Morgan has published results from a phone poll of 523 respondents conducted between Tuesday and Thursday, which have Labor on 36.5% of the primary vote, the Coalition on 44.5% and the Greens on 8.5%. Morgan’s headline two-party result is 51-49, but this comes from the dubious respondent-allocated preferences measure: the more reliable measure using preferences from the previous election has the Coalition’s lead at 52.5-47.5. This being a phone poll, it should not have the Labor bias associated with Morgan’s face-to-face polling. It also reverses the consistent trend of the face-to-face series in giving Labor the better result on respondent-allocated preferences (I have consistently had grave doubts about the face-to-face polling on this score). However, the poll shows no gap in voting intention between men and women, which perhaps illustrates the difficulties you can get with small samples. The margin of error on the poll is about 4.3%.
Morgan has also taken on the tricky job of framing questions appropriate to the knotty AWU matter. The most useful of these asks if respondents approve or disapprove of Gillard’s response, coming in at 37% and 28% respectively. A question on whether the Prime Minister should resign if “scandal allegations are true” has 43% saying she should against 27% saying she shouldn’t, but this rather overlooks the enormous range of the allegations that might be levelled (had they started a few days later they could simply have asked if respondents agreed with Christopher Pyne). Another question asks whether Gillard “was aware that the AWU ‘slush-fund’ was illegal when she resigned from Slater & Gordon in 1995”, which seems simplistic at best. Thirty-three per cent answered in the affirmative (including 10% of Labor voters and 20% of a tiny sample of Greens voters) against 26% negative, 17% couldn’t say and 24% not aware of the scandal.
There is also an entertaining plethora of questions on preferred party leaders, the chief head-to-head scorelines being Gillard 49 Abbott 36, Turnbull 59 Gillard 31, Gillard 46 Hockey 44, and Turnbull 54 Rudd 38. Not featured: Gillard versus Rudd or Abbott versus Turnbull.
Seat of the week: Perth
The electorate of Perth extends north-eastwards from the city centre to accommodate an area bounded to the south by the Swan River, extending from Mount Lawley and Maylands to Morley and Bassendean. An electorate bearing the name has existed since federation, with the entirety of the metropolitan area having been divided between it and Fremantle until the expansion of parliament in 1949. It then assumed more familiar dimensions, with Swan being drawn into the metropolitan area and Curtin created to accommodate the western suburbs.
Perth was held from its creation until 1922 by James Fowler, first as a Labor member and then as a Liberal and Nationalist following his defection in 1909. It thereafter remained in conservative hands until the Labor landslide of 1943, when it was won by Tom Burke (father of Brian). Burke held the seat until defeated in 1955 by Liberal candidate Fred Chaney Senior, whose son Fred Chaney Junior was a Fraser government minister, Senator and member for Pearce. Chaney was in turn unseated in 1969 by Joe Berinson, who became a junior minister in the Whitlam government and later a state Attorney-General. When the 1975 debacle cost Labor all its WA seats except for Fremantle, Berinson suffered a narrow defeat at the hands of Liberal candidate Ross McLean.
Redistributions in 1977 and 1990 respectively reoriented the seat westwards to the advantage of the Liberals and eastwards to the advantage of Labor. Australian hockey captain Ric Charlesworth was able to gain and hold the seat for Labor in the more difficult conditions after 1983, and Stephen Smith came to a seat with a solid Labor margin when he succeeded Charlesworth in 1993. It continued to trend in Labor’s favour thereafter, remarkably producing a slight positive swing amid the 1996 landslide, and surpassed Fremantle as Labor’s safest WA seat at the 2010 election. However, such has been the party’s progressive malaise in WA over the past decade that the margin has worn down to 5.9%.
Stephen Smith had been an adviser to Paul Keating and a state party secretary before entering parliament, emerging as a senior figure in the Right faction. He was elevated to the front bench after the 1996 defeat, and became Foreign Minister when the Rudd government came to power in 2007. He relinquished this role with displeasure when it was given to Kevin Rudd after the 2010 election, instead being assigned to defence. His desire to return to the foreign ministry was thwarted when Bob Carr was drafted after Kevin Rudd’s failed leadership challenge in February 2012. Smith also served as Trade Minister from Julia Gillard’s ascension to the prime ministership in June 2010 until the reshuffle which followed the subsequent election.
A Liberal preselection in June 2012 was won by Darryl Moore, a former mining engineer now involved in “investing in and managing the family’s commercial and industrial real estate portfolio”, ahead of Geoff Hourn, a former lieutenant-colonel in the Australian Intelligence Corps.
The finns
You forgot the DLOTO and the Manager of Opposition business, aka the poodle
re’ Discussion about Grech and Prosecution last night:
Leaking/provision of information by disgruntled public servants to non-government politicians is not an uncommon thing.
I can think of a number of such known events in the last few years eg the Ombudsman writing questions for SH-Y to ask in Senate Estimates hearings – forced to resign. That their efforts become known to the public is unusual.
Politicians are ‘very receptive’ to these approaches and Public Servants caught are generally just sacked or resign as soon as they realise the game is up.
Their are probably some prosecutions but I don’t recall one ATM.
Grech is a standout for the public because his efforts brought down a Leader of the Opposition.
That the DPP decided not to prosecute Grech on the basis that he was mentally unstable is in no way unexpected.
After all he falsified the documents that he was giving Turnbull to use in Parliament…
the current carbon price scheme 46% approve
is more popular then the coalition primary vote
victoria@47
Well, there is that. I just wanted to point out that when he puts forward an argument like that, it’s true for all, not just his side of politics. Narrow him down enough and you can probably get him to admit he wants to right to ‘get’ the PM while leaving the entire right of politics untouched. Declaring him a partisan isn’t the same as exposing him as one.
CTar1
Hence my comments that Turnbull’s judgment is not as questionable as that of Abbott and Bishop. They have attacked the credibility of the PM, based on the statements of a self confessed crook who apparently came back to the country last week to seek “immunity” for his wrongdoing, so he could dump on the PM.
JBishop tried to table Blewitt’s POA as evidence of the PM being guility of not correctly witnessing this document. Obviously on the hearsay of Blewitt.
Aguirre
Point well made
This from Haaretz on the Australian abstention move on Palestinian observer status at the UN.
[The Australian PM may have been rolled by her party cabinet and caucus, and some MPs who have large Muslim constituencies (such as in Sydney’s west) may have been influenced by the looming Israeli election in 2013 and pro-Palestinian sentiment on the streets — but neither proves a change in government’s fundamental posture on the Israel-Palestine debate. ]
Amusing … MPs in Sydney’s west are influence by <emthe looming Israeli election in 2013 and pro-Palestinian sentiment on the streets.
Haaretz, which is comparatively dovish on the question of how to go about indefinitely occupying Palestine and protecting an ethno-nationalist colonial settler state, does note:
[It is a “storm in a teacup,” says Philip Mendes, a political analyst and co-editor of “Jews and Australian Politics.”
But he adds: “It turns the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the equivalent of a football match where you are either 100 percent with us or against us. This is a common strategy of some lobby groups, but it can potentially backfire.
“It doesn’t allow for the reality that a friend of Israel can be totally supportive on the fundamentals of Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and steadfast at times of crisis – as the Labor Government and Obama both were during the recent Gaza conflict – whilst holding sympathetic but critical views on issues such as West Bank settlements, and the preferred pathway to two states.”]
That’s twice this morning “storm in a tea cup has appeared on my radar. Cicero might be stirring in his grave.
I’m taking my daily mantra from the Tweet of God:
[God @TheTweetOfGod
Fear of failure is all that stands between you and failure. ]
Could be a great motto for the Liberal Party going forward.
[Hartcher *almost* writes something different than his usual: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/pm-lives-to-fight-another-day-20121130-2amng.html%5D
Hartcher even when slowly turning his megatanker of anti-Gillard bile around proves himself a complete dope.
[But this is a standard part of any democracy. The searching public examination of a leader, exploring evidence and testing character, is routine.
Remember the outrage over John Howard’s alleged conflict of interest when his government handed ethanol subsidies to his brother’s firm, Manildra? Remember the parliamentary convulsions over Paul Keating’s piggery? The accusations were tested in public; the leaders passed the tests.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/pm-lives-to-fight-another-day-20121130-2amng.html#ixzz2DkFPmCMK%5D
Moron.
Glaring Google Fail schoolboy error No.1 – In obvious confusion he conflates Howard stumping up government cash to pay for unfunded workers entitlements in brother Stan’s company when it went arse up with Howard secretly meeting with Dick Honan the boss of Manildra, then slapping a 38c/l excise on imported Brazilian ethanol whilst the ship was at sea, and then misleading parliament about it.
This from the so-called “Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor” just demonstrates the lack of basic competence that is endemic to our media. Hartcher is demonstrably incapable through either lack of skill or will of even a 5 min google search to get simple facts right. He is also clearly deluded enough in his own righteousness to rely on his demonstably faulty memory. No wonder the deluded sap is so often wrong.
Glaringly False Equivalence schoolboy error no. 1 – Somehow, through a thought process clearly only comprehendable to those of a right-wing hack and the fellow travellers bent, our pin-striped putz manages to equate the persuing of John Howard over his actions as Prime Minister (both over National Textiles and Manildra – if not Children Overboard, Iraq WMD, AWB and all the rest), with a smear campaign based on actions that may or may not have been taken by Gillard acting as a lawyer a decade before she even entered parliament. Even the grotesque and dishonest pursuit of Keating could be barely excused as he owned shares in the piggery at the time he was PM.
The Howard probes went directly to his conduct as Prime Minister and on his fairly clearly demonstrated misleading of the House and the people. Keatings could be said to at least be indirectly related to his conduct as PM.
No such relevance to any matter of governance can be attributed to the AWU hysteria. It is hearsay, spun and distorted in the most appalling way by fringe dwelling nutjobs with malign intent and chequered histories, laundered by a Murdoch press without a sense of integrity, and then taken up by sheep in the rest of the media because they are too stupid or fearful to rub two brain cells together and come up with the obvious conclusion – the only story here is that the Libs have attached themselves to a smear campaign because they are bereft of any leadership or policy worthy of the name.
It is heartening that even a dope like Hartcher is having some of the scales fall from his eyes and notice that Gillard is tougher than the lot of em. But it would be much better if he wasn’t so incompetent to start with. Had he and his fellow media morons had more than 50% of the entry fee to a battle of wits between the smear campaign never would have left the sullied pages of the OO where it would have been as ignored and irrelevant as the latest headlines on the Green Left Weekly, as should every fevered delusion of the fantasists that populate that Murdoch shit sheet.
victoria @ 55
I agree – Still Talc, bearing in mind what hinged on it for him personally, should have taken a little more care.
But the general public or the Press won’t consider the use of “Blewitt” in the ‘context’ that you are seeing it in.
They don’t have the same span of attention.
Many MPs and Senators on both sides of politics are lawyers or were prior to entering politics. Probably most would advised on the setting up shelf companies, trusts and other instruments which were subsequently used for not entirely legal purposes, most commonly to hide assets and income from the tax man. Are they therefore guilty of tax evasion?
Good Morning Bludgers! 🙂
“Sometimes there are moments when a prime minister must keep faith with their convictions…”
And sometimes there are moments when a desperate Deputy Leader of the Opposition keeps company with sexual predators.
I know what I think is the worse moral crime. Abandoning one’s convictions(which is purely a matter of perspective of The Australian editorial writer, anyway)?
Or, consorting with known criminals…………like Ross Lightfoot. 😉
Oh, and I win Poll Bludger Bingo this week. 67 Red! (I used to own a house in Highgate, before I moved my reliably Red vote to City Beach). 🙂
Good morning all.
For those declaring JBishop to be finished on the back of the latest allegations about Blewitt, remember you read it here first.
But I particularly like this:
[The second is that Bishop, Credlin, and Abbott have underestimated Gillard. They don’t have a plan B if she fights back – and the more effective she is when she fights back, the more likely the PM is to do it again and again, meaning the poverty of simply assuming she will simper or weakly stonewall when challenged is exposed.]
Morning, Bludgers!
[Authentic Observer @BarossaObserver
Every time you read @chriskenny’s opinion on the #AWU saga, remember he was Turnbull’s Chief Of Staff during the Godwin Grech fiasco #auspol]
Here’s one for all the linguistics nuts here, and just generally a good read for us internet word-speakers:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2012/11/language-internet?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/theerkernermest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Kenny_(journalist)
One thing I’ll say about Chris Kenny, is that he has a thick hide and doesn’t block people on twitter who want to argue with him, and often responds.
Do any of the techie types out there know whether you can do pictograms on a Qwerty keyboard by using a particular function?
Ditto Twitter?
🙂
[Authentic Observer @BarossaObserver
Every time you read @chriskenny’s opinion on the #AWU saga, remember he was Turnbull’s Chief Of Staff during the Godwin Grech fiasco #auspol]
Oh, what a tangled web we weave
when first we practice to deceive.
I reckon the ALP can pick up everything under 2% in Queensland provided Gillard stays out of the state and Clive Palmer forms his new party. That’s 3 seats including Wyatt Roy’s (the Coalition clearly think Longman’s vulnerable given Abbott was there yesterday)
Melbourne’s also a good chance of an ALP gain.
It’s everywhere else that’s the problem.
http://tinyurl.com/cmpa84c (click google link)
[Police to pursue defence abusers amid 1000 ‘credible’ claims
by: BRENDAN NICHOLSON, DEFENCE EDITOR
From: The Australian
December 01, 2012 12:00AM
A TEAM of up to 50 investigators, mostly serving and retired police and criminal lawyers, will be needed to examine more than 1000 “credible” claims of abuse in the Australian Defence Force in a process that will take at least a year.
In an exclusive interview, newly appointed ADF abuse taskforce head Len Roberts-Smith outlined the monumental task confronting the investigators but declared that Defence was committed to cultural change and eradicating entrenched abusive behaviour.]
Thanks to whoever linked to Mike Carlton.
[Even in quiet times the Oz’s Canberra political coverage has a hectoring tone. Obsessive, bombastic, endlessly repetitive, it is a newspaper with Asperger’s. Platoons of reporters, columnists and commentators, all grandly titled – chief this, national that – tumble over each other in furious agreement with their proprietor’s view that only nice Mr Abbott can save the nation from the perdition to which Labor is leading us.]
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/stirring-this-storm-in-a-teacup-20121130-2alxv.html#ixzz2DkYhc400
😆 He has such a great way with words.
Steve777@61
Bingo!!
spur
a couple of months ago we were being told here that it didn’t matter what happened elsewhere, Labor was going to be so wiped out in QLD it wouldn’t matter.
Now you’re telling us that Labor’s going to be OK in QLD but in trouble elsewhere.
I don’t mind doom and gloom prognostations as such – I just wish they’d follow a consistent line.
I got this one from Leroy on Twitter, and he hasn’t linked it yet(in his cool, clear and neat style 🙂 ), so:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/well-they-are-not-laughing-now/story-e6frerc6-1226527718631
It’s a round-up of the state of politics at the moment in The Sunshine State.
[It’s everywhere else that’s the problem.]
Now.
Who’s to say that won’t change in the future? After all, it was only a short while ago you were saying Labor was going to lose all its seats in Qld, bar one.
zoomster,
One thing that IS consistent about spur212, her posts will always follow the anti-Gillard Labor line, ‘More in sorrow than in anger’. 🙂
[Glaring Google Fail schoolboy error No.1 – In obvious confusion he conflates Howard stumping up government cash to pay for unfunded workers entitlements in brother Stan’s company when it went arse up with Howard secretly meeting with Dick Honan the boss of Manildra, then slapping a 38c/l excise on imported Brazilian ethanol whilst the ship was at sea, and then misleading parliament about it.
This from the so-called “Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor” just demonstrates the lack of basic competence that is endemic to our media.]
I spotted that too, but wasn’t sure if Stan had something to do with Manildra as well. It wouldn’t have surprised me.
You make a good point ratsak: they are conflating Prime Ministers’ policy decisions and “suspect” associations with an intra-office blow up, 15 years before one of the participants became PM.
Of course, they say that the PM is “untrustworthy”, and this earlier, alleged indication of her duplicity is therefore relevant on the theme of “untrustworthiness” today.
But we don’t need to look far for another example of this.
Abbott’s thuggish behaviour has been his trademark throughout his political life.
Youse all know the details, so I won’t bore you with them, except for one: his announced intention to prosecute the case for a judicial inquiry even after he wins the election next year (if he does, of course), no matter what.
Never has some much column space and legal angst been frittered away on so little, from so long ago, for such negligible purpose.
Abbott has gone insane with anger and humiliation. He can never let a slight go. He has to settle every score, avenge every defeat, eviscerate every enemy.
It’s stood him in good stead for over thirty years in politics, but finally he’s rattled. He wants to prove that he’s still the alpha male, not to be challenged by a mere woman, a woman who has the job he believes is rightly his.
What his colleagues must think of this is a legitimate question.
They are seeing a bloke driven crazy by Gillard. He’s letting his emotions get to him. He’s changed his behaviour, trying to get the word out that a couple of weeks’ letting it all well up inside him signals a change of character.
I don’t think too many will be fooled.
The emerging truth of the matter is that Abbott is a spent force. He’s performing less than his best because every time he goes the biff, he’s tarred with the “sexist” brush. He is a liability to the Coalition. A dead weight.
Although I don’t mind Mike Carlton’s ramblings and generally agree with him, I find it a bit disingenuous to single out the Oz as the only media player in what has been a criminal conspiracy against the PM – his own Fairfax and the ABC are also co-conspirators in this crime.
ta C@tmomma 🙂 Here is another local politics one, and a couple of general interest links.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/getting-liberal-with-our-wallets/story-e6freuy9-1226527750198
[Getting Liberal with our wallets
Gemma Jones The Daily Telegraph
December 01, 2012 12:00AM
LIBERAL former prime ministers have been the most expensive to keep in their retirement this year. ]
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/jeh-johnson-terrorism/
[For the First Time, Obama Official Sketches Out End to War on Terror
By Spencer Ackerman 11.30.12 12:00 PM
Neither the George W. Bush nor Barack Obama White House ever laid out a vision for what an end to the war on terrorism would actually look like. But as Obama prepares for his second term in office, one of his top defense officials is arguing that there is an end in sight, and laying out conditions for when the U.S. will reach it. ]
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/lifestyle/a-different-battle-20121126-2a25x.html
[A different battle
December 1, 2012
In southern Africa, where elephants and rhinos are being slaughtered in huge numbers, former Australian serviceman Damien Mander has set up a private army to take on the poachers. He talks tactics with Nikki Barrowclough.]
CTar1, I completely disagree with you.
I spend most of my professional time doing reports for people with mental illness of all kinds, even severe, being charged with every offence under the sun.
Grech should have been prosecuted.
sohar:
He does sink the boot into Fairfax and the ABC, albeit not with the same gusto:
[Towards the end of the week a collective madness seemed to infect everybody. Fairfax Media, publisher of this very organ, was berated by the Prime Minister in Parliament over its front page splash on the subject. At the ABC, a couple of impenetrable interviews on 7.30 shed more heat than light.]
The fact that the Libs ran so hard on AWU against Gillard pretty well shows they think she will win in 2013. If they thought she was leading the ALP to an historic defeat, they would be happy to leave her in place…
Yours obviously,
Exactly Captain
And in any event going after her in an election campaign may have been far more damaging. This was all about saving Abbott’s leadership. For now
Gillard clearly has them seriously rattled and desperate.
BB – you just showed why Kenny’s Sat. program has so few viewers. The bloke cannot look at anything about Labor from a balanced journalistic point of view.
Aguirre’s comment that Kenny has now given journos the green light to jump all over Pyne is a good one. Nobody is off limits according to Kenny.
Kenny needs to listen properly. In 1993 the registration of associations to raise money for elections was not illegal. Even S&G said the registration was not illegal.
JG’s only mistake was in trusting someone she believed wanted to do the best for union members. Most of us have put our trust in the wrong place at various times in our lives. It’s a bummer to be let down.
I do think she could tell Bonge tomorrow how she felt about being let down. She could also spell out in capital letters that ‘slush fund’ registration was not illegal then and there are still plenty of them around (Australians for Honest Politics!!)
Here is the audio of Jon Faine speaking on ABC radio
For those who missed Jon Faine’s editorial on ABC radio (9days ago) on the 22nd November re the credibility of Ralph Blewitt. In light of what transpired over the past nine days, it is a very important punctuation mark
http://soundcloud.com/bludger-sounds/jon-faine-774abc-2012-11-22-on
@JournalismDaily: ‘Leveson proposals would safeguard investigative journalism’ http://t.co/qhaeuSNR
[At the ABC, a couple of impenetrable interviews on 7.30 shed more heat than light.]
Good observation by Mike Carlton. It seemed that the ABC just ran those interviews to show they could touch base with the story, without revealing anything particularly new.
I can still remember the feeling of disappointment I had as the Media Watch guy promised there would be ABC involvement coming up in the next week.
Not only does The Australian fancy itself as the leading national daily, but it arrogates to itself the role of media watchdog as well.
Journalists at other organizations dutifully jump and skip to The Australian’stune, like my dogs when I get their walking harnesses out.
And what did it all come down to? Stayant-Browne remains in Seattle, sniping from afar with expropriated documents that legal ethics say he’s not supposed to have, all while he criticises the professional ethics of Julia Gillard.
Ralph Blewitt’s story becomes sleazier and sleazier with allegations of sexual misconduct, not only with Asian prostitutes, but with members of his own family.
The real truth about Blewitt was staring them all in the face, but needed Wilson’s interview to bring it out: He ran the account. He owned the house. He buried the money. He sold the house. The money disappeared. He went to Asia. He continued his sexual practices and his shonky land dealings.
Yet somehow, Gillard, who ran a mile when she found out how dodgy he was, is to blame. Gillard did the running. Mesma, Mike Smith, the collective Shock Jocks, The Australian and the ABC put out the welcome mat to Blewitt.
He eats his Chinese dinner with a fork, y’know. He’s just gotta be a dinkum bloke if he does that.
I doubt we’ll see Mr. Blewitt again for some considerable time.
@Charles_HRH: One cannot believe people are comparing Rupert Murdoch to Satan. Yes, he’s evil, but he’s not as bad as Rupert Murdoch. #leveson
[Aguirre’s comment that Kenny has now given journos the green light to jump all over Pyne is a good one. Nobody is off limits according to Kenny.]
That’s right, idle curiosity and some convoluted beat-up claiming – in at least one journalist from The Australia’s view – how something “goes to fitness for office” seems to be new paradigm.
Meredith Bergman on AWU news 24 now
So Kate McClymont won a Wangkley for her story on Thommo’s credit cards.
Perhaps she can chase this story with more depth than others have since June 2012. She could huge headlines to pronounce Downer and Howard guilty before presumption of innocence. After all Fairfax has allegedly declared Thommo, Slipper and the PM guilty.
Andrew – The difficulty with these generally is that a sitting politician has, if they can be shown to have responded to the approach, to have colluded in the commission of a crime.
Once you add in some reasonably well established evidence of mental instability it is simply not practical to prosecute.
People resign and that is generally the end of it. The Press rarely even know of these events and those they do don’t usually make much news.
I forgot the link in @92
http://www.smh.com.au/national/top-job-offered-to-end-probe-20120606-1zwrh.html
The panel on ABC 24 can’t resist tarring both side with the same brush.
It wasn’t Julia Gillard who first used the word “misogyny” in that debate over Slipper. She merely defined it.
It wasn’t Julia Gillard who brought up Slatergate for the umpteenth time. She merely accepted the argument and won it.
If she had refused to discuss either matter, then the media would have been full of how well Abbott had eviscerated her reputation.
Wow. Flooding in a desert
@breakingstorm: State of emergency declared in Reno, Nevada, area ahead of potential flooding – @rgj http://t.co/lfgpi19O
Yes, that seems to be the new line from the ABC and Fairfax – lump Labor with the Libs, so that the heat comes off the odious Tories.
spur212@69
Gaining Melbourne is not a great help in tilting the balance.
I agree there are possible gains in Qld (praise be to Newman) and possibly more than you are estimating.
NSW is the problem and from Mike Carlton, in one sentence, here’s why:
[Labor’s tragedy in NSW is that the glory days are dust and ashes. What a horrible fall it has been from Gough Whitlam to Eddie Obeid.]
NSW needs the cleansing fire of full blown Federal Intervention to expunge the stench of corruption.
Anything less is just pussy footing around and will not have the required dramatic effect.
[It seemed that the ABC just ran those interviews to show they could touch base with the story, without revealing anything particularly new.]
That was pretty obvious, as was the ABC radio obsession with the story when no more details were ever really revealled. Truly pathetic.
[It’s everywhere else that’s the problem.]
Specifically, it’s NSW, where Labor must expect to lose all or most of: Banks, Dobell, Eden-Monaro, Greenway, Lindsay, Page and Robertson; and Tasmania, where Labor must expect to lose Bass, Braddon and possibly Lyons (especially if Adams retires) and Franklin. Lingiari is also at serious risk. Offsetting that is some prospect of picking up Brisbane, Forde and/or Longman in Qld if Newman’s government continues to perform so badly, and maybe a chance of Aston in Vic, although Corangamite, La Trobe and Deakin will be hard to hold. Labor will probably pick up Melbourne, but that doesn’t help. On the other hand Oakeshott will probably lose Lyne and Windsor could lose New England. Overall, it still adds up to a loss. Labor has to get several points ahead in 2-party terms to offset the deep local problems it has in NSW and Tasmania. One good thing about the AWU-non-scandal is that it’s diverted attention from the real scandal at the HSU, but no doubt it will return in the new year, further damaging Labor in NSW. #letsnotgetcarriedawayjustyet