Newspoll has not reported on its more-or-less usual three-weekly schedule, but the usual weekly Roy Morgan should be along later today, followed by the usual fortnightly Essential Research poll tomorrow. In other developments:
• Simon Birmingham, Shadow Foreign Minister and Senate Opposition Leader, announced last week he will retire from parliament by the end of the year. As well as creating a vacancy for his South Australian Senate seat, his departure has resulted in the Senate leadership going from a leading moderate to a factional conservative in Western Australian Senator Michaelia Cash.
• Labor in Tasmania has confirmed its Senate ticket will be headed by Left faction incumbent Carol Brown followed by Right-aligned newcomer Richard Dowling, adviser to state Labor leader Dean Winter and former director of public policy with Meta. Matthew Denholm of The Australian reports Jessica Munday, Left-aligned secretary of Unions Tasmania, withdrew after recognising she lacked support, but now hopes to fill the casual Senate vacancy created by Anne Urquhart’s looming bid for the lower house seat of Braddon. Munday was subject to a party disciplinary process earlier this year after featuring a poster for Labor-turned-independent member David O’Byrne in her yard during the March state election campaign.
• Lachlan Leeming of the Daily Telegraph reports three candidates have nominated for preselection to succeed retiring Nationals member David Gillespie in Lyne: former Berejiklian-Perrottet government minister Melinda Pavey; Alison Penfold, senior adviser to Gillespie; and Forster-based accountant Terry Murphy.
• Hawkesbury councillor Mike Creed has been preselected as Liberal candidate for the Sydney fringe seat of Macquarie, held for Labor by Susan Templeman on a post-redistribution margin of 6.3%.
• The flurry of legislation the government was able to pass through the Senate last week did not include its campaign finance reform bill, which was pulled from the notice paper after a failure to land an agreement with the Coalition. Michelle Grattan at The Conversation reports the Liberals sought to “insert a potential legal time bomb” in the form of a provision that would likely mean the entire bill would be invalidated if the High Court found against any of it in the seemingly likely event of a High Court challenge. The Liberals also pushed for higher donation caps and disclosure thresholds and less generous caps for peak bodies, being specifically concerned about the ACTU. The responsible minister, Don Farrell, says consultations will continue over summer, seemingly with both the Coalition and the cross-bench.
Maybe we could have “Waiting for GABOT”.
B. S. Fairmansays:
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 at 6:57 pm
Additionally there are many people currently employed in the manufacture and installation of wind turbines.
_____________________
Not many in the manufacture. All coming in from China. Drive past them every morning at the Port of Geelong.
“Australia’s only remaining domestic wind turbine tower manufacturer, Keppel Prince, says it will mothball what remains of this part of its Victorian engineering business after fighting a losing battle to compete with cheaper Chinese imports”.
Here’s some really big news! Defence Secretary Ron De Sanctimonious!
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-talks-to-desantis-about-replacing-hegseth-secretary-defense-florida
Luigi Smith @ #1101 Wednesday, December 4th, 2024 – 7:30 pm
Sounds good to me. It never happened. 😉
C@tmomma says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 at 7:35 pm
DONALD TRUMP AND RON DESANTIS have personally discussed the possibility of the Florida governor becoming the next secretary of defense amid concerns that sexual assault allegations could engulf the president-elect’s current nominee for the post, Pete Hegseth.
Would Trump stand down on the basis he did the same or worse.. Crap American constitution & a half backed democracy.. All they did was replace an English King with a home grown one.
Wow, Minns referred to ICAC after just 18months, is that a record?
How long did it take before fatty o’barrel was referred…..
Someone on PB today is expressing a low information, low intelligence persona altogether apparent across the globe as a divisive but growing cohort.
It’s all a bit worrying to see it evolving in Australia.
Not so much its existence, but it’s determination to garnish itself to become a political force.
Sarah Ferguson – congratulations! The first “tinder box” of the Summer.
C@tmomma @ #1103 Wednesday, December 4th, 2024 – 7:35 pm
I still think that the Trolligarchs’ (note the placement of the apostrophe) agenda is to lead with the smelliest turd, have it howled down by the less insane, then “do the will of the plebs” by substituting some lesser shit who suits their rapine better. Donald Commodus plays the Circus.
I may be wrong but I don’t think Fatty was referred to ICAC.
He was giving evidence in the Australian Water Holdings enquiry (and the hearings against Tripodi, Obeid and Kelly must be starting soon) and was asked if he had been given a bottle of Grange by one of the principals. “Not at all” he said but the next day when the receipt showed up it was a case of “Oh, THAT bottle of Grange”. Hoist on his own petard, he resigned after lying to ICAC.
Slowest growth since 1991 outside of pandemic .US booming about to stick it to China and Albos besties China will drag Australia down because labor fed gov jumped into bed with China.
Wrong call losers.
FUBAR says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 at 10:46 am
Socrates says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 at 10:33 am
My daughter is a current engineering student.
They do not make it easy. The lack of flexibility is a major problem. I won’t bore you with the details but not everyone wants to or can just fit into the cookie cutter course selection and timetable.
I made it interesting by enrolling in two courses. But that was before HEX.
goll @ #1106 Wednesday, December 4th, 2024 – 7:43 pm
At the very least, because of compulsory preferential voting, that won’t be quite as damaging in Australia as it was in the USA.
Not to say it can’t happen that Dutton wins, but those who voted for Albo in 2022 would be less likely to just stay home in 2025 as what millions of 2020 Biden voters did for Harris in 2024.
Plus no matter how much the media tries to polish Dutton up, he’ll never be as big of a figure as Trump. All he’ll ever be is Gina Rinehart’s weird angry little robber’s dog.
Rex Douglas says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 at 6:12 pm
It’s a shame that Pollbludger is being used to peddle anti-renewables propaganda. It lessens the place.
We don’t have a price on carbon because of the Greens yet we all tolerate their sanctimonious behavior.
Australians should remember the federal lib/nats under Morrison was a clone version of Trump who tried to copy Trumps failures, one of the main reasons Australian economy is in a mess
That Centre refers to Biden as ‘the left’ is as good an explanation of why he calls himself ‘Centre’ as anything else.
Sceptic @ #1105 Wednesday, December 4th, 2024 – 7:41 pm
It’s interesting you say that because I was thinking the same thing myself. Americans threw out the British Monarchy but it seems that they’re happy to have a royal family. Originally the Kennedys, now the Trumps. It’s so obvious that Trump knows this because his youngest son was named ‘Barron’.
rhwombat,
Trump fiddles with America while he burns it to the ground.
rhwombat,
You’ll like this:
Wright at 9 Entertainment instructs that these are a terrible set of numbers for the treasurer and the RBA (Board) and that consumers are scarred
Well they would be further scarred if inflation was left to encroach across society – from the 6% it was at when this government came to Office
The rate of inflation has moderated to near the RBA band – and we have full employment and rising wage
This is the same Wright who “reported” on the RBA Governors address and answering of questions at the CEDA event last week – reporting which was a fabrication, fabricated no doubt for party political purposes
Wright needs to be called to account – as does indeed Main Street media in Australia (including a cowered ABC)
The FACT that these media companies are losing readership and advertising revenue and social media is replacing them is a cause for concern – for each and every one of us
It is not government or the RBA Board we have lost confidence in – it is our media and their warped portrayal of government
The government is getting on top of the inflation it inherited (noting also Global factors) and is also maintaining full employment and rising wages
As a comparative look across the ditch at New Zealand, never reported by media but covered by Bullock last week (another omission by Wright)
Be careful Australia, be very careful
And in regards Trump and tariffs, the rest of the World is a powerful constituency – and the rest of the world will win
The beneficiaries will be China and, eventually, India with their populations
I’m curious on what’s going on with the Woolworths Industrial Dispute. Is there any indication on what direction it’s going in between the company and the strikers this week?
This is something that could get very serious as shelves go empty leading up to Christmas.
Kirsdarke – As a Coles shareholder, I am fully been the Woolies workers.
And I think most of the public are too. It was funny how Woolworths were running those ads about the kid working there – “isn’t it great we give young people a job” – and then they go and stick computer monitoring of their warehouse workforce.
@B.S. Fairman
Yeah, from what I read about those productivity monitors, they’re utterly brutal. I’m backing the unions here in this as well, and I hope they’re successful in getting them to back down from being treated by Bezos’s Amazon workers.
Heck, Bezos treats his robots better than his human workers since the machines can’t function very well in over 40°C temperatures so he of course makes sure buildings with robots are air conditioned, while the humans can just suffer as they are in 50°C+ warehouses.
In recent days, I’ve walked past a couple of local Federal Labor members’ offices down here at the bottom of the earth. They were both displaying an anti-Dutton poster in the window which featured a big picture of the guy plus some words explaining why he’s a terrible threat yada yada yada.
This bothers me in several ways.
1. Political parties should highlight pictures of their own politicians, not those from the opposition.
2. It’s always a bad sign when a party’s main argument is, in effect, “don’t vote for the Opposition, they’ll be even worse than us.”
3. This was the sort of approach used by the Dems for much of their recent Presidential campaign. How did that go?
4. Is it truly going to be possible to scare Australians re Dutton? He’s been around the political scene for a long, long time and surely most voters would feel quite familiar, with him. Scare campaigns usually work better when voters feel that they don’t know enough about a candidate.
I really hope this doesn’t presage Labor’s campaign strategy next year. Because I don’t reckon it will work. Perhaps internal polling is showing that the cost of living so-called “crisis” and the global anti-incumbent trend are doing more damage to the Labor vote than Newspoll and the publicly-available polling are indicating.
If that’s the case, then i guess there’s not going to be much value in Albo trying to campaign on his achievements. So I would imagine that he and the Labor strategists might feel like he has nothing to lose by turning the 2025 election into the “Dutton election.” We might even see a bit of “who do you trust?” style advertising a la the 2004 election. It worked well for Howard back then. But Latham was far more obviously flaky, even that long ago, than Dutton is today.
It is not like Woolworths (or Coles) are currently beloved by the public at the moment. But it might difficult in communities where there is only a Woolworths.
@meher baba at 8:55pm
Yeah, if that’s seriously what they’re planning on doing then it’s likely going to be a repeat of 2013.
Dutton doesn’t even need to win the Teal seats back, if he wins all the other seats that Abbott won there then he gets a majority even without them.
Labor really needs to do better than that if they want to win.
1. Political parties should highlight pictures of their own politicians, not those from the opposition.
Which is why the Coalition had a picture of Anthony Albanese at every polling booth in the country with the words: ‘It won’t be easy under Albanese’ printed on it. 😐
2. It’s always a bad sign when a party’s main argument is, in effect, “don’t vote for the Opposition, they’ll be even worse than us.”
Which is why the Coalition do some variation of this at every election and win off the back of it. 😐
The Guardian headline is Australian primary students recording their best ever results in global science and maths tests
The Age headline reports the opposite and that overall key maths and science performance plateaus – changing their headline instructing our students are lagging Asian Nation students
It is time for this rubbish and rubbishing “reporting” to stop
All this rubbish achieves is to embolden a demographic which is in full sight on this forum.
The rubbisher’s peddling rubbish – with venom and outrage
If it were not for the reason that they are so dangerous you would take pity on them
That includes MB, noting the attempted rewriting of history over interest rates under Fraser, with Howard as (a failed) treasurer
Interest rates will always be higher under Labor – ignoring interest rates were highest under the Tories and otherwise low interest rates reflect a stalling economy
Re Biden pardoning his errant son, what would any father do when confronted with a justice system under the purview of a fuckwit like Gaetz and his successor? Surely the appointment of Gaetz justifies any broken promise.
FUBAR says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 at 10:46 am
“My daughter is a current engineering student.
They do not make it easy. The lack of flexibility is a major problem. I won’t bore you with the details but not everyone wants to or can just fit into the cookie cutter course selection and timetable.”
—————————————————————————
Unfortunately this problem is difficult to resolve in the structure of engineering degrees. There is an international treaty for recognition of engineering degrees to which Australia is a signatory. This specifies the skills and knowledge engineers are expected to gain in a degree. There is a lot of content required and not much room left for options even in a four year degree. In some signatory countries (e.g. France) engineering is a five year course.
I agree there is a need to update engineering course to reflect advances in science and technology. I have had some involvement in the content of courses in my field. But it is time consuming to achieve, the work done unpaid by volunteers from the professional body like myself, and government has largely washed its hands of it.
3. This was the sort of approach used by the Dems for much of their recent Presidential campaign. How did that go?
They got a lot closer to winning than if Biden had stayed in the race. Plus, according to interviews I’ve seen with American voters who voted for Trump, they voted for him for the most inane reasons. Kamala Harris received approximately the same number of votes as Biden in 2020. Trump simply received more this time. Though not that many more.
In the House the Democrats are 215 and the Republicans are 220. 218 is the Majority. Not a ringing endorsement at all, really.
goll says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 at 7:43 pm
Someone on PB today is expressing a low information, low intelligence persona altogether apparent across the globe as a divisive but growing cohort.
It’s all a bit worrying to see it evolving in Australia.
Not so much its existence, but it’s determination to garnish itself to become a political force.
================================
Which poster is it Goll?
I think the “politics of climate change” peaked a couple of years ago.
I don’t think it’s the salient issue it used to be.
Tough to be a Aussie with fed labor having no vision.
Airbus Albo will be jetting somewhere soon.
Space x rocket in four minutes is taking off live on YouTube let’s hope fed labors on it!
Per Barton…
The only issue with this is that it may remind the voters in Fowler of what they went through 3 yrs ago.
I’d put Fowler in the “dead cert” ALP pick up group, given Fowler usually pulls a 60% ALP primary, but the handling of Barton needs to be watched. As Samaras points out regularly, nothing can be taken for granted.
All the Libs may need to do is run a “dead bat” candidacy in Fowler to try and give Dai Le a clear run.
ALP HQ needs to tread carefully with all of this.
nadia88 @ #1133 Wednesday, December 4th, 2024 – 9:07 pm
I’m not so sure about that. Every time we watch a weather report on the news and they say it’s been hotter than usual, he turns to me and says, ‘why don’t they ever mention Climate Change might be causing that?’ It’s baked in with Millennials.
nadia88
I think the people who need to tread carefully are the NSW Right and Crosby himself. It’s surprising to see them (not Crosby, but his proxies through journalistic mouthpieces such as Stuart Rees) basically crying ‘reverse racism!’ Not so surprising to see Lars lap it up.
Good grief c@t, you’ve turned the whataboutism up to 11!
I did make one mistake in what i wrote earlier: I meant to say that governments really shouldn’t highlight opposition candidates. It’s ok for oppositions to do it. But governments need to be a bit more subtle. That was the beauty of Howard’s 2004 campaign: he had all of these posters and ads featuring the slogan “Who do you trust?” along with his picture. Latham was barely referred to in any of the Coalition’s advertising.
If Labor want to attack Dutton, they need to do something like that. But I suspect the problem is that, while Australians didn’t like Howard all that much, and (quite appropriately) never really trusted him, they did respect him. They thought he was competent, cluey and had good judgement. Albo has this sort of image in 2022 but for various reasons he hasn’t been able to maintain it.
I’ll come back again to my analogies with the 1990 election. Labor’s strategy back then was more or less to admit that times were tough and the economy was going backwards, but the government, particularly Hawke and Keating, were the right people to engage with this extremely difficult situation whereas Peacock, the leader of the Libs, was a total lightweight.
Labor should try a variant on that message. They should admit that global trends are not helpful at the moment and that we have some challenges ahead, but Albo and the team – especially Chalmers – are professional and savvy and are right onto it. The big legislation landslide provide a platform from which to start running this line. They’ve done a little bit with it, but they could do more. Of particular importance is to get more members of the team into the spotlight rather than just Albo himself, who is slightly damaged goods thanks to flight upgrades and expensive house purchases and hanging out with Alan Joyce and V’landys, etc, etc.
The Division of Lyons…
* The Captain’s pick – Rebecca White.
* Trouble brewing in Tasmania over salmon farming.
* The union has told Labor to pick either us or the activists.
* Smells like it’s heading to another Forest workers for John Howard moment.
* Howard sided with the workers. Latham was more concerned with the views of Doctor’s wives in Bennelong and Camberwell.
* White’s views..
Link 1: https://tas.liberal.org.au/news/2024/03/11/pm-fails-bring-cash-or-answers
Link 2: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-22/salmon-farming-not-an-election-issue-says-michael-kent/8734358
White’s views, to summarise, are basically – ” we’ll strengthen the EPA, and something about “we care”.
I know a lot of posters like Bec White, but I think she’s in strife down there.
Tough to be a Aussie with fed labor having no vision.
@pied piper
Let’s be honest the Liberals have never had any vision. Their vision has been to win elections at any cost and to cling on the power. Nine years of Liberals government and what have we got to show for it but 180 billion dollars of debt and they undid Abbott’s Knighthoods.
Rewi @ #1137 Wednesday, December 4th, 2024 – 9:21 pm
Like I said last night, there’s a battle between the parties for the Indian-Australian vote. It would be smart politics to have one as a candidate in Barton.
I don’t think it is c@t.
I think “peak climate change” politics occurred in Australia around the summer of 2019/2020.
We then went into Covid mode.
We’re now into the inflation & economy mode.
I think people rate it as a lower order issue.
I don’t think it’s as salient an issue as it was during the 2010’s. It sort of ramped up around the time of Cyclone Katrina in 2005. It’s peaked and people have moved onto other issues.
meher baba,
I think the problem is that sometimes your posts can seem as though you can’t see the other side of the picture. So I was just helpfully reminding you about it. 🙂
Whataboutisms are annoying but so are double standards.
Peter C: “That includes MB, noting the attempted rewriting of history over interest rates under Fraser, with Howard as (a failed) treasurer”
I find your posts difficult to follow, but, in the one I responded to, you seemed to be mainly talking about banking regulation and deregulation, so I thought you meant home loan interest rates. When Fraser was voted out of office in March 1983, home loan rates were 12.5 per cent. But, under Hawke-Keating, they steadily rose to 17 per cent by early 1990. As anyone who reads this blog regularly can tell you, I’m the biggest fanboy of the Hawke-Keating Government going around. But this is simply a question of fact.
If you were talking about cash rate trends, my recollection was that, as deregulation came fully into effect, these were increasingly paralleled by home loan interest rates. So I believe that the highest ever cash rate was also in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and was no doubt a factor in pushing the home loan rates to record highs.
I might add that I have never believed that, in the main, it is accurate or fair to hold Australian governments responsible for movements in interest rates: not Fraser and Howard, not Hawke-Keating and not the Albanese Government. Global economic/financial pressures play a far more important role in provoking movements in rates. There can be variations in the ways these pressures affecting interest rates from one country to the next. But, among the wealthiest first world countries, these variations don’t tend to result in substantial variations in rate levels. So the role of governments in these things is massively overrated by many people.
c@t: “I think the problem is that sometimes your posts can seem as though you can’t see the other side of the picture. So I was just helpfully reminding you about it. ”
—————————————————————————
Why on earth would I need to talk about the other side of the picture? I’m a poster on a blog, not the ABC news!
I was criticising Labor’s advertising strategy because I happened to see some of it. I haven’t come across much Liberal stuff yet: which is not surprising, because the Libs in southern Tasmania are a highly-endangered species (at least at the Federal level).
If I happen to see some crap Liberal advertising material, I’ll post about it. If I feel like it.
nadia88 @ #1142 Wednesday, December 4th, 2024 – 9:35 pm
I think you need to differentiate between the age demographics and the states. I just think that, with the Baby Boomer cohort waning in numbers in the electorate, whilst it may not be as important to them, and even Gen X, it certainly is an article of faith with the Millennials and Gen Z. Well, at least those ones in NSW I speak to.
Of course, there is a cohort of that demographic that falls into the Tradies and Associates grouping that don’t take Climate Change seriously but I also believe that we are one bushfire disaster in summer away from everyone taking it seriously again. That is the principle reason it’s dropped off people’s radars, it’s been wettish instead of dry during the past few summers.
It could also be the case that people see the government getting on with addressing Climate Change so it’s not as important an issue as it used to be. Now they want help with Cost of Living.
This is one defence change I strongly support – calling tenders to substitute the cheaper locally made Strikemaster for the more expensive imported HIMARS for the army as a long range rocket launcher.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/brother-of-one-of-australia-s-worst-killers-jailed-for-horrific-crimes-against-children-20241031-p5kmvq.html
The Aussie system is less than half the price of the US one, is locally made and will fire locally made NSMs. Excellent.
Ifour economy keeps struggling substituting locally made systems for more costly imports will become increasingly desirable.
meher baba,
I wasn’t making reference to Liberal advertising material this election cycle but reminding you of the last election when the Liberals did the things you criticised Labor for. Also pointing out that they always vilify the Labor Party and its leader in some way. And they are successful doing it most of the time. That’s all.
Division of Goldstein (VIC) …
* Recent issue has developed in that area, mainly around Brighton, about the state gov’t wishing to build high rise towers.
* Naturally the residents are in uproar.
* The local state member James Newbury, is stirring up trouble. Poor Jacinta had to leave a recent meeting via the back entrance to avoid hostilities.
* Tim Wilson is trying to win the seat back for the Libs. Wilson, as some may know, was a Liberal appointed to the H.R.C. and caused quite a lot of dissent to put it mildly.
The current Federal members response to the high rise issue – from Zoe Daniel – is here.
Link: https://zoedaniel.com.au/2024/10/23/victorias-housing-plan-statement/
To save anyone wasting their time reading it, the 2nd last paragraph states the following words of wisdom from Zoe …
“On a broader level I am advocating for multipartisan policy involving all stakeholders and all levels of government to create a long term, sustainable and cohesive solution to lack of housing supply.”
..
No-one is interested in multi partisan stakeholder word salad mumbo jumbo. This sort of language is code speak for ” I don’t really want to share my views with the voters”.
Unless she comes out with a clear view, I think she may be in strife there.
In fact, if she continues with this sort of double speak, then I think she will lose.
Sometimes clarity is required from a politician.