Will Julia be forced to drag Labor to the right?

[IQSRLOW]

Given that the electorates under fire seem to have illegal immigration and the mining tax at the forefront of there minds, will Julia, against every fibre of her being be forced to drag Labor to the right of these issues to save the Labor party?

I think she will.

What will you Labor voters think if/when she does this? What do you think about the Labor party moving further to the right just to garner votes?

Are the Labor party purely a poll driven party?

[boxy]

Personally, I believe that as long as we're allowing regular immigration to boost our population, then we are obliged to take our own (small) share of the worlds refugees.

Still... negative population growth is the way to go!

[Sappho]

Is the Labor Party moving further to the right? I'm not so sure about that just yet. Has she decided her cabinet? Not that I'm aware of. That cabinet, once decided tho, will show if any shifts in leanings have occurred. I don't think that it can be judged by the Victorian Chapter of the Labor Power House who initiated this coup.

Personally, being pragmatic and dominantly centralist, I don't really care which side of politics they work from so long as the ideas are sound, well planned and implemented.

[boxy]

Julia is more of lefty than Rudd, so you'd think the party should dress to the left now. And good to see her backing off a bit from Rudd's "Big Australia" vision, by considering scaling back immigration.

[IQSRLOW]

Not when she has been installed by the right factions and the issues that they are facing all mean more 'right' thinking to get them "back on track"

[Sappho]

Again, I would like to see the makeup of the cabinet, which is to be announced next week, before I make any claims like that.

I do expect at the least, as reward for their enacting a coup, that the right wing will have that super tax removed or varied significantly.

[IQSRLOW]

They have really backed themselves into a corner by putting the figures into the forward estimates- any change will see them having to bring down a mini-budget and their imaginary surplus in 3 years will disappear (not that any Labor govt could possibly hope to deliver any surplus at any time anyway)

[Sappho]

I think the voters are more concerned with the super tax than they are with moving back into surplus.

I say this, but at the same time I believe that Krudd moved too quickly when the GFC struck resulting in stim packages that were not so easily reversible or that could be modified as the GFC took shape... he put no thought into the matter. Gillard has to wear that too. Ultimately tho, the Labor panic package was the cause of our debt. Tragically tho, the electorate is not so savvy as to see this problem as a problem. The average punter thinks the Krudd panic package saved us!

[IQSRLOW]

I think more people are figuring out the huge amount of waste the govt stimulus brought, despite the propaganda from idiots like Monk

The insulation program ha been exposed and people aren't happy that more billions are going into fixing that abortion. The BER is finally coming under the microscope and 20% of schools have now raised issues that they don't think they are getting value for money.

The ball of waste that is Labor is slowly but surely unravelling

[Jovial Monk]

I think the voters are more concerned with the super tax than they are with moving back into surplus.

I say this, but at the same time I believe that Krudd moved too quickly when the GFC struck resulting in stim packages that were not so easily reversible or that could be modified as the GFC took shape... he put no thought into the matter. Gillard has to wear that too. Ultimately tho, the Labor panic package was the cause of our debt. Tragically tho, the electorate is not so savvy as to see this problem as a problem. The average punter thinks the Krudd panic package saved us!

Oh wow, where to begin? So much completely wrong!

The miners were having no effect on the polls and started a second series of much stronger ads so I doubt the RRT was much of an issue in voteland.

You cannot move quickly enough when a recession looms, just look at the recessions in 80s under Treasurer Howard and in the 90s under Keating. And no they shouldn't stop the stimulus, it is still propping up vast swathes of the economy even now! In fact those NAIRU-loving fluffy bunnies on the RBA board should cut rates by half a percent at their next meeting as the present rate is killing retail and housing! The Rudd/Swan/Gillard/Tanner stimulus did save us from a deep recession and 10% unemployment. The two Bank Guarantees helped keep the banks afloat: $160Bn was borrowed under it, allowing the banks to roll over borrowings and earning the govt $6Bn in fees.

The whole response also meant that the deficit over the forward years was reduced, not increased. We still have Costello's structural budget deficit tho and I would like to see some acknowledgement of that problem and policies to reverse it. The BCA solution to the structural deficit was to recommend the GST be increased—that way they keep their over–generous tax cuts.