The Federal Election Might Yet Be Close...

Great article by Crispin Hull...

Full story on his website HERE.

It starts a little like this...

AUSTRALIAN elections are always close run things. But September’s election could easily be one of the very unusual outriders. In the 24 elections since Menzies came to power in 1949 in only two was the two-party-preferred split greater than 45-55.


Those were in 1966 — the All the Way with LBJ victory of Harold Holt — and the 1975 post-dismissal victory of Malcolm Fraser. (Cycle helmets stuff is below.)

Labor’s biggest victory was Bob Hawke’s 53 per cent in 1983.

Sometimes elections are so close that the party with the most votes does not get the most seats and does not get government. It happened in five of those 24 elections.


This, however, seems different. The opinion polls since February seem to have opened up. Nearly all of them are showing a two-party-preferred split of 45-55. Various polls of polls are showing the same thing – nearly three months’ worth of polling where the Opposition is around 10 points higher than the Government.

It is a big hole for Labor to pull out of in a very short time. True, John Howard and Paul Keating came back from such a deficit less than six months out from an election, but they did not have this long stretch of persistently bad polling.

Moreover, the Opposition’s lead is despite Tony Abbott not because of him.

It seems that there is a visceral detestation of Labor this time around. The core of it has been Labor’s own making. Kevin Rudd ditched the carbon tax after saying it was the biggest moral issue of our time. Labor then ditched Rudd. Julia Gillard then ditched a promise not to have a carbon tax.

Then the unnecessary promise to have a surplus was also ditched along with various other promises.

Some of the detestation has been an irrational reaction to Gillard – the misogyny factor....

And it continues HERE.

Some more radical ideas...

Further to an earlier post highlighting some of the more extreme policy ideas put forward by the IPA, that could be adopted by an Abbott government, I thought it apt to point the browser at some of the more radical ideas from the left of centre.

Bill Mitchell's Fantasy Budget puts a different perspective on the quantum of money the Federal Government should be spending, and where they should be spending it. You can access the full story on Bill Mitchell's blog, but some highlights below...

• Aim for a $70bn deficit this coming financial year
• Invest in more public hospital beds
• Significantly increase the education budget - above and beyond the Gonski levels
• Make major investments in public transport infrastructure
• Invest more into public housing
• Fast track investment into the VFT / HSR
• Fund R&D into Renewable Energy

In addition, he would see the abolition of the following

• Federal funding to non-government schools
• Negative gearing tax concessions
• Private Health Insurance rebate
• Private Hospital funding
• Corporate welfare, including to the mining sector

Something to think about? Or left-wing nutcase? Check out the logic and rationale at Bill Mitchell's Blog.

Signs that Canberra is Growing Up

In the aftermath of Canberran's* blowing out their one hundred candles on their celebratory cake, it is timely to highlight some of the indicators that show that Canberra has truly 'grown up' and can be classed as a real 'city'.

Over the past few months I have noticed the following:

- An increasing number of bike riders and walkers commuting themselves into the city without the need for powered transport. Lots and lots of people walking and riding bikes people. This is good!
- Braddon: Need I say more? Along with the construction of at least six new apartment or mixed use buildings, there are seemingly daily additions to the cafe and coffee shop scene. The local Northside hipsters and DINKS have never had it so good!
- And today, for the very first time, I saw an interstate business visitor hail a taxi by standing on Northbourne Ave and waving - like you can do in Sydney and Melbourne. I have never seen this before, so it was intriguing to say the least.

What other signs might there be to indicate that Canberra has grown up?  Or indeed, what other big city attributes do we need to see locally before we can claim Canberra is a real city?

* Note that I said that it was only Canberran's that participated in celebrating Canberra's one hundred year anniversary. Do you think anyone else across the rest of the country cared? Or even knew it was C100?  This is the theme for another post for sure.....

An indictment on the current state of Australian Federal politics.

From  http://t.co/vOsQnc69cd