If Prime Minister Rudd is not smart enough to call an election next week, it’s likely his party will spend a long time in the wilderness waiting for Prime Minister Turnbull to mess things up.
Yes, that’s right – Prime Minister Turnbull, not Abbott.
If Rudd calls an election next week, to be held in August, there’s approximately a 50-50 chance that he will win against Abbott. It is Rudd’s best hope of completing the vengeful campaign he embarked upon shortly after recovering from his surprise ousting by Julia Gillard in 2010.
Importantly, if he wins, it will be the Coalition spending a couple of terms in the wilderness. Although Rudd’s first term in government was marred by his poor leadership skills, there’s every chance that he would lead his team of first-timers (remembering that Labor’s battle-hardened warriors have chosen retirement or backbench oblivion over working with Rudd – Emerson, Combet, Crean and Conroy, to name a few) much more successfully.
But let’s just imagine for a minute that the vaudeville act of current ‘reforms’ of Labor policy, which are being taken far more seriously by journalists than they ought to be, convince Rudd to revel in his newly regained power and wait a month or two before calling the election. What then?
Then Rudd risks his great nemesis, Malcolm Turnbull, being jostled to the front of the Coalition joint-party room and elected as opposition leader.
If that happens, Rudd will lose the election.
There are reasons to think it won’t happen …
To find out those reasons read more here:
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/7/19/election/rudd-must-call-snap-election-%E2%80%93-or-face-turnbull#ixzz2ZYpaJuLh
• phill Parsons: The old chestnut about a vote for the Greens doesn’t count is doing the rounds among bloggers.
Not having the experience of the struggle for the right to vote or for universal suffrage I cannot comment on the arguments of that time but now it is argued that the vote for a minor party, in particular the Greens is wasted because it is a vote for Labor.
This is getting a strong run now Labor has decided to refuse all asylum seekers. I suppose it is understandable for some to ask when they feel powerless in the immediate term.
When thousands of people came to Tasmania’s south-west the rulers’ opinion was they would win. It was a matter for the State of Tasmania, duly elected by the very democratic system of multi-member electorates.
We know the history of that concerted action, a process that had its roots in Tasmania’s beauty and in its history; in the campaigns for protection of what they represent.
History, even if it is short, can be full of lessons.
The unfinished struggle for equality between the sexes could have faltered at anytime if the protagonists had fallen for the argument that the only change will come from the mainstream, that only the old ideas and old ways have success when ecvery failure can be laid at their feet.
In a democratic system an informed and active community is essential. The tools to make it work are the word and the deed. Artists are important as are voters acting in concert.
They may be a minority who face all the tools of denial and approbation, such as the Ta Ann activists or a larger group, such as Climate activists who are now mainstream.
Climate activists have moved from being seen as curiosities wondering about the impacts of an infinitesimal substance that couldn’t be seen to having Ministries of governments addressing the matters they raised, the whole community debating the issues and taking the actions or not they believe are correct whilst a component of the scientific community spend all their time trying to define the outcome from various behaviours to guide global action.
What if we had remained in the old 2 party world. Would Labor have acted so quickly?.
It certainly would not have taken the actions the Greens required to support the Gillard Labot minority through almost 3 years of government. We have been reminded over that time “There will be no Carbon tax under the government I lead”.
Some will be pleased that I am claiming that without those 1.6 million Green number 1 votes action on the climate issue, if they occurred would be so much weaker. However, the evidence is clear as Rudd Labor goes to water on the fixed price when they are happy to argue that the impacts on the Australian economy are due to external factors.
A number 1 vote for the greens does count.
However the voter preferences the parties on the ballot paper the evidence is clear and it is called Adam Brandt. He walk and talks the impact of less than half the voters voting 1 green and he being elected on preferences.
Bandt may not have seen his marriage Equality Bill pass the house but would the issue have brought out so many members had he not been there. Would Abbott be exposed as a petty dictator driven not by the Liberal philosophy but by his beliefs to overrule a conscience vote on a conscience issue.
Regardless of the merits of Zucco’s proposal isn’t it interesting that Australia’s greenest capital city in Australia’s greenest state finds one of the conservative offerings in the federal elections seeking votes by appearing greener.
It is essential to play to the voter who has green issues as part of the suite of matters they consider before deciding how to vote.
Further, I would argue that vote has a life to the next poll as each political opinion poll tries to count the support accruing to the Greens, something unheard of before they appeared and something the vested interests of big business and their servants in the old parties would be happy to see go away.
It is why we are being lectured by the devious and misinformed by the naive that there is no point in voting 1 Green, your vote only flows by preference to another party.
In Bandt’s electorate the other proved true and so is the argument now there is no point in voting 1 as it may flow to a Green and in a bad case see them elected.
The second worst case is for them to have some power as we have seen in Tasmania where the Greens are criticised for not changing everything when they don’t have the power to do so and not praised for what they achieve because the issues keep coming and many fail to reflect on what is being achieved.
The laternative for this group that appears demanding and hypercritical is to move away from the lip of their coffee cup and form a group. They can work inside the constraints of the law and find that achieving anything is slow and needs the support of the many.
Of course they can wish for one of the alternatives Churchill less acceptable than the rule of the many.
Even he, to regain power after his loss in 1945, recognized that the welfare system British Labor had introduced had to be retained. There was a point to voting Labor once but now they have lost the plots determining what needs to be done to ensure there is a future and have become beholding to the crazy radicals of the fossil fuel industry who would have the climate go haywire so they have more money.
You can’t eat it.
Instead you will have to spend more and more trying to adapt to the increasing climate instability, the rising sea level, the heatwaves, floods and bushfires, the more intense storms and the flows of asylum seekers not just from far away but from Australia as well.
Your vote is a nuanced tool. Please consider it carefully before you number all the squares in order of your preference in the lower house or the Senate. Remember in the Senate you only have to number 1 square above the line if you wish to accept that party’s preference allocation.
phill Parsons grew up in a simple world where only the two extremes of shade existed only to find as he aged there were more colours than meet the eye. When he was a lad Bilgola was a valley of palms with a house behind a beach fronting Pittwater and Manly had no highrises. Now Bilgola is a subdivision and Manly’s one remaining 1890’s beach house is overshadowed by highrises. He has served his community and his country, sometimes in structured and approved organizations and sometimes according to his lights. One such less structured service was with others saving Tasmania from the Gordon below Franklin mistake another has been in trying to get the resources of the forest harnessed for the benefit of the many rather then the betterment of the few. With an interest in natural systems since his early years he remains focussed on resolving the conflict betweens the failure of humans to understand and use nature sustainably and the impacts of our activities. He works with others to provide a community asset for recreation, education and research.
