WOW, maqqa you really do live in a state of fear. What will you do when the polls start to turn and the world does not end as Abbott has said. Things really are on a knife edge for you, if anything goes right for labour your sunk. I suppose you will simply disappear and re-emerge as 'i told you so" or some other name.

Oakes is an idiot and Abbott is a fear mongering liar..checkmate  

Maqqa wrote on Jul 30^th, 2011 at 2:52pm:



Oh now you are stooping to the literal when it suits your narrow minded retoric.

Abbott has made it clear on more than one occasion that;

• The coal industry is finished and will collapse and fold.
  
  • Minning will leave and we will loose everything
    
    • the whole economy will be sunk
      
      • climate change is rubbish or not depending on who he is speaking to.
      
      I could do some looking through old reports for some specifics but you know them all so well as you use them regularly to try and justify you superstitious nonsense.

Abbott's charm offensive falters

   * John Ferguson
   * From: The Australian
   * July 30, 2011 12:00AM

TONY Abbott and Ted Baillieu have got a thing going. Tony the younger likes running and riding bikes. Ted the elder -- for reasons only he can explain -- likes swimming in mid-winter Port Phillip Bay.

When the federal Liberal leader and the Victorian Premier combine on the campaign tread-mill they frequently challenge each other to a competition, but so far both have quite sensibly chosen to stick to their strengths.

This banter is becoming more frequent as Abbott's raids into Julia Gillard's heartland become more regular, but Liberal insiders are starting to wonder whether Abbott will need to take up Australian Rules to cut through to a surprisingly sceptical electorate.

For the party is confused about why Victoria is taking an apparently long time to warm to Abbott; so much so that strategists are trying to nut out a plan that will help encourage disaffected Labor voters to swap sides.

"It's just different down here," says one Liberal insider."What they like about Tony in NSW and Queensland doesn't work here."

The common example is illegal immigration, which is a red-hot issue on the eastern seaboard but not in the nation's deep south.

The recent re-emergence of industrial relations reform as a topic of Liberal conversation is another issue that is more complex in Victoria, perhaps because of the institutionalised acceptance of a mobilised workforce and the fact the construction industry so readily deals with the unions.

In many ways, Victoria saved Labor at the last election. While the most recent Newspoll improved slightly for Labor, it still pointed to a national rout of the Gillard government.

In Victoria, however, Liberal insiders believe the vote still shows Gillard with a two party-preferred lead.

Senior Liberals also report while there is an improvement on the 2010 election result, there are difficulties bridging the gap compared with the rest of the country.

On the basis of present polling, the Libs would hope to win maybe one or two seats in Victoria, with landslide results elsewhere in Australia.

Two things, one observer noted, define leadership: likeability and respect. Every successful leader needs one and the giants -- think Hawke -- have both.

Those who know Abbott sign up to both camps; affable, bright and energetic. But it's not across the board and not necessarily shared by the people who vote in Victoria.

"Abbott is neither liked nor respected in Victoria," a senior Liberal told Inquirer, "just as Gillard is neither liked nor respected."

A post-election redistribution in Victoria hasn't helped the Abbott cause.

The Australian Electoral Commission has not released its analysis, but the ABC's Antony Green still lists the seats breakdown as 22 Labor, 14 Coalition and Greens 1.

Quoting the parliamentary library, margins on key Liberal seats, such as Aston, have dropped to 0.7 per cent, and Casey has fallen from 4.2 per cent to 1.9 per cent. McEwen, the so-called Black Saturday seat because it includes many of the fire zones, has become a safe Labor seat, its margin almost doubling to 9.2 per cent. Even once blue-ribbon seats such as Wannon in Victoria's west have dropped from 7.3 per cent to 5.7 per cent.

Labor's only main numerical concern is Deakin, which drops from 2.4 per cent to 0.6 per cent.

What is clear enough is that the redistribution has done little to help the Coalition cause.

There is an obvious response to the scepticism among some senior Liberals: much better to be in Abbott's shoes than Gillard's. Which is entirely accurate if you consider the other states and territories.

But in order to get the rout that Abbott will want, further inroads must be made in Victoria.

Labor strategists attribute Gillard's relatively strong standing in Victoria to her home-town advantage and the buffer that's given her.

And yet it still defies logic how the leader of a government so breathtakingly on the nose can manage to hold on in a state that former Labor leader Kim Beazley once said thought more deeply about its politics.

Whether or not Beazley was simply trying to ingratiate himself with a Labor conference several years ago, he may well be right.

Yet the core issue in Victoria seems to be the same as NSW: the cost of living, with high house prices leading the charge.

Cost of living is what senior Liberals believe swung the state election in Baillieu's favour in the last week of campaigning. Which is the issue that Abbott, via the carbon tax, has been hammering for many months.

It may also be Abbott just needs to spend more time in Victoria.

There is no doubt Gillard fails the barbecue test among all but the most rusted on, soft Left sympathisers.

Despite this, the state once known as the jewel in the Liberal crown is taking longer than many would have expected to embrace Abbott's charms.

Perhaps it is time Abbott followed Robert Menzies' well-worn path and started rooting for a Carlton premiership.

Maqqa wrote on Jul 30^th, 2011 at 2:56pm:



I voted Green coz they had a carbon tax..check mate..mate