I've had many people tell me recently that compared to the current mess, they miss the good old days under Howard.
I disliked Howard for many reasons, and I believe he was directly responsible for many of our current problems but at least the election process didn't feel like the Special Olympics.
What didn't you like about Howard? Personally i was against workchoices and draconian gun control. But he was still better than the other mob.
I don't completely disagree with you and thank you for making those points, they are well made and there is a lot of truth in them but I contend that the Liberal Party are still currently a mature, stable party compared to Labor. How can you compare Howard or even those that followed him to a party that threw their own sitting Prime Minister out of office because he was an unpopular, unbearable and egotistical failure, replaced him with a PM who took Labor down to the depths of internal fighting and despair and to a point where it was seriously being considered that Labor could not win enough seats to form an opposition, Who then in desperation brought back the first failure to try and save something and in the process had around a third of their cabinet decide to quit politics altogether, that being preferential to working under the Labor PM? Some of the remaining ministers are on public record describing their PM as a psychopath and an egomaniac among other things? How much talent did the Labor Party just lose? Simon Crean blew himself up trying to convince failure A to re-unseat failure B. A lot more talent has disappeared from the Labor Party in the last 3 months than from the Liberal party under Howard. If you contend that Howard gutted his party, what dud Rudd and Gillard just do?
Like or dislike Tony Abbott he is definitely the most formidable opposition leader in living memory. By next week he will have seen the fall from grace to disgrace of Kevin Rudd twice and of course Julia Gillard. And he did it while being relatively publicly unpopular. He also held his opposition team together tightly throughout. .
I get that that what actually happened was different but I see the same patterns, greed and a power vacuum. Byron: His policies were directly responsible for the housing bubble, not that I'm convinced labour would have been any better.
All I can say about the current state of Australian politics is this; Bob Santamaria would be turning in his grave.
Actually I'm going to vote but I won't bother with the house vote, I'll just vote the 1 to 1000 in the senate. Got to make sure Freddy Nile is last.
At least she has the good grace to step completely out of politics after her leadership defeat, unlike that little scum from that Brisbane electorate.
Can you believe her last question to Tony? "Will you remove the morning after abortion pill from the PBS list?" Seriously how low can a journalist go?
I see it more as resurrecting a Julia Gillard "misogynist, anti pro choice" scare mongering dig at Tony.
Me too, but that's only in the Senate. Which means you can still vote for a change of government in the lower house. It is almost like the election in the senate is a referendum on the safe return of Assange.
