Tony wisely almost in hiding. With headlines like these being generated by the other side, little wonder that Tony Abbott has been taking things quietly. He didn’t need to say a thing to win the day.
It’s hard to tell which front page is more damaging. The report that three more former state Labor ministers are involved in yet another Independent Commission Against Corruption enquiry will surely lead some wavering voters to agree with Piers Akerman in the Daily Telegraph that: “If you create a cesspool it can only ever breed slime“. Try as he might to absolve himself from any connection with the damaged NSW Labor Party, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will find that some of the mud sticks when stories like these keep appearing:
- From The Australian: “Disgraced ALP powerbroker Eddie Obeid claims he actively lobbied members of the powerful NSW Right faction to support Kevin Rudd’s push to become the party’s leader in 2006. His comments back up claims by senior Coalition figures that Mr Rudd owed his rise to power to the powerful and scandal-plagued Right faction of the NSW branch. But they were vigorously rejected by the Prime Minister’s office last night …”
- David Penberthy in the Adelaide Advertiser: “It suits Kevin Rudd politically to posture as the angriest man in Australia about the squalid corruption revelations within the NSW branch of the ALP. It is too cute by half. The truth is that Kevin Rudd’s original creation and recent reincarnation could not have been possible without his own orchestrated and sustained suck-job to the people from the very branch he claims to despise.”
If you fancy something more serious for your political reading then click to Laura Tingle of the Australian Financial Review. Her “A pipeline of cash means election day is close” outlines the problems in providing gas to Gove and raises the fear that “it will be just too tempting for one political side or other to splash money around to sort this problem out”. It could prove, she argues, to be “a big test of all the ‘fiscal responsibility’ rhetoric we will hear from both political sides after Friday’s release of Labor’s economic statement.”
The pictorial week. A funny vest week for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd — a mixture of flak and fluoro gave him a win on our weekly photo opportunity scoreboard. It was the second clear weekly win for Rudd in a row.
The daily indicator dips for Labor. No surprise really that the market marked Labor down a little based on yesterday’s news stories.
This morning’s reading: Labor 26.5%, Coalition 73.5% – Labor down 1.2 pts on the day and up 6.2pts over the last 30 days.
News and views noted along the way.
- A place for everyone: Germany promises daycare for all parents — “A new law went into effect in Germany on Thursday guaranteeing every child over 12 months of age a slot at a daycare facility.”
- The agony of the Washington lobbyist-statesman
- Government requests for Twitter users’ data on the rise
- The living room makes a comeback, and it has technology to thank — “Ofcom says tablets and phones are bringing families together as viewers gather round TVs with handheld devices.”
- Ranking wines using the Shapley value — “Increasingly, economists and cultural critics are arguing that wine tasting is junk science. This column argues that the problem with wine tasting lies not with the impossibility to consistently tell a good wine from a bad wine, but with how the wines are ranked. If a new system of game theory-based rating and ranking, using the Shapley Value, was implemented, wine tasting might get a better hearing from its critics.”
- Wine tasting: Is ‘terroir’ a joke and/or are wine experts incompetent?
Who did Kate Ellis support in The Night of the Rudd Knives?
The SMH story also reports that ‘Apart from former treasurer Mr Costa, former planning minister Mr Kelly, and former waterways minister Mr Tripodi, senior Liberal Party figures, including federal senator Arthur Sinodinos and backroom fund-raiser Nick Di Girolamo, are expected to be in the spotlight given their former senior roles in AWH’, Australian Water Holdings, a project management firm owned by the Obeid family.
I noticed Arfur, and his party’s minder, Rupert, didn’t want to dwell too long on that association of his.
News Corpse is in danger of overkill. The more they make Rudd the hunted man the more the public will sympathise.
Truly, is anyone still reading their guff – or merely looking at the pictures?