- Bligh unveils 20-year infrastructure plan
- Torres Strait pleads for climate change action
- Overcrowding in parliamentary precinct worsens, Opposition says
- Minister apologises for 'boisterous' comment
- Junee senator questions Australian Quarantine rules
- Carbon price 'disastrous' for mining companies
- Local MP urges PM's carbon tax tour to visit Riverina
PM says he can keep Government, but does not believe it
The Prime Minister has said overnight that he believes he can win Government this election, however leaked polling data by the Liberal Party's preferred polling service, Crosby Textor, shows a different story. While Crosby Textor have been going to some lengths to suppress information arising from the leak, their advice to the Prime Minister is that winning the election is an impossible task and that all he can hope to do is limit the size of the loss.
Given the Prime Minister's track record of ego-driven behaviour, the possibility of going down alongside Stanley Bruce as the only Prime Minister to lose his seat in an election is likely to affect his behaviour. He can therefore be expected to spend a lot more of his time in Bennelong than he normally would, given the serious threat posed by the ALP's Maxine McKew. If he does not, this will be a signal that he has written off Bennelong entirely and that he believes that his only prospect for reducing the damage to his historical image is to spend time trying to save other seats to reduce the size of the loss.
Even if the Prime Minister is re-elected in Bennelong, he will inevitably resign from Parliament shortly after losing the election, forcing a by-election in Bennelong. As a result a vote for John Howard in Bennelong is a vote for a by-election. Unless Bennelong voters are determined to suffer a second election campaign and a second day of voting, this makes it more important to be familiar with the other candidates in this election. The question for Bennelong voters is not so much "Liberal or Labor" as "which of the candidates do we want who will be sticking around after that election." This question necessarily excludes John Howard.
Between now and the election I will be attending as many candidate forums as I can and blogging about them here. Readers should also try to keep up with the Politics pages in the Northern District Times &emdash; once the election is called the NDT will be running a weekly series of columns where they ask a question of all declared candidates and publish the responses.