Firstly, as per the above post, don’t forget to give generously to the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly donation drive. Now to an assembly of recent events in the worlds of polling and Eden-Monaro:
• The Guardian reports the latest Essential Research poll includes the pollster’s monthly leadership ratings, which find Scott Morrison’s approval up a point to a new high of 65% and disapproval down a point to a new low of 26%, reflecting continuous improvement since a nadir of 39% and 52% in February. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is 53-23, compared with 50-25 last time. Albanese stands at 43% approval, up one, and 30% disapproval, up three. These numbers have been used to update the BludgerTrack trends, which can be see on the sidebar or in detail here, showing Morrison now at a plateau after his recent ascent.
• The Essential poll also finds 41% saying Jobkeeper reporting bungle reflected negatively on the federal government, compared with 43% saying it did not. “A third” wanted Jobkeeper broadened in response, along with another 20% who wanted the eligibility criteria broadened, while 45% preferred that it go to reducing the debt. The poll also featured a semi-regular suite of questions on the leaders’ attributes, which have become more favourable for both leaders across the board since January. This is especially so in the case of Morrison, and still more especially in the case of his ratings for good in a crisis (66%), leadership capability (70%) and trustworthiness (66%), which have yo-yoed between the bushfire and coronavirus crises. These ratings will be available to review in detail when the full report is published later day. UPDATE: Full report here.
• A poll by the Australia Institute finds 77% support across the country for state border closures. Labor and Greens supporters are somewhat more in favour, One Nation supporters somewhat less so. The poll was conducted online on May 27 and 28 from a sample of 1005. Small-sample state breakdowns suggested Western Australians were particularly supportive, at 88%, a finding consistent with …
• The West Australian ($) had a poll yesterday that recorded a remarkable 89% in favour of keeping the state’s borders closed, with which the state government is persisting in the face of criticism from the federal government and New South Wales government. Presumably the poll had more to it than that, but that’s all there is in the report. The poll was conducted online by Painted Dog Research on Thursday from a sample of 1000.
Eden-Monaro latest:
• With a week still to go before the closure of nominations, the ABC by-election guide records ten candidates and counting, including Cathy Griff for the Greens, Matthew Stadtmiller for Shooters Fishers and Farmers, sundry candidates for the Liberal Democrats, Science Party, Christian Democrats and Sustainable Australia, and two independents. The Nationals have also opened nominations, although they have not traditionally polled strongly in the seat. The deluge has prompted Antony Green to argue that all candidates should be required to produce 100 locally enrolled nominators. This burden is currently imposed only on independents, exemption being a perk of party registration.
• The Australian Electoral Commission has announced its service plan for the by-election, detailing special measures arising from COVID-19. A familiar set of social distancing rules will apply at polling booths, and mobile polling will not be conducted as normal at hospitals and aged care facilities, where “support teams” will instead assist with postal and telephone voting (the latter still only available to the visually impaired).
Bucephalus says:
Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 9:02 pm
Churchill is correctly venerated as the greatest person of the 20th Century.
________________________________
Incitatus
What criteria do you use to determine who the ‘greatest person’ was?
‘poroti says:
Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 9:03 pm
boerwar
We do what fits in with our “tribe”. What fits in is doing “good” . Now as to what determines whether your tribe thinks ‘good’ is shooting ‘them over there’ rather than being nice to ‘them over there’ is a bit of a ??? Money, power and ?’
Yep. Morality is a bit of a challenge.
“They did with the last one and it caused Trump to lose his shit, publicly slagging off at all of the project founders, AND Fox News!”
I hope they do that every night 🙂
Good night all. Sweet dreams.
I had relatives on that railway too. And they got it worse than the Dutch. And it was the British who killed a lot of the Dutch POW’s:
However, the Dutch suffered a significantly lower death rate (15 per cent) to the Australians and British (21 and 22 per cent, respectively). Possibly this was because they had previously lived in the tropics and had more experience in treating tropical illnesses. In addition, no Dutch POWs worked in F Force, which suffered the highest death rates on the railway.
Around 8000 Dutch POWs, who survived working on the Burma-Thailand railway, were later sent to Japan. However, around 3600 died during the voyage. In a single instance in 1944 over 1300 Dutch POWs died when a British submarine sank the transport ship Junyo Maru.
https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-and-missions/burma-thailand-railway-and-hellfire-pass-1942-1943/workers/dutch
Your figures are consistently way off.
You asserted 1 in 3 Dutch died on the railway. When it seems it was 15%
Your figures from the Battle of Manila and the Burma Occupation were way out, by between 1.8 to 1.4 million.
And I’m not sure 50k Dutch died of starvation either. Sources I’ve seen say 18to 22k.
TPOF @ #1899 Thursday, June 4th, 2020 – 9:08 pm
Exactly. Churchill had a privileged upbringing, was an old soak, but a great leader who could speak and write very well.
Give me Nelson Mandela any day.
If Churchill had to spend 27 years in solitary confinement and then lead his country, he would never have made it.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-lots-of-white-democrats-ended-up-protesting-the-death-of-george-floyd/
TPOF @ #1788 Thursday, June 4th, 2020 – 7:08 pm
He carefully examines the patterns on his stable floor each morning.
Recently he’s been so full that no coherent picture can possibly form, but in the past on rare occasions Churchill’s spherical dome has emerged from the surrounding chaos.
It’s basically the horse version of tea leaves. 🙂
Fair enough.
Orangutans aren’t “orange”; they’re much more sensible than that.
Churchill is correctly venerated as the greatest person of the 20th Century.
______
Has to be Einstein right?
Bucephalus says:
Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 9:02 pm
Churchill is correctly venerated as the greatest person of the 20th Century.
__________
What the actual fuck!
Greatest bungler of the 20th century perhaps, but by any other measure his career was one rolling omnishambles.
‘But, but, he was right about Hitler’ I hear you say.
He wasn’t Robinson Caruso on that call. Not by a long stretch. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
A pox on Churchill.
Found a new home just perfect for Bucephalus. Maybe he can use the $25,000 to do it up?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-04/tasmanias-historic-tunnel-hill-railway-tunnel-for-lease/12312132
You mispelt “eviscerated”.
Curtin certainly ranks with FDR and Churchill. He was a reluctant though also an exemplary leader. He not only organised and led the defence of this country against Japan – to the chagrin of Churchill – he made postwar, modern Australia possible. Curtin was a visionary leader as well as a very practical one. I also like De Gaulle, who helped remake Europe, dragging France and its neighbours out of the enmities of the past.
Cud Chewer @ #1800 Thursday, June 4th, 2020 – 7:25 pm
Is it horse drawn?
I reckon Einstein has Churchill well covered…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-04/victoria-coronavirus-cases-rise-as-premier-discourages-protest/12318372
Ummm.. how do you give a hazardous waste management facility a “deep clean”?
The counterfactual to Churchill is Halifax and a deal with Hitler.
Germany then may or may not have defeated the Soviet Union. At any rate they would have dominated Europe for many years with all of the genocidal mania that would have involved.
Japan might also have won.
Churchill’s pluck and obstinacy saved democratic civilisation in 1940.
Historyintime says:
Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 9:28 pm
Churchill’s pluck and obstinacy saved democratic civilisation in 1940.
_______
Churchill made some good speeches and had some pluck. But lets be straight. It was the millions upon millions of Russians who defeated Hitler. The glory is all theirs.
More dreadful polling for Dotard from A graded CBS/SRSS
Approve of Dotard – 40
Disapprove of Dotard – 54
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S1Y-EmVi3WHU9PmAJyxMzTTezm4DlUa7/view
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-04/coronavirus-update-covid19-wuhan-tests-home-builder-grants/12317862
10 million tests in Wuhan find 300 cases, all of them asymptomatic. This is virtually everyone above 5 years old.
I wonder what a similar mass testing here would reveal?
It took a global village to defeat Hitler and Japan. Italy, not so much. 🙂
Sprocket
How does all of this translate to the Senate and all those local/state contests that have been important in the Republicans gerrymandering and otherwise fucking with the rules?
What really enabled Churchill to endure was the insane decision of Japan to attack the US. It was this that brought the US fully into the war, in turn leading to US support of Stalin and the stationing of US forces in Britain. More than any other army, it was Russia’s Red one that militarily destroyed the German forces, and it was US forces that defeated Japan.
Churchill stood up against Hitler. He rallied the British. But by itself this would have been to little avail had Germany not attacked Russia and had Japan not attacked the US.
sprocket_ @ #1919 Thursday, June 4th, 2020 – 9:34 pm
sprocket_,
Listening to someone who is closely following the polling they said that Trump is STILL competitive in the Swing States. The only one he isn’t ahead or level with Biden in is Pennsylvania, for obvious reasons. But there Biden is still only a measely 5 ahead of Trump.
Of course the great irony of it all was that it took one monster to defeat another.
Eddie Izzard on why Hitler is considered worse than Stalin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmG5-RU3EcU
“ Curtin certainly ranks with FDR and Churchill.”
Wash your mouth out briefly. A pox on Churchill.
Looking at tonight’s lead stories on the web, HomeBuilder has sunk like the boat anchor it is.
This morning, the Smear and DT were crowing ‘see how much you will get’; this evening, silence. The closest comment is ‘get off my lawn’ to a befuddled Morrison.
all the hot air about ‘renovation bonanza’ has burst
Yes, obviously it was not Churchill alone.
The point is that without Churchill, Britain would not have stayed in the war.
Worth watching, documentary on racial tensions in US between African American community & LAPD.
https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/1736052803508/burn-motherf-burn
sprocket_ @ #1919 Thursday, June 4th, 2020 – 9:34 pm
More like business as usual. That 40% will not budge.
“ More dreadful polling for Dotard from A graded CBS/SRSS
Approve of Dotard – 40
Disapprove of Dotard – 54”
He is very very competitive on those numbers. It’s incredible that he has 40%. Unfortunately he does – and they mainly live in rural towns and they vote. Bigly. In the swing states that was enough to win in 2016 because the urban folk didn’t turn out to vote in sufficient numbers.
Will history repeat for Sleepy Joe? It has been my fear all along.
Trump doing and threatening all the things that repell right minded folk simply energises his base. Counter intuitively, after the protests, a lot of urban folk will likely somehow ‘forget’ to vote. Again.
‘Get off my lawn!’ is absolutely the cut through moment of the day.
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/06/nbn-co-copper-wire-broadband/
Utterly stupid.
“ Yes, obviously it was not Churchill alone.
The point is that without Churchill, Britain would not have stayed in the war.”
That point has been too readily assumed. I don’t think it is actually correct. With the Royal Navy and a unified Air Defence System (both built on the back of Chamberlain’s budgets from 1935 onwards) she was a tough nut to crack. Every war game conducted since WW@ has come to the same conclusion – Operation Sea Lion was doomed to fail, even if the Luftwaffe managed to gain air superiority for several days over the channel. Besides, Hitler would have still had his arse handed to him in Russia anyway.
“ Churchill stood up against Hitler. He rallied the British. But by itself this would have been to little avail had Germany not attacked Russia and had Japan not attacked the US.”
I’m not so sure about that either. I reckon that at best Germany would have fought the British Empire to a stalemate by about 1943.
Einstein by an absolute mile.
Churchill not even in the stadium. A plucky wartime leader on a little island who was saved by Russia and the US from an ignominious defeat.
Andrew_Earlwood @ #1934 Thursday, June 4th, 2020 – 10:01 pm
I feel better about your Trump predictions now. 🙂
Andrew_Earlwood says:
Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 10:01 pm
“ Churchill stood up against Hitler. He rallied the British. But by itself this would have been to little avail had Germany not attacked Russia and had Japan not attacked the US.”
I’m not so sure about that either. I reckon that at best Germany would have fought the British Empire to a stalemate by about 1943.
____________________
A counterfactual of limited value Herr Vice President
Hitler lost WWII by breaching the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and Japan totally screwed it by attacking Pearl Harbor.
Churchill was a bit player.
Halifax wanted to do a deal with Germany even after Churchill became Prime Minister and almost had the numbers in the War Cabinet.
If he rather than Churchill became PM a negotiated peace would have been at least a significant possibility. Britain was losing at the time and Hitler seemed amenable to a deal.
It’s only a matter of time until every conversation reverts back to WW2.
Bucephalus was as I recall a horse, and thus brings to mind the phrase “horses for courses”, and so:
The current situation is different to the early phase of the GFC. What is currently lacking most particularly is activity and to some extent capacity (both due to demand and supply shocks from lockdown), rather than money to pay for activity.
What is therefore needed is a stimulus in activity (which will in turn unlock and where necessary re-build capacity), rather than a stimulus in money. This in fact rather more resembles the second phase of the GFC, rather than the first.
The problem with simply providing cash at this stage (as with the later stages of the GFC) is that it is quite possible to add more cash without causing an increase in activity (and in fact it’s even possible to have a decrease if there is inflation combined with saving). NB: adding cash is appropriate for the (deflationary) bushfire problem, and may well help there (would have been better in January / February of course…)
The most efficient way to generate more economic activity is simply to pay for it to occur:
– “school halls” – buy a “school hall” that wan’t previously budgeted and activity increases unambiguously
– fix broadband – everyone trying to work from home through FTTN now knows it’s fucked – spend $20bn to fix it – more real activity (and for trades even)
– put in smart meters (and don’t fuck it up)
– etc etc
and:
Quite right – it’s a load of crap – note that a contract for a “school hall” is only one contract, and actually delivers a “school hall”. Simpler, more efficient, better!
Horses for courses …
It will likely bring forward some renos (or restart them), but is not 100% efficient in the triggering.
The government buying “school halls” is 100% efficient in triggering – it builds one “school hall” per contract (whether the cotnract is internally efficient is of course a separate question, of course it should be, but that doesn’t bear on the decision as to whether to enter the market, but rather on the way in which the govt enters the market – in this case it should deploy its monopsony power to “dominate” the (otherwise empty) market, so to speak…)
Horses for courses …
Again, it will in some cases, lead to some increase in activity.
Compare this to a “school hall” where none was previously contemplated – activity increases from 0 to 1 in each case.
Horses for courses…
The key to proper analysis of this situation is that the govt has temporarily become substantially the monopsony purchaser in many markets. It is not (and cannot be) 100% efficient for the govt to give people money in the hope they will re-enter the market, because many (and in some cases most) will not do so until the fundamental market forces that caused the (temporary) monopsony have dissipated, which theory have not. NB: once the forces have dissipated, the conservative position would be that the market will recover itself…
Modern energy technology is notably labour intensive in construction, with (critically) short lead times, hence would be one of the most effective ways to increase demand for labour (this is in fact one of the main reasons modern “conservatives” hate modern energy technology)
The principal concern is lack of activity in the macro economy, and “state housing” is merely a reasonably efficient way to generate more activity (with short lead times). Macro economic concerns typically (and in this case) require fiscal policy to address them.
The Constitution prohibits State governments from issuing currency, so States are fundamentally incapacitated from undertaking fiscal policy. Therefore, the only way in which States could pursue your proposal (in a way that did not detract from activity elsewhere) would be for the Commonwealth to print the money and give it to them to spend. There are two problems with this:
– there is no sterilisation mechanism applicable to the financial interaction between the commonwealth and states
– it would be politically unattractive for the Commonwealth (although, since the Commonwealth is/was called the Commonwealth for a reason, the conservative position would indeed be to do it anyway)
The Commonwealth is a currently fighting the last war, adopting the successful tactics from that war. However, the current war is different, and requires different tactics – Horses for Courses!
Actually, the greatest person of the 20th Century was one Herbert Smythe, who lived in Lilyfield, Sydney, from 1939 to 2011.
Unfortunately he doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry, he didn’t kill anyone, start (or finish) any wars, make any speeches, get elected to political office, steal money, make money, or host a Reality TV show.
But he was still great.
Still think Einstein has it.
A harder one might be the greatest of the nineteenth century.
Einstein AND Nelson Mandela.
Dads are like that, Bushfire.
Time magazine in 1999 had Einstein at 1
FDR and Gandhi at equal 2.