(From Dai Le)
Dear friends and supporters,
Thank you for your well wishes, congratulatory messages and comforting and encouraging words. I’ve been taking calls all days from many of you. I’m having a few days’ rest, clean up the house, and restoring some semblance of normality in our household again! I’m looking forward to taking a couple of weeks off, to recover from five months of campaigning and two weeks of intense pre-polling! I feel rather exhausted today to say the least!
The results for Cabramatta on Election Night can be gauged at this link:
http://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/la/la_district_summary-Cabramatta.htm
I cannot express enough my sincere gratitude to my volunteers, my supporters, and backers. They have been with me on this journey for many months with some having been with me over the past few years. I could not have achieved what I have achieved last night without them.
Cabramatta, once Labor’s second safest seat, was reduced to a margin of 7.9 per cent at the 2008 October By-Election, and last night was reduced further by about 4 per cent. The seat has never been as marginal as it is today. We are still waiting to get the final count but it looks like Labor will retain with a slim margin.
Last night's result speaks for itself. This is all due to the fact the NSW Labor have taken the area for granted, and NSW Labor have failed to deliver to the people living in that community. Last night’s result, delivering a triumphant win to Barry O’Farrell and his team, is a resounding acknowledgment that change was needed in NSW, to make it Number 1 Again.
Unfortunately for the 48 per cent of voters in the Cabramatta electorate, I could not deliver the change to the area that I know you wanted when you went to cast your votes for me yesterday. For the 52 per cent of voters, I am sorry that the fear and smear campaign by NSW Labor, Nick Lalich, and his Labor councillors, (edged on by Greens Candidate Daniel Griffiths) linking me to Pauline Hanson, have created innuendos and fear which impacted your decision to vote for me.
What happened in Cabramatta is the very reason the majority of NSW left Labor: dirty, grubby politics; the lies, the innuendos. Labor had nothing to offer to the people of Cabramatta except lies. Like NSW Labor, Lalich and his councillors resorted to telling lies and using the race card to gain votes.
I also want to congratulate our Candidate Andrew Rohan who won Smithfield for the Liberals, to Charbel Saliba for doing a magnificent job in Fairfield despite limited campaign resources and yet still making Fairfield a marginal seat, and to the other new soon-to-be Members of Parliament from across the State of NSW. I hope that you will work to make sure that the Liberal Government, under Barry O’Farrell will restore confidence, accountability, respectability, honesty to the people of NSW. I know you will work to govern for all.
Once again, I would like to say a big Thank You to all my wonderful volunteers. We gave our all to this campaign, and ran it with integrity, and focused on the issues of the day which were: the rising cost of living, transport, health and education. With Premier-elect Barry O’Farrell now leading a great team, I sincerely believe that they will be able to start the work to restore confidence in NSW and turn it into a Number 1 State Again. I look forward to catching up with you all soon for a cuppa, lunch, or even a dance of salsa!! :-)
Much Love, Dai
- David Daniel Ball Dai, I thank you. You ran a clean campaign. An honest one. If others build on it by being as gracious and hopeful as you have been, then in the future the seat may well be won by the Liberals. Even so, by your actions you have cleaned up much. The seat will not be taken for granted in the near future by the ALP. The dirty campaign of Lalich and Zangari, with their vast expenditure on phone calls, leaflets and signs is testimony to that. Thanks to you, Cabramatta is building car parks it has long needed. The local business needed that.13 minutes ago ·
David Daniel Ball I just noted that at least 2 in 7 who voted for daniel preferenced you ..
TOADPRINT REDUCED
Tim Blair – Monday, March 28, 11 (06:19 am)
Gentle miracle gas carbon dioxide can do anything, which is possibly why useless politicians despise it so. Left alone in nature, it helpfully floats from field to forest feeding grateful plants. On Formula One grids, it assists hard-working mechanics trying to keep engines cool before the big race. And in Queensland, it kills toads:
A toad-killing spree in north Queensland has eliminated 14,000 of the environmental pests in the third annual “Toad Day Out”.
The event is the brainchild of Queensland state MP for Dalrymple Shane Knuth … Mr Knuth hates cane toads, as do most people in his region.
So volunteers were rallied again this year last night, with Townsville, Charters Towers and Cairns the designated killing fields.
Toad vigilantes rounded up a record number of the voracious hoppers:
They were bagged, gassed with CO2 and then frozen.
“It’s a very quick death,” Mr Knuth said.
Far Knuth it is.
(Via Maurie S, who emails: “BTW, I take the kids out each night with a solid 4-wood and do our bit for bio-diversity!")
ROOF FIGHTERS
Tim Blair – Monday, March 28, 11 (05:47 am)
Queensland premier Anna Bligh meets Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl:
“He said ‘this is what I know how to do. I don’t know how to fix people’s roofs, but I know how to make music and make money’,” Ms Bligh said.
By the sounds of it, confused Bligh probably met former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett. Easy mistake. Those young rock types all look the same.
EVEN HAMAS WON AN ELECTION
Tim Blair – Monday, March 28, 11 (05:01 am)
“This state election was meant to represent a historic political breakthrough for the NSW Greens,” reports the Daily Telegraph. “Instead they have lost credibility, ground and influence, becoming even more ineffectual.” Well, that’skind of a breakthrough:
Federal Greens leader Bob Brown yesterday conceded the party had failed to win the seat of Marrickville, their chance at victory ruined by candidate and Mayor Fiona Byrne’s controversial support for a boycott on Israel.
In the seat of Balmain, where the Greens were expected to romp it in and win their first seat in the NSW Lower House, their candidate Jamie Parker is trailing 86 votes behind Labor’s Verity Firth.
However Mr Brown insisted the results were better than expected …
That would explain why Brown and his team of library-dwelling androids looked so happy at yesterday’s press call:
Has Brown ever, in his centuries of Greens leadership, described an election result as anything less than wonderful for his strange little boutique party? At least this time he noticed one error:
He said there was no doubt the controversy surrounding Ms Byrne’s comments and support for Israeli goods to be boycotted ruined their chances in the seat.
“I think it [the call for a boycott] had an effect on it and that’s my feedback from the electorate.”
Brown knew about the Israel-shunning way back in January, if not earlier. It’s only an issue for the Greens now because they lost.
FUNGUS FUN
Tim Blair – Monday, March 28, 11 (04:05 am)
Hey, kids! If your parents ever give you an eco-friendly toy, it might not mean that they hate you. Possibly. So keep that chin up, little guy, while you play with Ms. Frizzle and lumps of fungus:
Going Green is an award-winning kit including components, plus exciting experiments and activities designed to teach kids about living green. Accompanied by the famous Ms. Frizzle, early learners discover how to recreate the water cycle, build a compost tube, shrink plastic, magically make packing peanuts disappear, decompose food with fungus, form pulp to create new paper, design recycled paper shapes, learn about the 3 R’s and more.
One of those “3 R’s” ends in “etarded”. It’s a word you’ll learn when you take your handmade compost tube to school.
YOUTHS SANS DICTIONARIES
Tim Blair – Sunday, March 27, 11 (10:56 pm)
In London, anarchists are fighting against reduced government.
463 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S ELECTION-WINNING TAX
Tim Blair – Sunday, March 27, 11 (10:31 pm)
Election-winning … for Liberals! Barry O’Farrell always had a lock on the NSW election, but the carbon tax made things just that much more colossaltastic. Here’s Heath Aston four weeks before Saturday’s poll:
The families the carbon tax will sting most – mum, dad, two kids and an air-conditioner – are the kind that Labor desperately needs if it is to hold key seats and build a raft for after March.
For example, there’s no way a carbon tax will be embraced in the battler belt around Blacktown …
So it proved. O’Farrell quickly seized on the tax during his campaign:
He called on voters to make the March 26 state election a referendum on the issue and vowed to travel to Canberra to lodge a protest against the carbon tax if he won.
Post-election, Liberals hint at the tax’s impact:
Liberals claimed [Gillard’s carbon tax] was a key flashpoint in many Labor electorates.
Further from the new premier:
On the carbon tax, Mr O’Farrell revealed that he felt the mood of the election campaign switched on the day Ms Gillard announced the carbon tax, undercutting NSW leader Kristina Keneally’s argument that Labor would be better able to manage cost of living pressures.
Ms Gillard’s “amazing announcement” was “certainly an issue” in the stunning election result, Mr O’Farrell said.
And from Tony Abbott:
“This was an election fought very much on cost-of-living pressures,” he told Sky News, adding federal Labor was making a bad situation worse with taxes on carbon and the mining sector.
“The message that is coming loud and clear from the struggling families of NSW is that the carbon tax is toxic.”
Only to Labor. Keep talking, leftoids.
If the answer is Robertson, Labor is truly gone
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 28, 11 (06:59 am)
Paul Kelly is pessimistic about NSW’s chances of recovery under the mooted new leader, former ynion boss John Robertson:
The nadir of this malaise was the crisis over electricity privatisation when the Labor organisation destroyed the Labor government of Morris Iemma. It is incredible that, with Kristina Keneally’s resignation, the leadership candidate of the NSW machine is now former trade union leader John Robertson - architect of Iemma’s fall.
Keating wrote to Robertson in 2008 saying: ”If the Labor Party’s stocks ever get so low as to require your services in its parliamentary leadership, it will itself have no future.”
McGauchie warns on deficit, workplace “reform”
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 28, 11 (06:55 am)
Too much spent on too little, and curbs put on earning more:
OUTGOING Reserve Bank board member Donald McGauchie has renewed his attack on federal Labor’s economic management and industrial relations reforms, as he declared he would not seek a third term.
The rural business leader, whose second five-year term on the board ends tomorrow, warned that the RBA’s challenge of keeping inflation under control in the wake of the global financial crisis would be much greater, given the size of the Labor’s government’s deficit and the impact of its workplace policy.
Greens grounded
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 28, 11 (06:37 am)
The Greens have flopped again, after failing to win a single one of the four seats they thought they’d win last year in Victoria. In Saturday’s NSW election they felt sure to win one, if not two, seats, but seem to have won neither Balmain nor Marrickville.
Let us hope one reason for that humiliation finally sinks in with Greens Leader Bob Brown, who has been shamefully silent on the growing anti-Semitism anti-Zionism in his ranks, but now admits Marrickville may have been lost because of candidate Fiona Byrne’s bigotted support as mayor for a boycott of Israel:
(Brown) said there was no doubt the controversy surrounding Ms Byrne’s comments and support for Israeli goods to be boycotted ruined their chances in the seat.
“I think it [the call for a boycott] had an effect on it and that’s my feedback from the electorate.”
Tim Blair:
Brown knew about the Israel-shunning way back in January, if not earlier. It’s only an issue for the Greens now because they lost.
Victorian Liberal Senator Helen Kroger, who successfully pushed the Victorian Liberals into not preferrencing the Greens, celebrates once again:
In the NSW election on Saturday night, the ALP primary vote dropped 13.5 per cent but the Greens picked up only 1.4 per cent…
On Saturday night, they were expected to win the inner-city seats of Balmain and Marrickville, but they now look like winning neither. With a huge collapse in the ALP’s primary vote, the Greens should have won these seats where the swings required were only 3.7 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively.
More and more, the public is becoming deeply suspicious of the consequences of the extremist policies of selfish inner-city professionals who vote for the Greens…
Julia Gillard is starting to get the message. You won’t see any more joint announcements with Bob Brown between now and the next election.... Pressured by Bob Brown into announcing a carbon tax, Julia Gillard must be wondering why she panicked at the behest of a man with a friendly face but extremist views, which are putting the federal Labor Government at risk.
On Saturday night, former NSW premier Nathan Rees, in describing the carbon tax, said: “I’ve never seen an issue sink in so quickly.” He should know. The former premier is struggling to hold on to his seat after a massive swing against him in Labor’s heartland.
O’Farrell with leave Gillard with just a pocket full of mumbles
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 28, 11 (06:00 am)
If the Gillard Government thought it had trouble enough with WA’s impressive Colin Barnett, wait until Barry O’Farrell gets going - because he threatens to destroy what little Julia Gillard could claim as a success:
BARRY O’Farrell will use his thumping mandate in NSW to take the fight up to the Gillard government on a range of contentious federal-state issues including health reform, infrastructure funding, a carbon tax and the national curriculum, which he fears is “dumbing down” education in his state.
The Coalition’s victory in Saturday’s election, by an estimated 69 seats to Labor’s 21 after gaining a two-party-preferred swing of almost 17 per cent, loosens Julia Gillard’s grip on the national reform agenda, which is already weakened by her reliance on independent MPs and the Greens.
Along with the victories by the Liberals in Western Australia in 2008 and the Coalition in Victoria last November, Mr O’Farrell’s triumph means conservative state governments are now in charge of about 70 per cent of the national economy. ..
In a letter to be sent to Ms Gillard today, the premier-elect will detail his concerns and reaffirm his intention to redirect $2.1 billion of promised federal funding for a rail link between Epping and Parramatta in Sydney’s west to a new rail line to growth areas in northwest Sydney…
Mr O’Farrell said he would use the national tax summit in October to argue against a carbon tax, which became a centrepiece of his election campaign…
On health reform, he flagged support for Victorian Liberal Premier Ted Baillieu’s campaign to change the formula under which hospitals will be reimbursed according to the “efficient price” of the procedures they perform....
In a further sign of trouble for Ms Gillard, Mr O’Farrell backed comments last week by NSW Nationals leader Andrew Stoner, in which the deputy premier-elect opposed the federal government’s proposed “opt out” system for getting households on to the proposed National Broadband Network.
So if O’Farrell gets his way, Gillard:
- will have no health agreement in this “year of delivery”
- will have her National Broadband Scheme in even deeper financial doubt
- will have her national curriculum rejected
- will have her carbon dioxide tax made even more poisonous
- will have her last-minute Epping to Parramatta rail link promise made to look even even worse joke, which will hurt her in the next election campaign in Sydney’s West.
The election has bought Gillard a world of pain. And has bought NSW a Premier much, much tougher than the Opposition Leader so widely described to them for so long, and a hell of a lot more powerful than any Premier they’ve had in many years.
A taste of what the Independents face if they don’t ditch Gillard
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 28, 11 (05:57 am)
The repudiation of the Greens is a comfort, but it’s the pressure on the Independents that may change government:
The NSW election result was a blow for the Greens, who look unlikely to win a lower house seat after hoping to snare two in Sydney’s inner-west, while it will leave federal independent MPs Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor questioning their viability.
The NSW independent MPs in Tamworth and Port Macquarie, whose seats are contained within their federal counterparts’ respective electorates, lost to Nationals opponents.
The successful Nationals candidates in the seats attributed their victories to voter anger about the decisions of Mr Oakeshott and Mr Windsor to support the Prime Minister last year in forming a minority Labor government.
UPDATE
Independent Peter Draper, whose seat of Tamworth falls within federal Independent Tony Windsor’s seat of New England, blames his federal independent colleagues’ deal with Greens-backed Julia Gillard for his thumping:
A FEDERAL government getting too closely aligned with The Greens was one of the chief reasons support for Peter Draper switched in such dramatic
fashion....Mr Draper said he was inundated by calls, texts and emails from people apologising for the fact they could not give him their support on Saturday.
“A lot of people were ringing up apologising, saying they’ve always supported me, but because of the federal situation they just felt they had to vote for The Nationals,” he said.
He said talk of a carbon tax played no role in his defeat.
“This electorate is very conservative and they are extremely concerned a government is reliant on The Greens. I understand that concern.”
O’Farrell disses O’Brien
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 28, 11 (05:54 am)
Indeed, O’Farrell may have a problem with not just Kerry O’Brien but the ABC more generally:
The ABC missed out again yesterday, when its key panel show, Insiders, failed to interview either O’Farrell or Keneally. O’Farrell popped up instead on rival Sky’s Australian Agenda...
(Thanks to reader Mark.)
No need to return, after all, Nikki. Honest
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, March 27, 11 (01:59 pm)
Nikki Gemmell, author of The Bride Stripped Bare, explains why she’s leaving Britain to return to the land where Julia Gillard now rules:
Would a woman like Gillard, a coal-miner’s daughter from Wales, have risen so far in Britain...? It doesn’t seem likely—and we’re not hanging around to find out.
Gemmell should stick to fiction:
Smoky tribute to Earth Hour
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, March 27, 11 (01:40 pm)
Extra candles? Check.
Neon sign ablaze? Check.
Warmists in Newcastle make sure they emit extra carbon dioxide for Earth Hour. Photographic evidence here.
(Thanks to reader Steve.)
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