The Australian reports the latest Newspoll has Labor maintaining its 55-45 two-party lead from the post-budget poll three weeks ago, from primary votes of Labor 38% (steady), Coalition 34% (steady), Greens 12% (up one), One Nation 6% (down one). The reports says Anthony Albanese is down two on approval to 55% while Peter Dutton is steady on 36%, with disapproval ratings not yet provided (UPDATE: down one to 37% for Albanese, down one to 50% for Dutton). Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister shifts from 56-29 to 55-28.
The poll provides further evidence for a deterioration in support for the Indigenous voice, with 46% in favour and 43% opposed, in response to a question based on that to be put at the referendum. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1549.
goll: You seem to think that anyone expressing any view in the comments of a blog that differs in any way from your own is expressing some outrageous degree of confidence in their own importance whereas you, on the other hand, are just some paragon of humble reason for reasons anyone else could only hope to ascertain.
My dude, I think you are projecting on a level far worse than most people on this site.
Why, it seems, is he one of the few people in Australia right now who seems to love Phillip Lowe? Why, exactly, does he think that it would be in anyone’s political interest (much less Labor’s) to take that approach? Who knows. Apparently we’re just supposed to bow to his great and almighty wisdom that isn’t at all occupied with pronouncing its own importance.
Or perhaps he doesn’t even know and just likes randomly lashing out at people on the internet.
maybi thepeople wanting albanese to get rid of stage three tax cuts wants the liberal party back in power because there pole ratings are in the low 20s
Enough Already: You raise some good points.
1) I think that’d be a much more interesting discussion for an Australian blog rather than the day-to-day goings on of the war better covered elsewhere. It is certainly a valid discussion that needs to be had more.
2) I’ve never been a huge believer in Trump being primarily a result of Russian disinformation. I don’t doubt that Russia saw him as a convenient chaos agent, but I don’t think Trump needed any help from them to rise to power.
Aaron Newton: Support for the stage three tax cuts had plummeted to 22% seven months ago, probably being even lower today. It’s funny that you think tossing them would be a way back to power for Liberals polling that you claim is in the low 20s.
‘A FABULOUS DINNER’: RBA’s wild $25K act after jacking up interest rates
The RBA spent nearly $25,000 of taxpayers’ money on an exclusive dinner for Perth’s business elite hours after raising the cash rate.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/interest-rates/fabulous-dinner-reserve-bank-spent-25000-on-exclusive-perth-function-after-raising-rates-in-may/news-story/d485c4c9a80b3ed47f805dbdbe58a757
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That comes in at just over 1 on the Cartier Watch Scale…
Andrew_Earlwood,
The premise of your rebuttal is farcical. There is no way that China wants the war against Ukraine to last forever. There’s no way it could last forever. Ukraine would be overwhelmed or Russia defeated before ‘forever’.
Also this constant assertion of a ‘chicomm paranoia’ is risible and ignores mountains of evidence, from impartial experts, of the global designs of China, not to mention the evidence that stares us all in the face of the No Limits partnership. So to make an observation that China is funding the war in Ukraine via proxy is unremarkable to me. Not a result of any silly label you might want to stick on me.
And that’s where I’d like to leave it, thanks. I’ve suffered enough from your obsessive attacks over any opinion I may have that disagrees with your own firmly held opinions. I just don’t have the stomach for another series of extended deeply personal tirades from you.
@Ven:
“ Couple of days ago Peter Hartcher wrote an article in SMH (which BK linked in Dawn patrol), according to which Democracies main objective is to defeat Putin and restrain Xi.”
____
Hartcher is a fuckwit. He exemplifies the American Jingo school of non thinking shitfuckery.
He should take his fair share of the blame for the current Canberra Establishment Sinophobia and Sabre-rattling.
He is also a relic. It is against the odds that the next generation of Democrats and Republicans will sign up to Biden’s set of delusions.
And then she said “ impartial experts” … and we all rolled around the floor laughing our heads off.
But seriously, even if ‘forever’ is an impossible outcome, but if the Ukrainian war lasts for another 5 years (which is plausible I think), then by 2028, when a future American President sits in the situation room and receives a briefing that is is NOW safe to pivot further resources into the Asia pacific, such a president will be faced with a PLA that would be probably twice as powerful as it was in 2019 before Covid. I think the ChiComms would also take THAT as a win as well.
“From 1971, there are red flags everywhere about this person” …
The High Court holds the Catholic Church’s feet to the fire … finally …
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/08/red-flags-everywhere-high-court-asks-catholic-church-why-it-didnt-investigate-priests-abuse-50-years-ago
Cameron Murray the economist had a really good article on his Substack recently – it was about the confusion that media pundits have about what causes policies to become popular. It’s common for pundits to assume that if a policy is popular now it must have been popular all along, and that’s what prompted a government to introduce it, but that often isn’t true. A lot of the time a government has to enact the policy first for people to see its value. Obvious examples of that are mandatory helmet laws for cyclists and mandatory seatbelt laws for cars. If you polled those ideas before they were introduced they would probably poll poorly. But after they became reality people got used to them and they were convinced of their benefits.
There are lots of left-wing economic policies – free health care, free education, a Job Guarantee, etc – that are worth doing on the merits, and that would become immensely popular after being implemented. So how well they poll right now, when those ideas are constantly framed by the media and politicians as impossible (which they aren’t), doesn’t tell you much about the electoral impact they would have.
Even now, with the ubiquitous negative framing of left-wing economic policies, a national rent freeze is supported by 60 percent of Australians. That’s with zero support from the mainstream media and zero support from the ALP and the LNP. The only political party that supports this policy is the Greens, and they generally get negative media coverage, yet the idea has 60 percent approval.
Public opinion is malleable. It is shaped by what governments do, by what politicians say, by how the media frames things, by historical events, and many other things. There is no such thing as a static “centrist” position. And what is considered “centrist” by the media and the ALP is often considerably to the right of public opinion.
When Canada decides to join a hostile military alliance and host missiles pointing at D.C., get back to me.
Nick,
Stop and think for 2 minutes about what would happen if a national rent freeze was implemented.
You are a smart guy, it should not take you longer than that.
Watermelon @ Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 4:36 pm:
================
Russia does not understand that ‘sovereign independent nation’ means ‘Moscow does not get a veto over its foreign policy’. Ukraine wants to join NATO. Boo sucks to Russia. Ukraine is a sovereign nation. It doesn’t need Moscow’s permission.
Holodomor, Stalinist purges, forced Russification, WW2 scorched earth, Chornobyl, Budapest Memorandum, Yanukovich’s Maidan massacre, Crimea, Donbas, Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, Feb 24, Bucha, Mariupol Theatre, now Kakhova Dam … How many reasons do Ukrainians need to be reasonable in their manifest desire to escape Moscow’s grip forever?
Dandy, a national rent freeze would provide much-needed cost-of-living relief to tenants, it would reduce inflation, it would prompt some landlords to sell their properties (which would add to the supply of homes available to first home buyers – which is a GOOD thing, contrary to the way this issue is framed by the media). And in the unlikely event that there wouldn’t be enough first home buyers to buy all of the investment properties that are put up for sale the federal government could always buy those properties and rent them out cheaply, or sell them cheaply in a public housing program similar to Singapore’s Housing and Development Board.
We don’t depend on private landlords for anything. They don’t add value. They extract rents and capital gains. They take, and they take, and they take some more. We can’t afford to keep letting them bleed our people dry.
Ten News running heavily with the Britney Higgins text message thing – so of course David Shiraz’s text messages got leaked to a Murdoch journalist! And reliable Liberal Party stooge Ben Fordham was all over it this morning on 2GB.
Enough Already
Prognosticating what the Poles will do in relation to attacks on smaller – democratic states – around the Polish border is interesting. What I can say there is no love in Poland for Russia – at all. The Poles have long suffered under the hands of the Russians – both in Tsarist times and during Soviet times.
The Pole have not, and will never forget the Katyn massacre of some 20,000 plus Polish intellectuals and Polish officers, personally signed off by Stalin, but a task happily carried out by so-called “peace loving” Russian citizens…Then Stalin tried to blame the Germans…..What has changed?
Tricot @ Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 5:13 pm:
“Enough Already
Prognosticating what the Poles will do in relation to attacks on smaller – democratic states – around the Polish border is interesting. What I can say there is no love in Poland for Russia – at all. The Poles have long suffered under the hands of the Russians – both in Tsarist times and during Soviet times.
The Pole have not, and will never forget the Katyn massacre of some 20,000 plus Polish intellectuals and Polish officers, personally signed off by Stalin, but a task happily carried out by so-called “peace loving” Russian citizens…Then Stalin tried to blame the Germans…..What has changed?”
===================
Tricot, of course, Poles know full well the answer to that last rhetorical question of yours. That is exactly why they are agitating for the US/UK/Germany/France to agree to get Ukraine saddled up good and proper against Moscow’s hostile invasion and occupation, much more than they have so far.
Credlin has a terrible problem with the rule of law and an intellectual inability to distinguish between murder and the laws of warfare and the rights of POWs and those rendered as non-combatants (ie: disarmed and in handcuffs or similar). This renders her a very dangerous mouthpiece.
She seems also to be comparing values and actions undertaken in WWII with the new age wherein the subsequent construction of the UN clearly laid out the ways future wars should be fought and the laws surrounding warfare.
Not to mention that a hero one day can be a murderer the next. Both actions are judged on their merit but one does not negate the other as if to balance the scales of justice.
Anyone who thinks Ukrainians have any desire at all to be subjected to the same (or more likely worse) treatment of political disagreement with the Kremlin that has befallen internal Russian critics – show trials, imprisonment, poisoning, defenestration – is … deluded.
I think that the view of Ms Credlin and like-minded Far Right media and political figures is that Ben Roberts-Smith is “one of us” and must be defended.
I’m not planning on reading squat in The Australian and I have been out of the loop today generally. How is the Australian meant to have got hold of David Sharaz’ text messages, up to the old Murdoch phone hacking again?
I’m pretty sure swearing about Scott Morrison isn’t a crime.
Dutton taking a leaf from the Greens book in waving the NACC around like a banner at the most inappropriate things, probably trying to distract from the NACC investigating actual obvious corruption in public office cases like, say, Stewie Robert, Well Done Angus and Barnaby Joyce.
Seriously, the Putinbot came around again today did he/she/they? I recommend ignoring it and waiting for William to ban its ass. I know it can be very provocative but the outraged reactions are how it gets its jollies.
Well Nick, you proved me wrong.
I reckon a rent freeze would see both a collapse in the housing market, destroying wealth, and reduced investment in new housing, exacerbating the aggregate shortage of housing.
And on this: “We don’t depend on private landlords for anything…” – they do share risk. Decentralising risk is a good thing.
Your desire to punish those you see as unworthy of the gains they have accrued (due to historical policy failures that we probably agree on) does your argument no good.
The GST the government is getting from the rent increases would be most welcome.
Enough Already
Putting German and other western boots on the ground – in Ukraine – to take on Russia is just a bridge too far for the West – as I see it now.
I think the West is willing to have a proxy war with Russia but not to the extent of blood of soldiers from the West flowing in the vast areas of Ukraine and Russia.
Of some value might be to hit at the “friends of Russia” – such as Iran – supplying arms to Russia and other states such as Brazil happy to make a quid – real – out of the war.
At the end of the day, it is not the Russian people who should cop yet another slaughter, but there would be no end of joy if the Russian leadership was kind of evaporated…..
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2023/06/voice-referendum-polling-yes-vote-keeps.html
Voice Referendum Polling: The Yes Vote Keeps On Falling
The texts were on Hunter Biden’s laptop…
@ Cronus:
“ Credlin has a terrible problem with the rule of law and an intellectual inability to distinguish between murder and the laws of warfare and the rights of POWs and those rendered as non-combatants (ie: disarmed and in handcuffs or similar). This renders her a very dangerous mouthpiece.
She seems also to be comparing values and actions undertaken in WWII with the new age wherein the subsequent construction of the UN clearly laid out the ways future wars should be fought and the laws surrounding warfare.
Not to mention that a hero one day can be a murderer the next. Both actions are judged on their merit but one does not negate the other as if to balance the scales of justice.”
_______
The irony for Credlin is – as I tried to point out earlier – even B R-S acknowledged the points you made when he was XXNed: he ran his defo case solely on the basis that all of the allegations were false.
Tricot @ Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 5:41 pm:
================
Agreed, no way Western or NATO-wide troops are going in for the foreseeable future. I also think if Poland and the Baltics get more muscular with their own contribution than the US/UK/Germany want, NATO will expect Article 5 protection as such to be waived for any attacks emanating from such a move.
Really, though, I see this more as a means Poland etc are employing to pressure NATO into: (a) taking some of the shackles off the conditions imposed on Ukraine for Western arms, and (b) to announce something concrete at/before Vilnius next month, regarding eventual Ukrainian accession to NATO after the war concludes. Of course, it should go without saying I fully endorse the Ukrainian position on those two matters in preference to the more dithering elements of the Western one.
Edit: Plus, Ukraine should get F-16’s and ATACMS in big numbers, yesterday.
Pretty obvious the Murdoch end of the media is out to destroy Britney Higgins and damage the government too if they can.
Speaking of Greens policies being popular, their leadership needs to put some effort into getting some coherence into the Blak Greens…..
Paul Sakkal
June 8, 2023 — 3.54pm
Greens senator Dorinda Cox is considering pressing charges against a former Greens Senate candidate after an airport incident that sparked duelling federal police complaints and underscored tensions over the party’s support for the Voice to parliament.
The flare-up between Cox and Tjanara Goreng Goreng last month came after former allies of ex-Greens senator Lidia Thorpe “expelled” Cox from the party’s influential First Nations group known as the Blak Greens.
An official police complaint obtained by this masthead shows Goreng Goreng, the party’s ACT Senate candidate at the 2022 federal election, made a report to federal police three days after the episode on May 6.
In Goreng Goreng’s version of events, the Canberra-based Greens member ran into Cox, a West Australian senator, in a Perth airport queue, where the senator berated her and asked who provided permission for her to come to the Indigenous country Cox hails from.
Goreng Goreng, an academic and former public servant, said she was brought to tears and Cox had “deliberately decided to humiliate me as retribution for the [Blak Greens] rescinding her membership,” according to her police complaint.
However, a spokesperson for Cox said Goreng Goreng grabbed and shook Cox in a “very serious incident” that the senator referred to federal police and Greens leadership. Cox has reserved her right to press charges.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/blak-greens-group-chat-spat-spills-over-into-airport-clash-20230523-p5dah7.html
Yeah, BRS is not trying to present himself as Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. I think he’d regard Credlin trying to lionise war crimes as a case of “please stop helping me”.
“The GST the government is getting from the rent increases would be most welcome.”
If only residential premises supplied by way of lease or license were not input taxed they might.
“Yeah, BRS is not trying to present himself as Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. I think he’d regard Credlin trying to lionise war crimes as a case of “please stop helping me”.”
He doesn’t seem smart enough to get there to me.
Enough Already
I am optimistic enough to think the West will not allow Russia to just roll its tanks in to any country it likes – eg Hungary, Poland, Czec and others as it did in other times of Soviet imperialism. I suspect the West will be happy to have Russia lose blood and gold in Ukraine in Putin’s bid to emulate the Tsars…..Weapons are expensive, but they do allow the West to test what works and what does not with their – Western – hardware.
I think the views of Russian tanks rolling westwards as shown in old docos from WW2 will now be seen as what they were, a tactic from a by-gone era like the Charge of the Light Brigade – ironically in Russia too!
Well the recession in retail has already commenced.
Here down on in my local government area south of Frankston and Dandenong IGA has announced they are pretty much closing down all their supermarkets in the area at the end of June due to a collapse in demand and a reduction in impulse purchasing.
The fact that we have Aldi (in this area really?), Coles and Woolworths ‘box stores’ did not get a mention but I suspect purely the premise that ‘bigger is better even though choice is less and NO COLES and WOOLWORTHS DON’T support local producers (wine, dairy, vegetables)’ rings true.
Evan says:
Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 5:53 pm
Pretty obvious the Murdoch end of the media is out to destroy Britney Higgins and damage the government too if they can.
———–
As with everything they tried , it will fail and backfire badly on them
Attacking Higgins will be the worst backfire yet
Brittany Higgins was a Liberal party staffer in the federal Lib/nats government , the lib/nats propaganda media protected Morrison and his cronies
The Lib/nats and lib/nats propaganda media shown they have learnt nothing from the original Brittany Higgins case, continuing to attack Higgins and using her as a political conspiracy theory to bring down Morrison government .
Shows they are still political clones of Trump , were robbed of election victory
It is always sad when nice people fall out …
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/blak-greens-group-chat-spat-spills-over-into-airport-clash-20230523-p5dah7.html
Watermelon: “Whataboutism”
Holy crap the hypocrisy. That is literally your modus d’operand. It was defined in response to the USSR doing EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE DOING.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#Use_in_political_contexts
“Several articles connected whataboutism to the Soviet era by pointing to the “And you are lynching Negroes” example (as Lucas did) of the 1930s, in which the Soviets deflected any criticism by referencing racism in the segregated American South. The tactic was extensively used even after the racial segregation in the South was outlawed in the 1950s and 1960s. Ioffe, who has written about whataboutism in at least three separate outlets,[26][24][27] called it a “classic” example of whataboutism.[28] Some writers also identified more recent examples when Russian officials responded to critique by, for example, redirecting attention to the United Kingdom’s anti-protest laws[29] or Russians’ difficulty obtaining a visa to the United Kingdom.[30] In 2006, Putin replied to George W. Bush’s criticism of Russia’s human rights record by stating that he “did not want to head a democracy like Iraq’s,” referencing the US intervention in Iraq.[31] In 2017, Ben Zimmer noted that Putin also used the tactic in an interview with NBC News journalist Megyn Kelly.[32]”
Does this constitute a dysfunctional democracy?
Between 2001 and 2007, Republicans controlled at certain points all three branches while President George W. Bush occupied the White House. GOP control was interrupted between 2001 and 2003, as the Senate majority flipped to the Democrats as one senator switched his party affiliation, one senator died, and when the 2002 midterm elections shifted control of the upper chamber.
From 1961-1969, Democrats controlled all three branches during the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
The 83rd Congress (1953-1955), during the presidency of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, saw the deaths of nine senators and the resignation of one. These changes shifted the balance of power in the Senate with each new replacement, according to the U.S. Senate website. When Republicans held the Senate majority during those years, all branches of government were under Republican-control, as the party also held the White House and Supreme Court.
Ven says:
Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 12:30 pm
I am admitted to Sydney SW Hospital for Angiogram. They did my ECG and BP.
They took me to Angiography suite, did the procedure
Came out of Angiography suite after procedure (@around 10 am (Australia time) and resting on bed.
Doctor told me nothing to worry. No stent required with only one artery blocked by 60%
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Good luck with that Ven, good news on the overall result. A warning is better than the alternative.
Alpha Zerosays:
Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 4:01 pm
‘A FABULOUS DINNER’: RBA’s wild $25K act after jacking up interest rates
The RBA spent nearly $25,000 of taxpayers’ money on an exclusive dinner for Perth’s business elite hours after raising the cash rate.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/interest-rates/fabulous-dinner-reserve-bank-spent-25000-on-exclusive-perth-function-after-raising-rates-in-may/news-story/d485c4c9a80b3ed47f805dbdbe58a757
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That comes in at just over 1 on the Cartier Watch Scale…
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
98.6 says :
And if anyone has any objections ‘they can go’.
Pi @ Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 6:15 pm:
“Watermelon: “Whataboutism”
Holy crap the hypocrisy. That is literally your modus d’operand. It was defined in response to the USSR doing EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE DOING.”
================
Pi, it is telling that, when confronted with the awkward reality that none of the ‘whatabouts’ being conjured up by apologists for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine actually point a finger at Ukraine, there is the distinct sound of crickets. Always with these people, they try to talk right over or past Ukraine as if it is not even there.
BK says:
Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 2:16 pm
From The Chaser –
“Let those who haven’t kicked a handcuffed man off a cliff cast the first stone” by Peta Credlin.
I keep coming back to some reading recently about the PNG campaigns during WW2 and the extreme climate and terrain that complicated both fighting and more importantly the fighting withdrawal accompanied by the evacuation of sick and wounded soldiers.
Wounded Japanese were killed on occasions because it was impossible to assist them.
I remember Maj-Gen Paul Cullen (who I had met, but who’s second wife, Eve was better known to me through stud cattle breeder groups) a one stage in later retirement acknowledged this form his time on the Kokoda track as a Lt.Colonel of the 2/1st Battalion. References to this can be found here (http://qura.org/Fryberg_PDF_notes_War_Crimes.pdf)
Credlin has chosen the wrong horse to back in this instance given the circumstances of BRS’s alleged war crimes have a significantly different feel about them compared to historical war crimes committed in a desperate fight to hold back a highly accomplished enemy is unthinkable physical conditions.
Steve777 says:
Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 5:26 pm
I think that the view of Ms Credlin and like-minded Far Right media and political figures is that Ben Roberts-Smith is “one of us” and must be defended.
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Of that there’s no doubt, they call it defending the indefensible. I do wonder though what she thinks of the vast majority of those soldiers who didn’t act contrary to the laws of war that Australia is a signatory to?
Following her logic, if BRS’ actions are to be so stoutly defended, was the implied inaction of the majority of soldiers therefore open to derision or claims of cowardice or weakness? Both cannot be right.
A_E
“ The irony for Credlin is – as I tried to point out earlier – even B R-S acknowledged the points you made when he was XXNed: he ran his defo case solely on the basis that all of the allegations were false.”
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Sorry I missed that post, agree, I’ve been out all day and am trying to catch up with some poor quality skimming.
Credlin’s piece essentially asserting that the things alleged about BRS aren’t even defamatory is strange comfort to be offering a just-defeated defamation plaintiff.
RBA spending money in Perth is great bit shattered to infer I’m not one of Perth great.
Check out Credlin. She looks sinister, she holds sinister opinions, she is sinister. What a nut!
Ha, ha. Shogun bemoaning the fact that WWP is not a right wing robot like him. It does not compute, it does not compute!