The Australian reports the latest Newspoll has Labor leading 53-47, in from 54-46 three weeks ago. The primary votes are Coalition 37% (up two), Labor 38% (steady), Greens 11% (steady) and One Nation 2% (down one). Scott Morrison is down two on approval to 44% and up two on disapproval to 52%, while Anthony Albanese is respectively steady on 37% and up two to 48%. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister has been cut from 48-34 to 46-38. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1524.
Dr Sandro Demaio
@SandroDemaio
Good news! Victoria has now PASSED 87% fully vaccinated (12+). Great work, team! #covid19vic
3:09 PM · Nov 17, 2021
BB
Best wishes to HI and your good self.
Observer says:
Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 3:57 pm
“Government commits $5.8 Million to eradicate cervical cancer”
Headline,
So less than what my wife and I are worth.
And no doubt 1/2 of the sum will go into making, printing and delivering the pamphlet.
Observer says:
Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 3:57 pm
“Government commits $5.8 Million to eradicate cervical cancer”
Headline,
So less than what my wife and I are worth.
______________
It’s been far too long since Observer delivered to us a full account of his fortune; funds, stocks, bonds, real estate and collectables. I think it’s high time he gave us an update.
Bloos
“Seriously, Conroy badly over-promised and under-delivered with NBN”
I see a lot factually wrong things being said on this blog, but it puzzles me how you got this egregiously wrong?
Towards the latter half of 2012 and into 2013, the fibre rollout was gathering serious momentum. NBNco was also trialing lower cost methods of fibre installation and succeeded. Indeed the leak of the NBNco report on new methods saw a vicious retaliation. More recently, details of NBNco’s review (under Turnbull) were leaked, revealing fraud. It wasn’t going to be cheaper and they knew it.
Please, get your facts straight.
There is no possible future in which Australia does not have a fully fibre comms neteork.
What the Liberals did was to add to that cost (and time) by inserting a temporary network.
Labor has a lot to gain when people realise just how incompetent Turnbull was.
Dog’a Breakfast @ #1401 Wednesday, November 17th, 2021 – 4:10 pm
Should hit 90% next Monday. Woohoo !!
Cud Chewer says:
Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 4:22 pm
Bloos
“Seriously, Conroy badly over-promised and under-delivered with NBN”
I see a lot factially wrong things being said on this blog, but it puzzles me how you got this egregiously wrong?
I think the NBN was successfully conflated in the public mind with a stack of real fuck-ups. Boats. The Mining Tax and its predecessor RSPT, the failed CPRS and its successor Carbon Price. The recurring mis-forecasting of the budget balances. These were serious political failures by Labor. The dumping of both Rudd and Gillard. The NBN was easy pickings for Turnbull, right or wrong.
I have said this before but in my time on periphery of the NBN project, and in it’s very early days, Labor, naively perhaps, used several rural exchange areas as pilot sites. The obvious plan was to get the cockies on side. In NSW, the sites were Riverstone and Lidcombe for the city and Kiama and Armidale in the bush. No prizes for guessing which area had the most problems. Why, Armidale, of course, where the Nats leant on their brothers in the local council to make it as hard as humanly possible to get the permissions for footpath openings, road crossings, night work etc etc. Anything to slow it down and make it look worse. And which demographic is whingeing loudest about poor broadband?
Also, the local member was Tony Windsor (not Joyce at that point) and the then opposition had (and still have) a particular hatred of him for keeping their petal Abbott out of the chair. We haven’t really come that far from the Rum Corps days.
Cud Chewer says:
Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 4:22 pm
There is no possible future in which Australia does not have a fully fibre comms neteork.
What the Liberals did was to add to that cost (and time) by inserting a temporary network.
Labor has a lot to gain when people realise just how incompetent Turnbull was.
You’re doubtless right about the Liberals. However, be absolutely certain about one more thing: voters could not care less about blame/blame. It gives them the complete and total shits. The blame/blame games drive voters away from politics. Albo, wisely, understands this very well.
If you doubt the accuracy of this, go door-knocking and ask voters what they think about politics. Listen to them. Really listen to them. They will tell you: they deeply resent the child-like squabbling, the point-scoring, the incessant negativity and the attempts to talk over each other. They see public fighting and they turn away.
They want something different from politics. If Albo can deliver that, he will win easily. The LNP and the Greens and the MSM are trying to draw him into scrapping. They have failed so far. I hope he continues to elude them.
Nah. The starting date of the NBN was delayed by legal complications with Telstra (price and asbestos in pits).
Turnbull – the rat – then falsely extrapolated the resulting low initial yearly figures and used this to mischievously claim that the optic fibre NBN would take 60 years to complete, not 6.
It was a rat act by Turnbull, who then – purely out of contrariness, just to be “different” to Labor – put in a clusterfuck of outdated multiple technologies and really screwed it up.
The media – all of whom had the luxury of bespoke, fast solutions for themselves of course, waxed lyrical about how “clever” all this was.
Remember they hype around “Innovation, innovation, innovation”?
WHAT innovation? All we got was virtually dead last in internet speeds, the end of the car industry, more coal and bigger holes dug in the ground making fortunes for business people in OTHER countries.
What a bunch of charlatans they are.
[‘Singapore: Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State who helped lead America through the Cold War, said the landmark virtual meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping was the first step towards reducing conflict between the two superpowers after years of escalating tension.
“We are through the mountain pass, but there is a precipice through which you can look in both directions,” Kissinger said on Wednesday.
“The necessity for both sides is to see whether from that position they can move to a pattern in which disputes are mitigated and in which they realise a victor is not possible without a risk of destroying humanity.”
Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore on Wednesday, Kissinger, 98, said the conversation between the two Presidents had the promise of a détente where coexistence becomes “not only possible but essential”.
“That now has to be followed in the direction that both Presidents have affirmed they want to pursue,” he said.
The elder statesman of Western foreign policy said cooperation across trade, climate change, and arms control were essential to maintaining dialogue and equivalence between the two superpowers.
“I think both sides have to accept that conflict between major technical powers of comparable capacities must not occur for the preservation of humanity,” he said.’]
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/kissinger-us-and-china-must-realise-there-can-be-no-victor-without-destroying-humanity-20211117-p599oc.html
While Kissinger’s got a point insofar as the virtual summit is a promising start to attempt to quell the rhetoric, there’s no way that China won’t reclaim Taiwan – by invasion, blockade or by any other means, and the US will not respond with its full military might when the inevitable happens – it wouldn’t get through Congress.
And Plod Dutton should STFU in the meantime and allow the big boys to work out the geopolitics of the potential crisis.
Bushfire Bill says:
Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 4:41 pm
the end of the car industry
_________
How many more billions should the government have given to the auto companies? It was 3 billion for the decade ending 2013.
“The irony of the NBN, in the end it was the Liberals who carried out the the over promise and failure of it. Thats why today NBN is having to commit to a much bigger fibre build to fix it.
History has once again shown Labors original plan for the NBN was correct.
Like Medibank to Medicare”
I’m pretty sure the original Labor plan taken to the election was significantly less than the fibre to the premises the original NBN mandate but that after the election information and experts convinced them to do it right.
Now Turnbull isn’t dumb so the only conclusion open is that he knowingly and deliberately conducted the greatest single act of economic vandalism the country has ever suffered. Between that, his farcical neg and the GBR scandal his legacy should be seen as a complete disaster.
There are still thousands upon thousands of duct kilometres of asbestos pipes in the Telstra PSTN network. And copper trunk and junction cables as well as fibre get hauled through them to this day. Does anyone seriously think a few fibres aren’t dislodged and directed up workers noses? Next time you see a contracting gang in the street (not Telstra anymore), do a quick count of how many are wearing breathing gear.
The cost to dig up and replace those buried pipes would be astronomical. Beyond astronomical. Can you imagine the cost of digging up and replacing three blocks of Pitt St? There are pipe nests of up to 36 pipes there and they are all chock-a-block full of cables connected to the richest businesses in the country. And all of that cable would have to be replaced and cut-over.
They were actually still building out subdivisions all over the country with asbestos pipes as recently as the early 80s. All PVC since then though. There would be close to a million pits and manholes across this wide brown land and a significant number are still there with asbestos all through them. The asbestos thing was just another delaying tactic for the NBN, among many. Can you seriously have imagined Julie Bishop, with her Wittenoom experiences being concerned? Me neither. Keeping Mr Murdoch happy though…
Bloos
I’ve no doubt that if you go door knocking you’ll find a whole lot of badly misinformed (and disinformed) voters.
But that’s the entire point isn’t it?
Who is going to change this, if not Labor?
Roy
Surely the cost of handling that was included in the $11 billion that Telstra was paid for its copper network.
WWP
Agreed. Had Labor made an issue of the NBN in 2013, the real issue would have become Turnbull’s competency.
Beemer
The original deal for Telstra’s infrastructure under Labor was on a ‘fit for purpose’ basis. Meaning Telstra had to stump up for remediation.
Then under Turnbull, NBNco did a deal for the copper, but that deal handed the risk and remediation costs to NBNco.
MB,
11 billion wouldn’t scratch the surface. That money was paid, in part, for NBN to presumably use for the A1 network they have built us. Anyway, no privately owned and listed company is going to pay to rip up useable conduits in every city, town and whistlestop in the country (yes, even those tiny portable building you see as you whiz by have lead-ins from the point where the directly buried cable links to the building). They may have been there since the early seventies when automation came along. None would have had their conduits and manhole entries replaced.
Btw what Labor is currently offering isn’t much.
Yeah, well, the only reason it reputedly took 7 days to build the world is because there was no installed base to worry about?
Premise, lead in, pit/ pole, pillar/ hub … exchange/ POI, as in access, aggregation to backhaul.
Still, nbn+/ NBN- for wired broadband something like 60s globally?
On Wuflu vax, New Holland seems to have gone from last in the OECD to about mid teens out of 38, if with lowish deaths per million of population, let’s see what happens on infrastructure, given some of international examples (like New Netherland).
There’s no [freedom/ freedumb] approach that still doesn’t get a run downunder, Ausminster/ Washminster and all that, no matter what even the Poms/ Yanks have already discarded?
Instead of learning from Scandinavia, Switzerland, SIngapore … countries with better iHDI, GNH or WCI scores.
Thanks Roy
I thought the government paid to have the copper replaced.
Beemer
The deal NBNco did under Labor for the pits and pipes (not copper) was more of a lease – with payments made for many years. The $11 billion was a net present value calculation. Not an upfront sale cost.
When Turnbull forced NBNco to acquire the copper – that was more of an outright sale. Despite the obfuscation, some estimate this cost $20+ billion since it landed NBNco with the remediation and replacement costs.
Thanks CC
There is no point in digging up asbestos ducts that are not being otherwise disturbed, and it would be far more of a risk than leaving them alone.
If pits/ducts are being disturbed then a check for asbestos-containing materials is made, and if found there is a whole to-do with properly disposing of them along with contaminated soil around them.
What is it with NSW Labor and Terrigal? …
Boris meet karma bus. Ironic given the racism underpinning the Brexit vote. As predicted by yrs truly:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/12/brexit-easier-small-boat-crossings-to-reach-uk-refugees-say
Rex Douglas says:
Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 4:23 pm
Dog’a Breakfast @ #1401 Wednesday, November 17th, 2021 – 4:10 pm
…..
Should hit 90% next Monday. Woohoo !!
So the Victorian Liberals think 10% is a working demographic, they really need to get out more. Perhaps extend their reading beyond Murdoch rags.
My thoughts on the NBN:
It is a pity that the ALP did not take fibre to the premises (FTTP) to the 2007 election and get the ball rolling months sooner.
The Gillard Government should have legislated FTTP (preferably before July 2012, so Abbott did not have the option of advising the Queen to use section 59 to disallow the legislation) then the FTTP rollout could have continued into the term of the new Senate. If Rudd had then been forced to call a House only election (Windsor and/or Oakshott calling/backing a no confidence motion before the end of June), ALP+Green Senate losses to parties of the right could have been limited by a half-Senate only election and legislated FTTP may have been preserved.
Cud Chewer says:
Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 5:16 pm
Bloos
I’ve no doubt that if you go door knocking you’ll find a whole lot of badly misinformed (and disinformed) voters.
But that’s the entire point isn’t it?
Who is going to change this, if not Labor?
Labor is not going to serenade voters by telling them they’re just wrong. That number will be left to others. Voters have little or no interest in these things. They hope for political representatives who will speak up for them rather than talk at them.
It is extremely annoying (and dare I say deliberately misleading) for the Morrison government to continue to quote vaccination numbers as a percentage of the population 16+.
https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021/11/covid-19-vaccine-rollout-update-17-november-2021.pdf
What will Hunt do when 5-11 yo’s become eligible for vaccinations? He obviously wants to make the figures look as good as possible prior to the election so I suspect he will keep population 16+ as the denominator.
A large project should be well planned, it takes time.
Until the Liberals came in and completely screwed it that is what NBNco was doing.
I have designed and and managed replacing HV cable in the CBD.
Go under and directional drill is the solution. Stay away from the old stuff:
1) It is in use.
2) It is un-documented.
3) Most is at its’ end of life.
For those bludgers requiring an interlude in the late 18th century….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue9I3eEySho
The Age
Former minister Adem Somyurek has proved his vaccination status to Parliament, clearing the way for him to vote on and potentially derail the pandemic bill.
_____________________
Welcome back Adem
Andrew Fisher should have began work on FTTP NBN the minute he was sworn in as PM.
Nath asks:
Better to spend 3 $billion over a decade to keep thousands in gainful employment, an industrial base alive, and prepare for future exploitation of the coming energy revolution, than pissing TEN TIMES THAT up against the wall in a mere six months supporting spiv donors and corporate hucksters to make record profits, and pay themselves executive bonuses, all while sacking their workers, don’t ya reckon, nath?
Wasn’t it Abbott who said Labor’s FTTP was only good for streaming porn?
And then we had the pandemic with who knows how many trying to use zoom etc. Watching my OH trying to teach TAFE with constant drop outs was more than painful. Shame on Abbott.
https://theunaustralian.net/2021/11/17/pm-tells-those-offended-by-protestors-with-nooses-it-could-be-worse-they-could-be-shooting-people/
I always enjoy The Drum more when Ellen Fanning is the host. She’s no way a conservative and her show is like an entertaining dinner party.
I think Abbott’s view on FTTP was based on his own first-hand experience.
nath must have had some bad experience with the car industry – a relative sacked? Or perhaps he bought a P76 lemon..
$3 b in subsidies over a decade compared with the $100b wasted on JobKeeper.
$3b is what the Liberals have pissed away trying to save a seat in Adelaide for the French subs.
The car industry was a training ground for apprentices, sustained a healthy components industry, and with the emphasis on industrial design, would have enabled a home grown EV industry – perhaps even utilising the unlimited lithium, nickel and copper we have. Now, the raw materials are just shipped out and we buy back the finished product – if the supply chains are not disrupted.
Joe Hockey told GM to piss off – his actual words – over $500m. This would barely build one of nath’s beloved Car Pork promises.
Who can forget the location for the Abbott/Turnbull Fraudband launch.
Fox studios.
The Bondi outbreak has come full circle…
‘Hundreds of eastern suburbs students are in self-isolation after multiple cases across three public schools, with almost half the children at Bondi Public in quarantine and students at Randwick sent home twice in two weeks.
In an email to parents on Tuesday night, Bondi Public School said about 250 students have been required to isolate, after confirming the first positive case in a “member of the school community” on November 13. Cases have also been identified at Rose Bay Public in the past fortnight, at least one of those on Saturday when a member of the school community tested positive.
It comes as parents of some year 3 students at Randwick Public were notified on Wednesday of another case, two weeks after the first notification. This time, the school remained open. “We still don’t know how many cases there were from the first time,” said a parent.’
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/worse-than-lockdown-hundreds-of-students-at-sydney-schools-isolating-after-covid-19-exposures-20211117-p599p0.html
Conroy’s folly was pushing for mandatory internet filters:
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/conroy-backs-away-from-internet-filter-20121108-290ym.html
Citizen
“It is extremely annoying (and dare I say deliberately misleading) for the Morrison government to continue to quote vaccination numbers as a percentage of the population 16+.”
The difference between 12+ and 16+ is very small in many jurisdictions ie < 1%
Nath
“Bushfire Bill says:
Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 4:41 pm
the end of the car industry
_________
How many more billions should the government have given to the auto companies? It was 3 billion for the decade ending 2013.”
The current Liberal “government” is giving more than $10 billion per year in subsidies to fossil fuel industries that employ fewer people, are mostly foreign owned (like the car makers) and pay virtually no tax. Yet it is still signed up to the Paris agreement which implies that industry has no future after 2050. So why give it > $10 billion per annum??
The ACT has been proudly reporting 12+ vaccinations for some time: 96.6%
6 new cases today. Hopefully it will continue to come down – but will it be enough to get off QLD’s “naughty” list?
This is one for the rumor mill, but interesting. In planning a technical event for Adelaide next year, a senior engineering colleague advised we should avoid March, because the Federal election is looking like being in March, and the State election will be put back to April 7.
Like I said, purely a rumor, but from someone who talks to people in authority here.
That the LNP could oversee the demise of Holden & Ford manufacture in Australia & still garner the bogan vote says spades for their pernicious motives.
Something about those WA politicians having someone pay their legal fees – at least Hastie says who it is..