A Landslide! This must be some new definition of Landslide you're using .. so they have a majority in both houses?

Labor won by a small margin, I guess somehow you might not have noticed that in your apparant glee that the evil Howard has gone, and here we are all this time later and you're still having to use his image to invigorate your hatred.

The right will rise again

LOL

Where were you two during the election campaign, were you two in another country?

Kevin Rudd was elected on the fact that he marketed himself as mini-John Howard

He mentioned social conservative about 200 times, he talked about protecting the economy and keeping interest rate low, ie like the last government.

He implied he would do something about grocery prices and petrol and we are waiting.

Lets get some facts right, and away from fairy land where you two seem to live in.

The move toward China did not happened on Rudd's watch, we have worked on the free trade agreement for the last 5 years, trade with China rose more than 10 times from the end of last Labor government to the end of the Howard government. Student from China studying in Australia increased more than 5 times, imagration from China more than doubled. Yeah Rudd speak Mandarin, but many Chinese now speak english under Howards watch, I guess in your opinion, 1 Rudd > 1 million Chinese ..... wait that would be racist!

Illegal people are not allowed into Australia, that is why we have Customs and detention centers, we have an imagration system. I myself waited 3 years before I came to Australia under the correct channel, why should someone who have money to pay for a boat get to come to Australia before me and jump the queue? Can you answer this question.

Imagration from middle eastern country was also increased significantly under the Liberal government, but I guess it was just all Kevin magneficient!

Reconciliation, yeah Rudd said sorry .... next day .... he said there will be no compensation .... there is now a suit in the courts for compensation. Rudd is not that far from Howard, who refuse to say sorry, because he fears there will be compensation claims

Please come back to the real world

"We seem to have moved away from Howard’s white Australia where brown people were locked up for trying to come here, where black people were told to become like whites and where white people were paid to breed."
1. Non-visa holders were locked up. Visa-holders of any colour were admitted. Nothing has changed under the Rudd government.
2. Funny I can't recall any edicts being pronounced saying blacks had to become like whites. I do remember Cathy Freeman running around in an aboriginal flag though at the Sydney Olympics. Perhaps she had become white.
3.I didn't realize to get the baby bonus you had to show you were white.
Perhaps I have been asleep for the past 12 years.

the Rudd gang is simply a 21st century version of the Whitlam outfit. I'm not looking forward to going back to the 70's. I'm not overly fussed about Democracy. If a country had more thinkers than non-thinkers, yes, but in Australia's case ?

Not 100 percent too sure what is happening there at UniSA but I defend their right to be misinformed and ignorant.

Here are a few salient facts: Keating hated the cultural left. Abhorred the film & TV culture vultures. He had absolutely nothing in common with them. Parasites on the public purse. They were going to vote for him anyway.

The whining of the cultural left helped Howard wedge the ALP. Howard did them like a dog's dinner.

Rudd's 'mandate' ain't as strong as you think. He has performed OK. Not fab. Gillard has disappeared. Garrett is the invisible man. Smith is aural mogadon. And there's possibly a swing back to the conservatives in the states.

As a former journo I can say that The Australian is an excellent newspaper. I don't always agree with the editorial line but I don't dump it in some 1970s academic construction with News Ltd being the 'Evil Empire'.

Academics talk a lot about social justice. That's all they do. If they really cared a fig they would have joined the students in fighting the VSU legislation. They sat back, drank chardonnay and read The Adelaide Review.

This seems to be a case of a couple of academics so in love with their own trees they can't see the forest.

Federal elections are won or lost for a great multiplicity of reasons and it usually rings hollow when some interest group asserts one issue or the other was the 'key.' The Howard government got washed away for all sorts of reasons, but the issues important to left wing fringe academics were likely the least important, since the people for whom such issues are vote deciders almost always give their preferences to Labour in any case.

Children overboard, war in Iraq, anti terror legislation, tough immigration laws - all provide fertile ground for bleeding heart socialist whining and outrage, but its very doubtful they have much impact on the polls in the absence of other factors.

I voted labour on the last occasion, but not for the reasons connected with fringe notions of 'social justice.' I really just felt it was time for a change and Rudd looked like a pretty sensible alternative (unlike Latham whose periodic rantings even before he lost, worried the hell out of me).

The parties aren't nearly as different to one another as they sound. If their speeches sound very different, the reality is both parties are bound by the reality of economics, and the very large and little changing civil service which runs the country day to day. Those at the fringes of policits (left or right) make very little diffence, and I'm very glad of it.