It is a lying Govt, incompetent, neo-liberal to a fault, anti-science, anti-justice, captured by big money (FIRE, coal, etc) ‘interests’. They are so bad that my little ‘canaries’ in the ACT now hate them more than Howard (and boy did they hate Howard).

Yep, we in Oz continue our long slide downwards into 3rd world irrelevence.

However, after being nice about Dudd I really I should say what I think about Bumby …… thanks for, for as I predicted, killing off solar in Victoria. Nice tag team work with the Federals.

You know, I’d actually like to be proven wrong once in a while .. I simply predict the worst (and assume that our ‘elite’ decision makers are stupid, bent, corrupt, very stupid, very very stupid, etc) .. and it magically happens.

You know, I probably have read enough of your articles on ‘The honeymoon’s over’ line form the papers to know better, but your right, there is irony there.

Looks like my communications lecturers were right, most communication is non-verbal and sarcasm doesn’t work on the Internet, oh well.

PinkyOz

SA is a curious beast in some ways – there are quite strong localised pockets of both extreme conservatism (one of these being in the NE suburbs, home of the happy-clappers and Family First) and other quite progressive pockets, which made Jamie Briggs’ recent election in Mayo such a near miss. There are strong progressive pockets in places like Goolwa near the Murray mouth.
Just by way of evidence, we have 1 Green MLC, 1 Democrat MLC, 2 No Pokies MLCs and 2 Family First MLCs in the Legislative Council, out of 22 – Labor and the Libs have 8 each. We do seem to have a fairly strong history of voting away from the two major parties toward independents and minor parties whether centrist or extreme, perhaps due to being that smallest mainland state and fearing that we’ll be subsumed by Party Discipline™ without independent voices.

Paulus@18 – OT, but it’ll be brief. You’re quite right that someone will always be lowest paid in the country, but very rarely throughout the entire life of an EBA. At some point, you will skip ahead of at least one other state. The current Govt offer would leave us at the bottom for the entire life of the agreement.

BoyI wish we would stop using the word ‘honeymoon’, it’s deceptive it makes it seem like a temporary effect rather than a trend (short/long, yet to be seen)

Fair point, PinkyOz. The irony in its use in the post should be taken as read!

There is a cycle to our political system; it’s different between each government so it never looks like it matches up, until Howard. It’s possible that through all the wedging and politicking that made up the Howard years, he actually did something that others before him did, break the equilibrium, the cycle that we see in governments rising and falling around the country.

His own (let’s say successful) work federally made him popular enough for re-elections, but there was still an underlying groundswell of dislike for the man, which manifested in bad results for Liberal governments/oppositions that didn’t have his playbook, resources or the ability to execute a good counter strategy, leading to even the most unpopular state Labor governments being returned with unheard of margins, like the voting public had a ‘group unconscious’ thought that they needed to reign in Howard, but still wanted him in power.

Now he’s gone, the system is correcting to meet the returned equilibrium. State Labor governments will now have to perform to stay in power, but the Libs won’t have an easy run to victory because the ‘group unconscious’ hasn’t come to the conclusion that the Rudd government needs that extra check.

It would be interesting to see the figures on, after each state has had their post-Howard era election, but it’s a crazy electorate, so you never know, I could be right.

PinkyOz

BBB

Why’s Rudd trending down? Sure, Murray-Darling effect in rural SA, where it’s turning some people incandescent with rage.

And maybe SA is just a bit more inherently conservative than the other states, and is returning to its long-run average.
[/unscientific speculation warning]