With nearly every pollster in the game having pitched in last week, a quiet period looms. The weekly Roy Morgan should be along later today as always, and DemosAU is about due for one of its big-sample MRP projections. On the broader electoral front, there is the following to report:
• The Weekend Australian had the quarterly Newspoll detailed breakdowns from its four polls conducted in April, May and June. The state results show movement towards One Nation and away from Labor clearly evident in Victoria and South Australia, less evident in New South Wales, and not at all evident in Queensland and Western Australia, with Labor gaining three points in the former case. Breakdowns by education are distinctive in that One Nation is up six among those with technical qualifications, but effectively unchanged for everyone else. Voting intention is barely changed among 18-to-34s, whereas One Nation are up significantly among the older cohorts. Presumably inspired by the budget tax measures, the breakdowns now include housing tenure, as commonly featured by other pollsters. To commemorate the occasion, I have added tabs for these results to the BludgerTrack poll data features (keep clicking the “more” tab until you see them).
• The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has published an interim report from its routine inquiry into the last election, which notably focuses on aggressive behaviour at polling booths. The majority report cites data on public complaints received by the AEC, and recommended that “election participants” be required to register and observe a code of conduct. The AEC, whose bailiwick currently ends six metres from the entrance, would enforce this code within a “campaign zone” around the polling place, in which signage limits would also apply. The report argued that much of the offending behaviour “seemed to involve third parties”, and while it didn’t name names, committee chair Jerome Laxale told parliament while tabling the report of “an assault by third parties identified in submissions like the Plymouth Brethren and Advance”.
• Certainly the Plymouth Brethren angle had been divined by the committee’s Coalition members, who headlined their dissenting report “less inquiry, more hyperpartisan witch hunt” – the latter having been directed against “Australians based on their religious faith”. While acknowledging aggressive behaviour was an issue, their own volunteers having been “targets for intimidation by unions and other third party organisations on polling booths for many elections”, the Coalition members forcefully rejected the recommendations as burdensome, open to abuse and possibly unconstitutional. Also in the Coalition report was a call for the early voting period, already truncated from three weeks to two before the 2022 election, to be reduced to one week, and for the AEC to be “more strident on ensuring that people accessing pre-poll are doing so for one of the reasons prescribed in the Act”.
• The official determination of how many seats each state and territory will be entitled to at the next election, which is calculated a year into each parliamentary term, will be made later this month. Antony Green has done their work for them based on the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics population data, and concludes there will be no change from the status quo, Queensland having recorded not quite enough growth to get it over the line for a thirty-first seat. Queensland will nonetheless get a redistribution under the seven-year rule, which is now overdue after being twice delayed: first because of the election, and then because there was no point commencing the process until it was clear how many seats the state would have. Proposed boundaries were published in March for South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, final boundaries for which are expected later this month.
• Wendy Askew has brought forward the retirement she recently announced for the end of her term in mid-2028, now to take effect in a “few weeks”. This means two vacancies are now available for Tasmanian Liberal Senate seats, together with that created by Jonathan Duniam’s surprise retirement announcement last month.
Yeah, nah. If you examine the 12-month rolling average renewable proportion of the three coal states, Victoria (who privatised first) with 47% is way ahead of NSW and Qld on 38% and 37% respectively.
https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/compare/?range=all-12-mth-rolling&interval=1M&metric=renewablesProportion
Moreover, the Qld LNP plans to keep the (publicly owned) coalers running to 2049. While this is partly for ideological reasons, if they are making money it makes economic sense. It also kind of makes sense for them to block renewables, like they are doing, so they don’t further undermine the economics of the coalers.
More generally, it never made sense to privatise the transmission and distribution networks because they are monopoly assets. Back in the day, when electricity generation was mostly coal-fired, you could make the argument that public ownership was a superior model. With the introduction of renewables, that argument became harder to make, due to the Qld example above.
With the advent of batteries*, it’s very difficult to mount an argument for public ownership, especially here. The NEM is one of the most competitive electricity markets in the world – when competition is high, prices are low and vice versa. It is not just the competition per se, it is the innovative business models that different operators provide. Something public companies are not known for – justifiably with their lower appetite for risk.
Notwithstanding the above, there is still a role for government. The Electricity Services Entry Mechanism, which will be implemented next year combines the advantages of old-school public ownership with the innovation provided by competition.
* In addition to the NSW battery discharge records set yesterday for power and energy, there is a new NEM energy record:
https://openelectricity.org.au/records/au.nem.battery_discharging.energy.day.high?datetime=2026-07-08T00_00_00&offset=10_00&focus=1783432800000
WWP
I agree Qld ball control was poor last night and that probably cost the game anyway. But the refereeing was still awful.
We don’t know how the game might have gone if the NSW player causing the head high tackle early in the first half got sent off for it the way Ponga did in game one.
The corporate watchdog has launched an investigation into how the big four accounting firms handle internal complaints, in an unprecedented intervention into the multibillion-dollar sector, which has historically avoided meaningful regulation.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission will use compulsory information-gathering powers to force KPMG, Deloitte, EY and PwC to hand over documents relating to their treatment of internal complaints. The probe is in response to KPMG failing to adequately look into claims by a whistleblower of misconduct in its audit division and then allegedly bullying him for raising concerns.
https://www.afr.com/companies/professional-services/kpmg-data-misuse-scandal-triggers-wider-asic-probe-into-big-four-20260708-p60dli
Davidsays:
Wednesday, July 8, 2026 at 10:50 pm
Perhaps there needs to be focus on the IPA girl leading the Liberal Party in Victoria.
_______________________
Sounds a bit sexist to me.
Her name is Jess Wilson.
Final thoughts on Telstra and various flow on outages yesterday. The Telstra network outages were nationwide. Yet the (long distance) trains kept operating in NSW and Qld but not Victoria. What is the explanation of that?
Talk about “resilience” is just political messaging from people with zero technical background if problems like this persist.
Further proof that our infrastructure operating standards have been run down.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-09/berrima-freight-train-derailment-rail-union-safety-concerns/106891274
Taylormade, Thursday, July 9, 2026 at 9:02 am:
———————
TM – is ‘Freedom Boy’ sexist as well?
“Jeff might not be around anymore (politically speaking) but he deliberately left some timebombs ticking.”
For goodness sake, Labor have been in office in Victoria for 23 of the last 27 years. If there are still issues from the Kennett years, WTF have they been doing all that time? They have no excuse, they have had landside victories – mandates for change -they could have changed anything that you mention.
Zoomster – have you asked your Labor mates in Spring Street why they didn’t make changes?
Eight economic myths that are helping destroy our future
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/07/eight-economic-myths-that-are-helping-destroy-our-future/
“Australia and the world are facing existential and other major human-induced threats: climate change; destruction of our life support system, the natural environment; social breakdown due to increasing gaps in wealth, income and political power; a severe shortage of housing; inflation; and a high risk of nuclear war.
The principal sources of these threats are state capture by private vested interests – such as the fossil fuel, military-industrial complex, property development, gambling and financial services industries – and an economic system, designed by supporters of those vested interests and based on exploitation of the planet and most of its peoples.
The methods of state capture include political donations, revolving door jobs, and uncontrolled lobbying. The latter’s practitioners and supporters have been very successful in creating a ‘culture’ that fosters the interests of the rich and powerful and downgrades the importance of the environment, social justice and democratic decision-making. It does this by disseminating such myths as:”
It is the game we should have got to see, but never will.
Rental crisis is a policy choice, not unavoidable, Senate inquiry told
https://thepoint.com.au/new/270708-rental-crisis-is-a-policy-choice-not-inevitable-senate-inquiry-told
Australians face record-high rents across all capital cities: Domain report
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-08/record-high-rents-across-capital-cities-led-by-sydney-domain/106890418
Concussion is a bad enough problem in league and AFL, without head high tackles being let off lightly.
My speculation is that they were embarassed by the first send off, and over corrected, but if so they’ve made the basic mistake not recognising that two wrongs have never made a right.
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Andrew Wilkie on the need to go harder to curb gambling advertising
https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-andrew-wilkie-on-the-need-to-go-harder-to-curb-gambling-advertising-287061
“It needs to be recognised that the Murphy parliamentary inquiry, named after Peta Murphy, the late chair, was the best parliamentary inquiry into gambling harm this parliament has ever seen. And it’s important that its 31 recommendations, (made up a) consensus report.
I would go so far as to say it is the best blueprint that has ever been produced in Australia for addressing gambling harm and that makes the fact that the government sat on it for more than three years all the more damning. That makes the fact that the government is only going to three of the recommendations and then only in part, I think that’s all the more damning. It’s clearly well short of what the community were hoping for.
:::
I think there are some in the government who are fellow travellers with one or all of those industries and I’d single out the prime minister personally and his relationship with the leadership of NRL. I mean that’s not a case of the prime minister being scared of anyone in the NRL, he’s just favourably disposed to the leadership of the NRL.
I don’t know how any member of the House or Senator can sit down and have the sort of meetings that I have regularly with people who are battling addiction or recovering from addiction, families who have a loved one who has an addiction, perhaps may have even suicided. I don’t know how anyone with humanity can have those conversations and not walk away absolutely determined to do something about it.”
One would not be taking those meetings, one would be counting the money from the gambling lobby instead. Surely. Why would you meet them, those people are just whinging anyway, never had it better, just ask the much lauded PB brains trust.
Pegasus
Just in brief summary, and taking a broad sweep, what would be the economic and political features of the system that should replace our predominantly capitalist and democratic system?
Of particular interest to this blog, how would political leaders be elected, if at all?
Pegasus, I watched the extended highlights of the third SOO on YouTube interspersed with about 5 TAB ads.
Apart from AAP, I can’t find any coverage of our first locally made electric truck in the MSM. Although, Big Rigs and Fully Loaded covered it:
https://www.fullyloaded.com.au/australian-made-electric-trucks-volvo-wacol/
More details were provided in yesterday’s presser:
https://www.pm.gov.au/media/press-conference-brisbane-7
Something else that has been rattling around in the back paddock of my thoughts for sometime is the contrast and conflict between those who focus on the behaviours and values of Australia and our allies, whether that grouping is the anglo sphere or a broader Western Civilisation (although I have enjoyed the challenge recent analysis suggesting aren’t actually part of Western Civilisation, a term I’ve always taken to be a fake term used by racists who are at least smart enough to try and disguise it, but still the discussion was interesting) and those who like to focus on the bad behaviours of whomever they are ‘othering’ at the time.
There seems to be a bit of a false conclusion, often, if not always drawn in bad faith, that those who concentrate on the ideas that as a first step to improving humanity by critiquing the behaviours of Australia and other members of whatever class definition you seek to put around ‘us’, eg anglo sphere, western civilisation etc etc, are implicitly endorsing the behaviours of the ‘othered’ class. And this isn’t logical, it isn’t a reasonable conclusion, it is just a form of denial and avoidance. ‘How bad is China’ is intellectually and socially and morally easy to say, it is an other and easy target.
Criticing the ‘us’ class takes thought, and care.
Now of course we need both aspects of analysis in a sensible discourse, either alone is incomplete and somewhat pointless.
But there is an English translation of an ancient text many in the anglo sphere hold dear that suggests one should remove the tree from ones own eyes before looking to remove the mite of dust from the others eyes.
Doing it in this, the bibilical order doesn’t negate the mite of dust in the others eyes, it just paves the way to get to it.
bbp
No longer my mates, but I’ve tried to point out some of these problems over the years.
Teachers (and public servants in general) aren’t allowed to speak publicly (another Jeff thing). Hasn’t been overturned because it makes life easier for governments of all stripes if they can’t. I can, a bit, so I do, but I get dismissed as someone with a gripe, even when I make it clear that I’m speaking as the result of multiple conversations with other teachers (who, of course, I then can’t name…).
The Minister therefore relies on the Department and the Departments always wanted these changes. So the Department tells them these things aren’t really problems.
Jeff’s system changes (across the board) elevated a lot of bureaucrats overnight from being (say) accountants to Financial Managers, Secretaries/Managers to CEOs. They’re not interested in going back. And they’re also not terribly interested in saving governments money.
And some of these changes are difficult to sell electorally. A school run by locals for locals, by parents for their children? You have to get very rude about parents and their capabilities to change that. Not a popular move.
Hey, mate, have you not woken up yet?
Peg wants the Revolution.
Peg wants a total statist control of the economy with a bunch of Greens technocrats and moralists doling out each to his needs while demanding from each his capacities. These would be buttressed by committees of earnest but dull and humorless Greens at every decision-making level who would embody devolved democratic decision making for every farm, factory and house.
Wrong-thinkers on two legs would be sent off to re-education camps. If they are lucky.
Five year production plans with targets would be all the go.
Since there are no limits to this nirvana there would be no point stopping anyone from crossing any of our borders at any time. Logically, it would be immoral so to do.
No-one would ever be offended by anything in this dream state, by order of the state. Capital has been banished to beyond the Australian borders. Exchange tokens would be taken to the nearest whole food distribution centers.
Since everything would be free to everyone and all needs and wants are met by order of the state, there is no need for capital.
There would be no gambling because there would be nothing to gamble with. Problem solved. There would be no recreational drugs because there would be no psychological need for recreational drugs. There would be no domestic violence. There would be no racism. No-one could actually tell if LGBTIQ+ and heteros actually existed at all because the state has mandated zero gender differentiation.
There would be no ADF. National sovereignty would be guaranteed by no-one wanting to go anywhere near the Greens blissbomb.
It is truly incredible that 85% of australians stupidly and persistently resist the lure of the Greens Eden.
Who are the 2 women, who greeted Modi on his arrival? One appears to be Jacinta Allan. Is the other woman in red dress, who greeted him first, Anika Wells?
You might recall that Trump sacked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientists and closed down the Climate.gov website. Some of those that were sacked launched a new website: https://www.climate.us/
https://grist.org/solutions/scientists-saving-climate-information-government-websites/
Agree TaylorMade.
At least 000 calls are being diverted through Optus. That’s a big plus. Telstra is up for a bucket of compensation.
GOP desperately insists Mitch McConnell is alive and well
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/8/800066854/congress/gop-desperately-insists-mitch-mcconnell-is-alive-and-well/?pm_source=ICYMI&pm_campaign=ICYMI07082026
I don’t care whether McConnell is dead or alive, but why are Republicans behaving like Soviet Union officials with regards to McConnell health?
And what is this 20 minutes conversation with McConnell? Why wouldn’t he talk for 5, 10, 15 or any other minutes with them?
Why is everyone after Platner when Trump and many other Republican politicians did much worse?
Some good news on the climate front. Volvo Trucks in Brisbane has just completed the first Australian built electric truck (semi prime mover). About 35% of transport GHG emissions are from trucks, so this is important. EVs alone are not enough to solve the problem. This could also be great for more resilient freight transport if we are stuck with unreliable diesel supplies.
https://www.fullyloaded.com.au/australian-made-electric-trucks-volvo-wacol/
https://www.fullyloaded.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/DSC_0635-1-1024×673-1-1024×673.jpeg
Give me a break! Now Optus, which was responsible for multiple failures resulting in 000 call failures, is the good guy.
Diogenes, both Telstra and Optus are private operators and John Howard privatised Telstra, which some called a con job because Telstra service went down hill and shares never rose to great heights as promised by Liberal politicians at that time.
Pretty hard to unscramble the privatisation egg that Kennett cooked up.
Essential services should never be privatised based on making profit.
They should rather be run by Govt at break even with parliamentary oversight.
[Pegasussays:
Thursday, July 9, 2026 at 9:17 am
Australians face record-high rents across all capital cities: Domain report
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-08/record-high-rents-across-capital-cities-led-by-sydney-domain/106890418%5D
Surprise: Company with vested interest tries to make increasing rents look inevitable due to economic factors. Aims to discourage renters form shopping for value.
Real economics: Price of underlying asset is declining, so return from the asset in dollar terms will also decline over time. All the fancy real estate language notwithstanding.
The Chaser: “We’re seeing a head-to-head race heating up between the joke candidate and Count Binface.”
https://chaser.com.au/world/aussie-who-cant-name-his-local-mp-heavily-invested-in-wanting-binface-to-beat-farage
Because real markets always follow the theorhetical market rules and nobody in a market has ever misbehaved, and they are incredibly easy to predict and real economic has a fantastic record of correctly predicting real markets. All praise the invisible hand.
Democrat Graham Platner drops out of the U.S. Senate race in Maine: This scumbag posted an 11-minute (!!) video to announce he’s dropping out, in which he blamed “large forces” and the “corporate media” for the very credible sexual assault allegations against him.
First report of a death due to not being able to call 000
SA Police refute Lib Senator’s claim:
Something as big and brutal and diversified as real estate does eventually follow the laws of supply and demand. This does not even require a particularly “liberal” market system.
Manipulation of real estate requires long time governmental intervention – and it’s Howard’s use of that type of manipulation that is being unwound to much squealing.
It’s smaller and specialised markets that present opportunities for manipulation by the players in those markets.
zoomster says:
…..
And some of these changes are difficult to sell electorally. A school run by locals for locals, by parents for their children? You have to get very rude about parents and their capabilities to change that. Not a popular move.
Would the teachers in question support the bringing back of inspectors? They supported the new and weeded out the failures. With the appropriate powers would matter who did the hiring?
I just do not see landlords letting or additional supply forcing residential rents down.
I know it is not like commercial real estate where rents cannot be reduced because of funding requirements and commercial and retail space sits empty for years rather than rents reducing, but except outside specific segments (like student rentals if racists keep all the students out) landlords current and future will not let supply grow and rents fall.
Ven says:
Thursday, July 9, 2026 at 10:08 am
…
Give me a break! Now Optus, which was responsible for multiple failures resulting in 000 call failures, is the good guy.
Diogenes, both Telstra and Optus are private operators and John Howard privatised Telstra, which some called a con job because Telstra service went down hill and shares never rose to great heights as promised by Liberal politicians at that time.
The probability of a network failing is not zero, the probability of two networks failing at the same time is closer to zero.
The problem is Victoria is they obviously didn’t implement a redundant network because optus stayed up.
Ven
I remember when Telstra was privatised. It was a big deal and we almost all bought shares. Then they went down.
The government has a lot of power over telcos because they’re essential.
Alpha Zero says:
Thursday, July 9, 2026 at 10:21 am
The Chaser: “We’re seeing a head-to-head race heating up between the joke candidate and Count Binface.”
https://chaser.com.au/world/aussie-who-cant-name-his-local-mp-heavily-invested-in-wanting-binface-to-beat-farage
We are going to see how big the protest vote is, voting bin face would be the ultimate protest.
Another article from former Adm Peter Briggs on reconsidering the French nuclear sub option for the Australian navy. Briggs points out that the LEU reactor system the French SSNs have has many advantages over UK and US SSNs in terms of maintenance and long term nuclear waste disposal. Worth a read with some important technical details.
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/07/australia-should-take-another-look-at-frances-nuclear-submarines/
Over to Richard Marles for a Sovereign Press Release in response.
frednk
Inspectors were long gone before Kennett’s changes.
What matters is that hiring becomes almost wholly a budgetary decision, rather than picking the best teacher for the position (the Department says this isn’t so, that decisions are made purely on merit, but virtually every teacher knows that that isn’t so; the Minister doesn’t seem to talk to teachers but relies on the Department’s advice).
A few years ago, there was a big fanfare about luring experienced teachers to regional schools by offering them a $50k bonus. Of course, that doesn’t work when the problem isn’t with the teachers; if the bonus had been split between teachers and the schools, it would have been more effective.
* In addition to the NSW battery discharge records set yesterday for power and energy, there is a new NEM energy record:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That would be me. The little household box was installed last Friday and is doing its thing.
(The installation gang arrived about 4 to 4.30 pm and finished about 7.30 pm, I think they have as many orders as they can possibly fill, in 12 hour shifts, for as far as the eye can see.)
….the original ‘problem’ was that teacher placement was run by a centralised agency, so schools had no say over staffing at all.
The NSW system would solve this – a budget for staffing which (theoretically) allows for each teacher being paid the maximum, but the decisions around filling positions being made at the local level.
A bunch of fucking mornons – rent growth is high because migration is too high, and successive global supply crisis means there is zero can can be done to “build more houses”.
It took around 5 years following the GFC migration surge for the rental market to settle, and a further 5 years of benign economic conditions for housing construction to lift and drive up supply. When Labor lost the 2019 election, it was at the end of a golden period where wages were surging ahead of rents for half a decade.
Cut migration and you cut inflation and rent growth. Focus the program on genuinely value adding skills, and cut the BS roles that are going tk be automated anyway. No International students beyond STEM, med, nursing and childcare, and all training institutions must fully house every student with new supply.
Idiots are still risking handing over the keys to the lodge to Hanson…
You mean T2?
T1 had done so well I remember people filling out T2 applications in as many names as possible. I think someone had a cat and dog seek to subscribe, but then from memory it did not go at all like T1.
Iran launches a missile and drone attack on Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Here we go again.
zoomster says:
Thursday, July 9, 2026 at 10:51 am
frednk
Inspectors were long gone before Kennett’s changes.
…
True, but that was when central control, lost control, you can’t just blame Jeff.
But your point on the hiring of experienced teachers seems to be true. There seems to be no long term career path. To undo it there needs to be a little bit of honesty on how it happened. If you want the department to take back control, they need the tools.