Mood:
sharpTopic: election Oz 2007
"I'm sick of them" said our gallery owning 'friend' in the 2005 byelection of the ALP's Ms Tebbutt to the lower house seat of Marrickville. "They [Anthony Albanese MP and spouse Carmel Tebbutt MP] are on $500,000 a year. I'm going to run against them."
But something happened on the way to that place. No nomination. No splitting of the ALP vote in the 2005 state byelection, and the marriage of left wingers and millionaire ALP aristocracy marches on ascendant to the popular Greens in the area ... so far.
Today in this election it's not the state but the federal seat of Grayndler with Carmel's other half Anthony Albanese. "The best you are going to get in the ALP" said one Green voter in his T-shirt last week riding his bicycle who didn't look like he was from the property classes.
Yep there is alot of hot air in Grayndler most of it from the comfort of a big fat political wage leading the poor people to the ballot box by the nose with sophistry. Even the local Liberal Party seem to have got tired of it and preferenced The Greens candidate Saeed Khan conspicuously prominent in the small business friendly indy suburban press The Valley Times.
Upward envy probably is a fertile area of campaigning for the Greens in relation to the ALP leaning poor folks. We didn't detect any rhetoric along these lines perhaps indicating the nice and fluffy nature of the Greens who may or may not adopt the "whatever it takes" attitude of the institutional ALP.
Take for instance the concern over greenhouse gases by Verity Firth in the neighbouring state seat of Balmain some of which presumably falls in Grayndler. The huge issue here as she knows are motorway tunnels and their inevitable smog stacks:
$5b secret road under Sydney | The Daily Telegraph
and massive diesel train intensification where apparently 1 diesel loco equals emissions from 6,000 normal trucks
Trains do the heavy lifting in plan to expand Port Botany - National
to be shepherded through by ALP colleague Albanese as Shadow Infrastructure Minister at the expense of his own electorate's health and amenity.
Verity Firth logically has been promoting the clean air "credentials" of brand ALP albeit from a state govt perch. Here she is 15th November 2007:
Sydney's air 'cleanest in 15 years' - ABC News
The New South Wales Government says an analysis of Sydney's air shows it is cleaner and healthier than at any time over the last 15 years, but says it may crack down on polluting lawnmowers.
The results come from an audit done by the Government.
Assistant Environment Minister Verity Firth says the data shows emissions of harmful air pollutants have decreased significantly during the period.
Ms Firth says the positive result has been achieved in spite of Sydney's population increasing by 23 per cent and 640,000 more cars being put on the road in that time.
"We're doing well but we do know that we have to keep the pressure on, that we need to maintain the momentum towards clean air," she said.
"We know that we need new actions to meet the ambitious goals that we've set for ourselves."
She says while the results are encouraging, NSW needs new measures to deal with the pollution that comes from equipment like lawnmowers.
"The interesting thing about lawnmowers is that a four-cylinder lawnmower pumps out as much pollution in an hour as four cars," she said.
"Lawnmowers are actually quite a polluting instrument so we will be working with councils about lawnmowers."
But Greens MP Lee Rhiannon says the data compiled by the Government cannot be trusted.
"Why we're saying it has been fudged is because we don't have accurate figures," she said.
"When you close down a quarter of the air monitoring stations in Sydney, you don't have sufficient data to be able to make a reliable assessment that the air quality of this city is improved."
So is legally trained Verity Firth BA LLB MP 'horsing' around with our lungs and our minds?
One notices the proxy contest with Rhiannon MP of the Greens already smelling a rat.
And sure enough even Jeff Angel of Total Environment Centre couldn't stomach the hypocrisy. Here he is 23 rd Nov:
Sydney's 'sewer' air quality | The Daily Telegraph
AS the NSW government praises itself for meeting four of six national standards for clean air, a leading environmental group warns the state faces an alarming future.
"In Sydney ... we've treated the air shared like a sewer,'' Total Environment Centre executive director Jeff Angel told the Clean Air Cool Climate forum in Sydney today.
Its air quality assessment has found NSW is "poor'' in several areas and exceeds emissions for ground-level ozone and fine particles.
Mr Angel blamed the breaches mostly on pollution from transport.
"What this means is we are not doing enough and we have to lift ourselves many quantum leaps to improve our investment in public transport,'' Mr Angel said.
The Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water, Verity Firth, disagreed with Mr Angel.
Hot air Verity? Firth strikes back with yet another grab at the air pollution cherry right up to the election day vote with a policy to be implemented by ....2015 .... maybe, with that nice (too?) slick John Watkins at her side, 23 Nov 2007:
NSW petrol stations forced to cut fumes - ABC News (Australian ...
which in 'true' ALP form is a rehash of this of the 23rd August 07
Plan to reduce petrol fumes in NSW - ABC News (Australian ...
Yep Grayndler is a worry.
One thing that will happen way before 2015 is a massive expansion and intensification of traffic via Port Botany with devastating transport impacts on Grayndler. But you won't hear that from the ALP this federal election. That's not in the business plan so reliant on tax revenue into personal income.
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As to the overall result we found Crikey.com.au yesterday for the first time this last 6 weeks made redundant by a later Newspoll than their usual middle of the day deadline. But even so we feel this late poll revival by the Howard regime of Thursday/Friday will like every other poll this year be checked by the contrary view or ambivalent big media press of Thursday/Friday/Saturday. In other words the ALP in a canter despite Howard's legendary chutzpah.
In a sense these last few days are a contest of competing Aussie norms: The power of the Big Media (which John Laws recently described as the real power) for Rudd overall, versus the traditional inclination for "right" as in Right governments.
Howard is banking on the second of these. Rudd the former because he is pretty right wing himself. Our faith is on the Big Media power but it probably is a close run thing. If Howard get's back the Big Media know it will not be good for the country and they would be right.
Picture: A red and white theme at the polling booth in the ALP held seat of Grayndler, matching the group's colours, Socialist Alliance, and by coincidence the Christmas theme front page of their enemies in the Big Meeja Daily Telegraph today (in turn echoing our picture report yesterday of an unauthorised "Xmas" signage late 2005). The SA perhaps do not fully appreciate that their creative paper mache can't have any effect in this safe ALP seat (Grayndler, Illawarra Rd/Warren Rd Booth Marrickville), or at most swinging to the Greens, in any case both non Howard results. Bennelong or Wentworth might have been more impacting? The Liberal How To Vote form does in fact confirm Liberal preferencing to the Greens, but not reciprocated.
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