Poll Tracking

[Rainbow Moonlight]

I think Hockey is probably their best choice, perhaps with Nelson as a running mate.

[Jovial Monk]

Mr Workchoices and Mr 9%????? Who is retiring next election?

[skippy]

I think Hockey is probably their best choice, perhaps with Nelson as a running mate.

Hockey is another Beasley, he probably will lead the party one day, but he'll never be PM.
I think the best team atm would be Abbott and Dutton, Abbott couldn't win an election either( tho I said the same about Howard ) but he'd be the best to take them through the next nine years or so in the wilderness.By then someone younger like Dutton or little John Brown who is still in high school might be ready.

[Jovial Monk]

Yeah and Greg Hunt's voice might have broken by then Hunt (why oh why wasn't he called Michael???) is a cut above the dross that is the average Fib MP and is not a lawyer, always a good start!

[JW Frogen]

I think you guys are fooling yourselves if you think it is all about personalities. For instance Howard lost not because everyone loved Rudd but rather Work choices worried a lot of working middle class voters and that combined with rising interest rates, when he had made that the issue of the previous campaign sunk him.

Although I think Labor is a shoe in for the next election after that if the world economy stays in the doldrums Labor will not be able to borrow much more for stimulus, if unemployment slowly rises in the next few years (I hope it does not) and the cost of Labor’s debt starts to bite in taxes or pressure on the currency servicing the debt then almost any Liberal leader will win two elections from now.

If on the other hand we recover in the next few years and Labor starts to pay down the deficits she may be vindicated for such spending, giving us a soft landing during the worst of it, and she might be in for a long run.

Also Labor has to worry about hot social issues, like the increase in boat people comming here. Indeed Kevin seems to know this and is in Asia right now trying to get an agreement to clamp down on people smuggling.

[skippy]

I think you guys are fooling yourselves if you think it is all about personalities. For instance Howard lost not because everyone loved Rudd but rather Work choices worried a lot of working middle class voters and that combined with rising interest rates, when he had made that the issue of the previous campaign sunk him.

Although I think Labor is a shoe in for the next election after that if the world economy stays in the doldrums Labor will not be able to borrow much more for stimulus, if unemployment slowly rises in the next few years (I hope it does not) and the cost of Labor’s debt starts to bite in taxes or pressure on the currency servicing the debt then almost any Liberal leader will win two elections from now.

If on the other hand we recover in the next few years and Labor starts to pay down the deficits she may be vindicated for such spending, giving us a soft landing during the worst of it, and she might be in for a long run.

Also Labor has to worry about hot social issues, like the increase in boat people comming here. Indeed Kevin seems to know this and is in Asia right now trying to get an agreement to clamp down on people smuggling.

You make some good points frogen tho I'm not sure I agree, Howard went for lots of reasons but having an alternative that we Australians would go for took Labor eleven years. There is no way that Beasley, Crean or Latham would have beaten Howard, The leader of a party is very important now days as to how that party performs in polls and elections.
Lots of liberals play down polls but in the last few years they have proven to be very close to the mark.labor won the last election by 23 seats, all the polls before the election said this would happen but all the "experts" said ,no way ,the polls were right.
I think you could be right about the economy, if the Liberals can spook people into believing Labor are running the economy badly they might have something to run on, but I can't see anybody in the Liberal party with the skills or public confidence to pull it off.
I don't see refugees as being a problem, Howard played on the xenophobic tendencies of many Australians and used the refugee issue as a political wedge, it worked for a while, but Rudd will not try and play the racist card so will not be out there every day banging on with 1950s rhetoric like"we will decide who comes to Australia".If its not in the public's eye every day it will not get air.

[JW Frogen]

The very polls you are fond of, or rather the post election polling found that Rudd did not win the last election, interest rates and Work Choices (with some seats being concerned about global warming, such as Howard's own, an irony as it has more SVUs than any other place in Australia) cost Howard the election.

The Liberals will not have to play any economic card if the world economy does not pick up and Labor will have few options to deal with it but weather the suffering as they have already spent big.

If the economy does recover (and there are some indications India and China are already, which means we probably will to a degree) then the Liberals are going to have to re-invent themselves and find wedge issues to slowly erode Labor's popularity.

As to immigration, a huge influx of boat people would be every damaging to Labor, as like Howards methodes or not, it did work; people except their government to be able to control their borders. (Indeed this is an issue the Republicans should hit over and over again in the US as the Dems do not seem concerned about it.)

[Leftofcentresalterego]

Fear not, the government does not need to borrow to pay for the stimulus. The gold standard and the Bretton woods system are long past history and since Keating floated the dollar we became a pure fiat money system. The standard arguments that government cannot spend this and government cannot spend that are a furious attempt to argue that history has not gone by and that we are still ruled by systems that ceased to exist ages ago.

The spending capacity of a government that presides over a modern monetary economy utilizing a non-convertable fiat currency with a floating exchange rate is the same today as it was yesterday, regardless of how much they spent. If the private sector declines to keep buying bonds, it will not affect the ability of the government to spend although it may give the reserve bank a headache in trying to set interest rates while a defecit is running, since that is the primary purpose of bond issuence in a fiat system.

Interestingly, you will note that the previous government continued to issue bonds even when they were in surplus. Why? There were in surplus, clearly they did not need to borrow in order to spend. In any case, the Australian dollars used to buy the bonds did not exist until the government defecit spent previously.

But no, the government has monopoly right of issue over the currency. It is the sole source of Australian dollars and can never run out. Ever. Any constraints on spending are voluntary.

As has been pointed out many times, the defecit will automatically shrink when economic activity picks up.

I think though, that we are going to need another stimulus package soon, one focussed on direct job creation. Over a hundred years of economic history have proven beyond any shadow of doubt that the private sector by itself is almost never capable of utilizing all the willing labour available and creating full employment. Indeed, the capitalists do not want full employment (defined as 2% unemployment and no underemployment) because it serves to increase worker baragining power and redirect more of the national income share towards labour.

[skippy]

The very polls you are fond of, or rather the post election polling found that Rudd did not win the last election, interest rates and Work Choices (with some seats being concerned about global warming, such as Howard's own, an irony as it has more SVUs than any other place in Australia) cost Howard the election.

I think you'll find that Rudd has polled better than the Leader of the Libs ever since he became opposition leader.He out polled Howard the whole time,he out polled Nelson the whole time and he has out polled Turnbull the whole time.
Work choices certainly made a difference, but you underestimate Rudds personal popularity.

[Auzgurl]

Polls go up and down , they wax and wane..they are just a snapshot in time and time is a cruel mistress.