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http://www.businessspectator.com.au/
Sighs of relief echoed around Australia yesterday as Wayne Swan finally fronted up to formally ditch the surplus promise, but none would have been deeper and more heartfelt than among Labor MPs and staff at campaign headquarters in Melbourne.
They had been faced with coming back from Christmas holidays and starting an election campaign having to find at least $15 billion in new spending cuts for no good economic reason. In fact business and markets were pushing for a deficit so the Reserve Bank didn’t have to do all the work in countering the strong currency.
The political calculation was this: is it better to face an angry squall of broken promise accusations from the Opposition while the voters are doing their Christmas shopping, or cut $15 billion from government spending during an election campaign? No contest really.
And the barking from Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott yesterday was probably neutralised by polite applause and yawns from business groups and market economists.
It’s been a pretty good week for the ALP. The campaign has been freed from a fiscal straitjacket and a Roy Morgan face-to-face poll taken over the past two weekends has put them comfortably in front – 52.5 per cent to 47.5 per cent, which are roughly the figures of the 2007 election.
Obviously there is a long way to go, but Labor MPs and the campaign staff led by national secretary George Wright will sit down to Christmas dinner this year with the sniff of victory in 2013.
The key to Labor’s turnaround is a surge in support from women. According to the Morgan poll, support for the ALP among women went from 35 per cent to 40.5 per cent between November and December, and on a two-party preferred basis from 50.5 to 56 per cent.
Men are roughly equally divided between the ALP and the Coalition, but Tony Abbott and his team now have a real problem with women. Their two-party preferred support among women has collapsed from 51 per cent in November to 44 per cent now.
These are notoriously volatile figures and need to be confirmed by other polls, but as Gary Morgan said this week, it’s been “a bad couple of weeks for the Opposition as the sustained attacks on Prime Minister Julia Gillard over her involvement in an AWU ‘slush-fund’ from nearly 20 years ago fell flat due to a lack of evidence of any wrongdoing … (and) the case the L-NP promoted against former Speaker Peter Slipper involving his former staffer James Ashby backfired.”
Normally the ditching of a budget surplus promise after three years of saying you’d do whatever it takes to deliver one would be good for the Opposition, but despite all the furious broken promise finger-wagging, it’s unlikely to get the Opposition anywhere unless Abbott and Hockey counter with a surplus plan of their own, which they can’t.
The Coalition now has a problem with Tony Abbott’s leadership. His disapproval rating is now 63 per cent and Julia Gillard is now well ahead (49/36) as “preferred prime minister”. That wouldn’t matter if the Coalition was well ahead overall, but it’s not now.
Actually I’d say there’s a fair chance yesterday’s dumping of the surplus by Wayne Swan will actually extend the ALP’s lead, especially among women – because it’s plainly sensible.
So, let’s also deal with those bloody guns in the US:, please sign;
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Thank you for your kind welcome. I have been investigating the blog and will difinitely be a regular reader. Thank you again.
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I’ve mentioned it before but you should read Andrew Elder’s blog – Politically Homeless. He is an ex-Liberal. He says Abbott can’t win and he says why. It makes for interesting reading. Very much full of truth and things we don’t see or read enough of.
I do totally detest the Libs. This current collection of MPs sitting on the Opposition benches is the worst ever. The nastiness, hatred and lying is beyond belief yet I see everyday. Their IQs are the lowest ever too. Tim Dunlop’s piece on the Drum yesterday was brilliant.
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Viv, I do at times look at Elder’s blog, most interesting, must do it more often, it’s in my Favourites….I also like Tim Dunlop, he never disappoints, he’s not boring or long- winded…
The problem with liberals is that even if Turnbull is kind of OK, the rest of them are hopeless and nasty, private school bullies…
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One of my closest friends has been a member of the Liberal party on and off from a very young age. They were (and still are) very connected to the party machine. So I’ve had insights into how that party works and how I could never vote for the from a very young age. As I mentioned to googlehoover below there are too types of Liberal party member. Those who are in the now and the vast majority who seem to be the sad, stupid an lonely who’ll say anything. Years ago there were moderates who tempered the conservatives, balanced them out so to speak. Nowadays the moderates are slowly being purged.
I can say that many of those within the Liberal party at the time were borderline criminals, whilst giving an outward sign of virtue and pillars of society.
I had contact a few years ago (before he became leader) with a university professor friend of mine who nor forms part of the management team of one of the schools where Abbott gave a public lecture, interesting fellow they thought but seriously dangerous as a PM. There are several in the Liberal party thinking that now, however its probably too late to change leader and to who. As you say Malcolm’s about the only one with the rest being nothing more than fodder really.
As you say Dunlop’s piece was brilliant on Friday but unfortunately I got onto it too late as the mods were already at the Christmas party.
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What if i told you that at lunch the other day in Lane Cove I overheard two presumptive Liberals discussing the coming poll. They were not “faces” and they conferred soto voce for most of the lunch so I can’t be sure of certain aspects of their discussion, and towards the end, after a couple of whites and a good Aussie red their collogue became somewhat blotto voce, but this is the jist of their discussions.
To put the motivation to it; they seemed to be cottoning on to the fact that Abbott is unelectable. They discussed some recent private qualitative polling that suggested that far from being a shoo in, the coalition heavyweights are deeply concerned that the face to face polling has crunched down to something like 52/48 TPP Labor’s way. Women they said were 56/44.
The strategy is to roll Abbott during the summer recess, though how that would happen I didn’t hear and can’t imagine. Particularly since they want to install Turnbull, not because they want him but because they’ve woken up to the fact that he’s the only one capable of driving a deep and acceptable change to the current disillusionment with the party’s posture and polling. You see they like Abbott but are reluctantly going to give him the heave in the interests of regaining the treasury benches. Naively they believe that Turnbull’s gratitude for this belated reinstatement will see him tow the conspiratorial elite’s line. Like that will ever happen.
Giving Turnbull the top job would open a conservative Pandora’s Box spilling ill omens for the party’s recent attacks on the carbon tax, the mining tax, the NDIS and just about anything Julia Gillard does from getting out of bed in the morning, to any act of governance, whether good or bad.
It will however, liker that original box also release hope for a better Liberal Party, more in tune with the modern world and led by the only Liberal that has broad centre appeal.
They identified Hockey as a problem. He’s popular if somewhat challenged in the leadership stakes. Which is to say, he might be able to get the gig but wouldn’t really know what to do with it. If they spill, he might run again, which would cause all manner of problems for their media strategy which they hoped would see the change presented to holidaying Australians as a fait accompli and huge sigh of relief by the media and the Australian polity in general. Hockey, they said, would have to be told to stay in his box, (their words), and he would get the best he can hope for from now on; a senior portfolio but not Treasury or Foreign Affairs. Even the Liberals apparently thnk he’s too light on upstairs.
They were at odds to decide what could be offered to Abbott to accept this change. I got the impression that neither man liked Abbott personally. One rather ironically said he might make a good ambassador to the Vatican. The other suggested he be made head of the national abuse enquiry, and then laughed rather sadistically.
They’re right though. I can’t see Abbott going quietly and I can’t see how they can roll him without the press and Labor being all over it, making a dog’s breakfast of their media strategy which souned to me like nothing so much as an attempt at presenting Turnbull’s ascendency as some second coming of christ.
I should point out that I never once heard either of them mention The Nationals.
But wait there’s more.
They talked about Newtown and the killings and voilà,
Hilary is running in 2015 and Biden took the poison chalice of gun reform to clear the way for her to run. Biden thinks he can make a difference but it may knobble his future hopes; but in more interesting news, Joe doesn’t want the Presidency, (I find that hard to believe too), he wants to be elevated to the Kennedy like heights of Elder Democratic Statesman, and if he gets some runs on the board against the murderous gun lobby and the sociopaths that run the NRA he reckons that will be his ticket. He wouldn’t need to be President if he could claim to have saved hundreds if not thousands of lives from senseless gun violence. Sounds like a plot to me. Good luck Joe and “See Hilary Run!”.
But it could all be crap from “player grade” crap artists. It’s a well known fact that you can’t rely on the words of politicians.
So there you have it. You heard it here first
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I find that there are two types of tory. Those in the know and the gulliable rank and file who might as well be mushrooms. Tell them anything and they’ll blurt it out as some sort of truth. I think though they’re on the money. If the Liberals where to change leaders it would be all over I suspect. But with Abbott, he’s starting to look like the Black Knight in Monty Python, thinking the cutting off of his limbs are nothing more than flesh wounds.
Cant see Hillary Clinton running in 2016 though, she’d be 69 come time of the election, the only older president elect than that was Ronald Reagan.
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Morgan might say that Labor is in front but of all the polls it’s probably the most unreliable. However I think there is a trend. Abbott appears to be mortally wounded after the Gillard speech. He’s inability to to produce a scintilla of evidence to back up his comments of criminality and the she with the stare falling flat on her face that same week has damaged them. On top of that the failing to read but the backing of Brough will also damage him after doing the same with Rio Tinto. These all bring serious questions of his judgement or lack thereof.
I think it’s possible that Labor will win next year. The word I here from Queensland is the Newman makes Joh look good. The LNP vote has collapsed so Labor may pick up seats there. They’ll lose seats in western Sydney though. Still if Abbott haemorrhages votes which he’s doing they’ll stick with the devil they know.
Like Therese, their treatment of asylum seekers makes me shudder, it’s just marginally better than the LNP’s. Whatever we’ll be stuck with the sounds of silence here in Bennelong.
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I feel that also, the treatment of asylum seekers is abominable in both camps. But… with Abbott’s mantra of picking up the phone to Nauru, and it will all stop doesn’t seem to hold.
Anyway, we are all orphans in this world. Plod along and we have the P/A to keep us in contact with sanity. Talk about sanity; Nice to see Hung back. He always was the rudder of our ship Noah. Or was he the keel?
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HAPPY DOOMSDAY EVERYONE!
🙂
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We are mystified what happened with the Pub champers. Granny did look a bit shifty when I asked about her it. There has also been a lot of noise coming from upstairs where I think the dispersal of extra pain might well have been assisted by snifters of Pub champers and cloth pegs on nipples.
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I hope to heaven that the latest poll has some credibility. I heard on the radio today that failing to make the surplus is likely to see Australia’s credit rating being down graded from AAA – which means that the Reserve doesn’t have to struggle with the exchange rate (rather unsuccessfully, it seems) all on its own.
When Julia bucketed Tony, it was far more surgical than Keating’s bludgeoning of Howard. And it was no less satisfying to see he who would pretend to run the country, be shown up for the pile of sh1t that he is. Naked power for power’s sake. That’s our Tony.
I sincerely hope they do win next year, but I have a heavy heart over Labor’s treatment of asylum seekers – which is indistinguishable from that rodent’s approach, and I despair over the environment and the global warming that is so closely poised near the tipping point of permafrost melting.
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For the moment Australia’s credit rating remains AAA.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-21/ratings-agencies-affirm-australia-at-aaa/4439802?section=business
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Therese Trouserzoff: I’m new to this site – just wanted to say “excellent comment” – my sentiments exactly.
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Please feel welcome, hope to hear from you again.
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Rosie, welcome nice to see you, feel free to wander around as gerard says hope to here from you. Merv, drinks all round for our weary traveller.
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Let’s crack the champers (Aldi’s) I’ll shout.
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I seem to remember you raising question about the concept of surplus, Gerard. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought it was your good self who questioned it.
If we are cracking open an Aldi’s champers however, I must ask what happened to the pub champers Granny made do you know. She left a box in the basement. I was told.
Noooooo, I can’t remember who told me that ‘ticular tall story…
😉
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I’ve been looking forward to the five bucks a bottle Aldi stuff.
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