With WorkChoices all about cutting the wages and conditions of the “Howard Battlers”, the very voters they had managed to win over from Labor for a couple of terms, there will be a measure of distrust, even antagonism, in voterland that the Coalition will have trouble living down.

A portion of those votes is, I am confident, lost to them forever.

I can’t see any labor government, besides WA rushing to the polls as there will be an almighty kerfuffle from the Lationals and Niberals to win any state, if the right loses that, they will be stuffed, maybe for good. New conservative party then, anyone?

I didnt think they’d have a high chance of getting up, from watching the count last year i vaguely remember low primaries and certainly no signs of their being a threat to the incumbent parties or independents.

Maybe it was just Costa’s way of taking a swipe at the opposition.

Perhaps people will vote for the minor parties or Coalition in the Upper house as a protest vote, but my money isnt on a lot of people doing this.

Talk about The Mark of Cain! Little Johnny Stableford (the one they called El Rodente) bubonically annointed The Nightwatchman with its imprimatur at a tory fundraiser earlier in the week.
All Petit Mal has to do now is go through the motions, make the occasional “brilliant” policy initiative but mainly stfu and wait for The Party to come to him.

Geez, can’t wait to post to see what sort of a groovy mandala gets laid on me……man. JP’s is totally cool. Maybe Huey WordPress will set me up with one that is really far out

The problem with the Greens getting into the Lower House anywhere is their lack of broad support. In any electorate in any election they have to, essentially, beat the ALP into second place and coat-tail off their preferences into first over top of the Coalition - a hard ask by any optimistic yardstick. Apart from the very occasional protest vote (like Cunningham) or a few inner city electorates - it’s a pretty unlikely proposition for the foreseeable future.

Independents can run rampant through rural and regional Australia particularly as long as they are well known local personalities like Rob Oakeshot in Port Macquarie through to blokes (and it’s invariably blokes) like Katter, Tony Windsor and the late Peter Andren federally. On rare occasions you get metro independents like Ted Mack - but they are extremely rare.

As far as Iemma is concerened, its simply a contest between Labor and the Coalition in NSW with independents on the fringe unless there’s a hung Parliament.

There’s been rumors, gossip and general scuttlebutt about Hockey moving to the Bear Pit and taking over the NSW Libs since the 07 election.

If an election was held soon, could NSW see the creation of a new party ? Greens get into the Lower house ? More Independents ? or does his actions come from knowing that the ALP isnt going to lose power even if he sticks fingers up at the electorate.

I still think that NSW will be the first government to stop the wall to wall labor governments.

If i was asked i would tell the ALP they still own my vote, i’ll just lease it to someone else for 3 years.

Also i saw something interesting in the Legislative Council Hansard which makes me think Michael Costa is nuts. He said this on 7th May.

I was going through the list of Liberal Party leaders who support the privatisation. I can advise the House further that today Joe Hockey—a future Leader of the Opposition in this State—said the following on Radio 2UE:

Why would Michael Costa announce that Joe Hockey will be a future leader of the Opposition in NSW ???

We can say on the polling that “this time its not different, it never is” (i.e. bad polling is expected from poor leadership after an election defeat but they’ll bounce back come the main game) - but the thing about the Australian electorate of late is that it’s happened enough times (Qld, NSW, to a lesser extent in Vic and SA as of now, but may well happen in WA next election) that “this time it’s not different” might well apply to the isolation of the opposition rather than to its recovery.

Amber- I’ll whack that graph up by tomorrow morning.