ALP

The ALP is going down hard but there s a school of thought that suggests that a quick change back to the narcissistic Kevin Rudd may jut save some them…or if polls are to believed put them back in the hunt.

KEVIN Rudd’s resurrection as Prime Minister would lift the Labor Party back into a 50-50 fighting chance against Tony Abbott at the election.

But voters have urged Julia Gillard not to hand the job to him on a platter – rejecting Labor MPs’ calls for her to resign to make way for Mr Rudd.

An exclusive Galaxy poll for The Sunday Telegraph has revealed Mr Rudd would deliver a six-point lift in the Labor Party’s primary vote, saving up to 18 seats in NSW, Queensland, WA, Victoria and the Northern Territory including Treasurer Wayne Swan’s Brisbane electorate of Lilley.  Read more »

NSW Labor leader John Robertson writes to the Sydney Morning Herald about how he is setting about cleaning out the ratbags.

For NSW Labor, losing the 2011 election was devastating but not unexpected. Under normal circumstances, the ashes of that government would now be safely scattered out to sea. Yet two years later, the embers still smoulder.

Right now, the focus of NSW politics should be on Barry O’Farrell’s cuts to services and his failure to fix the state’s problems. Instead, it’s been on the Independent Committee Against Corruption hearings – and the allegation that a rogue Minister improperly granted mining licenses.

Regardless of what ICAC ultimately finds, I know these hearings have damaged NSW Labor. The cascade of negative headlines has been water torture for our members and potential supporters.

Labor is so much better than what the public have seen through the ICAC hearings and I accept my duty to return it to the promise of its founding principles.

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Robbo is a good bloke and doesn’t like ratbags, especially crooked ratbags like Eddie Obeid. John Robertson is moving to chuck Obeid out of the ALP.

It is the behaviour and activities of ratbags like Obeid which is seeing massive damage being done to the ALP.

Eddie Obeid has launched a ferocious attack on NSW opposition leader John Robertson, labelling him a “weak-kneed leader” over his “disgraceful” call for the controversial former Labor powerbroker to be expelled from the party.

Mr Obeid, who is awaiting the outcome of an inquiry into corruption allegations levelled at him and his family, accused Mr Robertson of seeking to have him expelled from Labor for personal political gain.

“I find myself the victim of the very party I served for 40 years,” Mr Obeid said on Thursday.

“The victim of a political stunt by a weak-kneed leader who doesn’t have the policies to take on the current government but wants to go back and apportion blame.”

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The Labor party is going to go down hard in 100 days at the Australian Federal election.

For more than two years, Rod Cameron’s pessimism about Labor’s prospects has been a strictly private affair. Although he dubbed Tony Abbott unelectable, the former ALP pollster remained circumspect on the challenge facing the party he served in more than 50, mostly winning, state and federal campaigns.

”I didn’t want to throw any curve balls in while there was a prospect that the party would do what I thought it would do – and that’s just act out of self-interest,” Mr Cameron explains. Now, ”more in sorrow than anything”, he is predicting an epic Labor disaster.

He is not alone. While the mood of the Labor caucus has been despondent for months, it seems that only now, 100 days from polling day, the gravity of what is in prospect is really sinking in.

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The ALP and Julia Gillard are in awful trouble in the polls and facing electoral annihilation.

Watch as Kevin Rudd loyalist, Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon reads from the party’s ‘manual’ about how to respond to bad poll results.

In terms of polling disasters you can’t get much worse than what is facing the ALP., where leaked polling data shows that a bloodbath is imminent and Kevin Rudd might be the last little vegemite left standing.

Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan looks set to lose his Brisbane seat of Lilley, with internal polling suggesting Labor will struggle to retain any Queensland seats at the September 14 federal election.

In a result even worse than the 1996 ”baseball bats” election, when Labor was reduced to two of the then 26 seats in Queensland, Labor may retain only one MP – former prime minister Kevin Rudd.

The Queensland polling, taken in recent weeks in Mr Swan’s seat of Lilley, is believed to show Mr Swan’s primary vote has collapsed to just 28 per cent, compared with 41 per cent at the last election.

Mr Swan has held the seat since 1998, although at the last election his margin narrowed from 8 per cent to 3.2 per cent, with a 10 per cent fall in his primary vote.

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Julia Gillard and Labor are stuffed in Australia, even the lobbyists have abandoned them. Julia Gillard is becoming Julia No mates.

Political lobby groups have deserted Labor and are flocking to the opposition while preparing for an expected change of government in September.

Labor-aligned firms are downsizing and those more associated with the Coalition are expanding, but even organisations that walk the middle ground have stopped knocking on the government’s door.

”There is nothing in it for us now to be in the government’s ear and in front of ministers and their staff on behalf of our clients,” one lobbying firm executive said.

”They’re not going to be in government much longer so our focus has changed. There is still a little bit of tokenistic representation to Labor, but really we don’t put much effort into it.”

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The former Labor party ratbag Craig Thomson is facing yet more fraud and theft charges. I’ll say this though, he has more cheek than a fat man’s bum to still continue as an MP.

Former Federal Labor MP Craig Thomson – accused of using a Health Services Union credit card to pay for prostitutes – has appeared in court today to face 19 fresh charges.

Mr Thomson, 48, who last week announced he would stand as an independent for his NSW seat of Dobell at the September federal election after being suspended by the Labor Party, appeared briefly in the Melbourne Magistrates Court charged with a total of 173 fraud and theft offences.  Read more »

Kevin Rudd is starting up the rumour mill again after his last cowardly leadership challenge. He always does this with a bit of seeding from the back benchers who then leak to outside sources.

Senior Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne says a Labor source has told him Kevin Rudd will again challenge for the leadership in June.

Mr Rudd this week revealed he now supports gay marriage, having voted against it in parliament in 2012.

Mr Pyne told ABC radio on Wednesday the change of stance on gay marriage was a signal Mr Rudd intended to challenge Prime Minister Julia Gillard.  Read more »

The ALP is full of ratbags, union ratbags, dodgy ratbags but all ratbags nonetheless. A little law change here, another there, some bribes and rots over there, and their mates score over $1 billion in windfall profits.

Former resources minister Ian Macdonald introduced legislation which overruled the highest court in NSW and resulted in a $1 billion windfall to two mining executives who have been under the scrutiny of the Independent Commission against Corruption.

Travers Duncan and Brian Flannery had owned the Moolarben coalmine near Mudgee for more than 30 years. But it was not until the Labor government intervened that it made a big profit.

The NSW Court of Appeal had ruled they could not mine at Moolarben because the lease encroached on a lease held by mining giant Xstrata.

But after the court decided, in August 2008, they could not mine at Moolarben Mr Macdonald stepped in to champion Mr Duncan and Mr Flannery’s cause.

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