The dying days of the Fourth Reich: it's the 2007 AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION

Hey has anyone seen the Coalition commercial where big union toughs burst in on a child's birthday party, eat the cake, pop the balloons and cancel Christmas?

I saw the one where big union thugs invade Poland, round up the Jews and send them to the gas chambers.

They got off lightly in that one.

From La Bolt's Blog:

There’s an acknowledgement of the traditional owners - a genuflection to the new racism to which Labor is so prone.

Hahaha, what a douche.

Hey has anyone seen the Coalition commercial where big union toughs burst in on a child's birthday party, eat the cake, pop the balloons and cancel Christmas?

-- Tim F, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 21:52 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

You're serious??

Can anyone spell DESPERATE??

Odds on next week there'll be an ad showing union thugs indulging in child pornography and setting fire to Brisbane. This pathetic muckraking can only be hurting the Coalition.

A friend of mine told me that Bob Hawke was seen recently sporting a badge that said 'Union Thug'.

Brilliant!

I can distinctly remember hating Keating with a burgundy passion, but yesterday I was only proud to see him there. Things really have changed, haven't they? Perhaps it's just that Keating's arrogance pales in comparison with Howard's high watermark.

Sometimes the role of elder statesman can bring out the best in some ex-PM's - look at Malcolm Fraser for example.

Absolutely.

I don't see Howard being that successful an elder statesman, to be honest. His legacy won't be a good one, especially now that it's clear the whole economic boom has little to do with him.

On the radio this morning some Liberal hack was trying to paint the unions as a greedy corporation intent on grabbing power to line their own grubby pockets - something along the lines of "pouring $30 million into the campaign to steal the election". Contrasts nicely with the actions of Richard Pratt et al no?

Was that an advertisement? Coz there's a tv ad about that, but it's an ex-LABOR mp that's saying it.

Surely they're chasing the unions because there's nothing else left?

This has to be transparent to even the most hardened Howard supporter.

xpost

I was half asleep but it was on the ABC so I don't think it was an ad; although perhaps I was confused? So who was the ex-labor MP talking about?

I can't remember, but I def recall the $30 milly call.

Autumn wouldn't there be lots of small business types who would respond to a fear-of-a-militant-union type dog whistle though?

Why this time but not any of the previous 13783 occasions Howard has made the same bleat in the last six months?

One feels from the polls that people have pretty much made up their minds. There may be a few vacillators, but not enough to make a large difference from one poll to the next, taking into account margins of error.

Autumn wouldn't there be lots of small business types who would respond to a fear-of-a-militant-union type dog whistle though?

-- badg, Thursday, 15 November 2007 10:47 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

Probably, but loads more are worried about being affected by WorkChoices. It just seems like niche campaigning to me.

moley: Everyone's sick of it. It's been going now for almost a year and the country's just exhausted. Normally politics is the subject of every conversation two weeks from voting day, but this year nobody's talking about it. It's selling papers but that's about it. Last week I heard that even the election-themed books that usually sell in high volumes aren't moving.

In other words, yeah, most people made up their minds ages ago and just want the whole thing to stop.

Centrebet has the Coalition at $3.50. That's the highest it's been iirc.

I want a badge that says "union thug livin'"

put out a track called "fuck your PM" by (union) thug

^^^

I'll paste my facebook photo in here when I get around to it.

I have got around to it

http://www.4bitterguys.com/adam/unionomg.jpg

HAHAHAHA, awesome.

I've been trying not to get my hopes up because so many times these past twelve years, they've been dashed and that clique of far right cunts and Howard have stayed in power.

But it's fucking actually happening, isn't it? In nine days time...that lying immoral cunt who has fucked up and sold out this country (and its gonna take a long time to recover) will be gone. And clobbered on the way. And we'll have the hilarity of Costello and Turnbull with hangbags at dawn.

November 24 is going to be one of the happiest days of my life.

It's happening.

I think the turning point (from a probable win to a definitive win) was last week's revelation that the Coalition knows fuck-all about economics, despite this being its one perceived strength. After 12 years of slippery deception, the emperor has no clothes, and no other strength on which to fall back.

Commentators are unanimous and firm in their confidence that the ALP will win. According to Chris Uhlmann, Labor is measured but ebullient, and the Coalition is "grimly determined."

Advertising ends on Wednesday. The Coalition is pushing unions because it can't find a cut-through message. This will ramp up but probably not change, and probably have no effect anyway.

Meanwhile Labor this week shattered just about every negative stereotype it's been given by showing true leadership in fiscal restraint (thereby actually showing up the government in terms of economic responsibility), and expressing once and for all the stark differences between it and the Coalition.

Yesterday's pork-barrelling finding will severely damage the Coalition, but what's another nail in an already nailed-shut coffin? It could be the difference between Labor winning 96 seats and 102 seats in the lower house, which is academic when 76 seats is enough.

What I said weeks ago about status appears to have been otm. Rudd is resolute and the Coalition is (uncharacteristically, yet normally for this year) running around in circles.

I expect Coalition ministers to start publicly breaking down any day now. Barnaby Joyce was first this week, but it'll get worse. Probably Tuesday, if the next Newspoll shows a widening.

Hey, and it's also likely that Howard will lose Bennelong. Seriously. McKew is cranking up the rhetoric something fierce atm. I don't think Labor even expected that.

:D:D:D post, xpost, xxpost

The most interesting statistic in all of this is the trajectory of the major polls.

I always said that people would vote out Howard if someone good came along, and that Latham didn't rouse enough confidence in voters. Rudd's entrance was met with positive polling which hasn't changed. Nothing the Coalition has done all year has had any effect on the polls. They've not even narrowed (perceptibly) during the campaign period, despite consensus to the contrary.

My theory now -- as it was months ago -- is that people just want to get rid of Howard, and nothing he can do would ever have changed this; and that, in the context of Howard's hate-fuelled politics, Rudd can't possibly be worse.

The past 8-9 days have seen a shift in the playing field (new strength for Rudd, new weakness for Howard), so I think that, for the first time all year, the Coalition will lose a serious amount of support to Rudd.

xpost I WILL EAT CHOCOLATE AND DRINK BEER AND HUG STRANGERS UNTIL I EXPLODE.

FUCK!! Abbott says WorkChoices is good because if you don't like your job, quit

"I accept that certain protections, in inverted commas, are not what they were, I accept that that has largely gone. I accept that," he said.

Death throes.

And I doubt there's any coming back from this

John Howard’s anointed successor Peter Costello made his name in the early 1990’s destroying the parliamentary career of the Labor Member for Canberra Ros Kelly after she was implicated by the Audit Office in the whiteboard affair. Her crime had been to use a whiteboard (which she later erased) to “shovel funds to marginal Labor electorates prior to the March 1993 election”.

She dished out $60 million.

The Regional Partnership Program directed by Peter Costello’s colleagues [under the Howard govt] didn’t even use a whiteboard. The Audit Office finds that many of the reasons for its grants weren’t documented at all.

It shelled out $350 million.

The culture that allowed it to happen appears to pervade the Howard government.

[...]

The Coalition looks poorly placed to win an election about competence.

But it's fucking actually happening, isn't it?

Oh, dear God, I hope so. If they don't get chucked out this time, nothing will do it (save perhaps pictures of Howard and Costello having sex with each other, an image I apologise for inflicting upon you).

I was surprised the 7:30 Report last night did nothing on the regional rorts story, though (though what they did cover--the polling--was not comforting for Howard and co).

Latest Morgan face-to-face poll has ALP TPP on 56.5% (up 0.5%) and primary on 47% (up 3.5%). Coalition primary on 39%.

A formal summation of this poll is Labor to win in A FUCKING LANDSLIDE.

Oh and taken last weekend (post-rate rise and pre-launches), which is significant.

O Bitter Irony!!!! (strictly in the Alannis Morriset sense)

A real-life Trade Union Thug, absolutely faithful to the stereotype, lurches into plain view 10 days before polling day - and it turns out to be the single TUT Howard can't sling muck at in a blue fit: Paul Mullett of the Police Association.

u
got
s3rv3d

Sportingbet Coalition $3.60.

They're fucked.

Looks like it.

Huzzah!

<a href="http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/2007/11/17/the-final-countdown/";>Possum</a> has predicted not only a clear win for Labor, but also the demise of the Liberal party.

The political and media system has caught up to what we’ve been saying for the last 5-6 months (this site has actually been running 6 months to the day, as of yesterday).

The message is clear - the game is over.

That is what makes it so dangerous.

[...]

If Coalition members lose the plot, if recrimination starts creeping into the last week of the campaign as government members fail to come to terms with the electoral reality, if members become more concerned with saving their own skin now that the fight to save the government is lost - it could all get very ugly very, very quickly.

If the ever cumulating misdemeanours of an 11 year administration start leaking out, replete with documentary evidence from the many technocrats and political operatives with long standing grievances that now see the twin windows of opportunity and immunity offering the sweetest revenge of all, the loss could turn into a rout.

He goes on to state, in no uncertain terms, that the party could begin to collapse within days.

DAYS.

oh fucking tags.

Oh and Centrebet now has Coalition's odds at $4.60, a jump of more than $1 in 24 hours. Not a typo.

Amazing.

roffle roffle roffle

i take plenty of notice of centrebet after they got '04 so right when many others didn't.

Centrebet hit $4.95 this morning (since come back down to $4.60). I don't mind saying I'm REALLY fucking excited now.

From Ozpolitics:

Last Sunday, the average probability of a Coalition win from the five bookmakers I am tracking was 30.6 per cent. This morning it was 20.9 per cent.

It goes on to list all five at odds of $4.50, except Centrebet which is higher.

http://www.ozpolitics.info/election2007/betchart-odds.png

Going by what haitch said there's no competition anymore. I mean really.

Classic front page on today's Sunday Age:

John Howard, Ben Cousins and Paul Mullett sharing the fron page.

Currently that trio would be the three least employable people in Australia.

But who's going to be the new Socceroos manager? It's the more wide open election now.