Seven weeks out from the state election, The Advertiser has published a poll of state voting intention, conducted on Wednesday to make hay out of the paper’s win on the blog comments issue. It finds Labor still leading at 52-48, compared with 56.8-43.2 at the 2006 election and 57-43 at the previous Advertiser poll in December. After distribution of the undecided and otherwise non-responsive, the primary vote figures are 38 per cent Labor, 39 per cent Liberal and 9 per cent Greens. Consistent with all other polling, Isobel Redmond has remarkably good personal ratings, and was deemed by 51 per cent of respondents to be more trustworthy than Mike Rann. The sample as usual is on the low side: 538 respondents, for a margin of error of over 4 per cent. Full tables here.
I’ve got a great election slogan:
Mike Rann and Labor: Always on the Job
😀
chinda
What about that number plate slogan the Libs wanted
PS I hope you noted my absence of posts during the day yesterday as I was working at the public hospital 😀
No new infrastructure?
Only a major new hospital, massive road works, a desal plant, new light rail and tramways, and, yes, the Adelaide Oval revamp. That’s just for starters.
Never before has so much been in the pipeline at one time.
TT
All in the pipeline. Nothing delivered for eight years except a tram extension and an underpass.
Adelaide Oval won’t happen. The new RAH probably won’t happen either.
Infrastructure completed in the last 4 years (I’m sure I’ll forget something):
1. Bakewell underpass (henley beach rd/mile end – a pleasure to go through on the bus every morning)
2. Sturt Highway upgrade (duplication, 17km – completed)
3. 2 Tram extensions and new rollingstock (second extension will be finished in the next four weeks)
4. Gallipoli underpass (anzac highway/sth rd)
5. Oaklands rail interchange
6. South road tram overpass (almost completed with new elevated station)
7. Belair rail line upgrade – installed gauge convertible sleepers and entirely new trackbed.
8. Port Adelaide expressway opening railbridge
9. Port Adelaide commercial road railway viaduct (works in progress – finished in 3 months)
10. Noarlunga line new trackbed and gauge convertible sleepers (small amount completed – in progress)
11. Upgrade of all 3000 class railcars (in progress – paritially completed)
12. New railcar depot (started and will be finished during this year)
13. Royal Institution Australia precinct
14. Desalination plant (well underway – finished end 2010)
15. Northern Expressway (largest road project in 30 yrs – well underway, finished late 2010)
16. New South Australian Medical Research Institute – site works in progress – CEO appointed as well as board members from all 3 universities.
A few of these projects are also partly funded by the Commonwealth but are managed and commissioned by the DTEI.
Personally, I think that list is quite impressive.
sykesie
I should have included the Bakewell underpass but a lot of those other projects are pretty minor or haven’t been completed. They have been in for 8 years and there has been a dearth of major projects completed.
I don’t know how you can say the desal plant will be completed by 2010 when the website says it will only be at the end of 2012 when it is running at capacity.
Yes, once the writs are issued both Liberal and Labor are caretakers for SA. Neither can take any policy decisions.
Those election posters? Well, there needs to be some clarity given, because my understanding was that the whole box and dice of the censorship law was to be repealed;-inclusive of. Further this Head of the legal process in SA (who should have known….?) was advised by fellow legal eagle Chapman that he could do this pre-election (he insisted that he could not). He has agreed to an immediate repeal,…but he hasn’t done it yet.
…oh! and I agree Rann IS ‘on the run’ metaphorically. He has taken an absolute hammering recently. LOVELY!! Certainly the complacency has evaporated.
It astonishes me that they could possibly be returned,-but it appears they will be. Buggered if I can figure why, though I think it has more to do with the Opposition’s lack lustre performance. The acceptance speech will be peppered with humility. ‘We have heard you/we are listening to you’ twaddle.
How bloody depressing.
I much prefer Redmond, but she does not have the killer instinct of Chapman. And that killer instinct is necessary to match the Rann Governments MO.
I so look forward to Rann’s defamation case. I suspect 7 is holding a trump card. I will need to get into the Court early; seating will be at a premium!
Ok, perhaps completed isn’t quite the right word – operating might have been better. However “Nothing delivered for eight years except a tram extension and an underpass.” is a bit disingenuous don’t you think? Many of those projects don’t come cheap!
ROTFLMAO
🙂
Yes that was a bit over the top. I greatly respect Socrates’ opinion and he tells us that Conlon has done a good job with transport infrastructure but, from what I can see, a lot is on a small scale or not completed. Certainly transport has been the area improved the most.
But most of our facilities are ageing badly. The city area of North Tce and Rundle mall has had a facelift but really has needed redevelopment for ages. Our hospitals are terribly run down. The WCH, FMC and QEH have major problems in addition to the well-documented deterioration in the RAH.
Our sport stadiums are awful. We haven’t done anything about the cultural infrastructure for ages. Adelaide really looks much like it did 15 years ago. When you go to the cities on the East Coast, you realise how much more they have done than Adelaide has. I’m certainly not saying it is Labor more than the Libs though.
My legacy, ****ing pandas and Lance.
😀
Oh, and random 50km/h roads.
🙂
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/the-chantelois-letter-to-mike-rann/story-e6frea6u-1225827469318
I’d like to say, Thanks Advertiser, singlehandedly you’ve turned an 8 year Premiership and 8 year government in to a freak show that has no hope of a steady solid campaign message. Mark my words, Mike Rann will not be Labor leader at the election, and the blame will only be able to be laid squarely laid at the feet of The Advertiser. They are the *only* media outlet left who gives any form of a damn. Yes, you’ve ran the story in god knows how many guises god knows how many times, but will you even give the Premier a chance to breathe for electoral life before you keep his head underwater to the point of no return? And all over an issue not even related to the performance of the government (which if it is bad should be able to stand on it’s own merits without a Labor crutch to help them wobble to the finish line.
Grow up.
And as for Adam and the other people who keep disregarding Chantelois – please, truly, stand right there, and tell me, again, that Chantelois will have no effect on the election. Any answer other than admission shows a failure to see the writing on the wall, and the last thing I want to do is think of Rann’s (eventual, be it sooner or later) downfall in the same vein as Howard’s.
In a perfect world, Rann would step down and Jay Weatherill would be made leader, whilst keeping under wraps a massive factional war in SA Labor to return some balance to the centre – forget the left for the time being.
Atkinson’s policies are easily Australia’s most regressive as a whole, and like Rann at least in part, is simply a puppet of the dominant Christian Right in SA Labor, ie: Don Farrell.
At this point, i’m not asking to be electorally-destructive progressive (as some on these forums like to make out), i’m simply asking for SA Labor to once again be able to fit somewhere in the ranks of state Labor governments – not stick out like a sore thumb.
I’d like to see anyone attempt to disagree with the basis of this.
It’s the perfect storm really. Redmond seems a naive woman which we’d normally consider a liability. In this case it may very well be what’s giving her such artificially high approval ratings for an opp leader – as it certainly isn’t reflected in the SA Lib primary vote.
Perfect storm – was it Dio or someone else that said the SA Libs have a stack of announcements prior to election day? Meanwhile SA Labor gets consistently put off message without a chance of reprieve from Adelaide’s only paper, the lovely folk at News Ltd.
I’m justifiably worried that Redmond may very well manage to pull the election off (be it minority or majority govt) simply by default. What a disgraceful and shameful day for democracy it would be when a government is booted out because a single media outlet, the city’s only daily paper, doesn’t let a non-government-related issue slip even for a second. What ever happened to booting a government out because they were incompetent? If this is SA Labor, then can’t it hang on it’s own merits?
And the blood that Liberal supporters have had since Chantelois is a stark and stunning reminder of how silent they all were prior to this. None of them will be prepared to admit it, but I hope they realise the contradiction in themselves for using partisan Rann-hate with Chantelois. It’s the exact same shame they should feel for wanting Rudd’s stimulus, and Australia’s economy, to fail – it’s out of pure vindictiveness than genuine concern. I’m sure if all of this happened to Howard we’d just be reminded of how he presided over the mining boom so therefore it somehow figures he’s responsible for it.
and of course that no criticisms are valid or worthy of discussion because he presided over a mining boom.
Rant over.
Actually, no it’s not – how dare anyone tell me I shouldn’t be able to say everything i’ve just said without printing my name and postcode, thus creating a possibility of anything from abuse to stalking to death threats, to an extreme such as being a government target.
There are a lot of extreme hypotheticals when it comes to rights. Thankfully Atkinson, this time, has seen the electorate, and the light, and realises that being able to anonymously criticise your elected representatives is something Australians hold dear, even if they don’t give a flying something about any last one of them.
How can anyone honestly defend what even Atkinson now cannot?
Anyone who continues to defend the indefensible and say that we shouldn’t be able to, really needs to look internally at themselves as the epitomisation to what is wrong with modern politics.
Ok, now the rant is over.
Cheer up Bob, at least you don’t have John Bannon almost single-handedly destroying the current Labor govt through either incompetence or malice, with a dose of corruption. People in WA started ranting like your last few posts a year and a half ago.
How dare you compare SA to WA, we are in so many ways superior to them ;P
Actually, this is worse. At least a party and influences on it can be cleaned up and become electable again, and only have themselves to blame.
This is an assault on democracy. The Advertiser will continue to be immune, because as we all know, the media never loses, they always win. They control what we think and how we think it, and will never be open to attack because they sit high and mightily on the shameful pedestal of independent untouchable media.
A government is about to lose because a single newspaper continues to keep them off-message. When Adelaide is a one paper town, and day after day all they talk about is Chantelois and don’t give the government any chance to announce anything (oh the number of times SA Labor has had to and continues to push back announcements… christ… it’s so crippling), they are singlehandedly controlling who wins and who loses (and all over an issue that does not relate to the competence or otherwise of the government). SA is becoming an Advertiser dictatorship. Or am I only just playing catchup to the last 30 years?
I’m feeling very dissolutioned at the moment. I think some within Labor need to pull their heads out and stop the replica that infects aging governments. They WILL NOT win with Mike Rann as leader. I agree with them so much in terms of not allowing these people to win and get him dumped, over a non-government issue, despite the wolf cries of generalised incompetence for the past 8 years. I know that SA Labor will lose so much face if they allow them to win and dump Rann – and how troubling it will be that his (comparatively) competent government ends over what is a firestorm cooked up from nothing. But if they don’t take action how and do the unthinkable and dump Rann, they will end up in the political wilderness, and we’ll all be crying in to our lunchboxes wondering why SA Labor didn’t dump him when they had the chance, if only to stop The Advertiser’s assault on democracy. Yes I know it would be so unfair to dump Rann for this. But it is the nature of politics, the nature of The Advertiser, and the nature of Adelaide.
But somehow I think Don Farrell will remain wedded to his ideas and ideals on how things are running and should be run. They will not take the opportunity to do the unthinkable and dump Rann because it would give the Libs and The Advertiser so much pleasure, and we all know that a partisan depriving of is what politics is all about these days.
I’m so disolutioned right now…
Rant again over (for now).
While I share Dio’s view of Rann, I don’t agree that nothing major has happened in infrastructure. There are two very major transport projects under way right now in Adelaide:
– Rail revitalisation (electrification, resleepering, new depot, extension to Seaford) – total $2B
– Northern Expreseway (Gawler to Penfield) – $500M
Plus there is the Desal plant, further windfarms at Jamestown and upgrading of power and communications networks all under way. Also, the list of recent projects left out the airport.
A lot of this stuff is not very visible but very necessary, and will have a big impact on the quality and reliability of services when finished. For example, the new rail depot at Dry Creek is needed before they can introduce faster and more frequent electric trains, that will carry double the passengers the new trams are already taking. There is now a high speed fibre optic network linking all our universities too. You don’t see this stuff but it fundamentally alters our ability to service a now growing population in Adelaide.
I think the current government has done an excellent job on infrastructure. They inherited road, rail, water and power networks that had not even been maintained for 20 years, never mind lack of extensions. They were falling apart. A lot of work was needed to repair them. That is happening, and the next phase will be expansion. But it would have been quite irresponsible to just expand the networks without doing the repairs first. Bakewell Bridge was a good example – not our most congesteed road, but it badly needed fixing. Frankly, given that most governments only think in 3 year electoral cycles, Conlon deserves praise for planning and acting in a long term manner. I wish he had a clone in Sydney.
Also, when the new tram extension, electric trains and Northern Expressway are rolling within the next 2-3 years, you will see tangible improvements in transport. Where I have concerns is not the transport planning direction, but distant land development proposals like Buckland Park. But that is Holloway and Rann, not Folley or Conlon.
Good luck on you or Labor getting *any* of that out to the voters, when Adelaide’s only paper stops reporting the news and instead posts this crap day in day out.
Agreed Bob. Still, if we are not just all going to be “party hacks”, we should criticise them where they deseve criticism (eg no CMC, Buckland Park), and compliment where they deserve praise (genuine investment in power, water and public transport).
I also thought that governments were meant to hold or lose government due to voter sat/dissatisfaction with policies and outcomes. It all seems a bit academic since Adelaide’s only paper won’t stop printing the same crap day in day out that their own poll showed nobody cared about. And over an issue that doesn’t even have anything to do with competence or otherwise of a government.
If a tree falls down in the woods and nobody’s around to hear it, did it really make a sound?
Dio – love Going All the Way 🙂
And it’s good to hear you’ve been hard at work on behalf of pleb everywhere 😀
Bob – Weatherall won’t ever be premier because he’s from the Left. Same reason why Conlon will never be either, in spite of the influence he wields within the party.
Foley is an electoral liability; your average punter on the street just doesn’t like him.
I’ve got my money on John Hill. Softly-spoken, humourous and with a common touch. He is factionally unaligned (like Rann), but has the support of both the Left and (more importantly) Don Farrell and the Right. Let’s face it; he wouldn’t have achieved anything at all, let alone enter Cabinet, unless he had the support of the Don.
SA Labor works like that; if you aren’t in a faction, you need to have a special friend or you’re stuffed.
Bob
The Libs who had dinner with Redmond said that. I’ll believe it when I see it.
chinda63
Hill was considered a good chance to take over until he stuffed up the public hospital EB a year and a half ago. The party was enormously unhappy with him and I was told that pretty much ended his aspirations.
I seem to have wandered into a private clubroom.
No time today. But I look forward to a discussion with you Bob1234. Rant is correct.
Dio – the party doesn’t give a stuff about things like that.
In the current environment they are more interested in who would be an acceptable public face of the Party in the highly likely event that Rann either jumps or is pushed. Hill is seen as a cleanskin with a safe pair of hands. He ran the Party very well as State Secretary and has many, many friends and not too many enemies.
Just the sort of leader your want and, arguably, need in these current times.
And another extremely important consideration is that Hill has the Advertiser on side. They like him – always have done – as evidenced by the easy run they have given him as Health Minister.
Having Murdoch’s Gutter Rag on side is half the battle won – just ask Bob!
That rail electrification in the 2010’s is one of the reasons I say: if you want to know what Perth looked like back in the 1970’s, go to Adelaide. (No boom-inspired skyscrapers, diesel trains, all the stations look like Maddington or Midland, everything ‘undeveloped’, ie: not yet bulldozed or covered in stucco.) It’s kinda cute that there’s a time capsule of us; any good feeling from that cuteness quickly evaporates when you have to figure out how to catch a suburban train from Keswick into the city at 7am, though. That was my introduction to the place, and it was bloody annoying. (As was the strange SA custom of not having pints in pubs. Uh?)
chinda
That’s probably true about Hill. It might have blown over by now but the party room really gave it to him then. He ended up costing them heaps of dosh. He literally gave some of the doctors a bigger pay rise than they were asking for.
The Tiser loves him and has given him a free ride as Health Minister. Various theories have been offered as to why.
The Sunday Mail has to publish all the bad health stories. The doctors and nurses NEVER go to the Tiser with a story; it’s always the Sunday Mail.
Bob
Cheer up. Rann will probably still win.
And I put $100 on the Libs a week ago at $4.75 so that’s my consolation prize if it goes to crap!
What an absolute scam and an abomination of a disgrace our so-called democracy has become when the town’s only paper chooses who lives and who dies rather than the voters.
Doing this would only re-enforce the power at The Advertiser. Adelaide has never more been in need of a comparable Advertiser equivelent. That would do so much more for democracy than any party policy would in this current environment.
I used to think so, but I can’t see it happening now courtesy of the ‘Tiser.
By the way, here another reason why SA can’t be compared to WA: we got one vote one value last election, so a massive paper majority to Labor in parliament wasn’t backed up by reality, and many paper seats were new and didn’t actually have sitting members – that’s part of the reason many of those seats went Liberal, with a few notable exceptions. Apart from your weird-arse fairness test, nothing like that has hapened in SA lately.
(Further to that: has SA even had a proper redistribution lately? I’m talking something that actually changes the number of seats or moves them around due to population growth in the suburbs / decline in the bush.)
bob
In fairness to the Tiser, they barely covered Chantelois passing the lie-detector test. It was a small article on page 5 or 7. It’s the Sunday Mail that is running it today.
The Mail and the Tiser do run different slants. Health has been mentioned already. The Tiser loves Hill and supports moving the RAH and the Mail runs all the bad Health stories and doesn’t support moving the RAH.
So the tiser add, shuffle and remove paragraphs from their daily Chantelois article. Nothing much changes, Chantelois remains the subject of discussion for the Tiser, and thus keeps the campaign off-message till the end.
Labor keeps wanting to announce various things, but they keep waiting for some free air. They aren’t getting any free air. Things keep getting pushed back. The government is being held to ransom by Adelaide’s only daily paper who happen to have a Chantelois fettish.
The Advertiser control who runs this state.
aka News Ltd (like anyone had to be told that, but anyway…)
bob
The Tiser has been in Rann’s pocket for ages. He is at war with them now, largely because of that clown Atkinson and the Chantelois stuff.
I don’t see why you are so fussed about Chantelois. It won’t shift many votes but it does make it harder for Rann to stay on message. I think she’s going to crop up every one to two weeks. People will get sick of it.
No, the Tiser will switch allegiance depending on who is Liberal leader. When the unelectable Evans was leader, the Tiser spouted Labor lines, IMHO in an attempt to undermine a leader the Tiser did not want. Then MHS came along, and viola, everything at the Tiser changed. And has only intensified with Redmond.
And that’s the problem. Nobody cares about it except the Tiser, who appear determined, as Adelaide’s only daily paper, to keep Rann off-message until the election.
Mike Ranndy: Getting it done, one blowjob at a time.
Does it eat away at your soul that the Libs have a reasonable chance of winning not by government policies and outcomes, but because of a non-government issue? After 8 years, this thing that isn’t related to a government’s competence, is the best you’ve got to run with?
That’s pretty pathetic. I hope you at least recognise the chance of the Libs winning will be by default and largely through the Libs doing what they’ve done for the past 8 years – sweet nothing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUCUIvN3YSI
I’m too enraged by the Tiser’s gagging of SA’s democracy to enjoy the humour, but others may.
bob – don’t be such a nervous nellie. One dodgy Sunday Mail article shouldn’t make you so depressed. Mind you if Mike Rann isn’t the leader at the election and labor lose – that would be a pretty impressive predictive double on your part. I’ll be the first to commiserate you if that gloomy prediction comes to fruition.
Syksie – I think the problem Bob – and many others, including me – has with The Advertiser and Sunday Mail is the worry that things won’t change once the campaign proper starts.
Unless the coverage gets more even-handed, the Libs might squeak into government by default, merely because people have been distracted by the circus, rather than looking at the government’s record and what both parties have to offer in terms of policy, which is what election campaigns SHOULD be about.
If it becomes solely about personality, then neither of Murdoch’s Gutter Rags are going to run anything approaching a favourable line for Rann and in turn Redmond will get heaps of free kicks. And let’s be honest, in a one-horse town like Adelaide, where else are the punters going to get their election information?
Adelaide Now is even worse than the dead tree edition …
Rann will be the leader come election time…. but whether he wins the election or not is another story.
The Labor Hacks in here are doing their best to try and make it look like Rann’s a shoe in.
I wouldn’t be betting my house on it thats for sure.
chinda63, thanks for such a concise contribution, you say it so well.
sykesie, I don’t know what will happen. I think there’s just as much chance Rann gets pushed, maybe this is wishful thinking, because unlike some my view isn’t clouded and never has (gee, who thought that several months ago I was right and the Laborites here were wrong, yet again). I did a reasonable job of saying before how if Labor was smart, it would dump Rann, but I somehow don’t think they will, and will see a government defeated by a media outlet who kept them off-message the entire campaign over a non-government issue.
chinda – “Weatherall won’t ever be premier because he’s from the Left” – I thought this was (albiet not explicitly) stated in my earlier rant?
If Labor replaced Rann with Weatherill right now, it would be a cakewalk. As has been said before, the Right have been quoted as saying they will destroy the party rather than see Weatherill as leader.
Indeed. No words can express how much I agree and how much it depresses me. I thought the Right was supposed to make Labor more electable… this is what happens when a party is reduced to a rump and a faction gets stacked. Lucky people finding themselves more or less singlehandedly running the party.
I hate Don Farrell. Not nearly enough attention, infact, no attention is paid to him. Don’t criticise Rann, don’t criticise Atkinson, they are mere puppets. Farrell is NSW’s Obeid (at least I think Obeid is the chief right warlord in NSW Labor…). I’ll save another Farrell rant though, I already did it in an earlier post.
I have been watching the debate very closely, and must apologise if my commentry does not come up to the quality of what is before me in previous posts, but I have some gossip…. I just heard from a source that Adel Now will soon run a story on possible challenge to Rann. My intel, and it may be crap is that 6 ministers are meeting today to discusss events.
And with the mood so against Rann and Labor the only surprise is it hasn’t happened sooner. Rann in my opinion is unelectable and the best asset Liberals have . Other than Atkinson of course who should rerally resign and with Rann also make hard for anyone to enter the ALP with a first name of Michael.
I don’t know if this has been posted anywhere else, but this is a video of Mike Rann at a Greek festival slagging off the Macedonians in a bizarre attempt to curry favour with the Greek community, who have large numbers in some marginal seats:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id1MPlkTAYk
This is vintage Mike Rann, and makes me want to barf. I’m voting green in March (of course) but I’m going to be preferencing the Liberals ahead of Labor. This is the first time I’ll ever have done that, but Rann and Atkinson are just too much for me.
I’ve just got back from a rally outside our ‘Halls of Democracy’ (ha!). Public Housing/DV/child abuse/St Clair/RAH.
This Government may well have done lots of lovely things for SA as listed. But they have done little about essential services other than to spin that they’ve done a great deal.
It was the usual promises by the usual people. Independents/ and Pisoni of the Liberals.
……then Rankine arrived and was encouraged by Wunderlich to take the mic. She was howled down..with bells. It was an uncomfortable thing to see, but in part it was her own doing. You simply cannot talk to people who have been at the arse end of welfare policies, and open with the wonderful job you’ve done for them.
She called it a Liberal rally. It was not. As a Socialist it was an accusation that angered me,…….but she DID have a point. Without question the Liberals are milking this for all it’s worth! Disaffected Labor voters are SO disgusted that they see the Liberals as a cure-all….; likewise an ICAC. They are riding for a fall.
It won’t happen, and I tried to tell them that. I knew immediately that I was seen as a Labor stooge. For the record, in the 33 years I have been in Oz, I have never met a mob I loathe more (I lied: Howard’s Hell). Rann and his Regime disgust me ( and Bob1234;-to suggest that the ’tiser for all its glaring inadequacies, is responsible for diminishing Rann’s image, is crap. CRAP! Rann/Foley/Conlon/and Atkinson who run the State are loathsome little ticks. Btw: I knew John Hill when he was a decent human-being..) Weatherill is OK. that is why he’ll get nowhere.
I spoke to Rankine afterward, telling her that I did not agree with her/I was NOT a Liberal, but that I admired her guts. She responded that ‘if you take the Liberals out of it, ‘there would only be 4 or 5 people here’.
….THAT is why these people NEED to lose office. That was a thoroughly stupid thing to say, and was so glaringly out of touch with her own housing portfolio, that I felt a bit sorry for her.
I care little about this destructive two Party system, and regardless of what has been said, see little difference between them. It is going on O/S’s. Doe’s anyone seriously believe that Blair was a Labour man? Twaddle.
The Gang of Four need to go. But they need to go because an entrenched Government is a complacent and arrogant Government. I have enjoyed immensely seeing that arrogance and complacency crumble recently!
Rann and Atkinson are on borrowed time. Thankfully they will be gone soon, I’m sure.
Mikey is such a loose cannon that it simply cannot last. Good.
And Rann?, unlike some of you, I believe that as a PUBLIC figure his trustworthiness is paramount. It IS relevant.
I cannot wait to see the back of them all. Unfortunately, the alternative is not much better.
Still;-a change is as good as a rest.