The Easter weekend has meant the only poll this week has been the usual weekly reading from Essential Research, which records a tie on two-party preferred for the fourth week in a row. Both major parties are steady on the primary vote – the Coalition on 43%, Labor on 38% – while the Greens are down a point to 9%. There is accordingly not much change on the surface of the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, which records a gentle move to the Coalition that yields nothing on the seat projection. However, there’s a lot going on under the BludgerTrack bonnet, as I’m now doing it in R rather than SAS/STAT, and relying a lot less on Excel to plug the gaps. Now that I’ve wrapped my head around R, I can probe a lot more deeply into the data with a lot less effort – commencing with the observation that the Coalition’s two-party vote would be around 0.5% higher if I was using a trend of respondent-allocated preference to determine the result, rather than 2013 election preferences. I’ve also done my regular quarterly BludgerTrack breakdowns, featuring state-level primary votes based on results from Morgan, Ipsos, Essential and ReachTEL, together with the breakdowns published this week by Newspoll.
Further polling:
• The Essential poll found 44% would approve of a double dissolution election if the Senate blocked the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill, with disapproval at only 23%. Respondents also showed good sense when asked the main reason why Prime Minister might wish to do such a thing: 25% opted for clearing independents from the Senate, 30% for getting an election in before he loses further support, and only 14% for actually getting the ABCC restored. Other questions recorded an unsurprising weight of support for income tax cuts (62% more important, 61% better for the economy) over company tax cuts (16% and 19% respectively). Results for a series of questions on which party was best to manage various aspects of economic policy were also much as expected, though slightly more favourable to the Coalition than when the questions were last posed a few weeks before the 2014 budget. A semi-regular inquiry into the attributes of the Labor and Liberal parties allows an opportunity for comparison with a poll conducted in November, shortly before the recent improvement in Labor’s fortunes. Labor’s movements are perhaps a little surprising, with extreme up and moderate down, and “looks after the interests of working people” down as well. The Liberals are down vision, leadership and clarity, and up on division.
• The Herald-Sun has a report on ReachTEL poll commissioned by the progressive Australia Institute think tank in the regional Victorian seat of Indi, which Sophie Mirabella hopes to recover for the Liberals after her defeat by independent Cathy McGowan in 2013. The news is not good for Mirabella, with McGowan recording a lead on the primary vote of 37.3% to 26.9%, while the Nationals are a distant third on 10.6%. The report says a 56-44 two-candidate preferred result from the poll allocated all Nationals preferences to Mirabella, a decision that was perhaps made in ignorance of the level of support McGowan received from Nationals voters in 2013. The primary votes as reported would more likely pan out to around 60-40.
Preselection latest:
• Andrew Burrell of The Australian reports the Liberal preselection for the new Western Australian seat of Burt is a tight tussle between Matt O’Sullivan, who runs mining magnate Andrew Forrest’s GenerationOne indigenous employment scheme, and Liz Storer, a Gosnells councillor. Storer is supported by the state branch’s increasingly assertive Christian Right, and in particular by its leading powerbroker in Perth’s southern suburbs, state upper house MP Nick Goiran.
• The Weekly Times reports that Damian Drum, state upper house member for Northern Victoria region and one-time coach of the Fremantle Dockers AFL club, will nominate for Nationals preselection in the seat of Murray, following the weekend’s retirement announcement from Liberal incumbent Sharman Stone. The front-runner for Liberal preselection looks to be Donald McGauchie, former policy adviser to the then Victorian premier, Ted Baillieu.
ITEP – You’d have to show me that reponsibility for health and education in canada has devolved to the states. I doubt it.
ABCNews24: .@BrianOwler “As Australians we should expect a level of healthcare service that is the same no matter what State or Territory you live in”
If the Mining Boom takes off again Maybe Western Australia will have to start having state based defense force to watch out for the poorer states wanting more of the pie?
CITIZEN – Yup, it’s all about the refusal of these clowns to gather more tax revenue. That’s why they won’t easily let go of this brainfart (no matter how stupid) because divesting themselves of cth services is the only way they can square the circle.
AMA not happy with Malfunction’s brainfart.
ABCNews24: .@BrianOwler “I am AMA President and I’m a brain surgeon with a PhD and I’m struggling to keep up with the policy process” #Medicare
sarahinthesen8: Turnbull wants to recall Senate to debate corruption. Ok, lets start with bribery & money laundering in oil industry https://t.co/RGYDMG3OCu
1tep
Every nation that is a federation has different history, social dynamics and constitutional systems driving the Federations. There is no point in simply comparing what works and what doesn’t. That said, I don’t see how creating a devolved taxation system is in any way efficient.
One of the reasons why Howard’s original GST proposal got traction was the promise of doing away with a whole slew of irritating taxes and charges that made it hard to do personal or company business even within a State because of the plethora of hidden taxes. And while many charges remain, things are certainly better than they were.
For good or bad we remain a federation, but in any increasingly globalised world the idea of pushing the constituent parts of Australia further apart is absurd.
GUYTAUR – Hysterical
Sounds like there must be a ‘Grover Norquist fanboi” faction in the Liberals .
[Nearly all the GOP candidates bow down to Grover Norquist
In 2012, all candidates for the Republican nomination for president signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge………the Pledge is in some ways the perfect embodiment of the current era in Republican politics. It takes a conservative principle — raising taxes is bad — and elevates it to the status of a holy commandment, one that can never be violated. It insists that context never matters, compromise is abhorrent by definition and the slightest deviation from orthodoxy should be punished without mercy. Deficits, wars, supervolcanoes, alien invasion — no matter what a future president might face, he cannot ever raise taxes for any reason. You have to hand it to Norquist: almost every Republican in Congress has taken the Pledge, and he’s gotten 14 out of the 17 presidential candidates to genuflect before him, which isn’t too shabby.]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/08/13/nearly-all-the-gop-candidates-bow-down-to-grover-norquist/
guytaur @ 55
[ABCNews24: .@BrianOwler “I am AMA President and I’m a brain surgeon with a PhD and I’m struggling to keep up with the policy process” #Medicare]
This is as good as it comes as a comment on this government.
TPOF
So does the David Pope cartoon. Here is link again so you don’t have to go back to BK’s Dawn Patrol to find it.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/david-pope-20120214-1t3j0.html
ltep
[ Another party has been registered that would neuter its MPs and make them meaningless pawns by way of web voting.
https://voteflux.org/
Such proposals are undesirable and unworkable. ]
Worse, they encourage you to trade or give a way your vote on issues you “don’t care about”. Soon, someone will realize this means they can acquire a monetary value, and set up an online marketplace to “harvest” votes.
It appears to be democracy as imagined by teenage video game designers. Still, it may be an improvement over democracy as imagined by spivs and shonks, which is what the LNP are proposing.
Kevin:
[Education is within provincial jurisdiction and the curriculum is overseen by the province]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Canada
I acknowledge the same link mentions it does receive funding from both provincial and federal governments. I’d have to look further into the extent of vertical fiscal imbalance in Canada, but I’d be surprised if it was to the same level as in Australia.
Which leads me to another annoyance. The national curriculum in Australia should be abolished and returned to state jurisdictions. Some of the stuff the Commonwealth is doing in this area clearly is in contradiction to the decision of the High Court in the Williams cases and should be struck down. In fact, in my view the entire new scheme of various payments should be struck down as an unacceptable delegation of parliamentary functions to the executive.
Turnbull’s savage attack on public schools:
[The federal government would stop funding public schools while continuing to support private schools under a dramatic change to the nation’s education system outlined by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Labor immediately accused Mr Turnbull of “walking away” from public school students and said the move would undo decades of work, including the Gonski school reforms, to lift standards in all the nation’s schools. The proposal was originally contained in a discussion paper leaked to Fairfax Media last year…
Labor school education spokeswoman Kate Ellis accused Mr Turnbull of advocating “an extraordinary abandonment of public education”.]
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/malcolm-turnbulls-education-revolution-end-federal-support-for-public-schools-20160330-gnuo4l.html#ixzz44QbaDt9X
[ABCNews24: .@BrianOwler “I am AMA President and I’m a brain surgeon with a PhD and I’m struggling to keep up with the policy process” #Medicare]
You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to understand the policy process.
Step 1: Being a brilliant individual, Malcolm goes to bed each night wrestling a seemingly insurmountable problem.
Step 2: Malcolm’s incandescent brain wakes him up the next morning with a brilliant solution to the insurmountable problem.
Step 3: Malcolm calls his press secretary to call a press conference.
Step 4: Malcolm waffles at some journalists for an hour or so. why use one word when twenty will do the job nearly as well?
Step 5: Malcolm’s aide de camp informs him that someone called Scott is on the phone asking about the new policy. Malcolm promises to call him back later.
Step 6: After luncheon, Malcolm views the post-conference commentary with growing alarm.
Step 7: Bill Shorten and three quarters of the country argue that Malcolm’s solution is unworkable. The IPA issues a press release saying how great the idea is, and if only they had thought of it first.
Step 8: Malcolm realises he has a problem. He is also very tired from all the waffling, and so Malcolm goes to bed, wrestling a seemingly insurmountable problem.
Morning all.
[Turnbull’s double tax proposal has nothing to do with redefining the the nature of Australia as a federation.
It is solely because these clowns stubbornly refuse to address massive tax avoidance by those at the big end of town and the super rich.]
Citizen is correct! State (personal) income taxes will do nothing to stop the real problem, which is that most of our largest companies pay little or no company income tax. More than a third already pay none.
Yet the Liberals are proposing to reduce company tax rates even further! Why? Because they are big business champions, who understand how the real world works in boardrooms. Hah!
The Liberal position on reducing tax is absurd, but it is hubris, not stupidity. They cannot admit they were wrong to promise tax cuts. So because they do not have the humility to admit it was a mistake, or the courage for a serious tax debate about increasing commonwealth tax revenue (by closing loopholes or introducing more efficient taxes), they want to dump the problem on the states. Then they will pretend to be a low taxing government for reelection. It is an extension of Abbott’s “no new taxes” promise, already badly broken.
They are more egotistical cowards than clowns.
Thanks Player 1. I’d missed that, and indeed that is worrying! I almost wish we’d had a “Senator Online” style senator elected under our old “random senator” electoral system so we could have all of its many flaws highlighted in actual real life practice.
And TPOF we will agree to disagree. We may live in an increasingly globalised world, but we are seeing moves to devolution in larger countries and a rejection of large groupings elsewhere as evidence that citizens wish to maintain increasing control over how they’re governed. If the Commonwealth wants to take over more stuff, let them take it to the people by way of referenda, rather than take them over by stealth by squeezing the states for money.
I think there has never been a more exciting time to be a Labor Opposition. They are just trying very hard not to show it.
Cruising around the papers websites as I do. One thing very noticeable when I cruise through the DT and HS…the righties are making more comment on the hate filled anti-ABC article than they are on the articles about Turnbull and his tax “reform” bubble of having the states income tax powers.
More interested in hate of the ABC than the state of the nation. That says it all about the Liberals and their followers
beautiful summation of the process autocrat
And with that, I end my rants about the state of the federation. Sorry all.
SOCRATES – That raises another huge issue with this brain-fart, doesn’t it: how will corporate taxes be divided among the states: according to their place of business? pro-rata? Will they be asked to contribute at all. The mind boggles.
guytaur
“Ok, lets start with bribery & money laundering in oil industry”
Could start much closer to home, with Packer / Lend Lease / NSW Liberal Party & the Barangaroo Casino
The LNP could return Ros Packer $200k “donation”
The truth is Turnbull is doing nothing to fix Howard’s structural deficit. Instead cutting Fed areas of health & education to pay for that deficit.
Thats the problem. Spending priorities.
A vital two words to put on the agenda as Labor is doing.
BrigadierSlog: Revealed: the angry donors in NSW Liberals scandal https://t.co/HdIwsVQkJv https://t.co/0E4MstwHL6
For all christians, and particularly No 1 Pell fan GG, Peter Fitzsimons delightful summary of
quote — the classic Christian belief “that a cosmic Jewish zombie who is his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood, while telepathically telling him that you can accept him as your master, so that he can remove an evil force from your ‘soul’ which is present in all humanity because a woman made out of one rib bone and a mound of dirt was tricked into eating fruit from a magical tree by a talking snake” — endquote
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/sport/the-fitz-files/join-me-on-a-walk-through-the-minefield-of-will-hopoates-decision-not-to-play-nrl-on-sundays-20160330-gnu6j8.html#ixzz44QWvNlOc
Such a sound basis for rational thought.
I wonder if anyone is thinking this about Malcolm or Tony?
http://www.smh.com.au/world/donald-trump-strategist-resigns-in-disgust-excoriates-him-in-open-letter-20160329-gntpel.html
I appreciate that ltep is correct that multi- level tax systems exist in other OECD countries and can work well. The problem is that there are other factors in those countries that allow that to happen. Either the revenue raising ability of their lower levels are greater, or their spending responsibilities are less.
Australia has a huge funding imbalance because the three largest streams of government income (income tax, company tax and sales taxes (GST)) are federal, while two thirds of the spending falls to states. You would have to change the constitution to fix it – various High Court decisions transferred most of the taxing powers to Canberra over time.
The real solution would be to do the opposite of Malcolm’s thought bubble – transfer total funding responsibility for health and education to the Commonwealth. That would solve many problems with inconsistent policy, standards and services too. It would scare a few state level bureaucrats, but the useful ones would end up with federal PS jobs. Patients and students would be far better off. No more stunts like Hockey cutting their funds and expecting states to find a solution.
In fact, transferring delivery of health and education to the Commonwealth is the logical outcome from all those High Court decisions transferring taxing powrs from states to the feds.
Have a good day all.
Sorry, one last comment. The Government, could, as a sign of good faith in recognition of their stated desire of increasing accountability of service provision, immediately cease placing conditions on state grants, making them all untied. Of course the fact that this won’t happen probably highlights that the Government are not genuine in their latest stunt.
Kevin 72
Yes exactly. Think of all the problems with multinational tax shifting now, only worse, because corporate money can be freely shifted across state borders, as guaranteed in our constitution! It will only accelerate the race to the bottom effect others have warned of. Malcolm’s thought bubble on state income tax has turned out to be a very small bubble indeed. It has really exposed his lack of policy depth.
K17
[ SOCRATES – That raises another huge issue with this brain-fart, doesn’t it: how will corporate taxes be divided among the states: according to their place of business? pro-rata? Will they be asked to contribute at all. The mind boggles. ]
Too easy! Clever corporates pay no tax at all. And by “clever” I obviously mean those run by the LNP, the IPA and their spiv mates. And the others? Why would they care?
[Peter Fitzsimons delightful summary]
Fitzsimons is an A-grade arseclown. He thinks he’s really clever but in reality is an ignorant pig. Worse in real life than on paper, even if you were thinking that wasn’t possible.
Ltep 78
Untied grants were used in the past and failed. States used them for all sorts of pet projects then blamed the commonwealth when the money ran out. Tied grants evolved over time out of need.
As I said, the real solution is to shift health and education delivery to the feds. Why have six different systems for each? Canberra would then have the power (taxing) and the responsibility (service delivery).
Shorten presser now.
Autocrat is an A-grade arseclown. He thinks he’s really clever but in reality is an ignorant pig. Worse in real life than on paper, even if you were thinking that wasn’t possible.
Too easy.
What possible reason, other than spite, is behind this?
[The Federal Opposition deputy leader says she has been refused entry to the North-West Regional Hospital to view upgrades Labor funded when she was health minister.]
http://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/deputy-opposition-leader-tanya-plibersek-stopped-from-entering-northwest-regional-hospital/news-story/182dd4d5d8484c0b8b662cf59c27f347
Given our Prime Minister’s latest well thought out proposal I think it’s worth revisiting Matt Cowgill’s blog post where he uses the Wire to explain horizontal fiscal equalisation https://mattcowgill.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/the-wire-and-horizontal-fiscal-equalisation/
stephanieando: Bowen now pointing out that #COAG will be held on April Fools Day: That’s the credibility that Malcolm Turnbull brings to the table tomorrow
Yabba 88.
Absolutely!
TheKouk: Rather than devolving policies to States, Australia should have a centralised approach to health & education policy. Efficiency gains huge
stephanieando: Bowen: Mr Turnbull’s thought bubble, if it was ever implemented, would be a disaster for Tasmania, for the Northern Territory, for SA.
Yeah, must be really easy to cut and paste, Yabba88. Don’t know why you bother putting your IQ in your handle though, I would have thought anyone who cared about that would be able to work it out.
Now go away.
774melbourne: DEAD ON ARRIVAL: State-based income tax “if’ it’s not D.O.A. it’ll be dead by 5PM tomorrow” @barriecassidy #Faine https://t.co/Ky1mPag9H8
[Why have six different systems for each]
Why not? It allows for differences of approach, legitimately upheld by governments more controlled by voters of the particular states. We have seen different policy approaches tried in hospitals in NSW and Victoria for instance to differing degrees of success. But I accept I am in a minority amongst posters here on the positives of competitive federalism so don’t propose to continue to go over well trodden ground.
MrDenmore: Public choice theorists argue we vote according to self-interest. So why do we so often do the opposite? Because of the power of lobbies.
K17@29: “When you think about it, Malcolm doesn’t have much choice, really. There is method to his madness – though it is certainly madness. The Liberal Party has morphed into the No New Taxes Party. That’s its only core ideology (apart from doing whatever donors want). So his only option is to force the States to take responsibility for more and more services. I think this “thought bubble” is going to run a lot longer than people expect. For the Liberal Party it is the only way to square the circle.
So, basically, this is all about preserving internal party unity and has zero to do with accountability or anything else.”
I think you’re onto something here. It is possible that Turnbull is playing a high stakes game with his own side of politics: gradually floating, and allowing to sink, all the ideas for balancing the Federal Budget/delivering tax cuts that the Right of his party would support in order to land eventually on the policy position that he actually favours, but which the Right have already shot down (or would try to shoot down).
And I suspect that this is the position that he and Morrison were running with before Abbott and the Right shot it down internally: that is, a GST increase to 15% plus an overall cap on individual deductions – be they from neg gearing, superannuation concessions, workplace deductions or putting the money into a trust – as a proportion of gross income.
I’d be very surprised if that wasn’t the policy position that Martin Parkinson, David Gruen et al are telling him and Morrison to go with. So perhaps his plan is to get back there eventually.
The only other possible interpretation is that Turnbull doesn’t know what he is doing and is all over the place. It seemed that way to me yesterday, but observing his demeanour in the media overnight, he isn’t displaying the slightest signs of panic.
So perhaps he is actually trying to wedge Abbott and the Right. After all, it’s they – rather than Shorten and Labor – who are the main obstacle between him and a second term.
stephanieando: Turnbull: This is a reform which could only be effected with the support of the States #auspol #coag
So its DOA back to the Drawing board Monday for Turnbull. Wow the budget must be a mess.
Meanwhile, in the real world…
[For half a century, climate scientists have seen the West Antarctic ice sheet, a remnant of the last ice age, as a sword of Damocles hanging over human civilization.
The great ice sheet, larger than Mexico, is thought to be potentially vulnerable to disintegration from a relatively small amount of global warming, and capable of raising the sea level by 12 feet or more should it break up. But researchers long assumed the worst effects would take hundreds — if not thousands — of years to occur.
Now, new research suggests the disaster scenario could play out much sooner.
Continued high emissions of heat-trapping gases could launch a disintegration of the ice sheet within decades, according to a study published Wednesday, heaving enough water into the ocean to raise the sea level as much as three feet by the end of this century.
With ice melting in other regions, too, the total rise of the sea could reach five or six feet by 2100, the researchers found. That is roughly twice the increase reported as a plausible worst-case scenario by a United Nations panel just three years ago, and so high it would likely provoke a profound crisis within the lifetimes of children being born today.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/science/global-warming-antarctica-ice-sheet-sea-level-rise.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Autocrat. No argument, therefore personal abuse; typical of your type. I am a member of Mensa.
You have to give it to the brilliance of the Labor mole who all those years ago inserted not one but two moles into the Liberal party: Abbott AND Turnbull.