The interruption of Easter means we’re not likely to see any opinion polls this week. A new post is wanted though, so I offer the following loose assemblage of news items. My own efforts have late have been consumed by my Tasmanian election guide, which is currently being buffed and polished ahead of publication later today.
• Lydia Lynch of the Brisbane Times reports the executive of Queensland’s Liberal National Party has voted to reopen preselection nominations for Andrew Laming’s seat of Bowman, by a bare margin of 11 to 10, but for which the position would be assured for businesswoman Fran Ward, the only candidate to nominate against Andrew Laming when he still intended to run. The Australian reports that “conservative forces” were keen that this should happen to open the way for Henry Pike, communications adviser for the Property Council and unsuccessful candidate for Redlands at the October state election. The Brisbane Times report says the preselection looms as a three-way contest between Ward, Pike and barrister Maggie Forrest. Senator Amanda Stoker has ruled herself out, despite expectations she could use the seat to resolve a difficulty where she and James McGrath are in competition for the safe first and loseable third positions on the LNP Senate ticket, the second position being reserved to the Nationals.
• A by-election will be held in the New South Wales state seat of Upper Hunter following the resignation of Nationals member Michael Johnsen after he was accused of raping a sex worker. I will have a dedicated post and election guide up for the by-election hopefully later in the week. For what it’s worth, Sportsbet has Shooters Fishers and Farmers as favourites to win the seat, paying $1.50 compared with $3.25 for the Nationals and $8 for Labor.
• The Canberra Times reports on the findings of an internal review into the ACT Liberals’ sixth successive election defeat in October, finding more effort should have been made to win over “soft Greens voters” who might be persuaded by a pitch targeting the Greens’ “anti-small business bent” and “soft law and order policies”. The review was conducted by Grahame Morris, lobbyist and one-time chief-of-staff to John Howard, Vicki Dunne, recently retired Liberal MP, and Daniel Clode, the party’s campaign manager in 2016.
@Politics_PR tweets
Yellen to Call for Global Minimum Tax Rate to Raise Revenue, Stop Companies from Evading Taxes politicususa.com/2021/04/05/yel…
I like the idea but given governments around the world I don’t think this will work
Edit:
I think Senator Warren has more chance of success than Yellen
@SenWarren tweets
I’m tired of the excuses made by corporate lobbyists about why ultra-millionaires and billionaires shouldn’t pay their fair share. The numbers are clear: it is time for a #WealthTax in America.
Alpha
What Australia should have done instead of throwing all our eggs into one basket is it should have thrown a billion bucks at rapidly setting up manufacturing for other vaccines – as well as AZ. We could be giving our surplus to Papua about now and aiming to help other countries soon.
And it would leave us with an expanded biotech manufacturing sector.
@CaslerNoel tweets
Don Jr is joining the boycott against coke and will be switching to meth.
huh?
Haha, strategic thinking. This mob?
Cud.
Apparently son of Donald Trump is calling for a boycott of Coca Cola over voting rights.
Yeah, that’s gonna be the key to getting Georgia back in the Republican fold. Might as well boycott peaches too.
Next week, off to Wisconsin to talk about how much dairy sucks.
Hmmm.. you learn some..
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/business/delta-coca-cola-georgia-voting-law.html
In Case it’s not been posted
@zeynep tweets
More good news. Pfizer has the six month update. *Zero* hospitalizations among the vaccinated vs. 32 among the placebo group (n=46,307). Also real life data from South Africa, where B.1.351 is dominant: zero cases of COVID among the vaccinated vs. nine in the placebo (n=800).
guytaur
That’s confusing.. is he quoting from a continued trial (with actual placebo).. or real life data using matching. I wouldn’t have thought it was ethical to continue a trial with a placebo given what we’ve known for some time.
It’s amusing Tories so called independent reviews think that Britain isn’t racist.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-05/sewell-race-report-is-the-u-k-really-the-world-s-least-racist-country?sref=2o0rZsF1&utm_medium=social&utm_content=view&utm_source=twitter&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-view&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic
It’s a bit like saying Donald Trump has no tax invasion.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, launched after the Black Lives Matter protests last year, begs to differ. Its controversial conclusions in a report published last week say that while it’s too early to declare Britain a “post-racial society,” arguments of institutional racism are overblown.
Overall, it says, the U.K. is pretty much best in class when it comes to White-majority countries around the world. (One fact: The difference in educational attainment between Black and White pupils is eight times smaller in Britain than in the U.S.) That message of “cheer up, things are better than you think” is unlikely to be the comfort the government hopes.
It’s interesting the 5G/6G debate that is happening already pushing 6G research before 5G is on a mass scale,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-02-08/forget-5g-the-u-s-and-china-are-already-fighting-for-6g-dominance
But the complete anti-china bias is evidently there.
“The lack of trust in Chinese companies like Huawei is unlikely to abate with 6G. Democracies are growing increasingly worried about how 5G technology is being used by authoritarian regimes, with fears that 6G could enable technologies such as mass drone surveillance. China is already using surveillance cameras, AI, facial recognition and biometrics such as voice samples and DNA to track and control citizens.”
Wow, Sci-Fi movie stuff there. But the West wouldn’t do that already right ? Or have they?
A global minimum wage would be a better idea than a global tax rate.
Who’d have thought that Barnaby Joyce would be the voice of reason in this “empathy training” bullshit.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/05/barnaby-joyce-says-you-cant-redesign-peoples-brains-with-empathy-training
How is that going to work? By raising the wages of people in Bangladesh, or by lowering the wages of people in Australia.
The only people who would advocate such a hare brained notion (sorry mate that’s exactly what it is), will always go for the “lower wages for developing countries” option. It even sounds like they’re laying the ground work to do just that.
It’s just another shift on the path to corporates being exempt from their obligation to pay tax and transfer the entire “burden” onto the citizenry. Well, most of the citizens anyway. The 1%ers who will be behind this shift will have already taken measures to protect themselves, heck, they’ll be the ones who write the laws.
The best way is to expunge “transfer pricing” as well as tax havens.
‘covid complacent’ youngsters’ look like getting a bit of a wake up call.
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Covid 19 coronavirus: Brazil strain three times more deadly for those aged 18-45, research shows.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/covid-19-coronavirus-brazil-strain-three-times-more-deadly-for-those-aged-18-45-research-shows/A4LAA4JTXZK2XMSKOLPKHQWMJI/
The Morrison era is coming to an end, the longer the election is not called the worst it will get for the lib/nats
AAP reports some state breakdowns…
The Coalition has taken a significant hit in Queensland and Western Australia, where it has traditionally done well, and would have to restore support there to hold onto government, the latest Newspoll shows.
The poll, published in The Australian, shows the Morrison government would lose seats in the key resources states and faces collapse in South Australia.
The poll also shows the Coalition has lost more male voters than women voters since the Liberal party has been under pressure over the treatment of females in politics.
However Scott Morrison himself remains personally popular and is the preferred prime minister over Labor’s Anthony Albanese, rising one point to 58 per cent while Mr Albanese remained on 28 per cent.
The latest poll comes as the Federal Government faces pressure from angry states over the slow vaccine rollout and amid the ongoing sexual assaults scandal.
On a two-party-preferred basis the Coalition now trails Labor 49-51 per cent averaged over the past four Newspolls.
In WA, where the Liberals were virtually wiped out in the recent state election, support for federal Labor surged from 32 per cent in December to 42 per cent in the latest quarterly analysis, while the Coalition dropped from 43 per cent to 40 per cent.
This produced a 12-percentage-point turnaround in the two-party-preferred vote from 53-47 in the Coalition’s favour in December to favour Labor 53-47 now, with the Coalition on track to be defeated in three WA seats.
The WA result indicates the state Liberal Party’s disastrous election result in March had an impact on support for the Morrison government.
In Queensland, Labor’s averaged primary vote rose from 29 per cent in December to 35 per cent in the latest survey while the Coalition dropped from 45 per cent to 42 per cent.
On a two-party-preferred basis that puts the Liberal National Party ahead 53-47, down from 57-43 in December and on track to lose four Queensland seats.
The only improvement for the Coalition in the two-party-preferred vote was in Victoria where Labor’s lead of 55-45 in the December analysis fell to 53-47.
The worst state for the Coalition is South Australia where its primary support fell six points to 38 per cent and federal Labor’s vote rose five points to 41 per cent, putting Labor at 55-45 on a two-party-preferred split.
In NSW, the Coalition dropped two points to a primary vote of 42 per cent with Labor flat at 36 per cent, producing a deadlocked 50-50 two-party-preferred vote.
The analysis found voters to have forsaken the Liberal party over the past three months have been overwhelmingly male.
Support from women, however, has remained relatively unchanged despite the ongoing scandal over the treatment of women in government.
According to The Australian, the male primary vote fell from 44 per cent in December to 41 per cent in March, while female voters remained stable at 41 per cent.
The demographic breakdown showed middle-income earners had the largest swing to Labor, with households with incomes between $50,000 and $99,000 increasing three points to to 39 per cent.
Voters with household incomes of between $100,000 and $149,000 also rose three points in favour of Labor to 37 per cent.
Jeez, Nicolle Flint’s performance, off-Broadway at The Canberra Bubble Theatre, doesn’t seem to have played as well as ProMo thought it would. 🙂
The analysis found voters to have forsaken the Liberal party over the past three months have been overwhelmingly male.
Totally opposite conclusion to that given by the guardian. It’s good to see a bit of variation. Some will be because polls aren’t perfect, some with be because of different time periods. Looks like men went first.
And it looks like the job of dumping Christian Porter and Linda Reynolds (because somehow I don’t think she’ll be top of the WA Senate ticket), will have to come down to the WA voters. Mr Slim Majority (SliMo?), certainly isn’t going to do it for them.
New thread.
The vaccine rollout schemozzle has yet to flow through to the polls either. So Morrison’s new +1 (due to the beginning of the rollout at last?), may yet again take a slide.
Cat
There are several trains going off the rails for the LNP at once.
It’s not just the botched vaccination rollout.
The evangelicals losing the culture wars is bad news for an evangelical Prime Minister.
The same effect as Biden using the Presidential bully pulpit had for Reagan. Despite what Mexican Beemer tries to distract from. Increasing taxes is good is revolutionary economics in the political narrative.
The Climate war loss is going to be apparent before the election those Green tariffs will be reality.
It will be easy to tell voters. Your economic security needs a government acting to bring emissions down.
This reality happening as Murdoch’s propaganda loses both credibility and an audience to see it.
@briantalyorcohen tweets
NEW: A record 4.6 million COVID vaccines were administered in the US in a single day.