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May 1, 2012
Can federal Labor claw back the scale of the disaster at the next election? If so, what is the best means of saving them from a wipeout? They face a future where few of them will be left.
The Labor backbench must now be thinking along these lines surely. They must realize that there will be no lift in the polls from a May budget that is in surplus. Nor will the introduction of carbon tax compensation will help the government recover its standing all that much.
The way things stand now an Abbott led Coalition could take control of both houses of Parliament at the next election, and Labor's reform legacy would be gone. Carbon pricing gone. Mining tax gone. NBN gone. Water reform gone. Media reform gone. The road to the future would lead back to the past.
I appreciate that the Gillard Government has been under a barrage of assaults aimed at destablization from the word go by all those vested interests who have opposed reform. News Ltd's aggression and manufactured rage cannot be explained by the performance of the government or the behaviour of the current prime minister.
Gillard Labor have also bought a lot on themselves. My own tipping point was the tactical power-play that used Peter Slipper in order to turn away from an electorally popular policy regarding poker machine reform. They turned their back on a reform that was in the public interest because the NSW Right feared losing some seats.
The result is a smell from the Slipper affair, and that has mixed in with the smell of corruption in the Health Services Union and its association with Craig Thompson, the Member for Dobell. The smell just reinforces the public mood of the Gillard Government as being on the nose.
The routine commentary and analysis of the Gillard Government of the political journalism of the Canberra media gallery is that the government may be doing okay in terms of policy and reform, but it is failing badly in the daily political battle (ratings?) to present a coherent and convincing public face.
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Gillard Labor simply couldn’t hold its nerve on poker reform. I'm sure the NSW Right will move against Gillard even though they helped get her into the electoral black hole