YouGov brings more good news for Labor, its latest federal poll crediting them with a two-party lead of 53-47, out from 52.5-47.5. The primary votes are Labor 33% (up one), Coalition 33% (down half), Greens 13% (steady) and One Nation 7% (down one-and-a-half). Anthony Albanese is nonetheless down two on approval to 43% and up two on disapproval to 49%, while Peter Dutton is up two to 40% and down three to 50%. Albanese leads 48-38 on preferred prime minister, little changed from 48-37 last week. The poll was conducted Friday to Tuesday from a sample of 1506.
Arthur Calwall was very much a traditional Labor man. White Australia was supported by both major parties, although both were starting to move away by the 1960s. I don’t know when that remark was made, but it would most likely have been regarded as an uncontroversial witticism in it’s day, maybe a bit outré by the time of Calwell’s last election as Labor leader, aged 70, in 1966.
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Apparently that pun was made in 1947. I get there are different standards in different times but this is not a statement that would be made by a fair and decent person that is inclined to treat people decently and with respect. Clearly Australia had extremely problematic views regarding race at the time if this was considered an “uncontroversial witticism”.
For anyone interested in this topic, Liam Mannix, science writer for The Age, has written an excellent well-researched book about back pain called “Back Up : Why back pain treatments aren’t working and the new science offering hope”
Another good book about chronic pain generally is “ Why Does It Still Hurt? How the Power of Knowledge Can Overcome Chronic Pain” by Paul Biegler who I think was an emergency medicine doctor.
After the Gold Rush, in the late 1800s Chinese who had come in that huge wave were offered money by the Victorian Government to go back to China. Maybe this is where Trump got his idea from!
“What’s missing is the moderate Liberals.”
There are far to few of them actually extant in society to matter.
“Maybe that’s reflective of the party as a whole.”
Yup ….the RWNJob wing basically ran them out of the party, starting under Howard. Sad, and not good for democracy in Oz, but that’s the world we live in.
That which currently calls itself the “Liberal” party are anything but. ALP far from perfect, but very much the better alternative for Govt.
Rocket Rocket @ #650 Friday, April 18th, 2025 – 9:19 pm
He’s not the only dickhead among the neurosurgical fraternity, though his type are feeling increasingly insecure – which is probably why he’s “triggered” (i.e. scared) by a competent neurologist with read academic credentials like Ryan.
– NPR
If this ends up before the SCOTUS, no second guess as to how it will turn out.
Surprise poll result just reported in the oz Allegra Spender trails on primaries.Issue “security”.
Me thinks the Teals are not travelling as well as people think.
mjsays:
Friday, April 18, 2025 at 8:50 pm
Arthur Calwell of “two Wong’s don’t make a white” infamy? Sounds like he was the Peter Dutton of his contemporary Labor party.
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Calwell was also a huge fan of Chinese food and regularly dined in Melbourne’s Chinatown. He had many friends in the Chinese community and helped more than a few. He may have been a racist too. But there’s been plenty worse than Calwell.
Mostly Interested 917pm
I knew someone who when young was at the 1970 VFL Grand Final in very crowded standing room (the crowd of 121,000 has never been surpassed and can’t be now with so much less standing room) – at half time with their team Carlton trailing by an insurmountable 44 points their dad said ‘I can’t bear these Collingwood supporters any more – let’s leave’
His young son said ‘Let’s just stay for the first few minutes of the second half’ and so they did – I think Carlton kicked 7 goals in about the first 15 minutes and eventually went on to win by 10 points. The father was eternally grateful to the son!!
Would the Oz have a vested interest in undermining Spender?
Piex Piper, she trailed on primaries in 2022.
And won.
LeftieBrawler
“Dr Doolittle surely we’ve all had our moments 28 standard drinks in ?
I can’t judge him.”
Speak for yourself. I have never started a fight in my life. I have had to defend myself a couple of times when I was younger. I have simply avoided such situations in the past 30 years.
Taylormade says:
Friday, April 18, 2025 at 7:58 pm
Question for anyone who has handed out HTV cards outside the polling booth.
Do you get asked about policy from people ? or is it just a smile and maybe a smile back as you hand them the card.
Much abuse ?
********
My experience is that nearly everyone who asks policy questions of HtV handlers out is looking for an argument rather than enlightenment. There is the very rare genuine question.
Not much abuse, most people are just getting it done, although you do come across the occasional impression of a poll bludger commenter.
@mj-
“Clearly Australia had extremely problematic views regarding race at the time if this was considered an “uncontroversial witticism”. ”
Of course it did, it was 1947. Australia was mad racist, albeit you wouldn’t have found a country on the planet in 1947 that was not mad racist at the time. The best Australia could say is we didn’t have slavery and we fought against Hitler. Given how we treated indigenous people and that you copped severe racism if you were from the wrong part of Europe let alone Asian or African you’d struggle to say anything nicer about 1947 Australian race relations than that.
Remember it was not for another 20 years after that that Australia amended its constitution to recognise indigenous people properly as full citizens for the purposes of the census.
sustainable snail @ #623 Friday, April 18th, 2025 – 8:51 pm
That’s a ridiculous thing to say. You’ve been expressing yourself more than just about anyone else on this site recently. Don’t be a hypocrite if you want people to take you seriously.
“My experience is that nearly everyone who asks policy questions of HtV handlers out is looking for an argument rather than enlightenment. There is the very rare genuine question.
Not much abuse, most people are just getting it done, although you do come across the occasional impression of a poll bludger commenter.”
My experience is that generally things are pretty calm, and no-0ne really turns up on the day looking for agro. Sometimes, people doing constant slogan recitations are annoying, but i generally make it a rule not to engage in anything other than polite conversations, and withdraw from any kind of intense interactions.
nath
My mum said Calwell was a devoted practising Catholic and went to Mass every day – but that didn’t stop him being dammed from the pulpit (literally sometimes when he was in the congregation) by some DLP-backing priests.
“Surprise poll result just reported in the oz Allegra Spender trails on primaries”
Like I said the other day, the pattern of Teal seat polling for two elections – a war of commissioned polling each insisting in turn the side that commissioned them is winning by 10. It was the Liberals turn but that Climate 200 poll we know was in the field this week will probably report within the next 48 hours with a conflicting result.
Hi RHWombat
For the “adjunct professor” It would probably require criminal charges to be laid before Ahpra became involved. There is much debate about the threshold of criminal charges that Ahpra should be concerned with – particularly with traffic offences.
Latham did provide great entertainment through 2004 – and hope as well to the fully paid-up Howard Haters who had suffered so long. After years of undue deference to this dreadful man how joyful it was to see Latham serve it up to the Libs in Parliament (“conga line of suckholes” will never be forgotten), plus his regular calling out of the self-satisfied posturing from the press corps. He had a way of setting the agenda and getting under the skin of his opponents that Crean and Beazley lacked.
But with hindsight, Howard employed the “rope a dope” strategy to perfection. Australia at the time was still in thrall to the War on Terror and the US – 9/11 was still fresh in the mind. Once it came to the election campaign, Latham’s earlier outbursts and the taxi driver incident formed part of the bombardment about “being dangerous to the alliance”, “soft on terror”, “higher interest rates” etc.
Then, two pivotal images of the campaign that exposed Latham – either his inexperience or maybe the aftereffects of his pancreas issues. First, Latham and Howard’s “accidental” encounter outside a radio broadcast booth and the resulting photo that made him appear menacing and thuggish against the shorter Howard. The coup de grace was in the last week — Howard greeted as a hero by Tasmanian forestry unionists, as the PM promised to protect their jobs after Latham’s embrace of Bob Brown’s Greens.
By then I could feel the last hope draining away, and the aftermath was especially bitter as the Libs also got control of the Senate. Thank goodness for Howard’s hubris, through Workchoices. Otherwise we might never have gotten rid of him!
I think we can now safely say that a counterfactual Latham PM’ship would not have been a successful one – his diaries revealed an angry personality that revelled in opposing and “muscling up” but lacked the quality for leadership, and like Abbott I doubt he would have lasted 2 years.
Rocket Rocket @ #659 Friday, April 18th, 2025 – 9:35 pm
What a great story! It reminds me of the other week when I was watching Souths V Easts and I thought they were going to be beaten. Again. So I went to bed. I ended up missing one of the greatest comebacks for the Rabbitohs in their history and the ‘Hand of God’ try scored by Latrelle Mitchell. 🙁
Calwell was also a huge fan of Chinese food and regularly dined in Melbourne’s Chinatown. He had many friends in the Chinese community and helped more than a few. He may have been a racist too. But there’s been plenty worse than Calwell.
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Perhaps but he was a perpetual loser in elections. Seeing some parallels to Dutton who likes to hang out at Chinese restaurants as well.
Thanks to Google, I found the following (lengthy) explanation of Calwell’s “2 Wong’s” comment:
It happened like this: on 2 December 1947 Calwell was answering a question in the House of Representatives, a question put to him by the Member for Balaclava, a Melbourne electorate. He was defending his unbending policy of deporting wartime Asian refugees – making a long statement in the high-pitched, croaky voice that was his trademark, a voice that was damaged by childhood diptheria. Calwell finished up with the following words:
The question from the honourable member for Balaclava also referred to a Chinese
, who, according to today’s press, has been resident in Australia for twenty years and has been told he must go … Speaking generally, I think that there is some claim for him to be regarded as a resident of Australia, and I have no doubt that his certificate
can be extended from time to time as it has been extended in the past. The gentleman’s name is Wong. There are many Wongs in the Chinese community, but I have to say – and I am sure that the honourable member for Balaclava will not mind me doing so – that two Wongs do not make a White.
Now if we are to understand this final remark, it may be crucial to know that the honourable member for Balaclava was Sir Thomas White, an eminent member of the Liberal Party and thus one of Calwell’s parliamentary enemies.
Calwell was being clever. His remark was a word play on the phrase ‘Two wrongs do not make a right’. And his defenders, ever since, have insisted it was not a racist remark. They point out that the press chose to report the comment with the ‘W’ in ‘White’ in lower case, so that ‘white’ seemed to be referring to a colour rather than a surname.
Calwell’s defenders also point out that he spoke a little Chinese and loved going to Chinese restaurants. They insist there was nothing racist in what Calwell said.
I don’t know the total experience, but when I volunteered as a HTV-giver for Labor in 2013, there was an incident when a Liberal voter poked me sharply in the chest and said “How dare you show up for them?!”
I was comforted by the Liberal and Greens HTV volunteers afterward saying that it wasn’t right that she did that to me.
And it didn’t seem to go over well with other people in the voting line who saw that because it turned out to be one of the best poll places for Labor in Ballarat that time, in the terms of swings against them in that year.
Ophuph Hucksake
The one thing I clung onto that election night in 2004 was that getting a Senate majority would be Howard’s undoing. As they would overreach.
And so it came to pass with ‘WorkChoices’.
pied piper says:
Friday, April 18, 2025 at 9:33 pm
Surprise poll result just reported in the oz Allegra Spender trails on primaries.Issue “security”.
Me thinks the Teals are not travelling as well as people think.
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Does it say what the Liberal primary was? Didn’t think so.
Cat
In Victoria we were just stunned at the Rabbitoh’s ‘exile’ after Super League. (Given that they were historically the most successful club, say like Collingwood in the VFL/AFL) Was it a vendetta by News Corpse?
C@tmomma @ #665 Friday, April 18th, 2025 – 9:40 pm
And this is a classic example of how it is done.
imacca says:
Friday, April 18, 2025 at 9:40 pm
******
Yes. I should have been clearer that those looking to argue are a very small minority
No, Sustainable Snail was whingeing about the fact that I deleted some of his or her comments, in the course of uprooting a self-indulgent exchange between him/her and LeftieBrawler.
Nath, as a blue baggers supporter I am dead inside.
I’ve literally burnt Carlton scarves to try and lift the curse, but to no avail. I’m thinking of travelling to the same witch doctor John Saffron visited to get the curse lifted off the Socceroos when he did race around the world for the ABC. That guys magic has major juju.
Everyone should read Arthur Calwell’s 1966 speech against the Vietnam War. That wonderful wordsmith Graham Freudenberg knew just what Arthur wanted to say, but it was a khaki election and jingoism sadly won the day.
William Bowe @ #680 Friday, April 18th, 2025 – 9:58 pm
I don’t think that excuses C@ts post. but okay. I’ll get my coat.
Calwell’s defenders also point out that he spoke a little Chinese and loved going to Chinese restaurants. They insist there was nothing racist in what Calwell said.
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I guess he loved dumplings, not a racist bone in his body.
More thoughts on the surgeon grabbing Monique Ryan’s sign….
The code of ethics for the hospital are separate, no one is to make patients or colleagues uncomfortable. There will definitely be a lot of conversations between him and the executive team. He can be uninvited to operate there, although don’t know what would happen to his consulting rooms.
It will be ‘putting the body in the trunk’ that will be most offensive especially with the domestic violence issue we have in this country.
It absolutely excuses C@t’s post.
in NSW, at least, suspension of a medical practitioner, which would be done by the Medical Council, has an urgency requirement.
Being a knob ain’t enough.
Steve777:
Friday, April 18, 2025 at 8:32 pm
Thanks for the link. I’m in the division of Wright, where the Country Party member has
a 10.89% buffer. And given that I vote via the post, I now know how to number my ballot – not that it would make a difference in the House.
Allegra Spender was 4.7% behind on primaries in 2022 and won easily. The Liberals would probably need a primary vote lead in double figures to have any realistic chance of winning.
And the Nationals are certainly putting a lot of resources into Bendigo (where I currently am). The Age’s theory is that it’s mostly because it’s the only place the Victorian Nationals have to spend money (their own seats are safe). They lost their deposit in two of their last three attempts there and last cracked double figures in 1990; 1987 is the only time they came anywhere near making the 2CP.
I see in the past hour various people have complained that either left wing posters or right wing posters views are not heard on this blog. Really? We argue a lot if PB is nothing but a group of centrists 🙂
I’d probably regard myself as Centre-Left.
The numbers in the Wentworth poll are Liberal 47%, Allegra Spender 28%, with Labor on 15% and the Greens on 10%. What’s actually wrong with it is that it’s from Compass, towards whom Dennis Shanahan is far too credulous.
WITHOUT DUE PROCESS, WITHOUT RULE OF LAW, YOU HAVE NOTHING…NOTHING!
Huh if Spender is 19 points behind the liberals but Knox seems a good candidate so maybe she is well in front in Vaucluse and Point Piper.
I don’t believe the Liberals in Wentworth could have increased their primary vote by 7%. They’ll probably go backwards .
Mostly Interestedsays:
Friday, April 18, 2025 at 10:01 pm
Nath, as a blue baggers supporter I am dead inside.
I’ve literally burnt Carlton scarves to try and lift the curse, but to no avail. I’m thinking of travelling to the same witch doctor John Saffron visited to get the curse lifted off the Socceroos when he did race around the world for the ABC. That guys magic has major juju.
______________________
I think you need to go further.
Firstly. Return the 1979 Premiership Cup to Collingwood where it rightly belongs. Renounce any claim to this Premiership and insist the rightful Premiers are acknowledged.
Secondly. Gather as much hair from the descendants of John Elliot and Wes Lofts as possible. Otherwise you may need to gather remains.
Thirdly. Place several million dollars in dozens of brown paper bags.
Now find the witch doctor. Hand over all items and let him do his thing.
Shellbell
I think you do some work concerning the Medical Council of NSW. I think their regulations have been sound, certainly an improvement on the national regulations that NSW rejected. BUT when things are working well they always have to be revised and that is what is happening at the moment.
The role of Arthur Calwell in the 2025 election.
It’s a book!
Posters complaining about being suppressed by writing as such on a public forum is hilarious but also boring.
More seat gossip please! 🙂
And yes, how to vote handing out is usually a positive experience. Normally at the end of the day there are handshakes and all between supporters of different candidates in my end. Policy questions are usually few and far between – though I did get a few that Shorten election when Internet misinformation had people confused about death taxes (from good people who thought it was rubbish but wanted to check). The Voice was not fun handing out; conspiracy theories are getting more traction.
Goll, sounds like an interesting read.
“Title: “The Ghost of Calwell: White Australia’s Last Hurrah in the 2025 Election”
Blurb (back cover):
In an age of spin, culture wars, and a resurgent hard right, one man’s shadow looms larger than expected. The Ghost of Arthur Calwell explores how the spirit of Labor’s last pre-multicultural leader unexpectedly finds relevance in 2025 — not through policy, but through rhetoric, nostalgia, and some very selective memory.
From Chinese restaurants to White Australia sentimentality, Calwell’s complex legacy haunts the margins of both major parties. This book dives into how the echoes of a 1947 pun still rattle around modern Australian politics — and why Peter Dutton might be feeling a little too at home in his old boots.”
Anyone has Calare how to votes? l think Kate Hook has a great chance in this seat if Andrew Gee preferences her second or .ore importantly above Nats. Also if Kate preferences Gee??? This seat is fascinating.