have been in Australia for 52 years, arriving at age 21. I joined the ALP in 1972 wanting to contribute and become involved in my new country. I was a member for more than 25 years.

There were many wonderful people in the party, full of ideals for a more equitable and just society. The 1970s was a great decade for change, including the battle to improve the position of women in society. But there were also opportunists and careerists, who have now become the dominant group in the party.

The rot started in NSW with the Olympics. Our treasurer at the time, Michael Egan, congratulated himself that the Games had been paid for, but what he did not say was that millions were slashed from transport, hospitals and schools. New projects were cancelled to find the billions needed.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/why-im-voting-liberal-again-20110306-1bjcd.html

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Gus: What Franca did not say of course is that the "Olympics" were mostly promoted as a Liberal gig (Fahey) and of course these games had been undercosted by the same Liberals (conservative). Don't forget too that John Howard (Liberal/conservative) was shortchanging NSW, with Federal funds allocations, by about 1 billion per year. So what is it you want?: a sputtering Kingswood or a clapped out Model-T Ford with Lamborghini side panels to improve the look?

Most dedicated Labor people have moved on to the Socialist Alliance and the Greens... Still there are many honest Labor people inside the party who are committed to weeding the place... And weeding has been happening... They know how to fix a Kingswood...

see toon at top.

As Armageddon approaches, Labor's truly effective backroom operators of the past - the likes of the legendary Bruvver John Ducker - will be weeping with the angels. If that is where they find themselves.

Barry O'Farrell, meanwhile, is doing his best not to look like the cat that swallowed the canary. It cannot be easy.

Opposition leaders always like to trawl for the sympathy vote by pleading that they are the underdog in any campaign, facing a massive battle to toss out the government.

But not this time. It would be ludicrous. O'Farrell could probably still win this election if he were filmed naked at Ken's of Kensington frolicking with a strapping catamite, a fistful of eccies, a large bundle of neatly stacked $100 notes and two first-class plane tickets one-way to Beirut. This is an election not even John Hewson could lose.

The truly depressing news is that the Oxleymoron is back again. Pauline Hanson - ''a disgruntled Strayan'' as she described herself on Wednesday - is having yet another shot at worming her way into the Legislative Council and on to the public payroll.

The last I heard of this vulgar and stupid woman she was so disgruntled with Straya she was moving to Britain to live. That changed when she discovered, to her great surprise, that the place was not the haven of Anglo-Saxon racial purity she had expected.

''I love England but so many people want to leave there because it's overrun with immigrants and refugees,'' she announced last November, blithely unaware that she herself would have been an immigrant there.

As you would expect, the radio shock jocks are getting behind her, notably the odious David Oldfield at 2UE. Hanson, you will remember, claimed Oldfield had bonked her back in their One Nation days after cooking her dinner at a Canberra motel.

Oldfield has always disputed that. ''I did not have sex with that woman,'' he told the Herald in a Clintonesque denial in 2007. ''Pauline does not have a dress or anything else that I left a stain of mine on.''

All class, aren't they?

Mike Carlton

North-shore community radio — that blabby-wave for Joe Hockey — through some of the most vile smooth-talking greasy-voiced shock-jocks was at it again, with them calling a female caller a drongo (or something like that) after she hung up (or got cut off) for expressing the idea that in fairness Labor in New South Wales had not done such a "bad" job... The next caller — an unreal estate power-broker from the eastern suburbs (I guess, a friend of the shocking-jocks) — was hoping for a total wipe-out of Labor.... The pair of shock-jocks were licking the cream from the bowl.... Ugly guffaw.

Meanwhile the minister for bulldozing legislation on Barangaroo, Tony Kelly, lied through his teeth on TV.... and that did not help the Labor case.

The National Trust, the lord mayor, the greens and Jack Mundey were out there at the Lend Lease headquarters with banners and other speakers to expose what was a multitude of ministerial bastardry. A liberal candidate to the next election promised that the Barrie O'Farrell Liberal (conservative) government (should it get elected, guffaw, incoming Labor wipe-out) would have an "enquiry" into whatever to which the 250-strong crowd demanded nothing less than a repeal and total rethink of the project... The mob at Lend Lease upstairs were more amused by the lunchtime entertainment than threatened... We shall see... I guess that Barrie O'Farrell — and many of his invisible troops — goes to the same lodge as many of the Labor and business people, and pray to the same god and his acolyte  — time immemorial and money...

THE state Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, has been forced to defend the Liberal Party's decision to direct preferences to the Christian Democratic Party in the upper house only a week after ruling out preferencing the former One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, because of her policies.

As signalled by Mr O'Farrell on Friday, pre-poll electoral material prepared by the Liberals instructs voters to direct preferences to key independents in the lower house.

But it also directs voters to place the Christian Democratic Party as its second preference on the upper house ballot.

The Christian Democratic Party, led by its upper house MP, Fred Nile, is standing on a platform of ''No Islamisation of Australia''.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/state-election-2011/ofarrell-behind-preferences-flowing-to-nile-20110314-1bugm.html