Labor may win in Western Australia.
The Debate last night showed Colin Barnett, the Premier, to be a chronic breaker of his promises who would lose, soon, the state’s credit rating and go into more and more debt while traffic choked the suburbs and strangled the inner city.
The questioning reporters didn’t like him one bit, and his opponent, Mark McGowan, scored again and again on policy, the way Labor does when it is not o’erhung with smell and scandal. He was nervous at the start but grew more confident, and Barnett seemed weary of his own mediocrity and keen to go into retirement, as he was in 2008 before he was lured back into an election and a surprise victory by Buswell sniffing chairs.
There will be no Newspoll next Tuesday or Wednesday, of course, because it would show McGowan gaining and Preferred Premier. There will be none the following Tuesday or Wednesday. There will be one on election day showing Barnett narrowly winning, but it will I think be wrong.
The result will mirror Gallop’s win in 2001 which I witnessed up close, gladly, in that memorable year.
There will be no Newspolls in Queensland either lest they show Labor gaining massively and Katter overwhelming Newman in the bush.
This, in turn, will make the coming September federal election what Wayne Swan might call ‘a patchwork result’ with Labor losing six seats in New South Wales, three in Tasmania and one in the Northern Territory and picking up six in Queensland, two in Victoria, one in South Australia, two in Western Australia, the KAP getting two in Queensland, and Oakeshott, Windsor and Katter holding, and Brandt and Wilkie losing their seats, and leaving Abbott and, probably, Shorten, to vie for a coalition with Katter.
This is what would happen if the current figures hold. But the worsening news for Barnett, Newman, Baillieu and, to some extent, O’Farrell, may edge it Labor’s way; or not. The present Labor crisis is nothing to do with policy. It is absolutely to do with Gillard’s failure of salesmanship. That rectified, one way or another, it can be easier for Labor to win.
But not that easy. We wait on the Child Abuse Enquiry to take its toll on the Liberals.
And then we will see.
Name:
If you were Gillard, how would you sell policy in this corrupted and hostile environment? How would you have win through the media blockade?
Set it out, Bob, because whoever you annoint is going to need your magic cream.
Shorten? Brutus. One of the faceless men? Has to be one of the easiest targets. No work to be done there. Just use duplicate photocopies of the Gillard smear of trustworthiness. Pity because he seems both loyal and capable.
And how do you figure ALP figures’ attacks on the Greens? Now there IS a good look. Ingenuous? Disloyal? Cheap? Labor suddenly representing all forces of conservatism, Murdoch included, against those extremist crazy out-to-lunch do-gooders who are going to take jobs off decent Australian men and women. O yes, even if they have unflinchingly kept Labor in power and are still promising to do so. The Libs are laughing. They don’t have to do anything.
Well the news is all the Greens I know are pretty ordinary people still trying to fight the Whitlam fight of yonks ago, you know, that one of standing up for equity, justice, and opportunity for all. Something apparently Labor now finds extremist, irresponsible.
Like stated many times. The Libs are in bed with the masters; Labor want to be. To think Whitlam, Connor, Cairns, Uren, Crean, Murphy, Hayden, Beazley, Cass, Bowen, Barnard [the list goes on] … once had a dream.
Not sure what you have against Shorten. He did a good thing by ridding us of the flapping incompetent Rudd and he is to be punished for it? Why? He restored to dignity a million and a half Disabled people and their carers and he is to be punished for it? Why? He defended Labor brilliantly on Q&A and he is to be punished for it? Why?
What punishment do you think would be appropriate?
“Pity because he seems both loyal and capable.”
If you had have noticed, that was my assessment of Shorten.
I am not recommending punishment. You need to direct that question to News Ltd and the Lib’s dirt squad.
There are a lot of good people of the right stuff in the ministry.
So you don’t think Shorten has a target pinned to him?
No comment on Labor’s attack on the Greens?
What did Oswald do that Kent hated him so? I really think he had no idea.
Today Gillard actually said something useful.
”We’re a Labor Party, we’re the party of work, we’re the party of making sure working people have got access to decent jobs and good working conditions, so that’s the difference,” she said.
”At the end of the day, the Greens party is fundamentally a party of protest rather than a party of government. The Greens party is fundamentally a party that would prefer to complain about things than get solutions.”
Truer word never spoken. Keep this up and she’ll gain some votes.
She should never have got into bed with the Greens. They would have supported Labor anyway. They had no choice. No need to have ever signed any stupid agreement like you were getting married. How daft was that?
The Greens are like a dread-locked doped hitchhiker you pick up on the side of the road. Every time Gillard tried to get into the right hand lane the zonked Greenie would grab the steering wheel and yank it over to the Left.
The hitchhiker finally left.
She’s better off without them now and could have had an extra $10 Billion in the kitty if she didn’t blow it on their harebrained crazy ideas.
So you don’t like the Greens?
I too do not think Shorten is leadership material. He a good man but not THE man.Bracks is my man if he could get a seat for the next election after this. Forget this election-it was lost 2 years ago.
If the problem is just one of salesmanship maybe Willy Loman is the man for the job.
But it isn’t and he isn’t.
The turning point for the ALP btw was not so much the Whitlam sacking as the “Shame, Fraser, Shame” campaign with which the ALP reacted. I remember Whitlam’s rally in Geelong, the people up the front chanting We Want Gough, and the rest of the crowd, listening mostly silently, asking policy questions on the one or two occasions they got a chance. I saw Whitlam notice them, briefly, worriedly, and then turn his attention back to the claque at the front. And I hear the strategists decided Corio was safe….on the basis of the claque.
Its shits me still to remember it. If this was indicative of the country then the ALP could have held the election to a workable loss and been back in six years with labour policies still. They had to fight their program not whine about being dragged out of the cake shop.
Just thought I’d get that off my chest while I have the attention of one of the authors of that campaign. The Gorton ads were a particularly bad look, seducing a folk-hero to rat on his own party.
Yes, I wrote Gorton’s lines, but thank you.
You may well (sigh) be right…
And it was ill-natured of me to drag it up and I apologise. I’m having a very tedious day is my only excuse.
I think you are wrong. The electorate had to decide in December 1975 whether they wanted a circuit breaker.
At the time, I was maintaining the rage and I maintained it until at least Hawke’s election in 1983, so I think I have some credentials to pass judgement.
The electorate wanted to vote Gough out, and no campaign could have overcome that.
Oh yes, they were going to lose. That wasn’t the question though, the question was if they were going to be able to take the hit and retreat in good order, and live to fight again with their values intact.
I was reading recently about the Battle of the Boyne where King James II was defeated by William of Orange. The Boyne is a river in Ireland. James’s troops were outnumbered, less well armed, and his command made a major tactical blunder apparently based on faulty intelligence. It should have been a rout. But his men kept their nerve and fought well and bravely, they protected each other in their hour of defeat and they were able to retreat and regroup. There was every chance of a comeback…but King James then lost his head and fled the country. His soldiers then asked each other why they had fought and died. Not because James had made a tactical blunder, soldiers know that happens, but because he had given up and fled.
It seems to me that 1975 was a kind of Battle of the Boyne moment for the Austrlian ALP. Well 1975-1977 or so, the analogy isn’t perfect.
In 1976 or 1977 Senator Jim McClelland spoke at Monash Uni about how the great dream of changing the power structure through Parliament was over. One accomodated with the rich and powerful or one worked outside of Parliament. I know there was a body of thought inside the ALP which believed the ALP should withdraw from Parliament and take option 2, although I don’t know how big it was.
But it was clear that option 1 was the popular favourite, Hawkes victory in 1983 was the final sign that King James, so to speak, had left the island. Or so it seemed to me then, and still now.
But I can’t see that it had to be, and I can’t love those who made it so.
More recently back in 2010 a flawed ALP PM, obviously a damaged needy man, without what now passes for working class credentials, took on the mining giants in the interests of the Australian people. They whistled up their flunkeys in the media and in the ALP among other places and then he wasn’t PM anymore.
Isn’t that what happened? That is what it looked like.
And he had stood up for asylum seekers against the prejudices of the Austrlaian public and the opportunism of the Parliament.
I don’t that he was a prick of a boss. I shuddered every second time he opened his mouth and was fool enough to think that Gillard was pulling him left as far as she could.
But that is no matter now. What matters is that he did his best for human decency and the Australian people at the price of losing the office and power he so obviously loved.
And these flunkeys of the big money, who were they and who was their captain? Who hopes to become PM by betraying his country to the rich and powerful, and the American Empire?
I could be wrong but I think it is Shorten. Am I wrong? If so, how so?
More recently back in 2010 a flawed ALP PM, obviously a damaged needy man, without what now passes for working class credentials, took on the mining giants in the interests of the Australian people. They whistled up their flunkeys in the media and in the ALP among other places and then he wasn’t PM anymore.
Isn’t that what happened? That is what it looked like.
And he had stood up for asylum seekers against the prejudices of the Austrlaian public and the opportunism of the Parliament.
I don’t that he was a prick of a boss. I shuddered every second time he opened his mouth and was fool enough to think that Gillard was pulling him left as far as she could.
But that is no matter now. What matters is that he did his best for human decency and the Australian people at the price of losing the office and power he so obviously loved.
And these flunkeys of the big money, who were they and who was their captain? Who hopes to become PM by betraying his country to the rich and powerful, and the American Empire?
I could be wrong but I think it is Shorten. Am I wrong? If so, how so?
Dear Jeremy,
How I hate to right.
But could I draw your attention to the fact that if you included all the words that are running through your head whilst typing your posts would be readable enough for us to rubbish them.
Luv, Chris.
I do apologise, Chris, for the typos and the occasional missing word. They make me wince when I see them. They are a product of haste and sometimes a dodgy connection.
But I do think the posts are in fact readable enough for you to rubbish…if you (plural?) refrain there must be some other reason.
Luv to you too.
You are not the only one to have studied the Battle of the Boyne. “James the Shit” was what the Irish called the ex-king, with some cause. But kings fleeing battles has a long history, and he was not unique or even unusual.
If Gough had not been such a respecter of the democratic process, and had called for revolution, I’d have been there!
Of course, if he had torn up Kerr’s letter of dismissal and laughed in his face . . . but history is just that, and facts are such stubborn things, as John Adams said.
And so it went.
It was after the battle that James II fled. Everyone fled from the battle itself! That is what one does when one loses. Fleeing the cause is another matter.
Whitlam obviously couldn’t have torn up Kerr’s letter of dismissal. That isn’t what I meant.
I think you need to restate your point in that case.
I think there is a useful issue here.
The agreement with the Greens served a purpose, considering that they form a balance of power bloc in the Senate. Rather than having to horse-trade every Bill, they knew that several important Bills would have support.
The agreement was negotiated with that very reasonable human being, Bob Brown; it is hardly surprising that the erratic and ideological Milne found it difficult. It had probably run its course in any event.
The weakened media mogul is lashing out from the confines of the corner into which he has forced himself to retreat still licking the wounds aggravated on November 6th by Carl Rove raving on Fox News refusing to accept Obama’s win.
The DC beltway fix they arranged was punctured and defeated. Now the reactionary fix is on in WA. Who backs Barnett? McGowan? Buswell? Wyatt? Grylls?
Clash of greedy titans. Gina Twiggy Clive Packer and the Prince are each represented by political puppets here.
The federal fix is on already for September too but the disastrous precedent of Obama crushing Romney has collapsed the prince’s pride and prejudiced his confidence opening up a yawning gap into which an electric sword or pen may penetrate and perhaps perpetuate and reactivate people power in the Australian house and senate.
Or shall we all pray and say, on the third Sunday of September, if not before, in eight bitter words:
the Prince was almost dead
long live the Prince
God saved the governor general from serving as Kissinger’s bitch. Allende can you lend a hand accross the water. Can we afford another Ford or Carter before the next dynastic Bush bashing. An October surprize will be too late in Oz this time around.
The pendulum swings. The worm turns. Are we still on the wide and wavy road to electronic serfdom or have we already turned the corner to a new dawn of civilization - a sustainable planetary community in which goons are in therapy and we are much more immune to their vile toxic depravities and perverse defilements. A post carbon renewable world emancipated from petroiligarchy.
The fifth estate is us and here is where it will be decided. The fair go has survived the Howard tsunami of greed. We need only to deploy the power of the internet and social media like this medium that Bob built - Table Talk - by coordinated communicative action to seize the moment and continue to expose the lies of the public private partnerships of a compliant ABC television staff and a dominant News Limited hegemon with tentacles in police forces, private surveillance, electronic eaves-dropping (called cabinet leaks), drugs, guns, gaming, brothels and crime.
The ABC chatterrers are already singing their sad songs of lament and fantasy for an imaginary dead Gillard-Milne-Windsor et al coalition government in the weakening hope of forcing an early election to strike while the News Limited irons are still hot enough to brand.
I count 205 more days we have to illuminate and educate ourselves and the swing voters. Will we let Bob Santamaria’s pretentious pugnacious protégé split off and enclose the Catholic laity by failing to seize the opportunity to expose the pederasts or can we emphasize solidarity of the whole 99.99% regardless of gender race creed preference or will the pederasts and plutocrats succeed in their divide and conquer manoeuvre of the kind that worked to keep the traitor Menzies in power long enough to commit Australia forces to participate in the illegal invasion and war crimes that went all the way with LBJ – at least as far as the southern beach from which Harold Holt did not return.
Thanks for the good news Bob. Labor may as you say, win in Western Australia Saturday week.
Now we must take the ABC chorus’ sad song and make it even better.
Etude.
Interesting, Malcolm.
The way I see it is that policy differences are not stark enough, at least in perception, to decide the election.
But man for man and woman for woman, the Labor ministry is suprior to the alternatives. It is that which will sway the election Labor’s way in September, when the electorate actually focus their minds on the issue.