Australians come to their senses – March 24th will be remembered as the day they collectively said “we’re tired of this sh**” Commenter “truthseeker” writes in comments:
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Anthony,
You may want to refer to Jo Nova’s latest post about the results of a state election down under.
Now for all of you nice people from the USA who may not think state elections are that big a deal if you do not live in that state, please remember that we only have 6 states and 2 territories, not 50 like you guys. We just had an election in Queensland, one of our most economically important states, especially for mineral wealth representing about a quarter of the population. Before the election the Labour (think Democrat) held a small majority in the 89 seat Lower House (House of Representatives).
With over 70% of the vote counted, the results are;
Liberal / National Party coalition (think Republicans – sort of) – 78 seats
Labour (think Democrat) – 7 seats
KAP (new party – think TEA party with less logic and more strangeness) – 2 seats
Independents – 2 seats.
A mini-van will have more seats than the previously incumbent Labour party in the new parliament.
I have one word for this … OUCH!
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Jo Nova writes:
Those devastating Queensland Election Results: Voters hate lies and the Carbon Tax
UPDATE: Is this a record? Has there ever been a loss this bad in Australian history? Conservatives likely to win 74 seats of an 89 seat parliament.
Labor was reduced to only 11 seats in 1974, and on latest counting tonight appeared set to retain only nine seats. Some analysts put the figure even lower, at seven. This would mean Labor falling short of official party status and relying on the incoming LNP government to grant it party offices, staff and resources. The Queensland Greens failed to win a seat and suffered a fall in support. [The Australian]
This is thread for all those who want to comment on this election. According to Bolt, things are not just bad, they’re seriously awful for the Labor Party. Newspoll says LNP (conservatives) 55%, Labor 26%. Channel Nines polls says Labor could be left with less than 10 seats!
The ABC’s election predictor at 8:26 has LNP on 67 seats, Labor on four, others five, doubtful 15. Absolutely catastrophic for Labor. The current leader of the Labor Party in Queensland is Anna Bligh facing a 13% swing against her, and will need preferences just to stay in Parliament.
March 24, 2012, will be remembered as the day the electorate delivered a decisive, devastating blow to an incumbent Labor government. Courier Mail
For non-Australians, Australia has seven states (technically 5 states and 2 territories), and in 2007 all the States and the Federal Government were Labor. Currently Liberal (meaning conservative) governments have won NSW, WA, and Vic and now look like taking a landslide in Queensland. These are the four largest states.
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Andrew Bolt has this update:
Queensland election – and why it spells death to Gillard
Andrew Bolt March 24 2012 (5:52pm)
Here is the bottom line from the rout of Labor in today’s Queensland election – the line that spells doom for Julia Gillard, too.
Premier Anna Bligh, 2008:
I will not kick (Queensland households) when they are down and I will not abolish the petrol subsidy.
Three months after the 2009 election:
THE Bligh government will scrap its 8.35 cent per litre fuel subsidy and hold a multi-billion dollar fire sale of State-owned assets to offset a plunge in revenues during the global financial crisis.
And that was already that, as the next Galaxy poll showed, two months later:
There has been a dramatic swing to the Opposition, with a 59-41 lead on a two-party-preferred basis – a 10 point swing from the March 21 state election… And Ms Bligh’s popularity rating has hit an all-time low for a Queensland premier at 33 per cent.
Remind you of anyone?:
Anna Bligh broke a pre-election promise, and hiked up people’s bills. She immediately lost the public’s trust and never regained it, although got a brief sugar hit during the 2011 floods.
Julia Gillard broke a pre-election promise, and is already hiking up people’s bills. She immediately lost the public’s trust and never regained it.
The analogy still not close enough?
Sky News exit polls show voters were most concerned about the Cost of Living (69 per cent), followed by Delivery of State Services (63 per cent), Carbon Tax (44 per cent)
How do you think Gillard will do in Queensland next year?
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GREAT NEWS!
For Auss goings on. I keep a sharp eye on Simon’s – Australian Climate Madness Blog it’s great for the Climate issue and the Politics, especially this excellent news. The fruit and nutters are going down one by one , with their policy’s they alienated the people, they might as well have slit the own throat’s:
Australian Climate Madness
Queensland votes: landslide for LNP
Saturday, 24 March 2012 21:51 pm
by Simon
A referendum on the popularity of the carbon tax, perhaps? Watch out Julia, you’re next!
ANNA Bligh has conceded defeat after a blood bath for Labor at the Queensland election.
“It’s clear tonight that the people of Queensland have spoken with the strongest possible voice and they have voted for a change of government,” she said.
Ms Blight congratulated the Liberal National Party and leader Campbell Newman on what she called an historic victory…………………………………………
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/
Careful
This result speaks about how ‘Fed Up’ the people of Queensland and likely Australia are with the incumbent politicians. The reality is they have replaced one group of party appointed flunkies with another. The only difference being the landslide against the Labor Party was of such a magnitude that token members from outside the closed party fraternity have won seats. The effect is the Arts Law / Spin merchants that inhabit the paid political elite of Australia have been joined by somne real people who will hopefully represnt the voters who elected them
nimbunje said @ur momisugly March 24, 2012 at 1:14 pm
Just use the pencil provided to draw a box and write “none of the above” next to it like I did in the last federal election.
Unfortunately here in the UK, we do not seem to have a choice. All the three major parties, Labour, Liberal Labour and Conservative Labour, give us the same policies.
Down here we are cheering.. and waiting with cricket bats at the ready for the next federal election.. and hoping not too much more damage is done in the interim.
The chief of lies and deceit, Gillard, is going down big time !!!!!!
Oh and its 6 states (not 5), and 2 main territories (plus several very small ones, or ones with very small populations.. Australian Antarctic Territory is not small)
Sadly this will never happen in Norway.
The socialists manage the greatest art of all con-jobs;
To talk “green”, and finance socialism with oil and gas money simultaneously.
A strange, upside-down world, totally disconnected with the rest of the world, thanks to total socialist control of the media.
The Australian prime minister Julia Gillard is a screaming lefty a “wardrobe watermelon”. She lied about the carbon tax. She lies all the time, it is normal for her and her party to lie. They think that the Australian people are stupid and that the government need to think for them; sound familiar? Yes this is about the carbon tax, and taxes on energy, yes this is all about the crap surrounding CAGW. Gillard and her party are FINISHED for the next twenty years. Hurrah! Yesterday was one of the happiest days of my life. Lets us all hope that the same thing happens in the USA. I think it will be so; as people have had enough of Obama and his lies as well.
And in other government news, the California Legislature tucks tail between its quivering hind legs and runs away from a debate with Lord Monckton.
From Andrew Bolt’s blog
“Labor has gone from 51 seats in Queensland to just seven or eight, leaving it without an automatic entitlement to party status and the extra staff that brings. What a disaster.
The Greens vote fell from 8.4 per cent last time to 7.4 per cent. Good.”
Good? Bleedin’ marvellous I’d say. ☺
Jonathan,
From your lips to God’s ears.
mpaul,
The comments given leaving the election box were, time for a change,cost of living(driven up by green scams) and the carbon tax, the false smears ( which is related to the first because they have nothing left to say)
The green vote dropped and they did not win one seat.
It was one of the dirtiest elections ever with Labor(the left) claiming the LNP leader(right) was corrupt. When finally pressed, Labor admitted they had no evidence. The corruption committee (CMC) not only said the leader( they had 3 times cleared previously of false allegations by Labor) was clean but there was nothing to investigate. Because his wife’s company held a share in a building that was leased by a firm of accountant, Labor tried to say there was corruption because one of the accountant’s clients had donated to Newman’s run for office as a Mayor. It was laughed out of the CMC and throughout the electorate. It backfired hugely.
The logic is there must be corruption so lets make some vicious smears and see if any sticks. It is so similar to the CAGW campaign, it is not funny. Labor will not apologise.
The Katter Party is a mix of left and right. It is fiercely independent. It takes no guff from journalists. The founder of the party started out conservative but he has seen his electorate stripped of industry rural and manufacturing for decades under both left and right governments. Their facilities are and infrastructure spending are meagre as opposed to the production of the electorate. While they cannot abide the greens, they are natural environmentalists and they also back ethanol fuels.
The Queensland Greens failed to win a seat and suffered a fall in support…… THIS IS THE ALL IMPORTAIN LINE that every Australian needs to take some solace from…. Julia is on her way to the grave yard , we all know that…. but now we have proof positive that those funny coloured green/reds its will join her…. assured. Watermelons are serioulsy over ripe and out of fashion! They are headed to the compost here where they shall fester properly and die!
the wheels on the bus go off off off….. now lets do the same in Tasmania!
George Lawson says:
March 24, 2012 at 1:13 pm
“The message to President Obama is clear…”
There’s your paradox. How can one “get a message” when they have no clue?
We Yanks wait with pitchforks and torches. Maybe cricket bats are a safer alternative. Harder to poke your neighbor’s eye out with those.
Best news i have heard in awhile.
Congrats to our freedom loving Aussie friends.
I can only wish for such a staggering defeat for the commie democrats here in the states, but at least we should get a majority in both houses and the white house. Then we can start to try and fix some of the damage thats been done here.
JustMEinT Musings says:
March 24, 2012 at 2:13 pm
The Queensland Greens failed to win a seat and suffered a fall in support……
The Greens will always be a nuisance until we can solve all mental health problems. But they went into this election expecting to (or at least saying they could) pick up a seat. They believed that many would welcome a carbon tax, and that would increase their vote. Labor may have expected any “true blue” voters to switch to the Greens and they would get their preference vote.
It didn’t happen that way.
Locally, a long way from Queensland I have noticed a big swing in attitudes locally. People I either know, or think of as life time Labor voters are quite outspoken against them. It doesn’t indicate any great love for the opposition either. People are just sick of large government, taxes and interference with their lives.
One little thing that others haven’t picked up on, is the underestimating of the NLP vote by the MSM all through the election. I think some of the ABC talking heads would have liked to float a kite about a possible hung parliament, but even in the ABC some echo of the real world must have intruded. (Note to those overseas; One ABC presenter on TV hailed an increased Labor vote in a past election as a “swing to the ABC”. Those claiming the ABC is biased may not be wrong).
mpaul says:
March 24, 2012 at 10:23 am
A question for those in Australia: to what extent did dissatisfaction with climate/energy policy play a role in the defeat? Were there other major economic issues or was energy/environment the battle-ground issue?
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Climate/energy policy probably paid some part, but there is also the fact that labor governments (vaguely dem in us-speak) have been in power for some time. People get bored and there is an accumulation of policy mistakes that annoy people. The liberal party had the same problem in the past when they were in power and that’s why labor is in now. It’s just part of the political cycle.
I also have a theory that labor have put in female leaders and historically they have a poor acceptance rate. Humans being monkeys and all , the alpha male syndrome probably has some influence on people’s thinking.
I dislike Julia Gillard and am looking forward to voting out the lying [SNIP: Uhh.. we really can do better. Let’s not be TOO offensive? -REP] at the next federal election but the QLD result was purely because of truly abysmal government performance on state level issues and little to do with climate.
I think Gillard is still staring down the barrel of a resounding defeat and not a moment too soon but don’t read too much in to the federal situation from a state election that was mostly decided on state issues.
We saw the first rout in the state of NSW and now Queensland…reduced to a rump.
The CO2 tax is a disaster for Labor from which they may never recover. The conservative Coalitions intend to build infrastructure and grow Australia’s population.
awww. will she cry all the way to the bank, then?
whoever got the money won, ozzie friend.
you have to learn to keep proper score – you’re losing the farm.
but hey- you can always play triumphal victor if it hides your shame.
whatever you do – don’t stop playing at that casino – just choose new croupiers.
is it worth so much to have somebody else to blame?
To put it simply Andrew Bolt, is trying to confuse and befuddle his readers with hot air, on this issue, for he clearly forgets certain salient aspects about the complete difference between State and Federal Politics and about who and whom controls all the money purse strings.
Rarely, if ever in the vast rural and mining intensive conservative state called Queensland, have the so called greenies or environmentalists, wielded any degree of influence or power in the entire state’s political post Federation or colonial history, dating back to foundation in 1859.
You do also realize, in Queensland, the previous Labor Government of Anna Bligh, had embarked on an ambitious major capital upgrade program for improving state infrastructure for the coal mining and gas fracking industries, all using tax payer and borrowed funds. This also included building a brand new port and facilities at Gladstone, to handle the export of coal seam gas in liquid form overseas. In addition, very little restraint was placed on the expansion of coal mines or the gas fracking industries, apart from rubber stamping a simplistic environmental impact papers. All these new project papers, are directly funded by and written in full support of the actual mining or gas company involved in the new project.
One could say the former conservative Labor Government of Queensland controlled by Anna Bligh, was very pro mining and primary industry all the way and had little concept of that which is environmentally sustainable or being green.
To put it simply, down under in Australia, “State Politics, is not and never been the same as “Federal Politics”, since 1901, they exist for two different reasons and operate independently of each other. I believe in the United States of America, a similar parallel exists.
Alas, down under in Oz, it is a fatal mistake to confuse State Politics, with Federal Politics. As they are two completely different animals traveling in two different directions at the same time, for obvious reasons. An example of similar convoluted politics in the US, is the past eight years under Arnold Schwartzenegger’s “Green is Clean” Republicans style in California and his complete polar opposite in the same party Rick Perry, in Texas.
Three cheers! No olive branches, no condolences to the liberals…drive them back under the rocks!!!!
That is what I would call a thrashing. Labour must be catatonic. Then out will come the knives. Great fun to watch. Is there any way this can be spun as less than a categorical rejection of the carbonistas’ agenda? Will other countries’ leaders fail to note, although they will try to avoid admitting it?
Australia actually has three mainland territories, not two as commonly thought. Jervis Bay is the third.