Time for a new thread. For the want of anything better to hang it off, I hereby reprint my piece in Crikey last week on prospects for the Senate. This does not mean discussion on this thread need be relevant to this topic.
Like so much else this year, speculation about the Senate election has been guided by “the narrowing”: that mystical force that would drive swinging voters to the Coalition once the campaign focused minds on economic management. It’s now clear to all but a dwindling band of die-hards that this hasn’t happened and isn’t about to.
It is thus necessary to revise the view that the Coalition will be strong enough in the Senate to make life difficult for an incoming Rudd Government. The Liberals and Nationals instead find themselves in danger of losing a swag of seats, which opens up a dizzying range of possibilities for the Greens.
A case in point is Kerry Nettle’s bid for re-election in New South Wales. Earlier in the year it seemed safe to assume there would be a traditional three-all split between left and right, with Nettle fighting a probably losing battle with Labor’s number three, Senator Ursula Stephens. In that context, any improvement in the Labor vote would have been damaging for Nettle. Now it seems Labor might be strong enough to win Stephens a seat without excluding Nettle, perhaps even bequeathing her a measurable surplus as preferences. That would boost Nettle’s chances of overtaking and defeating the Coalition’s third candidate, Senator Marise Payne.
The story is similar in Victoria, given that Labor and the Democrats have thought better of repeating their 2004 preference exchanges with Family First (who nonetheless have a vague chance if they can match their vote at the state election).
There has been a further stroke of good fortune for the Greens with the entry of independent Nick Xenophon in South Australia. Such is Xenophon’s popularity that he looks likely not only to win a quota in his own right, but also to deliver the Greens a substantial surplus. This could help their candidate Sarah Hanson-Young overcome the third Labor candidate, Cathy Perry.
Bob Brown should have no trouble winning a seat in Tasmania, the question being how the remaining five seats will divide between Labor and Liberal. There is familiar talk that Brown might do well enough to also carry running mate Andrew Wilkie over the line, but this at least seems a little too optimistic.
The two states where Labor’s strength does not help the Greens are Western Australia and Queensland. Western Australia does not look likely to produce the huge swing required to cost the Liberals a third seat, so a strong hike in the Labor vote has the potential to squeeze out the Greens. Nonetheless, their candidate Scott Ludlam remains the firm favourite.
Labor is also becoming hopeful of winning a third seat in Queensland, which it has never done before at a six-seat half-Senate election. On the other side of the ledger, there is a chance that the Coalition will lose the seat of Nationals Senator Ron Boswell to Family First, who will harness the entire right-of-centre vote if they get ahead of Pauline Hanson. It’s hard to see how Hanson herself could put a quota together, despite all that has been written about her minor successes in preference negotiations.
The remaining wild card is the Australian Capital Territory, where Greens candidate Kerrie Tucker threatens an historic win at the expense of Liberal incumbent Gary Humphries. This would be especially significant because territory Senators’ terms are tied to the House of Representatives, so that an end to the Coalition’s absolute majority would take effect immediately.
While it is likely that not all of these potential Greens wins will come off, they will probably have around five Senators joining the two continuing from the 2004 election, to be joined on the cross benches by Nick Xenophon and continuing Family First Senator Steve Fielding. The Coalition will be reduced from its current majority of 39 seats out of 76 to around 35, while Labor should increase its current 28 seats by four.
Paul k (1234) There IS something to scare people this time around and it’s been doing it beautifully for the last two years. It’s called Workchoices.
“Howard has been one of the most accessible Prime Ministers in history and he’s always willing to front up to the 7.30 report, Lateline and other mediums where appropriate.”
Howard loves the sound of his own voice.
1247 Generic Person – and then dodge every question being asked.
Thanks for the reassurance, guys. I think you’re right about people not chuckin’ a wobbly on Rudd in the booth.
Another reason I *dont* think people will change their minds on the day is that Rudd is the ultimate Safe Pair of Hands.
By comparison, I was looking at the Wikipedia page on Latham today and it includes one of those giant scare billboards the Libs ran in 2004 to such good effect. You remember: “Latham running the economy? Good luck with THAT!!”.
There is absolutely none of that this time round; there’s no cut-thru ads like that, and there’s no pre-existing fears to hang them on. Rudd’s image is as safe as iced-vovos at nanna’s house on a Sunday afternoon.
No 1244
Yes, there’s a big difference. And just because the legislation allows the construction of power plants does not mean that suddenly all the regulations go out the windows.
In the end, the problem with having a debate about nuclear power is that it inevitably descends into hysterical scaremongering rather than pragmatic assessments of the science and safety measures.
Of course the coalition isn’t going to build Nuke Plants.
They haven’t built anything in their 11 years in office, just slowly takern apart a good health system, industrial relations system, training and education system and a housing sector. These jokers could nt build a playpen.
They will just legislate where the sites are going to go, throw billions in subsidies and tax benefits to the builders and operators of the Nuke plants and then retire to a juicy well paid board seat on one of the companies after they leave politics.
#1239
As I posted yesterday, I get the impression that the ALP is taking Ryan very seriously. Again driving home from work today (through Ryan), I saw Ross Daniels and a crew of supporters with numerous billboards on the roadside. As someone mentioned to me yesterday, some serious ALP cash is going into this seat. The punters still have the ALP long to win the seat ($2.90 odd I think), but who knows, this may shorten suddenly before Saturday.
Betamax, I think a Swan and the economy: Good Luck, would have worked equally as well. But instead, the party focussed on union-bashing.
1255 Generic Person – the nuclear debate is a negative for Howard, pure and simple.
I actually support nuke power myself.
I just beleieve we need better disposal technologies for waste that has a half life of 10,000 years and can kill you through a wall without even looking at you.
I beleive a “mag lev gun” is being built which is capable of shooting large objects well past earth orbit with little power needed.
I believe this would be best applied to nuke waste and GP
No 1259
There’s no definitive evidence of that. Although, I agree it’s not an appropriate election platform given the ease with which the opposition can bring out the scare campaigns about Tchernobyl.
I’m watching the last half of Who Killed Harold Holt (missed the first half, had it on SBS).
The Segment of Holt’s relationship with LBJ re Vietnam and the treatment of the troops is VERY similar to how Howard is running things.
[Yes, there’s a big difference. And just because the legislation allows the construction of power plants does not mean that suddenly all the regulations go out the windows.]
Wait and see where this arrogant crap gets you on Saturday.
If you support nuclear power, then just say that. You don’t have to say there is a difference between legalising nuclear power and some how legalising the construction of nuclear reactors.
Get real.
GP,
No one outside the Liberal Party is buying this bull about the Nuclear Power Plants. Everything you’ve said about them is rubbish. Howard announced he wanted the plants BEFORE there was any assessment done at all. And if they are built they’ll only be built because of subsidies that Howard gives for the Plants. The Coalition is responsible for any Nuclear Plants built as they couldn’t be built without the dollars Howard will give away to the Plant builders.
i never thought id see it. they;ve found the lupercale!
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22795535-12377,00.html
No 1263
ShowsOn, there is a difference between legalising the construction of power plants and actually building them, as the ALP is trying to argue.
But it seems your too hysterical about nuclear power to debate with some sense.
Howard has always been ‘accessible’. Why not, he thrives on that fraction of vote which is essentially a cult.
But that wasn’t my point. Howard (and friends) set out to either destroy or gag the ABC – or a bit of both which has been the case.
Kerry was making the point that he’s been there since Howard got in he’ll be there when Howard is a memory. And Kerry is looking forward to the freedom of being a journalist in a once-proud organization without Liberal party hacks pressuring the ABC board every time they perceive ‘bias’.
Witness the shameful campaign about ABC ‘bias’ when all they were doing was picking up on a cross section of media reports on the Iraq war and not just running the Fox view.
The interview had Howard pinned, but that wasn’t surprising. It was seeing Kerry almost gleeful. There’s lots of people in the ABC who are going to get seriously newscasted on Sat night 🙂 (and I mean merry.. happy.. freedom!)
I got an extremely effective Labor pamphlet in the letter box tonight (Deakin, Vic). It looks like a worn men’s wallet with a $5 note poking out of the top. Very realistic, so that I reached in to see what it was all about. Inside it looks like a wallet but has anti-WorkChoices material set out simply and effectively.
This typifies the astonishing difference in quality of Labor and Coalition advertising this time around.
The Coalition pamphlet, also in the letterbox, by contrast, was just a poorly assembled smorgasbord of fear-slogans, patently ridiculous assertions and B-grade personality attacks.
Setting aside political afiliation and content, it is just beyond belief that there can be such a difference between two major contenders in an election in a country the size of Australia.
1237 Generic Person, that’s just classic Howard spin that his government won’t actually build the 25 nuclear reactors themselves. Speaking plainly, under the Liberals, nuclear power plants will be coming to a site near you, and it will all be set in motion before the Senate changeover in July.
A rodent from old Bennelong
Was skewered, and looking quite gone
He thought, with a grin
I’ll lie, and I’ll spin
And Costello can deal with the pong
(it is getting late)
voterboy 672 Agree entirely. My daughter is a vet, and if she stays in Aust she gets peanuts (like seriously peanuts – you have to work for years to get over $50K, and the hours are awful). In the UK, the pay is twice that. But getting into the Aust housing market against the tide of negative gearing … forget it.
[ShowsOn, there is a difference between legalising the construction of power plants and actually building them, as the ALP is trying to argue.]
Read this slowly:
WHY WOULD YOU LEGALISE NUCLEAR REACTORS WITHOUT HAVING ANY INTENTION OF ALLOWING THE CONSTRUCTION OF NUCLEAR REACTORS?
[But it seems your too hysterical about nuclear power to debate with some sense.]
Utter dickheadery.
I’m actually one of a tiny minority of Labor supporters who support nuclear power.
is conservative activist an oxymoron?
GP at 1247 says: “Howard has been one of the most accessible Prime Ministers in history..”
That’s true, GP. He’d turn-up and lie, spin, distort, obfuscate, weasel and fail to answer the question anywhere, anytime.
He was like the rent an argument skit from Monty Python.
No 1267
The ABC is still a proud organisation. Indeed, even as a Coalition supporter, I like the ABC and watch it all the time.
However, it can be prone to bias. Monica Attard and Philip Adams are prime examples.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/dirty-dozen-smear/2007/11/20/1195321782646.html
GP, as I made very clear to Glen weeks ago. Nuclear isn’t cost effective. It isn’t now. It never will be. It will never happen here without subsidies and that much was made clear by Ziggy.
Problem is, renewables are now roughly at about a 30% premium over coal and that’s without the benefit of scale, whereas nuclear is (or would be once we got the kinks out), at a 50% premium over coal, and thats in ten years. The price of nuclear technology isn’t coming down because it’s a mature technology. The price of solar is plummeting.
In 10 years solar will be cheaper than coal. End of story.
No 1277
What happens when the sun isn’t shining mad cow?
Fromm Bob…..
On Sunday, March 5, I called in the secretary of the Treasury, John Stone, who told me that the projected figure for 1983-4 was $9.6 billion, the largest in our history; equivalent today as a percentage of GDP to more than $40 billion. Stone pointed out that “the budget balance is projected to deteriorate from near zero to more than 6% of GDP in a two-year period. The speed and magnitude of that deterioration is almost without precedent among the major OECD countries in the postwar period”. Stone was no Labor stooge — he went on to become a Nationals senator — and his written judgement was that Howard’s performance was virtually the worst anywhere in the developed world since 1945.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/the-pm-continues-to-misrepresent-the-truth/2007/11/20/1195321779086.html
GP, I think the issue is not whether we bludgers are too hysterical to discuss things like nuclear power. The important political issue is the Howard has lost the trust of a large swathe of voters. People want to have trust in their political leaders. The system relies on public consent, for which a precondition is trust. Howard’s first-order problem is that he has lost the trust of people who once voted for him. These are the people who have swung from his team to Rudd’s team. Getting them back is his problem and he has gone about it in exactly the wrong way. You can call it hysteria, but really it is about trust.
1278
you have just demonstarted your environmental credentials
Thanks for that link blacklight, Most edifying! If Granny says it’s a pathetic smear, it’s a pathetic smear.
[GP, as I made very clear to Glen weeks ago. Nuclear isn’t cost effective. It isn’t now. It never will be. It will never happen here without subsidies and that much was made clear by Ziggy.]
It will become more cost effective when we have carbon trading. It will be coal power stations that will become much more expensive, and so they should, they are the most polluting.
Re 1262 Frank Calabrese, Q: who Killed Blind Johnny Howard? A: Deaf and Dumb Johnny Howard. This guy is so deep in the aquamarine that Sharks Cousteau couldn’t get him out. 😉
Nuclear Power Plants are not a core Liberal Party policy, they are a John Howard policy. The next leader of the Liberal Party will dump the policy along with a lot of other Howard policies.
I am not a greenie and really doubt Climate Change (It really hot therefore the sky must be falling in) but Nuc powers by products have a 100000 year shelf life. No one can say anything with confidence or even slight sense over that time frame.
In 3000 years there might be a new Rome and special yellow power stones.
Will at 1224.
‘I wish KOB had gone a little further with Howard on the 22% cash rate and the effect of having housing loans capped at 13%…’
Yes, that was good.
It is rare to hear any reference to that cap. Often wondered what happened to it.
Certainly caused division, even then for those on the cap and those starting on new, and ever, really escalating rates and real estate prices.
Having a recollect about the whole deal. It certainly meant and caused kerfuffles in South Australia.
Seem to recall Bannon doing something.
The Nuke plants will cost $175 billion, even the USA plants cannot operate wiyhout massive subsidies and tax benefits so you can add another $75 billion on top of that.
$250 billion dollars for Nuke plants in Austalia.
What would that do for alternative energy sources like solar, wave generation wind power, geo thermal and hot rocks if you spent even a tenth of that money.
Howard couldn’t even spend just $10 million on keeping ground breaking solar sliver cell technology in Australia that was eventually sold to the Germans who will reap a fortune from it.
For me, Uranium based power generation no, Thorium maybe. But when those advocating nuclear power have their business mates already lining up, they can go and get farked.
GP
One final laugh for the night please. since you know him so well, how would you describe John Howard’s personal honesty?
[1273 Big Blind Dave Says: is conservative activist an oxymoron?]
no it’s just a moron….
By the way GP, stick around because you liven up the place. It sometimes get a bit nauseating with all this mutual backslapping and pissing in each other pockets.
LTEF – if you get this: my daughter is living in the north of England, being paid twice as much as in Oz with a house and car thrown in, and she reckons her cost of living is about the same as in Melbourne. And no HECS. I wonder whether she’ll come back ….
THE WORRY IS THAT LABOR WILL WIN DESPITE THE “RIGHT WING” MEDIA
ie. John Howard is the most untruthful PM in this Country’s history and yet he has won 4 elections straight and PROBABLY would have realistically won this one if he had not enacted work choices.
ie. Howard probably would have won despite Iraq being our worst ever foreign policy disaster AND the AWB $300 million bribe being the worst ever fraud by an Aussie Government
Do we celebrate Rudd’s win but blindly continue to purchase “right wing” newspapers and listen to un-balanced commercial TV news ???
or does not anyone care
GP. I’m not opposed to nuclear power plants myself, although I’d like to see other options explored first. So a debate would be good. But one can’t debate with Howard because he’s not willing to be upfront about things.
When Kerry asked him about nuclear he came up with some stupid smokescreen line about how he wasn’t wasn’t going to be building them in the next three years. Of course not – the question is, though: what is your intention?
His intention is to switch Australia to nuclear energy. But as with everything else, Howard wants to have it both ways. He wants nuclear power, and argues there’s an economic reason for it, and is establishing the steps to have it brought in, but he knows it’s politically difficult, so he says, ‘but people will have to OK it first’.
So … on one hand it is in Australia’s national interest that we switch to nuclear, and not doing so will damage our economy and our environment. On the other hand, John Howard – the biggest centralist since Gough Whitlam – will be happy to bow to the good burghers of Sutherland shire or Maroochy shire, or Gippsland, just because they say – quite selfishly, perhaps – ‘no, not in my back yard’.
I don’t think so.
[Howard announced he wanted the plants BEFORE there was any assessment done at all. And if they are built they’ll only be built because of subsidies that Howard gives for the Plants.]
You know, Howard’s ideals start to make sense when you think about his upbringing. Born in 1939, his earliest memories would have been of the twists and turns of a war that brought the free world to its knees. And the Watershed of nuclear fission as the bringer of peace and security. So, in a time of crisis, his childhood imprinted instincts are to turn to nuclear power, and pretty soon we’ll all be happy behind our white picket fence with Uncle Sam to protect us.
GP 1278
The obvious answer to your question is wind energy. It is alreeady quite cost competitive in SA. The only real difficulty is that most of the existing transmission system is focused on the existing coal power station sites.
[1287 Crikey Whitey Says: It is rare to hear any reference to that cap. Often wondered what happened to it.]
Confession of ignorance, but I’d never heard of that cap till the 7.30 report tonight, is it too technical to be an electoral issue?
No 1290
Politicians have and always will talk in equicovations. John Howard is no different to any of his predecessors, and nor is Kevin Rudd any better.
[The obvious answer to your question is wind energy. It is alreeady quite cost competitive in SA. The only real difficulty is that most of the existing transmission system is focused on the existing coal power station sites.]
And dickheads complain that the turbines *may* kill ~200 birds in a year.