The Guardian reports Essential Research has unloaded its latest quarterly-or-so dump of voting intention results, which should presumably appear in full later today. According to the pollster’s headline “2PP+” measure, which leaves a hole marked “undecided” in its two-party preferred, the Coalition and Labor are both on 46% while undecided is at 7% (presumably the failure to sum to 100 is down to rounding). We are also told that the Coalition is on 39% of the primary vote with Labor on 34%, but this too would be from a set of numbers including an undecided component of around 7%.
There is also a particularly wide gender gap in the latest results, though I’m not clear if they are basing this entirely on the latest poll result or from a quarterly accumulation like the ones familiar from Newspoll. The Coalition trails Labor by 37% to 31% on the primary vote among women, which converts to 50% to 38% on 2PP+, whereas the January result had the Coalition leading 37% to 33% on the former measure and 47% to 44% on the latter. Conversely, the Coalition leads Labor among men by 47% to 31% on primary and 55-42 on 2PP+.
This was all in addition to the usual fortnightly release from Essential Research, which offered yet more data on COVID-19. Forty-three per cent now think the vaccine rollout is being done efficiently, down from 68% in late February, while 63% think it is being done safely, down from 73%, and 52% think it will be effective at stopping the virus in the country, down from 64%. Forty-five per cent rate felt the rollout was proceeding more slowly than they would like, which is in fact a seven-point improvement on a fortnight ago: among this group, 48% felt the federal government most responsible, up six points.
There have also been two further tranches of results from Newspoll’s weekend poll, one of which related that the Morrison government’s handling of COVID-19 was rated positively by 70% (down from 82% in June) and negatively by 27% (up from 15%), and that 53% were satisfied with the vaccine rollout compared with 43% who were unsatisfied. The other set of results related perceptions of the two party leaders according to nine character traits. Compared with the last such results in August, Scott Morrison was held in slightly lower regard overall, the biggest movement being a ten point drop on “understands the major issues”. Anthony Albanese’s ratings were stable – the only one on which he scored better than Morrison was “arrogant”, a quality attributed to Morrison by 52% and to Albanese by 40%.
https://www.miragenews.com/polling-majority-of-australians-support-552900/
lizzie
I’m perplexed by this kind of economic model.
The assumption seems to be that if women enter the workforce, that automatically increases productivity.
If the jobs aren’t there to begin with, how does that work?
This kind of thinking is also at work with the unemployed – that the jobs are there, so all we need to do is get them out there working in them to increase productivity.
It seems a bit of a sacred cow, so perhaps I’m missing something.
DisplayName @ #1050 Sunday, May 2nd, 2021 – 3:31 pm
One for each foot?
https://japantoday.com/category/tokyo-2020-olympics/olympics-under-close-supervision-tokyo-welcomes-foreign-divers-to-test-event?fbclid=IwAR2RvmDCgg1eNTLF0_TVu9y0tWnXeYu_7QIJDPD0V2ySRpcexxMKuWXcOcE
The diving World Cup, also a qualifier for this summer’s Games this summer, features more than 200 athletes from 50 countries including powerhouse China.
“We’re not allowed out of our rooms, where you have to stay… – no outdoor air, no human interaction,” said U.S. women’s diver Sarah Bacon. “But we’ve been making it work.”
With around 15,000 Olympians and Paralympians expected to compete in Japan this summer, organizers are still grappling with how to hold the Games safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Japanese authorities are determined to protect not only Games participants, but a local population that opinion surveys have shown is largely opposed to the event held this summer due to the presence of the virus.
Japan is battling a fourth wave of infections, and the government has declared states of emergency in Tokyo and other areas.
During a warm-up before Saturday’s men’s preliminary event, the announcer scolded divers for gathering too closely, thus violating social distancing standards, around the 3-meter springboard.
——————-
If this was China – the west is demanding inhuman treatment of foreigners And racism, discrimination and calling on USA, UK and Australia to boycott The Olympics!
zoomster
I don’t really understand it either. Perhaps they mean that increasing funding for child care would create more jobs (in child care), therefore freeing housebound mothers to branch out into startups!!!
[‘Award-winning Australian poet and writer Kate Jennings has been remembered as brilliant, funny and formidable after she died in New York aged 72.
Jennings, who penned essays, novels, short stories, poetry and newspaper columns throughout her career, was among a group of pioneering feminist activists in Sydney who set up Australia’s first refuge for victims of domestic violence.
She rose to prominence in the 1970s, when she spoke at a Vietnam moratorium rally at Sydney University and declared, in part, “You’ll say I’m a man-hating, bra-burning, lesbian member of the castration penis envy brigade. Which I am!”]
https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-miss-her-poet-and-writer-kate-jennings-dies-aged-72-20210502-p57o5u.html
Republicans in several states are pushing bills to give poll watchers more autonomy. Alarmed election officials and voting rights activists say it’s a new attempt to target voters of color:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/01/us/politics/republican-pollwatchers.html
A question at the bottom corner of the slide indicated just how many poll watchers the party wanted to mobilize: “Can we build a 10K Election Integrity Brigade?”
As Republican lawmakers in major battleground states seek to make voting harder and more confusing through a web of new election laws, they are simultaneously making a concerted legislative push to grant more autonomy and access to partisan poll watchers — citizens trained by a campaign or a party and authorized by local election officials to observe the electoral process.
This effort has alarmed election officials and voting rights activists alike: There is a long history of poll watchers being used to intimidate voters and harass election workers, often in ways that target Democratic-leaning communities of color and stoke fears that have the overall effect of voter suppression. During the 2020 election, President Donald J. Trump’s campaign repeatedly promoted its “army” of poll watchers as he publicly implored supporters to venture into heavily Black and Latino cities and hunt for voter fraud.
Republicans have offered little evidence to justify a need for poll watchers to have expanded access and autonomy. As they have done for other election changes — including reduced early voting, stricter absentee ballot requirements and limits on drop boxes — they have grounded their reasoning in arguments that their voters want more secure elections. That desire was born in large part out of Mr. Trump’s repeated lies about last year’s presidential contest, which included complaints about insufficient poll watcher access.
Now, with disputes over the rules governing voting now at a fever pitch, the rush to empower poll watchers threatens to inject further tension into elections.
Both partisan and nonpartisan poll watching have been a key component of American elections for years, and Republicans and Democrats alike have routinely sent trained observers to the polls to monitor the process and report back on any worries. In recent decades, laws have often helped keep aggressive behavior at bay, preventing poll watchers from getting too close to voters or election officials, and maintaining a relatively low threshold for expelling anyone who misbehaves.
——————
Some say suppression- I call it fascism, Nazism, hypocrisy, xenophobic, racist, bigotry.
Itza
Seems logical!
Lizzie, in theory at least, if you increase the human capital employed in an economy you will increase the output of the economy. Assuming the increased human capital can be effectively employed you will increase both supply and demand in the economy.
Certainly you need to have non-human factors able to be employed for this to happen or else you will only spread existing output across more people.
Zoomster there is an important difference between productivity and output. If you increase inputs (people and other factors employed) without increasing output then productivity decreases. The reverse holds true, employing less factors while maintaining output increases productivity.
However you are correct that if those additional employees can’t be effectively employed you won’t achieve any economic improvement.
Re Tony Benn’s quote (Lizzie @2:38):
“The way a government treats refugees is very instructive; it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.”
That is insightful. Not just refugees, any powerless out-group of whose rights the authorities believe can be safely disregarded, for example the unemployed (Robodebt).
https://www.pollbludger.net/2021/04/30/essential-research-2pp-coalition-46-labor-47-undecided-7/comment-page-22/#comment-3600283
The more backpackers, temporarily onshore/ 457s, etc etc etc, onshore seekers against a job … lowering wages?
Don’t you know …
Zoomster
The theory is that the women is employed then has a child and needs to choose between staying in that job or leaving it and this is why child care spending can favor higher income professional women because they are the ones that take the biggest drop in income.
Mexican
And in the present job market, someone fills her position.
Zoomster
Yes then mothers can fall into the trap of becoming long term unemployed which our job market has difficulty dealing with.
This is all very scary but I can’t see how they can do this when so many people have small amounts of private income or investments to supplement their pension. As I do.
lizzie @ #1067 Sunday, May 2nd, 2021 – 5:15 pm
At between $7000 to $10,000 per card for management fees it would cost an absolute fortune to extend to all pensioners. They may plan this for Jobseeker though and my Tassie friend lives in fear of this happening.
#auspol story is behind the scenes Gov will be pushing privatisation of all welfare payments if they win the next electio., This includes all welfare payments and everyone will be on the Indue Card overseen by Gov and Banks
_____
This bloody stinks, and the opposition should really pile in on this. It is SO believable that this mob would stoop to this. They could deny it all they like, but people know it’s in their DNA.
It’s unlikely that pensioners will be touched by any Indue expansion. Retired Australians have a voice politically, so there would be blowback. Whereas there’s no political cost to hitting Jobseekers with it.
It should also be said the Twitter user you’re quoting doesn’t seem to be a journalist or anybody connected to anything, so this information should just be treated as a rumour. However, I suspect a mass rollout is definitely on the cards if the Coalition is re-elected. Especially if they and One Nation have the Senate majority.
I don’t think the aged pensioners and veterans community will be very happy with this idea. That’s a large group of people to upset.
Rational Leftist
It’s a rumour I have heard several times before. Problem is it’s so believable for this nasty privatising government. We’ll see.
Government is paying 1 billion for a replacement of the IT system in Centrelink. It is being tested in Adelaide and has been for several years.
If they try to privatise and pensioners do not get paid it will lead to riots.
The Twitter user in question also posts stupid shit like this:
The timing of this would be very poor for the LNP, there are many thousands of people currently on welfare who are there because of covid, many of them would be Liberals or friends of families who are Liberal. While they may have previously agreed with something like this their recent brush with unemployment could have them looking at this differently.
This would also be very difficult for some aged and disabled who use cash to give their carers to do the shopping as they don’t want to give them their cash card.
Simon Katich says:
Sunday, May 2, 2021 at 2:56 pm
__________________
The ALP needs another Whitlam type figure to bring fundamental change.
Not saying the Liberals don’t want to roll the card out but partisan twitter users need to be treated as gossipers.
‘Rational Leftist says:
Sunday, May 2, 2021 at 5:38 pm
The Twitter user in question also posts stupid shit like this:
MsRebeccaRobins
@MsRebeccaRobins
·
6h
#auspol Josh Frydenberg has just set my feelings towards the Jewish religion back to the gutter. You would think Jews would understand but then just look at Palastine, Maybe Adolfus Hittlemous was right after all ?’
FMD.
That tweet from Rebecca Robins is a natural extension of the casual racism that has been allowed to creep into the public debate.
Thatcher & Reagan have a lot to answer for –
Joe Biden Is Electrifying America Like F.D.R.
YAMHILL, Ore. — The best argument for President Biden’s three-part proposal to invest heavily in America and its people is an echo of Franklin Roosevelt’s explanation for the New Deal.
“In 1932 there was an awfully sick patient called the United States of America,” Roosevelt said in 1943. “He was suffering from a grave internal disorder … and they sent for a doctor.”
Paging Dr. Joe Biden.
We should be cleareyed about both the enormous strengths of the United States — its technologies, its universities, its entrepreneurial spirit — and its central weakness: For half a century, compared with other countries, we have underinvested in our people.
In 1970, the United States was a world leader in high school and college attendance, enjoyed high life expectancy and had a solid middle class. This was achieved in part because of Roosevelt.
The New Deal was imperfect and left out too many African-Americans and Native Americans, but it was still transformative.
Here in my hometown, Yamhill, the New Deal was an engine of opportunity. A few farmers had rigged generators on streams, but Roosevelt’s rural electrification brought almost everyone onto the grid and output soared. Jobs programs preserved the social fabric and built trails that I hike on every year. The G.I. Bill of Rights gave local families a shot at education and homeownership.
Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration provided $27,415 in 1935 (the equivalent of $530,000 today) to help build a high school in Yamhill. That provided jobs for 90 people on the relief rolls, and it created the school that I attended and that remains in use today.
In short, the New Deal invested in the potential and productivity of my little town — and of much of the nation. The returns were extraordinary.
These kinds of investments in physical infrastructure (interstate highways) and human capital (state universities and community colleges) continued under Democratic and Republican presidents alike. They made America a stronger nation and a better one.
Yet beginning in the 1970s, America took a wrong turn. We slowed new investments in health and education and embraced a harsh narrative that people just need to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. We gutted labor unions, embraced inequality and shrugged as working-class America disintegrated. Average weekly wages for America’s production workers were actually lower in December 2020 ($860) than they had been, after adjusting for inflation, in December 1972 ($902 in today’s money).
What does that mean in human terms? I’ve written about how one-quarter of the people on my old No. 6 school bus died of drugs, alcohol or suicide — “deaths of despair.” That number needs to be updated: The toll has risen to about one-third.
We allocated large sums of taxpayer dollars to incarcerate my friends and their children. Biden proposes something more humane and effective — investing in children, families and infrastructure in ways that echo Roosevelt’s initiatives.
The most important thread of Biden’s program is his plan to use child allowances to cut America’s child poverty in half. Biden’s main misstep is that he would end the program in 2025 instead of making it permanent; Congress should fix that.
The highest return on investment in America today isn’t in private equity but in early childhood initiatives for disadvantaged kids of all races. That includes home visitations, lead reduction, pre-K and child care.
Roosevelt started a day care program during World War II to make it easier for parents to participate in the war economy. It was a huge success, looking after perhaps half a million children, but it was allowed to lapse after the war ended.
Biden’s proposal for day care would be a lifeline for young children who might be neglected. Aside from the wartime model, we have another in the U.S.: The military operates a high-quality on-base day care system, because that supports service members in performing their jobs.
Then there are Biden’s proposed investments in broadband; that’s today’s version of rural electrification. Likewise, free community college would enable young people to gain technical skills and earn more money, strengthening working-class families.
Some Americans worry about the cost of Biden’s program. That’s a fair concern. Yet this is not an expense but an investment: Our ability to compete with China will depend less on our military budget, our spy satellites or our intellectual property protections than on our high school and college graduation rates. A country cannot succeed when so many of its people are failing.
As many Americans have criminal records as college degrees. A baby born in Washington, D.C., has a shorter life expectancy (78 years) than a baby born in Beijing (82 years). Newborns in 10 counties in Mississippi have a shorter life expectancy than newborns in Bangladesh. Rather than continue with Herbert Hoover-style complacency, let’s acknowledge our “grave internal disorder” and summon a doctor.
The question today, as in the 1930s, is not whether we can afford to make ambitious investments in our people. It’s whether we can afford not to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/01/opinion/sunday/biden-fdr-americans.html
When is the ALP sending the SMS messages masquerading as CentreLink?
Still waiting for Medicare to be privatised.
[‘The Morrison government has asked the Department of Defence to review the Northern Territory’s 99-year-lease to Chinese-owned company Landbridge – a deal that has unsettled national security figures in the federal government since it was signed six years ago.
Defence officials are looking at whether the company, owned by Chinese billionaire Ye Cheng, should be forced to give up its ownership of the port on national security grounds under critical infrastructure laws passed in 2018.
The Defence Department is reviewing Landbridge’s ownership of the Port of Darwin.
The Defence Department is reviewing Landbridge’s ownership of the Port of Darwin.
The federal opposition and national security experts have questioned the deal since it was signed in 2015.
Defence Minister Peter Dutton confirmed the National Security Committee of Cabinet had tasked his department to “come back with some advice, so that work is already under way”.]
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/strategic-own-goal-defence-reviews-port-of-darwin-s-chinese-ownership-20210502-p57o49.html
Anyone who thinks Hitler was right should be made to read The rise and fall of the Third Reich. Hitlar was criminally insane
Bucephalus says:
Sunday, May 2, 2021 at 6:07 pm
When is the ALP sending the SMS messages masquerading as CentreLink?
Still waiting for Medicare to be privatised.
———————-
Lol Buce
The lib/nats breach care taker convention ,during the 2016 federal election when they awarded an medicare service to a private company called telstra
It was in the budget 2014/15/16 papers for a medicare privasation taskforce to be set up
dont know if the lib/nats ever got rid of trying to get that task force up
A critique of the PISA educational ratings, particularly of Tudge’s use of them to argue that reduced funding leads to better outcomes…
https://saveourschools.com.au/national-issiues/tudge-fudges-school-results-and-funding/
Beguiled Again (if about)
The arrest of Ronald Ryan in Tommy’s Shop ( with pictures) gets a couple of pages.
Interviewing old hands there are 2 things they remember.
1. Ronald Ryan’s arrest – in which two nurses were used as decoys
2. The publication of “Be in it, Mate” an expose of the waste and corruption in the Repatriation system which started the 25 year discussion between governments and the RSL that their members would be better off in state hospitals
Who can ever forget this corrupt and fraudulent behaviour by Newsltd and the Howard lib/nats government
Turnbull’s millionaire mate, major campaign donor and Murdoch family member Matt Handbury. He claimed to be able to create rain clouds from clear blue skies through a process involving the “electrification of the ionosphere”.
https://www.pollbludger.net/2021/04/30/essential-research-2pp-coalition-46-labor-47-undecided-7/comment-page-21/#comment-3600276
Voices for Indi deprives the Coalition of a seat (reduced talent, potential for Coalition government to be in a minority rather than a majority and a potentially better position for the ALP at a joint sitting) and has created inter-party tension within the Coalition and may do so again.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7231431/history-in-the-making-more-aussies-turn-50-in-2021-than-in-any-previous-year/?cs=14329
Telstra are providing medical services? Where?
Zerlo says:
Sunday, May 2, 2021 at 3:44 pm
‘…
If this was China – the west is demanding inhuman treatment of foreigners And racism, discrimination and calling on USA, UK and Australia to boycott The Olympics!’
Actually, the calls for boycott are in relation to the Uigher Genocide. Nations SHOULD have boycotted Hitler’s Berlin Games and the they SHOULD boycott Xi’s games as well. Goose gander.
Tom
Which is all very noble, and is the Labor party’s rationale in not contesting the seat in any serious manner.
What it means in practice, however, is that Indi misses out on services and opportunities.
It’s easy to regard winning elections as an end in themselves, but whether a seat changes hands or not has real implications for the people who live in these seats.
We’re suffering now from six years of relative neglect. The medical staff at the regional hospital have been complaining now for years (as I said, last significant injection of funds was under Gillard).
When I ask local indie supporters what’s been delivered, they talk about the mobile phone towers – something McGowan didn’t advocate for to begin with, then only got two of the ones she nominated (out of over 30 provided) and which are a huge taxpayer-subsidised rort for the major telecoms.
Other than that, nada.
Well, that sorts that, then.
The problem for the Morrison Government is that there is no real way of knowing the extent to which racism influences any or all of their decisions.
Hows their response to the Uluru Statement from the Heart going, BTW?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/02/marise-payne-denies-racism-motivated-ban-on-australian-citizens-returning-from-covid-ravaged-india
Lars Von Trier says:
Sunday, May 2, 2021 at 2:16 pm
It’s my belief that there will be a third anti-party Labor leader after Latham and Rudd.
The third will bring the whole show down and inadvertently usher in a new era of social democracy in this country.
“Rapture” thinking, transferred to politics. Just nonsense really.
laughtong @ #1049 Sunday, May 2nd, 2021 – 3:23 pm
When you look at something like Jobseeker, where a person could be on it for as little as a week, it’s hard to see it as being viable.
“The problem for the Morrison Government is that there is no real way of knowing the extent to which racism influences any or all of their decisions.”
Maybe the answer to these questions might give a hint: “Has the Australian Government ever banned Australian citizens returning from the USA? From the UK or France?” At one stage these countries were on a per capital basis faring worse than India is now.
Bucephalus says:
Sunday, May 2, 2021 at 6:34 pm
Telstra are providing medical services? Where?
————
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/election-2016-telstra-wins-contract-to-manage-your-health-records-20160525-gp3go9.html
That was a medicare service
Beware the GLOF!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/02/glacial-lakes-threaten-millions-with-floods-as-planet-heats-up
The Borg is back! Or is he?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-02/lawrence-springborg-running-for-lnp-presidency/100111068
Mexicanbeemer @ #1078 Sunday, May 2nd, 2021 – 5:59 pm
Anti-semitism. And suggesting that Hitler was right goes a fair bit beyond “casual”.
I have no doubt that the current Australian Government intends to extend the Indue Card to the unemployed and probably also to disability pensioners, but not the aged pensioners and certainly not veterans.