Ends and odds

Recent matters to report that aren’t state poll results.

It’s been a big couple of days for state opinion polls: a shock Newspoll from South Australia three weeks out from the election, a YouGov poll showing Labor still in front in Queensland, and a Resolve Strategic finding that Labor is back in the game in New South Wales. As well as all that, I can offer the following summary of miscellaneous developments to hang a new open thread off:

• The Age/Herald has related that the small sample of 170 Western Australian respondents from the recent Resolve Strategic poll had 64% supporting Mark McGowan’s decision to scrap the originally proposed date of February 5 for reopening the state’s border, with only 32% opposed. This compares with 39% and 47% respectively from the national sample of 1604.

• The Liberal National Party candidate for the Labor-held marginal seat of Lilley in Brisbane, Ryan Shaw, has announced his withdrawal. Shaw is an army veteran who served in East Timor and Afghanistan, and said he had made the decision to focus on his mental health.

• Lara Alexander will become one of the three Liberal members for Bass in the Tasmanian state parliament after winning the recount to succeed Sarah Courtney. This involved counting the ballots that elected Courtney at the election last May, which found Alexander prevailing over rival Liberal candidate Simon Wood by 5671 votes (52.9%) to 5051 (47.1%).

• The Poll Bludger, individually and collectively, was greatly saddened to hear of the death of Zoe Wilson, a.k.a. Lizzie, an unfailingly civil contributor to the forum of long standing, as was related yesterday in comments by Zoomster.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

947 comments on “Ends and odds”

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  1. Gareth

    Yes the internal dynamics were fraught. Pretty sure the UK also hated the idea. I didn’t mean to imply (but can see how it might be inferred) that it fell over because of US opposition.

  4. C@t at 11.41

    Thanks for that Freedman article. It set out very neatly some of my instinctive views about this conflict.

    It is interesting to see the growing momentum in the west to impose sanctions and to provide Ukraine with lethal hardware, software support and other measures.

    There is a degree of herding in this. Initially, each Western nation was trying to outdo each other in anti-Putin rhetoric, but held back more substantial support for fear of losing out domestically by getting too far ahead of the others. However, the more the populace of each of these countries sees what is happening and demands more action from their leaders, the more the leaders collectively feel safe in doing that.

    I only hope that the various populaces continue to support sanctions when they come to see the costs to them of imposing those sanctions (higher energy costs are just the very beginning).

    The good news is that (as Penny Wong pointed out so well this morning) we are starting to understand the need for greater self-reliance and capacity (so badly damaged because of the profits from importing cheap goods and cheaper labour).

    Xi has done Australia a favour by imposing his absurd trade sanctions and making his equally absurd demands (including the muzzling of Australian press). It has given us an insight into just how vulnerable we are by being so dependent on external supply and opened up the opportunity to do something about it. Unfortunately, all this government’s leader sees is an opportunity to pretend he’s Winston Churchill.

  5. Rewi says:
    Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 12:04 pm
    Looks like the soldiers on Snake Island surrendered and are alive in Sevastopol.

    _________________________________

    I hope that’s true for their sake and that of their families. However, it’s very hard to know what is true while the fog of war is about everywhere.

  6. I’ll let others on the board be the judge, by war-C@t’s bellicose ‘blood in the eyes’ responses pretty much proves my view: she no claims ‘foresight’? Unhinged more like. In her view anyone who defends a more sensible and nuanced position should, in her words ‘get in the bin’.

    Remember last year she was doubling down on defending the Iraq war of 2003: as Keating said last year Bush ands Howard (and I would add Tony Blair) should hang their head in shame. No over clusterfuck has done more to undermine the strength of the western alliance, weaken the defenders of the liberal order or embolden the despots since the end of tyhe Cold War than THAT. But as far as War-C@t is concerned, anyone who argues along those lines belongs in the bin.

    Someone posted a list of 50 world dictators a yesterday. By my county at least 10 now those are creatures of the West, and another dozen or so we do business with gladly. All because of the terrible shitful awful ‘sliding doors’ decisions C@t’as dodgy mates made over the last 25 years.

    Get in the bin? With PJK? Gladly!

  7. When it comes to the domestic electoral implications of the Ukraine situation, my thinking is that we will probably see a bit of a move back to the government – not because they are considered the better option in such troubled times, but simply due to the wall-to-wall coverage taking people’s minds of the government’s many failures as of late.

    The opposition has responded to the crisis about as well as could be expected, but I have to grudgingly admit that Morrison, Dutton, and Payne have all been pretty solid on the matter too. I doubt this will precipitate any real comeback for the government, but they will at least have the opportunity to look like reasonable statesmen for a little bit instead a the mob of squabbling idiots.

  9. TPOF

    re Herding: It also takes time to work together constructively.

    re Churchill: In Morrison I see a cartoon.

    re Xi: Rudd tied Putin and Xi together for us. Ukraine makes it real.

    re The World: Thankfully we’ll get a chance to change government soon. The current lot can’t be trusted.

  11. TPOF,
    Thanks. 🙂

    Yes, and, as the Tweet from The White House has shown, President Biden isn’t letting the grass grow under his feet as he steps into the sanctions against Putin and the Oligarchs.

    I think that one of the fatal errors that the West made wrt Putin and the oligarchs for too long was that they let the rope play out on the dissolution of the USSR and the embrace of capitalism by Russia. Such that, when Putin made his first moves, they didn’t confront him about it, not only because the populations of the areas he took over didn’t provide much resistance, but also because he was singing the NeoLiberal tune and to confront Putin meant that they would have to confront the fact that Neoliberalism had its faults. Big ones. Plus, the global economic consensus was happy to ignore Putin while he didn’t get in the way of THEM making money. And could provide an easy supply of energy.

    Not to mention the appeasement over too many years of Putin, and China, by too many American Presidents, Obama included, and other world leaders.

  12. The White House
    @WhiteHouse
    ·
    2h
    This coming week, we will launch a multilateral Transatlantic task force to identify, hunt down, and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs – their yachts, their mansions, and any other ill-gotten gains that we can find and freeze under the law.
    ———

    This site has a number of the super yachts and their locations 🙂

    https://twitter.com/scottbix

  15. AE

    All because of the terrible shitful awful ‘sliding doors’ decisions C@t’as dodgy mates made over the last 25 years.

    __________________________________

    I would like to point out that ‘Sliding Doors’ was a fictional movie where only two streams of events were possible. In the real world, there is an endless range of possibilities at every moment of decision at every time by every person who makes decisions.

    For a much better understanding of decision points in the real world, I would recommend Matt Haig’s ‘The Midnight Library’, in which the central character gets to live all sorts of lives where different things she regrets not doing (or doing) actually eventuate.

  16. Bludging wrote:
    Keating was trying to argue that the expansion of the EU would be instrumentally better than expanding NATO at inhibiting Russian aggression. He was wrong about that too. The EU has been very significantly expanded and that has made no difference whatsoever to Russian military intentions.

    The problem with your argument is the EU expansion happened concurrently with the NATO expansion. Without NATO expansion, the EU expansion may have worked.

    cheers

  18. “Rewi says:
    Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 12:04 pm
    Looks like the soldiers on Snake Island surrendered and are alive in Sevastopol.”

    Oh no, what a disappointment, I was just about to put some investment money into the coming Hollywood blockbuster: ‘Go fuck yourself’… starring Clint Eastwood, as an ageing border guard in his last assignment before retiring….

    Damn!

  19. ”Unfortunately, all this government’s leader sees is an opportunity to pretend he’s Winston Churchill.”

    …and seek opportunities to wedge the Opposition.

  20. The USA,UK and Australia lost most of their credibility to criticize other countries illegal invasions when they illegally invaded Iraq ,based on lies about WMD, and have never admitted their illegal invasion or paid reparations to Iraq.

  21. How to respond to the Russian attack on Ukraine:

    1) Acknowledge that Russia is not the same as Iraq or Afghanistan.
    2) See what else you can do after you acknowledged (1).

  22. Alpo

    Not to worry, there’s sure to be a Netflix premiere ‘Escape from Snake Island’ starring Jake Gyllenhaal you can plough your hryvnia into.

  23. Rewi says:
    Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 12:04 pm
    Looks like the soldiers on Snake Island surrendered and are alive in Sevastopol.”
    —————
    Is there a source/link for that?

  24. Earlwood,
    When war comes to a country via an authoritarian dictator, there are two types of people. The first group allow him to roll over them. The second group stand up and fight. You can say I may have blood in my eyes, or some other colourful over-simplification. You, on the other hand are from the first group who have dollar signs in their eyes and a yellow stripe down their back. Which is hard to see as you roll over.

  25. Rakali

    From the Guardian blog:

    ‘…in a recent statement, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine said:

    We [have a] strong belief that all Ukrainian defenders of Zmiinyi (Snake) Island may be alive.

    After receiving information about their possible location, the DPSU together with the Armed Forces of Ukraine are conducting work on identifying our soldiers.”’

    This corroborates the following, reported on CNN:

    ‘On Friday, Russian Major-General Igor Konashenkov said 82 Ukrainian servicemen “laid down their arms and voluntarily surrendered to a unit of the Russian Armed Forces.”

    The SBGSU statement added, “Russian media reported that Ukrainian servicemen on the island had been sent to Sevastopol” in Crimea.’

  26. Fe Sceptic @12:10 PM. ”Looks like Putin is still shit scared of Covid… Cabinet meeting”

    And/or shit-scared of his Cabinet…

  31. That picture of Putin isolated from his cabinet is startling. It is one with the picture of the long table. It graphically demonstrates the lack of trust, the lack of relevance allowed the other party, and the disdain. It shows a king on his throne.

  32. Rewi

    Ok thanks, that is the same link and it’s a report of the Russian media.

    “ The SBGS, the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as well as the whole of Ukraine, received hope that all defenders of Snake [Island] are alive. Russian media reported that Ukrainian servicemen who stayed on the island had been taken to Sevastopol, temporarily occupied by Russia. Preliminary information that border guards may be killed came before contact with the defenders was lost,” the statement reads.

    The SBGS stressed that Russian propagandists know how to produce false information reports and use them, noting that Ukrainian defenders have surrendered.”

  35. PB’s resident google expert on everything has done a Lord Downer and accused everyone who disagrees with her, questions anything or points out the hypocrisy of the US amongst others of being supporters of Putin.
    Who could forget lord Downer calling everyone who questioned The presence of weapons of mass destruction and didn’t support the Iraq war appeasers and supporters of Saddam Hussein.
    I’m a lurker more than a poster but this rubbish annoys me,surely people on PB can a have a discussion about events without being called cowards and traitors.

  36. C@tmomma

    I think TPOF’s point earlier that the fog of war can lead to badly drawn conclusions applies equally to prematurely declaring martyrdom as a demonstration of inspirational heroism for propaganda purposes. I think monetising stories of martyrdom for profit by movie producers is a far bigger social ill than my flippantly making fun of that conduct.

    I’m also disinclined to have my comments policed by you, given your propensity to declare those you disagree with the enemy within.

  38. Rakali

    While the reference to Sevastapol is from the Russian military, that they are likely alive is a statement by Ukrainian authorities.

  41. “The USA,UK and Australia lost most of their credibility to criticize other countries illegal invasions when they illegally invaded Iraq ,based on lies about WMD, and have never admitted their illegal invasion or paid reparations to Iraq.”

    What, forever? For a couple of decades? Until they repent to your required level of contrition?

    Or in other words, what utter bullshit.

  42. Rewi

    It would be good if the Russian media’s claim is correct. The Ukrainian Border Guards state that they do not know what happened on the island after contact was lost.

    I would suggest the Russian media is not necessarily the most reliable of sources.

  43. Rewi @ #505 Sunday, February 27th, 2022 – 1:03 pm

    C@tmomma

    I think TPOF’s point earlier that the fog of war can lead to badly drawn conclusions applies equally to prematurely declaring martyrdom as a demonstration of inspirational heroism for propaganda purposes. I think monetising stories of martyrdom for profit by movie producers is a far bigger social ill than my flippantly making fun of that conduct.

    I’m also disinclined to have my comments policed by you, given your propensity to declare those you disagree with the enemy within.

    Bit of an overreaction there. I’m not the blog police, nor do I claim to be.

    Sure Hollywood monetises war for profit. So does every country in the world that has a film industry. Have you seen some of the films coming out of China recently?

    Nevertheless, my point really was that, maybe a comment like the one you made would have been more appropriate when the war ends, rather than in the teeth of it. But, as I said, I’m not the blog police, and so would never seek to stop you saying whatever you want. If you don’t like criticism I’ll stop. 🙂

  44. C@tmomma @ #625 Sunday, February 27th, 2022 – 9:52 am

    Earlwood,
    When war comes to a country via an authoritarian dictator, there are two types of people. The first group allow him to roll over them. The second group stand up and fight. You can say I may have blood in my eyes, or some other colourful over-simplification. You, on the other hand are from the first group who have dollar signs in their eyes and a yellow stripe down their back. Which is hard to see as you roll over.

    simplification???

    What about option 3.

    The war is not in your country.

    Surely that allows for a much less binary debate.

  45. Dr Wombat wrote:

    Speaking of fighting past wars – would BB like to comment on these reports?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/26/coronavirus-wuhan-market-chinese-lab-studies

    My comment is that I see two studies have been done as a response to earlier calls for further studies.

    Those calls themselves are in turn the product of perfectly logical speculation that, in one of the world capitals of research into bat-borne coronaviruses, Wuhan, a world coronavirus pandemic originated in its “wet market”, with the virus’ genome being remarkably similar to others found in wild bats under study at the selfsame Wuhan Institute of Virology, just up the road from the Wuhan wet market.

    How the bats actually got to the wet market is unexplained, as their native habitat is over a thousand kilometres south-west of Wuhan. This is unless you count the regular traffic between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and said native habitat for the purposes of collecting specimens of various viruses.

    Or was it some other species that caught a bat virus (presumably from a bat), mutated it perhaps so it was suitable for infecting humans, and then brought SARS-CoV-2 fully formed to the wet market? DON'T KNOW.

    Did that species- whether bat or other – just fly, crawl or hop in from the wild? DON'T KNOW.

    Or was it brought to the market? DON'T KNOW.

    And if the latter, brought from where, and by whom? DON'T KNOW.

    If the studies were conclusive and “extraordinarily clear” why were they not published “in any journal”, given the sensitivity of the subject? DON'T KNOW.

    What are the names of the authors? DON'T KNOW.

    Hesitant as I am to further fight past wars, are the articles mentioned as reliable as the Lancet articles you were quoting in 2020, with all the authority and technobabble you could muster, that concluded the easiest way of catching Covid was through … wait for it … fecal contact? Or that one could only be a racist Trump supporter who watched Fox News all day in order to justify caution about aerosol transmission? Or that you couldn’t possibly catch the virus by walking down a narrow, crowded urban street? Do you still believe any of that?

    Gee, I hope not.

  46. Rakali

    Agreed, the words of the Ukrainian border service are pretty strong though:

    “We [have a] strong belief that all Ukrainian defenders of Zmiinyi (Snake) Island may be alive.”

    In my comment I said “Looks like”. I’m not asserting any greater certainty than that expressed by the Ukrainians themselves.

  47. Late Riser

    Thanks Rakali. Once you exhaust the billionaire boats, the thread is powerful.
    ——-
    I only had a quick look at the yachts… i thought their ostentation was a bit sickening.

  49. Sorry, my misreading they were not killed but were saved by the Russian navy which destroyed 16 Ukranian Navy vessels

  50. Hello Bludgers, I’ve noted a key difference between real leaders (Zelenskyy) and pretenders (Morrison). One is Ukrainian and when offered an escape while his nation is under attack says “I don’t need a lift, I need ammunition”. The other goes on holiday in Hawaii when his nation is burning and his only defence was “I don’t hold a hose mate”. I’ll take the comedian any day over the marketing man. It really puts things into perspective doesn’t it?

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