Election Aftermath

[Jovial_Monk]

Royalties cost a LOT more than $100 a year, mantra.

They will be a big disincentive to keep all but the very best mines going and to open new mines once demand declines.

The Can’t is already in big trouble with his Budget with coal royalties diving.

[Rorschach]

Mantra, why would we want to reduce licenses in a bid to destroy the very industry that is the backbone of our nations economy?

Because Mel - large foreign corporations - are buying up huge tracts of good agricultural land to mine. We've always had a reasonable food export trade here and it's being eroded away quickly.

The states are flooded with mines and people are getting ill and having to walk away from their properties.

Indian, Chinese and Korean companies are the worst at present, but with the approval of the government - and it was the same under the Coalition, they can bring their own employees out here to work. There is nothing in it for us especially now that Abbott is removing the mining tax. BULLSHIT Even royalties to the States are coming with so many credits attached, that we will be owing them shortly just for the privilege of mining here. BULLSHIT

There is no discrimination anymore. Foreign states can buy up our land and even those who choose to use it for agriculture pay no tax.

A mining license costs about $100 a year.

[Rorschach]

Dear Monk, thank you for displaying your ideas of how an Australian political forum should work. Ignoring questions and avoiding debate should really be accepted as the new high standard you are advocating.



ps. Ignoring polite questions from people you are rude to and have problems debating with is also a great new standard

[Rorschach]

Bob Carr looks set to resign...

[mantra]

Royalties cost a LOT more than $100 a year, mantra.

They will be a big disincentive to keep all but the very best mines going and to open new mines once demand declines.

The Can’t is already in big trouble with his Budget with coal royalties diving.

Royalties and a mining license are two different things. Every corporation, man and his dog needs a license before they can mine and these are almost given away. Why are they given away - maybe we could ask Eddie Obeid.

Many of the mining companies are given all sorts of credits and incentives - some of this largesse has been so generous that it''s wiping out the royalties.

[mantra]

Bob Carr looks set to resign...

That's no surprise.

[Jovial_Monk]

No loss either.

[Rorschach]

You see Monkey Boy... there are so many things we can all agree on.

[DaS Energy]

Hello mantra,

A small correction re the Carbon tax "Most civilised nations have a carbon tax now" a web search reveals just how few have one! However I do note Labour lies was to give that impression.

[Rorschach]

just as a backup to my thoughts on the hopeless Diaz and the Greenway result...

Miranda Devine agrees with what I posted.

Libs in the west must learn disunity is death
* by: Miranda Devine
* From: The Daily Telegraph
* September 11, 2013 12:00AM

THE Labor party has a new three-word slogan: disunity is death. But they must also learn that bad policy and incompetence is also death....

And of course it is true. The maniacal ambition of Kevin Rudd and his lust for vindication crippled Labor unity for more than a decade.

But it's not even close to the only reason Labor suffered its worst primary vote in 100 years, or why it saddled the nation with almost six years of incompetent, cynical, untrustworthy, spendthrift government. Rudd might have been a cancer but he had a willing host. To lay all blame on him is a delusion which will prevent the party from seeing its deeper failings. yep.

But disunity is death just as much for the victors as the vanquished.

For a man who was dismissed as unelectable, Tony Abbott will take office with more than 30 seats.

So it may seem churlish after such a remarkable victory to quibble about the Liberal party's performance in western Sydney, where .

But in the failure of the NSW Liberals adequately to capitalise on Abbott's appeal to aspirational western Sydney voters, lie the same seeds of destruction that afflicted the Labor party, and eventually destroyed it.

The mood for change was there in Lindsay, Greenway, Chifley, McMahon, even in Blaxland and Werriwa, in the outer belt Labor heartland beyond Parramatta, home of the famous Howard battlers.

One Labor supporter manning a polling booth in Chris Bowen's seat of McMahon reports "young tradies" brushing past to vote Liberal.

But only Lindsay fell to the Liberals, with a three percent swing to Fiona Scott, reportedly helped by Abbott's "sex appeal" comment.

Labor's heartland did not flip , as predicted by the polls, or as occurred in the NSW state election, when people in Penrith and Campbelltown who had never voted Liberal delivered the west to Barry O'Farrell.

In McMahon, Chris Bowen's seat, Labor's ground campaigners played every dirty trick in the book to beat Liberal Ray King. But they were also better organised. Bowen, for instance, stitched up a preference deal with the Christian Democratic Party candidate by promising to vote against gay marriage. Late last week, NSW state director Scott Neeham was alerted to the problem and Fred Nile was asked to intervene, after doubts were raised over whether Bowen was genuine. This led to the curious situation in which the CDP had duelling how-to vote cards in McMahon on polling day.

But the real debacle occurred in Greenway, Labor's most marginal seat. Jaymes Diaz, the hapless Liberal candidate, became notorious when he froze during a gotcha interview with Channel Ten. The video of his humiliation went around the world and was played in a continuous loop by Labor on giant TVs driven around the electorate. From then on Diaz elected to keep a low profile, giving him the "Where's Wally" tag of the campaign.

Ultimately he lost the seat, with a three percent swing to Labor.

Now he has become a lightning rod for discontent in the NSW Liberal party, where deep divisions between Left and Right were suppressed before the federal election.

Diaz, a lawyer from a well connected Filipino Catholic family, was the conservative candidate back in 2010 for Greenway, after a battle which saw him preselected only a few weeks before election day. He defied expectations when he almost won.

In the three years since, his family stacked the Liberal branches in Greenway with Filipinos, according to Liberal sources, making him unassailable by new candidates from either the left or the right. The right now say they had no control over his preselection. Exactly like I said.

But as the campaign wore on, Diaz became a convenient pawn used by the Left to pre-emptively strike the Right, as the jostling for advancement under an Abbott government begins.

Less than a week before the election, with polls still favouring Diaz, Liberal sources began to background journalists against him, laying responsibility for his preselection on the right. Two days before the election devastating stories appeared saying that if Diaz were elected, he would be replaced

"They deliberately undermined him," says one senior NSW Liberal politician from the right. "It was a campaign deliberately run from within. Why? Because he is a conservative."

The conspiracy theory holds that even if Diaz wasn't undermined, senior party members aligned with the left who were assigned to help him, played a dead bat, and put him in front of TV cameras on day one of the campaign without preparation.

Whatever the truth, both sides agree Diaz was not a great candidate. But he was no more gaffe-prone than others, including Fiona Scott in Lindsay, whose comment about boat people causing traffic problems in the west was widely derided.

"We should have smashed it in Lindsay", says a state Liberal MP. "We should have won Parramatta and Greenway. No excuse."

"But every faction has some responsibility in losing the west. "

The Liberals have a serious problem attracting quality candidates in marginal seat in NSW, and much of that is due to the influence of factional powerbrokers over pre-selections. In Greenway it is because they allowed an ethnic minority take over and stack branches within the party. His father is now attempting to do the same thing re the position of mayor on Blacktown council.

The voters of western Sydney know they're worth better.