Gee fwed, I thought you were smarter..........when was political credibility any higher?

Tony is an Um harar--and of course I don't like him either--Joe I do like as a person--from what I have seen, however Joe is also not leader material.

None of the Libs have come up with anything concrete

The header in this post is a true oxymoron, credibility and politics do not belong in the same sentence. For me it is a real concern with an election looming. I don't believe either of the major parties are capable of leading this country, and it would appear that the minor parties hang onto the coat tails of one of the majors e.g. a vote for the Greens is a vote for Labor, so we are left with nowhere to go. For me, it will be a matter of voting for the party that will do the least damage to the economy and the country, and even that is hard to determine at the moment. Unfortunately they tell us what they think we want to hear, and the majority of the electorate seem to fall for that.

Trouble is Pommy with our system there are only two parties that will get in--one or the other--the Greens at the moment don't know where they wil put their preferences--but they will never rule--and can make all the promises they lie as they will never have to produce the goods

You never know, we may end up with a power sharing deal such as the Brits now have......anything is possible. The "Greens" could well find themselves having real influence in Australian politics if the vote between the main two parties is close. Its a "long shot", but stranger things have happened.

Yes always good to vote to keep the B-----ts honest

Precisely kfchugo.



The way the Greens are deliberately campaigning against Labor politicians in marginal seats that has already commenced, would not surprise me if we have a coalition government of the Libs and Greens.

Tanwin, I have very little faith left in Politicions, but if you are right,

that would blow the last vestige of credibility.

We in the ACT have a coalition between the Greens and Labor, and it is a disaster. The Assembly has been reduced to deal making - you vote with us on this issue and we will you allow you to push such and such through. It's a joke, except that we are not laughing. The bottom line is that we have a minor party pulling the strings. If we had wanted the greens to manage the ACT, they would have been elected. They ran a candidate in every electorate..

What a stupid electoral system. Voting is compulsory.........dictatorship not democracy! Preferences...........so you may not get who you voted for!

We may as well visit a circus and employ a new batch of clowns.

I agree Gizmo, it is an appalling system, and the only people who can change it are the people who benefit from the current system - so I'm with you, bring on the circus clowns. We do live in a dictatorship. When was the last time your elected representative actually asked you how you felt about certain decisions that were being made on your behalf. These elected representatives are supposed to be just that, "representatives". They conduct all these studies and inquiries and then refuse to share the results with us, they make promises in order to get elected, and then blame all and sundry when they decide not to carry out those promises. They mismanage huge projects, costing the taxpayer millions of dollars and the only comeback we have is to wait until the next election and vote in another party, who will do exactly the same thing. We are living in fairyland if we call this democracy. Yes, we have elections, but that is the only concession we make to democracy.

We in the ACT have a coalition between the Greens and Labor, and it is a disaster. The Assembly has been reduced to deal making - you vote with us on this issue and we will you allow you to push such and such through. It's a joke, except that we are not laughing. The bottom line is that we have a minor party pulling the strings. If we had wanted the greens to manage the ACT, they would have been elected. They ran a candidate in every electorate..



Exactly and until you experience it yourself I guess that it will continue to muck up politics in this country as Greens haven't got any real polices other than "green" which will ruin us if allowed to run rampant.



Plus of course Pommy - you are describing the preferential system of voting that is what Nick Clegg in the UK thinks will get him more seats in their lower house when ours hasn't got the Greens any to date!

Lib Dems UK get around 23% of the vote and here Greens get close but never will get a seat with their off the wall add on policies which are on the nose like open borders - well we have them right now don't we and no one likes the cost particularly pensioners and others on fixed incomes.



I would like us to go back to FPTP as in UK and no preferences in the lower house at all, plus non compulsory voting as voting is a privilege for citizens to exercise and should never be mandatory!

And as was here until the 2 majors decided to keep it to themselves and not to have to go out at election time and get votes personally from us.



Senate is fine on preferencesas we need the Independents and minor parties there to hold the others to account. But also not mandatory!



Plus all this "you do this and I will give you my preferences"! Stinks and is corruption of the process.



Everyone here in Tassie at the voting place I went to were saying fed up with preferences and we only had 3 to vote for - L L and G. Meaning liberal or Labor/green.



Greens always rubbish Labor but give them their preferences and look we now have a hung parliament with 2 greens in the Labor Cabinet - Nick McKim the leader and his female live in partner in order to defeat the Liberals and at one time Greens vote of no confidence which had already been mooted.

Wont work already arguing over timber and Gunn's as both are opposed on these alone.



No wonder no one down in Tassie now trusts Labor and this is a solid Labor state so time will tell - and the looming Federal election too as usually with one exception under Howard every seat here is Labor. And that one seat has mining within its area. It went back to Labor in 2007 but maybe go to Liberals in 2010.



BTW you will be glad for cancer sufferers that once again Rudd has promised a cancer treatment centre and a closer than Hobart MRI machine so they don't have to travel 4 hours etc and in that one seat with the mining - how much can anyone tolerate of this sort of outright mushroom feeding?



Didn't get it when he promised exact same in lead up to 2007 election and he also promised to run the Devonport Hospital as set up by Howard as a Community based with local people on the Board and handed it back to the state with the money allocated by Howard already enough for 3 years and that will run out soon.



Broken promises are so many I have lost count!

Must be lots of state ones like above too - maybe a thread with a list so we can count them up and see if others are being repeated as above ready for this looming election.

Makes you wonder about the intellect of Tasmanians BigVal, doesn't it?

All that Labor has done in Tasmania & the reward for the mess ups is to

vote all 5 seats to Labor. If you want any help from this Government, you

need to change all seats to Liberal with a majority of less than 2%. Then

watch the attention & money flow. Do you really expect anything from Rudd

when your stupid loyalty gives him the seats regardless. If you are right

about Liberal winning the next election, you should encourage Tasmanians

to keep the 5 seats Labor but reduce the majority to under 2%. The result

would even see tax money thrown at the Tassie Devil.

Yes and the greens and all others but the Libs and Lab can promise all as they will never rule