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”

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  3. citizen

    It is just as well that the Coalition got stuck into the Department of Foreign Affairs with swingeing cuts to professional staff. What would those useless public service bastards know about diplomacy?

    Much better to go with highly skilled integrity mongers like Sinodinos and Hockey.

  5. ‘poroti says:
    Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 4:14 pm

    A shot across the bows or a warm up to the main event ? ‘

    Bluffing, IMO. If they were in a position to screw us on iron ore they would be doing that right now.
    Packer went to pieces when he go the treatment. I wonder whether such glowing nationalists as Rhinehardt and Forrest will do what is required and kowtow in public?

  7. Did he really say this? And when? I seem to have missed a great moment in the tale of a brilliant PM.

    A visibly rattled Morrison “demands” that China agree to trade talks with HIM.
    What Morrison is incapable of understanding is that the problem with Australia’s trade with China is firmly rooted in HIS damaging “megaphone diplomacy” and HIS public insults directed at Xi.

  8. lizzie
    IMO it is high time that Morrison deployed his personal Spin Brigade. I’m thinking something redolent and strategic, like ‘Let a Thousand Insults Bloom.’

  10. boerwar

    Just because they cannot screw us right this instant does not mean it is a bluff. If they intend to screw us on iron I’m sure they can wait 6,12,18 months . Could be a lot more of those Brazilian 400,000 ton iron ore carriers and berths by then.

  11. BW,

    In one of my previous incarnations I was a Records Manager.

    So, it was Lord of the Files for me back then.

    I even had an old Bob Seeger tune to keep my interested.

    I’ll take all those records from the shelf.
    I’ll sit and file them by myself.
    ……..

  13. poroti

    I understand that four Chinese ports are being upgraded to Valemax standards. As soon as enough ships have been built and as soon as Vale gets its act together in Brazil (fortunately for us, the fuckers are incompetent) and as soon as the Chinese ports can accept enough Valemax carriers, so soon will Morrison get the ultimate political horror: the iron ore nyetski from Xi.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valemax

  15. This is similar to many comments by some mature and intelligent beings, who are not impressed by Scotty.

    Andrew Catsaras@AndrewCatsaras
    · 36m

    For the Chinese ‘Face’ is everything.
    I am astounded that Morrison’s advisors never explained to him how kicking the Chinese can – for 2GB & News Ltd rags – would not impress the Chinese.
    Now we are reaping what we have sown.
    Softly, softly behind closed doors was needed.

  16. Nick Feik, The Monthly Today:

    Talk about chickens coming home to roost: as the rest of the world’s developed nations pressure a recalcitrant Australia into climate action, our largest trading partner kneecaps our coal trade. The Coalition MPs who have spent so much effort propping up a dirty, dying industry have just been spanked.

    So, what can we expect now from the Australian government? An honest appraisal of the global diplomatic situation, and an admission that coal and gas are in permanent decline, and that renewables are the only way forward?

    Judging on past performance, our Coalition leaders won’t admit fault or backtrack in any way. It’s just not in their nature. Especially when Essential polling shows that 62 per cent of people “believe Australia is a victim in the trade war rather than making itself a target by the government publicly criticising the Chinese regime (38%)”.

    Regardless of where responsibility lies in the ongoing trade fights, and regardless of whether China is “playing fair” or not (or even cares), Australia faces a near future in which most of its major export industries are either smashed or subject to immense instability: iron ore, coal, education, tourism, livestock and agriculture (including wheat, barley, wine, seafood etc). Not all of this is China’s fault, of course, but it’s hard to avoid the sense that there’s a perfect storm brewing: COVID, China, climate change, all converging.

    With our recent record on climate change and human rights, we don’t even have our good name to trade on.

  17. Morrison, as usual, wants to blame someone else for his inadequacies.

    Australia is just collateral damage as China moves to fill a vacuum caused by the abrogation of power in the region by the US.

    Morrison knows this and is simply running retail politics as usual. It might work for awhile yet.

  18. Birmingham, Payne and Morrison are losing face like crazy. Rubbing noses in the shit. All the posturing has increased the pain and without even a single phone call.
    How humiliatement!
    Plus, they are white and a person of colour is doing it to them!

  23. boerwar @ #1718 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 5:14 pm

    Birmingham, Payne and Morrison are losing face like crazy. Rubbing noses in the shit. All the posturing has increased the pain and without even a single phone call.
    How humiliatement!
    Plus, they are white and a person of colour is doing it to them!

    Thank goodness Labor is ready to step in and pick up the pieces … hello? … hello? … Albo? …

  24. Player One @ #1723 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 5:22 pm

    boerwar @ #1718 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 5:14 pm

    Birmingham, Payne and Morrison are losing face like crazy. Rubbing noses in the shit. All the posturing has increased the pain and without even a single phone call.
    How humiliatement!
    Plus, they are white and a person of colour is doing it to them!

    Thank goodness Labor is ready to step in and pick up the pieces … hello? … hello? … Albo? …

    PvO’s Ch10 report had Husic asking for SfM to “pick up the phone” to Xi. Need to hear more of that from Labor.

  27. poroti @ #1725 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 5:35 pm

    Rex Douglas

    PvO’s Ch10 report had Husic asking for SfM to “pick up the phone” to Xi.

    Those foreign Johnnies have to come to us. Just ask Scrott.
    .
    Prime Minister Scott Morrison has put the onus on China’s President Xi Jinping to pick up the phone and open dialogue amid the worsening bilateral tensions between Canberra and Beijing.
    https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/we-re-waiting-to-take-your-call-pm-to-xi-20200805-p55ip9

    Labor won’t get any easier political opportunity to pressure SfM.

  30. Does anyone here really know what is going on in the WA opposition telephone booth regarding their leader?

    Is he in or out? Is Nalder back?

  32. There is no way Trump Jr is going to receive a phone call from Xi. All he will be hearing is crickets. China doesnt need us Mr Smoko. They couldnt care less.

  35. p1

    True, true… what price vacuous ranting and railing? And… more to the point… softly softly catchee monkey?*

    The wailing and gnashing in machinery sheds and front bars would be in full swing already. My guess is that the first to break ranks will be the Nationals. And then it will be on for old and old, the young having no standing when the Coalition grown ups start with the serious bidness of political knife fighting.

    I do understand that this sort of gibberish language, long attributed to non whites, was part of the anglophone white superiority matrix. But, since anglophone whites like Trump and Morrison and Johnson have taken to biting themselves on the bum, I feel a touch of irony is warranted. (Querulous Cancel Culture queries not welcome.)

  38. ‘BK says:
    Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 5:41 pm

    Boerwar
    Is Bluey still with you?’

    Yeah. But I regret to say that the Covid short chain, Brexit, the Great Stolen Election, and the way in which the AFL draft was compromised on the Crow’s behalf, has triggered bouts of barking madness. Let’s hope that Morrison’s soothing words on how our China Crisis can be fixed by his Spin Brigade puts Bluey back to sleep!

  40. Wackey Zackey is still there as far as one can see…..Roe 8, Launorder and Payroll Tax his new ideas “going forward’ to the election…………..On talk-back, Roe 8 seems to get them as south of the river going….again…………….

  41. 2020 is a most subtle movie.

    Its dual tragedy plot-lines, bushfires that start the year and reignite from time to time and place to place thereafter throughout the year, and the global pandemic with all its associated miseries – recession, lockdown, business and personal disruption, oh and death, should be a wake-up call to its audience.

    These dual tragedies are known to the big-brained apes who suffer from them- they are, in significant part, the cause.

    But the big-brained apes keep preening themselves and their big brains. They will find a solution that enables the big-brained apes to continue to apply the increasing pressure to the ecosystem. Like big water-dumping planes. Like vaccines. Like huge deficit spend ups.

    As a satirical subplot most of the big-brained political leaders are system-selected dolts unfit for the offices they hold. Democratic systems give the likes of Trump, Bo Jo and Scomo.

    Autocratic systems give the likes of Putin, Xi and Kim Jong-un.

    Ultimately the conclusion to be drawn from the movie is that big brains are far to complex for the apes that house them and must inevitably lead to the destruction of the apes as a species. Whether it happens in a slow, drawn out torture through the multiple impacts of climate change, or mercifully quickly by some biological or nuclear Armageddon is the only question the audience ought to ponder as they leave the cinema.

    Oh, and which alternative would be best.

  44. ‘Greensborough Growler says:
    Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 5:07 pm

    BW,

    In one of my previous incarnations I was a Records Manager.

    So, it was Lord of the Files for me back then.

    I even had an old Bob Seeger tune to keep my interested.

    I’ll take all those records from the shelf.
    I’ll sit and file them by myself.’

    Record managers are for when freedom from information is finally set in stone: the ultimate arbiters of history.

  45. Tricot @ #367 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 5:56 pm

    Wackey Zackey is still there as far as one can see…..Roe 8, Launorder and Payroll Tax his new ideas “going forward’ to the election…………..On talk-back, Roe 8 seems to get them as south of the river going….again…………….

    Roe 8 lost it big time for the Liberals last time! Comes a time when bulldozing through pristine environments is not a vote winner.

  46. Someone mentioned earlier that Morrison seem “rattled”. I should have liked to have seen this as “glib” is the only adjective I can find for his demeanour most of the time…….

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