The other day I pointed to ludicrously misreported Galaxy polling showing federal Labor improving its vote in Queensland. Yesterday, the other bit of the Galaxy Poll was published in the Courier-Mail showing state Labor going backwards in Queensland. (Although actually, it only shows this if the comparison is with February – the last three polls show the 2PP bouncing around 52% for Labor and the margin of error isn’t stated. But as usual all the focus is on preferred Premier – where, of course, Anna Bligh is still ahead – but not by so much.)
Richard Farmer has pinged what the national News Limited polling pundits haven’t noticed – the movement in inconsistent directions (although the trend in both cases is weak) shows that their current narrative of “balancing” Labor’s federal dominance by turning on state Labor.
Incidentally, Lawrence Springborg shouldn’t get cocky (heh! bad pun!) about all the good news from the meejah. Since his dream baby, the LNP, came into the world, he doesn’t seem to have done anything much other than continue the purge of Liberals. Oh, and claim to stand for “renewal” while failing to stand up to should be superannuated former leader and Minister Mike Horan who wants to continue to occupy Toowoomba South at age 65, thus leading to Stuart Copeland – one of the few Nats shadows with brain power – being redistributed out of existence at age 40. But, never mind, The Borg has promoted a 27 year old no one has ever heard of to the front bench!
Lawrence had better either start spelling out how exactly he’s going to “fix” Queensland, or get that singlet and the running shoes out and prepare for some more stunts.
So, we have a self-fulfilling prophecy then? that’s clever.
There are still going to be some nervous backbenches out there in QLD next year with margins of less then 5%, but really can you see it happening? Lawrence Springborg taking the Nationals (Yes I know, LNP, but I’m calling a spade a spade) to victory. For him to have even a slither of a chance he needs to take Brisbane-based seats, and I just don’t see it happening. Were talikng seats like Indooroopilly, Aspley, Chatsworth and to really win, seats like Pumicestone, Redcliffe, Cleavland and Redlands need to be on the list, so what are they doing for any of these seats, what are the policies that will attract former Libs & Labor swinging voters to vote for them in these electorates?
This is the continuing nightmare for QLD, we can have Labor’s lazy, populist and reactionary policy making designed solely to keep them in government. Or a hard-right controlled set of factions, that only know how to criticise their political opponents (inside or outside the party) that make up the LNP.
Oh, so looking forward to the election now.
PinkyOz
Speaking of Federal ALP’s electoral popularity, I guess I’m somewhat gladdened that the electorate seems to be generally smart enough not to associate sharemarket woes with the change in government, despite the scarily close level of association:
http://au.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EAORD&t=5y
Funny thing, you probably could make a case that an element of the AORDS’s fall since November is due to the fact that share traders are somewhat likely to downgrade (short-term) corporate profitability given some of the ALP’s policies (whether on WorkChoices, emissions trading, or whatever). But I’m actually surprised nobody is pointing at that chart and screaming “look what electing the ALP has done to your superannuation”. In fact, if anybody has been accused over superannuation loses, it’s Peter Costello, for changing tax laws in a way that encouraged many to put significant amounts of money into super: something my own mother would have done if it weren’t for the fact that it took much longer to sell her house than initially anticipated.
You could put in a million and if a small business you could lump in $4 million. I guess those wealthy groups Costello was really targetting gave a wink and a nod as members of their family each put in a million looking forward to tax free money a few years down the track as well.
But dear old Peter in his hurry to help the rich also suckered a number of retirees with their lifes work.
They (the wealthy lot) would be cursing Costello and Howard for pandering to them now. How ironic.
I reckon it’s a more accurate picture if you leave off the “Or”: Queensland Labor is a “hard-right controlled set of factions”, and will be for as long as government means control of the treasury, and with it the ability to dole out contracts to firms that might have seats on boards and directorships available for post-parliament careerist rumps.
Anyone that buys Anna’s “It’s time for investment in brains not bricks” line has bricks for brains. Hint: They spend 1.5 $Million to get each new bed on-stream ($1.23 billion-> 750-beds for Southport), and maybe .1% of that, outside, is the actual bed. Who gets the rest?
Just watch Anna dump the Traveston Dam plan as it gets closer to election and she gets twitchy about the Greens vote maybe getting out of hand. If that’s what you mean by populism, I’ll go with it.
But it’s a strange populism at work railroading the Children’s Hospital onto the Mater campus, contrary to clinician’s advice and wishes, regardless of the criticism in the leaked Ernst and Young report, notwithstanding there will be net less beds than there are now, despite a budget blowout from 800 million to $2.5 billion. (Hmmm , maybe that’s why the odd decision was made, it allowed an opportunity for such a blowout, the money’s going somewhere.)
Apart from anything else, the traffic is going to be a freaking monstrous nightmare when the new congestion is delivered by all those people taking the stanley st freeway exit past the mater entrance to access the mayors new bridge.
And it’s done: Anna Bligh has just announced knocking Traveston Dam on the head, or at least, delaying it for several years, which is electorally the same thing: bowing to green pressure perhaps, or just an uncharacteristic attack of common-sense?