A Four Point Plan

I was going to write about why the Labor Party primary vote has slipped to the high 20's from the good old days of the 40's.  And then I realised that no-one gives a rats.  So I am going to write about something else instead.  My four point plan for electoral success follows.

1. The first thing I would do is stop chasing Abbott down every nasty little rat-hole that he can find. Australian's don't want or need two conservative parties.  At election time they have been trained to choose between the Liberal Party and the Labor Party - with the crumbs left over for the Nationals and the Greens.  When Abbott goes down a rat-hole - close it off and focus on something positive.

It's too bad that the Libs have become nasty right wing conservatives - but we can't change that and it won't help you to try to occupy their old space.  Go back to being Labor and looking out for the people and the nation.  And stop the suck up and the dominance of the ugly right wing.  That only works for conservatives.

Identify the things that the conservatives will do after they win government and hammer each and every one of them as hard and as fast as you can between now and the next election.

If you don't know what these things are - then check out what Cameron and the Tories are doing to the UK and what Romney and the Republicans think they will do to the US after November.  Can't be that hard to figure out.

2. The second thing I would do is communicate.  Properly.  Start with the PM.  She needs to have a weekly 20 minute pod-cast about the big and important things that the government is doing - and it needs to be distributed widely.  She also needs to have a series of radio and television sessions each week - where she speaks directly to the people - not the hosts or the shock jocks or the right wing audience.  Bypass our dickhead and biased media and go direct to the people - paid for by the government if necessary.  Work something out with the ABC to host a weekly segment of real conversation with the PM and her senior Ministers.  Train Ministers to communicate properly and introduce them to Twitter and other social media.  Lose the shyness.

Don't allow Abbott to hijack that process and request equal time.  He is already getting more than equal time from Uncle Rupert.

3. The third thing I would do is stop any Federal money going to the Murdoch press - or indeed any media organisation that is partisan and biased in *any* way.

If they want Federal advertising money then they will demonstrate that they are not biased and partisan.  Otherwise they can let their bias sort out their funding.  And I would include the ABC and other public media in this deal.

It's just plain stupid to fund the Murdoch press with Federal government advertising money.  And you should already know that.

4. The fourth thing I would do is "Go after Murdoch and his cronies" - hard.  A simple perusal of the evidence to the Leveson enquiry shows that there are many people in Murdoch Ville who have no regard for the rule of law.  And they seem to think that they are not subject to the same standards and rules that apply to the rest of us.  Slowly pick them apart and demonstrate to the Australian people that they can't determine who our government is.  Or die trying in the process.

So this is my four point plan for electoral success.  You should have started on it two years ago - but you need to get into it now or disappear into oblivion.

Your choice really.