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.
”Funnily – when it came to climate change, Thatcher was to the left, 35 years ago, of many of the Coalition party room.”
The UK isn’t wedded to fossil fuels in the way Australia has become. It does not have the sort of powerful fossil fuel lobby that we have. Also, 35 years ago, climate change was barely in the public consciousness and the anti climate action coalition of the unwilling had not yet organised. Even right-wing ideologues were free to believe the science.
Mostly Interested says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:25 am
Boerwar @ #1440 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 10:10 am
‘Mostly Interested says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 9:47 am
Holdenhillbilly @ #1393 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 8:19 am
US Supreme Court allows $6 billion in student loan debts to be canceled, possibly impacting up to 200,000 loans.
That’s a good outcome.
Unfortunately it isn’t the $400 billion the president is trying to forgive. Republican’s congress have said that it was a budget measure so couldn’t come from the president.
Now if we could get the nearly 3 million Australians almost $70billion HECS debts cancelled wouldn’t that be great, too late for me though.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/supreme-court-student-loans.html?searchResultPosition=1‘
———————————
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.
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.
_____________
Declaration of interest: I finished undergraduate uni in 1986 – pre-HECS.
My (limited) understanding is John Dawkins argued for HECS partly on the basis that, while Whitlam’s Free Tertiary Education opened doors for people regardless of wealth, few people from lower-wealth households were entering. Middle- and upper-class families were the main beneficiaries.
HECS, as originally designed, was a ‘contribution’ to education costs based on the graduate’s post-uni earnings level.
Then Howard…
Have I got this about right?
A common theme when discussing the USA is that the country is fu%@ked, but how could a member of the National Guard be given access to national secrets sensitive enough to cause international embarrassment?
Isn’t the National Guard a bit like our Army Reserve.?
“The UK isn’t wedded to fossil fuels in the way Australia has become. It does not have the sort of powerful fossil fuel lobby that we have. ”
in fairness that would be because fossil fuel exports are fuck all of the UK economy (they have some oil but they’re a net importer not exporter).
The UK is owned by the financial services industry instead.
Ley dialled the outrage up to 11 today.
Did any of the assembled hacks ask what the Libs and Nats did for the problems in NT between 1996 and 2007 and between 2013 and 2022?
Or did all the problems she raises only start last May?
I do love how convenient it is for some people to forget.
@Granny Anny: I believe there are full time National Guard employees.
This guy seems to have been, ironically, a cyber security guy for the air force national guard.
Steve777 @ Friday, April 14, 2023 at 11:37 am
Her government had already brutally shut down coal mines in the UK, especially in Wales, without providing any alternative means of employment. Not for environmental reasons, of course. The UK just started importing coal instead, and continued to do so until the middle of the last decade.
Thatcher’s principal motivation was to break the power of the trade unions.
There’s a nice graph in this article that shows how the UK’s coal imports soared as its domestic production shut down. Thatcher paid lip service to the idea of climate change but her actions did nothing to help:
https://wiserd.ac.uk/blog/the-pit-closures-of-the-1980s-part-of-mrs-thatchers-green-eco-strategy/
@Rossmcg:
“Ley dialled the outrage up to 11 today.
Did any of the assembled hacks ask what the Libs and Nats did for the problems in NT between 1996 and 2007 and between 2013 and 2022?
Or did all the problems she raises only start last May?
I do love how convenient it is for some people to forget.”
Too right. She was quoting statistics from 2021 to back the claims about sexual abuse, and I wanted someone to get up and say “2021, weren’t you in government in 2021?”.
Ven
“ American MAGAs hid in plain sight till Trump became President. And then he unleashed them. The rest is history.”
———————————————————
Thankfully, we are not America.
Granny Anny @ #1503 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 11:47 am
Not really.
The US state governors use the national guard as an extension of their ability to suppress civil disobedience. If you’re on the conspiracy spectrum you’d say the national guard was the armed forces of the government designed to suppress freedom.
But the form it is in today is a gradual extension of historic colonial militia set up by the British, then ironically mobilized to fight against them during the war of independence, then even more ironically mobilized again to fight themselves during the civil war.
The Australian army reserve is like a plug and play set of resources that are supposed to bolster our main army.
”
Arkysays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 10:57 am
@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.
”
I heard from a Liberal supporter some 20 years ago that John Howard said, at a closed door gathering, something like if everyone wants to go to University then who will do jobs like Plumbing, electrician, welding and other such non-Uni jobs. So ‘aspiration’ and such words are there to give good speeches.
Rossmcg @ #1505 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 11:55 am
Why does Suusssannn quack so loudly?
The replacement of Brendan Murphy will be by a merit based selection process. From what I hear a lot of medical administrators around the country have been brushing up their progressive credentials in their CVs over the last 12 months. If one of the rumours is correct, I will be physically sick.
Edit: As RHWombat is on line – some are suggesting Dr Thickened Fluids.
Player One says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 11:31 am
Cronus @ #1489 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 11:15 am
“ Peter Dutton has called for the AFP to be brought into Alice Springs to help ‘restore law and order’
Excellent idea. The Keystone Cops certainlty do bugger all good in Canberra!
———————————————————
A thug with a truncheon only knows one course of action, he’s at least consistent, ugh! One might think it would cause the 20% of Indigenous No voters to think twice.
Rossmcg
Ley dialled the outrage up to 11 today.
5u55an Ley is a numerologist. Is 11 a good number for her?
Great graphs Pueo, thanks for sharing. The tidbit of explanation for what happened to the graphs after the hurricane hit the weather station really makes the story.
Meanwhile and completely unrelated:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/14/presbyterian-church-of-australia-calls-for-right-to-ban-lgbtq-and-sexually-active-student-leaders
aka “Presbyterian Church still has open bigotry as #1 priority, fails to read room”.
”
Rossmcgsays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 11:25 am
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.
”
Dutton has experience on this. He sent army personnel while Gladys B government sent police to check on Western Sydney citizens during Delta Covid lockdown.
The TV News showing footage of a Military man and NSW police person knocking on the doors of Western Sydney residents sent chills down my spine.
Didn’t they do something like that during WW2 on some particular houses in Australia let alone in Europe and US?
@Oakeshott: “The replacement of Brendan Murphy will be by a merit based selection process. From what I hear a lot of medical administrators around the country have been brushing up their progressive credentials in their CVs over the last 12 months. If one of the rumours is correct, I will be physically sick.
Edit: As RHWombat is on line – some are suggesting Dr Thickened Fluids.”
You’re NSW aren’t you? Do you guys have a Dr Xanthan Gum or a Dr Gelatine up there?
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?
Peter Dutton could appoint her to a ministry. But he wouldn’t do it even if One Nation had a the balance of power in the House of Reps. The Liberals would be crucified in the urban parts of Australia by going along with such an agreement. One Nation don’t even have a seat in the House of Reps so Pauline Hanson has no leverage for such a move. Pretty sure Dutton could appoint Hanson to a ministry with a sign of paper with no written formal agreement needed.
I think the Greens did request a ministry with their with the negotiations Gillard government in 2010, but it was refused. Either that or Labor ruled the idea out from the outset. Greens did get two ministry’s when it formed with the Giddings Tasmania state Labor government in 2011. But it’s important distinction that the unlike the coalition. The Greens had no formal agreement to form a coalition with Labor. The parties had separate party room meetings, and never had joint meetings unlike the coalition. I’m not sure a ‘formal agreement’ means much in the grand scheme of things when either party can walk away from the agreement.
GREENS leader Bob Brown has revealed that his party did not insist on a ministerial role in the Gillard minority government.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/ministry-bid-sacrificed-to-help-julia-gillard-bob-brown/news-story/c3558f11396bfbd84ca00c4fb6021c40?amp=
“ Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley rejected suggestions the party is scaremongering ahead of the Voice to parliament referendum.
The MP spoke on Melbourne radio station 3AW this morning and questioned whether Anzac Day and Australia would be impacted if the Voice was established.”
Cra cra!
https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-news-live-voice-to-parliament-debate-continues-amid-peter-dutton-s-visit-to-alice-springs-cyclone-ilsa-batters-wa-s-northern-coastline-20230413-p5d0ad.html
Arky, I still don’t get that even a cyber-security operative in the National Guard could access sensitive material, presumably so he could skite to fellow on-line gamers. Is there no over-sight of what is going on with their state secrets. Apparently Trump took a truck load with him and it took ages for them to realise what had happened.
You would think that a country self described to be at the head of the software and technology development queue could do better than that.
@Political Nightwatchman – yep, it’s a move Dutton could legally make but even he’s not that dumb. It would also fuck up the Coalition agreement with the Nationals by giving away a ministerial post to someone not even in the Coalition. Pauline would be a shit minister who he couldn’t control or compel to vote his way on everything and who would get him in trouble on the regular and nor even gain votes.
@GrannyAnny: Sort of the way finance people tend to have access to info way above the level of other workers in the same salary bracket, presumably being a security guy gives you more access than other junior burgers, and more knowledge of what you need to circumvent.
Paul The Avengersays:
Thatcher’s principal motivation was to break the power of the trade unions.
——————
This is where the left makes a mistake because it doesn’t matter what Thatcher’s motivations were because the fact is she took climate change seriously and her words should be thrown at every conservative that opposes tackling climate change.
I’d suggest that at this rate Dutton, Ley and the Coalition will run out of ridiculous claims and lies well before the Voice referendum really gets underway. They sound beyond desperate at the moment and at this stage hardly anyone is even listening.
GrannyAnny @ #1144 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 12:18 pm
He was a support guy for users of the defence bureaucracy’s networks. He would have held hands on, ‘share your screen with me’ sessions with people at all levels who were having network access problems.
“See if you can sign on now?” Observe closely.
Similar technique to that successfully used by ‘I’m from your bank’ scammers every day, except with no doubt about his legitimacy.
Dutton can appoint anyone to the Ministry as long as they’re in the Federal Parliament, or can get themselves elected to it or appointed to the Senate within 3 months.
“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. ”
This.
HECS, as an income contingent loan, does a job of financing study costs while shifting the obligation to pay to a time when the debtor has more capacity to pay.
If extra support is needed to facilitate more students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds into universities, then the blunt instrument of HECS is not the way to do it.
BTW note that Labor cut the 10% discount to HECS for upfront payment at the end of last year, as this was purely regressive (if you can afford to pay HECS fees upfront, you don’t need the 10% discount).
Surely it’s enough to have Hanson chearleading from the side and offering advice on how to deal with dissenting Liberal Members.
It’s been said that if the Voice to Parliament actually passes, then Dutton’s leadership is terminal. But who can he be replaced by? There would still be about 17 months before the next election is held. Angus Taylor? Sussan Ley? Even if they selected someone a little bit more centrist, their party room is so far to the right that there would never be any substantive change in Liberal Party policy. Perhaps they will just bank on a better salesperson by reinstalling Morrison!
And if they go backwards in terms of seats at the next election, their party room composition will just become even more conservative. The only way they have any chance of returning to electoral relevance, barring another Julia Gillard-style Labor mashup, is if they somehow select moderate viable candidates in urban seats and win them. Otherwise, the pathway for them is to simply wither away.
The way to encourage more socially disadvantaged students into University is to improve primary and secondary education in those areas so that students start to see it as a realistic option.
Cronus
The MSM wasnt even listening when Ley gave that presser this morning. No questions asked as I dont think there was any journos there.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/crime-news/2023/04/14/jarryd-hayne-bail-revoked/?utm_campaign=News%20Alert%20-%2020230414&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Adestra&lr_hash=966bdfe94dfdc96aa7989c1c89befdf1
As I predicted, quietly, to myself.
@Shellbell – I only have one word to say about that: Good.
shellbellsays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 1:02 pm
If the judge is going to impose a custodial sentence, it’s hard to see any reason why he should remain free.
HECS was just a money grab, as Labor started implementing trickle down economics.
The main objection to HECS was that it was the thin edge of the wedge, and of course that was dismissed as insane. The thin edge of the wedge people were right.
I don’t know the full demographics when I hit uni late 80’s, certainly when I got into law school I was confronted by a majority of wealthy students, many many with families with long histories in the law. But in the science faculty it felt and looked very much like a full demographic spread, if not one skewed to middle class and lower middle class.
I can also say the early HECS much as it hindered me just after I got married and was trying to get into a house with the then govt subsidy scheme, it was a lot closer to a ‘small’ contribution. The rich kids getting a big discount for paying up front always seemed regressive.
Now with chronic underfunding of public schools (instead we are systemically funding the orchestra pit and polo trips to Europe for the most privileged students in the wealthiest schools) uni fees are the biggest impediments to the entry of low and and lower middle class students into tertiary education. In the arts where Albo has, so far embraced Morrison’s ideological and politically motivated, doubling of fees for arts courses, which excludes even middle class and upper middle class from much of that study, and in many ways will drive an Australia where a majority of the literature, the history, all the arts culture will be drawing almost exclusively from the very wealthy. Which is of course what they want.
There is also, and I see it as part of trickle down, a large element of learning where we have it back to front. There is a great public interest in funding the arts (including at university), science and the social sciences, where the education is not interested in, nor directed to producing a human product that can immediately slot into the Australian subsidiary of billionaire owned Mega Corp, and very little public utility, other than income tax (well at least until labor is wedged into stages 4, 5 and 6 of income tax flattening and turning into GST and other regressive taxes) , in producing human product for the local subsidiary of Mega Corp.
Yet our funding and commitment to learning is almost exactly back to front, we spend a huge amount of money and resources trying to create free human products to be slotted into Mega Corp’s local subsidiary, for the period/s the local subsidiary needs them.
The whole uni fees are fair and sensible argument is really like looking at traffic on public highways noticing that poor people without cars can’t use them and whacking on a toll so that poor people with cars can’t use them either. It is just mega dumb.
But one of the very successful strategies of the ultra wealthy and far right wing is to pit one exploited group against the other, like they are currently trying to get Doctors who are grossly underpaid to fight with grossly underpaid nurses, seeking the outcome that they can continue to grossly exploit both groups. They must sit in exclusive clubs laughing at how many very very stupid people fall for this kind of stuff so often.
There was a BBC interview where the spokes person tried to suggest that both doctors and nurses should go backwards because everyone has gone backwards, conveniently ignoring the 1000% increase in wealth over the same period of the ultra wealthy.
It is so obvious you’d think people would be in the streets,like in france, rather than sitting online defending ultra wealthy ideas like crippling uni fees, but no there are far too many stupid people.
Granny: “A common theme when discussing the USA is that the country is fu%@ked, but how could a member of the National Guard be given access to national secrets sensitive enough to cause international embarrassment?”
9/11, that’s how. One of the lessons learned with 9/11 was that different parts of the gov weren’t talking to one another which allowed the attackers to get where they got. So they restructured such that more operational information could be shared. Exact same thing happened with Manning.
WWP: “HECS was just a money grab”
Strawman.
HECS is a good scheme but the bigger problem at uni is the cost of textbooks that for some strange reason cannot be billed to the HECS loan.
‘Rossmcg says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 11:25 am
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.’
———————————
Canberra has a population of over 6,000 Indigenous people – more than the number of Indigenous people who live in Alice Springs.
I see that the elites can always find good reasons why the poor should subsidize them to buy EVs, build solar panels on the houses they own and for them to go to University. They do this for the good of the country as it turns out.
This is just part of the complex of reasons that ensures that 70% of kids in this country will miss out on uni.
It’s the rich wot have the pleasure and the poor wot have the pain.
‘Twas ever thus.
“WWP: “HECS was just a money grab”
Strawman.”
Your usual quality of contribution I see.
You constantly remind me of the saying that it is often best to remain silent, the risk being people think you don’t know anything, where the option is to open your mouth and demonstrate conclusively that you have no understanding and nothing to offer of value.
Have some advice for free and next time when your brain delivers nothing at all and you are tempted to misuse ‘strawman’ a concept you clearly have no understanding of, and just don’t.
I might be slow but I finally get why the English cartoonists are concentrating on the Black and Tans.
Biden has apparently confused the B&Ts with the All Blacks
https://news.sky.com/story/joe-bidens-black-and-tans-gaffe-was-unfortunate-he-might-want-to-stick-to-the-script-from-now-on-12856123
Textbook costs are absolutely insane, especially in this day and age, when all that stuff can surely just be made digital.
theunaustralian.net
BREAKING: Susssan Ley Demands Albo Return From His Holiday And Add An S To Alice Springs As Her Numerologist Says That Spelling It Alice Ssprings Will Help Stop The Crime.
Oakeshott Country @ #1542 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 1:27 pm
Black and Tans are what you bought in Irish pubs – Guinness and Ale!
steve davis says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 1:00 pm
Cronus
The MSM wasnt even listening when Ley gave that presser this morning. No questions asked as I dont think there was any journos there.
——————————————
😆 Case rests your honour.
It sounds like yesterday when the ABC just cut away from Dutton mid spray.
Dutton is just another product of the Sky sad arses after dark. Lets hope he keeps taking their advice.
Me: “Strawman”
WWP: “You constantly remind me”
You should stop using strawmans as your primary narrative device. You clearly know what they are, given you have attempted to call others out on it. You stop doing it, and I won’t remind you of it.
BW : “the elites”
One step away from referring to people as ‘globalists’.
Asha @ #548 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 1:31 pm
Many texts are available online but still cost – but not as much.
There will always be some students for whom digital is not as good, or practical.
Speaking as a former University acquisitions librarian.
A downside is that the text can’t be sold or passed on at the end of it’s use for the first student