Essential Research: gender equality and Australian history

Not the Eden-Monaro by-election news: an Essential Research poll, electoral reform in South Australia and election day roll management potentially to go digital.

Three entirely unrelated bits of information that don’t involve the Eden-Monaro by-election, for which another dedicated post is assuredly not far away (the most recent, and its attendant discussion thread, is here):

• This week’s Essential Research poll looks at indigenous issues and gender equality, finding broadly liberal viewpoints prevailing in each case. On the former count, most agreed that indigenous Australians and Pacific islanders had been “forced to work in Australia in conditions that amounted to slavery”, but 42% agreed that “many of the new cases of Covid-19 in Victoria have been from people who attended the Black Lives Matter protest” compared with 37% who believed it to be false. On gender equality, majorities somehow managed to agree both that there was “still a long way to go” and that it had “already been mostly achieved”, though a lot more emphatically in the former case. Respondents were also asked who got paid too much (bankers and lawyers) and too little (nurses and teachers).

Tom Richardson of InDaily reports on an imminent package of electoral reform in South Australia, which may include the introduction of optional preferential voting. Labor leader Peter Malinauskas has accused Premier Steven Marshall of a move to “rig the next election”, and invoked the bogey of “the polarisation of our democracy in the way we have seen in the United States”. Malinauskas’s real concern is more likely to do with Greens preferences, the system having raised no such concerns for the Labor governments that introduced them in New South Wales and Queensland, back when its main impact was to weaken intra-Coalition preference flows in three-cornerned contests. The Greens have also declared their opposition, which would leave its upper house fate in the hands of the three survivors of the Nick Xenophon disturbance. The government’s reforms may also include crackdowns on corflutes (which seem to be particularly popular in South Australia) and dissemination of how-to-vote cards at polling booths.

Justin Hendry of IT News reports the Australian Electoral Commission is looking into a full rollout of the electronic certified list system for marking off voters, which operated at around 10% of polling places at last year’s election. This replaces the more familiar method of paper lists marked off by pencil, which offer no guarantee the prospective voter has not already voted somewhere else beyond the requisite verbal assurance. As such, it can genuinely help prevent multiple voting, unlike a lot of other supposed electoral reforms that are invoked in its name. However, it may also constitute a point of vulnerability to nefarious actors.

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.

3,724 comments on “Essential Research: gender equality and Australian history”

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  1. United States :

    Coronavirus Cases:
    2,779,953

    Deaths:
    130,798

    – 51,097 new cases and 676 new deaths in the United States

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

    Ryan Struyk @ryanstruyk

    The state of Texas reported 8,076 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, its highest number of reported cases in one day yet.

    Texas Lt Gov Dan Patrick says he WON’T listen to Dr Fauci’s advice any more after government’s contagious diseases expert warned infection toll could hit 100,000 a day

    Dan Patrick, a former talk radio host, says of Fauci: ‘I don’t need his advice’

    He said Fauci ‘doesn’t know what he’s talking about’

    Patrick dismissed Fauci’s warnings, saying the doctor had been ‘wrong every time, on every issue.’

  2. Quasarsays:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:04 pm
    “Tony Windsor
    @TonyHWindsor
    ·
    50m
    Confuseus say …
    “ Man who start arms race doesn’t necessarily have the legs to finish””

    Windsor proving once again that he is a pompous windbag. Australia is playing catch up – we didn’t start an arms race – we are simply keeping up with the evolving technology. It is China that has illegally seized foreign territory in order to protect the approaches to its new submarine base and is intent on developing a blue water navy with an Aircraft Carrier capability in order to project force.

    Exactly what do you expect Australia to do in the face of that?

    Roll over and request a tummy rub from our new overlords?

  3. In the usual run, Labor should hold E-M. Maybe COVID has upset the usual run, but it’s unlikely. We’ll soon see if it has.

    The polls suggest that nothing much has changed since the 2019 election. The loss of Kelly’s personal vote will hurt, but Labor’s candidate has a strong local profile and has been able to campaign longer than the Lib, who has some ideological/reactionary weight to carry. As well, infighting among the LibNats will undermine their campaign to some extent.

    It would be unusual in historical terms if the governing party were to succeed in taking an opposition seat at a by-election caused by the serious illness of the elected member. If this happens, it will be attributable to a rally-to-the-flag effect in the context of a pandemic and the economic shock that has resulted.

    The question for voters is whether or not the Liberals can be relied on to put their usual ideological impulses on hold or not. If voters suspect that RW/nastiness – ideological politics – is going to be revived, the Liberals should expect a swing against them.

  4. Bucephalus

    Roll over and request a tummy rub from our new overlords?
    ————
    What! Have the Yanks stopped being our overlords?

    I thought this whole exercise was to please Amerika, thus demonstrating their unquestioned overlordship.

  5. MB wrote,

    You can get all excited about the Daily Telegraph if you like, I don’t care about that rag.

    But a young lady who raised her concerns with her employer in good faith has ended up being humiliated by the court and has had her life and career destroyed by the whole process. Not something to celebrate at all IMO.

    But there’s the rub. Ms Norvill did NOT make a formal complaint. She had a private word with someone in HR, who then grabbed to – of all people – the Tele’s gossip columnist.

    He did not name Norvill in his story, because she refused to co-operate. But when the Tele got sued, she changed her mind, after returning from an unsuccessful series of auditions in Hollywood looking for film work. There is no allegation that those auditions were arranged by Murdoch’s in-house film production company, 20th Century Fox.

    Norvill and a male co-actor were found to be the only unreliable witness among many witnesses, by the trial judge. I think at one stage it all boiled down to which hand had been placed on which of Norvill’s breasts.

    After video and photographs of the actual rehearsal were shown – proving Norvill’s and her co-actor’s groping allegations to be impossible (except if Rush had been a Cirque du Soleil contortionist instead of playing King Lear) – it all went downhill from there. Norvill remained steadfast, but her friend dissolved into a jumbled mess of contradictions and hazy memories. His Honour was not impressed, especially as it turned out that a year or so previously Norvill, in the same newspaper, had been prarising Rush over exactly the same kinds of antics for which she later condemned him, if only after a lit of persuasion to do so by the Tele’s legal team.

    Yes, it’s always a shame when someone’s career is ruined. Just ask Geoffrey Rush, Meher. He’d have a point of view on that subject, I’m sure.

    The story was one of the most ridiculous, unnecessary, and malignant instances of persecution by a newspaper that regards itself as immune from censure as could be imagined.

  6. C

    In the usual run, Labor should hold E-M. Maybe COVID has upset the usual run, but it’s unlikely. We’ll soon see if it has.
    ———+
    Morrison is not taking any risks. He has been “too busy” criticising certain States to appear. He doesn’t want to be seen as a loser.

  7. Rakali says:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:18 pm

    Pick your poison – USA or China?

    I know which one I prefer based on the past 70 years of extremely successful relationship.

  8. We do live in dangerous times….not least because the US has taken itself to the circus. We are now allied to a heavily armed but politically impotent power.

    Wherever we look the enemies of democracy and the post war liberal/humanist/pluralist order are ascendant. This has got to be bad news for everyone.

    We need to arm ourselves….but while this is a necessary step it is far from sufficient. The world order is being re-made. We have to reflect on that and develop a coherent response that will serve stability, peace, freedom and economic safety.

  9. Bucephalus

    Pick your poison – USA or China?
    ————
    I prefer to keep away from both poisons thank you very much.

    It’s way past time for Australia to become independent.

  10. csays:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:23 pm

    So, you don’t think that a Biden lead US will be a strong Ally? Why not?

  11. Rakalisays:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:26 pm

    “I prefer to keep away from both poisons thank you very much.

    It’s way past time for Australia to become independent.”

    So you think John Curtin was an idiot. Noted.

    When do we get the nuclear weapons?

  12. mundosays:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:27 pm

    “Just my trusty Mundoscope.”

    Do you have a Medicare Item Number for that?

  13. Ever ready to lend a helping hand, Hunt does another stab in the back routine. Like we’re all in this together until Hunt finds a way of slipping a political shiv between your ribs.

    (Perhaps Hunt wants everyone to forget that he fingered BLM for the spike in Victorian infections? That one is past its use by is it? Nice bit of race relations work there, Little Greggie!)

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-02/victoria-hotel-quarantine-breaches-greg-hunt/12414612

  14. Bucephalus

    So you think John Curtin was an idiot. Noted.
    ———-

    Introducing irrelevant matters from 75 years ago is not a rational argument.

    Anyway, the USA came into the war 2 years late only because they and their Philippine colony were attacked by Japan. “Saving” Australia was only ever a means to their end.

  15. a rsays:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:28 pm

    “We should be small and neutral, like Switzerland.”

    And I should be a Billionaire.

    We aren’t Switzerland. Switzerland is a small country that isn’t strategically important. Australia is a whole continent that is resource rich and geographically strategically important.

  16. Bucephalus @ #224 Thursday, July 2nd, 2020 – 12:39 pm

    a rsays:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:28 pm

    “We should be small and neutral, like Switzerland.”

    And I should be a Billionaire.

    We aren’t Switzerland. Switzerland is a small country that isn’t strategically important. Australia is a whole continent that is resource rich and geographically strategically important.

    “We should be small and neutral, like Switzerland.”
    Like federal Labor.

  17. A lot of Labor worry warts attacking an an anonymous poster on a blog for pointing out Labor is not covering itself with glory.

    This when the political landscape has given almost unprecedented ammunition to attack the government on.

  18. “ i agree with Mundo, I expect a labor EM loss and trouble for Absent Albo, if they win it won’t be by much.”

    Potentially the electorate is polarised between the parts that were devastated by bushfires and haven’t forgotten SfM and places like Queanbeyan- who have been ‘protected’ by Moses Morrison and his amazing barrel of endless pork.

    Who really knows how this is going to play out. As a Labor man, I’m still pissed off that Mike Kelly didn’t wait until towards the end of the year before resigning. Sure he couldn’t service the electorate the way he used to, given his illness. But another 6 months servicing via remote control wouldn’t have hurt in the circumstances either.

    IMO, the electorate hasn’t had time to absorb just how much Morrison’s merged two word slogans (jobseeker, jobkeeper, HomeBuilder etc etc) are not actually well thought out programs but cheap marketing slogans designed to paper over a yawning gap in governance. A bi-election held in November or even March next year would have been a much more formidable proposition for our marketing guru to spin.

  19. Perhaps if Bandt wrote to Xi urging him to take a Greens peace studies course?

    And, if Xi refuses, Bandt could remind Xi that the Greens are going to turn the whole of the ADF into a ‘Light Mobile Force’.

    We know that the Greens have opposed ALL current equipment purchases. No fighter planes, tanks, warships or artillery. So we have to guess how the Greens Light Mobile Force would be armed. Sling shots? BB guns? Water pistols?

    You know it makes sense!

  20. Baba, it wasn’t Bushfire who published the defamatory material and it wasn’t Bushfire who supplied the material to that notorious rag.

    If you have a problem with how the courts operated, take it up with them.

    Your attempt to associate him with having somehow disparaged the woman concerned is disingenuous and despicable.

  21. Rakalisays:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:33 pm

    “Introducing irrelevant matters from 75 years ago is not a rational argument.”

    It’s not irrelevant – it is completely relevant and Grand Strategy hasn’t changed.

    “Anyway, the USA came into the war 2 years late only because they and their Philippine colony were attacked by Japan. “Saving” Australia was only ever a means to their end.”

    Pretty sure most Australians, especially in 1942 onwards, were pretty happy with that (apart from the unnecessary assaults on the Buna-Gona-Sanananda beach heads).

  22. Bucephalus says:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:26 pm
    csays:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:23 pm

    So, you don’t think that a Biden lead US will be a strong Ally? Why not?

    Trump has done immense harm to US interests, prestige and capability. The world has moved on and the US itself is paralysed by divisions. Maybe a new President and Congress can repair the US. But for now you’d have to say they have fucked everything, including their capacity to think, speak and act coherently. We are at a more uncertain juncture than at any time since the 1930s.

    Paralysis in the US is institutionalised…..led by the ideological Right. They have utterly fucked the place and done great harm to the rest of us into the bargain.

  23. rakali is quite right.
    We could not depend on Great Britain in World War Two and we certainly can’t depend on the US in our next war.

    My view is that we could save an awful lot of money on equipment and training and instead deploy some peace studies, as per the Greens defence policies.

    It goes without saying that every single defence equipment purchase needs to be slagged without mercy.

    It also goes without say that the lessons of weakness and appeasement need to be ignored resolutely.

    It also goes without saying that sneering one liners by the Greens are a perfect substitute for actually having a national conversation about what to do as a world order falls to pieces and a new world order comes into play.

  24. mundosays:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:41 pm

    ““We should be small and neutral, like Switzerland.”
    Like federal Labor.”

    Now that made me LOA. (Laugh Out Aloud)

  25. FS

    It’s BB that’s doing the conflation.

    Baba is only pointing out the woman went official route got nowhere.

    Blaming the woman for trying to defend herself in any way she could after events were out of her control is not the solution. Baba is right to make this point.

    If the woman had gone public herself first you would have a fact to base an attack on Baba’s comment on.

    Edit: The point being it was the woman who was a victim of the Tele defamation along with Rush.

  26. BW and C

    It may have escaped your notice.

    Until you turned up the Greens were not in the conversation. Neither was Labor. It was all serious discussion about being independent of the US in the National interest.

    At least on the comments I have seen.

  27. We are now allied to a heavily armed but politically impotent power.

    We are now allied to what is effectively on the world stage a clown.

  28. Australia was extremely lucky in World War Two that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour.

    Australia entered World War 2 with basically a Light Mobile Force that was particularly light and not very mobile.

    We had no main battle tanks, no frontline fighters, no frontline bombers, no submarines at all, a parlous artillery park, bugger all AA, a serious lack in infantry automatic weapons, and bugger all by way of logistics.

    This is EXACTLY what the Greens are touting for Australia’s defence right now.

    We were lucky in WW2. There is absolutely no guarantee that we will be lucky next time round.

  29. You know, in the grand scheme of things, $20B a year is a bit meh – except in the context of claiming there’s no money for anything else.

  30. Andrew_Earlwood,
    I used to live in EM and you’re right about the weight of electors in queenbeyan skewing things. There’s a heavy defence presence out there and I don’t think the Fires, Flood and Plauge have had time to settle in the minds of electors.
    Mike Kelly could have done an Andrew Wilkie and just phoned it in. But hey can’t fault him for wanting to take some time to himself.

    I just can’t understand what Labor is waiting for.

  31. csays:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:46 pm

    “Trump has done immense harm to US interests, prestige and capability. The world has moved on and the US itself is paralysed by divisions. Maybe a new President and Congress can repair the US. But for now you’d have to say they have fucked everything, including their capacity to think, speak and act coherently. We are at a more uncertain juncture than at any time since the 1930s.

    Paralysis in the US is institutionalised…..led by the ideological Right. They have utterly fucked the place and done great harm to the rest of us into the bargain.”

    I know Biden appears unable to remember where he is or relevant facts and figures but I have some faith that he’ll have some people working for him who can actually do stuff.

  32. Oh also, now the government is going after small business about Jobkeepr. Front page of the SMH. Easy pickup for Labor, just run to the try line and score.

  33. Bucephalus

    I know which one I prefer based on the past 70 years of extremely successful relationship.
    ———-

    Undoubtedly:

    You think the 550 dead young Australians in the failed USA War in Vietnam was the sign of a “successful relationship” for Australia ;

    You think the USA refusal to to support Australia and Netherlands and stop the Indonesian take over of West Papua in 1962/3 was the sign of a “successful relationship” for Australia;

    You think the USA “Free” Trade Agreement signed by Howard and implemented in 2004 which did much, overwhelmingly to the USA’s advantage to Integrate Australia more closely with US America politically, economically, legally and culturally was the sign of a “successful relationship” for Australia.

    I don’t.

  34. guytaursays:
    Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 12:49 pm

    “The point being it was the woman who was a victim of the Tele defamation along with Rush.”

    The only problem with that claim is that the facts of the case demonstrated that she had no basis for making her claims and that’s why the action was successful so she is not a victim.

  35. Buce

    Biden could be literally dropping marbles out of his mouth at the podium direct from his brain and he would make a better President than Trump.

    For exactly the reason you cite.

    Good to see you are not all just right wing pr talking points.

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