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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  1. “media speculation”
    Morrison needs to learn, there are times when it is best to stop digging.

    bw

    The pendulum swings. It’s entertaining to see mundo, Rex and P1 play old games.

  2. Tricot @ #376 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 6:00 pm

    Cat…………..there are some South of the River for whom this is the ONLY election issue…….

    And they don’t like it from what I can gather over here.

    Anyway, how long before it would need to be extended as housing estates gobbled up the land opened up by Roe 8? These things are always the thin end of a destructive wedge.

  3. ‘BK says:
    Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 6:01 pm

    Boerwar
    The Crows seem to find ways to bugger up every draft!’

    I am all for the Crows buggering up every draft but I thought that they did pretty well this time round. OTOH, Stengle looks like being a serious off-season downer.

  4. WRT China, Morrison can use this to play the courageous battler, standing up for what is right, confronting the bully, and so on. Throw in some sovereignties, and some resiliences, and some ANZAC spiriting, and he’ll have himself another 3 years as Prime Marketer. But I think profitable trade with China will be Morrison’s Achilles heel. His money backers will want change now. I sense questions floating about even now: Do we need a circuit breaker? Can we clear the air? Isn’t it worth trying? How could anyone be worse? Wouldn’t it send a signal? Who’s credible? etc. etc.

  5. With the imminent demise of Trump the buffoon, Xi is now facing a much tougher challenge from the Biden administration in trade and diplomacy.

    Even dictators like Xi need to keep their constituents on side, in Xi’s case it is the largely faceless CCP power brokers. One way to prove how tough you are – bounce around a country with another buffoon as leader, one which you can hurt in a significant way.

    Where this will lead is anyone’s guess at the moment. However one thing is for sure – China will not hesitate to damage Australia’s trade position but Xi will avoid damaging China’s trade position and source of goods that it needs.

  6. In the photo of The Family which seems to be Scotty’s Christmas Card to his adoring subjects, one of his daughters is wearing an off the shoulder dress. Looks very nice. However, I think it indicates that she no longer favours a child’s Cubby House as a suitable place for her leisure pursuits.

  7. Labor does not have to do much at all re China, coal and trade in general.

    Morrison is the PM. It is up to him and the government to get under control. It may play out well for him for a while but ,as in all things , it is all about the hip pocket. Once coal miners and the communities in which they live start to feel the deeply cold breath of job losses on the back of their necks the whole situation will change and not in a good way good Morrison.

    It will not just be mining communities, mining unions and stories of individual miners and their families that put pressure on. It will be the mining companies and industry groups that start to arch up as well.

    Then we have the agricultural sector putting in their two bobs worth.

    Why does labor need to rant and rave. I watched Husic today. In my opinion he got it just right. Mining and agricultural jobs and communities were front and centre in his presser and he called on Morrison to get it sorted ASAP.

    That is all labor needs to do. Let Morrison fuck it up and end up, instead of getting on the front foot, being dragged by the short and curlies to fix this mess up.

  8. The titles of the two films alone scream The Trump: “You Should Have Left” and “Unhinged.”
    “Three Christs” immediately made me think of The Donald, BoJo the Clown and Saint Scotty of the Marketing.

    For the rest of the year, “Artemis Fowl” because it was such an awful horrible mess like 2020.

  9. boerwar
    “I can hardly believe that Xi would be so cruel to a Dad who built a cubby for his kids.”

    I know! But he’s such a top bloke! His marketing team is unanimous on this point.

  10. Bill Bowtell AO
    @billbowtell
    ·
    9h
    .
    @BorisJohnson rejected advice to lock down but instead acted on advice from A.Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s discredited herd immunity policy. Consequences now playing out in London.

  11. lizzie says:
    Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 6:14 pm
    In the photo of The Family which seems to be Scotty’s Christmas Card to his adoring subjects, one of his daughters is wearing an off the shoulder dress. Looks very nice. However, I think it indicates that she no longer favours a child’s Cubby House as a suitable place for her leisure pursuits.

    If he really wanted to build a cubby house (and it wasn’t just a PR stunt) he would have done so when the girls were somewhat younger. The preschool where our grandson starts next year has a rather magnificent structure for children around 4yo.

    Perhaps the next thing he could build is a stable for the horse or pony that his daughters will probably want at their age.

  12. Peter van Onselen
    @vanOnselenP
    ·
    4h
    It always makes me laugh (or sigh) when I hear the PM dismiss probing questions about important issues saying he’s too busy managing the pandemic only to see him drive around a track in a tank for a photo op or appear on some infotainment show talking about odd ball rubbish.

    But managing his Daggy Dad Image must take precedence over any actual government.

  13. In Kelly’s eyes could Morrison ever be anything but “ascendant”?
    At Christmas, Labor leaders are usually “under pressure” but Liberal PM’s/leaders are always in “ascendancy”
    …It has been ever thus……
    Even this year, we had the words ‘killing season’ bandied around but only as it applies to Albanese…….Shorten….Gillard….Rudd…………………………………………………(yawn) ….Keating, Hawke…..Whitlam and so on into the dim past……

  14. …and Morrison’s ascendancy hasn’t shown up in any real ways; no unexpected electoral gains, and no impact (apparently) on the Queensland result, where he put a bit of an effort in.

  15. ‘Late Riser says:
    Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 6:35 pm

    BW, turning that around, I’d like to know what Labor peeps are quietly saying to business.’

    ‘You got what you wanted. How does it feel?’

  16. Yes, welcome back BW

    I’m always happy when people with something genuinely interesting to say (not just to fuck around with us) comes on here.

  17. Morrison and a role in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. The ending for the character Morrison plays as he enters, differs somewhat to the character Morrison plays as leaves the film.
    Morrison’s memoir will borrow the title “Dog Day Afternoon”. But he’ll probably achieve his waterfront in the Shire despite ths film and just hang out with Gall!
    Or perhaps “Farewell My Concubine” as Morrison will discover . “All are characters doomed to drown in the unforgiving tides of time”.
    Morrison’s cabinet believe they are “Zu Warriors From Magic Mountain”. Self-explanatory!
    Morrison wil remain an immortal character however as will be revealed in the yet to be produced “The Peasents Revolt “. An epic set in Australia in the early C21st.
    It doesn’t end well for anyone.

  18. C@t

    I’m seeing an increasing number here not spelling ‘too’ the right way. Spell it how you want, of course. Just sayin’.

    Yeah, getting it right isn’t to hard!

  19. Without being too personal, my dad, had he survived, would have reached 100 today. He loved Shakespeare’s sonnets – his favourite, S.94:

    They that have power to hurt and will do none,
    That do not do the thing they most do show,
    Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
    Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
    They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces
    And husband nature’s riches from expense;
    They are the lords and owners of their faces,
    Others but stewards of their excellence.
    The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet
    Though to itself it only live and die,
    But if that flower with base infection meet,
    The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
    For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
    Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

    It’s rumoured he wrote this to impliedly suggest to the Earl of Southhampton – his mentor – that he should back off.

  20. Holidaying in Katoomba, for the first time in decades. Look threatening when we arrived, has interspersed between fog and rain ever since. A mixture of old elegance, tourist traps, retirees and bogans – local businesses in fear that the absence of tourists is becoming permanent.

  21. Dotard has only got 2 chances left to steal the election and destroy US democracy and global leadership for a generation:

    1. Somehow make the 6 January joint sitting of the Congress a circus, with the Supreme Court as arbiter.
    2. Invoke the Insurrection Act, and convince the State Apparatuses to back his coup.

    But more likely he will be laughed out of office..

  22. Windhover @ #4575 Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 – 5:56 pm

    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.

    I’ve lived Contagion and laughed at Outbreak. For me 2020 was Slaughterhouse 5 x District 9.

  23. sprocket_ :

    Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 8:15 pm

    [‘1. Somehow make the 6 January joint sitting of the Congress a circus, with the Supreme Court as arbiter.

    2. Invoke the Insurrection Act, and convince the State Apparatuses to back his coup.’]

    Neither of which will transpire. Biden will assume the presidency on Jan, 20 – the rest is merely bunkum.

  24. Kiwis to the rescue?

    New Zealand’s new foreign minister has said the country could help negotiate a truce between Australia and regional heavyweight China with the two nations caught in an escalating trade and diplomatic spat.

    Nanaia Mahuta said on Tuesday that hosting the high-profile Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit next year presented an opportunity for New Zealand to bring both parties to the table.

    “Do I believe there might an opportunity for New Zealand to create a different environment and have a conversation? Yes, I do,” Mahuta said.

    “Hosting Apec might well be the opportunity … but both parties will have to be willing to come together and concede in some areas where they are currently not seeing eye to eye.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/15/new-zealand-foreign-minister-offers-to-help-broker-peace-deal-between-australia-and-china

  25. … but both parties will have to be willing to come together and concede in some areas where they are currently not seeing eye to eye.”

    Good luck with that, Nanaia!

    I’m sure if we ever got to see Scotty from Marketing starkers, we’d see that he has a tattoo on his arse that says: ‘I’m not for turning’.

  26. Goll
    On Morrison’s approval rating. I wouldn’t read too much into those numbers at this stage because Morrison has been able to dish out cash which will always be popular and for many people the economy is pretty good.

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