[..]
Andrew Wilkie has stated that he will not enter into any deal/agreement to support either party. This has been widely interpreted as an intention to abstain from decisions on confidence. Actually, there is nothing in what Wilkie has said that precludes him from deciding to support one side or the other on specific confidence motions (or even on confidence through the parliament), but without any formal “agreement” with the side thus supported. Furthermore Wilkie has stated he would consider confidence motions on their merits. That clearly implies that he is open to voting on them and would not necessarily abstain.
[..]
At the first Denison debate ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY4AlFjzADY ) Wilkie explicitly promised he would do “everything in my power” to prevent Tony Abbott from repealing the carbon tax or introducing harsher asylum seeker policies (and that comment is relative to those existing under Gillard, not Rudd.) Adhering to that commitment while also adhering to his commitment not to do deals requires that Wilkie would support Labor and oppose the Coalition on confidence and supply, without making a specific deal/agreement to do so, unless Abbott backed down on both those policy areas.
[..]
What is funny in this situation is that it is so reminiscent of this stoush ( http://www.oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php/article/lib-preference-scare-labor-response-both-rubbish ) from the 2010 poll, except that Labor has switched from complainant to target, just as the Liberals switched from target to complainant when they attacked Hans Willink over his Nelson LegCo ads. In 2010, the Liberals engaged in a beat-up about Labor preferencing the Greens in the Senate and made a misleading statement that contained just a grain of truth. They claimed that a vote for Labor was a vote for the Greens when that was not clearcut, and Labor squealed and alleged the ad was illegal, which it very probably wasn’t.
Now we have Labor engaging in a very similar beat-up, claiming that a vote for Wilkie is a vote for Abbott as PM when there is no firm evidence that it is actually true.
Read more, comment here:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/the-anti-wilkie-denison-billboard-stoush.html
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