Re: Aus Federal Politics thread (XI)

[skully]

Boo-ferkin-hoo, Sarah

"INDEPENDENT senator Nick Xenophon says an overwhelming reaction against the Greens from his supporters has convinced him to preference the major parties first on his South Australian senate ticket.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young yesterday complained that Senator Xenophon's decision could disadvantage her and risk giving the state's sixth senate spot to the Liberals."

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Good riddance to a Top 10 waste of space in Aus Politics.

[G.Wood]

[snigger]

"Labor's shock decision to recruit Peter Beattie as its candidate for the federal Queensland electorate of Forde appears to have backfired spectacularly, with the Coalition on track to win the seat in a landslide, The Australian Financial Review reports.
...
The poll shows that in Forde, in south-east Queensland, the incumbent Liberal-National Party Member Bert van Manen is thrashing the former Queensland premier on a two-party preferred basis by 60 per cent to 40 per cent."

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I guess you can never underestimate the ability of Chips to succumb to the cult of celebrity but after his efforts with water reform and Council amalgamations it was a strange decision to get him to stand in SE Qld. The only person Loganites hate more than Beattie is that cow of a grub Anna Bligh

[lardbucket]

Beattie probably thinks that he shovelled the shit onto the unfortunate and unqualified Anna just in time, with none of it sticking to him ... but there was so much, some of it inevitably stuck.

Similar scenario down here with Bartlett, who cut and run when things started getting messy politically and personally, leaving the gullible but perfectly round and smooth Lara Giddings to trot out a thought bubble per week until she is assassinated at the ballot box.

[G.Wood]

Peter Beattie busy campaigning
Mick Sawyer not posting

it makes sense to me

[lardbucket]

PB looks as though he's had something - perhaps a large garden gnome - inserted in him shortly before that photo was taken.

[G.Wood]

can you get faceless ones?

[skully]

...leaving the gullible but perfectly round and smooth Lara Giddings to trot out a thought bubble per week until she is assassinated at the ballot box.

can you get faceless ones?

 

[Paul Keating]

The job of the opposition is to oppose and be negative.

Labor will have three terms of it. It will take them two terms to learn it.

[skully]

Swag of marginal seat polls out this morning. All look bad for the Pinkos except for Blaxland where Jason Clare is just in front.

Chuckled at the Bennelong result. Krudd has made two visits in 2 weeks - John Alexander is now ahead 65% to 35% 2PP. Also Chris Bowen is behind 47-53 in McMahon.

[skully]

3 weeks to go!!

[Paul Keating]

Undoubtedly the ALP is losing and will lose, Skully.

But those polls are rubbish. Small sample size. Large margin of error. Land line respondents only.

[Nath]

3 weeks to go!!

which can't end soon enough

[skully]

True enough, Ponts, but they were conducted across 8 electorates, so the overall poll covered 5,000 people (600 per electorate), so the trend is consistent with previous polls.

[skully]

Agreed Nath. With the polls sliding backwards for Krudd, I'm guessing he wished her went to the polls 2 weeks ago. At least then the sentiment was closer to 50-50.

[lardbucket]

I don't mind what the margin is - a seat will do - just so long as that slimy platitude-generating balloon of pus is lanced, once and for all. Normal service can then resume.

[embee]

[skully]

Who's the old grub staring at her boobs?

[embee]

ALP candidate for Swan

[lardbucket]

She has a lot to look forward to.

[skully]

ALP candidate for Swan

And the Megan Fox lookalike?

[embee]

''Sex appeal'' are dirty words in election 2013.
So the entrance of Danii Alexis, a Perth fitness model, into the glare of the campaign had to be handled with extreme care by Kevin Rudd.
The Prime Minister was clearly taken with Alexis.
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''Hi, Danii,'' he purred.
Rudd remained clear of the most obvious pitfall in his path, maintaining a gentlemanly line of sight. However, his candidate for Swan, John Bissett, failed the test - as pictures would later show. His gaze was last seen on the tiled floor of the Westfield Carousel shopping centre in suburban Perth.
Rudd's stinging rebuke of Tony Abbott over the Opposition Leader's sex appeal gaffe was instantly left looking decidedly hollow, as some of his campaign strategists had feared when he launched the assault.
Speaking later, Alexis described the resulting pictures as ''cheeky'' and said she had no problem with their being published. ''I'm a fitness model and I go in competitions where you have 10 judges marking your body in competition,'' she said.
Alexis, who was working on the counter of a raw nutrition stall at Westfield, was one of hundreds of shoppers and shopkeepers keen to get between an iPhone and the PM.


Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/rudd-passes-the-danii-test-with-aplomb--not-so-his-man-in-swan-20130816-2s28o.html#ixzz2cD3ch4h6

[embee]

Labor's PNG solution was ''unravelling'', said Coalition immigration minster Scott Morrison, after the country’s Prime Minister Peter O'Neill denied the two central elements of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's tough new asylum-seeker policy – that PNG will settle all those determined to be refugees and that none will end up in Australia.
Mr O'Neil, speaking exclusively to Fairfax Media, said he had not agreed to settle all asylum seekers who are found to be refugees after processing on Manus Island and that Australia would need to take back a share of them.
Coalition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison at a press conference earlier this week with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.
Coalition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison at a press conference earlier this week with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. Photo: Graham Denholm/Getty Images
''There is no agreement that all genuine refugees will be settled in PNG,'' Mr O'Neill said.
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Mr Morrison seized on Mr O’Neill’s comments saying Mr Rudd had ''been caught out again making bold claims that aren’t backed up by the arrangements that are intended to support those claims''.
''It happened with Nauru, and it has been unravelling with PNG by the day,'' Mr Morrison told a press conference on Saturday.
Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd sign an agreement over asylum seekers on July 19.
PNG's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill and Kevin Rudd shake hands over an asylum seeker deal on July 19.
''This PM just isn’t fair dinkum when it comes to these issues. He is always one to over-promise, over-claim and under-deliver. And that’s why the Coalition has always been so concerned how the government handles these issues.''
He called on the PM to be upfront about what the arrangment ''actually does''.
Earlier on Saturday, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said that Mr O'Neill had ''flatly contradicted'' Mr Rudd's claim about their deal on asylum seekers and that the Australian Prime Minister would say anything to get a headline.
Illustration: Ron Tandberg.
Illustration: Ron Tandberg.
''You just can’t trust this Prime Minister,'' Mr Abbott told reporters in Perth on Saturday.
But when questioned about Mr O'Neill's comments on Saturday, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said that was certain he had 100 per cent support from the Papua New Guinea government for his tough new asylum seeker policy and he could guarantee that no person who came to Australia by boat without a visa would be settled in Australia.
He referred to a section of the agreement with PNG that says: ''Persons found to be refugees will be resettled in Papua New Guinea and other participating regional states including Pacific island states.''
''That’s what we agreed to . . . that has been confirmed as late as today,'' Mr Rudd told reporters in Adelaide.
Mr O'Neill told Fairfax Media that PNG would work with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to engage with other countries willing to take part in resettling those refugees.
''That includes Australia, New Zealand and all the other countries who are signatories to the UN conventions on refugees,'' he said.
He said he believed Australia had an annual quota to settle about 20,000 refugees. ''Under that process, they will get some and New Zealand has indicated they would take some.''
Mr O'Neill's stand came as the federal opposition toughened its refugee policy, announcing that it would deny the right of asylum seekers to appeal against negative assessments by courts.
It would also retrospectively apply its tough temporary protection visa scheme to more than 30,000 people already in Australia awaiting refugee assessment decisions.
Mr Rudd insisted during the election debate last Sunday evening that there was ''one simple principle'' in his new regime under which all asylum seekers arriving by boat are now being diverted to PNG and would be settled there.
But Mr O'Neill said that while PNG was willing to help with resettling refugees, it could only take ''our quota''.
Mr O'Neill also derided federal opposition claims that Australia risked another major asylum-seeker influx after two Somalis were apprehended last week entering Australia from western PNG via the Torres Strait.
Mr Morrison repeated those comments on Saturday that the PNG plan opened ''another front'' for asylum seekers coming across the Torres Strait to Australia.
Mr O'Neill said the comments were ''ridiculous'' and there was no evidence that significant numbers of refugees were seeking to use PNG as a pathway to Australia. ''It is certainly an overreaction,'' he said.
Mr O'Neill said many Papua New Guineans had been offended by much of the debate and media commentary in Australia about the asylum seeker deal, which depicted the country as a dangerous ''hell-hole''.
He said PNG was happy to help Australia try to solve its asylum seeker problem, but was not obliged to. ''We can easily walk away from it and allow Australia to deal with it,'' he said.
Mr O'Neill said the new policy appeared to be working. It was slowing the number of boat arrivals and many of the asylum seekers already sent to Manus, predominantly single Iranian men, were indicating they wanted to return home.
''From early indications there are not too many genuine refugees among those who are coming. They are economic migrants and many of them want to go home,'' he said.
Earlier on Saturday Treasurer Chris Bowen said the process outlined in the agreement with PNG was clear, as were Mr O'Neill's comments when the deal was announced.
''What's very clear is we have a strong and enduring agreement with Papua New Guinea,'' Mr Bowen said.
''I think the agreement is clear and I think it's clear it's starting to work.''
Despite Mr Bowen's comments about the deal being enduring, the arrangement signed with Mr O'Neill says the program will be reviewed after 12 months.


Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/png-solution-unravelling-morrison-20130816-2s2cy.html#ixzz2cD7P2lY6

[skully]

Choyers, A.

[embee]

From Lateline

STEVE CANNANE: Also run something retired Test cricketer Nathan Bracken. The former fast bowler entered the race for Dobell just this week.

Now you're a bit late to the race, is that a bit like you know, turning up to a Test match without doing your net sessions?

NATHAN BRACKEN, INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE: You can still score a hundred

...only off your bowling Ferny

[skully]

Ferny has looked very awkward and uncomfortable pressing the flesh in Wyong.

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