by Grahaml » Thu Jan 31, 2013 2:06 pm
However, it might mean that it's not entirely practical for Tony Abbott to force an earlier election. It does seem odd timing with the Craig Thompson issue appearing again, but if Gillard knew, announcing the date the day before he got marched to the cop shop has given Tony Abbott a free kick in front of goal 25 seconds in.
Not at all surprised though that he's been charged. It looked the whole time that it was simply too difficult for the parties involved to keep such a story going without there being something in it and the report that came out couldn't have been full of lies. Makes you look back at that speech and wonder whether he was actually emotional because he'd been caught out and was desperate.
Looking at the last election and how close that was, I think Labor will struggle to hold Dobell after this. They had a 5% margin but the people in that electorate must be seething. Fisher is a safe Liberal seat and Slipper won't get the Liberal preselection for that so out of the current parliament, that's two seats likely lost. Andrew Wilkie should hold Denison and won't side with Labor again. Katter is Liberal leaning, but might lose a lot of votes with his new party, most will go to the LNP. If he loses it, that seat will stay with the coalition. Oakeshott and Windsor are wildly popular in their seats, but the people there are conservative voting. They might not like the fact their vote kept Labor in power for 3 years and we could well see big swings to the coalition there. Probably not enough to take either seat, but independants can lose 25% very swiftly. So IMHO, if the rest of the country stays the same, Labor still lose 2 seats and won't gain any of the others while Liberal might get 1 or more of the mainland independants. Puts Labor in the position of needing to win other seats somewhere when it looks more like they'll lose a bunch.