Women give Gillard the winning edge 54-46
Saturday, 24 July 2010 01:22
Whatever the result at this election, the worst result would be a big win with Labor and the Greens in defacto Coalition and Julia Gillard feeling she has an endorsement of the sort of ludicrous policy bungling we have seen to date. The latest Herald/Neilsen poll is 54-46 to Labor, a 2% swing to the ALP since the last survey, with women being the strongest part of the swing.
There is no escaping two key facts. The Government of the past three years has been poor, and Gillard's fumbling on boat people, the mining tax and now the great big new talk fest on climate change is not worthy of reward. However, it is also clear that Tony Abbott faces an uphill battle.
On these latest poll results, if uniform, the Coalition would lose further seats. The results won't be uniform and Queensland and WA appear to be holding up a bit better for Abbott, even if not to the same extent now that Julia Gillard is Prime Minister. Havnf said that a westpoll suggests Gillard is enjoying a honeymoon and might secure Hasluck which was previously at risk and even pick up Canning from the Liberal's Don Randall. Again, the swing seems to be mainly among women.
But Australia can't afford to return to the days where a poor Rudd Government was unconstrained by an effective Opposition. Pink batts, debt, childcare broken promises, school hall rip-offs, fudged tax policy numbers and much, much more means that the probationary Prime Minister can't be trusted to govern well simply on face value.
The best result is a close one either way. There is no question that a strong signal needs to be delivered to the ALP Government. At ComeOn we currently are running two issues that warrant change.
The mining super tax needs to be abolished and any future reform of resource taxation needs to be so much more robust than the process which delivered the now discredited PRST/MRRT debacle.
And both sides of politics need to commit to award improvement including getting rid of silly rules like the retail minimum hours restriction on school aged workers. It lacks commonsense to apply a rule that requires a minimum 3 hours work if there is only 2 hours between school ending and stores closing. Even Fair Work Australia - in upholding the current law - recognised that young people are losing their jobs and being denied opportunities.
There is a long way to go in this election, but there is nothing in the Government's performance, under Mr Rudd or Ms Gillard, that justifies a 54-46 outcome and a larger margin. Tony Abbott is behind the 8 Ball. He was always going to be, whatever the wishful thinking of the faithful, but he has been incisive in holding the Government to account, and he certainly deserves better than the current polls suggest is in the offing.
What do you think?
