Both parties trying to be Not-Green in Australian election, Coalition looking better at it.

Stick with us overseas readers. The spectacle goes on…

How times have changed

Back in 2007 both major parties wooed the Green vote. Now Green is so on the nose that Abbott not only declared that he was putting them last on preference swaps*, but felt it was worth egging the Labor party to join him. The ALP did not scoff. Abbott is marking the Greens as worse for the nation than the Labor Party. In response the Labor Party put out a definite “maybe-sorta-kindof”. Rudd ruled out “deals” to form government (though it’s not clear what that means exactly), but he naturally wants to use preference swaps and won’t be bragging about it.

Both major parties are competing to look tough on “irregular maritime migrants”. Though both still pay lip service to the climate-scare. It’s a shame the Liberals are still too afraid of the name-calling bullies to stand up and ask for evidence, or to promise to set up an independent science agency to audit the IPCC claims on behalf of Australian taxpayers.

Where did that bounce go?

The honeymoon is over for Rudd.

Sportsbet have the Conservatives at $1.11. Labor at $6.50. The Labor Party suffered ignominious polling news that Peter Beattie (star pick, former-Premier, parachuted in last week) is not-too popular and unlikely to win the seat (Ouch. 40%). The Hollow Men magic is failing.

Meanwhile Rudd announced a plan to reduce company tax in the Northern Territory. As far as most people could tell, he decided it on Thursday, and waited a whole day to announce it. I think Abbott launched a similar idea months ago, and at the time it was mocked. Simon Crean (Labor MP) called it: “Tony Abbott’s grab bag of wacky ideas.” What was yesterday’s dumb idea is today’s grand plan. Too bad about intelligent repartee. Most of the Australian policy debate is analyzed with scorn or derision.

The tally for Labor waste stands at $250 billion according to Henry Ergas and Judith Sloan.

Remember Rob Oakshott and Tony Windsor?

The two infamous independent M.P.s wanted a stable big-spending-soft-government and a carbon tax and thanks to them, we got it. The big lie was that their electorates wanted this too.

Latest New England Poll suggests a 66% vote coming for the conservative candidate. In Lyne, it’s 59%.

Shucks but I’ll miss Rob Oakshott. His words of wisdom from the Hansard record of Parliament May 2010:

“I take this opportunity to raise the issue of the smoking guns that I have seen over the last six months. I smelt a rat in the shift that I saw and what looked to be—to their credit—a very well organised and very well-funded campaign from the likes of JoNova and Viv Forbes.”

Thank you Rob.

(My response to him in 2010)

I’m bowled over by the compliment. Is he really giving me and Viv the joint credit for the sweeping poll changes? (As if). I’ll just ask my PR department (me) to arrange with my cartoonist (me too) to throw together a parody of parliament, which the web-editor (me) can code into a page. All of us are delighted to be described as well organized. (It’s true, we communicate like we are all in one head.) **

We’re a bit confused about the “well funded” term though, since we write pro bono, and are essentially a charity operator…

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*We have preferential voting, meaning we number the politicians sequentially from one to n according to to how much we dislike them. Bigger numbers are worse. Like golf, the ones who score the lowest number wins. Unlike golf, where the losers throw away their cards, in Australian politics the losers pass their cards (or votes) to the people with better scores. This analogy falls into a bunker trap about here. Preference swaps means politicians write up lists of how they hope their fans will number their voting card. In quite a few seats these second or third choices of voters will end up winning. May the least disliked pollie win.

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