YouGov’s tri-weekly federal poll shows no sign of movement one way or the other in the wake of the stage three tax cuts rearrangement, with two-party preferred unchanged at 52-48 from primary votes of Labor 32% (steady), Coalition 36% (down one), Greens 14% (up one) and One Nation 8% (up one). The poll also has a question on the tax cuts which finds a 69-31 break in favour of the changes over the tax cuts as originally proposed. Anthony Albanese’s lead on preferred premier has narrowed from 45-35 to 45-38 and his net approval rating is out from minus 13 to minus 16, with Peter Dutton in slightly from minus nine to minus eight. The poll was conducted Friday to Wednesday from a sample of 1502.
Some notable electoral happenings at state level:
• There is the possibility of an early election in Tasmania as Premier Jeremy Rockliff pursues a demand that John Tucker and Lara Alexander, Liberal-turned-independent members who hold the balance of power in the lower house, agree not to vote for non-government amendments and motions. Further clarity may be provided after a meeting between the three at 1:30pm today.
• March 23 has been confirmed as the date for the South Australian state by-election in Dunstan, the highly marginal seat being vacated with the resignation on Tuesday of former Premier Steven Marshall.
• I also have by-election guides up for the Queensland state seats of Inala and Ipswich West, which will go to the polls concurrently with the local government elections on March 16.
LVT: And the GST was 24 years ago. But they show that reform is possible, even when you don’t have a majority in the Senate.
The key is to focus on the principle of what you are trying to achieve, not how much additional revenue it might generate. One of Labor’s problems in 2019 is that they wanted to raise lots of additional money to spend on various other things. (If I wanted to be cynical, I’d say that it was mostly to pay for higher wages for unionised workers in the health, education and community services sectors, but that’s another story.)
Once you become overly concerned with revenue-raising, the process is going to run off the rails, as we saw with superannuation in 2019, when – even though Turnbull had already significantly scaled back the tax benefits for superannuants, Labor continued to propose to scale them back even further. When asked why during the campaign, Shorten was unable to explain it: indeed, he couldn’t even remember that the policy was there. But the reason it was still there was that Bowen needed all the money he could find to pay for the promises that other ministers were making.
Franking credits were another instance. The obvious way to go with these was to grandparent them. But, once again, Labor needed more money than that would raise, so they ran with a proposal of getting rid of them alogether. That created hundreds of thousands of losers (more than a million if you included the immediate families of those affected). Super dumb.
Reform is still capable of being achieved in a much better way than this. Let’s see how Chalmers goes. I’ve never been a fan, but I’m hoping he’s going to surprise me. He’s certainly smart, although perhaps not as smart as he thinks he is (which I suspect would be difficult).
Kirsdarke,
I think BJ gets the Henry Lawson treatment. Or was it Banjo Patterson? Everyone knows that he is a drunkard but he produces quality material for the punters. So he can do whatever.
A good question which I saw posed on FB: what if Joyce, possibly a future Cabinet minister, had been filmed not by an Australian diner, but by a Chinese agent?
Lars has a genuine interest in the lifespans of the morbidly obese. It is completely different to Sprocket’s photographic cataloguing of the same subjects.
Holden Hillbilly
Thanks for the link to the Australian story on Marles, Defence and the Boxer IFV program. I am not surprised there is a fight. Cutting the Boxer program now would waste billions in development work with no local construction employment. That would be a political disaster as well as a military one.
I must declare a personal bias here because my niece’s husband works for Rheinmettal at the Ipswich factory. He is a mechtronic engineer. I hope the Boxer is not cancelled.
To me the far more obvious solution is to cancel some of the ADF’s sacred cows – the expensive foreign built traditional capabilities that now look obsolete in light of the war in Ukraine. The two obvious ones are $5 billion on Abrams tanks, and $6 billion on new Apache helicopters.
The USA has just cancelled its new attack helicopter development program. Japan is selling off its Apache helicopters. Such aircraft are proving very vulnerable in Ukraine, and their job can be done cheaper and safer by drones.
Likewise tanks. I know Boerwar disagrees, but the US Marines have abandoned their Abrams in shifting to their new “littoral warfare” organisation, which is supposed to be what we are aiming for too. The western built tanks sent to Ukraine were too few in number, but were seen off by Russian defensive missiles. We’d be better off buying the missiles for a fraction of the cost. We still need the Boxers and Redbacks to move troops. They can carry missiles.
ItzaDream says:
Sunday, February 11, 2024 at 9:30 pm
Keep up. It was the pills!! For the Medical Condition!!
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/not-normal-behaviour-joyce-to-miss-party-meeting-as-medication-mix-emerges-as-factor-in-video-20240211-p5f3yc.html
__________________________________________
I was once on a medication that combined very badly with alcohol. I was very careful about the amount of alcohol I drank while on the medication. Every medication that combines badly with alcohol comes with a warning. Doctors should tell their patients the same when prescribing. If that is Barnaby’s excuse it is no excuse. It would not be an excuse if he were driving and on a medication that said – don’t drive while on this medication.
MB:
The monsters! 😮
@Michael
Frankly exactly the same reaction as we have now. The Canberra press gallery closing ranks and saying “No, shut up, Barnaby is a good boy, you’re the bad person for thinking he isn’t.”
meher baba,
So you don’t think health, education or care workers deserved the pay rises they got when Labor came to power because they’re in unions? Or you just think that they didn’t deserve them at all?
John Howard got stuff done too, some good (gun control, GST), much bad (our Iraq involvement, vandalising superannuation and the tax system, defunding tertiary education, weaponising asylum seekers). It’s much easier with the mainstream media barracking for you.
LB:
Well, he is in his mid-thirties now. I thought he came across as pretty articulate and mature… certainly moreso than some of his decades-older colleagues.
leftieBrawlersays:
Sunday, February 11, 2024 at 9:42 pm
Well I owe it all to you Lars, if i’m honest
“When they go low, I go high”
LVT, 2024AD
===================================================
Though if a black women repeatedly said it, you would probably take no notice of the quote at all. Then credit a white male with the quote many years later. Not a good look.
I’ve backed you from the get-go Lars, i’m sure you know that. I’ve constantly resisted the howling from those who feel my affable engagement with you is tantamount to treason against the Labor movement.
You’ve always been excellent value here from my point of view and I hope that continues. I also hope the both of us man a table together at the next Sydney PB function, with vacant seats aplenty for the curious and intrigued to sit and chat with us once they figure out who we are on pb.
C@tmomma @ #1395 Sunday, February 11th, 2024 – 9:42 pm
Misreading me I think C@t; no need to justify this with me. I was addressing the clarity of his recent comments. I’d be knocking on the NG door too, quarantining existing arrangements, but limiting the number. But he’s clearly said not, and I don’t think there is much room for another ‘broken promise’, so hence my assumption he thinks he’s got his bottom line well covered.
How much do people really care about fairness? Especially when they have to pay for it?
Asha: “The monsters! ”
I should explain. Of course workers in all these sectors – particularly IMO teachers and child care workers, who have virtually no ability to supplement their incomes through overtime – are worthy of significant pay increases over what they currently receive, if we can afford them.
But the problem with the package of spending proposals that it took to the 2019 election was that it seemed to be all about rewarding its own constituency rather than trying to give swinging voters something to latch onto. The proposals were sold as improving the quality of health, education, childcare, etc but, when you looked at them a little more closely, there was really not much of substance in them beyond a whole lot of additional expenditure which experience shows would mostly end up funding pay rises. In other words, the same services at a higher cost: not really a vote-winning proposition.
I think it was indicative of a fair bit of overconfidence on the part of Labor in 2019. They didn’t repeat the mistake in 2022. They campaigned on other stuff and then, once elected, they worked to improve pay levels for their constituency. Better way to go.
Lars Von Trier @ #1415 Sunday, February 11th, 2024 – 9:56 pm
Fairness has a price? Isn’t that a little … ummm … 🙁
Meher Baba:
Fair enough. 🙂
LVT
They dont, especially when having to pay for it.
C@tmomma says:
Sunday, February 11, 2024 at 9:38 pm
I always reflect on the guy who invented jogging. Reed-thin. Fit. Died young.
That’s why I always appreciated the advice to keep a bit of condition on you for emergencies.
I subscribe to the school of thought (Supported by Neil Armstrong) that we have a finite number of heartbeats, no point in using too many of them up exercising too much (or wtte).
ItzaDream says:
Sunday, February 11, 2024 at 9:30 pm
Keep up. It was the pills!! For the Medical Condition!!
==========================================================
So while he can’t be trusted to follow medical advice not to mix his pills with alcohol. We can still trust him to do a good job analysing legislation in parliament?. Because only one of these two things requires a brain more developed than a 4 year old.
c@t: “meher baba,
So you don’t think health, education or care workers deserved the pay rises they got when Labor came to power because they’re in unions? Or you just think that they didn’t deserve them at all?”
See my response to Asha. Of course they deserve pay rises. I should have explained myself better (but then my posts already tend to be too long). My cynicism was about proposals that were largely about increasing pay for workers being presented as being about providing more and better services. Gillard did it as well in 2010, but she got away with it. It’s disingenous IMO.
ItzaDream at 9.44 pm
Who needs to rely on the dubious sound quality of youtube when you can hear a real virtuoso at work? See:
https://www.visitsouthernhighlands.com.au/event/chamber-philharmonia-cologne-germany-live/
Concert on this Tue evening, starting 7 pm, tickets should be on sale an hour before. Venue: St Jude’s in Bowral. Program is the same as in Braidwood last night:
VIVALDI
-THE FOUR SEASONS 4 Concertos for Violin, Strings and basso continuo
MOZART
-Aria »Canzonetta« from the opera Don Giovanni
TCHAIKOVSKY
»Andante cantabile« for Violoncello and String-Orchestra
PAGANINI
»Carnival in Venice« for Violin and Orchestra
The lead soloist, Sergey Didorenko, started playing concerts with the main Ukrainian orchestra over 40 years ago, when he was 11 years old. The female violinist, Sylvia Hurttia, started playing violin in Finland at age 4, and regularly performs new Finnish works in her homeland.
The only German in the ensemble, Thomas Grote, plays the Tchaikovsky beautifully. There is also a Spanish viola player who doubles as a baritone.
If you know the local organisers, ensure they don’t rush up too soon after the Paganini performance, otherwise that could deny the audience an encore.
If you must have youtube, here is maestro Didorenko playing the Four Seasons:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGr_3ya4XmZIZJ-n9S-GyIeeSJ3ZmCy5k
Itza,
I was agreeing with you. 😉
Also, with 2019 still fresh in the minds of the government there’s no way that they will touch NG. Also, research suggests that there’s not that much to be gained from doing something about it. Supply, as the PM said,is the key to deflating the Housing bubble.
Dennis Richardson strikes again. Not bad going for a bloke in his mid-70s.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/drugs-guns-corruption-australia-paid-suspect-companies-to-run-offshore-detention-20240208-p5f3bw.html
https://www.news.com.au/finance/money/wealth/baby-boomers-live-large-as-young-aussies-sucked-down-black-hole/news-story/94fda8ca8ec0088a7268865262c03e23
This is where the wealth is in Australia.
Henry Lawson was the one with alcohol problems. The cave where he is said to have slept things off after a long night at the pub is a local landmark.
https://www.destinationsjourney.com/henry-lawson-cave/
P1,
If you wish to sit down with Lars and I for a catch up the standing rule will be that you ensure you keep your hands where we can see them at all times. No sharp instruments or blunt, heavy objects within reach lol
Cat
“I always reflect on the guy who invented jogging. Reed-thin. Fit. Died young.
That’s why I always appreciated the advice to keep a bit of condition on you for emergencies. ”
My mother in law is a doctor (now retired) who was involved in a study of aged women’s health. They found that both extremes were foolish.
Obesity is a problem but they also found a particular problem for older women who had low BMI. They were more often osteoporotic and did not have much muscle mass or padding around bones. When they fell they more often broke bones, especially hips.
Life expectancy for a woman over 70 with a broken hip was grimly short. It created a downward spiral of sedentary lifestyle that led to further weakness and falls.
TPOF @ #1406 Sunday, February 11th, 2024 – 9:49 pm
Doctor’s do. Pharmacists do. Educated, and dare I say sober people, know not to mix drugs, and check.
Synergists (sedatives and the like) are obvious. Another notorious one is Flagyl (metronidazole: anti-bacterial and anti- protozoal), a big No No.
Dog’s Brunch @ #1420 Sunday, February 11th, 2024 – 10:00 pm
I have heard this before. It may be true …
https://www.discovery.com/nature/almost-every-mammal-gets-about-1-billion-heartbeats
leftieBrawler @ #1428 Sunday, February 11th, 2024 – 10:04 pm
No worries. I have drones.
Metronidazole +alcohol gives you an almighty headache! So it’s probably not that which is the culprit with Joyce.
People is uniform?
Steve777:
Sunday, February 11, 2024 at 9:52 pm
[‘John Howard got stuff done too, some good (gun control, GST)…’]
The GST was ‘good’ – I mean really! And now damn it another is calling for it to be increased/expanded. With that, I’m off.
Maybe Joyce has AIDS. (Alcohol Induced Dizzy Spells)
P1 I have every confidence the features of Lars’ Patek Philippe nautilus would have some kind of drone counter-measure built into it.
Being of middling physical form I can verify that I had one fall recently when my foot clipped the bathroom door and I went flying onto the tiles! Bruises but no breaks.
leftieBrawler says:
Sunday, February 11, 2024 at 9:36 pm
I seek to reconcile with all and sundry when within reasonable perimeters
———————————————————
Has leftieBrawler truly trod the road to Damascus?
Has he been blinded by the light?
meher babasays:
Sunday, February 11, 2024 at 9:46 pm
LVT: And the GST was 24 years ago. But they show that reform is possible, even when you don’t have a majority in the Senate.
The key is to focus on the principle of what you are trying to achieve, not how much additional revenue it might generate. One of Labor’s problems in 2019 is that they wanted to raise lots of additional money to spend on various other things. (If I wanted to be cynical, I’d say that it was mostly to pay for higher wages for unionised workers in the health, education and community services sectors, but that’s another story.)
Once you become overly concerned with revenue-raising, the process is going to run off the rails, as we saw with superannuation in 2019, when – even though Turnbull had already significantly scaled back the tax benefits for superannuants, Labor continued to propose to scale them back even further. When asked why during the campaign, Shorten was unable to explain it: indeed, he couldn’t even remember that the policy was there. But the reason it was still there was that Bowen needed all the money he could find to pay for the promises that other ministers were making.
Franking credits were another instance. The obvious way to go with these was to grandparent them. But, once again, Labor needed more money than that would raise, so they ran with a proposal of getting rid of them alogether. That created hundreds of thousands of losers (more than a million if you included the immediate families of those affected). Super dumb.
====================================================
Grandparenting them would be stupid. It would further increase the intergenerational wealth divide. Giving boomers the rort and nobody else. The whole point was to take the rort off the boomers. Not give it to them in perpetuity. To be subsidised by the younger generations who will never be allowed to carry out the same rort when they are the boomers age. This is typical of selfish boomer thinking. Keep it for me and phase it out for all others. Which is how most things have worked relating to super in the last few decades anyway. If they capped it at say $2000 only the really wealthy rorters would have been effected. So a pensioner getting $400 back on her $10000 in bank shares would not be effected at all.
Steve777,
I thought that it was Henry Lawson. But I hedged my bets. 🙂
You’ve probably heard of Rodin’s “The Thinker” …
Just rotate it 90 degrees and you have “The Drinker”
Re Barnabys episode.
Been there, nearly did it tonight!
Only hit the deck for two minutes and not on the phone.
No suit though, just thongs, stubbies and a singlet.
Then no one took a picture for national media.
Not happy Jan!
Fully sympathise with brother Barnaby.
Good to see most people are laying off, we all have our moments!
https://www.watoday.com.au/politics/federal/drugs-guns-corruption-australia-paid-suspect-companies-to-run-offshore-detention-20240208-p5f3bw.html
Drugs, guns, corruption: Australia paid suspect companies to run offshore detention
By Nick McKenzie, Michael Bachelard and Amelia Ballinger
February 11, 2024 — 5.30pm
Companies linked to suspected arms and drug smuggling, busting sanctions on Iran, corruption and bribery won massive government contracts amid systemic failures to adequately vet the businesses being paid to run the nation’s multi-billion dollar asylum seeker offshore processing regime.
An inquiry into the Home Affairs department conducted by former ASIO director general and Defence chief Dennis Richardson also blamed senior public servants for the failure to use intelligence that could have prevented taxpayers from paying multiple companies linked to alleged serious crimes through often rushed contracts over a decade up to late 2022.
“Intelligence and other information, which was readily available, was not accessed,” Richardson concluded in his report. “As a consequence, integrity risks were not identified.”
The inquiry was launched last year after revelations by this masthead and 60 Minutes about millions of dollars in suspect Home Affairs payments to allegedly corrupt firms and foreign officials as part of the Pacific Solution policy.
Cat
Exactly.
I don’t know how much it will affect the election but there is a lot of social media on Taylor Swift right now. Evidently her supporting Biden is triggering the Republicans.
C@tmomma @ #1424 Sunday, February 11th, 2024 – 10:02 pm
Sorry. Now, I have dabbled, but we know this mega-manufacturer exporter who needs more money like I need to loose more hair, who was recently bragging that it was simply being a lay down misere. He was a lender’s dream, the interest rate mattered little, and all he had to do was watch them all (9 at the time) all become his at our expense year by year by year by year. Mine and Mine alone.
(I was in a cab in New Orleans, with a driver with an afro that took a lot of strong will to not just touch it, just once, lightly, and the cab had M&M Transport Co as its door logo, in big curly bright green lettering. It turned out it was one cab, his, and as he said: “It’s Mine and Mine Alone!”
I used my allotted 1 billion heartbeats by the age of 23. I’m now up to 2.9 billion. I hope to exceed 5 billion by the time the ticker gives up. If necessary I’d go the extra yard and seek out another one.
point taken Rainman, I could also say that when you are removed from the likely lads that encourage you here on Pb you are reasonably palatable
Stooge, heart beating @ #1447 Sunday, February 11th, 2024 – 10:20 pm
Try and get one from a politician. Low mileage.
I recently completed a drawing from life of a young chap in a similar pose as Rodin’s famous work. My subject described it The Over-Thinker. Very droll. Sold the drawing to his mother.