It’s been a busy week on Poll Bludger, which a new thread on the US election joining posts on state polls in Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland. Meanwhile at federal level:
• The federal redistribution for New South Wales has been finalised, with only very minor adjustments made to the boundaries proposed in June, none of which affect my calculations of the new margins by more than 0.1%. Certainly there has been no revision to the abolition of North Sydney, held by teal independent Kylea Tink. The only redistribution process still in train is that for the Northern Territory, charged with drawing a new boundary between its two seats of Solomon and Lingiari, for which a proposal should be published shortly.
• The Liberal candidate for the crucial Melbourne seat of Chisholm will be Katie Allen, who was the member for Higgins from 2019 until her defeat by Labor’s Michelle Ananda-Rajah in 2022. Allen was endorsed on the weekend by the state party’s administrative committee, which was charged with ratifying local party preselection processes that were conducted before new boundaries revealed that Higgins, for which Allen had again won endorsement, was to be abolished. The decision came at the expense of Monash councillor Theo Zographos, who was last year preselected unopposed for Chisholm.
• Ronald Mizen of the Financial Review reports the looming preselections for the Melbourne seats of Maribyrnong and Gorton, respectively to be vacated with the retirements of Bill Shorten and Brendan O’Connor, will be shaped by a long-standing agreement that the Left will take Gorton from the Right when O’Connor retires, while the Left will take “the next safe Right seat that becomes available”. The matter will be determined by the party’s national executive, which has again taken over the federal preselection process from the Victorian branch. Maribyrnong is considered likely to go to Jo Briskey, national co-ordinator of the Left faction United Workers Union, although The Age reports she “could face a challenge from Moonee Valley mayor Pierce Tyson”.
• In Gorton, the Labor preselection appears to be developing into a contest between Alice Jordan-Baird, a climate change and water policy expert, and Ranka Rasic, the mayor of Brimbank. The two candidates are back by rival sub-factions of the Right, the former with that of Richard Marles and the Transport Workers Union, the latter with Bill Shorten and the Australian Workers Union. James Massola of The Age reports the matter could be decided by a third Right union, the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, supporting Rasic and the AWU in the interests of checking the rising power of the TWU.
all the feckless LNP have to do then is to say ‘yep, vote Labor, get the greens’ and boom LNP governments happen. … like magic …
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That’s a pathetic argument and I doubt there’s even a shred of truth to it but even if there was, it must mean that Labor are so shit at politics that such a line can magically deliver government to the LNP.
And what do you expect The Greens to do? Gracefully exit the field to make it easier for Labor?
Labor’s problems can be solved by doing politics better. Pretty simple.
Socrates, I am more then happy to say that Labors issues lie more with the fact they keep being given the ball when the chickens come to roost based on LNP policy.
Hell, for the record I will say that likely constitutes 80 percent of their polling issues.
But I am oh so tired of hearing about how its the Greens that are truly killing the Labor party because… they have different policies and understand how to utilise the government not having a majority to potentially get some policies through.
Thats politics, thats life.
And yes, Shorten being rejected is a true tragedy for a whole range of reasons, because I would suspect he wouldnt have cocked up like morrison did during the fires, during covid, and just in general
“Birdbrain” ?
I’m new here but is derogatory abuse your thing?
“ And I’m pretty sure Whitlam let Timor Leste fall to Indonesia too.”
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Fun fact: Whitlam was removed from office several weeks before Indonesia invaded. The former LNP opposition’s (then installed as the caretaker government) attitude was to positively beg for Indonesian intervention to ‘put down the marxist insurgency’. A better view is that Whitlam’s insistence of a ‘peaceful’ transfer of power from the former colonial Portuguese stayed Suharto’s hand for a lot longer than his generals wanted. Fraser and the Americans were very happy with what then happened in December 1975.
Lordbain says:
Monday, September 16, 2024 at 9:57 pm
Griff, heres a question; why dont rent freezes work? Theres the usual answers, but it comes down to this; it reduces landlords in the market, it reduces the desire for investment of new proporties, and simply put, it means the market doesnt like it.
So, by itself, rent caps wont help the housing crisis… by itself.
Thats the key phrase that seems to be “conveniently” left out in these “chats”.
Rent freezes for a set time while other parts of the Greens housing framework are utilised to increase supply because the government doesnt need to do things for a profit margin.
If the government did what it did back in the day of Menzies, and you had government departments running government funding housing projects, these projects arnt reliant on the market in the way that rent caps and freezes discourage others.
So saying “rent freezes dont work” is like saying “this cog doesnt tell time” because it is only part of the framework.
You know which countries and cities have government led housing with rent controls?
Lets start with Vienna; all apartments build before 1945 is subject to rent control, and while private-for-profit housing makes up 42% of housing stock in the city, 77% of that figure is subjected to rent controls.
The reason why Vienna’s rent control works is the government actively steps in to build housing when demand increases… just like the Greens are proposing!
Or look at Singapore; massive housing levels driven by… government building projects.
Or put another way; Rent regulation is a stopgap to forestall mass evictions long enough for the housing market (or the government) to build an appropriate amount of housing commensurate to demand.
Theres a reason why the Greens have rent caps with deadlines… and not indefinite.
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So, as Vienna and Singapore are case studies where they have long-term rental control or long-term subsidised mortgage rates combined with a public housing authority, short term rent freezes with a public housing authority is not evidenced based after all. Which makes sense as increasing housing supply takes more than a few years. Especially with a depleted workforce. Whoopsie!
So when are you going to tell Max to vote for a shared equity scheme again? 🙂
“ But I am oh so tired of hearing about how its the Greens that are truly killing the Labor party because…”
Labor are doing a pretty good job of killing themselves. But let’s just keep blaming the Greens while Albanese keeps dealing with Dutton, and dealing himself out of power.
@Andrew_Earlwood
Fair, though whoever is writing the Wikipedia article on the issue suggest prior awareness and support:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_and_the_Indonesian_occupation_of_East_Timor
“Whitlam, speaking to the ABC, said to an extent, his Government was carrying on the view that East Timor was not viable as an independent state. Additionally, there were initial fears of a possible Communist government being installed in East Timor by the Timorese, after the withdrawal of the Portuguese. This saw the Whitlam government look favourably upon Indonesian annexation, and Whitlam expressed this desire to Suharto in a visit to him in 1974.”
If that information is incorrect then feel free to re-write.
nath
Actually, we are not pissing and moaning.
While we applaud the sheer street smarts of The Greens, and their ability to attract votes, we are very concerned that The Greens are doing nothing with these votes other than playing weird political gotcha games over their arch-enemy, the Labor Left!!
Being more serious, in the Senate, Labor has had very productive negotiations with David Pocock in particular, where legislation has actually been substantially improved, and then passed.
I am really hoping someone, anyone!!, gets a “Teal” senate movement off the ground. I used to vote for the Democrats in the senate, back in the day when JJ was still broadcasting on the AM band, before Malcolm Fraser decided to shut the down by banning “simulcasting” (see below*).
And, my votes for the Australian Democrats in the senate were richly rewarded. The Hawke / Keating Labor governments from 1983 – 1996, ably supported by the Democrats in the senate, made Australia a model, modern welfare state.
Howard reversed a lot of the gains we made, but multiculturalism is here to stay, it is now unthinkable to talk about getting rid of Medicare, and compulsory superannuation is here to stay. And, now, the NDIS is also here to stay. It may need reform, but no one is suggesting it should be abolished.
* Ahh, Double Jay. We who were in high school in the 1970s were truely a blessed generation. JJ brought us amazing music, but also some of the best political commentary imaginable: Mungo MacCallum, Fred Dagg (AKA John Clarke) and a bunch of other political reporters. Bob Hudson and Lex Marinos spun discs, and Dr Poo and the Tardis made us laugh.
Malcolm Fraser, who may or may not have been an Easter Island statue with an arse full of razor blades, was certainly determined to shut down 2JJ. He brought in a law on simulcasting which saw the advent of JJJ, but 2JJ was off the air. FM broadcasting was still in its infancy, and there were many FM radio shadows, including great swathes of western Sydney. And of course, FM radio waves do not travel very far, from the point of view of good radio reception. So, in the Blue Mountains, forget JJJ. When eventually JJJ became accessible to all, by the mid-1980s, their format had changed. They were still great with the music, but not a trace of the ironic political humour remained.
But much as I disliked Malcolm Fraser’s strong neo-liberalism, he had other redeeming features.
See, e.g https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/the-paradoxical-malcolm-fraser/jah0hzk7e
Griff, because as much as you pretend otherwise, a shared equity scheme, in the face of minimal additional supply, will just rise housing prices, which even the Gratten institute notes is a likely outcome if the supply remains the same.
And given that Labors housing target is woefully unlikely to happen… maybe its time we look at direct government intervention, which is both too leftie, and yet also too torie because a god damn tory did it last century, leading to the greatest rise in home ownership this nations ever seen.
Lordbain says:
Monday, September 16, 2024 at 10:31 pm
Griff, because as much as you pretend otherwise, a shared equity scheme, in the face of minimal additional supply, will just rise housing prices, which even the Gratten institute notes is a likely outcome if the supply remains the same.
And given that Labors housing target is woefully unlikely to happen… maybe its time we look at direct government intervention, which is both too leftie, and yet also too torie because a god damn tory did it last century, leading to the greatest rise in home ownership this nations ever seen.
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And we are back at the beginning of today. The Grattan say a shared equity model is a good thing.
See https://grattan.edu.au/news/levelling-the-playing-field-its-time-for-a-national-shared-equity-scheme/
Quote: “Any impact on house prices would be modest
Shared equity schemes can result in higher house prices, by adding to housing demand. But targeting schemes tightly at lower-income Australians and lower-priced homes would reduce the impact.
A well-targeted scheme, such as the one we are proposing, would have only a modest impact on house prices. Capping the scheme at 5,000 places a year in the early years would limit any short-term impacts. But even if the scheme were to eventually offer 10,000 shared equity loans a year, with each buyer purchasing a $500,000 home on average, the scheme would add at most $5 billion to housing demand in a $9 trillion housing market, and probably a lot less.20”
That flys in the face of what you are saying. Feel free to tweak the scheme, Lordbain 😉
Griff, look at those numbers, and tell me they are not the economics equivalent of a perfectly round ball in a vacuum
500k average? Where the hell are young first home owners going to get a 500k average?
Responding to Lordbain’s circular logic today was quite fun, but also rather unproductive. Scrollworthy even. Apologies to all 🙂
The Labor Left currently exists in name only much like the liberal Liberal.
Lordbain says:
Monday, September 16, 2024 at 10:42 pm
Griff, look at those numbers, and tell me they are not the economics equivalent of a perfectly round ball in a vacuum
500k average? Where the hell are young first home owners going to get a 500k average?
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With a mortgage. Read the article and do your homework. Good night 🙂
The housing supply crisis is due to many factors, which have accumulated over two decades since Costellos’ tax brain-snap in 2001. Shorten tried to fix the tax mess in 2019 but got rejected by the Australian electorate. That was a tragedy.
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The lack of a policy to build public housing, which Labor could have had as an election policy in 2022, if they were interested (but they aren’t), indicates the neo Liberal Labor Party of today.
Labor, with right faction boss, Bill Shorten, was only interested then and now in supporting wealthier people and businesses.
Who may donate to Labor. Note the exposure of Shorten in the Trade Union Royal Commission, 2014-2015 with his desire for donations to his union, the AWU, from Chiquita mushrooms, enabled by cutting working conditions to some of his AWU mushroom pickers.
Who testified at the hearings. Members of his AWU but he threw them under a bus.
Shorten’s NG changes were only about
‘Class Envy’.
Without NG, investors would leave the market, there would be less rentals and rents would rise.
Lower income people, young people in particular are of no interest to Shorten or Labor. Why Labor will not bring Federal funding to public schools to equal level of religious schools or increase funding for public hospitals, or build public housing. Supporting business needs, including weapons manufacturing designed to kill civilians as part of ‘built in Australia ‘ program.
Copying Howard, Morrison, Duttons policies, getting his support on other policies shows why Labor support dropped from 43.3% in 2007, then 4 Labor losses under the boss Shorten to 30% today.
Need a charismatic social democrat leader like Rudd, who had been homeless for Labor.
Albanese has had no choice than follow this business and wealthy Australians support direction by Labor.
Only won 77 electorates in 2022 by not being Morrison.
Also Shorten supports the poverty level payment for Jobseeker. As he did for Newstart.
But have put Chinese ancestry, Muslims, young Australians offside. Hard to see Labor’s vote improve for many years.
nath
No, no one expects the Greens to exit the field. They have every right to be there. And, they are really, really fantastic at politics.
But as for “Labor’s problems can be solved by doing politics better. Pretty simple.”, you are dreaming.
Labor are actually attempting to find solutions to long-term problems – housing, climate change, poverty. None of these solutions are quick or sexy. Take, for example, the restoring of the single parent payment. It has made an enormous difference to mothers / parents of single children. Like , these parents can afford to provide a roof over their children’s heads, and food as well.
And as Andrew_E said, making the trucking industry safer for workers – saving lives.
But in these days, there is so little care for the many people who have benefited from these changes, and that because Labor has not delivered a unicorn to every house, then we need Peter Dutton PM.
And, the Greens could do what the Australian Democrats did, which is “To keep the Bastards Honest”, and hence deliver better outcomes politically for the majority of Australians.
But, no, the Greens need to destroy Labor before thinking of what happens next.
As you say nath, The Greens have a perfectly reasonable and successful political strategy, but one which will probably see Australia with Federal Coalition governments for a decade or two after 2025 / 2028. And this will just reinforce the conservatism of Australia.
But, I guess, the 75% Coalition / 25% Labor governments federally in Australia is so baked in now culturally, that nothing is going to change that ratio.
Actually I am surprised noone has corrected Lordbain and me for reversing supply and demand side levers throughout the course of today. Just shows how scrollworthy such discussions are 🙂
Griff
Responding to Lordbain’s circular logic today was quite fun, but also rather unproductive. Scrollworthy even. Apologies to all
No apologies needed for me.
A big thanks from me for calling out the logical and reasoning fallacies, because, unassailed, they really do hurt us.
“ mj says:
Monday, September 16, 2024 at 9:58 pm
It’s easy for people who are sheltered from the problems to say there is no magic wand to fix them.”
And yet they do keep saying that ad nauseum. Everything is just too hard for Albanese – except for making deals with Dutton, who is playing him like the fool he is.
Douglas and Milko says:
Labor are actually attempting to find solutions to long-term problems – housing, climate change, poverty. None of these solutions are quick or sexy. Take, for example, the restoring of the single parent payment. It has made an enormous difference to mothers / parents of single children. Like , these parents can afford to provide a roof over their children’s heads, and food as well.
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Restoring the SPP to a somewhat decent age out is one of the few reasons I don’t join others on here in daily bagging the government. Which I don’t think is actually that bad. But something is obviously not working at the moment.
Albanese’s political career has shown him to be cunning enough to get into power but probably not smart enough to stay there.
So, let’s all thank Albanese for getting Dutton so close to power. In anywhere but Bizarro world Dutton is so awful that there would be no chance of him being even close to becoming PM. So, well done Albanese for totally fucking everything up.
One thing I would like to know is who is negotiating with The Greens and could there be someone better to do the job? The government’s job is to convince the Greens to support their legislation and I refuse to believe that The Greens actually want a LNP government. Sure they want to peel a few seats off Labor, but I bet they wouldn’t mind if Labor peel a few off the LNP.
Weren’t the Democrats the OG teals? A liberal splinter off the Liberals. That sought of grouping is generally going to find dealing with a centrist Labor party easier than the Greens who are more committed than either to direct government intervention sitting to their left. The Greens are the way they are because they represent left leaning voters broadly dissatisfied with the status quo, there is no use willing away that reality. Labor can decide to what extent it embraces/rejects those concerns but at the moment they seem way too content to govern like it’s 1999 and think the Greens are just some pesky fringe group that can be ignored and will go away eventually.
“ Whitlam, speaking to the ABC, said to an extent, his Government was carrying on the view that East Timor was not viable as an independent state”
Unfortunately, this paternalistic attitude led to the death of a hundred thousand people.
Griff:
Monday, September 16, 2024 at 10:57 pm
[‘ Just shows how scrollworthy such discussions are ‘]
I think you’re on the money. A change of subject is I think required as it has been done to death today. And it’s highly doubtful if anyone’s opinion on this site changes despite at times cogent argument by the warring parties. One rarely sees any concessions such as, “Yes, you make a sound point, I’ll give it some thought.” Replies are often instantaneous. I think much of it is ego driven – no names, no pack drill.
Irene says Monday, September 16, 2024 at 10:44 pm
But I thought the Greens opposed negative gearing? Their policy appears to be the “phase out” of negative gearing. Although when they mention tax concessions, including negative gearing, they only refer to “big property investors”.
By the way, the ALP’s policy at the 2019 election was to only allow negative gearing on new homes. If anything, this should have led to an increase in the supply of housing and eased pressure on house prices. I’m not sure how this would have caused rents to rise.
The Greens main housing policy at the moment appears to be a rent freeze. I could see how that could lead to a decrease in the availability of rental properties. No doubt they would then attack Labor for the increase in the number of homeless people.
Negative gearing has been a tax deduction since at least the Hawke government, 1983 -1991,maybe earlier.
Keating considered removing this tax advantage, he may have, but less than a year later restored it.
Maybe because, without NG, there will be less rentals. Most people need to rent at some time in their lives, maybe all their lives.
While Labor (and Liberal governments) abandoned public housing builds as their policy (unlike Liberal PM Menzies), NG has allowed rentals during that time to mostly be sufficient for the population needs.
People may remember during these years, up to 2000, under the Howard Government, that house prices didn’t increase significantly, were affordable.
It was only when the Howard Government increased immigration (around 7million population increase, including births, from 1999 to 2022),
Imposed the 10% GST on building materials etc, instituted the First Home Owners Grant (similar to the current Labor policy?), allowed cashed up foreign buyers in,……without a public housing policy, that house prices started to rise.
During Labor’s time November 2007 to September 2013, the GFC may have effected planning. And from The Age › rudd…
Rudd unveils housing affordability plan
Oct 17, 2007 — Kevin Rudd has unveiled a new housing affordability plan in a bid to blunt the Coalition’s tax momentum and steel a march on another crucial policy.
I think 20 000 initially.
But with the Shorten and Farrell coup of the Faceless Men in June 2010, Rudd’s plans were abandoned.
So here we are.
Public housing is too much a social democratic policy, policies which Labor is retreating from.
Irene, I’m not sure that you’re right but I’m not going to argue with you because I think you might be smarter than me. Anyway, I like your posts.
“ Property Investment Professionals Australia chair Nicola McDougall said at least 14 per cent of investors in their annual investor sentiment survey – out Friday – had bailed on their rentals in the past year, an even bigger sell-off rate than the year before.”
This makes me very happy. Take your money and go play with it somewhere else. Every investor’s house that gets sold becomes someone else’s home.
New thread.
Irene says:
Tuesday, September 17, 2024 at 12:46 am
Negative gearing has been a tax deduction since at least the Hawke government, 1983 -1991,maybe earlier.
Keating considered removing this tax advantage, he may have, but less than a year later restored it.
Negative gearing for property investment was introduced by the Lyons Government in 1936.
Hawke instituted several reforms, including a capital gains tax and fringe benefits tax. Keating repealed negative gearing but was forced by political pressure to reverse that. Very clearly, the electorate likes negative gearing despite the inequities to which it gives rise.
https://x.com/deniseshrivell/status/1835518580777185722, that’d be a good start, why the wait, “pathologically unambitious”