NSW Election 2011

Old Freddy Boy seems to have been around since the Dark Ages or beyond. The funny thing about a lot of the religious loonies is that though they all believe in God (of various types) and Heaven, none of them seem in too much of a hurry to get there and meet Him or Her.

Bloody hell the blow up after an election loss by the ALP is entertaining isn't it? I don't mean this in a mean spirited way, but they attack their own and do it very publicly. Maxine McKew and Alannah McTiernan were like that after the federal election too.

I think this is a worst case example to be honest. It seems to me shit has just got a bit out of hand and a clean out is needed. Labor will be back, we just need to find the next keating..

Both sides do it. The libs got in on a bit of it after 2007, and if you cast your mind back to the 80's, Peacock, Hewson, Howard etc spent nearly a decade kicking each other in the teeth.

This time it's a little more vicious, as there is a perception that real change needs to happen. There has been significant anger over the actions of the NSW Right for some time now, and it has been difficult for other members of the party to find their voices while the party was winning elections. A vicious blood letting is good for political parties once every so often.

I don't disagree that both sides do it. My argument is that the ALP do it a little more publicly and I think that's got a lot to do with the structure of the party and their caucus. Even senior ALP people of the past have remarked that theirs is a "rowdy" democracy

Robertson elected as Leader. As is the case after any significant election loss the new Opposition leader never survives. Keating may get his wish and Robbo will be gone once and for all.

I might be going out on a serious limb here but I don't think Robbo will see it through to the 2015 election

Bloody hope so. While ever he is in the role all the issues that hampered the Labour party will continue to strangle it from within. For what it's worth, I found myself for the first time since becoming eligible deciding not to vote Labor. I chose the local independent candidate, a community minded candidate with a long track record of altruistic activities. As long as Robertson leads the party I will not be returning.

From a political strategist POV there could be two angles the Labor party are taking on the Robbo leadership. Firstly the guy has so much dirty laundry that is steeped in rumour, backroom factional knifings, etc etc etc. With him in he leadership journos will forever be intrigued in trying to air this stuff because he now is the public face (rather than a faceless man ) of the party in the State. Wait for the "Who is the real Robbo" stories etc. What this will do is serve as a distraction to BO'F's leadership and attempts to lift the state of play in NSW.

The other thing they may have considered is far more cynical but not unthinkable. Given Robbo's history he is essentially a very easy target for the Libs/Nats to take easy pot shots at. In fact it's too easy. The Libs/Nats might get a bit carried away and turn into all attack and forget about the mandate and responsibility they've been given. What I've learned from being around politicians is that even with the best intentions to serve the public, the political points scoring is almost impossible to train out of them even if the majority is so large and from the public's point of view there is absolutely no reason to do it. And this has nothing to do with a "new paradigm" (which was well intentioned but was ironically political points scoring from Oakshott, but I digress)

Or it could be that there's no one else left?

Carmel? Hell give Rees another go, a proper go that is

I think Carmel Tebbutt didn't want to stand for leader previously for family reasons, perhaps that will change in a few years.

The die was cast on Robbo becoming leader long ago - one can only hope it's the last act of the backroom bastards from the ALP who lost them this election. I wouldn't vote for them anyway, but we've seen over the last 8 years or so how bad government can be when the Opposition is ineffective.

The ALP is anything BUT democratic. The many instances of "behind-the-scenes" fixing the last 10 years is a major cause why they're in this mess. The parachuting of spouses and/or mates into safe seats is what's pissed off the rank and file members and long term supporters, many of whom declined to help out at polling booths on election day. Do you know the preselection contest Belinda Neal lost last year was the first time she'd taken part in such an event? Now, Belinda was a senator from 1984 94 to 88 98 before transferring to the House of Reps in 2007. Both stints in Federal Parliament were orchestrated by her husband, John Della Bosca, the former NSW ALP secretary, at state and national executive levels. Bugger the local ALP preselectors. Joe Tripodi's cousin (that crook Angela d'Amore), John Faulkner's wife, Anthony Albanese's wife, too many Fergusons to count, any sycophant who did Eddie Obeid's bidding, the list of political plants goes on and on. And the NSW backroom boys have the stupidity to make one of these fixers, John Robertson, parliamentary leader! Honestly, they deserve to be out of power for at least the next 20 years.

Can I get an Amen from the congregation. Nice one Lindo. What I hope is that for the sake of politics in this country is that this stuff all comes to light over the next few weeks and that parties (both sides) realise they just can't take the public as fools anymore. But I think a disenfranchised (and disengaged) public need to know the dirt in order to want to become more engaged to get to the point where change can occur.

The meia and the (recycled) commentators all say that the NSW election is proof that the public are sick of the spin, well I don't think its the spin so much, its the scandals and anti-democratic ways the parties are run/organised.

I am really hoping that the O'Farrell government does an excellent job in the seats it won off Labour so that the voters can distinguish between the two parties. Hopefully if the Libs provide sound accountable government it will lead to change in the Labour party from the policy of spin and the daily media cycle to long term good governance that will benefit all parties.

As an aside I enjoyed the 'voluntary preferential' system of voting and would like for this to be adopted at a federal level.

Lindo, you're right about the nepotism. Until I read this tongue in cheek story, I never knew the extent of it in NSW

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...ristina-keneally/story-e6frg6z6-1226026970457

http://m.smh.com.au/nsw/labors-killing-machine-spoils-the-party-20110401-1crlm.html

Sorry for the mobile link as I am on my iPhone.

It is a biased and rambling article, but it highlights plenty of where Labor went wrong. More concerned about numbers and popularity at the expense of their own ideology.

Oh, and Obeid and Tripodi. Sickening.

The Sydney Morning Herald
12:26 AEST Mon Nov 7 2011


The NSW Liberal Party received more than double Labor's political donations last financial year and outstripped it in fundraising too. The state's Election Funding Authority (EFA) has also revealed the Liberals didn't borrow to fund their election campaign, unlike Labor, which borrowed heavily before its resounding defeat in March. When it came to fundraising events, the Liberals raised four times as much as the ALP, despite Labor offering a lunch and dinner with Prime Minister Julia Gillard ahead of last year's federal election.

In 12 months to the end of June this year, the NSW division of the Liberal Party received $9.2 million in political donations, figures published on the EFA website on Monday show. This included $803,600 in small donations and $8.4 million in larger donations from corporations. Labor received $3.76 million, of which $67,300 came from small donations and the rest from unions, the clubs and hotel lobby and big corporations. Unions alone gave Labor $565,000 in donations. Just before Christmas 2010 the state ALP borrowed $3 million, half of it from Unions NSW. The Transport Workers' Union lent $1 million while the Electrical Trades Union gave a $500,000 loan. The Australian Hotels Association also gave the ALP almost $80,000, with one $20,000 donation made on December 23, one week before a ban on donations from gaming interests came into force.

On the fundraising front, the Liberals drew $3.9 million to Labor's $889,000, which included $166,000 raised from a lunch and dinner with Ms Gillard shortly before the August 2010 federal election.



Now, I know what most people here, and in the rest of New South Wales, think of the state Labor machine but they're in much deeper shit than even we can envisage. The dead hand of the union movement has them well and securely held for quite some time. When will they ever learn?

I dont think you can be too surprised about the influence of Unions on the ALP. It is , after all the LABOR Party, born out of the industrial movement of the 1890s. Talk of the "dead hand of unions" is like talking of the "dead hands of dairy farmers" in the Nats. All parties have their roots which are often sstill the base of organisation, and none of the major parties have (or could) move far from those roots. They have all tried to broaden their appael from their roots, especially the Nats who because of their demographics have become the party of choice of real estate agents along the coast and the less educated rural residents. That demographic is moving towards the Libs who have the small business, social conservative, retiree and big business groups as their base.

km, last time I looked I didn't see a link from the dairy farmers' collective to the Nationals' conferences. Any dairy farmer so politically inclined has to join the Nationals as a member. Not so with the Labor Party: a smaller and smaller number of union cadres (Robertson, Bitar, Ludwig, Howes, Fergusons et al) control a tiny proportion of the workforce who belong to unions which are affiliated with the Labor Party. As was seen in the NSW election a large number of this tiny crowd couldn't bring themselves to vote Labor.

Have a read of Rodney Cavalier's 2010 book, "Power Crisis: The self-destruction of a State Labor Party", to see how the modern labor movement's political representatives do business.

Lindo. I was far from making excuses for the ALP. I recognise that they are run by a small clique that is getting smaller andn smaller and more inbred every year. My point is that all parties are. Society now are not joiners, or long term doers for organisations such as political parties. The lack of active members of parties is the root cause of the problematic direction they are all heading in at the moment and one of the big reason they all cling to their historic base so tenaciously. Labour needs the unions for "feet on the ground" at election time and inordinate influence is the cost of that need. The Nats need the small farmer/coastal developer/rural blue collarworker for the exact same reason and hence the convoluted policies of social wowerism with maoist economics they espouse. The Libs have pretty much given up on memberships in many regions and so are often reduced to paying for assistance with the "how to vote" and other tasks that require menial members.