Roy Morgan returned to the field this week with an eye-catching headline result of 53-47 in favour of the Coalition on two-party preferred, but this turned out to be entirely down to an unorthodox set of respondent-allocated preference flows, with the accompanying release relating that Labor’s share from the Greens was down from 85% to 55% from the previous poll. A previous election preferences measure was not provided on this occasion, but such a result assuredly have come in at 50-50. Labor were in fact up three-and-a-half points on the pre-Christmas poll to 31%, with the Coalition down half to 40.5%, the Greens down half to 12% and One Nation down one-and-a-half to 3.5%. The poll was conducted December 30 to January 5 from a sample of 1446.
Also out this week from RedBridge Group was a follow-up report from its recent MRP survey relating to ideological positioning on the customary left-to-right scale. On a ten-point left-to-right scale, 51% rated Labor at very points on the left, 18% had them in the centre and 20% on the right, whereas the Liberals were put on the right by 62%, in the centre by 14% and on the left by 13%. Thirty-one per cent placed themselves in the centre, 23% on the left and 33% on the right. Forty-two per cent either way felt the Liberal Party to be to their right and Labor to be to their left, with 43% rating the Liberal Party’s position similar to their own compared with 39% for Labor.
To err is human; to forgive, divine.
Boerwar @ #46 Saturday, January 11th, 2025 – 10:47 am
Remind the electorate of that. Every. Day. Who the face of Indigenous No was.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/11/giant-pink-slug-makes-a-comeback-on-extinct-volcano-in-nsw-national-park
The choice of this photo by The Carter Centre is shadier than a Georgia Peach tree.
😆
Hi cat, I floated the idea of making a fake new name but wasn’t to keen on adapting a new persona and prose to avoid detection
leftieBrawler @ #54 Saturday, January 11th, 2025 – 10:51 am
That’s why I suggested simply adding ‘former’. Keeps the name but signals the new intention.
BW
I can see that point of view, although I think that most of the angst is coming from the Greens and Socialist Alliance types (on the left) and most of the media, rather than from the Teals.
I also think that the World is very much where it was in the 1920s and 30s – lots of shocks – war, pandemic – financial crises – and people are just cranky. The latter emotion is easily channeled into anger directed at governments and minorities, and at this stage people want to punish first and ask questions later.
It is a hard tide to swim against with any sort of reason. At the moment, from my perspective, the Teals are doing a pretty good job of that.
Anyone recall what happened to Dr John?
Welcome back LB.
If you post after dark you will need to take deep breaths. There are a lot of angry people posting, mostly just about how angry they are.
BW
Thanks for the story on the Mount Kaputar slug. Somewhere I have a photo I took of these in 1992.
But, here is the Guardian one:
D&M
Re the Martyn Turner cartoon.
Negotiations for the new Irish government continue and will most likely be Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael with a supply and confidence agreement with the Regional Independents technical group, who are largely rural reactionary deputies.
Another option is to include the Healy-Rae brothers in the government by offering one of them a junior ministry. As a lover of farce I hope this is the case. Here is a typical example of their contribution to the Dáil.
https://youtu.be/i3r8IBlVtys?si=cP16ZiVPfATugR58
Labour and the Social Democrats seem to be excluded from further negotiations- so the result has been a definite swing to the Right
Edit: now with correct clip
‘Douglas and Milko says:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 10:56 am
….’
==================
Agree.
Voters are in the mood to cut off their noses to spite their faces.
Boerwar @ #35 Saturday, January 11th, 2025 – 10:23 am
Better.
Trump is not yet President so why are Judges taking him being President into account?
C@tmommasays:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 10:33 am
I reckon your female ancestors had all had their teeth removed as was a common enough health decision at the time. Removing young women’s teeth was regarded as an aspirational option
There’s plenty of evidence to suggest these women benefited and live long “productive” lives
Irenesays:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 8:33 am
Taylormade says:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 7:38 am
Dan Tehan must be shitting bricks in wannon, and rightly so.
_____________________
Well, his electorate has been significantly burnt by the Grampians bushfires
==========================================================
Which Victorian firefighters (both CFA and Parks Vic) did a fantastic job containing under very trying conditions. With no loss of life and very little property damage for a fire of this size. Relative to what we currently see in LA.
Can’t get much more succinct …
https://bsky.app/profile/richarddenniss.bsky.social/post/3lfgcmjgmnk2p
So, That’s That
The anticlimactic end of accountability
Mary L. Trump Jan 10
I’m not entirely sure what to say.
The incoming 47th president of the United States of America is, in the wake of his sentencing in a New York courtroom, officially a convicted felon. And it matters not at all. There will be no prison, no probation, no community service, no fine.
Donald also falsely claimed that the charges against him were trumped up—apparently forgetting that Michael Cohen was charged, tried, and found guilty on similar charges in 2018. Unlike Cohen, Donald was not sentenced to three years in prison.
He was sentenced to nothing.
Justice Merchan’s remarks were mostly about how extraordinary the circumstances of the trial were, but how ordinary the trial itself was. His tone throughout was matter-of-fact, and he laid out clearly and concisely the dual context in which he had to consider the sentencing—namely, the Supreme Court’s decision last summer on presidential immunity and the fact that Donald will be sworn in next week. As such, he was forced to conclude that an unconditional discharge was the only way to avoid “encroaching on the highest office of the land.” It is “the Office of the Presidency,” he said, “which imposes legal protections, a factor that overrides all others.”
In his only obvious dig—and I hope it stung—Merchan concluded that, “It is the legal protections afforded to the Office of the President of the United States that are extraordinary, not the occupant.”
davesays:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 10:58 am
You drove him away with your former belligerent persona.
Can’t get much more succinct …
Mass discretionary spending on tourism is burning huge amounts of fossil fuels.
Burning fossil fuels causes climate change.
Climate change makes fires/floods worse.
Bigger fires/floods drive up the price of insurance & ruin lives/communities.
In short: tourists burning fossil fuels drives up the cost of living.
Subsiding tourists to burn fossil fuels is dumb & dangerous.
Oh wait… it wasn’t the person who killed the victim. It was the gun what killed the victim.
Thanks Douglas, doesn’t surprise me re the anger.
Sadly the current stocks of the Albanese government were inevitable ever since he crawled into that hole to never return after the failed referendum.
Throw in a housing and cost of living crisis, inflation , no real wage growth etc.
And then exactly what I feared, Labor taking the wide spread heat and anger over the unskilled economic migrant sleeper issue that was lit by the previous government.
‘Player One says:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 11:08 am
Boerwar @ #35 Saturday, January 11th, 2025 – 10:23 am
5. Here is a thought experiment. How would the country go if every single member were a Teal?
Better.’
==========
If chaos is better, sure…
I see that rightiebrawler has returned to the fray.
Spot the daylight between Dutton and leftiebrawler?
None.
Trump.leftibrawler.Dutton.
Join the dots.
leftieBrawlersays:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 10:40 am
Hi William, I’ve had a long period of reflection for my petty hyperbole that defined my last stint here.
I really want to participate again but without all the bombastic rubbish etc.
Would you consider a strict parole for me ? I don’t want to create another profile. All the best, LB
=================================================
Sounds like a commendable new years resolution.
Welcome back (i assume?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qBJeEkfbcc
OC
Thanks for this context. Some of those rural independents are scary, going from my memory of being in Dublin just after the election was called.
This is definitely another significant swing to the right. sigh..
And in France, LFI (La France Insoumise) are trying to topple New PM François Bayrou’s government. I think they are thinking back to Leon Blum’s Fronte Populaire’s success in 1936, but the Coalition was short-lived (1936 – 1938).
If new elections are forced, more voters will swing to Le Pen and the RN than to the left, because that is the Zeitgeist at the moment, and it has mostly always been thus in European history.
And Marine Le Pen as president will be very bad news for many people – especially the farmers she pretends to care so much about.
Boer I’ve voted Labor all my life. No appetite for Trump or Dutton.
What I stated was the narrative that has been allowed to fester and growth for over 18 months
When you’ve got even the likes of silly old Roy Morgan throwing out 53-47s just months out you have to sit up and take note
Boerwar @ #71 Saturday, January 11th, 2025 – 11:49 am
Why would it be chaos? The Teals probably have more uniformity of policy – not to mention education, real-world experience and integrity – than either of the major parties.
Perhaps is it just the idea of actual “democracy” that frightens the crap out of you?
Jesus Boer, dude’s just returned to the site and has barely said jack and you’re already sledging him with your join the dots bullshit…….
As to the independents, you might be mistaking chaos for progress. Take the issue of gambling, we have the Murphy report which already canvassed all the issues like potential loss of revenue for broadcast media, and was a bipartisan recommendation to ban gambling advertising (not banning gambling mind you, just the advertising), there is broad support for it in the parliament AND the community, but nothing has happened. Why? Because the ALP takes large donations from the gambling industry, Albo is mates with Peter vlandys, and the minister enjoys, erm, ‘hospitality’ from the industry she’s supposed to regulate. And that’s just one example. In so many policy areas both the ALP and the coalition are so hopelessly compromised or captured progress is impossible. Then on top of that we have the ALPs institutional cowardice and habit of trying to please everyone and ending up pleasing no-one
Party politics is failing, the community independents represent communities who have had enough and want better. Fully one third of the electorate wants ‘someone else’, and let’s not forget that the ALP won government with just 32% of the vote and goes in to the next election with a primary more like 30 if you reference bludgertrack
With more independents we might have a proper nacc, money out of politics done in a way that doesn’t entrench incumbents, maybe even some policies to benefit all Australians like real taxation reform, proper payment for our resources and especially gas, progress is all possible once you get the lobbyists and vested interests out of the way and sideline careerists like Albo whose only aim is reelection
I’m pretty confident that Nadia 88 said she will be back posting when the polling action increases around Australia Day.
Nadia is one of the best Polling analysts I have read here at PB. Me thinks that some of the other bludgers, maybe of the same sex, are a little jealous 🙂
Nadia went through an unbelievable winning streak in the AFL and NRL final series last year tipping all 18 winners including the Panthers to win the grand final + Trump to win the US election.
If she can keep to that success rate, I will be jealous.
‘leftieBrawler says:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Boer I’ve voted Labor all my life. No appetite for Trump or Dutton.
…’
===============
Good. I look forward to you spending most of your time sticking it to Dutton/Trump/Farage/Musk/Littelproud and so on… all combined with some positive statements of some of the wonderful achievements of the Albanese Government… including, for example, the huge real pay increases for the lowliest-paid workers in feminized industries.
‘Pageboi says:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 12:08 pm
Jesus Boer, dude’s just returned to the site and has barely said jack and you’re already sledging him with your join the dots bullshit…….
=====================
He DOES make the same sort of sound bites with which you are infatuated. I don’t mind criticism balanced with praise for the Albanese Government.
Everyone who comes along with a partisan sledge which helps Dutton right along is going to get some return fire.
Did you all have a good night’s sleep last night Bludgers?
Not too cold. Did you have enough covers to keep warm?
Praise to climate change…climate change we give thanks…amen
Pageboi
Do stop making up numbers.
Independents got something like 5% of the primary vote in the last election. All the rest of the primary vote went to candidates representing parties.
Labor, Liberals, Nationals, Greens, PHON,UAP and Centre Alliance received something like 95% of the vote.
P1
The anarchy would be a good giggle, that is for sure.
Who gets to answer the questions are QT?
Who gets to be the PM?
How many Teals per ministerial position?
Who gets to drive a budget through the budgetary process – already a hideously complex process with just ONE party let alone 150 individuals.
Boerwar says:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 12:18 pm
_______________________
When you read Boer’s posts praising Albo and abusing those who disagree with him I cannot help but thinking how obsequious working Boer would have been to the Departmental Secretary and Deputy Secs and how much he would have punched down on subordinates who dared disagree with him.
Yep, the Teals in parliament, all supported on the back of self interest – no thanks!
People in teal seats can swing back, swing back to Dutton’s zero emissions nuclear, and they will…
Cat at 8.37 am, leftieBrawler at noon
lB – please read the heading to the thread – the Morgan poll is actually 50/50 in real-time prefs.
Cat – thanks for the Sat Paper story. They unfortunately caught Prof Frank Bongiorno, the ANU historian who is an expert on Whitlam, and the 1980s, and other more salacious subjects, at a time of summer slumber, as he remembered the LNP 2022 vote too low; it was 35.7% not 34.
The Labor “insider” seems a bit of a loud mouth. Perhaps it was a permitted leak, to get an April election date circulating. April is not in any sense an early election as the intro claimed.
The current sitting schedule is at:
https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/resource/download/2025-parliamentary-sittings_0.pdf
Presumably additional estimates in the last week of Feb will be cancelled as unnecessary.
That would leave two clear weeks without Parly before the election is called on 9 March, as Hugoaugogo suggested a week or so ago. There will be no Fake Budget.
The main points for Labor are to give marginal seat MPs as much time in their electorates as possible, and to have a clear election campaign, unimpeded by holidays. For those reasons Albo is much more likely to choose 12 April than 17 May.
Little significant would happen in the last 7 days of Parly starting 4 Feb, except that the inquiry report into Dutton’s nuclear nonsense would be tabled, and given prominence in QT with the key Labor theme being Dutton’s economic idiocy.
So I have revised my expectation of the election date, from 1 Mar to 12 April, which is the only feasible date in April, as it is before Easter and the election would be called on 9 March, on the back of an expected strong result for Labor in WA. The “insider” is clearly from “over East”.
FUBAR:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 11:09 am
He will be shortly. Had Merchan, J imposed a custodial sentence,
the SCOTUS would’ve quashed it. However, by ordering an unconditional discharge, a majority of the court rightly believed that the sentence would not impede his presidential duties.
What numbers have I made up?
Of course there isn’t a community independent running in every seat so a national figure for them is somewhat irrelevant, but the proportion of voters putting their 1 against someone other than the coalition or ALP gets bigger every election. Maybe if the ALP had something positive other than ‘we’re not as bad as the other mob’ their primary might improve a little bit
Centresays:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 12:19 pm
Did you all have a good night’s sleep last night Bludgers?
Not too cold. Did you have enough covers to keep warm?
=================================================
It was bloody hot last night. No covers at all and it is still bloody hot. Air con keeping the house to 26C currently but well into 30s outside.
Not exactly true. Only have air con in one room of the house. That room is at 26C, all other rooms shut off. Those rooms are probably somewhere near 30 now.
Boerwar @ #83 Saturday, January 11th, 2025 – 12:26 pm
I reckon they would be mature and capable enough to figure all this out. Then on the second half of day 1 they could move on to the actual difficult stuff – unlike the major parties. You know, stuff like governing the country in the best interests of the whole electorate, and not just a few special interests.
I think we’ll find it works better than any of our other choices.
Let’s give it a try.
The ALP are corrupt. The LNP are super corrupt. The Greens and the Teals offer a welcome respite from the pervasive corruption of our political system. Their presence is definitely valuable to the Australia people.
We need structural solutions to corruption such as 10 year cooling off periods before politicians and senior public servants can get corporate gigs in sectors that are the most prone to corruption – property developers, real estate lobby groups, pharmaceutical companies, the mining industry, defence contractors, infrastructure construction firms, banks, superannuation firms, private hospitals, private health insurance firms. In the meantime, the presence of Greens and Teals alleviates the corruption to some extent and this is an unambiguously good thing.
No prime minister, of course. Or maybe a rolling prime ministership rotating on a daily basis.
Of course if you DID manage to get 150 people to agree to a prime minister that prime minister would represent – their single electorate.
Anarchies are a laugh a minute until you actually need some hard calls, some hard compromises, some agreement about how the gubby funding is going to be queued.
Just on the Australian Open, from memory it was back in 2017 that consideration was given to pushing the tournament back given the extreme heat conditions at the time.
Not a problem in the 8 consecutive years since, not a chance. The cyclical nature of weather and climate 😉
Centre says:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 12:37 pm
Just on the Australian Open, from memory it was back in 2017 that consideration was given to pushing the tournament back given the extreme heat conditions at the time.
Not a problem in the 8 consecutive years since, not a chance. The cyclical nature of weather and climate
________________________________________________
Classic example of vague anecdote versus huge volumes of statistical data. The world is now full of idiots who respect meaningless (and often fake) anecdotes over actual data (not to mention individual instances consistent with the data, such as shrinking polar ice caps).
I’m enjoying seeing the psychiatrists vs NSW Health stoush. They need to go through with their resignations.
The system can’t be fixed until it has been destroyed.
‘Nicholas says:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 12:35 pm
The ALP are corrupt. …’
==================
Twaddle.
This Government is especially scandal free. No minister has questions to answer. No minister is fighting for their life. Grants programs decisions are at arms length. No ministers are doing he Cayman Tango. Expenses are not being fiddled. There is not a skerrick of evidence of bribery. Nothing. There is the NACC which is too bloody slow but which exists for the first time in federal history.
However, there IS corruption. It is the sort of ethical corruption you get when the Greens promise to deliver Zero Net Thirty Five. Intellectual corruption of the first order. When the Greens criticize Albanese for buying a house when Bandt has an architect designed purpose built house in the inner Melbourne. It is when the Greens refuse to acknowledge the genocidal intentions of Hamas and when the Greens refuse to accept that Hamas is holding up peace through its negotiating positions.
‘Diogenes says:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 12:41 pm
I’m enjoying seeing the psychiatrists vs NSW Health stoush. They need to go through with their resignations.
The system can’t be fixed until it has been destroyed.’
==============
Not enough pay?
Diogenessays:
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 12:41 pm
I’m enjoying seeing the psychiatrists vs NSW Health stoush. They need to go through with their resignations.
The system can’t be fixed until it has been destroyed.
===================================================
Does the same philosophy also apply to the planet?
Some said the planet will only improve if we get rid of the dinosaurs but did the mammals do any better?
Mavis and others interested in Justice Merchan’s sentencing of Donald Trump today in America:
https://youtu.be/sfH5Lw9XRA4?si=Jhi2-_lXRw3RTtoy