Well, it's only fair for Labour to get a chance to screw up. Once they've wrecked the economy, the opposition can be returned to power and clean up the mess.
Posted at 2007-11-24 09:05:13 [PermaLink]Yay! Couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke. Harper should note that Howard appears to have lost his own seat and Rudd has made Kyoto his top priority.
Posted at 2007-11-24 09:08:53 [PermaLink]Much as I appreciate John Howard, four terms as Prime Minister are more than enough, and the new government should prove very profitable for Tim Blair who can now take off the gloves.
As for Kyoto, it's a dead letter. Australia might as well sign onto the Kellogg-Briand Pact for all the effect it will have. (Oh, wait, they did! [External Link]) China, the world's greatest emitter of CO2 and India, rising fast, won't sacrifice economic growth for a feel-good treaty, and even the signatories produce far more CO2 than when they signed the thing.
Howard was a crap PM. Other than his willingness to go shoot islamists, he had few virtues. He was the highest-taxing, highest-spending PM in our history. He expanded the welfare state, passed idiot gun laws and made the government more instrusive than ever.
Rudd won't be any better, but Howard didn't have much to recommend him
At least the new government looks solid on Afstan (major platform thrusts at link):
[External Link]
"FOREIGN POLICY
- Withdraw few hundred combat troops from Iraq, look to transfer Australia's training of Iraqi security forces to another country, keep and possibly increase troop numbers in Afghanistan.
- New Homeland Security department..."
Mark
Ottawa
I haven't followed Aussie politics very closely, but I can't help noticing that the leftists all love Rudd. That alone should set off some warning bells.
Posted at 2007-11-24 11:54:03 [PermaLink]"He expanded the welfare state, passed idiot gun laws and made the government more instrusive than ever."
Well, now we can look to Labor to reverse all that, eh?
"I haven't followed Aussie politics very closely, but I can't help noticing that the leftists all love Rudd. That alone should set off some warning bells."
They don't really. They just hate Howard. They loved Mark Latham (previous Labor leader, who was revealed to be just a bit flaky after his loss to Howard in the last elections) just as much. Though I don't recall poor old Kim Beazley (longtime Labor leader, and Rudd's immediate predecessor) getting much respect .
Before Greg gets very exited about Howard losing his seat, he should know that it was redistributed into a marginal, and actually had a swing BELOW the national average.
Posted at 2007-11-24 14:08:41 [PermaLink]Australia is welcome to jump on the Kyoto bandwagon just as the wheels are falling off, but Canada has already taken a more mature future-oriented lead.
Posted at 2007-11-24 14:41:04 [PermaLink]In what should come as a surprise to no one, the AP's political correspondent in Oz is *gasp* a biased pro-Labour hack.
This was the AP story posted this morning (it's been updated since), before it was known that Howard had lost his seat:
[External Link]
"Official figures from the Australian Electoral Commission showed Labor far in front after more than 70 percent of the ballots had been counted — with 53 percent of the vote compared to 46.7 percent for Howard's coalition.
Using those figures, an Australian Broadcasting Corp. analysis showed that Labor would get at least 81 places in the 150-seat lower house of Parliament — a clear majority."
Now, by my count that's a victory margin of just over 6%. And a possible seat outcome of 81-69 doesn't qualify as a landslide by any measure. But here's how AP's intrepid scribe portrayed the result:
"Conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat Saturday at the hands of the left-leaning opposition, whose leader has promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdraw Australia's combat troops from Iraq."
[...]
"The election was an embarrassing end to the career of Howard, Australia's second-longest serving leader."
[...]
"Howard took full blame for the drubbing handed to his center-right coalition."
Aside from the utterly ludicrous, blatantly partisan hyperbole about the margin of victory, Rudd is, from what I've heard during my Aussie podcasts, a social conservative. Secondly, if the Australian "combat troops" have engaged in any combat in Iraq, I'm not aware of it. They haven't lost a man there to hostile action.
Seems to me that someone named Rohan Sullivan has been waiting for this day for a very long, long time.
By the way, here's what the Australian combat battalion has been doing in Iraq:
[External Link]
"AN Australian army officer serving in Iraq says Diggers are disappointed with the media coverage of their positive work in the troubled nation.
Major James Kerr said he and the rest of the 550 Australian soldiers in Overwatch Battlegroup West III had completed 34 projects since May, including rebuilding schools and orphanages, and training Iraqi police on how to handle militias.
The group, based at the Tallil air base, had also provided irrigation systems and pedestrian bridges to help the Iraqi people.
"The boys get disappointed with what they see in the media. There's no focus on what we're achieving here, it's more of a focus on the political side and it's really upsetting for them," said Maj Kerr, a 33-year-old from Sydney.
"They're out on the ground speaking to local Iraqis, training local Iraqis and helping them improve their skills so in time - and we don't know when - those guys will be able to take over and sort things out in Iraq.
If you spend your whole time in Iraq and then all you read in the paper is something a politician said about Iraq, it makes it really hard for the guys.
It's understandable that the media want to sell papers so they just focus on how many bombs went off in Baghdad. That's of interest to us but that doesn't affect what we're doing."
I hate to be the one to break this to you, Major Kerr, but the media have a helluva lot more on their agenda than selling newspapers.
Good riddance to Howard. Among his other endearing qualities was a completely unvarnished old-school racism.
[External Link]
"Good riddance to Howard. Among his other endearing qualities was a completely unvarnished old-school racism."
Your link points to a page with a big pile o' links. None of the ones pertaining to Howards's "old-school racism" work. Nice smear, dude.
Howard was so racist he presided over the largest, most diverse immigration intake in Australia's history.
Pretty strange for an "old school racist"....
Mr Howard could always take passage to India.
Mark
Ottawa
Mark,
I don't think he will be welcome here.Remember, the Australians are not too popular after their recent cricket tour.Even the Pakistanis are better liked than them right now!
Personally, I think that it is more their aggression rather than racism that others find difficult to digest.Especially on the cricket field.
ajsuhail: Well, he could try to forster better relations!
Mark
Ottawa
Damian beat "The Grauniad":
[External Link]
Mark
Ottawa
"Australia is the only developed country whose government has been condemned as racist by the United Nations : 13 Oct 2000"
United Nations? Now there is an unbiased source - no doubt condemned by the former UN Human Rights Commission. Yeah, the body that contained members like Libya, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Paraguay, Russian Federation. You're known by the company you keep.