Australia’s Liberal Party won big in Western Australian state elections this weekend, with the latest count giving the conservative coalition some 40 seats out of 59 in the state’s lower house and returning premier Colin Barnett to power. The victory comes on the back of Liberal Party sweeps in the states of Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory. All of which should make opposition leader Tony Abbott feel confident about his party’s prospects in September’s federal election.
Australian voters seem to have tired of the Labor Party’s tax-and-spend agenda, which plunged the federal fisc into deficit and raised taxes and the cost of living for average Australians since the Labor-led coalition took power in 2007. Export-oriented mining states like Western Australia have weathered these burdens better than states like Victoria, whose economies have faltered. Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s latest response is to stoke anti-immigrant sentiments and promise $1 billion in pork barrel spending to politically important Western Sydney electorates.
Her gambit has afforded her a brief boost in the polls. The Newspoll released this week shows the Liberal-led coalition ahead of Labor and its allies by four percentage points, down from a 10-point advantage two weeks ago. Ms. Gillard is also more popular than Mr. Abbott, leading 42% to his 38%. But worryingly for Labor, Kevin Rudd, whom Ms. Gillard unceremoniously unseated as leader in a backroom coup in 2010, is even more popular.
Which raises the question: Will Labor stick with Ms. Gillard or plump for Mr. Rudd to lead the party into September’s polls? Or could Labor opt for the colorless Bill Shorten, a longtime Labor functionary who is marginally more popular with the business community? Whatever happens, it’s clear that Labor needs to change policies or leaders—or both—before September. Otherwise, Mr. Abbott can count on occupying Kirribilli House before the year’s end.
Source. (HT: vr)
Mary should have been a little more spefic here and reminded people who the liars party formed a coalition with.
She should have said…. Labor/Greens coalition.
And Oaky and Windy.
As I remember Newspoll always seems to favour ALP. Then ALP gets the dead to vote early and often to win elections. But NSW, Qld and now WA seem to have more living voters then dead ALP.
And the Green vote was down, down, deeper and down. Long may that trend continue.
Fixed
All that anti Labor feeling and the Victorian look like losing. Napthine may be a good bloke but I doubt whether he has the ideas and balls to do what has to be done. Aside from ridiculous new traffic legislation the Vic Libs are bereft of ideas. I think they are a vacuum that nature has filled with ambition and not much else.
Where are the plans to free up business and reduce government and red tape? Can they get people to realise that they are responsible for themselves. Here’s an idea to get the ball rolling, abolish the Alpine Resorts Commission and make alpine land available for private purchase. The alpine areas could merge with a local council or go it alone. Funny how prices at Dinner Plain are better than Hotham even though it is further away. Hotham is lease Dinner Plain is private.
Denis be man, repeal legislation. Privatise and get rid of government departments.
Sfw, my only hope for Napthine was that he was apart of the Kennett Government. On the other hand, today he reinstated the cut money into TAFE’s which worries me that he is now appealing to the loud minority groups and not thinking about what TAFE’s are offering, along with the lack of employment many of those courses offer. Ted was right to cut TAFE funding, but just could not explain why.
Ted couldn’t explain it because he didn’t know why he did it. Someone probably told him to. Ted was a walking vacuum when it came to holding and understanding either a conservative or libertarian philosophy.
All that anti Labor feeling and the Victorian look like losing. Napthine may be a good bloke but I doubt whether he has the ideas and balls to do what has to be done.
They barely won in the first place. Here in Victoria a lot of people support Gillard and favour Turnbull as the Liberal Party leader. So anti-federal ALP sentiment just isn’t high in many parts of this state.
@Splatacrobat
Labor-led Greenjust call them marxists..
that fixes it
Agreed.
The Desal plant and general arrogance of Brumby & Co caused the swing.
Melbournistan loves federal Labor – just disappointed they didn’t screw Queensland and WA effectively
the marxists are trying to destroy Australia and all other countries that believe in private property.
great to see that the shooters and fishers party have entered the WA upper house.
once again this election shows how easy it is for people to get elected to parliaments if they have even a small base of support in the community.
The strength of democracy is a small group of concerned citizens can band together and change things by running for office and winning elections.
That is how new parties such as the ALP, the country party, old DLP, and greens changed Australia. Katter’s party and the new DLP are next. State upper houses have Christian and shooters parties and many independents.
There’s something about the further south you go the more loopy the politics.
As much as he is hated on here, he is not a complete numbnut and it would be ridiculous to say otherwise. He obviously knew why, but simply could not explain it.
Andrew
“He obviously knew why, but simply could not explain it.”
You’re saying that a man can have a superb education and become premier and yet be unable to put into words what he knew to be right.
I can’t accept that. Ted was no dill he just didn’t believe in anything that’s why he couldn’t verbalise it. he was a walking vacuum the only content was ambition and a bit of snobishness.
I’m not anybody believes Newspoll anymore, it’s out of step with every other poll. Maybe some body at Newspoll has a crush on Julie?
TAFE cuts I’d think would is the sort of stuff governments usually try to gloss over. Distraction (it’s all because of what the opposition did) is usually order of the day. Lefties will always kick up a stink when Liberals/Nationals do stuff like TAFE cuts. There’s a whole lot of policy that some/most politicians will *never* bother explaining – it’s not that they can’t, it’s just that you never get credit for explaining boring details about the necessity for cuts in the context of broader education policy etc.
Tim
That may have been the case however Ted did so little that there wasn’t much to explain. Can anyone tell me of a time when Ted expounded on his personal philosophy and how he envisaged Victoria in the future?
You could be right. A friend who works in Vic parliament told me some time ago that Ted is silent, says nothing. Not so much a low target strategy as a no target strategy, it seems. Didn’t work out for him, did it!
This article contains only 1 sentence about the WA election.
Sad but true. A lost opportunity. The Vic Libs do have a couple of people who could do well but they seem stuck in the ‘Safe Hands’ position. They’ll safe hand themselves back to opposition.
Ms Miiseel make several mistakes. Firstly, Newspoll is an outlier, compared to Essential and Galaxy which both put the Coalition 10 poits up. Secondly, Gillard was not in Rooty Hill defending marginals, but safe seats like Werriwa and Reid.
Kissel not Miiseel
As for you people having a go at the Victorian Liberals, are you going to change your vote to Labor? Are they more likely to give you what you want? Of course not. SO the Libs won’t go back into Opposition for being less than libertarian. They will go back into Opposition because they have no real theme and no balls.
Hobson’s choice indeed!
Do they stick with the lying ranga or go back to the ear-wax eating school prefect?
They will also go back into Opposition because Victoria is a shithole and always has been a refuge for unreconstructed dickheaded bogan lefties
I wonder if the ALP might be looking at the “third man” option.
Or, when referring to Gillard, the “second slops” option as it is known.
Gross.
RL is right. A coalition government governing like the ALP is a disastrous outcome. They’re much better in opposition if they’re going to be like this. Besides, having a state ALP party back in government screwing up Vic would be useful if Abbott’s mob wins in September. Give them something to point at when the short memoried-voter starts whingeing about the inevitable post-Labor cuts.
The Victorian economy depends upon selling and destroying property.
If the liberal/labor/green collective where actually fair dinkum about preserving the bush then they would agree with me!
Bulldoze every cap city into the sea
and not once did ‘liberal’ barnett nor his ‘nlp’ mate gryls ever talk about stopping the subsidy that real workers are paying for john howard and peter costello’s ret on electricity costs!
Reid is closer to kiribili than Rooty hill.
As for the popularity poll men, I believe Barnett was trailing in the satisfaction ratings going into the election.
What does this mean? What is a “ret”? Do you know where the “shift” key is on your keyboard? Have you got a picture of a goat?
So many questions ……………..
Electricity costs haveskyrocketed in recent years in WA because of 17 years of maintaining artificially low prices from 1991-2008.
The people I have confidence in are Matthew Guy, Michael O’Brien and Robert Clark. All of which are doing a good job in their portfolios.
Sure, and no other reason.
The electricity CPI rose 57% between March 2009 and June 2012 and then 13% in June 2012 so yes the overwhelming majority of the price increases occurred before the implementation of the carbon tax.
By the way kneejerk, I don’t support the carbon tax.
SDFC
There had been talk of some serious interference in the energy markets for fucking years before the slapper implemented the carbin tax she promised not to change.
Here’s the deal in Victoria. Our prime source is brown coal which doesn’t carry an international price…. it’s basically free.
What possible catalysts occurred to raise prices?
The left has been trashing coal fired power stations for fucking years. The cost of funding for these utilities went up because of political risk. Utilities carry a higher debt level than other industries and they are allowed to pass on the cost to consumers.
On top of that we’ve got the feed in tariffs for the disgusting renew balls to contend with.
This is the trouble with you lefties. Every time someone suggests the horrendous increases to our energy costs are basically to do with the global warming scare you all try to find excuses. Suck it up princess. The left caused the price of energy to skyrocket in this country.
Sorry I was interrupted by one of the kids scabbing fuel money. That should be 13% in the September quarter 2012.
No Frank the price increases in WA were due to prices being held at artificially low rates for so long. That’s the problem with price fixing, there is always catch-up.
13% is 13%, doucheballs. It’s not something to sneeze at.
One last point. The country’s GDP and population has grown significantly over the past 13 years. During that time there has been no additional conventional energy supplies. So demand has gone up materially while supply has been artificially contained. What has been allowed to increase supply is hugely expensive and inefficient re-balls which is basically a fraud.
No fucking wonder prices have skyrocketed.
SDFC
I’m Frank…
Is WA’s energy come for brown coal?
This can’t be the real frank walker from national tiles, it doesn’t come across obnoxiously loud enough, it needs to be in uppercase 25 points bigger than anyone else’s text. Coming from Sydney and not listening to a lot of Melbourne radio, it strikes me they must be the worst radio ads in the country, you only have to hear them once to hate them.
I think most is gas JC. Remember when the Chevron plant went down? They had power rationing.
Thanks Splat.
That’s why i asked.
I believe that WA isn’t on the East seaboard grid. They may have their own issues over there. However the problem in the East is basically for the reasons I mentioned.
Rob
Frank Walker deserves to be executed by the state for what he’s done to Melbourne radio. I want to ring his neck.
You’d better wring him first, JC, to find if he’s in. (nyuk, nyuk, nyuk)
Frank, there has been a number of conventional ( coal and gas) power station builds since 2000 (two coal and two gas in WA alone), so I dont know what point it is you are trying to make. WA has several electical grids (SWIS, Pilbara grid, Esperance grid, etc), none of which are in any way connected to the eastern states. Sub bituminous coal (not quite black coal, but not brown coal) fired power contributes about 40% of the electricity to the SWIS (South West Interconnected System) the main network that stretches from Kalbarry in the north, Kalgoorlie in the east and Albany i the south, including Perth. A large component of recent power tariff increases is also attributed to network costs, specifically the running down of power transmission infrastructure by successive state governments and the increasing costs of keeping the networks in a reasonable state of repair. A negative consequence of this situation if the ignition of bushfires in rural areas due to faulty power lines that have destroyed a lot of private property and claimed some lives.
I already explained that I didn’t know enough about the WA to SDFC which is why I asked the earlier question. My points were about the eastern part of the country, dickhead.
I already said that I didn’t think the West was connected to our grid.
Let me repeat that the problems I mentioned related mostly to the east. You have a comment on that?
JC, i was clarifying your “thought” that the WA grid was not connected to the rest of the country. the balance of my post was in response to Frank. its not all about you princess.
Dickhead? Go fuck yourself.
Are you talking about the Varanus Island plant? That one’s Apache Energy. A sizeable chunk of the power in the West is generated using gas these days, a lot of it from the NW Shelf.
Antipodean, JC is Frank.
@everyone : the rise in energy prices is almost all attributable to the global warming scare in some way. Howard, Rudd, Gillard and successive state premiers all dipped their oar in that particular muck. RET, carbon tax, solar FIT, CCS subsidies, Geothermal giveaways, rusting wave generators : all mad money burning schemes based on the scare that turned out to be utter crap. And for a double whammy, many people have had their water bills skyrocketing at the same time for the same scare.
Yes, the network needs upgrades, and yes the state governments like taking dividends from state owned utilities. But the meat in this particular hamburger comes from global warming scare policies. It all came to fruition in 2007 when even John Howard started to run scared and took baptism in the church of scary graphs. And from that point onwards, the destiny of energy bills was straight up.
@ brc
Over here in WA the price rises are mostly due to what SDFC said…
Look, nobody want to see these price rises sheet-ed home to the AGW scare campaign more than me. That’s certainly part of the price rises, but there’s more to it than that.
1. As mentioned previously, power prices were kept artificially low by govts for too long.
2. WA saw international gas pricing before the eastern states. You’re talking much higher prices in Karratha than the east coast even before it’s sent down the pipeline to Perth.
3. Government stuff up with the idiotic capacity payment system, where you have generators being paid while not producing anything. (If you’re going to create a market just use a simple price as a signal to build mothball plant like every other freakin market.)
4. Probably the most incompetent and wasteful government owned corporations managing power assets outside of the third world.
5. All the carbon offsetting/renewable crap…
And just like Qlders, WAlians love their public utilities. If you really want lower prices, get over it and get Stockdale to privatise it!
Should read build *or* mothball plant..
They will also go back into Opposition because Victoria is a shithole and always has been a refuge for unreconstructed dickheaded bogan lefties….
No no it’s very pleasant here!
Actually I think a lot of the rusted-on Labor voters now are the sons and daughters of privilege – ie, they inherited wealth from previous Liberal-voting generations, are often not interested in making wealth themselves, and have this kind of redistribute the wealth attitude. They’re the sorts who are fond of pontificating about far-away places, like the NT, etc, without actually ever going there and experiencing it for themselves.
Anyway being a arty-farty sort myself I find Melbourne quite congenial and the lefty politics of others is neither here nor there.
Yes TimT, I think you start announcing proudly at the start of your poetry gigs “Thanks for coming folks, and don’t forget to vote Liberal in September.”
Well, it would amuse me, anyway.
You can tell JC is not Frank Walker. The real Frank Walker really stretches out the last word of each seeennnnteenceee. Every single oooooonnneeee.
Yes TimT, I think you start announcing proudly at the start of your poetry gigs “Thanks for coming folks, and don’t forget to vote Liberal in September.”
All these tips and more will be shortly released in Steve’s upcoming book, ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’.
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2013/03/could-western-australia-deliver-the-coalition-control-of-the-senate.html has a great post showing that the WA Nats could win the 4th senate seat in WA and with it control of the senate. the Libs should get 3 quotas, and Labor 2.
In 2010, the greens and Christian democrats fought it out for the last seat!! the Christian democrats are separate from family first.
The rise of family first, Christian democrats, DLP, WA Nats and Katter’s mob suggests that the greens are for a decline.
These parties will end up with the balance of power because they appeal to social conservatives and economic nationalists across the spectrum.
The greens are cannibalising the Left Labor vote and a protest vote that second preferences the liberals. 20% of green voters second preference to the Liberals.
the greens must win more votes from the centre to win the balance of power. redividing the Left vote will not be enough.
the greens must win the last senate seat from the liberals to keep them below three senators a state and a blocking vote of 38.