GhostWhoVotes relates that the latest Newspoll has Labor leading 52-48, up from 51-49 last fortnight. Labor is up a point on the primary vote to 36%, and the Coalition down one to 40%. More to follow. UPDATE: The Australian report relates that Bill Shorten’s approval rating is up three points to 36%, which is the first time a poll has moved in his favour in quite a while. UPDATE 2: Full tables here; to fill in the blanks, Shorten’s disapproval is steady at 43%, Tony Abbott is up two on approval to 40% and steady on disapproval at 50%, and Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister nudges from 42-36 to 43-36.
Today’s Morgan result, combining its regular face-to-face and SMS polling from the last two weekends, was the Coalition’s worst since the election, recording a 1.5% shift on the primary vote from the Coalition (to 38%) to Labor (38.5%), with the Greens down a point to 11% and Palmer United up half a point to 4.5%. On 2013 election preferences, this gives Labor a 53.5-46.5 lead, up from 52.5-47.5 a fortnight ago, while on respondent-allocated preferences the shift is from 53.5-46.5 to 54.5-45.5. Morgan has also been in the business lately of providing selective state-level two-party results, which are presumably based on respondent-allocated preferences. From this poll we are told Labor had unlikely leads of 56.5-43.5 in Queensland and 52-48 in Western Australia, together with leads of 54.5-45.5 in New South Wales and 55-45 in Victoria, and an unspecified “narrow” lead in South Australia.
UPDATE (Essential Research): Essential Research has Labor back up a point on the primary vote after it fell two last week, now at 37%, with the Coalition up one for a second week. The Greens and Palmer United are at 9% and 4%, with others down a point and the other loose point coming off rounding. Respondents were quizzed about the attributes of the major parties, which provides good news for Labor in that “divided” is down 14% to 58%, and “clear about what they stand for” is up 8% to 42%. Those are also the biggest movers for the Liberals, respectively down 6% and up 7%, although they are still performing better than Labor on each at 50% and 32%. The worst differential for Labor is still “divided”, at 26% in favour of the Liberals, while for the Liberals it’s “too close to the big corporate and financial interests”, which is at 62% for Liberal and 34% for Labor.
A question reading “as far as you know, do you think taxes in Australia are higher or lower than in other developed countries” turns up the fascinating finding that 64% of respondents believed they were higher versus only 8% for lower, while 65% believed taxes to have increased over the last five years versus 9% for decreased. Forty-seven per cent believe the current level of taxation is enough versus 33% who believe they will need to increase. The poll also finds 50% opposed to following New Zealand’s example in holding a referendum on changing the flag versus only 31% supportive.
Will the wife of an Aussie Sir be referred to as a Dame?
If so, you can imagine the pressure Hyacinth would be piling on!
mari
Mrs Bucket will be positively aquiver at the news at a possible Sir John.
“@BernardKeane: As the Infrastructure Prime Minister, Abbott’s first new projects will be a Gothic cathedral and city walls around every capital.”
Arise, Sir Bolt, Earl of Bigotte.
If Abbott started creating Australian Lordships he’d have to start giving away random bits of the Australian countryside to go with them … actually he may well consider it part of his economic plan for the regions.
[I run Win 8.1, Ubuntu 13.10, iOS 7.1 and Android 4.4.2.
They all have things they do well, I use the tool for the job I want to do.]
That’s fair enough, ruawake!
@guytaur/453
That’s actually kind of funny from Keane (Considering the Abbott PM hasn’t built anything).
BK
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2014 at 4:19 pm | PERMALINK
Will the wife of an Aussie Sir be referred to as a Dame?
If so, you can imagine the pressure Hyacinth would be piling on!
452
poroti
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2014 at 4:20 pm | PERMALINK
mari
Mrs Bucket will be positively aquiver at the news at a possible Sir John.
I was going to say something re Mrs Bucket but think Sir or Lord? John might be a bit old 😀
Does Mrs Cosgrove automatically become “Lady Cosgrove”?
murdoch of course refused a pommy knighthood.
Josh Taylor @joshgnosis 1m
Did the PM explain why in only December he ruled out knights and dames? http://bit.ly/1kZDHUU
What changed?
Why do the ABC have to be ‘balanced’ on everything ?
If Abbott announced extermination of redheads would the ABC offer both positives and negatives to the proposal ?
[The problem here is that 64% of people are objectively wrong.]
And we know this now, thanks to the poll.
Of course, we never really lost the aristocracy: the “Duke of Avram” was briefly a Liberal member of the Tasmanian Parliament.
Stephen Koukoulas @TheKouk 8m
Meanwhile 750,000 are unemployed.
sortius @sortius 7m
Sir Bogan of Bigot #NewKnights
MRRT voted down in Senate so Abbott has distraction to hand
“@PaulBongiorno: Supine, derivative, insulting to an independent democracy, sneaky and high handed.”
What changed? Need you ask – Arthur, bad polls, that SA election loss, Arthur, more bad polls…..it’s a thundering great herd of unicorns.
Graeme Bowman @Graeme_Bowman 18s
@hscleasby @randlight I knew a Dame once. she had 16 girls working for her 🙂
There is such funny tweets coming in
OK. QT finished? How farcement!
Back to reality.
Faced with 34 show causes, Dank reckons once again that he is totally innocent, see you in court.
So James does an interview a couple of days before the first game of the year. He will return. But then, so did Macarthur, over the bodies of around one million filipinos – not that coaching Essendon and smoking a corncob pipe while running the South-west Pacific Command are one and the same thing.
Then Tania reckons that Demetriou is a bullyboy and that he said something over the phone to Evans that he should not have said and that Evans repeated it and that when Evans repeated it to James, she was listening on a speaker phone, and she TOOK NOTES, and that James wanted his day in court and that it is all sooooooo unfair.
Just in case anyone is confused, she sort of reckons that what she says has got nothing to do with James.
Que?
Then one of Hird’s hired gunslingers reckons that it is all sooooooooooo unfair because the AFL is judge, jury and executioner. He doesn’t say whether he would prefer the Pell model of true christian justice.
Then someone reckons that Thommo has been saying to his mates that he reckons that Hirdy will not come back to coaching Essendon.
Then Little reckons that he would rather not talk about exactly what he thinks about Hird returning as coach.
Pyromaniac Caro hoses her usual jellied petrol onto the flames.
Wallis has something to do with Dank turning up at a fund raiser. Wallis was handy on the paddock but sort of ended up as collateral damage from EssendonGate and is Not Happy.
Meanwhile Robbo is suing the Club for wrongful dismissal.
And there is chatter that the EFC might be setting up some sort of Future Fund to provide for players, their wives, their children and any future offspring, should they start developing strange syndromes, conditions, illnesses, or even shapes at birth.
It is also getting itself an integrity officer.
Then Hirdy’s Dad swings into action and flays the AFL. His son Jim is a good boy. Hirdy’s Dad also reckons that there is no such thing as a Hird Camp, whatever that is.
So the Board meets and considers its options around Hirdy which are looking decreasingly neat and tidy. What part of riding off into the sunset doesn’t the Hird non-existent Camp get? James got the dinero, and a sojourn in Paris studying business, now it is time for James’ part of the deal: STFU. He does. But not his wife, his Dad, his mates, or certain persons hired to carry out certain tasks. The Board checks the small print of the deal. Oh, oh: No vociferous wife clause.
Anyway, the Board also considers what its legal position ought to be if, or more likely when, the Dank stuff hits the Federal Court Fan. So the Board decides to do nothing. It also decides to wait until Wednesday. See what happens. Get some more info. Some say that that some members of the Board might just want to wait to see whether Hirdy gets infracted. This might save them the $2 million break fee, cut the ground from under the ground of the H**d Camp, and the embarrassment of having to sack a FAVOURITE SON and LEGEND and ALL ROUND GOOD PERSON.
Someone writes a lengthy article which quotes a whole lot of people who know Hirdy really well saying the same sorts of things that a whole lot of Liberals who know him really well are saying about Sinodinos. Hirdy’s friends and acquaintances all reckon Hirdy’s a great chap in every possible way. They sound like they believe it. They should know, don’t you think?
One reckons that right until the end Hirdy was 50/50 about whether to challenge in court which he really wanted to do but that he took the Fall to protect EFC’s 2014 premiership points and that this is why Hirdy and Tania are so bitter: Hirdy did nothing wrong and was bullied into taking some unfair punishment.
Anyway, the Bomber’s players and Bomber then distract everyone by achieving a bloody good win out on the paddock. The Hawks, with their defence weakened by bad behaviour and injury, do not look like an impossible next task.
Thommo looks happy at the post-match. He delicately skirts around the questions having to do with the Board trying to Hird its cats. But he does rather look like the Cat who got the Bomber’s cream. Certainly, the Cats did not get to keep Bomber when they wanted him. He is agile, No?
In what was possibly a Stalinesque gesture of public hierarchy messaging, Little hugs Thommo.
So then Loydy reckons that Little and Hirdy talked on Saturday and have kissed and made up.
But then Little sort of reckons that Loydy is sort of talking out of his arse.
Then another of Hirdy’s hired guns, or maybe one of his not-for-profit guns, flays the AFL and gets stuck into Demetriou for laughing at dwarf throwing (I kid you not) and then also gets stuck into Eddie for the somewhat vague crime of just being Eddie.
It would not entirely suprise the casual viewer to learn that some of the public players have had rottweiler-type experiences.
So will Tania talk to the Essendon board or not on Wednesday?
If I were on the EFC Board I would refuse to talk to Ms Hird unless she is willing to sign a statutory statement accusing Demetriou and Evans of criminal conduct. Barring that, it is not as if she injected anyone with anything illegal or played in the forward pocket or anything like that, so why should they talk to her at all?
Let Jim and Tania and David and Andy have their day in court, I say.
And let a very good coach and the very good players just get on with their very good standard of, um, uh, your actual footie.
Thanks, guytaur, that might be it.
[ “@danielhurstbne: What’s wrong with existing honour system, @lenoretaylor asks.
PM: “That is for eminent achievement. This is for pre-eminent achievement”” ]
It speaks volumes when a so called Australian PM, ranks Australian Honours as second class to those of a foreign country – one which continues to sink further into decline.
Nick Ross @NickRossTech 21m
Interesting to see Budde claim Telstra & Optus cld be getting annual $1-$2bn govt maintenance payments… for nothing. #NBN
Nick Ross @NickRossTech 9m
@sortius I still record FTTN is not viable. The wires dont go where they are supposed to. You can’t blag that. It’s impractical to fix.
100% Agree.
Wonder if Turnbull going to throw the axe at Nick again?
zoidlord
[What changed?]
A desperate need for unicorns as “Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor” sets in.
“@Pollytics: Nah mate, Sir Prancealot RT @richardtuffin: Dame Christine of Pynedom… #GameOfTones”
@Mari/469
Here is one from Possum:
Possum Comitatus @Pollytics 26s
Nah mate, Sir Prancealot RT @richardtuffin: Dame Christine of Pynedom… #GameOfTones
Sir Arfur of Longbay?
I just checked. It’s another 6 days until April 1.
Of course Abbott’s IPA backers hate Government but they would love to be called ‘Sir’. For
generous donations to the LNP‘Services to the community’ no doubt.How pathetic. It’s the 21st century and we’re reintroducing a local bunyip aristocracy. When Abbott’s kicked out Labor should do a ‘Whitlam’ and rip up the Honours list.
Knights? Dames? This is ludicrous.
It doesn’t suit modern Australia which is moving to a Republic.
[When Microsoft stop any support for XP just having a good virus protection program might not be enough.]
LOL, It never was. About as secure and tight as a sieve
Annabel Crabb makes a good point
“@annabelcrabb: That splatting sound you hear is Australian cartoonists’ heads exploding in unison, by the way. #especiallymarkknight”
No wonder people like to think the liberals are back in time….
Wild West, Gold Mines, Nobles that sort of thing.
[Abbott is reintroducing Sirs and Dames into Australian honours.
FFS!]
W H A T!!!!! Crikey. How much will Murdoch be paying for his? Lindsay Fox?
I really am feeling sick about this Govt.
Moats, Drawbridges and Crenelated walls will become the new ‘in’ housing style.
guytaur
She we play Ten Guesses about what the toonist’s them of the day will be in the next 24 hours ? 🙂 As I said after the election. The Abbott government will be a golden age for cartoonists.
@KnottMatthew: Labor to introduce motion into lower House to force Speaker Bronwyn Bishop out of the Liberal Party room http://t.co/vyUSKqrhfG
“@BernardKeane: BREAKING: Attorney-General George Brandis circulates exposure draft of a bill for trial by ordeal and new offence “most satanic witchcraft””
Sir John and Lady Jeanette Howard of Wollstonecraft.
Dame Bronwyn Bishop.
Dame Gina of the Pilbara
His Grace Sir George Pell
If Tony ha a Liberal successor then in due course Sir Anthony Abbott of Warringah
LU –
Well, yes. It’s clearly yet another area that is basically intractable in modern Australian politics because the obvious answer to housing affordability is to implement policies that reduce the price of housing, but since housing is a major part of many Australian’s individual wealth (not to mention the proportion of the Australian financial system that relies on current housing valuations) it does not seem that any politicians will take effective action on this.
There are some options, though. A somewhat old-fashioned idea that might come back is just putting more effort into attracting people away from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Our big cities don’t need to get bigger, and where house prices are being driven by peoples’ desire to work and live in these cities it seems perfectly reasonable to try to make alternative cities more feasible destinations rather than just trying to facilitate cramming more people into our existing big cities.
If we do want to facilitate more people living and working in our big cities then this really has to be by increasing inner city density, not endlessly releasing and developing more suburban fringe locations. But this is, of course, difficult, and (being an inner-city dweller myself) I am fully aware of the issues with disrupting the things that make inner city living workable just to tear stuff down and build high rise apartments … and while I see that as the only sensible way to facilitate greater populations in Sydney, Melbourne etc, I think it should be at a measured pace that is about the willingness of residents to go along with these changes, not about the drive to cram more people in.
If more people want to live in urban centres at affordable prices, then push (and keep pushing) to make Bunbury, Adelaide, Bendigo, Orange, Newcastle, etc, feasible alternatives to the big 4.
Ultimately I’m also a ZPGer so I’m always looking at things in terms of stabilization of our population, and that would have a major impact on the issues associated with house prices (with the subsequent majorly positive and majorly negative effects). I realize this is wishful thinking given that neither of the major parties considers ZPG as anything other than fringe thinking from xenophobes.
“@senatormilne: Australia has gone backwards under Abbott. Hate speech allowed, knights and dames to form “bunyip aristocracy”. Bring on Republic. #auspol”
The simplest sane explanation is that it is the only way the Libs are going to get Bronnie out of her chair.
Anthony Green take:
Retweeted by Stephen Koukoulas
Jonathan Green @GreenJ 7m
I’m just guessing, given the quality of this distraction, that they’ve found the Sinodinos negatives.
How long until it really is the Earl of Wentworth for Sir Malcolm
Sir Joe. Sir Christopher. Dame Julie. Dame Bronwyn. Sir Tony. Sir Malcolm?
Sir Canardly Wait.
Abbott’s announcement deserves this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OzIMHowtL8
It would be nice if Dame Alan Jones and Dame David Flint could be invested together.
It looks limited to start with according to this report: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-25/pre-eminent-australians-could-be-made-knight-or-dame/5344646
Basically a revival of the old Fraser-era ‘Knighthood if the Order of Australia”. But the pressure to expand it from our local would-be ‘Sirs’ and ‘Dames’ would be immense.
LOL my post at 492 is not correct (RE: Anything Green).
Too much annoyed with this Goverment.
Any chance that Quentin Bryce, an avowed Republican, will refuse a Dameship?
Listening to Question Time over the last few days, I’ve often thought that the Liberal’s internal polling for Western Australia must be worse than anyone thinks….and the knights/dames announcement confirms it.
Either that, or there’s a whole load of smelly stuff heading Sinodinos’ way…