Little Tony Abbott the Rabbit! uncharitable? yes, unneeded? yes, but if we must drop in to a slanging match so be it.
Pelican and others have contributed interesting things here.
I only differ slightly.
Labor in my view dumped Kevin Rudd not because of polling.
It was the back flips the silly policy's no ETS no double dissolution the list is long.
In retrospect Gillard and others failed me,still fail me and Labor voters.
A change in leadership, in both party's, is coming.
What Kevin Mr 74% promised some one else MUST DELIVER.
And tea party Tony is making promises he can not keep.
It is, it has to be, commitment to change, to policy's,to being better that both party's should commit to not popularity contest.
And the sooner all party's stop responding to foolish questions from media ,all media , that are uninformed efforts to create controversy,and often asked by people with no understanding.
And an IQ that could be beaten by the family dog.

SM,

I think it's more than that. It's about leadership and personal achievment. Most leaders want to go down in history for their record of achievement rather than their notoriety. I'm sure the current PM wants to be remembered as a PM who accomplished something great for the benefit of the nation and she's in a current position to do just that.

Dear Thinker 2,

Fingers-crossed that at the next election we have a real choice between the two parties in their leadership. It would be far more interesting if the choices were between the "Best and the Brightest,"
from each party instead of factional reps and the same old party hacks. New blood is desperately needed.

wobbles:>> I could list some of "Honest John" Howard's less-than sincere outcomes but there is a word limit.Posted by wobbles<<

Wobbles I am not a right wing guy, so go ahead and bag Howard, you will not entice me to defend him. I only am focused on the lot in power now, the ones failing so miserably now, screwing us over right now.

Belly:>> Sonofglion, review your list, it is full of presumptions and quite untrue mostly.<<

Belly, pick any one of the failings I listed and I would be pleased to review the original policy or undertaking with you and measure the actual outcome against the vaunted policy outcome, if indeed the undertaking was not canned after cost over runs or implementation issues. Pick any one and we will break it down and review the result if you wish and see if what I say is “quite untrue mostly”.

Belly to my mind the most capable interpreter of the human condition was Shakespeare. One line of the bard’s observations is pivotal to our survival as individuals and as a society, “to thine own self be true”. I believe that all current Fed Labor politicians and anyone in the Party Machine that is on $100k or more a year are not being true to their natures.

Churchill said any man that is not a socialist in his youth has no heart, and if they are not Tories in their maturity they have no brains, and that is the way it generally runs. Labor always has the young vote but more turn from Labor to Liberal than visa versa when they mature. The true social democrat whose character carries the humanities above individual gain keeps to the left all his life. I am saying that the back bench of the Labor Party should have revolted half way through Rudd’s term, but they did not, they wanted power at any cost. These social democrats are anything except true to themselves and the quite rightly idealistic youth they evolved from. Power without glory seems an apt description of the current rabble.

Mostly untrue indeed Belly, the true believer loves his country not hand full of swine that control it, no offence.

Dear SOG,

Interesting take in your previous post and of course one can only speak about one's own experiences. I come from a Liberal-voting family. The generation of my parents associated Labor with communism and they believed hook-line-and sinker the Menzies fear campaigns of "reds-under-the beds." Of course the fact that they were refugees who ran from communism also played a major part in their choice of who they voted for and who they believed. Most of my family and their friends voted for the conservatives. As did I for many years.

However, as I matured, got an education, entered the workforce, got married, travelled, raised a family, I began to question things and began looking more closely at actual policies that were good for me and my family.

This became more important to me than party loyalties. That still applies to this day. Also, Having lived and worked in the US (Los Angeles) influenced me a great deal. I saw first-hand what an unequal society does to people. Where money talks.
America is wonderful - if you've got money. Otherwise you're in trouble. I would hate that way of life to ever come to Oz. Where Big
Business can do what it wants.

As I grow older, like many people, I become more concerned about government policies and their effect on me and my family. I believe there should be room for social equity, compassion and the idea of an egalitarian society. I believe in social welfare, public health, education, and so on. I don't believe that big business has the right to get whatever it wants at the expense of the interests of evryone else.

We are living in critical times. What we don't need is the "kick-the-worker-today-and take-the-money tomorrow," attitude that comes from the so called pollies who are currently at work around the place. The only way in which the country can work properly is for management and Labour to co-operate with one another, not condemn one another. But the sad truth is that condemnation is the only language that some people appear to understand.