It’s been a particularly busy few days on the poll front, with Newspoll’s three-week cycle coinciding with YouGov’s fortnightly cycle and Essential Research’s monthly cycle and RedBridge Group thrown in for good measure. The fortnightly Sky News Pulse poll by YouGov parts company with the others in finding One Nation continuing to rise, at the expense of the hapless Coalition rather than Labor. Labor is up three to 29% and One Nation two to 30%, the latter a new record for the party from YouGov. The Coalition is down four to 17%, two points below its previous nadir around the time of the February leadership change, while the Greens are steady on 13%. Anthony Albanese is up one on approval to 38% and down three on disapproval to 55%, while Angus Taylor is down one to 36% and steady on 47%. Albanese’s leads on preferred prime minister are out from 43-38 to 44-35 against Taylor, and from 48-41 to 49-40 against Pauline Hanson. The poll was conducted last Tuesday to this Tuesday from a sample of 1502.
The Guardian reports on the monthly Essential Research poll, with which the pollster’s data feature has been updated, though its full report with all its attitudinal questions will come later today. Inclusive of a steady uncommitted result of 5%, it has Labor up a point to 30%, One Nation down two to 26% and the Greens down one to 10%. The drop for One Nation might be thought especially significant coming from a monthly series, since the BludgerTrack trend measure records them gaining two-and-a-half points over this period.
The pollster’s 2PP+ continues to be unusually strong for the Coalition, who recover a 48-46 lead with the balance undecided, after Labor gained a 48-47 lead last month – my rough measure based on 2025 election flows has Labor ahead 51.3-48.7, out from 50.6-49.4. Anthony Albanese is up a point on approval to 38% and down three on disapproval to 51%. Contrary to other recent polling, Angus Taylor is up three on approval to 36% and steady on disapproval at 37%.
The Guardian report relates negative responses to various One Nation positions: 15% in favour of privatising the ABC, 11% for shutting down SBS, 20% for ending multiculturalism, 18% for withdrawing from the United Nations, 18% for revising workplace laws in favour of employers, and 25% for stopping the renewables transition and focusing on fossil fuels. Only 26% were in favour of the party’s position on banning abortion after 20 weeks, but results were somewhat more conservative than when the question was last posed in November 2024: the 72% supporting abortion being legal in some or all cases was down seven points, and the 28% holding it should be illegal in some or all cases was up seven. Fifty per cent said they were concerned about One Nation being backed by Gina Rinehart, and 45% were concerned the party would “turn Australians against each other”. The poll was presumably conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample that will have been a bit over 1000.
The weekly Roy Morgan poll has the biggest hit to One Nation of them all, down five-and-a-half points to 26%, with Labor up one to 28%, the Coalition up four to 21.5% and the Greens down half to 13%. Labor’s two-party lead over One Nation on a measure based on respondent-allocated preferences is out from 51-49 to 53-47, while its leads over the Coalition are in from 54-46 to 53.5-46.5 on respondent-allocated preferences and unchanged at 52.5-47.5 on previous election preference flows. The poll was conducted last Sunday to Monday from a sample of 1639.
Steve:
I went to the races once, at Eaglefarm during my first year of Uni. Bored me to tears.
Waiting ages in line for an overpriced watered-down beer or to take a piss in a bathroom so disgusting it made the one from Trainspotting look pristine, barely even able to see an actual race (naive young me figured the horse races were what everyone was here for rather than it just being an excuse for the well-to-do to get pissed at 11am on a weekday without looking like a degenerate), barely able to move through the throngs of drunk dickheads in fancy suits and woman wearing the dumbest hats imaginable. Its like a music festival if all the bands forgot to turn up.
More power to those who enjoy it, but it is not for me. If I want to wade through blind idiots and get the soles of my shoes drenched in urine, I can go to the Valley.
Dr Fumbles McStupidsays:
Sunday, July 5, 2026 at 9:59 pm
Indulging in the ultimate Melbourne 80s nostalgia fest here, watching the Great Bookie Robbery minis series. I has to be from about 1986 so Harris trains, For Cortinas, XD Falcons, VC Commodores, GTS HQ and the rest Vauxhall Vivas, Toranas, Austin 1800s, Renault 12s, 2 door range rovers, W114 Mercedes and the series 1 XJ6. Fantastic locations, Jolimont Yards, North Melbourne, Richmond, probably Collingwood/Clifton hill and Altona.
________________________________
The original Great Bookie Robbery miniseries was indeed a classic.
The real life events sparked a Melbourne underworld war in the late 70s and early 80s that included many murders. The emergence of the ‘Toecutters’ gang, led by a psycho pom. The murder of the main architect behind the robbery and the revenge murder of several standover men who were trying to extract the money.
Fumbles:
Ah, I get you.
The Golden Mile was definitely peak Underbelly, for all the liberties it took with the actual facts. Brilliant stuff.
Christ, the quality took a downturn the next season with Razor, though. Suddenly it felt like I was watching a cartoon.
Dr Fumbles McStupid @9:59.
I see that you pay very close attention to the details in TV shows, movies – probably to everything else too.
One of the Great Bookie Robbers was Norman Lee who had Chinese ancestry and was known as ‘the Chinaman’.
His other nickname was ‘Chops’ because his parents owned a dim sim manufacturing business and he would help dispose of people by chopping them up and putting them through the dim sim machine. Apparently!
Steve777 says:
Sunday, July 5, 2026 at 10:18 pm
Dr Fumbles McStupid @9:59.
Edit: One thing that annoys me is the fake number plates on the cars – green garden state H reg, FFS, B and W KEG on an 80s Nissan, so fake…
I see that you pay very close attention to the details in TV shows, movies – probably in everything else too.
______________________
It was always a bone of contention is this household calling stuff out like that, but my then partner would watch a film and call out all the differences with the novel it was based on so it would even out.
zoomster at 8.08 pm
W. Hughes was bigoted and belligerent at Versailles against the Japanese mainly because of racism.
He acted based on prejudice, against the advice of his main foreign policy advisor at the time, Edmund Leolin Piesse, a Tasmanian who attended the Friends {Quaker} School in N Hobart and moved to live in Melbourne.
He didn’t continue as a government advisor after 1927 because he refused to move from Melbourne to Canberra.
Neville Meaney wrote a good short book about Piesse, for which Kim C. Beazley wrote a foreword. It is online. The title is Fears and Phobias.
Piesse actually visited Japan in the 1920s, as well as attending the 1922 Washington Naval Conference. His informed view was that Japan was not a threat in the 1920s, but it became so by the early 1930s due to militarism.
My mother’s favourite aunt became Piesse’s wife. Only today one of their grandchildren sent me an email that mentioned they were married in October 1914. She has written a good family history book on recollections of her grandmother, Christina Piesse.
nath says:
Sunday, July 5, 2026 at 10:24 pm
One of the Great Bookie Robbers was Norman Lee who had Chinese ancestry and was known as ‘the Chinaman’.
His other nickname was ‘Chops’ because his parents owned a dim sim manufacturing business and he would help dispose of people by chopping them up and putting them through the dim sim machine. Apparently!
___________________
The real thing sounds far more exciting than the TV versions, according to the Wiki
“A well-organized gang of six stole an estimated $14–16million (roughly $115,276,243 AUD in 2025) from bookmakers in the Victoria Club, located on the second floor of a building in Queen Street, Melbourne. ”
Now that makes the lifestyle stuff a bit more realistic
Norman Leung “Chops” Lee (died on 28 July 1992, shot by police while attempting to rob the Ansett Air Freight terminal at Melbourne Airport
Again and another interesting story there too
Time for a remake, if this was the US, Amazon/Netfliks would be there for ‘content’ how do i pitch this and get my 10%?
zoomster at 8.08 pm
W. Hughes disliked the Japanese intensely at Versailles because of his bigotry and belligerence, which was based on racism, but the main sources of Japanese aggression were internal.
Hughes put a premium on prejudice, against the advice of his main foreign policy advisor at the time, Edmund Leolin Piesse, a Tasmanian who attended the Friends {Quaker} School in N Hobart and later moved to live in Melbourne.
He didn’t continue as a government advisor after 1927 because he refused to move from Melbourne to Canberra.
Neville Meaney wrote a good short book about Piesse, for which Kim C. Beazley wrote a foreword. It is online. The title is Fears and Phobias.
Piesse actually visited Japan in the 1920s, as well as attending the 1922 Washington Naval Conference. His informed view was that Japan was not a threat in the 1920s, but it became so by the early 1930s due to militarism.
My mother’s favourite aunt became Piesse’s wife. Only today one of their grandchildren sent me an email that mentioned they were married in October 1914. She has written a good family history book on recollections of her grandmother, Christina Piesse.
Dr Fumbles McStupidsays:
“A well-organized gang of six stole an estimated $14–16million (roughly $115,276,243 AUD in 2025) from bookmakers in the Victoria Club, located on the second floor of a building in Queen Street, Melbourne. ”
_____________
It was an enormous haul. The mastermind, Chuck Bennett was a legendary Melbourne thief and bank robber. Tales of his exploits were told everywhere.
The genius of the robbery was that the robbers had rented an office above the bookies hall and instead of taking off with the money, deposited it upstairs in the rented office where no one would bother looking.
Bennett was murdered on the steps of the Magistrates Court three years later.
Random fact: Woodrow Wilson, US President from 1917-1921, exasperated at the intransigence of Australian PM Billy Morris Hughes at the Versailles Conference in 1919, called him a “perfidious varmint” (although not to his face).
zoomster at 8.08 pm
Sorry for double post. Here is the link to Meaney’s book about E.L. Piesse and the problem of Japan:
https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20101024214916/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/123223/20101023-0019/www.nla.gov.au/pub/ebooks/pdf/Fears+and+Phobias.pdf
https://defense.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/fearsandphobias.pdf (looks like a US Defense link)
@nath
It needs a remake to be told properly, an epic heist and fits the whole larrikan bushranger story and up there with the Goodfellas Lufthansa heist.
I was a bit skeptical about the shooting part thought it was artistic license
The dim sim thing sounds a bit like an urban myth…
We Want Paul at 2.10 pm
“Longer time has gone on and the more I’ve learned I am leaning to the idea that the cold war, at least in the west, was at least to some not insignificant extent a bit of a false construct built on an exaggeration.”
There is much historical evidence to confirm that view. The key statement was made by Dean Acheson, US Secretary of State, who said the “Soviet threat” must be presented in terms “clearer than truth”.
https://www.cfr.org/articles/dean-acheson-and-the-birth-of-the-liberal-international-order
If you want to read a brief analysis of how the Cold War involved distorting mirrors on both sides, see pp 944-47 of this article:
https://sci-hub.red/10.1080/09668136.2019.1636936 (Europe-Asia Studies, July 2019)
That’s an “interesting” turn of phrase…
Trump has always been big on size and has been known to exaggerate the numbers attending his events – eg, his inaugurations. So, it would’ve come as a shock to him to see how many attended the funeral of the former Dear Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAla3-Zw98&t=399s
“Noticed lots of changes which have made the whole experience more humane.”
“I don’t have to have anything to do with a job provider if I don’t want to.”
“rather than “Sorry, don’t care what the reason was, you’re being penalised…””
This is only happening because the “targeted compliance framework” that allows Job Networks and Centerlink employees to act like arseholes to jobseekers has been fully stopped since mid-2025 because it illegally cancelled payments 300,000 times from 2020 onward.
Additionally, since you’re already working there’s likely no significant financial incentive for them to do anything other than ensure you remain on their books to get the basic fee for having you signed up with them. No big government paycheque until an unemployed person finds their own work, at which point the network agency will hound them into giving up payslips at which point they can get their fat govt grant, even if they did nothing to help. The payslip hunt makes debt collectors look lazy.
Right now anyone who gets sick of dealing with the job networks or whatever “mutual” obligation they’ve been given can stop dealing with them as long as they can handle the 4 weeks before the suspension gets overwritten & you can report and get backpaid + the payment will continue. Previously you used to get the payment totally cancelled automatically and be forced to reapply from scratch.
Unfortunately this rotten system is being planned to be switched back on in 2027 with little more than the rebrand that Amanda Rishworth announced back in May.
Ah, isn’t clickbait a wonderful thing.
I turn on my phone to see this headline pop up in my notifications:
“Holy shit!” I think. “Is it finally happening!?”
Foolishly, I click on the article. The first few sentences are promising, albiet with a few worrying portents:
Then I read on:
If I were sure that the article’s “author”, one Chris McPherson, were in fact a real person rather than the invention of an LLM, I think I’d be looking into engaging the services of The Faceless Men right now.
No, I won’t be sharing the link. I have already given that website one more click than it deserves.
Asha I now assume any headline is wrong or out of context, in addition to the classic law of headlines that anything with a question mark can be answered with “no”, or “not any time soon”.
Except here on PB, which is a bastion of straightforwardness.
“engaging the services of The Faceless Men right now.
Labor Party apparatchiks? (I just impressed myself getting that word right first time, I might be spending too much time in political discussions)
GoW:
I really should have known better. Normally, I am just as cynical as you on this stuff.
And with that, I think I shall head to bed, hopefully to be blessed with dreams where every person and / or data centre operator involved with the creation of that article recieves the Ramsay Snow treatment.
GoW:
The average ALP Faceless Man would probably make for a better assassin than the TV adaptation’s Faceless Men were.
Graham Richardsen vs Jaqen H’gar would be quite the battle.
(Okay, actually going to sleep now)
Good night all…
Confessions 9.30pm,
Fess, that’s the exact reason that pokies machines are so widely spread throughout clubland initially, and then to become part of pub culture.
Horse, greyhound and harness betting away from the racetrack or venue at which it was being held was almost entirely conducted in the pubs.
This type of SP betting was thriving everywhere.
The SP bookmakers were illegal, rampant across all states, cities and towns and was incredibly successful for the bookmakers.
TAB were introduced to take control of betting from the SP bookmakers and under the states control earn money for the state coffers.
Poker machines were the domain of the clubs. Before digitalization and computerization of poker machines, the job of a club manager was a very much sort after job!
Casinos existed in every capital city and every big town in Australia.
I frequented at least six “casino” establishments in Sydney town in my youth.
Gambling has been part of “white Australia” since Botany Bay.
Look up the movie “Wake in Fright”.
Have you ever played “Bridge”?
The “let’s ban gambling” fraternity are the unfortunate victims of their own inexperience and and naivety.
To begin to attempt to ban or control gambling will have the effect of making it all go underground again and more than likely promote gambling and lead to an increase in gambling.
Day after day I read the demand by the anti gambling/anti Labor fraternity on PB screech about gambling and have now moved to gambling advertising as their spear point.
I’ve written about the Tasmanian “private family owned” consortiums that not only control poker machines in Tasmania, but have gained control of the largest venues for poker machines across Tasmania to maintain their control.
And was the driving force behind a winning election in Tasmania.
In WA, the “pokies” are confined to the casino. WA also has a disproportionately high rate of gambling via “lotto products”!
The Queanbeyan Leagues Club in Queanbeyan was standing room only and “make a queue” every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night and the trail of full cars to Queanbeyan was a sight as the Canberrans, before they introduced their own poker machines, poured into NSW to gamble.
Merimbula on the south NSW coast boomed as retired Victorians were getting themselves to the poker machine action.
Most have no idea of the gambling industry but insist on “lecturing ” about something they have no idea about.
Gambling causes harm to families across Australia.
Gambling makes money for someone and others lose.
Young people do gamble.
The tirade of “no it all” individuals, groups and political parties demanding action in regard to gambling and now almost exclusively gambling advertising are actually contributing to the growth of gambling.
Do any of these people have any idea of the amount of gambling that is driven to the international computer world?
Do any of these people have any idea of the skills that young people have in gambling across different platforms within Australia and overseas?
Action needs to taken but demanding governments ban gambling advertising is simplistic in the extreme.
Have the universal introduction of police forces stopped crime?
Any reduction in gambling will come from education about probability, algorithms and common sense.
They used to put little toys in cereal packets!
I still see little toys are used by retailers and cereal still sold.
I apologize for “picking on ” you fess to make a point.
If I had the time I could regale PB with many tales of gambling
Unfortunately the anti gambling /gambling advertising brigade have all the adorned themselves in their “I know everything” shields thus making interaction with them futile.
It’s like talking to a One Nation devotee!
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