18 October 2012

Democracy Canberra Style

18 October 2012 | johnboy

Why bother with even having our one lousy vote every four years when the Canberra Times can just tell us how it’s going to be?

At least Noel Towell managed to look at the camera. That’s something.

Oh what the hell let’s laugh at the little Korean man without realising he’s trying to mock the delusions of power.

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pepmeup6:52 pm 21 Oct 12

pepmeup said :

It is likley Labor will hold power with the help of the greens but I still think the libs are a chance of 3 in brindy and Molonglo, Making final numbers

libs 8
alp 7
greens 2

and I still think an upset could be on the cards in Gindy with Chic pulling off a massive upset.

but i guess we will all know soon enough

Still pretty happy with that prediction but time will tell

chewy148:16 am 20 Oct 12

WillowJim said :

So a day out from the election the CT admits that yes, it has been barracking for the ALP the whole time.

Have you never read a newspaper? Because every newspaper in this country editorialises on the eve of an election. I imagine some people here would have lambasted the newspaper as gutless if it hadn’t published an election editorial.

I was unsurprised by the editorial, though I don’t get why it ignored the Greens. They did win a large enough chunk of the vote to affect how this city is run.

It’s also a little odd that RA takes the stance that it would never publish the results of a poll, lest by doing so it might affect its readers’ decisions.

Yes newspapers editorialise before an election, they’re also meant to present the news, its right there in the name.

If you’ve read the CT during this election campaign, you would be a dunce if you didn’t realise their election ‘news’ seemed to be supporting the ALPs reelection.

WillowJim9:44 pm 19 Oct 12

So a day out from the election the CT admits that yes, it has been barracking for the ALP the whole time.

Have you never read a newspaper? Because every newspaper in this country editorialises on the eve of an election. I imagine some people here would have lambasted the newspaper as gutless if it hadn’t published an election editorial.

I was unsurprised by the editorial, though I don’t get why it ignored the Greens. They did win a large enough chunk of the vote to affect how this city is run.

It’s also a little odd that RA takes the stance that it would never publish the results of a poll, lest by doing so it might affect its readers’ decisions.

housebound4:28 pm 19 Oct 12

PantsMan said :

From the Canberra Times today:

We support the re-election of her government.

Link: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/editorial/tarnished-labor-still-more-reliable-20121018-27u6b.html

So a day out from the election the CT admits that yes, it has been barracking for the ALP the whole time.

And it makes our candidates look religious with headlines like this: Pollies hit town on mass for election eve

Tetranitrate4:05 pm 19 Oct 12

c_c said :

I’ve yet to here her say one thing about Canberra itself, it’s all about her. She has an ego that makes me long for the days of Kate Carnell by comparison.

I get the feeling from your posts that you were probably still in Primary school when Carnell resigned as Chief Minister.

DrKoresh said :

PantsMan said :

I really don’t think a phone poll is particularly accurate in Canberra. Soooooo many households do not have a fixed line phone, and the transient population might mix things up a bit.

Also, the 8-10 per cent lead is the danger zone for protest votes. People believe that there is enough of a margin to put the boot in.

It’s nice to know that The Crimes has done the thinking for me though. Can they just hurry up and go bankrupt.

I doubt transients and people without fixed phones are generally the type of people to vote Liberal though, just saying.

Agreed but I think the larger issue is the statistical significance of the result rather than any possible sampling bias. I haven’t seen it for this time around, but the poll the CT did last time had a normal looking confidence interval, with a significance of 70% (!!!!!!).

c_c2:56 pm 19 Oct 12

Having said that, surely after this loss it is time for a broom to be swept through the party?

Agreed. Elizabeth Lee is exactly the kind of candidate that they need more of – in fact they should make her leader.

You’re joking surely. Elizabeth Lee is exactly the type of person who should never get into the Assembly.

This is her reason for running: ”I’d been involved in legal politics for a while… it wasn’t a single issue for me, but I’ve always enjoyed doing this sort of work.”

You don’t run for politics because you want to benefit, you don’t run because it’s another box to tick on your ego trip. You run because you see things you want to improve and people you want to help and feel you can do something about it.

I’ve yet to here her say one thing about Canberra itself, it’s all about her. She has an ego that makes me long for the days of Kate Carnell by comparison.

caf2:34 pm 19 Oct 12

The libs will lose. No doubt about this given the Greens backing. Nine seats is one beyond what they could hope for in their wildest dreams.

That’s not entirely true. Ginninderra and Brindabella have both delivered 3 seats to the conservative side of politics in the past, and 3 seats ought not to be a challenge for the Liberals in Molonglo, so 9 is well within the bounds of possibility if the political winds (and the candidates) are right.

Having said that, surely after this loss it is time for a broom to be swept through the party?

Agreed. Elizabeth Lee is exactly the kind of candidate that they need more of – in fact they should make her leader.

DrKoresh1:58 pm 19 Oct 12

PantsMan said :

I really don’t think a phone poll is particularly accurate in Canberra. Soooooo many households do not have a fixed line phone, and the transient population might mix things up a bit.

Also, the 8-10 per cent lead is the danger zone for protest votes. People believe that there is enough of a margin to put the boot in.

It’s nice to know that The Crimes has done the thinking for me though. Can they just hurry up and go bankrupt.

I doubt transients and people without fixed phones are generally the type of people to vote Liberal though, just saying.

PantsMan12:54 pm 19 Oct 12

From the Canberra Times today:

We support the re-election of her government.

Link: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/editorial/tarnished-labor-still-more-reliable-20121018-27u6b.html

Tetranitrate12:36 pm 19 Oct 12

jimbocool said :

@tetranitrate, actually the Libs did much better in 2004 than 2008. In 2004 they polled 34.8% and won 7 seats. In 2008 they polled 31.6% and won only 6 seats.

Re-read what I wrote.
I’m putting forward the opinion that the worst the libs will do is something near the 2004 result, ala 2/2/3 seats. I’m very well aware that they did better in 2004 than 2008.

dpm9:34 am 19 Oct 12

steveu said :

…On a side note, I don’t recall seeing a government in power that as been in power for so long have such trouble just stating its achievements over the last decade – this wouldn’t be hard would it? There seems to be a lot of promises coming out, and not a lot of achievements in their campaign.

Hahaha! Yes, most of the Labor policies are odd for a party that has been in power so long. You’d expect they’d just be tidying up a bit and focussing on efficiency by now. But instead there are a lot of large ‘reforms’! You have to wonder what they have been doing. It’s a bit concerning! 🙂
On the plus side for them, I actually quite like Katy and think she works and tries v. hard. No probs with her really.

As for the Libs, I think they have come up with quite a few good ideas in this campaign – and ones that address many of my pet peeves in Canberra. For example,
*) a review of the justice system/courts (I hate how it is running ATM, but not sure if the review would lead to positive changes..)
*) Gp-led clinics instead of nurse-led (While the nurse one(s) are good, I honestly don’t think you will achieve reductions to presentations at ED with that model. My opinion…)
*) Green bins (I feel bad as it would probably stuff up trash pak operators, but on the other hand, almost every other council seems to have them?)
However, their policy announcements have been fairly minimal (and not all costed or fully explained. e.g how are you going to add 6 more beds to a ward that is physically already full? Remove nurse tea rooms? Squeeze more beds into rooms?), and some of the others are just the reverse of their opposition (e.g. reverse the plastic bag rules!). Which leads me to my other problem: they have run quite a negative campaign which I am against (e.g triple your rates etc). If they had their time again, i’d like to think they’d have attacked this election differently.
I have to say, I haven’t looked too closely at the Greens, but might do that today.

And finally, overall, while we are not ‘just a council’ (as we do have hospitals, schools, law/gaols etc to manage too), I still think we should be focusing more on getting services and planning right for the community, rather than the pie-in-the-sky ‘ideals’ they seem to spend half their time debating in the LA. At the end of the day, a lot of that stuff is for Federal Govt (or not for Govt at all!), and most should be prioritized lower while they get basic services competent and efficient. *Then* they can spend their time navel gazing about ‘ideals’…! Basically, I’d like to see whoever wins instigate *all* their election promises first, then move on to the fluff (most of which they put up knowing that it won’t get up – they just want to have their 10 mins of fame). 🙂
Anyway, I still haven’t decided who to vote for……! Hahahaha!

zippyzippy6:56 pm 18 Oct 12

housebound said :

SnapperJack said :

I can’t believe it! There is a big swing away from The Greens across Australia exemplified by the NSW and Qld elections and the NSW local government election yet this poll is saying that support for The Greens here has doubled since the 2008 election.

This proves without a doubt that the ACT is out of touch with the real world and that voters here really are stupid.

I suspect it might prove the results of having a local paper that will not publish negative commentary on the Greens. There was even this sycophantic op ed a few weeks ago.

I think we’ve seen maybe one partly negative article in the entire election campaign. The Greens get to make all sorts of election promises, with no critical analysis. RA has been the only outlet that has not brainlessly accepted everything the Greens say. We’re hard pressed to find more than a handful of articles about Liberal policies without invited (negative) comment from Labor and Greens.

If the Libs got the same dream run as the Greens, who knows what the results could be.

I’ve seen a pretty mediocre effort at scrutiny of all 3 parties from the media; mainly just an attempt at keeping up with all the announcements, which I think is a pretty bad way to do things.

I don’t think those dream run comments are really fair. The libs got negative coverage, which they brought on themselves by refusing scrutiny. Labor and the greens went through the verification process with the treasury to have everything they promised scrutinised and costed. Libs avoided that. That’s why there was this pretty funny cartoon in the CT today: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/photogallery/opinion/cartoons/david-pope-20120214-1t3j0.html

All the policies and costings that treasury did are publicised here: http://www.treasury.act.gov.au/Electioncostings/Index.shtml

In terms of election policy detail, I found the libs the most vague and inaccessible – eventually found them here on their website: http://www.canberraliberals.org.au/ABOUT-US/ABOUT-US/Our-Policies.asp
Some of them I can’t work out at all, especially where they’re just reannouncing money that is already committed. Like, $4B for health? Surely that’s just what’s budgeted for already?

The labor ones were a bit better, on the katygallagher site, still a bit hard to see them all: http://www.katygallagher.net/?cat=24

I thought the greens’ were most accessible, alphabetised on the front page of the website, and found a lot of detail: http://act.greens.org.au/

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