Rechtub for every action you can bet on it, another action takes place.
I think media has never been this lost and unfocused on truth.
That hung Parliament hurts us and helps the greens.
And that, like it or not both party's will improve because of current public perceptions.
And that a double Dissolution is to be crafted by one or the other side, this will return us to balance.
If you however see a return to Conservative rule as a savior, your disappointment will hurt.

Belly, I agree with you on this one.

I have predicted that the LNP will win government, then, after being blocked on any bill, they will call a DD election without hesitation.

This should have occurred with both Rudd and Gillard, they just knew they would get flogged.

Pollies need to be aware that they should do what's best for the people, not what's best for their own survival.

As for the post from T2'

How anyone can sit there and claim that Howard was worse than gillard mystifies me.

During what has to be the most wasteful four years in Australian government history, she was either sitting at number two, or number one on the hierarchy list.

its funny...[in hindsight]
that during the howard years i resisted him every step
felt so upset about the things he was doing..i lived as an activist..with other activists..and not that sure pro-testing did any good..

but now left labour alone
after i realised i could do more activism..on my own
sleeping in my own bed..in comfort..live
on line and globally

so while being a loner on line
gets things more affectivly done
now im alone fighting the current beast
wheras before i was with friends..that distracted me

but man isnt meant to be alone
so the howard years i had real people as friends
now i just got vague names of posters and bits and pieces
but doing my work more affectivly[the easy way]...by lifting only one finger at a time

anyhow i put the thought where it was raised
im amased at how small those who lead us are

tiny dark spirits
in their two party mind
serving their mates the best of everything

putting their mates
abouve their duty

putting the core's greeds
before the peoples needs

[its ok when i was with real people
they said the same things]..at least now it got it in writing

Thanks, Andreas, for having drawn our attention to what will be the most critical issue at stake in the next Federal election.

That even John Howard's own electorate of Bennelong voted him out in 2007 is confirmation that he the very worst Prime Minister in Australia's history, as thinker 2 pointed out.

Contrary to established wisdom by many who wear the label "left wing", there is a difference between the two major parties.

It is not the difference that they and the mainstream media would have us believe it is, but it is there and it is real.

The difference is that, for all its grave faults, the Labor Party is constrained by its formal ties to trade unions from carrying out attacks against workers in a way that the Liberal/National parties cannot be.

Whatever may be the wishes of some some Labor Party leaders, there is no way that they, in government, could be as nasty to its supporters as a Coalition government without there being a profound political crisis that would both threaten their rule over the Labor Party and the wealthy elites' rule of the entire country.

That is one reason why no Labor Government in history, even the appalling Hawke/Keating Government, has approached the nastiness of the Howard Government.

Our justified dismay at Julia Gillard, could so easily cause us to forget the far greater peril we would face if the alternative Government were to win office.

As terrible as the Howard years were, they could have even been worse. We only have to think of places like Chile in 1973 and Argentina in 1976 to see how Australia might have turned out if, for example, the maritime workers had not stood up to Howard's attempt to break their union with mercenary strikebreakers in 1998.

(ToBeContinued)

(ContinuedFromAbove)

Much of the answer as to how Howard was able to get away with his appalling misrule for so long is to be found in the "Latham Diaries". Whatever can be said of Mark Latham since then, that book gives a most revealing and insightful understanding of what is wrong with the Australian Labor Party.

Howard only won the 2004 elections, amongst others, because state 'Labor' Governments of Bracks, Carr and Beattie and many, even within the Federal Labor Party actually preferred the continuance of Howard's misrule than to the election of a Federal Labor Government in 2004.

I recall a discussion I had with members of the Queensland Labor Party about John Howard in 1996. One had previously stood as a candidate for Wayne Goss when he was Premier. To my astonishment they were falling over themselves to praise John Howard, the same man who was savagely slashing Government services and who was to take Australia into the illegal war against Iraq in 2003. The praise was all because of because of Howard's stance against guns, which was supposedly driven by the Port Arthur Massacre. The subsequent years of support in practice for Howard by many in the Labor Party indicates to me that this was driven by more than just and emotive response to the carnage at Port Arthur.

In reality, we were ruled in those years by an even broader coalition which secretly consisted of the most corrupt elements in the Labor Party in addition to the Howard Liberal/National Federal Government.

Dagger, like it or not, high wages are likely to bring this country down.

Now it may not happen in the next ten years, but I hope your kids are not planning to have kids, who intend to enjoy the lifestyle you have enjoyed, or at least could have.

Work choices did not effect skilled workers, as they simply went elsewhere as the economy was booming at the time.