My previous post dealt with the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters’ inquiry into representation of the territories, which recommended the Northern Territory be crudely guaranteed a second House of Representatives seat while removing the more sophisticated statistical fiddle that helped preserve it when the issue last arose in 2003. As Antony Green noted, this proposal raised the strong possibility that the Australian Capital Territory might lose its recently acquired third seat the next time the determinations are made during the next parliamentary term. However, the federal government has sprung into action with new legislation that promises to preserve both territories’ seats by following Antony’s advice rather than the committee’s.
This is to be done by having the territories’ seat entitlements calculated through the harmonic rather than arithmetic mean, at least so far as their first three seats are concerned (beyond which the issue is likely to remain academic). The principle behind the harmonic mean can best be explained by using a simplified version of the Northern Territory case as an example. The basic problem is that the territory has around 150,000 voters, whereas the average House of Representatives seat has around 100,000 (population rather than voter enrolment is actually used, but the near accuracy of these nicely round figures means I will continue with them for purposes of illustration). Using the conventional arithmetic mean, this places the territory right at the cut-off point between a one-seat and two-seat entitlement. Two seats prevailed when the local economy had the wind in its sails during the late mining and resources boom, but in the more straitened circumstances of the present it only makes it to one.
Using the harmonic mean, the point at which rounding occurs is based not on the mid-point between the two quotas, but the point at which electorates’ populations differ least from the national average. Were the Northern Territory to lose its second seat, the remaining seat with its enrolment of around 150,000 would have 50,000 voters more than the national average. But if its second seat is retained, the two would have around 75,000 each, differing from the national average by only 25,000. The harmonic mean is all about minimising this difference, which in the present example would mean only one-and-a-third quotas would be needed for a second seat, or around 133,333 voters. For the Australian Capital Territory, which similarly stands on the precipice of two quotas and three, the third seat would be retained with 2.4 quotas (240,000 voters in the present example) rather than 2.5. The differences between the arithmetic and harmonic mean tipping points continue to reduce with each additional seat. By Antony Green’s reckoning, the ACT would have fallen below the arithmetic mean benchmark at 2.4796 quotas without the aforesaid statistical fiddle, which the committee had proposed to abolish without the remedial action of using the harmonic mean.
It is perhaps not surprising that the federal government has determined to save the second Northern Territory seat, notwithstanding that both seats are held by Labor: both are winnable for the Country Liberal Party, particularly the Darwin-based seat of Solomon, and an overstuffed single electorate for the Northern Territory would essentially amount to an act of malapportionment to the disadvantage of the territory’s substantial indigenous population. However, there is no such impetus in the Australian Capital Territory, where the Liberals only win House of Representatives seats under extraordinary circumstances (the most recent being the Canberra by-election of 1995), and the removal of a seat could be rationalised, if not justified, with recourse to public service bashing. At a time when mainstream conservatism in the United States is taking to the foundations of democracy with an axe, our own government’s defiance of self-interest to preserve Labor-held seats is worth acknowledging and celebrating.
Elsewhere: in the only bit of polling news to relate right now, JWS Research has released its latest True Issues survey of issue salience, as it does around three times a year. When respondents were asked to nominate the country’s three most important issues without prompting, 42% offered a response within the “hospitals, health care and ageing” category, which is down five from July but well up on the 24% recorded in the pre-COVID days of February. Results are otherwise very similar to the July survey, with economy and finances steady in second place at 32% after shooting up from 18% in February. A plunge in concern for the economy and climate change, down from 26% to 16% last time, has only slightly corrected to 19%, remaining well behind third-placed employment and wages on 32%, up two from July and eleven from February. The poll was conducted online between November 20 and 22 from a sample of 1035.
Not Opus Dei, let’s just say, ‘Opus Dei adjacent:
https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/thomas-brejcha/
This seems to suggest the hard right has prevailed in VicLibs’ little confrontation:
Steve777 @ #150 Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 – 2:59 pm
Lol. 🙂
I like to dig deeper.
Johnson is boldly going to Brussels, to take them on. By himself. What a hero…
Is he going to shirt-front them?
Sad news for aero enthusiasts :
BREAKING: America’s greatest pilot Chuck Yeager, the first person to break the sound barrier, dies aged 97
•Chuck Yeager’s death was announced on Twitter on Monday night
•Yeager is widely believed to have been among the finest fighter pilots ever
•He fought in the Second World War and shot down at least 11 enemy aircraft
•In 1947 he became the first pilot to exceed the speed of sound in level flight
•Yeager became a test pilot and broke numerous speed and altitude records
•He fought in Vietnam, and eventually retired from the Air Force in 1975
•On the 65th anniversary of breaking the sound barrier Yeager did it again
•At the age of 89 he flew as a passenger in an F-15 in October 2012
•He is survived by four children and his second wife, Victoria
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9029117/Americas-greatest-pilot-Chuck-Yeager-person-break-sound-barrier-dies-aged-97.html
meher baba,
I guess you have to be a bit of a wanker if you are a Conservative Catholic. Sex being only for procreation and all that. 😉
Steve777 @ #154 Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 – 3:01 pm
Chuck Brussel Sprouts at them? 😆
About hand shakes. When Morrison offers you his hand in a PR photo op, it is about him with you as his prop. Only by not accepting the handshake can you regain your self.
This has disaster written all over it. Terrifying to think about.
Lizzie
Cashless transactions have been shown to increase spending, something about the tangible act of handing over your hard earned. I believe it has also been shown that the overspend is usually on unhealthy items such as junk food.
I am not a great advocate of going cashless but think it will be inevitable, seven though no one has yet explained how society will function if the IT systems break down. During the bushfires one of the problems for people was they couldn’t access their accounts and didn’t have cash to buy essentials. The stores were also unable to process transactions because they also had no backup for their computerised systems.
About 10 years ago I was invited to a presentation by Fr Frank Brennan (pro refugee etc lawyer) organised by the Thomas More society. He was actually speaking about stem cell research and took a pro Catholic establishment line but did argue his case well.
However the highlight was a fiery exchange on refugees and asylum seekers between himself and Angela Shanahan (Murdoch shill). He was calm and measured, she sounded rather unhinged. Well worth the (free) cost of admission!
C@t: “meher baba,
I guess you have to be a bit of a wanker if you are a Conservative Catholic. Sex being only for procreation and all that. ”
I’m afraid not. The temple of the body must never be sullied and all that. Check out the fate of Onan in the Book of Genesis.
Sorry to hear of the demise of Chuck Yeager. Wonderfully portrayed by the late Sam Shepard in the rather underrated movie The Right Stuff.
Courtesy of David Brooks
“@HotlineJosh: “The former vice president carried 64 percent of the moderate vote—a significant 12-point improvement on Clinton from 2016.” Few other Dems could have done that. ”
Well done Biden. Not bad for a ‘war criminal’.
Rex
If the system used for aged care is rolled out someone needs to set up a not for profit that links applicants with suitably qualified support people to ensure that the disabled person gets appropriate help. When the aged care assessments started they were linked to hospitals and were in general nurses, physics and OT’s, now they can be anyone.
When my husband was accessed for an aged care payment his gatekeeper assessment was conducted by a worker with a Cert 111 qualification who had only done a few months care work before being given the job. When she thought the assessment was complete I pointed out all the missed issues and how they were impacting him, at which time she approved his being assessed for funding.
The second assessment was a social worker who needed to have various issues explained to her. For example the fact my husband can feed himself is not important if he forgets to eat or walks away mid meal, thus needing constant supervision and encouragement and about 10 small meals and snacks a day to maintain his weight.
The government likes the status quo, people are placed on lower levels of support and families pick up the slack and the person needing care suffers.
This is one area where Labor, not just Shorten needs to get on the front foot and ramp up public sentiment to ensure that appropriate assessors are employed, and preferably not from the private sector.
I don’t think they care about lying in QT as long as they can talk for a couple of minutes. Does the MSM ever question them aftrwards? Rarely.
“ I don’t think it would be reasonable to describe St Thomas More as a “conservative Catholic.” Sure, he opposed the Reformation, but that was an existential crisis for English Catholics, so they all opposed it.
Paul Scofield did a fine job portraying More in the 1960s movie A Man for All Seasons: an admirably humanitarian and progressive thinker, but also an unnecessarily stubborn man who was in some ways a bit of a wanker.”
He also not adverse to spying against protestants, persecuting heretics – especially protestants, and signed at lest 6 death warrants that led to protestants being burnt at the stake when he was chancellor. He lied about his role in all of that – even though he publicly gloated of the burning of Tyndall, Richard Bayfield and John Tewkesbury. Fucker.
A sanctimonious hypocrite. Just like his modern catholic counterparts.
Cud
You still have not learnt what Trump did.
Even if those polls Nate Silver posted are wrong and the Dems don’t win in Georgia there are still executive powers. Plus Biden will do multilateral deals and lock the US in with the rest of the world.
Also remember the GOP is going to be a very different beast. The infighting has been delayed because Trump is still there with the bully pulpit. Edit: in other words Republicans still fear him. A Dem win in Georgia would undo that fast. It will still happen just more slowly without that.
The whole narrative will change.
McConnell will try and block for four years but will fail.
Democrat states will legislate. The red states will get poorer and as the US benefits from increased exports to China in things like beef at Australia’s expense Biden will get some credit for that.
The political dynamics are just going to be different.
Rex Douglas
Same shit the poms did. They got private scumbag company Atos to assess fitness for work. They were famous for assessing ‘almost dead’ and terminally people as ‘fit for work’. Large numbers of suicides and deaths. Some even starved.
.
.
In August 2015, statistics from the DWP showed that 2,380 people had died between 2011 and 2014 soon after being found fit for work through disability benefit assessments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atos#Atos_Healthcare
meher babasays: Tuesday, December 8, 2020 at 3:19 pm
Sorry to hear of the demise of Chuck Yeager. Wonderfully portrayed by the late Sam Shepard in the rather underrated movie The Right Stuff.
*********************************************
In my model collection is a replica of Chuck Yeagers P-51 Mustang – which Yeager named his aircraft *Glamorous Glen* after his girlfriend, Glennis Faye Dickhouse, who became his wife in February 1945
Recent talk about war criminals brings to mind – In his 1986 memoirs, Yeager recalled with disgust that “atrocities were committed by both sides”, and he said he went on a mission with orders from the Eighth Air Force to “strafe anything that moved.” During the mission briefing, he whispered to Major Donald H. Bochkay, “If we are going to do things like this, we sure as hell better make sure we are on the winning side.” Yeager said, “I’m certainly not proud of that particular strafing mission against civilians. But it is there, on the record and in my memory
poroti
I assume the thickheaded LNP MPs simply believe what Robert tells them, and never search for other answers on the NDIS. And if Labor/Greens complain, they just shrug it off as lies.
Are they so narrow in their thinking? Hard to believe.
If God is so against the Victorian Governments Anit-Gay conversion legislation, then he (and it’s always a he) personally should be able to draft a letter to Dan Andrews outlining his objections.
I’ll give him til Friday before I pass judgement on the matter 😉
@MrKRudd tweets
Why would Australia be let in the door for a summit of climate leaders? The government doesn’t have a vision for net zero, refuses to increase its 2030 target as it promised in Paris, and is completely isolated having pulled out of the Green Climate Fund.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/dec/07/scott-morrison-yet-to-be-granted-speaking-slot-at-weekend-climate-summit
Cud Chewer
I will put it another way to make the Trump impact clear.
Trump has made the US President is an elected Monarch is not an outlandish description anymore.
@SBSNews has launched a new daily easy English news bulletin. It’s aimed at English language learners with a focus on Australian news.
Is this supposed to be “easy English”??? You judge, perhaps imagining it said in a language you are not very fluent in. Transcript (extracts).
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/audiotrack/sbs-news-easy-english-8-december-2020
lizzie @ #171 Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 – 3:43 pm
I believe that you are “looking for
loveanswers in all the wrong places”.Seek ye the truth from atop a high mountain …
Characteristics of a psychopath …
From whence you may assume a guise of virtue and decency plus, of course, moral ascendancy.
In answer to BK’s question —
Why, in 2014 did this government decide to eliminate the human intervention and judgement and launch the proven unlawful robodebt scheme?”
Answer ….(see list above) and …
and the unwritten, unspoken end to any argument.
Who’s gonna stop them:?:
lizzie @ #166 Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 – 3:29 pm
Rick Morton of The saturday Paper is the only one I know of who does.
I guess you have to be a bit of a wanker if you are a Conservative Catholic No you can’t – it’s a Mortal Sin.
Republicans urge Supreme Court to overturn Pennsylvania’s election — but know the scheme has a flaw
In a case brought by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), Republicans seek to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania.
Republicans have been pushing the case hard, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) even publicly volunteered to argue the case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
There could be one problem with the scheme, which Sen. Cruz explained on Fox News on Monday night — Supreme Court justices might not want to burn credibility by overturning the election based on unfounded conspiracy theories.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/12/republicans-urge-supreme-court-to-overturn-pennsylvanias-election-but-know-the-scheme-has-a-flaw/
I have a couple of items coming courtesy of EBay and Fastway.
Both items have gone from
Sydney on 20/11/2020
to
Sydney on 30/11/2020
To be fair I have received en email advising that I can, if desired, receive a return lable upon receipt.
Note – Apparently “Fastway” is now “Aramex” which may (maybe) translate as “Slowway”.
poroti @ #169 Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 – 3:35 pm
They’re sociopaths these people like Robert and Dutton and Tudge and Morrison et al… damn frightening.
Putin’s former son-in-law bought shares worth $380m for $100, report says
“It’s simple,” wrote Alexey Navalny, an opposition politician and anti-corruption activist. “Putin’s daughter gets married and the newlyweds receive the present of $380m.”
The pair also reportedly spent millions of dollars buying and furnishing elite real estate near Putin’s residence in Russia and in Biarritz, France, the emails showed, purchasing a nearly £50,000 carpet and £5,700 in Japanese books. It was a life of luxury that, like Putin’s daughters, has been hidden almost entirely from public view.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/07/putins-former-son-in-law-bought-shares-worth-380m-for-100-report-says
Rex Douglas
So frightening the youth of the UK found communism a credible option.
Corbyn was the compromise candidate.
Lizzie @3:43
Standard issue cognitive dissonance.
Read “Mistakes were made. But not by us” by Tavris & Aronson.
3rd edition with last chapter on Trump. “Dissonance, Democracy and the Demagogue” (unfinished)
phoenixRED,
Read this and be horrified:
!!!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-pennsylvania-speaker-call/2020/12/07/d65fe8c4-38bf-11eb-98c4-25dc9f4987e8_story.html
It’s not over yet. Not by a long chalk. He’s trying everything to stay in power.
The Coalition parties basically don’t believe in social welfare.
Assantdj @ #165 Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 – 3:28 pm
Credit to Shorten as he’s been on the front foot with this going hard on Robert. I’d like to see a lot more support for Shorten by his colleagues, they need to get loud about it.
@ProfPCDoherty tweeted 5 hours ago
“Opinion Based News Programming” is cheap. You don’t need journalists or reporters to look for evidence or check facts. All you need is dogmatic, aggressive creeps who make stuff up in their own heads, or know where their bread is buttered and act accordingly. A total betrayal!
C@tmommasays: Tuesday, December 8, 2020 at 4:17 pm
phoenixRED,
Read this and be horrified:
President Trump called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives twice during the past week to make an extraordinary request for help reversing his loss in the state, reflecting a broadening pressure campaign by the president and his allies to try to subvert the 2020 election result.
***************************************************************
Rachel Maddow: Trump Is Committing A Crime By Pressuring Officials To Falsify Election Results
The MSNBC host pointed out that Trump has urged GOP lawmakers in Georgia, Michigan, and now Pennsylvania to overturn the will of the people and throw out Joe Biden’s victories.
“I realize it sounds quaint to point this out, but pressuring officials to falsify election results is a crime,” Maddow said. “I mean that’s election interference, right?”
“If anybody else you knew was pressuring elections officials personally, leaning on them, weighing on them to try to get them to falsify the election results and say the other guy won, they’d be indicted.”
https://www.politicususa.com/2020/12/07/rachel-maddow-trump-is-committing-a-crime-by-pressuring-officials-to-falsify-election-results.html
guytaur
“Corbyn was the compromise candidate.”
Corbyn was an unelectable dill. UK Labour is well rid of him.
Let them eat tennis balls?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/07/melania-backlash-tennis-pavilion-twitter
Coal terminal’s $1.3b float sinks
Shares in the $1.3 billion float Dalrymple Bay Infrastructure have sunk after opening for trading on Tuesday as Pershing Securities Australia, which was convicted of criminal offences in August, emerged as one of its biggest investors.
The stapled securities, which were priced at $2.57 each under the ticker symbol DBI, were down 13 per cent at $2.24 after trading started at 12.30pm on the Australian Securities Exchange.
https://www.afr.com/companies/infrastructure/dalrymple-bay-infrastructure-shares-sink-on-first-day-of-trading-20201208-p56lj8
Interestingly – the company’s description of itself on its ASX page doesn’t mention that its is primarily a Coal terminal.
Infrastructure.
Kakuru @ #190 Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 – 4:23 pm
Corbyn the dill had it the wrong way around didn’t he.
It should have been “for the few, not the many” and he would’ve been sweet , yeah ..??
Good to see Melania working hard for the people who support her.
Unless both house and senate agree to ditch a state’s votes they will be counted. The debate in both chambers is limited to 2 hours. It is highly unlikely the house will reject a state’s votes but it will add to the perception that the election was “stolen”. The joint sitting will be chaired by Pence not sure if he is planning any tricks.
Rex Douglas @ #179 Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 – 4:12 pm
‘This has disaster written all over it. Terrifying to think …’ that Scrooter will get away with it as well if it is…
Rex
“It should have been “for the few, not the many” and he would’ve been sweet , yeah ..??”
Corbyn lost twice, the 2nd time in a landslide. So he was pretty sweet for the Tories, who picked up a swag of seats, including many in (former) Labour heartland.
meher baba @ #161 Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 – 3:19 pm
Tom Wolf’s book is terrific too……
Kakuru @ #197 Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 – 4:35 pm
Of course he lost. How could he win with so many of his colleagues ‘for the few, not the many’ …?
Rex
“Of course he lost. How could he win with so many of his colleagues ‘for the few, not the many’ …?”
By ‘colleagues’ do you mean UK voters? They voted for fewer Labour MPs, and many more Tory MPs.
Keir Starmer and UK Labour have a huge hill to climb to get in at the next election. Thanks to Corbyn.