The coming Oz election thread ...

Yes the Trish's , Worth and Draper are causing a few headaches. Chris Gallus has also retired and three Liberal marginals look vulnerable in SA. The outcome will be decided in such electorates.

Did anyone watch Mark Latham on tonight's 7:30 Report? What did you think of his interview?

Good evening. I'm pleased to see a few new additions to the list of Australian posters. I reckon I could do some kind of google search, but it is easier and, frankly more fun to just ask yall:
Who are "The Trish's, Worth and Draper ... and Gallus" that gozmo mentioned? And three liberal marginals?
So far, little coverage of this election in the US.
BTW is it okay to call yall Aussies or Ozies? I don't want to offend anyone. We're used to being called names (Yanks or Imperialist Pigs, for example). Thanks. -rjb-

I will come back and help, if nobody else has by the time I get home from work.

Aussies (pronounced ozzies) is fine!!!

hey real john boy
POINT TO NOTE: liberals in Australia would never vote for the Liberal Party as it's conservative and therefore neo-radical - they might vote though, for the Labor party, (the other major party) a traditional working class party that lost a "u" in its spelling and an "I" from its membership, The Greens (much on the rise) or the Democrats which is another (much dimished) balance-of-power party.


must run too - got a 10am game of chess at the coffee shop

Amazingly enough, moondoggy, I actually knew most of that once I dusted off my file folder full of Aussie politics stuff. You confused me on the "lost ... an "I" from it's membership," and I don't know anything about the possible influence of the Greens.

Thanks for being patient with this naif. -rjb-

Good morning, realjohnboy.

I will leave the Draper/Worth stuff to the "Adelaide-ians", (sp?)as they'd know more about the nitty gritty details than me.

Yes, indeed, the Greens, over recent years, have become a potent influence on Oz politics. A lot of this is due to disenchantment with the 2 major parties, who are perceived as being too alike/conservative in their policies. Also, I think, as a reaction to "machine politics". They are currently the 3rd most popular party according to polls & are particularly appealing to younger voters. Yesterday the government & the Murdoch press ran a "scare" line on the Greens, largely to do with their policy on drugs. The aim, obviously, was to discredit the Greens, whose preferences are expected to flow to Labor, in what's shaping up to be a very close election. I'll see if I can find a link from yesterday's Herald/Sun To show you the article.

Dirty politics, Oz Style:

Greens on the boil over attacks
By Brendan Nicholson
September 1, 2004/the AGE

The polls indicate more support the Greens than ever before, but that popularity is coming at a price for Bob Brown, who yesterday accused Rupert Murdoch and the Government of trying to damage his party.
Prime Minister John Howard wasted no time in launching an attack on Monday, less than 24 hours after the election date had been announced.

Mr Howard warned voters to be aware that there was much more to the Greens than just a warm and fuzzy love of the environment.

Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson followed the leader and quickly issued a media statement entitled "Don't Trust Your Vote with Wacky Greens".

Justice Minister Chris Ellison also weighed in, saying the benefits of the Government's tough-on-drugs policies would be lost if the Greens won influence.

And the Victorian Liberals distributed a "background paper" to party members in which they questioned whether the Greens were environmentalists or social engineers.

Liberal Party Victorian state director in Victoria Julian Sheezel said the paper was sent to party members to provide them with an overview of Greens policies "to assist in combating that party's radical economic and social views".

"The Greens are social and economic radicals first, environmentalist second," Mr Sheezel said. "They want to limit us from having our family barbecues but they want to allow our kids to use dope freely."

Senator Brown hit back yesterday, saying he was unsurprised by the attacks from a government determined to discredit him and his party.

Senator Brown also accused Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd newspapers of trying to destroy his party.

He said Greens policy had been misrepresented in a newspaper report on Monday which claimed the party would supply ecstasy and other illegal drugs over the counter if it won power.

The report also claimed the Greens would force people to ride bicycles more often and eat less meat. Farmers would be driven from their land, Medicare funding would be provided for sex-change operations, capital gains tax would be charged on the most expensive family homes and there would be an open-door policy for asylum seekers, it said.

"The Murdoch press said it's going to get the Greens, if it can," Senator Brown said. "If Rupert Murdoch wants to discuss this policy with me, bring it on."

Mr Howard said he was glad the report had appeared. "It underlines the point I made yesterday and that is that there's more to the Greens than being warm and fuzzy about the environment."

Mr Howard said the Greens wanted voters to believe they were a single-issue party that just wanted to save the environment.


He said everyone wanted to save the environment, and the real Greens agenda should be exposed so that people supporting them knew what they were voting for.

At a press conference he called with Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett to explain that the two minor parties would share Senate preferences, Senator Brown made it clear why the Government had reason to be worried.

"In the main, the options for the Greens as we see it are not to direct preferences (and) leave it to the electorate, or to direct preferences to Labor if it measures up," he said.

"That can change 300 or 400 votes in a House of Representatives seat, which is obviously important in marginals."

Senator Brown said the Greens in Tasmania had decided not to direct preferences because of the destruction of the forests and wildlife by the State Labor Government and because of the Howard Government's policies.

He said that just over 70 per cent of Greens preferences generally flowed to Labor.
Asked if he had every used illicit drugs, Senator Brown said he once sat in a circle in London in the 1970s with a group of Ethiopians smoking marijuana. He inhaled.

But he said that as a doctor he was aware that there was strong evidence that marijuana was very bad for users and he did not smoke it now.

The Greens, who hold two seats in the Senate and one in the House of Representatives, hope to win three more in the Senate seat, which would give them the five they need to gain official party status and a likely hold on the balance of power in the upper house.
They also believe they are in with a chance of winning the seat of Melbourne from Labor.
~

Moony means he stopped supporting Labor, I think - and prolly resigned from the party.

Moony means he stopped supporting Labor, I think - and prolly resigned from the party.

And more dirty dealings. This is an important one in Oz, with one of the highest rates of home ownership (& related debt) in the world. Sheesh. And we've only just begun the campaign! :

Rates scare campaign hits home
By Louise Dodson and Matt Wade
September 1, 2004

Labor has gone on the counterattack to neutralise Government claims that interest rates will rise under a Latham government, as the latest figures show paying off a home loan is harder than at any time in the past 14 years.

Labor MPs in Sydney seats report the Coalition's scare campaign has been biting and they are being urged - including by party members - to hit back because the Government is "making hay on interest rates".

Worried constituents have called some Labor MPs about the Government's interest rate claims.

Using its campaign for truth in government, the Labor plan of counter-attack is entitled "The Truth about Interest Rates" and includes briefing notes for candidates and MPs to counter the rates scare. The MPs are preparing pamphlets and direct mail to reassure people.

The voters' alarm might be explained by figures released yesterday that reveal home affordability in NSW has dropped by 7.2 per cent over the past quarter. And average monthly loan repayments have risen by 7.4 per cent to $1817 - 19 per cent higher than a year ago - according to the AMP-Real Estate Institute of Australia home loan affordability indicator, released yesterday.


The proportion of family income required to meet the average NSW home loan repayment rose from 35.6 per cent to 38.4 per cent. Rising home prices, rather than interest rates, are to blame.

The Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, confirmed Labor's forthcoming tax policy would include relief for people earning up to $85,000 - and he linked it to the stress on families caused by high mortgage repayments.

"Here in Sydney, if you're on that amount of money, $80,000 a year, you've got a mortgage, children, you've got the living expenses in an expensive city," Mr Latham said. "I don't regard people like that in this suburb, where I live, as super rich, not at all. I think you've got to have some regard for that aspect of tax policy as well and you'll see all the detail in our comprehensive plan when it's released."

Labor is likely to deliver relief to this group of taxpayers by lifting the threshold at which the top 47 per cent marginal tax rate applies - from $80,000 to $85,000 - from July 1 next year.

Separate Reserve Bank figures yesterday underscored the financial pressures on families, with the level of household debt soaring above $700 billion for the first time ever, having more than doubled in five years.

A massive blow-out in the trade deficit, also revealed yesterday, pointed to a pre-Christmas interest rate increase no matter who wins the October 9 election.

Australia's trade deficit ballooned to $2.75 billion last month - the second highest ever. After the release of these figures, BT Financial Group's chief economist, Chris Caton, said: "The probability of an interest rate rise in November just went up."

But the Prime Minister, John Howard, denied a rate rise was a certainty. "I don't think that is inevitable," he said.

Although the Government's rate attack appears to be hitting home, Labor's private polling is showing it is set to win the northern NSW seat of Richmond, now held by the Children and Youth Affairs Minister, Larry Anthony, the rural seat of Eden-Monaro, Parramatta and the Wollongong-based seat of Cunningham, now held by the Greens.

Mr Howard welcomed the latest Newspoll results yesterday which showed the Coalition had already improved its primary vote by four points to 43 per cent, while Labor had dropped two points in the first few days of the campaign. The poll still showed Labor would narrowly win an election by 52-48 in two-party terms.

Government sources said the Coalition had been ahead in marginal seats until a few weeks ago, when Labor's focus on the impact of the US free trade agreement on the cost of prescription drugs wiped out any advantage.

The Government had been shocked at this result and Mr Howard decided an election should be held to put Mr Latham under the same scrutiny as the Coalition, the sources said.

The decision was risky, because the Coalition was behind in marginal seats, the government sources said.

Labor is now defending itself against Mr Howard's opening salvo of the election campaign: that average mortgage repayments could rise by $960 a month under a Latham government if interest rates were to rise to what they were under previous Labor governments.

`

Is there an historical precedent for suggesting that interest rates would go higher with Labor, or has this been tailored entirely from whole cloth?

Setanta

I am by no means an economics expert, but it appears that there isn't that precedent at all.( unless you take the example of the Whitlam Govt. as being representative of Labor's attitude to interest rates & economic management. It was a very inspirational govt, but economics was not its strong point, for most of its period in office.)

In case you're interested, I'll post a link to an article by the (respected) Economics Editor of the Age, from yesterday.

"Let's see policies, not scare tactics" Here's a quote:

"From go to whoa, interest rates in fact fell under both Hawke and Keating. On average, yes, the Hawke years saw interest rates peak, as the Government and the Reserve used them to shore up the currency and crush inflation. But at great cost, they succeeded, and the pay-off was that average mortgage rates under Keating were lower than under either Fraser or Hawke.

The reality is that high interest rates primarily reflect high inflation. When inflation is low, interest rates are generally low. Inflation and interest rates are likely to rise slightly in future whoever wins the election, but the financial markets are predicting that both will stay low long into the future."

`

Repeat post deleted

Here You go, Setanta:

Let's see policies and not scare tactics :

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/30/1093852178483.html

Whitlam's government also sat in a period of high inflation and high interest rates in the United States, and, consequently in Europe and Japan--historically, the highest in United States history (other than the period of the latter portion of our civil war). Thank you, Miss Olga, for the enlightening response.

Yes, setanta. The point is constantly being made that our interest rates constantly mirror those in other like countries. The trouble is, we've be sold this "world's best treasurer" myth for yonks. In actual fact, our trade deficit is frighteningly high right now. But little is said of that, apart from the likely need for interest rates to be increased around December, no matter which party is in government. I think the current political spin will give you some idea of the sort of leader John Howard is? Not telling the truth is no impediment to winning. With Murdoch on his side, it's bloody frightening!
This, & the US election campaign at the same time is, well ..... at times a horror movie!

Try again, moondoggy. It didn't work.

All hail the big man





Setanta, Gough is God.