The Opposition must have thought Christmas had come early when the Utegate scandal broke. It looked like they had delivered a gift to themselves. Sadly, it has all gone belly up, now that it has been revealed that Treasury official Godwin Grech, head of the OzCar program, might have had more at stake than a […]

Cross posted from What the people want Proposed and actual state government legislation to specifically criminalise particular bikie gangs and membership of them provides an interesting insight into the law and order debate. The first table measures general concern about bikie gangs. Percentage concerned about bikie gangs   Greens Labor Liberal Total Very concerned 1% […]

Never waste a good crisis is a good maxim. Tough times allow organisations to fundamentally re-engineer what they do. Many of our public and private companies understand that, and we’re seeing restructuring all over the place at the moment. Paul Keating, probably the best treasurer Australia has ever had, recognised it in 1983. Peter Costello […]

(Cross-posted from What the people want) Can Wayne Swan justify a $50B deficit? It’s a meaningless question in isolation. If he spends it on things that the public wants, then it will be justified. According to our polling about the only thing that the treasurer ought to consider spending on is infrastructure. According to our […]

The Rudd Government seems to have done something appropriate, and we should be getting a top of the line model for broadband. Fibre to the Premises should break the twisted copper grip Telstra has on fast internet. It might also open the door to wider use of microwave and satellite internet. At the coast we […]

Anna Bligh has just announced her cabinet, and contrary to my expectations it is fairly adventurous. No appointment is probably more adventurous than the appointment of my new local MLA, Cameron Dick. It’s very rare for a parliamentarian to be elevated straight to the ministry. Not only is Cameron my local MP, but I discovered […]

(Cross-posted from What the people want). Every pollster, including us, was saying that Labor was in trouble in the Queensland election. The predicted swing was in the realm of 7 percent. From what you can tell, internal ALP research also seems to have supported this. In our last poll it appeared that the “undecideds” were […]

(Cross-posted from What the people want) The Australian reports today on Newspoll research which puts the Liberal National Party in a small lead over the ALP. It’s not up on Newspoll’s site yet, but it confirms Galaxy and our own findings. Most notable movement in the figures appears to be the deterioration in Premier Anna […]

(Cross-posted from What the people want). Voters are bored and disillusioned with Labor – that’s the basic reason that the Liberal National Party looks likely to achieve at least a minority government after this year’s Queensland state election. It’s an “It’s time” election, but one where there is little sense that changing governments will really […]

Subliminal factors contribute strongly to election results. That intangible “I don’t know what it is, but there is something that I don’t like about x,” feeling only needs to affect one or two percent of voters to be significant. Labor’s handling of the subliminals in this campaign have been poor. For example, they’ve chosen formal […]