Hinkler (Qld, Nationals 8.8%): Greg Roberts of The Australian reports that Labor’s candidate for this Bundaberg-based seat, Garry Parr, is suffering a campaigning boycott from members of the Left and Unity (“Old Guard”) factions. Parr is backed by the Labor Forum (AWU) faction, whose chieftain Bill Ludwig has evidently put a few noses out of joint. Former Labor Forum members Brian Courtice, who held the seat from 1987 to 1996, and Greg McMahon, a one-time branch secretary and candidate at the 1998 state election, have said they will not vote for Parr in protest at Ludwig’s “bully boy” approach. Courtice was expelled from the party in 2005 for leaking party documents to state Nationals MP Rob Messenger, which purportedly exposed the “siphoning” of $7,000 in branch funds. At around this time, Courtice’s wife Marcia was sacked from her job with state Bundaberg MP Nita Cunningham, which she claimed to be in revenge for her husband’s actions. Marcia Courtice reportedly had the backing of local branches for the Bundaberg preselection going into the 2006 election, but the party’s union-appointed electoral college instead imposed former nurse Sonja Cleary. McMahon ran against Cleary as an independent, and the seat fell by a narrow margin to Nationals candidate Jack Dempsey, who was assisted by the fallout over the Bundaberg Hospital “Dr Death” scandal.
Blair (Liberal 5.7%): The Courier-Mail reports that the largesse being heaped on this crucial electorate, which covers most of Ipswich and rural areas beyond, is “starting to cause angst in Coalition ranks”. Specifically, Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce has criticised the decision to spend $2.3 billion on the Goodna bypass as the government’s solution to congestion on the Ipswich Motorway. Blair was also the target of yesterday’s announcement by Mark Vaile of $700 million in Auslink funding for a second crossing of the Toowoomba Range, located in neighbouring Groom.
McEwen (Vic, Liberal 6.4%): The Age reports of yet more marginal seat road funding, this time in Fran Bailey’s traditionally precarious electorate beyond Melbourne’s north-eastern outskirts. Peter Costello appeared in the electorate yesterday announcing $80 million in AusLink funding for road bridges on a yet-to-be-built extension of the Epping rail line to South Morang.
Charlton (NSW, Labor 8.4%): Sitting member Kelly Hoare, who was first dumped by Labor in favour of former ACTU secretary Greg Combet and then humiliated with sexual harrassment claims, is “considering” following Gavan O’Connor’s footsteps and attempting to hold her Hunter Valley seat as an independent. She has until the closure of nominations next Thursday to make up her mind.
Wentworth (NSW, Liberal 2.6%): Danielle Ecuyer, investment banker and environmental activist, has confirmed she will run for Malcolm Turnbull’s seat as an independent. This prospect has attracted considerable attention as she is a former partner of the Labor candidate, George Newhouse.
Maranoa (Qld, Nationals 21.0%): Labor has dumped its candidate for this unwinnable rural Queensland seat, Shane Guley, after his reputation for robust behaviour as a union official emerged as a political liability. This didn’t seem to bother anybody when he ran at the 2004 election, at which time his colourful history was noted on this website.
591 Comments
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a Morgan thing: ALP vote jumped 4% in September. With a regional breakdown: the only place the governmeat leads is in country WA.
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2007/4231/
For the good of parliamentary democracy and government accountability, shouldn’t I be hoping for a decent sized Coalition opposition to keep the Rudd Government honest?
Nah! I want a frigging huge bloodbath on November 24, and the Liberal Party reduced to an irrelevant rump: the National Party, who cares?
Stop it, there haven’t been any votes cast yet
HH
Yeah, at the moment I’d be happy if the chamber was pretty much a sea of labor with bronwyn, barnaby and a couple of the wets sqeezed down in the corner…….
One provisio in all of this is the RBA still has one very big weather eye on the faltering US economy, which is taking in water fast. The US Federal Reserve next week is seen certain to cut rates for the second time since September, the only doubt being over the size of the move.
Petrol prices here are about to go up markedly as the crude price lingers around $US90 a barrel. While that is nominally inflationary, central banks these days seem to focus more on the consequences for growth.
And any unrest in the financial markets (we saw the Dow drop nearly 3 per cent in a single session last Friday) could muddy the waters as well.
All of those things have the capacity to derail a November rate rise and fuel the Coalition’s (admittedly laughable case) that they are a “safer pair of hands” in terms of economic “management” (whatever that means).
HH 402 – I too want to see Howard and the Libs absolutely annihlilated. But if Labor has a big majority, then Rudd has a problem with a lot of bored backbenchers making trouble for him. A comfortable majority would be OK.
LTEP @ 383
Exactly, so why so pessimistic? If the Rat thought he would win at any time since Dec last year (or August at least to avoid the half Senate election), then the election would have already been run and won.
He held on and played russian roulette with the RBA because his own polling was telling him what Morgan, ACN, Newspoll and Galaxy have been telling the rest of us all year – Ruddslide of biblical proportions. He would have held off even longer except the polling was obviously telling him that waiting til December would only make things worse. Now we find the RBA chamber is loaded, the trigger gets pulled on Nov 7, then BANG. It’s gonna be messy.
The vote is 5 weeks away and yet you left wingers are so full of hubris you already think the election is over based on 1 opinion poll if you persist with this hubris you will more than likely get a nasty surprise come election night!
402-404… sounds good. I’ll drink to that.
Glens here. I’m off…
Your claim of hubris lacks substance.
Will at 382 said:
“I guess Costello will say the economy is now like a F-111 rather than a well tune race car.”
Considering the unsustainable pork flying around, I guess All Tip is doing the dump and burn
They say that radio is a hot medium. This perception was reinforced on hearing The Man from Mayo Himself, Lord Diner of Baghdad, cutting loose with a full-blown Dummy Spit on Virginia T.’s radio show this morning.
I mean really and truly, how could Dolly have possibly interfered politically in the ex-Gitmo-ization of David Hicks? Lord Diner is an honourable man for goodness sakes!
Eddixinder sounded very testy indeed, as if someone had just asked him to eat dirt, or grovel or something terribly awful. I for one, think that it’s mean that Foreign Minister should bear any responsibility whatsoever after all he’s done for us.
Please don’t be upset, Minister, we are a truly grateful nation. When all is said and done, we simply arn’t worthy to be ruled by gentlemen who have been born to the thankless, lifelong duty of having greatness thrust upon.
Glen, I get the feeling no one is gonna be too surprised. Not even you.
So Glen… you’re predicting a Coalition win? By how many seats?
Glen, if Liberal HQ is already counting numbers for Howard’s successor, their own private polling must be showing they are in a heap of shit.
And, if the roles were reversed and the Liberals had a 16 point lead, you’d be crowing too.
Analysis of September face-to-face Morgan Polls finds that support for the Coalition was 36.5% (down 2% from August), while support for the ALP was 51.5% (up 4%).
Sean and John Rocket: are you blokes gonna be as drunk as me on election night?
Glen at 408 doing his impersonation of the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/149502/monty_pythons_black_knight/
No i wouldnt be HH for the simple fact that the election isnt tomorrow and the people have not voted yet…the election would not be over if the Coalition was 10 points ahead it aint over till election night…i would show less hubris that the leftards of the blog that i guarantee you…
PC 412 – That’s good. In the air force the F-111 is known as ‘the pig’. That’s because it gets down close to the ground and has a lot of grunt.
Drunk is too mild a word. I expect at some stage I’m gonna get up on the table and drop my trousers. Its gonna be one of those kind of nights
Some of you are getting WAY ahead of yourselves.
Talking up three terms FFS…!
Labor may win, but its no sure thing yet.
Time to talk a chill pill.
More like a Dons Party Sean and HH you could just as easily be weeping into your beers than celebrating for this election is far from lost….
Sean 422 – Yes, I think I might partake of a tipple tonight!
Just saw Rudd ripping into Costello in a press conference on Sky.
Said that Costello did an academy award winning act in distancing himself from responsibility of rate rises after ignoring 16 separate warnings from the RBA .
Was an extremely good performance by Rudd, he is actually growing and getting better as the campaign unfolds. Made a fool of Costello, yeah I know it’s not hard.
I say again, Howard will not last the length of the campaign.
Stop showing hubris about other people showing hubris.
Why is this so hard for everyone to understand and remember? The $4bil for oldies was money from *before* the election was called. It is government money, NOT an election promise. The reason Rudd doesn’t have to match it is that he gets it as a freebie. 99% of the news sites, tv programs and all people like us reading and listening to them seem to have forgotten this in 24 hours. This $4bil is a **own-goal** by Howard. Had he offered it as an election promise, that would have been different.
Glen, you and the Smirk must both be on that stuff they’re handing out at Lib HQ. Please share your election night predictions with us!
ShowsOn that is rank meta-hubris.
ShowsOn
Stop showing hubris about other people showing hubris about other people showing hubris.
ShowsOn at 427 said:
“Stop showing hubris about other people showing hubris.”
You know it’s really going pear shaped when we hit hubris squared.
Glen, is dropping your trousers ’showing hubris’. If so my apologies.
This is the time for Rudd to tear down government claims of economic superiority.
He can show how the government has had absolutely no idea about how to deal with inflation in a growing economy.
He can say that it shows 10 years of neglect when we should’ve been investing in infrastructure. Fixing our ports, building water and power sources to sustain the economy into the future.
Costello claims that the 1996 and 1997 budgets shielded our economy from the Asian financial crisis. But it was at those budgets that $1 billion was taken from education, and the price of university degrees were all increased, some of them were nearly tripled.
Ten years later we are feeling the effects of that short sightedness.
Rudd can use this inflation increase to bring his entire argument together.
That all depends on what’s underneath sean.
Jim @ 423
Save your breath. They will not listen to you. They are sure Labor will cruise into government and are in for a huge embarassment if that doesn’t eventuate. Imagine the ammunition the other side will be handed for the next 3 years!
LTEP – you’re only given one set of walnuts in your life, you might as well stick ‘em on the table when you have the chance.
I think it is funny that during non-election years, the government attacks people on disability support pention as being full of people faking back injuries. But once an election campaign is on increasing their power and phone supllement from $100 to $500 is par for the pork barrelling course.
Yes, Tim Blair is gonna be doing a lot of cutting and pasting from this thread LTEP. We’ll never live it down…
Actually last election he did just that with Christopher SHeils blog.
LTEP – I wouldn’t worry too much about taunting over the next 3 years. If Labor doesn’t win this election they will never be in power again.
Youve summed it up nicely possum! I suspect LTEP rarely gets his walnuts out.
Howard is gone, he’s outsmarted himself by far trying to wedge Rudd and just keeps kicking own goals.
The $4B pensioner fund is just another one. Howard set all these “pre-election” stunts up thinking he could catch Rudd out as fiscally irresponsible in making additional election promises but it is all backfiring on him.
Rudd has always out thought Howard and he always will. Costello is just a dill on the sidelines and the gaggle of reporters are finally starting to see it unfold all too clearly.
I can see the press turning viscously on Howard over the next 4 weeks and it will be nearly as enjoyable to watch as election night.
Best bet for post-election Liberal leader, given the need for some experience and a safe-ish seat: Wilson Tuckey. He’ll be one of half a dozen left in the party.
It is about time the media came clean and ran the true story of the ’smoke and mirrors’ BS that the LNP have been good economic managers.
They need to point out clearly that our economic strength comes from:
1. hawke/keasting reforms
2. global boom
And the great failing of the Howard govt {backed now by many economists} is starving the States and failing to invest surpluses in the right areas. Basically – wasting our prosperity. AND that they never had control of our interest rates.
Possum, your current prediction for seat count on November 24?
If you’re so willing to put your ‘walnuts’ on the table.
Now now kids don’t gang up on poor old LTEP. I suspect any day now an upgraded prediction is coming … You gonna give us something LTEP ?
Hot off the press from the Reuters poll of market economists:
SYDNEY, Oct 24 (Reuters) – Australia’s central bank will
almost certainly raise interest rates at its next policy meeting
in November as it strives to control an alarming acceleration in
inflation, say economists.
A Reuters poll of 25 analysts taken on Wednesday produced an
80 percent chance of a rise in the Reserve Bank of Australia’s
(RBA) 6.5 percent cash rate. The central bank meets on Nov. 6 and
its decision will be announced the following day.
The sense of inevitability followed an unexpectedly sharp
rise in the RBA’s core measures of inflation, reported earlier on
Wednesday. Average underlying inflation climbed
0.95 percent while the annual pace hit 3 percent, the very
ceiling of the central bank’s 2 to 3 percent target range.
“It is very likely the RBA now will feel the need to take out
some further insurance against unacceptably high ongoing
inflation down the track,” said Rory Robertson, an interest rate
strategist at Macquarie Bank.
The market seemed to agree, with futures showing around an 84 percent chance of a hike to an 11-year high of 6.75 percent next month. Investors were also pricing in a real chance of a second move to 7 percent by the end of March.
I’m predicting 147 seats to Labor.
Anyone care for a crushed walnut?
We have to revel in the last month of Liberals in Power. Revel in it! Really… let’s say (time to close your eyes and block your ears… Glen… adult talking hubris now…)… Rudd wins – minimum 9-12 years in power. Right wing party of tomorrow takes over… probable period in power… 9-12 years…
It could be 18-24 years until we have another month like this one, we have to enjoy this period, I’m talkin’ to you LTEP! Just relax, be happy and enjoy.
Ashley, is that your serious prediction? I’m going to take note of it if so.
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