Posters of the 2015 NSW Election campaign

The State of New South Wales is currently embroiled in an election.  It would be fair to say that anyone not paying attention might have overlooked this, as it is the quietest contest I can ever remember.  In part this is because so many of the players are on the nose with the punters:

  • Various Ministers in the previous Labour Government have had bad things said about them in hearings about corruption;
  • A good number of members of th current Liberal Government (for some reason mainly from the Hunter Valley an Central Coast) have also found alternative employment due to questions about the source of their funding,
  • The charming Shooters Party has managed to alienate everyone by shooting things in ways that contradict common sense and other people's property rights.

The Greens haven't been caught with their hand in the Hunny Jar  ...
... but instead of filling the vacuum of noise have been completely silent as far as I can tell.

I'm not a member of any political party, since that would require me to follow the direction of the aparatchiks.  While I do have a poster beside our gate ...
.. and will be handing out "how to vote" cards on election for Steve on election day that is because I believe he is personally a good bloke and his Party is more likely to do the right thing for the environment than the Liberal/National Party Coalition.

The other poster to appear in our neighbourhood is this one.
Other than in an election year, posters of Fred only appear at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras: it would be fair to say they are not generally favourably disposed towards the old bloke.
Fortunately the AEC results for our electorate show that at the last Commonwealth Election only 861 people (0.96%) of people voted for Fred's candidate. As we have about 0.1% of the population in our streets we are obviously well over-represented with this mob.  A late breaking item is that I have just had drawn to my attention - following an article in the Bungendore Mirror - that the householder whose property is graced with this image is the Candidate for Fred's team!  Words fail me, although I did notice that the recent strong winds blew the sign down for a couple of days which may indicate Nature's views on the matter!

Down on the main road a somewhat buckled poster for the Nationals candidate is evident by a school bus stop.

I actually think he is not a bad Member.  Certainly active for the community and responsive to questions from voters (eg me).  The problem is his mates.  I had thought that a good tactic for the ALP would be to link him prominently with the Mad Monk and they have made it so!
The Monk has been Mr Invisible (even more so than Luke Foley) but as a measure of how these posters are working the Coalition retaliated with one featuring Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.  This is pretty desperate stuff and could backfire since many people would probably love to have Julia back - the Kevster might be more of an issue, but compared to the Monk even he would be a dream.

The local candidate for the Greens, Peter Marshall, is also a good bloke.  He is on the local Council and is the only member thereof to respond to questions from the ratepayers (eg me).  Unfortunately I haven't seen a single poster for him, and I am told that he doesn't even have one on his front gate!

While not in its current language, in some of  his previous commentary about this electorate Anthony Green of the ABC concludes that both Bari;aro and Whan are well known and popular in the electorate and the outcome will basically come down to a vote on that basis.  Higher up the totem pole, Mike Baird is IMHO about as popular a Premier of NSW as I have known - and seems to have overcome the corruption image refered to above - while Luke Foley (Leader of the ALP) has basically been invisible.  A distinct advantage toBarilaro.  However, Barilaro has an albatross around his neck in the shape of the Monk - an advantage for Whan.

If I was a betting man I'd keep my wallet in my pocket for this seat. Overall, Centrebet are offering $1.03 for the Coalition and $12 for Labour.  I'd have to say that the price for Labour is very good value but in the words of an old Rugby song $12 x 2/3 of 5/8 of sod all is still basically sod all.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the birds: The view from the top of
Read more