Labor strategists once again read the mood of the voting public totally wrong, this time in the QLD State elections. Since Rudd's landslide Federal election victory in 2007, which at the time left (the new Premier of QLD) Campbell Newman, the then Liberal Lord Mayor of Brisbane as the highest ranking Liberal official in Australia, Labor has lost WA, VIC, NSW, has gone into minority governments supported by Greens in TAS & Federally, and now been annihilated in QLD.
"Voters with baseball bats", a phrase coined by journalists describing the likelihood of Gillard Government's annihilation in the next Federal election was changed to "voters carrying chain saws on the day of QLD Elections" by early saturday evening shortly after the first exit polls.
The Liberal National Party (LNP) is expected to win anything up to 78 seats in the parliament consisting of a total of 89 seats leaving Labor with a mere handful of seats after accounting for the 4 independents/Kettar members. The optional preferential voting system made this defeat even worse than the disastrous in NSW in 2011, where the preferential voting system meant 80s of greens & independent votes flew to Labor.
Forget about the so called faceless men of Labor, popularly held responsible for the sad & sorry state of the Party & its brand name! It is even more tragic to see the public faces of the Party still in denial, at least publicly, about the urgent need of structural and personnel reform in the Party.
And here's the main point of my blog: The urgent restructuring of Labor Party, which is regrettably being denied by self interested powerbrokers in the Party, is an imperative & urgent matter for the political survival of the Party as well as our two party based democracy. Labor owes this to the Australian public! The future of the Party and more crucially the health of our democracy depends on a reformed, viable & relevant Labor Party.
Nobody will benefit from a democratic system when one party has an overwhelming majority! believe it or not, history shows politicians will misuse that power to the determent of the voters!
