The Labor Leader

should be a drag on the party's hope of winning the election. He isn't - but he should be.
He isn't as popular as the very new and relatively unknown current Prime Minister. That should be sending alarm bells through the community.
But, things that should be said are simply not being said. Why?
This is a man who is alleged to have raped someone. The matter never got to court with the police claiming there was insufficient evidence and that it was uncorroborated. In reality the evidence is a great deal stronger than the uncorroborated evidence which recently sent another high profile figure inside.
He had an affair outside his first marriage - with a married woman and made her pregnant. He divorced his first wife and married the second. Both women had a status that greatly enhanced his career. (The mother of his second wife was once the Governor-General.)
Nothing much has been made of that but his party was heavily critical of the member of another party who had a relationship outside marriage. They may have got him on citizenship grounds but they made a lot of his infidelity while never mentioning that of their own leader.
And this man was a union boss - a union boss who did not do the right thing by the workers. A Royal Commission was supposed to sort that out but it is the person who blew the whistle who is facing criminal proceedings not this man. Despite this the workers at Unibuilt, Chiquita Mushrooms, Cleanevent and others will still do as their unions tell them and vote for him - the man who cost them thousands of dollars each. They will vote for him even though he lined the union coffers with vast sums of money now being used in a very nasty election campaign.
I voted yesterday. I have two things I need to do on polling day - both outside the electorate. I might make it to a polling booth but it would be a rush and there is that slight chance I might not make it.
Voting early also meant that I didn't need to stand in the queue. I still had to run the gauntlet of those handing out "how to vote" cards. (I didn't take any. I told them all, "I know how I am going to vote" - and they actually cheered me. It helps when you know at least half of the people doing it - my friends come from across a fair range of the political field.)
It was a hard choice this year. People like the Leader of the Opposition make it difficult.