The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Galaxy has conducted a poll for SBS’s Insight program showing Labor leading 52-48 across a sample of marginal electorates: Dobell, Eden-Monaro, Blair, Moreton, Deakin, Stirling and Wakefield. The average margin in these seats is 3.5 per cent, so this suggests a combined swing of 5.5 per cent.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
Galaxy: 52-48 in “marginals”
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911 Comments
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Popular vote or not, and not withstanding the implementation of the policy. The fact remains that the Libs put it to the people and won office. I think the Dems needed to respect that and not abuse their senate power. By the way i’m not arguing this point cos i vote lib, quite the opposite…
As the Rodent is on 7.30 tonight, I’ve scanned the papers for what’s getting attention. Kerry has a lot to choose from
AWB-Downer knew
Debnan-Should have signed Kyoto
FOI blocks revealing Serfchoices extension
Regional Rorts
$280M of taxpayers funded advertising
Geldof-Aussies mean and pathetic
Turnbull pays Raindance friend $11M
Dissent in Lib ranks over Turnbull ambition
That should just about take up the program.
# 179 middle man Says: November 20th, 2007 at 10:47 am
There’s nothing they can do. Meg Lees sank their party when they moved them to the right and right into the fold of the liberal party. She split them down the middle, and killed the party. They had a chance of surviving if they could have kept their cool when Natasha Stott Despoja was given the job, and rallied behind her. But all they proved was that their organizational skill was shown to be woefully lacking.
And now the only thing the Dems would do, because of Lees, would be to grab a percent or two from the coalition vote. The other side of their party has been completely enveloped by the ALP.
Why are so many people talking about a DD? It’s just plain ridiculous.
And, incidentally, a DD does not make it easier for small parties to get senators. Under a DD the quotas are halved, so for the big parties, instead of a getting a half a quota which then flows on in preferences, which then elects a small party senator, they get a full DD quota, and nothing flows on in preferences.
The DLP was wiped out in the 1974 DD for exactly this reason.
If Newspoll is right (54/46) and Galaxy is right in the marginals it polled (52/48) there’s got to be some mighty big swings going on elsewhere. (Do we know when the Galaxy poll was done?).
Asanque
Personally I was happy with the Democrats doing a GST deal, but to me the problem was that first they did not exclude education etc (hence contravened party policy) and second they did not hold Howard to it. There was supposed to be a corresponding reform of business tax to reduce known means of tax avoidance, but Howard simply deferred the inquiry as soon as he got the GST through. This was a blatant doublecross but Meg Lees never called Howard on it. Just as Kernot was too close to Labor, I think Lees was too close to Howard. Her defection was particularly damaging, because unlike Kernot she didn’t even resign.
Ltep. my point exactly.
NB
You’ve gotta laugh at that scoop. We’ve got funding rorts, secret IR plans, environmental catastophe, AWB whistleblowers etc etc and the poor old terrorgraph sensationally tells us that the ALP uses actors in its Ads!! Always ahead of the game is the tele. Next they’re gonna tell us that Eric Bana really isn’t the incredible hulk.
Fairfax Chairman Ron Walker – ex Lib money man – won’t allow the SMH or the Age to editoralize in favour of Rudd.
As for the GST, the Libs opposed the ALP’s idea of a simplified BAS for small businesses, only to introduce one a few years later sprucing it as their own idea.
The ALP has flagged many of the current governments policies as red tape nightmare for small businesses. Even WorkChoices is a red tape nightmare. So much for the small government conservatives that the Libs are supposed to be.
201 Diogenes
You could add: Labor pays actors to star in ads – scandalous!
If the Daily Telegraph endorses Rudd, I’ll faint from shock! Judging by today’s front page, they are firmly back in the Howard camp.
How much was Brian Courtice paid to appear in Coalition ads? I doubt he did them for nothing
LTEP Passing the GST was more than enough.
middle man, the Democrats are finished. Had Natasha been leader instead of Me(sla)g Lees, I doubt that the GST would have passed (she would’ve demanded too many amendments). I believe that Natasha would have been very much stronger in opposing JHo than Lees. As it was she was white-anted by her fellow senators. I doubt if there will ever win another senate seat again .
Come to it, is Abbott on the Labor payroll?
To be fair to Meg, she said during the campaign that the Dems would support a GST so long as it excluded ‘fresh food’. Lord knows why fresh food is so important, do poor people eat more fresh food? Anyways, she didn’t do anything outside of her mandate.
The thing that made it worse for the Democrats was that Brian Harradine said he would not support the GST because it was inherently regressive, so the Democrats were the party that made the GST happen, and it was largely the Dems model of the GST that we now how have.
It split them down the middle (I think about half of them actually voted against it) and turned people like me off them forever. That and they helped pass Reiths first wave of IR reforms.
At the end of the day, the Democrats probably got more of their voters from the left than they ever did from the Tories, so passing those fundamentally conservative bits of legislation really did alienate them from their base.
alpal. You are spot on. The management at Fairfax are doing their best to screw staff. They ain’t the nice guys of the media they like to make out. They would love Workchoices Mark II. Its all about moeny it that joint. Its run by an ex-All Black captain… he couldn’t give two hoots about balance views in Australian journalism and how it contributes to the nations political discourse.
Vote1Maxine, you didn’t answer my question regarding why Labor is not proposing to abolish the GST.
Surely if the Democrats must be punished for passing the GST that means Labor should be promising to get rid of it.
• Downer leaving to campaign in Seat du Jour: Singapore
http://www.theage.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/downer-knew-about-awb-kickbacks/2007/11/19/1195321695303.html
Darn, yes and it could be in Labor marginals, safe Labor seats and seats they don’t have a chance to win from the Coalition. There’s no rule that says the swing has to be just where they want or need it to be.
Galaxy’s reputation will be in taters on Sunday morning…
Howard on Sky about to make “rail and road” announcement “affecting all of Tasmania”. In his preliminary remarks, he is referring to his forestry policy announcement in the last week of the last campaign. It would seem he is desperately hoping he can do something similar here.
HH
The sunday tele and SunHerald in sydney endorsed Labor on the weekend but they did it holding their breath and wincing. It was clearly half hearted and more about giving a touch of balance (in the face of a potential lab landslide) before both the main papers – the SMH and the OZ completely cane Labor on Saturday: ‘not the time for change, style over substance, proven coalition track record, competent govt, the howard economic miracle etc etc
Oh, lets not forget that Keating promised in 93 that if Hewson won that the ALP would not block the GST, and Fightback in general, in the Senate. I think it was more of a ploy to scare people in to not voting for the Libs.
He says $470m to build and upgrade road and rail throughout Tasmania. Desperate last acts surely.
180
Yes sure we don’t like Family First or the Greens as they represent the extremes of politics but why should cults be able to run in elections. Next the Scientologists will run!
—-
I always thought Ayn Rand was the L. Ron Hubbard of political philosophy. Guess that makes the Lib’s the Scientologists of oz politics?
Julie at 129 and
Albert Ross at 159
Don’t knock Amanda. She will have a very interesting story to tell.
About how her Ministerial career was mainly about being given a plastic bag and scooper, and then viciously condemned for missing bits laid by others.
It could be that if she wants more time in Rome to, let’s say, write a book about it all, Kevin PM might be gentleman enough to let her have it.
I think I heard Howard mistakenly refer to a town in Tasmania as “Baghdad”.. Can’t be sure though.
HAhahah… its been a long time since I’ve heard a reference to Ayn Rand! what a fruit loop. Thanks for that Bakunin! good times.
My advice to Howard would be to camp himself in WA for the rest of the week.
That’s his last hope, taking Cowan and Swan off Labor and holding the rest of his WA seats.
Does anyone know where Rudd is campaigning today in Sydney? Any chance he’s going to Bennelong or Wentworth?
LTEP
A bit disingenuous. Removing the GST would require massive amounts of money, time and political capital. It would be electoral suicide. That’s why.
i think we all need to move on from the GST….
220
I guess that means that Galaxy users will be spitting chips . . .
# 217 Lose the election please Says: November 20th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Who said they should? I support the GST, and I voted for the coalition in 1998. I think it should be applied to everything so that the entire tax law could be simplified.
But the discussion wasn’t about whether the GST was a good law. It was about why the democrats, because of Meg Lees, are on a one-way ticket to oblivion.
Has anyone else noticed that Betfair is now taking bets on the next Lib leader? Is this new?
Costello $1.45
Turnbull $5
Nelson $8.80
Abbott $42
Downer $20
Bishop $75
Howard $5
Yep, there is a town called Baghad in Tassie. !
The fairfax papers seem a bit scitzophrenic. On one hand they have a readership that is left wing and a few left leaning writers, but on the other hand the editorial line is right off the plant and the SMH has a majority of coservative columists these days:
Monday – Paul Sheehan – Tory
Tuesday – Gerrard Henderson – Tory
Wednesday – Ross Gittens – Non Aligned, critical of both sides.
Thursday – Mirand Devine – Raving Tory
Friday – Hartcher – swings both ways
Saturday – Alan Ramsay – Left
Who are they trying to impress with this array of conservative cronies? Every time they write a column the letters pages fill up with retorts.
The New York times is an unashamedly progressive paper. Why can’t we have 1 in Sydney?
JFC – Maybe a voice over at the end something like ‘welcome to work choices the 2nd wave – be scared, be very very scared’ (too melodramatic?)
Bad news for those predicting a miraculous Sri Lankan victory.
They’re 6 wickets down LOL
The GST is also now the normative base that Federal and State governments, as well as business, has been working off for a decade. Realistically, it cannot be reversed from here.
7
HH Now 7
Coalition is back to $5.10 on centrebet
8
7]
8
Now 8, brilliant throw for a run out
ShowsOn Flash
Too fast for me
@ 229 Howard Hater Says:
And on Sunday morning he could emerge as the Generalissimo of the WA Nationalists and by 5.00 pm, having summarily dealt with Len and family in the Hutt River Province, have himself crowned Imperator with Hyacinth as his consort.
I guess the pater familius aint gonna get his analogy from the Sri Lankans…
Pi I’d agree Meg Less was a large part of the problem. But most of it I’d say its the media pronouncement that they’re over, the endless jokes about them etc.
Sean, politics isn’t easy. You have to make tough calls. If the GST is inherently unjust (which I’m partially inclined to agree with) then it should be gotten rid of, no matter the cost. It’s the same argument with pokies, to get rid of pokies would result in revenue problems for the states (bar WA). That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. The right solution is rarely an easy one to make.
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