I held off doing a post on yesterday’s unconvincing Morgan phone poll result in the hope they would give us a face-to-face poll this week, but either they’ve gone on Christmas break or are returning to their old pattern of combining results fortnightly. Yesterday’s effort was a phone poll from a sample of just 493 respondents, conducted on the back of a survey about climate change. The results were not unlike those of last week’s similarly dubious poll: Labor up a point to 42 per cent, the Coalition down 1.5 per cent to 41.5 per cent and the Greens down one to 9.5 per cent, with Labor’s two-party lead steady on 53-47.
Elsewhere:
• Phoebe Stewart of the ABC reports Palmerston deputy mayor Natasha Griggs has been preselected as the Country Liberal Party candidate for Darwin-based Solomon, defeating three other candidates including Darwin City Council alderman Garry Lambert and Tourism Top End head Tony Clementson. Bob Gosford of The Northern Myth further writes that Bess Price, described by the Northern Territory News as an “indigenous domestic violence campaigner”, has nominated for CLP preselection in the territory’s other electorate, Lingiari. Price has the backing of Alison Anderson, Labor-turned-independent member for Macdonnell, and says she has “always voted Labor” in the past.
• VexNews hears the NSW Liberals could dump Chris Spence as candidate for The Entrance early in the New Year. At issue is Spence’s comprehensive resume as a former One Nation activist: research officer to the party’s state upper house MP David Oldfield, federal candidate for Fraser in 1998, state candidate for Barwon in 2003, New South Wales state party secretary, national and state president of the youth wing “Youth Nation”, and ACT branch president and regional council chair.
• Samantha Maiden of The Australian reports possible scenarios for federal intervention into the NSW Labor Party include replacing secretary Matthew Thistlethwaite with an administrator answerable to the federal executive, and stripping Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid of their preselection (respectively for Fairfield and the upper house).
• Nick Minchin told ABC Television on Wednesday that it would be “healthy for democracy” if restrictions were placed on television election advertising to reduce the costs of campaigning.
• The Labor national executive has endorsed Rob Mitchell for a second try at McEwen, to be vacated at the next election by retiring Liberal Fran Bailey. The court ruling in Mitchell’s unsuccessful legal challenge against the 2007 result saw his margin of defeat increased from 12 to 27.
• Damien Madigan of the Blue Mountains Gazette reports the the state leadership change has inspired Labor’s national executive to delay its preselection decision for Macquarie, where Blue Mountains mayor Adam Searle is expected to be named successor to the retiring Bob Debus.
• Reader Sacha Blumen points me to a Wentworth Courier article from a month ago (see page 22) naming two potential Labor candidates for Wentworth – “Paddington veterinarian Barry Nielsen and Darlinghurst barrister Phillip Boulten” – in addition to Stephen Lewis, described in last week’s edition as a Slater & Gordon lawyer, anti-high rise activist and members of the Jewish Board of Deputies. Former Australian Medical Association president Kerryn Phelps has also been mentioned in the past. This week the Courier reports the Greens have endorsed Matthew Robertson, a Darlinghurst-based legal researcher for the Refugee Advice and Casework Service.
• Antony Green berates those of us who were “examining the entrails of the booth by booth results to try and divine some patterns” from Saturday’s by-elections, arguing such entrails are only interesting for what they tell us about “how Labor voters react to the Greens as a political party”. The conclusion is that “Labor voters in the ritzier parts of Bradfield seem more likely to view the Greens as a left-wing alternative to Labor than Labor voters in less affluent areas”. Antony has since conducted some entrail examination of his own to conclude that the resulting positive relationship between the two-party Liberal vote in 2007 and the Liberal swing at the by-election is unusual for urban electorates. My own post-mortem was published in Crikey on Monday.
• The NSW Nationals have announced the state seat of Tamworth will be the laboratory for its open primary experiment, in which the party’s candidate will be chosen by a vote open to every person enrolled in the electorate. The naturally conservative seat is held by independent Peter Draper, having been in independent hands for all but two years since Tony Windsor (now the federal member for New England) won it in 1991.
• Robert Taylor of The West Australian has written an action-packed column on Labor federal preselection matters in Western Australia. It commences thus:
On the surface, the WA Labor Party’s powerful state administrative committee looks to have a straightforward job next Monday when it meets to approve candidates in crucial seats for next year’s Federal election. In typical Labor fashion, three of the candidates for the most winnable Liberal seats of Swan, Cowan and Canning are unopposed, the backroom deals having already been done between the factional powerbrokers to obviate the need for a vote and all the inherent dangers that accompany them. In Durack, where there’s an outside chance of Labor rolling incumbent Barry Haase in the redrawn Kalgooorlie-based electorate, former State Geraldton Labor MP Shane Hill is also unopposed, but that’s because he was really the only one who wanted it badly enough. In Stirling, where Labor has a second to none chance of rolling incumbent Michael Keenan, something obviously went wrong because two people decided to nominate against the favourite Louise Durack, but an upset is highly unlikely.
So the administrative committee had very little to worry about until last Thursday when the Corruption and Crime Commission released its long-awaited report on goings-on at the City of Wanneroo, which handed a couple of misconduct findings to deputy mayor Sam Salpietro and fired a salvo across the bows of Wanneroo mayor Jon Kelly. The problem for Labor is that Mr Kelly is the party’s hope in the seat of Cowan, held by the Liberals Luke Simpkins with a thin 2.4 per cent margin. Labor sees a combination of the local mayor and Kevin Rudd as an irresistible combination in Cowan and had all but pencilled in the seat as a win before last week’s report. The CCC made it clear that in its opinion Mr Kelly was prepared to curry favour with former premier-turned-lobbyist Brian Burke in order to further his own political ambitions. Mr Kelly argued both at the commission and since the report came out that he did everything possible to distance himself from Mr Burke, but put bluntly the CCC just didn’t believe him – which must make the ALP’s administrative committee wonder whether the voters of Cowan will either.
• Dennis Shanahan of The Australian has been in touch to point out an error in last week’s Newspoll post, which stated both Newspoll and the Nielsen poll were both conducted on the Friday and Saturday. Newspoll’s surveying in fact continued throughout Sunday, with The Australian releasing the result at the end of the day.
Andew Elder’s latest blog entry has an interesting perspective on the Abbott/Joyce relationship asserting that Abbott is “Another Weak Liberal”, contending that Joyce is manipulating him, not vice versa.
http://andrewelder.blogspot.com…..
Is my gravatar back yet?
[In your opinion did the Swiss and Irish suffer more, the same or less than the Scandinavians?]
They all suffered from food shortages as a result of the choking off of trade, but none of them suffered any real hardship. The Swedes made a fortune selling iron ore to Germany – the German war effort would have been impossible without Swedish iron. (To be fait, if they had refused to sell it, Germany would have occupied Sweden.) The Swiss also did very well selling machinery other goods (though not armaments), as well of course as food, and banking services, to the Germans. (Again, they didn’t have much choice as they were surrounded by Axis territory. The Irish on the other hand did very nicely selling food to the UK.
point 4
[In secret, a Norwegian military force had been created to fight the huge German power. In part, the underground had been spontaneously organised by individuals who wanted to continue fighting the occupying forces. Other troops had been dropped in by parachute or transported into the country, on small vessels – the so-called “Shetland bus” – aboard submarines, or by the land route across the Swedish border. These clandestine forces included radio operators, sabotage experts and military instructors. In their wake followed weapon and equipment deliveries. In time, a secret army had been organised. When the Germans capitulated, the underground military groups totalled 40,000 soldiers. Their commander was Jens Christian Hauge, who was later appointed minister of defence by Einar Gerhardsen in the Labour Party government which was elected in the autumn of 1945.
The Resistance cooperated closely with the Norwegian government in London, and detailed and closely synchronised preparations had been made. This is certainly part of the reason why the capitulation did not end in massive bloodshed. ]
[4. More Norwegians served in the Waffen SS Wiking Division (15,000) than in the resistance]
Grandmothers and sucking eggs
ps the finnsmark was occuppied in the winter of ’44
Well. I do believe I’ll leave youse to it. It’s been a long week and Abbott and Abbott’s Army, Colonel Klink and what is he now? Major Joyce promise much, maybe not of the scale of WWII, but dammit, I’m sure they’ll find a Leningrad or two of their own along the way.
I still can’t help laughing when I think about Barnaby as Shadow Finance.
I saw a documentary once on how the resistance and the British stopped the Germans getting heavy water from the Norwegian plant where it was made to their atom bomb program. When the Allies got to the program around the time of the defeat in 1945 they found that the Germans needed only the heavy water to move to the next stage with the bomb program (going critical if I remember correctly).
Many of the more rabid Ulster Loyalists still swear that the Nazis were welcome in and used Ireland (republic of) as a refuge during the war, especially U Boat crews. I have had one Ulsterman claim that he saw them there “frequently”. All reputable historians refute the claim. Devalera was a prick of the first order, but he wasnt a Nazi.
Gusface, I’m sorry to offend your patriotic sensibilities, but this is a lot of postwar mythology. Norway was a famously “soft posting” for the German Army, second only to Paris. The Norwegians were regarded as more friendly to the Germans than just about anyone in Europe, the young ladies especially so. As I noted above, Norway was one of the best recruiting grounds for the Waffen SS. I’d be quite certain that more Norwegians were killed fighting for Hitler on the eastern front than were killed with the resistance. There was virtually no serious resistance activity in Norway for most of the occupation, although of course good work was done smuggling people in and out, passing on intelligence, and assisting in Allied operations like the attack on the heavy water plant at Ryukan (spelling?) in 1943. As for your 40,000 soldiers, the Germans certainly never noticed them. As in all European countries, there was a rush to “join the resistance” in the last months of the war once it was obvious that the Germans were going to lose. As I said, there was a bit of street fighting in Oslo right at the end, but essentially the resistance gave the Germans no real trouble – far less than in France, Italy, Greece or Yugoslavia.
[ps the finnsmark was occuppied in the winter of ‘44]
Once Finland changed sides, the German army in the far north of Finland retreated into northern Norway, Finnmark. The Soviets chased them some way into Norwegian territory, but they made no real effort to occupy the country. As I said, if Stalin had wanted to occupy Scandinavia in 1945, there was absolutely nothing to stop him. He didn’t bother because it was peripheral to his strategic interests. Unlike Hitler, he was a very cautious man and careful not to over-reach himself.
Ttfab
I saw it too.Tho they said that even tho the ferry was blown up and many lives lost,the amount of heavy water was neglible and wouldnt have been enough to further the nazi nuclear experiments.The penemunde plant was briefly mentioned i think?
psephos
cool.
you might like this link.
http://www.sodatkuvina.cjb.net/LapinsotaMain.htm
Psephos
But no one could have stopped him then.
why not occupy scandanavia?
I mean he took most other “eastern’ assets! poland LLE etc
[why not occupy scandanavia?]
See 107 above.
Both are weak, kleewyk. But.
Barney is incapable of any kind of successful manipulation, he just does not have that kind of mind. Barney simply has convinced himself that he knows the deal.
It is not that he is (yet) shifty.
Though, that may come, with experience.
Particularly under the tutelage of Abbott’s masters. The likes of Ruddock et al.
Barney, though, is in his heart a well meaning fellow. For a Jo type crazy.
He will become their plaything.
Then he will fold.
[Firstly, his influence was of crucial importance when Finland was defending herself against the aggressive attack, based on Stalin’s and Hitler’s clandestine agreement on the division of the spheres of interest. It was Mannerheim that laid the foundations of Finnish sovereignity on which the international relations could be built. Secondly, at a very early stage, he was perspicacious enough to see the development of the Finnish-Soviet relations in a very realistic light. Thirdly, his cultural background and the liberal philosophy of his ideology eventually proved more viable than the totalitarian society represented by Soviet communism. In that sense, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the defeat of “real-socialism” in Russia was a victory for the Marshal of Finland.]
http://www.mannerheim.fi/navi-e/kehys-e.htm
I don’t see how Mannerheim’s career is relevant to Norway, but anyway…
The greatest service Mannerheim gave to Finland was persuading the Finns (he himself of course being a Swede), both in 1940 and 1944, to settle with Stalin for what they could get rather than continue a struggle which would inevitably lead to Soviet occupation of the whole country. Of course, if they’d taken his advice and accepted Stalin’s first offer in 1939 they could have stayed right out of the war and been much better off.
Crikey @111
Over at LP, Mark’s latest entry reflects Andrew Elder’s assessment, that Joyce is protecting Nat interests, not focusing on Liberal electoral ambitions.Abbott is both Minchin’s and Joyce’s patsy.
HSO
[I still can’t help laughing when I think about Barnaby as Shadow Finance.]
LOL, I was at the Flight Centre Xmas bunfight on Thursday and talking to a well known Queensland businessman closely identified with the Liberals. The topic of Barnaby came up and he said “You know, I’ve met him plenty of times. The thing about him is he just won’t listen. We tried to get him to have a look at some of the science behind (greenhouse gas issues). He is completely uninterested about really informing himself about anything. All his attitudes are set in stone and all of them are utterly wrong. He is patently not stupid, but I’d describe him as just about the most ignorant political figure I have ever met. Let’s hope he never actually becomes Finance Minister.”
And of course Barnaby has already set about chipping away at the world’s delicately balanced financial recovery.
I have to tell my best friend’s new daughter in law, who wants to cook Christmas for the first time, what to do. As I said I would type it out for her, here is Part One.
May as well post, at the same time.
The Turkey.
Free Range. Whole.
If frozen, which is quite okay, defrost in fridge, underlined, for two, three or even one more day beforehand. Kind of depends upon how frozen it is. Not a good idea to leave the birdy outside of the fridge. Invites tummy troubles. Yours, that is.
You will have a deep and decent sized oven pan. Turkey sized, you know the deal.
A ball of white kitchen string. Some metal skewers. Some Alfoil.
A good sized basin.
Choose. Olive oil, butter, pork lard. Depends on how purist one is. How often do you cook a turkey, after all? Need the run off fat for the vegies.
Stale-ish white bread. Oh I forgot, only have my fresh bread. Put the slices on a rack outside. A littllish while, depending on sun or shade. Watch out for birds. Enough to get them to dryish.
Then slice the crusts off and crumble the bread in your hands. Not too fine.
From the garden. Fresh Sage leaves. Fresh Thyme. Fresh parsley, lots of.
From the fridge. White (I insist) Onions.
Chop, chop.
From the cupboard. Ground Black Pepper. Dried Mixed Herbs.
Mix this stuff with your breadcrumbs.
Sniff and savour. Add pepper and onions.
Take an egg or two. Beat lightly.
Work lightly into the Stuffing Mix. Until dampish, not soaked.
Pack lightly into the turkey cavity. Which you have wiped beforehand with a paper towel. Having removed any plasticky objects beforehand.. .. though if you find some giblets, you will recognise these by virtue of never having seen them in your life.
Put them in the fridge. For the gravy. Pop the left over stuffing in the fridge.
Tie the turks legs up with the string. Secure arms and legs with string and skewers where necessary.
Baste the beast with melted butter and olive oil.
End of Part One.
You’ve got to have reached some all time low of public political behaviour when you get lectured to by Troy Buswell about your standards …
[LOL, I was at the Flight Centre Xmas bunfight on Thursday and talking to a well known Queensland businessman closely identified with the Liberals.]
Was Christopher Pyne there in his Flight Centre Captain’s outfit ? 🙂
Frank, you will now have to show more respect for Christopher Pyne, currently the sole semblance of a voice of reason and moderation left on the Liberal front bench.
Within the coalition lead by Rasputin, even the whining harpy seems less unattractive.
[Hey, Bilbo! What the hell happened to my avatar? Why are my comments being moderated? All I did was update my e-mail address and password.]
That’s all it takes. As far as Deep Thought is concerned you’re a new commenter, and you need your first comment manually cleared so it knows you’re not spam. The gravatar is governed by the vagaries of the gravatar website, and changes do not take immediate effect.
@119…. Ewwwww~
Some quite nifty graphs here.
[Copenhagen: Emissions, Treaties and Impacts]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/05/world/climate-graphic-background.html
Jeeze Beck even used a background of marching Nazis.
Jon Stewart doing another great job.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/11/stewart-catches-glenn-bec_n_388362.html
[Copenhagen climate summit releases draft final text
Rich countries are being asked to raise their pledges on tackling climate change under draft text of a possible final deal at the Copenhagen summit.
A document prepared by one of the summit’s chairmen calls on developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25-45% from 1990 levels by 2020.
Analyses suggest that current pledges add up to about 18%.
]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8407824.stm
[However, in a major concession to developing countries, it spells out that pledges for further reductions for developed countries still inside the Kyoto Protocol – all except Australia and the US – will be managed under the protocol.]
Huh?
Coming up on A-PAC
[Sunday:The Prime Minister’s Community Cabinet from Townsville 1.34pm 9.28pm AEDT]
DRG@12:
[and especially the graph half-way down.
The theory is simply that about 18% ALP voters switched to Libs rather than Greens and 10.6% of (2007-TCP-Lib) voters switched to the Greens in 2009.
There are more details on my blog page.
This simple model explains exactly how the ALP booths were the ones to swing most to the Libs.]
Any such model is easy to do for a single occurrence.
The question is, have you used it to predict swings in many other by elections?
Until it reliably does that, you are wasting your time.
[Fins – It’s not a matter of what the Greenies want, it’s a matter of what the Earth needs and of what will give us a sustainable economy.]
THM, what the Earth needs is to be left alone by you stupid, greedy, and ignorant humans. The Earth has evolved a beautiful, harmonious and equilibrium system only to be disturbed by the greedy humans.
Try we be like us 👿
Take what you need Not what you want 😎
[the finns kicked the ruskies ass and stopped the complete rout of scandanavia.any scandanavian that you sugest to that russia saved them would deck you.And rightly so.]
Gus, did i kick the Herr Doktor ass as well? 👿
Tom the first and best #107
There’s a review on http://www.abc.net.au/tv/guide/netw/200407/highlights/235911.htm
The book – old, I read it in high school 50 or so years ago is Skis Against the Atom; the romanticised & rather unsatisfactory film Heroes of Telemark
In early A/ARNet days, there was at least one fascinating message board re whether what cost Hitler the war was assuming that Churchill’s not the Yanks’ preferred invasion (Normandy) date would be chosen (had Churchill won, the Wehrmacht would have been in position & therefore, it would have fought, in Normandy, a more prepared version of what became Battle of the Bulge, slowing the Allied advance) and whether the possibility of holding the Russians long enough to perfect the weapons trigger explains the Berlin Bunker stand. Had the trigger been invented on time, the war would have been won in a single day, not by Big (or any) Battalions but by atomic warheads on flights of A9B10 ICBMs (the original of the rockets – Russian & German, began our journey beyond Earth) – on UK and North American cities; a horror war to dwarf Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s impact … one of history’s “What ifs?”.
We did agree that WW II’s real winners were almost certainly the heroes of Telemark.
Never mind the quality, just feel the frothing, foaming mouth and sprouting full of shits.
oh dear, you can see how easily the MSM journos are being seduced by a media tart, even a moderate like Peter Hartcher.
[As 2009 comes to a close, ask yourself who have been Australia’s most influential political leaders this year. Kevin Rudd, certainly, but who’s next on the list? I nominate Barnaby Joyce.
…………………..
News is about conflict and dissent and dysfunction, and Barnaby Joyce is all of those. He ostentatiously hops into both major parties, slaps the biggest political figures, and ridicules the conventional wisdom. He did all three in just five words in this comment about the positions of Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull on climate change: ”They’re both full of shit.”
He got air time because he was a contrary voice, not because he was a powerful officeholder as leader of the National Party in the Senate, a leader with exactly four followers.]
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/from-media-tart-to-a-force-to-be-reckoned-with-20091211-kofv.html
[From the time he was elected to the Senate in 2004 until last week, the media and political mainstream refused to take him seriously. It’s easy to see why.]
I sincerely hope Peter wrote this before the latest outbursts about China and US economy. How can anybody take Barnyard seriously after that. Even his own leader Abbott no longer takes him seriously and gagged him.
Now i got everyoff my chest for the morning, off to the markets for Christmas shopping and the beautiful tofu of Flemington.
crikey whitey #119
it’s not all that long ago when most (inc suburban 24 perch-block) people’s Chrissy poultry – chooks & ducks, before Americanisation conquered Chrissy food, too – came tiny & fluffy in small boxes with holes punched in them, to be reared on household scraps until parents “did the business” in enough time to hang them properly before they went into the oven on Dec 25, with kids singing
“Dame get up and bake your ducks,
Bake your ducks, bake your ducks
Dame get up and bake your ducks
On Christmas Day in the morning.”
(from the very old Carol starting “Dame get up and make your pies”)
That was before councils decided to wreck self-sufficiency by banning all chook pens, even pre-Christmas makeshift ones. Soon, it cost a mint to buy what had cost only a few pence to buy – to die for, oh so tasty Duck & orange/ cherries/ giblet gravy for Christmas.
Real & expensive Chrissy treats (besides ham)? Canned and bottled peas, asparagus, sweet mustard pickles & pickled onions, pineapple, biscuits etc – an exotic break from endless home-grown, home-made everything!
Self-sufficiency on a 24 Perch (c 600 sq metres) block – and a very very small carbon foot-print, almost certainly off-set by extensive vegie gardens & fruit trees.
Why don’t the Greens want us to return to it?
The Finns #133
OH****MY****God! (expletives deleted).
How did you keep your breakfast down?
No respect. I coined the nickname “Spanky” for Brendan Nelson. 😛
HELP !!!
re: Higgins by-election
Will someone who understands “all things mathematical” tell me if my understanding of the various points made by Dr Good and Antony Green is correct:
Traditional Labor voters who did not have the option of voting Labor in 2009, cast their votes in the following way:-
1. In ritzier/low ALP booths they cast their primary vote (gave their No 1 to) to the Greens in 2009 at a higher rate than those in poorer/high ALP booths.
2. However, in all booths the rate at which they ultimately preferred (that is on a 2 candidate – Liberal vs Green ) the Greens was the same across all the booths (about 82%).
3. Thus in poorer/high ALP booths, such voters had a greater tendency to place a third party candidate (that is a non-Liberal and a non-Green candidate) as their primary (no 1 vote), but still numbered the remaining squares in such a fashion as to put the Greens ahead of Liberal, thus maintaining a consistent 2CP vote across the electorate.
If my understanding is correct, is it possible to calculate the Labor to Green primary rate in each of the types of booths?
For Psephos and others who don’t check TheOz’s cartoons, here’s BLeak’s great take on Tony’s front bench! It’s certainly given cartoonists the inspiration of the decade!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/gallery-e6frg6zx-1111119669474?page=1
[How can anybody take Barnyard seriously after that]
In Barnabys own words from the Hartcher article.
[And Joyce himself is happy to invite ridicule. He says he has “a name that resembles a pet cow”]
Dropping steaming piles of policy everywhere it walks.
I think we can now revise the description of Barnaby as ‘Hanson without the racism’.
So glad Shameaham reads PB. Maybe it was responsible for his very brief flight into reality, which has now ceased
Zoomster, Hanson without the intellect I’d say
Joyce’s anti-intellectualism, is of course, all an act. Whilst people might ridicule him for what he says etc., he is pushing it at a very deliberate market. There are large groups of people who will be ready to agree with anti-Chinese sentiments or bank bashing sentiments. The question is whether having him in a front bench position of financial prominence scares away more people than it attracts.
…and the answer is pretty obvious.
Peter van Onselen gives the Liberals a reality check …
[… Abbott is a conservative with a radical leadership style. Liberals will just need to be conservative with their expectations.]
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/about-as-bad-as-its-likely-to-get/story-e6frg6zo-1225809552953
Readers will notice he quotes “opinion poll watcher Andrew Catsaras”. That’s the Poll Bludger’s own Aristotle, who is regularly published or referenced in the MSM.
[Joyce’s anti-intellectualism, is of course, all an act.]
Designed to reflect and appeal to the right-wing. Horses for courses?
[Designed to reflect and appeal to the right-wing]
No. Designed to appeal to a mass of conservative, everyday Australians. There are more of them than so-called ‘thinking people’ and elections are won on mass numbers. The Nationals are attempting to appeal to a smaller subset of Australians and obviously they don’t see the appoint in marketing themselves towards intellectuals.
Morgan’s poll findings reported in Business Spectator:
Labor party popularity stable
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Labor-party-popularity-stable-pd20091210-YLGKX?OpenDocument
From van Onselen:
[Not to take away from the impressive manner in which he has carried himself since taking over — deflecting barbs from his predecessor and making it clear he isn’t afraid of an early election — but Liberals need to keep in mind that Abbott has inherited a party facing electoral oblivion.]
The impressive manner? Contradicting himself five times a day? Making major blunders on the economy – the kind that dissed Julie Bishop’s credibility permanently – and not only unable to control himself, but obviously unable to control his front bench?
I suppose it is impressive, in a way.
BTW, it occurs to me that the aggressive manner of Tony’s front bench is a mask for laziness. The one of them I know best is notorious for this – ask a question they don’t know the answer to, suggest that there’s something they should have done that they haven’t, and you unleash a torrent of personal abuse.
The idea that these types have the discipline, intellect, courage or judgement to come up with coherent policies, let alone reinvigorate the Liberal vote, seems to be based on nothing more than their ability to froth at the mouth on every occasion. That that doesn’t make for considered thinking doesn’t seem to occur to the msm – they see it as a reflection of their energy and commitment.
[No. Designed to appeal to a mass of conservative, everyday Australians. There are more of them than so-called ‘thinking people’ and elections are won on mass numbers. ]
Tosh. That’s the same mindset that saw Hanson as a potential third force in politics. Yes, she dominated the media and the airwaves and created a bit of celebrity appeal amongst ‘everyday Australians’ – but the 10% or so of the ‘mass’ who fell for it quickly realised that media presence does not a credible politician make.
Have more respect for the average Australian. As the utegate (sorry) episode showed, they can smell dead fish just as well as anyone else.