http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/15950456/struggle-for-labor-in-bass-p...

Polling in the northern Tasmanian electorate of Bass indicates the Labor Party may struggle to keep the seat.

ReachTel's poll of 540 Bass voters for The Examiner newspaper shows Liberal candidate Andrew Nikolic on 60.3 per cent and Labor member Geoff Lyons on 39.7, after preferences.

ABC election analyst Anthony Green predicts Tasmania will be one of the worst states for Labor at the next Federal election.

"The biggest swing against Labor is likely to be in Tasmania," he said.

"The party is in a great deal of difficulty at the state level and if that flows through to the federal figures, then the sort of swing you're seeing in Bass would occur."

"Bass and Braddon, the two northern seats in the state are usually the first two to fall when there is any swing against Labor in Tasmania and Labor lost both seats in 2004 and, on election night that year, the result in Bass and Braddon was the first sign that Labor was going to lose that election."

In 2007, Labor snatched Bass back from the Liberal Party and retained it in 2010 with an improved margin of 6.7 per cent.

"The Labor Party has come off, is coming off a very high base at the last election, they did very well," Mr Green said.

"They lost Denison but they certainly steamrolled the Liberals and the rest of Tasmania and what you're seeing is a correction to that very bad Liberal result, on top of a swing against the Labor Party elsewhere in the country."

"It's got to be remembered, the Liberal Party had their worst result in Tasmania at the last election in 60 years. It was the worst Liberal result in Tasmania for that long so the Liberal Party has got plenty of room to bounce back since the last election."

Mr Green says the method of the phone poll has to taken into account.

"ReachTEL is an automated polling system where they ring up and an automatic question is asked."

"Whether their two-party preferred has sometimes been a bit problematic but what they're measuring in that poll measures what is being reported elsewhere.

"The state polls for Labor in Tasmania which are produced by another opinion polling company are just terrible."

"There have been very few federal polls reported in Tasmania but all the talk is is that the Labor Party is in big trouble and Bass would be the first seat to fall," he said.

cods wrote on Jan 25^th, 2013 at 10:13am:



Bringing that old chestnut out again are we?
Don't you get tried of cliques?
Greens do not oppose backburning in cooler months never have, you & your shock jocks/Tele Hacks tried this crap with both Canberra & Victorian fires & it was proven false.

But Hey, what was my good mate Goebbels saying,

Quote:

Dsmithy70 wrote on Jan 25^th, 2013 at 10:25am:



*

Green arrogance burns fiercely
432 Comments | Permalink Miranda Devine Blog 
Miranda Devine
Tuesday, January 08, 2013 (6:45pm)

WHEN Julia Gillard toured fire ravaged parts of Tasmania on Monday she couldn’t resist opportunism - using the calamity to push a climate change agenda.
“As a result of climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events,” she said.

But the fact is Australia gets hot in summer - sometimes very hot - and if there is fuel on the ground it will burn. The more fuel, the wilder the fire.

Tasmania is a petri dish, demonstrating the consequences of green ideology run rampant. No jobs, the forestry industry on its knees, and bushfires feasting on fuel built up over two mild fire seasons. Yet, instead of facing up to their errors, the Greens conveniently blame climate change. They pretend imposing a carbon tax or destroying the coal industry will prevent bushfires, while reducing the actual fuel which powers the flames is “futile”.

Despite the lessons which should have been learned in Victoria in 2009, the fuel in Tasmania’s forests has been allowed to build up because of green opposition to fuel reduction burns, which they call “outdated, old school” and a “horrible blight”.

The state’s largest landholder, the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, last year planned 36 fuel-reduction burns on 10,000ha, according to the Department of Primary industries 2011-12 annual report. That would have been less than 4 per cent of the 2.6 million hectares it manages.

But it only managed to conduct 27 burns on 1927ha - less than 20 per cent of its target. In other words, prescribed burns were conducted on less than 1 per cent of land managed by the Parks and Wildlife Service.

“If I pulled my hair out any more I wouldn’t have any,” laments Phil Cheney, Australia’s foremost expert on bushfire behaviour, now retired from the CSIRO.

“It drives me to total frustration (that) governments are reluctant to spend money on preventative measures. They are great on helicopters flying around because it looks good. But they’re better off having a bit more smoke in the sky in autumn.”

Cheney says to manage fire you need a scientifically prescribed regimen of strategic light burns in cooler months.

That will reduce fuel loads which in turn reduces the power and intensity of bushfires. Cheney’s submission to the Victorian bushfires royal commission advocated strategic burning of 10 per cent of public land annually. The commission recommended an “annual rolling target of 5 per cent minimum of public land” - better than nothing.

Forestry Tasmania and timber company Gunns used to carefully manage their bits of forest and ensure fuel loads were kept at reasonable levels in order to protect their investment. When fires inevitably broke out their logging contractors had the equipment, know-how, and manpower to lay firebreaks and control the flames.

But the two organisations have been virtually destroyed by greenies determined to lock up forest as wilderness, ironically, all the better for total destruction by bushfire.

Forestry Tasmania has been under fierce attack from Tasmania’s Labor-Greens Coalition government, which plans to split it in two and bring it under the control of the Environment Department.

This victory for the Greens led to the resignation of Forestry Tasmania senior executive Ken Jeffreys last year after he sent a fiery email to staff saying the government planned “a public execution for Forestry Tasmania”.


how many people died in Tassy this year alone..

Dsmithy70 wrote on Jan 25^th, 2013 at 10:25am:


cods wrote on Jan 25^th, 2013 at 12:30pm:


REALLY????????????



progressiveslol wrote on Jan 25^th, 2013 at 11:08am:



Because non cooler months are Summer, a time when we try & avoid fires.

And just cause its winter doesn't mean we can just spark up the bush, are you people really this thickheaded or is it a put on for this place?

Greens do not oppose backburning in cooler months never have, you & your shock jocks/Tele Hacks tried this crap with both Canberra & Victorian fires & it was proven false.

I'm afraid you are wrong about this smithy. The evidence is overwhelming about green interference with controlled burning at all levels and in all kinds of organisations.

Dsmithy70 wrote on Jan 25^th, 2013 at 1:04pm:

You are part of the problem right alongside the greens.

hadrian_now wrote on Jan 25^th, 2013 at 1:34pm:




waste of time...had... the brainwashed dont want to read anything other than what the greens put out.. everyone else is out to get them... a bit like psycho...huff and puff about Devine... but prove everything she says is a lie... never..

Of course they say they support it but the outcomes give the lie to their words.
Greens hold sway in the national parks administrations and in many local govt bodies in areas of regular bushfire risk and events.
My information comes from a senior level in the rural fire service and that is to the effect that the brigades are regularly thwarted in attempts to conduct more than token backburns.