Scummo still stinking up Berejiklian

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Via Domain:

When NSW Opposition leader Luke Foley spectacularly resigned from Parliament amid a sexual harassment allegation, Labor strategists were bracing for a hit.

…Yet Labor has not only recovered but is ahead. The latest Herald poll, conducted across the state on the weekend, has Labor leading the Coalition 51 to 49 on a two-party-preferred basis.

John Hewson has it:

The Victorian election wasn’t just lost on state issues. Any objective assessment of Labor’s Daniel Andrews would say that he carried a lot of baggage. He was a dithering Premier, at best, costing the state dearly in jettisoning road projects, failing to deliver on a host of other promises, with a string of his ministers and their staff having rorted the electoral system, and operating as a total captive of the union movement. Why was all this ignored, so decisively, by the Victorian voters?

What caused the unexpected collapse in Liberal support in such taken-for-granted strongholds as Caulfield, Brighton, Hawthorn and Prahran? It’s not enough to fall into denial – to blame state issues, or refer to Victoria as Australia’s Massachusetts. It’s nearly a third of Australia.

The reality is that the Liberal brand is damaged. The party is now characterised by disunity and disloyalty, by tribalism, not by principle or policy but by personal interests – not even party interests and certainly not the national interest.

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Why is the brand damaged? The bedrock of it is not climate change, it is the income recession which the Liberal Party has made much worse via excessive immigration and overly friendly business policies:

That led to the collapse of Tony Abbott’s polling. When the same polities were sustained under Malcolm Turnbull it led to the collapse of his polling as well stoked the rise of One Nation in QLD.

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From there we tipped into internecine party politics which included climate change failures.

Berejiklian’s total failure to come to grips with the Sydney crush-loading, and her late turn on that subject, appears to have come too late. She could well lose to an empty chair.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.