{"id":6088,"date":"2013-07-08T21:09:05","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T11:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=6088"},"modified":"2022-05-02T00:29:01","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T14:29:01","slug":"bennelong-preliminary-skirmishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/bennelong-preliminary-skirmishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Bennelong: Preliminary skirmishing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Caf\u00e9

Caf\u00e9 Centro Eastwood Plaza<\/p><\/div>\n

By Jack Sumner<\/a><\/p>\n

July 8 2013<\/p>\n

Murat owns Caf\u00e9 Centro, which sits in the middle of Eastwood Plaza at the heart of the Bennelong electorate. As he made my long black this morning, I asked whether he\u2019d seen much political activity in and around his shop. His reply – \u201cno nothing yet”- indicated to me that the 2013 battle for Bennelong has not yet been seriously joined.<\/p>\n

There has, however, been some preliminary skirmishing. Confirmation that the sitting member is listening was dropped in our letterbox earlier in the week with pictures of John Alexander being told:<\/p>\n

Our power bills have gone through the roof. With all these new taxes, it\u2019s getting tougher to run your own business (and) I\u2019m concerned about the boats, and what they\u2019re costing<\/p>\n

The Liberal\u2019s case was further advanced by one of the local newspapers The Weekly Times, <\/em>owned and run by John F Booth, recognised for his bowler hat, climate change scepticism and political partisanship. Two excerpts from this week\u2019s ‘JB\u2019s World’ might help give you an inkling as to the way he leans.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaimo Cook, pictured right was delighted to receive a message from the Queen on her 100th\u00a0birthday last Wednesday, which she celebrated with Estonian community friends and relatives. She was not so excited about receiving a greeting from the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard which she filed in the circular filing cabinet. Some body said that\u2019s not so nice, to which Maimo replied: she\u2019s not so nice either. Fame is fleeting<\/p>\n

JA,or more formally\u00a0John Alexander OAM MP<\/strong>, the Federal Member for Bennelong, will be celebrating his third birthday as an MP\u00a0tomorrow, Thursday, and is probably hoping for a birthday present of an election win in the not too distant future. The fact that dear Kevin 747 Rudd got his own back on\u00a0Juliar<\/strong> G<\/strong>\u00a0might bring his birthday gift forward a few weeks from\u00a0Juliar\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0proclaimed date of September 14.<\/p>\n

The other side greeted Rudd\u2019s return more kindly, with NSW Labor General Secretary Sam Dastyari naming Bennelong first as one of the seats which Labor could now win from the Liberals.<\/p>\n

One has to wonder however whether this ambition can be realised. The Labor candidate, Jeff Salvestro-Martin, reported by Scott Howlett in the Northern District Times<\/em>, says \u201cBennelong is winnable\u201d, but then asked why he was not launching his campaign sooner replied, \u201cThere’s a hell of a lot of work that goes into these things, a hell of a lot of work – with everything that\u2019s happened,\u00a0July 24\u00a0seems about right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some Labor supporters could with some justification ask \u2013 have we got 3 weeks to spare?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jack Sumner July 8 2013 Murat owns Caf\u00e9 Centro, which sits in the middle of Eastwood Plaza at the heart of the Bennelong electorate. As he made my long black this morning, I asked whether he\u2019d seen much political activity in and around his shop. His reply – \u201cno nothing yet”- indicated to me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,785,675,3546,585,783],"tags":[2628,788,823,824,790],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-1Ac","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6088"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56637,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6088\/revisions\/56637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}