So I go to the ABC website to see what's happened this afternoon and the first thing I read is speculation that some people apparently want SA Premier Mike Rann replaced as leader by Treasurer Kevin Foley.
It's not that I am a Rann enthusiast, though it's always nice to have an undeniably smart and tough bloke running the state, whatever his failings may be. It's more that Foley's public behaviour and demeanour, particularly in Parliament, has been consistently that of a bully and a boor. I can't see him leading any sort of group out of a paper bag; while clearly a Type A personality, he seems to me to be a fundamentally divisive one.
If they want to replace Rann with Education Minister and former Adelaide Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith then I am all for it. Hooray. But if they replace him with Foley, then I will be voting Green or Independent somewhere to the left of Labor at the 2010 state election.
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2 comments:
Way ahead of you, Dr Cat. I've been voting to the left of Labor (not hard, really) since Hawke's first term.
David Irving (no relation)
I was talked out of that in 1989 by a bloke who pointed out to me that the most important thing was not to let the other mob get (back) in, an argument that still resonates. So when I say I'm not going to vote Labor it means I really have had them up to the eyebrows. The main thing that I have usually had them etc about is the way they use women at both state and federal level to hand the poisoned chalices to, starting with Hawke's choice of Susan Ryan to flog the idea of the Australia Card and going on through the roll call of Kirner, Kernot, Lawrence etc etc and most recently, locally and stupidly, poor old bunny-in-the-headlights Nicole Cornes.
You watch: if the 2010 election starts looking like a defeat for them or if something happens before then to put them seriously on the nose, they will immediately shoehorn Lomax-Smith into the leadership so that she can take the rap. She may be too smart to let them, but they will try.
Not that it really makes any difference to me as I have been living in safe seats -- on both sides, in two states -- ever since I was old enough to vote.
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