The Age/Herald has results from Resolve Strategic on the Indigenous Voice (hopefully to be followed shortly by voting intention results) finding effectively no change since it last asked in late February and early March, with yes steady at 46%, no down one to 31% and undecided steady on 22% (the total falling short of 100% on this occasion due to rounding). Respondents were also given the question without an undecided option, with the sample breaking 58-42 in favour. The accompanying report says a “rolling track of surveys over the past two months, using a larger sample size to allow a state-by-state breakdown, shows a majority in favour of the Voice in each state as well as nationwide”. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1609.
A second result on the Indigenous Voice emerges from the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll, as reported in The Guardian, showing 60% in favour and 40% opposed. However, “hard no” was up three to 26% and “soft no” was down three to 14%, while hard yes was down one to 32% and soft yes was steady at 27%. Essential had hitherto been tracking traditional personal ratings only for Anthony Albanese (as distinct from a separate series in which respondents are invited to rate the leaders on a scale from zero to ten), but this time there are results for Peter Dutton, who records 36% approval and 44% disapproval. Anthony Albanese is down one on approval to 51% and up one on disapproval to 36%. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1136 – other results, including voting intention, should be available later today.
UPDATE: Essential’s voting intention numbers have both Labor and the Coalition up a point on the primary vote, to 34% and 31% respectively, with the Greens and One Nation steady on 14% and 6%, from numbers which include a 4% undecided component, down one. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure has Labor down one to 52%, the Coalition up one to 43% and undecided down one to 4%. Also featured was a series of questions in which respondents were asked to rate Labor and the Coalition according to eight attributes, which produced an effective tie for “trying to divide the country” but was otherwise consistently more favourable for Labor than the Coalition.
The stage 3 tax cuts are legislated, Albanese and Chalmers promised before the election they would be delivered in full.
That is the bottom line.
Labor can not go back on any of that.
”
Griffsays:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 10:12 am
Albanese not being Morrison is a very adequate answer.
Everything else is gravy
”
That is not cool Griff. 🙂
Andrew_Earlwood:
“The United States is a democracy. China is not.”
One of those sentences is correct.
I know many people do not like the US system of democracy. I am sure there are many people in the US who do not like it either.
But the US is still a democracy – despite the travesty that is the Electoral College, and the entrenched gerrymandering and malapportionment.
Donald Trump was ejected from office due to the will of the American people. Ji Xinping will not even allow the Chinese people to exercise that choice.
The US has a deeply flawed and archaic democracy in dire need of reform, but it’s still a democracy.
”
Shogunsays:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 12:31 pm
Andrew_Earlwood:
“The United States is a democracy. China is not.”
One of those sentences is correct.
I know many people do not like the US system of democracy. I am sure there are many people in the US who do not like it either.
But the US is still a democracy – despite the travesty that is the Electoral College, and the entrenched gerrymandering and malapportionment.
Donald Trump was ejected from office due to the will of the American people. Ji Xinping will not even allow the Chinese people to exercise that choice.
”
Although 7 million more people voted for Biden, “Trump was ejected from office due to the will of 45000 American people.
Evan @ #951 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 12:22 pm
When the situation changes, any intelligent party would change their policies.
What would Labor do?
@Shogun – that’s just rubbish.
China is a democracy, so is the USA. Neither of them are particularly great democracies, and clearly China’s model is less good even than the US model.
In the USA, citizens vote for electoral college members who vote for President.
China – you vote for people who vote for people who vote for people who vote for people who vote for the President.
To try to claim that one of those is a democracy, and one isn’t, is purely an emotive response without any basis in facts.
What you mean to say is that you don’t like the way Chinese democracy works. You have a legitimate point to make, so make it without resorting to alternative facts.
Voice Endeavour
China is a democracy?
Are you making a joke?
Is North Korea also a democracy, in your estimation?
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit ratings, the USA is a flawed democracy, having slipped below the threshold of full democracy from 2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#List_by_country
As with many of these things, the Nordic countries plus NZ lead. Australia is about the middle of the pack of the full democracies, having slipped a few places in recent years. Afghanistan and Myanmar have the “distinction” of scoring lower than North Korea.
‘Voice Endeavour says:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 12:41 pm
@Shogun – that’s just rubbish.
China is a democracy,….’
———————————-
Insane.
@Shogun – yes, by any possible definition, the Chinese Communist Party is a democracy.
Chinese citizens can, through democratic processes, change both who is in the positions of power on the CCP, and change the policies that the CCP implement, subject to some restrictions from the Constitution.
USA citizens can, through democratic processes, change any of who is in positions of power in the Republican or Democrat parties, change the policies that the Republicans and Democrats implement, subject to restrictions from the Constitution, and theoretically, but not practically, people could develop a new party and change policy that way.
Australia citizens can, through democratic processes, change any of who is in positions of power in the Labor, Liberal, National, Green, One Nation, Legalise Cannabis, Animal Justice etc parties, change the policies that the those parties implement, subject to restrictions from the Constitution, and can develop a new party and change policy that way.
All three systems are democracies. Clearly, the Australian option is the best, from our perspective, USA is in the middle and Chinese is least preferred.
Doesn’t change the fact that all are democracies.
The biggest population fall of the past three years was in Boroondara, which includes the affluent suburbs of Kew, Camberwell and Hawthorn. Analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data by KPMG shows a decline of 9200 people between late 2019 and late 2022.
https://www.theage.com.au/property/news/the-melbourne-suburbs-that-shrank-most-and-what-happened-next-20230413-p5d0ae.html
————————–
This story contradicts the narrative pushed by the likes of Kos Samaras that the Liberals lost Kooyong because of a growing population of young people in apartments when the population was falling.
The Moon’s shadow appears to be visible on BoM’s satellite view (lower left corner):
http://satview.bom.gov.au/
The thing about the stage 3 tax cuts is that relief for PAYG earners is a good thing. The over reliance of the Commonwealth on individual PAYG tax payers needs to be reduced. But to implement these changes will cost revenue significantly and absent some other tax increases I am not sure how else this massive reduction in revenue will be accommodated especially given the current parlous budget state. Tax on large corporate entities might be a solution. Or trusts and franking rebates comes back onto the agenda? Where is this all going to end up?
I understand the politics of it all but sometimes politics and political imperative lead us down a very unsatisfactory path. What are the options according the brains trust?
Voice Endeavour says:
….
Chinese citizens can, through democratic processes, change both who is in the positions of power on the CCP, and change the policies that the CCP implement, subject to some restrictions from the Constitution.
….’
Insane. LOL. ‘…subject to some restrictions from the Constitution.. ‘
NFI. The systematic judicial murder and jailing of Xi’s political opponents has been going on for years.
Cancelling the stage 3 tax cuts is not an answer, at best it would be a tactical political action with limited benefits in the longer term in respect to the structural deficit in the budget.
The Labor party needs to educate the electorate on why we are where we are (answer is Howard with some assistance by Abbott/Turnbull and Morrison, but largely Howard).
There is a reason why, since Howard, government debt has been increasing and revenue decreasing. Howard essentially gave tax breaks and paid for them with the mining boom at the time.
Labor needs to be bold with Tax reform, we need to get rid of the rorts and BS tax deductions. But we also know that the second Labor try to do ANYTHING with tax the Media will start screaming.
From the Guardian blog. Price being put in her place.
The Central Land Council (CLC) has issued a scathing statement on the new Shadow Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jacinta Price, saying she “does not speak for [their 90 members] or most Aboriginal people”.
CLC deputy chair Warren Williams from Yuendumu – northwest of Alice Springs – said:
She needs to stop pretending we are her people.
Meeting this week at Spotted Tiger, near Atitjere (Harts Range), council members said they are “sick of Senator Price’s continued attacks on land councils and other peak Aboriginal organisations in the Northern Territory”.
Williams said:
We are tired of her playing politics with the grass roots organisations our old people have built to advocate for our rights and interests.
Her people are the non-Aboriginal conservatives and the Canberra elite to which she wants to belong.
She should tell us what her grievances with the CLC are, and if she can really and truly listen to us she is welcome to attend our next council meeting.
The council says it is well aware of the “scale of the challenges” facing its members and their families and that “Senator Price’s divisive approach isn’t helping”.
Speaking on allegations Price has made that children were being put in the care of abusers, Williams said:
Our kids are the apples of our eyes.
We are not abusers. We love our children. We’d like to know where she got her information from.
It is mandatory to report such evidence to the authorities.
Senator Price declined to comment.
yabbasays:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 10:31 am
Menadue:
“The US maintains 800 military bases or sites around the world, including in Australia. The US has in our region a massive deployment of hardware and troops in Japan, the Republic of Korea and Guam. China has one off shore naval base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa
Just think of the US frenzy if China had a string of similar bases in the Caribbean or their ships patrolled the Florida Keys.
———————-
Many countries hosting American bases want the Americans to stay.
The Chinese people have about as much say in their Head of State as we do.
Sounds like the Judean People’s Front vs the People’s Front of Judea:
Still and all, it could be fun.
Citizen Voice Endeavour would be the sort of person who would not stand up and applaud when Xi is announced as CPC Party Secretary AND secretary of the Committee that runs the PLA.
He would stand up in Tienanmin Square and tell Xi what was what.
He would try to access forbidden materials on the internet.
He would post posts excoriating the Party for being riddled with corruption.
He would criticize court rulings for wRONg thought.
He would worship with the Falun Gong.
And he would stand outside the Uigher Gulag demanding that innocent citizens be released forthwith.
If VE were very, very, very lucky they would lock up as being totally insane.
Q: Is North Korea also a democracy, in your estimation?
Of course it is, thats why it is called the Peoples Democratic Republic of Korea!!!!! 🙂
VE. Talk about sucked in. Incredible.
Shogun @ #136 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 12:31 pm
In the US ‘democracy’ the election of the more powerful house, the Senate, is a travesty. The votes of Wyoming citizens are 38 times more powerful than those of Californians. THIRTY EIGHT TIMES. The votes of North Dakota citizens are 45 times more powerful than those of Californians. FORTY FIVE TIMES. Democracy, my arse! These are the people who determine the composition of their Supreme Court, and whether the executive has funds to function at all.
Both Price and Mundine are running into serious political legitimacy problems.
Who would have thought?
Actually I think it was BW being sucked in. 🙂
Total solar eclipse live stream: watch a rare hybrid eclipse over Exmouth in Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_FRUExW0bg
Voice Endeavour
@Shogun – yes, by any possible definition, the Chinese Communist Party is a democracy.
The CCP might be a democracy of sorts. But I naively assumed that for a nation to qualify as a democracy the people were given the choice of more than one party.
To use your logic – It is like the people of the United States could only have the Republican Party in power. But the people had a say in who the leaders of the Republican Party might be – though perhaps not the President. The Democratic Party is banned (and its leadership in exile in Puerto Rico?), and its supporters persecuted and imprisoned on the US mainland.
I am trying to be polite here. But a voice in my head is saying China a democracy? – Bullshit!!!
yabba @ #974 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 1:09 pm
Not disagreeing with what you are saying Yabba. It’s also worth noting that Tasmanians have 4 times more voting power in the Australian Senate when compared to Vic and NSW voters.
Dr Albanese knows his S3 tax policy is the shits. He hasn’t got the balls to address tax rorts and bogus subsidies to his donor mates. Likes his current status and its entitlements too much to risk it.
Dr Albanese is a very limited PM, protected by a crossbench that makes his half-arsed policies barely respectable.
There’s not much at all to the bloke.
The ‘over reliance on payg’ is a claim I’ve heard many many times, it is not a claim I’ve ever seen any evidence for.
Sure there are comparisons, but never an explanation of why the comparative country with lower payg evidences that it is a better setting or system.
I would support heavy taxes on capital, but they aren’t really on the table. What is on the table is reduced income tax by high income earners, reduced company tax, increased GST and perpetual tory austerity, often delivered by labor.
How far past one vote-one value does it have to be before you are no longer considered a democracy? We have a very strong malapportionment in the senate (see Tasmania with their senate and lower house delegation). Are we still a democracy? Howard won in 1998 by winning less votes, and it has happened in numerous state elections. Does that mean we’re not a democracy?
I agree that the US has some very strong anti-democratic (one vote – one value) elements. But to not call it a democracy is just as silly as saying China is one.
erm. To be clear, i was not implying that China was not democratic.
What I was implying was that the American Republic resembles the sort of banana republic of the late Roman Republic: a system whereby a citizen’s vote received a weighting according to class and tribe, such that outcomes were effectively narrowed to choices between only a handful of candidates at best, all of whom reflected only the interests of one of the factions of the established order. This is not perceived to be a flaw in the American system, but a feature.
It has surprised me that there hasnt been more state based senate parties that pitch to the local voters that they’ll lobby for the states voters.
JLN kind of does this, but it’s a garbled message. Brian Harradine did it much better, his naked “what’s in it for Tasmania” (yes there was also a religious vote to his support) pitch kept him in the senate for 30 years. It’d probably work for the smaller states, Xenophon could have used this model but he had a brain fart with moving back to state politics.
Mostly Interested @ #509 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 1:20 pm
Oh noes! yabba will be outraged! 😆
Andrew_Earlwood
What I was implying was that the American Republic resembles the sort of banana republic of the late Roman Republic: a system whereby a citizen’s vote received a weighting according to class and tribe,
Yes I agree. The description of US democracy as “archaic” is accurate. It is in dire need of reform – but it will never happen.
The parallels between the US and ancient Rome are deliberate on the part of the “founding fathers” of the US constitution. They were consciously aping the Roman Republic.
Tasmanian mal-apportionment aside (and a slight fudge in the NT), Australia is now clearly a ‘one vote one value’ democracy – at least in terms of deciding who gets to form government with the confidence of the lower house in our Westminster system.
Executive Government in America is undermined by its system. The republicans have one the popular vote only once since 1996, but have held the white-house for 12 years in that period. The gerrymandering at a legislature level is astonishing, particularly when one has regard to the means by which that is obtained. The voter suppression tactics of the GOP could have come straight out of the shenanigans of late Roman Republic.
“I agree that the US has some very strong anti-democratic (one vote – one value) elements. But to not call it a democracy is just as silly as saying China is one.”
I’ve not done political science but to suggest that the mechanics of the US system isn’t a badly distorted racially biased democractic system would be wrong.
It would be equally wrong to suggest that America is a place where average citizens can exercise power, democratic power, through their democratic mechanisms because we have the numbers on important issues like gun control and they can’t actually exercise democratic power.
Mostly Interested:
Yes, I too thought that Lambie could have built reasonable success on a “Bloc Tasmaniens” platform, before she’d fully established her current ‘brand’.
“It has surprised me that there hasnt been more state based senate parties that pitch to the local voters that they’ll lobby for the states voters.”
Money & media.
WeWantPaul @ #990 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 1:40 pm
Maybe, it seems these kinds of parties top out at 2 senators, based on the rotating senate voting system.
With 6 up for grabs each cycle it’s always the 5th and 6th spot that everyone fights over. PHON have kept the 6th spot in Qld now for a few cycles. JLN now has both of the 6th spots in Tas sown up. The Greens effectively have locked down the 5th spot in all states. The other 2 thirds break the way of LNP or Labor. So the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 voting model kind of holds true (very roughly).
Dr Albanese knows his S3 tax policy is the shits. He hasn’t got the balls to address tax rorts and bogus subsidies to his donor mates. Likes his current status and its entitlements too much to risk it.
Dr Albanese is a very limited PM, protected by a crossbench that makes his half-arsed policies barely respectable.
There’s not much at all to the bloke.
@Rex Douglas
Its funny Rex because you have also argued that Labor are risking their election prospects by taxing the top 0.5% tax earnings from superannuation balances with a higher tax rate. Albanese must be not caring so much about his ‘current status and its entitlements’ by putting this change to voters at the next election.
Labor didn’t have to pass some of the minor amendments on legislation that the Teals proposed. Labor only did this to support the Teals at the next election. It’s not about making ‘policies barely respectable’ but more of a strategy of keeping the Liberals locked out of their seats. But you won’t acknowledge this with your constant tweedledee/tweedledum rhetoric.
“Maybe, it seems these kinds of parties top out at 2 senators, based on the rotating senate voting system.
With 6 up for grabs each cycle it’s always the 5th and 6th spot that everyone fights over. PHON have kept the 6th spot in Qld now for a few cycles. JLN now has both of the 6th spots in Tas sown up. The Greens effectively have locked down the 5th spot in all states. The other 2 thirds break the way of LNP or Labor. So the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 voting model kind of holds true (very roughly).”
That is fair, even with money and a media that game them a run there are serious hurdles, for example there is a big shift required before the ALP and LNP can make them irrelevant on any issue they agree on and like the greens you are then left with nothing more that childish stunts.
It would need a constitutional change, so its not happening any time soon I guess, but assuming that we persist with a bi-cameral federal parliament, the democratic composition of the senate could be improved by dividing the election of senators into two lists: a state and territory list (whereby each state and territory would have two senators elected) and a supplementary ‘proportional representation’ list, whereby remaining candidates would be elected according to their share of the overall vote. I guess under our current two party system that would usually mean 8 labor and 8 LNP senators representing the states, but assuming say a 100 seat seat, it would get rather in entering after that.
There is a grave injustice in that nearly 700,000 Australian citizens do not get an opportunity to vote as part of a state for the state element of referenda.
A Prime Minister who lets the tail wag the dog is not a true leader.
He’s just another flimflam man.
Plenty of ‘fatherhood’ statements. Lots of PR photos …but no economic leadership.
Politcal Nightwatchmansays:
@Rex Douglas
Its funny Rex because you have also argued that Labor are risking their election prospects by taxing the top 0.5% tax earnings from superannuation balances with a higher tax rate. Albanese must be not caring so much about his ‘current status and its entitlements’ by putting this change to voters at the next election.
Labor didn’t have to pass some of the minor amendments on legislation that the Teals proposed. Labor only did this to support the Teals at the next election. It’s not about making ‘policies barely respectable’ but more of a strategy of keeping the Liberals locked out of their seats. But you won’t acknowledge this with your constant tweedledee/tweedledum rhetoric.
————————-
Rex has brought the narrative that the Teal seats have changed demographically so they won’t vote for the Liberals.
VE should spend ten minutes in Hong Kong to get a small taster of democracy with special chinese characteristics.
Perhaps VE could join a pro-democracy demo and see how that sorts itself out?
Andrew_Earlwood @ #994 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 1:59 pm
What are your thoughts on state upper houses? I’ve only had experience with Tasmania, where the upper house members all claim to be ‘independent’, but everyone knows they are party aligned. And my other experience is in Qld where there isnt one.
At first blush I thought it was dangerous Qld didnt have an upper house, but after living there for a decade and a half it seemed to work fine. When Newman came in and just pushed through whatever he wanted, Qlders punished him for it. So it seems it regulates itself through the actual voters.
The Tasmanian upper house is a mess and just does whatever it wants, but everyone seems to ignore it.
This is how we view the west according to those who live in the west…
