Well I’m back from holiday. I’d definitely recommend Stradbroke for a relaxing break away from the world. The only problem I had was a lack of net access so I had to depend on the Courier Mail and the TV for my political news which only really gives you one view of what’s happening. I suppose I could have read the letters to the editor in the paper but I didn’t feel that it would be particularly enlightening.
I’m currently trying to rapidly catch up with everything that’s been happening. I unfortunately missed everything but the final ten-fifteen minutes of the debate but the reports of the debate basically tell me what I already knew: Rudd is a good debater and Howard isn’t. Brad can claim some kind of amazing victory by Rudd but Howard is a poor debater and he still managed to win the last few campaigns after losing the debate.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the worm. I think people end up looking at the worm result rather than look at what’s been said and the debating skills. It’s a tool for lazy journalists. Why do I care what 90 “uncommitted” voters think? I do wonder whether Nine might have made a tactical error in using the worm as it’s a long campaign and it might affect media relations between the Coalition and Channel 9.
In other news which I was not able to comment on: Rudd’s released his tax policy which basically includes the bulk of Howard’s tax cuts apart from at the highest tax threshold which will be deferred (which is a good tactic, because Labor probably won’t lose too many votes from high earners who would tend to vote for the Coalition), the introduction of a 50% education tax refund and a six year tax reform to reduce the number of rates of tax to three rather than the current four. The Coalition have released figures saying that people earning between $38,000 and $100,000 will be better off under the Coalition’s six years plan than under Rudd’s plan.
It will be interesting to see whether the Coalition can gain any traction from this issue. I think more people are focusing on the education tax refund side of it rather than the tax cuts themselves but the Coalition will use it as proof that the Coalition are better economic managers.
I see that Westpoll have released polls showing that Liberals are leading in two Perth marginals, Stirling and Hasluck and will pick up Cowan from Labor. Some are arguing that this is a rogue poll but it’ll give some hope to the Coalition.
The news that a Labor candidate has been forced to resign due to previous incidents of him acting as a union thug is probably not music to Rudd’s ears, especially with the Coalition’s focus on the “union menace”. I wonder whether the Coalition will use it for any future ad campaigns… I’m actually surprised that it hasn’t made bigger news but there you go.
That’ll do me for the moment. Things are certainly hotting up.
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