Nothing to relate over the past week in the way of federal polling, but past time nonetheless for a new post. We do have, courtesy of the Macquarie University Housing and Urban Research Centre, a deep dive into attitudes towards housing policy from before the May election, drawn from the Australian Cooperative Election Survey conducted by Accent Research. It finds only 16% were satisfied with the Albanese government’s housing policies, with 34% dissatisfied and 32% neither, although the high level of consistency of these results by age group, housing tenure and property investment status suggests the dissatisfaction takes on a variety of forms. On the causes of the problem, the report offers the perhaps unsurprising finding that “older and right-leaning voters” blame immigration, while “younger and progressive voters identify high interest rates, high prices and low wages”.
DemosAU does have a state poll for Queensland, which comes too soon after last week’s Resolve Strategic and RedBridge Group polls to get its own post (on a semi-related point: still no date for the Hinchinbrook by-election). In contrast to those two, it finds David Crisafulli’s Liberal National Party government well on top, despite a surge to One Nation at the expense of both major parties. The LNP has a two-party lead of 54-46, essentially the same as the 54.2-45.8 election result last year, from primary votes of LNP 37% (down by 4.5%), Labor 29% (down by 3.6%), Greens 12% (up by 2.1%) and One Nation 14% (up by 6.0%). Crisafulli leads Steven Miles 44-23 on preferred premier. Further questions find the government highly rated for handling of the Olympics but rather a lot less so for housing and cost-of-living, which also register as the two most salient issues facing the state. Extensive demographic breakdowns are available in the full report. The poll was conducted October 13 to 20 from a sample of 1006.
UPDATE (Essential Research): Had I held back a few hours I would have had a new poll from Essential Research to lead with: it has Labor up a point to 36% and the Coalition down one to 26%, and the ongoing One Nation surge pushing them well clear of the Greens, respectively up two to 15% and down two to 9%, with a steady 6% undecided. Labor holds a 50-44 lead on the 2PP+ measure, in from 51-44. Anthony Albanese is up a point on approval to 45% and down two on disapproval to 44%, while Sussan Ley is steady on 32% and up two to 43%.
A question on who should lead the Liberal Party produces indecisive results, with 42% professing themselves unsure and 12% favouring “somebody else” over six designated options: 13% for Sussan Ley, 10% for Andrew Hastie, 10% for Jacinta Namatjira Price, 7% for Angus Taylor, 4% for Allegra Spender and 3% for Tim Wilson. Forty-eight per cent felt the party should adopt more progressive positions, 24% more conservative.
Albanese’s meeting with Donald Trump was rated good for Australia’s long-term interests by 37%, bad by 18% and indifferent by 26%. Support for net zero by 2050 is at 44% with 27% opposed, and a monthly national mood reading improves a bit after a sharp downturn last time, with right direction up a point to 35% and wrong track down four to 46%. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1041.
Talking religion on a Sunday?
I mentioned this chap during the week. He is running to be the Democrat candidate for the Texas Senate election next year. These vids are about the Texas government mandating that the Ten Commandments be posted up in every classroom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we0b04Qbbvc
&
https://www.tiktok.com/@jamestalarico/video/7504107443882822958?lang=en
For whatever reason, I had Angie Bell listed in my head as one of the few actual moderates left in the Liberal Party and as someone who could potentially do well were she to run as a Teal-esque independent. (With the obvious caveat that the Gold Coast is a rather different battleground than the typical Teal seat.)
Guess I was wrong.
Player One says:
Sunday, November 2, 2025 at 2:33 pm
Fastwheels @ #1638 Sunday, November 2nd, 2025 – 1:59 pm
Angie Bell, Liberal MP, Queensland being interviewed on Sky by Andrew Clennell tells him that “renewables have failed”.
Just another Liberal liar.
Yes indeed. But Labor makes it easy for them to get away with lies like this.
Transparently, this is another disreputable lie from a crypto-reactionary Labor-hater. It is pro-Reactionary. It is a contemptible misuse of language by a despicable troll.
I’m sure the Poms don’t need advice from me on reform of their electoral system. Anyway, I think they’d mange to find some way to fuck up proportional representation given the chance. Tasmania has nailed that one already.
But reform is certainly needed. (In the US as well.)
I’ll just mention that NSW still has a non-residential right to vote in any number of local councils or wards on the basis of rateable land ownership. I remember using it long ago.
That’s an option for the UK: just restrict the vote to the land-owning classes. The more you own, the more votes you get. A bit back-to-the-futurish, rotten borough-wise, but it could hardly be worse than what they’ve got now.
Fastwheels:
Angie Bell, Liberal MP, Queensland being interviewed on Sky by Andrew Clennell tells him that “renewables have failed”.
Just another Liberal liar.
Who? Angie Bell or Andrew Clennell?
The other truly ludicrous element of what the Liberals and the Nationals are ‘debating’ ‘intellectually’ is that it is unlikely that they will be in a place to do anything at all for another five years.
By then most of the stationary energy in the nation will either be renewables or in the investment stream.
By then battery development alone, something which is accelerating as billions in global research investments are delivering lightning fast disruption, will drive EV cars and truck purchases.
By then battery investment and coal fire disinvestment will have killed the intermittent power debate stone dead.
Instead of getting a bit of a hold on ten years ahead of now, they are resolutely mired in ten years ago.
So, dopey virtue signalling to dopey climate idiots will probably ensure that they will not be tweaking the energy knobs for at least another 8 years.
It is the sheer political, intellectual and practical stupidity of it all that makes it so interesting.
Mavissays:
Saturday, November 1, 2025 at 10:03 am
Not before time, the NACC head has recused himself from any matter that involves former ADF personnel. He should have done that from the outset.
================================================
How has he still got a job?
He has already been shown to have no clue what a conflict of interest is!
It seems that the NACC has been set up to give the appearance of addressing corruption while doing absolutely nothing.
Was he appointed to ride shotgun in case The NACC somehow stumbled on some corruption and someone looked like investigating it?
If that is the case, then he is doing a good job.
Though as Murray Watt pointed out on Insiders this morning, the other Rio Tinto smelter at Gladstone is already running with Renewables as the former Labor State government got in quick before they were defeated and enabled it.
Like I originally proposed, Chris Bowen et al with carriage of this should tell Rio Tinto, and Chris Minns for that matter as he is being a laggard when it comes to these things, that a similar situation needs to be the outcome for Tomago or they don’t get a brass razoo from the feds.
How doable that is, Idk.
Luigi Smith says:
Sunday, November 2, 2025 at 2:37 pm
I’m sure the Poms don’t need advice from me on reform of their electoral system.
…’
==================
First past the post, preferential, proportional, Hare Clark, compulsory or not… none of that will make the slightest difference to the fact that they are skint and getting more skint every day.
I just saw that earlier people were trying to argue Scott Morrison kept his faith to himself, so apparently I imagined him the Brian Houston stuff, attendance at Hillsong conferences, the religious discrimination bill, opposing marriage equality yada yada yada.
Holy fuckballs, it was a major part of his public persona and his conservative social policy agenda. Some of you have really memory holed that guy to be saying he kept it to himself. He wouldn’t even say he kept it to himself, he was proud of it and fair enough, that’s who he is.
Morrison keeping his religion to himself?
LOL.
Would that be the same Morrison to whom God sent an eagle as a messenger a couple of elections ago?
The Nationals have scrapped their commitment to the net zero by 2050 climate target and will instead aim to bring down Australia’s carbon emissions in line with the rest of the world. Nationals leader David Littleproud said his MPs had come to a unanimous position as he announced the new policy following a party room meeting in Canberra on Sunday. “We continue to believe that we need to reduce emissions, but we’ve got to do it in a better, fairer, cheaper way for all Australians,” Littleproud said. “We believe that we can peg ourselves to the rest of the world. We’re not going to be a laggard, but we’re not going to streak ahead.” Littleproud said the Nationals’ decision was about “bringing common sense back to climate and energy policy”.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/we-re-not-going-to-streak-ahead-nationals-officially-dump-net-zero-climate-target-20251102-p5n736.html
From The Guardian’s blog:
‘David Littleproud says he expects that the “old arguments that we’re climate deniers and we’ve been left behind” will be trotted out in response to the Nationals’ announcement today, but that it “doesn’t advance the intellectual debate in this country at all.”’
========================
Intellectual giants abound.
The orange shitberg’s $3.4M US Halloween party at Mar a Lago.
Too bad about all the American people battling away on food stamps.
Climate?
Littleproud is going to get into pegging.
Arky:
Yeah, I agree.
This particular brand of nonsense just happens to be a bit more recent than most of the other nonsenses, and its establishment happened in an era of which we have a much more complete historical record.
But its still long ago enough for generation after generation after generation after generation to have had it drummed into them (often very violently) that *this* is the true word of God and everything else is heretical bullsuit, at a time when freedom of speech and the press and all that wasn’t exactly a big thing.
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/10/whitlam-dismissal-secrets-unearthed-from-the-archives-of-the-canadian-governor-general/ …
(URL, https://www.urlvoid.com/scan/johnmenadue.com/)
Fastwheels, let them eat cake?
Boerwar, for the sake of my own sanity, I am humbly requesting that you never use the words “Littleproud” and “Pegging” in the same sentence again.
@Boer – indeed.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/26/scott-morrison-tells-christian-conference-he-was-called-to-do-gods-work-as-prime-minister
Very kept to himself, yeah. In no way let it intrude on the public sphere.
In Trump’s GOP, the once mighty Tea Party is hard to find.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/10/31/tea-party-trump-maga-republicans/
Asha
The Nationals are going to p*g their emission target to global outcomes.
What the Nationals are signalling is that they want shiploads of city tax money to go to the regions to help farmers to adapt to changing climates caused by farm emissions.
Rural socialists abound.
Arky:
I wonder if God approved of the work Scotty ended up doing for him?
I’d have penned a pretty brutal performance review if was the big man in the clouds.
Boerwar:
So, will the the emmision target or the global outcomes be the top in this scenario?
Asha
With Joyce as thought leader, who really knows?
Interesting argument on the “Religion & Ethics Report” where it was posited that were it not for the Catholics on the High Court bench, the ’92 Mabo decision would not have seen the light of day. It was a 6-1 decision, with only Dawson (a protestant) dissenting. Brennan’s father, who authored the lead judgment, was a Queensland politician, and his son, Frank, spent/spends a good deal of his time advocating for First Nations people. Incidentally, I’d like to know why so many judges live for so long. Mason, for example, is 100.
The Nationals have scrapped their commitment to the net zero by 2050 climate target and will instead aim to bring down Australia’s carbon emissions in line with the rest of the world
——————————————————–
A fairly big chunk of the world has pledged net zero by 2050. China is 2060 and, well, at the risk of triggering BW, that’s pretty good imo (if they get there by then and meet some important targets in the near term) for a country that was underdeveloped and poverty stricken only 40 years ago. So, is Littleproud saying we should only do what the US and Russia and Mexico do? Is that “the rest of the world’ according to him?
As of last year, Australia was actually behind China, the US and well behind Europe for zero emissions in their grids. Which, for a country blessed with sun and wind, tells you everything about the clusterF of energy policies during the last LNP government.
Scomo is another who falls into the “crazy person or charlaton” category. Either he genuinely believes God is communicating with him, or he is spinning more bullshit.
My money is on the latter, though I suppose the two options arn’t mutually exclusive.
BW:
Now, there is a person I don’t ever want to mentally associate with the word “pegging”!
Victorian Liberals at this rate will see government before the Liberals will federally.
Campion does strike me as the type who’d be up for it, though.
Nationals ‘proud’ to formally scrap net zero target after party room meeting.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/nov/02/nationals-party-room-meeting-net-zero-emissions-target-david-littleproud?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Nah the Lib lie is too little too late now. Mainly thanks to Labor pushing ahead with renewables and batteries. Their are too many people who have experienced their own energy independence for this nonsense to fly.
Barnaby Joyce no longer needs to leave the Nationals, he now has what he wanted, so if he does hook up with Pauline Hanson – it’ll be because he can’t stand Littleproud.
As for Angie Bell and the Liberals – I guess they really don’t want to win back seats like Bradfield or Curtin or Kooyong in 2028.
Andrew_Earlwoodsays:
Sunday, November 2, 2025 at 2:31 pm
Question: has Rio Tinto announced the closure of the Tomago Aluminium smelter due to the failure of the Hunter Offshore Wind project to proceed (this far) when the Norwegians pulled out earlier this year? My understanding is the offshore wind is thought necessary to firm the grid adjacent to big power and big industry – which is why the Illawarra and Hunter coasts were targeted.
Maybe the government does need to nationalise both the smelter and wind project to avoid backsliding in LNP shitfuckery? Thoughts?
___________________________
Offshore wind is unlikely to be ever built in NSW. If it was to occur it wouldn’t be until after 204o at the earliest.
e.g.w.:
Sunday, November 2, 2025 at 2:51 pm
Mavissays:
Saturday, November 1, 2025 at 10:03 am
Not before time, the NACC head has recused himself from any matter that involves former ADF personnel. He should have done that from the outset.
================================================
Perhaps his next fuck up will prompt Rowland to send him out to pasture.
There is no mistaking what ICE’S new structure is designed to do.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-ice-raids-bovino-immigration-border-patrol-rcna240795
The LNP have no solution to this, infact their policy was to shut down industry and wait for nuclear, they are so dishonest about the reality of it, they know their anti renewable policy meant alot of industry would have to shut down.
@Mavis – “Incidentally, I’d like to know why so many judges live for so long. Mason, for example, is 100.”
Why do wealthy people in wealthy countries with good healthcare systems doing indoor work with no heavy lifting have high life expectancy? No idea Mavis.
“ Offshore wind is unlikely to be ever built in NSW. If it was to occur it wouldn’t be until after 204o at the earliest.
____
Last time I checked earlier this year I understood that ‘the plan’ was to roll out both the Illawarra-South Coast project and the Hunter Offshore project from around 2031 over a 4-5 year period. Obviously the Hunter project will have to be reworked if it is to go ahead, but what about the Illawarra one?
The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities has been a part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change since its inception:
https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf
As a result of this principle, developed countries are expected to reach net zero by 205o under the Paris Agreement, while developing countries have until or 2060 in the case of China and 2070 in the case of India.
Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has accused the Nationals of turning their backs on regional Australia after the party voted on Sunday to abandon its commitment to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
In a statement issued this afternoon, Mr Bowen warned that regional communities were already bearing the brunt of climate change and stood to lose the most if the Nationals’ stance were adopted.
He said that regional areas also had the most to gain from the transition to net zero, noting that renewable energy projects were delivering substantial new income streams for farming communities.
“Renewables are not only keeping the lights on as ageing coal plants retire, but they’re creating jobs and new revenue right across regional Australian communities,” Mr Bowen said, noting that renewables were now playing a greater role in the national energy grid – and, for the first time last month, outsupplied fossil fuels.
“Unlike the National Party, we support farmers being able to make choices about what they host on their land. We don’t think farmers and farming families should be bullied or ostracised for choosing to supplement their income by hosting renewable energy alongside their traditional farming activities.
“David Littleproud and the Nationals have abandoned their constituents in favour of stoking climate wars.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics-latest-albanese-writes-to-erdogan-to-break-deadlock-over-australias-cop-summit-bid/live-coverage/4b378462ecaea229ddc0fd1b4701ecfa?amp
Asha says:
Sunday, November 2, 2025 at 3:13 pm
Scomo is another who falls into the “crazy person or charlaton” category. Either he genuinely believes God is communicating with him, or he is spinning more bullshit.
My money is on the latter, though I suppose the two options arn’t mutually exclusive.
______________________
Agree with that, always thought the scomo and god bit was just too over the top for a sane person. Figured it was more a transactional relationship aimed at improving his career. Bit like the bit on Gosthbusters where Winson says ‘if there’s a regular pay cheque in it I’ll believe anything you say”
The Illawarra and Hunter Renewable Energy Zones (REZs) are zones where offshore windfarms could be built. They won’t be because no one is seriously proposing to do so because they are too expensive.
Underdog Toronto Blue Jays’ Cinderella story ended tonight when they went down to the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-4 in a nail-biting 11th inning of the final World Series game.
The Jays were leading 4-2 in the 7th but Los Angeles scored two home runs in the 8th and 9th to tie it up and send it to extra innings.
Toronto missed winning it all in the 9th when the catcher’s foot came down on home plate a quarter inch ahead of the sliding runner trying to score what would have been the winning run.
It had been 32 years since Toronto, Canada’s only major league team, had been to the World Series.
@Mavis – Interesting argument on the “Religion & Ethics Report” where it was posited that were it not for the Catholics on the High Court bench, the ’92 Mabo decision would not have seen the light of day
That was a real era of intellectual Catholics being in the forefront of a lot of social justice stuff (the fall of Marcos in the Philippines being another). It’s interesting how the attitude of young Catholic leaders of that era has now finally filtered through to the papacy, rather than being something that was occurring in spite of the mainstream church hierarchy who spent that period covering up for pedos.
The so called progressive left Starmer and Albanese governments are reaping what they have sown by supporting Hamas.
Fed labor gov btw have botched the renewables switch over.
‘SL says:
Sunday, November 2, 2025 at 3:30 pm
The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities has been a part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change since its inception:
https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf
As a result of this principle, developed countries are expected to reach net zero by 205o under the Paris Agreement, while developing countries have until or 2060 in the case of China and 2070 in the case of India.’
—————-
I am fine with that principle, in principle. In practice it allows China to burn more coal than the rest of the world combined. It allows India to INCREASE its coal burning.
We need to be clear-eyed about what is being promised.
Countries generating more than fifty per cent of the world’s emissions are NOT currently aiming for zero net fifty.
And while we are keep a clear eye on things, the aim of such Paris Agreement zero net fifty as there is was to keep the world below 1.5 degrees. The latest statistical analysis has that being breached in 2026.
We need to give a lot more attention to getting ready for the consequences.
Source, BW?