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Wentworth by-election the preface to electoral doom for the Coalition

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There’s one thing we can predict about the upcoming vote in Wentworth — it will be a Chris Gayle by-election. That is, it’s going to swing hard.

When unpopular governments begin the doleful trudge to the next election almost anything can trigger the descent into abject despondency.

At the fag-end of the Labor Kirner government in 1992, a government beset with turmoil, scandal and chaos, the tram drivers went on strike. Not only did the drivers pull the pin, they decided to make their displeasure known more starkly by driving trams up to the top of Bourke Street and along Spring Street, before parking them in long lines just outside Victoria’s Parliament House.

For the weeks the strike lasted the motionless conga line of trams remained. Labor MPs would look out their windows from their parliamentary offices at the traffic chaos below, shudder and draw the curtains before having a long lie down with a cold compress on their foreheads. It was an excruciating reminder when one really wasn’t needed of the belting that was coming their way.

Full column here.

261 Comments

  • Boadicea says:

    JB: one for you.
    My current man is a PhD in Climate Science, especially sea-level rising.
    He gets annoyed with the Green’s exaggerations.
    He reckons sea levels could rise by 1m by the end of the century but it’s difficult to predict accurately because future GGE’s are uncertain.
    This is what he had to say on Adani:
    “So – the amount of CO2 emissions that we cannot afford to exceed in order to stay below the Paris 2 degree warming limit is around 1000 billion tonnes.
    If the Adani Carmichael mine continued for its planned life, the coal produced would generate about 5 billion tonnes of CO2 – that’s about 0.5% of the Paris limit.”
    “How many times have you heard an environmentalist say that “if Adani goes ahead we’ll blow the Paris limit – that’s the kind of thing that makes me grumpy”

    Well I don’t want to make him grumpy, so I talk about anything other than the weather! Julie’s red high heels for example!

    • Milton says:

      Thank God i’m still married, i have no idea what passes for foreplay these days!

    • Jean Baptiste says:

      As counter intuitive as it may seem, since we are past the point of no return we are probably better off burning as much coal as we can. I don’t give a rats about Adani, and neither should anyone.
      The oceans have already sequestered so much heat we are seriously %&%@#%! Nor do I give a rats what crowd controlling nonsense acceptable to vested interests the university has been teaching your current man, (is there something electrical going on between you two?) the name of the game is methane and water vapor. I’m pretty sure the human race will be effectively extinct long before there is a one metre rise in the sea levels.
      And don’t pull the old ” academics know about these things ” stunt on me, or I will give you some serious academics who haven’t been tamed.

      https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/arctic-ice-melting-716647/

      • Milton says:

        You’re “pretty sure” in this post and “quite probably” in the following post, Jean sounds a bit like equivocating, I think.

      • Boadicea says:

        Isn’t that the most awesome pic!
        No, my man’s not ”tamed” as you put it. He’s actually annoyingly contrary at times. A debate between the pair of you would be interesting. Nevertheless I’ve checked. He does think the moon-landings were authentic.

        • Jean Baptiste says:

          Moon landings authentic? No cred, couldn’t be bothered. Too easy, I’d have him for breakfast. How obvious does bull*%$* have to be? It is clearly impossible. Humans will be extinct before they ever get to the moon, and possibly even before they leave the magnetosphere. I suppose he talks to the sky fairy too?

    • Jean Baptiste says:

      And, the Paris agreement is a load of crap anyway, we’ve had nearly fifteen years of consecutive heat records and even if we stopped all emissions now it will continue to get hotter for decades, and quite probably much much hotter.
      The oceans are absorbing the trapped heat at truly astonishing volume , water is a fantastic conductor, and shunting it along the great conveyors to the polar regions where staggering heat records are occurring right now.
      You’re not seeing or feeling anything much of the catastrophic events that are happening where we live, but it will come big time.

      We the idiot monkeys with electricity are gone for all money and a lot sooner than you think. Tell your man “live it up buttercup, theres no point in being grumpy with the greens. ”

      Not that I believe a word of your little story anyway.

    • Dismayed says:

      According to Nasa, of the 1,663 months since January 1880, the top 100 for temperature anomaly have all occurred since 1990, and every month since December 2014 is in the top 100.
      2018 is on track to be the third-hottest year behind 2016 and 2017; fourth is 2015

    • John O'Hagan says:

      A single mine, one of many in a country of 0.3% of the world’s population, blowing 0.5% of global CO2 targets? That makes me grumpy!

    • Wissendorf says:

      Boa and Beau,
      A link to Sahul time, an interactive from Monash Uni of the rises and falls of sea levels back to the first Ice Age 2.2 billion years ago. There’s a scalable graph that links to a map. The map is scalable from just Australia to global, and as the cursor on the graph is dragged, glaciation, desertification and forest growth can be observed. There’s also a group of icons scattered along the Australian coast that present visualisations of the coastline at that point, that change as the cursor moves. You can see an empty Sydney Harbor, and Port Phillip Bay, and the Barrier Reef 8,000 years ago when it was just a low range of coastal hills.
      http://sahultime.monash.edu.au/tectonic.html

    • Wissendorf says:

      If the Adani mine does not proceed, and wanna-be activists get to proudly burnish their credentials as Saviors of the World, they will condemn 4,000,000 Indian children to death from wholly preventable respiratory diseases over the projected 60 year life of the mine. Currently, 8,000 children die in India annually from respiratory diseases caused by burning biomass fuels, ( wood and dung mostly) in enclosed spaces. Dung is by far the worst, and burning dung releases formaldehyde, one of the worst known carcinogens, causing terrible lung cancers and throat lesions. These same (mostly) white activisits, having enjoyed the benefits of coal powered electricity for all their lives, and who drive cars that emit 70 grams of CO2 every kilometer (avg 2 litre engine), seek to impose their will on little brown kids, in the very best Imperialist traditions; privileged white folks telling impoverished brown folk what they can and can’t do, and can and can’t have. Wasn’t much point in Ghandi winning freedom for India; the whiteys still want to run the show. Anyone who believes India can generate enough power from windmills and solar panels to power an emerging nation, hasn’t been to India.

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4215499/

  • Henry Donald J Blofeld says:

    Call me an old softie, Mr insider but I cant hep feeling a bit sad for Scott Morrison who it seems is a good “fit” for the PMship, way too late though.
    In fairness he was a big part of the Turnbull government Leadership team so we must judge him also on that.
    His “Turn Back the Boats” was pretty ruthless, unlike Peter Dutton’s “Come On In Au Pairs”.

  • Henry Donald J Blofeld says:

    Great article, linked, by Laura Tingle, Mr Insider on the sad state of Australian Politics and she writes: ” The notion that recent extraordinary events in federal politics were driven by policy differences, rather than just pure spite and collective madness, seems to have pretty comprehensively bitten the dust in the past week of post-coup bewilderment.”
    https://tinyurl.com/y947ph2b

  • Milton says:

    Never mind, Henry the President will visit soon enough so just keep the bubbles on ice.

  • Milton says:

    I am right in thinking that regardless of the results of the next federal election we will still be left with the same senate?

  • Boadicea says:

    Julie Bishop confirms she will stand at the next election.
    She is their best option to lead what’s left of the party in opposition.
    It’s really astounding that TA was offered a position. It doesn’t matter any more. He finished them off and they must start rebuilding without him.

  • Milton says:

    Apparently you can get a single au pair though Richard Di Natale had 3 whom he paid at about a third of the minimum wage.

  • Milton says:

    Even if you were liberal or conservative, or both, it may make more sense to stand as an independent in Wentworth.

  • Henry Donald J Blofeld says:

    The call for Federal Liberal Party Wrecker, ex ousted PM Tony Abbott, to resign from Parliament at the next election grow louder daily, Mr Insider as we read today: “Liberal Party statesman Michael Yabsley has called on Tony Abbott to quit politics to allow factional divisions to heal and to give the Coalition a fighting chance at the next federal election.”
    Turnbull resigned today, Friday, FGS Abbott the “dogs are barking’ you punch drunk fool!
    https://tinyurl.com/y9vnkkzz

    • Jean Baptiste says:

      What a killjoy and bumpkin that Yabsley is. No foresight whatsoever. Abbott will rebuild the Liberal Party to become a force to be reckoned with, worthy of his talent and ambition. His brilliance will only be appreciated when we successfully conquer Indonesia, China and Russia and other non God fearing nations.
      Stop bleating you effete girls blouse and get behind the man who will lead us to our very own manifest destiny.
      All hail Tony.

  • Henry Donald J Blofeld says:

    Great read, Mr Insider I concur 100%, the death march or death rattle of the Federal Liberal Party has begun, and some time ago too. Ex ousted PM Tony Abbott is indeed the Wrecker he is painted by so many, the Kevin Rudd of the Libs.
    The tough thing now for PM in Waiting, Bill Shorten is not to make too many gaffes between now and election time and if all goes well for Labor they should win in a massive swing with the Coalition of Chaos, the Lib/Nats, consigned to the Political Wilderness for a long time imho.

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