Who really won in Herbert?

Slim raises an interesting point below about the recent campaign in Herbert. 

Judging by my letterbox and my TV habits, the LNP outspent the ALP 3:1!  So who exactly stumped up for Ewin What's-his-name?

Either the developers as Slim suggests or perhaps Big Clive P (a former property developer, now coal developer - basically the same MO though)?

One thing Slim is dead right about for sure - the property developers about town would have invested enough in each campaign to ensure that there would be a return for them no matter who won!

As for No Raffles at Mooney's wake? - I reckon he's petrified that no one will turn-up so he's simply eliminating the disincentives!

And finally, I thought a lot about whether Slim uses Ned's last words appropriately...and, yep!

Slim writes:

No Raffles at an ALP function? Has he quit the party as well?

The land developers must have come up with the big green notes - sometimes referred to as a "Jolly Green Giant"

Who else is known as as "Jolly Green Giant"?  Why Ewan Jones of course.

The land developers win every which way.

Such is life.
Slim

Election 2010 - Murdoch wins & Katter decides the future of a nation

For what it's worth, may assessment of the Election outcome as we understand it this morning:

• Murdoch won the contest by and easy margin with The Australian supported by Sky News a close second



• The Rudd Factor - rubbish - he suffered a 10% swing in his own seat



• The Rudd Leaks Factor - lethal!



• Only Gillard has the personal skills to manage a collaboration with the Independents - the Tories' natural 'born-to-rule" world view will be an anathema to the independents



• Bob Katter will decide who will govern Australia and how!  VERY SCARY!!!

Oh, and about Tony Mooney - well I told you so!  I only hope the ALP learns something about how and who it preselects as it's representative.

... and as for Ewen What's-his-name-see the last paragraph of this piece in today's Bully:

"...Mr Jones said one of his early priorities would be to get Townsville on the weather map and to support Free Sauce Friday"

Not as scary as Bob Katter deciding the fate of the nation, but the punters of Townsville didn't come back with much from their day at the races Saturday

Is Tony Mooney already a Serial looser?

Further to last Saturday's post about comrade Mooney's chances in Herbert, Slim writes:

How many times does it take to be a "serial loser"? He is already a three-time loser, that's a "serial" for me! He will make it to four.

The first one was the 1990's attempt at amalgamation which was only pulled because of the strength of the community comments coming from Thuringowa. The reports are still available in the JCU library. That's probably why he is campaigning out there now, although it may have been better to be campaigning in Townsville where a few may still feel sympathy.

The second was the disastrous Mundingburra by-election.
The third was the total destruction at The Amalgamation council election in 2008. Now that was a classic self-destruction!

How many "Tony Mooney" ads has anybody seen on the TV? Did they make any apart from the online meatworks one? Chasing the union vote, most unlikely to get any result.

It's not got anything to do with Rudd. Look in the direction of the competition between various land developers/real estate agents for the likely answers! Remember Rocky Springs - which means two horses from the one stable may be a close guess.

Rudd's political lifespan was a little short after all because he wouldn't play the faction game. Bligh will be next because the AWU and the SDA and the catholic right are ruthless, watch out for Lucas when Bligh gets into this ALP president appointment.

It won't be long now.

Jenny Hill has wanted Mundingburra for a long time now and she knows where all of Ludwig's and De Bruyn's bodies are buried. She knows where Tony's are, obviously.

Sabotage could not be ruled out, you know what these southern europeans are like?

Cheers,
Slim

Should Mooney be worried?

Although it's tactically nice to be able to claim underdog status, today's front page in The Bulletin won't make Tony Mooney happy.  The Newspoll results showing a 3.4% swing to the LNP is interesting although not particularly enlightening - the error margin is around 2.5% and the have applied a uniform swing from seven Qld marginals to Herbert.

The betting tend is much more interesting showing the LNP consistently leading - While nationally the betting markets are a good indicator, we don't know how many wagers have been made in Herbert (and therefore the strength of the betting sentiment).  I would also be very handy to know whether there have been any large bets placed yet (usually by someone with inside knowledge of party polling).

My guess of the best indicator of the outcome in Herbert? - party spending!  By my reckoning, the LNP are outspending Mooney 2:1 and, let's face it, you don't spend your money promoting a product that you know people aren't going to buy.

Tony is shaping up as a serial loser and the choice of him as candidate as another example of Rudd's poor judgement/leadership

You wouldn’t want to be Tony right now .....

Things aren’t looking great for Tony Mooney’s second shot at the big time.

While, judging by Julia’s visits, ALP campaign polling is showing Herbert as still winnable, the Lib’s polling is presumably showing the same thing (given the Monk’s new-found fondness for the town).

Given that the seat is so tight Mooney won’t be happy to learn today that the Greens will not preference him and will not hand out how-to-votes on the day. This decision will invariably lead to the loss of green preferences on the day and is of course contrary to the Greens’ national deal with the ALP – a very open demonstration that, locally, the Greens memories are verrrry long.

But it seems that many in the ALP locally have long memories too!  I hear that a number of Branches around town are having trouble getting a booth roster together for the day - it seems that members of the left in particular just can't bring themselves to help the man they've come to loath.

The fly-in fly-out count will be interesting to watch over the next couple of weeks as the leaders time and the campaign dollars gets concentrated on the must win seats (for the ALP, read "must keep seats" of which Herbert of course isn't one) - it will be an early indicator of the likely outcome locally.

The real reason Gillard is in Townsville today.....

...to re-shoot Tony Mooney's election pics - all the ones he had were with his mate and now ex-PM Kevin Rudd who of course got Mooney the gig.  Should he actually get elected to the big house he will find himself doing a very long apprenticeship on the back of the backbench.

While i think about it ... I wonder what it felt like to be Tony Mooney shaking the hand of a woman PM from the Left ?????

Mooney must be sweating

Tony Mooney must be wondering whether he's gonna repeat in Herbert what he did in Mundingburra:

• He's lost his apparent key supporter in Kevin Rudd who, if The Bulletin is to be believed, intervened personally to ensure his preselection



• Within days of her becoming PM, Gillard visited the next-door seat of Dawson  to announce her Super Profits Tax deal and give Mike Brunker plenty of head space in the evening news.



• The Libs or the LNP or whatever they are called are already out-spending the ALP in Herbert by 10:1



• The ALP's local troops in Herbert are still pissed that they were denied the right to select their own candidate

And today comes the news (via pollytics.com) that Betfair gives Herbert to whoever that guy is who's running against Mooney:

A bit of a worry for the boy - especially given that theoretically he starts with a 0.4% margin!

What do Mooney, V8s and toilet paper have in common?: A letter from Slim

Hi Islander

The recent letter and campaign update from the Mooney Kamp tells us a number of important facts and also allows some speculation, because that is what we like to do!

• "the fight ....... will be hard fought" - outstanding prose from one of JCU's finest?



• "cuts to services and a return to the worst aspects ........ including work choices" - is this what Mooney is promising?






• "broad based Campaign Committee" - does this mean they'll sit around on their big fat arses, like last time, when they could not "out" Tyrell's team as Liberals


• "I will be campaigning on a range on a range of local issues including health reform" - he'll be at the V8 races dispensing toilet paper and making all sorts of spurious claims to all the drunks about who brought the V8 races to town and just how soon they are going to open the case that contains the PET scanner



• Vi Cox has opened the Currajong ALP Branch purse strings at last for her beloved Tony - Colbran's taxpayer-funded business expenses no longer required; get well soon



• Barry Mitchell as campaign director - have the loving couple of Mitchell and Jack Wilson kissed, cuddled and made up? Or has Jack been asked that famous old ALP saying - do you like sex and travel?

The next campaign meeting will be 31 May at the office. Will there be space on the campaign team for a few "National Party" members? How about some "Liberal Party Members"? How about some "Independent Party" members?
You going to the meeting?

Cheers - Slim

Vigilante press – The Bulletin gets its posse & Mooney gets a whipping-boy

The Bulletin will not give up easily. They are determined to elevate the city’s young people to the position as our number 1 problem (and best newspaper seller)

They started their latest effort to create the news (as opposed to reporting it) two Fridays ago with a page headed “Gang Violence: the fightback” (see this post). Included there was a story manufactured from a few quotes by some lone unnamed individual who’d presumably rung into the Bully with an idea to set up a “Guardian Angels’” type community-watch group.

Of course, one man does not a vigilante group make. and the next day (Saturday 24th) three people turned up to his Victoria Bridge ‘rally’ – well actually one if you don’t include the ‘organiser’ and his missus

Undeterred by the small turn-out (despite the Bully’s free publicity), the Bully reported the following Wednesday (28th) that “Residents band together to fight Townsville crime” and publicised another meeting by the ‘group’ for yesterday (Sun 2nd May).

To generate a bit more heat and momentum for that meeting, the Bully then ran a story on Saturday: “Trouble at Willows, parents blamed” with the introduction “Willows Shopping Centre resembled a war zone on Thursday night”. Apart from the bad business sense in getting most military personnel off-side with the belittling use of the term “war zone”, this was a fair attempt to whip-up a bit of community outrage – reports (of reports) of 300 kids at the Willows that night (no wonder the Willows marketing managerseemed pretty unconcerned by it all), a witness to 5 kids screaming at each other… they even ran a video online of the “mayhem” that night.

I’d encourage you to have a look at the video here – no gangs, no fights, no ‘mayhem’, no ‘war zone’ just what looked like a few groups of kids with not much to do and little money to do it with.

Which brings us today’s report of the community meeting held yesterday and apparently attended by 30 people – although it’s not actually clear whether this number includes the politicians, coppers and hangers-on who were there (a count of the number of households present would have been much more enlightening, if somewhat less impressive).

Judging from the Bully’s report, three things came from the meeting:

• Tony Mooney returns to type and tells us that the parents of all bad kids are on welfare (and presumably black)



• The Bully got its vigilante group sorry, “resident-led patrols”, which it will no doubt now send a cub reporter out with one night with to do an expose on the city’s underbelly



• The coppers actually already run a community-based law and order program – it’s called Community Watch! It’s well established, been around for decades, and in most suburbs where groups form they then fold up after a year or two when the residents involved come to understand that crime in their area isn’t actually anything like as bad as they perceived it to be.

I wonder if the Bully, Mooney, Wallace, the coppers or anyone else (like a Bulletin journalist) at the meeting thought to check with a few local kids about what to do? My guess is that they would have said – “give us something to do”.

By the way, Mooney’s proposed withholding of welfare from ‘bad parents’ will not get up:

• the policy is in fact for the quarantining of part of a person’s welfare so that it can only be spent on certain goods, and



• it’s unworkable in terms of kids on the streets at night who are not under-age and not breaking the law.

A bit of a worry when the aspiring federal member doesn’t understand federal policy or program limitations!!

But then I’m sure that won’t stop the Bully from milking the ‘story’ for all it's worth.

Footnote
Determined to maximise the unruly kids and their bad parent angle, the Bully’s online ‘coverage’ (I use the term loosely) today is actually headed by a story about the Police’s “disgust” at the behaviours of kids at Grooving the Moo.

Despite lots of reporting of the impressions of one copper, the only fact in the story was that “by 3pm, five people had already been taken to hospital by ambulance due to severe intoxication”.

Sounds like the real story was about the management of entry to and alcohol serving at the event - but it is unlikely that it will get written, given that the event organisers had probably spent 10-15,000 on advertising in the Bully in recent weeks.

From the kids and parents i've spoken to this morning, it was a great event, well managed, fantatsic music and a happy crowd.

Comradeship, unity, equality, solidarity, justice – the ALP in Herbert

Occasional guest blogger Slim Cayenne sent this copy of the latest letter doing the rounds to ALP members in response the shoehorning of Tony Mooney into the party's candidature for the race for Herbert (click on the pick for better view).

Slim added the following comment:

"Governments lose elections by not listening to those who will make the decisions about who they will vote for.  The LNP will hold onto Herbert."

I agree on both counts Slim.

More on the ALP battle for Herbert

The Poll Bludger reports:

Labor’s national executive has installed three marginal seat candidates in what The Australian reported as a deal granting Herbert to the AWU sub-faction of the Right, Dawson to its rival Labor Unity sub-faction and Bowman to the Left. The respective candidates are former Townsville mayor Tony Mooney, who won the nod despite local support for councillor Jenny Hill; Whitsunday mayor Mike Brunker, who was picked over Julieanne Gilbert of the Queensland Teachers Union and finance industry worker Louise Mahony; and “local businesswoman and mother of two” Jenny Peters. The candidate for Bowman in 2007, Jason Young, reportedly lost his Left faction’s backing late last year due to his campaigning against the Bligh government’s asset sales in his capacity as an Electrical Trades Union organiser. Sean Parnell of The Australian reports Brunker faces the difficulty of a “lengthy Crime and Misconduct Commission investigation over his links with property developers”

I still can't help but wonder whether Mooney has brought a pup

Herbert – could this be the ultimate game plan?

Over the weekend I started wondering again about the ALP’s federal intervention into the preselection for Herbert .

Could it be that this pick has been made in the expectation that the ALP will lose the seat – that the preselection is a give-aways to appease the factions or to settle old debts in the expectation that it in fact won’t be won?

Unless Abbott totally implodes (a distinct possibility but maybe not a probability), history tells the campaign strategists that, in all likelihood, Labor will lose rather than gain seats at the next federal election.

Understandably, parties concentrate their campaign resources in marginal seats and, if the expectation is that seats will be lost, they are concentrated in those seats you marginally hold and not those marginally held by your opposition.

For the record, Anthony Green estimates that the currently Liberal (or is that LNP) held seat of Herbert is marginally Labor (by 0.4%) following the last redistribution.  Green also estimates that on the new boundaries, the ALP has to protect 14 seats which they currently hold by a margin of 3% or less.

With the demographics of Herbert changing since the 2007 election and arguably trending to the right over the last decade or more (witness for example the increase in defence force families in the electorate), the seat could be difficult for Labor to win if, as realistically expected, the national swing against them is on come election time.

If I’m right, the ALP’s campaign resources won’t be wasted on seats such as Herbert (they will seek to, for example, protect Maxine McKew in Howard's old seat of Bennelong before taking a punt on Herbert), Mooney will lose, and his last shot in the locker will have been spent (and all party debts to him will have been paid).

Worth thinking about? What do you reckon?

For the sake of completeness

Further to my post here about moves by some disgruntled ALP members to set up a NQ Labor Party to run (against Mooney) in the race for Herbert and for the sake of completeness, click the graphic below to read Mooney’s letter to members

Breaking News: Mooney wins preselection

News just through that, as expected, Tony Mooney has "won" ALP preselection for the race for Herbert.  Well actually, he has been handed the preselection by the party's National Executive.

Don't bother checking The Bulletin's web site for the news - well not for a few hours anyway.

While everyone is a bit focused on the off-shore cyclone right now - I forecast, as a result of the ALP's decision, an extended period of mud flying for the next few months (see, for example, my earlier post)

I'm currently setting-up a book on Mooney losing the seat as a result.  Any takers?

Who exactly is backing Mooney for Herbert?

I hear that it’s not so much the PM who is backing Mooney for ALP preselection  for the race in Herbert (as The Bulletin and others would have us believe) but one Leigh Birmingham who has been touting for Mooney’s consulting business in recent times - presumably in return for his doing quite well out of TCC when Mooney was Mayor.

With the Federal ALP executive apparently taking the risky road and likely to back Whitsunday mayor Mike Brunker for Dawson preselection despite his being under investigation by the Crime and Misconduct Commission, you’d think that they’d look a bit more closely at the links between Birmingham and Mooney as investigated in a previous Criminal Justice Commission probe.

Expect more federal intervention in Herbert

Expect an article from Rosanne Barrett in The Australian in the comming days/weeks on the federal ALP's intervention to assure the preselection of Tony Mooney in Herbert. 

It seems that quite a few local ALP members are only too happy to voice their outrage (and opinions on Mooney's chances of getting local members to "man" the booths on election day and of actually winning the seat).

You heard it here first

The battle when you're not having a battle

So, the first battle for Herbert begins.

Both Jenny Hill and Tony Mooney have nominated for ALP preselection and we learn today that, contrary to previous reports from ALP state office, the preselection decision is to be made by the national executive of the party and not by local members.

From what I’m hearing around the traps,

The race is on – But who will the Bulletin back?

So the Bulletin has discovered that both Jenny Hill and Tony Mooney will run for ALP preselection for Herbert.

Local ALP members of course worked this out a while ago when Mooney started sending out letters seeking support.

As for Wetherup’s speculation that recent ALP rule changes “could have a major impact on how local members vote, and even a locally preferred candidate could lose” – I really don’t follow. It has always been the case that a locally preferred candidate could lose if their vote was overturned by the electoral council.

Rumours heard this week

Heard around town this week:

Rumour #1
Mayor-in-waiting David Crisafulli has put the kybosh on any of his “independent” Councillor colleagues putting their hand up for the LNP preselection race for Herbert.

It’s not that he’s particularly concerned that the punters will twig to the fact that the “independents” were actually a LNP ticket all along. Rather he’s worried that if someone like Cr Dale Last (just for the sake of argument of course) were in the Herbert race and lost, as Crisafulli and everyone else (including Peter Lindsay) expect they will, the profile they would gain in the process would provide a platform for Dale them to run against him in the Mayoral race and he’s determined to keep that one for himself.

In a similar vein, I bet Crisafulli is pis*ed of at the Bully’s parking ticket story today – despite ¾ of the article quoting his press release, Dale Last gets the three-column photo!!

Rumour #2

Either Mooney is desperate or Crissafulli is running scared

Spotted in today’s NQ confidential section of the Bully (hat-tip to renown socialites M&C) is this little gem (see scan on the right - no pun intended).

By my reckoning the only two sitting councillors who also sat on the previous TCC are Jenny Hill and David Crissafulli.

If I’m right, either Crissafulli is a closet member of the ALP or scared of having to run against Mooney at the next Mayoral election if Mooney fails to get preselection for the Herbert race.

Either way, if Mooney has to rely on Crissafulli’s support in the race for Herbert, he’s in deep sh*t!