Four thereof:
• Michael McKenna of The Australian reported yesterday that “insiders from both sides of the political divide” say their strategies in Queensland are being revamped as it becomes clear that the front line runs through Labor rather than Liberal National Party marginals. The LNP now anticipates retaining its existing seats, and aspires to further snare Moreton (Labor margin 1.1%), Petrie (2.5%), Lilley (3.2%) and Capricornia (3.7%). However, contrary to the findings of last week’s automated phone polls, both sides consider Peter Beattie’s tilt at Forde (LNP margin of 1.6%) to be “hanging in the balance”. A “senior ALP insider” is quoted saying the party still has hopes for the Townsville seat of Herbert (2.2%), where Peter Beattie was campaigning on Monday, and to a slightly lesser extent for Brisbane (1.1%), where Labor started the campaign as short-priced favourites. Labor will benefit from a deal with Katter’s Australian Party that will deliver it a preference recommendation in Herbert and Capricornia, along with the less likely prospects of Flynn and Hinkler. The price of this was that Labor is directing Senate preferences to the party in Queensland ahead of the Greens.
• A Labor source quoted in The Australian today describes the party’s position in its most marginal seat in the country, the Victorian electorate of Corangamite, as “irretreivable”. Kevin Rudd is accused of being “delusional” in the seats he is targeting in the state, namely the Liberal-held Melbourne seats of Aston and Dunkley. For the Liberals’ part, party sources are quoted saying they expect to win at least three seats in the state. Tony Abbott nonetheless saw fit yesterday to promise that a Coalition government would spend $25 million over five years upgrading Corangamite’s chief attraction, the Great Ocean Road.
• The Liberals will go into the election without an endorsed candidate for the Hunter region seat of Charlton, held by Labor on a margin of 12.7% and to be vacated at the election by the retirement of Greg Combet. This follows the revelation that their candidate, Kevin Baker, had run an online forum for Mini Cooper enthusiasts on which various offences against political correctness were committed, some of the milder examples being from his own hand. Baker will continue to appear on the ballot paper as the Liberal candidate, the deadline for nominations having closed, but he has resigned as the party’s candidate and declared his campaign over.
• A key election milestone was reached yesterday with the commencement of pre-poll voting. The Victorian Greens have raised Labor’s ire by disseminating how-to-vote cards at Victorian pre-poll centres which instructed voters to determine their own preference order, in violation of a deal which has seen Labor place the Greens second on Senate preference tickets in every state but Queensland. The Greens have said an administrative error was to blame, and have pulled the tickets from circulation.
@1542
Ok, you got me. I’ve had a few hit into the creek…
England is now putting on a part-time left orthodox. He better put them on the dot!
does Watson’s hundred put pressure on Abbott to also finally achieve something?
I disagree TLBD. A regime that murders people on general principles deserves no secrets.
Three deep on the on for Watson.
England’s negativity is looking Tone as a progressive.
As England captain I would go two quicks on the off stump before the break, McGrath style.
1553
Watson Abbott, link please
[does Watson’s hundred put pressure on Abbott to also finally achieve something?]
He doesn’t have the sex appeal to apply that kind of pressure.
England is a tad short of accurate fast bowlers who can do more than a few overs.
Watson is playing controlled. Hope for no brain fade.
I think Kerrigan is about to be benched. What a dreadful ball!
Tlbd the only time the poms have really attacked this series was when they deployed leg theory against a number 11 batsman playing in his first test
The Poms are channeling Tony Abbott on negativity. At least they have the excuse of fielding on on a placid afternoon at the Oval.
Cuppa for them and bed for me. Cheers!
Aust 3/183 at Tea
Sleepy time now ….
we all know abbot has a shadowy past but where the heck did he learn to debate?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZYTRIdDgqY
I have somewhere a better version. But.
Shadow boxing..
It was interesting or something, that my Lib friend was under the impression that he had a rower’s blue.
Nope. Boxing.
Don’t think she even believed me.
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZYTRIdDgqY ]
that’s a ripper cw
The Guardian makes the Murdoch papers look like the dirty and partisan trash they have become.
The Australian, Courier Mail, Daily Telegraph totally useless as papers for finding honest fully truthful political information. They are all political gutter rags pushing some distant old guys personal agenda.
The Guardian just by being a ‘normal’ paper with honest and balanced reporting shows up the low level to which Murdoch papers have fallen. The editors of Murdoch papers must feel total shame that they allow themselves to be cheep whores for sake of a murdoch pat on the back, or keep their little jobs. These guys are masturbating in public and think people cant see it.
[David Miranda’s detention had no basis in law, says former lord chancellor
Lord Falconer, who helped introduce Terrorism Act 2000, criticises home secretary’s backing of police action at Heathrow]
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/david-miranda-law-detention-heathrow
My baseball bat for this election has Murdoch’s name on it. I’ll be voting in the national interest with intent and I’ll be voting early. What an appalling influence on national discourse this creature has been.
Well done labor party kept your dirt file hidden until it was impossible for the fibs to replace him,the electors of charlton now have been disendorsed and have no choice in this election ,the fibs won’t support a safe labor area and this will set back all the local issues like glendale interchange and morisset hospital 10 years
Like your summation, T.P
‘The editors of Murdoch papers must feel total shame that they allow themselves to be cheep whores for sake of a murdoch pat on the back, or keep their little jobs.
These guys are masturbating in public and think people cant see it.’
Any person with the slightest sense of dignity would find another job. Maybe with the Green Army.
Backbreaking, poorly paid, no Work Cover, Boot Campish, but worth it.
I suppose! Not.
We decry the pollies for the lack of real world experience.
The present day journalists suffer a similar ill.
Put them out there. If they could even imagine.
Unlike these lamented.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/paul-lockyer-john-bean-gary-ticehurst-tribute/
There is a certain quality in people who are undecided voters at this stage of an electoral cycle.
Chiefly that they are by definition not rusted on to one side or the other.
They sleepwalk politically from election to election. Their responses to polling during this time will reflect the *popular* meme of the time but they are not engaged. Come election time they ask what is in it for me and who is trying to pull the wool over my eyes the most.
This is where annoying detail like budget numbers, cuts etc are very suddenly much more under the microscope than they have been for the past three years.
Norwester.
You may not have read my recent recounting of a swinging voter’s view.
It was my first encounter of a real exhibit of the species.
Although I am not sure really that he is a swinger in the breeze, as it were.
He seemed decent, fair minded and considered. Hardly vacuous.
Certainly, he said of his own accord, that he pays not so much attention. Yet he must. May not have known titles etc.
Knew what he heard and paid attention to.
Not all dullards, I guess.
As Watson moves towards 170 and my eyes decide that it is time to sleep as Crikey decides to politisize a tradgedy and as the budget calculator is tossed around like acid all I can say is good luck
Please explain.
Silmaj.
I read all links Crikey . Personally that was a sad day for myself and many others. A comparison politically is really not the way to go.
Hi CW
Yes the true undecided swinging voter who will actually vote is not necessarily stupid, indeed often far from it.
Hip pocket can be a big factor but not necessarily all of it. These are people who will now look also to things such as profuse sweating, uncontrollable head-nods etc from the candidates. They are by definition not rusted on.
Overreach from the Murdoch press may just drive an extra percent or so to do their own fact checking.
The hit to self funded retirees will be doing the rounds like wildfire.
I reckon we’ll see at least another couple of 50/50’s in the next round of national polling. It looks pretty volatile in the middle to me at the moment. Wouldn’t an ALP 51 Neislen set a cat amongst the pidgeons…
Do not understand the gist of your 1576.
Again. Explain yourself.
Norwester.
I think we are led to believe that the ‘swinging voter’ is a sleepwalker.
It seems to me fairly likely that such SWs are not really swingers at all.
I recall Geraldine Doogue interviewing self proclaimed ‘swingers’ prior to 2007 election. It became quite clear that they were no such thing. They had formed ideas to which they adhered as time went on. And stuck eventually to their undeclared allegiance.
Guess what that may have been?
Not one, insofar as I recollect, intended to vote anything other than their original predeliction.
Norwester. In addition.
‘The hit to self funded retirees will be doing the rounds like wildfire’.
I do believe I have read a zillion times about people voting against their own self interest, for the sake of being ‘on the right side’.
Cw, Maybe they weren’t real swinging voters. I dunno but I just have a feeling that there is a little bunch of otherwise more or less ok people whose level of *rusted-on-ness* is relatively very low.
And that they only tune in to making a choice from around this point of the campaign. I will be very surprised if Labor hasn’t made some considerable ground with this group over the past week or so.
walking off at 4 for 307 it seemed Australia had won the day until some punchy yobbo exclaimed “don’t you ever shut up?” which by default gives the result to England
Norwester.
I don’t necessarily share your hope.
I would like to.
It is so annoying to hear ad nauseam that the election will be decided by marginals and/or seats within certain demographic or otherwise areas.
I would like Essendon, or more specifically, the management, to take a walk, similarly.
CW, Right now some of those self-funded retirees will be dealing with their personal demons regarding switching their vote to Labor.
Is it the monetary slug that has got them thinking or is it the insult of it all?
Some of these people will be comfortable shifting their vote if it is clear to them that their income is going to be slashed by hockeynomics.
Grins, Paaptsef.
Well, Norwester.
I have only one example of a died in the wool Lib voting self funded retiree on a pension as well.
My only others are Labor voters anyway.
The died in the wool has told me that she does not intend to vote Liberal account PPL.
I have sent her undermining or perhaps reinforcing information on the impact of same on her funds.
OMG! Is that the time?
Off to bed.
Good night, dear friends and others.
Mari. Sweat it out.
Thinking of you.
Another thing, (3) things actually:
1. When Rudd asked the audience if there were any women earning more than $75k – David Speers went into the Abbott defence trying to pour cold water over the point being made by claiming that people were reluctant to admit their earnings.
2. When Rudd made the point that Abetz had stated that penalties and overtime were a matter for review in the Work Act – David Speers went into the Abbott defence by stating that Abbott was leader therefore he only should be believed.
3. When Rudd was explaining his objective for an ETS – David Speers backed the deceitful assertion made by Abbott that Rudd withdrew his commitment for an ETS by asking the PM why he had not taken it to a DD.
There you go, three (3) undisputable facts of where Speers went into bat for Abbott.
WHY?
Because he works for Sky News which is owned by Murdoch.
Just like the Courier Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Australian, all owned by Murdoch.
Who the hell is Murdoch to dictate our democracy through his powerful and extensive media interests? 😡
New thread.
[Abbott to cut penalty rates
http://m.afr.com/p/national/abbott_signals_support_for_change_qMfndlrzCL9FxPrmv3TN2H%5D