Campaign comment and analysis

I never thought I would fail to cast a vote in a Federal election, and I never thought I’d be relieved that I didn’t. But I did, and I am.

In my defence, I was somewhere in the boondocks of Turkey when the election was under way, and had pretty much dropped the ball on sorting out my postal vote.

It may or may not say something about the administration of our electoral system that I’ve never been queried on this failure to exercise my franchise, but I’ve got to say, not having to make a decision has relieved me of the burden of responsibility for doing so.

Continue reading "I can’t believe I almost voted for The Greens" »

At this time of year, the Australian political junkie is in a state of melancholy induced by the end of parliament and politically associated TV shows like QandA, Insiders and Lateline.

Sometimes the weight of these melancholic feelings are of such significance that the political junkie may begin to ask, in typical political terms, “should I give the game away?”.

If you are asking yourself this question, I suggest it would be most prudent for you to commission the committee of your brain and soul to conduct a cost-benefit analysis on whether you should continue moving forward with politics, or begin to move away from it, in 2011.

Continue reading "A cost benefit analysis of an Australian political junkie" »

It’s easy to attack politicians.

No better evidence perhaps than the bitchy list we compiled yesterday of MPs we think disappointed or just disappeared. But we’re not just a bunch of naysayers here at The Punch. Indeed we appreciate politics and politicians are great deal, otherwise we wouldn’t bother writing about it.

So here’s a list, in no particular order, of MPs who have tried and triumphed in 2010.

Well it’s been one hell of an effort by Tony Abbott:

Continue reading "10 of the best performing MPs of the year" »

Calling this political year a long one is a little like Usain Bolt recenlty describing himself as “quick”.

This year’s political highlights were as extraordinary as they were painful. The language describing them is consistently one of violence: a spiked ETS policy, a Prime Minister stabbed in the back, an election on a knife edge and, finally, a hung parliament.

On the battle field that was federal politics in 2010 we had those that thrilled and those that failed. Tomorrow we’ll give our verdict on the best performers. But today, on the second last day of Parliament sitting for the year, The Punch presents, in no particular order, our most underwhelming MPs who have disappointed or just disappeared in 2010.

How are you still a Minister Peter Garrett?

Continue reading "The 10 worst performing MPs of 2010" »

Julia Gillard may be running out of time to stamp her authority on the government as the first murmurings of unease emerge.

A curious lack of courage on something as simple as allowing its MPs a conscience vote on same sex unions raises fears that the new government may be bundled up with the old in voters’ minds.

During the election campaign the question of who Julia Gillard was became central. It even led Ms Gillard to declare that she would come out from behind the campaign artifice and allow voters to see the ``real Julia’‘. The idea was sound but announcing it was just plain dopey.

Continue reading "Time is running out for Julia to find her mojo" »

What does Julia Gillard believe in? Let’s start by considering her history as a guide.

Julia Gillard started her political career in student politics at the Labor Club at Adelaide University. After moving to Melbourne, she worked assiduously to rise to become the head of the peak student union body, the Australian Union of Students, by 1983. Unsurprisingly, given student Labor politics is largely characterised by more radical left-wing ideology than the mainstream Labor Party, Gillard was also secretary of the Socialist Forum at university. The parliamentary register of interests indicates that Gillard remained a member of this Forum until 2002, which included her first four years in Parliament.

Looking at this, you might be led to believe that Gillard strongly favours the left-side of politics. And it is true that Gillard had, at least up until 2009, been a member of the Labor Party’s left faction. But, in fact, when Gillard wrested power from Kevin Rudd earlier this year, she did so with the backing of the dominant right faction of the Labor Party, the hard left favouring Rudd.

Continue reading "Who are you Julia?" »

If our election on 21 August had been held under British, Canadian, Indian or American rules, we wouldn’t have had to wait. We would have known the results that evening. 

It would have been a landslide to the Coalition.  Their majority would have been about the same size as that of the Rudd government. The three independents would have had no role in the formation of the government, and neither the Green MP nor Mr. Willkie would have been there.

There is no perfect electoral system, and none is sacrosanct. Politicians being human, they prefer the system which they think will favour them. But circumstances change. What favours a party at one time can disadvantage them at another. 

Continue reading "Let’s ditch preferential voting - but only in the House" »

If the Australian people were faced with the prospect of this weekend’s AFL grand final not going ahead because neither team could agree on the umpire, this nation could be faced with a level of social unrest that could force East Timor to come to our aid. Fortunately this crisis only goes to whether our Parliament can sit or not so it will be fine.

With the decision by Tony Abbott not to honour parts an agreement on parliamentary reform we are still faced with a speakerless House of Representatives, and now the awkward question of whether we’ll return for Parliament next week or not.

There are a couple of things to consider about Abbott’s decision and Gillard’s reaction to it. Needless to say it’s all about concern for political hides rather than anything to do with parliamentary reform. 

Continue reading "So should we call Parliament off next Tuesday?" »

Two weeks ago we were being told by the federal independent MPs that regional Australia had been neglected and was run down after years of not getting back a fair share of the riches it creates for the nation.

Today an alliance of regional towns is out spruiking themselves as alternatives to metropolitan life, by virtue of their great housing, cheaper living costs and an abundance of career and investment opportunities.

They can’t both be right. So which is the real regional Australia?

Continue reading "Would the real regional Australia please stand up" »

Sometimes a response to a polling question comes along that makes you re-evaluate your preconceived ideas, where the public’s refusal to confirm your gut instincts forces you to have a fresh look at the evidence before you.

Asking people to cast stones at the media’s reporting of the federal election seemed like a simple enough exercise, the public would confirm the media did a poor job and we could all wring our hands about democracy once again denied.

But hold the presses. Something is amiss. Fewer than a quarter of respondents to the Essential Report join the party.  One third rate the coverage at election time ‘good’, a further 40 per cent ‘average’. And far more say the media ‘gave fair coverage of all parties’ than thought they favoured a particular side.

Continue reading "Stop the presses: the media aren’t that crap" »

To all those in the The Punch community who wanted – needed – to believe in the ‘New Paradigm’ politics: sorry, we told you so.

In order to gain the Speakership of our Parliament, one of the Independents will have to consider deciding and neutralising his vote on any issue before it is debated in the chamber. Goodbye quaint notion of MPs working together to discern the national interest through rational parliamentary dialogue. Goodbye the New Naïveté.

In the end, the Independents, like most politicians, believe that everything will be better if only they hold the power. This Independent is after the power of the Speakership, because only he can be trusted with the power of the new paradigm.

Continue reading "Farewell new paradigm, we hardly knew you" »

Hasluck is a relatively new seat and has always been marginal - changing at every election. Labor and Liberal Parties have each held the West Australian seat twice.

It is interesting reflecting back on any journey we take in life and remembering each event, which occurred during this time. In reflecting on the Hasluck campaign I have this sense that it was surreal, similar to the effect of a dream that leaves you unsure if it was real or imagined when you wake up. It’s real and I will always cherish the moments frozen in time and locked away in my memories.

My preselection as a candidate seems so long ago, and the whirlwind journey to become the elected member of Hasluck has been exciting and packed with experiences. Campaigns are extremely hard work buoyed by the people who support and work with you each day.

Continue reading "How the west was won" »

I’m sure I am not alone in saying that every time I see Kevin Rudd on the television these days I hear Metallica playing Enter Sandman in the background and expect him to jump on a Harley and blow away a Columbian drug lord with a sawn-off.

Or maybe he just has a certain look in his eye.

The sad truth is that there have been no winners in this agonisingly protracted and policy-free election campaign. No winners except Kevin, that is.

Continue reading "One lesson from the election: Don’t mess with Kevin" »

Many conclusions have been made about the “new paradigm” of Australian politics. 

Much has been written of the rise of Independents – though close to 80% of Australians cast their first preference vote for either the Coalition or Labor, and that figure rises to 90% if you include the Greens, which by nature of their deal with Labor are no longer an innocuous fringe dweller.

All interesting stuff for the media and those whose lives revolve about politics and the operation of Parliament. But the real lesson of the past few weeks, the real message we ought to take from the sideshow is that it’s not about the Government of the day.  It’s not really about Government full stop.

Continue reading "The lesson from the new paradigm: less is more" »

In a recent article about balanced reporting, the former director of the Australia Institute Clive Hamilton noted that to give equal weighting that reflected the opinion of those who accept climate change as human induced and a cross section of sceptics would be 39:1.

As someone who spends a lot of time on climate debates, I would say that this is kind of generous to sceptics – the ratio would be more like 100:1.

How do I come up with this figure? Recently Stephan Lewandowsky, a Winthrop Professor at the University of Western Australia, analysed the number of peer-reviewed articles published by scientists at the UNSW’s Climate Change Research Centre versus those who argue against anthropogenic global warming. The results since 2007? Zero to the sceptics and 110 peer-reviewed to the research centre. This is only one research centre of hundreds so maybe even 100:1 is generous. So why does the public still remain confused about the reality of climate change?

Continue reading "Debate suffers when pollies think we’re too dumb to get it" »

As a long-suffering leftie, I thought it was just my fragile ego that was picking up an increase in the intensity of the bucketing I have been receiving from my Punch fan club in recent weeks.

But now we have statistical evidence to prove that the federal election has transformed average Liberal voters from mildly dysfunctional union–baiters into feral class warriors who want to tear down a system that no longer works for them.

In a series of questions about attitudes to the independents and Greens, huge numbers of Liberal voters have put themselves in the ‘strongly disapprove’ column.

Continue reading "10 handy stress-relief tips for furious Aussie conservatives" »

MONDAY 06/09/10

6:00am

Mobile rings. Gravelly voice says “It’s the devil”. Ask Bill Heffernan why he is calling at such an ungodly hour? Bill shocked I guessed it was him. Remind Bill he’s called me before and that picture of the devil comes up when he calls.

Ask Bill why he still does this?

Heffernan says he can’t help being a prankster. AND has had a lot of time on his hands since the Kirby ‘prank’.

Bill has never been funny.

Lunchtime

Joyce charges into office, demands $1 billion for veterinary hospital in his electorate. Slams signed declaration on desk that states he will not support Coalition if demand isn’t met. Ask Joyce who he will support.

Continue reading "Diary of a Liberal Frontbencher: End game" »

Update 2pm: Julia Gillard has named her new ministerial team. It includes Kevin Rudd as PM, Stephen Smith in Defence and Simon Crean heading a new regional affairs ministry. You can read full details here.

Australians finally know when Parliament will sit, September 28, but few have any idea what will happen when it does.

Visually, it will be interesting having both sides so evenly matched on numbers in the House of Representatives. Where will the independents sit - on the cross benches yes, but where exactly? On the Government side or on the Opposition side? It is one of many questions.

Julia Gillard may have emerged victorious from our closest ever election, but beyond that stretches yet more uncertainty. A new Cabinet will be named as early as today, but Ms Gillard knows that is the easy bit. Well, kind of.

Continue reading "Headache of government beats not governing at all" »

Here’s a simple question in a democracy – if over 80 percent of the electorate support, through a formal vote, candidates who clearly run on a specific policy, what should the new Government’s position be on that policy?

Well according to the Greens – and their cheerleaders such as Deborah Cameron on the ABC – you should first decide whether those candidates were duped by focus groups. When you decide they were – it’s fairly obvious really – you then tell the voters what they really wanted, what deep in their hearts they should believe.

Just on the primary vote, let alone the two-party preferred results, an overwhelming majority of citizens supported candidates committed to off-shore processing of asylum claims.

Continue reading "The new Green paradigm: bugger the majority" »

Instead of a conventional piece of writing about today’s triumphant ALP Caucus meeting, we thought we’d cover it through the lenses of News Limited photographers Ray Strange, Kym Smith and Gary Ramage, who were there today chronicling an event which often looked like it would never happen.

This first photograph, by Ray Strange, tells much of the story of this bizarre two months in federal politics. In the foreground is Stephen Smith, who served as Foreign Minister in Kevin Rudd’s first and last term as PM. In the middle of the election campaign, when Rudd was accused of leaking damaging Cabinet information and leadership details to Laurie Oakes, Smith magnaminously told Julia Gillard that he was prepared to vacate that portfolio to make way for Kevin Rudd. It’s expected that this will happen when Julia Gillard announces her new ministry on the weekend. Rudd has gone from being the reviled accused leaker to valued senior member of the team.

The next photograph, by Kym Smith, is the moment Julia Gillard arrived at the meeting. By the shape of her smile, she seems to be thinking: “Yikes. We did it.” You can’t quite make out the documents she’s carrying - maybe it’s another list of demands from the independents.

Continue reading "Julia’s triumphant return: The story in photographs" »

Despite it being the dawn of the Sunshine Parliament, Julia Gillard is going to have to make some decisions about her cabinet based very much on the darker and drearier realities of the last Government.

Between former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, former Prime Ministerial backstabbers and powerbrokers in Mark Arbib and Bill Shorten and Robb “this could go on for a while yet” Oakeshott, Julia Gillard is faced with political equivalent of a surgical face transplant in a NSW public hospital.

Heres are a few people and portfolios that are going to leave the Prime Minister with some headaches:

Kevin Rudd

He’s not so much the elephant in the room as he is an erudite 200 kilogram, opera singing multi lingual gorilla in the room that regularly supplies analysis for the six o’clock news. Queensland was apparently upset that he got dumped as PM, but as he never really seemed to disappear so it’s unclear why they were so upset.

Continue reading "Gillard’s big cabinet headaches" »

While Tony Abbott managed to resurrect the Coalition from its electoral death bed, to come so close and not seal the deal leads to questions of how the Coalition ultimately failed.

Here’s five things that they stuffed up in their bid to form Government:

1. Broadband:

Tony Windsor said this was critical in his decision to back Labor. The Coalition’s decision to spike the National Broadband Network policy in its entirety is questionable, but it was compounded by Abbott’s almost wilful ignorance of the issue during the campaign.

Continue reading "5 reasons Abbott didn’t seal the deal" »

Put My Way on the karaoke machine. It’s the end of the night and the sun is coming up on a new government - a Labor minority government, to be precise. If you’re a bit of a political tragic having followed the campaign and its surreal denouement, tomorrow you might wake up feeling as if someone has died.

But conversely if you don’t care - and many normal people don’t seem to have given a hoot, in fact being politically rudderless has been a subject of some mirth - you might feel as if that irritating but really fun friend of yours has just left town. Anyway here’s The Punch’s list of our favourite shark-jumping and oddball moments of the 2010 campaign. Add yours in the comments, and we might build out the list. Let’s start with today’s silliness:

1. Rob Oakeshott’s speech announcing who he would support: Really, could he actually have drawn it out any longer? He started with a list of thank-yous that made it seem like he was accepting an Oscar, then proceeded with a meandering justification of his decision that prompted Laurie Oakes to wonder if we would be here another fortnight. But in the end said he would support Julia Gillard in helping Labor form a minority government.

Continue reading "Goodbye campaign 2010, we’ll miss you" »

Just when it looked like the prospect of a hung Parliament had taken us to a new paradigm of political discourse, where nice trumps nasty and diversity of opinion is respected, the public has sent a clear message: enough already!

After railing against stage-managed elections, two weeks of introspection and pandering to the wishes of non-aligned members has the public calling for a recommencement of hostilities.

According to this week’s Essential Report, a majority of voters want a new election – and even more (70 per cent) believe a new poll is inevitable.

Continue reading "10 reasons we want to go back to the polls" »

One of the many elements of Tony Blair’s memoir to have created headlines was his admission that he “stretched the truth past breaking point in order to get agreement” during negotiations in the Northern Ireland peace process.

Send out an SMS alert, create an explanatory graphic - a politician has admitted lying. Blair was pressed about this by a newspaper and, in the customary manner of a former national leader freed from the shackles of office, here’s what he said:

I actually think that with normal people, when you go to them and ask: do you think a politician should ever be obliged to, you know, stretch the truth in order to achieve a greater national objective, they would look at you as if you were bonkers for asking the question. There’s no walk of professional life that you can exist in where you literally open up everything to everybody.

Continue reading "Politicians have a licence to tell some lies" »

In the next few days we should know whether Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott will be the next Prime Minister.

Regardless of whoever prevails they should do the country a favour and appoint the leader they knocked off to be the country’s chief diplomat.

The position of Minister for Foreign Affairs, which for the moment at least also has trade tacked on, is a coveted portfolio. Unlike most other ministries it has traditionally involved dealing almost exclusively with matters core to the national interest with a lesser regard for the day-to-day trench warfare of politics. Until Kevin Rudd came along.

Continue reading "Rudd and Turnbull are the safe hands for foreign affairs" »

What has become increasingly clear from the dithering statements from the three independents is they are unlikely to announce a decision on who will form government today.

Tony Windsor is still speaking in some kind of Yoda code, now worried that the three buddies will split:

“To talk to the other two about the possible prospect of a 75-all I must, in which case we might have to even rethink our own thoughts.  Yeesssssss.

“How the other two are going to vote, I know not.  Going to put our cards on the table today we are.  To see if we can get to something that is stable, the main objective here is. If we cannot get to something, stable we may well end up back at the polls, that is.”

(That was a Yoda translation of what Windsor actually told journalists this morning, it really wasn’t far off)

Continue reading "Some cricket relief during a political rain delay" »

A hung parliament is a golden opportunity for serious reform. The independents should not waste their extraordinary power on ephemeral trivia such as the black holes issue. (This is essentially about whether Treasury’s long term predictions are reliable. They are not.)

They should do something for which they will be immortalised in the nation’s pantheon. They should propose fundamental reform to our system of government, making it more democratic.

Why do the people have to wait three or four years to pass judgement on a failed government?  Why shouldn’t they block a law they do not like?

Continue reading "Trivial independents miss chance at making history" »

There are many of us who happily whiled away our youth reading those terrific Choose Your Own Adventure books where by thumbing through to different pages, you could select from a variety of endings.

They were swashbuckling tales involving shady figures, sinister conspiracies, acts of trickery, magic and deceit - pretty much like the 2010 federal election.

Now entering its third week, this campaign has been even more fantastic than anything the authors of those adolescent adventures could have dreamed up. It’s often been just as juvenile.

Continue reading "Choose your own election: come with me to Acapulco" »

THE past two weeks of political dealing and card playing between the major parties and the Independents to form a minority government reminds me of Kenny Rogers’ ode to The Gambler.

The song’s chorus, in particular, sums up the quandary faced by the political gamblers:

You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run. You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table. There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealing’s done.

Continue reading "Independents took a leaf from Kenny Rogers’ book" »

Let’s face it: What Paul McLeay’s done isn’t the worst thing in the world. It isn’t even the worst thing in the NSW Government.

The now former minister was summarily shafted—an activity with which he is apparently familiar—by Premier Kristina Keneally after being busted looking at porn and gambling on his parliamentary computer.

There is no question that his behaviour was stratospherically stupid, but again, these days that is more a pre-requisite for getting into Cabinet than being booted out of it.

Continue reading "Watching them do it online, as Labor did it to the nation" »

The Greens are now officially the far-left faction of the Australian Labor Party.  They have been signed, sealed and delivered by a Prime Minister desperate to cling to power and their own party leader who is clearly desperate to be part of the “big game” he has always decried.

Those people who voted Green because they would “stand up to” the major parties must be bewildered and disappointed by the indecent haste with which they have got into bed with the Labor Party.

The Greens can no longer claim to be an “alternative” to the major parties, because they are now a formalised wing of Labor.  Rather than being a third political force, they’re just Labor’s appendage.

Continue reading "Introducing Labor’s new faction – the Greens" »

Update 9:15PM: Appearing on Sky News this evening the crucial three independents Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor say they still have not made up their minds over which party to support.  It continues.

Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie’s decision to side with Julia Gillard’s Labor Government is not surprising.

The intelligence officer turned Iraq war whistler blower was basically labelled a clear and present danger to national security by the Howard Government, formally had a fling with The Greens and now holds what is usually a safe Labor seat – hardly paints the picture of someone who would hand Government to the Coalition. Like the laughable attempt by Bob Brown to tell us the day after the election the Greens could side with any party, Wilkie’s decision ended what was a series of false flirtations with Tony Abbott.

But by revealing that Tony Abbott, like Dr Evil making an ambit claim, was willing to write a $1 billion cheque for Royal Hobart Hospital, Wilkie could have done more damage to Abbott than anything Treasury can come up with.

Continue reading "Abbott’s Fatal Austin Powers Moment: One Billion Dollars" »

Well silly old me. There I was thinking the 2010 federal election was about economic management, border protection, broadband and leadership.

Turns out it was about light rail for north Hobart, the reintroduction of tariffs for the banana industry, an hourly limit on poker machine betting, new rules governing the length of answers during Question Time and the urgent introduction of an emissions trading scheme.

For all the talk about who has the biggest mandate, a separate and more compelling point should be made about the emergence of a raft of left-field side issues as bargaining chips in the battle to form government. And that is – none of these independents has any mandate at all to use them as conditions for supporting the major party.

Continue reading "The national policy agenda which nobody voted for" »

Australia really needs to do something about its addiction to opinion polls.

The week following the election, just like the weeks that led up to it, was dominated by polls.

First came the local ones in the rural Independents’ electorates, which some interpreted as a new set of riding instructions to Messrs Katter, Windsor and Oakeshott.

Continue reading "We need to get over our poll addiction" »

Having recently been in New York I am able to present the playbill lyrics of a show that opened off-off-off-off-off Broadway last month. Despite overwhelmingly harsh reviews from numerous critics it appears the production is going to have a surprisingly extended run.

A Night at the Ballot

Opening scene: Julia Gillard’s office. A number of faceless men lurk in the shadows behind Julia.

Continue reading "A Night at the Ballot: Election 2010, the musical" »

As the country enters yet another day of political limbo, at least one element of the recent federal election is clear: the Australian people want genuine action on climate change.

Over a week has passed since voters rejected both the major parties, creating our first hung parliament in seventy years and only the second in our history. The electorate’s disapproval of each alternative government manifested in a swell of support for the Greens and independents, who now hold the balance of power in both houses of parliament.

This unique situation seems in no small part to have arisen from Labor and the Coalition’s reluctance to offer substantive policies to mitigate global warming—the issue heralded as the greatest moral and economic challenge of our time.

Continue reading "Political limbo: hung for lack of climate vision" »

I don’t know about you, but I feel beaten over the head by the demands of the four Independents.

What about our demands?

Here are some of issues plaguing Australians. Feel free to add your own.

1.    Who shrunk the Weet-bix? Is it an evil ploy by the Seventh Day Adventists at Sanitarium to slowly starve us until – low on carbs and high on delirium – we agree to join their religion? And who decided that Sultana Bran shouldn’t have as many sultanas? Discuss.

Continue reading "The indies should be asking about the WeetBix" »

When the political history of 2010 is written, every element of the closest election in a generation will be rightly scrutinized. The winning side will get home by a hair’s breadth ­ but could it be hair that determines the result?

Because there is a minority group whose natural connection with their chief advocate did not translate into votes on August 22 ­ Australia’s rangas turned on Julia Gillard at the moment she needed their support most.

Exclusive hair-based research from the Punch shows that redheads turned their locks away from Gillard, being the least likely hair coloured group to support the ALP.

Continue reading "This election was not the ranga revolution predicted" »

Thursday, 26 August, 2010

7:00am

Horrible nightmare. Dreamt election never ended, then suddenly realised I was awake.

8:00am

Meeting in my office with Abbott, Alby Schultz and Hockey to discuss negotiations with Independents and costings.

Abbott says Treasury cannot be trusted. Just look at lying leakers like Godwin Grech. Point out that Grech leaked to Malcolm Turnbull. Abbott says that’s exactly his point.

Schultz proposes divide-and-conquer approach to Independents. Says it worked with the three musketeers. Unclear whether Schultz took away central message of Three Musketeers.

Abbott likes idea. Schultz will talk to Windsor. Shultz says they share language: Fair-Dinkumese.

Wants me to speak to Oakeshott.

Abbott will talk to Katter.

Continue reading "Diary of a Liberal frontbencher: The indy wars" »

Julia Gillard is now in a bit of strife. Since the inconclusive result on polling night - almost 10 days ago - she has argued that Labor has the right to govern because the two-party preferred vote shows a majority of Australians voted for the Government.

Not any more. As of late this afternoon, a majority of Australians voted for the Coalition. 

Both in her public rhetoric and her lobbying of the independents, Ms Gillard had placed great store in the fact that Labor was ahead on the 2PP vote. When she made the claim on the Sunday after the August 21 poll, Labor enjoyed a lead of 50.66 per cent to the Coalition’s 49.34 per cent, and no-one thought it likely that the lead would change. 

Continue reading "On the PM’s own test, the numbers now favour the Libs" »

Update 2pm: Now Bob Katter’s office says he was only “speaking figuratively” about being punched on election night.

Update 12.15pm: Bob Katter has just claimed he was punched on election night, but it’s not clear if he was suggesting it was by a member of the Coalition.

Update 12pm: Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan has outed himself as the maker of the “it’s the devil” call to Rob Oakeshott. Fairfax’s Phil Coorey says it’s one of the Senator’s “standard jokes” when he rings people.

Tony Abbott’s pitch to the country independents is looking a bit flimsy this morning. He’s got one unnamed Lib MP making “devil” calls to Rob Oakeshott’s family, the Nats are jumping up and down saying “what about us?” and over the weekend it emerged Alby Shultz took it upon himself to ring Tony Windsor and give him a piece of his mind.

The Coalition is carrying on like a bunch of school girls (apologies to schools girls everywhere) who don’t actually want to form Government.

Continue reading "Who needs enemies when you’ve got a Party Room" »

The electoral objective of a political party is to win or retain government. This is not the highest aim of a party. Good, competently administered, and visionary programs that uphold human dignity, support individual freedom and assist the nation to be secure and prosper are the reasons why government should be sought. But in purely electoral terms, winning or retaining government is the key objective.

Sometimes this is impossible, due to the competence and popularity of the opposing party, or the travails of one’s own. In these circumstances, the secondary objective of a political party is to not lose badly.

This is because election swings are usually small in Australia’s preferential voting system. A party rarely obtains the landslide witnessed in first-past-the-post nations. However, the cumulative loss of seats in successive elections makes the task of winning again more difficult. An average swing at a subsequent election may be insufficient to achieve victory because of the cumulative deficit of seats.

Continue reading "How Labor lost its mandate to govern" »

I stumbled upon a new and informative website today: http://doesaustraliahaveagovernmentyet.com/

It sums up the current political situation pretty well, and what a bizarre situation it is.

Gillard stabbed Rudd in the back, Rudd stepped up and helped out his Lady Macbeth during the election, interim-mad-monk-Abbott pushed a relentless campaign, we discovered that there was Julia and then there was the “real Julia” (along with two impersonators) which was confusing, the Greens slid gracefully into the Senate and House of Reps, Bob Katter… I don’t know what Bob Katter is doing, but one somewhat effective campaign video and all of a sudden he’s the force to be reckoned with.

Continue reading "Do we have a government yet? No, thank goodness" »

Who’s going to win the next federal election?

It is on the face of it a particularly stupid question, given that we don’t yet know who won this federal election.

And given the glacier-like pace of negotiations between the major parties and the independents and Greens, history may eventually describe this poll as the 2010-2011 election, such is the slowness of its resolution.

Continue reading "Whoever wins this election is likely to lose the next one" »

During election campaigns, Canberra is to national politics what a hole is to a doughnut - defining, but of no interest.

That changed with a rush in the wake of the closest result in a century.  With neither side able to claim a majority, both leaders rushed back to the national capital to court a suddenly pivotal troika of independents, Bob Katter, Tony Windsor, and Rob Oakeshott - all former Nationals members.

But rather than filling in the ``hole’‘, the unedifying horse-trading now underway Canberra has done the opposite. Bluntly, the nation is in danger of being dropped right in it.

Continue reading "Dawn of a new democracy? More like a siege" »

Julia Gillard’s office has just released some letters she sent to Tony Abbott regarding caretaker conventions and one of the most interesting things about them was the signature. Here’s her signature from the letter dated August 25.

And here’s what she wrote two days later on August 27.

I have to admit the unsightly scrawl I call my signature changes almost every time I write it. But I wonder what the hand writing experts would tell us about this.

Should Australia make a quick return to the polls, stand by for the el cheapo election re-run, where the late night Guthy-Renker advertisements for the Sham-Wow chamois system and the Zumba high-energy dance program are interrupted by statements from a guy called Tony and a woman called Julia about their vision for the nation.

After the style of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, the leaders will spruik their major policies on a series of hand-written cardboard flashcards.

There will be no money for focus group testing.

Continue reading "The NEW! improved low-fi el cheapo election campaign" »

The Australian Greens is a political party that comes to wreck and to not build.

Their grand plan is to turn Australia, the fourteenth largest economy in the world into Tasmania writ large.

Modern Tasmania lives off the redistributionist largesse of Commonwealth subsidies and public service salaries. Two thirds of the island State is locked up in national parks and its population growth has been historically anaemic for many decades. Through the Hare-Clarke system, development and entrepreneurialism is gridlocked – a happy outcome if you are an advocate of zero population growth and genteel poverty.

Continue reading "The Greens plan for Australia: A big Tasmania" »

I was at a pub a couple of weeks ago and a friend asked my prediction about the election. Not much into making predictions I speculated that Abbott would do better than anyone expected and the ALP were running a campaign that could ruin them. One of my other friends jumped in and said, ‘it’s the tax, the mining tax, the idiots should never tax the one thing that makes us rich’.

An interesting debate followed that only ended when someone reminded me that it was ‘my shout’. Being a Saturday night and with the footy on the big screen, I think we simultaneously decided that this discussions about tax do not make for an ideal night out.

While the country remains in political limbo and the power brokers are cutting deals, the mining tax is one of those issues that seem to be bubbling below the service.

Continue reading "Why the Independents should dig the mining tax" »

I voted for the first time this election. Willing to be a swinging voter in return for a competent government, I should have been the perfect target for a campaigning politician.

Yet the major parties do a better job at alienating youth than including us.

The incapacity to decipher anything politicians say or mean is alienating to youth who prefer a quick sound bite that is straight to the point. For voters of every age, accessing information more substantial than if the ‘real’ Julia or Tony is out today or who has better suited ears for Prime Ministership was hard this election.

After this weekend no one can doubt Australia’s frustration with such a shallow campaign.

Continue reading "Shallow campaigns have alienated young voters" »

This afternoon The Punch has obtained a new list of demands from the three men that hold the nation’s government in their hands:

Dear Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott,

We three independents, Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter and Tony Windsor, who are now officially acting on behalf of every Australian voter have been impressed with the progress made in negotiations to form a Government thus far, but have decided our initial seven point plan was lacking some flair. In that spirit we demand the following in for the sake of Australian democracy: 

1. Bob Katter wants a new pony and a lone ranger outfit

Continue reading "10 new demands from the three independents" »

There are a couple of reasons why Tony Abbott rebuffed the independents demands to have Treasury and finance cost their policies: they probably are a bit dodgy, he doesn’t trust treasury not to leak it and it’s an attempt at a show of strength from someone who’ll probably end up on top in the seat count.

During the campaign Abbott refused to submit his policies to Treasury under the Charter of Budget Honesty because he couldn’t trust treasury, or more specifically the Treasurer’s office, not to leak the findings.

Abbott appeared to refine his argument for not releasing the costings down to this reason this morning on ABC radio, calling a leak during the campaign from Treasury on Coalition costings: “an act of political bastardry”.

Continue reading "What could Abbott be thinking?" »

In yet another extraordinary exclusive, Joe Hildebrand has obtained tapes of Julia Gillard’s meetings with a key independent MP whose support she needs to form Government…

PA: Prime Minister, Mr Katter here to see you.

JULIA: Oh hello Bob, come in. Do you mind if I ask you to remove your hat?

BOB: What hat?

Continue reading "Revealed! The secret Bob and Julia tapes" »

With foreign policy barely rating a mention in the election campaign, the strongest indication we will have of the eventual winner’s view on the world is where they decide to go first.

Like most elections this campaign wasn’t fought on foreign policy.

Even with the tragic deaths of three soldiers in Afghanistan it was a passing topic. Tony Abbott did promise to dump Australia’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council and appoint a Minister for International Development. But the closest we got to a genuine debate on our place in the world was one about which island country to our north to send asylum seekers.

Continue reading "The foreign affairs guessing game: first stop for the PM?" »

The torturous negotiations over who can form a Government have taken an interesting twist, with former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd arriving in Canberra as talks with crucial independents begin.

The former Prime Minister, turned backbencher, turned Labor election campaigner has arrived at the same time crucial talks with rural independents Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Queenslander Bob Katter are taking place at Parliament House.

While Mr Rudd’s office says his trip to Canberra is not directly related to an attempt to form a Labor Government with the three independents, the former PM has a good relationship with the former independents, and is understood to have contacted Mr Katter on election night congratulating him on his re-election.

Continue reading "Is it Rudd to the rescue once more?" »

A new election will cost the taxpayers about $170 million. It’s a small price to pay for stability, which is something neither side will be able to deliver as a result of the seemingly insurmountable impasse created by Saturday’s mad result.

Governments are meant to operate in the national interest. The biggest worry about the current deadlock is that any balanced sense of national priorities will be compromised, as the party which forms government evaluates every major policy on the basis of what’s in it for Tamworth, Port Macquarie and whichever part of the planet Bob Katter hails from.

The last time we saw this distortion of public policy was in the late 1990s when Independent Senator Brian Harradine held the balance of power, and his home state of Tasmania was showered with extravagant telecommunications riches by the Coalition to buy his support for the Telstra sale.

Continue reading "We don’t need new politics, we just need a new election" »

Update - October 27, 2010: Another one bites the dust. Sadly this morning it was announced Paul the German octopus, who was responsible for the the humiliation of all creatures great and small after his psychic performance during the World Cup, has died. We have reposted the following in honour of dead psychic octopi everywhere.

This is the sickening non-human toll of Saturday’s election - a psychic octopus which has literally worked itself to death trying to determine whether Labor or the Coalition will form government.

Its last words were “No I don’t know what the postal votes are doing in Boothby” and then simply: “F**k this for a joke.”

The octopus is just one of many innocent creatures from the animal world enlisted by a callous and unthinking media to make election predictions in what now ranks as the most hackneyed and unfunny gimmick since changing the words to Hitler’s “Downfall” video.

Continue reading "Exhausted octopus dies picking Oz election result" »

On Friday my daughter turned 2. By the end of the month, she may have had more Prime Ministers in her life than birthdays.

That said, the result on Saturday night was a victory for the people. As much as the two major parties don’t like not knowing if they get the keys to Treasury, this is a great outcome for all Australians.

Throughout Australia, at the state level, we’ve been through this a few times more recently than the last time this happened federally. In Queensland – my most direct experience with hung parliaments – it started in 1995.

Continue reading "Hang time: Government limbo’s not entirely new" »

Three days after the election and punters will no doubt be biting their nails until the independents strike a deal with Gillard or Abbott to form a government. We’re still holding millions of dollars on the election result, and they could be waiting a week or so to be paid out on a head-to-head bet.

What’s clear is that punters who backed a hung parliament at $6.00 will be among the only ones celebrating at this stage.

With the wash up then showing about 73 seats in the bag for Labor and as many as 73 for the Coalition, punters didn’t take much of a rest after a late night awaiting a result on Saturday.

Continue reading "Follow the money: no result, but a number of winners" »

It took a brave (and bitter) kind of former politician to stand in front of the camera on 60 minutes, and tell the country to turn in a blank vote out of protest come election day. But that’s what happened.

In an amazing example of the pot calling the kettle black, Mark Latham declared neither party major worthy of leading Australia, and encouraged all voters to follow his lead and send them a clear message.

There’s a chance that even Mark Latham was surprised that people actually listened to him.

Continue reading "Goodbye naughty chair, it’s time to bring out the Latham" »

Eat your heart out, Antony Green. It’s cutting-edge interweb publishing here at The Punch. These infographic presentations explain the results of the 2010 election. Let’s start with the ratio of eggs to faces.

Next is a Venn diagram roughly illustrating the voting blocs in the new House of Representatives.

Continue reading "Crunching The Punch’s election data" »

I asked a bloke who has senior runs on the advertising board in “branding” of politicians to explain the election campaign.

He said the best analogy lies in bank ads. Writing campaigns for banks, he explained to me, is all about creating a distraction. “After financial deregulation, a gulf emerged between what retail customers wanted from banks and how bankers regarded their retail customers. The customers wanted a relationship with their bank. The bankers couldn’t care less.”

In the 90s, focus groups among average Australians who put their money with a given bank always ended in tears. “People would stand up and shout and cry. They felt incredibly let down”.

Continue reading "Brand-mad politicians acting like a pack of bankers" »

Meet Jackie Healy Rae. If Irish politics has a Bob Katter, it’s him. Like the member for Kennedy, he’s a rural independent and disaffected former member of an established party, who trades on his commitment to fighting for the peculiar concerns of his local constituents.

The parallels between Katter now and Healy Rae when he was first elected are as striking as their respective signature hats. The 1997 Irish general election produced a hung parliament in which the conservative coalition fell just short of a majority. Healy Rae was one of three independents who agreed to put old enmities aside and support the government in parliament. In return he extracted concessions for his constituents.

On the surface it’s all standard horse-trading, but there’s a murkier side that would be unwelcome in the Australian context. It has never been precisely clear what Healy Rae was promised in return for his support. And since 2007 Healy Rae has been propping up his old party again, under a deal which he openly says is none of the public’s business, thank you very much.

Continue reading "Heard the one about the Irish MP who promised stability?" »

I don’t mind admitting, I was excited when I rocked up to the polling booth. I was voting in Melbourne and Greens candidate Adam Bandt was favourite to win with the bookies.

There was no incumbent, this wasn’t a safe Liberal or Labor seat. No matter who I voted for, I felt like my vote could really make a difference.

I got my first How To Vote card from the kindly old Democrat volunteer and couldn’t help but notice they’d given their 3rd preference to the candidate from the Australian Sex Party. Way to go Democrats. I had no idea you guys were into that kind of Party!

Continue reading "How to vote in the electorate of Melbourne" »

What a great night to be Labor. As the Party swept back into office with a mandate to lead global action on climate change it seemed like the entire nation had grown a few inches taller.

The energy on the ground made the excitement of Kevin 07’s electoral triumph seem like a mere entrée to the main, as thousands of young people on booths around Australia literally enthused swinging voters into embracing the future.

Forgive my hyperbole just this once, but this was a night when the rules of politics were rewritten, where principle drove politics and the people responded by voting to reject fear and confront the reality of global warming.

Continue reading "Yes we will: remembering a campaign that never was" »

When Julia Gillard appeared on stage at the end of a punishing Saturday night to try to make sense of the deadlocked election result she opened with a quote from former President Bill Clinton after a previous US election: “The people have spoken, but it’s going to take a little while to determine exactly what they said.”

Well, if she is still in doubt about the message the people of Australia sent through the ballot box, she might like to read what they have been saying in cyberspace.

Even before election night was over, voters started sending a flurry of comments to online news sites with explanations and their own analysis of why the nation was staring at a hung parliament.

Continue reading "The people have spoken, but what did they say?" »

If the election was a referendum on the Government then the Coalition has lost.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott may have fond memories of referendums because of 1999, but his statement at 1.56 am on election night that the 2010 Federal ”…election has been a referendum on the political execution of a Prime Minister” could come back to bite him. If the Independents take his advice he’ll probably remain in Opposition for the foreseeable future.

The media and the Opposition are suggesting that the country rejected the current Government: “a humiliating rebuff” was the way ABC Radio National’s breakfast presenter Fran Kelly framed it in her interview with Federal minister Tony Burke on Monday morning.

Continue reading "Abbott losing his own election referendum" »

There’s a hilarious saga going on over an empty chair on tonight’s Q and A panel.

The ABC last week booked ALP powerbroker Mark Arbib for tonight’s show, but this evening Julia Gillard’s office pulled the NSW Senator from the show, and offered up backbencher David Bradbury instead.

The Q and A producers politely but indignantly told the PM’s office to bugger off. In the grand scheme of things it’s worth remembering it’s just a TV show, but in the absence of any concrete details out of Canberra tonight it’s set off a bit of a storm.

Continue reading "The empty chair missing its faceless man" »

Stability - hilariously enough - is the word of the day in Canberra as both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott argue that they are best placed to find a way out of the mess left from Saturday’s election shemozzle. 

While much of the horse-trading will come down to policy - that is, arguments over the respective party positions on big issues such as national broadband and the ETS - it will also be determined in equal measure by questions of personality. And the top-shelf sledging and sniping which we’ve seen in the past 36 hours suggests that neither the Labor Party nor the Coalition can credibly promise they will be able to deliver a stable minority government.

The immediate challenge for Labor is to keep a lid on the explosive tensions involving the conduct of national secretary Karl Bitar and factional numbers men and anti-Rudd plotters such as Mark Arbib, who has pulled out of a scheduled appearance o Q and A tonight amid the fallout from Saturday.

Continue reading "Fate of nation rests upon who hates who the least" »

Someone forgot to tell Julia Gillard yesterday that the ballot boxes have closed.

The Prime Minister gave a long press conference in which she made a pitch to the three men who could decide who forms government, Independents Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott. The problem is, it sounded a lot like the pitch she’s been making to voters every day for the past five weeks.

What both she and Tony Abbott need to realise is that the slogans they repeated with mind-numbing intensity during the campaign are part of the reason we’ve ended up with with a hung parliament.

Continue reading "Cut the crap, independents tell Gillard and Abbott" »

Desperate times call for desperate measures and the measures don’t get much more desperate than the argument between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott over which side won the popular vote in Saturday night’s election shambles.

At stake in this argument is nothing less than the right to govern a nation - well at least for a few weeks until Bob Katter demands we declare war on Brazil over orange imports, Tony Windsor has the entire $43 billion outlay for the National Broadband Network spent in Tamworth alone, Rob Oakeshott declares Port Macquarie a tax-free haven, and Adam Bandt announces the Melbourne CBD is now a bilby sanctuary.

As both sides start playing footsies with the independents, they are desperate to claim the mantle of legitimacy, to argue that the number of votes they received overall has given them a popular mandate.

Continue reading "They don’t totally love us but they like us a teensy bit more" »

The 2010 election result may not yet be clear, and we may be far from certain just who will be Prime Minister in a week or a fortnight’s time, but there is one thing we do know after the events of Saturday night.

The Australian people have chosen the Greens to play a much greater role in our new Parliament, and a much greater role in our decision-making.

Aside from the fact that we are looking at the first hung parliament since 1940, we have seen an historic vote for the Greens, with a record share of the national vote for a third party, both in the House of Representatives and the Senate. That is in addition to the success of Adam Bandt , the first Green to win a lower house seat at a Federal election.

Continue reading "Democracy will benefit from a healthy shade of Green" »

Humble pie is a real food. Modern derivatives of it are mainly sweet, but the original dish was something like shepherd’s pie, only made with animal entrails rather than meat.

So that’s the recipe if you need to serve it up, and there’ll be many ruing their failed election result predictions today. Including me. Offal, yum.

But whatever about numbers of seats there were a range of predictions and arguments about the risks and opportunities in the campaign for both sides that never materialised. So here, totally subjectively, in no particular order and without pointing fingers, is a list of the top 10 campaign theories put about by smartypantses of all persuasions that turned out to be wrong. Please add your favourite wrong predictions and analyses in the comments.

Continue reading "Humble pie anyone? Top 10 furphies of the 2010 election" »

In an unlikely attempt to continue to govern Julia Gillard will be dammed by the two words that she has said are central to her claim to power: legitimacy and stability. A Gillard Labor Government cannot make a claim to either.

When she called the election last month Prime Minister Gillard said that she was seeking legitimacy from the Australian people after she toppled Kevin Rudd in a Prime Ministerial coup:

“I made a pledge to the Australian people on the day I became Prime Minister that they would, soon, be able to exercise their birth right, their choice of who should lead this nation.  So I’m delivering on that promise today,” she said when calling the election.

Continue reading "Gillard in big trouble no matter what happens" »

All around Australia, voters are emerging from their post-election hangovers to nibble at a McMuffin and wonder about what just happened.

Australian politics is usually so nice, clear and conventional. Remember those Howard days when nothing seemed to change? Now we are left with something called a hung parliament that sounds like it belongs in a wardrobe or a porno.

Still, no wonder the election result is confused.  It has been an entirely confusing campaign – where all the normal laws of nature (inexplicably) didn’t apply.

Continue reading "Official: Election 2010 was the show about nothing" »

The collapse in support for the ALP last night could Labor to the wilderness, and is a harbinger for Labor defeats in NSW and Queensland where the swing to the Coalition last night was devastating. As the ALP begins its period of introspection, it must reflect on one important fact. Namely, the damage the party has done to itself in the eyes of many voters over its conduct this past few months, by allowing unchecked factional ambition to turn politics on its head.

There are some professions which invite nothing other than mistrust and scorn. They include used car salesmen, journalism (whoops) and, of course, politicians.

But when it comes to politics, there is now a sub-species of politician who has been catapulted onto the national stage and enjoys a superior level of public disgust.

Continue reading "Bad time to be a faceless factional hack" »

I’d like to know if anyone out there is having an election party which they’ve promised to keep going until there’s a winner. They’ll need to live near a well-stocked bottle shop and possibly ring out for some new livers.

You could exclaim that the outcome of the 2010 federal election was an amazing result. As in, there wasn’t one.

The Prime Minister quoted Bill Clinton’s line about the people having spoken, but it’s going to take a bit of time to figure out what they’ve said. I’m not so sure. On the results as they stand tonight there seems a clear message that Australians have opted not to give either of the major parties a mandate to govern in their own right.

Continue reading "Australia votes for chaos" »

12.30am - Tors at home: So not just a long night, but possibly a long few days as we await a result in four undecided seats. Tony Abbott’s speech, while measured and lacking in triumphalism, was essentially a victory speech. For a detailed seat by seat update visit The Australian here. We’re signing off now. If you’re still up, enjoy the rest of your night.

11.52pm - Tors at Liberal HQ: Abbott’s on the stage. Deafening in here!

11.32pm - Tors at Liberal HQ: A woman who says she works for the Liberal Party just asked me if the numbers meant the Libs were winning by 71 per cent. Tried to explain the concept of undecided seats and a hung parliament. Drew a blank.

11.24pm - Leo at Labor HQ: Gillard pays tribute to Karl Bitar. Not sure that feeling is mutual in this room.

11.22pm - Leo at Labor HQ: Gillard takes the stage to speak to the party faithful.

11.01pm - Colgo back at the Punch bunker: I think we can add “it could be a long night” to the list of insufferable count cliches. Is everybody having a good time?

Continue reading "Election night 2010: The Punch Party parties" »

The Punch tracked Julia Gillard on election day, being treated to a rockstar reception while voting at Seabrook Primary School in Melbourne’s west.

Tonight will decide just what kind of rock star she is remembered as: a Madonna or that girl who sang “I Saw The Sign” (Ace Of Bas I think the band was called)

Join us tonight here at The Punch from 6 pm EST, with Tory at the Liberal HQ function at the Four Seasons in Sydney and me at Julia Gillard’s party at the Convention Centre in Melbourne. We’ll be on our election blog till late, giving you an on the spot insight into tonight’s federal election count.

Many words have been used to describe this election campaign and none of them are particularly flattering. From doyens of journalism such as Paul Kelly down to giggly and uninformed disc-jockeys on commercial FM, the consensus has been that it’s been superficial, unambitious, contrived, with both leaders often pretending to be something which they are not in order to win votes.

Without wishing to drift into the kind of mindless nihilism which Mark Latham displayed on 60 Minutes, it has been hard to get too excited about the policy debates, to the extent that there have really been any detailed or meaningful policy debates. Both sides have run relentlessly negative campaigns against their opponents. The end result of this can only be an erosion in our collective faith in politics and a further diminishment, if that indeed is possible, of the standing of politicians in the eyes of the community.

This election campaign is one which we should remind our politicians of in future when they start complaining about the rougher than usual treatment they receive for making the selfless decision to go into public life, and endure the slings and arrows it entails, on salaries which are easily eclipsed by what is on offer in the private sector.

Continue reading "Politicians complain about cynicism, but they drive it" »

PRINCETON University Professor Harry Frankfurt in 1986 wrote the highly praised thesis On Bulls—t.

It’s long, pompous - a fine example of what it’s trying to define, but I’ve taken to re-reading it during this election campaign.

The origins of the word are unclear. Some say it came from the mocking of 15th-century papal edicts called ``bulls’‘. Others believe it’s a reference to Obadiah Bull, a famously waffly Irish lawyer in the time of Henry VII.

Continue reading "Reflections on bulls**t at election time" »

Veteran Labor heavyweight, Graham Richardson was asked several weeks back what Kevin Rudd would really think about a Labor defeat. The powder-dry former senator conceded that somewhere in the dark recesses of Rudd’s soul, he’d probably be delighted.

That may have been true just after his demise. And to be fair, a degree of schadenfreude is only human after such trauma. But a few weeks on and with the voters’ judgment hanging like Damocles’ Sword, Kevin Rudd must now be hoping for an ALP victory. His future prospects and his legacy depend on it.

Whether fair or not, nothing short of the Government surviving will salvage Kevin Rudd’s reputation with his colleagues.

Continue reading "Rudd’s fate hangs in the balance today too" »

Warning: this has nothing to do with politics. We thought we’d see how the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader would scrub up under a digital makeover of the kind you might find in a high-fashion glossy magazine. They have each had a bit of a facelift, lip and hairline enhancements and skin tone improvements from a professional image retoucher. Here’s Abbott’s dramatic transformation:

Notice the ears got a little tuck? And here’s the Prime Minister:

Continue reading "Gillard and Abbott get a digital makeover" »

Tony Abbott is nearly at the end of his marathon through-the-night last ditch election blitz, but it’s Julia Gillard who’s sounding a little sleep deprived.

The Prime Minister woke to a Newspoll this morning that has her primary vote at a perilous 35 per cent, and as the day has worn on her dire warnings about the potential of an Abbott win have grown more shrill. (And they’ve even rolled out John “The Faulkinator” Faulkner - see above video)

As Laurie Oakes pointed out on Twitter this afternoon: “Julia Gillard says if Tony Abbott becomes PM on Sunday, will be WorkChoices on Monday. Exaggeration born of desperation, methinks.”

Continue reading "The final countdown: is Gillard panicking?" »

By all accounts this election has been really boring and as a photographer I wanted to do something different to get people interested again. I wanted to shoot it in a different way than the way we always cover elections in newspapers.

If I can borrow a phrase from this election campaign, I wanted to be seen to be “moving forward” with technology and doing something new and fresh. So when I got the call up to shoot the final week of the election last week with Prime Minister Julia Gillard I decided to shoot everything on the iPhone.

A simple no frills camera (weighing no more than a can of coke) with a fixed lens, and using the Hipstamatic app bought for $2.49.

Continue reading "An inside view of the last days of the Gillard campaign" »

Whoever loses tomorrow, one thing is certain – this election will not be a victory for any major political party’s true believers. Coalition and Labor partisans have spent the last month gulping down political-DNA-corroding Kool-Aid in their increasingly desperate attempts to pimp themselves out to disengaged bogans address the legitimate concerns of those salt-of-the-earth, hearts-of-gold, marginal-seat-dwelling, mainstream Australians who embody all that is pure and noble in this great nation.

How many inner-city ALP activists letterboxing on cold winter nights have been haunted by that image of the PM and Member for Lindsay scanning the horizon on a navy vessel off Darwin, looking as if they might at any moment rush to a gun turret to strafe an incoming boat packed to the gunwales with queue-jumping reffos? And how many small-business owners brooding about a recalcitrant employee have spluttered on their Penfolds Grange at a Liberal fundraising dinner, pondering how the party of capital lost its bottle when it came to smashing the unions?

But let’s also spare a thought for the Greens’ disillusioned libertarian voters. It was always a somewhat awkward embrace, but for years those bridling at the interference of church and state into who they marry, what they watch, how they choose to get intoxicated, or when they die felt the Greens had their backs.

Continue reading "Slim pickings for libertarians" »

It’s the last day before we go to the polls and this election couldn’t be closer.

We’re all a bit tired, especially if you’re job was to follow Tony Abbott through the night, but it’s the Friday Fight Club finale.

Punch on and tell us what you thought of the campaign and how things are going to go tomorrow.

In keeping with our long-standing Punch hunch - that this election is going to come down to a coin toss and one which disturbingly may involve Bob Katter - today’s Newspoll has the major parties at 50-50.

Use this piece to say whatever you like about the election - all our other stuff comes further down anyway - our seat wrap, Lucy’s analysis of your reader comments, a look at today’s editorials and the latest betting.

Apart from where to get a good pie in Braidwood, how to woo a room full of pensioners if you look like you’re 14 years old, and that tropical diseases are an issue for voters in FNQ – the Punch’s five-week adventure through some of the campaign’s most hotly contested seats has thrown up some consistent themes.

The ten Labor-held seats the Punch spent time in during this election campaign weren’t necessarily the most marginal. We just thought they were the most interesting.

Factors that decide what happens in seats like the following are many. But troublingly for the Coalition, the one thing we found almost everywhere was a niggling sense among voters Tony Abbott is just not how they imagined the Prime Minister.

Continue reading "The seats: what The Punch learned on the campaign trail" »

If Election 2010 has confirmed anything for us it’s that you Punchers love a good political stoush.

You’ve been loud, passionate, well-informed and with a great sense of humour to boot, so thanks for your input over the past five weeks.

We’ve spent a bit of time listening to what you had to say, so here’s our take on the campaign according to our readers:

Continue reading "The readers: What you’ve said about Election 2010" »

The three biggest-selling metropolitan dailies in Australia - in descending order, Melbourne’s Herald-Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Brisbane’s Courier Mail - have used today’s traditional election-eve editorials to urge their readers to back the Coalition and turf out the Gillard Labor Government. The national broadsheet The Australian has also backed the Coalition, as has The West Australian.

The Adelaide Advertiser has broken ranks with its fellow News Limited dailies and backed Labor, as did Australia’s biggest-selling newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph, in its editorial last week. The two biggest Fairfax papers - The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age - have also backed the ALP. However the Fairfax papers have fewer readers in the swinging seats which decide governments so their final say on the vote has less influence.

The election eve editorial is a long-standing but controversial feature of newspapers, with the rationale going that if it’s good enough for voters to be forced to make up their minds on polling day, newspapers which devote their very existence to chronicling the events of the day should also put up their hand and offer a balanced and thoughtful take as to their allegiance. But many readers regard editorials as an impertinence and as confirmation of bias.

Continue reading "The editorials: biggest newspapers back Coalition" »

From a look at the betting markets, punters seem to have lined up with pundits to call this week a nil-all draw.

While the campaign descended into a Fromelles-style bloodbath, the negativity of both sides also stagnated the head-to-head betting market and we’ll go to the polls with Labor paying $1.28 to win, and the Coalition pegged at $3.60.

You’ll remember that last week saw Julia Gillard’s campaign finally stem the haemorrhaging that saw her odds on next PM drift out to $1.62, which was as bad as they got under Rudd. Once Sportingbet took over $400,000 on Labor in a week including a bet of $200,000, they were always going to head into the election as favourites.

Continue reading "The punters: Labor to win, with a major loss of skin" »

Note: Labor MP Richard Marles and Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella are among our favourite contributors to The Punch, and we have asked them to write a piece every Friday during this five-week election campaign giving their take on events.

There was one aspect of this final week of campaigning that really summed up Labor. Labor’s launch on Monday was cynically late for a start. But it was Julia Gillard’s address to the party faithful that really symbolised the depths to which Labor’s spin machine will go.
Her minders briefed assembled journalists that Julia would be speaking “off the cuff and from the heart”. They talked up the spontaneous nature of the address as evidence of their leaders drive and passion as well as her leadership ability. Julia raised her palms as she walked out – no notes in hand – and embraced Bob Hawke.

Continue reading "Liberal diary: “Foolya Joolia” not all she seems" »

Note: Labor MP Richard Marles and Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella are among our favourite contributors to The Punch, and we have asked them to write a piece every Friday during this five-week election campaign giving their take on events.

Julia Gillard speaks from the heart. She is the best performer in the federal parliament.

Through five weeks of controversies this is a proposition that is not controversial. The Liberals may quibble about how she uses notes, but for anybody who follows politics her ability to perform is beyond debate. Yet this is just one attribute of Julia Gillard.

Continue reading "Labor diary: the difference between Julia and Tony" »

This year’s election campaign has cast a cloud of sadness and disillusionment over Australian politics and therefore Australian society. With the final countdown well and truly under way we are left hoping for the best in dire circumstances.

A lot of the events over the last few weeks have looked like crass politics, but why are we so surprised?

Has election time in Australia really always been this dismal? This election will be the first where I will be able to vote officially in Australia. I was in London for the 2007 election and voted at the Australian embassy.

Continue reading "Not worth voting for" »

There’s a Liberal campaign ad running frequently on Perth television that seeks to remind voters how reliant the rest of the country is on the Western Australian mining boom:

“Labor = Labor’s cash cow” goes the punchline.

This plays into a common perception in the west: we’re the backbone of this economy and the bludgers over in the east are milking us dry.

Continue reading "A journey into the ALP’s western heart of darkness" »

With approximately 54 hours until the polls close the Prime Minister has just discarded the last shred of politeness, starting her address to the National Press Club with a 15 minute evisceration of her opponent Tony Abbott.

In a speech heavy on hyperbole Gillard sledged Abbott on everything from his book “Battlelines”, to his lack of tech-head credentials, saying the Coalition leader was “turbo charging the spendometre” during the campaign while she had fulfilled her pledge to not add a single cent to the Budget during the contest.

The one positive note of the speech was a promise to extend the Government’s paid parental leave scheme to two weeks paid leave for fathers or “other carers”, to start in July 2012.

Continue reading "Gillard unloads both barrels at Abbott" »

OK Punchers, it’s crystal ball time. Below I’ve listed five reasons why this election is such a squeaker. The video below involving a severed arm being buried on a beach and spat upon to look into the future might be as good a way as any to help predict what’s going to happen on Saturday. But we’re looking for you to have a go at it anyway in the comments. Who will win, and by how many seats?

Punch editor David Penberthy wrote this week why he thinks the Coalition will win. The prevailing view from commentators is that Julia Gillard and the Labor party will win but lose some skin on the way through - maybe a dozen seats, but not enough to be totally turfed out. ALP campaign spokesman Chris Bowen said this morning he believed it would go down to the wire. Here are five reasons why there is so much talk about the balls being still up in the air.

1. A lot of people are yet to make up their minds. There are hundreds of thousands of voters who will make their decision in the next 48 hours, and some who will only decide in the polling booth. At the second people’s forum in Brisbane last night, dozens of people in the audience kept their hands in their laps when asked at the end of the night if they had made a decision. And they had spent an hour listening in person to the two party leaders. If these kinds of late deciders break heavily for either party it will be pivotal.

Continue reading "Election 2010: Make your predictions" »

Life on the hustings in a highly marginal seat can be a surreal experience. One minute you’re part of a forum with the other candidates and 26 locals in an airless room at the local RSL – the next the Prime Minister or Opposition Leader has swooped into town, press pack in tow, to say your name out aloud three times and gaze in wonderment at some sort of machinery.

Then they’re off again, leaving just a whiff of jet fuel and funding for a new convention centre behind them, and it’s back to shaking every hand you can and hunting down people prepared to wear T-shirts with your slogan on them.

The journos on the Julia Gillard plane have touched down at the RAAF base in Townsville in Far North Queensland so many times this election campaign they’ve started referring to the electorate of Herbert as simply “Herb”.

Continue reading "Hunting the elusive Rudd factor in Herbert" »