Page MP Janelle Saffin hosts local National Disability Insurance Scheme forums in Grafton and Casino, 21 February 2012

Page MP Janelle Saffin has organised two National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) forums to be held in Grafton and Casino next week.

“I have said that I will keep the community informed on the progress of the NDIS and I am delighted that the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers, Senator Jan McLucas has agreed to come to Page to deliver the forums with me.

“The National Disability Insurance Scheme for Australia is a fundamental reform to how we respond to and provide care and services to people.”

“An NDIS means people with a disability and their carers having a say in how they are supported; it means making sure support reaches those who need it, and it means breaking down barriers to schooling, work and community life.

“I encourage as many organisations; people with disabilities; carers and friends of those with disabilities, to attend either of these important information sessions.”

“I know how important it is for local people that we get on with the job of building the NDIS and the forums will provide an opportunity for local people to stay informed about how the Australian Government is working with the States and Territories to push these reforms through.

“Many key local organisations have been working with me to make sure we had these forums here, including DAISI, and disability service providers Caringa Enterprises and Windara, RED Inc and others, and I thank them for their support,” Ms Saffin said.

The forums will take place next Tuesday 21 February 2012. The Grafton forum is at 10.30 at Caringa Enterprises and the Casino Forum is at 2.30 pm at Windara Communities.

Both venues have full access and if you would like to attend please contact Matt Dunne at Ms. Saffin’s electorate office on 1300 301 735 for further details. Bookings are essential.

[Janelle Saffin MP Media Release, 16 February 2102]

If my animals could vote in 2010?

If my animals could vote in 2010?

The dogs Blair and Tom would definitely be voting for Julia Gillard. She's a fine alpha bitch who got rid of the top dog and obviously knows were all the bones are buried.

The bathroom cat Venus would vote for Tony Abbott. He, like cats, knows that the world is divided into masters and slaves and how quickly he assured the big miners that his government would not tax them shows he respects the masters.

The goldfish think that the Greens have the best policies for them. The Greens are for a good environmental flow for all waterways and they have the kindest immigration policies - both these points are very important for foreign fish.

All the birds have agreed that they will put the Shooters Party at the bottom of their ticket.

Most of the geese will be voting for Family First since it pretends to be the moral majority. This falls in line with the unmated geese’s habit of attempting to disrupt the mating of any partnered birds.

The chooks are definitely swinging voters, they are keeping their cards and feathers close to their wishbones.

Arnold the poddy calf is still undecided; I think he's been talking to the chooks.

Original goose graphic

Causley gets a well-deserved wigging in run up to the federal election

Apparently there were a few surprised faces on the NSW North Coast when the Nationals former Deputy-Speaker and former MP for Page Ian Causley claimed credit for money promised by Kevin Rudd during the 2007 federal election campaign and delivered by the Rudd Government along with further funding to date.

On the strength of a conditional election promise by John Howard in that same election campaign, never delivered because he and his government were not re-elected, Causley claimed credit for $18 million in federal funding in his letter to the editor published in The Daily Examiner on 11 May 2010.

Labor supporter Bill O'Donnell called this ploy in the same newspaper on 17 May:

Preposterous Causley

WHAT an extraordinary letter by Ian Causley trying to claim that the $18 million being spent on Grafton Hospital was his initiative.

Let's look at the facts.

After 11 years in John Howard's government the Nationals had delivered next to nothing in health spending in Page.

In fact, there was a report in the Daily Telegraph by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in 2007 that between 1995/6 and 2005/6 the Federal Government hospital funding decreased from 45 per cent to 41 per cent, while state funding rose from 46 per cent to 51 per cent.

The fact is that after 11 years, John Howard turns up at Grafton Hospital a few weeks before an election he knows he's lost and says I've got $18 million for you.

He knows he doesn't have to deliver because he will be gone.

It was a ploy to try to save Page for the Nationals.

Mind you, that's after 11 years of nothing.

It must be galling for Hartsuyker and Causley to see Janelle Saffin finally delivering the $18 million.

Grafton Hospital upgrade is up and running, with an additional $1.2 million added on.

Fifteen million dollars at Lismore for Lismore Base Hospital for an integrated cancer care centre and $9.1 million for enhanced cancer care service, including second linear accelerator and cancer patient and carer accommodation.

Five million dollars for Grafton Super Clinic.

The list is too long to enumerate, and we're only talking about health spending.

This morning I heard Luke Hartsuyker talking on ABC radio saying he hopes the Federal Budget has money for roads and hospitals.

What hypocrisy.

What did he ever do for hospitals and roads when he was in government?

He cut one billion dollars from hospital funding and in 11 years only spent 1.1billion on the Pacific Highway.

Rudd Labor has promised $3.3 billion after two years in office towards finishing the highway's upgrade.

The fact is that in 11 years in government the Nationals were incapable of delivering anything to the Page and Cowper electorates.

Perhaps they were too busy holed up with Howard, Costello and Abbot planning to abolish the Industrial Relations Commission and to cut workers of their hard-won rights built up over 100 years.

I have a feeling the elephant is still in the room, if they are ever re-elected.

What a breath of fresh air to finally have a hardworking member for Page, with the ability to attract funding to the electorate.

It's a pity Maclean Hospital isn't still in Page because the National Party member for Cowper has shown us his ability to attract funding to his electorate for anything is non-existent.

BILL O'DONNELL, Maclean

"Please sir, will you pay for this anti-ALP brochure". Now which MPs said that?

This week the Commonwealth Auditor General released a report on the Administration of Parliamentarians' Entitlements by the Department of Finance and Deregulation.

What this reveals is one long rort of the $100,000 MP printing allowance by the major political parties for campaign purposes and a very lackadaisical federal department which did not adequately police invoicing for this allowance.

Happy little pigs in mud abounded in the run up to the last federal election - what with at least $125,000 each to play with at the time.

A little snippet in the report reveals that four unnamed Liberal pollies put in invoices for printing brochures called "Labor can't manage money. You Pay for it", which failed to mention either their names or electorates and seem to have originally been labelled by these MPs as "anti ALP" material.

The report rated these as a real risk of being outside the printing guidelines.

Now Google shows there's a long list of possible suspects ranging from big players like Nick Minchin and Christopher Pyne through to tiddlers such as Michael Ferguson and perhaps Jamie Briggs.

An enjoyable hunt the pollie game for the truly bored and tired of life.

More grief for 'Truffles' Turnbull

Last Sunday morning during the ABC Insiders program Chris Uhlmann referred to 'Truffles' Turnbull as having "strapped himself to the tracks in front of the gravy train", because of his somewhat silly threat to block the Rudd Government second stimulus package in Parliament when it was obvious to everyone that he couldn't possiblely mount the numbers on this one (indeed it passed through the House Of Reps and is on its way to a Senate vote in the next few days).

But Mal has other PR worries as well this week:
"Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says he is not the only politician to receive campaign funds from a controversial American billionaire.
Mr Turnbull received $76,000 from Fortress Investment Group director Peter Briger, to help fund the campaign for the Sydney seat of Wentworth, The Sun-Herald has reported.
Mr Turnbull previously held shares in the company associated with predatory lending practices in the United States, but offloaded them in 2007.
When asked if he would re-pay the money, Mr Turnbull told Network Ten: "You could well ask that same question of President (Barack) Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because Peter Briger was a prominent supporter and donor to both their campaigns."
According to The Sun-Herald, Fortress is referred to as a "vulture company" because it preys on vulnerable businesses and debtors and picks over financial carcasses....."

This is not the first time Peter Briger has donated to the Libs - in 2007 he gave $51, 000 to the Liberal Party in NSW, but nothing to the other major parties.
And, guess what, Mal me old china?
Yep, you appear to be the only Aussie pollie to directly get money from this Yankee billionnaire and former Goldman Sachs shareholder (along with yourself).

In February 2007 The Street.com said of Briger and other Fortress directors/shareholders (and presumably Malcolm Turnbull):
"When it comes to hedge fund company Fortress Investments(FIG Quote - Cramer on FIG - Stock Picks), one thing's for sure: Chief executive Wesley Edens and the other principals didn't get where they are today by leaving money on the table.
Fortress went public two weeks ago and doubled in price on the first day. But what investors may not realize is that the five principals pretty much stripped the company clean just before the IPO.
I don't mean they cleaned up the balance sheet. I mean they cleaned out the vault. Page five of the prospectus shows they withdrew $446.9 million from the company in "cash distributions" last year.
Plus another $409 million in January.
They collected a further $888 million on Jan. 17 by selling a small stake to Japanese bank Nomura(NMR Quote - Cramer on NMR - Stock Picks).
Oh yes, and they pocketed a further $22.8 million in the final weeks before this month's IPO.
A table buried on page 94 of the prospectus shows the remarkable facts. Between January 2005 and this month's IPO, the five principals of Fortress -- Edens, Peter Briger, Robert Kauffman, Randal Nardone and Michael Novogratz -- cashed out $1.04 billion. "That does not include the Nomura transaction," adds company spokeswoman Lilly Donohue.
Total withdrawn in the two years before they took it public: $1.9 billion. Most of that was in the final few months.
This isn't just every penny that the company earned over that period -- it's a lot more. By the time the owners opened the doors to the investing public this month, the company wasn't just out of cash -- it had negative book value. Liabilities actually exceeded assets by $507 million........"

Fortress Investment Group key executives as of 6 February 2009.

It's good news week

Over at Pollytics Possum Comitatus takes a squiz at population, age and two party preferred polling at the 2007 federal election:

"The patterns here are interesting – for seats that received a swing that was smaller in size than the average of 5.4% (which happened to be a majority of seats, as it was a chunk of seats with large swings that drove the average up), the percentage growth in the size of the 65 yr and older population in those seats was, on average close to the national average of the 65+ growth, which was 2.7%
However, in the seats where the swings to the ALP were greater than 5.4%, the percentage growth in the 65+ population increased above the national average as the ALP swing increased beyond its national average.
That black regression line tells the story – it tracks the national average in the growth of the 65+ age cohort until it hits the ALP swing average, than grows substantially as the ALP swing grows..
Further food for thought is that the people that moved into the 65+ demographic aren’t even baby boomers – it will only continue to get worse for the Coalition."

It's official according to the Parliamentary Library- the Internet didn't play a big part in the 2007 Australian federal election

According to the an Australian Parliamentary Library research paper, candidates standing at the November 2007 federal election did not make much use of the Internet during their electoral campaigns.

The Australian Centre for Public Communication at UTS reported that most candidates either did not use the Internet at all, or else used it in a very limited way. Within four days of polling day, one-third of Commonwealth MPs had not created a personal website, 90 per cent did not have a MySpace page and only a handful (6.6 per cent) had a blog. Fewer than six per cent had a Facebook site, a podcast or had posted a least one video on YouTube.[88] It was also noted that the most successful and innovative postings were those of bloggers and election commentators, such as Antony Green of the ABC.[89] All of which suggests that use of the Net by politicians has some distance to go before it is a major influence on electoral outcomes in Australia.

The research paper appears to wonder just how much new media might have affected the election outcome, but doesn't address the fact that many under 40s are now getting their political news from online news sites and blogs, if U.S. Pew Foundation survey results can be extrapolated to Australia.

Nor does it take into account the fact that traditional media in Australia is taking a hit from this apparent change of reader allegiance, with many advertisers bypassing print media according to the Australian Press Council.

The only thing proven by our politicians failure last year to widely engage with the Internet, is that political debate moved passed them and was mainly conducted without their direct input.

How dumb is Liberal Frontbencher Christopher Pyne?

Answer: As dumb as proverbial dog sh*t!

Today's Age reports that Pyne, the Liberal Party Federal Member for Sturt (SA), holds the view that the electoral system should be changed so that if a member of the House of Representatives retired, his [sic] party could choose a replacement to see out the term.

What a coincidence! Pyne is running with this line at a time when a number of coalition rats are gearing themselves up to jump ship despite having stood before their electorates not so long ago and declared their intentions of representing those electorates for the term of the current parliament.

Yes, Christopher, the election was only as far back as 24th November 2007.

Already, Peter McGauran, a Nationals' MP, has pulled the plug and created a vacancy in the Victorian seat of Gippsland.

Who'll be the next rat? Will it be Pyne's fellow crow eater, the out-to-lunch Member for Mayo, Alexander (of fishnet tights fame) Downer? Or, will it be the Nats' Mark Vaile, who has already done a spot of moonlighting?

Sorry, Christopher, but if your colleagues are not prepared to go the distance of a full term in Opposition and you would have electorates saved the expense of a by-election then a more palatable solution could be to have the candidate who finished second in the election fill the vacancy.

Of course, we could always require retiring MPs to fork out and contribute towards the expenses of the by-election.

Facebook digital board games helped win the Australian 2007 federal election?

A National Library of Australia staff paper The 2007 Federal Election and the Internet is quite firm on the point that the Internet is beginning to impact on federal election campaigns.
Election 2007 staff paper link.

It is clear now that the 2007 federal election can safely be adjudged as the first in which the Internet became not just the repository for information, but also a tool both to communicate policies with the public and to allow potential voters to in return interact in multiple ways with the parties and their candidates. It is impossible to say what effect this may have had on the electoral outcome, and assuredly as in previous elections not every voter would have visited an election website. However, the Internet is now and remains the only medium in which all those involved in elections are present. It is the only place that the general public can examine political parties' policies as the days of the printed manifesto or policy brochure are long gone. It is also therefore the place of record and as such needs to be preserved. Democracy requires the political process to be open and accountable, maintaining an archive of online election documentation, media statements and policies therefore is a vital component of that process.---

Unsuccessful and essentially pointless use of social networking was that by politicians who did not actually themselves create or maintain their profiles instead letting party staffers intermittently update them. The only benefit that 'friends' got from these sources was an occasional press release. However, many other less high profile candidates, particularly those who were not sitting, used the opportunity to create networks, communicate their views and motivate supporters. Successful social networking involves giving over something of your self, sharing interests and activities. Thus a candidate who was prepared to converse, take quizzes, play scrabble games and other quotidian activities on Facebook, was far more likely to develop friendships which could translate into votes.---

Blogs have been a feature of the Australian Internet landscape for a number of years. The blogosphere is now a mature feature of political discourse. However being mature has meant that political affiliations on most influential or popular blogs have become fixed and it is made very clear on most of them which political persuasion is dominant. On some of these blogs comment facilities exist only for those who agree with the blog's political line and discussion or dispute is treating as emanating from 'trolls'- trolls being the popular term for generally pseudonymous online agitators who enjoy causing controversy and baiting other users. However, it is also the case that a number of open forum websites and blogs are used not as a place for debate, but somewhere where interested parties (often un-disclosed party staffers) try to score points. Consequently, the more open arena for balanced and non-partisan comment and analysis was on the psephology blogs. There are a number of amateur and professional psephologists in Australia, most of whom seem to have websites and blogs. Some such as Possum Comitatus (http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-77602), Peter Brent (http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-42909) and William Bowe (http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-42908) maintain large sites continuously and have been doing so for a number of years. These sites cater both for voters or offer policy guidance but primarily provide election predictions and analysis of other's predictions and of other opinion poll derived data.

Meanwhile the Australian Electoral Commission supported Youth Electoral Study No. 4 looking at today's 'apathetic' youth was recently released. Study No. 4 link.

Besides a surprisingly high estimation of 300,000 18-24 year olds not bothering to sign onto the electoral roll, the study shows that while youth generally votes for the first time without a strong previous attachment to a specific political party, young women are more likely to reach their majority without this firm commitment and politicians are in with a chance with these women if they address social and environmental issues.

There is obviously a lesson or two for future election candidates in all this, as well as reasons for internet users to be cautious about political content.

Pollies spend up big on travel before leaving office

The Canberra Times (27/02/2008) details the extent to which our federal politicians spent up on overseas travel in the first half of the 2007 election year.

The Times reported:

Pollies spend up big on travel before leaving office

They were on the way out but they went up, up and away at our expense first.

Retiring politicians fill nine of the top 11 places of backbenchers with the heaviest use of taxpayer-funded overseas travel for the first half of the 2007 election year, according to Department of Finance figures.

Those leaving Parliament (seven MPs and two senators, who do not go until June 30 this year) shared in a total of more than $2.5million spent by federal politicians on overseas travel between January 1 and June 30, 2007.

Leading the retirees' pack (five Coalition, three Labor and one Democrat) was the former Liberal minister Senator Kay Patterson at $37,082.24.

Then came Labor's Ann Corcoran, already rolled for preselection for the safe Melbourne seat of Isaacs when she racked up $30,659.12.

She was followed by Liberal Kay Elson, who retired from the Queensland seat of Forde, at $28,540.14, ahead of NSW National Ian Causley, at $28,382.24. Mr Causley was deputy speaker in the last parliament.


The 13 government front-benchers totalled $1,663,673.74, well over half the $2,568,277.31 spent by all 226 federal Members and senators.

The portfolios that commanded that their ministers travel led the way, with former foreign minister Alexander Downer at $380,853.64, followed by former trade minister Warren Truss at $305,773.66, former prime minister John Howard at $238,809.55 and former defence minister Brendan Nelson at $222,056.04.

Read the report at:
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/articles/1191186.html?src=topstories

Nationals Chris Gulaptis 4 ever

After his defeat at the 24 November 2007 federal election, the Nationals candidate for Page Chris Gulaptis removed his campaign website from view on the Internet.

Presumably so that it would be unlikely that his words would be quoted back at him in the future.

Which makes the following from the NSW State Library all the more enjoyable.

The Gulaptis website was archived on 23 November 2007.

Chris Gulaptis - Nationals candidate for Page

This title is part of the "2007 Australian federal election campaign - House of Representatives election candidate web sites" collection.

Chris Gulaptis - Nationals candidate for Page was selected for preservation by the State Library of New South Wales. This title is not scheduled for re-archiving. The publisher's site may provide more current information.

Archived 23 Nov 2007 01:11

"Howard's End": bovver boys put the boot in

The Four Corners program on ABC1 last night, which detailed the Liberal Party response to the 2007 Coalition federal election loss, was a study of collective political denial.
It exposed a folie a deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six...... Abbott, Costello, Downer, Hockey, Minchin, McFarlane.

In Howard's End it is painfully obvious that the Liberals are still telling themselves that they lost the election because they had been in government for too long with the same leader and were not perceived as 'fresh'.
Only Andrew Robb came close to understanding why they lost when he articulated some understanding of the party's failure to listen to the electorate and it's abuse of Senate processes.

In their pathetic attempt to redeem themselves and distance the Liberal Party from its own failings, Abbott & Co. heaped blame on an intransigent John Howard as if he alone was responsible for loss of government.
The plain fact of the matter is that the Howard Government lost power because of the collective weight of SEIV X, Children Overboard, successive ministerial improprieties, its part in the Coalition of the Willing and war in Iraq, Immigration Department unlawful imprisonment and deportation of Australian citizens, AWB Ltd scandal, WorkChoices, failure to ratify Kyoto, abuse of parliamentary processes, excessive government spending on 'political' advertising, new sedition laws, the removal of habeas corpus from certain parts of the C'wealth Criminal Code, suspension of racial discrimination law in relation to the NT Intervention, and the sheer arrogance and insensitivity of its leader and his ministers.
This is by no means the entire list of the 'sins' which irked voters but it does cover those most mentioned in ordinary conversation.

The Liberal Party's ongoing failure to understand why it lost the confidence of voters is reflected in its current boast that it will use its Senate numbers to thwart the repeal of WorkChoices legislation and the abolition of Australian Workplace Agreements.

All in all, the bovver boys needn't have bothered - last night's foray into the media did nothing but confirm that the Liberal Party remains unfit for government.

Six new Victorian senators announced

The Australian Electoral Commission has announced that the count for the election of six Senators for Victoria was completed earlier today. 

The successful candidates for the six Senate vacancies for Victoria are (in order of their election):

1. Jacinta Collins (ALP)
2. Mitch Fifield (Liberal)
3. Gavin Marshall (ALP)
4. Helen Kroger (Liberal)
5. Scott Ryan (Liberal)
6. David Feeney (ALP)

Healthy rewards for unsuccessful NSW North Coast Nationals

Never say that losing at an Australian federal election doesn't have its advantages.
Taxpayers make sure candidates are not seriously out of pocket and in some cases may even award a healthy profit.
With independently wealthy Liberal Malcolm Turnbull rumoured to have partially funded Libs and Nats in marginal seats, one has to wonder if unsuccessful North Coast Nationals will end up making a slight profit on the whole political exercise.

Chris Gulaptis who lost in Page appears to be taking home around $77,317 in AEC authorised payment.
Sue Page who lost in Richmond seems to be receiving about $63,289.
In case you're wondering - that's a bit over $2 for every person who marked them as number one on the ballot paper.

What the 2007 federal election is costing taxpayers in little extras

According to a media release yesterday the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has authorised the first payment to political parties and candidates for votes received at the 2007 federal election.

The total of the first payment is $46,536,277.23. Payments have been made to seven parties and 15 independent candidates.

Payment is made in two stages. The first stage is 95 per cent of the amount due based on the number of votes counted as at the 20th day after election day. The second is the remainder due once vote counting is finalised.

Payments are calculated using an indexed sum per first preference vote. At the 2007 federal election, each first preference vote was worth 210.027 cents.

In order to obtain election funding a candidate must obtain at least 4% of the first preference vote.

At the 2004 federal election, the AEC paid out $41,926,158.91 in total to ten Parties and 15 independent candidates. The funding rate for the 2004 federal election was 194.397 cents per vote.

Below is a breakdown of the first payment of election funding for the 2007 federal election

AMOUNT AS AT THE END OF COUNTING ON 14 DECEMBER 2007

Name Amount ($)

Parties
Australian Labor Party 20,922,325.51
Liberal Party of Australia 17,222,359.78
Australian Greens 4,148,615.11
National Party of Australia 3,076,663.58
Pauline's United Australia Party 202,440.72
Northern Territory Country Liberal Party 160 719.91
Family First Party 133 965.51

Independent candidates
Nick Xenophon (Senate, South Australia) 296,627.70
Tony Windsor (New England) 105,217.86
Bob Katter (Kennedy) 64,919.66
Gavin Priestley (Calare) 37,979.71
Tim Horan (Parkes) 34,114.90
Caroline Hutchinson (Fisher) 21,141.74
Gavan O'Connor (Corio) 21,010.05
Noel Brunning (Forrest) 19,800.93
Aaron Buman (Newcastle) 12,655.91
Ben Quin (Lyons) 12,155.10
Cate Molloy (Wide Bay) 11,125.55
Ray McGhee (Boothby) 8 759.18
Rob Bryant (Murray) 8,727.25
Tim Williams (Macquarie) 8,270.34
Jamie Harrison (Lyne) 6,636.23

Total 46,536,277.23

Senate seats for NSW declared today

At 1.30pm today the following candidates at the 2007 federal election will be declared elected as senators for New South Wales:

Mark Arbib (Labor)

Helen Coonan (Liberal)

Doug Cameron (Labor)

John Williams (Nationals)

Marise Payne (Liberal)

Ursula Stephens (Labor)

 

Party representation at this election was matched with both Labor and the Coalition having three senators each.

Go Whalers!

 

Was the Coalition dishonest when in government?

At the declaration of the poll for the electorate of Page on Monday December 17 the unsuccessful National Party candidate Chris Gulaptis had this to say about the Coalition's loss:

"It's an opportunity for conservatives in opposition to make sure they represent us honestly."

Reading between the lines, one could easily arrive at the conclusion that Gulaptis thought that when the Coalition was in government its representation was something less than honest.

Quite honestly, that's rather easy to believe. Just look at the bundles of tripe the Howard government, and especially a number of its infamous ministers, served up for public consumption.


The Daily Examiner's report on the declaration of the poll is at:
http://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/localnews/storydisplay.cfm?storyid=3758647&thesection=localnews&thesubsection=&thesecondsubsection=

Few noticed Andrew Bartlett's leaving as Senate forms a new face

In all the blather surrounding the Kyoto conference in Bali there has been little time to notice that the Australian Democrats federal leader and Queensland senator, Andrew Bartlett also lost his seat at the 24 November election and will no longer sit after 30 June 2008.
One of the saddest outcomes of this election has been the demise of the Democrats.
They will be sorely missed on Senate committees.
November 24 delivered us the same old two-horse race in the upper house, with minor parties and independents holding the balance of power.
A list of senators announced as elected so far (final AEC list should be out later today):
Nick Sherry (ALP)
Richard Colbeck (Lib)
Bob Brown (Greens)
Carol Brown (ALP)
David Bushby (Lib)
Catryna Bilyk (ALP)
Don Farrell (ALP)
Cory Bernardi (Lib)
Nick Xenophon (IND)
Penny Wong (ALP)
Simon Birmingham (Lib)
Sarah Hanson-Young (Greens)
Ian Douglas MacDonald (Lib)
John Joseph Hogg (ALP)
Sue Boyce (Lib)
Claire Moore (ALP)
Ron Boswell (Nationals)
Mark Furner (ALP)
Kate Lundy (ALP)
Gary Humphries (Lib)

A blast from the past

Just for the record, this snap shows Chris Gulaptis (middle), who was the National Party's unsuccessful candidate for Page in the 2007 Federal election, providing 'advice' to the current State MP for Clarence Steve Candsell (left) and the former Federal MP for Page Ian Causley.

Whatever Chris said, it wasn't worth a cracker.

Andrew Robb almost admits abuse of Senate power led to Coalition defeat

Did I hear right? Yes I did. On the tellie last night Andrew Robb came close to actually admitting that the Howard Government abused its Senate majority and carried legislation further than was prudent.

This is the first time anyone in the Liberal Party has come close to voicing the underlying cause of its electoral defeat.

Perhaps the Coalition is finally beginning to face the truth about its utter disregard of the wishes of the Australian majority over the last eleven years.

Well, I can hope can't I?