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.
Unicameral for me. Four year fixed terms. First past the post. Compulsory voting. Preferential voting. All parties’s campaigns publicly-funded. No third party campaign funding. No foreign campaign funding.
Boerwar @ #1001 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 2:06 pm
Just for my own clarity, arent FPTP and Preferential voting contradictory to each other, or do you mean FPTP based on preference flows, which is what we (kinda) have at the moment?
MI
Thanks.
Yeah, FPTP – based on preference flows if needed. I should have added that preference voting is to be compulsory.
Boerwar @ #1003 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 2:13 pm
I’d like to see 4 year fixed terms at the federal level too. It’s been shown to assist in longer term planning and project delivery in time frames that arent stuck to two years. In a 3 year cycle governments needing 6 months to get settled and 6 months to campaign for the next election only have 2 years of real work.
The UK system shows that 5 years fixed terms is a disaster when the 3rd election win was a fluke and the party in power is already corrupt and out of ideas. Can you image if we’d had Morrison for 5 years after 2019.
VE could always check out how democracy in China really works when it runs into the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. VE would, doubtless, particularly admire the transparency of it all from woe to go and vice versa.
Constitutions, particularly Constitutions applied through a ‘what was intended at the time’ lens become a greater and greater constraint on democracy over time.
What the US supreme court is doing is very directly and deliberately anti-democratic and it is the most functional branch of the US ‘democracy’.
MI
I sort of like four as a reasonable compromise between five and three. I’d have the election date set for a fixed date by statute. This would remove the sort of arsehattery pollies engage in when they get too wide a latitude of choice when it comes to setting an election date.
C@tmomma @ #168 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 1:31 pm
North
One for VE.
“‘Fang’ for the memory”
https://warontherocks.com/2018/01/xi-jinping-generals-curiouser-curiouser/
Rudd has presented his credentials and met with Biden for a cuppa.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/it-s-official-rudd-visits-biden-starting-his-role-as-our-man-in-washington-20230420-p5d1yx.html
Shame the new Ambassador wasn’t PJK, who I would hope would open the conversation with “now listen here boofhead … “.
“Dutton favours bipartisan approach on RBA” (Oz headline)
Has he suddenly realised that opposing everything the government does makes the Liberals pretty much irrelevant?
He must be smarting from the latest opinion poll results.
yabba @ #538 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 2:23 pm
Puerile
I notice that ‘The Australian’ has not taxed its journalistic standards by reporting the Central Land Council’s official drubbing of Jacinta Price.
Just to clarify the situation for Voice Endeavour (who has a special interest in democracy) and for Bludgers more generally, the CLC’s 90 members are elected by their communities to sit on the council. The CLC represents around 24,000 Aboriginal and represents more than fifteen different language groups in central Australia. You could not get a more legitimate body to express central australian Indigenous opinions.
The CLC has NOT bought into the Price/Mundine/Dutton bullshit about regional bodies being sufficient unto themselves when it comes to the Voice.
Mostly Interested @ #534 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 2:19 pm
I cannot agree with 4 year fixed terms of government. Having to live in a state jurisdiction which has 4 year fixed terms, but with a state government that most agreed needed to be turfed out much sooner than the end of their 4 year term after much evidence of dodgy practices, I can only agree that maybe a 4 year non-fixed term may be the answer. I’d also add that the federal government, even though they only have 3 year terms, seems to accomplish much in that time. Well, when they’re Labor federal governments anyway.
citizen @ #1011 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 2:27 pm
I’m actually a little surprised.
Even though the RBA has not lost its ability to set rates, one committee, The Board, wont be able to make the calls on interest rates. And will be replaced by anther committee, The Monetary Policy Board.
But if Dutton was going full populist politics then he could have spun that as the labor Government appoint a stooge new committee to influence rates politically. Despite that actually being what’s been happening for decades.
I guess his financial backers yanked his chain (again).
‘citizen says:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 2:27 pm
“Dutton favours bipartisan approach on RBA” (Oz headline)
Has he suddenly realised that opposing everything the government does makes the Liberals pretty much irrelevant?
He must be smarting from the latest opinion poll results.’
——————————————
I suspect this is not sudden. Chalmers made it quite clear in today’s presser that he had been working collaboratively with Taylor. One can only assume that this collaboration has been going on for some time.
The payoffs would be that (a) the reforms would survive a change of government and (b) the new arrangements would engender business confidence and private sector investment.
A clear indication that the new arrangements are practicable and workable is that Blocker Bandt opposes them.
Business and unions are on board, the boards will be more representative, the board has been given social (full employment) as well as economic (inflation busting) objectives.
The CLC has NOT bought into the Price/Mundine/Dutton bad-faith bullshit about regional bodies being sufficient unto themselves when it comes to the Voice.
Probably because they realise that a splintered, ‘local/regional’ group of Voices would never be able to come to a common consensus, could be played off, one against the other, by a federal Coalition government with malign intent.
Shogun @ #953 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 12:31 pm
Exactly. And anyone who tries to misconstrue this very basic fact about the difference between America and China, is simply a wolf warrior in sheep’s clothing.
Mostly Interested says:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 2:11 pm
Boerwar @ #1001 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 2:06 pm
Unicameral for me. Four year fixed terms. First past the post. Compulsory voting. Preferential voting. All parties’s campaigns publicly-funded. No third party campaign funding. No foreign campaign funding.
Just for my own clarity, aren’t FPTP and Preferential voting contradictory to Boerwar says:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 2:13 pm
MI
Thanks.
Yeah, FPTP – based on preference flows if needed. I should have added that preference voting is to be compulsory. other, or do you mean FPTP based on preference flows, which is what we (kinda) have at the moment?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
98.6 says :
Looks like Bowerwar will have to be moving to QLD to get his UNICAMERAL wish !
(Do you live in QLD Boerwar ?)
Off topic but today Australia experienced a total eclipse of the sun and somehow with so many abc (still not worth capitals) channels the event was ignored 3 channels playing Micallef a repeat of last years showing
please lets have a clean out there. I am disgusted I had to go onto my computer to follow the event and guess what Chan 9 were there.
98.6
Um… Qld is not the only unicameral government in Australia.
‘Bilko says:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 2:44 pm
Off topic but today Australia experienced a total eclipse of the sun and somehow with so many abc (still not worth capitals) channels the event was ignored 3 channels playing Micallef a repeat of last years showing
please lets have a clean out there. I am disgusted I had to go onto my computer to follow the event and guess what Chan 9 were there.’
———————
ABC online had live streaming. I am not sure how they sourced that.
GoldenSmaug @ #966 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 1:01 pm
LOL! If Labor proceeds with the stage three tax cuts, future generations could be excused for responding with “Howard with some assistance by Abbott/Turnbull and Morrison and then of course Albo …”
Some legacy!
98.6 says :
Looks like Bowerwar will have to be moving to QLD to get his UNICAMERAL wish !
(Do you live in QLD Boerwar ?)
98.6 says :
Speaking about moving to QLD, which many have done over the last 12 years to escape that secretive Gladbags and that secretive Perrottet family, hopefully now that exodus from NSW will stop and maybe some of them can safely go back home now that Labor are back in.
Can I have a white feather, W@rC@t?
I think a good indication of whether a country is a democracy is how they treat dissenting voices to power. If they jail or kill you then I am confident that they are not a democracy in anyway.
Boerwar @ #1001 Thursday, April 20th, 2023 – 2:06 pm
Hmm. Some people need reminding that if the Federal parliament was unicameral, we would have even less action on climate change than we have now … if such a thing were possible.
Andy – is escalating again.
First he was fixated on Pl1 now it’s c@t.
Boerwarsays:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 2:49 pm
98.6
Um… Qld is not the only unicameral government in Australia.
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98.6 asks :
Please explain ???
Shogun “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.”
Indeed, that is the model of democracy that you are familiar with, based on both the UK and French models of Democracy. And those models are quite commonplace, due to the UK and French habit of invading lots of places a while back.
But it is not the only model of democracy.
The Ancient Greeks got by with 0 parties in their democracy.
USA has no legal limit but practically limits to 2.
Aus has no legal or real practical limits and we have more than 2 parties.
Chinese/North Korean/Soviet Democracy is A FORM of democracy.
I did post the satellite view of “How the East of Australia views the West, according to those in the West” in regards to the Solar Eclipse…
98.6 says :
Unicameralism is a type of legislature, which consists of one house or assembly, that legislates and votes as one.
Unicameralism has become an increasingly common type of legislature, making up nearly 60% of all national legislatures and an even greater share of subnational legislatures. Wikipedia
Seems like we in Australia are in the minority !
All democracies are human.
Therefore no democracy is perfect.
We could bodgie up some minimum standards for democracies.
For example we could have VE’s threshold of a democracy in which opponents are disappeared, murdered or jailed without accountability, with massive censorship, with totally opaque high level decision-making, where there is no freedom of speech, where there is no freedom of the press, where there is no freedom of assembly, where there is no freedom of worship, where minorities are jailed by the hundreds of thousands and persecuted by the millions, and where trial outcomes are a foregone conclusion.
Now if THAT is a democracy then every regime in the world is a democracy and there is no discussion worth having.
The NT and ACT Parliaments are unicameral.
”
Shogunsays:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 1:32 pm
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
”
Shogun
Paul Wolfowitz said when he was deputy secretary in Bush Jr. Administration that USA were the true heirs of ancient Roman Empire.
https://www.theglobalist.com/is-america-the-new-roman-empire/
From the article: In recent months, leading analysts in the United States have begun making comparisons between the United States and the Roman empire. On the right, conservatives like Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal editorial page have openly called for “benign” American imperialism.
Meanwhile, on the center-left, some “humanitarian hawks” are as eager as many conservatives to use U.S. military force in wars to pre-empt threats and topple hostile regimes.
In the past, parallels between Imperial Rome and Imperial America were primarily drawn by leftists or right-wing isolationists.
They thought that U.S. power politics corrupted the world, the American republic — or both. What is new since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is the embrace of U.S. imperialism by many mainstream voices as something desirable and defensible.
In a speech at West Point on June 2, President Bush laid out a vision of a future in which the United States more or less monopolizes global military power — indefinitely. The President declared, “America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge — thereby making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless — and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace.”
………
……
“This “Bush Doctrine” is really the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the former dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. and the brains behind Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld, was the major influence on defense policy guidelines that the administration of the elder Bush drew up in 1992. But at least a decade ago, the Wolfowitzian grand strategy had the rather innocent name of “reassurance.”
Evidentally, by filling all power vacuums everywhere with U.S. military power, the United States would “reassure” potential “peer competitors” (Europe, Russia, China, Japan, India) that they did not need to build up their militaries — or pursue independent foreign policies. Under that same logic, the United States would look after their security interests, in their own regions — presumably so that they could specialize as purely commercial powers.
As President Bush said in his June 2 speech, other leading countries should be “limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace” — while leaving the world policing to the American empire.
As it stands, the Wolfowitzian imperialists — in the name of “reassurance” in 1992 and “empire” in 2002 — want to reduce all of the other major powers in the role to the status of West Germany and Japan during the Cold War. Like Japan and the former West Germany, today’s EU, Russia, China and India will be discouraged from arming, or rearming.”
And here is another thing. Joe Biden was the Senate Foreign Relations Chair during Bush Jr era, who chaired the authorisation of Iraq war2.
A very, very clear-eyed perspective on China:
https://youtu.be/du_Ys58g8GA
Boerwar says:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 2:22 pm
MI
I sort of like four as a reasonable compromise between five and three. I’d have the election date set for a fixed date by statute. This would remove the sort of arsehattery pollies engage in when they get too wide a latitude of choice when it comes to setting an election date.
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98.6 says :
I’ll stick with 3 years federally and could even possibly go for two.
Federal and state elections are my favourite ‘sport’ and I would like to see more of them.
Lucky AFL and NRL followers get their grand final every year. Political tragics should be allowed similar benefits.
Imagine my displeasure when QLD went to 4 year terms for the first time in 2020, thankfully Annastacia won and Labor got the extra year before that other lot.
Just change the system to 4 year terms and retain the system whereby the PM of the day can call an election at will….but would need to explain, as now, what the justification for going ‘early’ is. As now, the parliament could bring on an election with a Vote of No- Confidence. A corrupt and/or totally incompetant government could be called before the will of the people after 3 years should a unanimous call from all state and territory governments demand such an election be called….a very high barrier….and also a political bombshell for any party who uses it for purely political purposes. If Morrison were still PM he could presumably count on at least Tasmania supporting him……and should the hypothetical case be made, and the evidence of corruption be made out then presumably even A Lib government might be swayed, if only out of self interest of not being tarred with the same brush.
I can think of no Government in Australian history, including Morrison, or Whitlam even with hostile State goverments, that would have been called to the people after 3 years….but it is a safeguard to protect against tyranny and corruption at Marcos levels, and in any case the will of the people will be manifest at said election.
So the afore-mentioned benefits of 4 year terms are available, with a safeguard, and a referal to the people under extraordinary circumstances…..Feel free to shoot my musings down
Re: Chicommies and Democracy
One of the essential features of a 21st century democracy is the notion of competing ideas.
These can be freely expressed at an individual level or by freely joining an organisation; i.e., a political party that aligns with your specific beliefs.
A Chinese citizen has very little choice of freely expressing their social or political views or being able to join an organisation which aligns with their point of view.
Despite, its massive population, citizens are not freely able to become a Party Member.
There is no website, no helpful telephone number or address to visit.
Membership is tightly controlled and prospective members are invited to join the Party by cadres who could be work colleagues, teachers or the local village party leader, after a lengthy period of direct and indirect observation.
Any reported criticism or deviation from Party policy would see the invitation annulled.
Party membership is a ticket, providing one doesn’t deviate or question the Party line, to social and career advancement.
It would require extending Senate terms to 8 years to maintain the staggered terms and simultaneous elections. Seems a bit long.
Mostly Interested:
They are. Preferential voting isn’t FPTP by definition.
The term you’re looking for is “Single-member electorates”.
I can’t necessarily disagree, Labor say they are implementing the Stage 3 tax cuts because they are already legislated and they made a commitment that they would go through with them. Fair enough, stupid, but pacta sunt servanda …
If they don’t then immediately start taking very bold action to fix the tax system then they, and every future government, will be in an ever deepening budget hole until someone grows some testiculus and tackles it head on.
Steve777 says:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 3:06 pm
The NT and ACT Parliaments are unicameral.
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98.6 says :
Everyone knows that, in the same way every city council, shire etc the third layer of government, is unicameral.
If Tasmania has approx 530,000 people with two houses, you would think the Brisbane City Council which has a population of around 2 million, and looks after one of the largest local government areas on earth, would have 2 houses.
HELLO ?
caf @3.26pm
It was this concern which saw New South Wales introduce a ballot for half of the Legislative Council, at each Legislative Assembly election.
Alas, the eight year terms continue but there is some check upon the constitution of each Legislative Council.
Steve777 @ 3.06pm.
Gee, you answer another question, and some clown wants to tear your head off.
Sometimes I really wonder whether some of our fellow Bludgers read the proceeding posts before they make an ill-informed response.
National Anti-Corruption Commission to start in July
Will there be a by-election in the electorate of cook called before July
“A very, very crossed-eyed perspective on China”
FTFU, C@t.
The USA is a flawed democracy. In spite of gerrymandering and a biassed electoral college, it remains possible, in blue-wave years, for the Democrats to win the presidency, the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate.
China is a complete, total and utter, totalitarian dictatorship. Even North Korea holds elections where its citizens can vote for the president, although there is only one box on the ballot paper (the same was true of Nazi Germany). Suharto-era Indonesia also held elections even if they weren’t free or fair. China doesn’t even bother to use an iota of pretence. People there live their entire lives without once choosing who represents them.
so iback found nothing against andrews is there any way debora glas could be sacked didnt she address a liberal book launch maybi they could gtake a look at morrisons secrit ministries it was claimed not to be ilegal but the only desition we know he made under the secret powers was ruled unlawful as he took over a desition only the minister could make so it wasover turned
Dutton would no doubt be happy that the voice referendum is over and he loses his leadership due to the yes vote getting up, before the National Anti-Corruption Commission starts to call people to front the commission.