A Paper War

I posted a little while ago about this document from Labor.

Since then I've had no luck getting any references from Labor. I've been told that people employed by the two major parties read this blog - if that is true, the Labor-employed ones have been keeping mum.

I've sent several tweets the way of @NSWLabor and even direct to @jrobertsonmp without success. One shadow minister who promised to chase it up for me then failed to do so.

You can make of that what you will.

In the interim, I contacted O'Farrell's office and asked if they had a response. I was, within a matter of minutes, graced with this document:

I still hope to come back to Labor's document and invigilate it thoroughly - but, for the moment, time forbids. What I can do, however, is weigh the two documents against each other and see if one comes up trumps.

For the moment, I am going to leave aside any issues that are only covered by one of the pamphlets. I'm a little more interested in the divergence between the two pamphlets on issues they both see fit to trumpet.

Workers Comp

Labor

Coalition:

The divergence is clear. The Coalition's changes hurt injured workers, but resulted in (potentially) reduced workers comp premiums. The position you take on that is essentially an ideological one - although it is worth noting that the Coalition has been unable to communicate the positive on this change, perhaps having adjudged that it will never be popular politically.

Homes

Labor:

Coalition:

Yes. Well. This is a difficult one. There is a great deal of opinion out there that suggests that money spent on first home buyers grants and the like is simply wasted, delivering no actual benefit excepting that it relieves many buyers from the burden of saving for a deposit. I am skeptical that Labor could in any way justify the claim that first home buyers are in any way "locked out" of the market.

It is certainly true that pure supply and demand mismatch is one of the major causes of Sydney's brutal property prices - whether new approvals and land releases will have a material effect on price (as the Coalition begs you to infer) is a difficult to say.

At the end of the day, there is no one right way to deal with the issue. I don't believe that Labor's criticism carries any real weight, but equally I don't think that the Coalition can prove that their approach will have a material effect either. Further, there are negative consequences that flow from land releases that complicate the issue.

Public Transport

Labor:

Coalition:

I'm going to put aside some pretty serious problems I have with Labor's statistics here. What is clear for the two documents is the Labor is saying "More Expensive!" whilst the Coalition is claiming "Better." There's no way to resolve that definitively.

Health

Labor:

Coalition:

This is a difficult one. Both parties are guilty of not providing references, and both rely heavily on anecdotes. Labor focusses on overall budget, Coalition focusses on staffing numbers. Which one means better health-care? Who knows.

Budget

This one is a little funny.

Labor:

Coalition:

First of all, Labor is using exactly the same spurious accusation that has been used to such effect by the Federal Coalition.

What I really like is this: the Coalition concedes that the budget position has deteriorated - but their response is "We may be in deficit, but we're in EXACTLY AS MUCH DEFICIT AS WE SAID."

Yeah no.

Environment

Labor:

Coalition:

Both entirely anecdotal. Both prove nothing at all.

So what?

It's impossible to compare the two pamphlets properly. Without references (from either side) I can't check the reliability of the claims. Assuming both tell the truth, each pamphlet simply seems spins the data the way they want.

So we're left with empty assertions and no real evidence. If only we had journalists who had the time and resources to chase up all the details. If only.

A Glossy Outlook

Another "glossy" pamphlet from Labor appeared this week.

The full document can be seen here.

I was hoping to get stuck in and investigate the claims and allegations that the pamphlet makes, as I have done before (and before).

That hasn't happened for 2 reasons - firstly, it has been a mental week for me, and long weekend notwithstanding I just haven't had time.

More importantly though, the document is deficient in one very major area. It is utterly bereft of references for the claims made.

The only references provided are for quotes that the pamphlets rips out of other documents - which makes the absence of references for the allegations all the more obvious.

I'm going to try and provide some sort of words about the document later this long weekend. In the meantime, have a look and let me know what you think - in the comments or on twitter.

Polls Apart

The new Newspoll was released today. Suffice to say that it will bring no joy to John Robertson or the ALP as a whole.

First, the party numbers:

Full table here

And the Premier numbers:

Full table here

True it is that there has been a gradual drift back to the ALP since the election. Their present 2PP numbers are some 5% better than at the election.

The problem is that a few simple sums show that, at this rate of improvement, the ALP will not win the next election. Believe it or not, we are almost half-way through the 4 year fixed term that O'Farrell won in March of 2011. Labor has made up 5% of the 14% shellacking they got almost 2 years ago.

There are good reasons why politicians who make decisions based upon polls deserve contempt. That said, when the polls are consistent over a long period of time, more concrete conclusions can be drawn about the attitude of the electorate.

That said, the numerical issue over how fast Labor catches up is the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

There should always be a rebound of sorts after a big win for a challenger in an election. Many people will often vote for the opposition because "it's time for a change" or "because we need to send a message". In and of themselves, those are pretty stupid justifications for a vote, but it is a common reason after a government has spent a long time in power.

People who naturally see themselves as supporting the incumbant will, for reasons that remain opaque to me, choose to vote for someone else. Those people should naturally flow back to the new opposition once they have been defeated.

Even more common is the disillusioned supporter - those people who voted for the challenger (perhaps against their better judgment) and then are immediately shocked/surprised/horrified by the changes introduced by the new government.

When you consider that a new government will often "get the bad stuff out of the way early" there should be a pretty large group of dissillusioned voters.

This is particularly so after a particularly heavy victory - there must be hundred of thousands (if not millions) of people who voted Liberal/National for the first time in their entire lives in 2011.

Those people must, for the most part, have been appalled by O'Farrell's actions since the election. They would have plenty company.

This makes the failure of the Labor opposotion to make inroads since the election surprising - and no doubt concerning for the Labor faithful.

Whilst O'Farrell has, for reasons I have discussed previously, an excellent chance of serving at least 8 years, Labor will not be willing to roll over and concede this. Their failure to make up significant ground renders this almost inevitable.

Success St

Sometimes politicians seem to have a strange perspective on the world.

We saw that recently with the US election. For your viewing pleasure, a collection of pundits talking about how Romney was going to win, and win BIG:


You would never see that in Australia, where for some reason it seems that you want to be the underdog. In the US, people want to back a winner.

It may be that those pundits were talking up the Republican's chances - I suppose another 4 years out of the White House was a little scarier than being made fun of by the LameStream Media in the weeks following the election.

In Australia, we seem to have been plagued recently by politicians talking about what "the man on the street" is telling them.

Joe Hockey has been especially guilty of this - suggesting that because 10 people in the street came up to him yesterday and complained about Gillard that the "people have had enough".

This may be because people who approach politicians in the street for a chat have vehement, poorly thought out views - easy to accept the crazies who agree with you, and easy to dismiss as crazy those who don't,

Maybe it's just a lazy argument that politicians make up when it's just to much effort to try and talk "facts".

In my view, it is symptomatic of politicians who don't seem to have any idea what the voters actually want.

This would explain the slavish devotion to short-term movements in polling numbers rather than a commitment to smart policy and good communication

The unpredictability of the media is partly to blame for that. One can just imagine politicians announcing a new policy quivering in their boots at the thought that a negative story on the front page of the Daily Terror could bury it in an instant.

But none of that is any excuse for this stupid announcement from Sam Dastyari, NSW Labor's General Secretary:

Full Story on SMH

True is it that "Sussex St" has come in for plenty of stick over the last decade. With the cloud cast by the Obeid ICAC inquiry hanging over NSW Labor, one can understand a willingness to look elsewhere for lodgings.

The problem that Dastyarti plainly fails to recognize is that no one could care less where NSW Labor has its headquarters.

As Heath Aston, another Herald journo, said not long after Nicolls tweeted his piece:

If you actually know where Sussex St is and who is holed up there, I think it is safe to assume that moving the headquarters is exactly the kind of BS that you are going to see right through.

Now, maybe Dastyari is trying to spin a positive story out the media's fascination with the Obeid Inquiry, much like we saw with the nauseating "Real Julia".

What I think is more likely is that people in Sussex St have heard so many barbs about the location of their headquarters that someone had the brilliant idea to move.

As Robin Williams said in Mrs Doubtfire:

A Day in the Sun?

Being in opposition for the first time in a while brings with it a fairly unique set of challenges.

On one hand, a new government is likely to over-reach, and over-estimate the public's enthusiasm for change.  It is all to easy to ignore the fact that, as often as not, the voters weren't so much endorsing you as repudiating the other lot.

Either way, new governments usually unfurl an ambitious agenda.  They roll out a lot of the unpopular stuff early, which makes easy (if not always effective) fodder for a new opposition.

On the other hand, some ideas from a new government are harder for a new opposition to combat.

Sometimes a government will extend or expand an unpopular program championed by the old government.  Even when the program is massively unpopular, there is often not much that can be done, as any comment criticising the move can easily be seen to be petty and opportunistic.

However, when the original program was generally popular and the new government extends it, there is even less that an opposition can say.  They can't oppose the changes because the program was their idea in the first place, and they can't very well complain that the new program doesn't go far enough, given that the original program did even less.

Any opposition that made such a comment would be pretty stupid, yes?

Well:

Full release available here

This is what the Coalition has announced:

Full release available here

Putting aside the rights or wrongs of banning solariums - where does Labor get off pretending that it is imperative that solaria are banned immediately? The situation is pretty much exactly the same as it was when they proposed that people under 30 or with fair skin be banned from using the solaria.

Moreover, hundreds if not thousands of people are employed in the business.  Those people deserve the chance to start finding new jobs or new products for their businesses

Best of all, as I understand it, the quite timid restrictions on who could use solaria Labor proposed  in November 2010 were cancelled just before leaving government.

Maybe Labor had their tails in the air after their success in the early parts of last week, and figured that it was time to start hitting the Coalition with everything they've got.

What Labor forgot, much like the "100 Broken Promises" document, is that a weak attack distracts from all your stronger once.

I think most voters are smart enough to see straight through this kind of politics.

TGIF (tomorrow)

This has not been a good week for the Coalition.

The new government has had more than its fair share of politically tricky issues in its first year (many of them of their own making).

In many cases these problems have been single large issues - often a large structural change or the implementation of a (at least, in their eyes) necessary but inevitably unpopular change.

In many ways these larger issues can be handled as they are easily anticipated.  This is why many of them have been introduced in the government's first year - they hope that memories will fade by the next election, and they're probably right.

This week has been different though.  Put simply, there has been a sudden spate of pretty obvious stuff-ups of various sorts, and Labor is making a lot of hay with it.

The NSW Labor website has a very handy collection of "News", and their items posted there really do tell the story of the Coalition's week.

Monday was about planning.  Before the election O'Farrell made a big song and dance about returning planning control to councils, and immediately on being sworn in the hated Part 3A was repealed.

The thing is, there are some developments that should be controlled by the state - major developments that are too big for councils.  Almost everyone acknowleges this - the issue is where that bar is set.

At this stage it seems unclear exactly what the Coalition has done or is intending to do - but whatever the precise change is, there will be a political cost to be paid.

It is hard to say whether O'Farrell was foolish to over-promise on this issue.  He knew that ALL control could not be returned to councils - if he had qualified his statements before the election, isn't it more likely that the qualification would have been lost in the media reporting, and therefore would not have lost him any votes?

Having said that, no amount of qualification before the election would have spared O'Farrell a slap from Labor when the issue arose, so perhaps he was better placed to simply do it early and take his lumps when it came up.

In any event, the headline generate by the Labor website was this:

The bigger issue on Monday, however, was about disabled kids.  And it's hard to comprehend just how such an easily anticipated problem was not avoided, especially when it presented such a easy opportunity for Labor.

The Labor press release is here. In short, bus contracts were not orgnised and signed in time, meaning that disabled kids could not get to and from school on the first day.

When it was revealed on Tuesday that a quick thinking Labor MLA wrote to the Minister a week earlier to alert him to the issue, the Coalition really had no excuse.

Without sounding crass, this story really had everything. It's about transport (always a sensitive issue).  It's about not just kids, but disabled kids.  It made the Coalition look disorganised and incompetent.

This is the kind of screw-up that starts to taint a government.  Put simply, this is the kind of thing the public expected from Labor, and the Coalition will not like being tarred with that same brush.

The drama continued through the week as it was revealed how long the Coalition had known about the issue and then will calls from Labor for Minister to resign.

Wednesday was mostly about the carers allowance.

Carers are a horribly undervalued sector of society.  Most people have a great deal of respect for the work they do, not least of all because it is an incredibly difficult and challenging job that no one else will do.

Foster carers get an allowance from the government to cover the cost of caring for the kids.  The suggested change was that, once a child is over 16 and in receipt of youth allowance, the carer's allowance would be reduced by the same amount.

One a purely accounting basis, it makes sense.  On a political basis, it is stupid.

Labor called it an attack on carers, and whilst that may be hyperbole, one has to wonder what the government thought would happen.

Most incredibly, according to this SMH article, that there are only 1000 or so families affected.  This means that the government let itself get tarred with "doesn't care about foster carers" for what, in the scheme of things, is a pretty small sum.

Moreover, after the week the Coalition has had, Labor has every excuse to lead off with this:

When you include the cutting of funding to vision impaired and the Fair Work Australia decision, the week was thoroughly Labor's.

As I said earlier, this kind of politics is all to easy for an even vaguely competent opposition.  And the more stories like this there are, the more the idea of a mean, selfish and uncaring government sets in.

The Coalition is already going to struggle to dispel that idea, being a centre-right party.  They don't need to make it easy for the opposition.

But that's exactly what they did this week.  They'll want to stop.

A New Start?

I hate "Year in Review" articles.

This time of year, it's just about all that journos seem to write.  That said, it's hard to blame them - they need to produce copy, but there isn't much going on - so I suppose the obvious thing to do is to write about things you've already written about before.

The problem for me is that whilst I don't have deadlines, I do have a hard an fast "once a week rule", and there is nothing happening.

Well, Peter Phelps is still around:

But the thing that has intrigued me most this year is the perception of NSW Labor, and in particular the contrast between performance at the Federal and State levels.

I've written before about how reviled Labor are in NSW.  Their defeat was not only resounding but also record breaking.

Federally, Labor are not doing so well either. The interesting part is that the reasons are so fundamentally different.

In NSW, Labor are still paying the price for their atrocious final term.  They are not only seen as being incapable of delivering on promises, but also corrupt.  The number of Labor members being investigated or prosecuted for corrupt conduct continues to grow, and it seems likely that this will persist for some time.

The fact that John Robertson has been practically hiding out has not helped their cause.  When something happens he occasionally rolls the arm over and issues a press release, but over 6 months after he took charge I'd wager that most of NSW couldn't pick him out of a line-up.

That may all be deliberate.  Since Labor's numbers are likely to be abysmal no matter what he does, why put himself out there and risk damaging his brand for no gain? His policy may be to lay low and ride out the storm.

Federally, Labor have a very different set of problems.  The Carbon Tax remains unpopular, the pokie lobby is still hammering away, and the Kevin Rudd issue won't rest.

Tony Abbott is proving incredibly effective, and Labor are under siege, and will be til (at the very earliest) the Carbon Tax commences.

In many ways, all that NSW Labor and Federal Labor have in common is bad numbers. But what I wonder is whether Federal Labor's problems are pushing the NSW numbers even further down.

NSW Labor's problems are structural.  People hate them because of what they have done.  Once the public start to forget that and focus more of the Coalition's failings, the disaffected voters will start to come back. Certainly there are already reasons for the public to be angry with O'Farrell and his government.

Federally, the problems are very different.  The Pokie and Climate Tax issue will go away when the changes are made and no one really notices.  The Kevin Rudd issue a different one, but suffice to say Labor can fix it easily, if so motivated.

Really, the two have nothing to do with each other - but I suspect that the poor Federal numbers are still having a negative effect.

We won't be able to get much of an idea until some more polls are taken in NSW, and we are unlikely to see much of that for some time yet.

Luckily for Robertson it seems that his party is willing to give him time, and there no suggestion that he is in danger if the next poll is not an improvement.  But it remains to be seen how long Labor will let it ride - when the last election was this bad, the numbers won't shoot up overnight.

Report Card

I'm not sure why a formal review is necessary after an electoral defeat.


There can be no doubt that it is appropriate to reflect and take stock. 


That said, it makes just as much sense to conduct a review after a win. Often in politics (as in life) there is as much to learn from a victory as from a defeat.


What confuses me is why a review is done in such a public fashion.  It is all and well to think about a loss, to talk to people and to reach an assessment - but once it is called a review and a formal document produced, then the document needs to be released.


It is good and well to say that the public wants to see that lessons have been learnt - but the public needs to see action - a party self-assessing that they did the wrong thing is not going to garner much credit from an electorate.

In any event, the NSW Labor Party has produced a report into their crushing loss earlier this year.  It is called the Wattkins/Chisholm Review. The authors are former NSW Minister and Deputy Premier John Watkins and the Queensland Branch State Secretary Anthony Chisholm.

Whilst the report was handed out to journalists the ALP conference, the report was not, as best I can tell, published on any ALP website. The is despite a large number of journos obtaining a copy of the report, if the number of articles on the report is any guide. 


I don't know whether this a deliberate decision by the ALP - make it available to journos to assist in the visible self-flagellation, but don't release it widely to avoid it being thrown back in their face?


It is particularly interesting in that the Victorian branch has released a similar report on their unexpected election loss earlier this year.  It is easily available on their website. 


In any event, if you want to read the NSW report, you can download it here.

Various news reports have picked out parts of the report that the writer considered particularly newsworthy.


A Herald report noted the blame levelled at the "Party Hierarchy" as well as the "sex, drugs and corruption scandals" that plagued the party.


A separate Herald article picked up on the recommendation for police and probity checks for all candidates, as well as the suggestion that the party had "lost interest in governing". 


The Australian led with this in their first paragraph: "identifying a culture of bullying and abuse within cabinet, and between cabinet and the back bench, that developed into a toxic mix of disloyalty, leaking and disenchantment". The writer also seemed to enjoy the description of the scandals as being "sordidly criminal to the adolescently stupid"


The report covers a number of areas, as listed below:

The section about the fall in the primary vote is easily the most interesting part of the report. 

The part that catches the eye immediately is what the report calls a "loss of policy vision" and details the ways in which the party moved away from "some of its central constituencies"

It particularly speaks of the increased pro-development and pro-privitisation attitude. As a consequence, "Labor supporters who were interested in issues such as law reform, gay and lesbian rights, the environment, and public education at times felt pushed to the fringes. Many found a welcoming home in the arms of the Greens.

The report also picks out something that was less obvious from the outside: a culture of "bullying and abuse within the Cabinet, and between Cabinet and the backbench."  In those circumstances, it is not surprising that little of value got done.

The section about scandal chooses not to list all the scandals that characterised the government, but rather states quite plainly that "embarrassing, tawdry and devastatingly regular reports of scandalous, inappropriate and corrupt behaviour became the norm.

In considering the reason for the "outbreak" of scandal, the report suggests that two possible causes: the complacency that "we would never be beaten" or, simply, "inappropriate candidate selection".

In the event, it was probably a combination of those factors, as well as a culture.  In every organisation, whether it be a place of employment, a club, or a government, there is a culture.  A culture can be difficult to control, but it is always pervasive, and when it is an undesirable culture, scandal is usually all but inevitable.

The breakdown of the local branches is covered at length. The reports of falling numbers of members and branches is hardly surprising given the state of the NSW government. As the John Faulkner was quoted as saying, "ìt ís hard to win a campaign if you can't staff a booth."

It is also interesting that, further on, the report says "The thought that repeatedly changing the NSW Labor Leader could change Party's political fortunes was simplistic and was ultimately rejected by the electorate."

Picture from here

The events in the Federal jurisdiction sit well with this assessment

The report moves on to consider what can be done, in a section that essentially mirrors the observations about the reason for the poor electoral performance

It is fascinating, however, to contrast this report with the report from the Victorian ALP.

A caveat at the outset though - the Victorian branch had served 3 terms, not 4.  This is significant - it is a significantly harder to win the 5th election than it is to win the 4th.

The Victorian report focusses mostly on what I would call "ordinary" complaints about government.  "Time for a change". Failure to invest in "Public Transport." "Cost of Living."

The NSW report is a bloodletting - on one level, it airs out the dirty laundry whilst the party fortunes are as low as they are ever going to get. From this point, the party can (at least in theory) refocus, rebuild, and get on with the job of holding O'Farrell to account.

In Victoria, the ALP lost the last election by a small margin.  Indeed, the loss was a major surprise, the ALP having lead every single 2PP Newspoll between the 2006 election and 2010 election, save the last poll taken in the week of the election.

Further, the Victorian Coalition's 2 seat majority means that the state is one by-election away from a deadlocked parliament.

For those reasons, Victoria could easily come back to the ALP next time round. If a Coalition member dies, an election could be just round the corner, with the ALP in genuine contention.

Only the most optimistic Labor member could foresee Labor winning the next NSW election, barring an absolute meltdown for the Coalition.

The one thing that I was disappointed to not see in the NSW report was a closer look at the Coalition's gains in Western Sydney.

Before...

...and after  Maps from Wikipedia

Western Sydney is always a battle ground, and most people expected large gains there, but nonetheless the number of seats gained and the margin by which they were gained was truly remarkable

I've written previously that O'Farrell has the opportunity to bring about a fundamental shift in these seats. If he can bring the "Howard's Battlers" across to the Coalition permanently, the traditional Labor dominance in NSW could be at an end.
By the same token, until Labor reconnects with those voters it is difficult to imagine them clambering out of opposition.

This report is a good step on the road to redemption, but is not more than a step. Much more remains to be done.

Trouble and Lawsuits Down South

Things are getting ugly in Wollongong.


Politics down south of Sydney has been a pretty rough trade of late.  Between the Wollongong Council ICAC investigation and the resignation and outing of David Campbell (then member for Kiera) it's been rough sailing for Labor in those parts of late.


Going into the election, Keira, Shellharbour and Wollongong were all "safe" Labor seats.  I say "safe" because very few seats were actually safe given the swings that some people were expecting.


Not only was Labor on the nose, but many people thought that David Campbell debacle would hurt Labor, even though some sympathised with him after the way Channel 7 handled his outing.


In the event, Labor held all 3 seats, but with drastically reduced margins - in Shellharbour a margin of 21.6% was reduced to 8.6%, in Keira, a margin of 22% was reduced to 3.9%, and in Wollongong Noreen Hay held on by the skin of her teeth, her 25.3% margin having been decimated to lie at 1%.


It was so close in Wollongong that her independant opponent, Gordon Bradbery, in fact claimed victory on the night, despite sitting on a margin of 0.4%.


It took some five days before Hay called the media to claim victory by a mere 650 or so votes.


Even on the day of the Election however, there were rumblings of discontent.


This article explains that the Liberals had been advocating a "vote one" strategy - meaning that they were asking voters to only number the box next to the Liberal candidates name.


The allegation (made initially by the Liberal party, and apparently the subject of a complaint to the NSW Electoral Commission) was that Labor had stolen some of those cards and hand amended them to ask voters to place a "2" next to Noreen Hay's name.

Photo from The Illawara Mercury

The above photo is one of the allegedly doctored How To Vote Cards.  Hay denied any knowledge of the incident, despite the fact that the doctored cards were said to have been found hidden amongst Labor's campaign material.


The campaign has already gotten rough - thanks to the very excellent ElectionLeaflets.org.au we can see this leaflet that Gordon's supporters delivered during the campaign. 

Photo from ElectionLeaflets.org.au

Unfortunately no one has uploaded the original Labor leaflet, but I think we get the idea.


The Daily Telegraph reported this week that Gordon Bradbery had filed a complaint with the Court of Disputed Returns. 


The NSW Parliament website helpfully provides a copy of the document here. 


The petition makes the following complaints:


a) At least 800 fraudulent how to vote cards were found at a polling  booth at Farmborough  Road in the seat of Wollongong on the day of the election. These cards which were repeatedly handed out to voters and falsely directed preferences to Ms Hay.


b) A high incidence of double voting occurred in the election in the seat of Wollongong, particularly as a result of voters in nursing homes lodging postal votes and voting a second time on polling day. The Second Respondent failed to accurately identify and take into account double voting prior to the declaration of the poll by the First Respondent on 5th April 2011.


c) A number of posters erected on and before polling day in the seat of Wollongong, some of which displayed Labor party authorisation, instructed voters to "Just   Vote  1".  The potential for voters to misinterpret these posters as an official directive from electoral authorities was  such that the result of the election by may have been affected. 


Time will tell how many of these allegations he will actually be able to prove. The way b) is phrased it it sounds like it is simply a criticism of the NSW Electoral Commission procedure.


The first allegation really is the big ticket item.  If true, it shows a shocking course of conduct by at least one person in the Labor party - and the question will then be "How high does it go?"


If there is a whistle-blower willing to say that Hay knew about this - well, let's just say that it should be excellent viewing.

Aping the Monk

While cruising the interwebs this afternoon and trying to avoid the temptation to blog about Jim Wallace (remembering, of course, Grog Gamut's third rule of blogging) I came across an interesting article on the Sky News website.


It appears that Mark Arbib was on Sky News yesterday and said the following: "Tony Abbott has provided a decent model for John Robertson to follow. Keep it simple."


There can be no doubt that Tony Abbott has been effective, at least so far as poll numbers are a barometer.


I've lifted the below graph from Wikipedia: 

From this article: Australian Federal Election 2010

Between the 2007 election and Abbott becoming Opposition Leader, the Coalition didn't make a great deal of progress in terms of their primary vote. Labor leaked some voters (as first term government almost inevitably do) but certainly very little had changed since July 2008, and certainly not enough to give the Coalition much hope of victory at the next election.  


At the point Abbott was anointed, the Coalition was a mess over the ETS, and Labor was looking pretty solid under Rudd.  Abbott's "Oppose EVERYTHING" strategy looked a little clownish, to say the least.


Since then, it's fair to say that Labor have played right into his hands.


Grog recently posted a most amusing list of people who Labor are presently at war with.  Suffice to say, it is a long list.


Federal Labor have, to their credit, tried to DO STUFF.  The problem with DOING STUFF, especially where that stuff is divisive stuff, is that you're going to piss people off.


This is politics right in Tony Abbott's wheelhouse.  Federal Labor played to his game plan, and before anyone knew it, Abbott had almost everyone that Labor has upset under his wing, listening attentively to his tell them that he knew how they felt, and wouldn't it be better if they let him run the show.


Abbott has made a huge amount of ground, to the point where the 2PP is presently 54/46, a roughly 10% swing since Abbott took the reins.


The important point is that Abbot was only able to do so because of Labor's approach.  Labor gave Abbott a look-in by upsetting a LOT of people, and then (incredibly) changing horse mid-stream, meaning that Abbott (of ALL people) was made to look reliable.


What I'm wondering is whether the NSW Coalition going to give NSW Labor the same look-in.


Answer? I doubt it.


First up, Robertson comes with a similar reputation to Abbott.  He's tough, he's aggressive, he'll "take the fight to the Coalition".


But the NSW Coalition has come to power in very different circumstances to Federal Labor.


Federal Labor blew in in 2007 on the back of the incredible popularity of Kevin Rudd, the disaster that was WorkChoices and the electorate being generally pretty sick of John Howard. The win was decent in size (2PP 52.7 to 47.3, seats won 83 to 65) but by no means overwhelming.


The NSW Coalition comes to power on the back of one of the most comprehensive and humiliating victories in Australian history (2PP 64 to 36, seats won 69 to 20).


Put simply, the Coalition is going to have to do little more than avoid falling over its own feet to ensure a win in 2015.  Any improvement will be lauded, and just about any fault will, in some way, be sheeted back to Labor.


If they're smart, the Coalition will spend the next 4 years governing cautiously, avoiding upsetting any more people than are absolutely necessary, and generally just spending time getting the job done.


In 2015, they will look around and ask the electorate "So - which bunch do you want governing?  Us or them?" Their win will be smaller, but it will almost certainly be a win nonetheless.


The Coalition will most likely govern sensibly and sedately, meaning that Robertson will probably be as effective as most people (myself included) thought Abbott would be.


Everyone expected Abbott to flap around like an idiot, make a whole lot of noise and generally do little good.  Of course that is exactly what happened, but luckily for him he found an audience for that.


John Robertson is unlikely to be so lucky.

Jumping at Shadows

In the lead-up the election there was a great deal of joking about the number of seats that Labor would win.  

When polls came out that suggested Labor's total seat count being in the low teens, many people wondered aloud whether Labor would even have a backbench once their shadow ministry was announced.

On Friday Robertson announced his new shadow cabinet that, we were assured, boasted "a mix of new faces and experience."

Almost every shadow cabinet member has more than one posting, although that is not unusual.  Unsurprisingly, the shadow minister for Education and Training (Tebbutt) and the shadow minister for Transport (Sharpe) are the only two with only one shadow ministry - clearly, these roles are more than enough for any one person to handle.

The full list can be seen here. 

The list is for the most part unremarkable.  Rees has made a comeback to the front bench in the not insubstantial role of police and emergency services as well as the arts.  Burney was, as expected, confirmed as deputy leader.

Robertson's statement that there is a mix of new and old is evident when their experience in the Lower or upper house s reviewed:

Robertson - LA, 2 years

Burney - LA, 8 years

Daley - LA, 6 years

Kelly - LC, 14 years

Tebbutt - LA, 6 years

McDonald - LA, 4 years

Sharpe - LC, 6 years

Lynch - LA, 16 years

Rees - LA, 4 years 

Foley - LC, 1 year

Perry - LA, 10 years

Furolo - LA, 3 years

Veitch - LC, 4 years

Cotsis - LC, 1 year

That said, none of the new appointees are taking their seats for the very first time.

Something I hadn't seen reported that I was interested to find out was who had missed out on appointment, so I've spent a little time trawling the internet trying to work out who is left.

I came up with the following list, which I think is interesting:

Tania Mihailuk - LA, newbie, member for Bankstown.

Nick Lalich - LA, 3 years, member for Cabramatta.  

Clayton Barr - LA, newbie, member for Cessnock

Gaetano Zangari - LA, newbie, member for Fairfield

Keneally - LA, former premier, 8 years, member for Heffron

Ryan Park - LA, newbie, member for Keira

Richard Amery - LA, 18 years, 8 years as a minister (but not since 2003), member for Mount Druitt

Anna Watson - LA, newbie, member for Shellharbour

Sonia Hornery - LA, 4 years, member for Wallsend

Greg Donnelly - LC, 6 years

Amanda Fazio - LC, 11 years

Luke Foley - LC, 1 year

John Hatzistergos - LC but just announced retirement, 12 years, multiple previous ministries

Shaoquett Moselmane, LC, 1 year

Eddie Obeid - LC, 10 years, 4 years as a minister (but not since 2003)

Peter Primrose - LC, 15 years, multiple previous ministries

Eric Roozendaal - LC, 7 years, multiple previous ministries

Lynda Voltz - LC, 4 years

Helen Westwood - LC, 4 years

First of all, all the brand new LA members didn't get a ministry, which was expected given that Labor managed enough seats to be a little bit picky.

There are, by my count, 8 LA members who don't have a ministry. Contrary to the jokes doing the rounds, Keneally will have plenty company.

Keneally announces when she resigned that she wished to serve from the backbench, and that is the job she will have.

The names Obeid and Roozendaal are poison for Labor, so no surprise that they missed out.  Hatzistergos is going so was never a factor.

Amanda Fazio has served as President of the LC for the last year and a half, and will most likely have a leadership role of sorts there.

As for the rest - well, I suppose some people had to miss out.  Amery and Primrose have been around for so long it may be that they are not figured to be a factor for long.

The rest have 3 to 6 years experience each, and may well be disappointed to see people with far less experience getting a guernsey.

It will be fascinating to see Robertson try to keep this group, unaccustomed as they will be to opposition, focussed on the difficult task they have ahead.

PS I've probably made an error or two in the above summary, what with being human and all.  Plus, I'm writing this after midnight on a saturday night.  Cut me some slack?