The latest Resolve Strategic poll from the Age/Herald records no changes of consequence since the last such poll five weeks ago. Maintaining the pollster’s recent form as the strongest for Labor, it finds Labor down one on the primary vote to 39%, the Coalition steady on 30%, the Greens down one to 11% and One Nation steady on 6%. Based on preferences flows at the 2022 federal election, this would produce a two-party preferred of around 59-41 to Labor, compared with around 60-40 last time. Breakdowns for the three biggest states suggest Labor leads of around 58-42 in New South Wales, 63.5-36.5 in Victoria and 53.5-46.5 in Queensland.
Personal ratings find Anthony Albanese down slightly on both approval and disapproval, by two to 51% and one to 34%, while Peter Dutton is up three on approval to 31% and down one on disapproval to 47%. Preferred prime minister is little changed, with Albanese’s lead nudging from 53-22 to 51-21. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1610. If the pollster and its publisher maintain their recent pattern, it should followed over the next day or two by a Victorian state poll.
UPDATE: Further questions on the poll encompass attitudes to immigration, with the headline finding that 59% think the current rate too high, 25% about right and 3% too low.
A couple of questions for any of the test cricket enthusiasts here who might be tuned in:
1. What do you think about Australia going into the 4th test without a spinner?
2. What do think about Warner being retained after his dismal performances so far?
It depends on the wicket. If it’s hard and fast, then they can omit Murphy no worries. I reckon Warner is on his last chance. Fail in this test and it’s all over for him.
Let’s be honest, this is the main reason Australia competes in the Commonwealth Games:
https://youtu.be/VuwXzXFniEo
Honestly, I didn’t even realise we were hosting the Commonwealth Games until yesterday.
It might be difficult to hold water events in the former Hutt River Province unless we can get the right wing religious loons on board so they can pray for one of those 100 year rain events that will cause the river to actually have some water in it.
@Bystander:
“A couple of questions for any of the test cricket enthusiasts here who might be tuned in:
1. What do you think about Australia going into the 4th test without a spinner?
2. What do think about Warner being retained after his dismal performances so far?”
For 1: I said during and after the previous Test that if Cummins isn’t willing to trust Murphy to bowl when things get tight then they might as well drop him for someone Cummins will bowl, and I think that is exactly what has happened.
For 2: They shouldn’t have picked Warner to play Tests in England against Broad to begin with, but they haven’t brought a credible alternative (Harris, really?) so this is probably inevitable.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/19/commonwealth-games-2026-cancelled-victoria-daniel-andrews-economics?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Jericho’s take
2. It is tough being an opener in England. I possibly would have dropped Warner earlier, but doing it now isn’t as straight forward a decision as many suggest. Fwiw, I don’t think any of the opener alternatives would do much better. So, on balance, not a terrible decision.
1. Not having a frontline spinner is less of a worry than the reasons they have dropped Murphy. They are bolstering the batting – because they need to. But doing it with Marsh and Green doesn’t fill me with confidence the batting order is significantly bolstered. And whilst I rate both as excellent bowlers, I don’t see them picking up lots of wickets. Nesser must feel hard done by.
@ Team Katich – I’m not sure that is the reason. I really think the reasoning goes – Mitch Marsh can’t be dropped after that century. Green deserves his spot back too. Cummins isn’t going to bowl Murphy serious overs so no point in playing him – boom that opens a place for Green to get his spot back. Cummins does trust Green.
The Aussie cricket team are big on people getting their spot back when they have missed due to injury.
*rolls eyes*
Big W removes sex education book from shelves after staff members abused
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/19/yumi-stynes-welcome-to-sex-education-book-big-w-removes-bans
As any western australian it is great to see Marsh and Green in the team, particularly if they are going to to do a lot of bowling between them.
If they are there to rescue Australia after a top order collapse, yeah they might, but it seems a very low percentage shot, to steal from another sport.
JBay finals today and The Open golf will be my sports focus the next few days. The Ashes not really doing it for me now.
clem attlee @ #642 Wednesday, July 19th, 2023 – 3:32 pm
Albanese with his Trump level tax cut for the rich and his ‘hard times’ election pitch is worse than Starmer.
Pueo – I think Big W has a duty to protect their staff from abusive members of the public. That doesn’t mean the members of the public are right, just that it should not be some poor kid who is putting books on the shelf who has to cop it. It actually becomes an OHS issue when something is triggering people to become aggressive to staff (even if it is unreasonable).
I seriously doubt kids are going to be going into Big W to buy it when they can see far more interesting stuff on the Inter-web. Plus what kid goes looking in the book section nowadays?
Hypocrisy and double standards in radio DJs? Who knew?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1UFVLHakAASwRJ?format=jpg&name=small
Rex Douglas: He’s not even close. Most Australians are lucky enough to be able to tune out on just how much of an arsehole sellout Starmer is.
Mostly Interested @ #657 Wednesday, July 19th, 2023 – 4:13 pm
Rebecca
Most Australians are lucky enough to be able to tune out on just how much of an arsehole sellout Starmer is.
Except when the local Trots mention it a hundred times a day.
Mostly interested
Haha. Neil Mitchell, of 3aw. Also known as “all whinging”.
The Murdoch press pack at Dan Andrew’s presser yesterday.
Sounds nasty.
Breaking News from Thailand. Leading Democracy Candidate Pita Limjaroenrat and winner of the May Election has been suspended as an MP. Still no Prime Minister for Thailand. The Parliament is Sitting again in joint session. Thais are following the debate closely. Thanks to our partners at “The Nation”. Pita can still be PM if can gain 375 votes as he doesn’t need to be an MP to hold the position. My sources telling me that outcome now is very unlikely.
“Charter Court orders Pita to stop performing his parliamentary duties immediately
The Constitutional Court unanimously agreed today (Wednesday) to accept for consideration Move Forward party leader Pita Limjaroenrat’s iTV share ownership case and, in a majority decision, ordered him to stop performing his duties as an MP immediately.
Pita has remained in the parliament chamber as the Court’s order did not affect his candidacy for PM position.
A petition for the Charter Court to rule on Pita’s parliamentary status was submitted by serial petitioner Ruangkrai Leekitwattana, who accused him of holding 42,000 iTV shares, a media company, when he registered his electoral candidacy, which is a violation of the charter.
The Constitutional Court ruled that the accusation has grounds, adding that Pita is entitled to rebut the accusation within 15 days.
On the petition to order Pita to stop performing his parliamentary duties, the Constitutional Court ruled 7-2 to order him to stop immediately.
After the Court issued the order for Pita to cease performing his MP duties, there are reports of more people gathering outside the parliament compound. Police have increased security around parliament.
Pita has been renominated for the premiership at a joint sitting of MPs and the Senate, after he failed to secure enough parliamentary votes for the position last week.”
@laughalong:
“ We attended a couple of sessions of the swimming at the Gold Coast 2018 Games.
As a former swimming referee I was amazed that a so-called major meet like this was held in an outdoor pool.
Yes the pool met all the other criteria and temporary stands were erected which were not easy to negotiate.
Daytime sunburn and evening rain – plenty of it. Not something that many topline swimmers would be used to in a competition pool.
Gold Coast did it on the cheap from my perspective.”
___
FYI, for the record, recent Olympic Games that have conducted the swim meet in an outdoor pool include LA, Seoul, Athens and Rio. I think LA plans on doing the same again in 2028.
Nothing wrong with an outdoor pool if you have the weather to pull it off. IMO, the Gold Coast in early autumn is made for outdoor swimming. Even at an elite level.
Soc
What Dan Andrew’s saw at the presser yesterday.
Plus what kid goes looking in the book section nowadays?
————————
My two just returned from the book shop. A Donna Hay (cookbook) and a Brontë.
Corbyn sold out britain on the altar of doctrinaire socialist rectitude. Not to worry, Corbyn did not starve any babies while pissing off enough of the electorate to give GB another five years of Tory catastrophe. Four legs good.
Two legs Starmer, who.will be a Labour PM with a majority of over 100, bad.
Very, very, very bad.
C games down. Limpics scam next.
Oi Oi Oi.
Forget the games. Biggest sporting event of the year starts tomorrow at 5pm.
Boerwar: Starmer wouldn’t have been ideologically out of place as a Conservative PM in the David Cameron mould. There’s nothing “Labour” about him apart from the party endorsement.
If all that matters is standing for a Labour Party, and what you actually stand for and want to do in office need not be any different whatsoever from the Tories, then we’ve really hit the bottom of the barrel for Labor people just having given up on principles and policy entirely. At that point, if all you want is power and power alone, why not just go and join the governing party, whoever they are at the time? Why does it matter that they be called “Labor” if the only thing that matters is power?
The Streisand effect:
“Welcome to Sex, the sex-ed book at the centre of the conservative campaign has sold out on Amazon and a restock has been requested, we can confirm.
We reported earlier that Welcome to Sex – the consent and education book aimed at adolescents has been taken off the shelves of Big W stores amid backlash from conservative anti-trans campaigners.
As of this afternoon, the book is sitting at number 10 on the Amazon Best Seller list and has sold out. Several other retailers are also reporting a doubling in demand, the publisher has confirmed.”
From the Guardian blog
Rebecca
If all that matters is standing for a Labour Party, and what you actually stand for and want to do in office need not be any different whatsoever from the Tories
Oh do stop carrying on. The Labour Party under Starmer is not the same as the Tories. It is just further to the right (and closer to the centre) than the Labour Party was under Corbyn.
So far, it seems most British voters are fine with that.
Socialists are not fine with that. But who cares?
I see Airbus Albo jetting off again next week for his 3rd bilateral meeting with the NZ PM this year.
Corbyn is on the record saying the West should stop sending military support to Ukraine. This amounts to declaring that he is fine with Russia conquering Ukraine. This means I would most emphatically NOT have been fine with him being Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for even 1 second while Russia has been invading, occupying and committing genocide and war crimes against Ukraine. If that means the UK gets a Labour Prime Minister Kier Starmer in 2024, and has had to put up with Conservative PM’s Johnson, Truss and Sunak in the meantime, so be it. Tankies like Corbyn have no place in a world threatened by the likes of Putin.
Anyone estimate Albo’s carbon footprint with all this jetting around the globe …?
TPOF @ #677 Wednesday, July 19th, 2023 – 5:13 pm
I thought it was “Get woke, go broke”? Truly puzzling.
“Albanese with his Trump level tax cut for the rich and his ‘hard times’ election pitch is worse than Starmer.”
Comparatively Starmer makes Albanese, who is governing far to the right of where Howard was first term, look like a radical left wing progressive.
I don’t understand why people are still hung up on obsessed either for or against Corbyn it is pretty pathetic, he isn’t even yesterday’s man, not even a Labor MP, and if he wins his own seat it will be as an independent. Why you’d be wasting much energy either supporting him or hating him is beyond me. Obviously it would make a more relevant story and be a legit target for hate if he tried to form a centre left party, but even then I’d personally much prefer Mick Lynch.
Anyway actually to relevant things, Alistair Campbell in this weeks ‘The Rest is Politics’ attempts to defend Starmer, it is pretty much a version of ‘lying to win, will be progressive when he gets there’ story people like to tell themselves, but still one of the best defences of the otherwise indefensible I’ve seen.
Albo is miles better than Starmer on nearly every metric. It’s not even a contest.
“Corbyn is on the record saying the West should stop sending military support to Ukraine. ”
This isn’t really true, it is more the way the British press reported what he said, but knowing your views of the conflict you wouldn’t be all the much happier with what he actually said.
Rex Douglas
Anyone estimate Albo’s carbon footprint with all this jetting around the globe …?
Nope. Nobody at all.
Rex:
That’s, um, that’s part of the job description.
Oh, come on, mate.
I mean, what’s the alternative? Chris Hipkins comes here? Thereby creating the same amount of emissions?
The PM has to travel overseas sometimes. They always have had to. Difference is that today those trips typically last a week rather than six month or more.
Kevin Bonham
@kevinbonham
OK so the Morgan primaries are ALP 35.5 LNP 35 Grn 12.5 Other 17. My 2PP estimate off these primaries 54.1 (+0.5). Not even a smidgin of honeymoon-doom here, it was just Morgan’s preferences being odd.
Asha @ #681 Wednesday, July 19th, 2023 – 5:43 pm
3 bilateral meetings in 6 months !
Albo just loves the red carpet treatment. Bugger the carbon footprint !
Ven:
Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 12:26 pm
[‘From the Guardian
“Distraught monarchists suspect ‘deeper motives’ behind Commonwealth Games cancellation
The monarchists are distraught after the cancellation of the 2026 Victorian Commonwealth Games.
“It is truly a sad day for this country,” the Australian Monarchist League say in a statement.
It says the “hopes of boys and girls dreaming of a chance to compete” have been “dashed,” alongside Australia’s international reputation – which “lies today in tatters”.
“Just because the Victorian government got it wrong,” the league says “is no excuse to let the entire Commonwealth of Nations down”.
From now on Australia – and not just Victoria, will be known as a country that does not keep its word, a nation that breaks its agreements, a country never to be trusted ever again.
People are now asking “was it the cost, or are there deeper motives behind this fiasco?” Was it because the King may attend his first Commonwealth Games? Would this have happened had it been the Chinese Games, if there was such a thing? These are all questions that must be asked and must be answered.
”
When I read above, for a moment, I thought I was reading “The Shovel” ” The Unaustralian” or”The Betoota Advocate ”
Satire in this country has become real.’]
Me too, Ven. I see that the CEO of the Australian Monarchist League (AML) Phillip Benwell has a bit of form:
[‘In 1978, Benwell was charged with fraudulent misappropriation and obtaining money under false pretences. He fled to Sri Lanka, where his family owned tea plantations. He was eventually extradited back to Australia in 1987, after a period of imprisonment at Welikada Prison, but was never prosecuted for the earlier charges. When it was feared that the press was about to publish details of this, Benwell stood aside from being chairman during the height of the 1999 referendum campaign.]
And I also note Eric Abetz is the AML’s ‘Director of the Vote No Republic campaign’ – some duo! And currently, the League doesn’t exactly enjoy too much public support: ‘100 financial members, 11,000 official members and a support base of over 53,000 people.’
That said, if I were a monarchist I’d accuse Andrews of pulling the plug on the Commonwealth Games on the basis that was the King & Queen of Australia to open them, the Republican cause could be set back a generation. The problem with this scenario is thatI’m not sure that a visit to Oz by His Majesty & Her Majesty would not go near to matching the hysteria that resulted in Charles’ & Diana’s visit to OZ in ’83, where it is rumoured that the latter’s popularity was such that the former became insanely jealous.
Despite the criticism by the usual squads, I think Andrews’ decision will be met with widespread support by Victorians & most states & territories. I mean, how could you sustain an argument between a third-rate circus maximus with schools & hospitals? Daniel is in my view the most astute pollie since “Nifty” Neville.
For Rex.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKvbgZb2WJU
“3 bilateral meetings in 6 months !
Albo just loves the red carpet treatment. Bugger the carbon footprint !”
I object to the very concept of personal carbon footprints, sure if you personally want to minimise yours go for it, but don’t tell anyone else about it and don’t get all virtuey about people who live in the actual world we have rather than the world they’d like to live in.
Personally I’d like our PM and FM to travel significantly more, and the expense of better jets for them to do it in would be value for money.
I’m sure Albo’s got a wizzbang video conference room setup that he can use a bit more.
To me, Corbyn comes across as a British version of one of those 80’s Warsaw Pact leaders. Unwilling to reform or acknowledge that the world has changed, had a disturbing cult of personality, and is so uncharismatic that he would never gain democratic power on his own without the threat of thousands of Soviet tanks rolling in to support him like the others. Also seems to have a weird thing against Jews.
Not just Albo, but the parliament can also get with the program and have mp’s spend more time in their local electorate office with remote voting and parliamentary work.
WeWantPaul @ Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 5:40 pm:
“Corbyn is on the record saying the West should stop sending military support to Ukraine. ”
This isn’t really true, it is more the way the British press reported what he said, but knowing your views of the conflict you wouldn’t be all the much happier with what he actually said.”
====================
WeWantPaul, I went back and watched the clip of Corbyn’s actual remarks again at:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/jeremy-corbyn-urges-west-to-stop-arming-ukraine
I will say I was too harsh referring to Corbyn as a ‘tankie’. He comes across more as naively trusting in the basic decency of Moscow’s rule towards those Ukrainian citizens who inhabit the lands which would switch to Russia if Ukraine’s resistance ended now.
I completely disagree with Corbyn’s presumed trust in Moscow’s tender and caring sovereignty, though. The effective enslavement of civilians reported here – https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-prisons-civilians-torture-detainees-88b4abf2efbf383272eed9378be13c72 – and the mass abduction of Ukrainian children for which Putin himself has been charged by the ICC in The Hague are proof of the fundamental malevolence of Russia’s hostile occupation of Ukraine. Not forgetting the mass graves in Bucha, the human incinerator of the Mariupol Theatre, and the Kramatorsk pizza restaurant strike, along with scores if not hundreds of residential apartment buildings being fatally struck from locations safely tucked away deep within Russia.
But more fundamentally than all that, though, is that the Ukrainian population itself overwhelmingly rejects a peace under Moscow’s rule, and instead overwhelmingly backs resistance for as long as they have the weapons to do so. Who is Corbyn to imply he knows better than they how they should respond to Russia’s violent invasion? Or to imply he cares more about their lives than does their own Government, which has most tellingly refused to ‘cut and run’ to the physical safety of exile?
Dolphins surfing alongside the QF competitors at JBay at the moment. So beautiful.