My daughters think I look like a Koala.
The ALP is highly likely to win.
Stop reading now if you want to avoid hearing my opinion.
Three things.
First of all I think you should all try to be less cynical. Politicans will find it easier to ruin things if everyone accepts before they're even elected that that's what they'll do. Looking around the world for comparisions, I'd say our polticians do a better job that the vast majority of their counterparts in other parts of the world.
Sure, they're way short of perfect but, as Winston Churchill said "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried".
We're stuck with it, we might as well try to keep it working as well as we can rather than throw up our hands and accept second-rate outcomes.
Whingeing is satisfying, but not especially useful.
Second, I think it's clear why the Lib/Nat coalition will be booted out.
I don't think the anti-union scare campaign will fool enough people to turn the tide. (Howard's claim that Labor will reinstitute centralised wage fixing with automatic flow-ons is a furphy and it's a measure of his desperation that he's trying it - what happened to the influence of the unions and the changes to the industrial relations landscape under Hawke and Keating is on the record.)
The claim to economic competence (low interst rates etc) is under challenge, and rightly so, and as a result voters feel more willing to change their vote on the basis of a whole range of other issues (see below), most importantly global warming and WorkChoices.
It's obvious Howard only cares about global warming as far as the opinion polls say he should and he gives the short-term profitability of the coal mining industry (and the ecoomic status quo more generally) top priority when push comes to shove. Young people I speak to almost universally think Howard has dropped the ball on global warming and will punish him for it.
WorkChoices is also a big negative - no-one voted for it, they just introduced it without a mandate. Large sections of the workforce are barely keeping up with inflation - even with labour shortages, 33-year low unemployment etc. The coalition's taxpayer-funded advertising shows "ordinary people" downplaying the idea that wages will fall under WorkChoices because demand for workers is so high. The unspoken question is what happens when things slow down? I think Joe and Mrs Average are smart enough to work that one out and don't like the prospect. I amazed that anyone could believe those ads mighth convince anyone of anything.
There are other big minuses for Howard & Co, eg:
- the childern overboard
- locking kids up in desert camps for the crime of having parents who fled regimes so brutal we sends our troops to war against them
- erosion of civil liberties
- the horrible things the immigration department has done to people like Mr Tran
- the non-existent WMDs
- the Haneef bungle
- claiming credit for low interest rates and denying responsibility for subsequent increases
- the GST
- proposing to hand over to Costello
The list goes on. (I'm sure there are still some people angry at losing their jobs in 1982/83 while treasurer Howard stood idly by as the corproate sector got way with blue murder with the bottom-of-the-harbour tax evasion schemes. People have long memories.)
I'm not saying Rudd & Co would be perfect, but I don't think many people are convinced that they'll do badly on the things Howard & Co claims they will (letting unions run the show, overspending, interest rates etc).
For Howard, the list of things that have ticked people off has simply grown too long, a bit like when Keating lost power in 1996.
Third, John Howard is my local member. How about that!
Gaz.