Adelaide’s Advertiser newspaper today carries a slightly curious poll of voting intention in Boothby, held for the Liberals by Andrew Southcott on a margin of 5.4 per cent. Conducted by phone from a sample of 649, it shows Southcott leading Labor candidate Nicole Cornes by an improbable 49 per cent to 32 per cent after distribution of the undecided. No two-party result is provided, but commenter Matthew Sykes has transcribed the paper’s large volume of generally unilluminating data from the poll throughout the previous comments thread. No doubt the Advertiser’s pollsters do their best, but my mind is drawn back to the final week of the state election campaign last March, when it ran a poll showing the Liberals neck-and-neck in Norwood and set to retain Hartley. Labor went on to win the seats with respective margins of 4.2 per cent and 4.6 per cent.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
Advertiser Boothby poll
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516 Comments
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Glen you miss an obvious difference. Labor PMs do not choose ministers, that is the job for caucus. So of course Rudd cannot say who ministers will be.
I hope Getup put that ad on during the NRL GF as well. Plenty of votes to be had in the Northeast…
#201 Ruawake
If Gillard is Deputy Leader, she can choose her portfolio in government.
#197 Stunkrat
“jackboot”… another thoughtless reference to fascism.
Why do some people assume Gillard is unpopular? Evidence please.
Rattus Rattus on ABC wireless news hopes – or welcomes – Family First gaining the balance of power in the Senate. These people scare me.
We have evidence Costello is unpopualr. Check some of the polls where his name is mentioned.
She was a communist, then a dedicated socialists, and a massive Union supporter…need i say more she represents a minority of public opinion and yet she could be deputy PM and treasurer…oh and to top it off she’s fugly nuff said!
I think your last comment Glen says more about you than you’d want aired. Not a pretty disposition my friend.
By the way Glen what is bad/wrong with union members again?
Glen,
The traditional left/right factionalism in the ALP has been quite constructive. You have the right in charge of things like economic policy, defence foreign affairs and finance and the left in charge of things like health, education and social policy. Gillard will never be Treasurer because Treasury would always go to someone in the right. And of course all the main ALP leaders have come from the Right. It is the dominant faction.
All parties have factions (come to think of it, so do families, clubs, work places and just about every other form of human co-operation). If you want rampant, destructive factionalism, look at your own Liberal party with David Clarke and the placement of that unelectable idiot Peter Debnam as leader in NSW. There were a lot of people ready to throw out Labor in NSW and they were robbed of the chance by the Liberals internal brawling.
In terms of hypocrisy, the Tele was bagging the ALP for allocating Government jobs, and yet you get cranky because they say they haven’t allocated any jobs to anyone. Catch 22.
Glen
Read a book. Try some poetry. Henry Lawson’s “Faces in the Street” might well be a good start. If you read a big book about politics in Australia, you will find that some of your idols began their political life as so-called radicals. G. Henderson, for example.
William. This is the last time I will bait Glen. Promise.
Are you an oil painting yourself, Glen?
ruawake #201,
just to clarify, the ALP caucus determines who will be on the front bench, but the Leader determines the allocation of portfolios.
Nothing thoughtless about it.
Optimist
You are correct, but with an extra 40 members of caucus after the election the front bench may well be different.
David Charles
I doubt Gillard would choose to be treasurer, Lionel Bowen was deputy PM in the first 3 Hawke Ministries but choose other portfolios.
I once went through the 2004 electorate polls 2PP Labor (x) as reported here and compared them with the final Labor 2PP in the electorate (y).
Result was:
Y = 0.78X + 10.98
R-Sq = 0.65
Wrong. But I’m not surprised.
Glen, if you are going to regurgitate the lines of Sheehan & Bolt you should have a look at what they actually say. Neither of them have accused Gillard of being a communist, just of being involved in an organisation that was in part founded by ex-CPA members.
Derek Corbett @ 205 : more importantly he said he prefers not to have to deal with minor parties, i.e. no checks and balances. The poor Democrats, once the jilted ‘wets’ of the Liberals, and the ones that gave us the GST, are now unwanted by the government and the rest of the electorate.
The bare minimum I want out of this election is for a party like the Greens or Democrats to hold the balance of power in the Senate. I prefer if it was 2 minor parties/individuals to hold the power, that way the government will have some difference of opinions to worry about. With one party/person holding power, they end up being just an extension of the government that’s allowed to voice their opinion now and then.
#214 “Nothing thoughtless about it”
That is sad.
Martin B
Yes she was, doesnt mean she is now but she was or at least had Communist leanings…how could she not have Communist leanings in joining a qasi communist organisation after all its like not being a conservative and joining the Liberal Party…
“Between 1984 and 1986 she worked full-time for Socialist Forum, a group that formed after another schism in the Communist Party of Australia, with the aim of advancing the socialist agenda in Australia. She served as a member of Socialist Forum’s management committee until 1993, well into her career as a lawyer.”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/play … 32033.html
Julia is too young to be a proper communist. Real communists in this country died out years ago. Vale. They handed out from the gutter, not the footpath because police would not allow. The story of McCarthyism in this country has yet to be written.
220 Glen Says: September 27th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Yeah… right… We’re all about to be shipped off to gulags because the commies have taken over. Should I sleep with my trusty rifle locked and loaded by the bed?
If this is your biggest criticism of the Gillard, you are seriously SERIOUSLY in trouble.
Your arguments have become laughable. You need to lift your game mate.
Optimist,
Again, thanks for your reply.
Maybe if I put this in very broad terms it will be clearer but please give me some wriggle room. Using a broad brush usually leaves plenty of room for ambiguity.
All organizations have factions some permanent (eg left and right in the Labor Party) some are temporary and some are for particular issue. Some are formalised some are not.
Sometimes the uses of factions are abused eg (the Cook preselection issue) but what is the problem, the concept of a faction or the driving force (eg personal ambition) behind the abuse of the faction. I would say it is the personal ambition that is the problem not the faction. The faction is just the tool being used/abused to drive towards a particular result. To clarify the point you raised in respect of Cook, Towke formed a faction (i.e. those “new members†beholding to him) with the sole purpose of gaining preselection for Cook. This faction (at that stage) had no other purpose but as a vehicle for his personal ambition.
Factions are here to stay and complaining about them does not help for we are all members of factions in all organizations we belong to.
The issue is not that they are bad/good or whatever but how to make them work better.
Everything would be a lot more chaotic and less productive making the running of any organization almost impossible if we did not have factions. Just consider the management meeting of any organization (including business) where factions were not used. This would mean that most of the time would be spent on issues that had no hope of success because there would be no indication of the support any particular issue might get prior to it being considered by the decision making body.
There are basically two reasons for branch stacking as I see it. The first is personal ambition and secondly the thwarting of other faction(s) (both people and ideas). This second reason is also to do with personal ambition in that one wants to be more important, further up the totem poll, than those from the other faction. If you can give me an example of where personal ambition was not involved in this sort of behaviour I would be interested.
However, if the reason for a faction is to support and fight for ideas than I can see no problems. I would contend that in this case factions should be encouraged.
Glen can you please post a link to a recent photo of yourself so that we can judge your contributions by the fact that you are fugly or not!
This is an important criteria according to you.
So if it is good enough for Gillard it should be good enough for all.
Please where is the link to your photo?
Anyone else has inside info on whether Glen is an oil paintig or not. Based on his opinions and contributions thus far, I can only imagine what he looks like – the horror, the horror…
What’s so bad about ‘Tailgunner Joe’ Derek?
Pauline her fugliness does not reduce her ability to do her job…having socialist tendencies does that more than anything! Anyway her public image and her past history will basically reduce her chances of becoming Prime Minister of Australia.
There are no photos of me that i know of on the internet but i can assure you i am far from fugly
I have done a bit research on Glen and this is what I found:
Fugly Glen
“Yes she was, doesnt mean she is now but she was or at least had Communist leanings…how could she not have Communist leanings in joining a qasi communist organisation”
How very McCarthyist of you.
Unfortunately for your little line in propaganda, being a communist means joining the communist party, not associating with ex-communists.
Despite what those freethinking Bolts and Sheehans would have you believe, Socialist Forum was not a “q[u]asi communist organisation”.
Here is a neutral description of the Socialist Forum.
“The Socialist Forum was established in 1984, initially by disaffected members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Its membership included Australian Labor Party (ALP) members and political activists and trade unionists seeking an alternative to the factional constraints of the CPA and the ALP. Socialist Forum’s stated aim was to contribute to the development of democratic socialism in Australia by facilitating discussion and analysis of ideas and experiences; providing education both for members and non-members; and developing links between political activists and organisations of political activists. Socialist Forum became an incorporated association in January 1986. It was not a political party, although there was an attempt by a section of the ALP Victorian Branch to prohibit members of the ALP from joining it. The structure of Socialist Forum was based on a policy setting Annual Conference, an elected Management Committee responsible for administration and financial management, an elected Public Issues Committee responsible for the organisation’s direction between conferences, and Interest Groups for education and information exchange. There were few paid staff members and Socialist Forum relied on subscriptions and donations. Membership was over 200 at its peak, but the level of active membership declined in the mid 1990s. A cost and accommodation sharing arrangement was negotiated between the Evatt Victoria Centre (EVC), the Australian Fabian Society (AFS) and the Socialist Forum in 1997. The EVC was itself an outgrowth of the Sydney based Evatt Foundation and the Victoria Foundation and had ceased to operate in Victoria by the end of the 1990s.”
http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/archives/collections/pdfs/socialistforum(102~28).pdf
Glen, it is only the right-wingers on this site that this little fantasy about Gillard becoming ALP leader.
The others here have consistently pointed out that as she comes from the left faction, there is no chance of her being elected leader.
Will @ 218
Your “bare minimum” would do nicely for me, too. But not FF. Cannot bear nutters of any ilk. Grown-ups believing in witchcraft and supernatural goings-on worry me when it comes to setting public policy.
Pauline – that was gold.
Glen @ # 226 refers to “socialist tendencies†and then argues that these tendencies somehow reduce her (M/s Gillard) ability to do her job.
What are “socialist tendencies�
Maybe I could suggest that they are a desire to help people who for whatever reason cant help them selves. That they are a belief that society as a whole has a responsibility to help those who need help.
This being the case I wonder what you would call the current government’s policy of spending billions on the welfare of those on the land who have been devastated by the drought.
Maybe I was mistaken the other day when I say Mr Howard arguing most strenuously for these socialist policies on the TV.
Maybe these “socialist tendencies†of Mr Howard reduce his ability to his job.
Could I be right in that Glen is working against the re-election of Mr Howard?
Well-done Glen there is light at the end of the tunnel.
When the “communist bogie” rears its head you know the conservatives are really struggling. Hell Glen just how old are you?
This Gillard or Swan or Santa for PM or treasurer is a typical strowman argument. Set up a false premise and scare the punters of a non existing crisis/problem/disaster.
This is a red herring and red flag to the bull. And as we know people like Glen have a problem with anything red or left.
So when the commentati our there raise the red flag, Glen and his ultra conservative union/women/worker hating friends go for the kill.
Last time I looked, Howard was PM. There is no election called as we speak. Labor needs to win the election and 16 seats. There are a lot of ifs in there.
And only IF Labor wins Govt, is there a decision to be made who becomes a minister.
So Glen, let’s all get hysterical and charge that red flag now.
But just ask yourself, who is the one in control here, the commentati with the red flag or the bull?
strowman is similar to strawman except misspelled…
Glen,
You’re wasting your time here in trying to convince any of us that Gillard will ever be PM. Everyone here, including you, know she is from the left and the right will never let Gillard or anyone from the left get to be PM.
If you really want to convince people, go to a site that doesn’t have people educated about the runnings of the ALP on it. Go scare them with your ‘Reds under the beds’ theory.
Glen
Just to make you feel good, read:
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=your+say&subclass=general&story_id=1060320&category=opinion
Another classy piece of opinion by Mr Pru. (David Barnett)
Then why did you bring the issue up if it’s totally irrelevant? Do you think bringing up totally irrelevant issues is a sensible way to argue?
Pauline
Looks a bit like Akermaniac on a really bad night. Or is it a grab from a John Howard nightmare? Anyway, ta.
It is common enough for people to change their political positions in one direction or another. What is important about Julia Gillard (or any other politician) is not what her political position used to be but what it is now–and (if it matters) she is plainly not a Communist now.
whogivesarats,
I don’t think we are in any fundamental disagreement. We are talking about two different things. You are talking about an academic understanding of the term faction and i am talking about the reality of how factions function in the major political parties. I’m not saying that it is a matter of getting rid of factions – you seem to be saying that it is either a matter of accepting the way factions are or getting rid of them altogether – actually, what I’m getting at is the need to reform party factions – I would suggest that you do a bit of research on efforts to reform factionalism in the ALP over recent years – you’ll see that the same points i have made, have also been made (rather more precisely and eloquently) by a range of people including Simon Crean, Bob Hawke, Neville Wran and Barry Jones to name a few. Please understand that when i use the word faction, i expect (on this site at least) people to understand that i am talking abuot its meaning in practice, not the precise academic definition – to do that would be, to my mind a pointless exercise in semantics that contributes nothing to the political debate that generally dominates discussions here. I could go on for days about this, but that is because i am well acquainted with the problems that party factionalism causes, especially for the ALP. When you want to talk about concrete examples and the reality of how factionalism works in the parites, come talk to me – otherwise, I thank you for again giving a definition of the term “faction” and we’ll leave it at that.
Pauline 227
Brilliant ….. Brilliant …. brilliant
says it all really
Isn’t it interesting that Gillard is on the agenda and her past (1980?) is suddenly very important? It was flagged weeks and months ago by Rudd and Gillard as well as in the Textor Crosby leaked report that personal attacks on Gillard were coming.
And here they are, right on call!
The MSM and ultra conservative commentati are running the mud all over the place. Except it won’t stick because there is no substance and no story. It is fabricated in some back office liberal dirt unit with the blessing of the GG and the rest of them.
When will they learn that they need to have a story with some facts and real dirt to make the running. This fluff mud piece won’t last the week…
J-D: So true, one couldn’t called Costello nor Murdoch socialists anymore.
Pauline = slander nuff said…
Pauline i made reference to her public image because it is detrimental to her chances of party leadership, but im afraid when you compare the two she doesnt hold a candle to Julie Bishop a potential leader or deputy leader of the Liberals.
Glen, it is you who made fugly a criteria – not me.
So Julie Bishop is better, smarter, cleverer than Gillard because she is not as fugly? Is that what you are saying. Your logic and arguments belong in the Daily Tele, HUN, kindergarden or Parliament.
Pauline i was referring to Bishop’s public image (level of fugliness) being better than Julia Gillards…
They are both lawyers but one is a socialist and one is a free market liberal democrat…you be the judge which you’d want in a powerful position.
Pauline i dont go out of my way to slander people just as a political retort…my remarks about Gillard are centred on her unfavourable public image that she cant seem to shake and because of that no matter what she changes her hair style to her policies stink and her public image isnt much better…
Rudd names top team – if he wins
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rudd-names-top-team–if-he-wins/2007/09/27/1190486465809.html
Now that the Gillard issue is settled, who would be treasurer IF Howard leaves (if ever) and Costello takes over?
Glen, you’re embarrassing yourself. Change the subject.
Ok how about Rudd having to guarantee that Swan will be the Treasurer after his gaff yesterday…lol…not only is that an own goal because nobody takes Swan seriously or thinks he can manage the economy but Swan hates Rudd and Rudd hates Swan…the perfect marriage lol…
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