Would PM Dutton poll better than Morrison?

And so, another year of Crikey Comments dawns. Going by the emails we received over the break, readers were eagerly anticipating a new year of hot takes. They hit the ground running yesterday, responding with gusto to our first stories of the year: William Bowe on the Coalition’s polling troubles, Guy Rundle on the latest Brexit machinations, and Christopher Warren on the future of Stan.

Welcome to 2019. It’s going to be a big one.

On the LNP’s latest polling woes

Rumtytum writes: Blaming Turnbull for the bad polls is too easy. I think he polled badly because the party was doing nothing useful for any voters — not even very much for crazed capitalists — and was clearly unable to do anything useful because half the party subscribed to right-wing lunacy and the other half was too frightened to fight. One must wonder how much worse the polls might have been if Dutton was PM and was pushing the sort of batty nonsense the polls tell us most Australians disagree with. A majority seem to believe that Turnbull wasn’t in fact left-wing enough. He gave us a rotten NBN, caved in to the climate flat-earthers, and wasn’t game to press forward with anything he was naively imagined to believe in.

bushby jane writes: Hope your analysis of Queensland doesn’t mean that Dutton will keep his seat.

On the ongoing Brexit farce

Filthy Dancer writes: The Brexit issue is impenetrable. Nobody can understand it or the implications either way. One thing is certain: if, somehow, the UK does squeeze itself out from the continent, the country is going to go tits-up very quickly. There is no way that the million flow-on effects have been foreseen and addressed. Afterwards, there will only be blame and plenty of that to go around.

Evil Brian writes: I’ve been saying since the day the Brexit vote took place that I didn’t think a true Brexit would ever happen, and I’m even more convinced of that now. I can certainly see a new referendum being created. Using the John Howard divide and conquer strategy from the Australian republic vote to ensure that the only palatable option would be to remain, they could convince enough original leavers to change their vote, and enough of those who wanted to remain at the time of the first vote but who were too bloody lazy to actually vote that time, to finally get off their arse.

On the global streaming wars

Laurie Patton writes: Rupert Murdoch kicked an own goal by campaigning against the NBN, ostensibly to protect Foxtel’s legacy pay TV business. Content is increasingly being delivered online and Foxtel could have cornered that market before Netflix and other foreign providers hit our shores. Foxtel is now belatedly moving to an online delivery model, but it is on the back foot trying to catch up rather than leading the field.

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