The Financial Review reports a RedBridge Group/Accent Research poll has Labor’s lead out to 56-44 from 54-46 in the last such poll a month ago, along with an altogether remarkable set of primary vote numbers: Labor up four to 38%, the Coalition down five to 24%, the Greens down two to 9% and One Nation up four to 18%. A preferred prime minister that differs from most in having an “about the same” response option has Anthony Albanese on 40%, Sussan Ley on 10%, about the same on 9%, neither on 28% and unsure on 13%.
This series doesn’t include regular leadership ratings, but on this occasion respondents were asked to rate seven respondents on a five-point scale. Anthony Albanese was rated positively (“very favourable” or “mostly favourable”) by 37%, neutrally by 20% and negatively (“very unfavourable” or “mostly unfavourable”) by 39%; Sussan Ley positively by 13%, neutrally by 30% and negatively by 34%; Andrew Hastie positively by 16%, neutrally by 23% and negatively by 15%; Angus Taylor positively by 12%, neutrally by 25% and negatively by 18%; Larissa Waters positively by 6%, neutrally by 20% and negatively by 13%; Pauline Hanson positively by 32%, neutrally by 18% and negatively by 45% (including 33% for very unfavourable); and Barnaby Joyce positively by 21%, neutrally by 22% and negatively by 44%.
The poll was conducted last Friday to Thursday, and thus did not capture the Coalition’s formal abandonment of net zero on Thursday.
Is Keir Starmer going to be remembered as worse than Liz Truss? “We must become Reform to stop Reform!” Cognitively dissonant stuff.
New thread.
UpN
To quote Neville Wran:
It was said of Caesar Augustus that he found Rome brick, and left it marble, it will be said of Gough Whitlam that he found the outer suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane with nightcarts, and left them fully flushed.
The reporting of that Griffieth forests Report is interesting. If you dive down a bit there are plenty of ‘suggests’ and ‘uncertainty’ and ‘insufficient data’ and questions that beg the answer. These translate into gospel statements and are then purveyed by the likes of Peg.
The figure the Greens HATE BTW is that Australia’s forest cover is increasing by 750,000 ha per annum. (If you listen to the Greens you might think that Australia’s forest cover is going backwards by world record standards.)
There is plenty of uncertainty. Measuring forest cover remotely is an inexact science but, at a continental scale, it is really the only way to measure it economically. But, even if we halved the annual figure to allow for all the uncertainties, forest cover in Australia is growing.
The Greens negotiating opposition to changing our environment laws is based around two red lines: a climate trigger and a forest clearing trigger.
There is a furphy in the main claim: that seedlings to replace harvested old growth are only planted in drier, slower growth or no growth areas. This is, quite simply, an untrue premise. Every forest coup in Australia is routinely replanted with seeds and/or seedlings: into the same aspect, rainfall, altitude and sunshine and rainfall patterns.
The sequestration rates for different age classes and different species of trees are not reported at all.
The lead author’s statement that state of forest reporting in Australia is a ‘sleight of hand’ is, IMO, simply an academic making a political statement. Which is not surprising when you see who commissioned him.
Finally, two sets of outcomes are conflated in the discussion: biodiversity impacts and carbon sequestration impacts. Combining ‘results’ for these in the same sentence is, IMO, misleading.
And there you have it: bad faith blanket assertions when it comes to the forest debate.
I do hope that the Greens will take the opportunity to turn their 10.5% into some significant gains at the margins in current major reform process for Australia’s environmental legislation. They are probably not going to get such an opportunity for another decade or so. Fart arsing with the truth will not cut it.
Going for 100% of everything will not cut it.
Whinging about the way the Greens are handing power to the Coalition to decide the amendments to Labor’s Bills will not cut it.
Forests is an example where the Greens could get significant gains.
One gain the Greens could get is to insist on funding for a finer-grained data collection of forest age classes, forest types and forest biomass. The technical means for these are all available.
It is time for the Greens to piss or to get of the pot.
“Is Keir Starmer going to be remembered as worse than Liz Truss”
No-one will be remembered as worse than Liz Truss unless they start a nuclear war or completely wreck the economy (which Truss was on the way to doing, but got stopped).
Starmer will imo end up being remembered as someone who couldn’t ride the wave of political fracturing post-Brexit, post-Austerity. Attacked on the left by the Greens who have become the Muslim/Non-White/Refugee party (their polling represents a rough equivalent of these demographics), the Lib Dems have hollowed out the centre with Teal-esque view of being better than everyone else and the Tories have fucked things up so catastrophically that their voters are abandoning them to move further right.