August 2010: Wilkie and Gillard pose after negotiations for him to support her minority government
Just echoing John Quiggin – gaining Jenkins’ vote back on the floor doesn’t mean the ALP can now ignore Wilkie’s poker machine reform bill, no matter what the party machine goons might be urging. You should have stopped listening to them ages ago, don’t make the mistake of following their advice now.
Of course, if you’re just playing it close to your chest and letting the media get all excited over something you have no intention of allowing to happen, sure. Let them gibber and holler and strut and fret their fury on the stage.
Categories: parties and factions
Elections #AusPol 2019 Thread 
Beyond Marching: I Will Not Be Passive #Resist 
Read This OTD: Invent A Phantom Enemy To Advance Your Culture Wars 
QOTD: on the blaming of progressive scolds/shamers for the rise of Trumpists 
Hoyden About Town 
Wilkie was on Radio National, Brekky I think, this am. Not sure what he said exactly, I was sorta busy, but he sounded pretty positive. You may be able to check.
It also seems that Harry Jenkins is a supporter of anti-pokies legislation and that may have been a factor in his resignation, a desire to be involved.
So, at this stage [important caveat] I suspect the prognosis for the legislation is more positive today than the day before yesterday.
That’s been my impression too, HD. I just thought Quiggin’s point was worth fully emphasising given that certain segments of the media are carrying on about Wilkie being out in the cold. Wouldn’t want to give any of the machine goons any encouragement at all.
Gillard would be pretty silly to come out now and say she was dropping the pokies legislation or not to reassure Wilkie. I think there will be the temptation to let the negotiations drag on with the independent support she still needs for a few months and then tell Wilkie that she tried really hard, but sorry can’t get the numbers. Hopefully that won’t happen, but clearly Wilkie has a lot less leverage than he did a couple of days ago.
FWIW, I have seen a couple of reports (now can’t remember where) of Gillard saying, very explicitly, that she will still attempt to do something with the anti-pokie legislation.
I heard on the grapevine that the first call that Gillard made after the Speaker resigned was to Wilkie. So I think she probably rang to reassure him that things were still ticking along. She has shown herself to be a much cannier operator than anyone has thus far given her credit for.
I saw a piccy of the new speaker on the front page of the Terror today. Scroll down for it. I think it is fair to say that they are not happy, Jan.
Mindy, that’s almost gob-smackingly unsubtle. Not that I’d really expect much less from the Tele, but still…
I also think it’s become clear at this point that the parliamentary result of Tony Abbotts tactics, which have been fairly effective at scaremongering to the public, has been to sure up the Labor government’s position. Between him losing Slipper and alienating the indies, there have to be people in the Liberal party room getting frustrated at how badly he’s been playing the parliamentary politics.