A Western push

Australians are pretty hazy on the different levels of government. That's hardly surprising - the responsibilities and powers of the different levels are almost arbitrarily divided up.

Moreover, the Federal Government funds a lot of things that are a State responsibility, meaning that people can hardly be blamed for confusing who is to blame for what.

That is why (ridiculous) leaflets like this work:

From ElectionLeaflets.com.au

It makes no sense at all, in that it shamelessly confuses the State's responsibility for Laura Norda with the Federal Government's responsibility for the country's borders.

The less said about the boat the better.

The confusion is not helped by stories like this appearing in the Daily Terror:

This piece makes exactly the same "error" in that it (some might say deliberately) conflates Federal and State Responsibilities.

There is a great deal more that could be written about how misguided the article is, but you can read it for yourself. The only thing I want to point out is this:

Labor stronghold?

Pic from Wikipedia

That's a Labor stronghold O'Farrell would love some more of, I fancy.

What I wanted to quickly comment on was how O'Farrell may use that confusion for his benefit. There is no doubt that the gun violence in Western Sydney is a potentially damaging issue for him. That is notwithstanding that the outrage is utterly disproportionate, given the marginal increase in one particular metric of crime in a particular area.

Rather than fighting the issue with that truth (which I accept is difficult to do when the Terror has set it's mind against you), O'Farrell (or, at least, the NSW Liberal Party) appears to be settling for muddying the waters.

It's not even really necessary, given the apparent ineffectiveness of the Labor attacks, the reason for which are the subject of another post. But the electorate cares about Federal politics this year, not State - so why not try and deflect the blame towards Canberra.

It's not exactly high-brow, but no one's really going to notice.