The Hung Parliament
By JASON LOVELL
At risk of falling into some fiendish Bonzo pit-trap, I think phill Parsons
Monumental success and failure...
...that mist covering the eyes spread far and wide and caused the brain of Labor to go into neutral...
phill PARSONS
was too easy on Kevin Bonham's federal election article Greenage Daydreams.
Greenage daydreams ...
How melodramatic ... how politically immature
...
KEVIN BONHAM
While Dr Bonham's collation of figures was admirable, his decision to analyse a combined Greens/Democrats vote can only be described as irrelevant to all but himself. The claim that a vote for Dick Adams MUST be seen as support for the forestry status quo is also rather strange, but not as weird as the predilection with "trapping" others.
Assessing a party's fairly good performance by combining its figures with a totally separate party that has just been annihilated seems somewhat pointless to me - surprise surprise, an analysis of the combined vote reveals that both parties did badly. When analysing the votes received by one party, why add their figures to another party and average out the result? To fit a square peg into a round hole, methinks. It's a fascinating method; I mean, if I combine the casualty figures for Nagasaki and Washington DC post World War Two and average them out I get a result that suggests Washington DC copped half a nuke during the war. A great outcome, if that's the result I'm angling for.
I now read that this square-pegging effort was actually "a trap" which I think is either pathetic back-peddling or, more likely, some manifestation of white line fever. Very weird.
Dick Adams. Godfrey "Dick" Adams. Big Dick. If forestry types voted for Labor in Lyons while voting Liberal elswhere, as alleged by Dr Bonham, why was there such a big swing against Dick in Lyons and such a small swing against Harry Quick in Franklin? The real point of interest in the Lyons result was that it proved forestry is not the big ALP seat killer as predicted by all and sundry, including Godfrey himself. Bass and Braddon have ALWAYS been right wing Liberal strongholds and the recent election simply restored the status quo. Polling in these seats prior to the ALP's forest package revealed they were going to lose them anyway, so Lyons was the litmus test on the forests issue and Big Dick held it for the ALP by winning the popular vote.
The loss of Bass and Braddon raises the probability that the ALP has lost influence in northern Tasmania, a situation that translates into a hung parliament following the next Tasmanian election. So look out York Park, more money's a coming...
Finally, Dr Kev failed to address THE big question regarding Godfrey Dick
Adams:
"I've often wondered whether he sleeps with his whiskers out or under the
sheets."
[Jim from Lutana, 7ZR, 7/10]
tasmaniantimes.com social and political commentator Jason Lovell is a former student of Herr, Kirkpatrick and Felmingham. He also works as a contractor to the Tasmanian Government and several Government Business Enterprises and lives on 20 acres in the Derwent Valley.
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Thursday, October 28, 2004