The latest Newspoll confirms the trend of recent Morgan and Essential Research results in showing an easing in Labor’s lead, from 58-42 in the previous two fortnightly surveys to 55-45. Labor’s primary vote has dropped five points to 42 per cent, its lowest level since November, but the Coalition’s is up only one point to 38 per cent. The Greens’ account for two points of the difference, up from 9 to 11 per cent. Malcolm Turnbull’s approval rating has dropped a further point to a new low of 36 per cent. Kevin Rudd’s preferred prime minister rating is down three points to 64 per cent, while Malcolm Turnbull is steady on 19 per cent.
UPDATE: Graphic here (how long have they been waiting to use that photo of Kevin Rudd?). Interesting supplementary question on what the government should have done with the stimulus package money – 78 per cent say they would have preferred it be spent on infrastructure, which is the kind of opinion poll response political operatives hesitate to believe. Opinion is divided on whether promised tax cuts should go ahead as planned.
Other news:
• Essential Research has Labor’s two-party lead nudging downwards for the fourth week in a row. It’s now at 57-43, compared with 63-37 on April 6. The survey also reveals slightly more optimism on the economy than was recorded in mid-March, mixed messages on what should be done in the budget, a persistence of illiberal attitudes towards asylum seekers, and a widespread belief that Pacific nations such as Fiji should be “left to sort out their own affairs”.
• An anonymous business figure tells Glenn Milne of The Australian that “major business donors” have a hit list of 14 MPs who must make way for new blood if the Liberal Party is to get their donations. These are Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar) and Philip Ruddock (Berowra), Kevin Andrews (Menzies), Alby Schultz (Hume), Joanna Gash (Gilmore), Judi Moylan (Pearce), Wilson Tuckey (O’Connor), Margaret May (McPherson), Andrew Laming (Bowman), Michael Johnson (Ryan) and Alex Somlyay (Fairfax), along with Nationals John Forrest (Mallee) and Bruce Scott (Maranoa) plus one lone Senator, former Howard numbers man Bill Heffernan. Some of these point to the Coalition’s undoubted surplus of MPs past their use-by date, as noted in detail recently by Peter van Onselen in The Australian. Others on the list fall well below van Onselen’s nominated cut-off point of 60 years of age, the most striking examples being Johnson (39) and Laming (42). Milne’s source also reckons Barnaby Joyce is “divisive and not a team player or a regional centre vote winner” – the latter judgement at least seems a very big call. While Milne describes the list as “non-factional”, Liberal sources are evidently putting it to Andrew Bolt that responsibility for the article ultimately lies with party treasurer and Turnbull ally Michael Yabsley, who scores an indirect compliment from Milne’s source.
• Submissions for the redistribution of New South Wales federal elections have been published, compelling the major parties to suggest which electorate they think should be eliminated. The Liberals have excitingly decided the axe should be wielded on their own turf, suggesting Kay Hull’s seat of Riverina and Alby Schultz’s seat of Hume be merged into a new seat called Bradman. Schultz has reacted by calling for a return to rural malapportionment. Ben Raue notes that the Liberals want territory transferred from Wentworth to Sydney, which would at once make Malcolm Turnbull safer while leaving Tanya Plibersek more vulnerable to the Greens. Labor’s submission calls for the abolition of Pat Farmer’s seat of Macarthur further to the north, where the Liberals propose to strengthen their position by adding territory from Hume.
• Swoon over the new-look Crikey. Now no longer featuring my goofy 2004 vintage mug on the front page, praise the Lord.
1,434 Comments
Pages: « 1 … 24 25 [26] 27 28 … 29 » Show All
Juliem
Quite right – surely we can use forecasting ability where it really matters – footy tips!
Our thoughts are very similar. Here are mine:
Hawthorn
Geelong
Brisbane
P. Adelaide
Carlton
Adelaide
West Coast
St. Kilda
Aristotle
Us bunnies need all the help we can get
Psephos,
Certainly, agree with the historical perspective.
However, they used to say Victoria was the “Crown Jewels” for the Libs. This is certainly no longer the case.
Sky poll
Will you leave your private health fund
Yes 62
No 38
same numbers as every poll I’ve ever seen at Skynooze lol
And how are non fixed terms any different? A government isn’t going to call an early election if they are going to get thrashed.
Sure they will
GG
That’s not true actually. There isn’t enough work for someone to live here full-time for any specialty. I manage to do the plastic surgery for the 20,000 or so people here in a 2 day visit each month.
What you say is partly true though in terms of docs wanting to fly here. The Governments give very little incentive to have doctors come here. I would make a lot more money if I quit and spent those two days in private practice (and I wouldn’t have to spend 2 days away from my kids, and catch a tiny plane at 6.20 am).
GG, the difference is that the demographics of Victoria have shifted decisively to Labor since Bolte’s day, with the industrialisation of the eastern suburbs and the recovery of the Catholic vote that was lost to the DLP in the 50s. As recently as 1973 state Labor had only one seat in the eastern suburbs (Dandenong). Now look at it:
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/states/vic/vicmapsindex.shtml
In NSW it’s true that state Labor has lost most of its country seats over the past 30 years, but that has been offset by its increasing dominance of Sydney and the growth of new Labor-voting suburban areas. The class structure of NSW gives Labor a natural edge that the Libs can overcome in very good years.
I meant “the Libs can overcome ONLY in very good years.”
Surely it’s a moot point whether Rudd would drop the health insurance rebate. There’s no way he would break two election promises in two weeks.
Mr X will block it in the Senate anyway.
The 30% private health rebate is a rort. Funds just increased their fees and private health insurance is not any more affordable than it was, and there is no evidence that it has effected public hospital demand.
Dont know why Labor has supported it this long.
1254,
Dario, I don’t know. You grew up with this stuff, I didn’t
……. I just know what I like better.
Psephos,
I’m happy to admit my lack of knowledge about NSW demographics. But, perhaps you could expand on your concept of “class” re NSW.
The Amigos of Telstra do not have the staying power of the Amigos of PB. We are still ridin’ singin’ and lovin’. Adios Amigos, dont come back.
http://business.smh.com.au/business/telstra-reshuffle-signals-cultural-change-20090508-axix.html
Andrew
Most of the people who would have taken up private health insurance because of the rebate would have been middle class people in their 30s and 40s with kids. They almost never use public (or private) hospitals anyway, except for their kids. And there aren’t any private hospitals (in SA at least) that try to cater for kids so I completely agree with you.
Still, a promise is a promise. If they wanted to scrap it, they should have gone into the 2007 election with a policy to dump it.
Adam/Psephos is correct that nominally the Governor has the power to sack the State Government. I invite you to reflect on the likely consequences if a Governor did sack the State Government just because it was unpopular and widely considered to be incompetent. I am sure any Governor who ever contemplated the idea would reflect on those likely consequences and refrain. It would be a good way to make yourself go down in history as the last Governor of New South Wales.
Game did sack the Lang Government in 1932. But he did so not just because it was unpopular and widely considered to be incompetent. His stated justification for dismissing the Government was that it was directly disobeying the law. According to one account I read, Game actually wrote to the UK Colonial Office (which at that point in history at least was still officially responsible for the appointment of State Governors, although not the Governor-General) asking for advice, but the advice arrived after he had already sacked Lang–and the advice said that it was not for the Governor to determine for himself whether the Government’s conduct was illegal, but that he should accept the advice on the point of his official advisers (in other words, the Government). And according to another account I read, Lang conspicuously declined to give Game a direct assurance that the Government’s actions were legal when asked to do so.
Of course, hypothetically various possibilities for extra-Constitutional removal of the Government exist. There’s nothing in the Fiji constitution which says that the President can revoke the constitution, but he did so just the same. Does anybody really think an armed revolution in New South Wales would be a better choice than the Rees Government staying in office?
Diogs,
You were saying how long the queues were. Either they are or they aren’t.
Balancing lifestyle and service is a difficult thing. But, I always thought that medicine was a vocation. Doctors need to be where the sick people are. Making filthy lucre is hardly the point of qualifying as a Doctor. Seems to me our Medical schools must be administering “moraldimensionectomies” to their undergraduates.
but they;re not scrapping it Diog- merely reforming it
Socrates @ 1231
I presume your listing of Rudd, Swan, Gillard, Tanner, Albanese, Wong, and Faulkner is supposed to be your listing of the top talent in the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, whom you take not to represent New South Wales, excluding Gillard from the ‘New South Wales’ category because she’s from the Left.
A much better reason to exclude Gillard from the ‘New South Wales’ category is that she is not from New South Wales. She’s from Victoria.
However, you will need to find a reason to exclude Faulkner and Albanese from the ‘New South Wales’ category, because they are from New South Wales. You can use the ‘but from the Left’ excuse for them if you like, as they are.
What strikes me at the moment as much more intriguing about the New South Wales Right at the moment is not whether or not they can produce ‘talent’ for the Federal Parliament (which must be partly a subjective judgement), but their apparent inability to produce a leader for the New South Wales Right. When the leadership of Iemma (who was a child of the New South Wales Right) was on its last legs, four names were publically canvassed as possible successors; three (Watkins, Tebbutt, and Rees) came from the Left, and one (Sartor), although now affiliated with the Right, is a recent recruit from outside who built his earlier career partly on opposing the machine.
J-D is quite right. The Governor’s power is purely theoretical. Even in 1932 Game’s action was on the edge of acceptable behaviour for a governor. The correct course of action for a governor who believes a premier is acting illegally is to threaten to resign, and then actually to resign and say why. To be fair to Game, he told Lang to his face that he would sack him unless Lang reversed his policy, he didn’t go behind his back and plot with the opposition like the mangy dog Kerr did in 1975.
No, folks, provided Labor’s majority stays intact (it would have to lose seven by-elections), Labor will stay in office till its term expires. This would almost certainly be the case even without fixed terms. Labor is not going to put itself out of office just because the Daily Torygraph says it should.
private health is only there to line specialists pockets. It is the cream that is so much loved. It’s also about the star belly sneetches, and not wanting to hang out with the none upon thars. Unfortunately the Costello black mail system was succesful in getting droves to join, as you would expect with any blackmail.
Gary Bruce at 1128
Normally I would agree with you.
I hate it when people throw up the ’seasonal adjustment’ challenge whenever a new release of statistics doesn’t go their way.
However, this April’s unemployment number really needs to be questioned. Its so far off the existing trend….
However – point taken
GG
Sick people are everywhere.
The queues are very long in the country, but not long enough to justify someone living in each town full-time in each specialty. So we mainly fly-in.
The provision of health care to the whole population is the responsibility of the Government, not the medical profession. The same is true for all other areas of the public service. We are just public servants.
How about Satyagraha?
No you’re not. The Constitution specifically prohibits “civil conscription” (s51 xxiiiA), and that clause was put there in 1946 at the insistence of the BMA as their price for supporting the referendum which allowed the Commonwealth directly to fund medical services. Doctors are businessmen/women – they go where they can trade at a profit.
Sorry, Diog, you may be a ‘public servant’ but that doesn’t apply to most doctors.
If you were all public servants, there would never be an oversupply of doctors in one area and an undersupply in another, because you’d go where you were sent.
I think the way to make this happen would be to tag Medicare provider numbers to areas on the basis of population. If you want to practice as a doctor, you’d have to wait for a provider number to become vacant in an area you wanted to work in (and in one of my incarnations, I did a lot of policy work on medical shortages in rural areas, in consultation with the RDA).
Psephos
I’m employed by the State Government. They pay me directly. John Hill keeps telling everyone he is my boss. I’m subject to the Public Service Management Act of SA. How am I not a public servant?
Sol Trujillo won’t be missed when he goes and certainly the immediate resignation of chairman Donald McGauchie will be cause for a sigh of relief in a number of quarters.
These two have been responsible for a substantial loss to the Australian taxpayer in both savage loss of value to shareholders and the subsequent loss to the Telstra Share portion of the Future Fund. Amazingly, the MSM have been extremely quiet about this. Must not damage Howard’s legacy, I presume.
http://www.futurefund.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/3175/Final_Portfolio_update_31_March_09.pdf
not exactly fair zoomster. how about bursaries with the country hospitals where they paid for some or all of your fees but in return you had to work there for say 3 to 5 years.You need to make it more attractive to go there, not force people
I saw the new CEO of Telstra, he looks like a “common man”, which is good. Not like the oil aint oil Sol.
zoomster
That’s true. GP’s for example are not public servants, which is true for specialists who only work in private practice. Most specialists work in public and private, and spend most of their time wondering why the hell they work in public.
Ah well that’s different. Obviously if you’re employed as a public servant, then you’re a public servant. But the government can’t direct doctors in private practice where to go or what to do.
(You do plastic surgery in Broken Hill as an SA public servant?)
I think the distinction is between choice and its lack. Doctors can still choose to be public servants. The provision stops doctors being forced to work in public hospitals. The concept was poetically discussed in the Eagles’ song “Hotel California”, I believe.
I’d imagine it’s similar for the teaching profession. You’re employed, ultimately, by a department and the department offers you placings. You can choose to not take the placing but are somewhat limited.
They can provide conditions, such as not being able to get your permanancy unless you work in the country for x years.
Diog, they pay you? for doing what?
1283
Exactly the sort of scenario I meant, Itep.
It’s not coercion. Just like a teacher, if you don’t want to work for the public service, you can go private.
And just like teachers, many of those ‘forced’ to go to country areas will find themselves staying there.
Diogs,
Did you watch that Pamelia Kurstin video? Very relaxing for the long flight back.
Here’s another Ted video Of Aimee Mullins and her twelve pairs of legs.
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/482
Finns
You are very mean. In between blogs today, I have operated on 6 people and seen 45 patients.
Adam
In BH I’m employed by NSW Health so della Bosca is my boss here. In Adelaide it’s John Hill. Although any really sick people I send back to Adelaide for treatment at the RAH with SA Health paying for NSW patients.
“della Bosca is my boss here”
I hope you haven’t said anything nasty about his wife Belinda Neal.
GG [I hope you haven’t said anything nasty about his wife Belinda Neal.]
It’s all been said, long ago. Only carrion eaters argue over a rotting carcass.
while we are at it the medicare threshold is also a rort, with studies showing the most affluent benefit from it. specialists are free to increase their fees in the knowledge that the govt will pay 80% of the extra over the threshold. It should be scrapped and would save millions
You should know by now that we dolphins dont have a mean bone inside us.
You are doing a fine job. Do you operate on flippers? They need a bit of streamlining, they used to be our hands you know.
JV,
Charming as always.
“It’s all been said, long ago. Only carrion eaters argue over a rotting carcass”.
Nice to know you’ve given up on your PR fantasy.
Does anyone else have a Health Minister who thinks that medicine shouldn’t be used to prolong life? All medical treatment is “unnatural” and “artificially” prolongs life.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25445732-5006301,00.html
freeze their brains and spinal cords and wait for another era when things are cheaper
Turnbull just quoted ” rud is spending like Paris Hilton”. I hope she gets wind of it and does another add like she did in the states
Turnbull really needs to go- whining about overspending at the same time as whining about the cuts to spending…Which is it Malcolm??
diogenes, what is your theory on why a medical specialist would spend their time between patients on a poll blog?? (I’m in the same boat!!!)
The discussion about the ABf’nC was interesting reading back over it – but only for the typical allegations of ‘bias’ thrown around by tribal spear carriers.
It was amusing to see the attack on S. Long’s economic segment on PM, and then read the transcript posted by ShowsOn– no-one was afterwards able to point to either bias or incompetence to back up the accusation.
Adam/Pseph put it best with his analogy of football supporters blaming the ref. onbehalf of the tribe.
If we didn’t have the national broadcaster and SBS the media landscape would be very bleak. Governments of the day should be challenged at all times by intelligent inquiry, with contrary views put to them strongly.
Oppositions often can’t do that effectively because their position is essentially the same as the government’s, or – as now – they are riven with factions to the point they cannot articulate a position at all. They therefore merely quibble about small things.
It’s often left to the intelligent inquirers in the ABC and SBS to put the key questions. It isn’t about left/right bias at all, but about challenging the status quo using the best information on behalf of the public. So, leave the last bastion of sceptical questioning alone, you knee-jerk members of the ALP palace guard.
This is not to say that the right-wing cabal appointed by Howard to the board shouldn’t be cleaned out as soon as possible. But Rudd must resist the urge to appoint his own tame members in their place.
GG @ 1292 – I wasn’t referring to you, but to BN’s chances of being an ALP candidate next election.
No GG why give up on something better than what we have? The PR proposition lives on all over the world. Only the big party vested interests try to raise weak arguments against it. Perhaps there could be a dedicated thread.
What’s your solution to the endless spiral of health costs, Dr Dio? People are living longer and longer, with more and more lifestyle-induced chronic illnesses. Medicine keeps coming up with more and more expensive techniques for spinning out our existences for a few more years, which everyone immediately demands the “right” of access to, so we have more and more people living in a twilight of senility at public expense. At the same time, fewer and fewer people want to do the drudge work of the health system, like nursing, so health care standards actually fall despite medical science’s “success” in keeping people alive longer. This can’t go on indefinitely. Something will have to give eventually.
Pages: « 1 … 24 25 [26] 27 28 … 29 » Show All