Few things interest me less than the leadership of the Australian Lieberal Party. Even though my housemate has been positively gigglesome about the whole implosive scene over the last week, I am yet overwhelmed by indifference. I may be the only person in Australia who doesn’t care. However, the surprise election of Tony Abbott to the Lib leadership is ponderous enough to merit a comment.
I can’t think of any political party in the English-speaking world aside from US Repuglicans who have worked harder to make themselves unelectable. The Libs have now squarely positioned themselves as flat-earthers on climate change in defiance of polling indicating that Australian voters want action on the issue. Now they’ve elected a leader who is roughly as popular as tofu in a steakhouse, even among Liberal voters (and women voters in particular).
All I can figure is that Abbott is a sacrificial interim leader, pending the installation of Ho Jockey as leader soon before the next scheduled election, provided of course that the anticipated defeat of Rudd’s ETS isn’t used as a double-dissolution election trigger. In one of the most complex breakdowns I’ve ever read on psephology in general, ABC’s elections analyst Antony Green isn’t terribly hopeful that this will happen in the near term. Given that Australian voters are known not to be fond of going to the polls any more than they absolutely have to, Labor would be wise not to pull this lever, especially since they’re shoe-ins to win the next poll at the usual interval.
We now return to our regularly scheduled nap.
zzzzzzzzzzzzz…
-weez
2 Comments so far
Leave a comment
Rudd has till August to do a DD, and the pundits generally feel that might be the way to go. It will give Abbott an opportunity to make a knob of himself and also give women ample time to recall Abbott’s ongoing obsession with pelvic politics which long pre-date the Howard years.
Comment by inglourious_basterd 12.02.09 @ 12:24 pmYep, the Monk may have accidently won this year’s “poisoned Chalice” Award (and boy, is he pissed that Shrek didn’t get suckered in).
Rudd’s clearly not interested in his pathetic ETS going through and now has a decent excuse to delay it, so a DD isn’t likely. IMHO he wants to head off the inevitable media barrage the miners will finance, with Murdock supplying the editorials.
Pity about the planet, though. (Snores on. . .)
Comment by Hip 12.02.09 @ 3:12 pmLeave a comment
Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function show_subscription_checkbox() in /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-content/themes/benevolence/comments.php:155 Stack trace: #0 /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-includes/comment-template.php(1618): require() #1 /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-content/themes/benevolence/index.php(28): comments_template() #2 /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include('/home/www/machi...') #3 /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/www/machi...') #4 /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/index.php(17): require('/home/www/machi...') #5 {main} thrown in /home/www/machinegunkeyboard.com/wp-content/themes/benevolence/comments.php on line 155