The Australian reports the Coalition has opened a 51-49 lead in the latest Newspoll, after the previous poll three weeks ago recorded a dead heat. The Coalition is up two on the primary vote to 43%, with Labor down one to 35%, the Greens down two to 10% and One Nation down one to 3%. Scott Morrison’s approval rating is down two to 66%, with the disapproval not yet provided; Albanese is down one on approval to 44% and up three on disapproval to 37%. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is all but unchanged at 56-29, compared with 56-28 last time. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1504. More detail to follow later.
UPDATE: Morrison’s disapproval rating turns out to be up two to 30%. These numbers have been incorporated into the BludgerTrack leadership trends which you can see on the sidebar and in greater detail here. Newspoll has put to respondents the same suite of questions concerning coronavirus in its last three polls, which record soaring confidence in “federal and state governments’ performance” in managing the economic impact (60% satisfied, up 13 points on last time, and 24% dissatisfied, down nine), preparing the health system (up 19 to 78% and down 13 to 15%) and informing Australians about how to protect themselves (up seven to 82% and down seven to 13%).
“Rex Douglas says:
Monday, May 18, 2020 at 5:30 pm
I wonder what Albo’s first reaction was to the NZ polling out today …?”
That he and Labor are doing far better than their NZ counterparts in opposition? [edit – last two words added]
Has there been any word on what Scrott’s Sermon on the Mount at the press club is all about,apart from how amazing his Plague management has been ?
citizen
That scores a 10. 😆
meher baba
“I think “centrist” is pretty straightforward: someone in the middle ground of the political debate.”
Yes, that might be the literal meaning. But the term as deployed has a negative connotation – and that is not straightforward at all.
MB any changes to tax don’t have to be all or nothing. Just some reasonable changes that cut out/reduce some of the abuses in the systems.
Michael ”In Australia our election is probably 2 years away. 21 May 2022 is the date I would favour if nothing significant happens.”
That would be the three year anniversary. The early election speculation will start early next year. They would have to move the Budget again if they go in May 2022. If the Government is leading in the polls in 3Q 2021 I think that there’s a good chance that the election will be held Oct-Dec 2021. March 2022 is another possibility. They’ll only wait the full 3 years if they’re trailing in the polls.
E. G. Theodore says:
Monday, May 18, 2020 at 5:01 pm
The virus hasn’t been in the human population for even 12 months so there’s no data that can scientifically prove that the claim.
I’d say that a March 2022 federal election is more likely than an end of year 2021 option. I have been told on numerous occasions that Autumn is better than Summer from the pollies’ perspective. Not so much embarrassing footage of them with sweat marks on their shirts as they play tennis in their suit pants and white shirts etc.
Buce,
Did your wife have any trouble conceiving your children?
davidwh: “MB any changes to tax don’t have to be all or nothing. Just some reasonable changes that cut out/reduce some of the abuses in the systems.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favour of tax reform: I rather liked the Henry Report and reckon that, if Shorten and Bowen had paid more attention to that, and less to the strongly anti-self-funded retiree views of John Daly and the Grattan Institute, they might have come up with a far better package of policies.
But I don’t reckon that the next few years is going to be a fertile time for tax reform if – as is generally proposed – that tax reform is going to take the form increased taxes on spending (ie, the GST) and
increased taxes on income from investment (ie, higher CGT, more taxation of dividends and superannuation returns, getting rid of negative gearing on rental property, etc.)
We want people to go out and spend as much as possible, so more GST seems counter-intuitive. And investors are going to be high incredibly hard by falling asset values, and a tax whammy on top of that is simply going to put the spark out.
I think governments are going to need to be very patient in dealing with their accumulated deficits. If getting back to a surplus quickly requires governments to significantly increase the portion of GDP it sucks up in taxes, then it would be far better to get back to a surplus slowly.
Boerwar:
As they should be on this issue; it does however need to be a disciplined national position, not something that alternates between Pollyanna and Polyphemus…
The Country Party was doing deals with the CCP whilst the Cultural Revolution was raging.
We remember…
Yep…
Avoiding the consequences of one’s incompetence is always alluring…
It was the Uighurs Wot Done It!
Tasmania has a lot of Chinese money sloshing around, relatively speaking …
Sen. Birmingham has proven repeatedly to be a sheep in sheep’s clothing across several ministries, but adding Cry Baby Bunting to his repertoire is just beyond embarrassing.
How does it go?
If negative gearing is abolished:
– the price of any house you want to buy will go through the roof
– the price of any house you own will crash.
Simple.
MB agree any changes need to be implemented gradually taking all that into consideration. However now is the best time to bet overall support for change assuming that is even possible. I fear not.
Politics generally wins over real structural change.
Steve777
I see you’ve played the Negative Gearing Reform game before and know the rules 🙂
It will be interesting to see how social distancing will be maintained for trials, especially for the twelve jurors.
<a href="Jury trials in the ACT Supreme Court will resume from 15 June in cases where Court facilities and resources allow for appropriate social distancing and health measures for jurors, witnesses, practitioners, accused persons and staff.
Temperature checks will also be a new staple of proceedings to ensure the health of people using the court.
https://the-riotact.com/jury-trials-resume-in-act-supreme-court-with-temperature-testing/376587
“Buce. Did your wife have any trouble conceiving your children?”
C@t
You just reminded me of that scene from Alien.. 😉
citizen
That is another example of where it would be far better to have mandatory testing. Temperature checks don’t pick up people who don’t have a fever but are nonetheless infectious. Also, an abuncdance of caution should see them wearing masks wherever possible.
meher baba says:
Monday, May 18, 2020 at 5:00 pm
but I also don’t think he was ever certain that his interests would be better served by Rudd defeating Gillard: eg, like me, I don’t think he was convinced that Labor would do better in the election under Rudd than under Gillard (I still content that, if Rudd and his backers could somehow have been silenced, Gillard was the only leader who might have led them to victory).
What I think did happen with Shorten was that he eventually became convinced that Rudd would inevitably roll Gillard, and he would never have wanted to be on the wrong side of that outcome.
___________________________
You would be one of only a handful of people who could possibly believe this. Indeed the theme of ‘saving the furniture’ is closely associated with restoring Rudd. I submit these few examples but there are hundreds.
The ALP may have reinstated Kevin Rudd as party leader in a bid to SAVE THE FURNITURE, but the party should have known it would not end there. Kevin is here to be Prime Minister. And it might take a while, writes Annabel Crabb.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-12/crabb-rudd-the-remarkable/4815642
In 2013, Kevin Rudd was reinstated to “SAVE THE FURNITURE”, and he did. Michelle Grattan.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-31/australian-politicians-michelle-grattan-coups-dangers-democracy/10186420
The party appeared to believe that returning to Rudd would put it back in the game electorally by drawing a line under the negativity of the minority government and neutralising the personal animosity towards Gillard (the so-called ‘SAVE THE FURNITURE’ strategy). Professor John Wanna
http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p309171/pdf/ch011.pdf
Cud,
I’m still waiting for a reply. Methinks he knows why I have asked.
steve777: “If negative gearing is abolished:
– the price of any house you want to buy will go through the roof
– the price of any house you own will crash.”
I have always been of the view that negative gearing has only a marginal effect on house prices, which are mainly driven by the interraction between supply and demand, which is itself largely driven by a combination of migration rates (both external and internal) and the speed at which new housing can be supplied.
What negative gearing does do is to subsidise the provision of rental accommodation at an average of around 4 per cent gross return on investment: which means, in effect, that if you borrow the capital you use to provide rental housing, you will make a loss in the current year (which you can then use to offset the tax liability on your other income). If you are the outright owner of the home you are renting out, you might – after paying rates, land tax, real estate agent fees, body corporate charges (where relevant) and covering the cost of maintenance – make an annual return of 1-2 per cent.
The abolition of negative gearing would take the first type of investor out of the market. So you’d have to hope that there are lots of people looking to make a 1-2 per cent return on their investment in the current year. (Sure, there are also capital gains to be made down the track, but these are uncertain in size: and, anyway, most of the proponents for getting rid of negative gearing also want to significantly increase the tax rates on these capital gains as well.)
No rational person who had the opportunity to design a tax system from scratch would want to include a negative gearing arrangement in which a wage and salary earner can use an investment loss to reduce their income tax liability. But that’s the system we now have, and anyone wanting to change it will need to explain how they deal with the impact on rents. And the only sensible answer is to build masses of additional public housing. But that would be neither electorally popular (voters don’t like the idea of their being lots more public tenants in their neighbourhoods), and it is likely to use up all the additional tax revenue generated and more besides.
It’s not a question I would respond to C@t.
Bucephalus:
It is not known that SARS-COV2 “hasn’t been in the human population for even 12 months”, though it currently is reasonable to assume that this is the case. A possible contrary position would involve it moving out of a reservoir occasionally and then dying out, but I don’t think it’s known whether there is a reservoir (???)
It is currently the case that there is not (currently) scientific experience (“data”) of several seasons , hence I wrote (more carefully):
More importantly, “scientific proof” (whatever that is, perhaps induction?) is not the whole of science. In addition to indiction there is abduction and deduction at least. It’s not as Sir Karl Popper says, in fact.
The Chinese economy, on a scale of 1 to 10, is about a 9. Globally.
Australia, on the other hand, is about a 1. Grudgingly.
If there is a trade war instigated by Deputy Sheriff Morrison, we will get squashed like a gnat.
GST is a regressive tax because the poor spend a greater percentage (if not all) of their income on goods and services- the wealthy by contrast have excess capital to invest in tax effective and tax subsidised vehicles. This will be made 10000 times worse if health/ food and education are included in the GST.
The GST is widely seen as the most regressive form of tax….
nath
“You would be one of only a handful of people who could possibly believe this. Indeed the theme of ‘saving the furniture’ is closely associated with restoring Rudd. I submit these few examples but there are hundreds.”
Yes, it was the phrase that Rudd himself and his marvellous supporters (Fitzgibbon, Griffin, Kim Il Carr, etc.) constantly used behind the scenes. It might have impressed a few nervous nellies in marginal seats, but the harder heads like Shorten only really shifted from Gillard when they concluded that Rudd and his evil henchmen weren’t going to stop until either they had rolled Gillard or had totally destroyed the party’s electoral prospects.
You need to appreciate that, beyond the relatively small band of Rudd plotters plus the Machiavellian figure of Albo and his supporters (which by no means comprised all of even his closest factional allies), most Labor parliamentarians felt nothing but contempt and loathing for Rudd by this time and really didn’t want to put him back in charge, even if this might improve their electoral prospects marginally. I believe the idea was floated (not least by Shorten himself) of a counter coup to install Shorten or perhaps Combet but, by then, Combet had become seriously unwell and I don’t think Shorten was even close to having the numbers.
I have to tell you that I generally find your comments here quite amusing, but your obsession with Shorten is becoming a little tiresome.
I agree with you that it would be good for the ALP and the broader polity for him to get out of parliament. But has it occurred to you that perhaps the reason he has stayed on is not so that he can plot Albo’s downfall, but because he can’t afford to resign? After all, he came into parliament too late to benefit from the old generous parliamentary pension scheme and, under the new scheme, I don’t believe he can access any benefits for another seven or so years.
I am struggling to imagine a good reason for asking it.
This is Stephen McDonnell, now BBC reporter ex-ABC China correspondent visiting the Great Wall yesterday. The Chinese are flaunting their defeat of C19, while the USA tears itself apart.
Australian instigated, WTO led inquiry? Sure, why not – let’s throw in a visit to the Wall for the delegation, and a State Banquet.
Time to start brushing up on the Mandarin..
davidwh @ #571 Monday, May 18th, 2020 – 6:12 pm
davidwh,
Then he should accord the same amount of respect about the inability of Anastacia Palacsjuk to have children and cease and desist from calling her the ‘Queensland Soccer Mum’. It is pig ignorant and rude and his weak as piss defense of, well people call Liberal politicians bad names, is no justification for his continual sly referencing of the Palacsjuk situation.
Now, do you get why I asked him that?
sprocket_ @ #566 Monday, May 18th, 2020 – 6:21 pm
Australia is not instigating any trade war.
The Chinese don’t like being told home truths.
Well, who could ever rely on them around the world if they go the tariff road.
Simon Katich @ #576 Monday, May 18th, 2020 – 6:27 pm
Now do you understand?
Torchbearer: “GST is a regressive tax because the poor spend a greater percentage of their income on goods and services- the wealthy can afford to invest their excess capital in tax effective and tax subsidised vehicles. This will be made 10000 times worse if health/ food and education are included.
The GST is widely seen as the most regressive form of tax….”
That’s not how it’s generally seen by economists. The beauty of GST is that the wealthy – unless they are Howard Hughes-style misers – end up having to pay quite a lot of it, as do visitors to Australia. And the poor can be protected entirely from its impact by being paid an equivalent amount in supplementation of their pensions and benefits. (Which is what was done when the GST was introduced, and all analysis of the impact on poor people was that the compensation they received was perfectly adequate.)
Income tax might be theoretically more progressive, but in practice this is greatly diluted by the fact – as you have pointed out – that those with more income can avoid the higher taxes they might otherwise pay by investing any spare income in tax-effective arrangements.
BTW, the exemption of health and education from GST mainly benefits the better off. Obviously public health and education services are tax free, so the types of purchases that GST could be collected on but currently isn’t are things like private health insurance premiums, uninsured private treatments and private school fees.
C@t, I must have missed that.
We struggled for a short time. Then went on a holiday. The eldest hasnt clued yet why I sometimes call her Sumatra.
4 bidders shortlisted for Virgin
I’d have a close look at BGH – Australian Super and Singapore Airlines a lethal combination..
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-18/four-bidders-shortlisted-to-take-over-virgin-australia/12259392
Is a Queensland Soccer Mum really an insult?
EDIT: Oh I see. She is childless. Well that really is very poor then.
In this case.
Tim Smith MP has not tweeted today. Must have his Jatz Crackers in the Liberal establishment vice..
I read on here earlier that Four Corners is going to rake over the old ground of the refusal by the Greens to back Rudd’s CPRS legislation.
What always struck me about that story is what a poor negotiator Rudd must have been to be unable to get a Green party to back climate change legislation, and instead had to court the support of the conservative side of politics.
It reminds me of the old saying “couldn’t sell water in a desert.”
yes but scummo isn’t
Somehow I lucked onto the Blossom Dearie YouTube “channel” this afternoon.
Divine.
From the Guardian
Our “gots to know” moment on schools and spread
[The ABC is reporting that students in NSW will return to classrooms full time from Monday.
They say premier Gladys Berejiklian will announce the change tomorrow.]
Simon Katich @ #582 Monday, May 18th, 2020 – 6:35 pm
Thanks for understanding the point I was trying to make. It was not only the case that Bucephalus had it gently pointed out to him why it was an offensive thing to call Anastacia Palacsjuk that, but then he heaped insult on injury by roaring back with a comment that would make Tim Smith MP blush. He didn’t care! Because, apparently, Liberal politicians had been called worse on this blog!
Well, I know for a fact that nothing of a similar nature was ever said about the former Liberal Foreign Minister. Her saggy arms, yes, but not her childlessness.
meher baba @ #587 Monday, May 18th, 2020 – 4:44 pm
The Greens alone didn’t give the numbers in the Senate, so it was pointless negotiating with them.
However with a couple of Liberal Senators crossing the Floor, the Greens were in a position to provide the numbers to pass the legislation.
Channel 9 News has just had an exclusive report about ANOTHER Grants rort perpetrated by the Coalition government! And guess who got the lion’s share of the Building Better Communities grants? Liberal and Nationals Councils in NSW. And guess who got the lion’s share of that? Yep, Philthy Phillip Ruddock and Hornsby Council.
Good on Channel 9, and yes, the NSW Greens, for collaborating to bring this story to public attention.
Who’s the idiot on The Drum?
Let the record note that you’re not allowed to say this sort of thing.
Adam Creighton
C@t I didn’t know that about Anastasia so that was a low blow by him. However I just think we should leave families out of these discussions.
lizzie @ #589 Monday, May 18th, 2020 – 6:57 pm
Journalists interviewing journalists.
FFS What qualifies him to speak in this context.
Who is he. What does he know. What are his qualifications. What does he know.
Why is he there.
He’s employed as a journalist.
SO. FUCKING. WHAT.
Payment for services rendered to old Phil, I imagine, for the ‘Religious Freedom Bill’ report. Hmm, I wonder what has happened to that contentious little piece of legislation? 🙂
Steve777 @ #587 Monday, May 18th, 2020 – 6:55 pm
He’s a regular.
It’s their ABC.