politicalowl

  The shenanigans of the SA branch of the Labor Party just gets worse and worse. The Federal Executive of the Party should intervene to stop this madness. What follows is a post I received this evening from my friend Maggie Dawkins about her daughter Alice's courageous decision to take on the power brokers and seek preselection for the seat of Spence. "Alice innocently exercised her right as an ordinary member of the Labor Party to nominate for Spence. What she may inadvertently have stumbled upon is a done deal agreed to by faceless power brokers of the Left and Right factions. Ordinary members have not been consulted, but it is all leaking out as Alice calls the SA Party office to account. It appears that many members may not be comfortable with this done deal, as they are contacting me, not only as Alice’s mum, but also as a board member of Whistle Blowers Australia. Is the deal correct? Who knows? Perhaps time will tell? We know that some of it is correct, for example, Ni...

There was a time when I thought that attacks like the one below by Chris Bowen on Scott Morrison as a man who lies over and over again would have an effect on the views of the public. But as I keep seeing the Morrison approval rating at a healthy level I fear such attacks may be doing.more harm than good   It is as if voters so expect all politicians to lie all the time. Indeed they are more likely to punish the ones who point out the lies for being whingers than they are the liars themselves.    Scott Morrison lies over and over again, about issues big and small. He can't help himself. You can't believe a word he says. pic.twitter.com/ae7noVYK8q — Chris Bowen (@Bowenchris) April 7, 2021 Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese looked like he had reached that conclusion when earlies this year he asked his colleagues not to call their opponents liars in the interests of making political debate more refined.  Chris Bowen might be better served following the message of the ...

No surprise that the last few months have seen a significant drift in the betting price of the Coalition to win the next election - our from $1.27 for a dollar to $1.74. And the way things are going with the vaccination program it will be no surprise if Labor shortly ends up as favourite. The government has its problems with matters of rape and sexual abuse more generally but the Prime Ministerial mouth is another major factor in the growing unpopularity. In short Scott Morrison is being seen as a man who promises too much and delivers too little. That is making Anthony Albanese's job quite an easy one these days. Scott Morrison needs to stop changing his story on the vaccine rollout. Australians don’t want to hear excuses – they want to get vaccinated. pic.twitter.com/Ci3H4IZE7T — Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) April 7, 2021

For the third night in a row Nine News Brisbane has set the national political agenda. Look at tonight's story and despair at the state of the Liberal Party. Andrew Laming was this morning forced into counselling after allegations of bullying and aggressive behaviour, but tonight the most explosive claim yet; a young Brisbane mother has finally built the courage to come forward and tell her story. @PeterFegan9 #9News pic.twitter.com/9LdhK4x5Ew — 9News Queensland (@9NewsQueensland) March 27, 2021

When you have a majority in the parliament of two and the opinion polls show you are in electoral trouble a Prime Minister is not in the mood to cause a by-election. Even less so when the vote would be in a state where your party has just been reduced to two members.  And that is the nub of a great difficulty for Scott Morrison when all and sundry are telling him that he should sack Christian Porter as his Attorney General. What if Mr Porter responds to being told he is being dismissed by submitting his resignation not just from the Cabinet but from the House of Representatives as well? And lest you think that's an unlikely prospect let me take you back to April when Jim Killen was Minister for Defence and I was carrying cases of beer to the cars of customers at my bottle shop. In those days Jim had a staff of two - a shorthand/typist/secretary and a private secretary on secondment from his department. There were none of those myriad of advisers that these days clutter up ministeri...

A quote for the day from The Australian  ' Former Queensland Liberal Party vice-president and online pollster Graham Young, who runs Brisbane-based conservative think tank the Australian Institute for Progress, says Morrison was always going to struggle to be returned, nixing any suggestion the government had a lock on the election when it was riding higher in Newspoll. “ The only reason they won last time was that Bill Shorten was overconfident, unpopular and they got over the line in a few seats in Queensland,” Young says. “Anyone who thinks it’s a lay-down misere because Albanese is hopeless or whatever is not thinking clearly.”'