… Not quite good enough. It looks like Labor will be returned to government with a reduced majority … Or possibly a hung parliament. A Coalition victory looks unlikely… More to follow.
Election 2010: Gillard's desperate lies to scare voters
21 August, 2010 by
Gillard's glamorous new look
Even the journalists are getting sick of it. I’m talking about the “WorkChoices Refrain”. If this is what Joolya is reduced to, she must be running scared. The Age (amazingly) has all the gory details:
IF PROOF were needed that Julia Gillard is getting rattled about the possibility she could be in opposition tomorrow, her last media conference before polling day provided it.
It was, it turned out, one of the shortest media conferences of the five-week campaign.
The reason? The media turned nasty, accusing the PM of becoming so desperate she had deliberately ”verballed” her opponent, Tony Abbott.
…
”Prime Minister, what does it say about your level of confidence in your positive plan for the future that you’ve just outlined that you’ve spent the day wandering around verbalising Tony Abbott?” she was asked.
The PM returned to the safety of re-outlining her plan for the future and utterly avoiding the question, to protests from the media.
She was then asked whether she was embarking on a fear campaign because she was panicking about the polls.
It got worse. Before long, a reporter demanded to know whether the claim that WorkChoices would be back on Monday was ”an outright lie”.
It was getting harder to avoid answering such questions, but Ms Gillard did her valiant best, which simply drew the accusation that she was doing what she accused Tony Abbott of doing: not giving straight answers. (source)
She can’t give straight answers because she has to defend the indefensible – Labor’s disastrous record in government – so she lies and spins and shamelessly tries to scare voters with the non-existent bogeyman of the campaign, WorkChoices. And as we reported yesterday, she brings up the subject of a price on carbon at the 11th hour so that there can’t be any proper debate.
You all know what to do today – vote out Labor.
Election 2010: Gillard devotes 12 words to climate
17 August, 2010 by
Quote of the Day
Drum roll please for Joolya Gillard’s contribution to the climate change debate in her campaign launch yesterday:
Yes we will work together and tackle the challenge of climate change. (source)
Er, that’s it. That’s how highly Labor, the party that was so desperate to push through the ETS before the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009, now regards the “greatest moral challenge since the dawn of time (or something)”. And where is the Labor-loving media on this shameless backflip? Nowhere to be seen, of course.
UPDATE: Tom Switzer at ABC Unleashed skewers the hypocrisy here. And one of the comments is priceless – wailing that he thinks he’s been “redirected to Liberal HQ”, when of course he’s accustomed to being “redirected straight to Labor HQ” thanks to the ABC’s blatant pro-Labor bias.
Election 2010: Desperate Gillard begs Rudd for help
6 August, 2010 by
Nightmare for Julia
From the “You Could Not Make It Up” department. Just weeks after savagely knifing Kevin Rudd in the back and stealing the prime ministership, Julia Gillard is now relying on Rudd to rescue her disintegrating campaign:
THERE are now three leaders in this election campaign.
The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard; the alternative prime minister, Tony Abbott; and the former prime minister-in-exile, Kevin Rudd.
In his intervention, Rudd presents himself as the saviour of Labor’s fortunes – an event of far-reaching and unpredictable consequences.
There has never been an election like it. With each day it’s more about Kevin.
Gillard, who assassinated Rudd as prime minister six weeks ago, has been reduced to asking him to salvage her prime ministership. It is a huge risk and reversal, but Gillard had no choice.
Rudd, the recently detested and vanquished former PM, now returns to centre stage as potential saviour. Indeed, it seems only Rudd might resurrect Labor in Queensland and that he is dictating terms to the party. Labor MPs do not know whether to laugh, cry or cheer.
Read it here.
See also: “It takes two to tango but one to lead” and The Australian’s editorial on the subject.
Election 2010: Labor prepares "smear campaign" on Abbott
1 August, 2010 by
The gutter: Labor will always get there first
Labor is the expert in gutter politics and smear, so there shouldn’t be much preparation required. Even the Sydney Morning Herald refers to is in this derogatory way. But we shouldn’t be surprised – Labor’s polling is in free-fall, and Labor will do anything to stay in power, even if it means descending to this level, as the SMH/Age gleefully reports:
LABOR’S election campaign is set to enter a new aggressive and negative phase designed to exert maximum pressure on Tony Abbott by highlighting his ”extremist” past rhetoric.
After a collapse in support following a series of leaks, Labor will be using its new underdog status to turn the blowtorch back onto Mr Abbott, warning voters to take a closer look at the man who could be prime minister.
Labor is preparing a smear campaign drawing attention to Mr Abbott’s controversial past rhetoric. The Sunday Age has been given an extensive dossier containing dozens of comments by Mr Abbott on issues such as industrial relations, abortion, teenage sex, marriage, and climate change. It includes extensive material on Mr Abbott’s hardline attitudes to women and abortion, including a 2006 statement that there was ”a bizarre double standard in this country where someone who kills a pregnant woman’s baby is guilty of murder but a woman who aborts an unborn baby is simply exercising choice”.
Small Business Minister Craig Emerson yesterday said Labor would turn up the pressure by highlighting Coalition plans to slash spending in areas such as health and education.
”Let’s just see how Tony Abbott deals with pressure,” Dr Emerson said.
”He didn’t respond very well to pressure in the first week. We are halfway through the second quarter in this match and there will be plenty of pressure coming on to Tony Abbott and let’s just see how he responds to it.”
So I guess Mr Emerson that you’re behind this school-playground type plan, yes? Abbott should not rise to this puerile mudslinging, and hope that the public see it for what it is – Labor desperation.
Read it here.
UPDATE: As Andrew Bolt rightly points out, if Labor is going to drag up Abbott’s past, then perhaps we should look a bit more closely at Julia Gillard’s as well, and her association with ultra hard-Left, socialist organisations, advocating batty policies like twinning Melbourne with Leningrad. Labor and Gillard should be very careful. Read it here.
Election 2010: Labor is just so last year
31 July, 2010 by
Old and falling to pieces, like Labor
Out of touch, out of control, and with a bit of luck, soon to be out of power. Magnificent timing by Labor. No sooner has Joooolya Gillard launched her innovative and original “cash for clunkers” policy to “tackle climate change” than the Yanks have, er, yanked theirs:
The White House says its cash for clunkers scheme worked well but that it will not be repeating the offer.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said she will introduce a similar scheme if re-elected.
The US cash for clunkers scheme was created last year as part of president Barack Obama’s bid to help the car industry during the financial crisis. [But Joolya’s policy isn’t about helping the car industry, because the Greens want everyone to give up cars and ride ethnic peace bicycles™, but to save the planet, of course.]
More than 500,000 drivers received rebates of up to $4,500 to upgrade their cars.
The scheme was so popular the government had to provide another $2 billion. (source)
Such a scheme here would be yet more money down the drain on pointless climate policies that could be better spent on, you know, education, health, roads, infrastructure – in fact anything else.
Election 2010: Labor in self-destruct as polls slide
31 July, 2010 by
It’s all looking rather shaky for Labor this morning. Andrew Bolt summarises, but before we go to that, here’s Kevin O’Lemon Version 2 from the Liberals:
Over to Andrew:
A catastrophic result for Labor:
In a stunning reversal of fortunes for the Coalition after a disastrous week for the government, support for both the Prime Minister and Labor has plummeted; the Coalition now leads Labor on a two-party-preferred basis by 52 per cent to 48 per cent.
This represents a 6 percentage point two-party swing against the government since the last Herald poll a week ago, and a 4.7 point two-party swing against the government since the last election…
The poll shows Labor’s primary vote has gone into freefall, plunging six points in a week to 36 per cent while the Coalition’s primary vote rose four points to 45 per cent. The Greens remained steady at 12 per cent…
The 58 per cent to 42 per cent lead that Ms Gillard enjoyed over Mr Abbott among women voters only a week ago has disappeared and the female vote for Labor and the Coalition is now statistically even at 49-51.
This result also comes just two days after a Galaxy poll put the parties at 50-50.
The import of this poll does not just lie in its predictive value. The poll will also hurt Labor’s already floundering campaign for at least several dark days.
First, the pressure now on Julia Gillard has become colossal. She faces not just defeat but personal humiliation if she leads Labor to defeat just seven weeks after assassinating a prime minister who was once our most popular on record. She will feel real fear, but betraying a glimpse of that will fatally make her seem out of her depth and out of control – the very opposite of what she’s projected for the past three years.
Second, Gillard will have to change to a much riskier tactic for her. She has tried to sail through the campaign serenely and regally as the frontrunner, barely engaging with Tony Abbott, trying to seem as the calm, impeturbable and methodical Prime Minister that Rudd in fact never was. Now she has to attack Abbott, who has seemed more assertive and even Prime Ministerial by the day. Can she do it without seeming shrill and scared? Her few digs at Abbott in the debate – patronising him as “naive”, for instance – seemed dangerously unsuccessful to me. It’s a challenge for a woman in politics to be strong without seeming just a bitch,
Third, Tony Abbott now knows he need take fewer risks – and certainly not of the magnitude of his absurdly lavish parental leave scheme. His real work now is to seem genuine prime ministerial material, now that voters are cooling rapidly on Labor and Gillard again.
Fourth, Abbott will have a surge of confidence – and confidence is a very reassuring thing to see in a political leader, providing it comes across more as assuredness than cockiness.
Fifth, the results will finally kill off that absurdly exaggerated claim that Abbott has a “women problem”. Having his shy wife and his daughters appear with him seems to have helped.
Sixth, journalists have the meme for the next week – Labor’s stumbles.
Seventh, as Osama bin Laden said, people tend to follow the strong horse. If the Liberals look like winning, more businesses will dare donate to its fund, and more public servants will dare to leak it revelations about Labor. On the other side, the Labor leakers against Gillard will be joined by the blamethrowers, advice-givers and the desperate.The party could yet blow right open.
This past week could prove to be the one that lost it for Labor. This next week could confirm it, unless Labor finds something very special, or the Liberals manage some great pratfall.
Read it here.
Election 2010: Leaders' debate
26 July, 2010 by
"When are the other two again, Julia?"
The leaders’ debate last night was a bit disappointing. Neither side landed any serious blows, but what came across more than anything was the stark contrast between the hyper-rehearsed sound-bite friendly spin of Julia Gillard and the more authentic, but less assured, honesty of Tony Abbott. Gillard is so like Rudd in the way she can speak for five minutes and not say anything – it’s quite uncanny. Her responses to questions on boat people showed she hasn’t a clue what she’s doing, and the climate issue didn’t get as much traction for Abbott as it should. But he made the very important point that the Coalition at least has a policy whereas Labor are just putting off announcing anything in the hope that the electorate will just vote her in anyway.
Are the Australian people that stupid? Maybe, if the Channel 9 worm is anything to go by. The debate was very close, with most of the commentators giving it to Abbott, yet the worm showed a huge advantage to Gillard – WTF? Just goes to show how easily swung the average voter is by gloss and spin, a new hairdo and nail job.
But there are encouraging signs that things are turning Abbott’s way. The latest NewsPoll shows a move to the Coalition:
THE election campaign has become a tight contest, with the Coalition back in front on primary votes.
Furthermore, Tony Abbott has narrowed the leadership gap on Julia Gillard.
The latest Newspoll, conducted exclusively for The Australian, reveals voters have turned against Labor’s proposal for a citizens assembly on climate change and that the women’s vote advantage for Australia’s first female Prime Minister has disappeared.
Labor’s 10-point lead on a two-party-preferred basis at the start of the election campaign has been reduced to a knife-edge 52 per cent to 48 per cent over the weekend, while the Coalition’s primary vote jumped four points to 42 per cent, compared with Labor’s 40 per cent, down from 42 per cent.
And even more dramatic is Gillard’s personal rating, plummeting like a stone:
Satisfaction with the new Prime Minister has also dropped dramatically, from 48 per cent to 41 per cent; dissatisfaction with the job she is doing leapt from 29 per cent to 37 per cent last weekend. (source)
Maybe the Australian people aren’t so stupid after all. We can only hope.
Election 2010: Greens want 100% renewables by 2030
25 July, 2010 by
Vote Labor and this is what you will get
100% out of touch with reality. 100% deluded. 100% on another planet. 100% dangerous for the future of Australia. That just about sums up the Greens, who, as we must keep reminding everyone, will have the balance of power in the Senate after their shady back-room deal with Labor (which Jooolia Gillard doesn’t want to talk about for obvious reasons). To propose 100% renewables by 2030 is pure madness – let’s just think for a moment what that actually means: no coal-fired power stations at all (and no nuclear, of course, no, no, no, we can’t have that), no petrol or diesel driven vehicles at all, no natural gas at all, and all within the next 20 years! Not only that, but they plan to rely on fart power and sunbeams instead! Words cannot begin to describe the utter lunacy of this. But this is precisely what they want, and what they will demand when they hold the balance of power in the Senate. As the Sydney Morning Herald reports:
The Greens want to completely replace Australia’s reliance on coal with renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.
Greens Senator Christine Milne said yesterday: “Australia can harness our tremendous resources of the sun, wind, ocean, Earth and human ingenuity to replace our reliance on coal with 100 per cent renewable energy within decades.”
Senator Milne said this could be achieved by 2030 with the right preparation and infrastructure. (source)
And Miranda Devine, also in the Herald yesterday, spelt out exactly what life under the Greens would be like:
There’s a lot more Brown and the Greens want if Labor wins: mandated zero net greenhouse gas emissions, the effective end of coal-fired power generation, phasing out of coal exports, a ban on new coalmines or power stations, removal of GM crops, and active discouragement of cars. They want a ban on the exploration, mining and export of uranium, and closure of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, which produces medical isotopes used for cancer treatment. They want to restrict funding of private schools. They want to abolish mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and to expand the definition of refugee to include ”environmental” or ”sexuality” refugees. They want to legislate for same-sex marriage, tinker with age of consent laws, establish ”intersex” as a legal gender, fund gender reassignment, require government to consult lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex people on policy, and provide easier access to abortion. On drugs, they are harm minimisation all the way, with more needle exchange programs and injecting rooms. And be prepared for a barrage of nanny-statism, starting with a ban on junk food advertising [which ACM commented on here].
The Greens’ published policies are carefully couched in escape clauses, to avoid the scare campaigns of past elections, when their extreme social agenda cost them votes. But the effect will be the same. And of course, their big-ticket policy, the one with the most nation-changing consequences, is an ETS or carbon tax, with householders paying the price in soaring energy costs. (source)
I have written to Tony Abbott this morning encouraging him to expose the Greens for the extremist, far-Left, hysterical environmental advocacy group that they are, who are not fit to participate in politics full stop, let alone determining the future of Australia under a Labor government. I encourage all Australians to do the same.
UPDATE: To contact Tony Abbott, go to: http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/ContactTony.aspx, or email: tony.abbott@liberal.org.au (Liberals) or Tony.Abbott.MP@aph.gov.au (Parliamentary). Thanks to Sean for the suggestion.
Election 2010: Half don't even know what an ETS is!
24 July, 2010 by
ETS? Never heard of it.
Yet oddly a majority of the population are still in favour of it (allegedly). Despite being a small poll, the number of people stopped in the street by Sydney’s Daily Telegraph who didn’t have a clue what an emissions trading scheme actually is was astonishing.
The Daily Telegraph yesterday surveyed 150 people in five Sydney suburbs and in the marginal seat of Robertson on the Central Coast, with the results showing Ms Gillard could have a lot of work ahead of her before she even gets consensus on what ETS means.
Just 73 of 150 voters knew what the letters ETS stood for, while only 53 of the 150 supported the introduction of an Emissions Trading Scheme.
Parramatta local Shaun Fernandez, 29, said he didn’t support an ETS because “it doesn’t seem like it will aid in the reduction of emissions”.
And almost half of 30 voters approached in Robertson – one of the most marginal seats in NSW – said they had never heard of the ETS concept. (source)
We’ve seen these kinds of results before. Despite all the government spin and advertising, and saturation media coverage and support, the general public have very little understanding of the ETS, and therefore the reality of what it will achieve (nothing) and at what cost (substantial). People tend to think that Australia should be “doing something” for the climate, because that’s the politically correct attitude to take (after all, who doesn’t want to “save the planet”?), but they have no comprehension of the fact that an ETS or any kind of carbon price in Australia will have no effect on the climate whatsoever, especially when China is installing new coal fired power stations with emissions equivalent to our entire annual CO2 output every few weeks. And that’s even assuming that microscopic changes in a harmless trace gas actually have a discernible effect on the climate over and above natural forces and noise.
They also do not understand the cost to our economy, and that the price of virtually everything, goods, services, you name it, will go up. And jobs will move offshore to countries, like China and India, that are more concerned about economic growth and raising their populations out of poverty than some liberal-elite ivory-tower urban “save the planet” crusade.
Australian Climate Madness 
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