The Australian had follow-up results from the weekend Newspoll on Tuesday showing how the two leaders compared on nine attributes, with accompanying tables neatly comparing the results to 14 earlier following the same template going back go 2008. It is characteristic of such results to move in lock step with a leader’s overall approval rating, and these are no exception, with Scott Morrison’s position deteriorating by between eight (arrogant up from 52% to 60%) and sixteen (likeable down from 63% to 47%) points since April, while Anthony Albanese’s movements ranged from positive two (arrogant from 40% to 38%) to negative four (trustworthy from 48% to 44% and experienced from 64% to 60%).
The result is that both leaders are at or near the weakest results yet recorded on a range of measures. Scott Morrison had the worst results yet recorded for either a Prime Minister or Opposition Leader on “understands the major issues” (52%) and “cares for people” (50%) and the worst for a Prime Minister on trustworthy (42%). However, he has the consolation that Anthony Albanese’s results were hardly better at 54%, 56% and 44% respectively. Both also scored poorly on being in touch with voters, at 41% for Morrison and 46% for Albanese, while landing well clear of the 33% Tony Abbott recorded a few weeks after the Prince Phillip knighthood. Conversely, Albanese’s arrogant rating of 38% is the lowest yet recorded, comparing with a middling 60% for Morrison.
Other news:
• A Liberal preselection vote on the weekend for the eastern Melbourne fringe seat of Casey, which will be vacated with the retirement of Tony Smith, was won by Aaron Violi, executive with a company that provides online ordering services to restaurants and a former staffer to Senator James Patterson. The Age reports Violi won the last round of the ballot by 152 votes to 101 ahead of Andrew Asten, principal of Boston Consulting Group and former ministerial chief-of-staff to Alan Tudge, with the last candidate excluded being Melbourne City councillor Roshena Campbell. Earlier reports suggested Campbell and Violi to be aligned with state Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien and party president Robert Clark, while Asten is in the rival Josh Frydenberg/Michael Sukkar camp.
• A Roy Morgan poll, using its somewhat dubious SMS survey method, produced very strong results for the Labor government in Victoria, which was credited with a 58-42 lead on two-party preferred, compared with 57.3-42.7 at the 2018 election. The primary votes were Labor 43%, Coalition 31% and Greens 11%. A forced response question on Daniel Andrews found 60.5% approving and 39.5% disapproving. The poll was conducted last Thursday from a sample of 1357.
lizzie:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 10:22 am
[‘Mavis
If the election is to be fought on the economy, Chalmers will have plenty of opportunities, but if Morrison senses danger, he will focus on something else, such as small government or security.’]
I don’t mean that he should be the only one, but once the election is announced, it’s usual practice for the media to
contact a nominated spokesperson for comment on the issues of the day, so as to keep mixed messaging to a minimum.
“Capitalism: The worst economic system, except for all the others
Steve777says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 11:25 am
Re Bloos @11:15.
Good post.
Capitalism needs to be civilised. The rules of civilised behaviour apply to corporations as well as individuals.
And a Capitalist utopia as seen by the likes of Hayek is as fictitious as any Communist one seen by the likes of Marx
”
Whereas unbridled and Corrupt Communism broke up Soviet Union into pieces we are yet to see same with Unbridled and Corrupt Capitalism.
That doesn’t mean Socialism is any better. Unbridled and Corrupt Socialism kept vast majority of people in NAM countries poor.
https://pittnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/pittnews.com/article/5424/opinions/capitalism-the-worst-economic-system-except-for-all-the-others/amp/?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16374648716180&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fpittnews.com%2Farticle%2F5424%2Fopinions%2Fcapitalism-the-worst-economic-system-except-for-all-the-others%2F
As Winston Churchill once said, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
I will take the former over the latter any day. I have made my choice. You are free to make yours.
Mavis
I love that. When Scotty’s in front of a mic, mixed messages are guaranteed.
Isn’t that communism?
“No, because we don’t call it that”.
nath says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 1:55 pm
Bloos says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 1:51 pm
Were they really “dependent” on the slave economies, they would have been defeated and/or slavery would have been revived.
__________
It was, as sharecropping.
We might say that modern day shopping malls are a form of sharecropping too, in as much as the occupants will be allowed to retain some offal, the ligaments and other shreds from their activities while the first grade meats, the bones and indeed the very marrow are kept by the owners of the malls.
Sharecropping adapted the slave economy to the legal status of the workers, who though they were free, remained bound to the land, not least because workers were tied by their debts to the landowners. Their bondage lay in their poverty, as much as anything.
Bloos says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 2:25 pm
We might say that modern day shopping malls are a form of sharecropping too, in as much as the occupants will be allowed to retain some offal, the ligaments and other shreds from their activities while the first grade meats, the bones and indeed the very marrow are kept by the owners of the malls.
_______________
Yeah, Nah. Apart from being debt bound to the land, sharecroppers also faced the legal and social institutions of Jim Crow. Your analogy is offensive and absurd.
I’m not sure whose scandal is bigger, but I can imagine the Barmy Army singing this every time Paine is on the field:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiCSSIEUukk
JimmyD says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 2:05 pm
Mexicanbeemer said
Good capitalism needs good government.
I agree, but I would go much further. Governments can easily be subverted over time. To truly reform capitalism into a horizontal rather than vertical income and wealth producing mechanism, we need to democratise economic decision-making and ownership.
Democratisation ….usually thought to be in conflict with the rights and duties of proprietors, and with the notion of exclusive ownership. ….there’s the thing too…the tragedy of the commons…difficult to reconcile these values/views…
nath says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 2:29 pm
Bloos says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 2:25 pm
We might say that modern day shopping malls are a form of sharecropping too, in as much as the occupants will be allowed to retain some offal, the ligaments and other shreds from their activities while the first grade meats, the bones and indeed the very marrow are kept by the owners of the malls.
_______________
Yeah, Nah. Apart from being debt bound to the land, sharecroppers also faced the legal and social institutions of Jim Crow. Your analogy is offensive and absurd.
The woes of debtors are very debilitating. We could do with reform of tenancies and franchise laws in this country too, considering how many workers try to subsist in retail and in service occupations…in the gig market….
BK – thanks for that
I am surprised Werribee is still manned by volunteers as it’s solid suburbia with people commuting to Geelong and Melbourne
Dad was a member of the RFS and turned out to a few grass fires a year and many traffic accidents a year. After 6 week Morwell coal mine fire of 2013 and summer 2019/20 fires I don’t think its appropriate to rely on volunteers to fight fires for extended periods
It’s dangerous work, and people need to be properly trained and compensated including workers compensation if injured or suffer health consequences
A R said
No, because economic decision-making and ownership would remain in the hands of individuals (either individually or as a collective), not the state.
The desired outcome would be for profit to be more equally and democratically shared.
lizzie:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 2:22 pm
[‘Mavis
so as to keep mixed messaging to a minimum.
[‘I love that. When Scotty’s in front of a mic, mixed messages are guaranteed.’]
“Mixed messaging” was the wrong phrase; “on message” is more to the point. The leadership team should be on all four with the major planks of policy. If they’re unable to explain policy minutiae, they should defer to the responsible Shadow. I recall in the last election that on one occasion when Bowen was questioned about dividend imputation, he become exasperated, saying something like if you don’t like our policies, vote for someone else. The fact was, he did a poor job of selling this policy. I’m confident the mistakes of 2019 won’t be replicated in ’22.
Bloos said
All true. But one benefit of pursuing economic democratisation of capitalist systems is that it can be done incrementally, as opposed to waiting/wishing for the revolution of the proletariat, as the Greens would have us do.
I would argue that compulsory super is an example of one such incremental reform.
About bloody time. He’ll probably make a half decent opposition leader after the next election.
I would love to see Jim Chalmers serving as a minster in a couple of terms in a Albanese government. There is no question a youthful Paul Keating benefited doing a couple terms in a Hawke government. To get used to the rigors of leadership the way Chalmers also would benefit in a government as senior minster under Albanese Prime Minstership.
For that matter so did Kim Beazley. I know Beazley lost two elections but I really think he was unlucky he didn’t become Prime Minster. The first election he won the two party preferred vote by almost 51%, the second election 9/11 happened.
Bloos @ #1742 Sunday, November 21st, 2021 – 1:45 pm
B:
I usually don’t bother with Nath’s adolescent glibness, but the “climate wasn’t suitable for plantation production” line needs elucidating (+/- slapdown).
It wasn’t so much the climate of northern USA that limited plantation agriculture (particularly cotton and sugar cane), it was the distribution of mosquito-borne diseases (particularly malaria & yellow fever) which limited the slave labour to Africans rather than the northern European indenturees (and convicts). The Mason Dixon line was (like the Goyder line) a rationalisation of a dimly understood but very economically real empirical limit of exploitation – not the (changing) absence of frost.
This pattern was established long before the 19 Century. East Africans were much more tolerant of malaria (specifically, the infant mortality was lower) due to inherited adaptions like sickle-cell trait ( which is why these diseases are so much more prevalent in African Americans). The Euro-Caribbean Pirate Imperialists worked this out in slave states like Haiti, but the (poorly- understood) practical principles of using humans as stock animals were exported to the southern states’ plantation economies in the 17th & 18th Centuries. The poor white trash of Europe couldn’t labour (or reproduce) as efficiently in the fever swamps – but were jes’ fine north of the Carolinas & in the uplands & interior. Ain’t much malaria in tham thar Appalachian hills, no more. Even economic bastardry (like slavery) eventually succumbs to non-human biology.
That said, I think your economic analysis is much more accurate & nuanced than mine – and certainly of Nath.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has reaffirmed his commitment not to grant freedoms to unvaccinated people until December 15, despite 10,000 marching in Sydney on Saturday to protest against mandatory vaccination rules.
—————–
Morrison was standing next to Perrottet claiming the liberal party at state and federal were not going to interfere and stop people from getting their freedoms back or telling them what to do.
What Morrison can not do is tell the truth and can not be trusted
Bloossays:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 1:06 pm
“The low-paid still pay very low income tax, because of the relatively high income threshold. This was the single best reform carried out by Gillard and it endures to the present. Taxes aimed at the very wealthy have been reduced. This is arguably very unfair, and means that taxes paid by median/mean income earners have increased and will continue to proportionately increase.”
Utter rubbish.
You completely ignore the massive welfare transfers to the lower and middle income earners that are part of the over all tax and transfer system.
“When I restricted the STINMOD base population to the working age population only (aged 18 to 65) and rank these people by their taxable income, I found that the top 10% (those with taxable incomes beyond $102,000 per annum) do pay around 52% of all personal income taxation.”
https://theconversation.com/factcheck-is-50-of-all-income-tax-in-australia-paid-by-10-of-the-working-population-45229
“Four in five Australians earn less than $100,000 with new tax figures revealing the federal budget is increasingly reliant on the nation’s best-paid 1 per cent to cover the cost of growing services and infrastructure.”
“The ATO, which broke the nation’s taxpayers up into single percentile groups, revealed the top 1 per cent included 82,000 men who had an average taxable income of $760,853 while for women the average was $753,481.
The men declared $62.6 billion in taxable income while 28,000 women declared $21.4 billion.
The men paid $26.5 billion in tax, the most of any group, while women paid $9.1 billion. Combined, these 110,000 people paid 17 per cent of the nation’s income tax.
Those in the top tax bracket, which starts at $180,000, paid almost $70 billion or a third of the nation’s income tax bill.”
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-s-one-per-cent-budget-reliance-on-high-and-middle-income-earners-grows-20210607-p57yrj.html
There’s plenty of other data out there showing that high income earners are paying far more than their fair share.
So, tell me, what’s your definition of fair? How much income do want to take from high income earners?
HI had her birthday party last night. Started out as “drinks” but by the time a couple of dozen people rocked up it was a full-on celebration. Most walked, so booze and driving weren’t a problem.
A common comment among the women was that they hadn’t worn anything nice and dressed-up for such a long time, ditto for make up.
The men were pleased to be able to just shake hands and have a beer or a wine.
All were double vaxxed, and several (including myself and HI) had had VERY recent negative tests. No “Freedom Marchers” in attendance. People just don’t want to get sick, period.
I heard even the woman across the street who was proselytising anti-vaxx propaganda has given in as she was losing customers by the barrow load from her bookkeeping business. A real case of caveat vendor there. Get vaxxed or go broke, lady. I think we’ll see more of this as time progresses. Ad I said, people don’t want to get sick.
It was universally agreed that Morrison is toast and that it’s time for a change. This being a pretty conservative area, that was an impressive stat. It had a lot to do with lack of Bushfire support, despite all the bullshit and promises.
There was a lively political discussion. The more drink consumed, the livelier. I came away convinced that what Labor has to do in response to any Morrison promise is to say, “You don’t really believe him, do you?” to anyone who challenges them with a piece of Libetal vaporware. Morrison is fast becoming a stranded asset for the Tories. The Boy Who Cried “Wolf!” has cried it one too many times, at least in these parts.
ScoMo has a warehouse full of last year’s expired bullshit to move before the election, but there are fewer and fewer punters prepared to stump up their votes in support.
JimmyD says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 2:38 pm
“The desired outcome would be for profit to be more equally and democratically shared.”
The risk takers make the profit – I’m not against taxes and welfare but there is a limit to how much risk takers should lose if the risks that they take pay off.
The term wealth redistribution should be banned because it is actually wealth destruction. The wealth is taken and then does virtually nothing to make the recipients wealthy. It generally changes from being an asset to immediate consumption.
Bucephalus @ #1769 Sunday, November 21st, 2021 – 12:01 pm
How much is enough?
What is the benefit to the society of this accumulation of wealth?
Bucephalus
My understand is that Bloos was referring to wealth, not income. It is true that high-income earners are relatively highly taxed, though from 2024-2025 someone earning $200,000 will pay the same tax rate as someone earning $45,000 under current plans, thanks to the stage 3 tax cuts.
Wealth is not highly or even moderately taxed in Australia, especially if you organise your tax avoidance scheme correctly.
Let’s see how well this BB prediction ages.
My Great Aunts are both holding on hoping to see Albo’s victory. Although Mathilde has been feeling very poorly and is only on custard at the moment.
What people may not be aware of was that when Howard called the election in 2001, Labor was looking down the barrel of a landslide. I’m only aware of this ’cause I was doing post-graduate studies with a former Hawke minister and he was keeping a number of the students up-to-date as the campaign progressed. Kim did an amazing job in saving a lot of Labor seats
Mexicanbeemersays:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 1:43 pm
“This is basically the point that Adam Smith and other economic theorist make about capitalism.
Good capitalism needs good government.”
Exactly. The Limited Liability Company is one of the foundation stones of the success of modern economic development. The rule of law and the protection of property rights is critical to successful economies. Just look at the post-WWII asian economic success stories – Singapore, Korea, Japan and a few others – strong rule of law and very little corruption plus a focus on free enterprise development and low tax rates to encourage economic growth and reward risk takers. Compare those with the various economic basket cases that are mired in poor Governments and corruption.
Despite Mundo’s dodgy hip and dicky knees he went for a bicycle ride with Mrs Mundo this morning. It was invigorating. Mundo was surprisingly up for the challenge and relished the outing.
Mundo has been reborn since watching Gentle Jim unload on Scotty this morning.
Bucephalus
In some circumstances that is certainly true.
But most redistribution that occurs via the tax system is of income, not wealth. That’s partly because wealth is more difficult to find and assess and therefore effectively tax, but also because the wealthy have unearned influence on policy-makers.
Economic development in Japan, Korea and Singapore has been very much State-led. The foundations of the Singapore economy are effectively in State control. But this does not mean Singapore is not a capitalist economy. It’s simply not a laissez-faire economy. On the contrary, it’s a very highly regulated/guided economy in which the elites depend on a large low-paid temporary/guest-worker labour force.
The risk takers make the profit – I’m not against taxes and welfare but there is a limit to how much risk takers should lose if the risks that they take pay off.
The term wealth redistribution should be banned because it is actually wealth destruction. The wealth is taken and then does virtually nothing to make the recipients wealthy. It generally changes from being an asset to immediate consumption.
________________________________
First, it is not profitable risk taking, but amassing of wealth that is the problem. Especially among those whose wealth is in the hundreds of millions of dollars or more. Secondly, again, it is the amassed wealth not income that is the problem. That is where the huge discrepancies are baked into gross societal inequality. Which leads to the third point. Immediate consumption is actually a good thing as it leads to jobs and further wealth.
There is plenty of money left for useful asset accumulation, even with redistribution of some wealth into pockets where it will be spent with immediate economic effect. Gross wealth accumulation which the current right wing spivs both encourage and enable through their corrupt conduct actually is damaging to economies – which is why there is a very strong correlation between the level of corruption and the level of poverty in a nation.
Bucephalus
I completely agree with this.
What I’m advocating is that employees have more say in the way companies conduct their decision-making, and enjoy a greater share of the company profit – profit which is almost entirely generated due to the activity of said employees.
Why should CEOs earn extortionate compensation for priming short-term stock price increases, while employee wages flatline or even go backwards?
Bloossays:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 3:28 pm
“Economic development in Japan, Korea and Singapore has been very much State-led.”
The major economic drivers of those economies are privately owned.
“The foundations of the Singapore economy are effectively in State control. But this does not mean Singapore is not a capitalist economy. It’s simply not a laissez-faire economy. On the contrary, it’s a very highly regulated/guided economy in which the elites depend on a large low-paid temporary/guest-worker labour force.”
You need to define this far better. Most of the wealth in Singapore is private capital. Yes there are Government Sovereign Funds but they aren’t most of the wealth. Yes, they have guest workers but they aren’t driving the economy. They are mainly in the construction and domestic services industries – not the drivers of their export successes in high tech and financial services.
The stand-out example in post-war economic history would have to be China. And yet no-one could say China is free from corruption. It’s system is totally reliant on systematic patronage, secret mutual obligation, confiscation, favouritism, arbitrary use of legal and bureaucratic processes, bribery, pay-offs, tax evasion, racketeering and so on….This is not foreign to capitalism. These are simply costs of production in China.
The idea (promoted by Bucephalus) that capitalism is in some way ethically clean is just wrong.
rhwombat says:
It wasn’t so much the climate of northern USA that limited plantation agriculture (particularly cotton and sugar cane), it was the distribution of mosquito-borne diseases (particularly malaria & yellow fever) which limited the slave labour to Africans rather than the northern European indenturees (and convicts).
_____________
Well this is a new interpretation. Somebody better get on to Encyclopedia Britannica. But then again Wombat was embarrassed by BB over Covid, so perhaps not surprising.
Although cotton can be grown between latitudes 30° N and 30° S, yield and fibre quality are considerably influenced by climatic conditions, and best qualities are obtained with high moisture levels resulting from rainfall or irrigation during the growing season and a dry, warm season during the picking period.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Cotton-Belt
JimmyD says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 3:33 pm
“What I’m advocating is that employees have more say in the way companies conduct their decision-making, and enjoy a greater share of the company profit – profit which is almost entirely generated due to the activity of said employees.”
It’s not their money. They don’t take the financial risk and nor are they responsible for the decision making of the company about those risks. If they want to participate in the risk then invest.
“Why should CEOs earn extortionate compensation for priming short-term stock price increases, while employee wages flatline or even go backwards?”
Because CEO’s are responsible for the vary large decisions that take risks to make the rewards that can be worth many billions in profit. It is for the Ownership who benefit from the stock price performance and dividends of the Companies to decide if the remuneration of CEO’s is worth it. The CEO’s compensation as a percentage of total revenue/costs is generally minute compared to the overall revenue and costs of the Company.
Bloossays:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 3:37 pm
“The idea (promoted by Bucephalus) that capitalism is in some way ethically clean is just wrong.”
Where did I say or promote that? Ethics aren’t related to the type of economic system.
State power is exercised very explicitly in many leading economies….in Germany, France, China, Japan, for example. It’s arguable that capitalism has succeeded in these places because private, sectional interests have been subordinated to systemic, central planning and control. Meanwhile, it’s arguable that in the US the State serves as a subsidiary or client of the corporate sector. …that the organs of the State have been mostly subordinated to private goals and interests.
Bloos
Further, many on the right like to promote the idea that capitalism and democracy are two sides of the same coin, because “freedom”.
China amply demonstrates that if you desire unconstrained capitalism, democracy is optional, and probably even undesirable
Bloossays:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 3:37 pm
“The stand-out example in post-war economic history would have to be China.”
It is a fine example because it was a complete economic basket case when it was a socialist planned economy until it realised that it had to become a capitalist state and then economic growth and development really kicked off. It is now a Dictatorship with an emerging capitalist economy.
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are other examples that could have become economic powerhouses but have been held back by corruption, poor government systems and sclerotic legal systems.
When capitalism is about evading your responsibility to society there is a problem
Hence the Liberal Party becoming a political party of the right, subscribing to the most effective form of regulation being self regulation and that austerity delivers confidence and that confidence will trickle down is the danger
Along with Federation, free markets and limited government
Whether it be government, capitalists or citizens the common thread is that they (and we) are all people
This introduces the pursuit of money, power and success to the exclusion of all else
Because you never judge others by self
No doubt those stumping up Capital (so money not a capital gain) deserve a return on that capital along with a premium for the risk they take with their money
But equally, everyone deserves a fair days pay for a fair days work
When you see the likes of what transpired with Jobkeeper whilst a demographic within the work force received no supports and were forced to their superannuation accruals because of their status within the workforce the wheel is out of kilter
“There’s plenty of other data out there showing that high income earners are paying far more than their fair share.”
This is a good example of inequality increasing if anything else.
Why are a small amount of people paying most of the tax, well its because they earn way more than anyone else.
“Four in five Australians earn less than $100,000 with new tax figures revealing the federal budget is increasingly reliant on the nation’s best-paid 1 per cent to cover the cost of growing services and infrastructure.”
This is rubbish, government doesn’t use taxes to pay for “services” or “infrastructure”. This government has spent 100s of billions on jobkeeper without increasing taxes, and are commiting to reduces taxes even further for the wealthiest.
JimmyD says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 3:47 pm
“China amply demonstrates that if you desire unconstrained capitalism, democracy is optional, and probably even undesirable”
Bollocks. They have achieved impressive economic growth but if they had freer decision making and less corruption through an open democratic system of government they would be even more successful.
Bucephalus makes things up about capitalism….
The rule of law and the protection of property rights is critical to successful economies. Just look at the post-WWII asian economic success stories – Singapore, Korea, Japan and a few others – strong rule of law and very little corruption
The really huge successes in these economies were built upon favouritism, protection of insiders and elites and on State-led development and investment….
You should stop romanticising history.
BB
There was a lively political discussion. The more drink consumed, the livelier. I came away convinced that what Labor has to do in response to any Morrison promise is to say, “You don’t really believe him, do you?” to anyone who challenges them with a piece of Libetal vaporware. Morrison is fast becoming a stranded asset for the Tories. The Boy Who Cried “Wolf!” has cried it one too many times, at least in these parts.
____________________________________
One of the critical reasons for Labor’s small target strategy (apart from doing the opposite of everything they did in 2019) is to deny fuel for Coalition misrepresentation. I expect one of Labor’s key messages when the election comes around is that the Coalition (the Beetrooter is actually worse than Scummo) just make things up. You can’t believe them and – more importantly – you can’t trust them about anything.
The other message should be that there has been almost a decade of waste, and wasted opportunities. Fancy announcements but nothing ever done. I doubt they will try to replace Scummo, but if they do the message is that they are all the same: waste, lies, untrustworthiness, and announcements that are never followed through.
All successful wins from Opposition (and not a few from government) have been by reading the zeitgeist and echoing it back to the populace. The zeitgeist now is that the Coalition is a bunch of useless do-nothing untrustworthy liars. All Labor has to do is make sure that the public are comfortable that it can’t be worse than the current mob. That is, it’s time to give Labor a go.
Nicko says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 3:50 pm….
the nation’s best-paid 1 per cent….cover the cost of growing services and infrastructure.”
This is crap. Investments in infrastructure more than pay for themselves. Investments in Human Resources also more than pay for themselves. They are not “paid for” by the wealthy.
TPOF says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 3:51 pm
All successful wins from Opposition (and not a few from government) have been by reading the zeitgeist and echoing it back to the populace. The zeitgeist now is that the Coalition is a bunch of useless do-nothing untrustworthy liars. All Labor has to do is make sure that the public are comfortable that it can’t be worse than the current mob. That is, it’s time to give Labor a go.
+1
If only the “risk takers” would take the down side as well as the upside, perhaps Capitalism might have a better press.
The false premise is the so-called “Perfect Market” from which all goodness comes.
In Economics 101 it is basically established that so-called PM is an artifice.
The second conclusion of Economics 101 is that so-called “free markets” tend towards monopoly. The day when a badly performing leader of a bankrupt business jumps from a 30 storey building rather and walking away with millions of dollars of “severance pay’ – while everyone else loses their shirt and more, will be the day I will believe in the Capitalist Fairy Looks After Everyone rubbish.
I think the difference between Albanese and Morrison is that Albanese is first and foremost a parliamentarian, while Morrison is (or fancies himself as) a CEO.
Albo gets things done through the workings and protocols of the House and the Public Service: consultations, debates, committees, laws and regulations. Morrison sees Parliament as an impediment, something that is in the way, there to slow him down, not to build consensus.
Someone who was at our soireé last night had once, back in 2020, told me he was in despair about Albo. He saw him as ineffectual and bland.
He’s changed his mind. After two years more of exhausting intensity and double-talk from Morrison this man yearns for peace and order, agreement rather than constant warfare, bullying and behind the scenes heavying. He wants a proper government with an honest person in charge of it, not a circus tent with a carnival barker out front saying anything to get bums on seats.
It strikes me that Albanese, while not admired as an orator or a showman, is also not distrusted as a charlatan, full of piss and wind, saying the first thing that comes into his empty head, as Morrison does.
I think as time goes by that Albo’s decency and honesty, his interest more in getting things done in a way that makes sure they stay done, rather than being a spruiker who only cares about winning, will see him even more trusted and appreciated as election day approaches.
Will our constitutional monarchy survive her madge, now plagued by hovering death?
A tart gish gallop through the darker regions of the family that automatically produces our head of state:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/20/what-fresh-hell-must-philips-will-contain-to-make-the-royal-family-look-any-worse
‘Bushfire Bill says:
Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 3:58 pm’
————————–
Spot on.
“NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has reaffirmed his commitment not to grant freedoms to unvaccinated people until December 15”
And even then they should wear something to indicate they are unvaccinated, so you can avoid them..