A brief note to say that a new Galaxy poll has come out tonight, giving a 51-49 lead to the Liberal National Party over Labor. It only works out to be a one-percent swing on both the primary vote and the two-party-preferred figure from the last poll, with the primaries on 44% LNP and 41% ALP.
Of course, the swing is too small to be statistically significant, but it does confirm what last week’s poll first said, that this race is incredibly close.
More discussion at Pineapple Party Time.
Via Daily Kos, former US Ambassador to Canberra Tom Schieffer has announced that he is considering a bid for Governor of Texas as a Democrat. The Texas gubernatorial race is turning into a fierce race on the Republican side between incumbent Rick Perry and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. It is believed that Hutchison would win the general election if she wins the primary, while Perry would be vulnerable.
Schieffer is a close friend of former President George W. Bush, although he was previously elected to the Texas House of Representatives. You would have to say, however, that he would have to be considered amongst the most conservative Democrats, which might fit perfectly for a statewide Texas election.
Schieffer was the president of the Texas Rangers baseball club when George W. Bush was general managing partner. Bush as president named Schieffer as ambassador to Australia and then to Japan.
Schieffer admitted that he supported Bush over Gov. Ann Richards in 1994 and that he backed Bush in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. But Schieffer said he filled out his application to become an ambassador by listing his political affiliation as Democrat.
“I’m not new to the Democratic Party,” Schieffer said.
He served Fort Worth as a Democratic legislator from 1973-78. He was in the same freshman group of the Texas House as Republican U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is planning to challenge Gov. Rick Perry in next year’s GOP primary. Schieffer, 61, is the younger brother of CBS newsman Bob Schieffer.
It’s worth remembering Schieffer’s controversy when he was US Ambassador to Canberra from 2001 to 2004. He attracted criticism for intervening in Australian politics by criticising then-Labor leader Mark Latham in the lead-up to the 2004 election. He criticised Labor’s amendments to the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement in August 2004:
Mr Schieffer warned yesterday that US certification of the deal was no longer certain because of the Opposition amendments.
“The concern we have about the amendment is that … for patent law there’s an attempt to carve out a special exception with regard to pharmaceuticals,” he said.
“The concern we have is that if you were able to do that, then could you then carve out something later on for automotive parts or for this or that sector in the economy?”
The Opposition trade spokesman, Stephen Conroy, said Mr Schieffer had entered the debate without a clear understanding of what the Labor Party’s amendments were about.
“What Tom Schieffer’s comments suggest is that [Prime Minister] John Howard has negotiated a free trade deal that sells out the PBS [pharmaceutical benefits scheme],” Senator Conroy told ABC radio.
In March 2004, he also called on Latham to back down on his promise to withdraw troops from Iraq:
The United States has urged Opposition Leader Mark Latham to reverse his plan to pull Australian troops out of Iraq, calling it short-sighted and an invitation to more terrorist attacks.
US Ambassador Tom Schieffer told The Age that Mr Latham’s comments “could have very serious consequences beyond Australia”. Such a move risked damaging the US alliance and could assist terrorists accomplishing larger goals, he said.
“Just to summarily say we are going to pull Australians out of Iraq I think would be very short-sighted and very troubling,” he said.
Mr Schieffer’s comments indicate the depth of alarm within the Bush Administration, which is struggling to hold the coalition of the willing together in Iraq in the face of Spain’s threatened withdrawal.
Interesting to see if a figure with links to Australia manages to get elected as Governor of one of the USA’s largest states.
It’s a slightly old story, but the European Green Party, the umbrella party for all Green parties across the continent, have condemned the Mexican Greens for their position on the death penalty, and opened the possibility of Mexico’s Green Party being expelled from the Global Greens.
In February, controversy broke out within the Global Greens when the Mexican Greens announced that they would support the introduction of the death penalty for kidnappers and rapists who kill their victims:
Violent murders linked to organized crime – in particular the drug trade – are soaring in Mexico with nearly 6,000 people killed last year, double the number for 2007. As a result, Mexico’s tiny Green Party has decided to campaign for the reintroduction of the death penalty. The Green Party in Mexico is pressing for the death penalty for kidnappers who torture, mutilate or murder their victims. If this measure is adopted by the country’s legislators, it would reverse a 2005 decision to formally scrap capital punishment. It has been almost 50 years since anyone was executed in Mexico. More than 5,600 people were killed by drug traffickers in Mexico last year and analysts say Mexico is now the most dangerous country in the world for kidnapping.
The European Green Party, the most successful continental Greens federation and the only one formally constituted as a party, has condemned the Mexican Green Party (or PVEM) for this position, and have called on the Federation of Green Parties of the Americas to expel PVEM:
In today’s Australian, the regular bimonthly state poll for New South Wales shows a swing back to Labor from a catastrophic low of 26% in December 2008.
Labor is up from 26% to 30%, while the Coalition drops from 43% to 42%. The Greens have risen from 14% to 15%, which appears to be a record for the party. There was a big jump from the 5-9% range where the Greens sat during the 2003-2007 Parliament following the 2007 election, with all but one poll being in the 13-14% range, with the exception of the first poll after Nathan Rees took over from Morris Iemma, which put the Greens on 11%. This 15% is the first time the party has reached those levels.
I’ve included a chart showing the Newspoll performances of the Greens since mid-2003.
Elsewhere: Poll Bludger and Pollytics.
Via Possum, we find that Essential Research released a poll yesterday including questions about various issues, and one in particular has piked my interest.
Thinking about the Government’s proposed emissions trading scheme (called the carbon pollution reduction scheme) to address climate change by which the Government aims to reduce emissions by 5-15% by 2020 – do you think the Government should:
With this fascinating poll now out, I thought it would be a good time to plot out the lay of the land on the CPRS, which must be the biggest piece of legislation to go into the Senate in 2009. I’ll run through what I believe are the objectives during the CPRS debate for each of the players, as well as the state of the numbers in the Senate and what that means for the issue of climate change.
Then I’m gonna leave it open to you to give your thoughts on what are the consequences of this three-dimensional chess match. A stronger target? A weaker target? No CPRS? A delayed CPRS? A double dissolution election? Malcolm Turnbull being rolled by Peter Costello? Joe Hockey? Bronwyn Bishop?
A few bits of interesting information today:
Former AFL footballer, pornstar, mayoral candidate and general Gold Coast identity Warwick Capper will be standing in the south-east seat of Beaudesert, the same electorate that Pauline Hanson will be contesting. Capper, who formerly lived in the electorate, is being sponsored by men’s magazine Zoo and challenged Hanson to a cook-off, which she declined at her campaign launch, where she likened herself to another political outsider: Abraham Lincoln.
Centrebet is currently giving odds of $6.50 for Hanson to win the seat, with Capper on $41.
The favourite, paying $1.50, is 28-year-old Liberal National Party candidate Aidan McLindon, who has replaced retiring veteran MP Kev Lingard as the conservative party’s candidate.
Labor candidate and former soldier Brett McCreadie is the $2.40 challenger and Greens candidate Andy Grodecki is a long outsider at $16.
Over at Crikey’s Pineapple Party Time, Possum has assembled a variety of campaign ads, including this gem.
“Spoken by B. Obama G. Brown K. Rudd L. Springborg”. Awesome.
Tomorrow will see the first major elections in Europe since the onset of the global economic crisis. Up to four million voters in Spain will head to the polls to elect governments in the Basque and Galicia regions.
Spanish politics is fairly diverse, particularly at the regional level, where conservatives, social democrats, communists, and separatists all achieve representation. This election will be complicated by the economic crisis (Spain fell into recession last year), infighting within the main conservative Popular Party, corruption allegations and terrorist attacks by Basque separatists.
Since the restoration of democracy in Basque, in 1980, the Lehendakaris (President elected from parliament) has always come from the relatively moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV). The more radical left-wing nationalist parties include the Communist Party, Basque Nationalist Action, Democracia 3 Millone and Askatasuna, all of who have been banned by the Supreme Court due to their connections to the terrorist organisation ETA.
The PNV looks like it will lose its grip on power in Basque with voters flocking to the non-separatist Socialist Party, the regional party allied with Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party who is in government federally. The recession is playing against both the centrist PNV and the Popular Party as it appears the voters trust the centre-left Socialist Party to manage the economy. Another factor in the rising support for the Socialists is their attempt at negotiating with ETA, a critical issue in a campaign that has recently been marred by bombings.
The Basque Parliament consists of 75 members elected using the D’Hondt method of proportional representation which, with a threshold of 3%, favours larger parties. The Socialists are running neck and neck with the PNV in opinion polls but it looks unlikely either party will win an outright majority. The PNV will be hampered by the banning of other separatist parties who have in the past supporting them over anti-independence parties. Polls show that most voters would support a coalition between the Socialists and the PNV but this appears unlikely given the party’s opposing policies regarding Basque autonomy. The most likely outcome is a coalition between the Socialists and the Popular Party which could provide a majority of 40 seats, according to the latest opinion polls. This would be a remarkable result as both parties are historical foes and it would be the first time in thirty years a party firmly against Basque independence would be in power.
Galicia is the other region to go to the polls tomorrow. It looks like a relatively straightforward affair, especially compared to the mess that is Basque politics. The major issues have been the economy and corruption scandals involving the Socialists and the Popular Party. The Socialists, in a coalition with the Galician National Bloc, currently have a very slim majority of 38 seats against the Popular Party’s 37. The Popular Party is hoping that the economic crisis and rising unemployment will create a backlash against the government but recent opinion polls indicate the Socialists will increase their majority by at least one seat. A Socialist victory would reflect voter trust in the government to ride out the economic problems and jeopardise the national leadership of the Popular Party who have historically governed Galicia.
Update: With almost all the votes counted in Galicia, the Popular Party have secured a majority of 39 seats – wresting control back from the Socialist and Galician National Bloc coalition who won 24 seats and 12 seats respectively.
In Basque the Socialists made expected gains, picking up 6 news seats giving them 24 overall against the PNV’s 30. The other nationalist parties won 7 seats collectively. This means that the potential nationalist coalition will be one seat short of a majority. The Popular Party won 13 seats and a new, non-separatist party, the Progress and Democracy Union (UPD) won 1 seat. This could see a potential non-nationalist Socialist-PP-UPD coalition for the first time in Basque history. Negotiations are expecting to begin soon and given the nature of the parties involved (social democrats, conservatives and liberals) they could be a very bumpy ride.
Interesting trivia for today – After the leftist Basque parties were banned, their supporters were told to cast a vote for Demokrazia Hiru Milioi (D3M) even though the ballot would be void. More than a 100,000 voters did so and if you treat their votes as real votes, they would have potentially picked up 7 seats – giving the nationalist coalition a majority.
