For Labor to govern in their own right they would need to pick up 21 seats, and hold the 55 they presently have, a big ask in anyone's language. I think presently Labor have a good chance of winning back maybe half that number but little chance of taking government. What is more likely next time around is the balance of power in the Senate will shift again. Presently the government requires 6 extra votes on top of their 33 existing votes. The 2 possibilities in the Senate is Labor/Greens regain control, but more likely is the Liberals loosing a couple of seats and relying even more so on minor parties and independents.
Its a long way out to the next election and as they say a week is a long time in politics, many things could happen over the nest year or so, which could see a major shift one way or the other.
I predict a second term for this mob, but they will be in for a much more torrid time than they are having now.

Prejudice is an irrational, inflexible attitude
toward an entire category of people. The word literally
means "prejudged."

The key feature of prejudice is
that it is always rooted in generalisations and so ignores
the differences among individuals.

Therefore someone who is prejudiced against Arabs will tend
to have a negative attitude toward any individual Arab in
the belief that all Arabs share the same supposed traits.

People tend to think in terms of general categories,
if only to enable them to make sense of the world
by simplifying its complexity.

We all probably have our own stereotypes, for example
of what our Indigenous people are like. The essence of
prejudice thinking, however, is that the stereotype is
not checked against reality. It is not modified by
experiences that contradict the rigid image. If a
prejudiced person finds that an individual member of a group
does not conform to the stereotype for the group as
a whole, the evidence is simply taken as "the exception that
proves the rule" and not as grounds for questioning the
original belief. As was shown earlier in this discussion
when I gave Dr Munjed Al Muderis as an example.

Another factor that contributes to prejudice is
scapegoating - placing the blame for one's troubles on
some relatively powerless group. Scapegoating typically
occurs when the members of one group feel threatened but
are unable to retaliate against the real source of the
threat.

The outstanding example of a scapegoated group is the
Jews in Nazi German, who were conveniently blamed for
the country's economic troubles.

A more contemporary example comes from Great Britain, where
prolonged recession had caused chronic unemployment among
working-class white youths. Unable to strike at the real
source of their problem - the 'system' - some of these
youths had taken to assaulting Pakistani immigrants,
whom they believed to be competing for the few available jobs
at the same level. Such attacks became so common that
a new word came into being - "Paki-bashing."

Instead of associating ISIS with the word "Muslim,"
better words for ISIS would be "Extremists," or
"Criminals," or "Terrorists."

Dear Poirot,

You've hit the nail right on the head.

And most of us should be ashamed of the direction
in which this country is currently being lead.

Dear Paul,

You may be right - Liberals may win another
term because Labor doesn't present well under
the current leadership. However I'm not sure
if Mr Abbott will remain as the leader prior
to the next election for the simple reason
that in stunningly quick time Tony Abbott's
popularity has plummeted to the depths that
saw Julia Gillard pack up and move out for
Kevin Rudd's return.

Mr Abbott's election triumph has not been followed
by solid opinion poll rating with a very high
percentage of voters not satisfied with his
performance.

Personally I feel that his days are numbered.
Especially with others waiting in the wings for his job.

Foxy, opinion polls presently favor Labor, but at election time, there generally is a late swing back to the incumbent, and that was clear in 2013. Fortunately for the Coalition with the electoral bias towards the big two, and the even grater bias towards the leading party in this case the Coalition with 53.5% of the two party vote and 90 seats, things favor Abbott at the moment. Having said that the biggest danger to his leadership might come from within. There are a couple of dozen marginal Coalition seats held by no more than 3%, there could be some very worried conservative backbench MP's in Canberra.
On Abbott, before he become leader and eventually PM in the Howard years, Abbott was perceived within the Liberal Party as being of rather mediocre leadership material, I think his standing in Liberal eyes has improved since then, but not by a great deal. An economic downturn with rising unemployment would see pressure mount on his leadership for sure.

LOL, Foxy and her ginger group gathered around the cauldron hoping to stir up strife with speculative gossip, unhappy before the election and unhappy after, "Will somebody rid us of this government, democracy too and that tiresome freedom of speech".

In a one-horse race you can always bet on self-interest eh? Your entitlements are threatened. That Gough Whitlam sure set up a huge victim industry with thousands hanging off the taxpayers' teat and thousands more public bureaucrats and 'consultants' to go with it. Any wonder the federal government past and present cannot afford pensions and care for the aged.