More distortions on the BER
The front-page article in The Australian on Saturday, July 9 under the headline “BER waste blows out to $1.1bn” is an example of the crap mentioned by Prime Minister Julia Gillard at the National Press Club on Thursday, July 14.
New Senate roundtable…
As the ABC breathlessly notes, the Greens now hold the Senate balance of power. A number of Senators have left, most notably Steve Fielding. Of the departures from the major parties, perhaps the most significant is Nick Minchin; Crikey has [...]
Rudd dumping cost votes?
I’ve added a question mark to the headline Fairfax used for its report on an ANU survey, an exit poll of 2241 voters in the 2010 federal election. The Australian Election Study – a detailed ”exit survey” of voters from [...]
NSW election: What is the way forward for progressive parties?
Some quick observations on the New South Wales election result: The really useful guide to what occurred is The Poll Bludger’s breakdown of votes and swings by region. 1. Labor Barry O’Farrell was right to pitch part of his fairly [...]
The Labor party’s review
Kevin Rudd had a good point to make regarding the lack of transparency in the failure to release the first two parts of the ALP’s post-election review. Predictably, it’s been taken as sour grapes or something (and why is it [...]
Gough’s “nervous Nellies”; Kevin’s “panicking Pollies”
In this guest post, LP reader JohnL (who you might remember contributed this excellent takedown of BER myths) examines how sources can manipulate media coverage – in this case, with uncritical acceptance of “secret polling” data that presents those who [...]
What accounts for Labor’s 32% primary in Newspoll?
The first Newspoll of the new year is out, and it’s not pretty reading for Labor supporters. The ALP is on a primary vote of 32%, with The Greens on 14% and the Coalition on 44%, resolving into a two [...]
#Vicvotes mythbusting II: Labor’s “brand” is toxic
So, Tony Abbott was out and about this morning trumpeting the claim that the Victorian election result meant “Labor’s brand is toxic”. If you actually think about what that sentence means, it’s a fairly incoherent assertion. Nevertheless, there’s been the [...]
Greens-Labor dynamic works both ways? #vicvotes
It’s looking as if the Coalition may narrowly win the Victorian election, though there are apparently around half a million pre-poll votes that won’t be counted until Monday. Given the number of extremely close contests, it would be premature to [...]
Mark Arbib’s same sex marriage push
Federal Minister Senator Mark Arbib’s view that the Labor party should change its policy opposing the recognition of same sex marriage, and that the 2012 Federal Conference should be brought forward to allow a revision of the policy so as [...]
The bullet we dodged – just
The size of the recently-announced spending cuts by the UK government is just flabbergasting. The Guardian’s summary lists all manner of huge cuts – not least, that the public sector workforce is expected to shrink by 490,000 over the next [...]
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