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Monaro, Capricornia, Dobell, Solomon, Reid, Lyons, Banks, Braddon and Hindmarsh, Gilmore, Lindsay, Rorbertson and Deakin. If as few as 30,000 voters in those electorates changed their vote, PM Abbott would quickly become a flyspeck on the pages of History.
This is remarkable given the full weight of News Ltd's influence was thrown behind Abbott for the best part of three years. It also tells us two other things:
- Abbott has no mandate
- There will be no Double Dissolution election
We have never seen either this government or their leader ever achieve what you could call popular support, they don't even seem to have had the traditional honeymoon period that you might expect with a new government.
Add to that the massive erosion of support and trust that has already occurred under this government in such a small space of time. The mounting scandals and concerns have included: Julie Bishop's handling of discussions with Indonesia, the large numbers who have signed a petition against Turnbulls plan for the NBN, Pyne's unauthorised release of details of the Liberal's agenda (without the support of the Nationals) in relation to Universities, laying the groundwork for a rise in the GST with the help of Colin Barnett, the shroud of secrecy on issues of assylum seekers and boat arrivals, and the vetting of all media appearances by Peta Credlin.
And now we have Brandis and Joyce attending a wedding at taxpayer expense, and being compelled to repay the money when their flimsy excuses fell over. This creates serious questions about Brandis' fitness to draft a ministerial code of conduct. His attitude to his own expenses seems to be in stark contrast to the standard he sets for others. This is added to Tony Abbott having to repay the $9000 he claimed from taxpayers while promoting his book Battlelines. But this 'error' comes at the back of many other questionable expense claims by Abbott.
2016 will be the next Federal election. At that time we will have an Abbott government with a long track record of deceit, secrecy and non-delivery, a PM with record low approval numbers, a further debased mainstream media whose audience has shifted to new media, a Murdoch press which no one trusts, and a resurgent Labor party.
In relation to some of these more recent events, I've really enjoyed David Rowe's Cartoons over the past week or so... a sample is below.