The DD allows Rudd to get the new senators early but they go early too ..

A half senate allows Rudd to get more senators AND have them start late and finish later. The greens do a little worse than in A DD (but still improve) but what they get they will probably pick up at the expense of the right …

Not quite sure I follow your line of reasoning there.

Say they go the DD. Upside for Rudd is extra seats and a rubber stamp parliament – always desirable for a PM, and especially if one is a control freak. Downside for Rudd is, umm, bugger-all change?

All upside, no downside?

Even a non-gambler might be pursuaded with those sort of outcomes…

This cynic has lost faith in any direct attempts to discuss things with pollies. It seems to me that they only sit up and pay attention if an item looks like it has mass support and significant votes in it. Individual appeals to logic and reason don’t seem to cut much ice.

Just saw Penny Wong’s address to the Press Club on ETS. She made perfect logical sense in the first half of the talk – defining the problem we face, the economic and social impacts, the argument for action now, etc. Then she got to the “how do we solve it” part, and reverted to pure politics. No discussion of what the ETS will actually do, but a lot of coalition-bashing, Turnbull-bashing, denialist-bashing etc.

Veiled threats to the opposition about what Labor would do (i.e. implied Double Dissolution) if they didn’t get it passed. Point-Blank refusal to contemplate any alternatives or amendments.

Very poor. In fact, EXTREMELY poorly argued.

At a time when the majority of people polled say that they don’t understand what ETS will involve, Wong implies that she doesn’t need to explain any details. More-or-less “Take it or leave it. And by the way, you WILL be doing it our way…”

Sounds like Hugo Chavez. So what was the role of a Senate in a Democracy? Rubber stamp, was it?

If the Rudd government uses this to force a DD on the electorate, rather than considering any amendments, then I sincerely hope that the electorate forces THEM to explain themselves properly about their scheme.

If it is important enough an issue, for them to bring the country to a halt, then it is certainly important enough for them to convince the electorate that their scheme is the best answer.

If they don’t, then they deserve to get chucked out for playing politics with the issue.

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XXXX: I feel your pain PM, you can’t press [enter] without the comment being submitted. Try using notepad, then paste it into this box.
…
PM: By the way, becasue I am chatting myself and my typing skills are a toal embarassment to my kids, lets extend this session another twenty minutes. OK?

http://pmtv.chat.viostream.com/chat/indexpiesstrazy.php#

HTTP Error 500.0 – Internal Server Error
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Not impressed. Greensblog ain’t fancy, but at least we don’t stuff around with comments. And we interact with commenters!