The latest weekly Morgan face-to-face poll has Labor shedding another two points on the primary vote – down over the last three surveys from 42 per cent to 40 per cent to 38 per cent – and the dividend again being picked up by the Greens, who have gone from 8.5 per cent to 11 per cent to 13 per cent. The Coalition is down half a point to 41 per cent. As a result there is only a slight change on the two-party vote, with Labor’s lead down from 52-48 to 51.5-48.5. There seems to be an anomaly with the “others” rating, which has supposedly jerked up from an anomalous 2 per cent to 6.5 per cent. The fact that last week’s figures only add up to 97 per cent probably has something to do with this.
Elsewhere:
• New South Wales Labor is bracing itself for tomorrow’s Penrith by-election, which you can discuss here. Tune into this site from 6pm tomorrow for live coverage.
• The Senate passed legislation yesterday that will allow pre-poll votes cast within the relevant electorate to be treated as ordinary rather than declaration votes, and thus to be admitted to the count on election night. This will account for about 4500 votes per electorate – roughly 5 per cent of the total. Nearly 20 per cent of the votes cast in 2007 were declaration votes of various kinds, slightly under half of which were pre-polls. The bill also allows changes to enrolment to be made online, and will prevent a repeat of the Christian Democratic Party’s effort from last year’s Bradfield by-election where it fielded nine candidates without having to go to the bother of obtaining the 50 supporting signatures required of independent candidates.
• Wyong councillor John McNamara has been chosen as the new Liberal candidate for Dobell. The nomination had been vacated by the withdrawal of original nominee Garry Lee, who seems to have been pushed because his establishment of a company to take advantage of the government’s insulation scheme threatened to muddy the election campaign waters. VexNews published a colourful account from a local Liberal who tipped the outcome earlier in the week, which suggested the party does not fancy its chances in the seat.
• The Queensland Times has published a list of eight starters for the June 27 Liberal National Party preselection in the new seat of Wright, to be held following the disendorsement of Hajnal Ban. Not included are the previously discussed Bill O’Chee and Ted Shepherd. Former Blair MP Cameron Thompson appears to be the front-runner, the others being Scott Buchholz, chief-of-staff to Senator Barnaby Joyce; Richard Hackett-Jones, “a long-term tax-review campaigner who helms the Revenue Review Foundation which advocates for a uniform rate of income tax”; Bob La Castra, Gold Coast councillor and perennial preselection bridesmaid; David Neuendorf, a Lockyer councillor; Scott White, an aircraft engineer; and the unheralded Erin Kerr and Jonathan Krause.
• Yet more trouble for the Liberal National Party, with the Courier-Mail reporting local members are calling for Forde candidate Bert van Manen to be disendorsed because “he had not kept his promise to fund his own election”. While van Manen was reckoned safe for the time being, “sources admitted there had been problems and his position might come under scrutiny if there were any further issues”.
• The Liberal National Party has preselected Logan councillor Luke Smith to run against Craig Emerson in the safe Labor southern Brisbane seat of Rankin.
• The Illawarra Mercury reports former rugby league player David Boyle will withdraw as Labor candidate for the winnable south coast New South Wales seat of Gilmore, after his installation by the national executive caused an uproar in local party branches.
• Following the withdrawal of original nominee Tania Murdock, the Nationals will preselect a new candidate tomorrow for the Labor-held north coast New South Wales seat of Richmond. The preselection has attracted four candidates, an interesting turnaround on the first round when Murdock was the only person interested. According to Alex Easton of The Northern Star, the nominees are “Richmond Nationals president Alan Hunter and lawyer Jim Fuggle from the south of the electorate; and businessman Phil Taylor and pharmacist Brian Curran from the seat’s north”. Oddly, Hunter was quoted on Wednesday saying “party members would not automatically appoint a candidate if there were no stand-out nominations”, with suggestions the one-time Anthony family stronghold should be left to the Liberals.
• The Tasmanian Liberals are hawking internal polling which it says shows Labor in trouble in as many three seats, although the only figure provided – a 37 per cent primary vote tie in Bass, which would translate to a comfortable win for Labor – doesn’t bear this out. The other two seats are Braddon and, it seems, Lyons. Barnaby Joyce has today been talking of a Queensland hit-list consisting of Leichhardt, Dawson, Flynn, Longman and Wright (a slightly creative inclusion given it’s a notionally LNP new seat), with Forde as a roughie.
• Left faction powerbroker and state party assistant secretary Luke Foley has taken the place of Ian Macdonald in the New South Wales Legislative Council, following the latter’s resignation after an adverse review finding into travel expenses.
#213 Bushfire Bill
[ When her tax is paid, only THEN does she pay the bills, run the car, buy the family groceries or whatever else it is that, for a company, would be tax deductible.
]
Surely you are not seriously suggesting that domestic expenses, running a car for personal reasons, and purchasing groceries for day to day are a “deduction” for a company before the net income (on which tax is paid) of a company is determined.
Skybeau
What is politically unpalatable? It’s called reality.
The CPRS is not the the be all of environmental policy which was pointed out to me by sparring Liberal Greenie.
Then on the other hand……………………………
So, what you people are saying that although you didn’t want the CPRS you are angry it got shelved. Now you declare that the ALP has done nothing on the environment because you didn’t get the CPRS you didn’t want.
What the???????
William
matters serious
Who are you tipping for penrith?
[What would be the equivalent in Australia? Could Telstra kill the internet?]
No they would need Optus to help them. But Telstra could kill a lot of it.
And as for the main theme of this thread as shown in the SA election you don’t always get across the board swings. If the Greens have gained that much of the Labor vote, Melbourne and Brisbane will go. WA’s Labor vote is down to 28% so say good bye to Hasluck, and possibly Perth and Brand. Only a 2% swing will deliver Corangamite, Deakin, Bennelong, Robertson, Bass, Braddon, Solomon, Flynn, Macquarie and Longman. Two Labor seats in Reid and Lowe have been combined at the expense of a Liberal seat (Wright) in Queensland. Some of the swings in Queensland were ridiculous in 2007 and in those results there is always a swing back to normality – that makes Dawson, Moreton, Bonner, Forde, Petrie and Leichhardt vulnerable. That’s 22 seats – more than enough
Dee, I had not seen that post. But here is a brief reply:
The reasons for Greens saying that the CPRS is worse than nothing have already been covered.
Signing Kyoto was at first hopeful, but Rudd kept Howard’s targets which were totally unfair to the rest of the signatories (an effective 23% or so INCREASE in emissions).
Renewable energy has not done much under Rudd, and the solar cell rebate changes stuffed up the whole industry.
Clean coal may never be viable, yet it gets the bulk of the funding (I think).
If the CPRS had gone ahead then the roof insulation scheme would have made ZERO difference to our emissions.
He changed the solar cell rebate scheme into something that is bad for the environment (ie installing a solar cell under Rudd’s scheme results in 4 times more emissions than doing nothing).
And I listed earlier many of the things that Rudd should have done in year one, none of which have been done.
Australia’s emissions are still increasing, and under Rudd action on climate change is on hold.
Water had no direct impact on climate change, but I think the science here also says that what has been done is far below what is needed.
[Titled “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act”, the bill stipulates any internet firms and providers must “immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed” by a new section of the US Department of Homeland Security, dubbed the “National Centre for Cybersecurity and Communications”.]
This is evidently what is proposed.
@Dee
[So, what you people are saying that although you didn’t want the CPRS you are angry it got shelved. Now you declare that the ALP has done nothing on the environment because you didn’t get the CPRS you didn’t want.
Yep — hypocrisy reigns supreme!
No Dee, I saw the CPRS as a way for people like Al Gore (the Chairman of the Chicago Carbon Exchange if i’m not mistaken) to make money, and a huge burden on every single household for zero result fromm a worldwide perspective – the emissions we would be forced to save in a year would be eaten up by China in a week. As soon as Rudd started looking shaky he bailed on every policy he thought might cost him a vote – as well as the ones he now can’t afford to deliver as he done such a woeful job of the pink batts, BER, etc etc
[That’s 22 seats – more than enough]
More than enough to install Abbott as PM? That’s thought makes you happy? Sure sounds like it.
[Some of the swings in Queensland were ridiculous in 2007 ]
Why? 200,000 people have moved to SE Qld in the past 3 years.
Rather Abbott than KRudd
So any Australian scheme would have to clean up after China as well as Australia?
Ambitious…
[Signing Kyoto was at first hopeful, but Rudd kept Howard’s targets which were totally unfair to the rest of the signatories (an effective 23% or so INCREASE in emissions).]
How the heck could Rudd change Kyoto? MWH you say some silly things.
[Well then re-post them. I don’t have any problem with taking full responsibility for any comments I make here.]
That’s not how it works. In any case, the comments were nothing out of the ordinary really – similar comments by all sorts of people came up when I did my “Hyacinth” search, and are now being made about Therese Rudd. You can get steamed about the latter but not the former if you like, but you should know that when you do you run the terrible risk of having me poking fun at you.
[as well as the ones he now can’t afford to deliver as he done such a woeful job of the pink batts, BER, etc etc]
Now I know you’re talking rubbish. If you think the home insulation scheme was a practical failure you are wrong.
[Rather Abbott than KRudd]
The term KRudd is a sure sign you aren’t old enough to vote.
Ru – historically large swings in seats associated with a change of government swing back at the next election. For example there was a double digit swing in Leichhardt – how many extra people live up there? Have a look at Aston’s results over time to see how this works
[Who are you tipping for penrith?]
My tip is for ongoing silence at the Penrith by-election thread.
jenauthor @ 249
Admirable stuff.
Hang on, Skybeau is actually Barnyard 🙂
[Ru – historically large swings in seats associated with a change of government swing back at the next election]
Bollocks. 😛
[Some of the swings in Queensland were ridiculous in 2007 and in those results there is always a swing back to normality – that makes Dawson, Moreton, Bonner, Forde, Petrie and Leichhardt vulnerable.]
This might be true, but I actually kind of doubt it. For one thing, it presumes 2004 rather than 2007 was the “normal” result, when there’s good reason to think the opposite.
Tom – what rock do you live under? Massive cost blowouts, huge amount of rorting, 4 deaths, any number of houses now dangerous, and the house fires. Garrett lost most of his ministry over it. Genuine, long established insulation installers have been sent to the wall thanks a) to the fly-by-nights and b) by their in good faith purchase of raw materials to be used in the scheme which was prematurely discontinued. Labor have even admitted they had been warned of the dangers but ignored them as they “didn’t have enough time” . And you still say it is a success?
Jenauthor,
I must admit that you have puzzled me. Are you really a progressive? Or are you locked in to Labor?
Compared to other OECD countries much of what the Greens want is centre. So in many areas just moving Australia to an OECD centre position would be a huge improvement.
Calling a few changes an education revolution is a lie when Australia still spends less on education than the OECD average. And which other OECD countries fund rich private schools?
I’ve been saying that the real media bias in Australia is that views to the progressive side of Rudd rarely get heard.
I agree with you that thanks to Abbott and Rudd and the MSM, just getting to the middle of the OECD on most issues now seems idealistic.
But that is something I’m willing to lobby for.
What really annoys me is those who act as if they are progressive yet support the right wing (lower tax, lower spending) Rudd government.
Once someone on Crikey said “I don’t care about climate change. I’m living for me now, so stuff future generations”. Of course I strongly disagree with his values. But I really respect his honesty.
What gets me is all those who praise Rudd for his action on climate change yet ignore the huge gap between what is really needed and what Rudd does. That is just plain dishonest.
[/rant]
[That’s not how it works. In any case, the comments were nothing out of the ordinary really – similar comments by all sorts of people came up when I did my “Hyacinth” search, and are now being made about Therese Rudd. You can get steamed about the latter but not the former if you like, but you should know that when you do you run the terrible risk of having me poking fun at you.]
That was a pretty serious accusation you made against me and all for taking two posters to task for some extremely low level comments.
If you think I am not angry about that, then you don’t know me very well and it is clear from this comment that you don’t.
If that’s poking fun, then I would hate to see you make any serious comment towards me.
re-post the comments!
[as he done such a woeful job of the pink batts, BER]
Ahhh, again believing the Australian doctrine rather than looking at the actual evidence.
As someone who has worked in schools a lot of years and still have many friends who do, overwhelmingly everyone IN the school environment thinks the BER is brilliant. A few disgruntled parents (whose brother-in-law couldn’t get the contract to do the work) should not be allowed to detract from the overall success.
The insulation scheme was a massively positive move — the fact that the industry was full of dodgy people, and the scheme drew in even more, could not have been anticipated by anyone in govt. The number of housefires/problems were not noticed previously because there were only a tenth insulations done. A scheme that big, with the logistics involved, achieved much of its aim, just as the BER has done. Read the reports. Ask the people who work in schools and the parents of kids who have benefited.
Will traditional Labor or Liberal seats always will return to the fold over time. Unless you live in an Eden Monaro, generally they don’t change that much. Aston for example was Victoria’s safest Liberal seat after 2004 (more than Kooyong and Higgins) but had a swing of 7.8% to Labor in 2007 – giving a margin of 5.5% which over the history of the seat is more normmal
Scorpio, I confess to being pretty stupid, but I’m not so far gone that I’m going to republish comments that I’ve made very clear I know to be defamatory.
[And you still say it is a success?]
Yes. Your spiel is Liberal Party raving.
Skybeau
“No Dee, I saw the CPRS as a way for people like Al Gore (the Chairman of the Chicago Carbon Exchange if i’m not mistaken) to make money,”
Oh, this just invalidated every comment you have made on the environment. This is the hysterical chant of the anti-AGW rent a crowd straight out of the neo-con US think tanks that Bernardi frequents. It is the Alliance for Climate Protection, http://www.climateprotect.org/
What next? Gore’s new world order.
ruawake asked “How the heck could Rudd change Kyoto?”
Very easy. He could have said “The target’s set by the previous government of Australia were far to generous to Australia. I promise that Australia will do much better than this target.”
(I would need to do some research to be able to suggest a sensible figure for him to have given back then when he signed Kyoto).
[I promise that Australia will do much better than this target.]
Again, La La Land commentary. Just how would the PM have kept such a promise?
Jenauthor you must live under the samme rock as Tom. If the BER is so great why is the headmaster of Berwick Springs PS mounting a huge campaign to expose the rort? Why has Julia NEVER answered a question about why Abbotsford PS is being forced to demolish 4 perfectly good classrooms to build 4 new ones? Why did the parents at Tottenham PS take a protest to Canberra about their 3m x 8m canteen costing $600,000? Why are builidngs at state schools (where the handouts are administered by the states) generally costing about 4 times as much as those at Catholic schools? Why is The Australian constantly adding to their list of schools projects which the schools don’t want or consider way too expensive? Why was Kristina Keneally defending contractors charging $70,000 for architects fees for covered outdoor areas when the NSW Govt’s standard plans for these areas available on the internet for free? Why do most contracts have a contingency clause built into them costing a couple of hundred thou when the work is guaranteed? And finally why is Gillard overseeing a $14m program to investigate rorts in the system?
[Scorpio, I confess to being pretty stupid, but I’m not so far gone that I’m going to republish comments that I’ve made very clear I know to be defamatory.]
Fine, but tell me how I can retrieve them and I will forward them on to the person concerned with my name, address and phone number so she and her legal advisers can make similar judgement on them.
I have no problem standing by “any” comments I have made here that you consider “defamatory”, whatsoever.
Skybeau@284
Maybe the Principal has a vested interest by either being a member of the Liberal Party, or he wanted a parent of the school to do the work at Mate’s Rate ?
scorpio
Build a bridge and get over it.
They’ve already killed it with a “30mb” cable service that delivers 10 at best. Lies, pea-and-thimble tricks in everything they do or say.
Time to get rid of them.
Also time to get rid of this nihilistic, airy-fairy idea that becase we mightn’t want to use the internet for criminal purposes, then nobody does.
They spout this “freedom” thing with guns in the US. They’re only for self-defence, you know. An armed society is a polite society, and all that. “Responsible” people don’t just go out and shoot other people. Training in weapons handling is the sober way to go about it.
15,000 gunshot deaths a year in the US shows where complete licence, or “freedom”, gets you, in anything, be it gun laws or, by analogy, internet usage. There has to be a standard somewhere to stop untrammeled, irresponsible, criminal usage, or at least to punish it when it occurs.
Our proportion here is less than a tenth of that, including criminal use… because we ban guns (Howard’s one, unequivocally great contribution to civilization in Australia).
Without an internet filter we’re asking for trouble.
Mark Reilly using Morgan as “Bad for Rudd.
FFS.
Scorpio, I’m sensing you don’t have a terribly good grasp of the whole defamation situation, but for your enlightenment I will email the revelant comments to you.
[If the BER is so great why is the headmaster of Berwick Springs PS mounting a huge campaign to expose the rort? Why has Julia NEVER answered a question about why Abbotsford PS is being forced to demolish 4 perfectly good classrooms to build 4 new ones? Why…]
blah blah blah
You should read the comments from some who knows a lot more about the BER than you.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/18/2930655.htm?site=news
It’s Time,
[scorpio
Build a bridge and get over it.]
I’d be interested to know how you’d react being accused of defamation and having it passed off as nothing more than “harmless fun”!
You should try it sometime!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/03/19/2851150.htm
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/schools-the-pawns-in-a-grand-plan-20100607-xqmz.html
The ABC and The Age – can’t get more impartial than that (!)
[Without an internet filter we’re asking for trouble.]
Nevertheless, without an internet filter in place, police are able to track down and prosecute people with kiddy fiddling materials on their computers. How would the proposed filter enhance current law enforcement?
[The ABC and The Age – can’t get more impartial than that (!)]
That stupid comment exposes you for what you are – a hack.
No point in responding to you any further.
Good to see labor has won the RSPT debate
Next target sems to be the BER
🙁
Oh and dragging up the ETS to create morw division between greens and labor
ho hum
C&T writ large
It’s Time@294
Because people will stil be able to track those who bypass it – The Filter is designed to prevent casual access.
Why? Am I making too much sense? I can imagine the outcry if I had posted articles from Andrew Bolt and the Herald Sun! As for sending me a link from a Government appointed reviewer – come on! I have given you definte examples of schools who are not happy – and no doubt they are the tip of the iceberg. There have also been cases where schools have been forced to build halls on their open space as they have “community benefit” – how about the loss of benefit to the kids wanting to run around at lunchtime?
You also haven’t been able to defend the fact that if the BER is so great why did La Gillard launch an investigation into it? Not to mention the fact that the auditor general has stated he can’t really investigate how the money is spent as it is being allocated by state governments – over which he has no jurisdiction?
@Skybeau 284
quoting 3 or 4 out of 24,000 is a pretty good success rate (as would ten times that). Perfection isn’t possible, no matter how much you might want it.
In private industry a few percent of mistakes is considered very successful — and by and large, these buildings are contracted to private industry not built by the govt itself — therefore, like the insulation program, they have to trust that those who are delegated to, will do the right thing (just as you would if you had your bathroom remodelled). You don’t know in advance if the contractor is dodgy — only hindsight can tell you that.
Many of these structures are value added, in that after they are completed, they generate a great deal of income for the school in hire out fees. One school I was in averaged nearly $100,000 a year in extra income to buy equipment/books etc. That in itself makes it very much value for money.
State schools have very strict guidelines which add to costs. I don’t know whether the same applies to non state schools. If every school could build identical structures for identical costs, I am sure it would be done. But every school has different logistics, structural requirements etc. My last school was next to a canal and large parts of he land were subject to flooding, therefore adding buildings required a great deal of work, structurally, before there was any possibility of actually building something. Now there are some 4 classrooms on that part of the site.