Land of Oz, and everywhere: politics is politics

8:07 AM:
Remember Robert Murphy and the pivotal role he played just days out from polling day? Don't feel uninformed - there were a few creased brows when his name came up at Election Live HQ this morning.

Mr Murphy was the man who cruelled the chances of Labor's Jon Sullivan being returned as member for Longman, on Brisbane's northern fringe. Labor was confident of a win, with Mr Sullivan up against 20-year-old Wyatt Roy.

But it all went pear-shaped for Mr Sullivan after this exchange in a shopping centre during a live election forum on 612 ABC Brisbane:

Mr Murphy: It's taken two years for my son - to take him to the doctor to get him diagnosed - because we don't have the money to actually go and pay for a specialist to get him diagnosed so he can get the proper help that he needs at school. He's undiagnosed.

Mr Sullivan: What parent would wait two years to get a child, who they believe has a disability, to get a specialist.

Now, Mr Murphy has told The Australian he was "a little bit confused" when he spoke up. It seems he and his wife have not really been waiting two years to see a doctor, and now that the doctors have seen his son, they've given him a clean bill of health.

In an election as tight as this, it illustrates how big a role fate plays. Robert Murphy hadn't planned to attend the 612 forum - he just happened to be at the shopping centre buying birthday presents for his daughter.

He got confused and said some things he shouldn't have. So did Jon Sullivan. Despite his repeated apologies, the backlash carried Wyatt Roy to Canberra and helped put the Coalition on the brink of victory.

You've got to love democracy.

John. Gilbert. "Jack". Layton. II

Registre des armes à feu - Le test de M. Layton
Menotté :
« À quoi bon, en effet, un projet de loi pour modifier un registre qui aurait disparu? Depuis quand s'applique-t-on à corriger une page blanche? Si M. Layton était sérieux, il exigerait de ses députés qu'ils assurent la survie du registre afin de pouvoir lui apporter les correctifs qu'il suggère.

Jack Layton s'est souvent moqué des déchirements libéraux et leur a volontiers fait porter l'odieux de l'adoption de projets de loi conservateurs. Ces dissensions lui ont même parfois évité d'exposer celles de son propre parti. Ce paravent a disparu et c'est à son tour d'être face à un arbitrage extrêmement difficile sur la place publique, ce dont les libéraux font déjà leurs choux gras.

M. Layton perdra des plumes, quelle que soit sa décision. Aussi bien prendre celle qui respecte ses convictions et celles de la majorité de son caucus, est-on tenté de dire. Le pire est que rien ne garantit que cela aurait raison des dissidents et sauverait le registre. »

John. Gilbert. "Jack". Layton.

Burke & Ignatieff vs Harper

Short version - Ignatieff's best 2min18sec: WE make the rules!
Long version - Burke
"But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated is, lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters, that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail or commit waste on the inheritance by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society, hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of an habitation — and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer."