Month: November 2007

My fellow Australians. I have just telephoned the Leader of the Australian Labor Party Mr Rudd and conceded that the Coalition has lost the election. I congratulated him and his party.

I would like to thank those who voted for us, my staff, and Coalition candidates for the magnificent effort they put in over the past six weeks.

I thought until yesterday that the polls had got it wrong or if they had got it right that there would be a last-minute change and voters would ultimately turn back to the Coalition.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 24 November 2007 howard’s defeat speech”

Some public servants might well have shuddered at the National Press Club yesterday (Nov 21) afternoon.

Kevin Rudd confirmed, “When I talk about a razor gang . . . I’m deadly serious.”

But one other person might have shuddered more: Greens Senate candidate Kerrie Tucker.

If Kerrie Tucker is to unseat Liberal Senator Gary Humphries she will be relying on a lot of overflow from Labor’s Senator Kate Lundy.
Continue reading “Op-ed-analysis piece on Tucker-Humphries”

Thirty-five years ago when I was in my 20s, I signed a contract for the construction of a pick-a-plan house in an outer suburb.

I was saved by luck not good management. I knew nothing of passive solar heating, but the builder did. Choosing one of the floor plans was easy enough. Putting it on the land was another matter. Most builders would have left the floor plan as is, banged the front door to the front of the block and that would have been that.

The trouble was that the front boundary of the block faced north-north-west. The only way to get north orientation was to turn the house 45 degrees. Radical stuff in 1972. Houses always ran parallel to the street – to show the world what a big house you have.

The builder turned the house 45 degrees and moved the large sliding glass door on the pick-a-plan to the northern wall. Total cost: nothing. It could be done because the block was big enough to accommodate the house’s diagonal across its width.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 17 November”

Opinion pollsters love elections. For a start they get lots of publicity virtually free as they are plastered all over the media. More importantly they get a taxpayer-funded audit on the soundness of their methods and work which they can flog around the commercial world.

People in commerce want to know what people are thinking. Car manufacturers want to know whether people prefer fuel economy over safety, environment over power, comfort over performance and so on. Cosmetic manufacturers want to know whether people care about animal experiments and so on. So they want to know whether the polling company, or its commercial arm, can give them sensible answers for a reasonable cost.

Pollsters can answer this question. In the aftermath of an election, a pollster can point to a poll of voters immediately before an election in which they predicted that X per cent said they would vote Labor and Y per cent would vote Coalition. And also point to the actual result in which X per cent, plus or minus a tad, actually voted Labor and Y per cent, plus or minus a tad, voted Coalition.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 3 November 2007 opinion poll”