Interactive Graph, 12 September 2016:
Showing posts with label poll. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poll. Show all posts
Monday 19 September 2016
Friday 17 June 2016
Mike Seccombe on NSW Premier "Teflon Mike" Baird
Journalist Mike Seccombe writing in The Saturday Paper on 11 June 2016:
People tagged him “Teflon”, because nothing stuck to Mike Baird.
Called to leadership in inauspicious circumstances two years ago, he was clean, shiny and charismatic. And also bold. He determined to privatise the state’s electricity distribution system. Many other governments had foundered on the issue, but Baird took it to last year’s election and still won a thumping majority.
He was one of those rare politicians who transcended his party. He became not just a state premier but also a national political role model to many. When the federal Coalition government was going badly under Tony Abbott’s leadership, Mike Baird was most often cited as the alternative ideal.
And no wonder. For almost two years he was by far the most popular political leader in the nation.
But no more. According to the most recent Morgan poll of national leaders, Baird has been bested for the first time since he became premier of New South Wales…..
Baird is not under imminent threat, but he is “Teflon Mike” no more.
These days he is more commonly described as “Casino Mike”, a reference to his government’s endlessly obliging approach to James Packer’s plan for the giant development at Barangaroo. Since it was originally, controversially approved under former premier Barry O’Farrell, the development has grown 100 metres in height and its floor space has more than doubled in size.
It has not escaped the critics’ attention that the Packer family are among the biggest donors to Baird’s party. Nor that the state’s controversial lockout laws, intended to stop late-night, alcohol-fuelled assaults, do not apply to the very violent precinct around the city’s existing casino, The Star, and also excise Barangaroo.
But there is a lot more to his decline than that, as was evidenced a couple of weeks ago when thousands of protesters descended on central Sydney. They came with a smorgasbord of issues, ranging from the local – the route of contentious WestConnex motorway, the axing of scores of ancient fig trees to facilitate construction of a light rail project – to the general – the sacking of 42 local councils across the state, draconian police powers and anti-protest laws, cuts to school and TAFE funding and the government’s extensive privatisation agenda.
Quite suddenly, an awful lot of things are sticking to Baird. The punters are increasingly questioning his motives and the insiders are questioning his political judgement.
In February, when the federal government was floundering about seeking a tax reform agenda, there was no stronger advocate of an increased GST than Baird.
“I am convinced our political leaders and our community are ready to take the right, hard decisions for our future,” he said…..
It’s not just that Andrews read the wind better. It’s that the GST business served to underline something about Baird that people were already starting to realise: this “moderate” Liberal is actually very hardline on matters economic. The former investment banker is a deep neoliberal.
The government’s record of privatisation tells the story, says the Greens’ David Shoebridge.
“He’s sold the big ticket items: electricity generation, electricity transmission, ports. And now they’re looking around for things people would have thought immune.”
It is quite a list. Care services to 50,000 elderly and disabled residents living in their homes have been privatised. Three hundred inner-city housing commission properties have been sold for some $500 million, to fund the building of new accommodation miles away in the outer suburbs of the Illawarra and Blue Mountains.
And, most recently, the state’s land titles service has been privatised.
“The land titles system delivers about $60 million to the state each year. It’s a profit centre for government, but it seems any profit centre, any service they can identify they are ideologically committed to selling,” Shoebridge says.
“It puts a corruption risk at the heart of land titles in NSW.”
Of course, such criticism is unsurprising from a political opponent, particularly from the Greens. But it is echoed by the Law Society of NSW.
The sale should not proceed, said society president Gary Ulman, out of concern about “adequate protection of sensitive data, the continued implementation of best practice anti-fraud measures”.
The Baird government’s determination to guard the interests of the private sector is nowhere more obvious than in its approach to those who protest against coal and coal seam gas developments.
Legislation passed in March increased tenfold the fines faced by protesters to $5500 and provided for jail for up to seven years for “unlawful aggravated entry” to mine sites. The new laws also gave police new search and seizure powers and allowed them greater latitude under “move on powers” to break up demonstrations.
“This changed laws in place since 1901,” the chief executive and principal solicitor with the state’s Environmental Defenders Office, Sue Higginson, says.
“They have turned them into laws that privilege a particular component of society, the business community.”
The new anti-protest laws, in force from this week, are but one aspect of the progressive erosion of civil liberties under this government, Shoebridge says.
“They have criminalised protest. So many police powers have been extended, so much court oversight has been removed that we have the machinery in place for a police state… A police officer can prohibit you from going to a club, to your church or mosque, your political meeting.”
Shoebridge’s critique might sound extreme were it not for the fact that the legal community – the Law Society and Bar Association – concur.
In a statement in April, the president of the NSW Bar Association, Noel Hutley, described the serious crime prevention orders legislation as “an unprecedented attack on individual freedoms and the rule of law”.
“The bill creates broad new powers which can be used to interfere in the liberty and privacy of persons and to restrict their freedom of movement, expression, communication and assembly,” he said. “The powers are not subject to necessary legal constraints or appropriate and adequate judicial oversight and in many cases basic rules of evidence are circumvented.”
His detailed critique was utterly swingeing. His reflection on the attitude of the government to civil liberties was damning.
This is a government not averse to applying blunt force to opponents. The saga of local council amalgamations provides another example.
Leaving aside the matter of whether amalgamating small councils into bigger ones is desirable – though there has been strong community resistance – it is the way the government went about it that is troubling.
They simply sacked them and installed in their place administrators who will run the councils until September next year. The administrators are in many cases the same people who advised amalgamation or political fellow travellers of the government – former conservative politicians or party apparatchiks…..
The giant accounting firm KPMG was employed as an independent arbiter of the financial benefits of the mergers. Documents have since surfaced suggesting the firm was not independent at all, but was engaged specifically to make the case for amalgamations.
The Land and Environment Court has ordered the government to provide documents about the role KPMG played in implementing the council amalgamation agenda.
Baird faces a long succession of legal actions.
Then there is the environment, where further changes are imminent under legislation due for introduction in the spring session of parliament.
“We’re talking about wholesale changes to an entire suite of environmental laws,” Sue Higginson says. “We’re talking about simply throwing out some of the global leading-edge laws dating back to the Carr government. Our view is that this is a catastrophic step backwards.”
The new laws, she says, open the way for broad-scale land clearing by rural landholders.
Jeff Angel, of the Total Environment Centre, takes up the story: “It allows clearing for almost any purpose, with minimal consent and monitoring. It’s appalling.
“Frankly, the more we look at it, the more it looks like [the laws introduced by the former Campbell Newman government in] Queensland.”……
Read the full article here.
Sunday 12 June 2016
Monday 30 May 2016
Australian Federal Election 2016: polling at the beginning of Week 4 of the campaign
News.com.au, 28 May 2016:
Three weeks into the two-month campaign, the 7News-ReachTel poll, released on Friday, has Labor ahead 52-48 on a two-party preferred basis.
Earlier in the week Newspoll and Essential had Labor leading the coalition 51-49 per cent, reversing the Fairfax-Ipsos result from the previous weekend.
For those who place more faith in the punters here are Sportsbet markets covering NSW Northern Rivers at 8am 29 May 2016:
Sitting Nationals MP Kevin Hogan since 2013 vs Labor candidate Janelle Saffin
Sitting Labor MP Justine Elliot since 2004 vs Nationals candidate Matthew Fraser & The Greens Dawn Walker
Sitting Nationals MP Luke Hartsuyker since 2001 vs candidate “Any Other” & Labor’s Alfredo Navarro
Thursday 19 May 2016
Australian Federal Election 2016: a tale of five polls
Poll No. 1 based on statistical analysis….
May 16 2016 Finding No. 6808 Topic: Federal Poll Public Opinion Country: Australia
In mid-May ALP support 52.5% (up 1.5%) is now clearly in front of the L-NP 47.5% (down 1.5%) on a two-party preferred basis after the first week of official campaigning following Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to call a Double Dissolution Election for Saturday July 2.
This is easily the best result for ALP since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister in September 2015 and if a Federal Election were held now the ALP would win.
Primary support for the L-NP is 36.5% (down 3.5%) with ALP at 33% (up 0.5%). Support for the Greens is up 2% to 15.5%, Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) 5% (up 1%; 19.5% in South Australia), Katter’s Australian Party is 0.5% (down 0.5%), Palmer United Party is 0% (unchanged) and Independents/ Others are at 9.5% (up 0.5%).
The massive vote for minority parties (30.5%) suggests that today they would definitely control the Senate and the Greens and the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) could control the House of Representatives.
Poll No. 2 also based on statistical analysis….
8 May 2016 release
The Holder of the TV Remote poll....
The Punter’s poll….
Sportsbet, accessed 16 May 2015:
Monday 25 April 2016
Australian Federal Election 2016: is Nationals MP Kevin Hogan in trouble in Page?
Echo NetDaily, 22 April 2016:
A ReachTel survey conducted in Page on Tuesday night shows sitting Nationals MP Kevin Hogan in serious trouble, with ALP contender and former incumbent Janelle Saffin ahead by 56 to 44 per cent on a two-party preferred basis.
But the news gets worse for Mr Hogan, with as many as 33 per cent of Page voters saying they would be more likely to vote against the Coalition if the parties don’t re-endorse the Gonski education reforms……
Wednesday 2 March 2016
Australian Federal Election 2016: another opinion poll puts Labor & Coalition neck-and-neck on two party preferred vote distribution
As national polling of voter intentions begins to tighten, the Turnbull Government options are also narrowing.
The term of this House of Representatives expires on 11 November 2016 and, writs for a normal half-Senate election cannot be issued before 1 July 2016.
Thus the first available date for a general election would be on or about 6 August 2016 - which would see Parliament dissolved and the Abbott-Turnbull Government in caretaker mode from as early as 21 June, approximately five weeks after delivering its third set of budget papers.
Leaving Prime Minister Turnbull and Treasurer Morrison very little time to tweak any unpopular measures or errors found in their 2016-17 budget before Coalition MPs went on the campaign trail in their respective electorates.
As for a double dissolution. According to Antony Green's Election Blog:
A double dissolution of the House and the Senate under Section 57 of the Constitution cannot take place within 6 months of the end of the House's term. That means a double dissolution must be granted by 11 May 2016. Allowing for the maximum campaign shown above, the last possible date for a double dissolution election is 16 July 2016.
This timetable leaves Turnbull less than seventy days to create a situation which the Governor-General could view as urgently supporting the dissolution of both the House of Representatives and the full Senate.
Such an election would also see the Abbott-Turnbull Government in caretaker mode within days of tabling this year's budget papers.
Latest Essential Report, 1 March 2016:
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