politicalowl

Back in November the Owl wrote the following about the NSW election: The Owl does not understand why the Liberals are the favourites in NSW The conventional wisdom is that the Liberals and National government will be re-elected in New South Wales. The betting markets have the coalition odds on favourite at $1.50. The Owl does not understand why. He thinks there has been an over reaction to the replacement of an Opposition Leader. He is happy to have a dollar or two on Labor at the $2.65 Those who followed that advice would be at peace with themselves at the moment because the Betfair market now has Labor favourite at $1.88 with the Coalition at $2.08. There's a nice little earn there. The opinion polls, for what they are worth, has the contest near enough to 50:50 but if you forced me to have another bet I'd be taking the odds on about Labor.

With its own opinion poll showing NSW Labor in front of the governing Coalition parties, starting out neutral is an understandable place for the Sydney Daily Telegraph  to be. Backing losers is not where Murdoch tabloids normally like to be and recent failures after stridently, but unsuccessfully, backing Liberal-National in Victoria and Queensland damaged the brand. The best that Premier Gladys Berejiklian can hope for in the lead up to polling day in March is for the kind of neutrality displayed in this morning's editorial to continue.

The conventional wisdom is that the Liberals and National government will be re-elected in New South Wales. The betting markets have the coalition odds on favourite at $1.50. The Owl does not understand why. He thinks there has been an over reaction to the replacement of an Opposition Leader. He is happy to have a dollar or two on Labor at the $2,65

New South Wales Labor seems to be back playing its familiar game of throwing another good person after bad. From this morning’s tabloid terror: Opposition Leader John Robertson meets the definition of a bad leader if the ability to win an election is the principal criterion. Under his stewardship Labor is heading for near certain defeat. The latest  Newspoll in  The Australian  had the gap at 10 percentage points. Hence this new round of change the leader. But what would be the point of changing with three months to go? Perhaps a new man might salvage a point or two but more likely the sacrificial leader would just remind voters of the side-show during the years before the Liberals and Nationals were given such a resounding victory next time. Better to let Robbo roll on to inglorious defeat without destroying one of the few remaining Labor members with talent.

Saturday, 24th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   State Opposition Leader Peter Debnam, and anybody else hoping for a Liberal victory in NSW today, should get a copy of the Toronto Star of 28 June 2004 where those headlines appeared above a story describing how the Canadian Liberals won an election. As Stephanie Levitz of the Canadian Press Agency put it, "Canada's electorate appears to have confounded the pollsters. Weeks of speculation, number crunching and supper-hour phone calls to more than 25,000 Canadians over the last five weeks meant little in the end as the Liberals beat projections that they were headed for a sound thrashing in the election..." That Canadian election was a wonderful reminder of the power of the underdog effect and a lesson in why election watchers should studiously ignore the opinion polls. For weeks the Canadian pollsters and pundits were predicting a massive decline in support for the governing Liberal Party with the opposition Co...

Tuesday, 27th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Peter Debnam The capacity for self delusion among politicians has no limits. That was shown by the reaction of NSW Liberal Leader Peter Debnam on Saturday night when his concession speech sounded like a man who had achieved a great victory. What in fact happened was a Liberal Party disaster. A very modest increase in the Liberal vote was not enough to win even one seat from Labor. How Debnam can even contemplate continuing as Opposition Leader is beyond me. Premier Morris Iemma, by contrast, on Saturday night was admirably restrained. He looks to me like a man who actually believes what he says about having heard the criticisms of a people disillusioned with the way they are governed. He will be a more formidable opponent in four years time and that's another reason why any decision to keep Debnam would be completely foolish.

Tuesday, 27th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   That Australia is moving away from a two party system was displayed in the weekend’s New South Wales election. There is clearly a third force to challenge Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition: the "Anybody but Labor and the Coalition" grouping is supported by almost a third of the electorate. In polling for the lower house the third force received 23.9% of the votes and really showed its strength in the upper house election by reaching 32.7%. No wonder the operatives of the major parties spend so much time trying to make preference deals with the minnows. More than ever before it is the number two on the ballot paper that determines which of Labor or Coalition becomes the government. These days Labor gets a big start in that department because of the emergence of the Greens as the biggest contributor to the third party vote. On Saturday the Greens gained 8.8% in the lower house (up half a percentage point ...

Thursday, 15th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Prime Minister John Howard hit the television screens of New South Wales last night urging a vote for the Liberal Party of Peter Debnam. Nothing unusual about that, you might say, but for the fact the advertisements were paid for by the Australian Labor Party. "I’ll do everything I can to help Peter Debnam." says the PM in the ads before arguing that the result of a State Liberal Party win would be the handing over of state industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth. That those powers are already effectively in Canberra for most workers was conveniently forgotten. This 30 seconds interrupting Dancing With the Stars was nothing more than an attempt to link an unpopular Federal Government with a largely unknown State Opposition. What impact, if any, will the strategy have? Owl readers can make their own judgment by entering our NSW State Election Bragging Rights Contest where in the 93 electorates our tipp...

Tuesday, 6th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Pull the other one! Even if I say so myself, I used to be a very good opinion pollster. I was able to make up internal Labor Party polling with the best of them. First of all work out the answer. Then Richard would provide the research. Everything tailor made to give a gullible journalist a very good yarn. The only draw back was dealing with journalists who had been around a bit, and wanted to stay around even longer, when you actually knew it would be beneficial to your campaign to tell them the truth. The rotters would often ignore you! Such is the lot of the unfortunate election campaign strategist. No such problem this morning for the spin team from the NSW Labor Party. They found the lads from the Daily Telegraph quite happy to run with a yarn that “Morris Iemma is looking down the barrel of a marginal seat blitzkrieg with secret polling revealing the state election is neck and neck in at least 1...

Monday, 19th February, 2007    - Richard Farmer   WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH To these classic George Orwell slogans from 1984 we can now add an Iemmaism: MORE TO DO BUT WE’RE HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION Morris Iemma yesterday launched his NSW State election campaign with that plaintive plea. Just when you thought Labor could not move any further to the right! Watch out One Nation, we’re coming to overtake you. Or are these Iemmaisms really Orwellian. Does this slogan mean that the left has gained control? Do all our political slogans now have opposite meanings to the ones advertised? Stand by for the new Labor Government’s Department of Freedom to impound all yachts in Sydney Harbour after cunningly pretending to allow free extra moorings to the city’s rich and famous. Rejoice. Morris is Jack Lang reincarnated. More to do indeed! Swallow that bunkum, return Labor and have another four years of costly tunnels and a shortage of ...

Wednesday, 14th February, 2007    - Richard Farmer   "Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, Oh how I wish he'd go away." On Sunday former Premier Bob Carr will be the man who wasn't there. Also absent from the stair to the stage at NSW Labor's policy launch will be Graham Richardson. Premier Morris Iemma just wants to begin his formal campaign before, in the words of his spokesman Ben Wilson, "people who have supported Morris throughout his career and people he wants to acknowledge." Thus no celebrities at the Hurstville Civic Theatre, just community members and people he has worked with. As Carr supported Iemma by promoting him in to the ministry and Richardson elevated him from obscurity by giving him a job on his staff, presumably the pair is in the category of people he does not want to acknowledge. That is a very un-Labor like attitude but one that the state Liberals will surely seize ...

Monday, 12th February, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Peter Debnam The last thing NSW State Liberal Leader Peter Debnam needed was a renewed interest in the Federal election. He is a man desperate to find a way of showing he is a fit and proper person to become Premier of the nation’s largest state but the only election the Sydney media is interested in is Kevin Rudd versus John Howard. There is a fascination with Rudd that is leaving no room for that other opposition leader. The bookmakers are reflecting the difficulty. The Glug NSW Election Indicator, based on the prices of the major internet players, has the Labor Government of Morris Iemma a 77% chance of retaining office with Debnam a 23% outsider. Perhaps the best course for the State Liberals is to make a virtue out of their underdog status and quietly accept that their best hope is that enough people will cast a protest vote against a long serving Labor Party to elect enough independents to make...