On the NSW State election
Former NSW Premier Bob Carr has written about the Labor debacle:
IT has taken political talent bordering on genius. The creativity of a master such as Disraeli or F. D. Roosevelt to deliver NSW Labor a defeat of this scale. ...
OK, we have a scorching row over electricity privatisation and two quick changes of premier. Both demonstrate real political artistry. But the party’s collective genius was not exhausted. There comes a third ingredient: a cluster of ministerial scandals unlike anything seen in recent government experience.
And on the limp performance of the Greens:
In an election made for them to score two inner-city seats the Green Party failed. This is an important message out of the NSW state elections. ...
It is the Green Party which takes voters for granted, they who live off spin and make-believe and want to skate through without policy detail. I will cheer when a newspaper or TV station insists on breaking into one of those closed Green Party conferences (must be closed - I never see them reported ) and giving the voters some account of how this outfit makes policy.
I agree and have nothing to add.
Apart from some supporting details. In the Legislative Council elections, the Coalition outpolled the ALP 2:1. The loss in ALP votes almost precisely matches the increase in Coalition votes. This is an election where the protest vote went to the alternative government and essentially nowhere else. There was movement within the "everyone else" vote, but that is all. This is all the more striking, given the steady increase in voting for "everyone else" since the early 1980s.
In the Legislative Assembly, the level of slaughter is as predicted by the polling (17 Labor MLAs announced their retirement before the election), but still astonishing. We are in record electoral swing territory. The ALP will be outnumbered at least 3:1 in the lower house. The ALP will only have a few more seats than the Nats being reduced to an inner urban rump. You have to go back to the early C20th for a Labor performance this bad, it is worse than the Coalition suffered during the Wranslides.
Extraordinary.
Federal implications? Zero, apart from the loss of ALP resources and increase in Coalition resources.
ADDENDA There may be more Federal implications than I thought: extra large swings in manufacturing and coal seats suggest the carbon tax may have bit. Though the analysis is disputed. And clearly, it was not driving the overall result.
The Nats also regained electorates previously lost to rural independents. Whether that has any federal implications, we will have to wait and see.
IT has taken political talent bordering on genius. The creativity of a master such as Disraeli or F. D. Roosevelt to deliver NSW Labor a defeat of this scale. ...
OK, we have a scorching row over electricity privatisation and two quick changes of premier. Both demonstrate real political artistry. But the party’s collective genius was not exhausted. There comes a third ingredient: a cluster of ministerial scandals unlike anything seen in recent government experience.
And on the limp performance of the Greens:
In an election made for them to score two inner-city seats the Green Party failed. This is an important message out of the NSW state elections. ...
It is the Green Party which takes voters for granted, they who live off spin and make-believe and want to skate through without policy detail. I will cheer when a newspaper or TV station insists on breaking into one of those closed Green Party conferences (must be closed - I never see them reported ) and giving the voters some account of how this outfit makes policy.
I agree and have nothing to add.
Apart from some supporting details. In the Legislative Council elections, the Coalition outpolled the ALP 2:1. The loss in ALP votes almost precisely matches the increase in Coalition votes. This is an election where the protest vote went to the alternative government and essentially nowhere else. There was movement within the "everyone else" vote, but that is all. This is all the more striking, given the steady increase in voting for "everyone else" since the early 1980s.
In the Legislative Assembly, the level of slaughter is as predicted by the polling (17 Labor MLAs announced their retirement before the election), but still astonishing. We are in record electoral swing territory. The ALP will be outnumbered at least 3:1 in the lower house. The ALP will only have a few more seats than the Nats being reduced to an inner urban rump. You have to go back to the early C20th for a Labor performance this bad, it is worse than the Coalition suffered during the Wranslides.
Extraordinary.
Federal implications? Zero, apart from the loss of ALP resources and increase in Coalition resources.
ADDENDA There may be more Federal implications than I thought: extra large swings in manufacturing and coal seats suggest the carbon tax may have bit. Though the analysis is disputed. And clearly, it was not driving the overall result.
The Nats also regained electorates previously lost to rural independents. Whether that has any federal implications, we will have to wait and see.