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. Nath
    Can you point me to the article that links all these outbreaks to the quarantine of returned travellers. I have not seen anything linking the tower clusters to them, actually the fact they are listed as a distinct cluster would indicate it is seperate or the testing for sequencing hasn’t been completed.
    Can you also point me to the article that says only Victoria used Security guards to manage Hotel quarantine.
    Also can you tell me what steps the federal government took to ensure people in insecure work could afford to quarantine if they had symptoms.

    I try to stay informed but can’t find any of the readings to answer my questions

  2. Anthony Perkins @seQular_left
    ·
    2m

    Try and add a comment supportive of Premier Andrews in the Age website comments and watch it disappear into the void. Only negative comments allowed.

  3. Apart from the Jobseeker jobkeeper payments and deploying the ADF what financial assistance is the Commonwealth giving to the states to maintain quarantine. NSW, Qld and WA are all wanting to reduce arrivals because of costs and difficulties with maintaining the number of supports required.

    Is this a case of Morrison providing support in name only and not practice.

  4. Hear hear

    Prof. Peter Doherty
    @ProfPCDoherty
    ·
    1h
    Good advice!
    Quote Tweet

    Rob Colligan
    @colligan_rob
    · 1h
    Dear Australian Politicians & Media Spokesthings… From an Aussie in Singapore: if your words do not match the Health Officials from your State, you need to shutup. Our experience here shows that you are making #COVID19Aus worse.
    #auspol

  5. From a conversation yesterday.

    Phillip Adams
    @PhillipAdams_1
    ·
    14h
    Don’t be so mean to JWH. It’s not his fault.Years ago John Hewson told me that as a Howard staffer he’d often witness how poor John was totally dominated by – and lived in dread of – Jeanette

  6. lizzie @ #3323 Tuesday, July 7th, 2020 – 2:56 pm

    Anthony Perkins @seQular_left
    ·
    2m

    Try and add a comment supportive of Premier Andrews in the Age website comments and watch it disappear into the void. Only negative comments allowed.

    As a SMH/Age subscriber I am polled weekly on what I think about current issues and how they are going. I will be sure to comment this week about this issue.

  7. OakeshottCounty
    Just heard a bloke has tested positive in Newcastle. Apparently from Melbourne.
    Do you heard which area of Newie?


  8. Quasar says:
    Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 2:50 pm

    Thanks for the correction,
    Frednk.
    Too many bum steers on Twitter -should double check before posting.

    Hi Quaser
    It’s pretty clear there is deliberate misinformation campaigned going on designed to cause trouble, you really have to check now days. The sad thing is the main stream media is now joining in, looking for click bait.

  9. Wouldn’t it be rather cold, heavy going if you were of a mind to swim across the Murray at this time of year?

  10. ‘Alpha Zero says:
    Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 2:40 pm

    boerwarsays:
    Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 2:23 pm
    I hope that the Victorians get on top of this pronto.
    I hope that there is not another case in the rest of Australia.
    I hope that we stop taking any more inbound internationals: as Victoria has demonstrated the risks are not worth taking for the tiny benefits involved.

    ________________________________
    No,

    The first learning is that you don’t quarantine anybody in a major city…

    The second learning is that once this is brought under control, vigilance and mass batch testing will be the only way to ensure that the numbers are zero.’

    What is this ‘No’?
    All the current infections in Australia are directly attributable to overseas arrivals. Stop the latter and clean up the Virus then move on.

  11. Where are the overseas students supposed to come from?
    The Virus is totally out of control in India.
    China is advising its students not to travel because of racist incidents in Australia.

  12. Lizzie:

    It seems that the main cohort of infections has moved down to the middle aged rather than the elderly. I suggest that this shows who is taking the danger seriously.

    Well spotted.

    Last I saw only 18% of Vic covid infectees were over 60, c.f. anything up to 35% in other jurisdictions within Aus, and even higher OS.

    Another peculiar thing this that AUS cases are only about 53% male, c.f. 65-70% OS. At one stage this was being driven by women 30-40 years old, but presumably that’s no longer the case

  13. BH
    The only one I know in Newcastle was an O/S returnee who was in hotel quarantine and tested negative on Day 10. He was released and returned to Newcastle on Sunday when he immediately got symptoms and was retested with a positive result.
    This raises several possibilities:
    WHO classifies 3 types of asymptomatic:
    1. Those who are truly asymptomatic
    2. Those who are actually symptomatic but don’t realise it
    3. Those who are prodromal and about to become symptomatic
    In any case the false negative rates among all three groups is high.
    Among other possibilities this guy came back with an infection which was missed on testing and now has symptoms of either COVID or another URTI.
    Reinfection, a very long prodromal period, infection during quarantine or community infection in his few hours of freedom seem less likely
    Given his history I suspect he is a low infective risk but NSW Health has placed him and contacts into isolation.

    Haven’t heard of any others

  14. There’s still a lot of statues and memorials that need defacing and/or tearing down – where are BLM when you really need them?

  15. Boerwar,

    The first step is probably to do as you suggest and stop all arrivals.

    It’s how you try to get the movement of people occurring post the current situation.
    There will have to be quarantine, it’s how and where you have it that is shown to be important.
    IE keep it well away form the big cities.

    I don’t think there is too much difference in our messages here…

  16. Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, has announced a lockdown of metropolitan Melbourne metro as the state records its largest daily increase in COVID cases since the start of the pandemic.

    Stay-at-home orders have been reintroduced for both Melbourne and the shire of Mitchell – placing those areas back into Stage 3 restrictions from midnight tomorrow.

    There have been 191 new cases recorded today, with 37 are linked to known outbreaks and the remaining 154 are under investigation.

    South Australia will close its Victorian border to all but SA residents, with the police in talks with the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to help barricade some roads into the state to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

    SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said as of midnight tomorrow, only travellers who actually live in SA would be able to enter the state from Victoria and self-isolate for 14 days.

    “People not residing in South Australia who are returning from Victoria will not have that option available to them,” Commissioner Grant Stevens said.

    “There are about 45 unsealed roads and 20 sealed roads in South Australia [along the Victorian border].

    “We’re certainly not ruling out at this point that we will deploy ADF resources.”

  17. frednk says:
    Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 3:22 pm
    boerwar says:
    Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 3:09 pm

    Insane

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/07/australia-to-allow-international-university-students-to-return-before-all-state-borders-open

    Lets hope Morrison gets the shellacking he deserves. It must be clear to any fool that elimination is the only option.

    And, incredibly, the Fed Gov’t seems saner than NSW.
    From the Guardian article:

    The federal government has not yet received a pilot plan from Queensland. NSW submitted an ambitious proposal for up to 30,000 international students to return in groups of 250 a day from July. The federal government rejected that proposal and asked NSW to revise its downwards.

    Where does Gladys expect to be able to quarantine 250 students a day?
    edit: each for 14+ days

  18. C@tmomma @ #3181 Tuesday, July 7th, 2020 – 11:58 am

    How judgemental of you to sneer at what would likely be one of their favourite foods.

    That whole thread seems needlessly divisive.

    Rather than making assumptions/stereotypes/guesses about what people like to eat or what standard of food their income level typically affords them or how full/empty their pantries are, what about something more like “since the government is forcibly quarantining these people it can provide each family with whatever food it prefers, whether that’s sausage rolls or Maccas or eye-fillet steak with truffle sauce horseradish encrustment” (you can’t ruin a nice steak with sauce; it’s horseradish crust or plain!)? Seems fair enough, and has a whole “jobs and growth” angle to it. 🙂

  19. Dan Andrews must be exhausted, yet he can still string sentences together logically. We need such clarity of thought.

  20. Lets take a moment to thank the reactionary richard heads in the media for demanding the reopening of the economy then lets thank the weak kneed politicians for failing to lead in the face of the reactionary media sulk.

  21. frednk

    I was wondering about that, and thought that Andrews explained it well: don’t exercise outside your own Shire.

  22. So Andrews has done a backflip on the backflip in regards to the ADF.
    He must have got the agreement from his union masters this time

  23. What I don’t understand re the lockdown towers is that they have cooking facilities. Why didn’t they Co opt Woolies and Coles and give everyone a list of items to order from with one order per apartment based on number of tenants.
    An orderly delivery could then have occured. That would then allow for focus on those who need a meals on wheels arrangement to be dealt with separately.

  24. Taylormade says:
    Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 3:43 pm
    So Andrews has done a backflip on the backflip in regards to the ADF.
    He must have got the agreement from his union masters this time

    —————

    Morrison is still refusing to concede defeat, he has to wait to til the foreign media tycoon newsltd hacks tell him to concede defeat.

    Morrison back flip on closing the borders, last Tuesday Morrison claimed spread of the virus was no reason to close NSW & VIC borders

    Today NSW border will close to VIC, because of Morrison was told to backflip by his masters newsltd hacks

  25. Alpha Zero
    That seems about right but not sure Mornington Pensinsula Shire would be included but it could be because of the continuation of suburbs along the bay.

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