The Australian reports the latest Newspoll has the Coalition’s two-party lead unchanged at 51-49, with both major parties down a point on the primary vote, the Coalition to 42% and Labor to 34%. The Greens are up two to 12% and One Nation are down one to 4%. Scott Morrison’s approval is unchanged at 66%, and his disapproval is down one to 29%; Anthony Albanese is respectively down three to 41% and up one to 38%. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is now 56-26, out from 56-29. The BludgerTrack leadership trends (see also on the sidebar) have been updated with these numbers. The poll was conducted online from Wednesday to Saturday, from a sample of 1512.
UPDATE: The Australian has helpfully published a PDF display of all the poll results, including for a suite of questions on coronavirus and its foreign policy implications. Opinion was divided as to whether the World Health Organisation (34% positive, 32% negative) and United Nations (23% positive, 21% negative) had had a beneficial impact on the crisis, but quite a lot clearer in relation to “Xi Jinping and the Chinese government” (6% positive, 72% negative) and “Donald Trump and the United States government” (9% positive, 79% negative). Further results are available through the link.
Cat
Importing the US there are only two options is dishonest.
We have a preferential voting system. It’s also compulsory to vote.
So as we have seen before it’s possible to have a third party with balance of power.
An outcome so good Newscorp and the LNP pulled out the anti Whitlam style campaigning. Despite some conservative politicians having that balance of power.
We are Australia. We have choice with our vote denied to US voters. With some new exceptions.
I think we will have fusion derived electricity soon. Great strides have been made in the its development.
They estimated initially it would be in production in 50 years time, then 30 years and the most recently 20 years.
Now that is pretty impressive progress.
https://www.pollbludger.net/2020/06/07/newspoll-51-49-coalition-6/comment-page-20/#comment-3423081
As a former multi-utility, water, power and services CTO I remember changing coal to CHP/ gas fired generation very well, though I do note earthquakes have let the national gov to review post-WW2 policies, hydrogen certainly looks interesting, even outside of Iceland, besides a bunch of renewable initiatives …
I was pleased that some of my colleagues, not me, also had some nuclear, if largely for medicine and research, generation.
Of course this was before I returned to Australia in late 2004.
PeeBee @ #1002 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 2:56 pm
I’m looking forward to the prayer powered and meditation powered vehicles.
Electricity prices are highest in SA because they have no old coal fired power stations that have 30-50 year coal supply contracts. The price of coal is cheap, and the capital to build them was provided by the state governments years ago.
Replace all these old clunkers with new coal powered electricity generators with new coal contracts and SA would be the cheapest state to generate electricity.
nath @ #998 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 4:55 pm
And there is substantial criticism and juvenile criticism. You tend to prefer the latter. I honestly can’t remember the last time you gave a thoroughgoing critique of something Dr Chalmers said, it’s all ‘big ears crybaby’. If that’s your free speech, you’re entitled to it. Substantive it isn’t, though.
I await your next substantial contribution with anticipation. I know you are capable of it.
So, WWP, the argument is not fundamentally about FF v Renewables but the timeline? Or is it some kind of moral preference for one rather than the other?
I just can’t escape the idea that it is all to do with economics.
If and when renewables are cheaper/more efficient/cleaner and so on, surely this and off itself is the death knell of fossil fuel power generation?
We have solar panels and they have about “paid” themselves off in terms of capital cost write down, but as some PBers have mentioned, when the sun don’t shine (dull days and nights) the solars are useless.
Batteries are not economically viable yet, so for the time being (10 years perhaps?) the conventional power sources for base load have to exist side by side with the newer technologies?
PeeBee @ #1005 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 3:01 pm
No intelligent body or person is going to fund another coal generator in Australia ever again, because they are too expensive and very very bad for the environment. And while we are Governed by climate criminals at some point other countries are going to act to stop the kind of irresponsible negligent behaviour here. I’m hoping the climate crimes tribunals and executions are live streamed.
Very well C@t. I have some free time available this week because of recent canny sharemarket moves 🙂
I will look over his speeches and will give you a substantial critique of Chalmers in several days.
“Cud Chewersays:
Tuesday, June 9, 2020 at 4:55 pm
Blobbit
Hydrogen is a lot, lot harder to liquefy than natural gas. Its also a lot less dense (about 70kg per m3 versus about 424 kg per m3). If you’re going to transport hydrogen overseas you’re better transporting it as ammonia (and that also makes it less energy efficient).”
Yes, as I said, I appreciate that H2 is a lot more difficult. NH3 might be better, it would be interesting to see the economics. LNG would have been unthinkable in the past.
The big worry I have with H2 is the potential for greenwashing with it. Getting H2 from CH4 isn’t particularly clean, but I can see the gas industry pushing it. That Hazer process looks interesting, but I’m not sure what happens with all the left over solid carbon. At a small scale it’s useful, but at a mass scale it’s likely to become a problem in itself.
PeeBee
Fusion will work. Just not at any price worth building a commercial power plant at.
Hydrogen power at the push of a button.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGFQ7d-2GaA
Blobbit there is a huge and growing market for graphite.
And besides if you do end up with a hundred million tonnes of it you can always stockpile it in one of those holes in the Hunter Valley.
Tricot @ #1007 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 3:04 pm
For me it fits into four timelines.
For much of the last 30 years, investments in renewables were essentially moral investments to tackle climate change responsibly. There should have been more of it.
Then from the time of the Garnaut Report, even thought renewables didn’t win on a renewables unsubsidised v carbon fuels keep their public subsidies and advantages basis, they did win on a long term cost basis. There was no economic excuse not to start and in fact accelerate the transition from that point, on a dual moral and economic basis.
In the last 5 or so years renewables have won on cost. The only generation that beats them is coal generation where you’ve effectively already depreciated your plant to zero, so coal wins on the running costs only v full capital life costs for renewables. Ignoring moral factors you’d still have been transitioning.
Garnaut last year rereleased his report which was essentially, wow I said we should have gone to renewables and wow did I underestimate the value in that by a long long way. Renewables outperformed all the original modelling, which still justified the switch to renewables.
So from about this point last year, economics justified a switch to something like 200% renewables, with the excess being poured into exportable value however that is best done. In a no hydrocarbon world Australia is much much more competitive and you’d have to be an idiot to try and detain us in the hydrocarbon world where we are massively not competitive.
Then when you add covid / oil price collapse / 2020 – 2025 depression to the mix there is an obvious need for a massive Govt investment stimulus, a whole range of obvious energy transition needs, and an array of obvious financial, social and economic rewards for doing it, doing it well, doing it fast and getting to 200 – 300% renewables over the next 5 years.
We won’t. We will build more coal and continue to rely on foreign oil, while exporting Australian natural gas at bargain basement prices.
C ch
That would be hard. You should just stick a match to it and it will go away all by itself.
They say you can’t have the best of both worlds, but in Australia we will have the worst of all available worlds with our decisions over the next 3 – 10 years.
“That would be hard. You should just stick a match to it and it will go away all by itself.”
Same could be said of what came out of the hole in the first place. Obviously you’d put a cap on it.
The screaming Nancy’s of Doom are out and about tonight!
nath @ #1008 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 5:08 pm
There you go. It wasn’t that hard, was it? 🙂
ABC Business
WWP
I’m reminded of listening to the Science Show on ABC radio. Talking about the high price of solar cells and what it would take to bring the price down to the point where they would be practical to provide grid scale electricity. The expert talking on the show said basically that the government should buy a lot of them and the price will come down. In essence they’re made of silicon and all you need to do to get cheap solar cells is volume production.
That was a Science Show in the early 1980s!
History has proven that claim to be true. All it took for cheap solar cells was a big enough market. And it could have happened sooner.
Edit: the figure he quoted was $500 million. This was presuming Australian production and long before China became the big porducer.
Apparently, Republicans have woken up to the fact that Trump will struggle to be re-elected.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/the-ss-trump-is-floundering-and-republicans-may-jump-off-the-ship-like-fleeing-rats-steve-schmidt/#.Xt8kgujiwH4.twitter
oil price collapse
Erm, no.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-08/saudi-oil-hike-shocks-some-asian-buyers-without-better-options
ABC
lizzie @ #1019 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 5:28 pm
And the more jobs that go, the more that those who remain will suck up to the guy ladling out the thin gruel.
Thanks Cud Chewer
The first link was quite pessimistic (realistic perhaps?). Renew Economy reports recently that Gates et al remain interested.
C@t
The IPA is winning.
The Libs hate the ABC and most of them probably voted for them anyway.
Rik Mayall died this day in 2014.
Here’s a cracker of an example of his work!
https://twitter.com/i/status/1270242081286520832
Practical fusion energy (for applications other than H bombs) has been 30 years off since the 1950s.
Here’s an optimist.
China warns students on Australian ‘racism’
China’s Ministry of Education has warned its students against studying in Australia, in a major blow to the nation’s schools and universities.
Days after Beijing’s Ministry of Tourism told tourists to avoid Australia, Chinese education departments said students should be “cautious” in going to Australia because of racism.
That would be the end of some unis.
lizzie
Kieth Murdoch will be smiling from luxury suite in Hades. He declared a jihad against the ABC after the blighters started to broadcast news. The Murdochracy have been at it a looooong time.
Bruce Haigh is dreaming. Smoko is the greatest according to the polls.
Now the Comrades are going for the jugular 🙂
.
Drinks giant Lion hit by cyber attack as hackers target corporate Australia
………… a major cyber attack that has disrupted manufacturing and knocked out its internal IT systems.
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/drinks-giant-lion-hit-by-cyber-attack-as-hackers-target-corporate-australia-20200609-p550pu.html
lizzie @ #1026 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 5:35 pm
Death by a thousand cuts.
poroti @ #1034 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 5:43 pm
Now THAT will cause a revolution amongst the proles!
C@t
Matt Canavan said this arvo that everyone else is losing money, so the ABC should too. How much have the MPs lost in the last six months?
Poliphili
I forgot to mention pure thermal energy storages like https://1414degrees.com.au/ and there’s various people using molten aluminium as a store.
The share market is a graph of rich people’s feelings.
Re ABC. It’s the classic LNP ploy. Starve it of resources and sell it off cheap to their mates!
Nicholas @ #1040 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 5:47 pm
A graph of Bernie Bros supporters would be going the other way!
Hundreds of jobs in journalism are going after News Corp and the ABC both announced significant cuts as they reshape their businesses towards lower costs bases.
Staff at News Corp were briefed on Tuesday that the Rupert Murdoch controlled publisher will cut under 100 jobs across its metropolitan mastheads, including The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun, as well as its national newspaper The Australian.
At the same time, staff at the ABC were told management expects up to 250 redundancies will be necessary to meet the $41 million per year budget gap, following an indexation freeze.
As of June 30, 2019, the ABC employed 4649 people across Australia, equivalent to around 4007 full-time employees. At the time, 2810, or 70.1 per cent, were employed for content making.
ABC managing director David Anderson said the public broadcaster would be opening up a redundancy program to its content teams, which include news, entertainment, specialised, regional and local, as well as the product and content technology teams.
Mr Anderson, who is due to outline the ABC’s new five-year plan next month, said the cuts were in response to the government’s 2018 decision to freeze funding increases from July 2019, saving taxpayers around $84 million over three years.
About a week ago, the NSW database of covid cases got revised to include an additional case of community transmission on the 24th of of May. This afternoon the database got revised down one case and the case that disappeared was that case on the 24th of May. Curious.
Nothing is certain. I think it’s more likely that Biden will win the Presidential election. That will mean the USA will have a Green New Deal.
Will Labor?
For context on oil price we have large capital projects in Australia with breakeven oil prices near to $80, there is a rumor one is at $100 a barrel. $50 / $60 is seen as pretty conservative.
For much 3rd and 4th quarter last year it was fluctuating around $60, and using brent fell to under $20 in April. A recovery of oil from $20 to $40 a barrel as we have seen on the brent index between late April and now is not rainbows and champagne stuff. It is still run off the cliff stuff.
“That will mean the USA will have a Green New Deal.”
I wish I had your optimism.
lizzie @ #1037 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 5:46 pm
Not enough, when you consider how little time they have spent in parliament doing their jobs!
PeeBee @ #1002 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 4:56 pm
Not for 50 years of research and developments it’s not.
Holdenhillbilly @ #1043 Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 – 3:48 pm
The Australian mainstream media ran a through campaign during the last Federal Election, ruthlessly interrogating every policy and cost of the ALP, even demanding answers to stupid questions like how much action on climate change will cost when everyone has known for many many years that it costs less than the LNP’s inaction.
They then contrasted this ruthlessness with a kind of awe and wonder at just how fantastic the LNP political strategy was, and just how amazing the PM’s sheep shearing was. Breathtakingly, droolingly great stuff.
Every single one of the sods deserves to end up homeless trying to live on a suspended newstart, for having failed a mutual obligation they are sure they never heard of, while looking at a fraudulent debt demand in the hand of a great big debt collection agent not unwilling to ‘encourage’ payment, including in unlawful ways.