Oh! Andrew, I and others have said the same as you have said in your article and have been labelled leftwingers, rightwingers, howard haters, God botherers and jealous of our "great & noble?" leader. As you appear to have some proof of 'possible?' vote buying you will be absolutely vilified by the precious petals of this forum. P/Ps are those who are fair, objective, totally non biassed,unprejudiced in all their letters to this forum, and will get upset if you remind them that our wonderful honest, courageous, fair impartial,PM and his 'bagman?' anderson bought, or appeared too or seemed too, their votes. As well as all the above qualities these P/Ps are far too clever to be taken in by a deceitful -that is if we have any deceitful government members in this country - politician.
By the way I enjoyed the article, thankyou. regards, numbat

Numbat, the article looked like a reasonable attempt to explore at one of the factors which might have contributed to the election outcome. A lot of us on the right side of politics (not sure if I'm a P/P) don't like pork barrelling regardless of who is doing it. No more white boards! At the end of the day my income is being spent so it better be spent on useful things.

Spending in seats you already hold makes good business sense, keep the customers you already have but to get an increased number of seats there have to be reasons why people in seats they don't currently hold would change their vote. That does not invalidate Andrews analysis and I don't have the knowledge to critique the detail of what he has done but it is a reminder that there was more to the election than spending in seats the Government already held.

I have little doubt that Andrew's analysis is correct. Up our way, the R to R program was eclipsed by the so-called 'Regional Partnerships' program - where funding for an equestrian centre reportedly became the context of a shoddy bribe attempt by John Anderson to induce Tony Windsor not to stand. Mind you, I'm sure the other side would be just as guilty given the opportunity.

Andrew, most of the roads to recovery was in rural areas. The ALP does not have too many of these.

Crocodile you seem to agree that money was spent by what some may see in a corrupt manner - that is to buy votes. You say that there were not many seats where labor had a candidate. Are you saying that clever john and his possible bagman would waste tax money? I mean if there was only a liberal or other standing what would be the point in what some may see as blatant bribery. Again why did so many country or near country electorates take the money? Regards, numbat

Maybe it’s possible that the Roads of Recovery program was directed to areas that needed it the most? How about instead of slyly alleging corrupt practices, how about investigating whether or not those electorates were deserving of the funding? Only when you show that the funding was allocated inappropriately can you introduce the idea of vote buying.