It's quite sad really the Liberal fans boys and Girls lining up to have a go at successful Labor campaigns in SA, Vic and Now Queensland.

Yesterday Graham outed himself as slightly more controlled "Runner", and now this.

Get over it, the lessons are easy, you need to convince the masses of your plan, not your fan's. If you can't do it you lose, having a go at labor because they employed the same tactics as the Libs to get into power is not only foolish, it borders on insane.

Got that little rant off your chest now, Gary? Feeling better now?

If so, then I recommend a 30 minute stroll in a garden, followed by a cup of tea in your favourite chair.

Tomorrow, the sun will rise just as it did today and a little observation will indicate that it is only in extreme cases that the choice of politician makes a significant difference to Joe Average's quality of life. You see, Gary, politicians have limited control over outcomes - essentially, the noise and fury spent decrying one bunch is a waste of time because the next bunch are also humans, are politicians, and have ultimately to feed the same beast, which is the ballot box.

Issues such as of debt and deficit, of feminism and of the structure of state owned corporations are ephemeral and, in the long term, entirely meaningless.

Our childrens' children will neither curse nor blame any of the state governments that you mentioned, nor call their members drovers' dogs, nor comment on their leaders' femaleness or otherwise.

I do, however, agree that the Commonwealth should ideally vacate policy areas such as education and health, which are constitutionally matters for the states. But there is no significant difference between the policies of the major parties in these areas - no policy statement that the Commonwealth will entirely disband these meaningless departments.

The Libs used to rely on the mantra that Labor tax too much, but the public got wise to it. So now they've replaced it with claims of irresponsible spending, but the public have started to see thorugh that too. And with the flimsy arguments in this article it isn't hard to see why — even the title includes the bogus claim that Queensland is broke!

The examples of "irresponsible spending" are similarly dubious. For example The State Bank of South Australia had a needlessly complicated and opaque structure and eventually it lost money (probably about $3 billion, but the exact amount is hard to determine) and since it happened on Bannon's watch, the people punished Labor, reducing them to a cricket team at the next election. But the liberals turned out to be even worse, wrecking business confidence by claiming the state was broke and resorting to numerous false economies: corporate welfare, a one way expressway (that eventually cost far more to duplicate than it did to build in the first place), a "business must always prevail" attitude allowing a low value stone quarry to destroy a potential tourist attraction, standardizing all government computers on the less efficient system (Windows), sacking hundreds of public servants and then paying more to have their work done by consultants instead and, after a change of leader, a botched electricity privatization that wrecked security of supply and pushed electricity bills up much higher.

Capable government is far preferable to small government. Sometimes spending more is the best course of action.

"I wrote on January 8, not thinking the LNP could possibly lose, "Should the LNP lose, Queensland and Australia should abandon all hope of rational politics and economic reform.""

With voter self-interest trumping even mild austerity measures, as responses to political moves in the last 12 months have shown, there appears little hope indeed of "rational politics and economic reform".

" Translate this observation to the fact the commonwealth funds schools, hospitals and universities, without running any. Should the commonwealth vacate these fields and transfer responsibility to the states and universities with a formula for funds, the spokes¬people would scream bloody murder because they are set up to lobby Canberra, not because it may harm their constituency. "

Should the commonwealth vacate these fields and transfer responsibility to the states and universities with a formula for funds, it certainly would make for interesting times

Another petulant rant from the born to rules.
Get over it mate you lost.

People dont like your unfair low tax, for the rich, no benefits and vilification for the poor ideology. Your privatise everything and make the serfs pay through the nose dogma. Your "nobody understands us" bleating and whining. Your mates in the propaganda business, where this very article was first published suprise suprise.
People dont like your attempted destruction of medicare and our universities and our environment and our safety nets and our community advocates and all the other little cuts you have tried to make to civil society.

Good riddance to newman. Baird is next and the federal lieberal party are already dead men walking. Bring on the DD abbott like you said you would. Give the people of Australia a chance to pass judgement on you and your government as you yourself stated is right and proper.

The author's little fix of shunting responsibilty for health and education to the States misses the Point.

The Point is Abbott must arrest the declining Revenue Base in order to afford to buy votes. Revenue Base can be expanded by way of income tax bracket adjustments.

If Abbott and his unloved Treasurer can't learn "Revenue Base" rapidly they will be consigned to the "Ruddite" Backbench quicker than you can say "Next Tuesday."