John Linton ....as the Page 9 'informal poll' of Sydney' Sun Herald reported today:
When asked who they would vote for in the next NSW State election the results were:
15% for the current premier
31% for the current leader of the opposition
54% who would vote for neither
For those of you who don't live in NSW this pretty much sums up why NSW has had four successive Labor State Governments who have not only charged far more than any other State for the taxes they are allowed to impose, bankrupted the State in the process and delivered Australia's worst Health, Transport, Police and Education services. The track record of those governments is so obviously truly awful that in any other democracy that had electors with IQs larger than their shoe sizes they wouldn't have lasted past the first term before they were elected out or, if they also rigged the State Elections like they rig everything else around NSW, then the few thinking people left would have burned down parliament house and tarred and feathered its inhabitants long ago.
The vote for Barry O'Farrell sums up how NSW voters have regarded the successive alternatives to the Labor riff raff who have "served the people of NSW" for the last 12 years - "served" may actually be the appropriate word using the common colloquial usage.
This piece of nonsense in today's paper reminded me that Krudd's approval rating is now reported as being higher than at any time since he was electd - it was reported last week but I don't have the source to hand. I thought that was an interesting comment on the Australian electorate (assuming the Australian polls are meaningful). As far as I can recollect Krudd has done absolutely nothing in 12 months since Labor replaced the coalition apart from absent himself from the country while it slid from the peak of prosperity in to a progressively more concerning economic situation.
Of course Krudd has:
1) Said "sorry" to some people on behalf of some other people (I actually never could work out who was apologising to who for what and why).
2) Signed the "Kyoto Protocols" and then one day later stated that he wouldn't be going any further than the status quo (which was what the previous administration had actually already accomplished without grandstanding about it and p**ing off the US).
3) Spent a fortune running an "ideas summit" which produced nothing/nada/zippo except wasting a lot of money and making a lot of very foolish people look even more foolish - chief foolish looking person = Krudd.
4) Promised to censor the internet and now backing down from yet another foolish election sound bite.
5) Promised to 'revolutionise' data communications in Australia and made a travesty of the promise by releasing a tender document that was sheer nonsense.
6) But why go on?.....the list of foolishnesses is almost endless but absolutely pales in to irrelevance compared to Australia's financial situation for which Krudd blythely dismesses with a rotation of one liners that include:
"Not my fault" - "It's the GFC" - "It's all Howards fault" - "Nothing can be done"
I've heard him say all of those things.
OK - maybe they're all true? Maybe there's nothing Labor/Krudd could have done/can do?
Then - three things come to mind:
1) How do you get to be more 'popular' when everything you control, preside over and are responsible for is much worse than when you took over?
2) If you keep insisting that there's nothing you can do why not resign and let someone who believes there is something they can do make some different decisions?
3) What's he going to do when he runs out the surpluses built up by the previous 11 years of coalition saving?
Bear in mind Krudd won the "unloseable" election and the 'pundits' of the time were all saying it was a "three term win".
Heaven help Australia if the Kruddster (total d***head of a magnitude not even approached by Whitlam) gets ten years to do to Australia what Labor has done to NSW over the past ten years while the NSW electorate agreed that the result was a shambles but "what's the alternative?"
Where's the drover's dog when you really need her?
PS: Don't you just sometimes wish when you see the results of the last three NSW elections that people like Mill (the younger) and Jeremy Bentham were strangled at birth?