At the time Krudd was still enjoying the honeymoon period of his reign. But I had been reading and analysing Labor policy for some time, and could see they were totally insincere about things such as climate change. One the one hand, in their glossy brochures, they SAID they were 'committed' to addressing it but on the other they were going full-steam-ahead (literally) with coal-fired power and road-based transport.
Now the house of cards has tumbled down. All it took was an opposition leader with cut-through, and continued bad advice to Krudd from his NSW-right advisers.
The government's repeated moral cowardice and backflips have, to their surprise, resulted in a landslide collapse in the opinion polls and The Greens have mopped up the benefit. Now the political discourse, which used to be exclusively about the big two parties, includes The Greens with daily analysis in the major media and even two polls about whether Bob Brown should be included in the next leaders' debate.
The SMH poll was running well into 'yes' territory and Murdoch news was running about 50-50 last time I looked.
With the Lib-Dems sharing power in the UK and The Greens sharing power in Tasmania, The political frame has changed. The traditional two-party power split is unravelling. And Bob Brown is finally capitalising on his steady-as-she-goes media presence, a voice of reason in the maelstrom, someone people would trust to have the balance of power in the Senate.
Krudd's attempts to get out of it with the mining tax has not worked either, because it has stirred up a hornet's nest of well-funded opposition from the miners, yet there was no grassroots popular demand for it in the first place, regardless of whether or not it is a good idea.
I note that Senator Conroy's internet filtering has been almost entirely overlooked in the press in all discussion about Rudd's fall from favour.
ReplyDeleteI would have thought this would have been as significant a reason as the mining tax and ETS to turn people away from Labor. If not more so.
I agree, which is why I published a story yesterday
ReplyDeletein the City News suggesting that the new wowserism is taking us back to the 1950s what with people's computers being confiscated at airports now for containing legal pornography, ministers being followed to sex clubs and Conroy's thought police briefing Customs officers that X-rated films featuring women with small breasts should be blocked in case viewers might imagine they were under-age.
No doubt he likes silicone-enhanced monstrosities.