James Massola of the Age/Herald reports that “expectations (are) growing that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison will quit politics”, probably between the May budget and the end of the year, entailing a by-election for his seat of Cook. Please let it be so, because a valley of death stretches before those of us in the election industry out to the second half of next year, to be followed by a flood encompassing the Northern Territory on August 24, the Australian Capital Territory on October 19, Queensland on October 26 and Western Australia on March 8 the following year (UPDATE: It’s noted that the Queensland local government elections next March, inclusive as they are of the unusually significant Brisbane City Council and lord mayoralty, should rate a mention). A normal federal election for the House of Representatives and half the Senate could happen in the second half of 2024 or the first of 2025, the alternative of a double dissolution being presumably unlikely.
Redistributions will offer some diversion in the interim, particularly after the Electoral Commissioner calculates how many House of Representatives seats each state is entitled to in the next parliament on June 27. This is likely to result in Western Australia gaining a seat and New South Wales and Victoria each losing one (respectively putting them at 16, 46 and 38), initiating redistribution processes that are likely to take around a year. There is also an outside chance that Queensland will gain a thirty-first seat. The Northern Territory will also have a redistribution on grounds of it having been seven years since one was last conducted, although this will involve either a minimal tweak to the boundary between Solomon and Lingiari or no change at all. At state level, a redistribution process was recently initiated in Western Australia and should conclude near the end of the year. The other state that conducts a redistribution every term, South Australia, gives its boundaries commission wide latitude on when it gets the ball rolling, but past experience suggests it’s likely to be near the end of the year.
However, the main electoral event of the foreseeable future is undoubtedly the Indigenous Voice referendum, which is likely to be held between October and December. Kevin Bonham has a post on polling for referendum in which he standardises the various results, which differ markedly in terms of their questions and response structures, and divines a fall in support from around 65% in the middle of last year to around 58% at present. For those of you with access to academic journals, there is also a paper by Murray Goot of Macquarie University in the Journal of Australian Studies entitled “Support in the Polls for an Indigenous Constitutional Voice: How Broad, How Strong, How Vulnerable?” In narrowing it down to credible polls with non-binary response options (i.e. those allowing for uncommitted responses of some kind, as distinct from forced response polls), Goot finds support has fallen from around 58% to 51% from the period of May to September to the period of October to January, while opposition had risen from 18% to 27%. The change was concentrated among Coalition supporters: whereas Labor and especially Greens supporters were consistently and strongly in favour, support among Coalition fell from around 45% to 36%.
Forced response questions consistently found between 60% and 65% in favour regardless of question wording, while non-binary polls (i.e. allowing for various kind of uncommitted response) have almost invariably had at over 50%. Goot notes that forced response polls have found respondents breaking between for and against in similar proportion to the rest, which “confounds the idea that, when push comes to shove, ‘undecided’ voters will necessarily vote no”. However, he also notes that questions in non-binary polls that have produced active majorities in favour have either mentioned an Indigenous Voice or the Uluru Statement from the Heart, or “rehearsed the Prime Minister’s proposal to amend the Constitution”. One that conspicuously did not do any of these things was a Dynata poll for the Institute of Public Affairs, which got a positive result of just 28% by priming respondents with a leading question and then emphasised that the proposal would involve “laws for every Australian”. JWS Research got only 43% in favour and 23% against, but its response structure was faulted by Goot for including a “need more information” option, which ruled the 20% who chose it out of contention one way or the other.
How would you like a rictus with your lies?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/14/peter-dutton-accused-of-misrepresenting-locals-views-on-indigenous-voice-to-parliament
Geetroit ”The trouble with Thatcherism is you eventually run out of public assets.”
Good one.
Eventually you also run out of taxes to cut to spend on stuff you want to spend on – defence, police, jails, pork barreling…
Fyi, some promising medical news:
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/990670
Boerwar @ #1447 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 10:20 am
Boerwar, mate the pdf link is to a file on your device, not a website……lol
(PS: I’ve done the same thing ! )
Sky News going after Birmingham today, how dare he not be campaigning for a no vote, according to the Murdoch Liberal stooges. It apparently is rank disloyalty to Emperor Potato Head.
Boerwarsays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:10 am
On average a University graduate will pay many times more tax to the cost of their degree than a nongraduate.
Also what are the benefits to the economy of having someone enter the workforce with a significant debt?
Boerwar @ #1440 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 10:10 am
Well that is one way to look at it. Not an invalid or unreasonable position to take. It’s useful to know that HECS pays for about 45% to 55% of a degree, Australians are already subsidising the other half.
Another way to look at it is to recognise that a significant proportion of people, predominantly women, never pay off their HECS debt and therefore carry lifelong debt to the grave. Around 20% of the working force has a HECS debt, might not the repayments be better spent in other areas of the economy?
And another way to look at is that Australia blundered when it made university degrees a user pays system. Particularly when it’s been shown lately that the Coalitions attempt to make Arts and Humanity style degrees more expensive in an attempt to mould the Australian workforce into a neocons’ wet dream has failed and cost the nation millions of dollars in lost productivity. Perhaps this is an opportunity to rectify that blunder.
Yet another way to view it is that large proportions of Australians choose not to got to university because they do not want to take on the between $20k and $55k to get a bachelors degree. So that section of the population never get to see the higher wages that a uni degree unlocks.
sonar
Thanks. Could you remove the link from your post, please.
If only Thatcher had kept those mines open and really committed to coal fired power.
mostly interested
Yep. Various considerations and room for some policy nuance – including with respect to the gender pay gap and debt at death.
But I remain extremely wary of the elites maintaining themselves through subsidised uni degrees at the expense of poor people – which is the big picture.
Boerwar @ #1446 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 10:20 am
It actually is. Assuming the degree is in a non-useless field, it lets you accomplish more than you would without it. You win, and society (“everyone else”) wins.
goll says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 9:48 am
Cronussays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 8:50 am
“I’m still not seeing any wins for Dutton anywhere on the No vote yet, and no sense of momentum either.”
Some more polling across the spectrum is needed before making a judgement about the outcome of the referendum for the voice.
How many more “duttons” out there in the wide brown land ?
I believe that this referendum will be closer than imagined.
And the stance taken by the daughter of Bess Price, Jacinta Price is the evidence for concern.
———————————————————-
Be assured there’s a lot of Dutton’s out there but I sense they’re outnumbered by decent folk. I’ll be satisfied with 51-49 and 4 of 6 states, given how impossible the media tells us such changes are. I the referendum is that close it won’t further divide Australians, it’ll just prove how divided we already were only secretively. Racists know it’s not cool to be loud and proud so they’ve tried for many years to camouflage themselves.
Saw Julia Banks’ recent tweets lamenting how the Liberal Party are now more resembling One Nation.
Just out of interest, if Dutton wanted, could he appoint Pauline Hanson as a minister (inside or outside cabinet) without a formal agreement for One Nation to join the Coalition? Like how Rann appointed the Nationals’ Karlene Maywold to a ministry? How would such a move be received in the LNP voter base and the country as a whole?
Boerwar @ #1457 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 10:26 am
Sorry but I can’t edit my post………it won’t let me.
Perhaps William B in his infinite kindness may be able to.
Apparently this is what Elon’s Twitter wants users to see:
I don’t follow Lil Nas X (or anybody else) on Twitter, but still had that fairly pointless tweet waiting in my notifications this morning. 😆
Anyways, good for him. Though isn’t he supposedly gay?
C@tmomma says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 9:50 am
Old Spoke @ #1407 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 8:55 am
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/14/peter-dutton-accused-of-misrepresenting-locals-views-on-indigenous-voice-to-parliament
This part is particularly damning…
…local elder Geraldine Hogarth – who attended the dinner – said she was surprised Dutton mentioned their meeting and the town when discussing the referendum.
…
Hogarth said she had raised the voice with Dutton.
“I asked him what he thought about the yes vote. He said: ‘Geraldine, I advise you to go for it, say yes, [because] you might have to wait for the next 100-plus years for another referendum.’
“That’s why I was shocked to hear that he was against it.”
Lying liars lie.
And then to characterise the elders he had spoken to as being against it. A lie upon a lie.
—————————————————————-
It’s clear Dutton is as much a pathological liar as Morrison. The Libs sure can produce them. I hope the media highlight this obvious comparison.
Boerwar @ #1460 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 10:30 am
I was a poor person from a rural background with 25% youth unemployment. I was stuck in minimum wage jobs until I went to uni at 27 and graduated with a bachelors degree with honours degree at 31. I have totally flipped my life into a positive position after going to university.
My newly born twins will have significantly better prospects in all areas of their lives because they have been born into a household with tertiary educated parents.
I dont hold to this idea of elites benefiting from this kind of policy change. It benefits huge sections of the very normal non-elite people.
The RW conspiracy theorists and Voice Wreckers Inc. have finally come for it. According to them the Voice advisory body will want to change the date of Australia Day. 🙄
“So everyone who does not do a uni degree gets to subsidize those with a uni degree who end up earning more than average because they do have a uni degree.
I am sure that every graduate debtor would say that that is a fine thing.”
Yeah. I want the ALP to be able to reduce the cost of degrees again and make places more available, but a mass handout to university graduates to pay HECS debts specifically doesn’t strike me as the best use of 70 billion.
Student loans in the United States are far worse and far more than HECS debts here and the rationale of the Biden plan is that the loan repayments are so high that instead of people earning more with a college degree and being able to repay the debt and then some, people are financially worse off for getting educated. Besides the forgiveness, other parts of the plan are intended to cap maximum repayments going forward in the style of HECS debt repayments. So I understand the rationale over there. (now they just need to do something similar about crushing health care bills).
“The RW conspiracy theorists and Voice Wreckers Inc. have finally come for it. According to them the Voice advisory body will want to change the date of Australia Day.”
Ah yes, the “Don’t vote for the Voice, Indigenous people might actually express OPINIONS” argument beloved of racists everywhere.
C@tmomma says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:23 am
Fyi, some promising medical news:
———————————————-
C@T
Thanks, good pickup, we have melanoma in our family.
Oh no! 😮
‘Mostly Interested says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:39 am
Boerwar @ #1460 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 10:30 am
mostly interested
Yep. Various considerations and room for some policy nuance – including with respect to the gender pay gap and debt at death.
But I remain extremely wary of the elites maintaining themselves through subsidised uni degrees at the expense of poor people – which is the big picture.
I was a poor person from a rural background with 25% youth unemployment. I was stuck in minimum wage jobs until I went to uni at 27 and graduated with a bachelors degree with honours degree at 31. I have totally flipped my life into a positive position after going to university.
My newly born twins will have significantly better prospects in all areas of their lives because they have been born into a household with tertiary educated parents.
I dont hold to this idea of elites benefiting from this kind of policy change. It benefits huge sections of the very normal non-elite people.’
———————————–
Without at all wanting to be impolite or personal, I would point out that your kids are ahead of the kids of non-university graduates who are (a) subsidising your education/economic status and (b) subsidising your kids better life expectations than their kids.
(My entry)
The trouble with Thatcherism is you eventually run out of North Sea oil.
But the thing is Thatcher anointed Tony Blair as her true political heir.
And boy-o-boy didn’t he fulfil her wishes at least when it comes to Iraq war 2.
And BW says something, No I am not a support of Corbyn.
a r says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:31 am
Boerwar @ #1446 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 10:20 am
Getting everyone else to subsidize your uni degree is win win
It actually is. Assuming the degree is in a non-useless field, it lets you accomplish more than you would without it. You win, and society (“everyone else”) wins.
———————————–
I am sure that the poor who subsidize the rich would rather just have their money. And if the rich are doing it for the general good then I am sure that they would be willing to pay for the psychic good.
(I am saying that the elites help maintain themselves through ensuring that their offspring get tertiary education and am defining the rich as those with a tertiary education and the poor as the two thirds who do not get a tertiary education. The boundary is porous!)
In general this is like subsidies for EVs and solar panels.
They are middle class subsidising themselves at the the expense of the working class with a cover of doing it for the general good.
‘Socrates says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:52 am
(My entry)
The trouble with Thatcherism is you eventually run out of North Sea oil.’
—————————————–
The innate beauty of Thatcherism is eventually you steal so much money off so many people to give to so few people that there are enough voters to give you the royal order.
Lesser and The Voice.
It is time for Lesser to shut up and fully support the Referendum Question as put on the basis that it is the correct, right and morally acceptable thing to do.
His continuous sniping and demands will have a negative impact upon the outcome of the Referendum.
He can raise very objection and amendment which he deems to propose when The Voice legislation is presented to parliament for debate.
The Parliament may consider or reject his amendments. After all is a lone voice, one of 53 in a 151 seat chamber.
In case Julian hasn’t noticed, despite a 5.31% swing against him at the 2022 Election, that he is an Opposition back bencher without any authority to make any demand upon the current government.
@Mostly Interested: “I was a poor person from a rural background with 25% youth unemployment. I was stuck in minimum wage jobs until I went to uni at 27 and graduated with a bachelors degree with honours degree at 31. I have totally flipped my life into a positive position after going to university.
My newly born twins will have significantly better prospects in all areas of their lives because they have been born into a household with tertiary educated parents.
I dont hold to this idea of elites benefiting from this kind of policy change. It benefits huge sections of the very normal non-elite people.”
Thankyou for sharing your story. Yes, access to university education for all who want it is very important. You’d think the Liberal Party and their love of aspiration would be all for it, but strangely enough not so much. There’s nothing wrong with working class jobs but they aren’t for everybody and especially for women without as much access to physical labour jobs, it has been a ticket out of forced to be the secretary or the homemaker to much higher paid men when they had the capacity to do more. (My mum was the first girl in her family to go to uni, moving to the big city on her own as an 18 year old to do it, so I have a certain perspective on this.)
That’s why I’d like to see whatever education funding boost Chalmers can rustle up put into improving access to uni places more than reducing HECS debts for existing graduates. No issues with rebalancing future fees away from Morrison’s war on the humanities either.
Macca RB
IMO, don’t fuss about the weeds. He has resigned. He is going to vote yes. He has blown a hole in Dutton’s lies.
”
Aaron newtonsays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:21 am
glad brendon murphy is finaly gone but it is very dissapointing the worst burocrat mike pezzullo is still in home affairs desbite his departments poor management failing to tell his ministr about end of naro contract keeping justin bassi as director of aspi desbite him being duttons captains pick and chief of staff to our worst ever foreign minister marise payne the liberal stacked aspi board with members with little relivant expirence john anderson who was deputy pm but inministrys relateing to agriculture michael keanon who was a very junier minister in security”
Wrt Pezzullo there is another thing. Agreeing (no proof that he advised that) with his Minister (Dutton)to stop people on Melbourne streets and asking for and checking their passports.
Boerwar @ #1099 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 10:56 am
If the UK had compulsory, preferential voting like we do, Thatcher would probably never have been elected at all. The highest vote the Tories ever got under her was 44% of total votes cast.
@Boer: “Without at all wanting to be impolite or personal, I would point out that your kids are ahead of the kids of non-university graduates who are (a) subsidising your education/economic status and (b) subsidising your kids better life expectations than their kids.”
Let’s not play that kind of game, beloved of wealthy Lib types complaining their taxes are paying for the wages of public servants they don’t like, or for welfare for dole bludgers, or subsidising other people’s health etc
There’s lots of subsidies out there for TAFE, apprenticeships etc. We have a welfare system for those unable to work or unable to find work, and for the disabled. We have a progressive tax system that is at least meant to provide that people who earn more are giving more back in an absolute sense. HECS repayments ensure that university graduates give back a substantial portion of the cost of their degree in cold hard cash before we get to the taxes they pay in with that increased income.
Who’s subsidising who at the end of all this is not easy to work out, and is a silly argument anyway in a situation where there’s nothing blatantly unfair going on.
”
Steve777says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:22 am
Geetroit ”The trouble with Thatcherism is you eventually run out of public assets.”
Good one.
Eventually you also run out of taxes to cut to spend on stuff you want to spend on – defence, police, jails, pork barreling…
”
When you don’t have money to spend on defence you annouce things like AUKUS deal without a prior White paper, Green paper, Red paper, yellow paper or blue paper and not informing stakeholders like opposition leader and the Vendor (whose deal is cancelled).
Degrees and trades are of personal and society benefit.
People entering the housing market housing and children are best entering without a HEX debt.
As a society we need housing, we need children.
Encourage families, cancel 1/4 HEX debt on the first child, 1/4 on the second and the lot on the third.
Boerwar @ #1473 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 10:51 am
No I don’t think you’re being impolite, you’re stating your policy preference.
My position is that through the potential higher earnings that a uni degree provides a person, that they also pay a higher proportion of taxes. That higher proportion of taxes then (in a perfect world) goes back into funding services that are heavily relied upon by people within lower SES brackets.
I would also point out that people with a tertiary education on average have better health outcomes and therefore do not place a burden on the human services that their higher proportion of taxes is assisting in providing. And as mentioned it’s a generational benefit that gets handed to my kids who in turn have a higher chance of doing all of the above.
So are poor people subsiding me or am I subsiding poor people? I’d suggest on balance it is me who is carrying the higher financial load. And just let me state, I am ok with that because that is the way a fair and equitable society should be built, where the better off assist the less better off. And that there are clear pathways for the less better off to move away from those circumstances.
Funnily – when it came to climate change, Thatcher was to the left, 35 years ago, of many of the Coalition party room.
Ashasays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:47 am
I’m sure the Voice will want to pursue many issues relevant to First Nations people.
Its value will be a combination of how they interact with Parliamentarians and the Government, and how receptive the Government is to these views.
It will also be a beacon, highlighting when a Government does something that goes against the views of the Voice.
That’s been my concern since they started incrementally adding HECS and it grew in line with the increase in Uni costs (anyone remember the kerfuffle about $100k legal degrees?)
A student who leaves Uni that needs to service a huge debt will simply not have the lending capacity to buy a house.
The upstream impacts of this means supply side housing issues as more are forced to rent for longer. Add that to the travesty of Howard’s baby boomer wealth creation tax breaks and we end up where we now are.
“ Peter Dutton has called for the AFP to be brought into Alice Springs to help ‘restore law and order’ during a press conference that included a heated exchange with a local ABC reporter.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fnation%2Ftruth-on-trial-over-nt-child-sex-abuse%2Fnews-story%2Fff642f9e7126b9ddc243d64cc9c68500&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=dynamic-groupb-control-noscore&V21spcbehaviour=append
I know the far right types hate education, hate meritocracy, and hate a level playing field where you can access the education you need regardless of wealth. That is why they’ve force huge uni fees on us.
That is because they want their donors and the nepo babies running the world, without contradiction.
But trying to defend the barriers to education, which disproportionally destroys the lives and futures of the poor, as a fairness to poor people mechanism is what those trying to shut down the avenues to success for poor people would say, but even they don’t expect any of us to be stupid enough to fall for it.
Gobsmackingly stupid stuff.
”The highest vote the Tories ever got under her was 44% of total votes cast.”
As I recall, the UK Liberal’s vote soared to 20-25% during Thatcher’s premiership. Many discontented Tories who didn’t want to vote Labor voted for the centrist Liberals. However, under first past the post, these votes were mostly thrown out.
”
Cronussays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:33 am
goll says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 9:48 am
Cronussays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 8:50 am
“I’m still not seeing any wins for Dutton anywhere on the No vote yet, and no sense of momentum either.”
Some more polling across the spectrum is needed before making a judgement about the outcome of the referendum for the voice.
How many more “duttons” out there in the wide brown land ?
I believe that this referendum will be closer than imagined.
And the stance taken by the daughter of Bess Price, Jacinta Price is the evidence for concern.
———————————————————-
Be assured there’s a lot of Dutton’s out there but I sense they’re outnumbered by decent folk. I’ll be satisfied with 51-49 and 4 of 6 states, given how impossible the media tells us such changes are. I the referendum is that close it won’t further divide Australians, it’ll just prove how divided we already were only secretively. Racists know it’s not cool to be loud and proud so they’ve tried for many years to camouflage themselves.
”
American MAGAs hid in plain sight till Trump became President. And then he unleashed them. The rest is history.
Macca RBsays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:56 am
I disagree.
Until the initiating legislation passes Parliament, it’s more than fair to discuss the form of the legislation. A Parliamentary Enquiry has started today, what do you think they will be considering?
Only once that legislation passes does it becomes a simple yes/no question.
Dutton wants AFP sent to Alice Springs.
What experience does your average AFP officer, apart from those policing in Canberra, have of day to day policing, much less dealing with indigenous issues?
Makes a change from a call to send in the army I guess.
”
@tmommasays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:42 am
The RW conspiracy theorists and Voice Wreckers Inc. have finally come for it. According to them the Voice advisory body will want to change the date of Australia Day.
”
Lars and nath
your thoughts on this angle of argument. This is an argument which many people may accept whether it happens or not.
BK @ #1386 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 7:21 am
Gosh! How exciting! I wonder which one will win???
The AFP in Alice Springs idea is par for the course for Peter “let’s have Border Force stop people in the street in Melbourne and ask for their papers” Dutton.
Hey that reminded me for the first time in a while of Roman Quadvlieg, the hilariously named Border Force supremo who managed to get sacked for an ethical breach under a Coalition government and promptly turned on Dutton out of pure spite.
Cronus @ #1489 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 11:15 am
Excellent idea. The Keystone Cops certainlty do bugger all good in Canberra!
“Getting everyone else to subsidize your uni degree is win win”
Like others, I agree with the principle that society should subsidise people to get degrees and skills that are socially useful. We don’t have enough doctors or engineers as it is.
Making students pay the full cost of tertiary education also has a huge negative impact on social equity and mobility, because the poor will be the first to drop out and the rich will buy their way into degrees. If we only had full-fee degrees, Anthony Albanese would not be our PM right now.
Personally I got my first degree (engineering) for free, and with it a career and an income stream. I was then fine to pay HECs on the following degrees. I really think there is a case for the first degree to be free, anything after that can be fee paid.
Finally, for those who argue that all uni students should pay rather than be subsidised, then we should apply that principle consistently to the following subsidised groups as well:
– private school students, who are subsidised per year more than many uni courses (>$10k/year)
– professional sports and sports people, who pay no tax but get virtually free use of publicly built stadiums that cost hundreds of millions
– mining companies who pay royalties on state owned mineral resources that are a fraction of their market value
– owners of negative geared property
It is when you consider the last two categories that you realise the whole argument for paying for uni degrees is just divisive class warfare designed to distract from the real causes of injustice and inequality in this country.
Personally I think that HECS needs to be greatly reduced, or the debts wiped out. Otherwise we are financially crippling the generation we will all be reliant on to fund the health system when we are older and dependent on it. It isn’t cheap, and I have seen how much of its resources could be expended looking after my Dad in the closing phase of his life.
Then you realise that those of us who have the means and/or good fortune to be able to, should simply shut up with the resentment and pay our fair share of tax, to help those less fortunate.