Like rats or saints?

Well it took Downer long enough to officially declare his resignation in writing. But the real ‘Flipper’ came from Vaile’s resignation announcement, this is an announcement only people so let’s not get too excited yet, and no doubt will follow Downer’s lead in goading the ALP about fielding a candidate. Downer was at it again today saying Labor was cowardly for not standing a candidate, while Labor wimped on about Mayo being un-winnable.

Well then let us look at the seat of Lyne (I believe it’s pronounced as line). The Nationals, and ergo the Liberals if things go well in Queensland, actually increased their two party preferred (2PP) vote. Vaile recorded a +3.01% swing in favour on primary votes. Surely if Mayo, which is not as old a seat as Lyne, is declared to be un-winnable, than Rudd et al must believe Lyne is completely out-of-the-question.

It will be interesting to see if Brough attempts to put himself in for Lyne in exchange for letting go of insisting on being the leader of the new conservative party post-merger of the Liberals and Nationals in Queensland.

However, Vaile’s decision to quickly follow Downer’s official resignation may be to ensure that both elections are held either at the same time or within weeks of each. This may be a way for the Coalition to keep the cost down for themselves by running roughly parallel campaigns i.e. prattle on about the economy, ETS being their scheme, interest rates, petrol prices and how they were doing a better job; you know the populist stuff.

It is really great to see the Greens quickly declaring their intentions to field candidates. They’ve at least given voters an alternative to the usual suspects. Like Mayo it will be good to see if the Australian Democrats can still manage to stand a candidate. Here are parties that are contributing the Australian democracy and multi-party system. And it is here where the tired old parties like Labor and the Liberals have begun to only care about winning and losing, the winnable and un-winnable seats.

It isn’t about the democracy, you know to give voters alternatives parties and opinions from which to vote, but about power and control. As we’ve seen from the emissions trading scheme being buttered up by Labor is really nothing at all in responding to the climate change challenge – even though someone in the ALP found a willing economist to support their scheme. Yet the Liberals are crying on about Labor stealing their emissions trading scheme, so the Liberals are whining about an idea that does nothing to really combat climate change being stolen by the ALP.

Crazy I know. But back to the question of democracy at hand.

I for one think it is appalling that Labor has chosen not to stand a candidate in Mayo – not cowardly like Downer so crassly puts it – because they are refusing to contribute to our democracy and multi-party system.  But then it doesn’t matter to the overall numbers either way for Labor.

Of course with Downer and Vaile bidding farewell to politics, questions have again been asked of Costello’s future.  I think Costello is either waiting for Nelson to sink to capture the reins or is waiting to leave until after his much anticipated memoirs are published.  (It seems strange to stick around if you’ve already publish your memoirs) Of course, you have those close to the various factions saying they’ve done the right thing, saintly farewells included, to move on to allow fresh faces to take their places.

But then I have to ask myself is the Downer and Vaile departure indicative of the real hemorrhaging of the conservative parties? And are they really like rats getting off Nelson’s ship?