Lexi, isn't McAuley one of those economists that believe that growth
will respond to financial investment and does not realise that growth
can only respond to energy supply ?

Beware the economists that you hang your hat on.

I would vote for Juliar to head Labor, as she makes the case for Abbott.

Yabby give me a break mate.
Do you think Gillard can ever win back lost ground.
And can she rest in peace after this.
Will her polling never again get in front of Abbott.
Are you aware far too many vote on personality's not policy.
Love?
Bloke I love my party, enough to give my good name in it away.
And to say sacking Rudd was never explained to us.
It appears, HONESTLY, to be compared with the Fiji take over.
Gillard is no winner tomorrow, she in fact can not win.
Victory is a very bad but certain defeat, for her and my party.
Reality is this, my party's policy's are good, it has let its self ignore us.
It, in miss placed self assurance,thinks it can turn around Gillards polling and the party's.
If Julia could look in to the future, just 6 months, she would not stand.
Be seen as heroic for putting party first.
MANY who vote for her tomorrow, need to be graceful enough to hold them selves accountable.
They with deliberate forethought smash my party tomorrow.

You've got to laugh at the declaration that the 102 Labor caucus members will have a free vote, free from those that endorsed / preselected them. As if any of them are capable of voting without one iota of consideration for their own survival.

It’s a pity that individual branches of the Labor party are not able to declare their support for candidates at least one week before the ballot.

From this you would get a much clearer picture of Labor's internal democratic liberalism nationally and according to those well cited but often amorphous indications of Left and Right within Labor's rank and file. I'm sure there are hundreds of union members who wrongly think the unions they are members of are Left wing!

Whatever the outcome tomorrow, Labor has to bite the bullet and admit that many of its parliamentary members do not come from working class backgrounds. The "modernisation" of Australia’s Labor party actually meant that the professional classes got a Guernsey ahead of many rank and file working class people. Rudd’s ambitions to revamp a “New Labor’ through ridding it of the faceless hatchet men is not based on anything more than revenge for his own assassination.

Here’s hoping that somewhere in the future ‘working class’ sentiment and political mobilization is not the sole political franchise of the stinking Labor party

Quite so Rainier, "As if any of them are capable of voting without one iota of consideration for their own survival,", in relation to the tearey eyed Albanese, sobbing that his career had just gone up in smoke because he was foolish enought to ask his branch whom to back.

A real jerk too for trying to appeal to the gormless masses with his lament that he was a) brought up by a single mother b) believed in the Pell Patrol without question c) mistook a bloody sports team as something worth mentioning in anything beyond a gents urinal converstaion and c) well, I'll allow him his belief in the ALP because, well, that's why he's there, I suppose.

What a pathetic lowgrade populist this 'iron man of politics' really is.

Lexi, I remind you that Costello operated in the same global economy
as Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, USA and the rest. It is exactly
because he was frugal, that we did not land up like them. It makes
perfect sense to build public infrastructure, when there is an
economic downturn, if you have money in the kitty. Better then
give it away, so that people can blow it at the pokies, like Kevie
did.

No matter how much money you throw at infrastructure, Govt depts
will spend it. So best to give them less, make them spend what
they do get a bit more wisely. That is exactly what Costello was
about. So it cannot be denied that Costello's frugalness and having
paid off Govt debt, got us through the GFC. Kevie got the credit.
But plenty of us know the real story.

Belly I remind you again, Labor did not win Govt, they won a huge
compromise with all sorts. They would have been better off to tell
the whole lot to shove it and call another election, but Gillard has
made the best of an awful bloody mess,with her hands tied behind her
back by the Greens, Wilkie and all the rest.

The problem for Labor is that its supporters are not unified on things
like a carbon tax or asylum seekers etc. As I've said before, its
more like herding cats.

Kevie's not going to solve all that for you, but I would not be
surprised if the party machine pulls somebody like Shorten out of
the hat if they need to, which would be a far better option then Rudd.