Rob Oakeshott

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

Typical of the whinger and sanctimonious. Promise the world and deliver the same bile their predecessors did, with a lot of extra sanctimony. They probably eat organic food and drive a hybrid car. Next Rob Oakeshott will be calling out “Chicken” in the house.

This will be a different Parliament” Rob Oakeshott claimed when he announced he would swing behind Labor and make Julia Gillard Prime Minister, again, after the 2010 election. ”We believe in the ‘Sunshine Test’.” And Gillard responded: ”So let’s draw back the curtains and let the sunshine in, let our Parliament be more open than it was before.”

The independents have long claimed that if only the Parliament were not controlled by members of any one political party it would operate on a higher plane. Likewise, feminists promised that as more women entered Parliament they would civilise the place and reduce confrontation in favour of co-operation.

Now we have the double – a female Prime Minister kept in office by independents. So does this mean the 43rd Parliament will be remembered as the Sunshine Parliament? Hardly.

More likely it will be remembered as the Sleaze Parliament. The Speaker cannot sit because he is dealing with allegations of travel rorts and sexual harassment.

Electoral bribes don’t work:

THEY’RE Parliament’s billion-dollar men – between them securing almost $1 billion in new funding for their electorates in just over a year. But despite it all, they are in dire danger of losing their jobs.

Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott – two of the three independents who supported Julia Gillard to form government – have won a list of projects for their regional NSW electorates, already totalling more than $820 million by the Herald‘s calculation and with announcements on another $1.1 billion in regional spending still to come.

Their agreement to form government guaranteed the pair – and their fellow independent Andrew Wilkie – three grants worth $456 million, more than a third of the total $1.3 billion handed out in a special ”regional priority” round of the Health and Hospitals Infrastructure Fund, once the projects met certain criteria.

The other 111 grant proposals from around the country that also met the criteria, together requesting more than $2 billion, had to fight it out for the remaining $840 million.

But according to the latest Newspoll, despite the largesse and special treatment, Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott have suffered a dramatic decline in support, with voters in their electorates overwhelmingly opposing their decision to vote for the carbon pricing scheme.

Bribes don’t work, just like here where NZ decided against more bribes from helen in 2008, and doesn’t seem to be listening to Phil’s bribes in 2011