Well, he has done it again. John Winston Howard, leader of the Australian Liberal party, has won a fourth term in office - running second in length of time served only to Sir Robert Menzies. The Liberal party won in what can be a considered a landslide, the trends were showing a comfortable win on the cards half an hour into the polling, and I guess that is pretty convincing. I always watch the polling, the over-indulgence of graphs and pie charts is a treat.
What does this mean for Australia now? John Howard went against the general wishes of the nation when he sent our troops to Iraq, and certainly when he implemented the GST a couple of terms back, yet he still manages to convince the voting public he is the right man for the job. Due to preference deals with right wing parties - such as the 'Family First Party' of which a standing member
remarked 'Lesbians should be burned at the stake' , the coalition government will also have a great majority in the senate as well - Greens leader, senator Bob Brown has remarked that this will lead to a 'Nastier Australia'
Labor pundits are attributing the victory to a Liberal scare campaign at the possibility of rising interest rates should the Labor government resume office after a 12 year break - Australia has a lot of families with mortgages, so rising interest rates would inflict a severe vice on the economy, and to an extent, it was a justified scare tactic, it certainly worked. Liberal heavy weights such as Peter Costello attributed a 3% swing in Victoria because of the state Labor governments backpeddling on an election promise to impliment tolls on the Scoresby freeway... many will say Liberal won based on a lack of faith in the un-proven Mark Latham.
Bob Brown and the greens can pencil in a million votes at least, which shows Australians aren't an entirely apathetic population, however, the two party preferred system means these votes will mostly count for naught in the running of our country - I hope the major parties do pay attention to Australians wishes and environmental concerns though.
The last 3-4 years would be difficult for any governemt to run our country. The election results will tell you that John Howard and the Liberal party have done a passable job over the last term - they even gained more seats. The political climate is hard to judge at the moment - with a majority of polls sugesting that it would be a close election, and groups like the Greens and Democrats faring exteptionally poorly. I hope this result doesn't lead to a nastier Australia, as Bob brown gloomily predicts. Hopefully John Howard realises the Australian people respect him enough to give his party another chance to atone for judgemental errors in government... only time will tell I suppose.
BAM!!!