Australian politics

THEORY AND PRACTICE

Duckpond - March 21, 2010 - 12:23am

Some criticism simply shows incomprehension. Democracy is both theory and practice.

I tend to blame myself for not being clear enough and too interested in making what might seem obscure jokes. What do you think?

Here is what I wrote with the names of real people changed with an alphabet soup:

DISCUSSION PRIMER: THOUGHTS ON DEMOCRACY AND PAROCHIALISM

The issue of deepening democracy, from televisual electoral politics to a more authentic community and locally founded democracy is a challenge. We need to develop a working model, and perhaps the sacking of the Wollongong City Council(and others) has given us the opportunity.

What worries me is that liberal democratic theory is not understood. But why should I expect it to be? The derivation of the word, democracy,even though Greek in origin, is simple enough. The meaning is rule by the people as distinct from rule by a single person or by a small group. Read more »

From Boom To Bust – How Employment Has Changed

Pollytics - March 19, 2010 - 12:43pm

Ever wondered where we are all working these days? The latest release of the ABS Labor Force Survey tells us.(click to expand)

undustryemp1

Health care and social assistance industries have come in as Australia’s largest employer in February, beating the retail sector for only the second time (the first being back in August 2009). Together, these two industries provide over 1 in 5 of all jobs in the Australian economy. Read more »

Parental leave, the minimum wage and the end of civilisation

en Passant - March 18, 2010 - 10:07pm

Those nasty unionists have been arguing for a $27 a week increase in the minimum wage from its current ‘exorbitant’ $544 a week. The end is nigh. Or so the bosses tell us.

There are about 1.4 million workers whose salary is dependent in some way on the minimum wage. Paying them a slight increase will evidently destroy capitalism in Australia if you listen to big business.

Many bosses ’earn’ in an hour what people on the minimum wage make in a week.

Last year the Fair Pay Commission froze the wages of those on the minimum wage and this freeze flowed through to a range of other workers whose low wages are set by reference to the lowest paid.

The Global Financial Crisis was the reason, supposedly. The real reason of course was to transfer more profit to the bosses. This is evidently the only thing that counts in our society.

But in Australia the GFC appears to have been more like a Great Fucken Con to force us to cut our wages and prop up the banks with guarantees so they could increase their profits. Read more »

On the QT: It must be love

Grog's Gamut - March 17, 2010 - 7:13pm

Here was Tony Abbott in August 2008, talking about Peter Costello: "I suppose we are all publicly saying what a terrific bloke he is, what a fantastic political talent he is, how much we miss him. We love him. We want him."

Methinks the love ain’t being felt so much today, after Peter Costello wrote in The Age of Abbott’s Paid Parental Leave scheme: Read more »

Newspoll Tuesday – Groundhog Day Edition

Pollytics - March 16, 2010 - 6:37am

In contrast to yesterday’s Essential Report which was Labor’s best poll result of the year, comes today’s Newspoll via The Oz which is probably Labor’s worst result. The primaries come on 41 (steady)/ 39 (down 1) to the Coalition, washing into a two party preferred of 52/48 to Labor – unchanged from last fortnight. The Greens are up 2 to 11 while the broad “Others” or on 9 (down 1).

This comes from a sample of 1143, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.9% mark.

Tony Abbott should consider himself a little lucky today with the Newspoll sample, as other unpublished phone polling that was in the field last week and over the weekend picked up movement more akin to Essential than Newspoll. So saying, it all comes out in the wash given enough time. (And no folks, that isn’t a Newspoll conspiracy, it’s simply normal sampling error – put it back in your pants) Read more »

South Australian Election Simulation

Pollytics - March 20, 2010 - 9:41am

Newspoll released 1500+ sample poll of South Australian voting intentions today in The Oz that you can take a squiz at over here. What this allows us to do is use that data to run one of our monte carlo election simulations on those figures to get a bit of a handle on the most likely outcome of today’s result (assuming that the election result comes in within the MoE of the Newspoll figures) and attach some implied probabilities to possible outcomes.

The headline results of the simulation come in like this:

sasim1

The most likely result is Labor winning 21 seats (where 24 is needed to govern outright), which would mean a total result of 21 ALP, 21 Liberal and 5 independents. You can’t get much more of a split parliament than that! Read more »

Betting Market Friday

Pollytics - March 19, 2010 - 7:09am

This week we’ve seen movement back towards the Coalition from our two betting agencies that moved against them last week, while the others continue to remain on their month long steady course. Sportsbet was the bigger mover, plunging $1.20 for the Coalition to bring them back to $3.50, while Betfair pulled back 20 cents to come in at $4 even.Our weekly change numbers look like this:

weeklychangemar19

We can see the recent volatility in Sportsbet by looking at the Coalition price of our 5 agencies since the beginning of February when we started tracking.

5agencypricesmar19 Read more »

On the QT: Let’s talk about health, baby. Let’s talk about you and me.

Grog's Gamut - March 18, 2010 - 9:07pm

Today’s final Question Time for the summer sitting period exceeded all expectations – which wasn’t hard given there weren’t any. The first question from Scott Morrison on asylum seekers suggested that today was going to be like every other day for the last two weeks – a tennis match between the serves from the Opposition on asylum seekers and insulation, and returns by the Government on Health. But it was not to be.

The first Dorothy Dixer to Rudd was (not surprisingly) on Health, but quickly things departed from the norm. Rudd began to goad Abbott into responding, to his rhetorical questions, and then said that the leader of the opposition was as usual silent on the matter. Abbott rose on a point of order saying if the Government wanted to give him leave to talk about Health he would be happy to. Read more »

On the QT: Does Comrade Tony’s jam jar have a billion dollars in it?

Grog's Gamut - March 16, 2010 - 8:36pm

In the past 24 hours the previous two Prime Ministers, John Howard and Paul Keating, have made appearances in the media. Howard was on 4 Corners talking about Tony Abbott; Keating was interviewed on Fran Kelly this morning. Their respective appearances would have only served to convince supporters of both that we are well rid of the other, and Oh! That the one we like were still in power. There’s no guessing which one I miss! Read more »

On the QT: There Won’t Be Blood

Grog's Gamut - March 15, 2010 - 7:41pm

Last year when Turnbull was making a charge at Rudd over the Grech Affair, there was a distinct feeling that Question Time could get bloody. When Turnbull asked Rudd a question on something seemingly innocuous, there was the feeling that there would be a follow up question that would pack a decided sting. You half expected Turnbull to lean over the Dispatch Box and say to Rudd “I drink your milkshake”. Read more »