Bagging a green vote. The fascinating thing about the Tasmanian State election is that almost certainly there will not be a winner. While the Liberal Party looks like easily getting the most primary votes it is unlikely to win the 13 seats it needs to govern in its own right from the five electorates which each return five members. Labor, although likely to record one of its lowest votes in history, is still favoured by the market to continue in office with some kind of support from the Tasmania Greens.
It is bound to be a very unstable arrangement because on forestry matters, the preservation of which is the fundamental issue for the Greens, Labor parliamentarians cannot do a deal without splitting their own party. As for the Liberals they will not even countenance talking with the dreaded Greens.
The best the Liberals can come up with is to attempt to lure a few potential environmentally concerned voters to their side by raising the spectre of government chaos if they do not manage a majority in their own right and by tossing in a few green policies of their own. So it was that yesterday leader Will Hodgman promised plastic bags would be banned within two years if he wins power in March. In a Liberal Tasmania shoppers would be able only to use biodegradable plastic bags, re-usable or paper bags.
Naturally Mr Hodgman dismissed suggestions that the announcement, and another Liberal policy to resurrect the axed Department of Environment, Parks, Heritage and the Arts, was an attempt to grab the green vote.
“This is mainstream, sensible policy,” the Hobart Mercury quotes him as saying. “There are all sorts of reasons why this sort of policy is about delivering practical outcomes, protecting our waterways. “The Greens don’t have a monopoly on environmental policy.”
Protecting the pizza. It won’t be long now before the European Union starts attacking your local pizza parlour for using the word Neapolitan to describe its offerings. The pizza producers of Naples this week succeeded in getting their local speciality given the Traditional Speciality Guaranteed label by the EU bureaucrats. The label is designed to stop pesky outsiders from using the word Neapolitan unless their product is vetted by a special commission that will check standards. These include using only San Marzano tomatoes and fresh buffalo mozzarella cheese.
South Australian Labor Shouldn’t be Too Worried. SA Premier Mike Rann should not be too worried that the Adelaide Advertiser‘s latest opinion p0ll shows the election race getting closer. The biggest problem for a long term government often is the public perception that it will win easily. The Tiser poll now has the gap on a two party preferred basis closing from 14 points to four — 52 Labor to 48 Liberal.
I am not aware of the track record of these polls, which have a relatively small sample size of 539 voters, but that there has been some narrowing of the gap was suggested by the speed with which Labor moved to defuse the controversy over internet blogging.
A little warning from Treasury. It is unusual for the Paris-based OECD to make a comment about one of its member countries without having the view vetted first by the member’s own officials. Thus we can perhaps conclude that there is within the Treasury in Canberra a growing concern about Labor’s national broadband roll out. The Australian this morning had the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Australia desk, Claude Giorno, calling on the Rudd government to apply more rigorous cost-benefit analysis to its infrastructure spending, including the $43 billion broadband network. The paper quoted Mr Giorno saying “questions need to be answered” about the network because of the amount of spending involved and the apparent lack of any cost-benefit analysis.
I am not surprised that the OECD has raised issues with Labor’s $43b NBN proposal questioning “the amount of spending involved and the apparent lack of any cost-benefit analysis”. Ever since Stephen Conroy advised that the new national broadband network will be provided at “no greater cost than existing services” because the NBN will be a “general access wholesale network.” and not selling direct to the public would indicate that the government is planning a massive cross subsidy. This of course assumes that this proposal has had some comprehensive financial modelling.
Any serious financial analysis of the $43 billion expenditure and the required rate of capital servicing and capital amortisation shows a per capita cost well in excess of current service provision costs. The total cost per point of utilisation will increase, and if user charges do not increase, a public cross subsidy is the only alternative.
If as reported by Kenneth Davidson the broadband plan was hatched by Conroy and Rudd on a VIP flight, this would explain the serious financial shortcomings of this proposal. One is reminded of the old joke as to the difference between a computer salesman and a used-car salesman. Answer- A used-car salesman knows he is lying. In Conroy’s case he may not be lying as I don’t think he understands what he’s talking about, and Mr Rudd of course is the quintessential spin doctor. I await a serious financial analysis of the Ruddnet proposal with interest (pardon the pun).
Will the EU’s Traditional Speciality Guaranteed label also specify how many anchovies there should be per slice of Napolitana pizza? I certainly hope so!
I doubt that Mike Rann is anywhere nearly as sanguine as Richard Farmer about his success at the polls. It is not Michelle Chantelois, It is not Michael Atkinson, It is not St CLair, It is not the developers, It is not the trams to nowhere nor the other matters – it is them all and that people are ignored, derided and treated with contempt if they disagree with the government. There will be a lot of votes going to minority parties and they won’t necessarily float back to Labor through preferences and he certainly won’t get control of the Legislative Council.