It’s now the earliest part of Day 9, and the Newspoll is in: Labor leads the Coalition on a Two-Party Preferred basis, 58% to 42%.
That is landslide territory. The Coalition is in danger of being reduced to a stump. It will happen to the Coalition the way it happened to the CLP in the NT. Time and arrogance destroy all parties. Listing achievements does not win votes in the long run; a simple fact of human nature that John Howard is about the learn the hard way after his involuntary retirement.
Since the Coalition are about to reduced to a rump, what will this mean for Solomon voters? Well, you can probably expect a few years of being soundly ignored. Labor will spend most of its attention shoring up Western Sydney and seats in Victoria and Queensland against the 2010 elections. Solomon will get a bit of generous helping of pork, but Labor’s factional politics will keep attention on those states with numerical pull at the Labor National Convention. The NT need not apply.
Not that we had much pull with the Coalition either: David has been treated as a lovable but ultimately ignorable backbencher. Nigel Scullion has spent all his time playing Canberra as if he was playing Monopoly. After two terms in office he managed to get a junior ministry in an unpopular department. And that’s after serving as a National, who for all their song and dance about being underrepresented in Parliament are vastly overrepresented in Cabinet.
I’m biased, but I reckon that Solomon would be better off with a minor party candidate — like yours truly — who can cross the floor on anything in whichever direction best serves Solomon. I am personally of the opinion that what does well for Solomon does well for Australia and vice versa, which is why I joined the Liberty & Democracy Party in the first place. It has the best policies bar none.
Anyway, brace yourselves. The narrative of the next few days will be the worm and the poll. Like me many of you are probably sick of the election already.
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