Some factors in a shift away from Liberals, apart from Tampa, are the four "H"'s:

HOWARD
HICKS
HANEEF
HUBRIS

How can you say: “The Coalition’s support has literally ebbed away”, Graham? Are you really claiming “without exaggeration or inaccuracy” that support for the Coalition has gone, or are you just guilty of a little carelessness of expression?

There is every chance that the ALP will form a government after the election. Nothing to do with polls; everything to do with a PM who should have retired at least 18 months ago and with a group of younger voters who have never been consciously aware (because of age, not intelligence I hasten to add) of suffering under an economically illiterate ALP government.

'Local representatives’ have become a total waste of space as we have moved to a presidential style of government, where party leaders seem to be hogging the limelight. As a conservative, I have to admit that Rudd comes over much better than Howard and seems to be a decent bloke, in so far as a politician can be decent.

However, total idiot though my federal Liberal member is, I will put my first vote against his name simply to try keeping the ALP out. Most people, apart from first time voters, obviously, will vote the same way they always vote when push comes to shove. Forget the polls. The swingers and, perhaps, new voters will decide, as usual.

My guess is that whichever party gains power, they will still have the usual slim majority over the losers: the enthusiasm with which media commentators embrace wild predictions of the end of the Coalition is over the top.

It must also be remembered that the economy rules supreme when the moment of voting finally arrives. The hoo ha about other issues comes from people who are Howard-haters and would never vote for a Coalition government anyway.

This article is well reasoned and worthy of serious reflection.

I believe the reason many are considering a change is that everyone seems to be exhausted. Even among familes on well above average incomes it is becoming a necessity for both parents to work, dash around day in day out to child care centres and spend far too much time just getting to and from work. The fathers I know are working longer and longer hours and bring work home with them. This is exhausting and the constant message from the Liberals is that we all need to work harder still and everyone should really be working full time. If wealthier families are struggling to find time to spend together and still pay off the mortgage then I cannot see how everyone else is doing it without a lot of tension and sacrifices in the household. It is no point telling people they are better off than ever when it is obvious to everyone that something important has been lost on the way. Money isn't everything.

It's a lot of baseless speculation. You can tell that the authour is not thinking about what he's writing since he says the support is "literally ebbing away". Support can not actually ebb, it can only figuratively ebb, since ebbing is for tides. This misuse of a metaphor shows the authour's not really considering his words.

Christians are less materialistic than anyone else? Men don't like anti-domestic violence adverts? What nonsense.

Howard's support is falling away because people are sick of him personally, and because none of his ministers help the matter. They're disliked personally. Labor will win not from any virtues of its own, but from default.

Notice that the authour makes no mention of party policies it's in this omission that he speaks the most truth. That's because the differences are imperceptible in practice. The ALP just nods along with whatever the Coalition suggests. People are just basically sick of Howard, Costello and Downer and so on. They're tired of being lied to, tired of seeing house and food prices rise and looking for a job and being told we've never had it so good. Tired of having our civil liberties restricted in the name of protecting us from a threat that simply doesn't exist here. Tired of having work protections taken from us. We're tired of being ignored.

When the people are no longer listened to by their elected representatives, the people give them a message they can't ignore - they sack them. People aren't moving to Labor or the Greens or any other party because they think they're the best party, but because they're the least worst. That's why Rudd's taken the tack he has - to be as inoffensive and harmless as possible.

Policies? What are they? What have policies got to do with politics?

Among the many plausible reasons being touted in forecasting a loss by the Howard Government at the end of this year, the one that gets least space is the fact that Howard will almost certainly not serve out a full term.

This means that voters will be aware that a vote for the Coalition is a vote for Peter Costello (or Malcolm Turnbull or Tony Abbot or Sir Alexander Downer or one of the Bishops or Bill Heffernan or...write your own choice). Any of these prospects are scarier than a dessicated coconut.

So young Kevin, a Kirribilli lovechild, looks so much more sensible. Notice how relaxed and comfortable he is?

Time is Howards worst enemy - and it has nothing to do with his age - more to do with the time he has been around.

We can discount all the clap trap about the economy - The economy will drive itself now - it does not need a government to tinker too much with it - it manages itself pretty much now - and it took an ALP government to get it to that stage.

Howard et al have been around long enough to tally up a series of scew ups that are rusted onto the psyche of the electorate -

it is hackneyed I know but like water dripping on a rock things like Tampa, Cornelia Rau,Vivian Alvarez, Lip sewing refugees, the early application of IR laws, Dr Haneef, the AWB, the inevitable back flip on Uranium, Iraq, WMD lies - all tweaked a bit by things like housing un affordability and escalating bankrptcies in the ranks of the once cashed up bogans aspiring for the second jet sky and plasma in every room - all gather small bits of support from different sections of the community - it aint just a small band of Howard haters - although they are in those ranks too - it is a broad cross section - who have tired of the coalition its arrogance and duplicity.

It is a widening spread of punters tired of plausible deniability unnaccountable ministers shielded by Howard seemingly buying support.

All Rudd isa doing is remebering his lines and not bumping into thefurniture - it all makes for bad government and vanilla and white bread policies - but is the beast we created and are stuck with it.

I too rather enjoyed the 'assertion' (that may have been ambiguous) ... did the author-editor write and mean that Christians are less materialistic (see Kyle above)? I read it a few times and am still unsure. A study of Reformation history and the development of Protestantism could dispel that methinks. I sense that born-again Christianity is the supermarket of materialism.

Still I enjoyed the article but think that people are simply sick of the spin and spinners. Can the opposition do it differently or is it now simply the way it is done? There is an odour of death emanating from the government and even though Costello is written as unpopular, he could provide the shot of adrenalin required. It would be a new trick. Or would it?

I was a committed Liberal for fourteen years. My support didn't ebb, it was chiselled away.

"This makes it a soft vote ... only 57 per cent [sic] wants Labor to win ... these voters haven’t so much deserted the Liberals, as that ... they’re trying to encourage the Liberals to follow after them, or give them a reason to come back."

It's more likely that the government and its erstwhile supporters have gradually parted company, that protesting has been futile and that all that remains are the formalities of separation. Perhaps a better explanation can be found in T S Eliot:
'The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity'

Maybe the Liberals will have woken up to themselves by 2010 - or maybe they'll be a rabble.

"It would be relatively easy for the Liberals to craft a few messages that ... turned the tide, and relatively difficult for Labor to pull them back"

Rubbish. Howard has run out of ideas and momentum and no Liberal campaign could convince anyone otherwise, much less that it could put behind us the issues identified by sneekeepete above.

"In fact, if they vote for Howard this election he will be gone in another two years"

This isn't a "fact", any more than it was a "fact" that Howard would retire after 1.5 terms, or by age 64. What Rudd offers is the prospect of a bit of momentum for economic and social progress unencumbered by the barnacles that have slowed the Howard government to a crawl. It is unseemly and unfitting to a nation that fancies itself as dynamic to have a government that can only make excuses about coal loaders or do back-of-the-envelope calculations about water allocations in the Murray-Darling basin.

"It’s possible that this election may end up being an audition for the next."

It's possible this could be said of any election, past or future. The 1993 election set in place trends that manifested themselves in 1996, and so on. I hope this wasn't your attempt at a profound insight.

The point was made on an ABC programme a couple of weeks ago that at the last election Labor garnered about 47.5% of the national vote and this was after the Crean/Beasley leadership stouches which ended up with Latham and very few sound policies. Since then the ALP has 'come back to earth' literally (there's that word again, it's a pity when literally is taken literally) with climate change etc. Labor has added lots of popular and populist policies to it's agenda, most seem to resonate with voters and few seem to alienate voters. It could only go up. This contrasts to the Liberals who really only had lots to lose if they missed the mood of the people; and they did

Notice not a mention about Howard's sweet friendship with Bush affecting the coming election, nor the unholy mess in Iraq, except the wonderful news of Iraqi soccer and the win in the Asian Cup.

As the Yanks don't go for soccer, may be the fact they haven't converted the Iraqis to baseball or gridiron after nearly five years, and with so many non-white nations taking on soccer, might be a sign for us whities to get right out of the whole Middle East, and let the competing camraderie of the round-ball show that the non-whites are as good as us at sport any time, and proving they could solve the Middle East problem all by themselves, which is certainly the true democratic way.

It also pretty well proves it in the AFL, especially as the game has been sped-up up lately, trained non-whites seeming to have much more guile of movement as well as stamina than have us pinkies.

Cheers, BB

While the article raises some interesting points at this stage it's just another in a growing pile of analyses that fail to satisfactorily explain what's going on.

It seems to simplistic to be true, but Hugh Mackay's observation that the mood of the nation has changed is more plausible by the minute, especially given that people give so many reasons for changing their vote. It's as if they look for reasons which match their mood, rather than the other way around.

There's a growing number of comments around the blogosphere along the lines of "this has gone on too long - we know who's going to win - let's just get it over with"

At this rate, holding off the election will be another reason Lib support is slipping. It can't possibly be realistic to beat the electorate into submission via sheer exhaustion.

What I think people need to remember with this analysis is that you can’t escape from the fact that the analysis is predicated on the responses of actual voters sampled and is not just opinion. I think part of the difficulty this year has been that the reputation of political research has been assailed from two directions - the crazed spin from the Government Gazette undermining credibility and the boosters of “betting markets”. But it’s still worthwhile remembering that actual data on voters’ intentions and views is highly valuable.

The National Forum research does seek to elicit how committed voters are to their current voting intention, which goes to the issue of how soft the Labor vote is.

So it's quite wrong to write as if this were all Graham's opinion. It's something fundamentally distinct from punditry and speculation.

The ALP does not want an election quite yet - they have not yet spent the money they have grabbed from the taxpayers to fund their election campaign and they don't want to be found out.
Here in South Australia they have made a $3million donation to the union movement - ostensibly it is to run health and safety courses in workplaces. The difficulty is (1) that the unions have given money to the ALP to run the election campaign, (2) the courses should be paid for out of union funds if unions want to run them, (3) employers were willing to run them - and know what their staff need to know...it was a neat means of obtaining a massive injection of funding into the ALP campaign...no doubt similar shenanigans elsewhere...no wonder the anti-government rhetoric is working so well...there is plenty of it around - and most of it is inaccurate.

People talk about the change in the mood of a nation. I doubt whether the hundreds of thousands that attend footy matches each weekend really care whether it is Labour or Liberal. In fact if their footy team wins they will vote Liberal and if they lose they will vote Labour. Though most know I much prefer the Liberals because I perceive (perhaps wrongly) that they are a little more interested in preventing the murder of the unborn and allowing the small vocal homosexual lobby to have its way, at the end of the day there is very little difference between the 2 parties policies.

There’s no mystery at all. I believe, in events at the moment in Australia.
It’s the train wreck that happens for the conservative side when the Left wing journalists of this country ( and that’s almost all ), abandon all decency…all belief in democracy…and pull out all stops to get their chosen party ( Labor of course ), into power.
What makes this work like a dream for the Left is the culmination of years of the ‘dumbing down’ education system, devised by the Left wing academics and implemented by the Left wing education union members…..along with the conditioning of the population by Labor’s media, managing the news to its own Left wing agenda….. inclusion of facts and interviewees that fit the required outcome…and exclusion of those that might actually inform the Australian people of the truth.
So…… many Australians have been made ripe for the propaganda…ready to do the Left’s bidding unknowingly.
Most think they’re saving the planet…caring for others….looking after others’ rights in the workplace etc …instead they’re allowing the Left/Labor juggernaut to use them as pawns in their power game.
With unprecedented prosperity…with almost full employment…with real wages up by about 20%, compared with about 1% over Labor’s 13 years…still the cabal have been able to con the voters into thinking people are ‘hurting’, struggling…in pain etc… a propaganda and confidence trick of massive proportions.
Faced with proof of their deceit, they switch mantras to the social side.
The Howard government has been infinitely better than Labor on that count too, but the media can always be relied upon to create the myth that it’s otherwise.
As well, the media ensures that the facts about Rudd’s past remain hidden.
They don’t want Australians to know that Rudd was the right hand man to premier Goss in the QLD government that unprecedentedly destroyed evidence ( having assured multiple barristers it would be preserved for forthcoming court cases) to avoid scrutiny of the sexual abuse of indigenous children in state care.....and they and Beattie and their media have covered up the lawbreaking ever since.
See ‘Shreddergate’, ‘Dilkera O’Neill’, ‘Heiner’.

As a retired wheatgrower now forced to get on the pension with bread up nearly 3 hundred per cent since the end of WW2, and our prices up only 60 percent, and with milk cockies out from Mandurah here selling out cheap to Howard's corpo' capitalists just for hobby farms, do wonder what is really going on?

Of course, we've still got the quarry economy with China creating a buyers paradise here in return for our pitstocks, till she fiendishly changes her mind.

Rudd has not even mentioned such problems, so maybe it has become our political fashioning, to not worry much whether backwards or forwards, so it won't be much different whether to vote for one or the t'other

Graham's analysis is pretty right. Mark B is exactly right. Graham's analysis seeks to find out how committed voters are.

All those comments about past issues will be well and truely buried under the voters concerns for national security. One thing the recent furore over Haneef has shown is that people are terribly interested in national security...as they always have been. It's an Aussie tradition. Remember the invasion from boat people Ala Tampa, thev 'Domino theory' that committed us to Vietnam, the 'reds under the bed' that ensured Menzies reign, right back to the fear of a Russian invasion and Asians undermining our working conditions that originally led to election of politicians who implemented the White Australia policy in 1901.

Watch the Haneef issue blow up in Rudd's fence sitting face.

Up until today Rudd ran the conservative race. ie Supporting the Government's policy...today however he's drifted to the traditional leftie labor, soft on security, stance. 'Let's have an enquiry' ... an enquiry that can only mean an enquiry into our actions and let's condemn the Government Policy that led to the expulsion of a suspected terrorist?

If you want to see how this issue 'rubs' with the average and swinging voter ...well ask the following question among your friends:

If Haneef was a pilot would you fly in a plane he was piloting?

Overwhelming the response I've seen is this: An initial hesitation, followed by an embarrassed laugh and then a smiling NO.

And the voters are still smart enough to work out in terrorist issues the obvious course in defending Australia, regardless of age, demographic or income. The Labor Party will dictate to Rudd on this issue and he won't be able to disguise that. And that's the issue that will decide the election outcome.

Security. Who can guarantee that?

Andrew E, that's Yeats you're quoting. Not T S Eliot.

And yes. I am feeling a mite pedantic this evening...

The writer's a dodger doing some nice ice skating carefully circumventing the essential issues.
The number one issue: The illegal invasion into Iraq based on lies and pretext, to mask stealing the oil. So far millions of barrels have disappeared with no paperwork. In consequence, a death toll creeping towards one million and the creation of a million homeless refugees. Described as bringing the Iraqis "democracy."
Voters would be rightfully concerned too that the next invasion may well be in Iran with its third largest oil supplies.
There is not one policy for Iraq and another for workers here. Although in a different form there is a criminal war proceeding here; both governments are carrying out to undermine and wreck the publicly owned essential services; hospitals, Medicare, ambulances, schools, childcare, unis, trains, Qantas, pensions etc., In many instances, withholding necessary funding in order to cripple them, breaking them financially and handing them over to their well heeled cronies. This process called "privatisation" a yuppie word designed to mask criminal practise. Such as the very contrived long public hospital waiting lists designed to create desperate people to go private and shell out big bucks - "creating a market."
Included too, is the grab now on for major supplies of fresh water and surrounding lands. The jargon for this is "asset creating."
Then there is the very deliberate driving down of all living standards with the promise of far more attacks to come. Irrespective of Liberal or Labor governing. A case being, the new industrial relations laws which are designed to drive living standards downwards for workers, back to the 1900's called "rollback." Based on boosting exploitation through the longer working day and week.
Another issue: The frequent terrorist scares used to justify trampling on basic legal and democratic rights. Coupled with many pieces of draconian legislation drawn up and passed in recent times in parliament. Designed to imprison, intimidate and stiffle any criticism or dissent about future wars and very high levels of poverty that is planned for workers.

Don't you tire of the left wing obsessive compulsive disorders like Johncee1945.The left are so simplisitic in their in their approach to all life's conundrums.The Middle East owns 65% of the world's oil.The US are there to keep energy flowing at market prices to the entire planet.Really,stealing Iraqi oil is drawing a very long bow.

Imagine in the future that Aust owned 65% of the world's uranium and China,India Europe were dependant upon us for their survival,however the Catholics,Protestants and Hill Song religions were too busy fighting each other and thus starving the world of energy.

Would China/India just starve or try to set the stupid Australian Christians straight and offer to buy their uranuium at market prices?

The US is doing all the dirty work of all those who buy Middle Eastern oil,since without them the world would be in the chaos of WW2 fighting over energy and resources.

We either back the US and be safe under their nuclear umbrella or develop our own nuclear weapons.At least John Howard has the courage of his convictions

real (aka truth of sydney),

Your comments about education – “What makes this work like a dream for the Left is the culmination of years of the ‘dumbing down’ education system, devised by the Left wing academics and implemented by the Left wing education union members…” and “So…… many Australians have been made ripe for the propaganda…ready to do the Left’s bidding unknowingly” – are a baseless slur against the hard-working often defamed teachers who have sacrificed so much in the education of young people, who daily put up with abuse that no other mainstream occupation faces and who do their best in an under-resourced poorly led semi-system. It is just the sort of propaganda by which communists created a category of “enemies of the people” (e.g., the kulaks of the Soviet Union) so that the elite could divert attention from their own misrule. It was used extensively in the lead-up to and for the duration of the Kennett Government in Victoria as it set about damaging our education system far more effectively than the Left ever did. (Readers can see http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5080 for some quotations of this despicable abuse and http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5225 for a list of the damaging things done to Victorian education by the Right.)

Rudd Labor will, if elected, govern Australia more fairly than the Liberals, just as Bracks Labor governed Victoria more fairly than the Liberals. If you have some evidence rather than mere conspiratorial assertion that Labor is not genuine in its intention to return social justice – a Catholic concept long before it got the left label attached to it – to the workplace and that it is some “Left/Labor juggernaut to use them as pawns in their power game”, please supply it. It seems more likely to me that a Labor party would be absolutely committed to looking after working people and their families.

You keep going on about Kevin Rudd in Queensland, but you do not supply a reference to or even a date for the events that you allege.

"The US are there to keep energy flowing at market prices to the entire planet."

First Brendan Nelson, now Arjay. Finally, people are starting to fess up to the reason we went in the first place.

As an aside, I, like many others, long for a change of government. The coalition have not governed for the bennefit of all Australians. This is why I am so disheartened when I see federal Labor toe the government's line. I want an alternative, and just wanting to be rid of Howard does not automatically lead to a vote for Rudd, particularly as he sat back and allowed Kevin Andrews to over-rule the desicion of a magistrate. Separation of powers is vital in a democracy.

ChrisC (as opposed to Chris C)

That's a good summary of the current situation Graham.

The latest blunder the industry aligned, sycophantic Liberal party has made is its deal with India to sell our uranium. Now our U miners will be delighted but Pakistan won't.

What about the pensioners, who've paid taxes for some fifty years in low income employment but have endeavoured to remain independent of the public health purse in investing in private health insurance?

This cost to pensioners is exhorbitant! Then they struggle to meet the exhorbitant, unethical gaps in medical charges.

Little wonder they are dropping out of private health schemes resulting in the poor buggers, often in pain, having to wait months or years to see a specialist or even to obtain a stretcher, in some draughty corridor, in a public hospital. This now common occurrence is unprecedented in Australia.

However, it was a revelation to watch the president of the AMA speak at the Press Club last week where the president was asked by a journalist why there were no applications from doctors interested in taking up a country practice which was offering $500,000.00/annum!

Despite the federal government's glaring failures, you also have a treasurer in WA who is flush with the dollars but has a health and education system worthy of third world standards. Is this a consequence of a booming economy erupting whilst obtuse politicians were nodding off in our halls of parliament?

I recall raising an issue, with a political leader in 2000, over industries' reluctance to take on apprentices. What a waste of time that was! So we've now had to resort to temporary 457 visas.

Finally we have the insipid Mr Rudd, who until this week, parroted everything the Libs said. What a phony!

So neither applicant or party is worthy of my vote which leaves me to consider an informal vote - where I will covertly endeavour to include some honest advice for good measure!

After all, what have we to lose? Either party will continue to operate from self-interest, regardless of our protestations!

Eventually I think it comes down to whether you are happy with the way the country IS, not how it's being run.

The pendulum seems to have swung too far to the right (not that Rudd is particularly left-wing) but also as a nation it seems that we have sold out our morality and sense of independence for a few quick bucks.

The illusion of growing personal wealth is based on the increased value of Real Estate and the stockmarket but in reality there is a personal debt crisis looming for many of us plus a coming generation that will not have the same opportunities that the previous one enjoyed.

Add it all up and some may feel somewhat disappointed by it all and feel like a change.

We have the ever intrusive bureaucratic government we have today thanks to the left wing socialist who said government knows best. Now government is heavily laden with unionist job protectors clinging to the indexed pensions and cost of livings at the expense of the public purse and giving little in return but further government expansion bloating the many government offices administrating to societies every need. A very nasty cycle of civil dependency and ever expanding administrative staff perpetuated by the left for the left paid for by the ingenuity and labour of the 'free' man.
You have the government you have because you wanted someone other than yourself to hold the responsibility. No matter how much the centralist and right of centrals work to lessen that grip of social dependency, it will take a very brave and heroic figure to ever return our freedom to us. Kick the Howard government all you want. They're impuissant when it comes to removing the leftist thumb from the scales.
Suffer for your complacency and own up to the fact that you did this to yourself. "OOOH, the government should take care of that. The government should be responsible. The government should be doing this. The government should be doing that." Well, you got it now shut the f' up and eat whats put in front of you. Maybe in your next life you will be able to stand on your own two feet and look after yourself with out being spoon fed.

The Coalition has lost touch with the electorate; people become quite resentful when they are told they have never had it so good, when this is definitely not the case. It has been a struggle for most of us to buy our houses, pay our rent or buy our vehicles, and now the price of food is extremely expensive. In the main these have always been difficult to pay for, requiring sacrifice; the comments are very hollow indeed about how well we are doing.

The Public Service has been politicised by the Coalition Government by the use of Heads of Department in advertising campaigns eg Ms Bennett. TV ads can only give small snippets of information, and consequently, can be seen as high on spin and low on fact. It's quite facile to believe tv ads actually provide any useful information. Yet millions of dollars are spent on these fragments of propaganda on behave of Governments, Federal and State. However, the worst offender would appear to be the Federal government. The rub is that we the tax payer pay for the messages we don't want. It's a good task for private enterprise; that is, journalists are capable of providing us with information about various matters free.

The point at which I finally concluded the Libs will lose, came just a couple of weeks ago, when Costello was interviewed on the 7.30 report about grocery prices. When asked to explain why people were hurting economically, his answer was basically to tell them they were wrong, that things had never been so good.

Unfortunately if someone is hurting, the most stupid thing you can possibly do is tell them that they're not. It was just a dumb move.

The constant refrain of "Look at wot Labor dun" doesn't wash any more. The price of incumbency is that those who, this year, will be voting in their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th election have never voted in an election where Labor won. Virtually nobody under 30 has ever voted in a Labor-winning federal election. And they're just the voters who swing elections. To them, Hawke may as well be Billy Hughes - just another PM in the history books.

Does anyone else wonder whether the government's control of the Senate might not have become a posioned chalice? In previous terms, the nasty obstructionist Senate actually took the edge off many government policies, and reminded them that they weren't infallible and omniscient. This term, they haven't had that brake applied to their own excesses. Worth considering.

Anth

Well Chris C.
Labor are not in because of their base treachery. Labor did more to hand the reins to the Liberals than anything the Liberals ever did. And that process has repeated itself since the 1930's. Wern't the Liberals born out of the the treachery of the great Labor rats Scullen and Lyons in the Great Depression and the filthy role the Labor Party played in dumping the depression on the backs of workers? Did they not go over and form a new party which eventually became the Liberals? How are they any different, if their loyalty lies with serving Murdoch, Packer, Fairfax, the bankers, oil companies, and big business? How are they any different if big money picks all the leaders and promotes them? Tell us that doesn't happen? Don't they have an extreme right wing nationalist agenda - economic nationalism? Immediately after the election we will get "you voted for us and now we are going to make you pay"; has that not dominated since the formation of the Labor Party in the late 1880's? Where is there a whit of difference? Only in the names!

Anthony I think you are on to something there. What comes through in the research is that the government is perceived not to be listening. That is frequently all voters want you to do - listen. If you give them a fair hearing they frequently won't hold it against you if you do something else.

I happen to think that objectively speaking Costello is correct, but then so was Keating when he said at the time that we had never had it so good. And that was hung like an albatross around his neck.

Stepping away from the research, I think the government is in so much trouble because it is not communicating effectively. Not only are front-benchers like Costello way "off message", but the Prime Minister can't make up his mind whether he's losing the next election or whether he is going to pull it off. All signs that they're not hungry enough any more. But Rudd probably is, and will win, as long as he can step around the problem that he probably needs more than 50%of the vote to win, given how the margins in the seats currently fall.

What will really change for the battler if Kevin does assume the mantle of power?The union backed Labor Party only represents 16% of workers in private enterprise.Why do our public servants need unions when they cannot be sacked unless criminal charges can be laid?In NSW we have the most numerous,overpaid bureaucrats in the entire country producing a basket case of an economy.

Kevin Rudd has a stated today that he will give the states $500 million for housing with no strings attached.How will these greedy ill disciplined Govts spend all this money? First of all they will give themselves a pay rise.We have 57 ministries in NSW of which many earn $300,000.00 pa,which is more than the PM earns.

The writing is on the wall.Kevin Rudd with his "Me too" no policy zone,wants to drift into office with a party that has nebulus notions of social equity and not the discipline,party talent or economic nous to back it up.

We have not seen a recession for 16 yrs and Labor's next one will be catastrophic.

johncee1945 (Tuesday, 31 July 2007 8:35:06 AM),

I understand your hostility to Joseph Lyons, but not to Jim Scullin.

Arjay (Tuesday, 31 July 2007 8:20:42 PM),

The Labor Party represents the people who vote for it – about four times more than the number of unionists in the country. The public does not care that unions are affiliated with the Labor Party.

Public employees belong to unions for all sorts of reasons; e.g., teachers do so because they are highly exploited and abused.

People who make comparative claims, such as “In NSW we have the most numerous,(sic)overpaid bureaucrats in the entire country producing a basket case of an economy”, should be able to produce detailed figures from all states and territories to support their claims.

Kevin Rudd has released dozens of pages of policy – modern broadband through effective investment from the Future Fund, continued aid to all private schools, a national curriculum developed in co-operation with the states, the end of WorknotcalledChoicesanymore and many more, all of which can be found on the ALP website.

The release of the proposals on federalism today makes me think that Kevin Rudd will be a lasting reformer in the mould of Steve Bracks, whose legacy of an auditor-general as an officer of the parliament and a democratically representative Legislative Council, entrenched in the constitution of the state, will ensure all future governments are kept accountable.

ChrisC."Why do PS belong to unions?Teachers do so because they are exploited and abused" You've got to be kidding! I was a teacher in the 70's and 80's and we had a ball.If I was not on the golf course,playing cricket or touch footy by 3.30pm twice a week,people assumed that I was either seriously ill or dead.Add to this the 10 wks holidays and public holidays,teachers did have a charmed existence.

Teachers have defecated in their own abodes by destroying discipline in our school system with the aid of human rights lawyers.Our Public Service dares not make a decision without confronting litigation consequences and thus our Public Service is now totally impotent.

The tide is indeed ebbing,however it is not just for "Lapsed Liberals".It is ebbing for all of us who do not have the sense of purpose,clarity of mind,or courage that died and survived WW2.

Arjay,

I don’t think I was unusually conscientious, but I regularly worked 50 hours plus a week as a teacher in the 1970s and 1980s when you were playing golf.

The average working week for a teacher is around 50 hours, which totally cancels out the extra time in holidays, part of which teachers use for preparation, correction and PD.

Teachers are not the ones who undermined discipline in schools. Almost all the teachers I worked with wished for a higher standard of discipline but were not supported by the “system” in achieving it.

I have already posted some of my own experiences of exploitation and abuse as a teacher. (Details are on the Farewell thread of the discussion forum of www.platowa.com. Anyone looking will probably have to scroll to the second page of the discussion forum to find them.) The deterioration in pay and working conditions is further general evidence, and most teachers will confirm it. The empowerment of principals with poor skills in leadership and the ever-growing demands of government have added to the exploitation since your day.

One of the tactics of the Right has been to cast slurs on teachers as a way of reducing their credibility and thus their effectiveness in resisting the regular attacks on education that come from the Liberal Party and its allies in this era.

The Coalition has stooped to a new low in their quest to retain a marginal seat in NW Tasmania by taking over the control of a local Hospital. When in government the State Liberals privatised the Hospital and it didn't work out. A later ALP Government bought the hospital back, and have been trying to maintain it. One of the major issues is the lack of professional staff to man the hospital. Its a problem Australia wide. The training of health professionals is something the Coalition Government should have taken care of years ago; it's been a structural problem allowed to lapse under the current Coalition Government.
By their intervention they are likely to fracture an already difficult situation due to greater complexities created for an already stretched number of health professionals. It's an ad hoc decision which could bounce back against the Coalition.
If this is to be the new style of government by the Coalition, then Gough Whitlam's government looks conservative in retrospect.

What experience has the Coalition had in the actual administration of hospitals?

Ant the Coalition are not administering the hospitals,they give our taxes to incompetent State Govts,only on this occasion are givng the money directly to a Tasmanian Hospital.They may as well take the reponsibility of Health,Education and Infrastructure from the States since they,the States, have all just grown their bureaucracies and lined their own pockets.

We in NSW spend $7 billion on bureaucrats,which is well over $2000.00 per working person for no result.

It is time to shed a layer of Govt and fix our failing infrastructure and health system.

Arjay, bureaucracy is a frustration generally, it is not just confined to State governments. For example, Federally there are Departments of Education and Health, the question is what actual service can a consumer identify that is brought to them by these Federal Departments?

The Mersey Hospital was privatised by a previous State Liberal Government; and had the Labor government not bought it back, then there would have been even worse problems for the Mersey Hospital. The changes that the Labor Government are wanting to make generally have the support of the Doctor's Union (AMA).

The changes to the Mersey as proposed by the Labor Government have not as yet taken effect, and a new direction has now been pushed that will have the Mersey reverting back to how it was when it did not work. A huge issue has been the lack of Specialist Medical staff, meaning that those employed were being asked to maintain unsustainable workloads. If Mr. Howard can arrange to have more specialists employed that would be fabulous; however, as there is a shortage of specialist medical staff worldwide it is a very unlikely outcome.

Mr Howard's ad hoc plan is more than likely to prove to be a short term gain for Mr Howard, but create a long term pain for the Region in relation to Hospital resources. Decision making on the run; something which the Coalition government despised the Whitlam Government of.

Lapsed or not, win or lose. Who is going to live in The Lodge? I'm very, very tired of the cavalier use of Kirribilli House by the Prime Minister. There is a serendipity about my moving house and changes in government and I'm pretty sure I want to move. Fluff up the pillows housekeepers at the Lodge, the new PM is coming home.