Bligh stages mock poll.

Cartoon: By Nicholson.

It is often remarked that some politicians are Poll driven, frequently accurately. This appears to be the case here in Queensland where the Bligh government has just done some polling on the subject of daylight saving.

For the unenlightened, daylight saving is the action southerners carry out during the summer months of turning their clocks back an hour. Somehow they are convinced that this makes the sun shine for an hour longer. Nobody is quite sure of what caused this belief but it is expected to gradually die out when the school opens down there.

Anyway an independent MP has raised the idea of doing it here several years after it was rejected in a referendum. At the time it was suggested that if the Southeast wanted it they could have it but the rest of us would like to stay the way we are, thank you. We were told in no uncertain terms that such an idea was ridiculous and the whole state would have to comply. After the referendum was solidly defeated, for some reason the Southeast felt that they could actually do it themselves.

This seems to indicate that when they felt they would win they considered that they owned us and could bend us to their will.

Anyway Anna and her cronies have decided that they want to go that way, so they felt that the best way to do it was a poll to get an indication of what the people were thinking, at least those who agreed with her. For this reason they staged the poll.

Rather than take the chance on a real poll using scientific methods to gauge an accurate picture of the mood of the electorate, it was decided to stage an online one, you know the sort that appears as a novelty on websites. It was probably not one of the generic ones that involve hitting a couple of buttons and typing in the questions, but assembled by experts to give them the same thing only more expensive.

Online polls are about as inaccurate as you can get, as they are pretty easy to rig. There is also the consideration in this case that those who want to change the system have more incentive to vote on the matter. Those who prefer the status quo are more inclined to ignore the whole thing while their opponents have every incentive to log in and vote; and vote often if possible.

But just to make sure that there is no pesky desire to vote on the subject after it is introduced the idea of a referendum, canvassed in the poll was rejected despite the vast majority (63%) preferred it. This government is out of control.