I had a paywalled article in Crikey yesterday that riffed off South Australian Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas’s pointedly supportive approach to the state’s brief COVID-19 lockdown, and the explicit distinction he drew between his own approach and that of Michael O’Brien in Victoria. It was noted that Malinauskas clearly believes the general tenor of polling coming out of Victoria, even if the likes of Peta Credlin do not. This also afforded me the opportunity to highlight a clip from September in which Credlin and two Sky-after-dark colleagues brought their formidable perspicacity to bear on the likely impact of Queensland’s hard border policies on the looming state election.
Speaking of the which, both Antony Green and Kevin Bonham offer extremely detailed post-match reports on the Queensland election, in which both try their hand at estimating the statewide two-party preferred: Antony Green coming in at 53.2% for Labor, and Kevin Bonham making it 53.1%. This represents either a 1.8% or 1.9% swing to Labor compared with the 2017 election result of 51.3%, which was barely different from the 2015 result of 51.1%. Annastacia Palaszczuk can now claim the vanishingly rare distinction of having increased her party’s seat share at three successive elections. For further insights into how this came about, JWS Research has published full results of its post-election poll.
Elsewhere, Western Australia’s Liberal Party will today choose a new leader after the resignation on Sunday of Liza Harvey, who came to the job last June but has been politically crippled by COVID-19 — a no-win situation for the Liberals in the best of circumstances, but one made quite a lot worse than it needed to be by a response that was more Michael O’Brien than Peter Malinauskas. The two contenders are Zak Kirkup, 33-year-old member for the all too marginal seat of Dawesville in southern Mandurah, and Bateman MP Dean Nalder, who unsuccessfully challenged Colin Barnett’s leadership six months before the Liberals’ landslide defeat in March 2017. The West Australian reports that Zirkup has it all but stitched up, since he has the support of Harvey as well as key numbers men Peter Collier and Nick Goiran.
All forms of education and training, from early childhood to doctoral studies, should be funded entirely by the currency issuer (the Australian Government). That doesn’t mean the government needs to be running everything. It is good to organize the system in a way that promotes creativity, diversity, and innovation. There should be appropriate regulation to ensure quality and to protect the rights of workers.
There simply isn’t any good reason to charge people for their education when the public benefits of education are so immense.
The reasons adduced for charging people a fee for their education reflect neoliberal assumptions about people’s motivations and how the world is supposed to be organized.
If the government thinks that too many people are doing a particular program, the government can cut the number of places for that program.
If the government thinks there are too few people doing a particular program, the government can fund more places.
If the government thinks that the quality of graduates is too low, it can raise the entrance requirements.
If the government thinks there are too many students who are not taking their studies seriously and who are wasting the resources allocated to the program, the government can tighten the standards that determine when and how students can be excluded from a program for poor performance.
None of those issues requires a fee.
The people who think there needs to be a fee for education usually came of age politically when neoliberalism was at its peak. They have absorbed the assumptions of that pernicious ideology. They need to be forgiven for they know not what they do.
Sharma is a fake.
What is CHYNA (or PRC’s CCP) up to now: https://www.9news.com.au/world/china-news-group-of-doctors-guilty-of-organ-harvesting/ ?
Enough with the feel-good generalizations, C@t… I challenge you to translate Wombat’s post. Tells us what he was trying to say, without having to use a dictionary. And if you DO need a dictionary, was his point THAT good it was fully worth the effort?
You have a better chance of succeeding than anyone else here, given your techical/scientific background.
It’s not having too look up obscure techical jargon that offends. It’s knowing with absolute certainty that you’ll never have occasion to use that word again, and that therefore it was only used by the OP to put us to the trouble of, and of wasting ever-diminishing time finding out how much more brilliant than the rest of us he is.
Spray @ #1538 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:07 pm
Yes, but he almost won the last election, and I think there is a lot of “Buyer’s Remorse” with Morrison, which means he would probably have a good shot at winning the next one – but at least he would fight it!
Albo seems unable (or unwilling) to do anything at all, so Labor is apparently now expecting to lose the next election as well.
lizzie @ #1550 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:37 pm
Indeed. Australians likes to pretend to themselves that they are leading the world. The world knows different.
Perhaps BB could explain Anamorphic Lenses to us again?
mundo @ #1546 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:24 pm
Why would they?
Lizzie wrote:
What is the point of appreciating someone’s posts if you don’t understand them, Lizzie?
I mean, WHAT is the point?
BB
Rarely (never?) has commentary on other commenters added anything of value to PB.
Your post(s) could be more efficiently phrased as “please restate that without the jargon” or similar.
Bushfire
OFSS. You’re just looking for an argument and I’m not in the mood.
SA Nullarbor 46.4., Moomba 45.3, Wudinna 44.9, Roseworthy 44.8 (with a crop fire nearby).
Some fairly hot weather heading East over next couple of days.
The Age.
The Coate inquiry has failed to answer one of the most important questions it was established to resolve; the author of the fateful decision to put private security guards on the front line of its quarantine hotels.
________________
Well that was fucking waste of time and money. Victoria couldn’t organise a chook raffle at the moment.
Rex Douglas says:
Friday, November 27, 2020 at 6:17 pm
Yeah sure – your comments about Labor leaders say otherwise!
Nicholas
What a pompous load of BS.
I am no fan of neoliberalism but i totally support students paying something for their degree because i think that is fair because only i enjoy the benefits of the piece of paper with my name on it. University is a choice it is not necessary so no government should be fully funding it.
“Sharma is a fake.”
Everyone elected to the Federal Parliament for the Coalition parties who isn’t a RWNJ is a fake. That includes a PM.
I must admit I did not understand what the Greens were trying in the NSWLC
The NSW Constitution does not allow the LC to amend or reject the budget. Usually they have a fairly tepid debate about the budget but no resolution has meaning
Re Nicholas @6:39.
I can see a flaw in that plan. It would result in the dumb and/or lazy children of the rich being excluded.
Seriously, I don’t have a problem with a modest contribution from tertiary students to the cost of their degree, but cogently put.
yes
Coate better have been doing it for free .
If she was getting paid for it i would be handing the money back if i was her.
Steve777
That is exactly why there needs to be a fee of some kind but not too excessive because rich kids will simply turn up then get daddy or mummy to organise a grad role and they are set at no cost. Nicholas might not realise it but in Victoria the word free education doesn’t refer to cost but refers to access without restrictions.
I could indeed, and you would understand what I was talking about, in detail. And I’d write it so you had a fighting chance of finding it interesting.
There is a difference between explaining a complex subject in simple terms, and explaining a simple subject in complex terms. You are so boring and predictable, P1, I doubt you’d understand the basic concept of writing prose that others appreciate and understand, in Wombat’s case without having to keep a dictionary nearby. You still haven’t admitted that you didn’t have a clue what he was on about in that earlier post. You just saw the chance of getting a kick in, while the kicking was good. Fuck lady, you are SO transparent.
To get back to explanations, I choose the former: the complex explained simply. Wombat chooses the latter, but I doubt his opinion needs the jargon words he used. It was just an opportunity to slag off anyone who later complained about his impenetrable prose. And a way to get hero worshippers here to admit that most of the time they don’t have a clue what he’s talking about (which is presumably why they worship him).
Bushfire Bill @ #1572 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 7:06 pm
As usual, you are far too fond of your own prose. As you are too fond of striking out at those who don’t fawn at your feet.
Some of us here got the point of Wombat’s post, without your intervention.
P1, you’d have a point if I still posted or visited here more than once in a blue moon. You have brought the place down to your usual state of predictable blancmange.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-27/kylie-moore-gilbert-arrives-in-australia-iran-prisoner-swap/12925682
I trust the government plane that brought her back was chock full of other Aussies who have been desperately trying to get back to Australia.
If not, why not?
Anne Davies only now questions #guiltygladys’s judgment.
What the fuck was Anne doing for the previous 9 years? Polishing her Walkley’s or some such over Obeid?
Not noticing the light rail disaster, the stadiums smooze of the great and good of the establishment on the SCG Trust, the extinction level land clearing laws, the privatisation of the LTO and basically everything that ain’t nailed down, the rampant corruption over water management in the MDB. All of that, and more. Much much more – and all with the stench of developer and/or bankster corruption hanging like a pall of smog as thick as the Black Summer bushfires. Fuck me. Is it an essential requirement that journalists, especially ‘investigative journalists’ be as thick as two planks of wood, as curious as an earth worm?
Bushfire Bill @ #1574 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 7:13 pm
Well, at least this was a relatively brief insult.
I call that progress!
mundo @ #1545 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:24 pm
No shit, Sherlock.
Hmm, could that be because he has nothing to do with getting them home?
C@tmomma @ #1578 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 7:19 pm
Hmm, by this logic, Albo should just shut up about anything and everything … oh, wait … now I get it! 🙁
lizzie @ #1549 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:37 pm
Yeah, Dave Sharma is one cheap trick.
Using big words in posts is no big deal. It may be grandiloquant, idiosyncratic, gasconading or even entirely honorificabilitudinitatibus. It does no harm.
https://thoughtcatalog.com/jeremy-london/2018/06/big-words/
Mexicanbeemer @ #1565 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:53 pm
Should the same user pay system apply to infrastructure? Toll roads everywhere?
Most roads are not Toll roads – they are paid for by the state to support both business and individuals.
In that sense education should be viewed as infrastructure – human infrastructure. Yes it benefits the individual more usually, but the whole society benefits. It is an investment to make us better able to meet our potential, not a burden that needs to be reimbursed in a proscribed way – money. It can be repaid via a persons contribution to society more generally and as an influencer to those who surround the individual.
Should the intent be to communicate, which is the greater barrier? Challenging terminology or challenging attitude?
Mexicanbeemer @ #1565 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:53 pm
We pay our education through our taxes, that was the whole point when John Howard introduced GST.
The Goods and Services Tax (as the name implies) where we supply the Services, and we buy the goods.
The round about of the Supply and Demand relies on people working and providing services to the people.
Changing terminology is much easier than changing attitude :-P.
Okay, instead of broad generalisations, I’ll use a specific one.
Bushfire Bill has a burr up his arse about rhwomabat and uses every opportunity to piss on him from great heights using whatever artifice he can create to do that, on one of the ‘rare occasions’ he comes back here. Anyone who dares to speak up for rhw also cops a serve.
Like. I. Care. I have a party to go to. 🙂
First Dog – The PM’s Marketing Task Force:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/27/these-candidesque-photos-show-that-the-pm-is-a-daggy-dad-just-like-everyone-else?utm_term=271155426882f0b074c7f7f740db47ce&utm_campaign=FirstDogOnTheMoon&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=firstdog_email
Steve777 @ #1587 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 7:44 pm
It must be hard to be a cartoonist in this “post-reality” era. What looked ridiculous and amusing when you penned it is just so much sad reality by the time it is published 🙁
Listening to the Chief of Army today, he’s apportioning blame to the ordinary & NCO ranks. Burr was OIC of the SASR for a time in Afghanistan. It goes without saying he knows more than he’s telling, protecting his back.
C@tmomma writes:
… which is another way of saying she doesn’t have a bloody clue what…
"both are using a semantically pleomorphic term of art to describe non-congruent concepts from separate domains. Apples & Oranges. Please be careful with terms like dishonesty,"means. And neither does anyone else. BUSTED!
I rest my case.
Spray
Agreed. Jordies is a bit of a mixed bag. He’s one of those commentators that I’d like to see more, but it gets too time consuming because of all the fluff.
Calls for free Higher Education are the absolute worst case of pseudo-Leftists demanding middle class welfare.
In Victoria, the state with the highest level of educational attainment, students from the highest SES quartile are more than three times more likely to apply to University than students from the lowest. Free degrees is simply paying the rich to get richer. Who’s the neoliberal here?
And to be clear, that fully deferred, vanishingly low interest loans exist for people studying a Bachelor degree are not a deterrent to study for kids from poorer backgrounds – let alone the priveleged sons of the gentrifier class.
The deterrent for working class kids is the opportunity cost. If they’re studying they’re not working (as much). Not supporting their families. For years.
If we are serious about diversifying Higher Education and increasing participation – and I assure you the gentrifier class isn’t interested in that at all – we need.to front end the benefits. Larger, and better means tested, youth allowamce. Scholarships for people from underpriveleged backgrounds. Not fee relief for the son of my absurdly well paid and wealthy orthodontist to beome, well, another orthodonstist.
rhwombat @ #1503 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 5:11 pm
[‘I got the same treatment when I *used to* try to help out explaining things as simply as I could. So that’s not the problem. The problem is much deeper.’]
Dear, we’d be better off without the medicalese, a language as foreign to most as legalese. Please stop being a smartarse.
” both are using a semantically pleomorphic term of art to describe non-congruent concepts from separate domains.”
People do that all the time…
Maivs
Heaven forbid anyone have to look up the meaning of a word or, gasp!, encounter new or difficult concepts. Predigested pap all the way , don’t want to cause any extra brain activity do we ?
First Dog On The Moon is the most boring, irrelevant bit of “satire” on the entire internet. There. I said it.
It’s the thong thing. Wrong thong. Now you all understand, right? Right.
Who are Trump’s main supporters?
“… These are white men without college degrees. They comprise the largest grouping of Republican voters. They voted for Trump 71%-23% in 2016. This time the split was 70%-28%. A shift, but not much.
Who are these men? They are the Homer Simpsons of America.”
https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/11/27/trump-2020-us-election-votes/ ($)
Roy
Smug funny is never actaully funny.
3Z – it is never funny. Ever.