OK, apparently New South Wales has a new premier, after Planning Minister Kristina Keneally rolled Nathan Rees 47-21 in a ballot held tonight.
Anybody want to take bets on Keneally lasting until the state election?
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Normally I’d applaud a woman becoming premier but not this time. Keneally is doing the bidding of her benefactors so that they could gain some petty revenge. It seems Tripodi and Obeid have not concept of how this will look outside their myopic, pathetic displays of limited power.
She is already damaged from her time as planning minister but Rees’ outgoing remarks have denied her any credibility. She is the perfect puppet of which he spoke.
(facepalm)
Is there no end to the embarrassment that is the NSW labor party? When will it end?
How funny to watch the incestous rump of tired, ugly fat politicians of the NSW ALP tear into eachother. Corrupt mongrels of a distant principle going the way of all professional politicians. We deserve no less.
Who?
OK – and how many of you are likely to vote (or at least preference) a Liberal in the next election?
If not, then you are just helping to perpetuate this tired, corrupt system.
By the sound of it, she’s a proxy for Tripodi and co.
To top it off, she was Planning Minister. In the NSW government, FFS? You’re looking to make a clean start and you pick the Planning Minister?
I hope she continues in the spectacularly snide form she demonstrated in the committee hearings – with any luck the Labor Right will be caned so mightily in 2011, their grip on the party will be loosened.
Andrew: what’s the alternative? A bunch of hard-right Bible-bashers?
Great choice.
I believe in gay marriage and equal rights, and a social policy of mutual respect and tolerance.
I believe in a new social-democratic compact for rebuilding our decaying cities, including desperately-needed investment in schools, hospitals, and ESPECIALLY transport infrastructure.
I believe in ethical government not dominated by the loudest voices or the deepest pockets.
The Liberals would, in some respects, be worse than Labor on these grounds. That does not entitle Labor to my vote. What Labor has done in government, and especially in the last few days, DISqualifies Labor from my vote.
Labor must go. It doesn’t matter what you believe on social issues. It doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight, Christian, Muslim or atheist, libertarian or communist, you must agree: this is a rotten government, dominated by the worst factional hacks, utterly disinterested in the best interests of this state.
I’m starting a movement called Labor for O’Farrell. Labor voters, interested in traditional Labor values, who just want Labor gone, by any means necessary: I don’t CARE who replaces them I just want them to GO AWAY forever and let this state be. Who’s with me?
Awful choice, but they’ve got to go. O’Farrell’s no bible basher is he?
FWIW, I preferenced the Coalition ahead of the ALP at the 2007 state election. Of course that was after the Greens, Dems and a couple of sane independents.
I’m hopelessly disillusioned by Labor but not so much that I’ll vote instead for a party I trust even less. In the midst of all the ALP’s bullshit, I’ve seen no sign that the Liberals would be any improvement.
Surely you should vote for the NSW ALP out of pity. If they’re this bad in government, just imagine how terrible they’ll be in opposition.
OK, I could be mistaken, but I understood that the Christian Right is very powerful in the NSW Libs.
Most of you people probably don’t recall the Sussex St. dinosaurs like Ernie Ecob.
I do, and my God he was a pain; “Yer not a commyoonuist are you?”, well that’s a moot point, Ernie, but I would just like some justice for the AWU members in the dry-cleaning industry.
“I want to see some MONEY coming in”, he bellows, and I try to explain how the company (Lawrences Dry Cleaning) has terrified the workforce against unionism.
Tripodi and Obeid are the spawn of Ernie Ecob.
Said Andrew@5
1. In NSW we have optional preferential.
2. Most of us live in non-marginal seats. Mine (Epping) is about as blue ribbon Liberal as you can get, even when the ALP is not on the nose.
The size of Greg Smith’s winning margin is neither here nor there.
So the Joe and Eddie show trundles on.
Plenty of time to rush through a whole lot of property developments and line to pockets of their associates and then leave at the next election.
Let the gorging begin!
As if Labor Right gives a damn whether you vote for them or not. They know they’re going to be in opposition and they’re quite happy to be, as long as they keep the Left down. A new generation of this sort of petty hack is passing through the sphincter of Labor UNITY.
You aren’t mistaken Robert, but there would be many New South Welshman currently contemplating an “anybody but labor” vote. In the next election, the cilice wearing opus dei dennis ferguson party would get a run.
Gee, I loved Nathan’s speech. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. See what Mal started? More please.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height.
Well, I don’t care what anyone says, I think Kerri-Anne Kennerley will make a great Premier!
Thought I should catch up on NSW political news, so I consulted “The Oz” and on p.9 of the 2nd December edition I found
Rees lives to ride again as Roozendaal support fizzes
IMRE SALUSZINSKY
NSW POLITICAL REPORTER
NSW Premier Nathan Rees yesterday survived his final caucus meeting for the year, but not before heading off an abortive attempt on his leadership by Treasurer Eric Roozendaal.
…
As a result, caucus yesterday was uneventful, apart from four backbench MPs rising to their feet to inplore the plotters to cease and desist.
…
The Premier will now limp into the parliamentary recess, at the end of a horror year …
…
Well, that’s settled that, then. Jolly good. As you were.
An exhausted preference = a vote for the majors, more specifically the incumbent in your electorate, such is the devil’s bargain of non preferential; damned if you do damned if you don’t.
Kennealy. What a fucking joke. Rees wasn’t a saint, but at least he had a fucking shred of integrity (only a shred, but still), which is more than you can say for anything of the bloated liver flukes that remain.
Of course, Carmel Tebbit and Verity Frith are better performers in my book, but they’re on the wrong side of course. What a fucking joke. I have no idea who I’ll vote for.
KK might charm her way into voters’ hearts, yer never know. (I thought she was Irish.)
It may well be a jolly good show Sir Henry, but given the Victorian orientalism of the stanza you have favoured us with you may wish to recall the old chinese curse regarding interesting times.
“Then imitate the action of the tiger”
Naughty phone calls, sexy text messages, lovers, car smash, contrition, renunciation, grieving in private… ??
I dunno where Imre Saluszinsky gets his reputation as an astute political journalist, Uncle Tom. Everything of his I’ve ever read (which, admittedly, isn’t recent – I haven’t bought a newspaper for about 4 years) has been somewhere between idiotic and just plain wrong.
I heard him in my radio once, pontificating about the new (at the time) Bob Dylan album and some of Dylan’s older stuff. For claimed fan of his Bobness, he doesn’t understand much about that either.
ABC news is reporting that “nine Left-wing unions revealed they had written to the Labor Party’s head office threatening to withdraw financial support if Mr Rees was overthrown.”
I’ll believe it when I see it, but that would be huge. Anyone know which nine?
Ah, er, Andrew, you want to try the provenance of the speech once more unto the breach?
Oh dear. The declining standards in education. I’m sure Shakespeare influenced the Victorian orientalists. And there is probably a chinese proverb about trying to be too smart which I could profitably contemplate.
To be fair, Sir Henry – the “Damn the Torpedos” was from the Victorian era – just not in Her Majesty’s realm.
.
Fran,
On the lower house, my opinion reflects the other responses. IIRC you also have a vote in the loser’s lounge. Will you preference the Libs ahead of the ALP?
To Mr. Andrew Reynolds,
I will not be voting Labor, Green or Liberal at the NSW State Election and I will surely vote.
regards,
Senexx
Robert @6 and @8
Kenneally was not the Planning Minister in anything but name.
Tripodi is the Planning Minister, de-facto Premier plus whatever
assortment of other plum jobs he’s negotiated as the dominant member of
the NSW Right.
Your characterization of the NSW Libs as ‘hard-right Bible Bashers’
is a typical justification for anti-Libs to avoid voing for them and so
ridding this State of the preposterous goons currently in charge.
The Libs are no more hard-right than NSW Labor, while ‘hard’ is merely
adduced as a fear-invoking adjective rather than a meaningful or accurate
statement of NSW Lib. ideology.
And as for Bible-Bashers, that’s the great Shibboleth of the left, the
Bible as source of evil. The term Bible-Basher is employed as a means to short-circuit
discussion rather than encourage it. It’s the left’s way of crying ‘Witch!’.
Yes there are some Bible Bashers in the NSW Libs but O’Farrell has
marginalized their relevance. In any case, their Bible-Basing is merely
invoked as a final justification for avoiding voting for them rather
than as a serious criticism. NSW Labor sucks to the hilt and does not
even provide interested government, but hey look over there,
MP Neville Nobody is a Witch and could become a Cabinet Minister.
Just finished watching ‘Power Of The Powerless’ about the Czech Velvet
Revolution in whcih Vaclav Havel became President. Describing the events
of immediate post-1968 Czeckoslovakia, a contemporary dissident said
(to closely paraphrase)
The incoming hard-line Soviet puppet regime offered we Czechs a new social
contract. The contract was that the population would concentrate solely
on their private lives and leave the entire realm of political activity
to the apparatchiks and Soviet-aligned elite. Then they would leave us alone.
This is the social contract they offered us.
Tripodi and the NSW Right are claiming complete ownership of the
political realm of the State of NSW. All challengers are politically
eliminated. No other claim is allowed to exist. You must surely recognise
the common ground of such diseased thinking with that of those who
crushed the Prague Spring as well as the common pechant of installing
puppets.
Its a civic duty to rid NSW of these parasites.
Hiding behind non-preferencing or parties that cannot win is gutless unless you’re actually voting and not hiding, or have good reason to believe your vote would be meaningless in any case e.g. Fran @15
For those in NSW at a loss of who to preference… you could vote with your feet by moving to another state.
As I said Andrew, there’s optional preferential in NSW, assuming I cared to vote at all. If I voted, I’d vote for the Greens and stop there.
Hideous bunch that they are,m and vacuous to boot, I don’t see the Liberals as being an improvement on the ALP, and in any event, how would thickening Greg Hunt’s margin say anything intelligible about my wishes?
It couldn’t.
That said, the day I cast a vote for someone described as a devout catholic is the day I’ve taken up swallowing cyanide as a health strategy.
Rees’ sacked Tripodi last week, and this is the Right’s revenge, of course, and who cares about the election. But the ALP was gone when it announced its last budget — a belt-tightening one, when every other government was spending. Madness, particularly with the infrastructure problems we have.
The other, less-discussed aspect is that I’m afraid a lot of senior public servants must also be deadwood. The Great Ideas certainly aren’t coming from Sussex St, but they aren’t coming from Departments, either. In transport, my feeling is that the various transport agencies are silos, and despite the new superdepartment, that’s how things have stayed. The NSW Ombudsman, OTOH, seems a great guy; his assessment of the Ebony tragedy was insightful, but… is anyone acting on his recommendations? If the next government puts a dose of salts through the Senior Executive Service, we might see some improvements.
Despite the failings of the current government, I don’t think Barry O’Farrell has actually got much traction, partly due to the shenanigans in the NSW Labor Right, but partly because he is taking the small target approach: Trust us; we aren’t them. They are a policy-free zone, relying on the ALP to lose the election — same as last time. This time it will work, unless Barry takes to his Speedos in public.
Would I vote for/preference a Liberal? No. Barbara Perry is an excellent local member and though it’s a blue-ribbon Labor seat, she doesn’t take it for granted. Not sure what her factional alignment is, and I can’t imagine her playing those games anyway.
Chookie,
Vote Perry, get Tripodi.
Change effected = less than zero, as you will have yet again confirmed to Tripodi and Sartor that no matter how much they milk the system, no matter the depths of their venality and disinterest in actually governing the state except as a means of maintaining their own access to the cookie jar, then they keep getting rewarded.
I’ll take your word that Perry is a great MP but unless she’s playing the game with Tripodi she’s having precious little effect on government and if she’s not playing the game with Tripodi she has no effect on government; and in the meantime the rot deepens and deepens.
As to those that say ‘but the Trains run on time and the Hospitals are running great’, the appeal to Technocratic competence completely removes the value of decency from government.
Vaclav Havel’s entire flamin’ platform was ‘decency and truth’. The Czechs had all th eopera they could eat and subsidized basic commodities and the trains went OK. But certain other truly important things were absent.
Havel, a playwright, wouldn’t know a train system from a sack of spuds and his best mate was the chief Rabbi which double disqualifies him on the basis he is a Torah-basher or tolerator, but maybe some of you would have voted Husak ?
Nice healthy margin though. Bet Tone wishes he had one as big. And on a woman FFS! He must be purple with envy.
Jeebus, why does NSW Labor even bother? I’m trying to think an analogy which somehow captures the NSW govt, but I just cant. I need something a. grey and colourless, b. hapless and incompetent b. wracked with meaningless internal division no real person cares about, d. autistically self-obsessed, and yet e. with an air of dubiousness, a bit like the Masons, only less likely to achieve policy objectives.
Give up! I think this may be the only time in my life Ive actively hoped an ALP govt loses office. It no longer a govt, its revolving factional flame war – as masturbatory in orientation as a student union caucus, or a Slanderyou blog piece.
This is what happens when a useless tosser like Debnam is the best the also-ran state oppositions can come up with. Australian democracy is debased by these crappy apparatchiks. I need a shower just reading about these hacks and their musical deckchairs.
I’d been thinking it was Queensland where democracy had gone to die, self-immolating in full public view, chosen because we don’t have an upper house.
In the end she chose NSW so we could see just how bad things could be made to get even though there is an upper house.
@Lefty E
An autistic, two-legged cat with a scarred and squashed up face, chasing its own half-tail but tripping over streams of its own vomit in the process. If you try to help it it scratches at your face and throws up on your shoes.
It has surely been a great week for the triumph of Catholics. Overall, the conclusion is urged that the country’s perspicacity is once again on the slide. At yesterday’s press conference, Keneally offered this cringeworthy moment:
One need not have too fertile an imagination to imagine the response. Perhaps in a forum such as this one might confine onesself to the observation that this might well have been the first occasion when she learned what it was like to experience someone’s hand where it shouldn’t have been.
Wasn’t it Jeebus who said: suffer the little children to come unto me?
At this time we should recall Sandie Shaw’s winning entry in the 1967 European Song Contest, the unforgettable Puppet on a String (as sung last night by Kristina to Joe)
I wonder if one day that, you’ll say that, you care
If you say you love me madly, I’ll gladly, be there
Like a puppet on a string
Love is just like a merry-go-round
With all the fun in the air
One day I’m feeling down on the ground
Then I’m up in the air
Are you leading me on?
Tomorrow will you be gone?
I wonder if one day that, you’ll say that, you care
If you love me madly, I’ll gladly, be there
Like a puppet on a string
I may win on the roundabout
Then I’ll lose on the swings
In or out, there is never a doubt
Just who’s pulling the strings
I’m all tied up to you
But where’s it leading me to?
I wonder if one day that, you’ll say that, you care
If you say you love me madly, I’ll gladly, be there
Like a puppet on a string
I wonder if one day that, you’ll say that, you care
If you say you love me madly, I’ll gladly, be there
Like a puppet on a string
Like a puppet on a….. string
Yes. There is an obvious and direct parallel between the grey, gormless teletubbies stuffing themselves with Chinese food on Sussex St, carrying out a minor putsch of no consequence; and the crushers of the Prague Spring. The tanks now encircling Macquarie Street adduce to that.
In other news: Obama is Hitler1!!!1!!!!
Patrickg @22 “An exhausted preference = a vote for the majors, more specifically the incumbent in your electorate”
Taking advantage of optional-preferential voting, if I vote 1 Greens and leave the rest of the boxes blank, how does my vote get to the majors?
(Genuine question not arguing here.)
I won’t be surprised to see some Greens in lower house seats next election. I don’t think I could stomach the religious influence in the NSW Libs either.
NSW was the first state. And it is the first failed state. Nothing works here – planning, public transport, public education, roads etc; Everything is corrupt and broken. The people the running the place all have their hands in the till. This is evident to anyone with common sense.
So why does Australia persist with its ridiculous, creaking, anachronistic federal system? What does having another tier of largely useless, incompetent and corrupt government do for us? I’m a transplanted Kiwi and I have never understood Australians’ failure to understand that it is the states that are at the root of their problems in delivering good public services. Too many layers, too much buck passing, too much blame shifting. What is it you don’t get??
Both Rudd and Abbott appear to agree that it makes sense for the feds to take over public health. But why stop there? Get rid of the states. It’s patently the most obvious micro-economic reform that Australia could under-take.
The rest of the country should sit up and take notice. Federalism is an anchronism in Australia. Get ride of the states.
Rees seems like a nice guy and I think he was nudging things in the right direction, but to be honest, I don’t think he had a chance of leading the party to victory at the next election. I think its become clear over the past few years that NSW Labor desperately needs someone with some real authority and gravitas as leader to bind the rest of the rabble together and get some runs on the board.
Not sure that Keneally is that person, but I suppose with another fifteen months to the election, there’s still time to run the leadership ball around the roulette wheel at least once more.
Oh, and I agree with Chookie – I’d never preference the Libs ahead of Labor. Even if I wasn’t a member, its not like the Libs have shown a ounce of initiative or promise, despite being presented with umpteen opportunities to do so by the government.
I’d agree Mr Denmore
I suspect that if one adopted a regional government approach, reducing council functions to strictly localised service provision, that there would be a significant drop in redundant administration, and better coordination and roll out of services across areas straddling state jurisdictions.
There are way too many politicians for 22 million people.
Mr. Dunmore @ 46,
Dunno. Queensland survived Bjelke-Petersen, and I hate to tell you, but as odious as the NSW Right are, they aren’t anywhere near that corrupt. I’m not holding my breath for St. Kristina to work miracles but if I have to choose between Labor’s Keneally and that Festival of Light puppet in the Liberal Party who is in the upper house, for a Catholic to run NSW, give me Kenneally any day. At least she’s sane.
How’d they get this one past the patriarchy? Where’s tigtog and anna?
The appropriate analogy is of course from George A. Romero: “Bub” from “Day of the Dead”, an apparently docile zombie who seems to possess limited memories of his past existence. Bub, of course, reverts to type when given access to a firearm.
I’ll be voting Liberal for the first and hopefully last time. The Labor Party in NSW has to be destroyed in order to save it from itself. Eight to 12 years of Liberal and National rule is the catharsis that both the state and party need. It’s unfortunate, but that is the way it is.
I hope that O’Farrell can keep his religious crazies under control. If not, then the fight will have to be had. Anyway, NSW actually has quite strong socially liberal institutions and quite a strong socially liberal culture. They will survive.
Sam @ 51,
Obviously you’ve had nothing to do with Festival of Light Fundies. They espouse a weird kind of Francoite fascism. If you knew anything about them you’d be less optimistic about the Libs in NSW preserving democratic freedoms. It will only take the sniff of power to bring them out from wherever O’Farrell has hidden them, believe me. Hell, come to think of it, putting the Libs in anywhere and expecting them not to take away democratic freedoms is a bit of an ask.
Give me the Irish-American-Aussie sheila anyday. I’d trust her and her sleazy mates, no matter how bad they are, over the Libs any time.
Paul, I know these Opus Dei types and they give me the heebie jeebies. But it is unduly pessimistic to think that they will simply be able to bring back the Inquisition just because they feel like it.
New South Wales needs more wine bars, fastidiously grungy laneways and trams.
Katz: And an additional seven AFL teams.
Mr Denmore: That proposal goes down very well in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Albury-Wodonga, and sundry other towns along the NSW-Vic border. Try suggesting it to a Tasmanian, for instance, and see how far you get.
You have a strong stomach Paul Burns
Minister Kristina Kenneally embracing solidarity with Nathan Rees, according to the Daily Telegraph, 15 days before becoming Premier. There’s even a happy snap of her giving him the kind of friendly kiss I’m sure he’d like to frame. It does have kind of a Mafiosi kind of quality to it.
I’m not sure calling her Irish American is right. Her family name, Kerscher is described as follows:
German: 1. habitational name from a place called Kirsch or Körsch. 2. occupational name for a grower or seller of cherries, from an agent derivative of Middle High German kirs(ch)e, kerse ‘cherry’.
Personally, given that the German Die Kirche means the church I’d not rule that out. ‘Church’ is a more common name than ‘cherry’. Strangely apt.
NSW Labor ought to be named the DLP. In Victoria the groupers split to form the DLP while in NSW they stayed in. Keneally’s premiership will be a frantic rort fest as the gangsters try and stitch up as many deals as possible to tide them over a well earned rest in opposition. She wont have much time but the key sign of her skills will be a post election appointment to the Macquarie Bank. NSW is rotting and NSW Labor, like the days of old when millions of sheep provided breeding ground for a plague of flies, is habituated to a swarm of flies around it. Labor Catholics wear a moving armour of flies on their dark suits and they are the corollary of Howard’s Protestant 1950′s vision. Labor left (left? Firth on the left?) is a lame joke unable to articulate any opposition for fear of being stymied at preselection. Should they really feel like having a go then a glance at an old photo of Peter Baldwin’s face is usually enough to settle them down.
Rather vote Green any day thanks.
No no no Katz- all wrong.
The hotel owners are great mates of the NSW Terrigals so forget any wine bars being allowed any time soon.
This is the organisation that even tried to have holiday home owners disallowed from renting out their houses when they were vacant.
They wanted the government to enforce the same safety requirements they have as commercial operators on home owners. The proposal was howled down as soon as it waa released but that is the style of this mob.Expect more such wheezes to be tried on soon.
We have grunge – it just isn’t fastidious – more following in the school of the vulgar. With natural smells too.
Won’t even comment of trams – phuffft- you probably also think public transport vehicles need to be decorated by artists or some such nonsense!
.
No first order of the day will be to suspend more local council planning committees and replace them with planning panels appointed by the ALP.
Just thinking about the possibilities is exciting.
And finally Paul Burns – you may fear the right but the corruption that is going on in NSW surpasses all other efforts since settlement.
As long as branch stacking is the base these people’s power it won’t change and K Rudd had better look at this smartly or the brand damage will be severe.
Just because she married a man named Keneally, how does that make her Irish?
“NSW Labor sucks to the hilt and does not
even provide interested government”
Depends which sense of ‘interested’ you’re using.
Sam, Every now and then she gets some irish in her (boom-tish).
Robert Merkel at 55: If you don’t have states, you don’t need to worry about states’ rights!
Federalism is an anachronistic system that predates open borders and the free flow of capital. It assumes that peoples’ primary division of interest is geographic
Many countries operate unitary systems of government without running roughshod over the interests of remote, sparsely populated areas.
Unitary systems are less liable to corruption, duplication and inefficiency. I think somebody in Tasmania should appreciate this.
Such as? Serious question. I can’t think of any big ones, off the top of my head.
Tasmania used to be owned by The Hydro, and now it is the personal fiefdom of Gunns. I reckon there might be quite a few Tasmanians prepared to ditch the local mafias and go national. No, the real problem with getting rid of the States will always be Western Australia.
Mercurius @44
Full marks for deliberately missing the point.
I do not say, as you imply, that NSW Labor is as vicious or totalitarian as the crushers of the Prague Spring.
What I did say was that both demand complete control of the political space. If you’re looking for ‘hard-right’ then the NSW Labor Right satisfy this characteristic at least, one which many here have ascribed in potential to the NSW Libs while ignoring the existence of it in practice in their favorite political party/footy team.
The NSW Labor are anathema to a democratic society. Keep voting for them and they will continue to get worse. How much can you tolerate ?
Brett at 64, Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, the Scandanavians, the Netherlands Japan, South Korea…
Admittedly most of these are geographically small. But geography was an issue in the 19th century, not now. We’re all citizens of the world.
Reviewing the entirety of this thread, and most of the media stuff I’ve read, there is very little information on Ms. Keneally except that she was originally from Ohio, has two school-age children, describes herself as a Catholic, a feminist, and not a puppet.
What else do we actually know about her?
Thanks, Mr Denmore, though of that list, Japan has prefectures; and Britain has made slow and haphazard progress towards devolution recently. (It looks like Scotland will be holding a referendum on independence next year.) And the list of big countries with an intermediate tier of government is much more impressive: the US, Canada, Germany, France, Russia, China, Brazil, India, Indonesia …
There’s been a long history of people predicting that technology will kill distance; I don’t think it’s happened yet.
Hi Daphon, it’s because it’s impossible for seats to have no one in . When you exhaust your preference with a non-major party, you are effectively nullifying your vote, just like a donkey vote. But someone still has to get it in, they can’t have a vacant seat, and thus your vote effectively becomes a vote for the status quo, i.e. the sitting member.
You will find on election day that representives from the majors will be exhorting all constituents to just put one number on the page; it has the ancillary effect of preventing any pesky minors from getting into the upper house on preferences.
Wasn’t it nice of the 7.30 Report to present us with the Daily Terrorgraph’s state political reporter so he could provide us with his objective views. I suppose a sophisticated public broadcaster would at least begin to explore the role of the Sydney media in this lurch from one crisis to another however this might involve the ABC examining its own role. Ain’t gonna happen.
It seems to me the present NSW government is as much ‘on the nose’ as the last 18 months of the Howard govt. and the present opposition but I sense a different ‘tone’ from the ABC. To me this was never more so than in the recent Four Corners episodes with the one concerning the NSW govt. ending with a vicious vox pop of voters saying they will not vote for them again and the chummy and collegiate tone of the episode concerning the Coalitions climate change farce.
I wouldn’t suggest this NSW govt. is beyond harsh criticism but a more sophisticated appreciation of their daily poltical realities is required in my opinion.
Thanks, Patrickg, @69
“What else do we actually know about her?”
.
What else do you need to know about a front person?
They are just manipulated by the powerbrokers and do as they are told.
You don’t need to know about an actor to understand a play and the playwright is the person who sets the scene and controls the plot.
Politics as it is played in NSW is deadly contact sport and the gormless stooges that are trotted out for public consumption may delude themselves that they have some influence but such thoughts don’t usually last more than one week.
This latest actor has inexperience and hubris on her side so plain sailing will clearly be the order of the pre-election period.
And Fat Freddy – blame the media , blame the ABC , blame the public just don’t accept that any responsibility for the corruption in NSW is due to the self interested decisions of the NSW ALP.
As I’ve never voted for them, I take it your question is either misdirected, rhetorical or, possibly, both.
Look we’re all in furious agreement that they’ve got to go. But as for being ‘anathema to a democratic society’, would you accept just plain old, dull, workaday ‘incompetent’?
Your intimations of the impending death of democracy in NSW are
unintentionally comicalgreatly exaggerated (he said politely, avoiding altogether the term ‘batshit’).At least we’re not Queensland!
I’d suggest electoral reform, but given the tactics of the corrupt, it would probably cement their power even further.
re 67: Robert, those of us in NSW have heard her a lot on ABC radio, drivetime discussions, etc. Way before there was talk of her becoming premier I formed the view that she was out of her depth and a party-machine-woman.
One thing is for sure, she could talk under wet cement and still sound like the empty spruiker she is.
If she used the phrase ‘going forward’ one more time in the interview I heard this morning, I would have inflicted some damage on something. Really, how stupid does she think we are?
About as stupid as Tony Abbott thinks we are probably.
Her husband is, I think, Tom Keneally’s cousin or something. I read that somewhere yesterday. And in the US, she nearly joined the Republican Party. Seriously.
Tom Keneally’s nephew, AIUI …
She worked for a Democrat who was into Animal Rights — can’t remember his name. I recall her being head of some student organisation over there that covered catholic colleges.
Channel Ten has just dredged up right-wing journalist Paul Mullins from his bottom-feeding job as a government lobbyist to tell us that Kristina “nobody’s girrrl” Keneally is not a puppet of Joe Tripodi, just a close associate. What a relief!
Mullins said on Ten News this morning that the people of NSW want to see cranes on the horizon to “get NSW moving again”. No, this is what Paul Mullins the government lobbyist wants to see. The public want to see an end to the corruption, which seems to be the defining feature of the right.
“You will find on election day that representives from the majors will be exhorting all constituents to just put one number on the page; it has the ancillary effect of preventing any pesky minors from getting into the upper house on preferences.”
Another reason to give them no preferences themselves.
Merc @74
I do not think that democracy in NSW is in imminent danger of expiry because of the NSW Labor Right.
But I accept my comment that The NSW Labor are anathema to a democratic society was very clumsily put. What I meant to express was that the NSW Labor Right are undemocratic. Sure they have votes, but so does North Korea. The ALP Labor Right insists on owning the political space to an extent that reveals attitudes shared with very odious regimes and which have no place in a civilsed political culture.
Many similar sentiments were expressed, justly I feel, about the Federal Libs under Howard. Margo Kingston said that Howard was inadvertently creating the foundations for a Pre-Fascist society. I think she was correct (note the Pre-)
NSW Labor are horrendous we all agree, but voting Green, like you, will not clear them out, and they need cleaning out.
In my opinion, Merc, the time to admire the ideological purity of one’s vote in NSW is past. Refusing to vote Lib. is not the supreme political value especially at State level where the stakes are lower. O’Farrell will not invade Iraq.
Further, the trajectories of decency, arrogance and love of raw power in NSW Labor are all alarmingly vile and getting worse. Voting Green will not turf out Labor will again return a party ideologically nanometres from the NSW Libs and not necessarily to their left and confirm to Tripodi and Sartor that they may continue to operate NSW Inc as a state for mates. This government passed its use-by date two terms ago.
I would vote Green if there were any chance of them winning government, but I think the requisite 40% 2PP swing is beyond them. Hence I will vote Lib. like last time, despite Debnam being a dill, as it is the most effective way of terminating the sick joke at Sussex St.
So, Merc, reconsider your vote or get ready for teh government you deserve.
You have to wonder if the NSW govt is now just a front for the mob. They deserve and need a thorough thrashing at the next election which will hopefully remove some of corrupt pollies.
The are looking like one of those old Thai governments where everybody scrambles to throw as much business and money at mates before they get chucked out.
What happened to the good old days when a NSW ALP faction fight made effective use of a pair of handcuffs, a defunct gas stove and a one-way trip in a half-cabin runabout?
These days, all you get interminable complaint and whinging losers. It’s a messy, bad look.
It would be nice to think that on March 26 2011 there would be an option for neither of the above …
The ahrd reality is that if the ALP gets slaughtered, then the result will be the triumph of another gang of right-wing loonies.
Whatver one would say of Greiner and his lot, they were far less odious than the current gang.
Considering only remotely plausible scenarois, perhaps a hung parliament with Greens holding the balance would be the best one could hope for …
not that that’s going to happen …
“I would vote Green if there were any chance of them winning government, but I think the requisite 40% 2PP swing is beyond them. Hence I will vote Lib. like last time, despite Debnam being a dill, as it is the most effective way of terminating the sick joke at Sussex St.
So, Merc, reconsider your vote or get ready for teh government you deserve.”
>> This is what confuses me about adherents to the two party system.
I don’t so far, see in the state Liberals, a sense of renewal, innovation, actual enthusiasm for the jobs. I haven’t studied their policies yet, and those who know more about them could show me where they would effect better government than the ALP.
But … lets say, they are doing the usual trick of sitting back, doing nothing, annoying noone and expecting to get in – because there are people using this logic above.
Tell me, what in your strategy will get anyone but mediocre people running the state? Why be progressive? Interesting? You’re already in power, you never left power, it’s always going to come.
Lets take out the Greens. Is there ANY other party that doesn’t deserve your vote because no one is voting for them? You’re doomed to only voting for two parties! How is that democratic?
Anyway, I probably need to acknowledge that your view is the standard all around the country forever more, and in the politicians in those two parties (OK, including the Nationals) viewpoint, this is very sweet.
A bit like the large USA banks and the bailout. Guaranteed money without having to change a thing. Super.
Seems K.rudd ain’t in a hurry to ring Keneally and congratulate her. Sort of feels he’s been hung out to dry by the NSW Right, I suspect.
Then again, maybe he’s just waiting yto see who she’s putting in her Cabinet.
Apparently Sartor, Della Bosca and Macdonald are back in, PB
Shocking.
And they wonder why people don’t just get disillusioned with the Libs. Rees was too good for them. Have heard mutterings of Federal intervention in one newspaper article (lost somewhere on Google News – never pay Rupert -) but I think its unlikely.
I have no idea what the mecahnics of a Federal intervention would be, or whether there would be knock on effects in other branches, but if the damage could be ringfenced to NSW I’d say that that was a policy with no downside right now.
I can see no serious prospect of anything but a massacre in 15 months time, so they might as well do it.
Eric @86
Hiya. Contrary to what you imply, I am not an adherent of the two-party system. As stated I am voting Lib as the best way of getting rid of a sick and unworthy government.
Let’s say the polls change and a week before election day the Greens are better placed than the Libs to win government. In that case I’ll vote Green.
My approach is based on the view that the current mob are so revolting, beyond the pale, they must be got rid of for the sake of basic decency in government. In my view the current mob are so appalling it merits the suspension of a normal approach to voting. NSW Labor are so bad a supra-ideological approach is called for. A transient alliance of the disgusted. Others may disagree of course.
I think that addresses the rest of your post as to ‘why bother being progressive’ etc.
Is there any more news about the left-wing unions that aren’t going to hand over their dosh to the NSW ALP?
Heard of rage in one particular ALP branch. They are considering chucking their local member because they know the member voted Rees down. The person I spoke to said that they had been greatly encouraged by the recent State Conference, but Rees’ sacking has destroyed that. Will be interesting to see how many people hand out how-to-votes at the election.
I had the enormous pleasure of putting Mamdouh Habib first on my ballot in 2007, and Bob Vinnicombe last (how often do opportunities like that come along?), so there is no need to assume that I will vote for my sitting ALP member first. Mind you, her margin is 28.7%.
Are there any decent Greens standing in NSW?
In the ACT the Greens picked up a lot of seats due to disatisfaction with the two major parties.
Who are these ppl? Which bit of government hasn’t been screwed by blatant self interest in NSW? A former planning minister? What planning? I’m dying on the floor here, planning in NSW? That’s the funniest thing I heard since Anna Bligh promised to get rid of corruption. Oh and full marks to the ALP for handing on the job to a woman when all the blokes have made a complete hash of the entire thing, FFS!
And did someone say Della Bosca is back? Jesus h fricken christ. If the ALP doesn’t get seriously slaughtered at the next election…I thought I lived on my own planet but these guys have their own universe.
“Oh and full marks to the ALP for handing on the job to a woman when all the blokes have made a complete hash of the entire thing, FFS!”
Could we knock this ludicrous meme on the head? Nathan Rees didn’t get rolled because he was making a hash of it. He got rolled because he took on the endemic corruption and self-serving mates at the trough culture of which Keneally is both emblematic and the direct beneficiary.
Is that so Geoff Honnor? Then I’d be interested in what you think about Lisa Carty’s paean to poor, poor, maligned Joe Tripodi.
“journo, excited by ‘contacts’ and ‘inside info’ loses her sense of detachment and proportion.”
If Keneally can overcome the puppet label, (which I suspect is malicious bullshit, – and I’m no fan of the ALP Right) she might actually do very well at the election provided she visibly improves services. Even win.
Or maybe I’m judst swayed by both her incredible accent and her toughness.
If Keneally can overcome the puppet label
I snort in derision. She can no more do that than can Abbott pretend he’s not a Catholic fundie …
She might firm up some of the Catholic right but the ALP is headed for the knackery in the next state election.
Hey Lefty, I think you might need to pay more attention to NSW politics.
Actually I don’t mind Baillieu for a Lib, but possibly that’s partly because he isn’t seriously challenging
Incredibly shallow of me, I know, but my opinion of KK did rise when I found out she cycles to work. Can’t be too many MPs that do. (Wonder if she still does?)
FB @ 99.
Hear yer snort. I work on the principle that the worst possible Labor government is better than the best Liberal Government, but in NSW I’d probably be pretty alone. Min you, if Socialist Alliance could get up … which I have to say is unlikely.
PB@101
Plainly, I’m never going to give a tick to any capitalist government — not even one where, in a fantasy, the Greens were the dominant grouping. I do realise however that I’m eccentric — radically unlike most people in my attitudes. The question for me then is — of the governments I’m likely to be forced to endure while not endorsing, which would be the least repulsive?
It’s not clear to me that the worst conceivable ALP-led government would be worse than the very best Liberal government that one could imagine. Let’s say, purely for argument’s sake, that we had here in Australia a figure like Obama leading a party that was actually liberal? Suppose he had people like Bernie Sanders and Mike Gravel to work with? Would that be worse than having a bunch of ALP apparatchiks crunch the numbers?
I’d say not.
Of course, Fran, but I was using Liberal in its peculiar Australian context. Interesting that from the very beginning the name of our Australian conservative party was a deceit.
Gee, what a coincidence that a woman unlikely to win the next state election is made premier. If I were a cynic I might suggest that she was elected as opposition leader to lose the next election so that somoeone who is a prominent leader in NSW might take her place and secure the next election as the Liberal party in NSW is such a joke….
Learned Prodders:
Is today’s Sydney/newcastle Bus Strike a revenge attack by a Rees-aligned (Labor Left faction) Unions against Sartor and Tripodi ?
No.
Apart from anything else the RBTU is not a Left union.
Fair enough.
Out of curiousity, where does the RBTU fir into the Labour factional array
Prodders:
Some good paras in this article from the latest Monthly on the endemic laziness and self-interest of NSW Labor, “Failed State” by John Birmingham.
http://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-john-birmingham-failed-state-new-south-wales-2180
I used to be a member of the RBTU when it was the ATMOEA … back in the early 1980s.