely an exercise in cheap political point-scoring, and arguably a bit inappropriate given that inquiries into the matter are not yet complete. I think her time at Sky News has inspired KK to become something of a tabloid news reporter. She has developed a great love of catch phrases that sound like they need to be printed in block capitals: I wish I had watched the interview late enough in the day to have set up a drinking game around how many times KK was going to say “gaping hole in our border protection.”
She is also inclined to zero in on human interest stories without giving much thought to the bigger picture: eg, when she launched into a diatribe about the couple who had been on the Ruby Princess and then died 10 days later. It was open to Speers to ask her what Border Force preventing the ship from docking would have done to prevent these people from becoming serious ill with coronavirus. Thankfully for KK, he didn’t: although I suspect she would have answered by saying “the point is, David, that under this government there’s a gaping hole in our border protection.”
The human interest reporter side of KK also comes through in her many statements about the Nadesalingam Family, which tend to focus on statements such as “Come on Mr Dutton, have a heart”, rather than give any sort of cogent argument as to why this family – who have been definitively found to have no valid claims to refugee status – should be given special treatment ahead of thousands of others. (And I’m not necessarily suggesting that such arguments don’t exist, just that I haven’t heard any of them from KK.)
KK always used to impress me as Premier and as a commentator on SkyNews. She’s clearly a very intelligent woman and I think could be put to better use than the attack dog role that she has currently assumed.
BOB LYNCH @ #1821 Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – 12:34 pm
Don’t tell michael – he’d be really annoyed! 🙂
Speaking personally, my job is busy and will continue to be for a while. That is because my work is drawn out over long periods… so older jobs linger with funds committed and new jobs will have a low cost start and long leadup to higher cost stages. My clients, their clients and their banks have confidence there is light ahead.
Keeping lockdowns too long will diminish that confidence. Open too early and it will have the same effect… peeps will be looking over their shoulder for a second wave. It is a tough one.
It is beers at 2 paces on the Mt Lofty Golf Course.
History
It’s simple. Its a matter of trust. Legislate proper privacy rights like the EU the app is not a problem.
It also fixes a lot of problems with trust in Electronic Health records and all future applications.
Germany is doing well so far.
Mundo is right the Australian people surely realise how bad Scomo’s leadership has been during the crisis.
Torchbearer says:
Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 12:34 pm
Q: The industrial relations system needs to be reformed because the current system is neither productive nor helpful….
Hasn’t Australia enjoyed the longest sustained growth period in OECD history? Cant be that broken. I suppose it could be skewed more towards workers as their share of GDP has plummeted in this period
————————————–
A long period of success can cover cracks that only become apparent when things change. The labour market has looked tied for sometime with a growing number of long term unemployed at a time we are needing to increase skilled migration because despite the unemployed being there we are somehow short of available labour. Only around 10% of graduates can obtain grad roles in anyone year and the unemployment rate is high when compared to many other western countries and wage growth has been poor.
Mundo
Morrison is toast. When?
The whole house burning down before we realise or another lucky diversion ?
Is there a newspoll tonight?
Tribal says no change if there is a poll.
Are enough people hurting enough to go against the tribe?
Recent history suggests not.
The complete “fuck-up”, the jobseeker/jobkeeper brainwave has however lit the wick.
Morrison will be secure in his next job before we have another federal election. (for Nath’s sake!)
“Keeping lockdowns too long will diminish that confidence”
Simon do the big boys do their sums and figure out that anything short of elimination is extremely risky to their bottom line?
Torchbearer
What’s broken is productivity at the management/board level. A lot of lazy rent seeking and very low corporate investment.
MB
You are easily impressed. I can’t remember what was achieved during KK’s premiership except that the parliament was adjourned to “the long bell” because there was no legislation to debate
“Mundo is right the Australian people surely realise how bad Scomo’s leadership has been during the crisis.”
You’d hope so, but.. media.
The sad thing is that if we luck it into elimination, Scomo will be insufferable in taking the credit – despite most of his actions being directly contrary.
Mexicanbeemer
Thats why I said changes had to be skewed towards workers…I pointed out the distribution of wealth issue at the core of worker malaise in this country over this period of growth.
CC: “So suck it down michael.
Yes, elimination is actually possible.”
As SARS showed, elimination is possible if the disease hasn’t spread very far into your community. Taiwan put the border controls in place very early, and they have consequently experienced very little in the way of community transmission. So, yes, they might achieve elimination: although the Taiwanese economy benefits greatly from remissions from expat workers in China, so they are going to have open the borders sooner or later.
At the other end of the spectrum is the US, where elimination currently looks about as likely as a Presidential election victory for the Green Party. No serious effort was made to control the borders until it was much too late, and the virus has ended up running everywhere. So, even if they were to shut themselves off from the rest of the world for a decade it’s difficult to see how they could ever be confident they had eliminated it.
Australia is somewhere on the spectrum between Taiwan and the US. We are clearly not a million miles away from eliminating the virus, but I suspect that we’ll want to start progressive taking controls off before we can be 100% confident that we have got there, and then eventually reopen the borders as well, so we’ll probably never see zero cases for a sustained period.
Sorry, but I can’t believe that any government in the world is going to keep its economy shutdown for months on end while it tries to get the incidence of a contagious disease down from 1 case per million people per day to zero cases per million people per day.
OC: “MB
You are easily impressed. I can’t remember what was achieved during KK’s premiership except that the parliament was adjourned to “the long bell” because there was no legislation to debate”
I didn’t say that she was a good Premier. I said that she impressed me as being intelligent. I felt sorry for her as she clearly did not possess the level of control over her government that any Premier would wish to have.
Of course you could say that she should have refused to take the job but, in the long run, it turned out to be quite a good move for her.
If there is a newspoll tonight
Still think the TPP will lend towards the Liberals but that is because many people who form the bulk of this government’s base are still mostly working or are making do in the online space and i am getting a sense that older people are happier to follow the restrictions but men seem more hostile so this might start to come through in the polling. Would like to see some seat-to-seat polling.
Any IR system where unions can be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for trying to enter work sites to ensure worker safety while employers who rip off wages and super from their staff and or put their workers at risk through shoddy or non existent health and safety protocols get a wet lettuce wrap across the knuckles is not a fair system.
Any IR system where unions can be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for trying to enter work sites to check if workers are being properly paid as per the relevant award or EBA while employers can simply claim it was all too hard and it was only a mistake when they are found out ripping millions from their staff over extended periods and escape any penalty is not a fair system.
Workers need more protections not less.
Baba
The science is clear. To quote Dr Fauci of the Trump administration.
The virus determines the length of time of shutdowns not us.
Just as Hitler determined to invade Poland led to the economy being second so too now. We are in an emergency and much as conservatives ideology wants cooperative communities being put in the spotlight the economy does come second.
Of course this means the Gillard government approach to climate change not the Abbott and LNP one will win the day.
meher
You seem to think that there is a “setting” that you can adjust. One that keeps the virus in check whilst allowing the economy to function well. That’s a dangerous illusion.
Another month or two is far better than the alternative – a partial reopening of the economy and the lack of consumer and business confidence that comes with always being only a couple of weeks away from thousands of infections.
Simon Katich @ #1830 Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – 12:41 pm
Keeping lockdown going will first expose those who have been swimming naked. Like Virgin Australia. I reckon that’s their main worry. Even if they have not been trading while insolvent – which actually seems quite likely in the case of Virgin Australia – how do they explain to shareholders why they have been taking huge and undisclosed risks with shareholder capital?
Keeping lockdown going for another couple of months may actually be the best thing we could do – it may substantially increase the resilience of the Australian economy, by exposing the shonks.
meher
Also, this argument about having to shut ourselves off from the rest of the world is bogus.
This will occur under your cherished “suppression” scenario also.
In fact there is no possible scenario where we don’t maintain aggressive border controls and compulsory quarantine at the border for the foreseeable future.