Comrade Ted's New Friend

It’s been a while between drinks, but here at hewhostandsfornothing, we can at long last report on a triumph for Red Ted.

No, he hasn’t managed a net positive approval rating in any poll. No, he hasn’t managed to actually make the running on an important issue and provide the Liberal Party with a solid bloc of support. No, he hasn’t managed to improve the Liberal Party’s primary vote – in fact, on the latest available evidence, it’s lower now than it was in November 2006.

Still, all is not lost.

Yes, thanks to Red Ted’s bold strategy, John Brumby is looking increasingly like the British in Singapore. Brumby’s been so busy focusing on voters in marginal seats and shoring up soft Labor votes that he’s foolishly neglected union leaders.

Luckily, in their hour of need the unions have a friend in Ted Baillieu. According to (who else but) Paul Austin in today’s Age:

“In the past week, Kathy Jackson, national secretary of the Health Services Union, rounded on Brumby over his handling of the union's enterprise bargaining agreement dispute with the Government. "These people cannot manage an industrial dispute. It's not just us, it's teachers, it's ambulances, it's police, it's everybody," she said. "They're not interested in dialogue, they don't give us the courtesy of a reply, they don't show good manners and it just shows what an arrogant Government they are." Noting she had sought meetings with Brumby and Ted Baillieu but only the Opposition Leader had taken up the invitation, Jackson said: "The Government has acted now only because they've been exposed politically by the Opposition, and I congratulate Mr Baillieu for showing more responsibility than the Government."

Wow. We take it all back Ted. You are brilliant. Problem solved. Election won.

Setting to one side the Fraseresque hypocrisy of Kathy Jackson attacking people who fail to display “good manners”, we once again are forced to marvel the bizarre mind of Ted Baillieu.

Jackson is a member of the ALP. Her union donates to the ALP. She will never vote anything but ALP. She will never tell her members to do anything other than vote ALP.

Ted, there is naught to be gained by pursuing alliances with those who will never vote for you, be they unions, opponents of bay dredging, refugee collectives, Greenpeace or the (laughably small) Malcolm Fraser Appreciation Society.

The Liberal Party has never won an election by outflanking the ALP on left. Every attempt to do so has resulted in electoral humiliation. If the politically talented and genuinely charismatic John Brogden couldn’t do it, what on earth makes you think you can?

Try heading east of Burke Rd once in a while Ted. You might learn something.

Red Ted marches into Box Hill:

The Baillieu-Kennett forces are preparing to roll respected Liberal patriot in Box Hill Robert Clark and install Baillieu staffer and Chinese Liberal supremo, Gladys Liu.

The saga of the Chinese Liberal Association slush-funds-for-branch-stacking-affair has recently taken a shocking new turn with the revelation from deep within the Liberal Party that Red Ted Baillieu and his Red Army are using the Chinese Liberal Association to stack out the state seat of Box Hill.

Robert Clark stepped up to the plate as shadow Treasurer after the disgraced Dr. Robert Dean misled senior party figures and the electoral commission about his enrolment and was ruled ineligible to stand for the 2002 election. Clark a former barrister is well respected amoungst many of his parliamentary colleagues and is being targeted by the Kennett-Baillieu faction because of his closeness to the Victorian Kroger-led faction.

Senior Liberal sources within the Kooyong Electorate Council have confirmed that although Chairman Liu lives in the federal seat of Higgins and Jeff Kennett’s former state seat of Burwood, she is a member of the Liberal Party’s Box Hill branch. Liu is believed to be ‘cultivating’ relationships with the local Chinese community and ‘developing’ the branches to facilitate a quick regime change for the 2010 state election.

Box Hill has a large Chinese community and according to recent census data has some 3464 residents in the City of Whitehorse who were born in China and more than 10,000 residents who are Chinese speaking. With what is becoming more and more like a brown-paper-bag-scandal more at home in the streets of Melbourne’s Chinatown and the race for Lord Mayor, Red Ted Baillieu and his cronies appear unwilling to rule out any tactic to defeat their factional enemies.

Here's an idea Ted, if you want the Chairman in the Parliament so much - give her Hawthorn.

Red Ted's "Good News"

An attendee at this week’s Kooyong AGM has contacted us to opine:


Thought you’d like to know what Ted had to say about this week’s Newspoll.
Ted told the meeting that the poll was good news, because it showed Labor’s primary vote had fallen. I hadn’t seen the poll, so didn’t check it until the next day.

Labor’s primary vote has fallen from 43.1% at the 2006 election to 43% now. A whopping 0.1%. Gosh, Brumby must be shitting himself.

Cheers


My God, if Ted Baillieu is really running around telling people that this week’s Newspoll is good news for him, he is even dumber than we’d previously feared.

Labor’s vote has fallen since the last Newspoll, to be sure, and that’s probably what Ted meant.

But it’s now back to the same level it was at in November 2006 – you know, when Labor won a massive election victory.

That’s not good news Ted. That’s calamitous (look it up if you don't know what it means).

After all the shit that Brumby has been through in recent months, you have not taken any support off him. And if this Newspoll is right, your dissatisfaction rating is higher than Brumby’s.

Worst of all, the Coalition’s TPP vote is 44% - 1.6% less than it got in 2006. That’s enough to put Kilsyth and Ferntree Gully in serious danger.

In the mad mind of Red Ted, this is apparently good news for the Liberal Party.

What is he on? And where can we get some?

Do nothing Baillieu looks to Bracks for example:

I definitely get the impression that if Ted Baillieu had not been born into wealth and privilege he would have been a public servant. If you think about it he has all the usual traits; he’s bone idle, seeks power for powers sake, is risk averse and considers longevity more important than achievement and reform.

Take for example this morning’s pitiful offering from Baillieu sycophantic marionette Paul Austin at the Spencer St Soviet. I do so very rarely loose my temper, but this morning was as close to throwing a Kevin Rudd style hissy fit as I think I have ever been. The thrust of the article appears to be that although Ted Baillieu is patently useless, his numbers are in the toilet and he personally is despised by the electorate - he’ll probably survive longer than Brendan Nelson’s. Austin believes that the secret to Baillieu’s ‘success’ will be his similarity to former incompetent oxygen thief Premier Steve Bracks, while Brumby’s downfall will take place because of his unenviable resemblance to the once well respected and unquestionably talented Jeffrey Gibb Kennett.

Austin writes:

“…the Liberals' best hope of making ground on Labor is to paint Baillieu as the next Bracks, and Brumby as the new Jeff Kennett. Stylistically, it works. Baillieu can be laid back, affable and approachable, in the Bracks manner. Brumby, with fewer soft edges, is a driven, can-do leader, disinclined to take prisoners — a bit like Kennett.”

The truly frightening thing about this is that Austin does not scratch himself without getting properly briefed by Red Ted and his boy Michael Kapel. So this is clearly the line that the intellectual juggernauts at 157 Spencer St are hoping to push. One can only wonder if this has been approved by Kennett himself; we certainly hope not for Jeffery’s sake.

You should know that we here at hewhostandsfornothing have a great deal of respect for Jeff; he along with now Federal President Alan Stockdale ran a highly successful government. Kennett’s only real failure was a product of his deep insecurity. He had and still has a deep psychological need to surround himself with talentless, yes-men hacks, like Baillieu, Kapel and Austin. Actually, the other thing that comes to mind is his complete inability to be taken seriously in the corporate sector post 1999 unlike the successful Nick Greiner for example, but that’s another story.

We digress… the point we wanted to make perfectly clear for Ted was:

Bracks is bad (cross)               Kennett is good (tick)
Lazy is bad (cross)                  Achievement is good (tick)
Indecisive is bad (cross)         Decisive is good (tick)
Malaise is bad (cross)             Reform is good (tick)
Socialism is bad (cross)          Free enterprise is good (tick)

The list goes on… let’s hope Ted wont.

Baillieu is hopeless, this is not news

God help the Victorian Liberals if Red Ted remains at the helm for much longer.

Confronted with Tuesday’s devastating poll result which showed Red Ted is about as popular as paediatric cancer, the best line of defence the man could manage was:

“We’re out of office, this is not news.”

Brilliant, isn’t it? This is the sort of withering retort that would make Churchill, Menzies or Whitlam green with envy. What a performer the Baillieu boy is. It’s a wonder the vast majority of Victorians haven’t noticed this diamond in the rough.

For the record Ted, being out of office is not an excuse for these polls. Kevin Rudd was out of office last year, yet we couldn’t help but notice that his ratings were sky high.

Why might this be? We’re just guessing, but it may have been because Rudd actually did some work, was able to identify issues and developed a coherent narrative that caught on with the public because it was easy to understand and well communicated. Just a guess though.

It may also have been because Rudd spent most of his time on the road meeting voters and getting good press, instead of sitting in his bunker doing the Red Army’s numbers for state council.

Ted, the important election is in November 2010, not April 2008. Try, for once, to focus on the main game. You’re not Party President any more, you’re the State Leader.

If you don’t understand the difference, then you plainly shouldn’t be in the job.

Pull out digger, the dogs are pissing on your swag

You know, sometimes I almost feel sorry for Red Ted Baillieu. Then I snap out of it, because I remember that the reason his numbers are in the toilet relate entirely to his own staggering ineptitude.

When John Brumby took over as Premier, Baillieu had the rarest of political gifts handed to him – a chance to define his opponent.

Instead, he spent all his time going to Liberal Party branch meetings in and around his own electorate, preaching to the choir. While Ted’s Red Army have spent months engaging in miserable tokenism like the Malcolm Fraser email, the instantly-forgotten Council of State Liberal Leaders and at “multicultural” lunches arranged by Gladys Liu, Brumby has stolen the march on Red Ted.

Regular readers will recall our campaign to highlight Baillieu’s summer activities, which consisted of sailing, polo and swimming when he could have taken advantage of Brumby absence from the stage to drive home a few home truths about what an atrocious outfit Brumby is running.

Stung by this criticism, Red Ted came up with a half baked plan where he kinda-sorta-half opposed the bay dredging, though not really. Entirely predictably, this approach profited Baillieu nothing – it pissed-off business groups and did nothing to win over the noisy crowd of doctor’s wives who oppose the dredging (because, as we said at the time, these chardonnay socialists will never, ever vote Liberal ).

Ted’s next big chance came with the State Coalition agreement, which gave him the opportunity to reshape his Shadow Cabinet and lose some of the deadwood. He wimped it, keeping proven non-performers like his mates Kim Wells and Helen Shardey in key portfolios when good people like Mary Wooldridge, Terry Mulder and Matthew Guy could have been given a chance to step up to the plate.

The verdict on Ted Baillieu’s leadership is in – today’s Age poll is a disaster, no matter how he tries to spin it. It’s broadly in line with what last December’s Newspoll said – namely that since the 2006 state election, the Liberals under Ted Baillieu have gone backwards, and Victorians don’t think Ted Baillieu is up to the job.

Since 2006, Labor’s primary vote is up by 5 points, and Liberal vote has fallen from 40% to 37%. The Liberal Party needs a primary vote of about 44% to have any hope of winning office.

But it’s Red Ted’s personal numbers that highlight the problem.

Baillieu has been running around branch meetings (he doesn’t actually mix with the general public) telling anyone who cared to listen that Brumby is very unpopular.

Now, Brumby does have a dissatisfaction rating of 32% - which would normally be something for an opposition to use. Except that Ted Baillieu’s disapproval rating is 38% - six points higher than Brumby’s.

In 2006, Baillieu’s approval rating is 50%. Today, it’s 37%. In 2006, Baillieu was the preferred Premier for 37% of Victorians. Today, that figure has fallen to 26%.

There is no good news in this poll for Ted Baillieu at all. Labor’s vote is up, the Liberal vote is down and on every key measure Baillieu is less popular and respected than he was in 2006. This is not a platform from which to launch a bid to regain power, coalition or no coalition.

We all know that Baillieu will not be the Leader come the 2010 election. No leader with numbers like this can survive. When the polls are this consistent there is a message – just ask John Howard.

The only good news for the Liberal Party is that there is over 2 years to run until the next election. There is time to turn this around. But it can’t be done with Ted Baillieu at the helm.
Liberal MPs have a choice to make.

They can either cut Baillieu down now and get on with the job of developing and selling a message, or they can do what they did in 2002 and 2006 – limp through to the election year with a mortally wounded Leader and then effect a panicked change at the last moment, leaving the new leader with no time to define themselves or sell their political message.

Ted has had more than a fair go. He is a nice enough guy, but it hasn’t worked out. Too bad, so sad.

We know you’re reading this Ted. And you know, in your heart of hearts, that we’re right. Because each of the arguments we’ve used were arguments you were using in late 2004 and early 2005 against Robert Doyle. You were right then. And we are right now.

In the name of God, go.

What would Sir Henry Bolte do?

It saddens me deeply to find myself agreeing with a state Labor Minister against the position of the so called ‘leader’ of the State Parliamentary Liberal Party. Read here a statement from the State Labor Minister for Regional and Rural Development Jacinta Allan on bay dredging.

Worse than anything is the overwhelming sense of role confusion displayed by the example of liberal obstruction and equivocation over bay dredging. Somewhat like a young Ted Baillieu modeling his mother’s underwear and high heels in front of a full length mirror, this is all back to front. We should be the party of infrastructure and businesses progress making the tough decisions in Victoria’s best interest, while they the Labor Party should be the party of bureaucratic and environmental obstructionism.

As the Minister says:

"Ted Baillieu’s Bayside Liberals want the project delayed, claiming it needs more monitoring… (t)his is despite a lengthy environmental effects process and an unprecedented environmental monitoring regime now in place."

Ted Baillieu has radically missed the mark in a misguided attempt to score political points against the government by tapping into ‘community’ outrage on the issue. The problem is he has confused apples with oranges and missed the undeniable fact that vocal minority groups of enviro-crusaders and reform luddites do not constitute the broader community. Nor does the state Party’s position on this make any sense in light of the 2006 election campaign attack on the Labor Party as having failed on state infrastructure.

Ted Baillieu should stop and ask himself what would Sir Henry Bolte have done?

Henry Bolte was actually an advocate of building a deep water port at Hastings, but it never eventuated. The point is however that he made tough decisions in the best interests of Victorians and we all knew what he stood for. He like Kennett was staunchly pro-business and pro-reform because they knew that business creates jobs, jobs create wealth and wealthy Victorians are happy Victorians.

So Ted, our message to you from here at hewhostandsfornothing is; take off the shawl and petticoat, flick off those high heels stilettos and try on your grandfather’s hat for size. Think big Teddy, think progress, think Liberal - or get lost.