The day after the day after

That lucid analysis I promised two posts ago will still have to wait another day. In the meantime, I have added a new “photo finish” thread below for Dickson, where Labor’s lead is an uncomfortable 389 votes, to those already existing for Swan, Solomon, McEwen, Macarthur, La Trobe, Herbert, Bowman and the Victorian Senate. It would also be remiss of me not to note the very sad passing of Matt Price, taken far too young at 46.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,367 comments on “The day after the day after”

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  1. Sky just announced that Downer will address his future tomorrow. This came on the heels of a story about the Lib leadership options. David Spears says it wouldn’t surprise him one bit if Downer steps down.

  2. Observer @ 150,

    I don’t see how the situation has changed since yesterday. Nothing has been counted since 4:30pm, so why didn’t she claim victory last night?

  3. Dolly will retire tomorrow. AWB hangs over him like a giant storm cloud.

    If the moderates win and elect Turnbull now, the uglies will go feral on them. They are always in the mood for a fight and are in a position of strength at the moment internally in the Party.

    If Nelson(the man with the immoveable face) gets elected we will all die of boredom. And superhornetgate hangs over his head as a problem for him.

    If Abbott gets elected you can bank on a DD election and a Lib slaughter.

    Good work Johnny. In the name of your own self interest you have destroyed the immediate (and maybe longterm) future of the Liberal Party.

    Also wouldn’t be surprised to see the Nats go it alone pretty soon. Led by Bananaby

  4. El Nino @ 141, but it worked for Howard the first couple of times. As with all his tactics, he tried it on once too often and this election no one was listening any more, and it just cemented the idea of an old guy with no new ideas.

    Labor has to come up with some way of disassociating itself in the popular mind with economic downturn, as the electorate is not sophisticated enough to understand there is not always a causal connection. Howard benefited from good timing with the boom, and was absolutely shameless in claiming all the credit. Whatever else his legacy, in the popular mind, if a recession hits, the Howard era will be thought of as “the good old days”.

  5. Swing Lowe@142

    The Mad Monk’s days in public office are over, even at school he was renown for turning debating into a blood sport. Parliament doesn’t need that. Change the Government – Change the Country. He should get out.

  6. LTEP – “Let Them Eat Pork” sounds pretty good to me, given the amount of pork barrelling our desperate former Prime Minister indulged in to try and bribe his way back into power. Yes, I think I like that.

    Of course you could also consider – “Thanks For Losing The Election”.

  7. Hmm… If Abbott doesn’t get the Leadership, will he resign? Or will he go for Shadow Treasurer?

    I’m sure he doesn’t want to get stuck in Health again…

  8. Isn’t it possible, and I’d argue likely, that Costello was ‘nudged’ out of contention? The Libs will want to move away from the Right wing nut jobs that have plunged them so deeply into electoral oblivion. Costello is a voice of the past and I suspect the moderates with the Liberal party know this.

  9. LTEP,

    My suggestion for your new name is “Thank God It’s Over”. Coz that’s how I’ve been feeling for the last couple of days…

  11. Abbott would be a highly amusing choice as leader of the liberal party, if only for the fact he is barking mad. After his election campaign though, he has no chance. Turnbull seems the best choice, but I suspect the boring graduate from my alma mater, Brendan Nelson, will win the role.

  12. Spare a thought for the Exclusive Bretheren. They must be feeling that the world truly is coming to end. I hope it would for them. Nasty piece of work and I only hope that we’ll see the end of this sort of thing. Rudd should set up an enquiry/Royal Commission and get to the bottom of all these things.

  14. Noel@113

    “well amused by the enthusiam for abbott as leader in this blog. i think his tenure would be filarious. mind you he’s got about as much chance of that as he has of getting to heaven. ”

    Gee that’s s bit severe – not even I would bash him that hard. Anyway, I doubt he’d be welcome in Hell.

  17. 137
    Jude Says:
    November 26th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
    Betamax @ 126, I think Rudd better start crafting the lines now, just as Howard honed them over the years, you know the sort of thing “Labor’s $X debt”, “17% interest rates under Labor” etc. Rudd’s lines would emphasise Howard’s failure to invest in infrastructure that could have led to productivity growth, squandering the dividend of the mining boom, ignoring education, huge foreign debt etc.

    I made this observation yesterday, that Labor now needs to create its own mantra that enters the sub-concious of the public much in the way of Keating’s 17% and they should be:

    1. this is a Keating/China/Global boom economy that has given prosperity
    2. decade of wasted prosperity, leaving us behind the world
    3. Liberal social divided the country
    4. Liberals lived off the politics of fear and intolerance
    5. Liberals had no respect for democracy
    6. Liberals have given us a inflationary economy

    They need to run these lines over and over from now on until the next election – until people take them for granted.

  19. So who won the most money? I reckon I’m up for $279 for $30 invested. We should have elections as often as the horseys. I could retire now 🙂

  20. LassetersSport offers betting on Next Liberal Party Leader:
    TURNBULL, Malcolm: 1.20
    NELSON, Dr Brendan: 4.50
    ABBOTT, Tony: 9.00
    BISHOP, Julie-LIB: 13.00
    Any Other Candidate: 21.00
    HOCKEY, Joe-LIB: 26.00
    DOWNER, ALexander: 34.00
    VALE, Danna-LIB: 34.00

  23. Different odds at Sportingbet on the Lib leadership:

    Malcolm Turnbull 1.45
    Tony Abbott 3.75
    Brendan Nelson 4.75
    Joe Hockey 7.00
    Julie Bishop 9.00
    Any Other 10.00
    Dana Vale 17.00

    Why they are offering odds on Dana Vale is beyond me, but anyway…

  24. 167 – Labor now needs to create its own mantra

    They need to hammer workchoices – how far it went, and how far it could have gone under a re-elected Liberal govt. The biggest myth pushed by the Howard govt has been the claim of economic management credentials – most of which was due to Hawke/Keating reforms.

    Labor made a big mistake in letting the kudos for this slide, so they need to lock in Workchoices as Howard’s “17%”.

  26. #169, I may have imagined it, but I’m sure someone wrote in an earlier thread they had won of the order of $10,000 on election betting. I’m not sure how much they staked though !

  27. The leadership of the Liberal Party won’t mean anything for 6 years with this win.

    A clean out of this lot will be good and I hope that it will be the death of the neo conservatives.

    I thought Kevin was all class in his acceptance speech on Saturday and his press conference yesterday. I can’t say the same for Keating in today’s SMH who gave us just as bigger loss as Howard has suffered and is still under the impression that he was loved by the country.

    As you can tell I prefer the Hawke style of concensus and nation building than a style of divsion and neglect.

    I think Kevin Rudd has this approach and I hope that the party factions know (as it was in 1983). He won the election and he calls the shots.

  29. Dana vale as opposition Leader!!!!!! Tell me i’ve died and gone to heaven.

    She will ask a question about the economy to the Attorney General. Or maybe she will just fax her questions.

  30. $1.45 on Turnbull seems pretty good odds to me. I can’t see anyone else in that field of alternatives being electable – unless the Liberals are prepared to elect an interim leader, knowing that they will be despatched before the next election..

  33. John of Melbourne… no because the Greens, Steve Fielding and Nick Xenephon will both support some type of amendment to the current Workplace laws.

  34. DLP you’re right. Barnaby Joyce has been very impressive pre and post election. He should move to the lower house and take the Nationals Leadership he definitely has appeal.

  38. The Coalition is not suicidal enough to go to a DD election – they would hand Labor a Senate majority and destroy their chances in the lower house for the two elections after that at least, assuming they had any seats left whatsoever. Those ministers in suddenly very marginal looking seats (Pyne etc) would also be rather keen to avoid a DD election which would end their federal careers.

    As such, expect a bit of fuss followed by Labor’s anti-WC amendments sailing through the senate with no amendments.

  40. JoM: Given how maverick Joyce has been, do you think the Libs would want to be in a coalition with Joyce as the leader? It would spell trouble. Some Libs would be very annoyed with the Nats not following the line, even though it would better suit the Nats.

  43. ***Vale Matt Price, a bright-burning candle, alas too brief***

    Re Costello: what a weak, whimpish -and wonderfully welcome- exit he has made from the main stage, tail drooping. Obviously he won’t stay long (March 18 sounds about right) as his “time to forge a new career” comment suggests. He is a smarmy, self-absorbed man, whose brand of parliamentary schtick was lauded by the commentariat but which I always found laborious, poorly constructed, predictable and unfunny. His punchlines were telegraphed and suffered from the smugness inherent in their delivery. WILL NOT BE MISSED.

    LTEP -how about “Let Them Eat Pork”? And please, mate, could you predict that the Dockers will narrowly lose next year’s Grand Final? That would give me great hope.

  44. In other news, I have heard an interesting if slightly implausible rumour – Julian Burnside QC to replace Gleeson CJ as Chief Justice of the High Court.

    Maybe not as crazy as it sounds, but it would be a brutal correction to Howard’s years of stacking the Court.

    Incidentally, it’s worth reflecting how important this election result is to the future of the Australian legal system. Another two Howard appointments and independent legal though would have been in real danger on the High Court.

    In addition, it’s interesting to reflect that Howard has managed to stack the Court, get the WorkChoices decision in favour of the Commonwealth, and then hand power straight to his ideological nemesis to do what it will with the unfettered power that results…

  45. And please, mate, could you predict that the Dockers will narrowly lose next year’s Grand Final? That would give me great hope.

    The Dockers will lose next year’s Grand Final in the same way that the Shooters Party lost this year’s federal election.

    Regards,

    A Geelong Supporter

  47. I wonder if John Howard has worked out yet that the beginning of the end for him was when he introduced workchoices. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

  49. JoM: Brandis is a fool. The Business Council of Australia is welcoming a clear result and is willing to work with Labor on IR. Economists have come out in saying that scrapping AWAs will not be inflationary, which takes the wind out of the sails of Libs attack on the Labor’s IR policy. Also the election may not have been totally about IR, but it was a big issue and any attempt by the new opposition to keep WorkChoices will look very badly on them.

    I’m sure the Rudd government will be willing to risk a DD given the majority it has. Are the Libs in a financial position to go round 2 with Labor?

    Finally, doesn’t seem like parliament will sit until February, so that would mean May would be the 2nd time to put the legislation through, and almost a waste of time to go for a DD once a less hostile Senate is around in July.

    The budget will the big thing in May, if the Libs block it (or talk about blocking it) they will pay a price too.

    This will be the coalition’s last battle really, and in that sense they will look like poor losers if they try to force Rudd’s hand on a DD.

  50. 167 and others on Labor’s need for a new mantra

    Good call, a mantra is exactly what Labor needs. I think it needs to be a single soundbyte — like “Beazley’s black hole” — that sums up the way the Libs have let Australia slide during their watch, by not investing in education, technology and infrastructure. Something like the “lost years”, perhaps.

    I also agree that Labor needs to start properly “branding” its history, and the Hawke/Keating economic reforms. You can understand why they haven’t done this during the election campaign; Keating’s perceived “baggage”, the recession we had to have, and all the rest of it.

    To repeat myself, though, most of all I hope they start using a mantra to sum up the Howard years. If we do hit economic tough times, people need to be able to understand that one of the reasons they have happened has been this lack of investment in infrastructure, training, broadband, research, science, and so on.

    However, I’m not sure they will. Remember that the FIRST THING Rudd did in his victory speech was pat Howie on the back (something that went down like a lead balloon in the Randwick Labor Club, let me tell you — can you imagine Keating doing it?). I fear that the new Labor team might see this as too negative and too much the “politics of the past”, a laudable attitude but one that could really work against them.

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