The first Roy Morgan face-to-face poll to catch the full force of the OzCar aftermath shows Labor’s two-party lead up from 55-45 to 58-42. Conducted over the past two weekends from a sample of 1190 (smaller than usual from a poll covering two weeks), it has Labor up 0.5 per cent on the primary vote to 46.5 per cent and the Coalition down a sharp four points to 35 per cent. The slack has been taken up by the Greens, up 3.5 per cent to 11.5 per cent.
Here’s an incomplete sampling of the past week’s action. This site’s normal energy levels will resume in about a week or so.
• Monday’s weekly Essential Research survey had Labor’s two-party lead up from 58-42 to 59-41. Supplementary questions showed a spike in confidence in the economy, but a somewhat paradoxical increase in concern about employment; Joe Hockey favoured over Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader by 17 per cent to 13 per cent; and the Labor Party viewed more favourably than the Liberals on 11 separate measures.
• The South Australian Liberals have a new leader in Heysen MP Isobel Redmond. Redmond succeeds Waite MP Martin Hamilton-Smith, who was mortally wounded after accusing the government of doing favours for an organisation linked to the Church of Scientology using what proved to be faked emails. Hamilton-Smith called an initial spill last Friday after Mackillop MP Mitch Williams quit the shadow ministry, which was universally interpreted as an attempt to undermine Hamilton-Smith ahead of a future pitch for his job. However, Williams declined to put his name forward at the ensuing spill, at which the sole rival nominee was deputy leader and Bragg MP Vickie Chapman. After inital expectations he would comfortably survive, Hamilton-Smith emerged from the vote without the support of a party room majority: while he won the vote 11 to 10, one member had abstained. Hamilton-Smith called another spill to clear the air, but when Redmond (who had been newly elected in place of Chapman as deputy) said she would put her name forward he announced he would stand aside. The result was a three-way tussle between Redmond, Chapman and Williams, in which Redmond defeated Chapman by 13 votes to nine after Williams was excluded in the first round. Goyder MP Steven Griffiths won the vote for deputy ahead of Williams by eight votes to six (since only lower house MPs get to vote for the deputy, whereas members from both houses have a vote for the leadership).
• Antony Green crunches some electoral numbers to conclude that, contrary to widespread belief, Labor’s position in the Senate would be better if the next election were for half the chamber in the normal fashion, rather than a double dissolution.
• Against his better judgement, Peter Brent at Mumble enters the world of blogdom. He’s also written a piece on Inside Story which delivers on what I emptily promised a few weeks back, namely to review the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report into the 2007 election.
681 Comments
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It IS a fact because the ALP Vote was the same as what was achieved in the State Election WITH a Liberal Candidate.
Oh and I’m sorry you csnnot follow my posts, I state SFACTS, you say nothing but Green Talking Points.
My Comments still stand, if you don’t like what IK write – DON’T bother reading them – you are not forced to you know !
And it was One Nation preferences in WA which gave the WA ALP Government in 2001.
ON were as I said “flash in the pan”. They did well for a couple of years and then died. They got a high primary for a short time but were not in the same league as the DLP Dems or Greens.
Frank Calabrese
Yes, I know. Whats your point? As always Frank: WHATS YOUER POINT? Please don’t claim she’s a Trot due to her associations with the NDP because she isn’t but then again you don’t ever let the FACTS get in the way of an incomprehendible and unhelpful comment or pots and kettles reference. She became a Green as did many NDPers as it was pretty much the precursor to the party.
It was weird how Borbidge lost support so quickly.
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/CIB/1998-99/99cib02.htm#INTRO
Bushfire Bill (349),
We are “dred[g]ing this all up…again” because on Reuters Poll Trend: 55.8-44.2 thread, OzPol Tragic (1488) described the DLP as “paranoid, embittered, divisive, obsessive, hate-spewing political group” that “[didn’t] last long” and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.
Given that Cardinal Gilroy acted to keep the Groupers inside the NSW ALP, it is rather strange that he would be writing something telling voters not to support it.
Geez, who said I was attacking her for being a Trot ? I was just pointing out the bleeding obvious that once the NDP imploded, one of their number joined the Greens. Cheryl Kernot was wooed to the ALP ?
Is that a crime to do so ?
Oh and it seems the Greens ALWAYS have some sort of Guilt Complex when ALP supporters quite rightly question their motives and policies.
THM
I hope your frustration (?) with Frank does not deter you from posting here. I always read your posts, as I do Frank’s.
As Frank suggested:
Let the silent audience ‘judge’ who they will
Yeah, Pauline & Co sucked up all the far right wing of the Nats as well as picking up all the rest of the wacko’s looking for a home with some influence.
If it wasn’t for the internal power struggles and subsequent implosion, they would still be a major force today.
Many of these people still feel disenfranchised and it is possible Abbott is looking at ways of bringing them into the Lib tent, but how they could exercise any degree of control over them I have no idea.
It depends how you define ‘ideologically aligned’, doesn’t it? (and ‘engaged’)!
One of the problems of being a member of a political party (rather than just an average punter without much interest in politics) is that it’s easy to believe that the people who vote for your party think the way you do and vote accordingly.
If ‘not engaged’ means voting the way you always have because your parents voted that way etc etc, never listening to the radio, TV or reading a newspaper (and believe me, it’s scary how many of them there are out there) than ‘more engaged’ can mean simply that you have some idea of what the party’s on about.
The Greens voters I know (and know well) fall into either the ‘both the majors are bad so I’ll vote Green ‘cos they’re for the environment’ or the ‘the Greens offer a different style of politics’ camps. Very few of them show much awareness of actual Greens policy (probably less than your average Labor/Lib voter, given the amount of info about their policies available during election campaigns compared to the Greens).
It can also be argued that, the smaller your party is, the more likely it is that the bulk of your membership is ‘engaged’ – so my ALP branch is very small, but each and every member is very engaged with it, simply because they know that there’s noone else to do the heavy lifting.
I KNOW it’s broadbrush, but I still stand by the Occam’s razor approach – if the Liberals lose 3% and the Greens gain 3%, the simplest explanation is that these votes moved from Libs to Green.
So we can argue about proportions – 100%? 80%? 50%? – but the most sensible explanation is that the majority of that 3% was a direct transfer from Libs to Greens, especially in the context of this poll, where there are plenty of reasons to explain the loss of votes from the Liberals but much harder to explain a loss of votes from the ALP.
Frank
But you didn’t. No where in your post did you question the Greens “motives or policies”. I just don’t follow you man.
Thanks Pegasus. I think I will stop reading Franks posts its just I’m CST and a night owl and he’s WA time I think so we often post when ESTers are tucked in bed.
The Greens voters I know vote Greens because of their policies supporting human rights and social justice. They are committed Christians who vary in age from 20 something to 70 something. They certainly are aware of Greens policies and have reflected long and hard about them.
Boerwar @ 137
“Where is the oldest opera house in the Southern Hemisphere?”
Port Elizabeth, South Africa. c1892
Pegasus
…and, with all respect, I don’t think ‘Christians between 20 and 70′ are a huge subset of the Greens voter demographic.
I’m really not talking about the committed Greens voters here (as I hope I’ve made clear) but about those who are shifting from one or other of the majors to the Greens in recent times – swinging voters by definition, who tell you prior to the election that they haven’t made up their mind and afterwards that the voted Green.
An example is a couple I know well, who have argued with me long and hard about issues such as the North South pipeline. It’s clear from their arguments that they don’t have much understanding of the underlying factors and aren’t much interested in them – there’s the simple belief that it’s wrong to pipe water from one place to another and an inability/unwillingness to consider why it might be necessary. If backed into a corner (and I’m usually not that merciless, having learnt long ago that some people simply can’t grasp the complexities of policy) they simply revert to ‘well, if you BELIEVE what the government says about it….’ and imply that I am a simple soul whose acceptance of the government’s actions comes from not knowing any better.
They vote Green not because they know what the Greens policies are, but because they think the majors are not environmentally friendly.
And, honestly, that’s all they want to know – they don’t want to do a policy by policy comparison between the majors and the Greens. They don’t want to vote for the majors (to demonstrate that they’re more perceptive than the ordinary voter) and the default position is Green.
And BTW – I would say the general feeling within the ALP re Greens supporters, especially the more engaged ones who are politically active, is that we’re pleased that there’s an alternative party that they can go to.
steve @ 354
Not really
1. The Waterside Dispute: Rob Borbidge. Queensland National Party Premier
Rob Borbidge has invited the National Farmers Federation to set up a non-unionised stevedoring operation in Brisbane. Rob Borbidge is trying to inflame the confrontation between the Maritime Union and Patricks to use against the Labor opposition in a likely state election this year.
http://www.takver.com/wharfie/who.htm#borbidge
2. Queensland Workplace Agreements: “The Borbidge government also initiated changes to the industrial relations system by introducing Queensland Workplace Agreements (QWA’s), similar to the Australian Workplace Agreements later created under the Federal Liberal government of John Howard.”
3. QPU “Memorandum of Understanding”: “it was revealed that during the Mundingburra by-election campaign, Borbidge and Cooper (now Minister for Police) had signed a secret Memorandum of Understanding with the Queensland Police Union guaranteeing the QPU the repeal of unpopular Goss government measures, the power of veto over senior police appointments, and increased police funding in return for a donation of $20,000 to the by-election campaign. This close relationship evoked many memories of the Bjelke-Petersen era, where relations between the executive and the police service were frequently close.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Borbidge
4. One Nation (Pauline H)
In power for less than 3 years and those were the highlights.
That enough, Steve?
KP had a beefo with Mitcho but then smashed by Hilfo. What a sound.
OzPol Tragic, I thought they must have been responsible for an infrastructure freeze or something equally nasty.
Zoomster,
And I wasn’t suggesting that they were. I have no idea what Greens voter demographics are.
I was simply responding to your comment:
[The Greens voters I know (and know well)] with my own anecdotal evidence, the same type of evidence that your post @ 363 largely consists of.
Bee-uuuuuu-ti-ful sound, The Finnigans.
Beeb’s Steve Pye. “I’ve had enough already and it’s only 11.21.”
In the 2004 federal election I voted Greens 1. Latham 2nd last and of course Rodente last.
Maybe that may help some of you guys LOL.
Allan @ 362
I actually don’t know for certain but I was told by several Tasmanians that one of Hobart’s main claims to fame was that it has the Southern Hemisphere’s oldest opera house.
@370 that’ld be oldest theatre,, as in “The Theatre Royal’
Off topic, well off topic…
So you want a Social License… What is it? What’s it good for? And where can you get one?
The all powerful, very cool. and dare I say it, mystical Social License!
Not everyone can have one. But more about that later.
So what is a Social License?
A Social License gives you permission to comment on subjects that you have no training in but feel your opinions are better than people who’ve studied and researched the area for 10, 12 or even 20 years. So, you might feel strongly about Tasmanian Devils, and with a Social License your views are given equal weight with those of a Professor of Zoology! How cool is that?
What’s a Social License good for?
Aside from the obvious power, you can use it just about however you like. In essence what you say becomes “reality”! Imagine you really hate Gunns. When they say they want to make clean Green electricity with a Biomass Generator your Social License allows you to say “Gunns should leaving saving the Planet to the people who care about it” and get it published in National News Media. That is amazing you say? Well, Gunns doesn’t have a Social License and you have. So even though you know nothing about anything other than feel-good mother-craft statements you’re in there, instant power!
How to get a Social License.
Not everyone can have a Social License. Obviously, you have to be “better”. And that’s the secret to getting a Social License. You have to be special, have special powers and knowledge. But not real knowledge, that’s for intellectuals. The best way to get a Social License is to join a pseudo-political group that’s got a few spare. We’re talking Australian Conservation Foundation, The Greens, The Tasmanian Greens (they have heaps, just lying around), The Wilderness Society etc. But you don’t just get a Social License, you get access to dozens of slightly woolly brained potential sexual partners!
Score!
367
…and fair enough, too, Peg.
Back in my box.
Allan
1834 Theatre Royal, Hobart.
They also did cock fights in there, so it might not count, strictly speaking, as being a pure opera house.
Hamer had dignitas, and would have appreciated the compliment.
I suggest that there is an alternative way of looking at some of the Liberal/Green/Labor discussions above.
The suggestion is that there are many Green voters, currently parked in either Liberal or Labor, who cannot bring themselves to vote for the Greens because they cannot actually imagine the Greens running the country.
Please tell me that the interminable Greens vs Labor slugfest hasn’t been going continuously during the whole week I’ve been away…
The only news I’ve been exposed to for a week has been the OO every morning. When is the popular uprising going to take place to overthrow the hopelessly incompetent Rudd Government I keep reading about. It seems that we are in the last days of the Empire and the brave media has escaped the censorship to reveal the truth about Rudd’s dictatorship.
The only other thing I noticed was that some Rio exec got caught spying and sorely needs the book to be thrown at him.
Diogenese
Welcome back.
You must have been very fortunate to have been stuck on a desert island with only the OO for company. Very informative journal of record.
There have been several dozen posts here on whether the 3% of those polled who left the Liberals are the same 3% of those polled who went to the Greens. The delightful thing is that since no-one can actually know what really happened, everyone has social licence to comment.
Nevertheless there have been some excellent posts, actually.
There have also been several zillion posts on ‘What really was the DLP and what did it achieve?’
There has been a bit of interest in wat hu did wen.
Oh, and Rebecca said some bad things about Rudd and Therese, and then refused to resile despite several zillion posts pointing out to her the error of her ways, and comparing her with a caterpillar.
Diog
you will be surprised to learn that Tony Abbott is a conservative.
Apparently he has only just escaped the vicious clampdown on conservatism which has been happening for the last decade or so, and is now free to talk openly.
Oh and a few of Tom the first and best along the lines of ‘If Churchill had been killed in World War I, would we have more Green senators today?”
Boer — yes, it’s been fun.
tonight’s tv is so hard to pick
The Ashes? – five for by lunch
Mark Webber on Poll in Germany, ready to cream the Germans at their home grand prix
Cadel Evans doing a champion’s job against the Astana team
Thank god the winter break is on, I’m just sooo conflicted about what to watch right now…
our greatest politicians aren’t in their local electorates, they are overseas representing Australia on the world stage//
C’mon aussie c’mon
From The Worst Of Perth’s Twitter Feed – note this is a Satirical post
and
Diogenes,
Possum also has some spiffy new charts which show the biggest swing to Labor since the election appears to be in SA. Obviously, you croweaters are delighted with the hard work and results being produced by local Labor star Penny Wong on ETS and water.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/
Poor Mr Abbott- held back all those years by the left wing radical John Howard…Isnt it amazing though that after all the Howard years (and their loss of government) he still thinks the party needs to go more CONSERVATIVE- Huh???
351
The number of Liberal voters who went to the ALP was approximately matched by the number of ALP voters who switched to the Greens.
Cool, Bird of Paradise. Thanks to you. Still have not worked out who Frank’s Mr Bird is.
Then, subject other, about Tony Abbott. Again. Did I mention his santamaria leanings? Yeah, for sure I did.
Tony should shutup and hope that Kev appoints him as successor to Tim Fisher as Ambassador to the Holy See.
And Kevin Rudd should shut up and get back to Oz quick smart before he loses all credibility with the Ozpop. As I said, bring on Julia. G, that is.
Have been loving Master Chef, great show. How interesting that Matt Preston commented that Kevin’s appearance on Rove is associated with Bruno, for one.
In, as Matt P put it, according to the press, a wish on Kev’s part, to remain or be or whatever, connected. Not for one second is politics or personalities ever referred to, on the show. Nor do I think they mean to. Just talking about stuff.
What that type of comment implies is a certain cynicism about Kev. And these guys and the younger followers are indicative about the voting future.
So, Kev, nota bene, as some among us commented quite a while ago.
Actually, Bruno may teach you a thing or two. Not least what shorts to wear.
Mr Bird and Bird of Paradox are one and the same – he posts on Facebook under his real name, but I won’t reveal it
Newspoll tomorrow. We’ll get to see whether the surge to Labor is a Turnbull dead cat bounce or just faulty shockers on Kev’s ute.
Well, Frank and companions.
I thought later that maybe Mr Bird could be a Freo high flyer.
Asked around, but no one had heard of such a moniker.
Whatever, I am not going to muck about on Facebook. Isn’t pollbludger enough?
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/how_do_you_say_get_up_in_mandarin/
Planet Janet plumbs new depths in partisan journalism with the potential to actually hurt real people.
Doesn’t seem to care that people having silly hysterics in public over this is only going to make things more difficult for the Government to deal with ( their obvious and political objective) and that the consequence of that will be that things could go worse for the poor bugger Hu whose in jail in China than they otherwise might.
Her equating the treatment and situation of Hu with that of David Hicks is really quite sick.
Liam Bartlett with another Anti Rudd Rant – btw before joining 60 Minutes, Liam was the Morening Announcer on ABC Local Radio Perth before joing 6PR where he lasted all of 6 weeks before getting the 60 Minutes gig.
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,25766623-5005374,00.html
Janet A. is either terribly deluded, mindlessly partisan or extremely jealous of Rudd. Rudd destroyed Howard and has since shown him to be a poor PM with his government trading on fear, racism bigotry etc – so I can understand the jealousy if it is there. But I reckon she lives in a world where self delusion reigns, she really believes a lot of her extreme nonsense, she is a female Ackerman.
I am surprised anybody who isn’t extreme right wing is still actually reading her. You know what to expect as you do with Ackerman. She writes for the faithful lost tribes of Howard, that are waiting in the mountains of South America for the coming of another Liberal Party messiah.
I read her (JA) because there is usually some entertainment value in whatever the rabid right is frothing at the mouth over at the moment. I suppose that to be fair though one has to remember that what she does isn’t journalism. Its opinion piece partisan trash.
Compare her amateur and blatantly partisan doodlings to some of the analysis and pertinent comment from George M in the same paper and she really shows up as a lightweight. I really hope the Libs giver her pre-selection for somewhere. They deserve her.
Turnbull and any other commentator saying the Government should confront the Chinese government and demand this and that are either extraordinary stupid or willing to trade Mr Hu’s well being in the hope of some political points for the Liberal Party.
We know the Howard government didn’t mind causing people to suffer in exchange for political points. The possible manslaughter of 300+ of the SEIVX, the turning of refugees into political cattle to be demonised and mercilessly punished, burying Hicks for years without charge to make sure a mate didn’t lose any political points.
Turnbull then has to say what he would do after having demanded China do what he said and they simply said back to him, ‘no’. What a total turkey he would seem and what damage he would have done to Australia’s relationship. And he would guarantee that no Australian get fair treatment in the future.
The only outcome of a Turnbull approach would be to ensure Hu gets found guilty and gets a prison term. This is probably what the Liberal Party want, to force Hu to be persecuted so they can have some political point to make. Turnbull and supporters have been reduced to hoping for the suffering of someone else to get some temporary political issue. They have a history of easily trading the well being of other people for politics.
China is a regime, it does what it wants and what it thinks it can get away with, especially with minnow countries. China’s government would never ever accept losing face on any issue, especially if witnessed by its own population.
Rudd knows exactly how to deal this issue. That it is – shut up, treat it as a genuine charge, let them make their point, deal quietly behind the scenes and don’t turn it in to politics. Time will pass and, if it was just a matter of residue anger, the guy would be released eventually.
AND if there really is a genuine crime of significance the guy will get charged and etc.
And in reality Australia doesn’t have much of a bargain position in any case.
Inadvertently the media and Turnbull in their ignorance and trying to make it into a domestic political affair with a bit of dog-whistling are behaving in a way that might help Hu’s cause.
If China was striking back because of Rio Tinto then they wanted it to be between Australia and them, the don’t want to escalate into a wider international issue of who can be safe doing business with a China that can act in an arbitrary way at the drop of a hat. This would hurt them in the longer run as it would cause the multinationals to seek sterner up front agreements and also get people to thinking that all arrests are simply political.
Issues like this if they get out of hand can turn international public sentiment against China, making it easier for domestic politicians to be harder on China even if it sacrifices business.
And I tend to think that it is better to suffer a few years of recession than to sell off the farm to China or any other country.
If in refusing to let China control a number of our resource companies it costs us business in retaliation then so be it. That would be only a short term sate of affairs as demand and business would increase again from some quarter. But if you sell off the farm then it is sold forever. Our resources are meant to generate revenue for generations to come so it is something we should exercise caution and control over. We should be maximising our revenue from our assets and the longevity of our assets.
Garnaut writes article critical of Rudd in context of Hu:
http://business.theage.com.au/business/how-we-got-china-so-wrong-20090712-dhfw.html
Well done to Mark Webber for winning his first GP!
You saw it here on Pollbludger first, folks. Garnaut and Grattan basically take up a theme I suggested on poll bludger the other day: that the Hu case is at least partly about a re-arrangement of power in China. In particular, I drew attention to the telling behaviour of Chinalco publicly going to bat against the secret police mob.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/president-backed-rio-tinto-probe-20090712-dhdw.html
I also drew attention to Shanghai/Beijing tensions, and also to the struggle between the Party and the second generation wealthy ones. I suggest now that the steel factory managers may be the second generation wealthy ones here.
I will suggest something else: At least part of the heat here is because of a need to draw attention away from the very serious embarrassment caused by the Uigers. Hu felt that he had to leave the G8 meeting to deal with this. How embarrassment. The fact that Hu has been reported as personally approving the investigation into Hu is particularly significant.
Meanwhile back in the OO, the hamfisted ones are pretty well suggesting that Hu is innocent and that the Chinese Government is guilty and that Rudd is to blame. They do not seem to have cottoned on to the fact that something bigger may be going on here.
As usual, there are some truthes here but today’s OO lacks something I suggested was needed the other day: a nuanced appreciation of what is happening.
Firstly, is Hu ‘innocent’? Who knows? But, as I suggested the other day, yesterday’s ‘normal’ corruption can become today’s official breaking of anti-corruption laws. (Again, you read it first on Pollbludger, folks). The Party has organised the secret police to haul in large numbers of Chinese-born Chinese (like the irony?) Steel Factory executives. If they can’t find some real evidence of real corruption amongst all that lot, I would be very surprised.
BTW, the Chinese routinely execute hundreds of folk for corruption. It is not as if they have suddenly made corruption up.
It seems to me that the Party has decided that it needs to remind everyone that it is the Boss and, as I suggested the other day, given that it is feeling more threatened than we might think, that stability must in some sort of question and that Australians should be giving all this a good hard think. Instead we have the OO braying away, supporting Turnbull and Bishop who are also braying away.
Some further thoughts:
1. The Rudd Government has given somewhat conflicting signals to the Chinese Government on several issues. These are detailed in the Australian. The signals issue is not helpful at this stage.
2. Crean should never have agreed to meet with a junior chappy from somewhere or other. He should have refused the meeting. The appropriate next step would have been to keep seeking a meeting at equal levels. (Again, as I pointed out the other day in the blog, the issue of time and timing is important here. If we appear to be in too much of a hurry, this plays into the hands of the hardliners in Beijing/Shanghai. The failure to appreciate this would be one of may main criticisms of the OO).
3. Rio has behaved in Rio’s interests. Arguably, from a Chinese perspective, it has behaved in bad faith in a big way. The results have not been in Australia’s interests. The problem is that the Australian Government, through FIRB decisions, has behaved in a similar way to that of the Chinese Government – it has interefered in purely commercial decisions. From a Chinese perspective, there is a whiff of hypocracy here.
4. While Australians may be surprised, this is not the first time that there has been an arrest of a senior business person during a period of business negotiation: (Areva/nuclear power plants).
What to do?
1. Relax about the time and timing bit. The Opposition has a legitimate role here – it should stop braying and bulling at a gate.
2. Work behind the scenes. Play the diplomatic game.
3. Publicly state that we condemn the rioting etc of the Uigers and that we condemn any corruption wherever it might happen.
4. Insist publicly that we are interested in seeing due process take place and that we are sure that fair, transparent trials will happen. In a way that is not linked specifically to the current case, we should continue to assert publicly our values of human rights.
5. There should be public Australian Government protests when we can demonstrably see that reasonable judicial standards are not being met. (BTW, we set these standards in Guantanamo Bay, and in the way in which we apply refugee laws, Right?)
6. Business will need to factor in a risk premium for doing business in China arising from the lack of arms-length between Government and Business there.
7. The Australian Government’s approach to ownership by Chinese entities of Australian businesses will also need to factor this in.
The Communist Party in China is facing monstrous challenges – it lured 150 million chinese peasants into the cities, it has created a mass of millionaires who are hungry for a finger of the political pie, it is reaching the limits of fresh water, it has an aging population, its information-control walls are being breached by millions of networked digital channels, its command and control processes are under major pressure. Thare are tens of thousands of cases of civil disobedience every year.
I wouldn’t want to be managing all that lot.
The arrest of Hu in this context is both small beer and sigificant. Australia’s response should be deliberate, well-paced and determined.
We should not be braying.
imacca @ 389
Planet Janet has always been full of sound & fury. Only when John Howard was PM did it seem to signify something other than nothing.
And for today’s little
vindication:
Have fun defending the undeleted expletives!
384
Tom, that’s a statement, not an argument.
You need to justify this: do you have ANY evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, which indicates this is so?
Secondly, how do you explain this poll? Why (given utegate etc) would the ALP lose votes to the Greens over the last fortnight? (Easy to imagine why the Libs would lose 3% — which, BTW, was my prediction – but I don’t think you can explain why the ALP would).
But, as I repeatedly say, if you don’t want to understand what is happening, so that your party can take advantage of it, then that’s fine with me.
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