The Australian reports Labor’s lead in the latest fortnightly Newspoll is up from 56-44 to 58-42. Kevin Rudd’s preferred prime minister rating is up two points to 67 per cent, and Malcolm Turnbull’s is down two to 18 per cent. More to follow.
UPDATE: Graphic here. Rudd has exchanged five points of disapproval (down to 21 per cent) for five of approval (up to 68 per cent), while Turnbull’s disapproval exceeds his approval for the first time (42 per cent to 39 per cent). Also featured are questions on foreign ownership of Australian mineral companies (it’s bad).
Elsewhere:
• The weekly Essential Research survey has Labor’s lead steady at 63-37. The other questions relate to Australia’s international relations, in particular Kevin Rudd’s handling thereof (67 per cent approve), the state of our relations with China and the United States, and the countries respondents feel “are most like Australians in their attitudes and the way they see the world”.
• Perth’s ABC TV news yesterday reported that litigious Queensland mining billionaire Clive Palmer plans to bankroll a campaign by the WA Nationals to win a Senate seat at the next federal election – something they haven’t succeeded in doing since 1975. No word on who the candidate might be. Former Deputy Premier Hendy Cowan didn’t have any luck in 2001, but he did have Graeme Campbell/One Nation to contend with on that occasion. Their subsequent efforts have been half-hearted.
• The ABC reports the WA Nationals are insisting on a precisely fixed date for the state’s elections, contrary to Premier Colin Barnett’s policy of allowing flexibility in the timing of elections in February or March “in case of natural disasters”.
• In yet more Western Australian news, Antony Green has a page up on the state’s May 16 daylight savings referendum. The Poll Bludger’s page on the concurrent Fremantle by-election is in business here.
• The Victorian Parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee will conduct an inquiry into whether the Electoral Act should be amended to expand the scope of the provision prohibiting misleading electoral material. At present this refers expressly to material “likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of the vote”, and is thus narrowly concerned with matters such as how-to-vote cards that deceive voters into backing the wrong party. The Victorian Electoral Commission rejected a complaint from independent Kororoit by-election candidate Les Twentyman about a Labor pamphlet stating that “a vote for Les Twentyman is a vote for the Liberals”, but its report on the by-election suggested parliament consider addressing “an undesirable trend for candidates to take advantage or build on community misunderstandings of preferential voting with confusing statements”.
• Ben Raue at the Tally Room has started an election wiki.
1,460 Comments
What was Nelson’s best?
16 per cent, at the very last poll before he was dumped. Rudd’s rating at that time was 62 per cent.
#1
“The kid in the wheelchair in the back of the Tarago”
Grog, very “quickly” reminds me of Herr Doktor Professor Einstein who was asked once to explain his Theory of Relativity.
He said: “It’s like this, when i speak to a pretty girl, 5 mins feel like 5 secs. When i speak to a “not so pretty girl” it feels like 5 years”. The problem is, People Skills Abbott is not very pretty.
Well maybe in the next newspoll Turnbull will be at 16 percent.
Still it is hard to compete with a Government who is paying the people a gift of 900 dollars. You’d be surprised if they didnt get such support in the polls.
Turnbull should start looking for a flight attendant to abuse – seems to work a treat
It’s very pleasing to see that the China dog-whistling backfired on Turnbull and the Libs. Either Howie was better at appealing to racism or Australia has matured in it’s view of China.
A big win for Finns and his comrades.
With numbers like these please, please, please Joe block the budget.
Patrick (previous thread) sounds a bit bitter.
Why shouldnt we???
Hell it is too late for a DD election so Rudd will have to eat poo sangers
It’s good to see voters see past the BS the MSM concentrate on.
Explain this Glen.
Havent we gone past the point where a DD election can take place without putting the system out of kilter what with the redistrubutions and all…
This will be a bit of a tricky one for the Ruddster. Public opinion is definitely against further troops going to Afghanistan but Hillary would only ask the question if she knows she will get a “Yes” answer. I’m guessing we will say “yes”, but in a support role.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25300761-12377,00.html
The support for Labor is due to the cashsplash. They bought their popularity and honeymoon with taxpayers money. MalcoPops vote also helped Labor as booze is much cheaper now.
Liberals might not be popular but they are standing up for the national interest, sacrificing themselves for the good of the country. They are the real heroes of the Rudd Recession moving their poll numbers in synch with the GDP.
Can someone please go around to Cossie’s house and untangle him from the hammock……he must be in fits of laughter
Hahahahhahahahhaha
?
I think people were marking Rudd up on his international efforts and failed to be sufficiently distracted by the domestic noise.
Being a Newspoll weekend was the domestic diversionary noise deliberate to stop Turnbull’s figures falling even further?
From December 2006 the media and Liberals have not changed their tactics. They refuse to believe that Rudd and Labor are competent and acceptable to the public and are waiting for them to just fade away.
They can either continue on like this and get humiliated at the next election or start to see the world seriously now. After all we need a competent and reasonable opposition. It may not be possible until they get beat again.
Glen:
The ALP would love your side if you did block the budget. As AIC said before this Newspoll: “Bring It On!” The resulting campaign and election would be stealing-candy-from-kids stuff. You’d lose the Senate, and be lucky to have 20 seats in the house . . .
So, forgetting the White Russian Roulette of Nelson/Turnbull/Costello/Hockey, what might you learn here?
- all the China-bashing (or more accurately, all the bashing of an Australian citizen of a certain ethnic origin) doesn’t work. That particularly-mangy dog won’t hunt. It’s not 1987 anymore.
- the constant attacks on Rudd as a person (cf Tom Pain in the previous thread) don’t work either. If nothing else, it’s way too soon for buyer’s remorse on the federal ALP, and besides Kevin and the comrades are actually doing stuff. It’s not the $900 bribe, it’s the visible action, the forward momentum, the activity. That’s what pollies are for after all: do stuff, fix problems, be proactive and all that.
Still: 18%. Another fascinating set of numbers to come . . .
Yeah, definitely a correlation between alcohol prices and support for Labor.
You almost had me there Malco. LOL.
Malco,
There’ll always be an England…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ2FOBxshWY
Garrett just got snapped by Tony Jones on his emissions targets.
Garrett: “We need to keep CO2 levels at 450ppm”
Tony: “But your targets, if adopted globally, would not go anywhere near that”
Garrett: “…”
I bet the paperboy who delivers The Australian to Mal’s house tomorrow cops a mouthful (but he doesn’t cry)
You left out the part where Garrett quite rightly pointed out that we don’t expect the world to adopt our exact targets, and it would be naive to think they would use us as an exact template
As sure as there’ll always be an England, I predict that the 3rd stimulus package has already failed.
Mal or the paperboy?
and the East is Red ……..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWOMuvTQg3U
Bree, when did you have a sex change?
Every time News Ltd and the ABC mount an attack on Rudd’s character, his approval ratings go up in the subsequent poll: when will the media hacks ever learn that Aussies don’t like the politics of personal denigration and smear?
I left it out to save Garrett embarrassment given it’s a stupid point.
“Well we’ll have our targets, which we accept won’t do anything, but it’s fine for the world to go out and have their own!”.
Sorry Finn just getting in early before Bree…
Glen and Malcopops: When your lot stop being obstructionist, negative bastards and actually offer some constructive solutions for the economic malaise we find ourselves in, then your ratings might improve. Does Turnball actually have any policies, other than blocking the government’s bills in the Senate?
Oz,
Misquoting, misrepresenting or being economical with the truth is piss poor.
Now, no one will take any notice of what you say.
It’s not stupid at all, and yours is rather asinine. There is no debate that Australia cannot solve the problem on our own.
Glen I see you are parroting the lib talking point of “its because of the bonuses”. This argument may have a shred of credibility if Rudd was not getting these numbers when he was opposition leader. You need a new excuse
Malco,
You are using quality bait.
A third stimulus is likely to turn the Libs into a quivering mass of jelly.
How soon before Smirky or someone else challenges Turnball? It can’t be long.
Btw have there ever been any equivalent support figures for a Govt in this part of the economic cycle? This is really the big story to come out of all the polls.
Regardless of St Kevin halo, why aren’t the media attacks and the looming or actual recession hurting Labor more?? Will it come when economy goes really bad?
MalcoPops was the Liberal Messiah, the times should suit him but he turned out to be just a run of the mill right wing hack.
He wasnt getting figures this high.
Malco: If the Libs go ahead and block supply bills in the Senate, their ratings will sink into the 30s, but knowing the stupidity of Turnball/Big Mouth Hockey, that’s what they’re likely to do.
And Thomas Paine youre absolutely spot on…My prediction?? They’ll need an election thrashing to change course
Um, does 58/42 ring ANY bells Glen???
GG,Oz,Dario
you are both right
TJ is the master of the gotcha, whereas PG still is comparatively a novice.
At least we are doing something to address CC/GW
I think you’ll find Macopops is having us all on and showing up the arguments used by some conservatives for what they are, BS. The sad fact is that some out there in voterland actually believe this line of argument.
Glen I was hoping from the discussion the other night that you realised that your side needs to do the hard policy work. Now your back in the denial phase…
Ummmm
didnt one John Winston Howard get written off a few times.
mal will happily handle a bypass methinks
well so much for spygate, the yellow peril and RAAFgate, at this rate they can keep bringing it on, Turnbull needs to be careful, stories of his temper tantrums are doing the rounds, he doesnt even bother to apologise, he’s above all of that, Chris Kenny, Downers ex chief gofer left ACA to take up with Turnbull and didnt last a month.
From earlier today we were discussing what results might we see if the next Federal Election gives us an increased Labor margin. I’ve done a cut and paste from the pendulum (just food for thought) of all Coaltion seats that are held with margins of 5% or less. I know swings aren’t uniform but this might give us a listing now of the vulnerable seats as you wouldn’t expect anything held with more than a 5% margin to fall I wouldn’t think.
Coalition (Lib 74 / Nat 13/ CLP 1)
Return to Top
Kingston (SA) LIB 0.1%
Bonner (QLD) LIB 0.5%
Wakefield (SA) LIB 0.7%
Parramatta (*) (NSW) LIB 0.8%
Makin (SA) LIB 0.9%
Braddon (TAS) LIB 1.1%
Hasluck (WA) LIB 1.8%
Stirling (WA) LIB 2.0%
Wentworth (NSW) LIB 2.5%
Bass (TAS) LIB 2.6%
Moreton (QLD) LIB 2.8%
Solomon (NT) CLP 2.8%
Lindsay (NSW) LIB 2.9%
Eden-Monaro (NSW) LIB 3.3%
Bennelong (NSW) LIB 4.1%
Dobell (NSW) LIB 4.8%
Deakin (VIC) LIB 5.0%
McMillan (VIC) LIB 5.0%
Good points Malcopops. It the midst of a massive slowdown, we have Labor riding high. The reason is that Rudd and the government have managed the economic issues wel- decisive, coherent policies, clear strategy and explanation. The opposition? mixed messages, changing positions. They have well and truly botched the opportunity
Rudd doesnt really have any policies either he’s just in government. Rudd’s idea of getting us out of a recession (which we’re probably already in) is to spend all the money our country has and keep borrowing and selling government bonds to China in order to raise capital.
We’ve run out of money and we’re in debt thanks to Mr Rudd.
And yet his numbers are still so high.
Gus,
GG, Oz and Dario are not a both.
A bit like the Thompson Twins which was a trio, one of whom was black.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW0YLWWf2b8&feature=PlayList&p=78054416EF813904&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1
Spot on Gary Bruce. Sorry if you thought I have anything in common with my “namesake”. Just trying to make the Libs arguments by taking them to their absurd logical conclusions.
Re 49, my mistake, I think that is the PRE election pendulum …. sorry …. moment, still looking ….
I said the same thing (very nervously) during the ‘Scores scandal’, when confident predictions were being made that ‘this was the end of the honeymoon’ (I think it had only ended half a dozen times at that point) and noone knew whether it really was or not…
If people genuinely like someone, and that person is attacked, they will swing even more violently towards that person in defence.
And that’s what seems to be happening. People like Kev, they trust him; if he’s attacked, they get all bristly and defensive and his numbers go up.
The Libs need to leave him alone. If they want to do personal attacks, they need to go for weak pins, that the public don’t care about. But they’d be much better just concentrating on painting themselves as fair, considered and reasonable, so that (when the tide finally turns, as tides do) the image in people’s minds is not negativity and carping.
I can offer this advice freely, knowing that the Libs are incapable of following it.
Wow Julie. 6 SEATS under 1.1%- BRING ON THE ELECTION!!!
Juliem: don’t forget there are electoral redistributions to come in NSW and QLD, that might alter the margins in some seats.
And, if the Libs are headed for another heavy defeat in 2010/2011, I wouldn’t expect that the likes of Peter Lindsay, Fran Bailey and a few others in marginal seats would want to hang around, so Rudd could very well pick up a few more seats because of Liberal sitting members retiring.
I meant the sides you were taking.
BTW Mrs G loves the TT’s
sorry Julie you have the wrong figures- bennelong, lindsay etc no longer lib seats
Also, I suspect Labor will do much better next time in WA!
Malco, you almost scared me there.
Most marginal seat is McEwen: if Fran Bailey contests it again, she probably retains it, if she retires, it’s up for grabs.
Glen youre clearly not getting the message. You seem to think the electorate will wake up one day and suddenly agree with you.
Electorate to the libs: we’re happy with Rudd and the government. You need to offer a better alternative
C’mon Julie, I’m waiting for new list!! (too lazy to do it myself!!)
Andrew, at a rough guess, if the Newspoll was the actual election result, Labor would pick up McEwen, Herbert, La Trobe, Dickson, Bowman, Swan, Cowan, even Chris Pyne’s seat.
If the Coalition sat down around the table now to establish their platform and policy direction would they be able to achieve a consensus that would last 5 seconds outside their meeting?
The next thing they should consider is what type of leader is most acceptable to the public (hint: Obama, Rudd). The keep looking for messiahs and headkickers. Rudd is a data freak and Obama a true intellectual.
They need an entire culture change.
Oh the pleasure of seeing the back of Jason “Orgasm” Wood (La Trobe)
Hahahahahahahaha, you should get Lib HQ to try running with that line… I’m sure it will go down a treat in voterland!
As an aside
I think a few of the Howard battler seats will be in play next election.
Reasons
1 higher unemployment
2 less confidence/mortgage stress
3 changing world order
I think the ‘dog whistles’ are playing on this fact and fanning the flames.
the Libs are playing the long game as well as short term Hits.
Fran Bailey is 65 now. The Bushfire Disaster has given a boost to her popularity and als give her a legacy beyond her years as one of Howard’s 96ers.
She is unlikely to run again.
Trying to lose the debt argument again Glen?
This is the link to the new pendulum BUT it isn’t organized nicely into coalition and labor columns. It has the seats in their OLD order but notes who has won them. Would have preferred to have it just shuffle them into two lots straight up and in numberical order as the old pendulum was. Antony, is there a link to the post election pendulum in that format?
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/results/pendulum.htm
What it does show, though, for those who don’t want to read the fine print. From the top down the 10 seats won off of the Libs and their percentages from most to least -
Forde, previously at 11.5
Leichardt, previously at 10.3
Dawson, previously at 10.0 (to the Nats)
Flynn, previously at 7.7 (to the Nats)
Petrie, previously at 7.5
Robertson, previously at 6.9
Longman, previously at 6.7
Blair, previously at 5.7
Page, previously at 5.5 (to the Nats)
Corangamite, previously at 5.3
The USA don’t seem to think that is a bad thing. And think China has stomach from over consumption.
Why has Malco not been smart enough to change his approach? His trendlines are all down and yet the Opp. are talking about blocking the budget etc. The party of NO.
Just remember that for all his bravado, Malcolm supported the StimPac 1 from last December which he now decries bitterly. Talk about the Malco 3 step dance.
The Libs have been a bunch of headless chooks for a while now, I’m not expecting Turnbullbutter to change his approach anytime soon.
I wouldn’t be carried away with these polls except to say it indicates that Labor has a resilient lead over the Coalition.
Didn’t I hear that Obama was going to visit Indonesia later this year? No doubt he could drop in.
Diogenes, from previous thread, you still win with your Jeckle and Hyde remark
you can’t help it if Malcolm is a bit slow.
The pendulum will change further with redistributions underway in NSW and Queensland.
TP if you are happy that one government alone is buying up australian commonwealth government bonds then you have probably have a screw loose somewhere.
David, it is only going to change a FEW seats in NSW and QLD. 90 to 95% of it will still be exactly the same. Once we can scrounge up a link to the post election pendulum in a traditional 2 column format with new margins for the seats, we’ll be in business and then will have a much better idea of where these juicy polls are taking us
House of Reps is not the main game really. The Senate is. The ALP best possible outcome is perhaps greens having the balance.
Mr X is the fly in the ointment. Will he get someone to run under his banner in the next half senate or a running mate in a DD?
As for a NAT getting a guernsey in WA, it would be most likely at the expense of the Liberals one would think. The greens are still doing well and ALP is pretty much at rock bottom.
I understand your point Glen.But I thought Japan and others were buying up our bonds as well? I know China is a big buyer.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a2iQkNT4996A&refer=japan
The internal politics of the Liberal party must be absolutely killing Turnbull. The only way he can retain support is to continually take the fight to the government, opposing and attacking relentlessly, so as to appease the right-wingers who loathe the ALP with all of their being. But in doing so he’s severely damaging the party to the point where its leadership becomes essentially worthless.
So what’s his motiviation for fighting on each new day, when he must know how hopeless the situation is? For the first time I can reveal Turnbull’s ultimate plan. He’s clearly aiming to get the Liberal vote sufficiently low by the time of the next election to ensure that as many of the old guard lose their seats as possible. He’s perfectly safe within his own seat, even obtaining a swing towards him last election. He’ll then be able to finally take control and lead the party the way he wants, to victory in another 3 years’ time.
It’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Of course, he’ll be such damaged goods by that time that he has no hope of succeeding. Still, it’s his best (and only) shot. But how much does he really want to be PM? Enough to risk another 4-5 years of his life on it?
TP,
Interesting that the world markets are giving Rudd and the Australian Government’s approach to the GFC the thumbs up.
On the other hand, the Libs and Turnbull have played the wrong strategy and are now in danger of talking Australia down. At any time that is dangerous, but in a time of crisis the electorate is going to want to see all hands to the pump.
Turnbull and the Libs have totally stuffed up.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article6041266.ece
Anyone heard if Ackerman,Bolt and Blair along with a few other Liberal toadies have done the lemming trip and chucked them selves off a high building yet.
These Newspoll figures (owned by the Australian,would I lie to you Newspaper) must be killing them still Piers can fall back on gibbering about Hiener
John
They are the toothless old tarts.
juliem, with NSW losing a seat and Qld gaining one, the changes will be more sweeping than that.
zombie – good point! Presumably any WA Nat would caucus with the eastern states Nats. So why throw a truckload of money at trying to flip a seat from one coalition party to another?
Sour grapes by the OO, after all their hard work last week to knock Rudd off his perch lol
This is them trying to console themselves over Newspoll as they wipe away the tears and stamp their little foot
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25299994-25209,00.html
LMAO I don’t think so!
Malcolm has done the flip on performance for the first time:
39 Satisfied
42 dissatisfied
Is this the cue for Costello? Did they have a deal? Will Cossie push or will Malco go POP?
Rise up back bench of the Coalition,. Your leaders have no hope
Malcom’s song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-q1H9N_u10
I highly doubt Costello will make any move until after the next election.
Are these journos seriously demented or what? How is an investigation into a clear leak of Defense department goings on, a ‘witch hunt’. Witches didn’t exist. Somebody give them a good slap ffs.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/anger-grows-at-farcical-fitzgibbon-inquiry-20090406-9uw6.html
Here’s a prediction you will hear more and more in the nest few days.
Hockey will lead the Opposition.
All the Libs will say that Joe’s a good guy and he has a difficult task.
Libs will lose the election.
At the appropriate moment, all the Libs will say that although Joe is still a good guy and has had adifficult task, he hasn’t lived up to expectations and should be replaced.
But GG, the Libs are living in Groundhog’s Day. They’re going to have to do that another 72 times before November next year!
You know the left has gone mad when they start saying Hitler was great for Germany:
http://www.redstate.com/warner_todd_huston/2009/04/06/nytimes-obamas-economic-ideas-great-just-like-hitlers-were/
So, Rudd goes to G20 and popularity goes up, as well as the ALP’s TPP. Turnbull and the Libs sink further. Rate cut tomorrow or even rates holding steady will be another positive for the Govt and make the Libs look even more silly on economic management which has to be a bad look for them.
How do you reckon the figures will start to look though, if Obama’s recent stated position on nuclear arms control even begins to look like a reality?? This article actually links this to Rudd’s position in Hiroshima last year and i have vague memories of Rudd being criticized for this at the time??
http://www.smh.com.au/world/no-nukes-vows-obama-20090405-9tas.html?page=-1
It may actually be quite legitimate for the ALP machine to spin any positive moves on this over the next year or two (like US / Russia decommissioning a few hundred or thousand warheads each) as somewhat down to Rudd and his diplomatic efforts.
Heavy Kevie saves the world from nuclear annihilation anyone?? While its not going to win over rusted on Libs, (who seem to be the only ones who reckon they will vote for that rabble), it really wouldn’t need to as they wont determine the result of the next elections. At the moment all the ALP need to do is solidify the record levels of support that they have to give the Libs a good kicking and build a massive seats buffer for the next election or two.
This happy thought being apart from the simple fact that the world could do with a lot less nuclear weapons.
Robert Manne rips Albrechtsen and the ‘Australian Right’ a new one with a bit of basic research a high school student could do. Basically he demonstrates Albrechtsen was incorrect in her assertions about the Rudd ‘neo-liberal’ essay being an ideological backflip. She just had to look up hansard, or use google, to find it out for herself. OOPS.
They should just stick to writing about Rudds obvious lack of social skills. Which, by the way, is not that surprising as he is an intellectual book nerd type of guy.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25299902-7583,00.html
Given the allegations from the media that they have leaked data from defence, allegations of spying on the minister and engaging in politics you would think an investigation would be mandatory.
The media got leaked data and are trying to protect their source. However some of the implications of the Defence leaking are of some concern and go beyond just investigating this incident, it goes to person(s) abusing their position and powers for the purpose of undermining a minister and or the duly elected government.
The media try to make it seem justifiable by smear Ms Liu in making her seem some risky sneaky woman with powers but present no data beyond what is normal. This is disgrace of the media. They would destroy one innocent person to protect the sleazy work of another person for the purpose of attacking yet another person with no justification.
The Age comes out stinking in this. As does their extremely weird position that the Government should butt out of interfering in Chinalco taking a large stake in Rio Tinto. As though this isn’t a matter of national importance that the govt should at least risk assess.
GP: don’t be disingenuous. All Leonhardt said was that Germany emerged from the Great Depression relatively quickly. Nowhere did he say Hitler was unqualifiedly “great” for Germany.
no, the far right wingnuts redstate stated that Leonhardt stated that Hitler was unqualifiedly “great” for Germany. They have read between the lines and uncovered the controversy.
It’s not what he wrote, It is what he didn’t write.
Did you know Rudd once didn’t say or write about that my alter ego was a swell guy when he was alive and leader of China.
Not picked up by the MSM so far, I believe, but any bludgers thinking of taking the kids for a swim in the Murray Darling system for the school hols may wish to check:
http://riverinfo.mdba.gov.au/weekly-report/current_wr.pdf
They have issued a red alert for blue-green algae over hundreds of kilometres of river. The MSM may have failed to take it up because the Report was dated 1 April – but it looks genuine to me.
Here’s a quizz question:
Dimitri Mascarenhas may be in line to captain the national team of which nation in which sport?
England in T20 cricket I take it.
vera @ 89
The thing that irritates me about such articles is that they don’t include who wrote it. One would suspect Mr Akerman or Mr Shanahan, but still…
The Oz editorials are written by Chris Mitchell.
Dario, some other funny bits in that story.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/anger-grows-at-farcical-fitzgibbon-inquiry-20090406-9uw6.html
Reads like said “official” believes “covert probe” was justified, love the reference to Neal. Maybe said “official” getting worried and starting to poop self.
No-one could dog whistle like Howard, he was the grand master.
Howie would have kept it very low key, a light barely audible whistle, “I’m not comfortable with some of Mr Rudd’s friendships,and I believe Australians share that discomfort”. And left it at that.
The coalition post Howie uses a megaphone to yell their phobias.
The best thing for the Libs to do to get rid of the hopeless Turnbull, and install Joe “Cossie” Hockey as their leader. At least Joe will have some entertainment value as the real life Shrek on Sunrise.
Yes:
Sour grapes
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25300936-5017906,00.html
So bitter, I’m so discussed with the papers behavior, it’s actually a joy to read.
Glen, here is one for the Liberals.
“Rudd secretly setting up re-education camps”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/06/bachmann-obama-wants-re-e_n_183552.html
The right wing nutters will love it.
Glen @ 5
There’s always some reason why Rudd’s support is so high isn’t it…. He’s giving away money, he’s doing this, he’s doing that.
Ever occurred to you that the support is still super high because he’s actually doing a fabulous job?
Just a thought.
That might be plausible if one ignored the fact Labor’s polling has been around this mark since Rudd became Labor leader all those years ago in December 2006.
Liberal fantasies. Still can’t come to terms with Howard severely trumped. Losing the Preferred PM rating WHILE in government. What a joke.
http://www.tallyroom.com.au/1028
Makes sense.
Maybe kryptonite would work.
ABC radio just reported that the government is going to build the broadband network itself.
zombie mao
Mr X will almost certainly have an endorsed candidate for the next Senate in SA. If he got someone with a bit of a profile, he/she would get in easily.
bob
The MHS counter-proposal to the New RAH seems to have gone down well and they might make a contest of the next election after all.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25301681-12377,00.html
Thank the Liberaltiser.
I still don’t think the hospital will matter as an election issue to those who Labor need to win them the election – people in seats won by Labor in 2006 which have closer hospitals than the RAH. And you’re going to get a hospital either way no matter which party you vote for.
I don’t understand this decision, after all this time, the expense of the tender process etc. they just decide to build it themselves?
Have you not been following how the tender process panned out?
Nobody has mentioned the possibility that the National Party inspired High Court chalenge against the stimulus package caused resentment. I think its likely that it did. The legislation had already been passed in parliament, despite a coalition senate backflip, and then a former NP official challenges it in court. Despite the court still being stacked with Howard conservatives, the challenge fails. That can’t have helped.
Second, DT82 – thanks for that link; the sale is a great vote of confidence in Labor policy. Several countries have had trouble selling bonds in recent months.
Finally what is the MOE on this pole? So what is the best/worst outcome possible. I don’t think the government should provoke a DD; that looks opportunistic. But they needn’t be scared of one either. There wil be another G20 in six months and, provided the budget is positive, we will still be in better shape than most of our trading partners, so Rudd will have a good platform for that too.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/coalition-wont-block-supply-bills-20090406-9tml.html
Damn!
bob
I think the stadium and the idea of a Fed Square are appealing. I hate Footy Park. It takes a whole day to get there and back. A multi-purpose city stadium would be great for Adelaide.
Imagine the back-bending they would have had to have done in their full explanation of their decision of backing the states over federal, after having allowed WorkChoices to proceed.
I’d prefer improvements in health/education.
#123
I’ve been following it, e.g., Telstra’s exclusion and the emergence of minnow Acacia, but I heard no suggestion that this was a possible outcome.
While we’re on SA politics… WHERE is the quarterly Jan-Mar Newspoll for SA? It’s the 7th of April already!!!
How much would the construction of the network cost? 20-30 billion?
108 Castle,
This line from that story
They haven’t got a leg to stand on. Doesn’t matter who they are and if they are the same agency or not
If you didn’t do anything you have nothing to hide. It is only those with something to hide that have anything to be worried about. If this flushes out the culprit(s), good on Warner ……..
Lindsay Tanner is on radio now (774 Melbourne). This decision means that Telstra is back in the game.
Looks like the bids were too high.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/07/2536726.htm
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25301687-5006301,00.html
and…
I vageuly remember Telstra suggesting that it would cost close to $30 billion. Taken with a grain of salt of course, it makes clear that the 4.7 offered is (or was) never going to cut it.
Frankly, I think it’s a better idea to build it ourselves. It’s the only way to ensure that we have a comprehensive network. Broadband is the railroads of this generation. We need to build it comprehensively and quick.
Dio, MHS refuses to give costings for his plans for the new stadium/entertainment centre and refuses to say which of the three rebuilding schemes he has come up with for the RAH he’ll use until after the election, that puts both policies in the pie in the sky catagory, voters would be voting blindly for an uncosted stadium that the SAFL have already said they WILL NOT use and a pickabox selection for the RAH, can you honestly see them coming at it? especially with MHS’s costing mess ups in the past.
It’s certainly an interesting decision. Off-hand there are positives, but it will be interesting to see the details emerge.
What won’t be interesting is how the debate works in the public sphere….I can already here Turnbull warming up his ‘generations of debt’ chords right now…
The proposal for fibre optic to the home is now the snowy scheme played over. Watch the Liberals ignore history and oppose it every step of the way.
Ideologically, state built and owned infrastructure isn’t really in their wheelhouse. It’s to be expected.
Massive Senate delays and rejections of the legislation are just the sort of thing that will hold up internet infrastructure in this country for years.
Same. He’s certainly in with a chance to draw with Nelson as 7% Preferred PM.
Personally I am delighted the government is proceeding with the broadband network. The myth of saving money with PPPs has finally come unstuck. They only happened in the past because rating agencies overrated private consortia and some governments wanted to hide debt off their books. But even then, they never saved money; the gain was pocketed by investors and taxpayers were worse off. This will be a valuable assett that should easily be sold for a profit later. This is exactly where the governmetn should invest funds to pay future PS retirement payouts. It also allows the government to ensure genuine competition in the sector by putting realistic access conditions on it.
In the past I have been on review teams for five different PPP projects. NONE saved the taxpayer money, but two proceeded.
JB
The SANFL really need to get with the times. They’re still back in the olden days of fighting with SACA. It’s time they got some new blood in there. Footy Park is obselete but they are obsessed with it. The fans have repeatedly said they’d prefer a city stadium. The AFL, SANFL and Soccer Australia should put up some of the money.
Ya. Would the snowy been built without government support, will there be fibre to the home without government support. If the government pays the bill it should have an asset to sell when capitalism gets over itself. Bloody good move in my view.
Love the headline on the polls from this website
I have to agree Socrates.
A project like this requires massive amounts of ’start-up’ cash. This takes away the ability for a short term profit. This means that if a private enterprise is to complete it, it needs to be able to sustain losses early. Few private enterprises can do that. Government is able to take a much longer view.
Although, I have to admit, all this cheerleading for Rudd is making me feel a little dirty.
I know others have already commented on Robert Mayne’s article in The Australian today, it’s about time that The Australian was counterbalanced with more commentators from the centre of politics.
love this bit – ” For the IPA, Henry Ergas published a critical account of the Rudd essay while mentioning the central issue – the derivatives explosion – only in passing. Nor has any plausible alternative account of the global financial crisis so far been published by any member of the Australian Right.
The attack on Rudd has been relentless. This newspaper, for example, has published 44 articles revealing hostility towards The Monthly essay and one that is broadly supportive. Why is all this worth saying?
Albrechtsen’s present obsessive and ill-tempered attack on Rudd is very revealing”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25299902-7583,00.html
This broadband infrastructure should have been built years ago. Howard was lazy and old fashioned when it came to infrastructure building or even maintenance. I glad the government are taking the initiative and building it themselves. This will be a win win for government investment and private investors. Everybody wants faster broadband, I hope the pricing will come down, like it is overseas.
Yo ho ho,
??? who did you vote for in the election?
Having worked on government tender processes, I presume the government (or its commercial adviser) would have built a Public Sector Comparator to determine the cost of the government building the network. They would have done this before the tenders went out.
I presume that the government has evaluated the cost of each of the proposals and found that the PSC is cheaper than the lot of them…
You must be new here…
To be honest, I voted green. Not because I associate with them, but because I’m probably a little more ‘left’ than the ALP.
Not new, just a little more discerning than your average bludger….
Recall the government never actually had a tender process. It simply issued a request for proposal for a network that achieved it’s election promise of 12mbit/s to 98% of the population using FTTN.
I find it a bit strange that they’re saying “None of the proposals we received did 100mbit FTTH cheap enough” considering none of them did 100mbit FTTH at all.
Building the network won’t be a big difficulty, it will be what happens after. The government’s planning to sell it off, which it did with Telstra, which was a stupid move. It would be slightly less stupid if they made sure the network was separated from any retail business and open access.
Swing Lowe
Exactly right about the PSC. The trouble is in the past, if you assumed a convenient discount rate and/or financial risk assumption, you could manipulate the answer very easily.
Well they’re looking at regulatory reform, goodo.
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_business/funding_programs__and__support/national_broadband_network/regulatory_reform_for_21st_century_broadband
The other (big) issue with broadband in Australia is the cost of sending/receiving international data, which is like 99% of the data we access. This translates into relatively high costs per GB. If you take an average 10gb a month plan, on 100mbps you’ll eat through that in 16 minutes.
Socrates,
From my knowledge, the Department of Finance insists that other Departments use a 10% discount rate. I don’t know why they use it – it just seems to be an arbitrary number they’ve picked from the sky (although I’m sure they can justify it in some way…)
Oz 154,
Far from it …… I know @ Glen, GP and the obvious ones. And you know what side of the fence I fall on I think. Don’t think you or I know e v e r y o n e. Any comment of the nature of that one that I commented on is enough to make me say “hmm, probably didn’t vote Labor (but I don’t have enough other information to decide where to place this bloke on the political spectrum)”
I’ve been around since early to mid 2007. Think a little bit before you hit the “post” button.
Swing Lowe
Discount rates are based on estimates of long term real interest rates. In the past I have seen rates varying from 4% to 12.5% used. Testing a range of rates of 6%, 8% and 10% used to be common. The higher the rate used, the greater the bias to short term benefits.
Yo ho ho,
Thanks mate
…… you took my comment how it was intended, I just wanted information 
…. Cheers 
WOOSH. Right over the head.
I think it’s fair to call this blog “Labor-friendly”.
The fact that the Oz has already labelled us as this should not detract from its appropriateness.
Re the earlier discussion: I’m sure economic historians have been wondering how to approach the “Hitler question” ever since the GFC broke. Because it is an undeniable fact that Germany, having experienced the deepest plunge into depression of any European country as a result of Bruning’s deflationary policies, made the most rapid recovery of any European country to full employment under Hitler’s regime. Germany had full employment by 1937, while Britain and the US still had unemployment rates over 10%. This was because Hitler provided a massive keynesian stimulus, first through “make work” programs like building the autobahns, then and more importantly through his crash re-armament program, coupled with the reintroduction of conscription. The fact that he did these things out of evil motives makes no difference to that fact. Keynesian stimulus works – whether the stimulus is building school halls or building the Luftwaffe makes no difference. As Keynes himself said, paying men to dig holes then fill them in again would have the same effect. Pointing out this fact does not make one an apologist for Hitler, any more than pointing out that there was no unemployment at all in the USSR in the 1930s, because everyone was working for the state one way or another (even those in labour camps) makes one an apologist for Stalin.
In this sense we can say that the NBN is the autobahn of the 21st century.
Ah, yes – I can see the government using this slogan in its next advertising campaign…
Like Yo Ho Ho I plead guilty to having a political view slightly to the right of Labor, even though I regard my small-L liberal views as a centrist position. No doubt thats a hanging offence to the extreme right. So I support Labor over Liberal most of the time, although like severl others here I am quite prepared to criticise Labor where I disagree (eg the too weak ETS).
Bloody republicans.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-05/are-republicans-blackmailing-obama
And that’s why the coalition is doomed to opposition and why Labor has spent more time federally in power than the coalition since it adopted centrist economic policies. Middle of the road wins.
Adam
Didn’t Hitler also stop married women from working to become baby-factories for the Party and therefore remove them from the figures of the unemployed?
I agree with GG @ 95. They will dump Turnbull appoint Hockey to reduce the loses. They will lose 10+ seats regardless though. Cossie will go to treasurer. Next term half way through Hockey will step down become deputy and let Cossie take the rains- they will do it ithout a spill thus gaining credibility as a united party- we all love each other etc. Bishop will get a front bench but lose the deputy. Turnbull will get a front bench but then ow out of politics.
Unsurprisingly, industry loves this move.
What they’re doing is very clever. With FTTN you were pretty much going to hijack the existing network and leave every telco’s existing infrastructure stranded. This way you’re building a completely new network, letting anyone get on board whilst at the same time leaving the existing one untouched.
SL,
Carly Simon singing “Node body does it Better” could be the theme song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZBCcY0nJao
Just to add to the comments last night about the most marginal seats for both sides (yes, I realise this is somewhat pointless pre-redistribution, but just for the info).
Liberal Seats:
McEwen, Bowman 50.0%
Swan 50.1% *(the WA redistribution has made this a notionally Labor seat at 50.6%)
Herbert 50.2% LaTrobe 50.5% Macarthur 50.7% Sturt 50.9% Cowper 51.2% Stirling 51.3% Paterson 51.5% Cowan, Hinkler 51.7% Hughes 52.2%
ALP Seats:
Robertson (Belinda Neal) 50.1 Flynn, Solomon 50.2 Corangamite 50.9
Bass 51.0 Hasluck 51.3 Deakin, Bennelong 51.4 Petrie 52.1 Page 52.4
Diogenes, yes. But the female labour force participation was fairly low anyway, so I don’t think that made a huge difference. And yes, before anyone else says so, he also drove about half a million Jews, socialists etc out of their jobs. But they were mainly business and professional people so that in a country of 80 million people it didn’t make much difference to the core problem – unemployed male, blue-collar workers. What solved that problem was drafting them all into either the army or the munitions factories. In 1933 Germany had no submaries, no tanks and no modern aircraft. Six years later they had enough of all three to launch a world war and nearly win it. These feats of production required massive conscription of labour. All those workers and soldiers were paid, and they spent their incomes on the things they had gone without during the depression – food, clothing, household goods. This in turn stimulated agriculture and domestic consumer production, so that by 1939 there was too much money chasing too few goods. In 1938 Germany had the highest standard of living of any major European country. After that it began to decline again, because consumer production was choked off and rationing introduced to devote all resources to armaments.
most of those wil go ALP Dave, Robertson back to coalitio, ALP to hold others
of those 10 I think at least half (if not 7-8) will go to the Liberals
of those 13 seats , I think Labor will only pick up 3
Centaur009,
If the swing to the ALP is big enough, Labor will hold Robertson. While Neal isn’t the greatest MP, Robertson is a much more naturally Labor area than (say) Dawson, where Bidgood could be under a much greater threat, particularly if Barnaby Joyce decides he wants to move to the Lower House.
Centaur and Gus,
I think the NSW redistribution will have a big impact on Macarthur and Hughes particularly, as this area of South-West Sydney is (I think) most likely to get ripped up and re-drawn.
Gosh, I only joined Twitter yesterday and already Barack Obama is offering me a free iPod! Doesn’t he know I supported Hillary?
DaveM,
Actually, the most under-quota seat in NSW is Lowe. So it’s the most likely to get ripped up or shifted.
Of course, this will almost certainly flow through to Macarthur and Hughes. One would expect Hughes to get more Labor-friendly (there are Labor areas to the North, West and South of it), while Macarthur is likely to get more Liberal-friendly (if it expands to the South or West).
Right you are, SL.
A few years on, it appears the same regions will be the interesting ones: Western Sydney, the Central Coast, the Gold Coast/Brisbane corridor.
Euphemistically “howards battlers”
NB: A very fickle bunch who can turn on a 5c piece
Surely they would consider a new candidate in Robertson? Putting the scandals aside, what hs Neal actually done in Canberra? A cleanskin candidate would at east signal to the electorate that Labor didn’t take them for granted. I think there is a job entitlement mentality in the Labor machine that has to be quashed, whether you are in the NSW Right faction or not. Taxpayers don’t owe you a job for life. If you chose a political career you take the risk if you fail to behave appropriately. Mike Kaiser was another case in point.
Hi Adam,
Re: #175
Where did Hitler get the money to finance the Keynsian project of putting the masses to armament manufacture? Did he borrow it, print it, or was it in reserve from the 1920s boom?
This is a very interesting moe in the US by Obama – taking on the efence industry establishment!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/07/2536802.htm
Good luck to him. It is time someone admitted that the biggest cause of global arms races is the United States. Their navy is particularly excessive – they have kept building new nuclear powered aircraft carriers even since the cold war ended. Who on earth will they fight? They must have more than the rest of the world combined.
Disendorsing Neal will be a lot harder than it would be for other candidate (for obvious reasons). There would have to be a major factional deal to pull it off (such as ensuring that the seat lost in NSW was held by the NSW Left).
Soc
whilst both 184 and 186 were revealing perhaps what you left out has made it more appealing
Like the fact that her husband is a major powerbroker in the NSW right?
Yes, it won’t be easy at all to disendorse her.
Adam 175
I’m no expert on this topic but I thought the Nazis fist got the German economy going agina by public works spending and then switched more to armaments later. In fact, I recall reading that Hitlerr actualy started the war too early, and Speer was gearing the economy up for full war production around 1941/42.
Either way, Schacht borrowed a lot to finance it, and paid back the Versailles debt with now devalued script. They put in price controls to stop inflation (so much for free markets always being the solution!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany
Typing was never my forte Gus
Socrates, a combination of borrowing, compulsory savings and cutting off imports. Hitler neither knew nor cared much about finance, he just told Hjalmar Schacht to pay for it somehow in the short term, because once he had conquered Europe all economic problems could be solved. That’s why he had to go to war when he did, because Germany’s financial position was unsustainable, which was why Schacht resigned as President of the Reichbank in 1939. That of course is why the exact path followed by Hitler (or Stalin for that matter) is not really the point – no-one is suggesting copying either of their methods. The point is that keynesian stimulus works, no matter who applies it or what they apply it to, or how they finance it.
In no way am I being critical, just having fun at the “hidden meanings”
ps I luv the [efence industry] – sorta like the effluent that cause offence
Adam 192
Agreed. The policy position is very obvious – be a Keynesian when times are bad, then be a fiscal conservative and pay it back with surpluses when times are good. You’d think the Liberals would get it after 75 years.
Thanks Gus; I wasn’t trying to be funny but I see why I amused you
http://business.smh.com.au/business/broadband-facts-20090407-9vae.html
This is HUGE, politically, technically and business-wise. More later. Adios Telstra, adios Amigos. Adios last mile copper. Adios Malcolm.
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/australiamapindex.shtml
I have made new constituency maps for all the states and territories
Swing Lowe
I have never understood why Dawson is supposed to be such bad territorty for Labor. I know state levels are not the best indication of intentions but Labor has never lost Mackay i believe. They still hold Witsunday in their 5th term. Bunerkins margin for the LNP isn’t that big. Bidgood may a little weird but is that enough?
Finns
Malcolm will spin it that now Rudd can get his orders that much faster from his masters in China.
This is a pretty damning assessment of the US subprime mess, and confirms my own suspicions:
http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.com/2009/04/william-black-talks-to-bill-moyers.html
After the budget and Hockey’s attack of everything, he will replace Turnbull, having tried to gain some momentum
Scotty J,
There has been a lot more Labor pedigree in Robertson than Dawson. Many of the towns in Robertson are now effectively the outer suburbs of Sydney and are thus Labor-friendly.
Dawson has only been held by Labor previously between 1966 to 1975. It’s been a safe Nationals seat since then and has only previously become marginal when One Nation posed a threat (in 1998).
As has been demonstrated countless times previously, state boundaries have limited meaning when it comes to Federal results. Federal Labor has historically struggled in the rural areas in Dawson, as well as in the provincial towns like Proserpine and Ayr. In 2007, it was these provincial towns that delivered Dawson to Labor (because of Rudd, not Bidgood).
Normally, I would be confident about Labor holding this seat given the current political climate – unfortunately, Bidgood has proved himself to be a nut. If Barnaby runs against him, he is gone for sure. If not, we’ll see…
arrr, but is a free Ipod enough to turn ya.
Seems there is at least one visionary who largely predicted/argued for the Government’s broadband decision today. Hat tip from me to Joshua Gans.
http://www.blogotariat.com/item/the-telecommunications-revolution
Fair enough. Should be interesting.
This might give some pointers to what sentences the firebugs in Victoria could expect. Seems pretty fair.
Kevin Rudd (Lu Kewen) – the Manchurian candidate. Barack Hussein Obama – the Meccarian Candidate. They do deserve each other.
Looking through today’s clippings it seems that Rudd had them all totally foxed on the NBN. All the so-called experts expected Acacia to get the contract, although someone called Sachin Gupta at Nomura mentioned the possibility of Rudd doing it himself. It’s not often that a government manages to keep a major announcement a total secret.
Maybe the doyens of the press gallery were too busy breaking all those nationally significant stories about hostesses and Madame Liu. Trivial pursuits can take up a lot of thinking time.
It wasn’t that top secret Adam – I heard about it yesterday:
http://twitter.com/Pollytics/status/1461061279
I am surprised though that the MSM didnt pick up the same.
Poss, where were the News Services when you need them. We are the News Service.
Got it in one. They were too busy trying to make the news rather than report it.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/02/gingrich-warns-of-third-party-in-2012/
Ahhhhhhh, parallels.
Well done then Possum. Wir sind die Nachrichten!
And with 100megabits (but lets be realistic here, by the time it’s rolled out it probably be gigabit) – the media, ALL MEDIA will change forever.
We’re talking IP-TV with full interactivity.
This means, for instance, that for the 2013 election we’ll be streaming video live from the blog covering every electorate in the campaign, following every local announcement in real time with an army of readers/viewers sending in quality video from their phones as it happens.
Media will never be the same again.
Arghh my Twitter page is suddenly full of possums!
Everything feels dirty the first time.
You probably feel guilty because for a decade we have never had cause to cheer a leader, unless you like war. Doing something positive that doesn’t involve wedging some poor segement of the population or dog whistle to anything, that is new. Have to keep looking over our shoulders to see if it is a trap.
With Howard it was always, ‘what’s the catch’.
Hi William -
Bit of an understatement to say “Hendy Cowan didn’t have any luck in 2001″ – he got 2.35%. In 2004 they actually dropped below 1%, before staging a very modest recovery in 2007 to 1.44%. Not very promising.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25302659-5005962,00.html
lol
Possum @ 215,
Perhaps in format yes. But in style or m.o, they will still be the same, following the dead end trails created by the bones that the right wing toss to them
It won’t be the same, aggregation not content is going to be the name of the game.
The whole of The Day of the Triffids (1962) is on YouTube
That’s 0.47% more than Steve Fielding got, and he had a lot of luck.
That ” editorial” from the oo is just extraordinary.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25299994-25209,00.html
They are really saying ” Rudd – we and our mates don’t like you. We do not accept the voters decision and we give formal notice that our campaign against you will be ramped up until we change voters opinion of you.”
There now, they finally have picked themselves up off the ground where for the last 18 months they have be rolling in the mud having a good old tantrum because the libs lost an election.
The so called newspaper of record has FINALLY had the balls to put in black and white the anti labor/ rudd campaign that has been running since well before the election.
They have today openly threatened to continue their plan to destroy our democratically elected government.
Now the Nats are trying to take the credit ….
Positive reaction from Optus regarding broadband decision:
http://business.smh.com.au/business/optus-hails-visionary-plan-20090407-9vcd.html
dave @224,
Rudd is an even worse problem than the blogotariat calling “bulldust” on many of the MSM views and attitudes. Rudd has shown he does not need either their guidance or their help to survive and thrive.
Looks like the MSM is in the “angry” stage of their journey through grief and obsolesence.
In fairness The Oz did have this story yesterday:
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25295324-15306,00.html
From Dave’s Oz Editorial link:
But more likely is that voters will consider the media coverage and think that it’s coming from a bunch of knobs.
You have to search hard in this article, but Telstra is praising it too.
“Telstra today described the initiative as “innovative” and a “world leading broadband infrastructure”.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25302690-661,00.html
Dave, I dislike The Australian as much as anyone, but that editorial doesn’t say any such thing. It’s just more carping about Rudd being not as nice a guy as the ignorant punters seem to assume. It doesn’t even hint at all the other dire things you impute to it.
SNIP: See Article 2 of comment moderation guidelines. And please try to be a little less hysterical – The Management.
Some thoughts on today’s $43 billion announcement by Rudd:
1. I congratulate the PM for deciding to spend money on serious, long-term infrastructure. If only he hadn’t wasted $50 billion on handouts.
2. The decision to build a FTTH network is good news for all involved. None of Telstra’s assets will be confiscated, Telstra will be able to compete properly at an infrastructure level and smaller ISPs will be able to leverage their existing ADSL investments for some years to come until the new government network comes online.
Oh dear, Malcolm. Oh dear.
Well said GP
…apart from the handout bit
Adam – your “reading” is far more generous than mine.
We both know what they are saying.
How right you are Poss. When we heard the newspoll results last night we had a belly laugh.
A week’s worth of hounding Rudd and for what ….. an increase in the polls.
Shows how stupid the MSM are and how sensible we in voterland are.
I think we all know what Rudd is – we heard it before the election. He has a temper and because most of us have short fuses at times we understand and give him a bit of space.
But we don’t think he is a liar and that’s the difference. We all knew Howard was one.
They are saying they don’t like Rudd. Well I think we already knew that. They’re not threatening to stage a coup.
And we don’t have to read or buy it Adam. And most of us don’t anymore.
I enjoy and thank others here telling me what silly things the OO is on about.
Altho I admit I have downloaded Robert Manne’s article today – what a refreshing change to read something like that in the OO
Doncha just lurrvv Mr Turnbull’s comment re Rudd today “he has become intoxicated with his own magnificence”. Poor Malcolm – the bloke just hasn’t and will never get it.
No 236
Think about it Dario – if it was totally necessary to send the budget into that much debt, I’d want something to show for it like new hospitals, schools, broadband – something.
Dave,
I can only speculate on the mindset of the MSM. However, unlike Adam, I believe there is a co ordinated “kill” mentality about Rudd.
Robert Manne’s observation this morning that 44 of 45 articles appearing in the Oz regarding Rudd’s summer essay as being antithetical to Rudd is as stark an example of that publications unrelenting and ludicrous agenda as anything.
The fact that it is having no effect in voterland must be as humiliating as it is galling to these broken mirrors of public opinion.
That’s what you’re getting, duh.
They are saying they intend to continue to put the boot in an attempt to change voters views (and therefore votes). They have tried virtually everything so far including attacks on his wife.
“Coup” is used by you.
GP,
You’ve already lost that argument. 3% of GDP is not an unsustainable debt imposition and there are many billions of the stimpac package being spent on infrastructure throughout the community.
And the fact they “Own” newspoll is twisting the knife even further
SNIP: Cut out the Hitler talk, Dave, for your own sake – The Management.
GP
Well I agree on Telstra and the NBN. I understand Telstra’s share price has already gone up. Once people realise that this will take years to build and Telstra still has a monopoly in teh mean time, plus that the govt has rejected any of their competitors building a monopoly, they are still well placed to be one of the main operators of the new network in the future. The key thing for government will be to make sure that they do not wind up the only operator.
I also agree on the investment vs handouts bit. Perhaps the first $20 billion is enough now. The $50Billion is not a handout – schools are not a wasted investment!
Still, Howard spent $40 billion on tax cuts, handouts and pork getting himself relected twice, without any major investment in transport, energy or communications. All we got for it was – him again. So I think Labor spending $20 billion getting the economy moving is defensible.
You idiot. $12b of the $42b was handouts. The rest was infrastructure spending.
No 248
Socrates, the great thing is that we could conceivably have two fibre networks at the end of all this. Because Telstra will not be impeded by forced separation etc, it could upgrade its copper network to fibre in order to compete with the government network. This is really very good news.
Money for schools (this is only the biggest spend on schools in Australian history)
http://www.deewr.gov.au/Ministers/Gillard/Media/Releases/Pages/Article_090406_105626.aspx
Money for hospitals
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/ministers/publishing.nsf/Content/mr-yr09-nr-nr006.htm?OpenDocument&yr=2009&mth=1
http://www.deewr.gov.au/Ministers/Gillard/Media/Releases/Pages/Article_090401_110524.aspx
Money for broadband
http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2009/022
You’re a hard man to please GP. How much more do you want? Does Malcolm know you’re in favour of all this reckless spending?
[..please try to be a little less hysterical ..] Ahh where was your advice when The Age was writing its various articles about Ms Liu and also Chinalco.
Super duper broadband will create a massive challenge to Murdoch tree based and on line newspapers.Competition will be enormous, especially without all the costs associated with a tree based newspaper.
On weekends I source most of my news and opinion and bloggs on my mobile.
Soc -
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/NBN-pd20090407-QV3QB?OpenDocument&src=sph
Telstra has seen off the immediate threat of the NBN. It now confronts what would appear a larger threat, with fibre-to-the-premises completely displacing its legacy copper, including the ‘last mile’ connections to the home. It faces fresh threats of even more intrusive and disruptive regulation.
For Telstra, the more things appear to change, the more they stay the same.
I should have snipped articles from The Age?
No 248
Howard was right to cut taxes, but I do not agree with the handouts.
GP wrote :
“the great thing is that we could conceivably have two fibre networks at the end of all this. Because Telstra will not be impeded by forced separation etc, it could upgrade its copper network to fibre in order to compete with the government network. This is really very good news.”
Try this
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Regulator-sees-the-light-pd20090407-QV494?OpenDocument&src=sph
Regulatory reform proposals put forward today by Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy could see Telstra forced to clearly separate its wholesale and retail businesses and possibly divest its HFC cable network.
The forced sale of Telstra’s cable network could be problematic for pay TV operator Foxtel, which is half owned by Telstra. Foxtel may be forced to renegotiate its access to the HFC cable or rely on satellite delivery of its service. In the longer term it may seek to deliver its service via the government’s fibre network.
BH went:
When Turnbull says things like that, the only effect it has on the public is to make them wonder when Malcolm is going to look in the mirror – if they pay any attention at all.
He needs to ditch his Churchillian oratory delusions and focus on just being relevant.
No 251
Unlike some of my colleagues, I actually support large-scale infrastructure spending. Indeed, it is the only situation where I don’t oppose going into sustainable debt.
You are God (or a demigod even) aren’t you.
Actually WB can you tell/do you know who bars PB
ie are you notified that your site is “unsuitable” by business Gvt ISP etc
Cheers
GP, it’s a pity you cannot admit you are wrong that there is not $50b on handouts. Your ill-informed comments in attempts to paint the government in certain shades is nothing short of obscene.
Ah GP, you’re a secret keynesian after all. You remind me of an excellent P J O’Rourke joke which I will try to find.
RBA decision soon
#250
I’d call two fibre networks horribly inefficient, like having two parallel highways or railways when only one is needed. Remember Optus and Foxtel having to roll out their own cables when one would do the job for both?
cut .25%
A closet keynesian? Why I never…
ABC pushing Malcolm’s barrow allready
And another .25 next month should just about end the rate cut cycle.
A fav PJ O’Rourke of mine is -
The Republicans are a party who believe that Government doesn’t work and get themselves elected to prove it.
And this one related to earlier re oo
In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.
Generic Person
Think of the hand out to pensioners etc as a one of boost to the pensioners income etc, done for exactly the same reason that same was done by Costello, it’s not a recurrent expenditure that the government is forced to pay if economic conditions made it inadvisable. Think of the $900 as a tax refund and get over, rest assured the average voter has.
You views on NBN are sane, I bet you that is not the Liberal party position. Turnbull has already came out with response I predicted …. a repeat of the snowy.
Don’t see why you’re criticising the ABC.
The lead story is “Rudd redraws broadband landscape”:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/07/2536726.htm
A young man from a deeply religious and strongly Democratic family was hitch-hiking.
The first vehicle to stop was an old man in a van. He yelled out the window, “Need a lift?”
“Yes, I sure do,” the young man replied.
“You a Democrat or Republican,?” asked the old man.
“Democrat,” the young man replied.
“Well, you can damn well walk,” yelled the old man as he sped off.
Another guy stopped, rolled down the window, and asked the same question.
Again, the young man gave the same answer, “Democrat.” The driver gave him the finger and drove off.
The next car to stop was a red convertible driven by a beautiful blonde woman.
She smiled seductively and asked if the young man was a Democrat or Republican.
“Republican!” he shouted on a sudden impulse.
“Hop in!” replied the blonde.
Driving down the road, the young man couldn’t help but stare at this gorgeous woman. Sinful thoughts crossed his mind.
Finally, he begged, “Please stop the car and let me out.”
“What’s the matter?” the woman asked.
“I’ve only been a Republican for five minutes, and already I’m going to Hell!”
Alcatel-Lucent and Nextgen approve of broadband plan:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/04/07/1238869954919.html
also on cars -
There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.
That wasn’t quite the point of the story, Dave
Gusface 259
Many individual offices in small and large companies and government departments and other organisations like Universities are worried about their Internet usage costs or their staff being distracted. So management often just gets a list of sites that get visited and cause most cost or where most time is spent. Then access might be blocked if those sites are not deemed necessary for work. This can be done locally in the local computing network.
Eg a small business might block Facebook, or even Google Earth if it thought that too much non-work related traffic is directed there. The offices do not need to notify the owner of the site. I am not surprised if Crikey gets on to such lists with certain employers or in certain offices.
Another excellent article by Alister Drysdale
Rudd plugs into the electorate
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Rudd-plugs-into-the-electorate-pd20090407-QV3JA?OpenDocument&src=sph
……It is a debate that will force Malcolm Turnbull into further argument about the role of government in times of economic crisis. So far, it’s an argument that he’s losing badly.
An excessive amount of hyperbole is about to fly. The language from the politicians will become extreme. Expect to hear the words “Whitlamesque” and “socialism” spluttering from the mouths of Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott and Turnbull.
The commentary too will be endless – filling pages of our national newspapers. It will be read by the aficionados and the tragics. But how will ordinary Australians react?
……..This plan is genuine nation building. It’s a plan that impacts on every Australian household. It will benefit every household and business – large and small.
Yes, there will be worry and argument about cost. But if Rudd can show that his public-private business model has a realistic ‘get-out’ then have no doubt that he is on a political winner.
In times of economic crisis citizens expect their elected governments to actually do something – and not simply rely on markets and wait for the sun to shine.
Australians support Rudd’s stimulus package, just as they reject Malcolm Turnbull’s opposition to it. They will see this project – compared with the iconic Snowy River scheme – as something positive from government.
yeah …I know but sometimes thing go on a trangent.
Roll with the flow – loosen ya tie and unpop that top button
Swing Lowe 271
That positive or at least vaguely objective story disappeared quickly from the ABC front page http://www.abc.net.au/news/ as soon as some negative comments could be found. Now we have got a headline about it being “Costly”.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25302949-5006301,00.html
In my day Dave it was an MG TD – and I still want one.
Poss – exactly what my old bloke said about Turnbull’s comments plus ‘the arrogant lawyer should stop playing to the non-listening jury”.
Ta Dr Good
I was aware of the info.
What I was referring to was whether PB/crikey Pings and combines rejected email to determine where it’s reach is, and who blocks it.
In light of the “filter” issue and the broader Q of free speech, I was interested as to whether PB/Crikey take a Pro-active stance regarding its readership
P.J. O’Rourke:
Later:
No 261
Governments should build infrastructure. That is a pragmatic realisation. They should not piss money away via handouts.
GP,
You and the Libs should pool your $900 to build a bridge and get over yourselves.
No 285
I apologise for caring about the senseless indebtedness of the nation.
I’m afraid I can offer no insight on the apparent blocking of this site at wherever it’s happening.
GP
I doubt many people are interested in much the libs have to say on anything these days.
And your party keep digging itself a deeper hole.
GP – grow up please. Many of us were grateful to get our Christmas handout – it made a big difference to a lot of oldies. We were pleased to get Howard’s handouts previously.
The only difference is that the handouts we got from Howard we knew were to buy our vote. And it didn’t work with us.
The handout we got from Rudd meant we could spend a bit extra and save someone’s job in our local shops. And that is exactly what we 2 oldies did here.
So do the Libs support the pensioner handout or not? Their support for it seems to be very much fluid… much like their attitude toward any Rudd government initiatives really.
The Liberals just don’t know what they stand for anymore. This will condemn them to opposition for another 13 years.
Nick Minchin says the government’s broadband plan has “descended into high farce.”
Gusface
I think you need an insider if you want to know whether viewing access to a web page is blocked to computers inside any particular office/organisation/company/country. I don’t think that you can tell from outside.
Nick Minchin is a high farce
Saw minchin on sky … didn’t look happy at all. Thought he said something about taking his bat & ball and going home
Interest rates at historic lows… damn the Rudd government
New Sky Nooz poll:
Kevin Rudd has just found a cure for cancer, solved world poverty and was single handledly responsible for global nuclear disarmament – do you approve or disapprove of his actions?
55% Disapprove
40% Approve
5% No Opinion
Well, not really – but it may as well be. I wonder how much money they make on their village idiot polls?
P J O’Rourke was farcically high.
284 Generic Person – So GP, would you encourage all Liberal followers to give their $900 back to the government?
No 298
I would encourage them to donate it to charity, like me.
No 289
BH, if growing up means supporting reckless handouts, then I’m sorry, I prefer to remain a “young’un” on that.
Possum,
Typical Rudd. Grandstanding and getting people to look away from the real issue that he hasn’t sorted, the Middle East.
I’ll bet he’s not really a nerd and only using it as a prop to pollute the minds of our children with his socialist ideals.
I’d be worried if the Sky Noos polls were in favour of Rudd’s actions. It would mean his Newspoll figures were about to head south. The more negative Sky Noos are the higher his polling from the more reliable sources.
Mal Turnbull should soon qualify as a charity GP – he’s certainly becoming pitiable enough.
Handouts = bad.
Tax cuts for the rich = good.
I wonder if you suggested that everyone who got a tax cut under Howard donate it to charity.
Taking aim at Telstra
Robert Gottliebsen
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Taking-aim-at-Telstra-pd20090407-QV7BL?OpenDocument&src=sph
…. I believe this is very dangerous news for Telstra shareholders because it will result in the structural separation of a very large chunk of the Australian telecommunications system without compensating Telstra shareholders – something that Telstra have warned us about.
I have had access to some of those in government involved in the decision making process and discovered that there has been some incredible outside-the-square thinking in the lead up to this decision. Senator Conroy’s intense desire to leave his mark is obvious.
…….The value of Telstra’s enormous copper wire network will be slashed and effective structural separation between infrastructure and retail will occur because the fibre cable will replace the copper wires for most uses – or at least that’s how the government sees it. It is planned to issue Australian Infrastructure Bonds which will give superannuation funds above bank deposit returns with limited risk.
Just how it will all turn out remains to be seen but this is dangerous territory for Telstra. The decisions made by Telstra over the next six months will be among the most important the company has ever made.
No 304
Oz, tax cuts for all, not just the rich. Also, the rich share the highest burden of taxation in the country, so I hardly see it as unfair to cut taxes on the people who create jobs and drive investment.
299 – But GP, all that will do is shift the necessary spending to somewhere else. That won’t overcome the problem of our deficit.
No 303
Mr Turnbull is terminal in my eyes.
No 307
The law says you are entitled to it.
the libs plus the nats are terminal in mine.
One thing Rudd did that was a bit inconsistent was the way his Stimpac gave “handouts” which excluded the wealthy, but his school Stimulus money was given to all schools, the poorest to the most wealthy. I’m not sure how that was worked out. It’s not a major point but it looked a bit funny to me.
So the law forces you to take it?
That makes no sense at all. If you disapprove of of the $900 payment, you should *give it back to the government.* Giving it to a charity is just another way of spending it, since the charity will either give it to a person to spend or will use it to buy goods and services.
GP – there are handouts and HANDOUTS. The latter being that much of the money handed out by the former Government was just idle spending.
If these handouts now mean that young families can pay off some debt and lose a little stress that will be good for them and their children.
Remember that we oldies have paid off a lot of Govt. debt in past years and it didn’t hurt us too much.
Better to make sure that families, etc. are protected now when times are bad – my kids and grandkids will survive in paying the money back.
The Libs argument re grandkids suffering is a trifle silly in the face of what many of them will suffer in the coming months.
Generic Person
Please explain:::::
The Liberal party wants a tax reductions. A tax reduction has a permanent negative effect on government income, without a reduction in government expenditure a increasingly negative effect on government dept.
The $900 is paid to taxpayers, it is effectively a one off repayment of tax, it will will have a one off effect on the budget but no effect on future budgets.
Please explain why the Liberal parties reckless policy is better.
311 – Come off it Dio, you’re not that polically naive. Has there been any complaints about the rich not receiving handouts? No. Why? Because they have the money to cope. Would there be a massive campaign against the government if rich kids were to miss out? Would the old “politics of envy” be resurrected? Remember what happened with Latham’s hit list? Do you remember listening to talkback radio and having every caller knocking Labor for daring to restrict educational funding to needy schools?
For some reason if you involve kids in the “not for the rich” argument you’ll lose everytime.
No 315
fredn, the $900 handouts will have effect on future budgets by virtue of the interest payments required to finance the enormous debt.
The wealthy were less likely to spend the handouts, and there was no way to force individuals to spend any of it as the targeting was so broad. On the other hand, the school funding had to be specifically applied for by each school, with a detailed proposal of what it would be spent on. Therefore it didn’t really matter whether the school was wealthy or not… the money had to be spent in order to get it. Makes sense to me.
311
The fact a;ll schools get money is based on:
a) politically shafting the Liberals
b) for speed. Any extra application and test procedure would mean more bureaucratic and a slower process of dolling out the cash and geeting work underway.
Of course it would be just as fast to say ‘just state schools’ (which I would strongly agree with) but it would give the Libs a leg to stand on ie ‘what about the poorer independent schools, religious schools etc etc.’ That would of also raised the ire of Mr Fielding me thinks.
No 316
It is good that Labor has discarded its insolent hit-list policy. Gillard has done well by ignoring the piffle of the unions in this regard.
GP, of the 42 bill how much is going on handouts?
If you look at the share market the biggest volume of trade is in Telstra shares and by a big margin, and the price has gone up. People are selling and people are buying.
Hahahahahahahahaha
GB
The education union was complaining bitterly that $200,000 was going to rich schools which already had great facilities.
And that’s not the point. I was saying it looks like a double standard which Rudd has allowed for political expediency, which you seem to agree with. I was wondering if there was a non-political reason for the disparity because I haven’t seen one.
What Labor is doing is far preferable to what the Liberals want to do, ie make working life intolerably unfair for our kids/grandkids.
GP, you neglect the fact that the whole point of the stimulus is to keep the economy moving along, and nothing is better for the budget bottom line than a healthy economy because tax receipts are so much higher than when it’s in a deep recession.
Anyway, how do you call the $12 billion in handouts an “enormous” debt? What fraction of GDP is that?
Dio went:
We’ve got to remember that the school expenditure itself isnt the actual point of the spending, it’s merely a vector for money to be shoveled from Treasury into the community.
Because schools are everywhere, and because most of the work that will be done will be sourced relatively locally, the funding ends up in the pockets of the local community – so bringing in private schools works better than just using public schools.
The end result will have something to show for it more than employment created and an increase in aggregate demand – but the school improvements themselves weren’t really the point of the exercise, just a beneficial side effect.
GP do you think Turnbull will lead the Party into the 2010 elections?
The purpose of the schools funding is to stimulate employment through construction, not to achieve social equity in education. Building a library at Geelong Grammar will achieve that purpose just as well as building one at Geelong High, even if they already have three.
Generic person
All borrowings have to have interest payed on them. It doesn’t matter if they occurred because of a one of tax refund or because of continual budget shortfalls which will be a continual problem if the Liberals reckless policy of cutting tax was followed.
Actually Dio, 318 Dario, makes some very good points and he’s right.
Rudd isn’t the problem Dio when it comes to the education spending. It’s the community. They expect their kids to receive a fair portion of the pie, rich or poor. The old “I pay my taxes” argument and it is super effective. I don’t think we can blame a politician for not wanting to commit political suicide.
CBA has only cut home loan rates by 0.1%
No 328
Not if he continues his current strategy. He is simply not cutting through, he has no policies worth mentioning, and he has no principles.
This would make sense if all schools were getting the same, but I have an issue where some public schools are getting $50,000 and some private schools which boast of 8 soccer fields, 14 indoor pools and 93 golf courses get $200,000.
GP you should go into standup comedy.
Just keep taking your medication
No 331
At the end of the day, if the Government changed education funding into a voucher model, none of this pernicious class-warfare would be occurring. Let the funding follow the child, not the other way around.
How can I get rid of this Obama person who keeps offering me free iPods?
No 335
Dave, what is so funny?
And nothing is better than making sure we are all under as little stress as possible.
If Kev & Co. can make it a bit easier for many then our health system will have less stress on it, families can hold together better and when things turn around we can feel proud that we got through.
Debt can always be paid off when the economy turns.
And Lindsay Tanner is already working on that – show how forward thinking this Govt. is. It is working for the long term as well as the short.
No 337
Free ipods funded by the taxpayer I imagine?
Oz, The schools are generally getting what they applied for in terms of what they can deliver. I would be surprised if all of the money for the schools ends up being spent.
Generic person
I am curious, the other night on Q and A it was suggested by Rachel Fry that she was going to have to pay back several thousand dollars because of the $900 dollar tax refund. How did she arrive at the figure?
Sorry that is the quote of the day from GG and I just wanted to repeat it.
Dave, GP is being quite reasonable today so let’s show him that lefties can play nice too. If he gets no reward for good behaviour he will just revert to being nasty.
#340. I doubt Obama is paying for them himself. Maybe the iPod company is giving them to him as a promo.
Adam, click on “following” from your twitter page, then click “remove” on the right hand side next to Obamanews.
Adam you and the other lefties merely give us positive reinforcement when we trash our own side, not when we trash yours….
ahhh..nasty is never far away with the libs.
We can agree on that.
Very disappointed with The Day of the Triffids. They’ve changed the story completely, and the triffids are very unconvincing. Obviously it’s time someone made a new movie of it.
There’s just nothing worse than unconvincing triffids!
Oh Glen you’re too clever for me…
Dave 305
When I first read the NBN news I thought it would eb good for Telstra or at lesat neutral. However it depends on the access conditions. If this repalces/competes with Telstras home connections then it is good for the homes but bad for Telstra. However I disagree about your suggestion of compensation for loss of a monopoly!!! Monopolies are bad and should be eliminated, to ensure that copetitive service providers don’t extract monopoly rents beyond what is justified by their investment.
Second, I disagree with the statement about the value of Telstras existing copper wire network. It only has value because it is a monopoly without a competitor. As a piece of infrastrucure, it is pretty obsolete. Telstra has not invested much in building a broadband network in recent years, so if it is vulnerable in that respect it only has iteself to blame. Fibre optic cable is now cheaper than copper wire, yet has far greater capacity. Telstra should have been replacing it for years.
Can anyone advise me on what the Liberal Broadband Policy is? I know the National Party agree with the ALP because they say their policy has been pinched.
Possum, what do I do when someone is already using my name? I want to be me, not some silly code name.
Glen your side has to trash itself bigtime and soon if its ever going to get back in power.
The way back it not further to the right. Its back more in the mold our your avatar.
The alternative is to wait for voters to get sick of rudd, gillard, etc etc. The china boom will be back in play down the track and labor will have the money to stay in power.
The Liberal broadband policy Ru?
Broadband only to wealthy suburbs.
So you can claim it back on tax?
What does the panel think of the view (just forcefully put to me by a caller who seemed to know what he was talking about) that we don’t need a physical broadband network at all, because wireless technology will soon render it obselete?
Soc 352
They are Robert Gottliebsens views. See posted link for full article. I clipped it a bit.
I cannot see how todays annoucement is positive for TLS. The only thing the market expected worse I think. Today was just traders. Will look to see how it goes in comes months – that is the real measure
GP 336
While I agree with you on NBN, I disagree on school voucher education. It assumes that education is a commodity you buy like a book in a shop. It isn’t. It is a system that requires skilled resources, needs to be maintained, and hopefully produces well educated school leavers. Vouchers will not produce that outcome; vouches will just punish those teaching the toughest cases. Who will want to teach the worse students and drop their rankings in a voucher system? Yet these are the students that most need attention in education; they may struggle without a decent education and then be a lifelong economic burden to society. The better students will succeed regardless. You need to fund a school system of uniform quality and enough capacity.
All OECD studies show that the Finnish school system is no1 for outcomes. Read how they do it – vouchers don’t even rate a mention.
Adam, Twitter naming rights are first in best dressed, so the only thing you can really do is come up with a name that you like. Some marsupial squatter pinched Possum, and some Hollywood famewhore pinched my actual name – so you just make do with what’s available.
Sorry Dave; in that case Gottleibson has some funny views on what entitles compensation.
Adam
Wireless still needs a physical network.
Adam, wireless is fine for a bit of web surfing now and into the future (as long as everyone else around you isnt using it at the same time – congestion kills it) – but for serious bandwidth usage it’s not in the game.
And if you live in an area with strong easterly winds it will cause havoc with the signal
Ask and ye shall recieve …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/02_february/11/triffids.shtml
‘The Day Of The Triffids attracts all-star cast to BBC One :
Currently in production for transmission later this year, this exciting, fast-paced drama is based on John Wyndham’s best-selling post-apocalyptic novel, The Day Of The Triffids, published in 1951.’
Soc he has funny views on many things.
Have been tempted to tell him but have let it roll.
I subscribe to the Eureka Report and last week another person wrote in giving him a dressing down on his IR articles which were heavily slanted towards businesses and anti gillard.
I am now TheAdamCarr, just to make it clear that any other Adam Carrs are imposters.
But isn’t there some law that the speed and efficiency of everything doubles every 18 months, so that by the time a trillion km of fibre optic cable has been laid, it will have been made obselete by super-fast wireless, or by something we haven’t even thought of yet?
So we wait to do something about updating our broadband network only when we’re sure the technology has reached the end of development do we? Hell we’ll be waiting a looooong time.
Poss – Spike wrote a book on: “Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall”. One day soon, i will get my chance to write my book on: “The old media or Rupert: My Part in their Downfall
Amigo Vera, prices in the IT/Comms industry do not go up, they only go down. As sure as night follows day.
Adam
That’s Moore’s Law but it only applies to computing power, not network speed. Although I did wonder about wireless like your caller.
I use ADSL2+. Will the new broadband be faster than that?
Adam
Unless someone can figure out how to exceed the speed of light fibre optics is the bees knees.
Funny, Adam, but for some unknown reason, I never seem to have issues with people usurping my name …
Well known telecommunications expert Paul Budde has also endorsed the plan.
http://newmatilda.com/2009/04/07/australia-lead-world-something-good
OK I am reassured. It’s all good. Let’s hear from some of those people who’ve been telling us for months what an idiot Conroy is. He seems to have got this right.
100mbps (as proposed by the government) is already obsolete. But fibre cables aren’t. With fibre, you can reach virtually any speed. The roadblocks are the infrastructure at either end of the cable, which can be upgraded at any point in time, continually. Getting the fibre in the ground is important.
The theoretical maximum of ADSL2+ is 24mbps. The government reckons their network will give 100mbps. The same technology being implemented buy the government is being used in other countries to give 1gps.
Yep, and it is not dependant on the quality of the copper and the distance from the exchange like ADSL does, ie the closer to the exchange the fast the speed, and you get NO ADSL if you are 3.5Km form the exchange either, and also if you are on a Pair-Gains or other line sharing arrangement you arfe also stuffed.
I should know as for many years I couldn’t get ADSL due to both pair gains, then being too far from the main Midland Exchange which was solved with ISDN (which is on longer available for home use), but for the last 2 yearfs I now have ADSL 2 because they have connected us to a sub-exchange which is within the limits.
Possum I sent you a message but it hasn’t shown up on your message board thingy…
Adam
Wireless broadband can not support enough simultaneous nearby users to cope with the needs of our suburbs. See eg
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/90683,21mbps-next-g-network-no-substitute-for-an-nbn-telstra.aspx
So Truss hates the idea because the country people will have to wait too long to receive it while Joyce says he can’t disagree with it because it’s their plan. What a rabble.
They’ll complain how useless it will be if they can’t download their porn
Braindead RW comment from a regular on ABC news blogs:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/07/2537297.htm
I don’t believe for a second Conroy came up with this. It’s a complete slap to the face of his policy and his process. He goes for a competitive process for 12mbps FTTN, virtually everyone (industry and analysts) say it’s a joke and the end result is something completely different.
Paul Budde is hilarious. Every week he’s been making new “predictions” about what was going to happen. None of them were right.
ADSL2 is offering only up to 8MB, if you are lucky. The NBN is offering 100MB. Is NBN faster?
ADSL2+ tops out at about 24 megabits /sec, and decreases with increasing distance from a telephone exchange (I only get about 3.5megabits at home with an ADSL2+ service for example)
The new network will be 100mbits for the optic fibre bit, and 12 for rural users connected to the wireless part
Now I have found parts of the 1981 BBC-TV Day of the Triffids – much better than the 1962 movie.
Poss, is this real or an impostor?
I’m sure they’ll come to a new position before too long. They’ll try to present unity to the people of Australia but end up looking lost yet again. The coalition are hopeless.
Nick Minchin – “I doubt there’ll be the demand for 100megabits”
Good grief.
The Libs are 5 down in fading light. I would be using a nightwatchman until the morning session and Mal’s is a good a nightwatchman they have. The Libs have a long tail.
Ok, Conroy is a bad boy, he’s a mug, he’s ……… (fill in the blank). Now that that is out of the way let’s talk about the plan. Does it really matter whether Conroy was rolled or not? Seriously!
Spectrum for wireless transmission is a limited resource, the reason why the spectrum used for analog TV transmission will be reclaimed, the reason why the government can charge so much for it’s allocation.
The big cost of fibre optics is the laying of the fibre. Fibre has two things going for it.
1) It does last.
2) The amount of data you can push down it is limited by the stuff you put on the ends, improved technology doesn’t make the fibre obsolete.
If you get into a debate just ask the other person, why has Telstra been replacing microwave links with fibre as fast as they can.
Wireless will never beat the speed of light – fibre optic light
Why are these people laughing? They better enjoy it while they can. Telstra is the biggest loser out of the Govt’s NBN strategy.
Oh that would be me.
Lets see on the one hand he wants to lock down the internet, on the other he wants to make it impossible because nothing is going to be able to filter traffic at 100mbits a second. Seriously deranged I’d say. But what the heck.
If the new Rudd broadband is 4x faster or up to 20x faster than the existing ADSL2, I’m sold. It’s worth the expense. Big Tick for Conroy and Rudd, although I suspect Conroy doesn’t deserve it.
Adam, the message you sent was a direct message. I got it – but it’s not public, hence it can’t be seen by others.
GB is right; irrespective of Conroy the NBN is a good plan. Also its not pie in the sky; this stuff is industry standard.
I know some engineers in Adelaide who have been involved in roll out of a fibre network betwen all the uni campuses called Sabre-Net. It has ample capacity and was cheaper than replacing some existing wires. In fact it got cheaper as they went along – in the end they could have done other govt organisations needs as well but they didn’t take up the offer. Now they are adding defence into the network. See
http://www.sabrenet.edu.au/
If the NBN is done properly, with overall standards defined and competitive bidding for delivery of each chunk (not so large that medium sized bidders are excluded) then it might even cost less than they forecast.
Does the panel agree with this point? That building a faster broadband network makes filtering technically more difficult, or even impossible?
So how I post a message on your public message board?
That’s me Finns
Diog, I am also on ADSL2 on the 1.5MB plan. I reckon I am wasting at least 1 hr a day waiting for the downloads or the web pages etc to appear. If this is cut to 1min, imagine the saving to the nation if the same applied to all.
Someone should do a time & motion study on this.
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2009/4370/
TP i hope you do not include Tuckey in the tail.
Poss, Will do.
Click “home”, type something into the box and press “update”. The world can now see your wisdom in 140 characters or less.
Herr Doctor, what is your user name on Twit? too many Adam Carrs
Finnigans
The volume of Telstra trading is enormous, obviously very differing views.
My view is it will be good for Telstra. The range of services they will be able to offer will increase, they will not have to support their current long haul systems over the long term if access to the new network is cheaper. Web pages, phone calls, video conferencing the fibre won’t care.
But in the end we are all just guessing, it really is a big change.
I just don’t see filtering as the big difficulty that it is continually made out to be. Sorry, but that’s just me.
rates won’t go down any more that was it. Steady as she goes for the rest of the year
The 100mbs blows a huge hole in the “slows the internet” crud.
But people need to forget the internet per se. This is a high speed data, voice, video, audio, telephony network.
Minchin and Turbull have yet to realise the danger they are in. When the Libs try to win an election in 10 years time people will pause them on TV while they take a video call from their mum.
Finns-
Bit rich to call them imposters if that’s their name.
Wireless will never beat the speed of light
No but it will travel at the same speed. light and wireless only differ in the frequency of the photon if your into the particle model, or the wave if that rocks your boat.
Just something interesting – how twitter is discussing the NBN in real time
http://twitterfall.com/?trend=nbn
240volt fingers running off 9 volt thoughts. The best example of failed crowdsourcing of knowledge I ever came across when I was trying to watch it earlier today.
The proposed filter just seems to be based on checking the addresses of pages against a blacklist (which is regularly updated). Thus, doing this check should make a tiny fixed delay every time a user requests a new page to be downloaded. This is regardless of the bandwidth of the delivery pipe to the user.
Having bigger pipes is going to allow pages with much more material on them or linked from them (eg videos, audio, voip, etc) to be downloaded more quickly and that will happen after the address of the page has been checked. So that will be much improved and will be unaffected by any filtering of page addresses.
Thus the filter is largely a separate issue.
I agree, and any such filter would be easily scalable
Yes fredn 413, as long as it is not a hot northerly wind whereupon it will slow to 1.2 mbit/s
#408 – It will good for Telstra if only they do an IBM. IBM used to make a lot of money selling the mainframes, but the arrival of PCs changed all that. IBM is now making more money as a service provider. Telstra also needs to be a service provider, a good one at that. Overnight, its copper network has been greatly de-valued.
I don’t believe the second part (or at least the quantum of seats) but the ALP’s increased support seems at least possible.
Is there a point in a poll conducted over 6 months?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25303231-5017996,00.html
Cricket anyone?
The ACT poll is insane, Greens 26%, Liberals 26.5%.
No way The Greens would get 8-10 in a half senate election, possibly 6-7. 8-10 is more likely the case in a DD.
Its like this, the internet is based on IP, the packet has a header and content. To move traffic around the net you have to decode the header and send it to where it is going. There are multiple option and no fixed path. It’s hard but you can build dedicated hardware to do that quickly.
You generate lots of traffic because a lot of different people put traffic into the system ( more than is taken out, a lot of packets die undelivered) and a lot of people are consuming the stuff.
A filter requires you to look deeper. Now you know the packet is for a web page because the port number is in the header ( port 80), you could hand port 80 stuff off to a computer and route the rest as fast as possible ( port 80 is only about 10% of the traffic and with broadband that will decrease). Port 80 traffic gets slowed, and in the scheme of things, no big deal, it won’t screw up you phne call.
Stopping child porn, big deal, I’m sure they will move to video; stop using port 80. But anyway that aside, we now come to virtual private networks.
First thing you going to do when you get pissed of with the government filter is organize a VPN connection overseas, $10 a month, if your a kid you probable know where to get one free. No fixed port, data in the packet is encrypted, address isn’t on the secret black list.
They have no hope. All they do is lose contact with the traffic, while on port 80 they could at least find out where it started an where it ended.
The thing you have to remember is the internet was designed by the DOD for war time use. They tried to make it robust. The designers did a pretty good job, the great filter will be treated as network damage and treated accordingly. The great filter hasn’t even got unlimited time to look at the packets, the system is robust enough to route around sections that aren’t performing well.
The whole thing will be about as useful as fridge magnets to fight terrorism, and what do we get; a secret black list theat blocks unknown information flow between average users.
And I come back to my original point, if the great filter actually had any chance of working the list wouldn’t have to be secret, now would it.
The Howard Govt. made a dogs breakfast of telecommunications. Costello saw it as a way to pay off “debt”. (how selling an asset constitutes paying off debt I am buggered).
They stuffed up by not separating the Telstra retail and wholesale arms. They stuffed up all ’round.
Now we have a Govt. that is doing what the previous Govt. could not or would not. An open access network where anyone with a good idea can access it.
Minchin and Turnbull are duffers.
And does anyone seriously believe that wasn’t going to be the case anyway.
The ACT is insane. The Greens demanded a fair bit in going with Labor especially in terms of governance. The Liberals are a hopeless rabble.
I wonder what’s going to happen in terms of the entire political establishment in this country (or at least in the ACT) if The Greens become the second biggest party in the ACT in a few years. I don’t live there and I’m somewhat biased, but from what I read/hear they’ve demonstrated themselves to be pretty coherent – implementing reforms to make government more transparent, negotiating gross feed-in tariffs and boosting public transport.
Hurry up and make the Libs irrelevant once and for all.
The response by Minchin is regrettable. I can see his point, but the fact remains that this new announcement is infinitely better than the NBN RFP process which threatened to confiscate Telstra’s assets and essentially destroy the company altogether.
Now, the Government is doing a FTTH PPP – a good thing – and it is resisting temptation to go down a path replete with endless litigation.
Actually, if the filter is smart it would filter by IP first, and no blocked web pages reside on the IP a particular packet is bound for (which would be most of them) then it doesn’t need to look deeper.
Besides, as I said before, a filter can be scaled. It isn’t just one 486 hooked up to a whopping great fibre connection for each ISP.
Oz the Greens are a joke they are simply a bunch of environmental extremists rolled into a riddle, wraped in socialism.
The ALP has the job of preventing the Greens from ever reaching the House of Representatives in any numbers, lest left wing extremists hold our Parliament to ransom like they regularly do in the Canadian House of Commons (re: NDP).
GP
The response by Minchin is incoherent.
Morgan have published one of their silly-ass Senate polls.
If Hitler had to go to war to steal money to pay for his Keynesian stimulus which did not work out very well in the end, what is Rudd going to do to pay off his Keynesian stimulus?
Glen, I can name around a dozen good policies The Greens have had a role in implementing this past year. I can’t name one by the Libs.
As Robert Manne said today, adjectives are not a substitute for argument. Try again.
I see Thomas Paine broke that news about two hours ago …
So polls conducted over 6 months are, in fact, a complete waste of time?
Oz you are a left wing sympathiser so i dont doubt that you could come up with things you like about the Greens but they are a bunch of extremists as bad as Family First.
See #434.
=)
I seem to recall both against WorkChoices. Who are the extremists exactly?
Glen
I think you’ll find that in their attempt to be more relevant, the Greens have become far less extreme and have become more pragmatic (to a fault if you ask me). Kind’ve like the Nats when they changed their name from the Country party.
Oz
I too look forward to the day when Labor is the centre-right party, the Greens are the centre-left party and they are flanked by the irrelevant Libs on the Right and the Australian Sex Party on the Left.
The Australian Govt’s decision today to build a national broadband network to the homes is:
Crikey –
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090407-Nationalising-the-national-broadband-network.html
Going, going, and will be gone – the Print and free to air TV media.
Oz, Senate polls are a complete waste of time. Parties’ vote share at Senate elections is only ever a point or two different from the House, so if you want to know how well the parties will do, just look at normal polling. In fact, it will give you a better idea for the Senate than it will for the House as it assumes parties are fielding candidates in every seat, which is generally true for the Senate but not for the House. Besides which, respondents to polling questions on the Senate are a lot more likely to give different answers to the question they’ve just been asked about the House than voters are at polling booths. And yes, polls that were partly conducted half a year ago aren’t much use either (although things have been so stable lately that now might be an exception).
Arrr, very true, if that is the way you want to go just take the address out of the routing tables.
1) Conroy assured us on Q and A that when a site goes on the blacklist it is only the offending page.That required port 80 traffic to be analized.
2) We are now talking broadband, IP6 is coming, your phone calls will be using the same IP address as your HTTP server, have your HTTP server hacked and put on the secret black list will result in your phone not working. That is going to work well now isn’t it.
GP 428
Agreed. There were much better ways to attack this. The panel decision was a major backflip from Conroy’s tender plan. Minchin could have criticised Conroy for a misconceived tendering process; time and money wasted by tenderers, dithering, we could have made a decision and been doing this six months ago etc. Instead he attacks the decision itself just as we have finally gotten a sensible one.
It would be nice but won’t happen. None of it.
The only big revenue source left for print media is the classified adds, especially houses and jobs in capital cities. As that migrates more to the net then print is really busted. The Oz and co must know it. This gives them a couple of years to reorganise themselves at most.
Vera, Brett Kirk got off at the tribunal with only a reprimand. Good for you
Ruddband anyone?
Is this a first?
Incidentally Xanthippe has already started downloading episodes of our favourite shows from the Itunes store rather than watch on FTA TV. THis made me think – the producers of content are likely to be OK in this revolution, its those who rely on a particular monopoly to distribute them who are at risk. Who owns Foxtel now? I wonder how their shares went today?
One guess?
Telstra’s shares were up in Australia today, but down in NZ. Elizabeth Knight from the SMH thinks the NZ’ers got it right and we were wrong. I agree with her.
Can’t believe a $43 billion infrastructure spend wasn’t even the top story on 7 news in Sydney.
Now I know why I stopped watching 7.
No 451
Elizabeth Night doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
*Elizabeth Knight, not Night.
Telstra hasn’t won anything out of this. They are no longer excluded, sure, but they’ve lost the only thing that they ever had going for them – a monopoly on the fixed line network.
Is it time already to remind everybody that Senate polls are rubbish, and that Senate polls taken 18 months before the election are rubbish with more rubbish on top?
Not to mention Rudd’s discussion paper canvasses the idea of separating Telstra.
Telstra’s net position will depend on the whole balance of their provider/distributor question. If they own the Foxtel content being distributed, and can adjust to the new environment, then they still stand to make similar revenue, but without the cost of maintaining the Pay TV network. However, if other competitors can undercut them on supplying mobile/NBN services then they will suffer big losses in the . Overall our phone bills are very high, so they must suffer some loss there. The question is if it will be exceeded by their reduction in maintenance costs.
So it seems to me there is potential in this for Telstra if they are nimble, but also a need for further restructuring. By that I don’t just mean job cuts, but change. They might grow in the long run, but they won’t have the same type of jobs. Someone should start talking to unions about retraining people.
AND
No it will be a whopping great something, and the whopping great something just got 10 times bigger, further the whopping great something’s only solution to encrypted traffic will be to drop it. Now that is going to be great for internet banking.
Juliem ta for the news on Kirk
GP 452 It wasn’t the main story on 9 either, but Laurie Oakes did a good job reporting on it when they did get round to mentioning it.
No 455
Oz, their monopoly rents have been on a long-term downward trend for quite some time. On the other hand, mobiles and wireless revenue has been skyrocketing.
And what percentage of their income does it represent?
No 458
The thing is, given that there is a $43 billion investment required, the network has little scope to undercut competing infrastructure services. That’s why the arguments that Telstra is dead are specious at best because they ignore the costs involved.
No 462
Sorry, I can’t find their mid-year profit outlook. I’ll take that on notice.
GP – it was the same on Nine (Adelaide) too – the NBN story was a headline, but it was fourth story. Interest rates were no.1.
There were a few interesting comments about the NBN on Hack, which had Conroy and a Crikey journo on it. I’m not saying I agree with the comments.
1. Eight years is too long to roll it out, Japan and South Korea already have 120Mbit broadband.
2. Conroy stuffed the tender process (kind of hard to argue with that one)
3. Seeing as Labor opposed selling Telstra, why are they creating another private-Government company, only to sell it off in 5 years?
4. There aren’t enough IT people in Oz to create another IT company. They should have used the personnel of an existing company.
5. You could buy back Telstra for that amount. (dunno who’d want it back)
A report that Sweden’s web traffic dropped by about a third when new anti-piracy laws were introduced:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Sweden-Law-Piracy,news-3737.html
GP I feel sorry for you on this one. The nine news coverage of NBN was fairly accurate and positive, but then Turnbull repeated the debt line, even though Laurie Oaks had just finished explaining how it wil be paid for and sold off after five years. Given that it will obviously be a valuable assett, it looked a bit of a silly thing to say. Why didn’t he attack the botched tender process instead? A Conroy free kick wasted (out of bounds on the full).
Conroy is a dud cant the ALP come up with somebody who’s up to the job?
I can’t imagine why pirates would want to hang out in Sweden anyway. Not many Spanish treasure ships in those waters.
BTW the Swedish Government is led by the conservative Moderate Party so it is no surprise they did what they did.
Still it wont stop file sharing.
The future of media is the “pull” or “on demand” model. The old “push” model that has allowed the rubbish media contents to be shoved down our throat is finished. We decide which contents come into our home, and the circumstances in which they come.
Conroy has come up with a plan to vastly improve Australia’s telecommunication infrastructure within 18 months of gaining government. 3 Liberal minister tried for more than half a dozen years and came up with… nothing.
Even Labor’s duds outshine the lazy lib’s dimwits.
If it wasn’t for 12 years of Howard, we would have built the NBN and moved on to teleportation by now.
Exactly Finns, if some smarty pants wants to produce a cutting edge program that people want to watch they do not need approval from the TV networks.
It happen with text, it will happen with HD video. The entrenched media are crapping themselves.
Sorry, I underestimated the Howard legacy. They sold off the people’s infrastructure as a commercial monopoly (foregoing its dividends to pay off debt) and then couldn’t stand up to the monster which they had created.
“Ruddnet Incorporated” that’s what ABC’s Jennett just called it
The moral of the NBN story:
Kevin Rudd’s brand has been enhanced as a nation builder.
Malcolm Turnbull’s brand has also been enhanced as a notion builder.
Ruddnet. Like it.
SBS says Fielding and Coalition have concerns and NBN could strike trouble in the Senate
Malcolm has a brand? If he has it would be on a par with Chemie Grünenthal.
Its Time,
It would be surprising if Glen could add anything to the debate beyond personal abuse of Labor politicians and their supporters.
Manne got it right this morning when he said,
“Beyond abuse, the post-Bush and post-Howard Right now has nothing much to say”.
Conroy has given Telstra a well deserved kick in the goolies which is worth a sainthood imho. Conroy has also managed to create an ideological split between the Nats and Libs.
The Libs have managed to deal themselves out of mainstream politics once again.
Adam, Teleportation will be illegal in WA soon.
I know you said you didn’t agree with these Diogenes, I’m just responding.
First point, Australia is not South Korea or Japan. Second point, it’s not the current government’s fault nothing has been done for more than a decade. You simply can’t roll out this much fibre very quickly.
Agree, and so does cabinet, apparently.
Good point. I don’t think it should be sold off, but I assume it’s too negate any arguments about debt. Also, selling it off won’t be a huge issue as it’s simply a wholesale organisation, no retail, unlike Telstra. Also, open access regulation has to be key. If the two above things in place exist it’s completely different to the Telstra sell-off and not really a big deal.
But if you built and own a revenue generating asset, a piece of key economic and social infrastructure I don’t understand why you’d sell it.
I’m sure 90% of the work will be outsourced to other contractors.
You could spend $40 billion and get a copper network + all of Telstra’s baggage (and $12 billion of debt) or you could spend $40 billion and get a brand new FTTH network.
Did they elaborate?
The Greens are onside, so no issues there.
But will the Coalition actually oppose it? The Nats say its their idea so they’re wedged and I know Malcolm’s been whining lately, but does he seriously want to say “We don’t want Australians to have decent internet access?”. Actually, I wouldn’t put it past him.
480,
they stand up to this, it will be the end of any hope they have of moving off the opposition benches in my lifetime (and I’m 48)
come on Glen, you can’t let a challenge like that go unanswered. Stick up for the Howard legacy in telecommunications. What exactly is that legacy?
Oh yes please, Mr Turnbull, pleeeease defeat our Ruddnet bill in the Senate, and please do it twice with three months in between. We *promise* we won’t spring a DD on you and smash you to smithereens if you do, cross our hearts and hope to die!
Surely any legislation on the super dooper speedy broadbeany stuff will pass the Senate with Green and National Party support?
I admit that I didn’t even imagine the actual outcome of this expression of interest process. But what we have as an outcome is a government-funded project which has been compared to the best that private enterprise is able to offer and assessed by a panel of experts to be the best outcome. That seems like a good outcome; hardly the characteristic of a stuff up.
And I’m sure that it would not have been a complete waste of time and money for the private enterprise participants. They have had the opportunity to demonstrate their expertise in a real proposal. Many will likely be looking to be involved in the government project as contractors, consultants etc.
The obvious tactics for Turnbull are to take his time and:
1. take a swipe at Conroy’s wasting of time to get here (claims the previous government did worse will wear off eventually)
2. agree in principle that nation building is an excellent idea and that it has the full in-principle support of the Opposition. Make sure that everyone in the Opposition sings the same fulsome praise. No negative noises please.
3. claim that the Government is pissing more money down the drain by attacking Telstra and lowering the value of the Future Fund, so carefully put together by the previous Government’s superior money-mangement
4. state that $43 billion is a fair bit of money so it needs a full senate enquiry before it can go ahead.
5. make sure that the enquiry finds some useful additons to the package
6. make sure the enquiry takes so long that this thing is hardly even started at the next election
7. claim at the election that even with a good idea the Government pisses away money and time and can’t get anything in place.
sorry to those who tire of the MSM bias posts, but surely our ABC outdoes itself again today. first the broadband story under the “massive broken promise” Lib talking point headline, now its even in their main stories???? I dont know why I bother even looking anymore. Even the OO is seeming more reasonable these days
Rudd on Kerry
Well at least the OO has it on its front page online, but “Broadband plan not viable: Turnbull”. What a surprise
1. He’ll try, but I doubt it’ll wash.
2. He won’t do it – has already declared it unviable – so he can’t backtrack now.
3. too complex – voters won’t care about “money-management of the future fund”
4. no doubt he;ll do that – and yeah he’ll get one.
5. good luck with that – anything added will be rinkydink – when yopu’ve got $43b anything else will be small potatoes.
6. he can’t do this.
7. see through.
Gee, Boerwar, do you think this strategy might add to the public’s impression of the Libs as obstructionist? There appear to be no immediate political downside to the proposal, no disgruntled interest group, only good news for Australians. It would be the perfect DD trigger to decimate the coalition. You might even see Barnaby cross the floor to pass such legislation.
Andrew @ 494
Why does the Coalition have this suicidal desire to shoot off the mouth before figuring out the ramifications, developing a strategy, agreeing tactics and agreeing a song sheet?
Hey guys, you don’t appear to be getting the first basic notion here. There are many, many tomorrows.
I would hate to be anything like a sensible coalition staffer and having to put up with the Opposition’s lurching harikiri policy/political processes…
It’s Time
It is perceptions that count. Whole-hearted public support with some eager assistance in the Senate to get this thing right – no problems. Any delays can then be rightfully ascribed to the Government.
Grog
Yeah, his talk first/think-it-through-about-later tactic on a $43billion investment has more or less instantly stuffed his options.
Grog
If the Opposition controls the senate with the cross benches, why can’t they stretch out the timing of an enquiry?
Listened to the ABC news on the way home. Ruddnet story was well in and minor with a short word from Tanner and Turnbull given his usual dissing time. Nothing new I guess. But like the man said, this is our biggest ever project and well as having mind boggling implications across the board. Guess the madam was away in a padded room screaming. That picture ‘The Scream’ must have looked like her on the eve of Howard’s loss.
Is Rudd’s name going to be immortalized in this new venture with Ruddnet?
The Libs are already casting aspersions on the concept. The Libs can be relied on to not provide any constructive criticisms in a Senate enquiry, only political grandstanding. Will they now cave in or do we have a stimulus package showdown? Can Fielding be relied on to commit political suicide and simultaneously sign a deal warrant for the coalition?
This Professor Paul Kerrin is making himself known. Each time I see him he’s opposing whatever the government is doing.
Those Bludgers in the NT, SA and WA make sure you watch the 7.30 Report. The PM is on and he is extremely impressive speaking about the NBN, interest rates and the RAAF dummy spit. This was his finest interview moment IMO.
493,
Grog, thanks for that
…. I’ll tune into that one 
…..
25,000 jobs each year peaking at 37,000 jobs. A major sound good feel good.
Super Duper major infrastructure project that most will say is the best thing to do and, will offer lots of goodies for users at the end. Gives Telstra a smack. Puts us equal with the best in the world. (the fibre optics backbone itself can go upto 1gb and more). Was basically an election promise. Sounds all good.
$43bn cost. So whats that to the electorate who have not the slightest feel for these sorts of numbers.
Sounds all good to most of the electorate I would imagine.
Turnbull will be shooting for a new low blocking this and playing with the budget.
Adam
Vasa matter that Sweden has no pirates, if the pirates do a reverse-Viking with a triple-Somalia, the Swedes will be ready.
Boerwar, just so this doesnt become a solo blog for you, I too cant believe how quickly the opposition have opposed this, and painted themselves into a corner. Why the rush to oppose for oppositions sake?? have they not been reading the polls??
Annoying thing is we will have two minnows, who are not the slightest bit expert thinking that they can block this in the Senate etc. Sort of like having a couple of blow-ins having the power to block the Snowy River scheme.
Steve K
In contrast Turnbull’s appearances have been disasterous for him.
Steve K, I agree, Rudd was very impressive indeed
Andrew, He didn’t show the slightest blush or gush when Kerry spoke about his standing in the polls. For the PM it’s all about doing the job in the knowledge that he and the government will cop a hit as the economy worsens but continuing to steer a course to recovery. People can call him an ego maniac or whatever but I think he’s a terrific public servant.
TP – If this gets blocked in the senate and/or the libs vote against it – its a perfect issue to take to the people.
Bring it on if need be.
Red Kerry put it to St Kevin tonight that the libs are saying on day 1 they will vote against it.
Steve – agree with you there. The bloke is obviously working his guts out for australia and I reckon the public have picked up on that.
Re Nick Minchin’s comment about 100gigathingies being too much for anyone, I’m reminded of Neil Brown, Communications Minister in the Fraser government, who told executives from Telecom that these “mobile phones” would never catch on, so no, they couldn’t have any frequencies to operate them with.
Boerwar, I stand to be corrected on this, but they don’t get a majority in the committee and I can’t see Xena or even Fielding holding up the process just for the sake of it.
Why has Turnbull come out and opposed it straight away??
Has he learned nothing???
There is absolutley no reason to oppose it today. Oppose it in the Senate committee when you can say “oh now that we’ve looked closer it all seems a bit dodgy”.
Now if they say that, it’ll just be the Libs opposing for the sake of opposing.
Seriously, who is advising these guys?
Didn’t some genius say that the world would never need more than 7 computers ?
minchin go stand in the corner for twenty years….
Adam,
Tom Watson the inventor of computers at IBM is alleged to have said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” in 1943.
Grog, its opposing for the sake of it- They didnt have time to digest it or discuss it a party level. They have learnt nothing. Turnbull is finished and they face a long haul in opposition
Another take on Malcolm’s troubles
…..
I continue to be amazed at HOW BAD Turnbull is as leader- THIS MAN was their great hope??
Grog @ 516
It would be nice if someone who knows the Senate Committee rules could let us know what tactical options are open to Turnbull…
Glen, Bree and doveif – GP is in a supporting role but is suffering for the opposition to building Infrastructure part
Smith and Fitzgibbon going to Washington ….
And a song for Malcom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy6cqFIljQo
That should read Malcolm
Frank,
Not the company I would want in the middle
….
Did you have any overseas family involved in the earthquake?
So do you still contend the ABC is biased???
Red Kerry almost always gives Rudd a free kick everytime he is on. But that is because Kerry voted for Rudd in 2007.
Fortunately not – we’re from the south in Calabria – hence the surname.
Rudd Labor’s extremely resilient popularity, Ruddnet and Budget machinations are going be a nightmare for the Coalition.
I can’t see that they can go much lower but the damage they do to themselves in the next few months could harden soft Labor voters.
Can they accelerate the replacement of people like Albrecht… and Co, pay out their contracts?
On the other hand we have seen Red Kerry very hard on Labor sometimes, almost like he had a bee in his bonnet.
Now I am just wondering how Kerry would go in a seat like Wentworth?
GG
There’s an even better one. In 1899, the first person to die in a car accident in the US was hit by a taxi. The driver was charged with manslaughter. He was found not guilty and the judge said “I hope that everyone learns a lesson from this and make sure this is the last car fatality to happen”.
As the polls indicate, those in voterland have a bit more sense than they are getting credit for. I wonder what the polls would show if the government had more positive coverage?? The only positive coverage Rudd seems to get is the poll numbers, and even this is often grudging and full of caveats
TP how can you honestly tell me that Kerry and Barry dont vote Labor?
I would imagine Kerry does. Barry I wouldn’t be too sure.
I was thinking of Kerry going up against Turnbull..lol
Who knows or cares who Kerry O’Brien votes for? Everyone has to vote for someone.
LOL but then who would do 730???
Do you think Bressenden votes Labor?
Yes, Glen, I reckon you’re right
….. his body language was pretty obvious during the counting of the returns 
…. I don’t recall, actually, that aside from those obviously identifiable as Liberal party members that anyone was visibly unhappy that night 
Good Stuff, Kev, on the 7.30 Report.
Challenging Kerry, who is I guess is still in the grip of ‘The Board’ or ‘The Mindset’.
Love the Gov for fine printing Telstra separation, infrastructure from retail. Thanks, JH, for not having done that in the first place. Strikes as me as buying back the farm, as they say.
The money? Does it matter? What the hell, we have to get there!
Teeth grinding exercise tonight, as I missed and failed to record the initial Spooks return, and sure, can look at it on the abc net, but in miniscule, and why should I, or zillions of us, have to buy zillions of things to make it look like TV as it streams?
Cheaper all round, the infrastructure.
Well he had dinners with Costello so you gotta say that taints him some!
I don’t want positive presentation of any party really, just honest straightforward stuff. I assume that is what we will get when the transformation of ABC management is complete.
Rudd’s media presence is getting much better. He is much more comfortable with himself now and more firm and certain in his language. Work experience. The real message for the Govt is to not care about the trivia and just do what they think they gotta do.
I do hope the Government are giving the Greens and X & F a pretty thorough briefing on all these things. Let them do their horse trading before the Senate sits.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25303670-601,00.html
A likely culprit for you not being able to be AdamCarr in twitter AiC
So Bressenden and Chris U votes Liberal yet Kerry and Tony Jones votes Labor oh and Cassidy.
Haddock in the Hammock ???
Insite is a much better format than Qand A, better questions.
Looks like shareholders aren’t going to get veto over executive pay. Pity.
Grog,
I heard Tony Jones the other day on Melbourne radio being interviewed re Q&A. He said that since that infamous dinner with Brissenden and Wright that Costello never talks to journos off the record. He’ll do small talk but nothing substantial.
Poor bugger has been traumatised by all the betrayal and breaking of confidences.
Glen, why don’t you admit that you can’t logically support your Libs on any of the issues of the day? Minchin is an anachronism, Turbull is a blustering oaf, Costello is a coward and Hockey is a clown and the whole party has only one policy: just say NO.
Take whatever comfort you can find in delusions of media bias against your Libs but beware that any unbiased reporting in the media will help to damn them to opposition for at least the next two elections.
These stories seem to spread like weeds. The version I heard was that there was a coroner’s inquest into the death of the first person to be killed by an auto in Britain. The coroner concluded his report with the words: “This must never be allowed to happen again.” Possibly both are true, but I suspect not.
Rudd was his usual specious self on the Kerry report tonight.
I will believe those first car fatality stories only if there were severed heads on the bonnet.
To be frank my side atm is down to toilet, so i dont give a stuff what happens really.
We’re not going to win in 2010 because if we were we’d have had policies out by now, they dont believe they can win so why should i care.
They are a rabble…makes me want to move back to Perth lol!
GP
In what way?
Glen
It must be very frustrating when a bit of applied common sense would make a huge difference…
I read the New York Times of 1909 or thereabouts and it had a report of, they said, the very first dog run over and killed by a car. And from memory it was the first trial run of an electric car from one city to the next. Don’t ask me to dig it up again. I was just interested to find that there were lots of expectations for electric cars at the time.
GP,
Your tears of impotence and quivering jaw of malice only show up your inadequacies. Suck it in comrade!
And the Party’s Campaign Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEYZjGg8mms
It should be noted that the English version of this song was a hit in Perth and a few other states by Marty Rhone back in 1966.
Boerwar…i’d just about settle for somekind of bloody ‘fight back’ document at least it shows we’ve got some ideas but we’ve got nothing.
That’s what happens when you appoint Kevin Andrews to report on all our policies for a review.
Even the Republicans after Nixon were more coherent.
What and try and get a secession movement going?
No 552
He was repeating his usual Rudd-isms. Talking a lot without actually saying anything. Also, he wasn’t especially confident about the broadband announcement – smells much like policy on the run.
Yeah, it is an interesting challenge. I think the public is operating on two parallel universes at the moment. The Government works in one and the public is happy with the Government. The Opposition would be far better off accepting that there are two separate universes and learn to operate well in its assigned universe. It just can’t seem to get past first base, which is accept that it is actually in Opposition, that the Government will have a run, that the Opposition needs to develop policies and to present as a reasonable alternative. It cannot seem to get any of these right.
No 560
The policy deficiency is especially egregious. There is simply no co-ordination on this point and I really wish Turnbull would get his act together. As he currently stands, he is terminal. No policy, no principles.
GP
I wouldn’t mind a list of ‘Rudd-isms’ if you have a ready reckoner of them with you.
I enjoyed your ‘the broadband announcement – smells like policy on the run. ‘Specious pot kettle specious?
Here’s a fascinating historical perspective/comparison for today’s Broadband announcement.
http://inside.org.au/kevin-rudds-partner/
No 562
Boer, don’t take my cynicism as being opposed to the policy. It does sound pretty good, indeed better than one could have hoped, but it suffers from a severe lack of detail and to me, the PM did not look like he was across all the facts.
GG, not you too. another Manchurian Candidate!!
‘To be frank my side atm is down to toilet.., so i dont give a stuff what happens really…
We’re not going to win in 2010′
Dear me, Glen, given up so soon? And don’t put your money in the loo, under the bed is best.
If this is policy on the run, we need more of it.
Pretty much universally approved by the industry – especially those that have been critics of the NBN process thsu far.
I think Bernard Keane got it right when he writes:
This isn’t policy on the run, it’s the ALP doing what it wanted to do in the first place.
Now obviously they can’t say that because the tenderers would be a tad shirty… but then again Optus is having an orgasm over the plan, so i don’t see much concern there.
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090407-Nationalising-the-national-broadband-network.html
Finns,
Yhe nearest I get is the Lunchsoonian Candidate when my tummy rumbles at noon.
Also it’s interesting to see the Libs react to the govt announcing that none of the bigs provided value for money.
No doubt they were going to use that argument against whoever the Govt supported and thus were left a tad wrong footed this morning.
So they criticise, but offer nothing up in it’s place – or do they think the govt should have selected a tenderer that did not offer value for money??
The best thing is their stock arguemnt that it should be left to the market doesn’t wash because… well where is my market generated fibre to the home??
Grog how are we exactly meant to pay for this if it is 42b?
“We” don’t have to pay all $42b of it.
No 567
The problem with the Keane article is that assumes that Telstra will just sit idly by and watch its customer base wither away. That is a laughable assumption. If there’s anything good that comes out of Sol’s leadership, it’s that Telstra is now much more nimble and willing to go out on the front foot on new technology. The NextG network being one example.
http://www.pm.gov.au/media/Release/2009/media_release_0903.cfm
Yes but how much have we got to pay.
I want Swan to tell us how much we have to pay and then tell us what our accounts are like.
Simple fact is we’ve run out of money because Rudd and Co have spent it all on gifts to the public!
No 570
Glen, the Government is contributing a direct cash sum of $4.7 billion and will then sell another 20 or so billion in bonds. The rest will come from private investment.
By charging users for using the infrastructure.
Wow GP so they’re going to sell another 20m worth of bonds to the Chinese Communist Party does anybody actually think that is a good idea?
Glen why do you persist with this inaccurate, disingenuous bullshit? Do you think you are going to fool anyone here?
Glen, the Chinese Communist Party holds close to $1T worth of USA bonds. They seem to think it’s a pretty good idea. So your miserable $20B, you shove it you know where.
572 I didn’t read it that way – and if the Govt moves to sepreate telstra what then?
Plus how can Telstra hold up the NBN? It doesn’t need their copper.
Here’s Simon Hackett of Internode from the whilrpool forum:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1177419&p=3
It’s Time…
We are going to have to borrow money for several years because Rudd has spent everything in the bank!
Rudd can only raise money now by selling bonds to China.
So when the recession comes this year what will Kev do…sell more bonds to China.
So when we actually get back on our feet the Chinese Communist Party will own a large stake in our nation like they do with the USA.
Oh c’mon Glen, you’re better than bringing out the Bolt line of bulldust. You must be feeling depressed.
This is how we pay for anything we want
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25286006-643,00.html
The world loves our bonds because they have such confidence in our economic management and because our debt levels are so low that we weill repay all this debt with ease out of future growth. This is why Turnbull’s spurious populist scaremongering about debt is falling so flat.
No 578
It is not inaccurate bullshit to point out that billions were spent on wasteful handouts. Fact.
The Aussie Infrastructure Bonds are crucial to the whole thing. Conroy said they would be very attractive and guarantee good returns at a time when returns were crap. He was sure they would be very popular. They didn’t have a plan B if the Bonds weren’t popular.
No 580
Who are you on whirlpool? I’m a frequent poster there too.
Adam i dont have any issue with selling bonds to businesses but i do have a problem when the only group buying our bonds are the Chinese Communist Party!
I’m no one on whirlpool. A friend sent me the link today.
As opposed to permanent tax cuts GP? Please spare us the Reaganomics, it didn’t work back in the ’80s and it certainly won’t work today.
really?? The ONLY one??
Glen sees the hyperbole river, and decides to jump right on in.
[ow GP so they’re going to sell another 20m worth of bonds to the Chinese Communist Party does anybody actually think that is a good idea?
I do.
Glen the Chinese would pay between $80 – $100 a share for BHP if they could.
To hell, let’s sell it to ‘em
Telstra went up today only because they are no longer excluded from the venture. Short term gain for long term pain for their shareholders. Trujillo knew when to cut’n'run.
Glen, China is only buying 15-20% of the bond issues – says The Australian, so it must be true – and the Communist Party as such isn’t buying any.
cue the ad campaign
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93q5_8olpPs
Meanwhile back at the ranch, South Africa is slip sliding away from the dignity and integrity of the saintly Nelson Mandela to the shifty, carpet begging, thuggy Jacob Zuma.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7987340.stm
GP, who are you? Please don’t say “atilla”. See if you can guess who I am.
No 595
Mr Mandela has a dark history of human rights abuse. So I would take your claims of “saintly” with a a big grain of salt.
I think investors are capped at 20% of the network.
#597, you just keep on taking your salt. it’s good for your blood pressure.
No 596
I’m not atilla. atilla is an egregiously aloof poster.
I think you’re probably Freycinet/ungulate/Mr Creosote.
My identity should be plainly obvious. Have a guess.
Just wait for South Africa to turn into Zimbabwe…
There is a reason why so many South Africans leave their country and come here.
Just looking at that old Aussie Bonds ad – 13.75% interest! Gee, I wouldn’t mind some of that now!
I wonder if the boast of “you can get your money back in a month” would fly now?
Their cricketers are doing alright though…
Glen it’s a one off tax refund, much more responsible than open ended tax cuts that place a continued strain on the budget.
I think you will find that most of the 20billion’s worth of bonds will be brought into super funds.
7 local news update reports that the Bega Valley Forum says Ruddnet will be great for local business
The stimulus to the retail sector is still working through the sector. Why is it wasteful to provide additional money to pensioners and other disadvantaged sectors of the community?
No 606
Because I believe people should be self-responsible, not reliant on governments to live. It’s at the heart of why I’m a Liberal and you’re Labor supporter.
GP -
This game is probably going to be difficult as I haven’t posted recently (in the last few weeks).
I have a feeling you used to be a poster called ~vaio.
But we’re still getting tax cuts…
But that was a while ago, you’ve changed your alias since then.
“Every Australian denounces government spending in general and demands it in the particular.” Robert Menzies
are we?…
Simplistic, self-serving twaddle.
No 608
Nup, wasn’t vaio.
Yes. From July the top tax rate will be cut from 40% to 38%.
In breaking news:
Details of the upcoming MC Hammer/Vanilla Ice tour have been leaked. Apparently Kevin Rudd will make a guest appearance. He will sing ‘You Can’t Touch This’ with MC Hammer.
No 613
Pot Kettle Black.
Then I have nfi.
As I quickly scrolled through some of the posts since I last posted, I noticed that some Bludgers wanted to know about short selling.
Short selling (buying short) is the opposite of buying long. When you buy long you;
a) borrow money, b) buy shares, c) sell shares, and d) repay the money. You reckon shares will go up, so you can make a profit.
When you buy short you;
a) borrow shares, b) sell shares, c) buy shares, and d) repay the shares. You reckon shares will go down, so you can make a profit.
The market can be manipulated with short selling with an excess of supply over demand.
Those are the 2008-2009 cuts. And 40% isn’t the top tax rate. My mistake.
That’s the plan as it stands. I believe there is a budget before then….
who’s kidnapped Glen and replaced him with a reality-facing conservative??? If only your party would take the sound advice, for your sake not ours
Irrelevant i know but found it:
It was a record 100 mile run by an electric car. The victim a fox terrier. RIP
1906
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9404E0DD1631E733A25750C1A9669D946797D6CF
dont worry about my 622, the replacement only lasted one post!!!
I still don’t understand how you can legally sell something you don’t own.
Andrew we tories have no reason to sugar coat the situation that has befallen our side of politics.
I think i can speak on behalf on GP as well that we are looking on with smiles at our fellow Tories in Canada (in Govt) and the UK (soon to be in Government), also we’ll have a lock on Germany by September.
But in Australia the chances are we’ll go backwards in 2010 because we have failed to do a proper review of our policies. The situation of the GFC has naturally boosted the support of the incumbent and so we’re stuffed.
Rudd will easily win 2010, we have have an outside chance in 2013 but 2016 more likely.
We need to focus on building back our support in the States and winning back State governments.
Given that the banks aren’t passing on the rate cuts (NAB 0%, CBA -0.1%), will the rate cut cause a stimulus to the economy?
This isn’t fact – it’s simply your opinion. I happen to think your are wrong. The ‘handouts’ are designed to super charge the economy through…
Stuff it – why bother. You know I’m right but you just won’t admit it. That’s my opinion.
exactly…
good on sky noos. their poll is “is the governments $42b internet plan money well spent?” 55% oppose. Of course, the government is aiming for 51% ownership so only half that money will be spent, but dont let the facts interfere with a sky poll. Even with the inaccurate and loaded question, 45% say yes
Adam your broker arranges it for you. Think of it as your broker buys the shares and then lends them to you. Obviously at some stage you must give them back, according to the terms of the agreed contract with your broker.
No 628
Steve K, the $900 payment can only be described as a handout. Simple as that.
Diogenes,
I wonder if the Reserve Bank cracked the “tom tits” and reversed the interest rate decrease, would the banks hold house mortgage interest rates at their current levels?
I posted this one last night:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a2iQkNT4996A&refer=japan
Oz
The Liberals irresponsible policy is to ask for more tax cuts, if your a “financial conservative” you would say “at least labor is limiting the damage to a one off refund”.
If you a economist you would say it’s a stimulus package. If your a hypocrite you would go around asking for more tax cuts while pointing out the one off will add to government spending.
I’m just fed up with the hypocrites.
It makes it easier for the banks to get funding which they then pass onto business.
But Glen now that youve seen the light as it were, can you proffer an explanation as to why your party is completely ignoring the need to review and renew?? Do they think the election result was a mistake? That a recession will deliver government back to them? That the public will wake up one day and hate Rudd?? I just dont get it.
When the public vote a party out they want to see that the party got the message. The libs have NOT gotten the message. Can you tell us why???
Generic Person
Sorry mate you only get it if you pay tax, it’s a tax refund, a one off tax refund that is much more responsible than the Liberal proposal.
GP, Call it what you will but it is still not wasteful. It is certainly much better value in a GFC compared to a baby bonus in the middle of a boom. I hope the BB gets trimmed or better still cut altogether in the budget.
yes fredn the problem with turnbull’s position (tax cuts not one off payments), apasrt from the fact that most economists and the IMF believe its not the best way to go, is that it is MORE EXPENSIVE in the long run because it is recurrent, so who’s the one causing more debt now
Centre, if you are happy for Dracula to arrange your blood donation then it is happy hour indeed.
I dont think they think it was a mistake.
The simplest explanation is that they have been so used to being in government they havent had to slog it out in opposition and make policy without the help of public servents.
The only thing a recession will do is weaken Rudds victory in 2010 nothing more nothing less.
Steve K
When it happened I would have agreed with you, the last think the economy needed at the time was more stimulus. But that dam thing seems to have worked.
Andrew that is my point.
The Liberal ’s are economically irresponsible. Rudd’s policy limits the damage to the budget to a one off payment.
Geez, that’s tantamount to universal approval for sky news viewers.
No 639
It certainly was wasteful. The billions spent on handouts could have been spent on something else, like public transport, water pipelines and other national infrastructure projects.
Basically, if we accept the notion that governments need to spend in a recession, let’s spend on infrastructure only and rebuild Australia. Governments have a place in infrastructure spending.
Either that, or they cut spending and cut taxes.
GP Howard was the king of handouts, at a time when the economy did not need the stimulus, purely to assist his re-election chances. But I guess they’re not wasteful handouts when the Libs do it
Glen, There’s a very real possibility that the recession will enhance Labor’s prospects at the election especially if the recovery is on the horizon. Kev will be seen to have steered us al through a tough time with minimal damage. Now that’s a depressing thought isn’t it?
That doesn’t answer the question of how I can legally sell shares which I don’t own. I will go and see what Wikipedia says.
But surely Glen the libs dont need public servants to make policy?? I think Howard stifled policy debate and dissension so now that he’s gone they are like lost children
Very true with some brokers Finns.
Adam your question is similar to asking, how come I can spend money I borrowed from a bank.
The bank wants a dollar back it really isn’t fussed which one, the lender of the stock wants a share back, it really doesn’t care which one. You friend wants the car he lent you back, another will not do.
Adam in Canberra, as far as I can make out, it’s a convention, a short cut , to enable selling of shares on the stock market. A gentlemens agreement!
Wikipedia doesn’t explain it either.
“For example, assume that shares in XYZ Company currently sell for $10 per share. A short seller would borrow 100 shares of XYZ Company, and then immediately sell those shares for a total of $1000. If the price of XYZ shares later falls to $8 per share, the short seller would then buy 100 shares back for $800, return the shares to their original owner and make a $200 profit (minus borrowing fees).”
That still doesn’t explain how I can sell the shares when I don’t own them.
My how the world has changed… Obama is creating a national discussion on ‘what are we, who are we’.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/06/obama-us-not-a-christian_n_183772.html
No 647
And yet, you say that, but then in the next breath accuse Howard of being a free-market fundamentalist.
Adam by your line of argument I can’t spend money I borrow from a bank because I don’t own it.
Glen, Your mob needs new blood and new policies. At least you’ll lose some dead wood at the next election (forced or voluntary) but the chances of replacing them with new talent isn’t looking good. I can see them running toward 2013 with the same old faces on the front bench and this will look pretty pathetic to the electorate.
The purpose of currency is to be spent. A bank lends money so that the customer can use to earn more money and pay back the loan plus interest. A share however is a piece of property. I cannot normally purport to sell you a piece of property which I do not own, even if the person I borrowed it from agrees.
Generic i totally agree, handouts are a waste of money. Infrastructure projects and the like creates jobs handouts just lets people pay of debts and increases the wealth of people in jobs.
The broadband plan has merit but it will take eight years and by the time it is finished i wonder if wireless would be better technology.
I also wonder what are priorities are, helping the environment and climate change so why can’t the government spend the money on solar panels for people instead or fast broadband. I also wonder about the price of broadband services when it is finished.
But in regards to stimulating the economy at least this project will create some jobs and some infrastructure rebuilding.
Herr Doktor, that was the problem. The so called “owner” of the shares think they are the owner. In fact, they are not, they have “surrendered” their ownership to Dracula and Dracula can do whatever he likes with the shares.
Steve K @ 658
With a lot of their faithful still wanting lazy Pete to lead the Coalition, don’t expect any new blood or new policies anytime soon. But hey, if they want a long stint in opposition, let them have it.
Oh Generic, old son, Howard was such a conniving, controlling, narcissistic SOB, that your party will take, oh, maybe a generation, till you recover. You still don’t realise what he’s done to you.
Adam, the shares act like a loan. Instead of lending money, you are lending shares.
yes, try Dracula.
Anyway, the whole process is clearly corrupt and immoral and ought to be banned.
Fredn @ 657, well said.
I wonder how Kevin and Wayne are going to get the banks to reduce interest rates?
Kevin on 7.30 report – i urge them to bring down rates,
how about a wet lettuce leave….
leave= leaf, errr….
No 663
No.
No, that analogy doesn’t work. A share is a piece of property, to which only one person or entity can have legal title at any one time. No-one can purport to sell a piece of property which they do not own.
No 660
Actually, I have already stated herewith that the government could spend $25 billion to install solar panels on every household.
Adam at 666. You are not too far wrong and is something the ASX is investigating at the moment. In fact they have released something on short selling, I’m yet to have a look at it.
Isn’t money, property?
That would be a far better policy, but their are Labor seats and Union members in the Hunter Valley, Latrobe Valley and in Queensland so it will never happen.
The current approach of emissions trading and burying coal is delying the inevitable from a cowardly government doing nothing in regards to the environment.
No, money is a medium of exchange.
Adam when you sell the dollar for useless consumer items you don’t own it, when you sell the share for perfectly good dollars that you could use to buy useless consumable items you don’t own it, but you have an obligation to return a dollar in one case, a share in the other. Look upon share lending as the same as dollar lending.
Broadband policy is not the same as Snowy project in that it is visionary. This is not visionary, visionary would be solar panels onto roofs because it is what is needed.
Question once filtering system is installed will the speeds that new broadband be worth it?
Well apparently shares can be a medium of exchange
Money is a medium of exchange
A store of value.
A financial instrument used to create or meet a financial obligation.
Adam a contract is entered into with your broker, it’s all legit.
If A owns 100 shares, and he lends them to B, and B “sells” them to C, who legally owns the shares?
If A still owns them, then C cannot have legally bought them. If C owns them, then A has not “lent” them, he has given them away.
That logic cannot be broken. So clearly in “short selling” either the “loan” or the “sale” is being inaccurately described.
Shares just like money can be used to create or meet a financial obligation.
Store of value…bit iffy at the moment.
marky , as a fellow traveller I thought you more than most that any policy that involves Gvt taking back the “social capital” is visionary.
As you well know i support a lot more Gvt enterprises
esp. SHOPS (that one was for you shows)
marky, why don’t we just see what happens with the whole renewables stuff? I’ve got a notion we might see some different policy directions emerging with the impetus of the Global Financial Fiasco to provide a mighty boot up the ….
When A lends the shares to B, B has a financial obligation to A. B can do whatever the contract says he can do with the shares, just as when you borrow the money for the house the contract says you can spend it on the house and you end up with a financial obligation to the bank.
C owns the shares, A has contract that says B will hand him back the same number of shares + interest and B has an obligation to give the same number back. How B gets them is his business.
A big call…
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/06/recovery-begins-unemployment-opinions-columnists-stocks-up.html
Steve Conroy on lateline, not answering questions and making a fool of himself. This guy is such a dill.
Government ownership is visionary and agree with this part of it, but we need to ask start asking ourselves what is important here, climate change or broadband. The world is warming very quickly, and we must understand that carbon continues to build in the atmosphere and the carbon already their will not if we suddenly get rid of all emissions tomorrow dissppear for some 80 years, but of course it will not so we continue to add to it making the situation more dire each day… Time to act is now not in ten years then it will be to late.
Fredn, thankyou. That means that A has not “lent” the shares to B, he has given them to B, with a contractual agreement that B will give A the same number of shares at some time in the future. Thus B acquires the legal right to sell them to C. What binds A to the shares is his contract with B, not a legal title to the shares. I understand now.
What has Conroy been doing for some 18 months as a minister? No business plan it seems and very little idea of what this broadband plan is… This guy is an idoit.
Kerist, that’s terrifying, fredn. About as terrifying as any discussion of Twitter, in my view. Whatever happened to speaking with someone on the phone, or even email? I think I’ve gotten lost in the techy stuff I’m not really interested in, yet again. Could join the Liberal Party? Would fit right in with Minchin.
And join a party whose inital Communications Minister thought that 14.4kbps was acceptable for Internet use ?
Adam
You have got it.
marky marky
A solid internet backbone will cut down jet travel, be happy.
Minchin i cannot stand as well, but he is right Conroy has been severly embarrassed and he should be dumped and put number six on the senate ticket. He is the Minister for stacking and that is it.
The problem is with the use of the word “lend”, which is clearly misleading. I have left a note at Wikipedia to this effect.
No 688
That’s my point – Conroy has been fooling around with the RFP for 12 months and then suddenly scraps it and pulls a government DIY out of his hat with no detail. Whilst I prefer the latter option, it doesn’t mean I approve of the fact that it has little detail, no costings, no business plan.
Didnt Alston want to appoint Marconi to review our communication requirements
Yep curbing jet travel will save the world…
If Conroy is an idiot then Minchin is a bigger idiot. He still thinks everything is evolved around the telephones.
Harry “Snapper” Organs
Are you saying I should join the Liberal party? They lost me with children overboard. Now I can’t see the Liberal party ever coming back to the center, I’m over it.
That’s enough advanced logic for one night.
Wij zijn het nieuws! Goede nacht.
Minchin has at least part of a brain and even if i do not like his politics and economic ratiionalist bulldust but at least he can put a sentence together and make some kind of sense when he argues, Conroy cannot do this and yet all his time in politics he yet has had no ideas and no gammit of doing anything constructive. Say it again dump him Rudd.
No 702
Conroy thinks yelling very loudly helps his argument. Of course, he’s mistaken.
Adam, I mentioned a contractual agreement is entered into at 631. Lent or borrowed is the more appropriate term as voting rights and dividend yields are usually excluded from the agreement.
Now back to politics. I thought Rudd was magnficent on the 7.30 Report in his defense of air-hostess-gate.
Tony Jones asked Conroy three times tonight about the nationalisation and socialisation of services and each time he ducked the question. Why can’t you just say that doing this is the only way we could get it built at this time of economic turbulence and lack of available funds in the marketplace simple answer but instead it woffled on and on and talked about something that had nothing to do with it.. He and Penny Wong people who do answer the questions…
He and Penny Wong never answer the questions, that is what i meant.
No 704
Rudd was hardly magnificent. He looked tired and annoyed and was mostly specious.
Rudd Labor being an example for the world. It is also an example of balanced reporting. Obviously not a murdoch paper.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/technology/internet/08broadband.html?hpw
No 706
Politicians rarely answer questions.
Stupid question, that Kerry asked. This is not issue, and i felt Rudd was peeved and so he should have been. Yep the big issues, God forbid he upset an air hostess.
C’mon GP, if the people wanted someone perfect, well Rudd is not that person. He is human like everyone else. Brilliant.
marky marky
You always look for the negatives.
There is climate change it will happen, the see will rise, things will change, cleaning up our act will create economic activity and make our cities nicer to live in so we should do it, but the climate will change and the seas will rise. Try and find the positives.
Just take a look at pre historic history, there has been greater changes than our little effort. The earth will eat it up, we may not be part of the future but that is the way it works, things come and go. Anyone who expects the planet to support 7 billion people in the long term is kidding themselves. Anyone who expect volcanoes to stop creating years with no summer are kidding themselves, they happen about every 10,000 years we are due for another.
Be happy.
709, Agree most Howard ministers never did, but also the media never repeat and make them answer the questions asked, only Kerry and sometimes Tony Jones do and John Faine here in Melbourne.
Wong and Conroy and that creep Ferguson always find ways to evade answering questions, and they are the worst in the Rudd team.
Like Joel Fitzgibbon he always answers them and tends to ensure that interviews end very quickly.
Kerry O’Brien made an ass of himself earlier tonight, I thought he might have had more journalistic integrity than the rest of the media. The question to Rudd about the VIP plane incident was plain embarassing! As today’s poll indicated, the vast majority of the public don’t care, no matter how much News Ltd and the ABC try to make a mountain out of a molehill!
C’mon marky, they talked about interest rates and broadband. The question at the end gave the PM a chance to clear the dirt from the MSM, and he did.
Btw, if only Latham could handle the media like Rudd aayy.
No 715
I quite enjoyed Latham’s abrasive style – made for a good laugh when he called opponents “roosters” and “suckholes” on national TV.
To the defence of Minchin he confused Telephone company with Telecommunications company. It is understandable as they both start with Tele.
Next thing we know the Govt will start a Telegraph, Television and Teleport company and they all need telephones so Minchin will be there to help out with his technical telexpertise.
This is not journalism Centre, give me a break… Concentrate on the issues not little tittle tattle. What next.
Great to hear that Laure Oakes is sniffing around for someone stupid issue like the Kernot and Evans story.. Centre who really cares about this issue it was not worth spending time on it.
Latham was no Murdoch do as i say man, the rest crawl to him.
marky it was given 30 secs at the end of the interview.
Btw GP, Latham with his faults made more of an impact than Nelson or Turnbull. Maybe you blokes should recruit him. He could do some damage to Labor, even though he would blow up your party in the process LOL.
The Liberals learn nothing from opinion polls, they are sticking to this “we’ll block every bit of government legislation” line. In my experience, negative, carping oppositions stay in the wilderness for quite a while.
I must have missed this. What’s the story here?
It would be great if that Aussie invented fibre optics switch can be used in the new network. I wonder how it’s developement is coming along.
Malco, you forgot telemarketers.
Agree. Best interview I’ve seen him do.
PAAPTSEF
I hope the Government has a plan for training fibre splice-putter-inners. They are scarce and it sounds as if we are going to need squillions of them.
GP and Glen
I must say your comments tonight have been fair and realistic. I have nothing argumentative to say to either of you. Frankly I feel a bit sorry for both of you; it must be like being in a dinghy tethered to the Titanic. Thanks for at least fronting up and addressing the issues.
Unfortunately, I think you both hit on the weakpoint that Turnbull missed – he should have attacked Conroy for the botched tender process. It wasted time and money. Too many more fumbles and Conroy could have been Rudd’s first ex minister. Instead Turnbull attacked the final, very sensible NBN investment decision which has been fixed by the intervention of the review group (and probably Tanner as well). Plus the bond finance arrangement looks good.
On the news Turnbull said it won’t ever make a profit, when everyone in the print, television and communications industries knows exactly how it will make a fortune. Plus it will generate thousands of real jobs doing something useful. If they try to oppose this and wind up with a DD it would be suicidal.
Is this NBN reaction by the Libs a generational thing? Doesn’t Turnbull have any advisors a bit younger and tech-savy to explain what it means? Then again, there are plenty of regulars on this blog who are over 40 – including me
– who all seem to get it. Even the nationals said it was their (good) idea. I don’t understand where the Liberal the opposition to it is coming from.
I believe the Liberal party opposition to the NBN is a relic of their past when they always vetoed any new technology that might displease Kerry Packer or Rupert Murdoch. KP would hate this new policy, and undoubtedly the Australians apparent redoubling of criticism of the govt is linked to this policy also.
Murdoch has spent a fortune world wide getting the rights to sporting events, in a post NBN future these right are likel;y to remain with the sporting bodies or even the individual clubs. With content being king, Collingwood or Essendon or Rabbitohs etc etc are worth a lot of money and the costs of broadcasting their games on a fee to watch basis will be vastly reduced. Murdoch will be calling in all the favours he can to delay this happening if he can’t scuttle it completely.
Minchin, Coonan, and several other Libs will have no choice but to march in step to Rupert.
It will be an impossible task. Far too many in the industry and business know it is a great project with big long term benefits for all. And many Australians will like the idea. And it provides a whole bunch of jobs.
Business will not like the Liberals trying to scuttle this project.
Craig Thomson – a name you’ll be hearing more about in the next week or two.
I guess we can thus expect the ABC to ramp up their distortion and the conservative whipped media to increase the depth and breadth of their lies about Rudd.
There are two things that Rudd must do in the short term; if possible pay out the contracts of Howard cronies at the ABC and; set up an independent media regulatory panel with real sharp teeth and super cede their self regulation which is a joke.
As far as I am concerned those journalists involved in the character attack on Ms Liu should be heavily fined and banned for six months from writing anything for media.
Why’s that Cuppa? Did he also have a bad episode at Iguana Joes?
In fact, I think the media should be banned altogether. The government can be trusted to say everything we should hear.
The French have introduced new internet regulation to combat internet piracy. It is called:
“la Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet”
You get two warning if you get caught pirating stuff. The third time your web access is cancelled for 12 months.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/French-Disputed-Anti-Piracy-Legislation-Moves-Forward-108695.shtml
I did say independent. And I don’t think there is the slightest thing wrong with having standards that should be applied. Especially protecting individual members of the public against a very powerful force.
Governments can handle themselves, people are mostly powerless. The best way for government to ensure a fair and free media is by ensuring diversity of ownership.
However I wonder how anybody here would feel if they were continually denigrated by innuendo by the media for the purposes of getting at someone else. If the media were to make some distasteful personal attacks on WB that implied he was such and such a person.
No 733
LOL WB.
TP, I’m really sick of hearing about your hatred of the ABC. The way you go on about is ridiculous – you may as well install Kevin Rudd as the sole director, thereby transforming the ABC into a government mouthpiece.
You simply cannot tolerate any criticism of this government. Get over yourself.
If the media were to make some distasteful personal attacks on WB that implied he was such and such a person, he could sue for defamation. As can Liu.
No 737
Exactly.
That is just the point. And what the more powerful can trade on.
The know the comparative little guy is going to be too daunted to make a case and doesn’t have the resources to do so. And in the meantime they further give air to the allegations against themselves.
It is the powerful against the mostly powerless.
No 739
Ms Liu is hardly powerless or without the resources to sue for defamation.
Well it is lucky for the well resourced, but most are not.
When you have for example News Ltd up against Citizen X there is severe disadvantage to Citizen X who lives in their mundane non litigious world and are simply over powered by the opposition and the process.
Instead of relying on justice for the best resourced there can be regulations (which they have for self regulation).
Now if they agree to certain regulations why not put them in the hands of an independent body.
No 742
The best independent body is the court system. We do not need another “independent” bureaucracy.
The Government can be trusted to a far, far greater extent than the lickspittles of the conservative press to tell the truth.
I would never put such a thing in the hands of government. They change, leaders change and temptation is always too great.
We don’t want bias, we want standards and codes of conduct that actually work.
It is much much easier to be defamed than to get to a situation where you have proved it and received compensation, after having put yourself through the mill. But there is no guarantee you will succeed if your opponent is well resourced. They can also lead you around the bush and play dirty.
We know corporations look at the dollar value of the risk. Look at the SLAPS in Tasmania. Deliberate litigation they know they will lose just to keep people quiet, but they make people fight their way through it.
PS. the day we stop complaining about media bias and misbehavior is the day we leave the place to the dogs. It is not only governments we need to keep honest.
Anyhow…. 1.45am
Sad, isn’t it, that we are reduced to believing politicians before we accept the words of Murdoch and Fairfax journalists.
I posted a while back, while while back that Sol Trujillo will turn out to be the George Trumbull of Telstra. If anybody can remember, Trumbull, who was also an American, single handedly, almost sent AMP Ltd into bankruptcy and destroyed the iconic AMP brand. AMP shares went from $20 to as low as $4.75. I should know, i was there and we sold our AMP shares at $20 and got out.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/planning/company-chiefs-strike-it-rich/2006/08/28/1156617274026.html
Unfortunately, Amigo Sol appears to have done similar with Telstra:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25306410-7583,00.html
Adios Amigo.
Plenty of stories from business and other groups positive about the new broadband network extolling the benefits.
All the opposition can do is criticise it and imply they will will block it.
The benefits for business, education, health, tourism, leisure industry and the consumer are enormous.
The main complaint is the time it will take to build and implement the network.
Among the coalition arguments for privatising Telstra was that it was an inefficient government monopoly and would be better privatised.
The new broadband network is slated to have a 51% government ownership with this to be sold off in 13 years.
Would hope that the sale is handled better than the Telstra privatisation.
13 years time may see a coalition government back in power or could see Julia handing over the reins to Mia.
castle
We’ve got to get Mia elected first. She’s just had a baby so she might not run in 2010.
marky
I heard Conroy interviewed. He was asked three times what criteria he would be using on his internet trial in terms of deciding how much slowing of the internet would be too much. Three times he said “I’m not going to pre-empt the outcome of the trial.” The interviewer said “So after you’ve finished the trial, you’ll put up the goalposts wherever you want them?” and he repeated his “not pre-empting the trial” line. It was one of the worst performances I’ve ever heard.
God almighty!!! Just listened to the love in between Turnbull and Fran Kelly on RN, T’bull not once but twice praised la Kelly to the heavens for her journalistic skills in asking the “right” questions to the govt. Thomas Paine has copped a bit of flak above for continually criticising the ABC by jeeze louise he has a point.
BTW t’bull is from sydney and knows the Chinese ambassador (such a Sydney wanker thing to say) so that’s alright then!
Plenty of time Dio, she can run in 2012/13.
The election of Bligh is an enormous boost for women considering a political career, as is the wealth of talent in the Rudd ministry, Tanya, Penny, Julia and Kate.
The alleged comment by Pyne that he chose the party that suited his chances of being elected is quite insightful. You can’t make a difference or change unless you are in power.
What female talent is there in the opposition, which party is more attractive to women wanting to follow their aspirations and make a difference.
castle, you forgot Nicola.
William,
How soon you forget Children overboard …… you should perhaps qualify this statement
In the SMH today ….. Craig Thompson in a bit of hot water and if these charges are proven, he might be gone ………
William I think that the “they can just sue” lie is hardly an argument to tolerate bad press
If those claims about Thompson are proven he should be gone; Rudd would lack credibility if he wasn’t. He hasn’t denied all the allegations either:
“He said yesterday they were the result of feuding in the union’s Victorian branches, with “more and more outrageous claims and counter-claims being made” by factional opponents.
Mr Thomson insisted there was no truth to suggestions his union credit card had been used to withdraw cash from ATMs every few days for five years or that union funds and resources used in his election campaign had not been appropriately authorised or disclosed.”
That still leaves the use of the union card for escort services and personal purchases undenied, though he later says others had access to the card. Cards I have held you are responsible for whether you spent the money or not. In my experience if you did this as a politician, public servant or corporate employee you could be sacked. Union officials shouldn’t be any different.
Juliem
I’m going to throw it out there that the chief bludger was being facetious. Perhaps pointing to the lack of critique of govt policy that can sometimes infect this site.
So two new Central Coast candidates for Labor at the next election then?
Yo ho ho,
Don’t know if you are a regular read every post bludger, I try to but like all of us, can’t always manage it
….. getting around to my point, I posted about a week or perhaps more ago on another topic that “well I didn’t ‘GET’ it and this was the reason why” ….. for your benefit, I’ll recap that reasoning: ” I was behind the barn door and hiding when they passed out the “get the joke” gene to folks between lives. My family knows this and just rolls their eyes or gives a wry smile.”
I would like to believe you are right and actually thought that when I first read the post but when I realized from reading other posts that I wasn’t the only one who came to that conclusion first up, I thought I had company so it was alright. If William is pulling legs out in PB-land, he’s pulled more than mine this time
I think the Oppositions thought about this (NBN) for about 5 minutes longer than you’re giving them credit for.
It looks like the Nats are going to vote for it. Which means it’ll pass the Senate. But this way it passes with the Libs appealing to their idiotic core (which is all they seem to want to do these days) and the Nats saying “We saved the country!”. So it’s better than actually blocking the whole thing.
So they get to carp + it’ll pass. It still looks whiny, stupid and selfish but that seems to be their modus operandi.
Nup
Just the lib smear squad ala heffernanV kirby
having met both and knowing people who know them well I think the MSM has a lot of explaining
BTW the fact that dobell/robertson are critical to lib re-election plans is the real reason that the Federal members are so mercilessly attacked
Our broadband plan seems to be the envy of the world, with some in the US media suggesting it will put pressure on the government their to up the ante when they release their plan in a year.
If that happens, watch out for the factional turf-war of the century. 2 NSW Right MPs being turfed out – either by their own faction or by the left. Could be interesting to watch…
I guess we’ll never know Juliem! I tend to think William get’s a little frustrated with the tone of this blog and that’s why I read that comment the way I did…..
How about me putting an apostrophe in ‘get’s’? That’s some quality work.
That’s what happened to every contentious bit of legislation the government has passed. Case in point – the IR laws…
Centre, I thought we had this clear, but this statement confuses things again. Does it invalidate your earlier statement that C is the legal owner of the shares? Only one person at a time can be entitled to voting rights and dividend yields attached to a share. If C buys the share, then C will expect to get the voting rights and dividends, so A cannot retain these rights. Please explain how your statement can be true.
Of course WB was being facetious!! Sheesh.
the news is thick and fast..yesterday saw the last drop in interest rates, the anouncerment of a new NBN, Craig thomson gone, ….I can’t keep up..
Oz @ 763,
Do you have one or more URL’s so I can read further details on this? thanks much
…..
centaur, thomson isn’t gone YET. Admittedly staring down the barrels of deep trouble in that regards but Rudd hasn’t pulled the trigger as of yet …..
Gusface – [blockquote]BTW the fact that dobell/robertson are critical to lib re-election plans is the real reason that the Federal members are so mercilessly attacked[/blockquote]
Your spectacles would appear to have adopted the hue of a favourite thorny flowering plant, if you believe that little bit of revisionism. Not that the LNP won’t jump on it with glee, but Belinda has been seen as a hopeless joke in her electorate for many years by those on the left with any knowledge of her serial political failures and bizarre behaviours. She rightly has as much chance of being the candidate next election as does Isabella of Castile.
As for Thompson, well it depends on whether or not he did what is alleged. If not, he survives. If so, he too will rightly not be the candidate.
The problem of course, as we all know, lies in the factional processes that lead inexorably to dumb hacks getting pre-selection.
I have an extra $4700 in my bank account since last year, my girls primary school is getting $200k, + a new multimillion dollar hall, + complete rebuild ina year, a pissy pay increase for health professionals 5.25% backdated to make up for none in 1.5 years….what next?
Adam
This explains it better. Then there’s something called “naked short selling” where even the broker doesn’t have the shares which is really dodgy.
http://www.investopedia.com/university/shortselling/shortselling1.asp
Proof???
Oh and no MSM shite
please
If I *lend* you something, I retain ownership of it. You cannot sell it, because you do not own it. If a share is *sold* to someone, they own it. Two people cannot own the same share at the same time. So, to return to our schematic of last night, If A owns a share, and “lends” it to B, who sells it to C, then C owns the share, so A can no longer own the share. Thus A has not “lent” the share at all, he has *given* it to B, in exchange for an agreement that B will give him a share at some point in the future.
juliem,
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/aussies-announc.html
I think where the stock “lending” gets possible is that, strictly speaking, all the transactions aren’t actually settled (titles transferred) till the end of the day. Until then you have contracted to buy a share for an agreed price. Thus in between time brokers have a large pool of stocks and funds they control and could “lend”. Hence “naked short selling” is a game only played by market insiders. Of course, if my understanding is correct, I agree it is very dodgy.
AIC,
In a short-selling situation, A (the broker) is acting as an agent (or trustee) of B. A owns the share as an agent (or trustee) of B and, acting as the agent (or trustee) of B, sells the share to C. C now has ownership of the share and A is under either a contractual or equitable duty to remit the profit/loss of the transaction to B.
Adam 777, you are being overly pedantic. It is perfectly reasonable to say that “I lend you a $50 note” when all I actually expect is that one day you return to me another $50 note. Stocks can be regarded like money in that one (of the same type) can be interchanged with another.
Belinda Neal was only elected at the end of 2007 – therefore, if she’s been a joke in the electorate for years, it obviously didn’t stand in her way.
Craig Thomson is gone from what, exactly? Not condoning bad behaviour if proven, but he’s not a Minister or Parliamentary Secretary and (unless there’s been a referendum I missed) noone can get rid of an elected member of Parliament. The most that could happen – and it’s very rare – is that he could be expelled from the Labor Party. Otherwise it’s up to the electorate in 2010.
Recall that she didn’t win preselection at her branch and the state executive had to step in.
zoomster
If someone is found to have missappropriated (i.e. stolen) funds then can’t they be charged as happened to several of the expense rort guilty parties in Howards first term? If found guilty couldn’t they then be thrown out of parliament?
779 and 780 seem to be reasonable explanations, for which I thank Socrates and Swing Lowe. 781 is a false analogy, because money is not a commodity, money is a representation of value. You cannot sell a $50 note, only exchange it for goods or services.
778 Oz,
thanks much for that. I’ve forwarded it onto two of my US relatives so that they can read what the government is on about here. Had a quick read through of some of the comments and blokes like ‘eBob’ are the reason the US has so many problems, they are generally too geo-centric around Washington …. you have to see this to believe it and what is sad is that this bloke believes what he is posting
….
* eBob is probably a Republican who voted for Bush too
784
Has it ever happened? (serious question) Has any Fed MP been removed from their seat for any reason other than resignation?
Depending on the exchange, and the transaction itself, settlement can actually be at the end of the day, or a date well in the future. Standard settlement is usually T+3 (3 days after the trade).
Actually, he could just get disendorsed by the Labor party (like Michael Hatton in Blaxland and Gavan O’Connor in Corio in 2007) and they could run someone better instead. You’d expect that there would be a reasonable mayor or deputy mayor somewhere on the Central Coast that could take Thomson’s spot. I doubt that Labor would parachute someone into a provincial marginal like Dobell or Robertson.
Re this discussion on short selling of shares. Excuse my naivety on the subject but when you contact a sharebroker and ask to sell shares (whether you have them or not) are you required to quote the share certificate no or does the broker just assume you own the shares.
Adam 785
I agree that money is not a commodity but you are still being pedantic. Just change my analogy to “I lend you a kilogram of sugar”.
TP,i can understand your earlier posts about the media only too well, we’ve been in that situation, do you realise that you cant sue for libel on behalf of a dead person so it’s open slather, we spent many years tolerating wild and hysterical stories about our lost boys, we caught the worst of it because Alan was the first, each journo tried to out dramatise the other with their flights of fancy, Alan died a dreadful death abducted, kept prisoner for a week, tortured and beaten until he bled to death, until the other boys were taken we bore the brunt of it all alone, he was portrayed as a gay rent boy {the police had to scotch that one many, many times,} a druggie, again SAPOL repeatedly told the press he was never involved in drugs, he was sixteen years old on his way home from his mate’s place at 3.30pm on a sunday afternoon, even last year TT tried to tie him in with a murder of a man that happened two weeks before Alan’s death, all on the evidence that someone said they just remembered seeing a blonde boy in that street thirty years ago, Alan was the only blonde boy in Adelaide??????? SAPOL was appalled at that one and the head of major crime immediatly came to my home to assure us it was just another lot of TT crap, it’s no use telling people it isnt true because they just think of course you’ll say that your his mother.
.
a psychiatrist in answering a question about the murder told our paper and it was printed on the front page that the fact i was instramental in starting up the first VOCS proved i had an unhealthy obsession with death and any normal person would have said my son died an unatural death and after six months put it behind them and got on with the rest of their life—i kid you not, i often wonder how he felt when the other boys disappeared and we had to keep reliving our tragedy over and over again or about the eleven long years we spent in and out of courtrooms with inquests and trials, TP, i know the feeling of hopelessness and helplessness only too well.
Or the length of the debate on short selling.
Dr Good, it doesn’t matter what the item is, if you *lend* it to me, you still own it and I cannot sell it. It is an offence to purport to sell something which you do not own. If you lent your car to someone and they sold it, I imagine you would not be amused, even if they assured you they could soon buy it back at a lower price.
In the case of these share trades, it seems that what actually happens is that A assigns to B the right to sell the shares to C in A’s name, although A remains the owner of the shares until they are actually sold to C. Ownership is then transferred from A to C. B then waits for the share price to fall, buys the same quantity of the stock and then sells these shares to A at the same price that A sold them to C for. B then pockets the price difference. I’m not sure I see what incentive A has to engage in this practice, unless there is a fee charged to B.
I realise he can be disendorsed, but saying ‘Thomson is gone” implied to me he was out of Parliament (as in before the next election).
As I said, apart from waiting for the next election (which is where he’d be disendorsed), I don’t think this can happen.
It’s good news week. $900 bonus, NBN and now this:
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-business/consumer-sentiment-up-83-in-april-20090408-a04l.html
Gusface – Oz is correct. It was the pressure Belinda put on her influential partner to get her the pre-selection for 2007 after a failed upper house stint and failed attempt in an earlier election (“You’ve got to do something about this John”). But it’s also the total lack of any capacity to relate to the electorate on an individual level, no public speaking ability, and obvious personal aggro all round that meant she only just rode the Rudd wave home. She simply could not win the seat next time. The Iguana behaviour – which was not a MSM beat up – was totally consistent with prior knowledge of the personality in action.
Anyway, it’s all passe because she is dead meat, and cannot be pre-selected – that is, unless Della is prevailed upon by his domineering spouse to deny the obvious, AND if he still has the clout in the faction to prop up Belinda’s cadaver one more time, given that his authority has been diminished by his pulling in most of his owed favours to get her there last time. If he does get her to the ballot paper Labor can write off the seat.
Looks like we’ll pick up Dobell in 2010 at least
Adam
There have been a lot of shady practices in share trading for a long time. I don’t know all the details but I recall one big scandal after Black Monday 1929 was that many traders were using customers shares to borrow against, and were badly caught out. that is, they had “lent” other people’s property. I agree it should be illegal but it did happen back then. I don’t know what rules might be in place to prevent that now, but it would be niaive to think these guys aren’t looking for a way around them. Stock exchanges are just money making companies, not government agencies and I wouldn’t have gret faith in them as bastions of fairness. Gary Madoff was head of one
Sorry I meant Bernie Madoff
Wouldn’t be so sure of that, Glen. There’s a 3.9% margin there and it’s easy to replace a one-termer like Thomson with a better person (could Michael Lee make a comeback???)
Of course, you’ve got a much better chance in Robertson…
tell me thomson will be able to sit in parliament if he has used his union CC to get hookers, until the next election, he will be pushed out- he won’t do a Mal Colson on us will he?
Diogenes, your comment previously on this site re Hamilton-Smith’s railyards precinct redevelopment being favourably received doesn’t seem to be correct. If you can place any faith in on-line polls, yesterday’s Advertiser’s poll (and remember they are pushing the sports stadium idea as hard as they can) was as follows.
Poll 1.
Which plan do you favour for the railyards precinct do you prefer?
Liberal 42% (3514 votes)
Labour 57 % (4668 votes)
Poll 2.
Is it irresponsible to release this plan without any costings?
Yes 58% (1068 votes)
No 41 % (757 votes)
I think there was also a poll fairly recently with similar percentages that favoured a new RAH ahead of re-developing the RAH on the existing site.
These issues at this stage don’t seem to be the big issue that MHS (or the Advertiser) thinks they are.
The regulations relating to short-selling in Australia state that you can’t short sell a stock whose share price is already heading downwards (over what time period, I’m not sure). Also, there is currently a prohibition of short selling financial services shares.
Perhaps the only State we may pick up seats will be NSW.
I also oppose the MHS railyard plan in Adeladie. Its pie in the sky. The cost will easily exceed a billion for the stadium alone, and then there is the cost of replacing the existing convention centre, railway station, cassino building and parliament. They would be at least $500 million each, and you still don’t have a new hospital. The hotel would want compensation. The plan is just nuts.
I’d wait for the redistribution in NSW to be completed before any of you start making bold predictions about which seats, if any, Labor will lose. Robertson indeed could be made a tad safer for Ms Neal, and much as I’d love to see her disendorsed, she and her husband are too powerful in the NSW Labor right, it won’t happen.
As for Craig Thompson, it looks to me like he’s been stitched up!
Swing Lowe: Michael Lee is finished with politics, so I understand. He’s in the corporate sector these days.
Actually I asked for proof, not idle gossip and speculation
.
.
still waiting
BTW do you live on the CC
“Gone” in political parlance means “has no political future,” not “gone from Parliament.” There have only been two members expelled from the federal Parliament: Senator Ferguson in 1903 for non-attendance and Hugh Mahon in 1920 for “disloyalty”. Under Section 44, a member who is convicted of an offence punishable by a sentence of one year’s imprisonment or longer automatically forfeits their seat. In practice, any member who is convicted of anything is expected to resign.
Maybe – as people have said, wait for the redistribution to go through. That said, I’d also give the Nats a chance of picking up Dawson from Bidgood. Flynn also has to be vulnerable, purely because of its narrow margin.
It’s also worth noting that even if the Libs pick up a couple of seats in NSW, they may well end up with a net loss, as there are quite a few vulnerable Coalition seats in NSW (e.g. Macarthur, Hughes if Dana Vale retires, Paterson, Cowper, Hume and Greenway if the swing is on).
Glen, I’m starting to worry about you.
Look at the positives, however. Being in Opposition gives you a chance to reassess, to regroup and get rid of the dead wood. It’s a slow process but ultimately rewarding and exciting, as new people with new ideas transform thinking.
If you’re not a member of your local branch, join now. If you are, get involved at a higher level. For someone willing to learn and to do the hard yards, there’s plenty of opportunities available – and (when the party does get back in) you personally will have made a lot of good connections and established yourself as someone worth listening to.
Whereas being in power can be very frustrating for the average branch member, who is competing for a voice against paid advisers.
Mind you, I’m not going to swap being in power!!
As I said earlier I think the heiferman has been lending his photocopying skills around.
Dawson? The QLD state election results in the corresponding area indicate to me that James Bidgood’s chances of retaining the seat are pretty good, even if Joyce is his opponent next time. There was virtually no swing against QLD Labor in Mackay, and Whitsunday was perhaps the only seat where the ALP strengthened its margin(by nearly 3%).
What’s Bidgood’s great sin? Selling a photo to News Ltd?
Oh please!
805,
Does anyone know, based upon reasonable speculation, I know as redistribution hasn’t been finalized yet —— will the NSW seat being dropped (to QLD benefit) more likely be a seat currently held by Lib or Labor or Nats?
Cheers
Zoomster, politics is too dirty for me to get that involved.
Belinda Neal in any seat she is in under 10% should be destroyed.
The most important thing is to get quality candidates in the seats NOW can get them doing some hard yards.
I wonder if Pyne will hold his seat???
I suspect the ALP could make gains in Victoria and possibly in WA.
Most probably a status quo result if not a net increase in seats by Rudd.
Glen, I’d happily see the back of Belinda and her husband, but they’re too powerful, it ain’t gonna happen.
There’s bound to be a correction in WA next time, I can foresee the ALP picking up Swan and maybe Cowan too.
enjaybee
I don’t place any faith in online polls at all. They are manipulated by both Labor and Liberal who get their media monitors to sit there for an hour and vote, delete cookies, vote, delete cookies ad nauseum. The only thing I use online polls for is to see whether the parties consider a topic important enough to use their resources to manipulate it. From the numbers of voting in those polls, ie the number of staffers allocated to manipulate the poll, both parties know this is a big issue.
The emphasis being on “a tad”.
Robertson has a fixed southern boundary (Hawkesbury River), so its not prone to getting pushed about at redistribution time. Looking at the projections, its slightly under quota but within tolerance. Might stay as is, or see a very slight northward expansion. Won’t make much difference.
I would probably agree that Swan and Cowan and maybe Canning may go.
I still think Keenan should hold Stirling, he’s got a bigger profile now and providing he’s done the hard yards in his electorate for the 6 years he should still be an MP.
See this page for Bidgood’s main sin (he’s a nut):
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24750170-601,00.html
I see Labor having decent shots at Swan, Cowan and Stirling next time in WA.
And as for the redistribution, the AEC will try to balance the effect of any changes. So if they get rid of a Labor seat in NSW, they’ll try to create a notionally Labor seat in Queensland. They tried to do this last time when they got rid of a safe Nats seat (Gwydir) and replaced it with a notionally safe Nats seat (Flynn) – the only problem was that Labor managed to pick up Flynn anyway…
enjaybee
There has only been one poll of any use about the old vs New RAH. It was a random phone poll conducted along with a voting intention. It showed Labor up 56-44 in SA but was about 60-30 in favour of retaining the old RAH site.
The argument has changed now a bit because MHS has upped the ante with the stadium etc. Hopefully there will be a phone poll soon about whether to go with the Lib or Labor package.
Glen
how’s it ever going to improve if good people stay out because it’s dirty??
It’s very easy to criticise from without, very difficult to change from within – but in the end, change from within is what’s needed.
We need good pollies (and good party hacks!) but we don’t get them if everyone sees politics as dirty. It leaves the game open only to people who think they can make a buck through it, rather than those with ideals and visions.
This is part of the reason why, even for a safe seat, there’s often only a handful of candidates.
Politics may be dirty (and I’ve undergone my fair share of undermining and personal attacks), but it’s the only system we have, and the best way for the average person to actually change things.
Things that are worth doing are worth fighting for and dirt washes off.
Further to my post @ 790, years ago (in the 1960’s) where I worked there was a chap who was very much into shares. He showed me how it was possible to make money on a falling market by selling shares (not borrowing) you didn’t own and then buying them at a later date (how much later I don’t know) at a lower price thus making a profit. Now I don’t know whether it was legal then or if it was ever legal to do that in Australia but he said that during the great Wall Street crash of 1929 some smart operators in the US (among them Jo Kennedy) did exactly that and made a killing. Does any one know if that was the case then?
That’s rubbish. The AEC takes no account of the political effect of its changes.
NSW in 2010 could be a status quo result – Labor loses Robertson but picks up Macarthur or Hughes(if Pat Farmer or Dana Vale retire)?
And, it’ll be interesting to see what the redistribution does to Bennelong, I bet Labor would love its boundaries pushed more westwards.
Glen are you in Higgins? give it a crack and we can go head to head
No i would have to knock off Michael Danby in Melbourne Ports almost impossible.
I’d have a better chance in Prahran but the Vic Libs are even more of a joke than the Federal ones i am sad to say.
Gusface – Re ‘proof’ on B N – The dud political career is on the record, the attitude and examples of behaviour are also on the record via soccer disciplinary action, I.G’s CCTV and staff stat. dec’s, electorate office staff statements, and Hansard (‘devil baby’). It has been known for years, and confirmed again and again by people I trust. I have also personally observed the inability to communicate with constituents at public gatherings. If you don’t believe me, you might believe Rudd’s extraordinary and repeated public censure, and direction for anger management. It has to be faced – the party shows itself to be in a very bad way when it knowingly puts up toxic candidates like that.
Yes, I am in the electorate – that’s why it’s so frustrating. I said all this here before the 2007 election, and was castigated then by quite a few for my criticism. I refrained from any triumphalism when the inevitable happened with Iguanas and the rest, because it’s just so awful on many levels.
Bring on PR!
Adam 794
That may be more complicated an explanation than is necessary.
Suppose I lend you a commodity (such as 1 kg of sugar) and you sell it, then later you buy another 1 kg of sugar and give it to me to settle your debt. Surely no-one is going to successfully accuse you of anything illegal or even improper.
So this hinges on the idea that one share (in a particular company) is as good as another. So I am claiming that shares are more like sugar than like a car.
(apologies to pollbludgers who have read too much about shares lately).
I wouldn’t be making predictions about the next election based on current polling, though it is amazing that it continues at high levels. The premium margin is soley I believe because of the poor tactics and attitude of Opposition leaders so far. Labor should be ahead on form but 58?
There must be a large number of dissapointed former Liberal supporters voters out there who are still repelled by what they see and attracted by what they see on the other side. This is why Hockey will do little better than Turnbull, he appears to want to use the same approach, media in hand.
I agree that everyone should consider being invloved in politics and have aspirations to serve, until they find if they can or cannot cut it in front of a hostile audience/reporter/opponent. And of course they possess some of the right goods for the role.
The Nats reckon RuddNet is basically their proposal? I think I heard that somewhere. They have no reason to block it then. And on that the Terrirory CLP should be considering a little more independent thinking. Though I gather Senator Scullion would follow the Nats.
It’s impossible to predict what the Commissioners will do. No-one predicted the abolition of Gwydir or Kalgoorlie.
There are different commissioners for each state and they do not compare notes. The Gwydir-Flynn thing was a coincidence.
thats all that is proven,which BTW she did apologise for
the rest is just so much bumfluff from the MSM.
Gusface please tell me you aren’t supporting Belinda Neal?
I won’t budge from the position that it is illegal to sell something you don’t own. If I sell your bag of sugar I am stealing from you and defrauding the person I purport sell it to. Now, maybe there is a law that makes it OK to sell shares you don’t own, although I don’t see how that can be, since it would mean two people each believing that they own the same share. But I want to see this law before I accept that proposition.
Gotta, a good friend of Mrs Gs’ gets beaten up by her at soccer,on planes, at the HOR meetings,iguana’s etc
NO
I actually support TRUTH not vindictive MSM misreporting
Glen: I like a few of your Victorian MPs, especially Bruce Billson and Greg Hunt(was impressed with him on Q&A).
What your side needs is some generational change, the likes of Ruddock/Bronwyn Bishop/Tuckey all should go at the next election.
Who would you rather be rid of? Belinda, or Joe Tripodi?
I presume under a democracy the voter is the ultimate arbiter
Suppose that rates weren’t cut yesterday. Would NAB have _raised_ its rates for the same reason that it didn’t pass on the cut?
Greg Hunt is a future leader of the party Evan IMHO.
I’m no supporter of Belinda Neal, but the ’soccer disciplinary action’ line is ridiculous.
I’m very actively involved in my local soccer club. Red cards are not what you want your players to accumulate, but they’re also no biggie, either. Good players inevitably get them, because they go in hard, and it’s often difficult for a ref to distinguish who did what to who.
My very fair minded and hard playing son was up against another player at a recent match. His opponent was given a yellow card as a result of a clash between them. When I asked my son about it after the game, suggesting that he had been the victim, he said that the two of them should have been given yellow cards – they had both been jostling, hacking and nudging each other throughout the game.
The ref can only act on what he sees and award penalties as a consequence. In a fast moving game, it’s easy to misread what’s happened.
As I recall, this was Ms Neal’s first card in many years of playing. If anything, that suggests she is either a very clean player or a wimpish one. I’d lay odds she isn’t the second.
But no, I don’t think she should be an MP.
Gusface – [the rest is just so much bumfluff from the MSM.]
In this instance the bumfluff in on a genuine bum.
Still, if people generally have your view on it, she will be fine next election day. O.O
Want a friendly bet on BN being the member next term?
I’m enrolled in Sturt, I know the area well, and normally i’d say that Labor won’t be winning this without a really significant redistribution as the south of the electorate is just too strong toward the Liberals. It takes in a lot of Bragg – the safest Liberal seat in Adelaide in state parliament. I think Handshin was lucky to peg it back to a 0.9% margin for the Liberals.
Having said all of that, Pyne has made an absolute goose of himself since jumping in to shadow cabinet, and i’m sure the whole Bernardi incident didn’t help him either.
However, I just cant help but think that there’ll be a moderate swing to the Liberals next election – when was the last time the second election of a party saw a swing to them? Hawke in 1984 was like Rudd, very popular, but the election saw it dip and had a swing against them. Since 1901, not a single party has seen a swing toward them at the second election.
Hunt is a dripping wet. They’ll have to be desperate before they move that far to the left.
Adam,
I have been watching you wrestle with the terminology used in respect of going short on a share transaction.
As beauty is in the eye of the beholder so is terminology.
Firstly, one needs to understand what a share is. Most think that it represents ownership in a company. This is incorrect. A share is a bundle of rights and these right s can be “utilised” i.e. you may (but not necessarily) have a right to a dividend. You can “transfer” that right to someone else if you so desire.
”Lend” is the term used and accepted by all in respect of this section of short selling.
In the circumstances of short selling maybe a better way of understanding the “lending” part is to think of it as a sale of the share (or some of the rights of the share) with an option to “purchase” that share back (or an equivalent share) at a discount.
The discount represents the fee for the use of the share and is usually the only “cash” transaction between the “lender” and the “borrower”.
However, the term I have used is not correct as the industry’s term for such a transaction is “lending”.
There was a case back in the 60’s I think were there was a lot of short selling of a particular share. It so happened that it turned out that one “investor” held 100% of the issued capital in that company.
However, some shorts sellers, ignorant of this fact, and still expecting the share price to fall, kept selling short.
This “investor” kept buying the short sales and subsequently made a killing because he was the only person with shares and was so able to names his own price for the sale of the shares to the short sellers which then had to give the shares back to this investor at a price much lower than what they were forced to purchase the shares. This is because the short sellers had to fulfil their contracts and of cause they all made very large losses.
Adam 835
Well I will continue to call you overly pedantic then. Suppose you came to my door and asked to borrow some sugar and I said “Here you are Adam, I’ll lend you one kilogram of sugar, no hurry to settle the debt.” Then any reasonable person such as me, and I have often travelled on the Clapham omnibus, would not particularly expect the same 1kg of sugar to be returned. So I would not care if you sold “my” kilo of sugar and anyone who contacted the police when you did sell it would be ridiculed.
So with (interchangeable) commodities it is normal usage of the word “lend” to allow
substitution of the borrowed items and by inference, you can enjoy and/or dispose of the original item as you see fit.
Of course, with items that are a bit more complicated than sugar you should really clarify with me whether we both agree that they are commodities. Eg, shares maybe Ok with me, but not Taragos.
Taragos.
Ah, memories…
Disunity is death.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25306321-5013871,00.html
Depends on Who the libs come up with
Jim whatshisname who was minister for something really did hand Rob. to BN (and of course labor)
As you are probably aware a lot of nth shories have congregated from terrigal up.
This demo change may gift the seat to the libs.
once poss has updated his charts closer to the elction then we will have a clearer picture. then maybe I’ll chance me arm
BTW my politics is “anyone but liberal”
Adam,
A few Parliamentarians have been removed because they died.
#844
Labor’s majority isn’t very large, so there’s certainly room for it to increase it next time. If not, they’ll be in danger of losing government.
How quickly we forget. That “swing” was an electoral fluke caused by the introduction of above-the-line voting in the Senate. Many people, nearly all Labor voters, thought that you could now vote for *both* houses just by ticking the Labor box, and so voted informally. As a result the informal vote rose from 2.1 to 6.8. That was more than enough to account for the apparent swing. The Hawke government in fact retained its popularity, and would probably have slightly increased its majority had it not been for the change in the voting system. This was extensivekly debated at the time, and the AEC produced a report showing that the rise in informal voting had come mainly from Labor voters. For example, in Grayndler the informal vote rose from 4.2 to 11.4, while in Bradfield it rose from 1.4 to 3.5.
The Ruddnet only covers 90% of the population, rather than the 98% pre-election promise. I’m sure the 8% not covered will be rural so I’m a bit surprised Barnaby is so happy. Will the 90% NBN with 100Mbit coverage mean the other 10% get faster coverage as well?
Zoomster – [the ’soccer disciplinary action’ line is ridiculous]
Well, perhaps. Belinda saw it this way:
“She said there was an occasion when “my boot collided with another player”.” (SMH 11.06.08)
Perhaps the swimmer D’Arcy should have used that defence – ‘I didn’t king hit Simon, my fist simply collided with his face’.
But you’re right, such things are open to conjecture. But it’s the ‘pattern of behaviour’ that Rudd talked about that is the overview understood around the electorate.
JV
Not a fair or applicable example, I’m sure you can do better than that
After all this is PB
Can anyone spot the problem with this headline & story? Gotta love the MSM
http://www.smh.com.au/national/mp-silent-on-credit-card-rort-20090408-a096.html
Diogenes, I thought the announcement stated ‘the rest’ (whatever that means) will have ‘high speed wireless’ rolled out. It’s not economically feasible to provide remote areas with fibre internet.
I heard on the ABC yesterday that the implementation of “Ruddnet” would free up huge amounts of space in the ether allowing wireless connection to cover what can’t be covered by Ruddnet.
But I’m not a scientist or electronics buff, so this may well be wrong …
It hasn’t happened at a federal level for a while but has happened at a state level. Further parties have increased their representation in the parliament at several elections over the past couple of decades, notably 1993, 2001 and 2004.
Labor finished on 52.7%, the second highest 2PP since full distributions were introduced in 1983. 1983 was 53.3%. It is quite high.
WP:OR?
Adam, I think from memory that the AEC report you refer to suggested Labor would only have won one extra seat if those ticks and cross votes had been allowed. Yes the report showed a higher incidence of Labor votes amongst the disallowed votes, but it actually had little impact on the final outcome in terms of seats.
ltep and Fulvio
That would mean that rural Australia gets much better internet coverage as a result so I can see why Barnaby will be crossing the floor to vote for Ruddnet. We don’t even have to worry about Fielding then.
Hasn’t it what.
The likelihood of Rudd doing a Wran-Beattie-Bracks-Rann and hugely increasing his majority at his second election is just as possible as his slipping back at his second go.
Antony, have you see this?
http://twitter.com/fakeantonygreen
It’s never happened.
And its original research to say it would have happened in 1984.
Antony, do you think Labor’s 2PP would have increased from 53.3% if it weren’t for the informal vote?
Sorry, 53.2%.
And, if memory serves, it’s only recently started happening at a state level – that is, I think during Howard’s government – so we don’t know if it’s purely a state phenomena or whether it has implications federally.
I would argue that it does, because basically it’s the same people voting, so one can possit (?) that the way they think at one election reflects the way they think at another.
So, in Victoria, people wanted to get rid of Kennett but were unsure of Steve Bracks, who was new to them and an unknown quality. The next election, they decided that SB was someone they knew and liked and the Opposition Leader wasn’t. So more people voted Labor.
To my mind, the parallels are clear (even if my spelling has gone to pot). People wanted to get rid of Howard federally but were unsure whether Rudd was a safe pair of hands, even though they liked him. If at the next election, they still like Rudd and they still think he’s a safe pair of hands AND they don’t think the same of the Opposition, more people are going to vote for him.
(I would also argue that the personalities of individual MPs plays far less a role in these things than it should….how else would people like Mirabella and Trish Draper get a guernsey?)
http://twitter.com/stephenconroy
This is good too. I’m starting to like Twitter.
@renailemay The winner is Nigera, with a last-minute bid that offers to build the NBN for free in return for a $100m good faith payment.
7:40 AM Apr 7th from Tweetie in reply to renailemay
ROFL
Good article by hatcher today
http://www.smh.com.au/national/cuttingedge-and-worldbeating-20090407-9zlp.html?page=-1
Some snippets :
Cutting-edge and world-beating
…”My great hope is that Australia will show the way for the US,” said Smarr, the head of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.
And by making the Government the prime actor and not just the director, Rudd has thrown out three decades of ideology.
Smarr compared the plan to the 1956 decision by the president Dwight Eisenhower to build the publicly funded interstate highway system. He nominated four of the features of Rudd’s plan as being models for a world-class system: the use of fibre-optic cable all the way to the home, the target connection speed of 100 megabits a second, the universality of its reach, and the public-private structure of the venture.
Other countries such as South Korea and Singapore are installing similarly advanced internet systems. But none is attempting to do so on a continental scale.
Access Economics’s Chris Richardson, customarily a wary watcher of government spending, said this was a case where “the budget cost is not the central consideration”.
Why not? “Take a step back and look at the two big aims of government: prosperity and fairness. On prosperity, the tyranny of distance has held Australia back economically for a long time. The advantage of this technology is that it allows us to compete in the world more fully.
“On fairness, the Government is really paying a lot of money here to buy more competitiveness for Australians.”
The ultimate cost to taxpayers, he said, would turn on whether the venture was profitable and could be sold at a premium. But the financial risks, while they are big, will not be evident for years after the next election.
The retail politics of this plan? You will eventually get faster internet connections at your home and public works in Your community.
And while Rudd is acting, Malcolm Turnbull will be relegated to carping, the “angry last paragraph” that opposition leaders dread.
This isn’t Wikipedia, thank chr*st. We’re allowed to do OR here, and we don’t get punished for actually knowing about stuff. Wikipedia is the best argument against participatory democracy I have ever seen. The day PB adopts Wikipedia rules is the day I leave.
http://twitter.com/TurnbullMalcolm
OMG it’s Mega-Malcolm, and beautifully photoshopped, too
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200803/r229813_916553.jpg
Federal is very different from state.
There has not been a swing to a government at their second election in history.
Informal votes may have risen from 2% to 6% in 1984, but I think its a bit rich to say Labor would have gone up and not down on their 2PP vote – they dropped 1.5%. That’s a lot to make up with just 4% of voters. And Antony seems to more or less agree.
The election policy was 12mbit to 98% of the population.
The new policy is 12mbit to 8% and 100mbit to 90%.
I’m sick of regional folk whining about internet services. Yes, in some places it’s terrible, but 12mbit is as good as you’re going to get for a long time. I’ve lived in a rural town and I’ve experienced the lack of internet options. But that’s the downside you get when you live in sparsely populated areas. You ACCEPT you aren’t going to get services like public transport and broadband that you are in the city. But you live there anyway because it’s not about bloody internet speeds it’s about fresh air, wide open spaces and no traffic.
Bob @869 – I don’t have the 1984 informal vote research publication at work. I’ll check it at home tonight. My memory is that the ticks and crosses informal votes had been included, Labor’s vote would have been maybe 0.5% higher. I will check tonight, but all the early speculation after the 1984 election that the swing had been created by the high informal vote rate was not correct when the AEC counted out the informal votes, and there would still have been a swing against Labor from 1983 to 1984.
That’s not my recollection, but it is a long time ago.
Thanks Antony.
Ner ner Adam
look at fake fielding on twitter for a laugh
855, The other 10% get 12mbps. The original plan was for everyone to get 12mbps, so the ‘broken promise’ is that 90% of the population get something that is about about 9 times better than promised.
http://australianpolitics.com/elections/1984/
And if its never happened before, why would we expect a positive swing in 1.5 years time when unemployment is far worse? People take that sort of stuff out on the government of the day, they don’t care about the academics of it all.
That depends on whom they blame for the high unemployment. If you took a poll at the moment, most people would blame George Bush, the banks or the capitalist system, rather than Rudd.
As for things that have never happened before, when have we had a party leader with this long a run in the polls? Rudd has been not just ahead, but miles ahead, in the polls for 28 months straight now. Of course, a lot can happen in the next 18 months, but there would have to be a *major* shift in public perception of responsibility for the GFC and of Australia’s response to it for Rudd to suffer a loss of seats at an election next October.
Oz and PAAPTSEF
So everyones a winner!
The Greens and Mr X are onside but Fielding is complaining. Still, Barnaby will have to cross the floor so it’s Game, Set and Match.
#885 bob1234
It depends on whether there is something inherent about a federal government seeking a second term that makes an increased vote unlikely or it’s mostly been just the luck of the circumstances. For example, a first term landslide is unlikely to be improved upon next time, and Howard had to sell the GST in 1998. The 1984 campaign was long, with Peacock campaigning well and Hawke poorly.
I think you’d have to go through every case to see on how many occasions a government should have expected to increase its vote the second time and why it didn’t.
NBN numbers game:
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/The-NBN-numbers-game-pd20090408-QW5ME?OpenDocument&src=sph
Access Economics’s Chris Richardson, customarily a wary watcher of government spending, said this was a case where “the budget cost is not the central consideration”.
Why not? “Take a step back and look at the two big aims of government: prosperity and fairness. On prosperity, the tyranny of distance has held Australia back economically for a long time. The advantage of this technology is that it allows us to compete in the world more fully.
and
And while Rudd is acting, Malcolm Turnbull will be relegated to carping, the “angry last paragraph” that opposition leaders dread.
That’s because it hasn’t hit home yet. Wait until unemployment shoots up.
Published polls only go back as far as 1985.
No 890
Chris Richardson needs to work out whether people are going to pay significantly more money to get a connection with an NBN supplier. The Business Spectator article pokes legitimate holes in Richardson’s superficial analysis.
GP
But this service can also deliver pay TV/flim viewing, and phone services too. Add in those revenue streams and RuddNet will do fine. It will effectively replace the existing cable TV network.
Dio
The country 12 mbps wireless internet also means they will have the capability for a greatly improved phone service, and Iwoudl think that is an attraction in rural areas too.
1974?
1951?
1946?
1934?
1919?
The usual pattern in all democracies is that new governments come to power with a certain “bank” of political capital or goodwill, and they then expend that bank, either faster or slower according to their competence and the difficulty of the circumstances they face, until eventually they run out of capital and are defeated. Where a party has had a big win on gaining government, you would usually expect some swing back to the opposition at the next election. But this is far from always the case. In the UK, the Tories won in 1951 and increased their majority in 1955 and again in 1959, before being beaten by Labour in 1964. Labor then increased its majority in 1966. Thatcher won in 1979 and increased her majority in 1983. The Canadian Tories won in 1957 and increased their majority in 1958. The Liberals won in 1963 and increased their majority in 1965. In West Germany, the CDU won in 1949 and increased its majority in 1953, and again in 1957. The SPD won in 1969 and increased its majority in 1972.
Spot on Socrates. Business Spectator clearly haven’t thought through their article.
The point remains that no federal Australian government received a swing toward them at their second election.
Sure, but there is no inherent reason why it should not happen in 2010. It has happened at state level, and it has happened in other comparable democracies. It will depend on whom the electorate blame for the economic crisis, on their judgement of the Rudd government’s response, and on their judgement of whether the Opposition is a credible alternative. Halfway through the term, all the evidence is pointing to Rudd being comfortably re-elected. Has an Australian government ever been this far ahead at this point in the electoral cycle and gone on to lose, or even have its majority reduced? I don’t know.
Assessing new technology on old use patterns is fraught with danger.
1. The technology allows new products and services to be developed.
2. The technology allows old things to be done in a smarter and more efficient way.
If all the new broadband did was create a marginal improvement in what you do now, then it would not be worth having.
#897 bob
The point also remains: is there any particular impediment to doing so?
“”Spot on Socrates. Business Spectator clearly haven’t thought through their article.”
GP has pick ONE article on Business Spectator that supports his arguement. There are half a dozen ones that very enthusiastly support Ruddnet. Same in most other MSM.
The average Newspoll taken during Rudd Labor opposition is higher than during Rudd Labor government. Thus if we conclude all that skyhigh polling can only pull 52.7% at an election, then it would be less next election.
One has to remember that in September 2001, the Coalition were up 57/43 in the polls. Beazley managed to pull that back to 51/49 on election day. While this example doesn’t satisfy the criteria asked in the question, it does show how quickly leads can whittle away?
For the record, I believe Rudd will be re-elected and that he will win with an increased, but not massive, majority.
Nothing concrete, but history is against us.
And of course several federal governments have increased their majorities at *later* elections. The Liberals did so in 1955, 1963 and 1966, Hawke did so in 1987, Keating did so in 1993, and Howard did so in 2001 and 2004.
Hawke did in seats but not in the 2pp. Hawke’s 2pp declined at each election.
I’ll take extra seats at the next election and a declining 2PP, please.
History is made to be broken. After all, Obama won without Missouri and Rudd won without Macarthur.
We’ll see at the next election.
#907
I think I’d take the higher 2PP. As the Queensland election showed, people need a good reason to change their vote from last time. I think a higher 2PP gives you a better chance at the following election.
Actually, as the NSW government has shown, it’s not so much extra seats or extra TPP – it’s building up the margins in marginal seats.
In 2003, it poured money into building the “fat” in its own marginal seats. The result – hardly any change in seats (won Camden and Monaro but lost South Coast and Clarence) – but the creation of big margins in marginal seats. As a result, going into the 2007 election, the Libs had to take on 8% margins in naturally Liberal seats like Miranda and Menai, while genuine marginal seats like Strathfield had margins in the region of 15%.
It was an impenetrable wall for 2007 – the Libs didn’t take a single seat from Labor in Sydney at that election, even though they picked up a 3% TPP swing.
#911
Well, you’ve added a third option there. I was only choosing between the two given earlier. When commentators spoke of the difficulty of the Qld opposition getting the necessary large swing necessary to win, even though the polls indicated they might do it, they could only have been referring to a certain inertia that exists from last time. If you just take the current polls then in theory the vote at the previous election is irrelevant, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Adam your example of Thatcher in 1983 is not correct because the Conservative vote went down from 43.87% to 42.44%. What happened was that the opposition was divided much more evenly than usual between Labour and Liberals who were in alliance with the SDP who had broken away from Labour.
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/ge79/partycand.htm
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/ge83/partycand.htm
876, not who I would want to follow
…. think I will search for Government front bench ministers thanks and I’m not interested in all of them either, certainly not Conroy ….. I looked for Pete yesterday and couldn’t find him, think Kev needs to get all of his front bench on Twitter and not just some of them …..
Can’t compare. Rudd was up against a long term government which would have considerable benefit from encumbancy. Thus the late swing back to Howard. as some people may have feared change. With the mystique of Howard gone there is no reason for a late swing against Rudd during an election campaign other than bad campaigning.
In the 1951 UK election Labour got 48.78% and the Conservatives 43.46%. Yet the Conservatives got a majority of seats. A good argument against single member electorates.
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/ge51/partycand.htm
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/ge51/results.htm
Tom, I’m aware of all those facts. The question under discussion was whether incumbent governments can increase their majority.
I was going by the vote.
Does it matter? (Unless by some freak of nature, Labor’s TPP increases but they lose their HOR majority)
George W Bush got in by more in 2004 than 2000. How hard could it be?
As did FDR, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton. In fact, every president since 1920 that has been re-elected has won by a greater margin than they were initially elected with.
Worse things happen elsewhere
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/08/2537982.htm?section=justin
Of course they will get an increased majority – If Malcopop is in 15+ more seats, if Fatty 5 to 10, if Cossy 0- 5.
God knows what you base this on. Just look at 1984.
Centaur bases it on an assessment on the current political circumstances, and not on what happened 25 years ago.
Just because worse things happen elsewhere does not mean that things that could be made better should not.