As well as test cricket, Boxing Day customarily brings Newspoll’s quarterly aggregated breakdowns in The Australian, this one combining 3775 responses over three polls from October 7 to December 6. The state results have it at 50-50 in New South Wales, after the Coalition led 51-49 last time, suggesting a Coalition swing of around 1.5% compared with the 2022 election; 50-50 in Victoria after Labor led 52-48 last time, a Coalition swing of around 5%; a Coalition lead of 53-47 in Queensland, in from 54-48, a Labor swing of around 1%; a Labor lead of 54-46 in Western Australia, out from 52-48 last time, a Coalition swing of around 1%; and Labor leading 53-47 in South Australia, in from 54-46 last time, a Coalition swing of around 1%. The gender gap disappears, with 50-50 results for both men and women, compared with 51-49 to the Coalition among men and 52-48 to Labor among women last time. A 54-46 lead to Labor last time in the $50,000 to $99,000 income bracket becomes 50-50 this time, while a 54-46 lead to the Coalition among those on over $150,000 reduces to 51-49.
nadia88 last thread: “Rainman – my kitten turned 1 today, so I suppose he’s a cat now.
There is another poster on this site who has a 19 year old cat, soon to turn 20.
Don’t be harsh on your pusscat please. He/she means well.”
——————————————————————————-
Hey Nadia
Because you mentioned my cat – a tabby with the given name of Mischief – he meows you and your cat his compliments of the season. (Although, TBH, like most of his species, he’s not necessarily all that fond of other cats.)
However, Mischief does object to your describing him as being soon to turn 20, as he considers himself a young fella who is still a good 8 months away from that momentous event. He wasn’t very well a few weeks back, poor fellow: some breathing difficulties that the vet thought might indicate that he was a gonner, but a course of steroids has cleared them up to a significant extent. So, who knows, he might still make it to the cat equivalent of a century. As I write, he is engaged in his new favourite pastime of looking out the front window to see what is going on in the street. He is still getting a lot of enjoyment out of life, spending plenty of time in the garden and climbing up on things.
I first met him (and his original owner, now my partner) when he was 8, and – in keeping with his given name – he was very bitey and scratchy back then, as a number of permanent scars on my hands and arms would suggest. But he’s become an old marshmellow now.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/don-t-walk-in-my-path-kohli-s-heated-clash-with-boy-wonder-konstas-20241226-p5l0ps.html
Were this any ordinary bit of niggle, a fine would suffice. However, shortly after Kohli’s physical with Kostas Sam got out. I think it likely that Kohli disrupted the debutant’s momentum: which was his intent.
Ban him until the end of the Cricket Championship in June, IMO. It will never happen of course, such is the power of the Brahmin mafia.
Re the Newspoll data. I think it’s ridiculous to write the Albanese Government off just yet, as a growing number of posters on here want to do. Unless things change between now and polling day, the election is clearly very close on a 2pp basis: somewhere between 50/50 and 51/49 to the Coalition.
In normal circumstances, one could chalk that up as a likely Coalition victory. But, this time, there’s going to be the little problem of the Teal seats, which might mean that even 53/47 2pp to the Coalition might not be quite enough to get them into majority government.
But I’m with nadia88 that the situation in Victoria is looking pretty bad for Labor: a likely cascade of seats falling to the Coalition. This was always going to have to happen sooner or later: some of the seats that Labor holds by significant margins in and around Melbourne are quite similar socio-economically and demographically to seats in Sydney which have steadily become more and more difficult for Labor over time. Socio-economic factors and voting preferences do not always line up in a neat way, but they will tend to move in the same direction over a longer period of time.
My prediction is the same as I have made before: election night is going to be a pretty scary one for Labor supporters and there will be no certain outcome at the end of the night. However, when the dust settles, I would expect Labor to be able to put together a minority government.
“In normal circumstances, one could chalk that up as a likely Coalition victory.”
By’normal circumstances’ you mean that the coalition start the race as the encumbent, surely?
Ken Bonham reckons that ‘normal circumstances’ sees a swing of up to 1% back to the encumbent party if it is a tight race with 5-6 months to run before the election (KB can please correct me if I’ve unfairly summarised him).
Dutton also goes into the race riding a wave that is in fact a house of cards. That will be scrutinised. Dutton reacts VERY badly to scrutiny, only ‘performs well’ when getting a tummy rub in Newscorpse outlets, or breakfast TV or 2GB. so there is that as well.
Bit surprise there is a swing against the federal Lib /nats in QLD
If that is the case Peter Dutton,wont be the federal liberal party leader of the opposition when the federal lib/nats remain in opposition after the upcoming 2025 federal election, he could lose his seat or retire from politics from the backbench .
There is nothing to suggest Labor won’t be increasing their majority
likely they will be
A_E: “Were this any ordinary bit of niggle, a fine would suffice. However, shortly after Kohli’s physical with Kostas Sam got out. I think it likely that Kohli disrupted the debutant’s momentum: which was his intent.”
I don’t want to defend Kohli in any way, but your memory has failed you a little bit here. The shoulder bump happened when Konstas was 27 no and it was a good 45 minutes or more after this that he was dismissed for 60. So I don’t really think that the shoulder bump had any consequences for Konstas: indeed, I think it fired him up a bit more. Nevertheless, I reckon Kohli should have been suspended anyway: physical contact like that has no place on any cricket field.
FWIW, my assessment of Konstas is that he has a fabulous temperament for top level cricket, but I’m not sure that he’s quite got it all together technically just yet. There seem to be a few vulnerabilities there for the bowlers to exploit once they work out how best to do that: which usually takes about a year after a player makes his debut at the top level. And then the challenge for Konstas will be to tighten things up, which he’s got all the time in the world to do. He’s certainly the most exciting batsman to debut for Australia since Warner.
Looks like the wealthy people don’t mind not getting their tax cut.
This bit of excellent psephological work from Dr Doolittle (and I think I’ve worked out who he is but will stay mum…because I’m probably wrong! 😆 ), deserves repeating in the new thread.
Dr Doolittle
Thursday, December 26th, 2024 – 11:50 pm
Comment #1003
nadia88 at 8.33 pm
Thank you for the details and your estimate. Note that Dr Bonham says the TPP vote and the pendulum remain ultimately decisive:
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2022/06/two-party-swing-decided-this-election.html
The issue I have with those polls is the small samples. Let’s take two of the most frequent one:
You Gov on 14 May with Labor on 35% primary (above Libs on 33%), then barely three weeks later on June 4 the same pollster has Labor on 24%, lower than your current floor, Libs at 41%.
The Payman debacle did not hit the media until a few weeks later. Was there such a big shift? Unlikely, but the Labor primary nationally diminished from winter 2023 until winter 2024.
Here is Bob Hogg on the 1990 campaign, with a bit of a focus on Victoria then:
“What you need to do, as when you’ve got a poll that has a 4 per cent shift in three days, is take it very sceptically and assume that at the very best what you are seeing is a correction on a poll that was wrong before. So you ended up getting it relatively correct, reasonably correct, that aspect. I could touch on others as well, but I’m not here on a witch hunt. The 4 per cent shift was sheer and utter nonsense.”
https://australianpolitics.com/1990/04/11/bob-hogg-1990-federal-election-analysis.html/
Note he says at best it is a correction, so at worst it is quite misleading.
What I conclude is that, for whatever specific reason linked to the small sample, the You Gov poll is unreliable. I suspect that is what the major parties have concluded.
The Dunkley by-election was on 2 March. The closest You Gov poll was:
Feb 26 until Mar 6, 2024 YouGov Online VIC 377 35 (Lab) 36 (Lib) 14 (G) 6 (Hanson)
Dunkley results: Lab 41% Lib 40% G 6% (lacklustre effort) Hanson absent; RW nutter 2.5%
Labor’s problem, evident in Dunkley, was not the primary vote, but fairly poor preference vote.
While that problem may persist, you say it is compounded by a significantly lower primary.
What you have noted correctly is that it matters greatly where the primary vote is spread. That was why Howard won from behind in 1998, because Labor’s vote was poorly spread, whereas Peacock had a stronger preference vote in 1990 yet lost, despite winning big only in Victoria.
If you think the last You Gov Vic Nov sample of 386 is adequate consider this sample of 386:
Aug 28 to Oct 12, 2023 Newspoll/Pyxis TAS 366 30 (Lab) 25 (Lib) 13 4 57 43
If true that would have indicated an 8% drop in the Lib primary since election. Unbelievable.
In general, and this applies especially to the US but also to state breakdowns here, the polling industry is woefully inefficient. They should poll less often with larger samples. Why not? Because the media have got much of their audience to believe in the horserace form of analysis.
Remember that the 1998 election showed the crucial role of candidate selection. Which 5 seats do you presume the Libs will win from Labor in Victoria, excluding Deakin?
Margins are:
Chisholm 3.3% (Lib candidate is former MP for Higgins, but Labor MP has sophomore surge)
Aston 3.6% on by-election, but 2.6% to Libs in 2022 (Lib candidate is Knox Mayor from 2004!)
McEwen 3.8% (held by Labor since 2007, won by 313 votes in 2013)
Bruce 5.3% (held by Labor since 1996)
Dunkley 6.8% (Libs have same stellar Irish bloke as candidate who lost the by-election)
Holt 7.1% (held by Labor since 1980)
Hawke 7.6% (new seat in 2022; Lib primary was 26.3%)
Corangamite 7.8% (margin increased by redistribution)
Isaacs 9.5% (held by Labor since 1996)
There you have 9 seats to choose 7 from, but the Libs won only 4 of those in 2013 landslide.
meher baba,
Read Dr Doolittle’s Victorian analysis. Far more erudite and considered than nadia88’s finger in the wind analysis. Though we’ll wait and see how she responds to his challenge.
I love this comment from the ‘Billion dollar Boxing Day blitz’ article in the 9Fax media:
Albo is hopeless ..he can’t even organise a cost of living crisis
😆
There is another point in Victoria which is being ignored, since there is no more united palmer party in Victoria
The swing which is likely going to the Lib/nats is from the united palmer party voters who are lib/ants leaning voters anyway , which isn’t going to make difference in Labor seats the federal lib/nats need to gain
Which overstates the federal lib/nats making ground off Labor
A_E: “By’normal circumstances’ you mean that the coalition start the race as the incumbent, surely?”
Of course KB is always correct about the data and I will defer to his advice on this point, if he is about the place and wishes to do so.
I haven’t trawled through all the data, so my view was based more on my recollection of what the pundits were saying before election night compared to what actually happened. I can recall ten elections in my lifetime in which many of the pundits, drawing on the opinion polling, seem to have wrongly predicted the extent of a late (or perhaps underlying) swing towards or away from the incumbent government. The elections where the Government ultimately did better than most predicted were 1977 (Coalition), 1990 (Labor), 1993 (Labor), 2001 (Coalition), 2004 (Coalition), 2019 (Coalition). The ones in which the Opposition did significantly better than was generally expected were 1974 (Coalition), 1984 (Coalition), 1998 (Labor) and 2016 (Labor)
Seven out of these ten elections produced an unexpectedly better than expected result for the Coalition. Intriguingly, none of them brought about a change of government, so it seems that the pundits are pretty good at predicting those (albeit that we have only had seven in the last 75 years).
So I’ll stick to my view that, if the Coalition – in government or opposition – are slightly ahead in the polling close to the start of the election campaign, then you would normally expect them to win. But, as I said, not on this occasion, because the advent of the Teals has changed everything.
The Sydney to Hobart Race again has tragedy dog it:
Two people on separate yachts participating in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race have died after they were each struck by sail booms on the NSW coast.
The first participant was on the Flying Fish Arctos and died just before midnight on Thursday. The second participant, aboard Bowline (SA), died just before 2am on Friday.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/two-dead-after-being-hit-by-sail-boom-in-sydney-to-hobart-yacht-race-20241227-p5l0sc.html
Condolences to the family and crew.
So Ralph Babet is a Senator from a party that no longer exists in Victoria any more?
c@t: “Read Dr Doolittle’s Victorian analysis. Far more erudite and considered than nadia88’s finger in the wind analysis. Though we’ll wait and see how she responds to his challenge.”
Dr D seems to be using 2013 as a benchmark. But 2013 was well after what seems to have been a sort of seismic shift to the left among Victoria voters which – apart from the brief Baillieu-Napthine farce – has been evident at both the Federal and the State levels for two decades or more.
I’m anticipating some sort of a correction sooner or later. The Newspoll data quoted by William suggest that sooner is conceivable. And, when the correction comes, it will bring a cascade of seats falling to the Libs, regardless of candidate quality on either side (which, as Dr D has indicated, would appear strongly to favour Labor).
Perhaps it won’t happen in 2025. I suspect that Dutton will not welcome the coming shift to the right of the leadership at the state level, which will make some Victorian voters more wary of the Libs, but this might not be enough to stop the correction in its tracks.
But, to sum up, I think that nadia88 is broadly correct about what is most likely to happen. I recall erudite discussions back in 1975 along the lines of “don’t worry about what the polls are showing, look at this list of Labor members who are are extremely popular in their electorates and therefore can’t possibly lose.” But they all lost. When the swing is truly on, it spares nobody.
C@tmomma says:
Friday, December 27, 2024 at 7:10 am
So Ralph Babet is a Senator from a party that no longer exists in Victoria any more?
—————
Yes, I think his office is in Canberra , so why is he representing Victoria ?
Victorian voters should be wary of a shift to the Hard Right by the Victorian Liberals if Brad Battin becomes their leader. Especially, as I have noted before, seeing Marcus Bastiaan lurking in the shadows again. These people have one main goal in political life, even if they may try to camouflage it in more secular clothes:
The first thing to understand about Christian nationalism is that it’s not really about Christianity. It’s a parasitic distortion, devouring faith from within and leaving behind a hollow husk. It’s a blasphemous hybrid of faith and politics, stitched together from cherry-picked Bible verses like some twisted theological Frankenstein. Their doctrine? A grab bag of convenient biblical one-liners that justify a political agenda rather than illuminate a spiritual path. This isn’t the faith of the humble carpenter of Nazareth; it’s a gospel with all the nuance of a crucifix wielded like a cudgel to bludgeon dissent and seize control.
https://patricemersault.substack.com/p/holy-hypocrisy-the-blasphemous-gospel
It’s just the same here as it is in America.
Morning all. Thanks for the polling breakdown William. I think this bit is key:
“ 54-46 lead to Labor last time in the $50,000 to $99,000 income bracket becomes 50-50 this time, while a 54-46 lead to the Coalition among those on over $150,000 reduces to 51-49.”
Labor has been very limited on tax reform, and so fears of wealthier voters about losing their rorts have probably abated. Conversely, despite Stage 3 tax cuts, less wealthy voters feel that Labor has not done enough for them.
For those on welfare I think Labor has done its best. For low income workers, the results are more mixed. Worldwide pressure on cost of living mean the latter is true in many countries. This isn’t something that Labor caused.
An example of a seat in Victoria where the polls are misleading is Wannon;
Last election Alex Dyson (ind) lost to Tehan (54-46), its the closest federal election result since 1955 when Fraser won his first election.
This year has raised about 200k (with big donation from one farmer and climate200), has a campaign manager, has three “Community Hubs”, looking to open two more, vehicle advertising.
So the 5 biggest cities will have a good presence. Typical campaigns focus on the two biggest cities only, and roll the dice on smaller towns and rural vote. So this is a step up from his last attempt and typical campaigns.
Libs are playing it very defensively so far, with their “vote for a teal, get a Green or Labor” (or something) advertising, but its hard to know how sticky that last few percent will be, if Libs will spend many resources defending it, or if they have the people to improve their campaigning after not having to try for 70 years.
Looking back at the overall political balance:
Labor hasn’t done as much in office as I had hoped, especially on climate change (new gas approvals and EV delay), tax reform (not just shifting scales), a too weak NACC, retaining AUKUS and lack of PS reform (especially Defence). This was part of a deliberate cautious strategy by Albo. I think that strategy reflects Albo’s nature more than political wisdom.
Against this Labor has managed foreign affairs, the budget and the cost of living challenges as well as possible, and better than most countries. The Voice was a mistake in execution, but well intentioned.
Meanwhile Dutton has done nothing but oppose and divide, like Abbott vs Gillard. He has literally no credible policies to stimulate growth, let alone improve standards of living.
I can’t see Dutton possibly picking up enough seats to gain a majority, nor have enough appeal to convince the cross bench to vote for him in a minority. Labor has a small margin and will lose some seats (though hopefully pick up Sturt).
So overall I think we are still headed for a minority Labor government next term.
Soc,
The $3.7 Billion Boxing Day sales splurge yesterday has convinced me that people are loosening the purse strings, even if not completely yet.
Dr Doolittle
I caught up with your comments about the extra budget for Veterans compensation and its economic costs yesterday. You referenced my comments on Defence spending.
I agree with your general points. Spending on Veterans assistance is liek other forms of welfare spending. The money gets spent by recipients, who usually badly need it. So it gives the economy a stimulus like spending boost. Saying that all welfare spending is a cost that has no value is economically wrong, as well as sociopathic.
I’ll add another post on other forms of defence spending
Cat
Agreed. The data shows our inflation problem bottomed out in the September quarter. There is still a huge problem with housing, but that has many causes.
Socrates @ #24 Friday, December 27th, 2024 – 8:02 am
The Housing problem is slowly resolving. Not quick enough for some but at least with the federal and state government’s new Housing programs the Titanic of Unaffordability has started to turn around. As the article I posted about the collaboration between The Salvation Army and the NAB for 7000 new Social Housing units, all brought about as a result of the HAFF, attested to.
As per usual the Coalition can see that these changes need more than one term to make the positive changes and solutions to these problems, ditto with the Renewables project, become so noticeable that they cannot be reversed, so the Coalition campaign on them being unresolved after 3 years of Labor being in power. Cynically. Especially so that they can reverse them if they win.
UK Labour carrying on the ‘good work’ of the Tories, much like Albo’s Labor is here.
“NEW: Labour’s net rating on economy is -51
✅ Well: 18%
❌ Badly: 69%
This is WORSE than the Tory rating in July 2024 (-41)
Via @YouGov, 23 December 2024”
On defence spending, it does have employment benefits and can encourage development of industries. However compared to other forms of government spending defence employment benefits are small, and industry benefits depend heavily on how much of the projects are built locally.
High defence spending generally reduces economic growth. It also encourages your potential enemies to spend more too. You create an arms race. Defence spending should be optimized not maximised.
The Ukraine war has shown that generally in war, numbers beats quality. In a one on one battle between two tanks, ships or planes, the better quality one wins. Though even that depends on the crew quality too. So buying expensive kit but not fixing high departure rates of experienced crew is a really stupid strategy. But in a real war, three hundred average tanks will beat two hundred good ones.
This is why I (and I suspect AE) bang on about getting better value in defence projects. It matters a lot, and the ADF, especially the navy, is frankly terrible at it. There is an excellent Australian defence economist, Perun, who post good YouTube videos on this. Unsurprisingly he is a consultant and doesn’t work in the ADF.
Seen in this light, projects like AUKUS don’t make sense. The strong tendency of the ADF to pick the most expensive defence kit from UK and USA suggests parochialism and vanity, not good judgement. Except for US aeropsace, UK and USA tend to be high cost suppliers. US shipbuilding is hopelessly uncompetitive.
For defence manufacturing, local production of consumables (eg ammo, spare parts) and things we can do efficiently is obviously better for the economy than imports. But you rarely get efficiency unless you can justify continuous production. Small scale one off production runs are about politics and shoring up votes in marginal seats, not defence or economics. Labor and Liberal governments have both been guilty of this in recent decades.
More hard truths for the boosters of Dum Dum Dutton’s Nuclear plan to swallow:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/dutton-s-brave-nuclear-bet-relies-on-coal-plants-their-owners-are-concerned-20241219-p5kzrl.html
Sohar the Nigel Farage booster. 😐
Socrates: “Spending on Veterans assistance is liek other forms of welfare spending. The money gets spent by recipients, who usually badly need it. So it gives the economy a stimulus like spending boost. Saying that all welfare spending is a cost that has no value is economically wrong, as well as sociopathic.”
This philosophy doesn’t seem to have worked too well in Uruguay over the past half century or so, during which time that nation has consistently struggled with a declining economic base that has made it difficult for it to sustain a welfare payments system that is enshrined in law and various industrial agreements that have proven hard even for authoritarian military regimes to undo. And, more recently, we have seen a similar problem emerge in Greece.
The occasional use of the welfare system as a means of stimulating the economy – eg, through one-off payments – is a good idea. But, in general, generous welfare systems do not pay for themsleves through increased economic activity. Countries are able to have generous welfare systems because they can afford them: in our case, largely because of the strength of our minerals sector.
We are lucky in Australia that the welfare system we have devised is well-targeted and fair, albeit a bit parsimonious according to many of its critics. We allocate money to recipients on the basis of perceived need, rather than on concepts such as the desirability of maintaining the incomes of unemployed workers at something close to what they were earning before they lost (or left) their jobs.
And we expect able-bodied people to continue to work, or seek work, until they turn 65: which I think is a little too old, but better than the much lower retirement ages that apply in the welfare schemes of some other nations.
So our welfare system is reasonably future-proof compared to those of, say, some nations of continental Europe. But it will require close monitoring as our population continues to age. And god help us when the day comes that we run out of valuable minerals and/or the rest of the world decides it doesn’t want them any more.
‘Andrew_Earlwood says:
Friday, December 27, 2024 at 6:06 am
‘Post discussion’ Nadia there was also one last Newspoll: Labor on 33%. That was missing from your list. I’m also not sure Resolve and Morgan somehow provide ‘post facto’ vindication to your bloviating for months that ‘29-31’ is baked in. Perhaps Labor is yet to suffer a further decline, but again, that doesn’t vindicate you saying – for months ‘29-31’ is baked in. In fact it underscores my point: you are not providing analysis: you are in fact campaigning.’
====================
Gosh, A-E, that is so accurate. Tried for some time to keep under wraps but golly, as they always do, the slips show.
Azerbaijani government says plane that crashed in Kazakhstan was hit by Russian surface-to-air missile
Mornington MP Chris Crewther is also throwing his hat into the ring to be Victorian Liberal Leader at today’s party room meeting.
meher baba says:
Friday, December 27, 2024 at 8:33 am
”’
So our welfare system is reasonably future-proof compared to those of, say, some nations of continental Europe….’
========================
I assume that your discussion is predicated on the huge personal debt per capita remaining manageable, the housing bubble deflating in an orderly fashion, that climate disruptions don’t increase in amplitude, and on our export commodities maintaining their current trading range.
Big assumptions.
‘Holdenhillbilly says:
Friday, December 27, 2024 at 8:37 am
Mornington MP Chris Crewther is also throwing his hat into the ring to be Victorian Liberal Leader at today’s party room meeting.’
——————
A hat-led economy.
Boerwar @ #31 Friday, December 27th, 2024 – 8:34 am
Finding common cause with paulA and Lars Von Trier kind of rang the alarm bells for me.
Meher baba
Not sure what the point of your post is? Obviously in welfare, like defense, you can spend too much or too little.
You have picked out two examples – Uruguay and Greece – which have many economic problems and languish at the bottom of growth tables. Hardly relevant to Australia. There are many countries showing the opposite- higher welfare spending making them more economically resilient. E.g. Nordic countries.
Overall Australia is now in the bottom half of OECD nations for welfare spending in % GDP. There are many countries with higher rates of GDP growth that spend more. I would say welfare spending has been cut much too far in Australia.
I have not discussed the many harms and economic costs from too low welfare spending. It would be a very long post. Google Finnish spending on public housing for a textbook example of better policy by spending more upfront.
” The Australian Energy Council, which represents the nation’s biggest energy companies and coal owners, including AGL, Origin and EnergyAustralia, said the fossil fuel plants were too costly to run and maintain for the decades required by the opposition.”
Yeah but they’re just a bunch of bleeding heart socialists…
”While the opposition believes it can build its first nuclear reactor by 2037, including a two-year planning window following the federal election that is due by May next year, the CSIRO has said it could not be built before 2040.”
I know which one I believe and it’s not the Opposition.
Holdenhillbilly @ #33 Friday, December 27th, 2024 – 8:37 am
The former federal Member for Dunkley has a better chance of instilling some rigour into the Vic Libs than others do who already have their hats in the ring, I reckon.
HH
“ Mornington MP Chris Crewther is also throwing his hat into the ring to be Victorian Liberal Leader at today’s party room meeting.”
As Keating would say, every Liberal MP carries a slave bosses whip in his knapsack.
I am surprised there isn’t a countdown clock to the Vic Liberal Partyroom showdown on Sunrise…
I am struggling to be sympathetic with “low income workers” (as compared to welfare recipients) given the significant falling in union membership. Retail is among the worst at a mere 7%.
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/trade-union-membership/latest-release
If these workers want a better deal, the need to join (or start) a union. While the things at the CFMEU have given the overall movement a bad name (I was a fan, not now with the bikie stuff), those public sector unions seem to show what a good member focused union looks like.
https://atui.org.au/organising-works/
Australia is not allowed to be ‘Beautiful one day, perfect the next’!
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/working-holidaymaker-numbers-have-soared-to-record-levels-it-s-a-challenge-for-labor-20241221-p5l052.html
“voters aren’t stupid” says many a “sage” infused commentator/responder as the “moment” requires.
Considering the efforts from specific interests in the “lucky country”, it’s a credit to Albanese and Labor that they remain a positive chance to retain government at the next election.
Of the polling over the last year, the instances of polling results declared in a “two party” manner has tended to ignore a preponderance of a growth in the incidences of “undecided” and “not prepared to say” has become more common.
I believe in once such poll I observed a 20%!
My thoughts are that “Australia as a nation” doesn’t deserve another “sentence” which includes being “saddled” with another “impost” of climate denialism, non transparency, technological ineptitude and fiscally recklessness.
I no longer claim to have any knowledge of the intellectual inadequacies of a mob often described by proven liars as “being not stupid”.
#weatheronPB
Empty oceans float,
a paradox of the mind,
just there above us.
A casual blue sky,
cool, flat, and endlessly deep,
passively watching.
Wow. What a bunch of warm lettuce merchants the cricket match refs are. I guess they realised an appeal further up the ICC (BCCI) ladder would have reduced the penalty so they cut out the middleman.
I’d point out that the rule does not differentiate between players and umps wrt this sort of contact. So open season on pushing umps around?
What message does this send down the grassroots?
Before anyone calls me a delicate petal, I do think there should be special consideration to
friction between batter and bowler immediately post delivery. But Kohli as a fielder, and doing it between overs is premeditated and outside the short timeframe bounds of a high energy tension after a ball has been bowled.
Poor effort from the Match Ref.
If you have an Anti Vaxxer in your family, or you simply want to learn more about Vaccines, their trials and efficacies, then you really need to watch this video interview with an American vaccine researcher. He explains concepts in language we can all understand:
https://youtu.be/J_fcdwM68Lw?si=jU78FidwyRkhONG3
Socrates: “Not sure what the point of your post is? …You have picked out two examples – Uruguay and Greece – which have many economic problems and languish at the bottom of growth tables. Hardly relevant to Australia. There are many countries showing the opposite- higher welfare spending making them more economically resilient. E.g. Nordic countries.”
My point is that a nation’s capacity to spend a lot of money on welfare is a function of the strength of its economy, and not vice versa as you seem to be implying. Back in the day, both the Uruguayan and Greek social welfare systems were frequently praised for having excellent impacts on reducing poverty, etc, etc. But they didn’t pay for themselves, and in the end the nations that devised them couldn’t afford to pay for them, leading to a fiscal crisis.
As I understand, it, the ageing of the populations of the Nordic countries has been putting increased pressure on their welfare systems, and many people are questioning whether they are sustainable in the long run. Because, obviously, economic strength can only go so far in sustaining a welfare system: issues such as age demographics and labour force participation rates are also important factors.
Re the Finnish public housing system: yes, I agree that it’s far better than ours. But it’s not something I would strictly describe as “welfare”, so it’s a little outside the point I was trying to make.
As a final point, I would observe that the US has arguably the crappiest and most unjust welfare system of any western nation, but it’s economy doesn’t seem to be suffering as a consequence.
C@tmommasays:
Friday, December 27, 2024 at 9:10 am
Australia is not allowed to be ‘Beautiful one day, perfect the next’!
Australia is welcoming a record number of working holidaymakers into the country – with numbers surpassing 200,000 for the first time – as a strong labour market and a surge of British backpackers boost the ranks of working travellers this summer.
Their arrival is a boon to regional industries but will compound the Albanese government’s challenge in bringing down migration levels as it heads into a federal election campaign dominated by voters’ concerns about the cost of living, housing and immigration.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/working-holidaymaker-numbers-have-soared-to-record-levels-it-s-a-challenge-for-labor-20241221-p5l052.html
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This is where nuances in the migration story is needed. I strongly support cutting international students, the ones largely working the lowest income jobs and raiding food banks. But there is nothing wrong with temporary workers, especially in regional areas, who are on visas with a defined exit date.
Can we name Byron Pickett for the next test match to show Kohli in a very personal manner exactly how the hip and shoulder should be done???
