Let Australia's US style Presidential Popularity Contest ……eerrrrr…….Elections begin!

As widely expected for the past few months, PM Malcolm Turnbull announced a double dissolution election for July 2nd last weekend.

And let's make no mistake about it: As his record so far stands, Malcolm Turnbull can only hope to win this election based on a US style Presidential/Personal popularity contest!

Malcolm Turnbull has been underwhelming to say the least since he toppled Tony Abbott last year & created a wave of national optimism.

He has demonstrated a mastery of political rhetoric & a less skillful political tactician than anticipated. The Government's foray to Tax Reform was of course the single biggest demonstration of lack of proper political process. The PM has jumped from one idea to the next & has quickly dumped one hasty thought bubble for another, causing embarrassment for his colleagues & in particular the Treasurer Scott Morrison.

Bill Shorten on the other hand, was totally hit for six by the popular wave of optimism following Turnbull's toppling of Abbott.

But to give Bill Shorten & his Labor colleagues credit, they have stayed united & focused on (mostly) policy issues & kept their nerves. Shorten has successfully narrowed & closed the huge gap in polls following the change of leadership & has highlighted the apparent lack of cohesive policy & decision making in the Turnbull Government to voters.

So as it is right now, and with a very long 8 week contest ahead of them, Malcolm Turnbull's best hope is to win a USA style Presidential popularity contest against Bill Shorten, because so far he has shown little substance to justify his challenge to replace Tony Abbott.

If eight weeks is a long time in politics, 8 weeks of election campaign must be even longer! Both leaders are bound to stumble & make mistakes during the course of the campaign.

But let's hope the Australia voters a) have lasting memories of e.g. Kevin Rudd's fruitless popularity  & b) remain interested & retain their focus during this long 8 weeks to scrutinise & ultimately judge the major parties based on their policies.

Otherwise, we will have a superficial USA style popularity contest based on media performance of our two opposing leaders!

Abbott, Hockey and the new Government, a case of letting everyone down with frugality?

It is the political norm for all newly elected governments to make the previous mob look incompetent by magnifying mismanagement, policy failures & budget deficits.

Tony Abbott & Joe Hockey are no different as political operatives & will make sure by the time May Budget comes down, everything is blamed on Gillard, Rudd, Shorten & co.

However, as Christopher Pyne's huge stumble (and Abbott's timely intervention) with education funding clearly demonstrated, Tony Abbott must be very careful!
Whilst in opposition, he had made commitments such as parental leave scheme, which will be very costly to fund.

Tony Abbott can not break his promises because of the successful way he totally discredited Julia Gillard over her Carbon Tax broken promise.

But at the same time & most crucially, he must not fund his expensive promises by simply taking away from other funding areas such as health & education.

If he does, he will at his own peril & will no doubt pay for it at the next ballot box.

Watch out Tony! Gillard Government is throwing out old problems & cleaning its act!

The upturn in fortunes that the foreign policy exposure Julia Gillard enjoyed in meeting the Queen & the US President Obama towards the end of last year has not abated yet.

Julia Gillard has finally started to demonstrate her political skills by getting rid of or finalising most of the unworkable policy promises that she made in order to save her political career after the last election.

The carbon tax legislation has been sorted out, Mineral resources tax is almost forgotten & the boat arrivals are off the front pages even though her policies in this area have utterly failed & Abbott & Morrison are trying their best to revisit the issue traction again. But most importantly, Gillard & her advisers have continued with their spring clean of poor policy initiatives & have got rid of her promise on the unworkable poker machines pre commitment nonsense to Andrew Wilkie by convincing Peter Slipper to become the Speaker!

The above matters should all start the alarm bells for Tony Abbott & his up to now effective negative strategy towards the Government. Gillard is making negative or troublesome policies scarcer for Abbott to attack. At the same time Abbott can not take much credit for many of the backflips by Gillard as his opponents are usually quick to point out that he at no time offers a workable alternative! eg in case of the poker machines Senator Xenaphon has pointed out exactly that!

Therefore, as I mentioned in my last post, 2012 may turn out to be a lot more troublesome for Tony Abbott than he could have anticipated.

In order to preserve the coalition's lead over the Government, Abbott must prove his leadership credentials to the voters, by demonstrating his policy vision in various troubled sectors of the economy, & by effectively countering the likes of the ambitious & out of control Bill Shorten, the PM in waiting! He must openly & directly tackle Bill shorten on the Fair Work Australia & commit to struggling businesses to change the more inflexible & stifling aspects of the legislation.

In short, whilst the voters may be waiting with their baseball bats to punish Gillard & Labor at the next election in 2013, they are yet to roll out their welcome mats for Tony Abbott! And he needs to give them enough reasons to do so! Being negative & short of alternative policies will not accomplish that!

Bill Shorten will do & say anything he can in his self promoting march towards the Lodge as a future PM!

Bill Shorten, the former Victorian State President of the Australian Labor Party and Secretary of the Australian Workers' Union (AWU) has to be THE worst ever heavy handed union powerbroker we have ever got stuck with in a position of power in Australia, and he sees himself as a future PM too!

His most notable achievement since getting elected to the parliament on the back of Kevin Rudd's popularity in 2007 is, ........, being one of the main architect's of the execution plot that toppled Rudd in 2010. And Bill Shorten did it for,...... the sake of Bill Shorten's advancement towards the PM's seat!

And there he goes again today. His sadly misinformed, ignorant, poorly timed & biased comments about the plight of retailing were an embarrassment to this incompetent Government. At a time when most retailers are reeling, who is Shorten to question their business models when as a union official all he did was making running business harder for small business?

And as for the Federal Government's contribution to the severe recession retailers are experiencing? They have not done anything to curtail unreasonable landlords & their fair Work legislation has made it totally inflexible & expensive for employers in retail sectors.

So, thank you Mr Shorten! Thank you for doing & saying all that is necessary to further your own career! Let's hope you never make it to the Lodge!

At last some good news out of Labor Party! But is it only good news for the time being?

Good news!...No, I mean Great News:

Karl Bitar the ALP National Secretary & one of the main architects of the disastrous Labor Election Campaign during last year's Federal Elections has announced his resignation from the position. That is great news, for both the Labor Party & Australia!

Karl Bitar (alongside Mark Arbib & the rest of the NSW Right powerbrokers) left NSW in the sorry state that it currently is for greener pastures of the Federal politics a few years ago as the Labor National Secretary (Mark Arbib got himself on top of the Senate ticket from NSW & became a Senator in 2007).

Bitar, Arbib, Shorten & the rest of the so called faceless powerbrokers then advised PM Kevin Rudd in early 2009 to drop his "Greatest moral challenge of our generation", ie his ETS policy & subsequently lost him all credibility, and then proceeded to execute him as we all know.

Amazingly however, Bitar & Arbib arrogantly refused to take any responsibility for Labor's poor showing in the last Federal election & to this day remain unaccountable for their poor track record in NSW & Federal politics.

Therefore it is great news that Bitar is quitting his post! But don't be fooled by his "family reasons" rhetoric. Of course politicians' families do sacrifice a lot & I am not disputing that for a moment, and Karl Bitar's young family are no exeption.

What is worrying about Bitar's resignation is if his real motive is to position himself for a cushy Senate seat or a safe Labor seat in the Lower House in the next Federal election, as Arbib, Bill Shorten, Greg Combet, Doug Cameron & countless other high ranking union officials have done in the past.

So watch this space! If Karl Bitar is simply resigning in order to get into the next Parliament, the news is not as good as it seems on the surface!