Because you're so different if someone posts a right leaning article

Yep that's what it is, you got me, for the record I have posted negative articles on both the Libs and Labor

I have no idea which side would be better for Australia and do not care who wins.

However the polling is showing Abbott is clearly winning and the trend in polling is towards Abbott. If the polling is accurate this makes it highly unlikely Rudd can turn this around. It is going to take a lot more than just very good campaigning from Rudd, it will take something to go very wrong for Abbott and the Liberals for them to lose.

However, the ALP still leads narrowly in the state with 51 per cent after preferences, a marginal improvement on the poll a fortnight ago.
Mr Rudd's advantage as preferred prime minister is also strongest in Victoria with 51 per cent to Mr Abbott's 39.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/labors-support-dwindles-20130823-2sgvr.html#ixzz2cqshuXKC

Funny how we only hear that the Libs are surging and Labor's support is collapsing, when in Victoria the opposite is happening.

Does it not bother people that they are being spun a bucketful of agenda?

Funny how we only hear that the Libs are surging and Labor's support is collapsing, when in Victoria the opposite is happening.

Does it not bother people that they are being spun a bucketful of agenda?

Funny how we only hear that the Libs are surging and Labor's support is collapsing, when in Victoria the opposite is happening.

Does it not bother people that they are being spun a bucketful of agenda?

Heard on ABC radio the Kev is behind in polling(52-48) for his own seat which I found to be extremely surprising

Hasn't Victoria always been more inclined towards Labor?

[size=8]Abbott vs. Rudd: Some Americans Decide[/size]



Australians get excited about US elections. To us they’re like soap opera versions of our own political showdowns, just without the frustration and apathy that comes when you’re talking about a country you have to live in. So does this principal apply in reverse? Do Americans get excited about Australian elections? Of course they do. That’s a dumb question. The real one is who they’d vote for. To find out we headed to Lexington, Kentucky, where the good people voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney in 2012 (60.49 percent). We were interested in how these politics translate, and whether anyone actually knows anything about the election. Get ready to be surprised and very not.


Albert from Lexington.

VICE: Hi Albert, who would you vote for in the Australian election?
I didn’t know you had elections.

We do. Here are photos of the candidates—any immediate thoughts?
That one (Rudd) looks like our mayor, I don’t like him.

How do you vote here?
Me? I’m a democrat. Always have been. Just be for the people, help people find jobs, that’s what I say.

Do you have a message for someone who wants to be prime minister?
Well I don’t know about Australia but I just say be for the people.


Melissa, Cass, Steven, Callum. Family from Flint, Michigan.

Hey guys, here are our candidates for prime minister. Who would you vote for?
Cass:I’ve seen that face (Abbott). I know that face but I don’t trust it. But then you shouldn’t judge someone just on their looks.

Right well that’s Tony Abbott, the leader of the Liberal Party. One of his policies is to repeal our tax on carbon emissions. The other guy, Kevin Rudd, wants to keep the tax. Who would you vote for?
Well it’s hard to judge man. It’s like you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. One person always has good views that are good for one person but not necessarily good for another. I’ve always liked the guy who looks out for the environment but then without the corporations you don’t have work. It’s hard you know.

Very diplomatic. Let’s dumb it down. Who has the better haircut?
Cass: Him, the Abbott feller. He’s got short hair and I’m all about short hair.
Callum:Yeah, and that guy (Rudd) has grey hair. I hate grey hair.


I’d rather not use my name. I don’t need the publicity. Lexington.

So what do you know about the election?
Absolutely nothing and I’m embarrassed to say so. Too many North Americans think North America is the centre of the world and it isn’t. It’s not even near the centre.

You sound worldly. What can you tell me about Australia?
I think I could locate it on a map. I also know a little about the outback and the aboriginal tribes and the capital, Sydney.

It’s Canberra.
Sorry, Canberra.

It’s a classic mistake. So whose face do you trust more from these two photos?
Neither of them. All politicians speak before they know what they’re speaking about and before they get into office they make promises they can’t keep. Those two will do it too. You can bet on it.


Lance (Lexington) and Meagan (Chicago). Dating for one year.

What do you know about the election?
Nothing. It’s not on TV.

OK well, in really broad terms this guy (Rudd) is the leader of the Labour party and they’re probably more aligned with the Democrats. This guy (Abbott) is the leader of the Liberals and they have more in common with the Republicans. Who would you vote for?
Lance: Well I’ve have always been a Democrat. I’m low budget, my family is low budget and the Democrats help us out more. I like some of what the Republicans talk about but when it comes to those who don’t make enough money they just cut you out of the picture.

What about you Meagan?
Meagan: I wouldn’t know. That one’s got big ears. (Abbott).

Yes. He does have big ears.


Bonny from Versailles, KY. Horticulturalist.

Hi Bonny. What have you heard about the Australian election?
Not a word. You’ve got a prime minister or a president?

A prime minister. He’s Kevin Rudd and he’s running for re-election
I’ve never seen him before. I just know about the Great Barrier Reef, marsupials and Black Marlins. Surf’s up.

Based on appearance who would you vote for?
Oh, I never judge on appearance. I’d just vote for the person who’s in touch with the issues of the average person. I’m a democrat.

What would you say to our politicians anywhere?
Quit being so short sighted and pay attention to environmental impacts of short sighted decisions.


Steven. Lexington.

Hi Steven, I’m guessing you don’t know we’re having an election?
Never heard of it.

No one has. Which country aside from the US do you hear the most about?
England. We don’t hear about their politics though.

Ok, well these are our candidates for prime minister. Who would you vote for?
Not him (Rudd). He looks like a crook.

He’s the leader of the Labour Party; they’ve got a similar ideology to the democrats.
Right, never mind what I said. I’ll go for the crook. I’m a democrat so I’ll vote for whoever will do the best for me. I’m a gay man so most of the time it’s the Democratic Party that supports what I need.

Well Kevin Rudd has pledged to introduce a bill on gay marriage within 100 days if re-elected.
So that’s my man there. I just want a government that treats people as people.


Ronny Donahue. Lexington. DJ and Grocery clerk.

VICE: Hey Ronny, have you heard about the Australian election?
No.

Have you ever heard anything about Australian politics?
No.

Ok, what do you know about Australia?
I know that it’s big and has a big rock. Also Flight of the Concords and Lord of the Rings aren’t Australian.

Very good. So back to politics, this guy, Kevin Rudd, wants to send refugees to Papua New Guinea and this guy, Tony Abbott, wants to turn the boats back. Who would you vote for?
Honestly, I’d go for him (Abbott). At least that way they’re going home and not to some place they didn’t want to be in the first place.

And whose face do you trust more?
The same guy. He (Rudd) looks shrink-wrapped.

Follow Julian on Twitter: @MorgansJulian

Australia, Is Tony Abbott The Better Choice?

Why The PNG Solution Is What Australia Wants

Meet Baby Kevin Rudd

http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/abbott-vs-rudd-some-americans-decide?utm_source=vicefb

In a News Corp poll.

In a News Corp poll.

FIVE OF THE WORST DECISIONS IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICS
18 August, 2013
Mitch Knox
Aside from the failures of basic humanity that have driven a frightening portion of Australian administrative policy since before Federation, our representatives and governments have also tended to possess a special talent in the fine art of general incompetence*.

You need only look at the news to be bombarded with factional breakdowns, controversies, scandals and criminal overuse of the word “gaffe” – there’s no escaping the sensation we’re being run by a bunch of children in suits who all have that disease that kid had in Jack that made him look and sound like Robin Williams.

But compared with the politicians of yesteryear, making the decision to speak publicly about Islam when you don’t know what you’re saying, or to photograph your business in some glassware and send it to your mistress, is vulgar amateurism. This? This is screwing up at its most refined.

5. FIRST GOVERNOR-GENERAL DECLARES WORST POSSIBLE CANDIDATE PRIME MINISTER



It was a simple task: arrive in Australia and pick an interim Prime Minister to tide us over between Federation on January 1, 1901, and the general parliamentary elections in March. Our first Governor-General, the 7th Earl of Hopetoun, handled step one just fine. Step two, however, was a total balls-up.

In what came to be known as the “Hopetoun blunder”, the good Earl selected then-Premier of New South Wales Sir William Lyne to be his No. 1 guy and rock this interim PM thing for a couple months. Lyne was, after all, an experienced politician, and Hopetoun was following British and Canadian precedents in choosing him, so it seemed a solid move.

Only Lyne was seen among his peers as kind of a massive douchebag. He’d been staunchly anti- the whole Federation thing until rather late in the game, by which time he’d managed to piss off his pro-Federation colleagues to the point that they outright refused to join his government and he was pretty swiftly ousted in favour of the much more popular, but still very racist, Edmund Barton. Flying start, no?

4. AUSTRALIA MOVES IN, FLIPS THE NEIGHBOURS OFF AND CLOSES THE BLINDS



No sooner had Barton taken office as the first Prime Minister of Australia than he started implementation of the White Australia policy, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Aside from being a fundamentally abhorrent piece of legislation, it was also kind of a shot in our own foot, developmentally speaking – instead of opening our arms to our geopolitical neighbours and embarking upon a golden age of cultural discovery, we embraced the idea of the isolated outpost, the far-flung noble bastion of colonial power, and basically pretended like South-East Asia didn’t exist, at least as far as immigration prospects were concerned.

Look, racism was obviously around well before White Australia – which stayed in place until 1973 – but the policy basically put the official stamp of approval on xenophobia, and the effect on the nation has been a long-lasting and deeply embedded one.

3. AUSTRALIA TRIES TO EXCLUDE A GERMAN HERO FROM ENTRY



In November 1934, Egon Kisch, a German communist, activist, reporter and fiercely vocal opponent of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, docked in Fremantle with the intention to speak at impending Centenary celebrations. The Lyons government promptly sent representatives aboard to cordially invite Kisch to fuck himself, because he was seen as an undesirable resident of and visitor to anywhere in the Commonwealth on account of all the communism.

But Kisch wasn’t going to just take no for an answer. This was “The Raging Reporter from Prague”, a man radicalised by his experience in World War I whose works had gone on to be banned and burnt in Germany. He wasn’t afraid of some foppish Australian bureaucrats, so he literally jumped ship in Melbourne in pursuit of solid ground, which he found five metres and a broken leg later.

He was forced back on-board and told he was not welcome. The case caught public attention – the radical journalist and orator who just wanted to warn us about the threat of a second world war and the moustachioed lunatic at its epicentre versus the conservative government who couldn’t move past the pinko thing enough to let him do so.

When a judge ordered that Kisch was being held illegally on the ship, mobilising his release, you’d think that would have been the end of it. But no – Lyons and co weren’t done. They had one more trick up their sleeve. Under the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, part of that delightful White Australia policy, visitors could be refused entry if they could not pass a dictation test in any European language.

Kisch was arrested again and forced to take the test in multiple languages until he finally failed – using Scottish Gaelic, which was later found by the High Court to not be a fair language to expect anyone to know; even Scottish Gaelic people. Kisch eventually made his speech to 18,000 people and the Lyons government was left humiliated by the ordeal.

2. BUREAU OF SUGAR EXPERIMENT STATIONS RELEASES CANE TOADS



Frankly, any plan involving the release of durable, foreign, poisonous amphibians into the wild should automatically raise red flags. When this initiative to fight the plague of cane beetles threatening our access to cheap, beetle-free sugar was brought to the table in 1935, somebody must have known there would be a chance it could go wrong.

But whatever, man, they were desperate times, and these were desperate measures and besides, how bad could it even be, really? Well, as you’re probably aware, cane toads have since spread from Queensland to NSW, the Northern Territory and all the way across to Western Australia, leaving a trail of devastated ecosystems behind them. So the answer is “pretty fucking bad”.

They eat a bunch of stuff they shouldn’t eat, they poison a bunch of animals that shouldn’t be eating them, and they’ve barely done shit about the cane beetle situation. They have generated a pretty profitable market for bored taxidermists with surplus miniature sunglasses and Hawaiian shirts, though.

1. GOVERNMENT ENTITY THINKS BRIBING SADDAM HUSSEIN IS A GOOD IDEA

It was only (already) seven years ago, but we can’t talk poor foresight without mentioning the Australian Wheat Board (and by implication, Australian government) oil-for-wheat scandal of 2006, which probably trumps every other decision on this list in terms of sheer brazenness and stupidity.

It takes an outrageously gormless group of people to agree on the brilliance of paying kickbacks to one of the world’s most reviled regimes – flagrantly contravening Australian law and UN sanctions – in order to secure lucrative wheat contracts. Granted, this was mostly between Iraq wars and the whole deal only came out following the defeat of Hussein’s government, but it was all still as shady as balls.

Besides, the simple truth of the matter is, as a citizen of a developed nation, I expect to be able to live free from the risk of my representatives and the bodies for which they are responsible accidentally pissing off a well-armed megalomaniac, regardless of how far away they live. That’s what insane people do. They fly off the handle for really irrational reasons, like poor wheat quality. The people behind this decision just did not freaking think it through.

* YES, there have also been some very able people in positions of power but that’s not what I’m here to talk about, so don’t bother pointing it out. I’m not here to depress you with examples of the best decisions in Australian politics, because then you’d just get upset that our current prospects are much, much worse, so, really, you should be thanking me for reinforcing the idea that, regardless of who wins next month’s election, hopefully our stupidest days are behind us.

In a News Corp poll.

I don't recall ever suggesting that someone should stop posting articles because I disagree with their content. Ridiculing the content itself, sure.

Was it not you who said you were hoping people like me would stop posting in this thread?

That's rich coming from Labor who released their costings a day out from the 2007 election.

Anyway, it's Mark Latham writing. Enough said.

That's rich coming from Labor who released their costings a day out from the 2007 election.

They had a portion of their costings submitted by the deadline. The rest were sumbitted 3 days prior to the election. Not saying it's kosher but if you're going to point the finger at least get your facts straight.

Tony Windsor reveals he would have supported Malcolm Turnbull after 2010 election

The man whose vote put Julia Gillard into power three years ago has revealed he would have liked to be able to offer the position to Malcolm Turnbull.

Tony Windsor, along with fellow independents Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter, spent 17 days negotiating with Ms Gillard and Tony Abbott after the 2010 election produced a hung parliament.

Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott ended up siding with Ms Gillard, putting her minority government into power.

But in an interview with the ABC's Australian Story to air tonight, the retiring independent MP for New England says history could have been quite different if Mr Turnbull had been in the picture.

"If Malcolm had been the leader of the opposition in a hung parliament and if he'd been the leader of the opposition at the start of this, he may well have been the prime minister through it," he said.

"And I think we would have seen some of these more difficult long-term issues dealt with in a far better way."

Mr Windsor says he believes Mr Turnbull is much more representative of middle Australia than the man who replaced him as Liberal leader, Tony Abbott.

He also believes the Liberal Party would win the coming election "by a country mile" if Mr Turnbull was leader.

But he says it is too late now to reinstall Mr Turnbull, and some members of the party would rather than "cut their arms and legs off" than let him back in.

In the interview, Mr Windsor also says Mr Abbott did not have the character or the personality to handle a hung parliament.

Mr Windsor describes Mr Abbott as "not the man for the moment", and says he believes the public is still viewing Mr Abbott with some degree of scepticism.

"If he can't be leader on the field, he doesn't want to get on the paddock," Mr Windsor said.

Decision to back Labor sparked protests, ended friendships

The Australian Story program documents Mr Windsor's last few weeks as a member of Federal Parliament, starting with a trip to the Simpson Desert with a group of friends and supporters.

It also re-examines his controversial 2010 decision to back Labor, a decision which sparked protests and even death threats to the independent MP.

His daughter Kate eventually told him she did not want him to run again.

"When people started threatening Nanna, who's 95 in a nursing home, you just think, you know, there really are some scummy people out there," she said.

Bob Katter, then a friend and fellow rural independent, also reveals he fell out with Mr Windsor after the decision.

"After that election, I've hardly had a civil sentence off Tony. He was a great fighter for us, and we'd lost him," he said.

"I hope I was never hostile towards him but I most certainly was grieved by his conduct."

Windsor says attacks on Julia Gillard were 'disgraceful'

Mr Windsor credits his mother, who brought him up on her own after the death of his father, with influencing the way he treated politics.

"You don't have to pre-judge people as to whether they believe in the right or left or middle philosophies; you're there to serve them," he said.

"I think my mother set a pretty good grounding in relation to that. I didn't see people as black, white or brindle, and I still don't."

And he says the treatment of Ms Gillard during her term as prime minister was disgraceful.

"I have never seen male, female or dog treated in the fashion that she was treated," he said.

"A lot of it has been quite strategic, hasn't been accidental, or a temper tantrum. It has been a strategic process of trying to destroy people.

"To a certain extent you feel as though you're mixing in a greasy pond, but that's politics."

Mr Windsor says he will remember Ms Gillard fondly, but has mixed feelings about Kevin Rudd.

"I wasn't privy to what was going on within the Labor Party on the demise of Kevin Rudd in 2010," he said.

"But given the little bit that I did know at the time, and the lot more I know now, I can understand why they did it.

"Leadership is one thing; dictatorship is another."

From a job of filth to a job of dirt
Retiring independent MP Tony Windsor kneels down in a field of crops. Photo: Tony Windsor says he will return to his love of agriculture. (ABC: Australian Story)

Mr Windsor will not be contesting this month's federal election, and instead will return to life on the land.

"I really love agriculture," he said.

"I don't want to be in the management of it, I just want to be a backbencher on the farm.

"In a sense I'll be going from a job of filth, still with a job of dirt.

"I'll enjoy the transition to the dirt from the filth."

He also finds a sense of perspective in his regular visits to the Simpson Desert.

"I think if you sit in an aged landscape like this one, you can actually put those things back into their correct perspective," he said.

"The arguments of the day, the headlines of yesterday, what happened last week, really aren't that important."

Australian Story's episode on Tony Windsor, A Voice in the Wilderness, will be broadcast at 8:00pm on ABC 1.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-26/tony-windsor-reveals-he-would-have-supported-malcolm-turnbull/4910836