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Showing posts from July, 2016

Labor should let a Coalition government govern

And now for something completely different. That's what the re-installed Bill Shorten should embrace. Instead of following the traditional path of obstructionism, let the Coalition government govern. Accept that the Liberal-National Coalition has won an election and let their major policies pass through the parliament. Forget about whether Labor can marshal a majority in the Senate to obstruct and delay. Make the minor parties and independents an irrelevance. Just state your objection as forcibly as possible to government plans and promise to undo them when you win the next election. And in the mean time let them become law. Leave it to the people decide the next time they go to the polls whether the conservative way was the right way. Don't let the Turnbull team hide behind a defence that it was a Labor opposition and/or a hostile Senate that prevented it from solving the nation's problems. A daring strategy but I think a winning one.

My tweet of the week

A gem from the Oz's "Cut and Paste": pic.twitter.com/YRcLI3ZY8T — Richard Farmer (@richardlfarmer) July 9, 2016

The rise and rise of the non-major parties

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The steady decline of the major political parties in Australia shows no signs of ending. This graph is from the ABC's website this morning: Click to enlarge Liberals should be thinking about adding someone else to their Coalition alongside the National Party. And the Labor lot should stop complaining about the Greens. With their vote in the mid-30s Labor shoulf accept that it will not be winning anything in its own right.

Predicting the election result: They'll all sink or swim together

No one among the media pundits is prepared to be different. From what I have seen, every last one of them reckons Malcolm Turnbull is going to be a winner. There's safety in being one of the herd. If Turnbull doesn't stay Prime Minister then at least the experts will be able to say "we all went down together". But let me dare to be different. I don't have one of those shrinking jobs in journalism to worry about. Being wrong has no potential monetary loss for me. I can dare to venture that the circumstances have never been better for what I call the underdog effect in electoral politics. When there's an overwhelming consensus among opinion leaders and the public that there is a near certain winner, those members of the public are prone to act in a perverse fashion - especially when they don't particularly like the short priced favourite. It's as if they want to curb potential future arrogance by not allowing the victory to be too large and wake up the