NSW: what went wrong?

Bob Ellis 27 March 2011

So what went wrong? Well, it’s a fair question. I never believed the words ‘the biggest swing in Australian history’ and ‘Barry O’Farrell’ belonged in the same sentence and I held out hope. I believed a world in seismic uproar – quake, tsunami, meltdown, cyclone, deluge, casual Afghan slaughters, an Armageddon Spring in the Middle East – would help incumbent governments as Kennedy’s assassination helped Menzies but I was wrong and I owe five hundred bucks, I think, in wagers on Kristina’s campaigning skills, a Hung Parliament, a salvaging weather event like Bligh’s, and the rest of it.

So what went wrong?

The sacking of Rees, the privatisations, the obsession with AAA ratings from the knaves and fools who rated Lehman’s AAA one day before it smashed up the world, the barping traffic driving in from the West every day, were only a part of it.

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Could Keneally have won? Oh yes. By cancelling the privatisation, announcing a Catastrophe Fund and a levy on the big banks to pay for it...

Could Rees have won? Easily. He was on 45 percent when they topped him. One percent away from Hung Parliament victory, and obviously gaining votes each hour with his push against the Tripodi bunch and on his way to glory.