A lot can happen in 18 months, calling abbott a fool is being kind to the grub.
A leadership change could occur in 12 months, who knows. Julia is strong but people seem to want popularity.
Abbott is only popular because there is nothing to judge him on.
I don't know if popularity is any way to run a country.
Some decisions will never suite all people. Mining tax and carbon tax is the right way to go, and that has upset the richest people in the country, but who is in charge, the 1% or the govt;

I much prefer Gillard to Rudd.

Rudd lives in a fairy tale land ignoring reality.

He apparently thinks population growth is no problem, and that Australia can expand in population regardless of such niceties as available water, arable land and other necessities to support a great population increase.

He is unaware of the reality that people would not flock to him in his recent leadership challenge where he wound up with approximately the same support as he started out with. A politician making a leadership challenge should make a realistic count of the numbers.

He instituted the chaplaincy program in the Queensland schools copied by Howard subjecting students to guidance by people subscribing to religious mythology rather than a grounding in psychology.

IMHO his commitment to religious mythology, denial of environmental consequences and lack of awareness of the way his peers see him makes him unfit to govern even a small country town.

579,

No the 28% with that grub Juliar are in charge.

I think there's a problem with the basis for the initial set of questions.
I don't think voters much care one way or another if politicians lie. They expect them to.
One of the reasons I say that is that Abbott has contradicted himself on nearly every position possible.
He's lied about his past beliefs, and simply laughs when he's confronted with his lies.
He adores Howard who was the architect of the notion of core promises, which meant that all other promises may be broken at will.
He was caught out on several porkies during his time as a minister. Yet Abbott is quite polpular and will probably be the next PM.
But it's certainly not only Abbott.
Another reason politicians lie is because of the way the media misreport and sensationalize honesty. Ditto the commentators.
Also politicians lie because we - the voters - force them to.
We elect them to do what's necessary to achieve the most good for the most people.
But to do that inevitably means annoying some group or another, sometimes a large, even majority group. We live in a time of the 30 second grab and few voters bother to educate themselves about the underlying issues driving decisions.
So, when politicians act in a way that we perceive to not be in our best interests, we punish them. Sometimes when they act contrary to our ideology but do the right thing, we still punish them.
Here's an example: Almost every economist in the world agrees that the way Rudd handled the GFC was correct and that the additional debt incurred was a small price to pay for our relatively painless GFC experience, especially as our public debt to GDP ratio is one of the healthies in the world.
Yet there are still many who are highly critical of that debt, mostly for ideological reasons.
So politicians tend to lie with a glib 30 second grab as a way of doing damage control.
I really don't understand why so many single out Gillard for doing exactly what every other politician does.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

Ant,

I have to disagree, whilst the electorate realize that politicians may not be entirely honest about their motives, election promises are taken seriously. The degree of breach of faith is what determines their reaction.

For example the promise of fuel watch and grocery watch, when proven to be unmanageable and then abandoned, is a broken promise, but does not carry much weight, as neither were huge election issues, and were abandoned for good reason.

However, a solemn pledge on a major issue just before an election, that is blatantly discarded to impose a large unpopular tax simply to appease a fringe party is a huge breach of faith. This is not forgiven nor forgotten, and while getting Juliar 3 years as PM will probably condemn labor to the opposition benches for a decade.

I would take you a bit more seriously, SadowMinister, if your emotions and personal feelings were not so obviously on display.
"Juliar"?
Oh, please.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au