For those of you following the South Australian election, note the new post immediately below this one. For the rest of you:
• The latest fortnightly Roy Morgan poll has Labor leading 56.5-43.5, in from 57-43 last time, from primary votes of Coalition 32.5% (down half), Labor 37.5% (down one), Greens 12.5% (up one), One Nation 3.5% (down half) and United Australia Party on 1.5% (steady). The state two-party breakdowns have Labor leading 56.5-43.5 in New South Wales (in from 59-41 for a swing of around 9%), 60-40 in Victoria (out from 57.5-42.5 for a swing of around 7%), 52-48 in Western Australia (in from 53.5-46.5 for a swing of around 7.5%), 59.5-40.5 in South Australia (steady for a swing of around 9%) and 75-25 in Tasmania (a swing of 19%, with the inevitable proviso that this is from a tiny sample). The result in Queensland is 50-50, compared with 51.5-48.5 to Labor last time, for a swing of around 8.5%. The poll had a sample of 2261 and was conducted from February 14 to 23, long lead times before publication having become a feature of Roy Morgan’s polling of late.
• The Courier-Mail had results on federal politics from the same YouGov poll for which it published Queensland state voting intention results on Saturday, though this did not include straight results on voting intention. The poll found Scott Morrison at 41% approval and 47% disapproval in Queensland, with Anthony Albanese at 32% and 38%. Forty-three per cent thought a “Morrison Liberal-National Coalition government” would be better for Queensland compared with 39% for “an Albanese Labor government”. The poll was conducted February 18 to 23 from a sample of 1021.
• The Australian yesterday had follow-up questions from the weekend Newspoll on various questions of national security, which found 33% favouring Scott Morrison and the Coalition on handling the threat of China and 26% favouring Anthony Albanese and Labor, compared with 31% and 26% when the question was previously asked a month ago, with respective results of 30% and 24% on a similar question involving the threat of Russia. Seventy-four per cent felt China posed a threat to Australian national security compared with 18% who didn’t, while 64% held such a view in relation to Russia compared with 27% who didn’t.
“ Yabba
Missing those tests probably cost him 20 to 30 wickets.”
I think it actually freshened him up and made him shed some of his ‘boofhead’ characteristics, at least until the end of his career: he was lethal in England in 2005 – pity about the rest of the team. It’s a shame he he didn’t make a ODI come back in 2007 to make up for the WC opportunity he lost four years before.
I think that one year out of game probably enhanced his performance in the last 3 years of his career.
Grime
Ned didn’t have much to do with Melbourne.
Ned isn’t what we could call a popular hero not even in the high country but he has his fans just as many people see him as a common criminal.
Seadog says:
Saturday, March 5, 2022 at 12:09 pm
Warnie like a lot of us had some flaws, as far as I’m aware one of them wasn’t bad mouthing people hours after they’d died. Unfortunately some of the moral majority around these parts can’t say the same.
—
Settle down champ. Many of us (myself included) were happy to say what we thought to his face given the chance. And I took both of my chances when they arose.
somethinglikethat @ #1616 Saturday, March 5th, 2022 – 9:36 am
Bye bye loser.
A bit shocked by the many vituperative comments re Shane Warne today. I’d thought ‘we’ were better than this…..
Warnie bought one of my anamorphic lenses for his St Kilda love nest. Does that count?
Well at least I now know what an anamorphic lens is….
Gotta say though , there are some good memories of Warne: My eldest just sent a text to remind me that I took him to the Sydney test against Seth Effrica when he bagged 7-fa.
In turn I reminded him we missed two of those because his 7yo bladder needed a pit-stop!
Always saw Warne as a prodigious cricket talent forever locked inside a teenager.
Damning evidence by Person 4, who once loved Roberts-Smith as a brother, and which, according to Snow, ‘has been a watershed moment in this most extraordinary of defamation suits’. I think she’s right.
[“Poignant” is an unlikely word to use about a battle in which you’ve come perilously close to losing your life.
But that was the word former SAS soldier ‘Person 4’ chose this week, as he sought to explain why the battle of Tizak, as it became known, had bound him and Ben Roberts-Smith together in a way only two people who’d faced extreme peril together could be bound.
It was a hot mid-June day in Afghanistan in 2010 when an Australian SAS unit found itself pinned down in a terraced grove by two Taliban machine-gunners, who were raining fire down on the Australians.
The odds were “overwhelming” against his team, the former special forces soldier told the Federal Court in Sydney this week. The army would normally throw 30 soldiers up against one machine gunner, let alone two machine guns. But on this occasion, only himself, Roberts-Smith and one other comrade had a chance to try storming the enemy stronghold.
Together, he and Roberts-Smith managed to silence the Taliban’s guns. “That action was the highlight of my professional career,” he recalled on Wednesday.
“We both supported each other … we overcame overwhelming odds.”
Roberts-Smith would garner the Victoria Cross for Tizak. Two years later, Person 4 would be awarded the lesser honour of the Medal for Gallantry for the same battle – a delay which would sow the seeds of a simmering sense of injustice.
Yet at that time, he said, “I loved him [Roberts-Smith] as a brother”.
All the more startling, then, to hear Person 4 effectively label his former comrade-in-arms a war criminal in the courtroom this week.
What changed? Two years after the Battle of Tizak, in September 2012, Person 4 was serving as second in command to Roberts-Smith, who was by then an SAS patrol commander.
They were on a fateful mission to a village named Darwan, to hunt down a rogue Afghan soldier who had slaughtered three Australian soldiers on a coalition base the previous month.
At Darwan, Person 4 claimed, he saw Roberts-Smith kick an unarmed and handcuffed prisoner down a cliff, the man falling so forcefully that his teeth were knocked out of his mouth on the way down.
After he’d followed Roberts-Smith and another soldier, Person 11, down a path to the river bed below, Roberts-Smith allegedly ordered him to help drag the stunned villager to a nearby tree.
When he heard shots ring out from an M4 rifle (the type carried by the SAS), he says he turned to see the prisoner lying dead, and Roberts-Smith and Person 11 nearby, with Person 11 still holding his rifle in the firing position.
Person 4 added that he believed that the ICOM radio subsequently photographed next to the dead villager had been taken by Roberts-Smith from a different individual killed earlier in the day (though later he conceded he did not know this for a fact).’]
https://www.smh.com.au/national/once-were-brothers-the-slow-fraying-of-bonds-forged-in-battle-20220303-p5a1gb.html
Even the most battle-hardened can be untowardly affected by what they’ve witnessed on the battlefield. And if the respondents’ witnesses are to be
believed, the ongoing glorification of Roberts-Smith must indeed be a hard pill to swallow. Moreover, and as has been postulated by some, if the suit’s strategy is designed, in part at least, to deter the Office of the Special Prosecutor from indicting Roberts-Smith on war crimes, I’m not sure it’s been a sound strategy, bearing in mind the onus of proof is on the preponderance of probabilities.
Maybe the Reps election won’t be delayed till 3 September?
A by-election will not be held in the South Australian electorate of Spence before the federal poll, despite the immediate resignation of its long-standing MP.
Labor’s Nick Champion announced in February he would resign from federal politics in order to contest the SA state election later this month.
Despite Mr Champion’s resignation, House of Representatives Speaker Andrew Wallace said a by-election would not be held for the electorate, due to the timing of the upcoming federal election.
The election is due to be held by May 21 at the latest.
“With a general election pending, the Speaker has decided the writs will not be issued and a by-election will not be held for the federal division of Spence,” Mr Wallace said in a statement.
“This will avoid the necessity for the electors of Spence to participate in three elections within a short period of time.”
Mr Wallace said the next MP for Spence will be decided at the next federal election.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7644980/spence-by-election-ruled-out-before-poll/?cs=14350
Jackol:
Agreed.
I have precisely zero interest in cricket, and few strong opinions one way or the other on Warnie, but some of the commentary here today is pretty gross. A person has died, FFS.
Seadog @ #1668 Saturday, March 5th, 2022 – 12:09 pm
I thought exactly the same of him whilst he was alive. Didn’t realise you’re a Warnie fanboy. Lift the blinkers…
Sad to learn of the death of Warne. He was a real character, a larrikin but above all, a great cricketer. Here he is being interviewed by Edna:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQmWguPTF2A
Warne was a brilliant cricketer and a flawed human being (like us all) – but being in the spotlight magnified both.
But I must say, I really don’t agree with deifying someone after they died. We tend to remember our celebs as caricatures rather than people.
yabba @ #1695 Saturday, March 5th, 2022 – 1:29 pm
So you’ve forgiven Pell then. I haven’t. You really are the Queen of the Bigots.
U.S. COVID update:
– New cases: 51,140 ……………………… – New deaths: 1,922
– States reporting: 48/50
– In hospital: 35,560 (-1,746)
– In ICU: 7,007 (-228)
983,486 total deaths now
South Korea reports 254,327 new coronavirus cases and 216 new deaths, the biggest one-day increase on record
Hong Kong reports 52,523 new coronavirus cases and 188 new deaths
Asha – interesting insights on FJ. Resonates a bit with my experience. There’s a guy in his 30s who I work with. He’s from a middle class Eastern suburbs of Melbourne background, professional and moderately centre right in his views. We get on very well at a personal level, but I had to restrain myself when he declared during the Victorian 2020 lockdown, more in sorrow than in anger, that Dan Andrews would have to go. I was really surprised to see this guy turn up as a commenter on one of the FJ YouTube pieces- and more or less on board with FJ. I think he does connect with a demographic that mainstream progressive media cannot.
Just catching up on the latest NSW Liberal Party shenanigans…. suspiciously missing from both those journals of record the Sydney Morning Herald and Daily ToiletPaper. WTF are they doing?
“Today the federal executive of the Liberal Party resolved unanimously to intervene and appoint a committee to take over the management of the NSW division, in accordance with clause 12.3 of the federal constitution of the Liberal Party,” the statement reads.
Until 5pm next Tuesday, a committee comprising of Mr Morrison, Mr Perrottet and federal Liberal president Christine McDiven will have direct control in endorsing candidates without preselection challenges.
“The intervention ground is based on the circumstance that decisions have not been made in relation to the endorsement of three incumbent Liberal members of Parliament as Liberal candidates to recontest their seats in the electorates of Farrer, North Sydney and Mitchell,” it said.
The temporary dissolving of the branch’s management will mean sitting members Alex Hawke, Susan Ley and Trent Zimmerman will be able to contest the election without facing a preselection battle.
It is expected grievances within Liberal ranks over the decision could see court action over certain candidates already preselected.
In January, fury between the NSW factions was ignited after a supposed backroom deal elevated former young Liberal Alex Dore to be the preferred candidate for the seat of Hughes, currently occupied by independent Craig Kelly.
A number of Liberals were demanding preselection votes follow a rank and file process.
It also notes the federal executive has instructed the NSW branch to “rectify the circumstances” where candidates had not yet been preselected and endorsed for seats within the state.
The NSW branch will have until the end of the month to resolve issues with preselecting candidates ahead of the federal election.
“The federal executive today also resolved unanimously to request the NSW Division of the Liberal Party to rectify the circumstances that candidates have not been selected and endorsed in other House of Representatives seats and for this to be resolved by Friday 25 March 2022,” the statement reads.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7645072/pm-takes-joint-control-of-nsw-liberals-can-choose-candidates/?cs=14329
My daughter has just had to work her way through anti vax protesters in Melbourne, she was wearing a mask as she was trying to get a tram (that were delayed due to protest) out to Burwood.
Several protesters told her to take he fn mask off; feel a bit annoyed at this lot making eighteen year olds feel unsafe.
Think she is now in Frydenbergs electorate who is campaigning fairly hard already, may get her to enrol there to vote against him. The current government have not been governing they have been campaigning.
Just briefly back to the Floods:
”jonathan green ‘s Tweet
apart from anything else, describing this disaster as a ‘1 in 1000 year event’ is an unknowable absurdity. utterly meaningless, other than its subtext of absolving climate change. Journalism should resist this kind of empty laziness.”
Andrew_Earlwood @ #1699 Saturday, March 5th, 2022 – 1:41 pm
As someone who knew him from the age of 19 also stated:
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/shane-warne-the-tubby-blond-kid-who-became-a-superstar-20220305-p5a1zb.html
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7645072/pm-takes-joint-control-of-nsw-liberals-can-choose-candidates/
He’s been useless at this thus far. I can’t see that changing.
For example, I’m sure Craig Kelly knows a few things about Alex Dore. Clive Palmer will be the ultimate arbiter of whether they are used but without an MP in parliament, Clive’s goal of being a Lower House powerbroker cannot be reached.
We’ll see how that shakes out I guess.
“ So you’ve forgiven Pell then. I haven’t. You really are the Queen of the Bigots.”
Yeah because the equivalence between taking a couple of dieting pills (and he being a slow bowler, so we can discount the reason why said pills were on the banned list – as a masking agent for steroids) on the one hand [Warne] and on the other hand (a) playing an active role as a senior official in the cover up of pedophiles in the RC church, (b) being the author of the terrible, awful, no good ‘Melbourne Response’, and (c) even ‘entertaining’ the doubt that the High Court said that his jury should have, safely concluding on the balance of probabilities that he [Pell] was likely a pedophile himself, is obvious. Not.
Catherine Cusack – a NSW Lib MP From twitter and Guardian blog
Day 5 (FIVE) of 81,000 Customers affected by Telstra mega failure – lost mobile and internet during Ballina flood rescues. Evacuees, first responders, missing persons profoundly impacted. @Telstra
has betrayed NSW North Coast in our time of greatest need.
I thought exactly the same of him whilst he was alive. Didn’t realise you’re a Warnie fanboy. Lift the blinkers…
I’m not a Warnie fanboy, just don’t see the need to stick the boots in 5 minutes. after he died.
It’s not that hard to lay off out of respect for his family.
As my mum used to say when it came to the recently deceased
“If you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all”
Shane Warne couldn’t have gone out any other way:
Shane Warne was watching the cricket before meeting friends for dinner when he suffered a suspected heart attack, prompting his business manager to perform about 20 minutes of CPR to save the generational cricketer.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/warne-was-watching-cricket-about-to-go-to-dinner-before-20-minutes-of-cpr-20220305-p5a21m.html
“ The most successful spin bowler of all time, whose skill and humour inspired a generation of cricketers, was found unconscious with the historic first Test match between Australia and Pakistan playing on the television.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/shane-warne-the-tubby-blond-kid-who-became-a-superstar-20220305-p5a1zb.html”
Discovering that Australia selected 3 (or 4 if one includes Green) pace bowlers (and one of them Mitchell Starc) instead of 2-3 spinners probably impacted adversely on his health …
I liked Warnie
For all his faults, a better person than of some of the sanctimonious scumbags on here
Asha at 11.31am re the role of FriendlyJordies
In a way, FJ occupies a left-leaning space in a similar manner to Sky on the right.
I think FJ is better researched. For starters, he actually provides some evidence!
Lots of centre-left people might find FJ over the top in style, but if he’s engaging a different market with a different thrust to Sky, more power to him.
(To be clear, I’m not suggesting a moral equivalence between Sky and FJ. Too much on Sky is factless propaganda. FJ seems able to produce facts, just loves name-calling.)
Seadog at 3.22pm re speaking of the dead…
Robert Menzies died 15 May 1978, while I was on a seaside holiday with my parents and extended family.
My pro-union uncle said ‘I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but he did nothing for the working man*.’
*It was the 70s…
Tom @ #1715 Saturday, March 5th, 2022 – 2:47 pm
No. You know that. You think taking a diuretic is equivalent to Pell personally, deliberately, with forethought, psychologically torturing thousands of victims, and actively protecting child rapists. Behaviour which continues, right now.
And because I recognise a difference between the two behaviours, you take up the GG baton, and call me ‘the Queen of the Bigots’. What deranged reasoning process leads you there???
I repeat, what a sick, sour, sad, stupefyingly depressing individual you must be.
Mexicanbeemer says:
Saturday, March 5, 2022 at 1:22 pm
A full judgement on the Queen can only be made once her papers are released to see how much influence she has welded and what positions she took.
___________________________________________________________
Read Jenny Hocking’s The Palace Letters for a rare insight into how the palace collaborated with Governor-General John Kerr in the sacking of the Whitlam government in 1975. I know it happened 46 years ago, but it is still relevant because all the constitutional provisions which made it possible are still in place.
This alone is reason enough for Australia to become a republic.
Queen Elizabeth II of England and I of Scotland has proven to be a good monarch in so many respects, but this unwarranted, unjustified and covert interference in our nation’s politics was unforgivable.
SA:
1,861 new cases and 0 new deaths.
My grandsons and their mates view FJ as a prime source. He makes life so simple, without the slightest hint of phoney “balance”. There’s enough anti-Labor stuff out there in the mainstream to sink a ship, anyway.
While the MSM journos are tut-tutting at FJ and polishing their writing down to the bone, checking with the Editor that nobody will be offended, FJ has put out more hard-hitting, researched, meaty news – with many more readers – than the young “cadets” from SCEGGS and Newington could dream of producing. A story like the Dutton scandal wouldn’t get past the Reception desk at the SMH.
Peter Wicks is another citizen journo I really admire. AND he gets the yarns too.
Despite any faults Warnie gave me heaps of pleasures. Watching him bowl was exciting. One of the best ever to play for Australia. RIP Warnie.
A boom in gas prices driven by Europe’s moves to end its dependence on Russian energy exports could breathe new life into Australian liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, raising the stakes for a political clash over the future of fossil fuels in the upcoming federal election.
Russia supplies nearly 40 per cent of Europe’s natural gas needs and countries and energy companies are scrambling to find ways to turn off the tap to Gazprom, Russia’s giant export company.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/election-challenge-looms-as-australian-gas-boosted-by-russian-invasion-20220304-p5a1oq.html
Outcry after US senator Lindsey Graham suggests Putin’s assassination
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/04/lindsey-graham-suggests-putin-assassination-russia-ukraine
Experts in Russian politics argued that Graham’s suggestion was not only irresponsible but also unrealistic. Bill Browder, the financier whose work against Russian corruption led to the Magnitsky Act of 2012, described Putin as “probably the most paranoid man in the world”.
“He’s a very little man. He’s very scared of everybody, and he’s very vindictive. And so he’s constantly looking around for betrayal,” Browder told CNN on Friday. “I don’t think that there’s going to be a palace coup because he’s looking to try to stop it.”
At the daily White House media briefing, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said: “We are not advocating for killing the leader of a foreign country or regime change. That is not the policy of the United States.”
NOTE….. Psaki didn’t say it was a bad idea or shouldn’t happen!
You don’t talk about assassinating a leader. Either you do it or you don’t.
I usually don’t pick up calls from random numbers but I did today and it was an automated poll from the Kylea Tink campaign which was interesting.
10 questions.
Who would you preference first (Labor). If you had to vote between Liberal and Kylea, who would you choose (Kylea). Asked me about whether Barnaby Joyce also made me less likely to vote LNP and I said no. Morrison does that already. A few other questions.
I’ve noticed quite a lot of Kylea volunteers on the streets talking to the public – so I’d say they’re doing very well atm, especially since the whole dilemma with Zimmerman and the NSW libs.
Holdenhillbilly @ #1734 Saturday, March 5th, 2022 – 4:05 pm
Ahh Australian corporate media no doubt invested in the future of fossil fuels.
The fossil fuel cartel is strong and influential across the big corporations, federal parliament, corporate media, super/investment funds.
But we can’t ignore climate change any longer.
A strategic vote is required at the next election to stop us going over the cliff.
Let’s not be lemmings.
Let’s put aside our historical partisan leanings, at least just for this election.
Holdenhillbilly @ #1736 Saturday, March 5th, 2022 – 4:05 pm
I’m on the side of eliminating Putin’s influence in the world and the means by which he attains it. Which is the side of democracy and not the side of a barbaric dictator and indiscriminate mass murderer.
Jen:
I actually agree. But I think there can be a happy medium between deifying a deceased person and having a spray about how much they sucked while the body is still warm. The only time I consider the latter appropriate is when the individual’s existence has proved a genuine blight on society, and whatever Shane Warne’s flaws as a human being, he definitely was not that.
Mr Mysterious @ #1740 Saturday, March 5th, 2022 – 4:22 pm
I wonder if Mr Bowe developed the questions. 🙂
Not as such, but if it’s indeed from the Tink campaign, I (not you) may be privy to the results of the poll.
AE
If you get the chance to dead those Senate reports this afternoon I recommend you look at some of the submissions as well, notably no. 34 including addendum. It is written by a group of former senior RAN officers.
https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=8087714f-c9ca-4250-ae39-836c4b293df4&subId=687729
Thank you for your transparency, Mr Bowe. It was merely a couple of dots that may or may not have connected. 🙂
William Bowe @ #1743 Saturday, March 5th, 2022 – 4:28 pm
but you’ll give us a vague hint maybe …?
WB
Do you know when/if we’ll get to know the results? I’ve seen zero TZ signs out here – very strong push for Kylea all around.
The Warne family asked for no flowers.