As it usually does on Boxing Day, The Australian has published quarterly aggregates of Newspoll with state and demographic breakdowns, on this occasion casting an unusually wide net from its polling all the way back to July to early this month, reflecting the relative infrequency of its results over this time. The result is a combined survey of 5771 respondents that finds Labor leading 55-45 in New South Wales (a swing of about 3.5% to Labor compared with the election), 57-43 in Victoria (about 2%), 55-45 in Western Australia (no change) and 57-43 in South Australia (a 4.0% swing), while trailing 51-49 in Queensland a 3% swing).
Gender breakdowns show only a slight gap, with Labor leading 54-46 among men and 56-44 among women, with the Greens as usual stronger among women among men. Age cohort results trend from 65-35 to Labor for 18-to-34 to 54-46 to the Coalition among 65-plus, with the Greens respectively on 24% and 3%. Little variation is recorded according to education or income, but Labor are strongest among part-time workers and weakest among the retired, stronger among non-English speakers but well ahead either way, and 62-38 ahead among those identifying as of no religion but 53-47 behind among Christians. You can find all the relevant data, at least for voting intention, in the poll data feature on BludgerTrack.
Boerwar @ #2094 Sunday, January 1st, 2023 – 2:02 pm
If Socialist leftie Albo doesn’t want to buy back QANTAS, then yes ban air travel and get on with build a Govt own very fast rail around the country for the essential travel.
Quite a bizarre story here. I assume the journalist knows fuck all about what is happening. Fungus ‘in’ the ship’s hull?
further:
‘….
“A limited amount of standard marine growth is being cleaned from the ship’s hull – a standard cleaning procedure for nautical vessels,” they said in an emailed statement on Sunday.
…’
It is NOT a standard cleaning procedures for ships to have parts of their hulls scraped while standing off.
I can only assume that the hull is encrusted with invasive marine pests and the ship has been ordered not to dock in Australian ports because of that.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/01/viking-orion-hundreds-of-passengers-stranded-on-cruise-ship-off-south-australia
Late Riser @ #2099 Sunday, January 1st, 2023 – 2:05 pm
It’s a step forward, but the religious extremists in politics are still too involved in law.
If I make it to 90yo, I want the freedom, dignity and peace of mind to be able to choose when my life ends.
If it is fine to shut down the almond, grape, olive, rice, dairy and cotton industries because they are grown in hot areas using irrigation water then shutting down the elite’s playthings should be a doddle for the doctrinaire greens foot walking brigade.
‘Abundance of Caution’ has made a comeback:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2023/jan/01/australia-live-news-updates-linda-burney-indigenous-voice-new-year-anthony-albanese-peter-dutton-labor-coalition
nath
That was because the private sector butchers were crap, i.e. they often had no meat
Now – Qantas has received $2B of public money during the pandemic, and Mr. Joyce has paid himself $18m. And now instead of flights maintained as an essential service, delivered “random” cancellations.
Far more case for Mr. Joyce to be abused in Parliament than Ms Holgate, who wasn’t getting any public money. I don’t know whether the little prick is an Irish dual citizen, but if so deportation would be a reasonable option.
Boerwar says:
Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 1:59 pm
‘Sceptic says:
Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 12:42 pm
Such a lack of talent .. all in one spot at the same time
…..’
—————————
Too easy. And, IMO, wRONg.
Hill is the best environment minister Australia has ever had.
(If Plibersek achieves what she has said she would deliver she might outshine Hill.)
I also have considerable admiration for Angus Houston.
Cosgrove is no slouch, either.
——————————————————————————————-
Having worked closely with Cosgrove I can certainly provide a first person perspective in relation to moral courage, humour, humility and general capacity. Not perfect (and he never pretended to be) but honest, decent and reliable. I never knew Houston however his attempts to stand against Howard and his ministers in relation to the children overboard incidents under difficult circumstances gave me cause to consider him as honourable and a very good leader.
Naf has lead us in to an anti labor trap briging up mark arbib out of no where i think thatObead has largily been forgottin now the similar power broker in vick Somyurek was re elected on the back of f sky news because heobveously had no true labor values and was only interested in power desbite him admiting to branch stacking because he wanted to distroy Andrews credlin lead the charge to rehabilitate him as a some sort of hearow yet after 10 years mclimont cant let go of obead who is in jailbut last year we have barilarow links with doggy property developers and his trade role
Said it before say it again. Politicians should get out of the complimentary Qantas lounges. Albanese should not have hosted Joyce on the RAAF plane to Canberra. Qantas should get no more money from the public purse without some equity.
plus there is hills cowncil and John Ajaka former liberal mp appointed to general manager of liverpool cowncil buy the liberal majority cowncil lead buy Ned Maaunoun but the liberal stooge naf tricked us in to bringing down labor again with his mark arbib distraction
I get his side is strugiling out of power evry where and arbib might be a good distraction but what abbout Hellin Coonan being chair of crown andpackers links with perrottit
plus its not suprising the liberals lack of action on climate change many x liberal and natiionals oficials went to the minerals cowncil even the gardian failed to let its readers know that when it mentiond that the palaszuk government would face a campaign buy the qld resourcis cowncil againsts agring to albanese plan that its head is the former liberal minister didnt peta credlin also work foor packer before joing sky foor evergraham richardson there is a coonan
How could any one think that Robbert hill was a great environment minister he could not convince his cabenit to deal with climate change or sign the kioto profile then he went to defence and over saw the iraq war his peariod as environment minister is largily forgottin is one of the leser known members of howards government desbite being senate leader on qantas dont want to fall in to nafs trap but senior oficial olivia worth is maried to former awu head Paul howes who morrison appointed to his pro business advisary group
it seems the fus 2gb tried to create was moore a factional dispute to atempt to weakin BErijecklien from the hard right then actualy about the ishue even though davies and co aposed when asisted duying was legislated under perottit desbite aposing it there was no atempt to bring down the government like 2gb failed to do over the abortion ishue now the 3 upper house mps that lead the campaign are dumpt from re contesting
Cronus
Your observations about Cosgrove tend to confirm my views, gained indirectly. Houston and Hill I know personally. The notion that they exhibit ‘lack of talent’ is risible.
‘Aaron newton says:
Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 2:32 pm
How could any one think that Robbert hill was a great environment minister…’
———————————————————-
Hill delivered huge gains for the environment.
The only other environment minister who came close was Richardson and he was more interested in project by project preference deals than he was in the environment.
How many environment ministers in the past 30 years have delivered on climate? None of them… Bowen is the first and I am inclined to go by results there so it is too soon to say.
It should be a sobering thought for the Greens that Hill by himself delivered more for the environment than three decades of Greens Party chatterboxes.
Australia will introduce mandatory Covid testing for travellers from China amid a “rapidly developing situation”. On Sunday, Health Minister Mark Butler said that Australia had decided to follow the position of countries across Asia, North America and Europe to introduce measures amid the “absence of comprehensive information about the situation in China”.
“The Australian Government shares the concerns expressed by a number of governments and particularly the World Health Organisation,” he said.“Out of an abundance of caution, travellers from China will need to provide a negative test before their flight. “The World Health Organisation has described such measures as understandable.”
Yes yes Lib and Lab have done a simply marvellous job re our environment just awesome.
…huh ??
Aaron newton says:
Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 2:23 pm
Naf has lead us in to an anti labor trap briging up mark arbib out of no where
______________________
Actually I didn’t bring him up, but always happy to give my opinion on him.
Gorgon.. Santos… Adani… our native forests… fracking our water table
Count how many koala’s are left. You’ll only need your fingers and toes…
Aaron – r u a former Obeid/Tripodi staffer ?
Well if any one is interesterted arbibb is stratigy director for a lidergation firm as well as on the bord off the olympick comity and other bords and former crown chair hellin coonan former liberal minister works for the minerals cowncil and carl bitar is a consultint credlin worked foor packer after leving tony abbott
Said the spider to the fly:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202212/1282890.shtml
Such a heartwarming smile:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202212/1283006.shtml
Meanwhile, hot from the Pravda presses, a Napoleonically styled Zelenskiiy is forcing an english therapist to live in her car!
https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/155342-ukraine_europeans/
Lars
Happy new year.
I am not sure how Premier Minns will go but the intense dislike for him expressed by Right insiders on PB makes me think he will be either very, very good or very, very bad.
Oakeshott Country. Everyone loves a winner. If Labor wins then i suspect his personal critics will be quiet.
Its still a tough ask to win. Could be a Shorten/Iemma election. One too early.
wranslide @ #2128 Sunday, January 1st, 2023 – 3:11 pm
He voted against VAD.
Massive red flag.
Looking through the various twitter feeds and videos of expensive, late model Russian Tanks throwing their turrets. Saw a recent one where the turret fell to earth a good 10 seconds after the Tanks blew up. And then other vehicles getting small bombs dropped on them from a quad-copter. Thats fairly normal practice in Ukraine and reminded me of where the words “Tank Plinking” came from. I read an article on that years ago after the 1st Gulf War.
Yup, the Seppo’s, and of course they did it with a degree of overkill back then. Each Iraqi tank they got then caught a 500lb LBG on the roof. 🙁 I think that episode was actually a driver for the development of the guided, gliding, 250lb “small diameter bomb” which the Yanks have now mounted on old HIMARS round boosters and have been talking about supplying to Ukraine??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_plinking
its true OC – senior Labor insiders like c@t seem very hostile to Minns in their previous comments. Still as JFK said Victory has a thousand fathers , defeat is an orphan which I think is Wranslide’s point.
Happy new year every one
Predictions
Nsw Lib/nats combined primary vote will not get to 40%+, and will lose government
The voice referendum likely to pass
Federal liberal party and Federal national party to have new leaders
The corrupt lib/nats propaganda media units to go absolute crazy
Lars Von Trier @ #2131 Sunday, January 1st, 2023 – 3:19 pm
Bullshit, Liars. It’s Andrew_Earlwood who doesn’t like Chris Minns. I’ve always said I am prepared to give him a go. And I have also said that it’s Jamie Clements that I don’t like, and justifiably so after the way he thought he could hit on young female staffers when he was General Secretary. So, as long as Chris Minns doesn’t bring Jamie Clements back into the fold then that’s fine by me.
Fair enough c@t if that’s your view.
I do remember a-e being hostile to Minns as well to be fair.
imacca
Overkill depends on the context.
The pave track system could be, and was, retrofitted to dumb bombs. This hugely increased their precision. Instead of dropping a dozen 500lb bombs around a couple of tanks hoping that one or the other would disable the tank, pave track enabled the bomb to hit the tank.
Rather than build a whole new stock of smaller and more appropriately sized bombs, the US used the existing inventory of 500lb bombs.
On an individual basis, this looked like overkill.
It was, in fact, maximizing stock on hand.
Once reason it worked extremely well in Iraq was because Iraq AA defences were weak. The bombs could glide down the laser path without disruption.
Firing HIMARs versus firing dumb artillery firing dumb 155mm rounds is a somewhat similar efficiency multiplier.
Lars Von Trier @ #2134 Sunday, January 1st, 2023 – 3:27 pm
I liked Jodi Mackay but I knew she was not making an impression on the Liberals. Plus, she was put in to counter Gladys. Now we have a Perrottet-Minns contest. I think we now have at least a 50-50 chance of beating the Coalition in March. We’ll see.
William Bowe
Happy New Year. And thank you for hosting this terrific blog.
I am looking forward to seeing your magic on NSW election night.
BW @ 1414.
Re the cruise ship MV VIKING ORION. You are correct. She would normally be dry docked to removed marine growth.
About time the marine authorities get tough on things like this.
MV VIKING ORION was in Melbourne on 11 December and is (was?) due to berth at Port Melbourne’s Station Pier at 0800 tomorrow. According to the excellent Marine Traffic app she’s not going anywhere at present.
A further update on MV VIKING ORION… she has been apparently banned entering Port Phillip Bay according to a comment from a clearly angry passenger on board via Twitter. Sorry but our maritime ecosystem comes first and foremost not your cruise. Deal with it.
Excellent.
Now the question is when/will the cruise line have to transfer pax to shore using tenders.
Boerwar at 2.37 pm
I don’t doubt Robert Hill’s talent, nor his perseverence, but I once questioned publicly his moral compass, and he was neither amused nor repentant, to put it mildly. The occasion was a public talk he gave at UWA when he was employed by Dow Chemicals via Sydney Uni (see excerpt from his wikipedia entry below). The question concerned the crime against humanity perpetrated at Bhopal in early December 1984 by the US Corporation Union Carbide, which was bought by Dow in 2001 and owned by it when Hill worked for them. There was no accountability for gross industrial negligence at all. Soon after the terrible disaster the American boss of Union Carbide Warren Anderson was briefly detained in India but then released under US pressure.
The companies (Union Carbide and Dow) have never acknowledged that cost-cutting and terribly slack safety procedures contributed to the disaster. The safety procedures at the Indian plant were far inferior to those at US chemical plants. An awful lot of very shameful details are public about what caused the disaster, yet still, “now owned by Dow Chemical Company, Union Carbide maintains a website dedicated to the tragedy and claims that the accident was the result of sabotage, stating that sufficient safety systems were in place and operative to prevent the intrusion of water.”
It gets worse. “The release of an email cache related to intelligence research organisation Stratfor was leaked by WikiLeaks on 27 February 2012. It revealed that Dow Chemical had engaged Stratfor to spy on the public and personal lives of activists involved in the Bhopal disaster, including the Yes Men. E-mails to Dow representatives from hired security analysts list the YouTube videos liked, Twitter and Facebook posts made and the public appearances of these activists. Journalists, filmmakers and authors who were investigating Bhopal and covering the issue of ongoing contamination, such as Jack Laurenson and Max Carlson, were also placed under surveillance. Stratfor released a statement condemning the revelation by Wikileaks while neither confirming nor denying the accuracy of the reports, and would only state that it had acted within the bounds of the law. Dow Chemical also refrained to comment on the matter.” (Quotes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster)
Further: “Estimates of the death toll vary from as few as 3,800 to as many as 16,000, but government figures now refer to an estimate of 15,000 killed over the years. Toxic material remains, and 30 years later, many of those who were exposed to the gas have given birth to physically and mentally disabled children. For decades, survivors have been fighting to have the site cleaned up, but they say the efforts were slowed when Michigan-based Dow Chemical took over Union Carbide in 2001.” (From https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/12/bhopal-the-worlds-worst-industrial-disaster-30-years-later/100864/ )
For a story by a US health reporter, Apoorva Mandavilli, including on contamination see:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/the-worlds-worst-industrial-disaster-is-still-unfolding/560726/
Over 6 years from 2010 Dow provided $3 million to Sydney Uni. For an overview see:
https://www.ussc.edu.au/programs/dow-sustainability-program/about
The program report is at:
https://united-states-studies-centre.s3.amazonaws.com/attache/70/cc/d9/6a/45/70/9a/51/75/a9/18/ce/9e/52/9d/07/2016_Dow_Program_Report.pdf
What was achieved? An awful lot of jet-setting, and a few bits of paper, to judge by the first focus, the so-called “alternative transport fuels initiative”. In the report’s words:
“What we achieved: One of the most significant outcomes of my work from 2010 to 2012 was the September 2011 signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the US Federal Aviation Administration and Australia’s Department of Resources, Energy, and Tourism to work collaboratively on alternative aviation fuels.” (Susan Pond, AM)
And, in fact, what really, albeit temporarily, reduced aviation fuels? A virus, Covid 19.
‘Following his return to Australia in 2009, Hill accepted an appointment as Adjunct Professor in Sustainability at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney where he was involved in the development of the $2 million Dow Sustainability Program, funded by the US-based Dow Chemical Company Foundation, to bring together academic and policy experts from Australia and the US to develop action-oriented solutions to a range of sustainability challenges concerning energy, water, food and biodiversity that are technologically innovative, commercially scalable and politically viable.’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hill_(Australian_politician)#Later_career)
”Its still a tough ask to win. Could be a Shorten/Iemma election. One too early.”
Morris Iemma won the only election he faced as Premier, in 2007. In retrospect some (not me) say it was one election win too many for Labor. Iemma resigned in the kerfuffle over elecricity privatisation in 2008, Nathan Rees had a go before being deposed in favour of Kristina Keneally a year later and she would go on to lose the next election badly in 2011.
Does cannabis have a role in cancer treatment?
– https://oncologynews.com.au/events/does-cannabis-have-a-role-in-cancer-treatment/
Some key points:
– trial at Chris O’brien Centre in Sydney
– cohort is chemo patients experiencing significant nausea from treatment
– significant number of eligible patients refused to participate in any medicinal cannabis trial
– significant number of eligible patients decided not to participate in medicinal cannabis trial due to need to be able to drive (and not drive like Taylormade)
– in the cohort as above, the trial found significant 10% improvement in nausea control as reported (so “semi-objective”)
– trial found > 10% preference for treatment cycles including cannabis element (subjective)
– trial was randomised and placebo controlled, but limited (presumably by funding). It was two chemo cycles with crossover, so the randomisation was simply whether patient got cannabis in first cycle and placebo in second, or vice versa. This seems weak to me, and longer duration trial with more sophisticated randomisation (inhibiting patients from guessing which was active cycle and which was placebo) would be better
– the > 10% subjective preference was attributed to “mild high”, perhaps countering moderate depression and/or anxiety, both of which would be strongly suspected in cancer (my nurses have in the last six months taken to 10 point scoring of “how are you feeling overall”, so it’s a thing)
LSD has been used for anxiety in breast cancer survivors inter alia, perhaps it could be compared
Grant_ExLibris @ #1816 Sunday, January 1st, 2023 – 3:55 pm
I think this is not the only example of marine authorities tightening up on the monitoring. Recently one or two cruises were not allowed into the fiords/sounds in NZ for the same reason.
Lars, to be fair to c@t, as a person of significant influence in Labor, she does support the leader when they are in the seat.
Dr D
Thanks for the commentary.
I take your point on Hill’s personality.
I don’t know anything about his accountability for Bhopal and am willing to acknowledge that you clearly know a whole lot more about that than I do.
The first point might just help explain one of the reasons WHY he remains Australia’s best environment minister. Think of the Cabinet within which he operated!
Your second point does not detract from the general point that he remains Australia’s best environment minister.
I reiterate my follow up point. Hill achieved far more for the environment than three decades of Greens chatterboxes.
I managed, by poking myself in the eye, to exude a tear in response to this one.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-01/wombat-road-deaths-spike-during-summer-holidays/101819346
More on that cruise from the Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/01/viking-orion-hundreds-of-passengers-stranded-on-cruise-ship-off-south-australia
if hill was so good wonder whiy he failed back in 1994 to wiin boothby with the talintles andrew southcott gaining the seat aparently downer did not like him even in his own state Vanstonepine and minchen had a higher publick profile desbite his record as longist senite leaderhhe is hardly ever talked about as one of the better ministers in howards government
Aaron what was Eddie and Joe’s POV on former Senator Hill?
Was to yung to follow politics during his time but all the news reports sugested that he lacked influence at least vanstone was sceen as the head of howawards moderits he eventried to stop turnbull in his seat
An
Name a single environment minister who came even close to Hill’s achievements as environment minister.
(We can take it as read that you will not name a Greens chatterbox.)