Around the traps

As the government approaches the middle of its term, the first sighting of early election speculation in the wild.

Dennis Shanahan of The Australian reckons “two basic assumptions are driving the economic and political debate in 2021”, and that one of these is that there will be an election late next year. The other is that COVID-19 restrictions will start to ease in the coming months; “neither is certain”. The government’s election window opens in the middle of the year, at which point the Senators given six-year terms after the 2016 double dissolution will enter the final year of the terms, the period in which the half-Senate election to replace them may be held.

That will do as a kick-off for a new open thread, which is needed because there are so many other posts flying around at the moment. For convenience, these include:

• Adrian Beaumont’s New Zealand live election count post, which will begin in earnest when polls close at 7pm New Zealand time and 5pm Australian eastern daylight time – to be followed an hour later by my own live commentary post on the Australian Territory election. And if you’re a Crikey subscriber, you can read my collective preview of the two here.

• Also from Adrian Beaumont, a review of the US situation.

• A post on a Newspoll result showing Labor leading 52-48 in Queensland.

• Another post on the Queensland campaigning detailing relevant recent developments.

• A post on a Ten News uComms poll from New South Wales showing strong support for Gladys Berejiklian.

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.

1,347 comments on “Around the traps”

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  1. I tend to find discussions around generations tend to bog down in generalisations (or should I say stereotypes). As if there’s really any notable difference between someone born on the 31/12/1964 and someone else born on 1/1/1965.

    That raises a thought. Imagine identical twins, one born at a minute to midnight on 31/12/1964 and the other a minute past midnight on the 1/1/1965. Would they really be that different, despite one being a boomer and the other a Gen X?

    Or, will someone born in 1964 really have more in common with someone born in 1946 than someone born in 1965?

    Older people don’t tend to vote conservative because they are boomers. They tend to vote conservative because they are older. Young boomers tended to vote for the left, just as millenials do now. No doubt in thirty years time Gen Whatever will be complaining because the millenials are all conservative voting fuddy duddies.

  2. The needles can be changed between each use but the body of the device can retain microscopic amounts of blood, said Safer Care Victoria, the state’s healthcare quality and safety agency.

    An earlier report said that the needles were used only once. It was the ‘bodies’ that were used multiple times. So a stuff up but not as bad as it could have been.

  3. Before I hit the sack, a reminder as the weather warms up to slip, slop, slap. And wear a hat.

    I had a skin cancer removed from my noggin nearly 2 weeks ago.
    Had the stitches removed today and the graft sight bandage removed. Alls well. Margins clear.
    Happy chappy.
    Graft looks good and I smell better after a proper shower!
    😁

  4. Lars Von Trier @ #1296 Monday, October 19th, 2020 – 9:21 pm

    Do you ever get tired c@t?

    Fyi, while you were at work today I was away from the computer, talking to friends, arranging birthday lunches for friends, making food, talking with my son who is overseas, talking with my son who shares the house with me, playing games, doing the washing, cleaning and reading. Also making appointments for medical treatment. Not to mention, keeping an eye on PB and making commentary when I felt like it. I’m pretty good at multi tasking, having completed a post graduate degree while working and bringing up a family, one of whose children was in need of a constant stream of medical interventions as he grew up.

    As to whether I ever get tired, well, usually but not always about 10.30pm every night. I am lucky enough to sleep very well. And then I get up and do it all again, with variations on the theme.

    Now, my question to you is, before I block you again because it seems as though you haven’t changed your approach appreciably is, do you ever stop being a dick?

  5. As each generation passes the consequences of treating your opposition with total contempt fades and it happens more and more.

    Hopefully the current generation doesn’t rediscover first hand the consequences of war and conscription remains an abstract concept.

  9. Not all Boomers are bad, in fact many a really decent people, but unfortunately there are those who are extremely haughty and entitled. Those aren’t traits unique to their generation though, of course.

    Some of them are also prone to suffering fits of rage at the mere mention of teh big bad daddy Greens. The unhinged and the far-right have this in common.

  11. Simon Katich says Monday, October 19, 2020 at 9:59 pm

    Get ready for change at the top!
    —————
    Morrison’s toupee?

    maybe the Queen is retiring. I’m sure she would make sure Jeff is the first to know.

  13. Firefox @ #1309 Monday, October 19th, 2020 – 7:04 pm

    Not all Boomers are bad, in fact many a really decent people, but unfortunately there are those who are extremely haughty and entitled. Those aren’t traits unique to their generation though, of course.

    Some of them are also prone to suffering fits of rage at the mere mention of teh big bad daddy Greens. The unhinged and the far-right have this in common.

    Of course it isn’t a homogenous sample, but its impacts in the US, UK and Australia are singularly bad. The receipts are in and as one lowlight in Australia we were killing our own poor with fake, unlawful robodebt notices. It is the boomers legacy, along with unaffordable uni education, a devastated tafe, privatised and corrupt everything.

    There isn’t any doubt.

  16. WWP

    along with unaffordable uni education,

    Wasn’t that was lead by teh ‘pre-Boomer’ peasants. Keating,Hawke, Dawkins. Oh and not forgetting The Rodent.

  17. Steven Miles
    @StevenJMiles

    #qldpol
    (Clive Palmer) if you could prove it you wouldn’t have changed your ad. You’re making things up to make
    @DebFrecklington
    Premier. Palmers party is just the
    @LNPQLD
    in yellow. Just more LNP lies.

  18. C@tmomma @ #3465 Monday, October 19th, 2020 – 9:37 pm

    Thanks, EGT.

    The money quotes are these :

    Finger-prick tests routinely used by people living with diabetes, including pregnant women who develop gestational diabetes, were used in the hotel quarantine system. Safer Care Victoria said it did not believe needles were used multiple times, but the body of the devices were touched by more than one person.

    “Blood glucose level testing devices intended for use by one person were used across multiple residents,” the agency said in a statement.

    Okay, so, I can see why they are concerned, the testing/data analysis machine was handled by more than one person, however there was no sharing of needles, to use the colloquial parlance that most people understand to be the gestation of Hep B, C, and, not so much, AIDS. Meaning that the machine was possibly acting as a fomite which may have been a vector for the spread of COVID-19. Hep B, C and AIDS, not so much.

    Um. The use of a single device (per ward, not person) to measure fingerprick blood glucose levels (BGL) is standard in all hospital settings, every day. Clean lancets are used each time. There is negligible risk of transmission of blood borne viruses. This is another complete bullshit diversion thrown up by the pathetic rabid morons of the Entitled Scum & Land Sharks Party.

  19. poroti:

    WWP

    along with unaffordable uni education,

    Wasn’t that was lead by teh ‘pre-Boomer’ peasants. Keating,Hawke, Dawkins. Oh and not forgetting The Rodent.

    First of all, most people in a “generation” are voters, not political leaders. Mr Howard was not himself a “Boomer” but his depravity and idiocy regarding the tax system and real property was aimed at “Boomers”: they voted for him, and for it, and are thus responsible. Moreover, and in a first for any generation, the Boomers voted for the von Mises / Hayek “trickle down” rubbish AFTER it had been tried and had failed (in the 1920s worldwide and in the 1980s in the US and UK). By failed I mean failed by generating lower economic growth than the known alternative, a metric that is objective and independent of one’s political persuasion.

    Second, HECS at the 23% rate improved access to University, particularly for the disadvantaged. It is equivocal whether raising the rate to over 50% inhibited access by the disadvantaged (it probably does, but it doesn’t necessarily do so, implying that a means tested 50% rate could well further improve access). What is quite clear about the 1996 and later HECS increases is that they converted “scholars” into “customers” and this has been extremely detrimental to education.

  20. rhwombat,
    As poroti pointed out, they’re getting their knickers in a twist about micro-particulate blood contamination of the measuring device. I would have thought COVID-19 directly on the machine was more likely a problem than whether Hep B, c or AIDS was going to be caught. But, apparently, that doesn’t scare people as much as the thought of contracting Hep B, C or AIDS.

  21. rhwombat
    Being totes ignorant of the procedure thank you muchly for that. It had been reported earlier the lancet part was only used once and the ‘body’ was the more than once part. Thought it meant the risk was therefore SFA but of course me no expert let alone amateur .

    As a thank you some tourism porn from Milford Sound 🙂 Part of the local ‘Go New Zealand’ tourism push. You may be able to go there in a few months time.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/tim-roxborogh-meets-the-kea-and-enjoys-the-ageless-beauty-of-milford-sound-fiordland/DUID2PXRAR3EPYUDDWO3X32LF4/

    .

    .

  22. WeWantPaul @ #1311 Monday, October 19th, 2020 – 9:16 pm

    The f*cking lincoln project. Bunch of racist grifters I wouldn’t believe it if they told me it was Monday.

    If you say so. I’m not saying they’re great, but they’re not Trumpers and that should be enough. Especially with how hopeless the Democrats are with competently attacking and exploiting (and fabricating) weakness.

    My enemy’s enemy is my friend. At least until Trump is gone.

  23. Nicholas

    “ But I think it is fair to say that the most powerful members of the Boomer Generation are the worst generation of elites the world has ever seen. The reason is that for the first time in recorded history a generation is leaving subsequent generations worse off in material wellbeing.”

    I agree it is not fair to label entire generations, since there is good and bad in every generation. I prefer the Humean view of humans as “tabla rasa”; how they turn out depends on upbringing and circumstances.

    But yes the babyboom generation of political and (even worse) business “leaders have been the worst in the history of the Anglosphere: short sighted, self serving and bent on power for power’s sake rather than any higher ideal. Multiple causes IMO – born in times of plenty with high expectations, Friedmans “purpose of a firm is to make a profit” nonsense ruining corporate management, promotion on merit systems that wind up electing the most self-promoting as leaders, and a failure to address the obsolescence of old left-right Paradigm after the end of Communism. Globalism has destroyed the idea that helping firms helps workers. The education revolution has destroyed the idea that the white collar are rich and the blue collar poor, maKing many IR fights irrelevant to the majority. The left’s failure to reinvent itself has left the field open for the right to exploit. My 2 cents.

  26. Nicholas
    It is not right to say that boomers are the first generation to leave future generations worst off and isn’t clear that the young ones are worst off when as a generation they will inherit the largest pool of capital in human history and its still growing. There has always been social disadvantage and challenging issues that need addressing but young Australians have it pretty good.

  27. As a thank you some tourism porn from Milford Sound Part of the local ‘Go New Zealand’ tourism push. You may be able to go there in a few months time.

    What you can’t see in those NZ Milford Sound photos are the 10,000,000 sand flies waving at the camera.

    They get up your nostril, in your ears, down your trousers (and not in a nice way), on your eyelids, and in general bite every square inch of exposed flesh, leaving dozens of intensely itchy mini-pustules for you to rip yourself to pieces over.

    Whereas mozzies like still waters, Kiwi sandflies like running water. They also only bite mammals.

    And there’s plenty of running water around New Zealand, not to mention about 3 billion sheep all baa-ing simultaneously: “Come and get me! And when you’re finished with me, try him over there!”

    They say you have a fighting chance in Winter, though. You go first and tell me if it’s true.

  28. Mexicanbeemer @ #1322 Monday, October 19th, 2020 – 11:59 pm

    isn’t clear that the young ones are worst off when as a generation they will inherit the largest pool of capital in human history and its still growing.

    What’s that got to do with being better off? What amount of capital puts back the 50% of corals that have died out on the GBR? What amount resets atmospheric CO2 to levels more like what existed 100 (or even 50) yeas ago? What amount to rebuild all the places slated to be inundated by sea-level rise over the coming decades, and relocate everyone living places that will be rendered uninhabitable? Etc., etc..

    Material wealth means nothing if the planet is fucked.

  30. a.r
    Nicholas said boomers were the first people in recorded history to leave the next generation worst off but history says that is not the case and i added there were challenges which climate change is one but it isn’t beyond managing.

  31. So the government has been told yet again that women limit their work hours because working a fourth day is not financially viable. The governments response, childcare fees are low, of course they are, because women can’t afford to work the forth or fifth day per week.
    The only way the government can be proven wrong is if lots of women take a financial hit to prove the point, and the government knows that won’t happen.
    The question is will those negatively affected, some of whom will have partners whose income has dropped due to covid, wake up to what the government is doing and how unfairly they are being treated.

  32. Mexican:

    Nicholas said boomers were the first people in recorded history to leave the next generation worst off but history says that is not the case and i added there were challenges which climate change is one but it isn’t beyond managing.

    A very large fraction of the Boomer “money” / “capital” is illiquid, locked up in residential land values.
    Dying Boomers can either:
    – sell at current value to later generations – in which case those generations’ balance sheets are impaired as they will have to go into debt to purchase land, and economic growth is retarded by lack of financing
    – sell at a loss to current value – in which case the supposedly largest in history store of capital goes “pop” and simply disappears, probably creating a prolonged recession
    – try to borrow against the land value to fund later generations’ businesses. This is consistent with growth, but not with Boomers’ risk appetites

    Having lots of paper money locked up in non-productive assets per the Howard-Costello “wealth” creation strategy turns out not to fund real growth. Who knew?

  33. According to the SMH Premier Berejiklian now claims of Maguire that “He wasn’t my boyfriend. He wasn’t anything of note.”

    I see.

    Can we take it therefore that, in the immortal words of Kathy Jackson, he was merely the Premier’s Charity Fuck?

  34. E. G. Theodore
    Those crashes have happened before and are bound to happen again which is why Nicholas was incorrect to say boomers would be the first to leave the next generation worst off and there have been other times in history where the next generation has been worst off than the previous generation.

  35. Mexican:

    E. G. Theodore
    Those crashes have happened before and are bound to happen again which is why Nicholas was incorrect to say boomers would be the first to leave the next generation worst off and there have been other times in history where the next generation has been worst off than the previous generation.

    So it sounds like you are predicting that the “largest store of capital in history” will evaporate in a crash – in which case what is the point?

    Crashes involving productive assets can be useful – new businesses can buy the assets at very low cost and prosper through using them (e.g. the tech crash). Crashes associated with non-productive assets tend to have no benefits.

  36. Possum on twitter-
    “In the Qld lockdown, and a bit after, I did a lot of stuff organising Qld’s community sector to work with the Covid health program – the Hillsong mob were one of the least cooperative community organisations I experienced. They acted like it was all about them, not their people.”
    Explains Morrison et al.

  39. Russian military intelligence services were planning a cyber-attack on the Japanese-hosted Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo this summer in an attempt to disrupt the world’s premier sporting event, the UK National Cyber Security Centre has revealed, disclosing a joint operation with the US intelligence agencies.

    The Russian cyber-reconnaissance work covered the Games organisers, logistics services and sponsors and was under way before the Olympics was postponed due to coronavirus.

    Many previous ascribed Russian cyber-attacks have been against the state institutions of Moscow’s political opponents, but some cyber-activity has been directed at the agencies conducting inquiries into Russian sports doping.

    The evidence is the first indication that Russia was prepared to go as far as to disrupt the summer Games, from which all Russian competitors had been excluded because of persistent state-sponsored doping offences.

    The UK has also become the first government to confirm details of the breadth of a previously reported Russian attempt to disrupt the 2018 winter Olympics and Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. It declared with what it described as 95% confidence that the disruption of both the winter and summer Olympics was carried out remotely by the GRU unit 74455.

  44. When I studied economics many years ago we learnt that UK entrepreneurs in the 18th century stored their manufacturing wealth in land, an unproductive asset

    In most periods of history people were downwardly mobile, the exception being the period since 1945. In William Dampier time, 1670s was another period of upward social mobility caused by the opportunities afforded by the great plague. Dampier’s wife owned property in her own name.
    Somehow by Victorian period women did not own property.

    History repeats itself but anthropogenic warming is going to make most people’s lives “shortish, brutish, and mean” to quote Thomas Hobbes.

  45. William,

    If you are immune to sandflies, immediately sell up in WA, volunteer your body for sale for scientific research out of Otago University, and make yourself an instant millionaire.

    At their worst, in the most intense sandfly-ridden spots of the West Coast, entomologists have recorded a bite rate of up to 1000-an-hour. In a couple of minutes, that could be hundreds of little bites, on your arms, neck, face, feet.

    Sandflies, on a minute level, rip and tear the flesh to open the skin and access blood, using anti-coagulating qualities of saliva to feed. It’s histamine that causes the itching and swelling.
    …
    The West Coast of the South Island, particularly Fiordland, is notorious.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/travel-troubles/88169578/sandflies-new-zealands-bloodsucking-summer-nightmare-actually-its-yearround

  46. Dena Grayson, MD, PhD
    @DrDenaGrayson
    Trump calls reporters “dumb bastards” for covering the #coronavirus pandemic.

    Wrong.

    Watch every minute of this powerful video. It’s well worth your time.
    https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/status/1318642301586071553
    #COVID19 #VoteHimOut @brikeilarcnn
    #VOTE

    Steve Simeonidis
    @stevesimeonidis
    Here is @CityofMiami
    Police Officer Daniel Ubeda, in full uniform with badge and gun wearing his Trump mask inside of the polling location in government center.

    This is city funded voter intimidation.

    Ubeda should be suspended immediately.

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