The latest weekly Essential Research survey has Labor maintaining a slight 51-49 lead on the two-party vote, down from 52-48 last time, but finds their primary vote at a new low (for Essential) of 35 per cent. The Coalition is up one point to 41 per cent, and the Greens two to 14 per cent. I fancy that Essential has been less favourable to Labor lately than it used to be, so I’ve knocked up a chart showing the monthly deviation between the two.
Which certainly provides some support for the theory, although a tendency for fluctuations in the past means the jury is still out. For good measure, I’ve done the same for Morgan face-to-face polls, which seem to be continuing a long-term trend of favouring Labor by 2 to 3 per cent.
Essential also has some fascinating supplementary questions this week: one on attitudes to political parties on various measures, which finds the Liberals well ahead on immigration (41 per cent to 20 per cent) and Labor well ahead on “representing the interests of Australian working people” (42 per cent to 27 per cent), which should tell you a lot about what the coming campaign will look like. The Coalition has solid leads on handling the economy, foreign relations (a disappointing one for Rudd) and the vision thing, while Labor is in front on “standing up to the big multinational corporations” – though not by the margin you might expect under the circumstances. An interesting question on whether various groups have too much or too little influence finds concern about the media and the banks and, to a slightly less extent, big business, unions and religious groups. No such problem for environment groups, whose influence is reckoned to be about right. Respondents were found to be evenly divided on the the likely impact on the mining industry of the resources super profits tax.
Essential has also done something I love: ask for retrospective evaluations of past leaders. Absence has made the heart grow fonder in the case of Paul Keating, rated good by 40 per cent and poor by 26 per cent, but his ratings are lower than John Howard, who scores 51 per cent (impressive work for a recently defeated prime minister) and 26 per cent. Mark Latham is regarded with something close to revulsion, Brendan Nelson and Simon Crean seems to be best remembered as duds, while Kim Beazley and Malcolm Turnbull are on a more even keel.
Preselection news:
• The Liberal National Party could have another brush fire on its hands in Longman, where discontent continues to simmer about the party’s decision to nominate 20-year-old Wyatt Roy for a crucial marginal seat. Tony Abbott has reportedly criticised the LNP over the matter, and former Moreton MP Gary Hardgrave (whose old seat is being contested for the LNP by an even more contentious youngster in the shape of Michael Palmer, son of high-profile mining magnate Clive) has told the ABC’s PM program he has been “sounded out” as a replacement. However, Hardgrave stresses it is “now well past the possibility of it occurring”.
• Meanwhile, Hajnal Ban has announced she will not again contest the new preselection to be held after she was dumped as Liberal National Party candidate for the new Queensland seat of Wright. The Courier-Mail reports a new entrant to the contest could be former Nationals Senator Bill O’Chee, himself a former child prodigy who entered the Senate in 1990 at the age of 24, before losing his seat to One Nation in 1998. O’Chee later emerged as a Liberal to unsuccessfully contest preselection for Moncrieff. In between, as the Courier-Mail puts it, he “successfully sued the Queensland Police for wrongful arrest and was then sued himself for allegedly not paying legal bills”. Also thought to be likely starters are Gold Coast councillor Ted Shepherd and former Blair MP Cameron Thompson, an unsuccessful entrant the first time around.
• The Liberals have preselected Jassmine Wood, a “small business owner specialising in water systems” who contested the safe Labor seat of West Torrens at the March state election, to run against Labor’s Steve Georganas in the marginal Adelaide coastal seat of Hindmarsh. Georganas won the seat narrowly in 2004 on the retirement of sitting member Chris Gallus, but a relatively small swing at the 2007 election made it more marginal than the Labor gains of Makin and Wakefield. Another South Australian Liberal candidate who slipped through the net earlier is Liz Davies, chief executive of Storpac Smart Storage at Holden Hill, who was preselected a month ago for Makin.
Finally, I’m doing a weekly series for Crikey in which I survey the lie of the electoral land in different parts of the country. Subscribers can read today’s effort on South Australia here; for the rest of you, here’s last week’s entry on Western Australia.
Welcome to the first in a nine-part series examining the lie of the land ahead of the looming federal election, one geographic unit at a time. Grim news for the government being the flavour of the month, I thought I’d start in Labor’s obvious trouble spot of Western Australia.
The State of Excitement (as its licence plates once proclaimed it, to the condescending amusement of visitors) is home to exactly one-tenth of the House of Representatives’ 150 seats, a mere four of which are currently held by Labor. Remarkably, they managed to go backwards at the 2007 election in terms of seats, losing two (Cowan and Swan) and gaining one (Hasluck).
This was despite a 2.1% swing to Labor in two-party vote terms, which was actually slightly higher than in Tasmania (2.0%) and the Australian Capital Territory (1.9%).
However, it came off a low base of 44.6% of the two-party preferred vote in 2004, when the state led the nation in swinging to the Coalition (3.8% against a national result of 1.8%). That result was no doubt fuelled by the loss of local hero Kim Beazley, who had led the party to defeat at the two previous elections.
In theory, that should have given a resurgent Labor all the more opportunity to take up extra slack, as it did so spectacularly in Queensland. In practice, the resources boom took the sting out of the hostility the Howard government was encountering elsewhere.
Perth’s mortgage payers were probably no more pleased than any others that John Howard proved unable to fulfil his promise of keeping interest rates at record lows — and there was indeed a strong correlation between electorates’ shares of mortgage payers and swings to Labor (with one conspicuous exception, to be discussed shortly).
But while many Sydney mortgage payers had been dealt the double blow of higher monthly payments and capital loss, housing prices in Perth nearly doubled during the Howard government’s final term.
The other lightning rod for disaffection with Howard, industrial relations, also took on an unusual flavour in the land of the resources boom. Australian Workplace Agreements were actively popular among mining workers, who feared a more regimented industrial relations regime might threaten the astronomical pay packets they had been able to command in a seller’s labour market.
A related aspect of the industrial relations issue involved controversies surrounding local Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union heavyweights (in every sense of the word) Kevin Reynolds and Joe McDonald, whose star roles in anti-union Coalition advertisements prompted the Labor hierarchy to force them from the party during the course of the campaign.
So it was that the West provided the Liberals with their only two gains of the election — a curious echo of 1972, when Gough Whitlam’s triumph was tempered by the loss of Stirling and Forrest.
One of the two was the northern suburbs seat of Cowan, covering exactly the type of mortgage belt area that provided Labor with happy hunting grounds in other states.
But here the effect was more than cancelled out by the retirement of sitting Graham Edwards, a veteran state and federal member who had lost both of his legs to a landmine while serving in Vietnam. Edwards had done well to hold back the tide in 2004, and the loss of his personal vote was enough to deliver a narrow victory to Liberal candidate Luke Simpkins in his second run at the seat.
The other Liberal gain was in the established inner southern suburbs electorate of Swan, which essentially produced a status quo result by going down to the wire for the second election in a row. But whereas the electoral gods favoured Labor’s Kim Wilkie by 104 votes in 2004, the decision went 164 votes in favour of the Liberals’ Steve Irons in 2007.
For much of its first term, it seemed Western Australia would provide the Rudd government with abundant opportunities to fatten its majority, thanks to the departure of the locally popular John Howard, ongoing prosperity and perhaps also the defeat of the state Labor government in September 2008, upsetting though that may have been to the party at the time.
A mortgage belt seat like Cowan looked particularly promising, while the Liberal margin in Swan seemed too thin to defend in any case. A redistribution proved to Labor’s advantage in both cases, cutting the Liberal margin in the former by 0.5 per cent and turning the latter into a notional Labor seat.
Liberal front-bencher Michael Keenan’s 1.2 per cent margin of Stirling also looked tough to defend, although the seat’s established middle-suburban status and older demographic profile has generally made it resistant to big swings.
Most enticingly for Labor was a decision by perhaps the most capable and certainly the most charismatic minister in the Carpenter government, Alannah MacTiernan, to contest the southern urban fringe seat of Canning, where the redistribution had cut Liberal member Don Randall’s margin from 5.6 per cent to 4.3 per cent.
However, as the election year began, it seemed Western Australia’s traditional hostility to federal Labor was beginning to reassert itself. The initially cordial relationship between the Prime Minister and Liberal Premier Colin Barnett began to sour, first over the state’s share of GST payments, which a Commonwealth Grants Commission determination cut from 8.1% to 7.1% with further reductions to follow in future years, and then over the federal government’s health reforms, on which Barnett remains the only hold-out.
Whatever the merits in either case, a perception began to harden that the state was being milked for electoral objectives elsewhere. Even before the resource super profits tax was announced, talk was emerging of “disastrous” Labor internal polling in the most marginal of its four seats, the eastern suburbs electorate of Hasluck, which former LHMWU official Sharryn Jackson had won in 2001, lost in 2004 and recovered in 2007.
Once the planned new tax was unveiled, it was clear that all bets were off: writing off Western Australia was evidently part of the government’s electoral strategy, and it was now simply a question of defending the seats it already held. This point was recognised a fortnight ago by The West Australian when it chose the second most marginal of the four, Brand, as the subject for an opinion poll by Patterson Market Research, having identified that Hasluck was likely to fall in any case.
Brand had provided Kim Beazley with a home after 1996, when he jumped ship from his existing seat of Swan as the tide went out on the Keating government. Beazley suffered a scare on the first occasion, when Labor spent the week after its crushing defeat contemplating the nightmare of Gareth Evans as leader before Beazley ultimately pulled through by 387 votes.
In suggesting Labor’s position was comparable to the dog days of the Keating defeat, Westpoll’s headline figure of 50-50 in Brand powerfully illustrated the extent of its woes. However, the two-party result did not sit well with primary vote figures that had Labor one point in the clear, a more plausible reading of which would be a lead to Labor of about 51.5-48.5.
The Liberals’ attack has been extended deeper still into enemy territory, with even the Labor strongholds of Perth (held by Foreign Minister Stephen Smith on a margin of 8.1%) and Fremantle (where Melissa Parke replaced Carmen Lawrence in 2007, on a margin of 9.1%) currently being targeted by Liberal leaflet campaigns.
While such moves might achieve tactical benefit in diverting Labor resources, it seems likely the seats to watch in WA will be Brand and, if Labor are lucky, Hasluck. However, a new and unfamiliar dimension has been added to the state landscape by the local resurgence of the Nationals.
The WA Nationals have not held a seat in the House of Representatives since 1974, and last won a seat in the Senate at the 1975 double dissolution. The party has nonetheless remained a constant presence in state parliament, and achieved a breakthrough success at the 2008 state election on the back of its campaign to have 25 per cent of mining royalties set aside for regional projects — which it was able to realise when the indecisive election result left it holding the balance of power.
Significantly, the Nationals proved the option of first resort for country voters abandoning the ALP, scoring big in mining towns and regional cities where they had not had a presence in the past.
Six months after the election, the ever-entrepreneurial Clive Palmer announced at the party’s state conference that his financial muscle would be put to the service of the party’s ambitious campaign for a Senate seat.
The Nationals have since been able to fund an extended campaign of advertising on regional television similar in tone to that which powered their success at the state election, and in doing so have also boosted their prospects for the lower house.
The most obvious possibility is O’Connor, home to most of the party’s Wheatbelt heartland, where they have loomed as a vague threat to Wilson Tuckey in the past despite consistently unable to beat Labor to second place.
The redistribution has done the Nationals a disservice in this regard by hiving off the northern Wheatbelt to the new seat of Durack, the balance of which consists of the vast Kimberley and Pilbara areas, and compensating it with Kalgoorlie (the seat of that name having been abolished after a career going back to federation).
However, a glass-half-full Nationals observer might well view the changes as a chance to be competitive in two seats rather than one, particularly in light of their success in scoring 21.4 per cent of the vote in the Mining and Pastoral upper house region in 2008, where they had not even bothered to field candidates in 2005.
If state results were transposed on to the federal boundaries (which it must be said is an unreliable exercise, given the importance of incumbent members in state country seats), the primary votes for the Liberal, the Nationals and Labor would have been about equal, giving Liberal member Barry Haase almost as much to think about as Tuckey.
The Big Ship
We know who Kerry Obrien votes for and yet he equally destroys Liberal and Labor leaders who goes on his program. Why? Because he is one of the few people who actually tries to get politicians to answer difficult questions. Explain what probing questions Koshie and Mel would ask Kevin Rudd or for that matter Tony Abbott.
The trouble is most politicians lie, dont answer or answer badly to Kerry Obriens questions because of how damaging it is for them.
If you want politicians to be held to account i’ll stick to Kerry over Koshie and Mel anyday.
Trouble is only people who care about politics watch Kerry whilst more people who do not care about politics watch rubbish morning TV shows like Sunrise.
[Senator Conroy’s spokeswoman has repeatedly refused to deny claims that the legislation would be shelved until after the election, saying only that she did not yet know when the election would be.]
Can someone explain to me why this answer isn’t reasonable.
1978# “NSW Labor to put it simply is “on the nose” and there is anecdotal evidence from the Penrith by-election that federal issues are on the minds of electors or at least electors are failing to discriminate between federal and state issues. ”
That’s an interesting point. I would note, with all due respect to any constituents of Lindsay on here, that the Penrith area is a lower-education area. I would hazard to guess that the lower the education level the higher the level of mixing up Federal and State issues. As such, I wouldn’t expect Wentworth or Bennelong to swing on state issues, whereas Lindsay or Macarthur may be more prone to.
Gary Morgan:
[The next Federal Election will be decided on whether Australian electors accept or reject the proposed 40% Mining ‘Super Profits’ Tax – the result will go down in Australian history as one of the most important decisions regarding the future of Australia.
Acceptance or not of the 40% Mining ‘Super Profits’ Tax will be decided at the next Federal Election – if rejected, Australia will continue its remarkable growth; if accepted and legislated it is the beginning of the nationalisation of many other Australian industries – the beginning of Australia with a ‘Greek’ economy!
Our latest Morgan Poll conducted June 5/6, 2010 gave the ALP 52%, L-NP 48% – forget the published telephone polls showing the L-NP with a big lead – the Federal Election will be close, and the ALP people I have spoken to (all close to ‘god’) know where the ALP now stands – in a good position to win the next Federal Election – then Australia will need more than ‘god’ to help us!
Like the Eureka Trials ‘through out’ the treason charges in 1855 the Rudd Government must now ‘throw out’ the proposed 40% Mining ‘Super Profits’ Tax to reverse the damage already done to Australian’s ‘sovereign risk.’
The 40% Mining ‘Super Profits’ Tax issue is bigger than the Mining Companies (not wanting to pay more tax), the issue is bigger than the L-NP Opposition wanting to win the next Federal election – it is about the future of Australia and all Australians.]
at
http://www.roymorgan.com/
Nice balanced assessment (insert sarcasm emoticon here).
[“I don’t believe he will be able to get the chamber time from his colleagues (before the election) unless he’s fairly sure that he’s going to be able to pass it; the government at the moment don’t have time to burn a couple of days of chamber time only to have it voted down.]
Can someone explain to me why this answer isn’t reasonable.
What an appalling piece by Morgan. Is he for real?
[Nice balanced assessment (insert sarcasm emoticon here).]
my goodness he lives in a different world to us
i would think most people really dont give a hoot in the outer suburbs about the mine tax but they
dam well care about WORKCHOICES AND HEALTH
Glen @ 2000
You have wilfully and entirely missed the point – when an interview with a powder-puff pair like Mel and Kochie yields more information about policies and events (regardless off what may be called ‘spin’ by the PM) than a set piece interview by the doyen of the ABC, then our journalistic standards are in free fall.
Our national broadcaster should be asking the difficult questions of all politicians, but my point is that O’Brien is now taking his cue from the Murdoch Press sheet of talking points, rather than formulating his own objective set of questions to be put to the PM, which is what he is being paid by the taxpayer to do.
Ask yourself who is setting the narrative on the ABC news and current affairs coverage at the moment?
[No, Stephen is stuffed. ]
Music to my ears.
Did anyone notice how Morgan is now putting in their little summary box at the top left hand corner the primary vote of the parties not the TPP?
[What an appalling piece by Morgan. Is he for real?
]
you got wonder dont you the wealthy people you see dont have care where their next sandwich is coming from so they have no understanding of
workchoices and health issues becasuse wealthy people can afford health even if they are not in private cover,
What does Morgan want? For the robber barons to rip our mineral wealth out of the ground, send it overseas, pocket the enormous proceeds for themselves … and leave Australia with nothing but a few holes in the ground to show for this boom?
[{The RSPT} … is about the future of Australia and all Australians.]
Damn right. And remember that.
[Posted Friday, June 18, 2010 at 12:45 pm | Permalink
Did anyone notice how Morgan is now putting in their little summary box at the top left hand corner the primary vote of the parties not the TPP?]
yes it has been going on for a while now
i really like the essential poll it comes from people who are on line.
I don’t care about Gary Morgan’s opinions, I only care about his poll. 52%, thanks very much. Given William’s graphs above, that would suggest about a 50-50 Newspoll, ie, no real change for the last two months. (It is of course quite possible that Morgan is right and Newspoll is wrong – we have no way of knowing.)
and also do they think these minerals are there for ever, well in their life time may be
seems not a lot peoplr give a r….. for the future generations.
[I only care about his poll. 52%, thanks]
is that today adam i agree, i think though it does show you what wealthy people think
its amazing, one day we may be or our children may be living in a waste land
Actually, it was pointed out by Rudd first. He specifically scolded O’Brien for not asking a question on the PPL scheme:
So there you have it. 30 years work on PPL signed off with a single word, “Okay”, from Kerry, and then onto the next scandal.
Rudd tried to talk about the PPL scheme, a historic achievement, and Kerry switched to the Auditor-General, and then onto next week’s Newspoll. Dennis “Dr. Sigmund” Shanahan would have been chortling if he hadn’t been so worried David Marr was trying to take over his “Let’s psychoanalyse Rudd” franchise.
And then came The Big One: “Will you resign?”. Ooooo-Errrr! Kerry popped his cherry over that. You could see the look of triumph on his face. Scripted triumph, that is. He’d been reading all his hectoring catchphrases from notes the entire interview (so he wouldn’t get them wrong, I guess) and this was just as well-prepared and timed to be dramatically asked at the end of the piece.
What a BIG MAN Kerry is, and what a BIG DICK he has. He even beat Shanahan to it. Kerry’s the first to use the “R” word.
All Shanahan can write about now is how “journalists have openly speculated upon” the PM resigning if Newspoll is bad, and how the story “won’t go away”. After all, Kerry told us earlier in the interview:
Kerry resorts to the last refuge of the blustering bullshit artist. Not just one person, but “several people”, agree with him. Well, that’s it then. Rudd’s gone.
Kerry’s seen Dennis’ “Ghost Of Newspolls Future” meme and “Gillard To Strike this week” fabrication and raised him “The ‘R’ Word” and a “People Say” question… in the same interview.
Beat that Shanahan!
Peter Young @ 1978
If the polls fail to improve, as the deadline for calling an October election grows nearer, what would Rudd, as an individual, have to lose by having a 2011 election?
Because they’re so closely entwined any pretense to the contrary would just make the electorate more eager to string them up: Anthony Albanese/Carmel Tebbutt, Belinda Neal/John Della Bosca, Tanya Plibersek/Michael Coutts-Trotter, etcetera, etcetera.
Morgan 52/48 is last weeks result. Still waiting for poll from weekend June 12/13.
I do love all this ‘Chatham house rules’ stuff. Other journos have done the wrong thing, so it’s OK for Kerry to.
And this is a profession which criticises pollies for lack of ethics.
Bushfire Bill @ 2017
Spot on
Benji @ 2020
Morgan 2001, Beazley for the win.
Morgan 2004, Latham for the win.
Don’t get excited about Morgan, we haven’t seen last weekend’s result yet.
It will be interesting to abbott’s treatment at the hands of Kerry next time he’s on. I expect he’ll get a comparatively easy ride (as last time).
[ Morgan 52/48
Morgan 2001, Beazley for the win.
Morgan 2004, Latham for the win.]
Might be method in the madness. Make people think that it’s a done thing and feel safe to put in a “protest” vote!
Pretty sure it’s one of the strategies that the Coalition are banking on as well as the Greens.
Usually works too!
BB et al
the MSM is running around and around in circles
I soon expect them to turn on themselves
😉
frankie v,
yes we know of the bias its been discussed verbatim. we are looking for trends.
Morgan NZ 2008, Helen Clark for the win.
I should have added, more so comments like this accompanying Morgan’s poll result.
[the Federal Election will be close, and the ALP people I have spoken to (all close to ‘god’) know where the ALP now stands – in a good position to win the next Federal Election ]
“forget the published telephone polls showing the L-NP with a big lead ‘
interesting to see Morgan say “Forget the published telephone polls…”
is it only phone polls that have a L-NP lead that we should forget…or is it every Poll other than morgan’s phone poll that we should forget
The 7.30 Report’s “About Us” page contains a pretty big lie on it. I wonder how many here can spot the discrepancies.
[Monday to Thursday, The 7.30 Report provides in-depth coverage and analysis of the major daily news events – both domestic and international. It has a network of dedicated and specialist correspondents in every State and Territory as well as overseas correspondents.
The program’s imperative is to provide up-to-the minute, balanced coverage of the most important issues of the day whether they be political, economic, medical, environmental, social, sporting or cultural.]
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/aboutus.htm
So when is the latest Morgan due out? Or has it been skipped due to the long weekend in the East?
For Those with longish memories
The OO is now spinning the Liberia deal thus
[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/bhp-billiton-enticed-by-liberia-tax-rate/story-e6frg8zx-1225881089460]
[One analyst said West Africa was well endowed in iron ore, and with all the big players over there, it would become a major iron region. “The Australian government has fostered the expeditious development of that process,” he said.]
EXCEPT THE BLOODY DEAL HAS BEEN NEGOTIATED FOR OVER 18 MTHS AND AT THOSE TAX RATES
SCALLYWAGS
I can’t believe they are dredging up this “Doomagee” case YET AGAIN.
A Jury of Townsvillians aquitted the copper involved and deemed him not guilty of any wrong doing, why the hell can’t these bueracrats down south let it rest already.
Sorry, I thought the comment above related to a Morgan today.
Scorpio @ 2032
They haven’t reported Lou Ferrigno’s scheduled appearance at Supanova.
[You have wilfully and entirely missed the point – when an interview with a powder-puff pair like Mel and Kochie yields more information about policies and events (regardless off what may be called ’spin’ by the PM) than a set piece interview by the doyen of the ABC, then our journalistic standards are in free fall.]
it is just how ordinary people like to hear things no big words no dramatic hand waving just a chat
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/18/2930199.htm
Lucy Turnbull appointed to planning body by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd
I’d forgotten about Kerry reading from prepared notes. It wasn’t just the questions, it was the exact phraseology of his hectoring that he was getting from a script on the desk in front of him.
He’d pause for a second, scan ahead, and then go on.
He’d probably spent all afternoon writing those notes, most likely with “several people” helping him get the gotchas! exactly right.
Rudd disappointed him by not losing his cool and staying – as far as possible – on the message. Kerry was clearly irked that Rudd didn’t fall into the “anger trap”. Rudd’s saying,
first up, probably didn’t exactly get Kerry on side either.
That O’Brien had to read his cutting one-liners from notes, constantly referring to them, shows, to my mind that the grandfatherly, concerned, professional image those treacly 7.30 Report ads present him as having, is more “grandfather” than “professional” nowadays. Kerry’s lost it, if that’s the best he can do.
He asked whether Rudd should retire. Rudd should have asked Kerry the same question back. I know who’s looking to be closer to the pension if last night’s effort was anything to go by.
MWH@ 1950
That’s as may be, but you do understand that it gets interpreted that way, don’t you? If the only word coming out of the Greens is “We can’t support Rudd”, the inference is going to be that they see no problem with Abbott – or even support him. I don’t think they’re saying nearly enough to counter that idea. They’ve just given this tacit, “We don’t care if Abbott gets in”.
It does seem to me that if a Green was asked, “Who’s worse, the ALP or the Coalition?” they’d say both. And yet…
This suggests that Labor are bad, but the Coalition are far worse.
There’s definitely a paradox going on here. The Greens think that Labor are so bad that they don’t warrant preferences, even if it means somebody worse gets voted in.
You’ve got this sliding scale here – if Labor move right, then the Coalition moves further right. But of course it could be just as true that the Coalition are moving right, and Labor are just moving to fill the vacuum.
I personally think an Abbott government is worse than a compromised Green Party. If only because one would be actually able to do damage, whereas the other can potentially do less good. But the important thing for the Greens is that they be right rather than useful.
Which is why I can’t support the Greens Party, even though I agree with their principles.
Kerry getting a bit of flak!.
http://www2b.abc.net.au/guestbookcentral/list.asp?guestbookID=156
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/18/2930655.htm?section=justin
BER was a success
Who’d thunk it!
🙂
“”One analyst said West Africa was well endowed in iron ore, and with all the big players over there
The only trouble is, it’s a long way from China!.
Gusface @ 2039
Oh great, just what small business needs – looney Lucy’s second crusade against convenience stores and fluorescent lights.
Real world experience my arse.
William, dunno if you saw this
http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/news/local/news/general/david-boyle-to-quit-race-for-gilmore/1862264.aspx
bummer! I was hoping for a Rabbitoh to represent me 🙁
Frankie
It will get Malcolm moving
Bushfire – Kerry O’Brien is largely a victim of his notes. He just wants to move smoothly from one scripted question to another. That’s why he keeps cutting off interviewees the moment they start giving a response he doesn’t want. If he lets them off the leash then, my goodness, he might have to actually use his brain and think on his feet (or arse in this case) and adapt. Better to bully them from one scripted question to another, then go home.
He was just as hard on Howard, for the same reason.
Must have something wrong with his eyes too, because the qns are all in 22 point.
Aguirre,
When commenting on my posts please remember that I am not The Greens.
I believe that the Greens should be much more hard hitting in criticizing both Abbott and Rudd, whilst the Greens tend to do a more softly softly approach.
It is the Laborites here who are working very hard to make it seem that I support Abbott. And it also seems likely that a part of Labor’s election campaign is likely to be that a vote for the Greens supports Abbott (despite the fact that the majority of Green preferences will go to Labor). In my opinion neither Rudd nor Abbott deserve a prime vote.
As I’ve said before, on the great moral challenge of our time, I don’t believe Rudd ever intended to take real action on climate change. At least Abbott is honest that not much will happen under him. Rudd is still going on as if the CPRS is good policy and that it all that is needed for real action. As Rudd is worse than doing nothing it is even possible that Abbott would do better on climate change!
I respect a liberal voter who votes 1 Green, 2 Liberal much more than I respect someone who votes 1 Labor. Which of Abbott and Rudd is least worse is a decision for each voter.
Thanks Vera, I’m on it.