Winding down

With the end of the year in view, I offer a Tasmanian state poll and not much else.

First up, there are two lengthy and highly substantive new post beneath this one which I like to think warrant your attention: my own review of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters’ newly published report of its inquiry into the 2019 election, and Adrian Beaumont’s concluding review of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.

So that the comments sections for those posts might remain on topic, I offer this post as the latest open thread. I’m not exactly sure what the imminent festive season means for the schedule of the pollsters – Newspoll might or might not have one last poll under its sleeve just before Christmas, and I’m pretty sure there will be an Essential Research next week, which should feature leadership ratings though not voting intention. We will also presumably get one of Newspoll’s quarterly geographic and demographic aggregations at some point during the silly season.

There is one poll that slipped through my net: the latest effort on Tasmanian state voting intention from EMRS, which continues to find Premier Peter Gutwein in almost as commanding a position as Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan, the other leader for whom COVID-19 has been nothing but good news. The Liberals are credited with 52% of the vote, down two from August, with Labor up one to 25% and the Greens up one to 13%. However, Gutwein’s lead over Labor’s Rebecca White as preferred premier has narrowed from 70-23 to 61-26. The poll was conducted by telephone from November 17 to 23 from a sample of 1000.

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.

1,814 comments on “Winding down”

Comments Page 33 of 37
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  2. lizzie @ #1591 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 10:43 am

    Late Riser

    Just a reality show. Are we the audience or the competitors waiting for the gong?

    Nods. That pretty much sums up my thoughts at the moment. Trump brought the audience into the competition and most of them strongly objected. The show _is_ entertaining, as we affirm every day on PB, but only until it gets too close to home. In the US Trump was too close, too much, and too fast. That will have been noticed. I expect a minor recalibration here at home and a larger one in the US, and cynically that the shallower trajectory will continue. (Language, such as sovereignty, is a tell.)

  3. SfM in Tassie. Pretending to take credit from the State Libs policies in Tassie which are a lot greener than that fucking CC sceptic. Piss off back to QLD where they love you.

  4. steve davis @ #1598 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 12:09 pm

    SfM in Tassie. Pretending to take credit from the State Libs policies in Tassie which are a lot greener than that fucking CC sceptic. Piss off back to QLD where they love you.

    SfM is a corrupt fraud. Federal Labor just needs to find someone capable of sticking a pin in him and he’ll pop like a balloon.

    Morrison government should be 'doing more' with states driving 33% cut in emissions by 2030 ⁦@CroakeyNews⁩ https://t.co/PrrlCCkKGC— Melissa Sweet (@MelissaSweetDr) December 15, 2020

  7. Taylormadesays:
    Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 11:40 am
    Shellbellsays:
    Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 11:14 am
    Other than Gobbo being struck off, there does not appear to be a whole lot of momentum for any other sanctioning.
    ________________
    None at all Shellbell. The rulebook has been thrown out the window under Andrews.
    Victoria at the moment reminds me of that Redgum lyric in thier song ASIO. “Everything is legal, anything goes”.
    …………………………………………………………………………………..
    Taylormaid, your underwear is showing. And it’s soiled.

    The Andrews government set up a RC to examine the many legal consequences of the outrageous misuse by Vic Pol of Gobbo.

    The RC has very recently done its job and made general recommendations as to the prosecution of malefactors. Unsurprisingly this process awaited the findings of the RC.

    Unsurprisingly the prosecution of these unprecedented crimes by police will require a special prosecution unit. One would expect the special prosecution unit to prosecute other miscreants involved, such as Gobbo, as part of their remit.

    Whilst you are on your “Andrews is just the leader of a lawless society” kick, may I enquire whether you have now shredded your “Dan the Dictator” paraphernalia, the season for which was so short?

  8. Apologies if already posted, but this is a good article by Greg Jericho …

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2020/dec/15/australias-path-to-net-zero-emissions-is-massively-behind-schedule

    Basically, our government is outright lying to us – we are not on track to meet even our paltry Paris targets. I guess most of us here already knew that. I think the main takeaway from this article is that we are fast running out of friends, and at the end of the day things will be a lot worse for us than they really needed to be:

    With the coming Biden presidency is pushing for real action on reducing emissions, the Morrison government’s climate change policy nakedness is revealed for all to see. Quickly it is finding itself friendless on the international stage as its long obstruction and pushing of fossil fuels is no longer tolerated.

    The pandemic and economic slowdown have allowed the government to claim that it has reduced emissions. But the reality is our current path to net zero emissions is massively behind schedule and will now require much sharper cuts in years to come.

  10. Rex Douglas
    How do you mean “lagging behind” ? First injections took place only a few days ago. The actual availability of vaccine is relatively limited at present compared to the total demand. It will be like that for a while. Why should we get bumped up the priority list ahead of those who need it more than we do ?

  11. ItzaDream

    I see using ‘folks’ as an unwelcome Americanisation. What’s next – compulsory droppin of the ‘g’ from all present participles.

    Another battle lost already – Using “looking forward” in place of “in (the) future”.

  12. Pressure is mounting within the Federal Government to establish a new visa that would allow overseas workers to come to Australia to work on farms, with a Coalition-stacked committee of MPs reigniting the call for an “ag visa”.

    …The Growing Australia report was commissioned by former agriculture minister Bridget McKenzie in August last year to recommend policies that could assist agriculture to become a $100 billion industry by 2030.

    It has made 12 recommendations to the Government, including to establish tax concessions for retiring farmers who transfer land to their children, negotiating new trade deals, and a marketing campaign to high school students to take up agriculture studies.

    But the report does not make recommendations regarding climate policy.

    “I didn’t see any evidence put before the committee that there’s anything the Government can do that will influence rainfall or climate in the next 10 years,” … (inquiry’s chair, West Australian Liberal MP Rick Wilson), said.

    “If anyone has evidence to that effect, I’m more than happy to see them bring that forward.”

    Have they ignored the effects of climate change as well? Ten years is such short term thinking.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-15/coalition-mps-reignite-calls-for-agriculture-visa/12982562

  13. poroti @ #1605 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 12:24 pm

    Rex Douglas
    How do you mean “lagging behind” ? First injections took place only a few days ago. The actual availability of vaccine is relatively limited at present compared to the total demand. It will be like that for a while. Why should we get bumped up the priority list ahead of those who need it more than we do ?

    Why aren’t we producing our own ?

  14. lizzie @ #1612 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 12:24 pm

    Pressure is mounting within the Federal Government to establish a new visa that would allow overseas workers to come to Australia to work on farms, with a Coalition-stacked committee of MPs reigniting the call for an “ag visa”.

    …The Growing Australia report was commissioned by former agriculture minister Bridget McKenzie in August last year to recommend policies that could assist agriculture to become a $100 billion industry by 2030.

    It has made 12 recommendations to the Government, including to establish tax concessions for retiring farmers who transfer land to their children, negotiating new trade deals, and a marketing campaign to high school students to take up agriculture studies.

    But the report does not make recommendations regarding climate policy.

    “I didn’t see any evidence put before the committee that there’s anything the Government can do that will influence rainfall or climate in the next 10 years,” … (inquiry’s chair, West Australian Liberal MP Rick Wilson), said.

    “If anyone has evidence to that effect, I’m more than happy to see them bring that forward.”

    Have they ignored the effects of climate change as well? Ten years is such short term thinking.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-15/coalition-mps-reignite-calls-for-agriculture-visa/12982562

    How bizarre …. has this moron never even heard of the IPCC? 🙁

  15. Rex Douglas @ #1609 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 9:26 am

    poroti @ #1605 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 12:24 pm

    Rex Douglas
    How do you mean “lagging behind” ? First injections took place only a few days ago. The actual availability of vaccine is relatively limited at present compared to the total demand. It will be like that for a while. Why should we get bumped up the priority list ahead of those who need it more than we do ?

    Why aren’t we producing our own ?

    Well, have you heard of any vaccine that has been approved for use in Australia?

  19. Greensborough Growler @ #1599 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 12:01 pm

    Spray,

    It was Seymour Nurse at the MCG second inning in the 1968 Melbourne Test. v the West Indies.

    Caught Stackpole bowled Gleeson for 74.

    http://www.howstat.com/cricket/statistics/Matches/MatchScorecard.asp?MatchCode=0643

    Found this in a very short bio:

    “But it was his fielding at short-leg that drew most of the attention.

    During the Boxing Day Test in 1968, Seymour Nurse pulled Johnny Gleeson straight into the back of Freeman’s head.
    As Freeman grimaced, he could hear wicket-keeper Barry Jarman shouting, ” He’s out! He’s out!”
    Freeman thought: ” Is he talking about me?”
    Not quite.
    Stackpole did catch the rebound.
    Freeman stayed on the field until Australia won the match .
    Afterwards, he complained of a mild headache.”

  20. P1

    He’s a WA Lib MP, so what would you expect? Only listens to the Great Miracle Man, Morrison.

    And on a similar subject, here is a graph proving that Scotty has done nothing towards emissions reductions, and his boasting is just riding on the coat tails of previous govts.

    @BoomerangChris
    ·
    4h
    Since 2015, LNP reductions hover around zero. In addition, the CO2 emissions graph shows…
    • in 4 yrs, Keating cut 100 Mt
    • in 12 yrs, Howard added 130 Mt
    • in 6 yrs, Rudd/Gillard cut 80 Mt
    • in 2yrs, Abbott cut 25 Mt
    • in 5 yrs, Turnbull/Morrision cut zero Mt

  21. I commented on this late last night, but this is encouraging so I will allow myself a repeat.

    “For the first time,” Barnier said, the UK government had “accepted a mechanism of unilateral measures”, such as tariffs, where there were “systemic divergences which distort trade and investment”.

    Despite positive signs on the so-called level playing field provisions, Barnier claimed talks over a deal on fishing had gone backwards, raising the risk they could run deep into December.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/14/brexit-trade-deal-possible-within-days-after-johnson-concession-says-eu

    If I look behind the words it appears that Johnson has backed down. Up until now he has used “sovereignty” to tie “level playing field” and “fish” together with the same bow. Having loosened the bow around “playing field” I can understand why Johnson now has to go harder on “fish”. The ball is in Macron’s court. (Metaphors, you have to love them.)

  22. “Battery of the Nation” isn’t even Morrison’s slogan. Lazy bugger stole that idea too.

    On GPUs, my teams is about to drop a stack of cash on 8x NVIDIA Titan RTX 6000 series, but that’s a touch out of reach of the average user.

  24. Although having a slight cough, Biden’s speech shortly after having been
    officially endorsed as president-elect was the speech you’d expect from a president, mentioning for the first time Trump by name on a number of occasions, debunking all the nonsense that the election was rigged. Now all Trump has left is a few feral Repugs making fools of themselves in the joint session on Jan, 6. Overall, a great day in the US, and for that matter,
    the world but not for Morrison who’ll find the new administration far more difficult to deal with especially apropos of global warming. I do hope he’s seen the pic of Morrison with that lump of coal.

  27. Rick Wlson’s lateest:

    Yes, the Seditious Seventeen—not counting Texas—will be marked and stained by their willingness to subvert the law to re-elect Trump, but even they knew this was a rearguard action, a last-ditch bit o’ fuckery in hopes of getting the good tweet from the Donald. They’re scum, to be reviled, but the real villain of the piece is Mitch McConnell, now unquestionably the most powerful man in the Republican Party from an operational perspective.

    If he holds the Senate majority after the Georgia races, don’t be shocked when McConnell and his obedient caucus demonstrate they’re dedicated to one mission: blowing up Joe Biden‘s administration. McConnell will undoubtedly block appointments, stop COVID relief spending, blackmail the Republican lobbying corps, and generally engage in the full spectrum of fuckery.

    Under McConnell’s dark tutelage, we’ll see a generation of GOP senators liberated by the understanding that the Republican Party no longer sits on any kind of ideological foundation. He knows that the new faith in Trumpism means that he leads a movement that believes in nothing more than the retention and expansion of political power and, in that that knowledge liberates McConnell, he’ll make common cause with the forces of the Trumpist authoritarians to hold his position or expand it in 2022.

    The handful—the tiny, tiny handful—of Republicans who refused to cross the political Rubicon this week were a minority of a minority. People like Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, Denver Riggleman, Brian Kemp, and a handful of others deserve more than the shrug they’ve received from the left. The courage it takes to oppose the Trump-McConnell-Fox-Facebook Axis of Assholes is notable.

    All authoritarian movements seek to purify their ranks, to weed out the unbelievers, the apostates, the poseurs. Trumpism is no different. You’ll see more and more GOP members tested in the dark and difficult days ahead. Don’t be shocked when they fail; as a close observer of the GOP’s transformation into the party of Trump-fluffers, I’ve seen it more closely than most and know how this story ends. They’ll make every excuse, but fear of Trump and the wretched lust for power are all they have left.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-axis-of-assholes-just-completed-its-hostile-takeover-of-the-republican-party

  32. Even by Scomo’s low standards of personal honesty, dismissing China’s ban on Australian coal as “media speculation” is a brazen lie.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-15/scott-morrison-china-trade-tension-coal-bans/12984322

    The ships are not getting unloaded. and that is China’s policy. The reporting in the Global News (English edition) quotes named senior Chinese government officials and their words could not be more explicit:
    “Wang Yongzhong, director of the Institute of Energy Economy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that China has stable and sufficient domestic coal supply, while having rich import sources.

    “China’s major coal import source countries used to be Australia, Indonesia, Russia and Mongolia. Since Mongolia has a geographic advantage that allows lower transportation costs than any other exporters, it could take a large share from Australian coal, as the relationship between China and Australia has been deteriorating and Australia is gradually losing the Chinese market. Domestic suppliers can also grab some market share,” Wang told the Global Times on Sunday, adding that even the US and Canada could be import sources, though they are the last choices as transportation costs would be very high.”
    https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1209840.shtml

    Incidentally there are explicit references to Australia in three separate articles on the front page of Global News right now and all are highly negative. The coal article says they would rather take US coal than ours. Portrayal of this as anything other than a major diplomatic failure is fiction.

    At least Scomo is correct when he describes the coal ban as “lose-lose” It is “lose” for the coal barons, and “lose” for their paid shills in Federal cabinet.

  33. The fix is in for ScrewForce: Ag Visas.
    We have a had a slew of newsfeeds on how crops are rotting, fruit and vegie prices are going through the roof, and on how Australian dole bludgers won’t work for umpteen thousand a week.

  34. Geoff Bennett
    @GeoffRBennett

    As Biden concluded his remarks, Peter Doocy of Fox shouted out to the president-elect to ask: “When did you find out your son was being investigated?”

    Biden turned back and with a dose of sarcasm replied: “Thanks for the congratulations. I appreciate it.” – via
    @mikememoli

  37. Soc,
    Shit will get real for Scotty from Marketing when previously fabulously well paid coal mining workers start getting laid off because China has shut the gate. What’s he going to say then?

  38. C@t, that’s in addition to access to this monster: https://rcc.uq.edu.au/wiener

    I have one student who is running computations on 16 GPUs and over 600 CPU cores simultaneously, pretty much non-stop since September. He’s only just going to complete his runs in time for a conference deadline in January! Deep learning research is nuts!

  40. Cat

    I imagine some form of denial will be his first response.

    Meanwhile the erudite Barnaby Joyce also comes in for comment at the Global News:

    “Some Australian politicians have again shown how ignorant and ridiculous they can be.

    Barnaby Joyce, a member of the Australian Parliament for New England, said on Monday that “the biggest issue” facing his children’s and grandchildren’s “lifetime” is not climate abatement, but “how they live in a world where China is a superpower and is not a liberal democracy.”

    China has promised to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Australia, however, not only refuses to fulfill its obligations on the international stage, but is even stuck in the old West-centered mind-set. Joyce claimed that “we have to get our priorities right,” but he has got it all wrong by labeling China, rather than climate abatement, as Australia’s so-called biggest issue. This is an irresponsible act for his children and grandchildren.”
    https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1209945.shtml

    So they think Barnaby Joyce is “ignorant and ridiculous”. I am not one to argue with them.

    We have been punching above our weight, in fact completely outside of our weight division, and are now getting punched back.

  41. Shit will get real for Scotty from Marketing when previously fabulously well paid coal mining workers start getting laid off because China has shut the gate. What’s he going to say then?

    Yep.

    You may not have seen it, but the Qld Labor government was laying the groundwork for an enormous shit shoveling machine, pointed at Canberra, during the Qld budget release. Basically – we expect to continue to earn plenty in royalties from coal exports, unless the Feds drop the ball on trade with China.

  45. Dr SWIFT PARROT
    @teamswiftparrot
    ·
    33m
    The eastern tiers are a critical swift #parrot breeding area that has been severely affected by deforestation. People are protesting because it’s legal to destroy the habitat of a critically endangered species for profit. #Extinction of swift parrots is a policy choice

    ***
    Bob Brown Foundation
    @BobBrownFndn
    · 1h
    Breaking news – Bob Brown arrested in Tasmania’s Eastern Tiers, defending critically endangered Swift parrot habitat. #politas #auspol

  46. I see using ‘folks’ as an unwelcome Americanisation.

    “folks” has a useful property in that it has a friendly informality without the traditional genderedness of “guys”.

    Being overly precious about language due to … hegemonic insecurity … seems unhelpful. Noting also that many things classified as “Americanisms” are actually just older English words/expressions/spellings that got left behind by the English.
    https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=folks

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