As reported in various News Limited papers, a Galaxy poll conducted over the weekend shows Labor suffering a 2 per cent drop in the primary vote since the previous poll four weeks ago, and a slight narrowing of their two-party lead. Curiously, Galaxy’s figure of 10 per cent for the Greens is at least double what Newspoll has given them in the past four months. Also included are figures on Liberal leadership preference which indicate voters are least unlikely to vote Coalition if John Howard remains Prime Minister. The following table shows two-party and primary vote results from Galaxy’s national federal polls this year:
| TWO-PARTY | PRIMARY | ||||
| ALP | LNP | ALP | LNP | ||
| July 30 | 54 | 46 | 44 | 41 | |
| July 2 | 55 | 45 | 46 | 41 | |
| June 4 | 53 | 47 | 44 | 42 | |
| May 14 | 57 | 43 | 49 | 39 | |
| April 23 | 58 | 42 | 49 | 37 | |
434 Comments
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Adam
a few small reports note that the decision has been postponed again:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/towkes-fate-will-be-a-test-of-pms-sway-over-right-wing/2007/07/30/1185647827130.html
I guess they still don’t know what to do
Ah, here we are:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22162539-11949,00.html
They dodged a decision again. Howard is supporting Towke – he must be mad. It’s hard to imagine a worse candidate for a seat with Cook’s demographics.
Rudd is right on the edge of starting to lose significant Greens preferences, in my opinion. His recent policy announcements, and the fact that the CFMEU are in bed with Gunns, is starting to make him look like a clone of Howard from the perspective of a genuine progressive or left-winger.
He had better come up with a particularly convincing bone to toss them soon, or there may be some pretty vindictive preferencing come election time. The media and many here rest on the assumption that Greens voters will basically predictably preference the ALP – but if the primary vote is 10% Green, say, and 20-30% of those decide to ‘punish’ Rudd, that’s a 2-3% change in the final TPP, more than enough to lose an election (and much more important than two Tasmanian seats, Kev).
I would suggest something concrete, like a sane reform of our anti-terror laws, for instance, is needed to protect Rudd from losing votes on the left. But knowing Labor they’ll carry on with their usual assumptions, catering to the right and losing to a government that’s further to the right…
Adam. If you are still looking for Quaama, it is an ex dairying town north of Bega and just off the Princes hwy. Now home to hobby farmers, sea/tree changers and artists/crafts people with a few residual farming descendants of the dairy farmers. It is one of those areas that is moving away from the Nats into a liberal Libs vs left Lab contest.
People on this blog are too hard on Nostradamus. Check out Quatrain 76 in Century X at nostradamus.org
76.
The great Senate will ordain the triumph
For one who afterwards will be vanquished, driven out:
At the sound of the trumpet of his adherents there will be
Put up for sale their possessions, enemies expelled.
Obviously the real Nostra was anticipating the Coalition Senate majority 2004 (with the passage of Workchoices) and then the 2007 Ruddslide.
Not only does the real Nostra give us the election result but the number of the quatrain tells us the size of the working majority Rudd needs (not even Nostradamus was prepared to predict Bob Katter as Speaker) but as the saying goes it is not all over until the adherents trumpet (so be careful what you trumpet for Glen and Steven K).
On a more serious note, there has been a thread of opinion at times that a later election will favour Howard (e.g, Bryan’s graphs at Ozpolitics). What are people’s thoughts about the prospect of the discipline of Coalition MPs cracking the longer the run of bad polls goes on? Leaving aside Wilson Tuckey and some anonymous comments they have been holding together very well.
Mike, it was a rhetorical question. Google Earth enables me to find every hamlet and every street address in Australia in seconds. I wouldn’t be able to do these maps without it. Eden-Monaro map here:
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/2007seats/edenmonaro.shtml
Are you a descendent of the late great John Joseph Cusack, first Labor member for Eden-Monaro (1929-31)?
Patrick, feel free to vote for the Socialist Allience and give your second preference to the Liberals. That’ll make Rudd sit up and take notice. You seem to forget that Latham tried a “tack to the left” last time, and for every Green preference he got (which he would have got anyway), he lost two votes to the Libs, which is why we now have to spend money winning back Bass and Braddon.
Patrick, the Greens think they have more influence on elections than they actually do. In ‘04, Bob Brown kept going on about how the Greens were going to get about 10%+; they got 7.5%. That was absolutely pathetic considering the collapse in both the Labor and Democrat votes.
Unfortunately for that analysis, Latham’s alleged ‘tack’ was mostly in the minds of the media and did not contain too much in the way of actual policy.
In any event, I think it is necessary to distinguish ‘progressive’ from ‘left’ in this context. I don’t necessarily want to beat up private schools and give their money to public schools, but I do expect a modern, small-l liberal approach to social and environmental policy from an allegedly centre-left party.
And I am not talking about “the Greens” the party machine, I am talking about thinking people who are likely to vote Green.
Nor am I suggesting a wholesale move to the left in any event – just some kind of effort to distinguish Labor as a party of social justice and progressive thinking and reassure those of us who are assuming that Kev’s current plan is to mimic Howard until he gets into power, then do some actual good.
It’s been mentioned by various commentators here before, that looking for trends and trying to graph trend lines is fraught with difficulty and can very easily lead to drawing incorrect conclusions. This example below indicates this clearly.
In late Jan 1995 when John Howard came to the Coalition leadership, the Feb Newspoll figures immediately shifted from the figures Downer registered, to show the primary votes as ALP 39.5 Coalition 46.5. In March they changed again to show ALP 36 Coalition 52.5, it was an obvious endorsement of the Coalition and a rejection of the ALP.
But from those respective highs and lows, by August, the Coalition vote had dropped to 46 and the ALP vote had increased to 41. Keating looked set to repeat his claw back as he had done in 1993. ALP spirits lifted and Coalition spirits were dashed.
Drawing a trend line indicated that the Coalition vote was decreasing at 1.3% per month and the ALP vote was climbing at 1% per month. Continuing that trend showed clearly that by the time of the election, March 1996, the Coalition would have decreased to 38.2% and the ALP would have climbed to 47%.
These primary vote predictions were pretty accurate, with one exception; it was the Coalition who achieved 47% and the ALP 38.7%, nothing like what the trend lines indicated, but actually within 1% of the first polls in Feb 1995, Coalition 46.5%, ALP 39.5%. Looks like the first impressions were actually firm impressions.
Poll comparison for this election:
Newspoll
Dec 2006 ALP 46 Coalition 39
July 2007 ALP 47.5 Coalition 39.5
Nielsen
Dec 2006 ALP 48 Coalition 39
July 2007 ALP 49 Coalition 39
Newspoll
July 1995 ALP 39.3 Coalition 47.7
July 2007 ALP 47.5 Coalition 39.5
There’s a pattern here, but I just can’t put my finger on it.
These polls are all crap. There is only one poll that counts, as we all know, (after all, if you believed the opnion polls, Kim Beazley would have been PM for much of the past decade, with Mark Latham occupying that position over the last three years), and the Man of Steel consistently wins that one – not surprising given that he has delivered the strongest economy and the strongest foreign policy for the past 30 years! I predict that the Man of Steel will smash that little cockroach Kevin Dudd and easily get re-elected – as he deserves. So says Cerdic Conan.
I think how Latham did it was as significant as what he did. I suspect the Forestry policy needn’t have ended up being the debacle it was. It was reasonable policy and did involve chucking a lot of money at the local industry. However a better sell locally obviously required a *lot* of spadework that wasn’t done and releasing it so late just gave Howard a massive tactical advantage.
I think Patrick Bateman has it right. There are many green minded people who vote for major parties too. I know many non-left progressives who are now in a quandary. They are at the margins between Liberal and Labor. They are not left of Labor but they are left of current Liberal in the environmental sense. Many of these are fiscal conservatives and they certainly are not class warriors. These are the ones that Kevin Rudd had a chance of gaining but may now lose as a result of his me-tooism and his appalling forest announcements.
Patrick, in an election campaign, how things look in the media is what counts. As Martin says, the forests policy was done late in the campaign precisely to get a big media splash close to the election. And while it went over very well in places like Melbourne Ports where I live, it was a dud in Ruralia, where we lost two seats and failed to win others, such as Eden-Monaro, that we should have won. Rudd is far too clever to fall into that trap again. In fact on the evidence so far, Rudd is far too clever to fall into ANY traps whatever, whomsoever they are laid by.
Rudd’s ‘public interest’ environmental policies are not going to cost him many if any lower house votes.
What they *may* do is drag the ALP’s Senate primary vote down, and hence bring into play more possibilities for the Greens.
Another part of Mark Lathams forestry policy was that he was too close to the Greens. At times in the forest,it seemed like a Bob – Mark love fest. Surely it can’t be too much to ask the ALP, or the Libs for that matter to come up with a sustainable forestry policy that treats timber as a high value material for high value uses rather than 400 year old trees being pulped for photocopy or toilet paper. It would probably help the Libs also if the Forestry minister wasn’t from Tasmania.
Cerdic Conan – we both know if the polls were tracking well for the coalition you’d be all over them, extolling their virtues. What a joke.
Dudes enough about the forests and other distractions
the real issues are
1.how many lies this week by J-HO and co
2.how many attempted wedges this week by J-HO and co
3.how many people with a shred of decency in all conscience support the Liberal Gvt
4.How many asians in J-HO’s seat are going to think “me next”
5.how many damascenes (sorry richard) are going to hit the blogs extolling J-HO’s steady hand and the “me-tooism” of the nice calm and honourable Mr Rudd (gee he would have made a good old time Lib )
*sighs*
Actually, I think the Latham forest policy was a reasonable policy, especially in relation to the money that was going to go Tas in form of industry adjustment ($800m) compared to Howard’s $80m. yes, people would have lost jobs, but you could paid them to stay (hell paid them for the rest of their lives even if they did get other work), or better still built whole new industries. But leaving it so late was the mistake IMHO. At the time, we knew the ALP might find it tricky to sell in Tas and couldn’t understand why it was left so late – there were always going to be issues with selling it in Tas, but that was just going to take work (which I note Harry Quick would not have put in…). Given so preferences were at stake (at least, perceived that way) it would have been simple to get it out of the way in the first weeks of the campaign, sell it as a solution (an ‘end to forest pain’), and then get on with the rest of the campaign. I always suspected that the Forestry division of the CFMEU had just said no-way, even if you gave them the money, so it was about managing them, but ultimately that failed too.
But hindsight has a 20/20 vision. Rudd’s decision to ditch the old forest policy is a calculated gamble I for one had thought had been made long ago (perhaps just to be announced now…). The ramifications I suspect wont be as significant as some are making out, although as Richard Jones notes above may cause some blue-ribbon Lib seats to stay that way (here I’m thinking Sydney North Shore…).
What I DO find disturbing is the lack of policy differentiation between ALP & Coalition. IMHO, while honing down policy targets to just a few key areas may be both an example of agenda setting and minimising risk, if electors find their is so little to seperate the parties they may simply decide to stay with what they know. Add in Howard & Costello’s attacks on economic management to undermine elector confidence and you begin to see a Coalition resurgence.
Still, I am not a party strategist, so what would I know.
I agree with Martin B (2:34pm), as much as I dislike Rudd’s forestry policy stunt, I don’t think it will make a whole lot of difference in the lower house. Indeed, it may actually work to the Greens’ advantage by increasing their suppport in the senate.
I agree, and with reference to this remark by Adam:
I am deeply concerned that Rudd is being too clever by half, and never nailing his colours to the flag on any significant issue ahead of time. Case in point is Haneef, which was an absolutely golden opportunity for Labor to both stand up for some of its key principles (equality before the law; human rights; independence of the courts; etc) and also score some serious points with the electorate. Instead the issue will damage the govt somewhat but not actively make the ALP look good – if anything it has damaged them slightly too. If they’d started with a principled stance from day one instead of darting around like a hare trying to avoid the wedge (tailed eagle?) then they would have come out smelling of roses.
Excellent point, and let’s hope it is so – it’s easy to forget that in the past a Senate majority for the government has been a rare thing, and that the current situation is the exception, not the rule.
Getting into govt is not the same thing as being in govt or being re-elected.
Patrick, when you’re ahead you absolutely DON’T take risks. Labor coming out strong on Haneef would have been absolutely dumb!! If evidence had later come out saying Haneef was guilty, the govt would have had an absolute field day, rubbishing Labor for being soft on terror. Now that WOULD have been a real disaster.
If the issue has backfired on the govt, only media and loony lefties will give a damn that Labor hasn’t opposed it. To most people, the govt is responsible for poor decisions, and it doesn’t matter whether the opposition opposes or supports them.
Patrick, the Haneef thing won’t damage Rudd at all. He has strenuously advocated an approach “based on the info handed to us”. If that info was scurrilous in any way, then both barrels would be let rip at the government. In my opinion, it is why,Andrews is holding his “secret info” to himself now. An inquiry wont see the light of day.
Rudd played it smart and learnt from Tampa. Imagine if the ALP had cried foul over this and the evidence pointed out to be true? That would have been electoral suicide and kissed goodbye to this election. So he let it through to the keeper. Maybe a bit of tsk tsk ing in the far left, but overall, no real loss. But smart play nevertheless.
I agree with Stewart J and believe Rudd is falling into the smaller target syndrome that Beazely had. But this may simply be holding his position until the campaign begins where the differentiation will in full swing.
There’s a little too much rose-coloured glass interpretation of Labor’s 2004 forestry policy going on.
Early in the last campaign, Howard used a small state park in Page as a backdrop to a press conference, where a journo asked the PM whether he had feelings on the issue of native forests. His answer suggested the coalition was going to make a big policy shift to win back doctors-wives votes in leafy suburbs in Melbourne and Sydney.
That set the hares running in the ALP on what it had to do on forests. Howard kept holding out, holding out, and eventually forced Latham into his “secret” trip to Hobart where he announced his policy to a group of journalists and almost no one else. Two days later, Howard flew into Launceston, got the unions onside, and won Braddon and Bass.
In politics, as the PM says, perception is everything.
Aristotle (31 July 2:10pm). I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Good grief, so we’re all going to preference against Rudd now? For what, to teach him a lesson? To teach Labor a lesson? It may surprise some of you to realise that Rudd and Howard are trying to appeal to the same apolitical swinging voters, none of whom will be paying much attention to anything yet. That’s why Howard is trying to wedge Labor so consistently – among some swinging voters, such an event may well be the first time they engage in this election, and if Howard can paint Labor as “soft on terrorism”, “pro-paedophile (in Ab communities)” or “bad for the economy”, then he has the election won. Rudd, thankfully, is not biting, and the frustration of the government is palpable.
I, like everyone else on the Left, will have to see the odd sacred cow slaughtered in order to have the feast. Once Rudd is safely in the Lodge, however, then it’s open season, and all criticisms will be fair enough. But for the moment, please remember that Howard is the enemy for now – we can all beat up on Rudd when it might do some good, but while Labor’s in Opposition, there’s not much point.
It is interesting to note that Rudd seems quite aware of what Howard is trying to do, yet apparently the “Howard-haters” have no idea.
Patrick Bateman Says:
July 31st, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Rudd is right on the edge of starting to lose significant Greens preferences, in my opinion….He had better come up with a particularly convincing bone to toss them soon, or there may be some pretty vindictive preferencing come election time.
Patrick you would have to concede that Latham’s Foresty Policy did him no favours come election day- so much for courting Green preferences.
At worst, so I am told, the Greens in Tassie will offer a split ticket on preferences and the voters can flip the (environmentally freindly) bit of paper over and follow the dots as they see fit. The Green-Labor preference deal negotiations in NSW haven’t struck sand, yet.
As for tossing the Greens a bone, as you aptly put it, I am sure Rudd has yet to be announced left leaning policies that will temper an Green “vindictive preferencing”.
Enough on the Greens already: Give them 8 percent of the primary vote and move on- normal Green preferencing trends expected here.
Rudd’s strategy is quite clear – neutralise the stuff the government is trying to run on (including Haneef), while talking a lot about the stuff HE wants to get out to the electorate (housing affordability, climate change, Iraq). It means he has been setting the agenda and looking like a credible alternative PM, while the government has been visibly floundering.
If you’re on the left end of politics and don’t like it, what are you going to do? Hope that Howard wins the election? Hugo’s got it about right, I think.
Federal / State relations as an issue is now in upside down bizarro world. Howard is trying to gain control of everything, whereas Rudd is looking at making it easier for state governments to do what they want with money. The parties seem to have the complete opposite positions to what they held in the 70s and 80s.
I, like everyone else on the Left, will have to see the odd sacred cow slaughtered in order to have the feast. Once Rudd is safely in the Lodge, however, then it’s open season, and all criticisms will be fair enough. But for the moment, please remember that Howard is the enemy for now – we can all beat up on Rudd when it might do some good, but while Labor’s in Opposition, there’s not much point.
It is interesting to note that Rudd seems quite aware of what Howard is trying to do, yet apparently the “Howard-haters†have no idea.
Nice summary.
David Charles, I was pointing out the folly of trying to extrapolate trends from polling data.
There has been much discussion about the “trend” back to the Govt since March and if this trend continues to the end of the year then the Coalition will be returned.
The comparison to 1995 shows exactly the same situation and the trend readings then, at similar periods in the electoral cycle, would have predicted an ALP victory. But that obviously didn’t happen.
Far more accurate was the polling done in the first month of John Howard’s leadership in 1995, the voters looked at him and said “you’ll do”. Their initial impressions stuck and didn’t alter when it came to actually voting.
Who let Sir Dick Onan in – the GG must have shut down their blogging again and he’s drifted over.
Gusface, I may be obtuse but I don’t understand your allusion to damascenes. I have never seen it used in that context.
StewartJ, Bob Carr was very courageous on preserving old growth forests. He took on the CFMEU and we now have all the significant old growth protected. The industry continues and a large amount of public money was used in re-structuring. There is now peace in the forests.
Bob Carr, as Neville Wran before him, both actually cared about the old forests. Bob used to go bush walking with Milo Dunphy.
Neville assessed that his save-the-rainforests decision was the best thing he ever did. It was a tough battle but he didn’t lose an election over it. He went from strength to strength until Barry Unworth, the “killer in the cardigan” took over and underestimated the passion and strength of the gun owners as well as the “it’s time” factor.
When Don Dunstan decriminalised marijuana in South Australia he went on to win with an increased majority.
Bob, Neville and Don all believed in these issues and acted accordingly.
Certainly Kevin Rudd is smart not allowing himself to be wedged but he is being too rigid and fixed. It doesn’t apply to every issue.
He needs to be even smarter. He should allow himself to be wedged on issues where he will actually gain.
He has to also appear as a man of conviction and principles and not just a nice guy who cares for the battlers.
That move by John Howard to pretend he was going to make an announcement about saving the forests and then send Mark Latham off to beat him to the punch was politics at its very best. It was a superb wedge.
Expect John Howard and his team to attempt something similar a week or two before the election. This time he might do exactly the opposite.
He might make Kevin Rudd appear to be a red-neck.
Gary Bruce, I don’t have any actual polling. It was anecdotal but I believe it is correct. Check the new boundaries of Richmond.
Richard
The reference to damascenes refers to the shameless ways some pretend to be for a change in Gvt and generally providing reasonable analysis until bam suddenly kevin rudd is the devil incarnate and only J-HO can save our souls.
richard i generally liked your commentary but this tosh re the forests and greens etc is pure distraction from the main game
Exterminating the rodent and his faeceal policies and clique IS the only game in town
Anything else smacks of toadyism (that is if you have a social conscience/sense of fairness of course)
I disagree. Demanding some kind of principled line now is essential if we are going to demand it later. I reject the equation that taking a consistent, principled line equals electoral destruction. Rudd needs support and unity now, he will not need it if he wins a landslide victory.
You watch. It’ll be done as you suggest, and a Labor government will be run by a feral combination of the Catholic right and the far right unions, with all of the sick free-market, big government, nanny state rubbish we see from “Labor” in the UK.
As for all the reference to “the far left” (and similar) in this thread, the left of the ALP makes up nearly half of the party – so on current polling they are representing a solid 25% of the electorate, more if you add in the Greens voters. This is the eternal curse of Australian politics though -there is no genuine progressive party which is taken seriously, and the current duopoly will use their entrenched power to keep it so (case in point, the ALP attacking the Greens rather than the Liberals).
Oh, and one further comment: everyone seems to completely overlook the other alternative when it comes to “the wedge”. When an issue presents itself, here are the options:
1. avoid the issue and shadow the government (i.e. small target stuff)
2. shilly shally and change positions (i.e. get wedged)
this is the binary choice perceived by many people, including it seems Labor and most of you here, but what about
3. take an actual consistent and intellectually sound position and stick to it, and defend it with well presented and reasoned arguments?
There is a difference between 2 and 3. And surely you would have to admit that option 3 is what many ordinary people think is missing from modern politics, and is what Rudd seems hell bent on giving up out of paranoia that ‘the master’ is going to wedge him.
This just in: you can’t be wedged if you only have one, consistent, position.
gusface, thanks for that explanation. I don’t qualify as a damascene then.
The main game is won by a lot of small pieces moving about the board. In this game right now, neither side can afford to sacrifice even a pawn.
Pawns can become queens after all. A king cannot win the game alone.
You never win a game of chess by being rigid, thinking you can move in one direction regardless of your opponent.
Just as the gun owners tossed out Barry Unsworth so can those who are as passionate about old growth forests deny Kevin Rudd victory. It is a vital part of the main game. He has failed to see this.
Patrick, if Rudd plays the left card – he loses the election. There are far more centrist-leaning middle Australia that Labor needs to win over to get over the line. The white collar, mortgage wielding “battlers” that so embraced Howard in 2001 and 2004 is the battleground Labor party needs to play with otherwise they are doomed.
Politics has little room for principles I’m afraid – ask JWH about his White Australia principles. Personally, I’m all for them, but they only count when you are in office, not in Opposition.
Rudd is more pragmatic – he knows that he cannot afford to play the policies that he knows the Labor left wants to play due to the small target syndrome engulfing Opposition parties. He needs to win office first. He, and the entire Labor movement for that matter, cannot afford the Coalition win as that will give Howard a mandate to do what he likes with Workchoices and kill off the union movement that the ALP need. So we have a tiptoe effect in play.
See off the Coalition first by playing to middle Australia, then start to re-build the nation.
Patrick Bateman: “I reject the equation that taking a consistent, principled line equals electoral destruction.”
Adam Carr: “The fatal precipice is always to the Left”
Patrick, i refer you to the 1983 British election for why your views are foolish.
Maybe so Grooski, but what if Kevin Rudd actually is an anti-green hard-line conservative? Would we want to vote in a Tony Blair?
Peter,
It is a favourite myth that UK Labour’s 1983 was a principled forthright manifesto. Actually it was an incoherent mess that pretty accurately reflected the party at that time.
Now Andrews is accusing Haneef of knowing about the bomb plot:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22166534-29277,00.html
If that’s the case, why was he allowed to leave the country? Surely having pre-existing knowledge of a terrorist attack counts as aiding terrorism.
And another question, if Haneef really was associated with his cousins who are likely to be found guilty of terrorist offences, why was Haneef allowed into Australia in the first place?
Patrick, bit naiive when the other party and/or the media misrepresent the first party’s position. Reality is not always pretty.
Patrick, even if it’s true that the left makes up nearly half of the ALP, it does not necessarily follow that its opinions are representive of nearly half of the people who vote for the ALP. That logic is faulty.
It is a safe prediction that a Labor Government will disappoint, at least in part, at least some Labor supporters–not because of anything Kevin Rudd is or isn’t doing, but because this has been true of Labor Governments since they first started being elected. I think this is just in the nature of things. Sorry.
I hope everyone is listening to PM, vindicating Rudd’s decision not to get to close to Haneef
Richard, do you honestly believe that the minority Centre-Right would hold off a rampant Left in the ALP should Rudd actually prove to be Howard’s shadow?
I can name several faction heads and that would have the balls to make sure that he keeps his place – including the Deputy Leader.
This is the beauty of the factionalised Labor party – the more dominant faction will always see its policies given more weight than others. I don’t believe Rudd has the authority in the party of a Hawke to override this. If a faction war ever started, Rudd would be swallowed whole.
There is hope for a Lefty voice yet Patrick, but we must be clever about it.
Andrews has released phone and chat-room transcripts showing that Haneef knew his cousins were involved in the UK bomb plot, and was warned by his brother to leave the country because the use of his SIM card had been discovered, and to use his new baby as a pretext for leaving.
“Rampant left”? “Faction war”? What year are we in? The factions are a hollow shell. Look how the left rolled over with Garrett.
So why didn’t we deport him to the U.K. so he could be charged with assisting terrorism?
As always with this government I would be waiting to see the context of these conversations before jumping either way. Rudd has done the right thing though politically in letting this issue run its course. Speaking of context this information released tonight shows Andrew’s strange press release on friday in a different light. They were obviously desperate to get Rudd to bite on this issue. They got plenty of tiddlers but the big one eluded them again.
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