I was talking to my daughter over dinner last night about her school camp experiences while Paul Howes was on 7.30 in the background, so I could only vaguely get the gist of what he was on about, but my main impression was that it was rambling, confusing performance of highly unclear purpose.
Mark Kenny in Fairfax this morning says that Howe's intervention is helpful to Abbott, and I suppose it might be, except that I find it hard to believe that anyone watching Paul will think it anything other than positioning for his own future benefit in politics, somewhere. As Kenny says, Howes seems to be alluding to some potential for a re-visiting something like the Hawke era wages accord, but the difference is that there is no potential for a "trade off"in higher social wage under the Abbott government.
Howes should just go away for a while. Like 3 years or so. Dissent within Labor is that last thing they need.
Still, I doubt it is going to lead to any improvement to the Abbott government's popularity. Pollbludger has its poll of polls at 52.6 to 47.4 in favour of Labor, with possibly the first Newspoll for the year being done over the next weekend. As Newspoll has been lagging a bit in its assessment of the decline of Abbott popularity, if it joins the other polls and shows Labor in front, Coalition members will not be all that happy with the prospect of a West Australian Senate election.
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