Business as usual for the NSW ALP. “With just 24 hours to go before polling, Labor has resorted to a sleazy smear campaign,” the Telegraph reports, “peddling a p-rnographic film to the media claiming it featured the 63-year-old husband of Liberal candidate Shelley Hancock.” There’s no word yet if goats were involved.

NSW poll pointers.

  • The Liberals are worried about Lane Cove. Very worried. And it’s in Bennelong. One of the good parts of Bennelong for the PM.
  • Are Labor planning a dirty deal with preferences to skewer Bryce Gaudry, the former party member running as an independent in Newcastle? Is this the sort of reason why they made information on preferences a state secret?
  • Peter Debnam is unable to address himself directly to voters. He keeps banging on about how bad Labor have been and seems obsessed with specific Labor pollies but can’t speak directly to voters about their hopes and dreams. This is mirrored in his own behaviour. At Party functions he doesn’t mingle. Instead, he has his schedule and appears on time and leaves on the dot without chatting to people.
  • The NSW Liberal factions have provided dud candidates. Voters don’t want them. The party went through huge soul searching and a new constitution eight years ago after the 1999 defeat, yet now it seems things have only got worse.
  • Begging emails from the Democrats are flying nation-wide. Can anyone come and help Arthur Chesterfield Evans?
  • Is that the sound of a whetstone in Willoughby? Is young Gladys Berejiklian going to be wielding a knife on behalf of the moderates and put a few fellow Liberals out of their misery when they’re wounded on Saturday night?

Wonk-sized meaty chunks. Antony Green doesn’t do forecasts, but we asked him what he expected the NSW election outcome would be anyway. His response? “It is interesting that Saturday’s election is the 90th anniversary of the Nationalist victory at the 1917 NSW election. That result was a landslide, but one that was not as overwhelming as predicted. The moral for the participants in this Saturday’s election is what happened afterwards. Despite the opposition Labor Party being riven internally in the run-up to 1917, and despite the scale of the Nationalist victory, Labor won the next state election three years later in 1920, even helping defeat Premier Holman in his own seat. A bit of history the Coalition can point to as vindication of why it can win in 2011.”

Fallen off his perch. For the fifth day in a row, the Parrot has been missing in action. This is a tragedy for all bird fanciers, who have been denied the joy of a reprise of his famous Sméagol-Gollum speech from the 2003 poll. 2GB have promised Gloria will be there for the tally tomorrow night, but the Parrot was plucked by the Premier this week, the Parrot and 2GB. Morris Iemma has passed on the opportunity to brave the parrot cage this week, but talked to rival 2UE this morning. Labor clearly can’t be bothered with the Parrot and his pals. The stand-in for our feathered friend Jason Morrison begged for callers this morning who were going to vote for the government. Well, instead of the usual callers raging against the socialist Labor Party – even our old pal Stephanie from Neutral Bay has got to air this week – Morrison got a string of callers raging against John Howard’s industrial relations changes.

Kiwi caption contest. It’s a conundrum, alright. Just what is Helen Clark thinking about George W Bush?

Red stains on the Greens? Has there been some nasty business over the top spot on the Victorian Greens Senate spot? One source says the party are “as bitchy as the ALP”.

Nice save, Malcolm. Other Ministers mix their metaphors, but not Malcolm Turnbull. Although it looked as if he was developing a disconcerting rabbit/chicken hybrid for a while there:

Mr TICEHURST (3.13 pm)—My question is addressed to the Minister for Environment and Water Resources. Would the minister inform the House of how the government is addressing problems of water scarcity across Australia?

Mr TURNBULL—I thank the honourable member for his question… Yet Mr Iemma had the effrontery to turn up to the opening of the pipeline and play the big benefactor of the Central Coast because he had made probably the most lucrative water investment ever seen in New South Wales. The constituents of the honourable member for Dobell know how the state government in New South Wales regards them in terms of water security. It regards them as bunnies to be plucked, to be ripped off—

Honourable members interjecting—

Mr TURNBULL—to be plucked from their burrows and skinned!

Labor rolls up their shirtsleeves. Labor Whip Roger Price raised the issue of the airconditioning in Parliament House yesterday. He suggested the Commonwealth follow the lead of the Queensland Parliament and Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, where the thermostat has been turned up a notch to save energy and pollies permitted to remove jackets and ties. Fool! Doesn’t he recall the damage this has done to his party in the past?