Despite the polls not having failed as such, in that they uniformly picked the right winner, it seems we’re having another post-election voting intention polling drought just like we did in 2019. This is unfortunate from my perspective, as it would be interesting to compare Labor’s strength during its honeymoon period with that of newly elected governments past. It also means I have to work harder on material for regular open thread posts. Here’s what I’ve got this time:
• The Reuters Institute last week published its international Digital News Report 2022, the Australian segment of which was conducted by the University of Canberra, which asked questions on media consumption and trust. Respondents were asked to rank their trust in various media brands on a scale of one to ten. Typically for such surveys, this found the highest level of trust in public broadcasters, with ABC News ranking first and SBS News ranking second; television networks and broadsheet newspapers in the middle; and tabloid newspapers, specifically the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph, ranking last. The survey was conducted online in January and February from a sample of 2038.
• In an address to the National Press Club last week, Labor national secretary Paul Erickson dated a shift in voter sentiment in Labor’s favour from the announcement of the Solomon Islands’ pact with China on April 1. Erickson said voters were struck by the contrast between the Coalition’s “immature” warmongering rhetoric and attempts to associate Labor with the Chinese Communist Party and Labor’s promise to “restore Australia’s place as the partner of choice” for Pacific Islands countries. He further noted that the rot set in for Scott Morrison amid COVID outbreaks in mid-2021, when Labor internal polling showed his net competence score fall by 14 points in two weeks over late June and early July. The Coalition was also damaged by cabinet ministers’ partisan attacks on state governments in Western Australia and Victoria, and it was rated lower by voters on housing and wages.
• Saturday’s Financial Review reported on the Australian Electoral Commission’s efforts to confront online disinformation about the election process head on, through the work of its election integrity assurance taskforce and a media unit that abandoned bureaucratic formality in engaging with social media on social media’s terms. Electoral commissioner Tom Rogers claimed they had a “70 to 80 per cent success rate in changing minds”, and that Twitter had been “a bit self-correcting as a result”: “Someone would say something and you’d see people say, ‘hang on, that doesn’t sound right, I heard the AEC say this or that’”.
• Tom Rogers also foreshadows possible changes to electoral laws to allow for faster counting of postal votes after election day by streamlining the existing process whereby ballots are sorted at a central location and then sent to the voter’s electorate before they are counted.
• Nominations for the South Australian state by-election for Bragg on July 2 closed on Thursday, drawing a field of six candidates who are listed on my by-election guide.
Other recent posts on the site:
• A post on the Queensland Senate result, which was confirmed on Thursday. The buttons will be pressed today on the results for New South Wales at 9:30am and, most interestingly, Victoria at 10am. That will just leave Western Australia – the post just linked to considers at length the remote possibility that Labor might not win a third seat, as is being generally assumed.
• Courtesy of Adrian Beaumont, a preview and live commentary of France’s legislative elections, plus news on British by-elections and American opinion polling.
• A post on Saturday’s Callide state by-election in Queensland, a safe conservative seat which the Liberal National Party has retained with a swing in its favour of 6.5% against Labor.
@Snappy Tom:
A Solomon Islander, not a Kiwi, I believe. An Australian popularised it overseas, hence the name. Although there are apparently ancient Egyptian artworks depicting similar strokes, the basic idea shows up pretty much anywhere people swim a lot.
“Yeah. I don’t think the US is up for a female POTUS yet still and that includes Kamala Harris. So it has to be a guy. Maybe a gay guy is who the Dems need to unify all the disparate wings of the party. Plus Amy could be the VP running mate who appeals to educated Women and the Mid West? The Democrats could do worse.”
Is the general belief that Biden won’t run for his second term?
SirHP
As the RGR burned into our collective memories, the Greens gave a master class in making mischief. After all, they have had 32 years of making mischief, which is what you do when you are too weak to do stuff yourself and you can only block stuff.
William Bowe @ #344 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 4:28 pm
Hmmm. Should we be pleased that another Mirabella got the boot, or sad that UAP got a guernsey?
Life can be so difficult sometimes! 🙁
The defenders of the establishment would love to do away with the ‘mischief making’ senate.
Less oversight is good, apparently.
@Ven
I suspect if the policy is decent but the target “bad” the Greens will still vote for it.
If we get a repeat of the CPRS they’ll vote against it 100%.
Bandt gives off the impression he cares more about closing coal/gas power plants than the target.
I’m more curious what Pocock will want.
Why do the Greens make national policy in the strictest secrecy?
The elitist defenders of the establishment have no time for democratic processes.
Outside voices are just noise, apparently.
Given a binary vote in the matter I would vote for Mirabella.
The UA chappie’s views are at the same general rationally grounded policy level as Bandt’s.
The US is up for a women president but progressives are not good at picking a board based women candidate.
I’d be happy to buy Bandt a glass of top shelf blood and congratulate him on boosting his HoR representation by 300%
The Dems are screwed for 2024. Biden is less popular than even Trump was, Harris is less popular even than that. They better hope Matthew McConnaughey is up for it.
Snappy Tom @ #342 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 4:26 pm
I am a former swimming referee
freestyle literally means free style. Does not matter how you get to the other end. The other 3 strokes have rules around them.
I think Andew ‘Boy’ Charlton had some influence but relying on memory atm
Ven @ #350 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 4:31 pm
It is actually very telling that Labor has so little ambition on climate that they don’t actually need to legislate anything. They will be relying on the States to do the heavy lifting. Except WA, of course.
Barney in Tanjung Bunga @ #323 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 4:06 pm
That’s rather short-sighted. It’s not just about where you’re going; how you get there also matters. As a feedback and quality-control mechanism. And from an ethical standpoint, and a strategic one, too.
Labor could benefit much by collaborating with the more progressive indies and minors and passing policies that only the Lib/Nats (PHON/UAP optional) oppose. Broadens their base and turns their main rival (and only credible threat) into an outright pariah.
‘BiltongCinematicU says:
Monday, June 20, 2022 at 4:36 pm
@Ven
I suspect if the policy is decent but the target “bad” the Greens will still vote for it.
If we get a repeat of the CPRS they’ll vote against it 100%.
Bandt gives off the impression he cares more about closing coal/gas power plants than the target.
I’m more curious what Pocock will want.’
——————————
The Greens will not get a CPRS to block again. Those glory days are long gone.
Bandt gives lots of impressions. Did you know that he will save the planet and stop extinctions by 2030? Well, that was the impression he was trying to impress naive and impressionable Greens with during the campaign.
Pocock was remarkably restrained during the ACT election. He promised vague generalities. He has in the past been willing to behave at the edge: chaining himself to some machinery, for example. Refusing to get married (hetero) when same sex marriage was not an option is an another example. I get the sense that he may be interested in the art of the possible informed by an ambitious vision and a considerable grounding in ethics. How that picture transmutes in practice when Labor is setting out to do exactly what it promised during the campaign is a matter of considerable interest.
Adam Bandt needs to get over himself because not standing in front of the Australian flag is everybit as childish as Abbott standing in front of a dozen Australian flags.
This ABC story is on the Secretary of DFAT losing their job, having previously overseen the robodebt debacle. No arguments there.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-20/foreign-affairs-public-service-shake-up-jan-adams/101167022
But why not also point out the problems we have had in DFAT with relations with both France and Pacific Islands under strain. Putting a coalition bureaucrat with no diplomatic experience in charge of DFAT at a time of heightened regional tensions was a bad idea, quite apart from robodebt.
The Liberals seem to have treated Secretary appointments like cricket fielding positions, with the question being where to hide the poor fielder, not when to replace the player.
C@tmomma @ #334 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 3:46 pm
Both he and Pete are certainly ticking some boxes on their potential POTUS resumes. Pete doubly so with kids and $210billion to manage.
Soc
On the results, a poor performer. The tricky bit here is to sort out whether the poor performance actually reflected incompetent, negligent or corrupt bosses.
Flood plains flood. Who knew?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-20/nsw-northern-rivers-csiro-flood-study-to-have-wider-focus/101167042
C@t, I reckon the states could elect a female POTUS in 2024. That is not to say it is a level playing field. It would have to be a very careful choice for the DNC and a less careful choice for the GOP.
Snappy Tom:
Occasionally there are swimmers who are faster with Butterfly than with the crawl – when I was swimming I think I might have seen it happen twice that someone swam Butterfly in a freestyle competition race. Doubt it’s happened in a very long time at the Olympic level though – if ever!
Arent there duration underwater rules tho?
Bandt on RN this morning said 1. Labor should be negotiating legislation with him; 2. He couldn’t take a set position on anything yet because not all the Greens elected had been sworn in.
Which makes 1. pretty pointless.
Nice work if you can get it.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/20/inquiry-to-probe-john-barilaros-appointment-to-500000-a-year-trade-role-he-created-while-in-government
The important thing with freestyle is to touch the wall with some part of the body.
True about having some part of the body above the water except for the first 15m thingie. The fish are right: underwater swimming is faster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freestyle_swimming#Rules_and_regulation
Lars Von Trier says:
Monday, June 20, 2022 at 3:55 pm
Cronus read it for yourself about the “whiteness” of parliament:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-61432762
But nonetheless, the federal ALP is more diverse than the federal Coalition is it not? One can always say that both parties can do better and they should but at the moment, as it stands, the ALP are overall doing a better job than the Coalition in terms of diversity. If I’m factually incorrect then let me know.
Of course skin colour too can be deceiving as it can hide both ethnicity and religion can it not?
Rex Douglas says:
Monday, June 20, 2022 at 4:45 pm
I’d be happy to buy Bandt a glass of top shelf blood and congratulate him on boosting his HoR representation by 300%
—————————–
Lol Rex
any idea on who will get foreign affairs aparently gregg moriarti a former diplomat however the defence department secretary who was responsible foor aukus and wanted with dutton and pezzulo to be able to sby on evry daypeople until smethursts story stoped it campbell had nowforeign policy expirence was the secretary of human survices in chare of robodebt and in finance
Boerwar @ #377 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 4:52 pm
Even fish like some air time – not for speed tho. The first time I saw a flying fish is something I wont forget.
Then there are these….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqNxco4xcpI
Now they should get rid of justin Bassi as director of aspi strategick policy instatute marise paynes former chief of staff and siman atkinson former cos to Mathias cormann from imfustuucture but good start stone and mirabeler should go as disaster head and fwc
Goodbye Giulia and hello Ed.
https://citynews.com.au/2022/ed-cocks-elected-to-replace-giulia-jones-in-legislative-assembly/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=canberra-daily-today-s-news-today_7801
turns out the ambasada to japan jan adams got the job
Jan6
Wow.
I don’t understand this.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/20/government-trying-to-cast-unusual-secrecy-over-foi-relating-to-company-part-owned-by-angus-taylor
Boerwar says:
Monday, June 20, 2022 at 4:29 pm
LVT is quite right.
“While doing far better than the Coalition, there are significant gaps in diversity in the Federal Labor ministry.
Non-anglophones are significantly under-represented.
Some occupation groups are significantly under-represented.
Some regions are significantly under-represented.
Some genders may be significantly under-represented.”
Lars is merely trying to undermine the fact that the ALP has a better record on diversity than the Coalition. The facts are that despite the fact both major parties can do better, the ALP simply is more diverse on a number of characteristics than the Coalition, that is a fact.
Boerwar @ #386 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 5:10 pm
Yeah, that would be something to see – long way to go to do so tho. Mind you, a huge flock of flying fairy terns is even more speccy and you can (at least you could) see those off WA. Not to mention the joys of wild budgies in flight.
David Rowe
Jan 6 at 5:46 pm
Having only ever seen Budgies in cages seeing a flock of them in flight was a real ‘amazeballs’ moment .
Boerwar @ #387 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 5:14 pm
When there is something dodgy happening in government, there are usually a lot of people who either knew or should have known and whole departments can freeze in fear. I would suggest Ms Cox and her barrister are onto something and everyone knows it and even a FOI appeal has peeps unable to sleep.
FICAC cant come soon enough.
Non-anglophones are significantly under-represented.
Some occupation groups are significantly under-represented.
Some regions are significantly under-represented.
Some genders may be significantly under-represented.”
—————————————
The largest minority group is ignored by this list.
Can anyone help decipher the patterns on Bowen’s dressing gown? Wind turbines? Barbed wire barbs?
zoomster @ #374 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 5:18 pm
Except as a tool for a grandstanding pipsqueak.
Late Riser @ #395 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 6:08 pm
Wind Turbines.
Player One @ #365 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 2:49 pm
It’s a shame you have no idea how implement change.
Late Riser at 6:08 pm
My guess is wind turbines.
Mexicanbeemer @ #394 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 6:02 pm
Aren’t Women greater in number than Men in the population? So, not exactly a minority group?
a r @ #366 Monday, June 20th, 2022 – 2:51 pm
Why does it have to be one or the other?
You need to be able to adapt to the situation presented.