The word out of Parliament House is that Kevin Rudd has stood down to avoid the ballot. Julia Gillard is the new PM, Wayne Swan is the Deputy PM. More to come.
9:30: Looks like the whole media has this now. Waiting for the press conference.
9:33: Unconfirmed report that Lindsay Tanner will be Treasurer. I can’t see this happening myself, I’d suggest that Swan will keep the job.
9:36: ALP Returning Officer says Julia Gillard is officially confirmed as new PM. Wayne Swan as deputy. No contest, no vote. Rudd stood down.
9:41: Nobody facing the media just yet. It will be interesting to see Rudd and Gillard’s individual press conferences, if they ever happen. I’d love to see how Rudd reacts to this considering that just last night he said he intended on being the leader forever (or words to that effect).
9:46: This is weird. Gillard is of the left, but was pushed to do all of this by the right-wing of the Labor party. Can anybody say Puppet Prime Minister? I’ll predict it now…a quick boost to Labor’s poll numbers, then they’ll nose-dive. If last night’s leaked figures for Rudd weren’t bad enough, Gillard’s will be worse come election day.
9:50 Gillard/Swan press conference about to happen by the looks of it.
9:52: 2GB’s Jason Morrison saying that Rudd is putting on a brave face, smiling to the media. Not entirely sure that I heard him right, but it sounded like he said Penny Wong followed him to his office, which indicates to me that she could be out. I’m seeing vision of Swan and John Faulkner walking together. Another Defence Minister bites the dust?
9:57: I’ll need to check this but Gillard is apparently, apart from being the first female PM, she is the first foreign-born PM. I’ll have to check that out…
10:00: Gillard’s comment as she walked past the media earlier “I feel very honoured and I’ll be making a statement shortly”.
10:03: That stat about Gillard being the first foreign-born PM is wrong. We’ve had a few. (Thanks to George for correcting this while I did some research of my own on it).
10:14: The one bit of information that I want and can’t find is the time at which Julia will visit the Governor-General to be sworn in. If anybody knows, could you please let me know?
10:17: Gillard will address the media at 11am. Unless something exciting happens, I’m taking a break for a little while…back in 10-15 minutes.
10:31: Have a listen to this little ditty put together by a restaurant at Casino Canberra in 2006 about Kevin and Julia. Have truer words ever been sung?
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/GrillBrasserieKevinJulia.mp3] Download MP3
10:39: 2CC’s Mark Parton on Facebook wonders what the future holds for Kevin Rudd. Will he do a “Turnbull” and fire pot shots from the back bench, turn up [as] a Chinese Interpreter in the UN, start a consultancy with Godwin Grech or accept the position of Australian Ambassador to Afghanistan
10:46: 2GB’s Jason Morrison on Channel Seven right now.
10:48: Morrison’s take is that the public don’t really care about the “first female” aspect as much as the policy, that the public have said to him that they see Gillard as representing the same brand and not as a different type of leader, and says that Gillard should acknowledge the many failures of the government and not palm them off on Rudd if she wants to be credible.
11:02: As we wait for Julia to appear at the lectern, Channel Seven report that the press conference is being pushed back to 11:40.
11:09: Rudd to address media at 11:15. Rudd will therefore be addressing the media before the new PM. It’s not what I’d want if I was the new PM. I’d be out there ad-libbing right now. It’s not like an “I’m your new PM” speech needs much work.
11:12: AAP are reporting that Julia Gillard will be sworn in as Prime Minister by the Governor-General at 12:30.
11:25: Rudd speaking now.
11:27: Rudd flanked by wife and son says he was elected by Australians to provide a “fair go”. Says he has given it his all and is proud of what he achieved as PM. Is currently rattling off what he considers to be his achievements. Another shopping list speech from Rudd.
11:29: The emotion is setting in now. He’s trying not to cry. I wish he’d stop the shopping list and just say what’s really on his mind. His wife just tried to make him stop the speech.
11:37: I might dislike Rudd and disagree with much of what he has done…but I will give him this. He clearly believes in what he has done, and is genuinely sad that he can’t carry on with his work. It’s sad that it’s only in moments like these that we get a glimpse of the real people under the politician’s protective coat and image.
11:46: Rudd says he will assist the Gillard government in being re-elected. He will be contesting Griffith in the upcoming federal election. Towards the end he started to lighten up, relax and joke around a bit about being PM but not Labor leader, and took a shot at his own convoluted way with words. Much thanks and praise was heaped on his wife before he disappeared with a smile on his face.
11:59: Julia speaking now.
12:04: Julia Gillard says she sought leadership with the “greatest humility, resolve and enthusiasm”. Says she is “utterly committed” to the job. Says she believes in a government which rewards “hard work, decency and effort”. Says leadership is about teamwork (huh??).
Sought leadership change because she thought a “good government was losing its way” and she didn’t want to see Tony Abbott take over on the back of that.
Julia has committed to:
*strong and responsible government
*fair work rights (strongly anti-work choices is her background and that’s what she means…very dark day indeed)
She says she takes her fair share of government’s good and bad deeds. Acknowledges her leadership is not at the mandate of the people, and will seek an election at some stage in the next few months so that she can ask Australians for their permission for her to govern.
Says she believes in man-made global warming and that she wants a price on carbon. If elected a prime minister she will push for an ETS as the economy improves.
Gillard says she will negotiate with the mining industry over the mining tax. She is cancelling all government advertising about the mining tax and requests the same of the mining industry.
Acknowledges sacrifice of the military.
Julia says she disagreed with Kevin Rudd about the direction of the government, however she says he was an historic prime minister and heaped a lot of praise on him, almost as if she received a short version of Rudd’s shopping list speech.
Julia says Rudd’s future in the Labor Party and the government is up for grabs. He can serve if he wants to, by the sounds of it.
It sounds like Wayne Swan will stay as Treasurer in addition to being Deputy PM. Further announcements on that will come at a later time.
Wayne Swan says it’s an “unexpected privilege” to be Deputy PM and that the government will now “move forward” with Julia Gillard, however today is not a day for celebration, but a day to get back to work.
Julia says she will be strong on border security/illegal immigrants, so it looks like the right-wing of the party supported her leadership on the proviso that she reverses the disastrous Rudd changes to border policies.
12:26: The presser is still going…Q & A time, not that the answers have said much that we didn’t already know.
Interestingly, The Daily Telegraph are printing an afternoon edition. They clearly want to be first to the press on this…but is there a market for an afternoon newspaper about this subject?
12:32: Gillard will not move in to The Lodge until the Australian public elects her and therefore gives her the right to use those keys. Either she is taking her role as PM extremely seriously, or she doesn’t want to move in, only to have to move out again in a couple months.
12:39: Press conference is finally over. Channel Seven are now running with a “panel of experts”. I’ve been informed that they have not taken a single ad break since 11am, about 100 minutes ago. (Clue time for y’all) So glad I’m not at work dealing with this.
12:43: Gillard is on her way to Government House to be sworn in as PM. I wonder if we’ll get live coverage of that on TV as well? Given the amount of continued talking heads, I’m starting to think that we might.
12:46: I was right! TV are taking the swearing in ceremony live. Tony Abbott also has a press conference scheduled for 1:10pm.
12:48: Watching this footage of the Government House driveway reminds me of the day that I was outside Government House waiting for John Howard to ask the Governor-General for the 2007 election.
12:55: Julia Gillard has arrived at Government House. We are moments away from officially having a new Prime Minister.
13:00 Julia has walked in and here comes the Governor-General. That’s two hours without an ad break for Channel Seven.
13:04: The GG’s statement has been made, the papers signed, and Julia has read the affirmation (???) and signed it, as has the GG. GG offers her “warmest” (incredibly cardboard if you ask me) congratulations. And it’s over…we have a new PM.
Abbott’s press conference to follow shortly.
13:08: Seven’s first ad break in two hours and eight minutes…and it looks like the 11am Prime news update just aired. “Good morning” you say? (no criticism from me on that…I wouldn’t be surprised if the newsroom stopped at the 11am update and waited for Seven’s block coverage to come to an end before making more updates. No point making hours of stuff which will never air.)
13:13: Abbott speaking now.
13:19: Abbott said Gillard does not represent any new policies, and that Labor simply represents “dud policies”. Abbott paid tribute to Rudd and seemed sorry that he was kicked out in this way.
Abbott congratulated Gillard on reaching the office of PM but took a swipe at her for being unelected, and then said that it is his job to ensure that she is never elected. He then went on with the shopping list of calamities overseen by the Rudd/Gillard leadership. Then he drew a long bow, claiming that pulling the mining tax ads without pulling their budget somehow means that she is not willing to do anything about the policy. He rightfully said that the tax needs to be dumped, but in the strangest way possible..I don’t think anyone will understand his message.
He then drew comparisons between federal Labor and the “NSW Labor Mafia” in an attempt to push some of the hatred of NSW Labor on to federal Labor. Might work, might not. I think people will draw their own conclusions.
13:22: Aparently Rio Tinto have pulled their ads opposing the mining tax, in response to Julia pulling the government’s ads. We have a cease fire.
13:27: Abbott calls an emissions trading scheme “Orwellian News-speak” for “big tax”
13:29: At a guess, I’d say Seven’s coverage with the “expert panel” will be padded out until the scheduled special before All Saints. If memory serves, it’s David Guetta today. (OK, so maybe not…looks like they’ll stay through Question Time just like Nine…another ad-free hour on commercial television!)
13:41: Well I think that’s it for the day. Julia will have her first Question Time as Prime Minister today at 2 o’clock and I dare say that the fireworks between her and Tony Abbott will be quite good, although I doubt that anything of consequence will come out of it today. I’m calling it a day on this. Any further updates will appear in new posts. I now need to organise the remainder of my day and go to work at 4pm, so I’ll probably look at organising my thoughts on all of this at some time tomorrow morning.
Ah the perils of being at work when stuff like this happens.
It was quite a night last night with the Labor leadership up in the air. I can’t say that I’m surprised that Kevin Rudd is forcing a vote and not simply standing aside for Julia Gillard…Kevin is in there to survive, not to hand over to anyone. Kevin, although portrayed as a nice and friendly man in the “Kevin 07” campaign, has shown his true colours a number of times since. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with him being less nice than he was portrayed (issues of honesty aside), merely that we now all know that he is not the sort of person who is likely to simply hand over power without a fight. In some ways that is admirable…although when your administration is in as much trouble as Kevin’s clearly is, the merits of staying and fighting, and the apparent arrogance of believing that you’ve overseen a wonderful administration is somewhat disturbing.
The one thing which Kevin Rudd said in his rather angrily delivered press conference last night which interested me is that he wants to push ahead with the emissions trading scheme…this is surely another backflip after he was forced to put it on the back-burner last year. In fact it sounded to me as if Kevin made that announcement publicly in an effort to win back some much-needed support from within Labor ranks, as otherwise he would have simply promised it in private and not brought it back to the public consciousness before a plan was formulated, as doing so simply allows the opposition to run the “great big tax” argument all over again.
In my mind, it really doesn’t matter who wins the leadership spill this morning as either way it will be bad news for them. If Kevin Rudd somehow manages to cling to the leadership, then the party will appear disunited and Kevin will need to get rid of many members of his cabinet in order to silence his critics…a move which would further antagonise his opponents and give him an even worse cabinet than the one he currently has. Alternatively he could keep his cabinet and risk more high-profile Labor politicians revolting again in the near future.
If Julia Gillard wins, well I don’t know how an angry-sounding former unionist, former secretary of a socialist group, with as much, if not more blame than Kevin Rudd for many of the fiascos of this government (the Building the Education Revolution scheme, for example) is going to be able to maintain popularity for any length of time, especially once she’s in charge and starts pushing her agenda rather compromising on the agenda of others. I also got the distinct impression from Kevin Rudd’s angry speech last night that, if he loses, he’s going to emulate Mark Latham and start spreading as much dirt as possible on Julia Gillard and all of the other people who he deems to be responsible for his downfall.
Having Julia Gillard as leader would allow Labor to market itself as a left-wing organisation rather than continuing to pretend that it’s a fiscally conservative party when we all know that not a single one of them actually understandings basic free-market economics. It would clarify the position of both the government and the opposition in people’s minds, however it would also have the side-effect of seeing many Australians, who have seen what a mess left-wing policies have made of many things in this country and abroad, finally decide that a return to conservative government is what they want.
Either way, for Labor it’s bad news. That said, one party doing a bad job isn’t necessarily enough to lose them an election as new leaders tend to have a honeymoon period. It will be up to Tony Abbott and the coalition to keep the pressure on Labor if they want to win. They’re generally doing a good job if it so far, however there are a few issues of unity which the Liberals and Nationals will need to work on if they want to truly bury Labor.
So, my predictions are that I expect Julia Gillard to defeat Kevin Rudd and become our first female Prime Minister today. I expect the federal election to be pushed back until at least December to give Julia enough time to settle in as leader…and I expect her relative popularity to disappear rapidly as Australians wake up to how much of a leftist she really is, and how much blame she actually deserves for many of the fiascos of this government. The continuation of the fiascos should help in this regard.
I therefore expect Labor to get absolutely hammered in the next federal election…although I think that will happen regardless of who is leading them.
I do have to say that, should Julia Gillard become leader, I think it will be a shame for our first female Prime Minister to be one which was not chosen by the public at a general election. Julia Gillard, whilst voted in to represent her electorate, was not voted for by the people of Australia as Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd was. It is an unfortunate anomaly in any electoral system that a deputy leader can assume the leadership without the direct approval of the public. I don’t see any sensible way around this anomaly, however it would be a shame to see an historic milestone reached in such a grubby way.
The plane load of missing mining bosses in Africa is concerning for a number of reasons. Most importantly of course it’s concerning because the plane has been missing for over 20 hours with absolutely no communications. Whilst I hope that it all turns out well for all on board the plane, I fear that it won’t.
Domestically this is concerning because of the impact it may have on the ongoing debate over the mining super profits tax (which is a crazy scheme, but that’s a debate for another time) in which the mining companies and the federal government are locked in a bitter fight. Under normal circumstances, a missing chartered flight carrying a handful of Australians somewhere in Africa wouldn’t get a lot of attention, in fact it would probably be in the news one day and not be in the news the next, however with the ongoing battle over the mining tax, anything to do with mining takes on extra importance in the media.
Neither the government nor the miners will want to be seen to be playing politics with this, however it seems somewhat inevitable that they will use it in one way or another. Take Foreign Minister Stephen Smith for example. He’s in a rather tricky situation…he runs the department which is responsible for doing everything it can to ensure the safe return of the missing miners, however he is also a member of a government which would be quite glad to have a handful of mining executives and a mining company off their backs. Stephen Smith gave a press conference yesterday as, after all, that is what the Minister for Foreign Affairs does when a group of Australians go missing overseas, however he did not look in the least bit comfortable. He looked like I might look if I was dragged out of bed at 4am to answer questions about a topic which is not as interesting as my sleep. He looked like he was forced to be there, but really didn’t care about the missing people and was just there because somebody else in the government decided that they needed to look as if they are doing the normal things for missing people.
The miners on the other hand could also use this to their own advantage, although I don’t think that they will be stupid enough to do it directly as, currently at least, they are winning the PR war over the mining tax and would know better than to use a potential tragedy for political gain…something to which Australians don’t usually take kindly.
It could be pointed out that the mining executives were en route to an almost unpronounceable mining project in a mostly unpronounceable part of Africa…the type of foreign project which would be more likely to occur on a more regular basis if the proposed mining tax forces the companies to invest more heavily in foreign projects. These less developed parts of the world have less safe transport infrastructure, and it could be argued that the mining tax would lead to a higher likelihood of lives being lost.
As I say though, it’s unlikely that the miners will say that directly, and certainly not this soon, but I think it is inevitable that the missing miners will influence the direction of the debate over the mining tax, which is sad. In the infamous words of Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste”.
I do sincerely hope that the missing miners are found safe and well. Any time that people go missing it is concerning, especially when it involves a plane in a remote area.
On the bright side though, we can usually learn from situations like this, and I think it’s safe to say that the one good thing which will definitely come out of this is that companies will be much more careful about allowing their entire board to travel together from now on.
After the maternity leave fiasco, it’s nice to see Tony Abbott making some sense again.
The idea for firm time limits on the dole (the payment for people who are unemployed, are not students, not retired and not ill or disabled) has always seemed like a good idea to me, especially seeing as in the area where I live, there seems to be an endless supply of drug-fuelled dole-bludgers who manage to stay on the dole by attending job interviews for jobs which they have no intention of getting, thereby fulfilling their payment requirement of appearing to be looking for work.
I don’t support the idea of completely banning the dole for people under 30 years of age, although I would be in favour of tighter restrictions on the dole for people under 21 years of age. At that age, quite frankly, it’s a case of study or work.. If parents want to fund their adult offspring’s leisure, then so be it, but the offspring shouldn’t expect the taxpayer to do so.
The plan from Tony Abbott and the opposition, apparently, is to limit the dole to six months. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, and should be more than enough time for people to get back in to the workforce, even if it means going in to a job other than one which they would prefer. They can always change to a different job later on if necessary.
The idea of the dole is not to act as an income from which one can live, but to act as an interim safety net, accompanied by one’s savings, to get one through a brief period of unemployment. People who are working and paying taxes should not be expected to pay for the lives of those who are capable of working, and choose not to work.
Paul Howes, boss of the great socialist empire known as the Australian Workers Union, calls this whole idea a “Sarah Palin moment” and, for once, I agree with him. Where I disagree with him, is that he thinks this is a bad thing. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Sarah Palin is a great conservative figure with a great understanding of the economics which help countries to thrive, and I’m sure that Tony Abbott would be delighted by the comparison. Personally, I’d call it a “Stan Zemanek moment” as the late Stan Zemanek battled for this type of sensible policy for years.
Now, I’m sure that people (it’s happened before) will point at me as an example of why this policy can not work as I spent much of last year out of work. The fact is, I was looking for work for almost all of the time that I was out of work last year, but I had saved enough money beforehand to avoid needing to rely on the public purse. Things were tight for a while, but I did not, at any stage, receive a government unemployment benefit. There were a few times where I almost took a job which I didn’t really want, and if it had been necessary, I would have taken those jobs, but I was fortunate that small amounts of ongoing work, and an eventual more permanent job made it possible for me to get by without needing government handouts.
It’s true that I had to learn a lot more about budgeting and sacrifice during this time. In fact, for large portions of the year I went without a car. It is this sort of careful planning and budgeting which makes government handouts, for the most part, unnecessary in the long-term and hopefully for most people, in the short term.
I fully understand that there will be some people who need the financial assistance during a period of unemployment. That’s fine and that is what the dole is for. But as I’ve already said, the dole is a temporary measure, and should have firm time limits on it.
As Sean Hannity would say, “when you’re unemployed, it is your job to find a job”. It is on this basis, that dole payments should be made. A temporary helping hand while you get back on your feet.
Sad news from western Russia this evening. The President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, has been killed in a plane crash from which there are no survivors.
MOSCOW – Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife died Saturday along with 130 others when their plane crashed while coming in for a landing in western Russia, officials said.
The governor of the Smolensk region, where the crash took place about 11 a.m. (0700 GMT), said no one survived.
“The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart,” Sergei Anufriev said on state news channel Rossiya-24. “Nobody has survived the disaster.”
The Polish foreign ministry confirmed that Kaczynski and his wife were aboard the plane.
The head of Russia’s top investigative body, Sergei Markin, said there were a total of 132 people on the plane, a Tu-154.
It is sad whenever an elected head of state is killed, however given my political allegiances I am especially saddened by this news, as Lech Kaczyński was one of those few good politicians who had plenty of good conservative values and recognised the inherent dangers in allowing giant bureaucracies like the European Union to be allowed to expand in to domestic affairs.
My thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Kaczyński’s family, and all of Poland, at this terrible and tragic time.
May Lech Kaczyński rest in peace. He will be missed.
Update: This story is getting worse unfortunately. It seems that many more high-ranking Polish officials were on the plane. More from the FOX News story linked above:
Kaczynski was flying to Russia for events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police in Katyn and elsewhere during World War II.
The presidential plane was a Soviet-built Tupolev TU154M, at least 20 years old. The Army chief of staff, Gen. Franciszek Gagor, National Bank President Slawomir Skrzypek and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremoer were on the passenger list.
In Warsaw, Prime Minister Donald Tusk called an extraordinary meeting of his Cabinet.
[..]
According to the constitution, [Parliament speaker Bronislaw] Komorowski would take over presidential duties.
The next Presidential election was due in Spring. It may now be brought forward. End Update
Regardless of who actually forms government in Tasmania and South Australia, there can be no doubt that the mood in those two states has shifted drastically towards conservatives, much as we have seen in recent elections such as the 2008 Northern Territory election and, to a lesser extent, the 2008 Western Australian election and the 2009 Queensland election. Much like most of those elections though, the swings might not be big enough for conservatives to form government due to large incumbent majorities.
Tasmania is set to go down as a hung parliament with the most likely outcome as ten seats each for the Labor and Liberal parties, with the Greens taking out the remaining five seats despite the Liberals taking more of the primary vote than Labor 39.1% to 37.1% with the Greens taking 21.3%. This is thanks to the strange Hare-Clark proportional counting system allowing for large numbers of votes which don’t fit in to a “quota” to effectively be wasted.
Labor took a serious beating with a swing against them of 12.1%, whilst the Liberal party gained a 7.2% swing and the Greens received a lesser 4.6% swing. None of this takes in to account the postal votes etc which have not been counted yet. As such, the 10-10-5 result isn’t guaranteed but appears to be the most likely.
Either way, Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett said prior to the election that whichever party receives the most votes in a minority government should be given the first opportunity to form government. Given this statement, and the fact that the Greens will probably decide who governs and will be wary of a partnership with their supposed ideological comrades in the Labor Party after the way they have been shafted in the ACT, it is probable that we will see Liberal leader Will Hodgman as Premier, forming a minority government with Green Party backing.
Will seemed very confident of forming government in his speech, and given the way that much of his party seems to be interested in renewable energy (presumably in a sensible cost-effective way rather than a “all the polar bears will have to swim to the equator if we don’t build five zillion wind farms by 10am” way), I’d suggest that he is right.
Over in South Australia we see a similar story of a massive swing to the Liberal Party (7.3%) and a similar swing against Labor. We also see the similar-to-Tasmania story of the Liberals receiving more votes but not more seats. With 72.9% of the vote counted, The Liberals hold 41.4% of the primary vote to Labor’s 37.9 and the Greens’ 8%. Oddly though this sees Labor ahead on seats.
Seat calculations have been thrown in to disarray by the extremely close results in a number of seats, and the swing is haphazard. Whilst the overall swing is against Labor, many seats had strong swings in either direction, and it seems that the obvious Liberal victories are mostly by huge margins, which means that a lot of their overall swing is “wasted” on excess votes in seats which they have clearly won, at the expense of the closer seats. This makes it possible for the Labor party to retain government.
The ABC computer claims that Labor will take 25 seats, Liberals 18, and independents and minor parties 4. This, however, is disputed by the ABC’s analysts which think there is likely to be two or three seats which the computer has awarded to Labor, but could easily go to the Liberals. This would bring the Labor party under the 24 seat threshold required for a majority government and potentially make it a 22-21-4 parliament. This would give Labor more seats, but still make it possible for the Liberals to form government with independent/minor party backing thanks to the fact that the parliament still gets to elect its leader, and this does not have to come from the party with the most seats. One could argue that in a 22-21-4 environment, the 21 seat party could be more likely to get independent/minor party backing if they attracted more votes from the public.
I would be tempted to say that incumbent Labor Premier Mike Rann will be returned to power except for that fact that his speech last night sounded like he thought he is going to lose. He did everything you would expect from a concession speech except concede, and this makes me think that his party officials have told him that the postal votes will go against him and that he will be facing a big backroom-deal-with-the-independents battle. Liberal leader Isobel Redmond’s speech was much more optimistic (although nowhere near as optimistic as the almost-victory speech of Tasmanian Liberal leader Will Hodgman) and so I strongly suspect that we will see a further substantial number of votes go to the Liberals before the counting is over.
At this time, I’m predicting a Liberal-led and Greens-backed government in Tasmania, and a minority Labor government in South Australia with a change to a minority Liberal government mid-term when Mike Rann pulls the pin or looks like he is going to pull the pin.
The swing to the conservatives is very heartening, and despite the decent swing to the Greens in Tasmania, I still have to say that this is just another sign that the world seems to be shifting back to the conservative side of politics after its 2006-2008 anti-incumbent shift to the left. In such a swing to the conservatives, a swing to the Greens is to be expected in a relatively left-wing state such as Tasmania. Tasmania has a substantial left-wing “environmentalist” population, and it’s only natural in a shift away from an incumbent Labor government that the Greens would pick up the votes of those who refuse to vote Labor but can’t bring themselves to stomach the notion of voting for the Liberals. Tasmania is very similar to the ACT in this way as we have a relatively left-wing population thanks to our massive public servant workforce and we saw a similar swing in the 2008 election.
Victoria’s Labor government faces an election this year and would have to be a tad concerned by these results even though the polls suggest that they still have a comfortable lead. They really need to hope that the federal election is called before the state election occurs, as the Tasmanian and South Australian elections are quite indicative of the shift which appears to be occurring at the national level and people don’t seem to like voting for the same party at a national and state level within a few weeks of each other.
Federally, Kevin Rudd won’t be happy today as he is likely to face a very similar backlash at the polls and doesn’t have the same percentage lead as his Tasmanian and South Australian counterparts. Tony Abbott on the other hand will be sure to try to seize on the momentum of his state colleagues.
It’s hard to draw definitive conclusions between state and federal elections due to the nature of the different policies and responsibilities of these governments, but when you have swings as big as we have seen in these two elections with only a handful of months until the federal election, the swings can’t be ignored.
Canberra’s annual road toll has sadly doubled overnight, and the worst part is that the four deaths appear to have been as a result of a driver failing to obey an instruction from police to pull over.
Both ACT Police and NSW Police issued statements at about 2:10 this morning. The NSW Police statement is on their website however I’ll quote the ACT Police statement as it is more detailed. Sadly it (as usual) is not on their website yet.
Quadruple fatality, Narrabundah
ACT Policing is investigating the circumstances surrounding a fatal traffic collision at Narrabundah this evening that has resulted in the death of three adults and an infant.
Initial investigations indicate that about 10pm (March 20), ACT Policing were advised that NSW Police were involved in a pursuit which has originated in Queanbeyan, NSW. The vehicle being pursued on Canberra Avenue by the officers was involved in a collision with another vehicle at the intersection of Canberra Avenue and the Monaro Highway exit ramp at Narrabundah, ACT. The offending vehicle collided with the second vehicle which was turning right onto Canberra Avenue, off the Monaro Hwy down ramp. The three occupants of the second vehicle, a male in his 30s, female also in her 30s and a male infant, died in the collision. The collision occurred after the pursuit was reportedly terminated by NSW Police.
The male driver and female passenger in the offending vehicle were transported to The Canberra Hospital, the male aged in his 20s, later died in hospital. The female remains in a critical condition.
Officers from ACT Policing’s Collision Investigation and Reconstruction Team are investigating the fatal traffic collision on behalf of the ACT Coroner, while ACT Policing and NSW Police are conducting a joint internal review of the circumstances surrounding the collision. The incident is considered a Critical Incident for both ACT Policing and NSW Police.
Tonight’s crash brings the 2010 ACT road toll to eight.
The intersection will remain closed for several hours while the scene reconstruction takes place.
Anyone with information which may be able to assist police with their investigation is asked to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000, or via the Crime Stoppers website on www.act.crimestoppers.com.au.
It’s interesting that the ACT press release says that NSW Police had pulled out of the pursuit, but doesn’t mention what ACT Police were doing at the time. I would assume that, as is normal procedure, NSW Police terminated the pursuit at the border and allowed ACT Police to take over. The NSW press release suggests that the pursuit was still in progress at the time of the crash:
The pursuit continued along Canberra Avenue into the ACT and at the intersection of Canberra Avenue and the Monaro Highway exit ramp at Narrabundah, the vehicle collided with a Mazda 3.
I’m sure that this will all be cleared up soon. Right now though, I’m just deeply saddened that an innocent family appears to have been killed by a driver who failed to comply with an instruction from police to pull over. The circumstances are tragic, and I have a heap of sympathy for the poor family involved and the police as well. I just hope that this doesn’t result in one of those stupid knee-jerk “let’s ban police pursuits” reactions that we keep seeing in New South Wales.
I love elections, they’re one of the few things for which I’m willing to delay my viewing of The Bill!
South Australia and Tasmania are heading to the polls today and I have to admit that I like the look of the polls with them showing that Labor are likely to lose power in both states.
the poll, conducted this week, shows Labor’s primary support across all electorates is 35 per cent to the Liberals’ 36.5 per cent and the Greens’ 25.5 per cent.
A review of first preferences at the electorate level suggests Labor could lose up to five seats, crashing from 14 in the 25-seat assembly to just nine.
Under this “worst case” scenario for Labor, the Liberals would gain three seats to move to 10 and the Greens would gain two to move to six.
Whilst a Labor/Greens coalition isn’t out of the question, one would think that the Tasmanian Greens would be wary of such a deal given the way the Greens appear to have been sidelined in their “partnership” with ACT Labor.
Meanwhile in South Australia, another Newspoll gives the Liberals are huge lead:
the poll found the Liberals ahead of Labor on a two-party-preferred basis by 52 per cent to 48 per cent.
[..]
Labor’s statewide primary vote fell by less than one percentage point to 35.3 per cent since the previous poll, covering January to the beginning of March.
The Liberals increased their statewide primary support by more than three points to 42.5 per cent.
Although it must be said that a poll quoted but not identified by AAP today shows a different result:
Polls have the two leaders running neck and neck .. but betting shows Labor slightly edging out the opposition.
I’ve personally gone all-out in support of Conservative Victory 2010 (with apologies to Sean Hannity for once again stealing his phrase) and put money on a Liberal victory in both states. Centrebet are currently offering some pretty nice odds, especially in South Australia:
South Australia
Labor: $1.38
Liberal: $2.93
Tasmania
Labor: $2.00
Liberal: $1.80
For assistance with gambling problems, Call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or your local gambling support group
I’ll be watching both with much interest tonight, although it’s quite likely that neither will have a clear winner tonight. I personally think that Tasmania will be a clear Liberal victory which will be announced tonight and South Australia will be much closer and may take a couple days to provide a clear result.
These elections will send a clear message to our federal politicians. If their side loses they’ll deny that is has anything to with federal politics, of course, but they will privately be watching these elections very closely as they’re the most useful and comprehensive opinion poll that we’ll see for some time. I’ll be very interested to see how the messages emanating from the federal Labor and Liberal parties change subtly in the few weeks after these elections. Obviously I’m hoping that they change in a “less government waste” and “less silly taxes” way…but only time will tell.
Kevin Rudd, commenting on the similarities between his problems in making parliament do as he says, and Obama’s predicament in passing his agenda in the US:
“But he has health reform on his agenda on Washington. We have health and hospitals reform on our agenda here in Australia. He has a thing called a troublesome Senate.
“I have a troublesome Senate as well.”
Kevin Rudd was commenting on how he understands the reason for Obama’s delayed visit and how “Australia would fit in with the President’s timetable”. So does Kevin really think that bowing to Obama (that would make a change from Obama’s habit of bowing to everyone…maybe we can have a bow-off) and insulting his own Senate will make the Senate more likely to agree with him, or is his plan to somehow make Obama the new Australian Senate?
I’m not a big fan of air travel. I’m not what you would call a “nervous flyer” but I’m not really at ease on aeroplanes either. I just don’t like the idea of having that much distance between myself and the ground, and the air pressure changes annoy me along with the bits of turbulence…flying through cloud bothers me because it removes my ability to check that we’re still a reasonable distance off the ground, and then, well this will sound nuts, but there are no signposts at 40,000 feet, and so the lack of noticeable direction bothers me.
Anyway, with that in mind, you can probably understand how something like this disturbs me in more ways than I dare to count.
An investigation is underway after a child was heard giving instructions to a pilot from the air-traffic control tower at one of America’s busiest airports.
In a recording that has been confirmed as genuine by the Federal Aviation Administration, the child makes five transmissions from John F Kennedy International Airport — with the pilots in each case all responding enthusiastically to him.
The child is clearly under supervision and being fed lines, but even so, should not be in that position. Whilst the fact that a child was in a position to give orders to pilots is a concern unto itself, the fact that the child speaks, like most children, in a not-entirely-clear voice, is a bigger concern to me due to the increased likelihood of a misunderstanding.
This disturbs me too much to think about, so I’ll turn my attention to something more palatable: the TV news set in the video.
Admittedly at this size it doesn’t come up all that brilliantly, but it’s an interesting set due to the way that it’s designed to have many different angles which all look vastly different, unlike many news sets which are designed to look like you’re stuck in one corner of a room.
I’ve highlighted the important bits here. The Red box shows the female anchor who is presenting to the camera in front of her. The view has changed changed from the camera in front of her to this overview camera, and in a moment it will zoom in on the green box where a reporter is standing in front of another camera and is about to present to it. In the yellow box, a male anchor is standing by for his next appearance.
Given the shape of the set, it wouldn’t surprise me if off-screen there is another part of the set which is used as a backdrop for some other locally-produced program. It’s not uncommon for sets to be used for multiple shows, but it is fascinating to see a single set used for the one program but with a completely different “look” depending on the angle, and especially fascinating to see the overview of the set.
Or maybe I’m just easily distracted in an effort to not be disturbed by the news story.
This is a bit untimely for me as I was deflecting the ridiculous “there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” argument a couple of days ago, but anyway, guess what they found in Iraq in the last day or so…yes, that’s right, another weapon of mass destruction.
I haven’t held on to the previous stories about WMDs being dug up in Iraq (nor have The Daily Mail based on the commentary in their article), but I’ll hold on to this one because I’m sure that I’ll have to deal with the silly argument over and over again.
I can’t think of a better way to re-emerge from my latest blogging hibernation, than with a video of a recently-hibernating groundhog having a chat with a bunch of grown men in funny hats.
Yes, legendary weather forecasting groundhog Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and has decreed that winter will last for another six weeks in the northern hemisphere. It’s no wonder that PETA launched a loopy objection to the use of a groundhog the other day and suggested replacing him with a robot (their reasoning included something about how we’ve replaced dinosaurs with robots and people still come to see them)…not enough global warming for them!
Seriously though, does that mean another six weeks of heat down here in this hemisphere?
A very happy Australia Day to you. Please be upstanding for Julie Anthony’s brilliant (the best, in my view) rendition of our national anthem, Advance Australia Fair.
The list of winners, which Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will announce a bit later this afternoon is as follows:
Australian of the Year 2010: Professor Patrick McGorry of Victoria
Senior Australian of the Year 2010: Maggie Beer of South Australia
Young Australian of the Year 2010: Trooper Mark Donaldson VC of Western Australia
Australia’s Local Hero 2010: Ronni Kahn of New South Wales
There we go. No need to wait around and endure the painful process of listening to Kevin Rudd talk.
I’m not naming my source but am 100% sure that this information is accurate. I’m led to believe that the media are stuck in some sort of embargo around this information, so if you’re in the media and reading this, it’s not my fault if you decide to relay it and get in to trouble for it.
Lord Christopher Monckton’s people have been kind enough to provide some more information about his upcoming lecture tour. The exact schedule is still subject to change, but as of this moment the following is known:
Wednesday 27.1.10 – 5.30pm – Sydney – Grand Ballroom, The Sheraton on The Park, Elizabeth Street, Sydney
Thursday 28.1.10 – 12.30pm – Newcastle – Banquette Hall, Newcastle City Hall, King Street Newcastle.
Friday 29.1.10 – 12.30 Lunch – Brisbane – Grand ballroom, Hilton Hotel, Queen Street, Brisbane
Saturday 30.1.10 – 2pm – Noosa – The J at Noosa Junction
Monday 1.2.10 – 12.30pm – Melbourne TBA
Tuesday 2.2.10 – 2pm – Melbourne – Grand Ballroom, Sofitel Hotel
Wednesday 3.2.10 Canberra
Thursday 4.2.10 – 2pm – Adelaide – Venue TBA
Monday 8.2.10 – 2pm – Perth – Venue TBA
I’m informed that details which are a bit more concrete should be available in a week or so.
Lord Monckton in Australia
(Please spread this message widely) 21 Dec. 2009
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (Christopher Lord Monckton) has agreed to come on a lecture tour in Australia in late January 2010. Professor Ian Plimer will accompany Christopher Monckton on a whirlwind tour of the mainland capital cities starting in Sydney on January 26th and finishing in Perth on February 8th. Unfortunately we cannot fit in Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Lady Juliet Monckton will come as well, in part to monitor Lord Monckton’s health.
Prof. Plimer says the following of Lord Monckton: “although I modestly state that I am a good performer, he is superb and I have seen him fielding a very hostile BBC and other networks. He has the ability to change thinking……”.
Given the now generally-acknowledged lack of understanding among the Australian general public of the underlying reasons for a “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” and the likely effects thereof, it is critical that the public gets a chance to hear a globally-recognised presenter to explain the rational understanding of the whole issue. Lord Monckton is the ideal person to carry out this task and to also put it to the mass media.
[Tour date details removed – see details above or download the PDF]
As you can understand, the cost of this exercise will be very substantial as we have to fly Lord and Lady Monkton to and from Australia, all his domestic travel and accommodation plus a “stipend” of $20,000. Our aim is to cover these costs from donations from individuals, appropriate associations and corporations; we expect the required total to be of the order of $100,000. We would like to keep the cost of admission to Monckton’s lectures at around $20 so as to maximise the number of people that will come to hear him.
We have had a number of donations already of $1,000 (and higher) and would prefer donations to be of that order, but of course any amount is very welcome. Should there be a surplus, this, depending on the amount, will be given to Lord Monckton and/or the Climate Sceptics Party which is assisting with this project.
Your donations should be directed to:
Westpac Bank – Lord Monckton Tour account
Bank BSB: 035612
Account: 253068
Thank you in advance for your support of this nationally important project.
