Two new federal poll results, one of which I reckon to be Labor’s equal worst result of the term, together with a Roy Morgan poll from early June:
• The latest monthly result from Freshwater Strategy for the Financial Review has the Coalition leading 52-48 on two-party preferred, out from 51-49 a month ago, from primary votes of Labor 30% (down two), Coalition 42% (up one), Greens 12% (steady). Anthony Albanese is down a point on approval to 34% and up four on disapproval to 49%, while Peter Dutton is down three to 34% and down two to 38%, with Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister unchanged at 45-41. The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday from a sample of 1057.
• The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor with a two-party lead of 50.5-49-5 on respondent-allocated preferences, from primary votes of Labor 30.5% (up half), Coalition 37.5% (up one), Greens 12.5% (down two) and One Nation 5.5% (down half). The two-party measure based on 2022 election preference flows has Labor’s lead unchanged at 52-48, which is a little better for Labor than I would expect based on the reported primary votes. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1634.
Peta Credlin, from the Moira Deeming side of the Liberal political spectrum.
Cash should be abolished.
Horrified to hear that Israel set off explosions in pagers in Lebanon issued by Hezbollah to hospital workers (NOT SOLDIERS). Doctors, nurses and ambos had hands blown off, lost eyeballs, damaged hips, had their guts explode
Only emergency hospital workers at American Hospital in Beirut were saved because all their pagers were recalled and only call cart staff were issued with new pagers 2 weeks ago
Today Israel set off exploding baby monitors(WALKIE TALKIES) etc
Best wishes to Lordbain.
Some awful commentary yesterday.
More hand wringing, and not much else, from Penny Wong
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/we-wanted-to-vote-yes-australia-expresses-regret-over-un-palestine-vote-20240918-p5kbnj.html
Poor old Palestinians hey they brought in Hamas to slaughter and attack Israel now they are being bombed back into the Stone Age.
Tut Tut.
I don’t have much time for Payman in general, but she nails it here:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/sep/19/fatima-payman-rupert-murdoch-media-muslim-women
‘Oakeshott Country says:
Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 8:56 am
More hand wringing, and not much else, from Penny Wong
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/we-wanted-to-vote-yes-australia-expresses-regret-over-un-palestine-vote-20240918-p5kbnj.html‘
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Faced with genocidal maniacs engaged in an existential Forever War, there is not much that onlookers can do but wring their hands.
And do some hand wringing about the hand wringing.
And some handwringing about the handwringing about the handwringing.
None of which will wring anything useful out of the genocidal manics engaged in an existential Forever War.
BW
Maybe
But supporting a resolution that supports a finding of the International Court of Justice is the right thing to do.
@billie – drinking the Hezbollah kool aid a bit hard there.
There’s room to argue about whether the pager attack was too indiscriminate, but if you buy that the pagers all belonged to medical personnel and that the walkie talkies were baby monitors you’re repeating straight up propaganda.
It would appear that the use of explosive pagers is a war crime.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/18/the-guardian-view-on-israels-booby-trap-war-and-unacceptable
40% capital gains tax, the highest in the world?
2% perpetual cap on annual rent increases?
The first part covers what happens when property crashes in value and capital is chased out of an economy. Combined impact? Tens of trillions lost to China’s economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQLmojW_CeQ
OC
If the ICJ were to rule on all behaviours of both sets of genocidal maniacs, yep.
@Steve – “No school with a swimming school should get a cent of public money”
This would be very awkward for the many state schools with a pool.
I don’t think pools are the problem.
The 14 who voted against the UN resolution: US, Israel, Argentina, Hungary, Czechia and the Pacific microstates whose foreign policy is run by Taiwan.
For the ICJ to make a ruling someone has to take a case to it.
How many state schools have swimming pools?
Oakeshott Countrysays:
Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 9:27 am
How many state schools have swimming pools?
_____________________________
From memory there was an outdoor 25m pool at Cowes Primary School that is open to the public in the summer because the rock still has no public pool…
Rex Douglas @ #802 Thursday, September 19th, 2024 – 8:51 am
Cash should not be abolished. That way lies the monetary control of the people by the State and the apparatus of the State. Also, has anyone devised a way to still keep transacting when the lights go out or a massive hack occurs? With the obvious effects of Climate Change still going to be occurring and getting worse into the future, though news reports of same dare not speak its name (hint: massive wildfires AND floods in Europe this week), humans need to be able to continue to transact their business absent electricity and server farms. There is only one global method for achieving that end.
”I don’t think pools are the problem.”
No, pools aren’t the problem, I’ve got nothing against them, I just think we should not be shovelling money at elite private schools while so many public schools are chronically underfunded. If we could wind back the level of support for “private” schools back to where it was before Howard, that would probably be enough.
Arky @ #814 Thursday, September 19th, 2024 – 9:25 am
The grandiosity of the pool/Swimming Centre is the problem. So, if these private schools get public money and they build swimming centres with them, then they should be open to the public after school hours.
Thanks BK. Peta Credlins article in The OZ was hilarious rant about how Dutton can win the 2025 election including his “credible” plans to acheive the 2050 0 emissions target “with nuclear power plants”. I stopped reading after that. She is clueless and still disturbed that her dalek darling Tony got knifed. Too funny.
‘Oakeshott Country says:
Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 9:27 am
For the ICJ to make a ruling someone has to take a case to it.’
——————
True, and interesting.
Who would make a case against Hamas for Oct 7, the Houthis for firing a missile that killed a civilian in Tel Aviv, the Houthis for killing neutral seamen in the Red Sea, Heshbollah for the 100,000 Israelis who cannot live in their homes in northern Israel, and Iran for funding all of the above?
Why should users of electronic money subsidize users of cash money?
@RP – an editorial from the Guardian is not a legal opinion.
Internet bush lawyering about international law is pretty much uniformly terrible. The Guardian has been one-sided anti Israel for decades, far pre-dating the current stage of the conflict.
The anti booby trap convention is analogous to the anti land mine convention, and for the same reasons. I don’t see this as being like booby traps, more like a mass bombing of military communication devices, and the question is whether it was proportionate and tried to minimise civilian casualties or not. It certainly killed a lot less people than the war crime level bombing going on in Gaza although simply being better than that is not the test.
Elmer Fudd @ #781 Thursday, September 19th, 2024 – 6:55 am
I’m surprised that Robertson isn’t on the list. We are very much Teal country, being just across the water from Sophie Scamps’ seat and also very environmentally conscious and resistant to the fossil fuel plans the Coalition always eye off on advancing up here. Not that I want a Teal candidate up here though. 😉
Abolishing cash will bring and end to tax dodging and welfare cheating.
”Peta Credlins article in The OZ was hilarious rant about how Dutton can win the 2025 election including his “credible” plans to acheive the 2050 0 emissions target “with nuclear power plants”
Why would the Coalition spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fix a problem that most of them apparently don’t believe exists? And why would they choose the most expensive option?
Rhetorical question.
Rex Douglas @ #827 Thursday, September 19th, 2024 – 9:49 am
Which isn’t really addressing the problems with electronic money per se.
A significant amount of cash sales also rely on a functioning internet.
Steve777 @ #828 Thursday, September 19th, 2024 – 9:49 am
Subterfuge. It’s a common go to for them.
Melbourne High
Mornington Secondary College has a 25m pool:
Glenallen School has a pool
and 7 other specialist schools are getting Hydrotherapy pools (at a cost of $25M – under 1/3 of the PLC):
Ballarat Specialist School
Bass Coast Specialist School
East Gippsland Specialist School
Echuca Twin Rivers Specialist School
Lake Colac School
Springvale Park Special Developmental School
Yarraville Special Developmental School.
It’s a little difficult to find indoor 50 metre, eight-lane swimming pools, with diving towers and seating for 400 spectators in the public system…
This.
Antoinette Lattouf@antoinette_news
Detonating bombs via pagers in supermarkets, offices and homes is “humbling” and not terrorism according to this ABC headline. An 8yo girl was one of several killed. Thousands injured.
I am sure lots of people in Lebanon are feeling humble at the moment.
@C@t: “The grandiosity of the pool/Swimming Centre is the problem. So, if these private schools get public money and they build swimming centres with them, then they should be open to the public after school hours.”
I was just making a point of how a statement like “No school with a swimming school should get a cent of public money” might sound good as a slogan but it’s inaccurate and misses the point.
Many state schools do use private school pools for swimming lessons. I am not across if they have to pay anything for that. If so, requiring the private schools to provide access for free to state schools (within reason) would seem fair, but it’s low hanging fruit that does nothing to fix the inequality issue. It’s a sidetrack.
(I wouldn’t want school pools to be required to be open for use by the general public after hours for what should be obvious reasons of not having God knows who traipsing around on school grounds doing God knows what).
The real point is that the funding formula is too nice on private schools and from Gillard onwards everyone’s been too scared to fix it and anger all the parents of kids in schools that will be the losers. Those schools will all pass it on in fee increases and the parents will either resent the extra money out of their pockets or resent that they had to take poor Quinoa out of private school because they couldn’t afford it anymore, and either way take it out on the government of the day.
It’s a shame this government got lumped with the inflation crisis and couldn’t go on as they began in the first 12 months, as otherwise I think they could have been in a position to risk the hit and taken a fairer funding formula to the next election.
BW
Israel is a signatory to the convention and presumably could bring a case to prove there was a state player acting against it.
The two countries that don’t have immediate access to the court are Palestine and the Vatican.
But realistically Israel only has contempt for anything that the ICJ or UNGA passes – when you have a sugar daddy why would you worry about the Plebs.
Sanctions might change Israel’s world view but they will never be imposed.
What’s you’re plan for payments when the payments system has a an IT outage?
RD
The only people who insist on cash now are tradies. The GST was sold as a way of blocking the black economy- something it has failed to achieve spectacularly.
“Abolishing cash will bring and end to tax dodging and welfare cheating.”
That would be one way to turn the occasional bank, POS or EFTPOS failures into a nation unable to buy food or fuel for a day.
I hope you enjoy barter economy days.
Do many people carry cash these days? A couple of years since I have been to an atm.
Increased resilience of electronic systems is important but in the meantime cash users should bear the cost of their transactions.
Private Schools save governments billions. Shut them down and everyone will be worse off.
Government funding of private schools is not used to fund capital works projects – it is directly linked to the educational operations of the schools.
If parents and friends of schools wish to pay extra fees and make donations – why shouldn’t they be allowed to do so?
G’Day all and thanks to BK for his usual good stuff. This article interested me.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/landlords-could-lose-negative-gearing-perks-unless-they-cap-rents-in-new-plan-20240918-p5kbha.html
It’s a report on this paper from the RMIT Centre for Urban Research
https://cur.org.au/cms/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/dodson-davies-2024-national-rental-regulation-system-cur-policy-paper.pdf
There’s quite a lot in this paper that I strongly disagree with, but I nevertheless think that it is moving in the right direction by trying to think of ways in which the existing tax concessions of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount might be retained, but tied more closely to desirable housing outcomes that might benefit low-income renters.
This is an advance on the naive policies of the Greens and some others who seem naively to believe that taking away existing government subsidies for rents is going somehow to help low-income renters whereas it seems pretty clear to me that it would drive a lot of investors out of the market.
The problem with the RMIT paper is that the authors are unable to help themselves in terms of wanting to impose all sorts of tough regulations and requirements on the landlords while letting tenants pretty much get away with anything . As I read it, I was waiting for a recommendation that the landlord would be required to provide free beer and foot massages to the tenants. And I’m not at all sure that I share the authors’ view that a vast national rental regulatory behemoth is a better outcome than state-level operations (and I’m also pretty sure that the High Court would have something to say about its contitutionality).
But there is the germ of a really good idea in here: that governments work with interested landlords to create new sorts of housing products for low-income renters. These would feature some sort of intermediary manager: a community housing cooperative or specialist real estate agents. Tenants would be provided with long-term leases (five years or more) at an affordable rate. Government underwriting of landlord insurance might also be helpful. Ideally, there would be some sort of tendering arrangement that would allow the market to help determine an appropriate price for such products.
Tax subsidies would be tailored to make this all possible, and perhaps the cost of the additional tax subsidies required might be offset by a modest reduction in the generosity of current negative gearing and capital gains tax arrangements. And, over time, perhaps the balance of incentives could be further shifted towards investment in the construction and provision of low income housing.
But this sort of thing is only going to work if it is introduced in a gradualist way, rather than the sort of multifacted punitive attack on landlords that the Greens and other far-left advocates are proposing: ie, take away their tax subsidies, freeze the rents they can charge for ever and make it almost impossible for them to evict their tenants while also allowing those tenants to waltz out of the property whenever they feel like it.
Anyway, the paper is worth a read.
FUBARsays:
Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 10:18 am
[Private Schools save governments billions. Shut them down and everyone will be worse off.]
WRONG
[Government funding of private schools is not used to fund capital works projects – it is directly linked to the educational operations of the schools]
WRONG
[If parents and friends of schools wish to pay extra fees and make donations – why shouldn’t they be allowed to do so?]
CORRECT
Rex: “Some awful commentary yesterday.”
It was only Lordbain that said the Greens were pedophiles. No one else.
OC: “Do many people carry cash these days? A couple of years since I have been to an atm.
Increased resilience of electronic systems is important but in the meantime cash users should bear the cost of their transactions.”
——————————————————————————
From my periodic journeys around rural Australia, I feel that a few more years need to go by before people out there are totally ready for this. They’ve come along leaps and bounds over the past 5 years in the use of electronic payment systems, but I reckon there’s still some risk involved in turning off the cash stream.
It’ll happen all by itself pretty soon as the logistics of getting cash out to businesses in all of these places become increasingly difficult.
C@tmommasays:
Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 9:35 am
Rex Douglas @ #802 Thursday, September 19th, 2024 – 8:51 am
Cash usage has collapsed over the past decade to the point where just 13 per cent of all transactions are now done with notes and coins. If we want to make sure cash has a future, we have to recognise that it is not free, and find ways to reduce its cost, explains Shane Wright.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-costly-business-of-cash-has-to-change-20240917-p5kb4g.html
Cash should be abolished.
Cash should not be abolished. That way lies the monetary control of the people by the State and the apparatus of the State. Also, has anyone devised a way to still keep transacting when the lights go out or a massive hack occurs? With the obvious effects of Climate Change still going to be occurring and getting worse into the future, though news reports of same dare not speak its name (hint: massive wildfires AND floods in Europe this week), humans need to be able to continue to transact their business absent electricity and server farms. There is only one global method for achieving that end.
___________________________________________________________
Imagine that, I am an in 100% agreeance with Momma.
Taken in isolation, the policies and wishes put forward by the Greens all have a nice sound about them . . . BUT . . . taken as a whole, they amount to what could be described as an Escher fiscal model. Totally nonsensical.
“Private Schools save governments billions. Shut them down and everyone will be worse off”.
Funding schools on a needs-based funding isn’t shutting them down. Hope that helps clarify you’re strawman issue.
Abolishing case would be a mistake not because you might not use it but because you might need to use it so let’s say you want to take money from a savings account at one bank to pay a credit card at another bank because if they are next each other it’s quicker to walk from one bank to the other bank.
“What’s you’re plan for payments when the payments system has a an IT outage?”
What’s your plan for payments when most payment systems are IT-based and not set up to accept cash when the IT system is down?
Royal Doultonsays:
Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 10:41 am
“What’s you’re plan for payments when the payments system has a an IT outage?”
What’s your plan for payments when most payment systems are IT-based and not set up to accept cash when the IT system is down?
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Risk management should make a backup plan.