Roy Morgan’s effort to pull the rug from under Newspoll on Tuesday, as noted in the update to the previous post, has deprived me of my usual Friday poll thread. It us thus left to Seat of the Week to fly the flag on its lonesome. The latest instalment looks at the NSW Central Coast seat of Robertson, held for Labor by what on present indications looks to be an undefendable margin of 1.0%.
One of the happier aspects of the 2010 election for Labor was an apparent tactical win in New South Wales, where a statewide swing of 4.8% yielded the Coalition a notional gain of only four seats – half of what would have been achieved on a uniform swing. Remarkably, the four marginals Labor retained against the trend – all of which were outside Sydney – were the only four in the state which swung in Labor’s favour: Eden-Monaro (2.0% swing), Page (1.8%), Dobell (1.1%) and, most fortuitiously, Robertson, where a winning margin of just 0.1% from 2007 became 1.0% in 2010. This was despite the unceremonious departure of Labor’s accident-prone sitting member, Belinda Neal.
Robertson covers the coast about 60 kilometres north of Sydney, with the Hawkesbury River marking its southern boundary with Berowra. All but a small share of its voters live at its coastal end, which includes Labor-leaning Woy Woy, Liberal-leaning Terrigal and marginal Gosford. The remainder of the electorate covers Popran National Park, McPherson State Forest and the Mangrove Creek dam. Although technically a federation seat, it was a different beast when it was created, covering the inland rural areas of Mudgee, Singleton and Scone.
As Robertson was drawn over time into the increasingly urbanised coast, the conservatives’ hold weakened to the point where Barry Cohen was able to gain it for Labor in 1969, and to withstand the party’s disasters of 1975 and 1977. The seat drifted back slightly in the Liberals’ favour thereafter, and was held by them throughout the Howard years by Jim Lloyd, who unseated Labor’s Frank Walker with a 9.2% swing in 1996.
Robertson returned to the Labor fold in 2007 when a 7.0% swing delivered a 184-vote winning margin to their candidate Belinda Neal, wife of Right faction powerbroker and then senior state minister John Della Bosca. Neal had earlier served in the Senate from 1994 until 1998, when she quit to make a first unsuccessful run in Robertson. Once elected Neal soon made a name for herself with a peculiar parliamentary attack on a pregnant Sophie Mirabella, and an episode in which she allegedly abused staff at Gosford restaurant-nightclub Iguana Joe’s. In 2009 her husband, who had been present during the Iguana Joe’s fracas, resigned as state Health Minister after it was revealed he was having an affair with a 26-year-old woman.
Suggestions that Neal’s preselection might be in danger emerged soon after the Iguana Joe’s incident. A challenger emerged in the shape of Deborah O’Neill, an education teacher at the University of Newcastle and narrowly unsuccessful state candidate for Gosford in 2003. O’Neill won the favour of local branches and, so Peter van Onselen of The Australian reported, “NSW Labor Right powerbrokers”. The national executive allowed the decision to be determined by a normal rank-and-file ballot, in which O’Neill defeated Neal 98 votes to 67. O’Neill went on to prevail at the election against Liberal candidate Darren Jameson, a local police sergeant.
The preselected Liberal candidate for the next election is Lucy Wicks, who has contentiously been imposed on the local branches by the fiat of the party’s state executive. Barclay Crawford of the Daily Telegraph reports this occurred at the insistence of Tony Abbott, who lacked confidence in the local party organisation owing to its poor performance at the 2010 election and the recent preselection of a problematic candidate in Dobell.
The solution was to impose candidates on both electorates; to choose women for reasons of broader electoral strategy; and to share the spoils between the warring Alex Hawke “centre Right” and David Clarke “hard Right” factions (local potentate Chris Hartcher being aligned with the latter). Robertson went to soft Right in the person of Lucy Wicks, who according to the Telegraph was a particularly galling choice for members due to her tenuous local credentials and membership of the very state executive which imposed her as candidate.
[Mr Krugman’s arguments should rest on their merits, not on his job title.]
Very true. I note that Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, both darlings of the Neo-Con Free Market were Nobel Laureates, just like Paul Krugman.
Even judging his arguments ‘on the merits’ they work for me. Austerity in a recesion is a recipe for a full blown depression, such as we’re presently seeimg in places like Spain, Greece and Ireland. Any further movement down that path would lead to a disaster globally. He was trying to impress this upon the British people in that interview, I thought, and demolishing the threadbare arguments of a couple of British Neo-Cons in the process.
Catch you later bludgers. Off to stimulate the economy
[Barnaby Joyce @Barnaby_Joyce
Standard & Poors says Australia “just not quite as strong as it was in 2008” if we don’t sharpen up we’ll lose our rating. $231 bil debt !.]
Why do I get the feeling that Barnaby is salivating over an economic downturn 🙁
lizzie
Joyce is a constant reminder of what we’d be in for if Abbott wins the next election.
Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!
BK
Too awful (or should I say awesome 🙂 ) to contemplate.
g
Mr Krugman repeatedly uses the Great Depression and WW2 as an example to demonstrate his POV.
But the analogy with today is manifestly false. Comparing then with now in the US:
(1) The US already has massive debt at federal, state, local government, corporate and private levels. I forget the percentage to GDP but assume that it is already in the region of 100%. In other words, if stimulus by borrowing is so good, why isn’t working now?
(2) The US is now importing about half its energy needs. This was not the case in
(3) Economies are globalised.
(4) The chinese competition is meaner and leaner and smarter
(5) The US has already spent trillions on defence spending and wars
(6) The US is not competing on a level playing field. The Chinese are screwing their workers, eating their environment and fiddling the currency exchange markets.
(7) The US is suffering AGW blowback. Last year this cost them $65 billion in major disasters. This does not count the cumulative cost of impacts such as forest destruction by bark beetles – and by minor, hundred million dollar stuff such as loss of oyster production from acidification and movement of commerical fish species beyond US territorial waters.
(8) The US has eaten its infrastructure investment (as per the Howard/Costello governments). They have around 40-50,000 bridges that they need to replace.
Barnany would love to see a crash.
Regrettably (for him) he’s not likely to get one. The BISONS and our Triple A rating (alone amongst the Industrialised world) tend to suggest he’s barking up the wrong tree.
[Do you have a suggestion as to why conservatives seem to support wars? I know those (such as Rumsfeld) make fortunes from it, but do they have any less self-serving reasons?]
Boerwar: this is about the best I can do off the top of my head. It’s UK specific, prob because it’s the best example of warmongering in a parliamentary democracy (adopted widely) – and the easiest to recall & cross-check. I haven’t tried to address war in the front yard to detract from chaotic mayhem in the back yard examples eg Russia 1904-5 & 1914.
In the UK, it’s quite a recent attitude (esp where Tories are concerned) starting with Marlborough’s triumphs in the War of Spanish – at a time when the Jacobites/ Tories were THE enemy and English victories like Blenheim helped consolidate Queen Anne’s legitimacy. When Louis XV took up his great-grandfather’s Louis XIV’s regime-changing policy with a vengeance, Whig politicians countered his meddling in the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion by conspiring with Prussia’s Frederick (later The Great) to lure him into the trap that was the 7 Years’ War, beating and bankrupting France.
Whigs were again in power when Revolutionary France cut loose in 1792-3, by which time Josiah Wedgwood had conned the government into supporting embargoes on Foreign goods – initially china from China; but soon an increasing number of manufactured goods as cousin Matthew Boulton & MB’s partner James Watt’s heavy engineering and steam engines multiplied in every type of factory, heralding the IR’s dominance of all manufacturing – Blake’s Did those feet in ancient times and Tyger, tyger burning bright best portray just how comprehensive and rapid England’s industrialisation was.
So in C18 England, antiConservative, commercial imperialist Whigs were the party of wars which increasingly became wars of commerce and empire-building – though essentially wealth-building inc by empire-building (esp against France). But the defence forces, though effective in wars, were by and large disreputable organisations whose fave recruitment strategy was kidnapping (aka “Pressing”) usually from cities’ lowest classes.
In 1792, that wealth-building extended to protective commercial embargoes. Whigs also became the party of tolerance: religious tolerance of dissenters and catholics; the more Libertarian and pro-political & social reform (influenced by C18’s great political philosophers, from Lock to Godwin & Paine)l would become the anti-slavery party and, to a certain extent, proUS Republicanism – Wedgwood was a strong supporter of US Independence & the antislavery movement (money; jasper & other ceramic plaques).
Tories’ quite different warmongering really begins with Lord North’s disastrous policy towards the American Colonies, and blossomed when their more aggressive (& expensive) policies for pursuing the Napoleonic wars saw them in government in 1807, with the Prince of Wales/ Regent/ George IV’s backing, and Duke of Wellington’s support – and for most of the next 25 years.
The politically ultra-conservative Duke of Wellington (PM, de facto PM & CiC during periods from 1828-48) entrenched conservatism in every controversial area – religion, emancipation; political reform; industrial & working conditions etc – and enhanced the status of the armed forces (inc Navy) by making “the uniform” a more popular, professional career than it was in the eras of “pressed” sailors & soldiers and the Infamous Army. The Empire’s massive expansion after 1814 created opportunities for military travel as well as “Death & Glory”, and few sovereigns since the Fall of Rome created more fervour for “God, Queen & Country (and endless possibilities for “Death & Glory”) than Queen Victoria – a feat her Grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II tried to emulate & lost his throne & empire.
[(8) The US has eaten its infrastructure investment (as per the Howard/Costello governments). They have around 40-50,000 bridges that they need to replace.]
Well there’s something they could usefully borrow to fix as part of any Krugman-style stimulus plan, I would have thought.
bw
The US debt was created in tax cuts to the rich and the cost of waging wars around the world. President Obama is in the process of redirecting this spending. So the US debt per GDP is likely to stay at current levels but spending on things like fixing those bridges is starting to happen.
This has the effect of increasing employment. We know the difficulties of President Obama has been his measures being blocked by the Neo Cons in Congress.
smithe
I agree with the basic principle that if you can, you ought to stimulate productivity improvements rather than consumption.
OPT
It was Victoria who asked the question.
There is no doubt at all that in Australia conservative governments have taken us into far more wars than non-conservative governments.
Perhaps it is because they are morally decrepit?
g
Whether the deficits are created by a lack of tax, an excess of spending, or a mixture of both does not matter much, IMHO, when considering the cumulative effect of too much debt.
In the end too much debt eats up all your options. In the end, adding to your debt is not an option anymore.
It seems to me that the Treasury predictions for the forward estimates were over-optimistic. I believed so at the time and am discouraged to find that I believe so even more strongly now.
The concerns about Europe, China and the US I had then are stronger now. The All Ords, flighty beast that it is, mirrors my concerns.
You can add to the above that the emerging nations are faltering as well.
bw
Note I did state that President Obama was redirecting the spending of current debt levels.
Not increasing them. He is spending on infrastructure and other productivity measures to enable the US to get out of debt.
A simple analogy for you. A single story house has been built and a second story added to that as an improvement. All the spending has gone on the second story and the first story has been neglected. Now the spending has to happen on the first story to prevent the collapse of both first and second stories,
It is a curious thing that 70 years ago China was a smashed up playground for foreign empires. Germany was a pile of blackened rubble. War, as a solution, begged the question of what the problem was.
Now, the rest of the world is on its knees, begging them to stimulate their economies.
[In the end, adding to your debt is not an option anymore.]
At which stage, you default. Going to be some very scary times in the markets to come over the next 12 months.
Hopefully, economic policy here (and elsewhere) will be firmly focused on supporting job numbers. I remember that Possum did some stuff a couple of years ago that showed how if you can keep the spike in unemployment at the beginning of a recession as low as possible, the duration of the recession is substantially shorter.
BB
I think the problem with the press commentators is the expectation that they will always have to have something to say. If there was just an editorial and perhaps an opinion piece one a week or fortnight, the political commentators would write reasonable well thought out stuff. However having to fill a daily column means they recycle stuff and write rubbish.
The real problem is that the papers emply generalists rather than specialists so they really do not have the skill set to comment on much policy, just politics. The contrast of a specialist journo – like Tingle is marked – they know the stuff and can comment sensibly.
The issue with something like Carbon pricing is that to comment on the POLICY you need to have a good scientific knowledge and good economics. Few journos have either so they stick to personalities and the POLITICS.
Same for health, transport etc – hard to comment without some specialist knowledge of the fields so the journos rely on press releases.
I think the future of quality papers may be to reduce their political commentators and have more specialists.
[Boerwar
Posted Saturday, June 2, 2012 at 11:32 am | Permalink
OPT
It was Victoria who asked the question.
There is no doubt at all that in Australia conservative governments have taken us into far more wars than non-conservative governments.
Perhaps it is because they are morally decrepit?]
Everyone loves a khaki election bores: The Government, because it allows them to wrap themselves in the flag and wax patriotic; The Press, because it sells papers; And the people because it gives them something to rally around.
Labor’s own Billy Hughes was a master of the art, until he was chucked out of the Party over conscription. My own grandmother (Dog rest her) handed-out white feathers to men of military age who were not in uniform in 1915, somethingn she bitterly regretted later in life. And she was Labor to the bone.
So it’s not specifically a Tory thing, but they seem to have used it more often.
g
Mr Obama, frustrated by Congress and the Senate, is not doing nearly enough, IMHO.
The US should should start attaining budget surpluses The US should just stop spending as much on its military as the next nine nations. It should stop spending a trillion dollars a decade on useless wars. It should stop basing its troops in 148 countries around the world. It should start taxing the super rich at reasonable levels. It should stop wasting so much energy. It should stop over eating.
But I don’t think it will until it is too late for them.
[Very risky from Carnell as CEO of BeyondBlue to get involved in partisan political issues. ]
Fess – There are no rules for the Libs. They can do anything they like. I heard yesterday that Jeff Kennett is joining Star City Casino in some capacity (is it Director?) and yet he still wants to retain his input with BeyondBlue. How about that conflict of interest!
Have had plumber here all morning so late start but just want to mention that I thought Mike Kelly did Sinodinos last night on Lateline. His closing statements refuting the myth of the magnificent handling of the huge mining bonanza by his side, was classic. Well done Mike Kelly. He’s a class act.
Oops, that should be ‘Everyone loves a khaki election Boers….’
s
There is no doubt that governments love a bit of chauvenism, jingoism and militarism. Recent Australian governments have all been rather conspicuous in this regard. Our very own Labor Government has allocated over $80 million for the celebration of the centenary of the stupidy of WW1 and Gallipoli. What a bloody stupid waste when we are in the middle of mass extinction event.
Second attempt at going for a walk… catch youse later.
bw
I have no doubts of a second Obama term. What is going to be interesting is the makeup of Congress. Maybe they will even get rid of the Filibuster that has destroyed true government for the last few decades.
Good Morning Bludgers, from the centre of the known Universe, otherwise known as the federal seat of Robertson! 😀
I can see the road that I live on on the electoral map above. Wow!
Now, may I start my comments today by also admonishing William for this statement:
Not. So. Quick. Mr. Bowe.
As someone who has intimate knowledge of this seat, might I just point out a couple of flaws in Mr Bowe’s assessment of the likelihood of a Robertson fall to the Liberals at the next election.
1. Mr Bowe has completely overlooked the fact that this is a seat with a large demographic of Greens voters. We have 2 Greens and 2 ALP local Councillors. (Sadly we have 4 Liberals, but come September 😀 ). Therefore, this being a seat which has lots of environmentally-inclined voters, we get a lot of Greens 1, Labor 2, Liberals last, votes here. I think this is what surprised the Liberals last time.
2. Add to this the fact that it is an Exurb area to Sydney. So lots of mums at home in our beautiful environment, with the kids, while dad goes off to work. So, and this goes to explain why the Liberal HQ endorsed a woman this time, a candidate who has time to get around and knock on doors during the day and leave a positive impression, gets a knock-on effect when politics gets discussed around the dinner table at night, when dad gets home from work.
3. As you can see, it’s a seat which is fairly insular(we call ourselves ‘The Insular Peninsular’ 🙂 ), and limited by National Parks and the coastline, which we guard jealously. So, we have lots of Community/ Residents Groups, and are very engaged. Also, as a lot of independently wealthy people have chosen to live here, appeals to the hip pocket are weaker, and more principled stands resonate. For example, we get Climate Change here, and so I think Abbott’s commitment to tear the government’s action to address it down, and then stomp on it, will not go down well for the Liberal candidate.
4. In fact, last election, known Liberal voters who are friends of mine, in the teeth of the Belinda Neal scandal being exploited by the Liberals, chose to vote for Deb because they had soberly ‘Compared the Pair’. Darren Jamison was very much the Abbottesque, brusque and brash candidate, who thought that he could just charm his way into the seat off the back of Belinda’s faux pas and boorish behaviour.
Not so. When all of the above were taken into consideration by the voters of Robertson, plus the fact that Jamison manhandled a couple of kids towards the end of the campaign who threw eggs at his car, it served to help the voters make up their own minds pretty independently, as we do. We are not so tribal here, or easily bamboozled. As my Liberal friend said to me, “I just voted for the best candidate.”
Add to this the fact that Barry O’Farrell’s latest decision, even though a State one, to allow shooting in National Parks will not go down at all well here, as we are surrounded by National Parks, but what it will do is serve to give an indication of how a federal Liberal government will think about the environment. So I believe that William’s statement, quoted above, is not a given at all.
Finally, at a human level, as Abbott is wont to say, Deb O’Niell is a friendly, intelligent, hard-working local member who doesn’t appear to have upset anyone particularly as yet. Except for the ‘Free Schapelle Corby’ acolytes, and even they have had a win recently.
Cat
Good analysis
I was wondering if there was a common thread with the four rural seats that stuck to Labor in 2010. Everything you say about Robertson can be said triple fold for Page and probably for E-M.
Good reason for the Green hating Labor types on this blog to think very hard about their strategy.
You are suggesting that 3-4 seats are Labor BECAUSE of green voters LOL
Victoria,
[I cant see Germany allowing Greece to leave the Eurozone]
Not while they think the benefits of Greece depreciating the Euro outweigh the costs of extending them further credit. As soon as they reckon that equation isn’t running in their favour anymore they’ll cut them loose.
BW,
The Australian response was pretty much text book. The bipartisan fiscal commitment to balanced budgets over the business cycle gives us the flexibility to use counter cyclical stimulus better than most others. A floating widely traded currency also massively helps. Lastly having relatively high interest rates turned out to be a bonus when it hit the fan. These more than mining are the reasons for our ability to ride out the GFC. Mining actually contracted more than almost any other sector during the stimpac period. Without mining our currency would be nearer 50c US and manufacturing, tourism, agriculture, financial, education and professional services would have enjoyed the comparative advantages to move the economy along. We wouldn’t have enjoyed so much cheap Chinese stuff and imported cars, but we would have been fine economically. The Hawke/Keating reforms give us the resilience and flexibility to deal with these ups and downs.
Equally now that mining is powering ahead it is the right idea entirely to be repairing the budget position. Especially with a rebalancing of receipts towards mining via the MRRT. It probably could and should have been greater, and equally a lot of the rebates etc that go towards mining should be reduced further, but Swan and Treasury’s direction is the right one. We still have plenty of room to stimulate further should the need arise.
To argue that Krugman’s model is based on infinite growth is a gross misrepresentation. He is merely arguing that Keynesian counter-cyclical stimulus is the correct response by a government at times that the private sphere is contracting. As he says in the video, if the economy was in an expansionary phase he would be a fiscal hawk arguing for reduced government spending and tighter budgeting. The point being that to try that when the private sphere is contracting is pro-cyclical – it makes the contraction even deeper and that this builds up a feedback loop similar but opposite to a bubble. When the economy is developing a bubble the correct response from a government should be to try and take a little air out, and when an anti-bubble is developing to pump some more air in.
Krugman definitely is not arguing for loose fiscal policy at all times. He recognises that it is just as dangerous at times of growth as austerity is in a recession. He is arguing that timing of stimulus/austerity is the important factor. Get the timing right and you smooth out the bumps and ensure people have jobs and the economy functions for our benefit. Get the timing wrong and you make a bad situation worse. Europe needs stimulatory policies now, even accepting that they did not show the requisite discipline when times were good. Once that has put a floor under the fall, and the private sphere has recovered to start expanding, then they can look at how to reduce the size of their public sector and pay back the debts.
I don’t think there is really any context that would suggest austerity as being an appropriate response when in the midst of a contraction. There may be contexts however where the stimulus has to be provided other than by further debt. Greece is probably in that situation, which is why I think leaving the Euro and defaulting is probably their only option.
I do think monetary union will need to come under serious reconsideration throughout Europe. Without a unified federal government to implement taxation and spending to balance out the differences between the states it seems to me to provide far more problems than it solves.
On Williams’s logic, seats such as Dobell and Robertson should now be Coalition seats.
They’re not, and that points to the danger of applying general poll results to individual seats.
Swings are rarely uniform.
Another fallacy indulged in here is to talk as if states vote as a block – for example, to say that because Labor is polling badly in one state, it will lose all its seats there.
Parties don’t make that mistake. They assess seats individually, and use that information to determine which are worth an all out effort, which are worth a punt, and which aren’t worth their while worrying about.
As form Krugman; as I understand his argument, it rests on his belief that both the US and UK economies are under performing. If their governments can invest in ways which help realize this potential, that would obviously help their recovery.
More proof that Sydney Harbour has improved
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-news/sensational-sydney-start-to-mass-whale-migration/story-e6freuzi-1226380907115
daretotread@177,
What you say has resonance. Lots of Inner City Sydney types came up here when they had their families because it was relatively cheap(not so much now). So, we have lots of Organic Food Co-Ops, Environmental Clean Up Groups, Harvest Festivals, Oyster Festivals, and even a Spike Milligan Festival!
However, we have one foot still in the city, so not exactly a ‘Dead Hippy’ demographic either. Though, as you say, we do have a lot in common with other coastal Labor seats in NSW like Page and Eden Monaro. Strong social justice values, strong environmental values, but also strong small business values. Which is why I think the ALP are onto a winner by reconnecting with them.
Funnily enough, I just recently noticed that the Labor Lawyers group was starting up again. There’d be a few of that type up here. Weigh up the evidence, social justice types.
BH 171
totally agree re mike kelly – he is really pushing it to the opps and is very active on twitter – not sure whether you tweet but if you do a message of congrats would be appreciated i’m sure @MikeKellyMP
Zoomster,
Exactly so, and why I laugh at those saying the ALP will be left without any seats in Qld. If the swing is on in Qld Labor will still be able to sandbag their seats and constrain the losses. Even with a huge swing they’ll hang on to a few that would fall on a simple reading of the pendulum. This is exactly what happened at the last election, and also is why Howard was able to walk away from 98 with functioning majority despite a 49% 2PP.
Of course if the ALP polls anything like 46% at the election they are going to lose and lose badly. Even 48 pretty much guarantees an Abbott government unless you get a SA like situation where they can do a near perfect job of sandbagging the marginals. But if the election is in the 49-51% range it will be street by street stuff. Some ultra marginals will hold, and some not so marginals will fall on both sides.
lizzie
[Do you have a suggestion as to why conservatives seem to support wars? I know those (such as Rumsfeld) make fortunes from it, but do they have any less self-serving reasons?]
It could be that conservative parties are the natural home for sociopaths.
If Mumble’s ‘sophomore surge’ theory is accurate and uniform, then O’Neill will get a swing to her at the next election.
confessions@185,
Yes, I hope you’re right about that. 🙂
Dr Emerson really ‘gets’ Twitter:
The way to think of a swing is to remember election night counts. Swings are counted at the booth level first they then join other booths to make a regional swing. This joins other regional swings to become a State swing. Then State swings come together to form a national swing.
Puff
Bullies, Land-grabbers and Born-to-rule Incorporated? 😆
My notion of an “advanced nation” is one that no longers feels the need to pull out a gun every time they want to make a point.
Ratsak
Sandbag seats in Qld like they did in the state election 🙂
Seriously when a swing is on it is on not matter how you sandbag.
[And actually, daretotread, I did disagree with another of Carney’s points.
He reckons Abbott’s approval can be sandlbasted back to bare metal and still win. I very seriously doubt that. If Labor picks up a couple of points in the 2PP, they become a threat of winning. Abbott on minus 60% approval would suddenly look to be a fairly oddsy bet if any narrowing occurs.
So no, I DON’T think his position is as safe as Carney argues that it is. Nowhere near, actually. He stays where he is simply because of the counter-intuitive position of his party in the polls. To be fair, Carney acknowledges this paradox, but then goes on to say that it doesn’t matter (“Who would you rather be, gillard or Abbott?”). IT was a pretty weak argument, and for someone criticising Labor supporters for burying their heads in the sand on polls, he didn’t do a bad job himself.]
Maybe you could argue that Abbott’s arguments have been most persuasive to journalists, because they sure as hell echo them time and time again.
Philip Coorey spells out what Privilege Committee likely to do regarding Thomson.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/worried-mps-are-reluctant-to-judge-thomson-20120601-1zn4h.html
Result another Abbott strategy fail.
Federal swings and state swings don’t really matter. It’s individual seat results which count.
zoomster
Yes exactly. Federal and State swings only count as a pointer to how many seats may change.
DTT,
+60% 2PP’s are another thing entirely. It won’t be anything like 60-40 even in Qld.
Also Labor was severely hampered in NSW and Qld by optional preferences. Serves em right for bringing it in, but if the Right is united then it smashes Labor because of the reduced flow of Green prefs. Much much harder to sandbag in that situation. In the Federal Election many voters may protest by voting minor party, but it doesn’t cost the majors the seat when their preferences come back.
To compare Qld State Election results to the next Federal Election is apples and oranges stuff.
[Result another Abbott strategy fail.]
But he’s ahead in the polls! That means everything! 😉
Afternoon all.
[There’s something about Abbott and his turbulent grasping desire for power, and the pond suspects it’s jockism.]
http://loonpond.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/how-can-you-do-comedy-with-vicious.html#.T8mEmauO2_U
On Emerson and twitter – He has the right sort of acerbic wit to do it.
Ratsak
Yes and no
Optional preferencing certainly did Labor damage and much of the Greens vote will return to Labor as preferences, but in reality the ACTUAL swing was straight from Labor to the LNP – no parking votes with Greens as a protest. So I would not place too much faith in the no optional preferencing stuff. I was in an electorate where most of the Greens vote did floe to the Labor candidate not many optional preferences at all really.
It is still a year to go and much can change but IF (and it is a big IF) the polling stays as it appears to be at present, then yes there will be a 60/40 TPP split federally. Honestly I do not right NOW see any real progress towards turning things around.
Labor hold 8 seats. There is not much scope to win seats back since they are mostly LNP seats most of the time. Brisbane is an outside chance and maybe Bonner, but other than that there is not any realistic chance of regaining Qld seats.
Moreover of the 8 seats Labor holds, Petirie (won by a miracle in 2010) and Moreton (thanks to Perrott’s ass-like comments) are very vulnerable. These are outer urban seats with not too many Green or sea changers and will be very interest rate sensitive. Also they are the seats where thee are relatively few “mexican” re-locators ie less southern influence than in some areas.
Lilley is quite similar but is shored up by Swan’s profile. I fear that Swan may have done himself irreparable damage over the Rudd affair, BUT there is still time to turn it around.
Griffith is a very middle class seat and would probably fall and stay fallen if and when Rudd departs. It has a swag of green inner city types but also a larger swag of newly rich water-fronters.
There are three naturally Labor seats – Oxlye, Blair and rankin. I think that these seats will largely follow whatever patter in set up for NSW Labor seats. If Blaxland and Werriwa hold for Labor so too will these three seats.
I will leave Scorpio and Rua to comment on Capricornia.