Chameleon
The Australian’s Matt Price says that when his shonky costings were exposed, Colin Barnett “turned crimson and began to sweat”. The West’s Steve Pennells reckons “the blood drained from his face.” Who’s correct? Did Barnett turn red or white?
Perrhaps they were standing on different sides of him, and the blood rushed from one side of his head to the other?
Who cares?
That super-gaff may have cost him election.
Off topic: I’ve done a bit of a back-of-the-envelope analysis of your election coverage, Rob, and by my count you’ve got 76 posts on this election, which is a superb effort!
I was going to categorise your posts into pro-ALP, anti-ALP, pro-Lib, anti-Lib, but given that you’ve nailed your colours to the mast and we all know which horse you’re backing, there didn’t really seem to be a lot of point in that.
So instead, since you are actively campaigning for the reelection of the Gallop government (which is fair enough) I went for these categories: posts giving reasons to elect Gallop, posts giving reasons not to elect Colin Barnett, and other.
If go through those in reverse, of your 76 posts, 26 fell in the “other” category. Roughly a third of those were posts attacking Mark Olson, roughly another third were posts attacking The West Australian, and the final third were a whole range of things (like, for example, your reasons for voting against extended trading hours in the election).
You devoted 46 posts to the reasons not to elect Colin Barnett, the majority of which were to do with the canal and its economic credibility, and by extension, the coalition’s economic credibility.
Then there’s posts in which you outline the reasons Geoff Gallop should be reelected. Four posts. In the whole of the campaign, four posts.
Gee whiz. You must be proud of the ALP’s record.
Thank god its Friday, and with a bit of luck Gallop will get back ,Murray has nailed his colours to the Liberal mast which is to be as expected but i am wondering with his rateings wether hes just getting towards and maybe vanishing from radio altogether,as people just are not listening to him,so i think Monday will be interesting
Gareth, almost every political commentator says the two issues that have provided interest in this campaign are the canal and the West’s alleged bias. I’d add the nurses dispute to that list, and that explains why I’ve focussed on those issues more than anything.
There are a lot of reasons to support Labor. Some of them are to protect the Government’s reforms — such as IR and gay law reform. Some are to implement long-standing Labor policies, such as one vote one value.
There are also campaign promises that I think are excellent. 50c fares for school students, height restrictions on coastal development, returning Joondalup Hospital to the public sector (and expanding it massively), extending Labor’s award-winning primary school literacy and numeracy program to high schools, building a new public dental clinic and giving more funding to the Dental Health Service, renovating the Northbridge TAFE, and prizes for high-achieving public school students in both TEE and vocational streams.
And many more.
Bagging the Liberals is less time-consuming than expounding policies, and since I’ve spent my time either at work, at uni or volunteering at various campaigns, I’ve had to squeeze blogging in as best I can.
But gee, they must be keeping you busy at the West if you’ve got time to tally up all my posts…
Monner Murray must be on the LIberal party payroll to run such a pro barnett campaign despite all the bumbling from the Libs.
I can tell you the liberals in Swan Hills have propperd up no brainer financial aqdviser as they’re candidate who was so unappealing, They had to resort to a campaign worker to appear as a “Swinging voter:” on Stateline.
I think the ALP learnt from Howard on how to run a successful campaign and it looks to have paid off.
Rob, can you fix my spelling mistakes ?? :-)
The width of the canal just got reduced by 15%.
Speaking of 6PR, just heard “THe Pollster” on the Afternoon show saying The Coalition by 5 seats.
We all know that Southern Cross Broadcasters has amongst their board a former Liberal Communications Minister.
No wonder Galop refused to appear on this joke of a radio station, hopefully prevail when Bob Maumill returns on Monday :-)
Yes i think both Murray and one A Jones should be forced to run “the following is a paid political announcement for the Liberal party”at least it would be honest
Oooh I think someone’s bucking for a payrise.
Rob, maybe you should make your blog accessible to paying subscribers only?
For everyone’s information, here is a link to the Australian Journalists’ Code of Ethics – so here is what you should be expecting from NEWS outlets as opposed to media outlets who publish political and social commentary. It pretty eye-opening when you consider the presentation of news in the werst everyday.
http://www.alliance.org.au/
Yeah, Rob you have been attacking Barnett personally quite a bit, which has irked me. And the canal got really boring – but you knew that :P
Gareth, would you care to do an analysis of my blog in the same way? Id be interested to see the results.
Would also be interesting to see just how even handed I am in my comprehensive election article (which you havent yet linked to, Rob) http://www.westelection05.blogspot.com
Is that Gareth Parker by any chance? Perhaps you ought to leave WA and travel the world a bit before you feel you can judge. An insular right wing west australian (who works for the west australian)? Not needed. Get some life experience boy.