gillards gone

[sprintcyclist]

JULIA Gillard's support in Queensland has collapsed, with Labor's vote plummeting to record lows across the state.
Labor's primary vote has crashed to 28 per cent, a Galaxy poll conducted exclusively for The Courier-Mail reveals.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has pulled in front of Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister by a strong 16 percentage point margin.

And former Labor leader Kevin Rudd is now preferred Labor leader by 59 per cent of Queensland voters.

Queensland voters have turned against Ms Gillard's minority Government, with 39 per cent saying the hung Parliament has been worse than expected.

For more on the poll results, don't miss today's print edition
In a sign the Government is failing to sell its plans for a carbon tax, only 8 per cent of respondents said climate change was the most important issue facing Australia.


Labor's primary vote has slumped from 33.6 per cent at the last election to 28 per cent, according to the poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

The party would face an electoral wipeout if these results were replicated across crucial marginal seats in Queensland.

This result would see the Coalition win by 59 per cent to 41 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis, assuming similar flows of preferences to the last election. Support for the Coalition has soared from 47.4 per cent primary vote at the last election to 53 per cent in the Galaxy poll.

For the first time in any recent opinion poll, Mr Abbott has pulled ahead of Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister by 53 per cent to 47 per cent.

In a further blow to Ms Gillard, former prime minister Kevin Rudd has three times more support to be Labor leader.

Previous polls had already suggested Mr Rudd had more support than Ms Gillard as Labor leader both in Queensland and across the country.

But the new poll shows Mr Rudd now has majority support among Queenslanders to take back leadership of the Labor Party. He has a massive 40 per cent lead as preferred Labor leader over the woman who deposed him as prime minister.

The new poll shows 59 per cent of Queenslanders want Mr Rudd to be Labor leader, up from 44 per cent in the last Galaxy poll in mid-February.

Ms Gillard only secured 19 per cent support as Labor leader, down from 33 per cent in February.

"Such is the popularity of Kevin Rudd in Queensland that there is consensus between Labor and LNP supporters, with both of the opinion that he is now the best choice to lead the federal Labor Party," Galaxy chief executive David Briggs said.

The recent Federal Budget has not helped Treasurer Wayne Swan's popularity either. Support for Mr Swan to take over as Labor leader has fallen to 9 per cent from 15 per cent in February.

The poll shows voters' growing sense of disillusionment about Ms Gillard's power-sharing deal with the Greens and Independents.

The number of people who said the hung Parliament was worse than expected has risen from 23 per cent in February to 39 per cent.

Almost half the people polled said it was too early to tell how the minority Government was working. But this was down from 62 per cent who were prepared to hold their judgment in February.

Economic management and cost of living were ranked as the most important issues, followed by illegal immigration and education standards.

[Pastafarian]

I can cut and paste articles too. Wheres the comment on this?

[Jovial Monk]

bwahahahahahaha comment? From Sprint?

[Rainbow Moonlight]

Labor is in a difificult position and still trying to achieve good policy and good change. I am more impressed recently than I have been in the recent past. Gillard looks better doing stuff than talking. And there s no doubt she is trying to do stuff on carbon emissions, boat people arrivals and getting the budget back to surplus(with Swan.) Also trying to do all this in the context of having compassion for the poor- unlike Howard and his GST; and in a precariosu political position where every piece of legislation ha sto be negotiated through parliament. Not bad if you ask me.

Tiem will tell Sprint. Now a lot of people are not happy with her- they haven't seen the results yet. Wait until they do.

This new broadband, if it is as good as the say will be a real boon for schools. I can't tell you the number of times I have taught in computer labs in schools where every student is waiting way too long for a webpage to load just so the lesson can progress. It wil be great for teachers to be able to have students to have proper access to the great teaching resource which the internet can be.

[sprintcyclist]

the alp have lost at everything they have touched.

the most inept govt I have suffered under

[Pastafarian]

the alp have lost at everything they have touched.

the most inept govt I have suffered under

You sure you don't work for Fox News? What the fuck is it with this whole if you're not who I voted for, you are the devil thing. And before you think I'm being leftist, extreme left did it under Liberal.

[Jovial Monk]

Obviously Sprint only knows what the national shitsheet publishes. Here are a couple of things from the time of Howard the Hopeless:

1.

abrahams were the dessicated coconuts greatest crime against Aus military.
We have no aircraft big enough to air lift them OS, no near neighbours where we could use them, no likely internal territorial use if attacked (too few to mass in more than one place and too far to move from one location to anoither).
BUT, they make Ausi armour able to be ‘integrated’ / ‘embedded’ with our Yank allies.

Yep, our armour can become just another statistic as front line fodder alongside the U S of A in a conventional hot war. THAT was J W Howard’s great betrayal of our military. The Aus Regular Army is not, and never will be, sufficiently large to maintain or support a US Style ‘big battalion’ army. (Likewise, we haven’t had a flying RAAF REserve since the last Spitfires in the 1950s.)

Our national interests are much better served by the 3 x Regiment structure, with multiple specialised Task Forces being established when required.
If it ever came to continental combat, lighter armour as support for our relatively mobile forces and specialist units such as SAS, provide a complimentarity that the Abrahams dinosaurs do not.

Howard’s buying in to embedding with the Yanks was a betrayal of our armed forces, of our national interests and defence preparedness and a HUGE waste of money.

2. The $40Bn of taxpayers money wasted by the Nats under the Regional Partnership scheme, better known as Regional Rorts

3. The idiocy of trying to use outdated, obsolete, worn out Sea Sprite helicopters for use by the navy. Labor finally terminated this idiocy in 2008

4. The huge amount of middleclass welfare, slowly being wound back by Labor. People on $30K subsidising “battlers” on $150K

5. The idiotic huge tax cuts for the rich that Costello the Clueless kept making. That is why there have been such big deficits—no tax cut this year and so bracket creep will finally start increasing the income tax share of C/w tax revenue as well as slowly lifting the amount of tax revenue.

No government is perfect. Use your brain and try to analyse what and why things are being done. Labor is actually making huge savings in the most difficult time of all, when the economy is still soft—a hard time to put in some overdue tax hikes.

[Rainbow Moonlight]

I want to see how this carbon thingo works out. Also want to see how NBN works out for schools. Also want to see how the idea of regional processing works out- sounds like if PNG, Malaysia and Thailand all come on board it may be a great plan. Also want to see what happens with the budget surplus prediction.

[Jovial Monk]

Exactly, ele! Underneath all the froth of polls and Rupert trying to oust the Labor government this government is getting things done, 72 major Bills have been passed through the Parliament. The carbon tax will pass as well, despite all this “lies” crap. After 1 July the Libs are largely irrelevant so the cutback of middleclass welfare will continue, strengthening the budget bottom line. Long time yet to Oct 2013!

Latest Essential Research showing opposition to the Carbon Tax is decreasing.

I just wish the NBN could be rolled out faster, both so more people have it and spread the word of how good it is and so it becomes harder for the idiotic talentless hacks making up the Lieberal Party can’t roll it back for some hodgepodge of a crap policy like FTTN or wireless.

[sprintcyclist]

the alps becoming a desert

LABOR fears up to one in four of its Victorian members will not renew their memberships after last year's devastating state election loss and disenchantment with the Gillard government.

And union heavyweight Joe De Bruyn warned that Labor - and civilisation itself - could cease to exist if the party overhauls its platform later this year to accept same-sex marriage.

Mr De Bruyn, national secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Union and a powerful figure on the Labor Right, has criticised his party for allowing debate on gay marriage to ''fester''.

About 4700 of state Labor's 12,000 members have not renewed ahead of a deadline on Tuesday. Labor insiders are predicting less than half will make the effort.ALP state secretary Noah Carroll told last weekend's Victorian ALP conference that membership was at a record low.

''That shortfall means we must look hard at how we as an organisation work. It means finding new ways to engage with our members both past and present,'' he said.

Federal Labor MP Alan Griffin, author of the yet-be-released post-mortem of the Brumby government's election loss, said the party must increase its membership.

''That's an issue facing all mainstream political parties and we are not immune from it,'' he said.

One Labor source blamed the federal government for ''trashing the Labor brand''.

''The successive failures of Rudd and Gillard in trying to seize the conservative vote on issues like climate change, asylum seekers, gay marriage and recently welfare to work has seen Labor members walk.''

In a closed speech to union colleagues last night, Mr De Bruyn warned that any decision by Labor to remove a requirement that marriage is exclusively between men and women would be ''electoral suicide''.

''Labor needs to hold the middle ground to win elections, not bolt to the extreme left in an effort to hold a few inner-city seats against the Greens,'' Mr De Bruyn said.

Mr De Bruyn also claims that undermining marriage could also trigger social collapse.

With senior party figures, including federal Finance Minister Penny Wong and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese, arguing that same-sex marriage should be allowed, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has agreed to move Labor's national conference to December 2011 so the issue can be debated.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/labor ... 1f2jz.html