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.
Oliver Sutton @ #1595 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 3:33 pm
Fegan is the voice of the hillbillies.
Barney
Why are supporting the idea that it is fine for the rich to screw the poor by getting the poor to subsidize their uni fees?
The manifest injustice of the scheme is obvious. As for the poor not benefiting society in the same way that is just arrogant Snobsville by the Rich. imagine what Australia would be like without cleaners? The toilets would be knee deep in piss and shit.
Indeed the Liberal Party is increasingly the party of hicks and hillbillies. Confined to inland areas or regional coastal areas with large retiree populations.
Lars Von Trier @ #1570 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 2:38 pm
Because it’s one of the few points of differentiation they have?
Rex: “ Fegan is the voice of the hillbillies.”
Cashed-up hillbillies, it seems:
“Fegan moved to Nine in Brisbane after he was sentenced to an 18-month conditional release order in 2021. Police caught him near Seven’s Martin Place studios with cocaine after his work Christmas party. Fegan apologised and no conviction was recorded.”
(Guardian, op cit)
Fegan is the voice of the hillbillies.
_____
I wonder what the ABC’s Macca thinks about it all.
Boerwar so if the number is a deflection why did you raise it in the first place? I didn’t. I just called you on it.
And actually the number does make a difference – if its 70% or 50% or 20% or 0% then that actually does change whether you’re right or wrong. And it sounds like you have actually no idea what the number is – just some feelpinions.
WWP: I do agree that it would be great if people with two lawyer parents were blocked from getting into law. I would have climbed faster myself without all the fucking nepo babies around (is law the single worst industry for blatant nepotism? It would have to be on the podium), and it wouldn’t disqualify me since I am the first lawyer in my family within memory (indeed, within genealogy research, since one of my aunts got really into that ancestry.com research type of thing to track down distant rellos).
I’m trying to think who we’d lose in politics with a rule against children of MPs running- it’s not the best start because Kim Beazley and John Cain (the later one) and Palaszcuk would have been lost. And we wouldn’t have got rid of Porter because it was his grandfather who was the MP, not his Dad. Back in the day Doug Anthony would have been out, so that’s fun. Richard Court would have been out. Alexander Downer so that’s looking up. David Littleproud but nobody cares.
I dunno, I suspect we’d hurt Labour more than the Coalition unless I’m forgetting some really bad ones. A couple of the Teals are also children of past Lib MPs and it’s what made them such good candidates to take voters off the Libs, the unimpeachable historical connection.
‘BK says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 3:48 pm
Fegan is the voice of the hillbillies.
_____
I wonder what the ABC’s Macca thinks about it all.’
==============================
After years of softly softly pandering on global warming… which has now gone off the boil what with all the bloody fires, bloody storms, bloody floods and bloody droughts…
The Age 14/04
Melbourne Water’s submission sheds no light on whether the controversial Flemington Racecourse flood wall had an impact on the October 14 disaster, despite its construction having been named as a key focus of its inquiry following widespread community anger.
The flood wall was built in 2007 with a permit granted by then Labor planning minister Mary Delahunty and green-lit by Melbourne Water with mitigation works, despite being opposed by local residents and three councils.
_____________________
No surprise there.
I think we can all assume the Flemington flood wall was to blame.
Thanks Labor for approving it.
Which MP was David Littleproud’s father (or mother)?
Mostly Interestedsays:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 2:26 pm
Of course there is a counter argument about the value of degrees, in fact they are measurably less valuable than they used to be.
There’s a concept out there called Education Inflation, which deems that as a greater percentage of a nation’s population attain a university degree there is a commensurate raising of the qualification you need to get an actual job. As degrees become less exclusive then employers raise the bar on the type of qualification you need.
I saw some unemployment figures today that show people with Cert 1 to 3 are actually more likely to be unemployed that those without a Cert. Weird stuff.
Education Inflation is highly contestable so I dont necessary subscribe to it as a robust theory, but its out there. I’d lean towards getting more education than not, but I’ve said that enough today.
————————————————————–
I’ve actually seen this in requirements in job ads, specifically software development.
These days I’ve commonly seen requirements of 5+ years of experience in multiple languages and frameworks, along with “exposure” to several others, which seems to be well beyond the reach of anyone with less than 10-15 years industry experience.
Half the time I just wonder if it’s a fig leaf so they can claim they tried to hire local but no-one was suitable, so they offshored.
‘Geetroit says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 3:50 pm
Boerwar so if the number is a deflection why did you raise it in the first place? I didn’t. I just called you on it.
And actually the number does make a difference – if its 70% or 50% or 20% or 0% then that actually does change whether you’re right or wrong. And it sounds like you have actually no idea what the number is – just some feelpinions.’
—————————-
Still utterly fixated on the weeds, Geetroit? You do realize it is not actually 50% of the population, BTW?
Arky: “I’m trying to think who we’d lose in politics with a rule against children of MPs running”
Robert Katter II (‘Bob’)
Robert Katter III (‘Robbie’)
BrissyVegasDad: “Half the time I just wonder if it’s a fig leaf so they can claim they tried to hire local but no-one was suitable, so they offshored.”
Wouldn’t find that surprising. That or they’re creating a position that only the person they want applying for it will be successful.
“4BC jock Peter Fegan interrogates Peter Dutton on the Voice. “I don’t understand it”, Fegan admits:
“what I want to know is: where does this person sit in parliament? Is it a man or woman? Are they going to be within the upper house? Are they going to be a minister?”
Correct. He doesn’t understand it
Probably he doesn’t understand why electricity doesn’t drip out of empty electrical sockets either.
Are these the people subsidizing the elites to go to uni?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/13/warning-decline-in-australias-adult-literacy-being-hidden-by-lack-of-data
So, because a Brisbane shock jock is too mentally lazy to do the work to understand what the Voice to Parliament will be, then that means we need to vote, ‘No’?
Job ads can be written to scare off borderline or unsuitable job seekers because employers get flooded by job seekers meeting their mutual obligations.
Arky: “I’m trying to think who we’d lose in politics with a rule against children of MPs running”
Alexander Downer II
(The wise voters of Mayo nipped the next generation of those bunyip aristocrats in the bud. Twice.)
Bracks will always be remembered for defeating Kennett, but he should also be remembered for allowing Crown casino to act so reprehensibly and endangering the public by greenlighting the Flemington flood wall.
Politcal Nightwatchman says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 3:27 pm
Interesting article on the Voice polling there is a view NSW is not a sure bet for voting ‘Yes’ on the Voice. Despite the ‘Yes’ vote having a substantial lead in the polling. There is also a view from some Liberals that Anthony Albanese won’t rule out abandoning the referendum if he does not think it will pass
————————————————————————
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, this claim re Albo abandoning the referendum sounds like a ‘Coalition plant’, it just doesn’t ring true to me.
(This was posted by Outsider yesterday from the Aston by-election thread but I thought it worth commenting on)
“Another 200 or so postal votes counted in Aston have increased Labor’s lead by 29.
Labor now on 53.63% of 2PP – which will be very close to the final outcome.
Labor has managed to get 50.22% 2PP on postals.”
What a fantastic result by Mary Doyle in the Aston by-election. The postals were won by Labor too! In the end she has won by over 6,000 votes – not even close!
This is better than many forecast at the end of election night, when it was suggested postals might trim the final result to around 52/48 to Labor. Not so.
At 53.9% 2PP Labor has a reasonable chance of hanging onto Aston in 2025. No wonder Dutton is reverting to being a desperate liar in the Voice debate.
Oliver Sutton says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 3:33 pm
4BC jock Peter Fegan interrogates Peter Dutton on the Voice. “I don’t understand it”, Fegan admits:
“what I want to know is: where does this person sit in parliament? Is it a man or woman? Are they going to be within the upper house? Are they going to be a minister?”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/2023/apr/14/the-voice-try-and-understand-it-kid-gloves-for-reporter-who-asks-dutton-is-it-a-man-or-a-woman
————————————————
A simpleton perhaps? This sounds like another setup.
Socrates
Aston is a truly remarkable result.
They rejected Morrison and they’ve utterly repudiated Dutton and their out of towner candidate.
Perhaps we should ban children of graduates from going to university.
Give the other two thirds a go?
Cronus @ #1624 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 4:08 pm
I think it is reprehensible behaviour by both Peter Dutton and the shock jock. Obviously a list of questions supplied to the shock jock, probably by a junior woodchuck in Dutton’s office working on every wrinkle the LNP can come up with in order to muddy the water.
Did the shock jock ask Peter Dutton about the veracity of statements which he made in Alice Springs? I’d imagine he didn’t because that wasn’t the aim of the appearance on radio by Dutton today. Instead it was to further the perpetual motion machine Dutton et al in the Coalition are creating to impel people towards a ‘No’ vote. Just so he can get the political scalp of the Prime Minister.
It stinks but I know this won’t be the end of it. Dutton will just keep on appearing on every media platform he can demand equal time with the Prime Minister on, every day until Referendum day, and no amount of explaining the truth of the matter to him and the rest of the Coalition mouthpieces will change that. Because they don’t care about the facts.
Brendan Murphy quits on a Friday afternoon…
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8157225/challenges-lie-ahead-for-next-agency-head-after-brendan-murphy-retires/?cs=27845
Boerwar says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 4:15 pm
Perhaps we should ban children of graduates from going to university.
Give the other two thirds a go?
________________
I’m liking this new Pol Pot phase BW. Only a few steps in logic to killing people who wear glasses.
Rex
Yes agreed on Morrison and Dutton. I think Tudge himself is also quite damned by the Aston vote, effectively forcing his electorate to a third vote in 12 months.
To be fair in giving credit I also note that the Greens vote mostly held up and (10.1% = -1.6%) and preferencing between Labor and Greens was tight, meaning the shift to Labor came mostly from a straight Lib – Labor switch. So a good result for progressive politics generally.
sprocket_ @ #1627 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 4:21 pm
Another hack sails away into the sunset sipping a chardy
The arrest of the 21 year old in America as the leaker of the Top secret information is just another example of the ongoing issues around security clearances and document classification.
About 15 years ago, I got an Australia clearance for work I was doing with the government (it has since expired) but the documents I was working with were being classified as “Top Secret” despite not being critical or that important (most of my work was given to the ministers’ offices and then ended up in the Australian….).
There was no reason for what I was working on needed me to be checked in the same way as people in Defence or Foreign Affairs. But there would have been thousands of people who were in the same boat as me. So that means that instead of concentrating on the people who will have access to the real important stuff, they were calling my ex-girlfriends to find out about me (One joked that she was going to tell them I was a fan of North Korea).
If less documents were classified as Top Secret than less people would have to get security clearances at such at high level and it would mean fewer people potentially accessing information to leak.
The Elephant in the party room …
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-14/reserve-bank-australia-institute-profits-inflation-main-drivers/102208104
Not to mention boosted the bank balances of a few politicians and political parties.
Australia, you’re standing in it.
Socrates
Indeed, it was remiss of me not to mention the exposition of Tudge’s exploits by the robodebt RC as a contributing factor to the result.
I hear the twittering of another impending test for Tanya, with a decision imminent re the proposed Isaac River coal mine in Qld’s Bowen basin…
These days, I’m pretty sure the average tradie earns way more than the average university graduate.
If you’re earning enough that your tax contribution to university subsidies makes any appreciable difference to your take-home income, you probably aren’t very poor. And if the poor are indeed taking on an excessive tax burden compared to the “elites”, then the obvious solution is a more progressive tax system.
The new NACC head would be out under WWP’s random thought of the day. So would I.
I could go on the tools, I suppose.
‘Asha says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 4:45 pm
If you’re earning enough that your tax contribution to university subsidies makes any appreciable difference to your take-home income, you probably aren’t very poor. And if the poor are indeed taking on an excessive tax burden compared to the “elites”, then the obvious solution is a more progressive tax system.’
——————————
Middle class welfare is a hot fave on Bludger today.
Right, I forgot that universities are frequented exclusively by the middle classes. I suppose the poor are supposed to know their place and resign themselves to a lifetime as an unskilled labourer?
‘Asha says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 5:01 pm
Right, I forgot that universities are frequented exclusively by the middle classes. I suppose the poor are supposed to know their place and resign themselves to a lifetime as an unskilled labourer?’
————————————-
Sure you do. It is shades of grey, of course. The noble rich trying to pretend that they should not be charged fees to go to unis because otherwise the poor would have to pay them as well.
LOL.
I assume that you do know the figures for who gets in and who does not, that you know the socio economic levels of those who get in and those who do not, and which schools to send your kids to if you them to go to uni and which not.
Here is a hint if you want to go to uni. Do not be Indigenous!
@C@t: Littleproud’s dad was a state Nationals MP, Brian Littleproud.
Of course since posting that I’ve remembered that Dan Tehan and Sarah Henderson are both political nepo babies as well.
@Boer: Universities have affirmative action programs out the wazoo to try and remedy that but it’s hardly a surprise Indigenous people are still disadvantaged in our society.
Is your objection here actually to HECS not being means-tested as against the student’s parents or something? Doing that has rather it’s own can of worms of course.
Pi @ #1220 Friday, April 14th, 2023 – 3:35 pm
Virtually all of them. In medicine to graduate a doctor does years of work under supervision, before they are allowed to practise. Psychology graduates have to get admitted into an honours year, then do a postgraduate degree, then do two years of closely supervised clinical work after their initial Bachelor of Science Psychology degree before being able to practise as a clinical psychologist. Similar for counsellors. GHD (enormous world wide engineering etc firm) require all graduates they employ to do a full year of corporate familiarisation before they can take on any professional role. Science graduates end up working in a very wide range of fields, almost all of which would require development of hands-on skills and multiple non-academic capabilities before they are fully productive.
When I did Chem Eng at Sydney University, all of my lecturers had followed a degree, PhD, Tutor, Lecturer path, and none had the faintest idea of what skills were actually required in the real world, in a real production facility. We learnt nothing about supervision skills, safety procedures, handling of emergencies, industrial relations, government regulation, pollution control and so on, which are essential components of the required knowledge of a real world practising chemical engineer.
I’ll be interested to see how you try to rubbish this.
BW:
Actually, no, I confess I do not. I presume you do?
Here’s a crazy thought. Perhaps people from low-economic backgrounds might be more likely to go to university if it was more affordable?
As for your concern about welfare for the wealthy, surely that can be solved through some form of means-testing?
https://www.fastcompany.com/90872671/ukraines-sneaky-submarine-may-change-naval-warfare-forever
Boerwar
“Middle class welfare is a hot fave on Bludger today.”
Utter rubbish. What is it with you and tertiary education today? Your posts are chock full of prejudice but light on facts.
Why are you so anti-public finding of tertiary education? It is consistently a feature of countries with the most equitable income distribution. Your concern about it being for elites is entirely misplaced.
Did you ever attend university? If so what decade?
Do you understand the history of tertiary education prior to the Whitlam reforms? Prior to then we had the opposite problem – universities were playgrounds for the wealthy. (To illustrate, in the 1950s when my parents finished high school, both qualified for university, but neither were able to afford to go for financial reasons.)
The public component of tertiary education funding in Australia has steadily dropped in Australia since a high point in the 1970s. By 2022 it had dropped to less than half (48%) at $19 billion. The rest was student fees.
Moreover, uni fees paid by foreign students were Australia’s third largest export income, at $25 billion in 2022. It exceeds all agriculture exports for example. That is also more than the total cost of government funding.
https://thepienews.com/news/australia-29bn-in-education-exports-in-2022/
‘Arky says:
Friday, April 14, 2023 at 5:14 pm
@Boer: Universities have affirmative action programs out the wazoo to try and remedy that but it’s hardly a surprise Indigenous people are still disadvantaged in our society.
Is your objection here actually to HECS not being means-tested as against the student’s parents or something? Doing that has rather it’s own can of worms of course.’
——————————————————
At the moment the odds are systematically stacked in every way against young people in general but against poor people in particular.
Despite the various protestations in Bludger today, the university system contains all sorts of elements that favour the middle and upper class elites. This goes from entry requirements, to the feeder schools, to the feeder race, to the feeder geography, to the courses different socio-economic groups choose, and to the courses that feed the highest incomes.
While rags to riches stories exist, unis are essentially elite maintenance engines. That the elites whinge about HECs is entirely predictable.
HECs is is a strange sort of abnormal thing: a truly progressive de facto tax.
The wealthierier your parents the more likely you are to be paying HECs because the more likely you are to be going to uni and the more likely you are to be doing courses that generate higher lifetime incomes.
HECS, de facto, is also means tested against a person’s income which is fair enough. Payments are progressive as per income which is also fair enough.
Apparently I’m an “elite” now. Cool!
Well bloody said, Socrates.