Gillard on Q&A
And this is before the carbon tax was announced:
LABOR’S support has slumped to a record low, with the Coalition sitting at all-time highs as Tony Abbott extends his lead as preferred prime minister over Julia Gillard.
In the two-week lead-up to Sunday’s announcement of the carbon tax details, Labor’s primary vote fell three percentage points to a record low of 27 per cent, while the Coalition’s support rose three points to 49 per cent for its highest primary vote since the Howard government in October 2001.
Even with a steady Greens vote of 12 per cent favouring Labor on preferences, the Coalition recorded its highest two-party-preferred vote of 58 per cent and the ALP its lowest of 42 per cent based on preference flows at the August election last year. The Coalition’s two-party-preferred vote is the second biggest in Newspoll history, with the previous record of 63 per cent to 37 per cent set by Kevin Rudd’s Labor government during its honeymoon period in early 2008 over the Brendan Nelson-led Coalition.
All the gory details are here.
I forced myself to watch Gillard’s address to the nation, but I refuse to watch Q&A – an audience stacked with lefties, a left leaning panel and a lefty presenter (Tony Jones) makes it the media equivalent of a quick turn in the Colosseum for anyone even vaguely to the right of the far left. Here’s Andrew Bolt’s take on Gillard’s solo performance last night:
On Q&A last night, Julia Gillard:
- dodged a question about her duty to seek an electoral mandate first before imposing this huge, risky and controversial tax.
- dodged again a question on how her tax would affect the climate, and whether the effect was so small as to not be worth the effort.
- again adopted her fatally patronising pitch, even suggesting we should be embarrassed at being beaten by those pesky New Zealanders who had (a very small) emissions trading scheme already. (“Just joking,” she trilled.)
- got picked up even by warmist Tony Jones on her deceit at pretending China was cutting its emissions, when it is actually replacing small coal-fired power stations with huge ones, sending total emissions soaring.
- was appealed to by a believer who captured the conceit of both of them by begging Gillard to use “simple” language so her “dear old mum” could be persuaded.
- repeatedly used the deceit of calling carbon dioxide “pollution” without once being corrected by Jones.
- twice dodges an invitation to debate Tony Abbott on the science of global warming.
- again falsely claimed Margaret Thatcher backed what she was doing.
Gillard also claims there’s not enough respect for “the scientists”. Like this one?
Ah yes, but according to Gillard, there should only be respect for the scientists that agree with Labor’s policy. All the others are just filthy deniers funded by Big Oil. Surely you must have grasped this by now…
Australian Climate Madness 
Tsk tsk tsk. And here was I thinking you were dedicated!!
Understandable though. Why put oneself through such torture?
Watching the polls over the next few weeks will be very interesting. I think Australia has stopped listening to this liar and it won’t be pretty for Labor.
I’ve completely avoided her except for a couple of seconds where I haven’t got to the remote fast enough.
Just her diction and tone alone should disqualify here for the job.
“Negosee-ayding with the derdy polluders”
Erck.
‘Please don’t waste my time and yours with ad hominems or abuse – such comments will be deleted immediately’, it says at the bottom of this screen, which makes me wonder to what extent a person can indulge in such before they are ‘deleted’.
That’s not abuse.
‘Just her diction and tone alone should disqualify here for the job.
“Negosee-ayding with the derdy polluders”‘
It may not be abusive, but it certainly qualifies as an ‘Ad hominem’ attack, ergo it should be deleted and the author given a warning or banned (according to your own rules here).
“dodged again a question on how her tax would affect the climate, and whether the effect was so small as to not be worth the effort.”
Lemme guess.. she said something like “..Australia is doing our part.. doing the right thing..” or similar? I sure wish they’d stop insulting our intelligence.
“again adopted her fatally patronising pitch, even suggesting we should be embarrassed at being beaten by those pesky New Zealanders who had (a very small) emissions trading scheme already”
So we should be stupid like NZ? Thanks, Julia.
“Gillard also claims there’s not enough respect for “the scientists”..”
What about scientists equally as qualified and as decorated (not that that matters, as long as they speak the truth) as her heroes, that hold contrary views? Where’s her respect for those?
Please pass me another sick bag..
Couldn’t make myself watch Q&A either, but there was a piece on the radio news this morning – at least a couple of times audience members said ‘we want an election!’ to rowdy applause. Ouch!
I have to laugh at the Thatcher comparison. Thatcher wanted to break the union that controlled the coal mining, and came up with alternative of nuclear energy, so that the dependance on coal could be broken.
Looks like Gillard & Brown are going to break the coal industry and replace it with nothing. Well, nothing that can replace the base load power to the same level. The Greens or Labor couldnt bring themselves to approve nuclear or hydro-electric as a replacement for base load power.
Also, I dont think we can read anything into the poll results until the next sets of figures are released in a few weeks. I have a feeling that Gillard has told the back benchers to wait & see. If the next couple of months polling dont improve, hopefully there will be some sort of back bencher revolt
Honestly – how much improvement is she expecting? From 27% back up to 30%? I remember Graham Richardson saying anything in the 30’s is the death zone for Labor. They need a 10% + swing just to get back to losing with a normal margin. It would be the mother of all turnarounds, and people are forgetting that most of the (good) details of the plan had already been leaked by Friday. If anything, I think the most they can expect is maybe a 1-2% bounce, which will bring them back to 30% primary, and might get GIllard back to parity with Abbott on preferred PM. If that is victory according to the backbenchers, they deserve their fate.
Tony Abbott isn’t silly enough to change strategy now – he is sitting back and letting the government make all the mistakes as they blunder around.
Yeah, dont think any bounce will be very large, noone is listening to her, just like Gillard is not listening to the majority.
I live in the electorate of Corangamite which has the smallest margin in the country. I’m going to write to my MP but he is one of the nine back benchers who has complained about the resumption of the live cattle exports. He has some very green leanings, so I dont think Im going to get much of a response from him, & if I do it will be a repeat of the same crap thats coming out of comrade Julias mouth.
Banana – send him a page of the jobs section of your local paper, along with a note that says -‘see anything you like? You’ll need it after your support of the carbon tax’. Or maybe you can come up with something more witty.
These MPs need to get it into their heads they are going to lose their jobs. At the moment they are in pretend land, but your seat will be one of the first to go. Once they start having the talk with their family about what they are going to do next some questions will be asked.
Hey Banana, you’ve told only half the story.
To help persuade the UK public (and the establishment) to switch from coal to nuclear power, thus crushing the coal miners’ union, Thatcher created the Hadley Centre and offered money to the Royal Society both with the intention of producing evidence that CO2 created dangerous global warming.
That’s according to Lord Lawson of Blaby and Nigel Calder as interviewed in The Great Global Warming Swindle. Starts about 36 minutes in.
I’ve also heard Mockton say this in an interview and it’s my own interpretation of the way he said this in the interview that the arrangement between #10 Downing street and the climate scientists implied that evidence for AGW was to be produced by any means necessary. If this were true it would help to explain Phil Jones’ excuse of “we recorded over the top of our wedding video with last week’s Dancing With The Stars because we ran out of spare tapes.”
Well enough of the scant anecdotes, Booker gives a succinct history here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7823477/Was-Margaret-Thatcher-the-first-climate-sceptic.html
So it would seem Thatcher has turned the corner after retirement and is now trying to be honest after the fact. Thatcher was not omniscient, so she couldn’t have known it was bunk, but AGW was sufficiently politically convenient for her to have given it a major boost in the 80s.
There’s nothing in the carbon dioxide tax package that will be a vote winner for Labor, The Greens or the Independents. If you believe the hype about global warming then this package does very little to address any alarmist concerns until 2050. If your sitting on the fence then you’d be asking the question … is it all worth the hassle. If your a skeptic you’d be saying … why bother anyway. Basically it’s a carbon dioxide lite tax for alarmists that’s heavy on bureaucracy, attacks Australian industries and jobs and delivers bugger all for real environmental issues.
That’s even before you mention … “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.”
The spin coming out is that this poll is all before the announcements, but the key ‘good news’ had been leaked prior to the weekend – the $10 billion slush fund for renewables, the ‘9 out of 10’ households. The bad news was released on Sunday – more debt to pay for a tax that costs more than it collects, limited assistance for industries.
There was no new good news in the carbon tax announcment, so a poll bounce is not at all likely. I’ve been waiting for the primary to drop into the 20’s, and here it is. I don’t think it will get past 30 again for a long, long time.
… and this from Miranda Devine:
A phone poll taken by John Shaw on Inverell Radio 2NZ, in independent Tony Windsor’s seat of New England.
In 30 minutes from 7.15am yesterday, (Monday 11th July) 177 calls came into the talkback line in answer to the question: Do you agree with Tony Windsor’s decision to support a carbon tax?
Only one said yes; 176 said no.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/taxing_the_air_we_breathe#86089
What an embarrassment she is to not only the labor party but to Australia. How galling it is to hear Ms 27 percent brazenly thump her chest and declare that she is going to push this through no matter what the majority of Australians think. I also just cannot watch her or the warmist Canberra press gallery that accompany her giving all the room she requires to spu out her patronizing and arrogant slogans eg.”It’s the right thing to do”. Life is not meant to be that painful!
Given that the Government does not have a mandate for the carbon tax and Gillard & Swan explicitly and repeatedly stated that there would be no carbon tax under this Government, can the Governor General refuse Royal Assent to the legislation? History would look very fabourably on such action.
Julia Gillard and her Labor politicians must, by now, realize that she has dug them into a hole over the carbon tax!
Most people are not interested anymore in what Gillard has to say, so they are not going to change their minds about her and her government.
The only place left to go for Gillard is to reconsider her stance and take the carbon tax to an early election. Australians can then decide.
The reality is that the carbon tax is now the political coffin of Julia Gillard.
She has brought this upon herself… all because of her compact with voters before the election: “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.”
Breaking her compact with voters has damaged Gillard’s credibility.
I could barely make it to 15 minutes of Q&A, but I thought I should try. Almost every tweet shown, and the super-cringe-worthy AYCC video was a painful reminder how brainwashed and deluded the ABC-filtered Australian public seem to be.
I lost it at the point where someone suggested to the PM that the word Carbon was “too complicated”, and the concept should be simplified so people understand it. The PM already talks to us like we’re a bunch of retarded and badly behaved children, the last thing we need is even more “simplification”…