ON THE WALLABY- 25th March 2007

" When your neighbour quotes scripture, brand your calves early” – an anonymous quotation that sat on my late uncles desk

BLIND FREDDIE COULD HAVE WON IT!

When thinking of a comment about last nights election result, the thought came to me that I’d love to have the NSW Liberal Party as my real estate competition as they would gladden my heart and no doubt, my bottom line of profitability, given their marketing ability.

There was an election Blind Freddie ( or John Brogden) could have won with their eyes shut and yet, on today’s television and radio, I hear Liberal Party people commenting about how well they went.

What rot!! They lost – simple as that and the people of NSW, who very much had had enough of the incompetence of Labour, obviously decided that they were a better alternative to what Peter “Frank Spencer” Debnam and his party offered.

In saying that, and looking through a professional marketing eye, top marks to the Labor Party machine for they started their win 18 months ago when they tapped Bob Carr on the shoulder and told him that he had just had a “Road to Damascus” vision and that he would be retiring.

Then they picked the “unassuming” Morris Iemma as the man to lead and proceeded to market him marvellously, aided greatly by Opposition Leader Peter Debnam’s ineptitude and blunders.

On the Liberal side, their major blunder traces back to the very public axing of former Leader John Brogden by David Clark and his team of happy clappers (see my quotation of this OTW) and for which they should never be forgiven.

Like all fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish or whatever, they only see what they want to see and unfortunately the citizens of NSW are the ones who are, and will continue, to suffer because of their actions.

Will the Libs change their leader?

Who knows, given their paucity of talent, but I reckon they certainly should and it should be Barry O’Farrell who gets the nod, as indeed he should have after the demise of John Brogden. However Messr Clark & Co soon fixed that and had Peter Debnam installed.

The key question the Liberals forgot to ask themselves, and as I reiterate time after time in our FAA Auction Skills course, is that the only answer that advertising has to satisfy is “what’s in it for them” and none of the Liberal ads did that.

Just as far too many real estate ads are written, mostly subconsciously, to keep the vendor/s happy and do not answer the “what’s in it for them,” as regards buyers, so the Liberal ads did likewise.

All Debnam et al had to do was just keep repeating “Labor has stuffed NSW” and let that be shown time and time again (as it was) in rail system blunders, road problems, school problems etc etc.

Instead, he and his advisors kept trundling out the “budgie smuggler” scene showing how fit he was but which had bugger all to do with running NSW.

On the other hand, a very contrite Morris kept saying “sorry”, quietly suggesting that all these problems were caused by Bob Carr, (when in fact he had been in Cabinet all that time as well) and that “if you give me a fair go, I will change it”.

Election over and what do I hear this morning?

Road Minister Eric Rozendaal admitting that it may be 12 months before problems with the Lane Cove tunnel, to be opened today, the DAY AFTER THE ELECTION will be fixed!

I wonder if the “fixing” will include a water system such as the Melbourne tunnel had this week and which probably saved countless lives?

Anyway, the dye is now cast and March 2011 is looking a long, long way ahead.

The election result was also sad for both Sam and myself, given the time and effort we had both put into the Party (she as national Secretary from it’s inception until the late 1990’s and me as national president in the early 1990’s) as with the non election of Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, the Australian Democrats will cease to exist in the NSW parliament and will, most likely, be the same in the Senate by the end of the year.

How did this happen?

Simple. They forgot that politics is not only about legislating, it is also about marketing and getting re-elected, a concept that Labor knows only too well. You start on being re-elected the minute you are elected, a fact well accepted by the Independent candidates who held their seats yesterday and which showed in a number of cases, those people had learnt that lesson.

One who did not was Alex McTaggart, the Independent member for Pittwater (our electorate) and who, in being asked by The Australian a week or so ago was he door knocking, replied ” no, I don’t need to” and was consequently defeated yesterday by the Liberal candidate!

As Sam comments frequently and I observe often, the similarity between real estate and politics is enormous with the one real common denominator being -THEY ARE BOTH ABOUT PEOPLE.

Forget that and you lose- in both games.

Carpe diem Tony

Tony Fountain

Professional Speaker, auctioneer and author

Sydney NSW Australia

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