Small and medium miners, including Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group, are considering restarting the advertising campaign against the government’s mining tax.

Mr Forrest, the chief executive of Fortescue, has told a teleconference in Perth this morning, his company and its counterparts not only remain opposed to the tax, but they now hold grave fears because the Greens may win the balance of power in the Senate.

The Greens of course want to basically abolish the mining  industry. I think the mining industry will do a much better job at attacking the ALP than the Liberals are currently doing through their advertising campaign. Hard but true. Still we don’t have a new attack ad. Is someone asleep in Liberal HQ? They should be rolling out a new ad every two to three days and bringing forward their party conference to rest back some momentum.

Noticed that Rudd is back in the news. Apparently he wants a job with the UN. Typical. Rudd would rather serve the UN than Australia, and don’t confuse the UN for the world. It also shows how self serving Rudd is and how quickly a politician can fall. Rudd has been leaking to the media as badly as a people smuggler’s boat since he was deposed as PM. For someone of his ego he must be raving mad at Gillard. A pesky journalist with a bit of courage could probably pry some type of public reaction out of him. That would make for juicy news. Better still, a punch up or stouch between Gillard and Rudd in a Westfields in Brisbane. Gillard would probably win.

ABC has launched its 24 news channel tonight. Just in time to help get the ALP across the line this election. Your tax dollars at work. I have a feeling that the ABC presence may move Sky News to the right to help them retain some market share. Here’s hoping.

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The A-Team.

I was surprised at the Liberals first election advertisement. They should have just gone straight for the throat first off. This is not a time to take prisoners. No one it seems expects the Coalition to win so don’t hold back.

This has been a very bad government. Easily the most incompetence in living memory – people have died as a direct result of this government’s domestic policies. The ALP has admitted as much by not dwelling on what has gone on before and by pushing another childish slogan. Something about moving forward together to even greater depths of incompetence and political spin mastery. You know what I mean.

There is also so much left unsaid by the ALP over what they plan to do on carbon taxation, border security and a host of other issues large sections of the media seem to lazy and inept to ask about. Can you imagine John Howard going to an election with such scant detail on the GST? Some how I doubt the media would allow him to get away with it, but the ABC and the TV news seem perfectly happy to give Gillard a great big free pass.

As a side, I’ve never been more convinced as to the basic immorality of the ABC. Taking conservative voter tax money to push a left-wing line on virtually every issue one cares to think about and then have the effrontery to claim they represent Australian values.  They have started to believe their own propaganda.

I am trying not to get ahead of myself, but this is amazing. There is a clear trend against the government. Voters don’t like being treated as fools. The real fools are in the government, not the people working hard for family and country.

Regardless, Tony Abbott has been an unbelievable opposition leader. Easily the best in living memory. His sincerity and balanced personal character  – with all his natural flaws and foibles – could be just enough to get the Coalition across the line. I believe he is more popular than the polls say he is. No body in the chattering classes and not many in main stream media predicted that when Abbott became leader he would be able to put the ALP to the sword, but he has.

Just imagine what Gillard must be thinking now. This poll and others like it could be enough to drive Gillard to desperation, depression and revenge. Remember, Gillard’s life is politics. If she fails at politics it would be like failing at life. Gillard is therefore desperate for victory and the pressure will begin to tell the longer the campaign goes on. Tony just needs to hang in there and be himself. We don’t need two fakes contesting this election.

UPDATE

Newspoll has the ALP ahead. I think it will take a couple of weeks for the polls to settle down and start giving readers a consistent picture of events. It is going to be tough for Abbott though. A victory with be re-writing history.

Noticed on the ABC news website that they decided to promote the poll that has the ALP winning, while ignoring the poll that has the Coalition winning. The ABC really is hitting rock bottom on this election campaign.

It is also revealing that nobody in the main stream media has bothered to actually check or critique the proposal. It seems journalists in this country have already given up on their profession just two days into the election.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has given a guarantee he would keep interest rates lower than a Labor government in a move that could backfire on him as it did for former prime minister John Howard.

Mr Abbott on Sunday said Labor policies and the size of the government’s debt were pushing up living costs and putting upward pressure on interest rates.

But in comments reminiscent of a promise made by Mr Howard during the 2004 election campaign, Mr Abbott suggested a coalition government would be able to keep interest rates lower.

If the media in this country bothered to give even a cursory look at recent economic history they would find that interest rates have been lower under the Coalition than the ALP for the simple fact that the Coalition has in past avoided the worst aspects of fiscal debt so common with the ALP.

What part of economics 101 doesn’t the main stream media understand? Fiscal debt  in a growing economy = higher interest rates. It isn’t rocket science. Even Rudd at the height of his arrogance admitted that the ALP’s debt was going to impact interest rates. In other words, see them go north beyond what they would have otherwise done without the debt and spend agenda of the ALP.

Count this as the third great media lie about Abbott during this election campaign. The first being that Abbott only recently decided to not push through Work Choices Mk II and secondly that boat people arrivals isn’t the real problem Abbott is making it out to be.

Firstly, the amount of resources needed to intercept, house, feed, cloth, educate, provide medical services and process asylum applications costs billions of dollars. Well out of proportion to the arrival numbers.

Secondly, Naval personnel every day risk serious injury even their lives having to intercept these boats. Injuries have already been incurred.

Thirdly, over 170 people have so far died since Rudd went soft on people smuggling.

Fourth, people smuggling is illegal.

Fifth, these illegal arrivals are denying a refugee place to people that play by the rules, and are in refugee camps all over the world.

Sixth, there is now a growing body of evidence that some of the arrivals have been engaged in terrorist activities in Sri Lanka. Remember that the Tamil Tigers invented the suicide bomber.

Seven, there are international aspects to the problem, especially our relationship with Indonesia.

To say that boat people arrivals is not much of a problem is crazy. Just look at the basic facts.

Oaks claimed that Tony Abbott’s promise not to bring back Work Choices in the first term of a Coalition government was the first back-flip of the election campaign. This is a total fabrication, probably stated in the context of Oaks’ ignorance of recent Federal political history.

In the very first days of the opposition, Brendan Nelson along with the entire party room rejected bringing back  Work Choices. Abbott also wrote about it in his book Battlelines. I’ve also heard Abbott from December 2007 to now, repeat on numerous occasions that Work Choices was dead. Abbott’s decision not to bring back Work Choices is only news to Oaks. It is saddening that Oaks continues to push statements out of ignorance on national television, miss-leading voters and giving advantage to Gillard.

UPDATE

Noticed that the Channel Nine presenter asked Abbott some fairly idiotic questions about the election giving us all a fairly good indication that most of the media will drop an pretense to objectivity and start advocating for Gillard. One question was what Abbott’s wife and three daughter thought about Gillard being PM. Who cares? It is not relevant but a desperate attempt to portray the Abbott family as some how divided. Abbott responded well, claiming that competency was more important in elections than gender.

Channel Nine could do a better job focusing the key issues, not trying to invent them as a proxy Gillard attack on Abbott, as per his media address.

Someone tried to interrupt him while he was talking – think it was ALP media spokeswoman Annabel Crabb – irrelevant questions about the GST, questions about what Abbott would do two elections from now, continuing questions about Work Choices even though Abbott said it was dead 2 1/2 years ago, etc… Some of these media clowns need to get up to speed.

Abbott says it will be a conservative government.

The $9000 return flight to Brisbane is just shy of the estimated $10,000 collected from the 250 people who attended the function for Labor MP Yvette D’Ath at the Australian Workers Union watering hole in the CBD.

…and now a quick visit to her parents.

Now I have no problem with the use of the VIP jet(s) for such purposes, but the hypocrisy of the media and ALP is plain to see. Howard is painted as corrupt while no one even notices that Gillard has basically been doing the same thing in the three weeks since she became PM.

The mining tax is far from a done deal, well that’s according to the mining industry and those wondering how much budget revenue the deal will result in. Issues far from the minds of Channel 9 nightly news producers.

UPDATE

Just suffering through a bunch of government and pro-government TV ads during the news.