Qohel

Make a Difference

Day: August 21, 2010

Voting So Far

August 21, 2010 / / 0 Comments

At 8.15 SA time, Labor holds Eden-Monaro.

Not a good sign. Since 1972 Eden-Monaro has gone to whichever party eventually formed the government. Maybe it is time for a change.

I was wrong about Melbourne. The Greens will take that seat.

I was right (well, pretty sure at this stage) about South Australia. There was a swing to Labor as predicted, but not enough in the two key marginal seats of Sturt and Boothby for them to take either of those seats.

I hoped the Liberals might retain McEwan. Other than that, the result is pretty much as I thought.

There is still a large number of uncertain seats in NSW and Qld.

The Liberals will come in ahead, but enough to form government on their own?

It may come down to Swan and Hasluck in Western Australia.

At 8.30 SA time, Wyatt Roy has won Longman for the Liberals. Typical snarky comment from Annabel Crabb on Twitter: Wyatt Roy claiming victory now. Parents allowed him to stay up late in recognition of his new status as MP for Longman.

Wyatt seems to be demonstrating far more maturity than the average ABC commentator.

Anthony Green’s latest prediction: Labor: 73 seats; Coalition: 72 seats; Greens: 1 seat; Independents: 4 seats.

He may be right. That would mean a very tight Coalition government.

The ABC still predicting the ALP will hold Lindsay. I don’t think so.

What else? Solomon will come to the Liberals. So will Cowan, Greenway and Macquarie.

Swan and Hasluck still too early to call. Looking like there is a small swing to the ALP in Western Australia.

We may have a result tonight. Going to have a beer. Back in half an hour.

9.00pm SA time. Labor spokesmen seem to be acknowledging they will not be able to form government on their own.

Maxine Mckew speaks very well in response to questions from Kerry O’Brien. Blames change of leadership, poorly planned campaign and loss of credibility over abandoned CPRS after earlier ALP claims it was the great moral issue, etc. Right with all of that. Says the ALP should have clearer about its great economic successes. Ha, ha.

Looking like Swan and Hasluck will come to the Liberals, but Stirling may fall to Labor. Only 25% of the vote counted, though, I’d love to know which booths. I wouldn’t have called that one.

At this stage, it looks like the Liberals will win seventeen and lose three.

Highlight of the night so far – Kerry O’Brien cutting Kevin Rudd off with the words ‘It could go on for some time.’  ROTFL.

Right on Solomon. Another point for me.

Time for another beer.

9.30pm SA time.

Stirling stays with the Liberals. They probably need Corangamite to get over the line.

The ABC is currently calling 69 for Labor and 70 for Liberal. There are five other/independent. Three of those will feel more comfortable with the Coalition.

Six seats are still in doubt. If three go to the ALP, three to the Liberals, the final figures will be Coalition and independents 76, ALP and independents, 74.

On track for the two seat majority I predicted this morning, and I’m calling it for the Coalition.

Even if four of the doubtfuls go to the ALP instead of three, the ALP will not be able to form government.

The Liberal Party will be in a better position. It could be a re-run of Peter Lewis’ appointment as Speaker in SA in 2002, but the other way around, with a left leaning independent acting as Speaker for a Liberal government.

The Senate is a mess, and Bob Brown says he intends to use the power the Greens now have to push for carbon taxes and gay marriage.

It looks like Steve Fielding is out of the Senate for Family First in Victoria, but Bob Day is in for Family First in SA.

The ABC is now predicting 74 seats for the Coalition. With three independents likely to ally with them, even if reluctantly, that is a win – 77 to 73. 

Not a bad night. Better than I would have hoped a couple of months ago.

Interesting comment from Alexander Downer:  I have never known a political leader as determined and hard working as Tony Abbott.

Time for a Milo and off to bed.

Just Back

August 21, 2010 / / 0 Comments

… from two hours of handing out how to vote cards in Kingscote (Mayo, SA).

Two things of interest.

1. Someone who thought I was offering her a Labor card said ‘Not without Kevin.’

I wasn’t sure the knifing of Kevin Rudd really would make a difference to the election. It has.

2. The number of people who specifically asked for Family First cards.

I know the candidate for Family First in Mayo. He is a great guy. Honest, intelligent, compassionate, hard working.

He won’t get in.

But the fact that so many people asked for Family First cards makes me wonder whether Bob Day has a chance of taking Sarah Hanson-Young’s senate seat.

That would certainly be a cause for rejoicing in my household.

Finally, the following from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Labor has denied employing dirty campaign tactics in the marginal electorate of Lindsay where candidate David Bradbury is at risk of losing his seat.

Labor campaigners are distributing how to vote cards dressed as Liberals, wearing recplica T-shirts to booth workers campaigning for Liberal candidate Fiona Scott.

The light blue T-shirts are unmarked with Labor branding and are precisely the same shade as their liberal counterpart.

A Labor campaign leaftlet is also styled to look like Greens election material. It is authorised by the ALP but contains no party logo.

Why would anyone vote for these people?

China, Warming and Renewable Energy.

August 21, 2010 / / 1 Comment

From James Delingpole at the UK Telegraph:

One of the great lies told us by our political leaders in order to persuade us to accept their swingeing and pointless green taxes and their economically suicidal, environmentally vandalistic wind-farm building programmes is that if we don’t do it China will. Apparently, just waiting to be grabbed out there are these glittering, golden prizes marked “Green jobs” and “Green technologies” – and if only we can get there before those scary, mysterious Chinese do, well, maybe the West will enjoy just a few more years of economic hegemony before the BRICs nations thwack us into the long grass.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. The Chinese do not remotely believe in the myth of Man-Made Global Warming nor in the efficacy of “alternative energy”. Why should they? It’s not as if there is any evidence for it.

There is much more. And it is all interesting.

China, after all, is the world’s future dominant economic power and, this being so, it makes an absolute nonsense of attempts by the EU and the US to hamper our industrial growth by imposing on our economies eco-taxes and eco-regulations which the Chinese intend to ignore completely.

This truth hasn’t hit home yet: not in the EU; not in the Cleggeron Coalition; not in Obama’s USA. Here’s my bet. The first to see sense on this will be whichever Republican administration takes over from Obama’s one-term presidency in 2012. From that point on – by which time we’ll have had two more exceptionally cold winters to concentrate our minds – British and European environmental policy will look increasingly foolish and irrelevant.

And so will Australian Labor or Greens environmental policy, along with any compromise carbon deals by the Liberals.

Nasty Canadians Don’t Want Illegal Immigrants

August 21, 2010 / / 0 Comments

If the Tamil asylum seekers thought they were going to have an easier run in Canada than in Australia, they may be in for an unpleasant surprise.

A poll of 1500 Canadians reported in the Toronto Sun turned up this result:

Asked which statement best described their own opinion on what should be done with the ship, which may include members of the banned Tamil Tiger terrorist group, 60% agreed with the statement: “They should be turned away – the boat should be escorted back to Sri Lanka by the Canadian Navy.”

Just 17% agreed with the statement: “They should be accepted into Canada as political refugees.”

The boat won’t be turned around, though, no matter what most Canadians think:

Martin Collacott was Canada’s highest-ranking diplomat in Sri Lanka during the period when the civil war launched by the Tamil Tigers started in the early 1980s. Collacott says we can’t just turn the boat back.

“We need to follow the process that takes the ones that are legitimate refugees and return the others,” said Collacott.

How many are legitimate refugees is up for debate said Collacott, who noted that the ship, the MV Sun Sea, didn’t come directly from Sri Lanka, but from Thailand where the passengers were safe from any possible persecution from the Sri Lankan government.

If they were all safe from any possible persecution, on what basis can any of them be legitimate refugees?

Inevitable Election Prediction

August 21, 2010 / / 2 Comments

All right, so I may be embarrassed tomorrow, but here goes.

In primary votes, the Liberals are way ahead. But with preference deals counted, most polls show them at 48% and Labor at 52%.

Tim Blair has all the bases covered, but suggests the most likely outcome is a three to eight seat victory for Labor.

If the polls are right, the overall swing may not be enough to give the Liberals a clear victory.

But the polls may not be right.

Julia has shot herself in the foot over the last couple days with her incessant bleating about how rotten Tony Abbott is, and how Work Choices would be back on Monday if the Liberals win. She looks tired, brittle, and untrustworthy.

I suspect the swing will be slightly stronger than the polls suggest.

But the overall swing is less important than the extent of movement in particular marginals.

Labor will lose seats in New South Wales and Queensland. They seem to be hoping to pick up two in South Australia. Julia is an Adelaide girl.

I doubt this will happen. The Rann government is not as popular as it was, and however Julia may try to distance herself from unpopular state governments, Labor is Labor.

The Greens will not win their seat in Melbourne.

The Liberals will win by two seats.

This may make effective government difficult. But Tony Abbott has shown over the last months that he can command loyalty and draw disparate party elements together. He will be a good Prime Minister.

In the Senate? The Greens will not get the vote they hope for. But the pixies in the garden parties may still hold the balance of power.

Incidentally, and in case you were wondering, I am not a member of the Liberal Party. The only political party I have ever belonged to was the Socialist Workers’ Party. That was at university.

My views have changed since then!

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