On the 21st of August Australia will head to the polls to choose their government. It’s either going to be Labor or Liberals. While the Greens are contesting, they have never and are not a serious contender to be in power although will form part of the government if they join forces with the Labor party should they collectively win enough seats to form a government.
This election campaign has been one of the most uninteresting, void of ideas and petty election campaign in living memory. On the left corner is the current prime minister of Australia Julia Gillard who only became prime minister by dethroning the previous Prime Minister Kevin Rudd unceremoniously with the support of the factions and caucus, the first time in the history of Australian politics a first term sitting prime minister has been booted out of office. The last this happened was when Paul Keating challenged then Prime Minister Bob Hawke and won with the majority support of the Labor party. Bob Hawke was then in the middle of his fourth term in office. Many years later, Bob Hawke acknowledged that he would still have been prime minister if he only gave a minister’s portfolio to Graham Richardson who later shifted his and his faction’s support away from Bob Hawke to Paul Keating. What a dirty game politics is but that’s news to no one. What is particularly disturbing though is that the country’s future are in the hands of these politicians playing politics with our lives. On the other hand coming in from the right corner is the chauvanistic, foul mouthed leader of the Liberals Tony Abbot who we'll talk about a little later.
What happened between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd is anyone’s guess but the execution style and the swiftness in which it was carried out is coming back to haunt Labor from the torrent of unhappiness from one of the marginal states of Queensland where Kevin Rudd is from. A huge swing towards the coalition may be enough to lose the election for Labor. There’s also been a wave of cabinet leaks purportedly coming from cabinet members loyal to the ex-Prime Minister which has hurt Labor so badly that in one week the polls showed a swing of 6% away from Labor to the Libs, something not seen in living memory. To state that Labor suffered a bad week is nothing short of an understatement.
What the Libs and their leader Tony Abbot are really good in is not espousing good policies for the country but what Tony Abbot is a master at is of pointing out the mistakes of the Labor party and quite effectively at that if the polls are anything to go by. From the pink bats debacle to the school halls fiasco to the debt and deficit, to the climate change back down where Kevin Rudd described climate change as the “greatest moral challenge” and then suddenly backed down. With those kinds of rookie mistakes Tony was never short of ammunition. Labor on the other hand have been limp on debunking some of the criticisms of Tony Abbot’s by giving some clear perspectives like the school hall debacle constituted only 1% rort in the program while still not good was relatively small for a program so large which needed to be rolled out in a relatively short timeframe and maybe also that the debt will be paid back within 3 years ahead of schedule a debt which was needed to keep Australia out of recession, the only one in the major OECD countries to do so. They should also press home the point that while the debt is in the billions of dollars it only formed 6% of the countr’y GDP as opposed to some other countries around 90%.
The Liberal party want our vote. A party still operating under the guidance and legacy of former Prime Minster John Howard, Australia’s second longest serving Prime Minister behind only Sir Robert Menzies. A party that is having its third leader in as few years having executed the two before Abbot and is now acting holier than thou by criticising Labor for what they'd done twice before.
This election campaign has been one of the most uninteresting, void of ideas and petty election campaign in living memory. On the left corner is the current prime minister of Australia Julia Gillard who only became prime minister by dethroning the previous Prime Minister Kevin Rudd unceremoniously with the support of the factions and caucus, the first time in the history of Australian politics a first term sitting prime minister has been booted out of office. The last this happened was when Paul Keating challenged then Prime Minister Bob Hawke and won with the majority support of the Labor party. Bob Hawke was then in the middle of his fourth term in office. Many years later, Bob Hawke acknowledged that he would still have been prime minister if he only gave a minister’s portfolio to Graham Richardson who later shifted his and his faction’s support away from Bob Hawke to Paul Keating. What a dirty game politics is but that’s news to no one. What is particularly disturbing though is that the country’s future are in the hands of these politicians playing politics with our lives. On the other hand coming in from the right corner is the chauvanistic, foul mouthed leader of the Liberals Tony Abbot who we'll talk about a little later.
What happened between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd is anyone’s guess but the execution style and the swiftness in which it was carried out is coming back to haunt Labor from the torrent of unhappiness from one of the marginal states of Queensland where Kevin Rudd is from. A huge swing towards the coalition may be enough to lose the election for Labor. There’s also been a wave of cabinet leaks purportedly coming from cabinet members loyal to the ex-Prime Minister which has hurt Labor so badly that in one week the polls showed a swing of 6% away from Labor to the Libs, something not seen in living memory. To state that Labor suffered a bad week is nothing short of an understatement.
What the Libs and their leader Tony Abbot are really good in is not espousing good policies for the country but what Tony Abbot is a master at is of pointing out the mistakes of the Labor party and quite effectively at that if the polls are anything to go by. From the pink bats debacle to the school halls fiasco to the debt and deficit, to the climate change back down where Kevin Rudd described climate change as the “greatest moral challenge” and then suddenly backed down. With those kinds of rookie mistakes Tony was never short of ammunition. Labor on the other hand have been limp on debunking some of the criticisms of Tony Abbot’s by giving some clear perspectives like the school hall debacle constituted only 1% rort in the program while still not good was relatively small for a program so large which needed to be rolled out in a relatively short timeframe and maybe also that the debt will be paid back within 3 years ahead of schedule a debt which was needed to keep Australia out of recession, the only one in the major OECD countries to do so. They should also press home the point that while the debt is in the billions of dollars it only formed 6% of the countr’y GDP as opposed to some other countries around 90%.
The Liberal party want our vote. A party still operating under the guidance and legacy of former Prime Minster John Howard, Australia’s second longest serving Prime Minister behind only Sir Robert Menzies. A party that is having its third leader in as few years having executed the two before Abbot and is now acting holier than thou by criticising Labor for what they'd done twice before.
John Howard's influence within the Liberal party is still alive and strong. His trademarks are stamped all over the Liberal party where leadership issues are discussed very openly with him. Senior opposition figures like Joe Hockey and even Abbot himself have been known to seek his advice regularly. John Howard was given the boot by the electorate in 2007 when Kevin 07 defeated him. To add salt to injury he was also defeated in his seat of Bennelong which he had held since 1974 by newcomer and former ABC journalist Maxine Mc Kew. While John Howard and his merry men governed Australia for more than a decade and did a lot of good things, education lagged behind most OECD countries, productivity went down, the education visas were abused by international students, house prices soared uncontrollably high out of reach of most first home owners and the mining revolution was not re-invested for the community to benefit in the longer term. This was the man who introduced a big new tax called the GST and forced Work Choices down the throats of working Australians. This was the man who followed blindly the steps of his idol George W. Bush into Iraq and Afghanistan without doing his own due diligence of what we now know was trumped up and selective intelligence reports on the case for war. This was the man who refused to sign the Kyoto protocol and was a climate change sceptic. What made John Howard lose the election was not because he was an ineffective leader. Quite the contrary, he was a very strong leader, he remained unchallenged from within his party until the electorate finally decided enough was enough and gave John his marching orders. What made him lose the 2007 election was that he was unapologetic of his failings and his policies which were unpopular and his determination to push through the policies that he deemed were good policies no matter how much the electorate hated them. This is the man now being idolised by the leader of the opposition Tony Abbot. Paul Keating regularly refers to Tony Abbot as the “small John Howard”, linking Tony Abbot with the many unpopular policies of the Howard era.
What we have now is the Libs accusing Julia Gillard of being a fake and likewise Labor asking will the real Tony Abbot stand up referring to his ever changing stance on climate change, Work Choices, Paid Parental Leave and a slew of other policies which he has back flipped on. Labor’s point is that the real Tony Abbot will eventually come to the fore if he won the election and these promises are all made to make him look to be sensitive to the voice of the electorate. Let’s face it, Tony is under a no win situation here. If he listen’s to the electorate, he will be accused of back flipping from his past beliefs and if he doesn’t he will be accused of being like John Howard. I guess his days of being an arrogant senior member of the John Howard cabinet is coming back to bite him when he now needs the people to make him Prime Minister.
Let’s face it, Labor’s accusation of Tony Abbot being a phoney, back flipper, vote fisher who will do and say anything to get your votes is something like the pot calling the kettle black. All politicians do it. They have in the past and they will into the future. Until the intense media scrutiny modern day politics encompasses subsides or is eliminated, unfortunately you will never see a politician let down their guard and be honest and down to earth with the people. Politicians nowadays are so guarded against what they say and commit to as footage of the interview can be retrieved years from now to be used against them in the future although circumstances may have changed after all those years. Nope, you’re not supposed to change your mind and say anything wrong if you’re a politician. They need to watch every word uttered and ensure that the political correctness is checked and double checked by their media staff over and over again so no section of the vast community is “upset” by their comments. No wonder our politicians nowadays are so contrived and fake, always reading from a script prepared by their media people, never able to answer a question straight up instead always prefering to beat around the bush. When can politics change so that the people’s interest and not the politicians’ will be foremost important as the garbage we’re getting from our politicians is nothing short of repugnant? Will it be Labor or Liberals this 21st August? Who cares I say, they’re both doing an equally bad job.
What we have now is the Libs accusing Julia Gillard of being a fake and likewise Labor asking will the real Tony Abbot stand up referring to his ever changing stance on climate change, Work Choices, Paid Parental Leave and a slew of other policies which he has back flipped on. Labor’s point is that the real Tony Abbot will eventually come to the fore if he won the election and these promises are all made to make him look to be sensitive to the voice of the electorate. Let’s face it, Tony is under a no win situation here. If he listen’s to the electorate, he will be accused of back flipping from his past beliefs and if he doesn’t he will be accused of being like John Howard. I guess his days of being an arrogant senior member of the John Howard cabinet is coming back to bite him when he now needs the people to make him Prime Minister.
Let’s face it, Labor’s accusation of Tony Abbot being a phoney, back flipper, vote fisher who will do and say anything to get your votes is something like the pot calling the kettle black. All politicians do it. They have in the past and they will into the future. Until the intense media scrutiny modern day politics encompasses subsides or is eliminated, unfortunately you will never see a politician let down their guard and be honest and down to earth with the people. Politicians nowadays are so guarded against what they say and commit to as footage of the interview can be retrieved years from now to be used against them in the future although circumstances may have changed after all those years. Nope, you’re not supposed to change your mind and say anything wrong if you’re a politician. They need to watch every word uttered and ensure that the political correctness is checked and double checked by their media staff over and over again so no section of the vast community is “upset” by their comments. No wonder our politicians nowadays are so contrived and fake, always reading from a script prepared by their media people, never able to answer a question straight up instead always prefering to beat around the bush. When can politics change so that the people’s interest and not the politicians’ will be foremost important as the garbage we’re getting from our politicians is nothing short of repugnant? Will it be Labor or Liberals this 21st August? Who cares I say, they’re both doing an equally bad job.
Man, have you considered a career as a journalist? Darned good I say!
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