A great well balanced article.

Thanks for affording the reader some non drum beating propoganda for a change.

well said realist

Dream on dreamer,in your imagination, the Australian population probably didn't vote Howard's government in four times, the Labor Party under Kim then Mark rose higher and higher [as did the everything under Keating] in a sort of ascending balloon. Until like that bloke who flew so high he melted, the balloon popped and down, down down ,you woke up and realised it was all.....in your dreams.

Right on, Realist. We can provide our own propaganda.

Iraq's a success. Latham was misunderstood. Woohoo!

Problem with Howards party speech last week. The logo at the head of the speech ran "Strong Directions" for "Mainstream".

Ouch!

Have I ever felt so rejected....?

My problem from here in Cooktown Cape York is; aside from a very small section of the business sector and generally the Regional Mangers/Officials of visiting fly-in's... Cape York has no mainstream. We are all mostly in some way different... as in "various and assorted" in both our joint needs, wants and vision of beliefs!

What does this say for other populations in this so called multi-cultural Australia.

Another trigger came at the end of the Howard speech when he said something like... 'we as Australians have good social cohesion".In my view, we will never be open to others, be they rural Australians, or the urban fringe while we have a Federal Government or any other that denies the diversity of differences.

I want reform everywhere, in health, in community development, in regional development. I want opportunity through an Australian Nation that respects the value of "community engagement" through Civic Participation.

At present I feel we are cultivating a system that divides Australians into a mob of "US and Them".

Why we don’t vote for Howard?

1 From one who is a historian with a strong knowledge of history and philosophy, Howard seems to have survived more by knack than knowledge.

2. Similar to Menzis in his admiration for Britain, Howard feels he is on a sure thing to follow the big league, the composition of the US of A.

3. Howard’s knack is shown by his sensing the feelings of the average Australian, which while seeing the need for migration, would preferably have white emigration than coloured, as proven by the amount of white South Africans who have migrated here, many of then undoubtly aparthaidistic. Also many white Rhodesians seem to have been given choice over other African coloureds, not necessarily Rhodesian.

4. In winning his second election, Howard gained considerably by Pauline Hansen’s downfall, her backers far too right-wing to vote for either Labor, Greens, or Democrats.

5. Globalisation and the acme of the Big Biz, actually a 1920s saying but really suiting the return to the free-market and economic rationalism in the late 1970s. Since that time, though Bob Hawke did introduce economic rationalism, the writing was on the economic wall for right-wing factions to take over. To be sure, we still have state Labor governments, but though some social scientists are saying that the change in the minds of our youngsters since the beginnings of the dot.com craze, is producing an increasingly moronic public, others say that the voters may really see the need for a voting balance between Federal and State