Political Uncertainty !

 Street marches protesting violence against women are a world event and usually the vitriol is directed at male prime ministers for lack of immediate action.  In Australia, an accusation of rape in the Federal parliament has become the focus of a demand for legislative change.

.In Britain the fury is directed at the rape and murder of a young woman walking home in the evening, and the fact that the accused is a serving police officer has caused the police commissioner to tender her resignation.

In an ideal world, the genders would be nearly balanced in national parliaments and the numbers are slowly heading in that direction.  It is interesting to note that in the state of New South Wales, both the premier and the leader of the opposition - are women.

Gladys Berejiklian rules with an iron fist and her hold on power seems unassailable.  The contender for power is Labor leader Jodi McKay and she has just been undermined by a revelation from the union movement, one of the key supporters of her political party.

The key Australian Workers Union has conducted an opinion poll that showed that Labor's primary vote has slipped to just 23.9% and if that held at the next election it would parallel Labor's landslide loss of 2011.  It would be the lowest primary vote accorded to Labor since 1904.

Ms McKay angrily went on radio programmes to claim that she was being undermined in some unions by men who objected to being led by a woman.  " They didn't support me, and they have undermined me from day one, and now they have used their member's money to conduct a secret poll ".

The unions responded, saying their members donated money and time to Federal and state Labor campaigns and no one in public life should be exempt from fair and reasonable scrutiny.

We made the decision to publicly discuss the research to raise the point that the party in New South Wales is objectively not travelling well and needs to change direction. This issue verged into negative territory when Ms McKay  suggested the union move  was straight out  of " the Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi playbook ".

She went on to claim. " Just as I took on Tripodi.   Just as I took on Obeid ".   That was an unfortunate episode of a Labor internal scandal that saw the party lose office when the voters went to the polls.

There is a vast difference between state and Federal political issues and in the past there have been claims that the Labor party is a captive of the union movement. Domestic violence and the issue of sexual harassment are fast bridging the difference between adherence to political parties and these are likely to influence voting patterns in ways yet to be determined.

It looks like predicting the outcome of future elections just got a lot more complex !