Thank you for the explanation.

Maybe he thought the US visit had more importance than it did? Or maybe he was kissing up to the US.

I have heard from at least one person that he voted for Howard because if Labour won they would have cut his job.

Labor was planning a government re-structuring.....which made more than a few people in the public sector nervous as to the particulars...including my wife and I (we work for the commonwealth education, science & training department) and they also took a BIG hit in Tasmania because their plans regarding the old growth forest there was going to impact on the logging industry there.

I dunno, personally I'd never base my vote on things that specifically target me....hell, we're planning to have a baby and Howard's baby bonus plan* would have given us a nice sum of money but you have to look beyond yourself IMO.

(* whilst I'd love the baby bonus, it's a bribe....big one, that everyone involved in Families is not overly happy with because it's not a planned or measured delivery. That and...jebus.....aren't the current baby boomers about to cause us enough trouble? Let's not go creating a new one. :p )

I just had Guinness, Honey Brown, and Murphy's to celebrate something totally unrelated, but congratulations on Australia NOT being in the Axis of Evil.

That should have been his campaign slogan...

Labor really screwed up the economy in the late 80's/early 90's.

So it kind of boils down to:
Liberals- Economic competence, but dishonest.

Labor- Probably Economicly incompetent and probably semi-dishonest.

Mind you Labor still really needs a kick in the butt, the amount of time it took them to kick the former Opposition leader Simon Crean out...(note for non-Australians, Crean was probably a decent bloke, but he had practically no policies and spent most of his time playing catch-up-cricket politics, ie govt says potato, Crean says tomato).

I'm still at the age where most of my money gets pissed up against the wall at the pub, so economic competence means little to me, hence me voting based on honesty. That and the fact that I think the guy is a ******.

Do the Greens care about anything other than the environment?

I agree that you have to vote for more than yourself, but the guy who said it said he has two children and mortgages.

The Family First party sounds pathetic. I'm not surprised that Howard has allied with them, because he sounds like a clone of Bush in some ways.
How conservative is FF? Would they be the type that tries to christianize the government?

Yeah, as their popularity has skyrocketed they've broadened their agenda, but environment and social justice are still their linchpins.



True, but the Howard government hasn't exactly done that well when it comes to mortgages and owning a house in particular. It is becoming next to impossible for young people to get a house in the big capital cities. It's one of the reasons I moved away from Sydney.



Yup. They are ultra conservative and indeed want to do that. However it looks like the Liberals will be getting the balance of power in the Senate in their own right so FF has lost their advantage. I'd be really surprised if they stick around long as they only got on the Senate through a preference deal, next election they are likely to disappear off the map again unless Howard feels he needs them again.

Could someone from Australia explain a bit about Family First? The really radical parties in Canada have basically no say in anything, and I'm kind of curious as to how such an extreme party could even exist on the national level, let alone hold the balance of power.

I'm not really surprised. They're probably exactly like the US Republican party, now that it's controlled by the Religious Right.

There are a lot of really conservative people still. Actually, having it as it's own party is kind of nice instead of it being part of the Liberal Party.

There are two houses, the House of Representatives where the big boys play...and then the Senate which can shoot down proposals from the house of Reps. The FF could have held the balance of power if the govt didn't have a majority by simply having that one seat in the Senate that would break the tie.

Generally one party being in charge of both houses is dangerous because they can get whatever they want through (unless some of their own members cross the floor, which is rare). They can also now block any senate enquiries which is a pain in the ***.

The next 3-4 years are going to be very interesting, since Howard one way or another is approaching the end of his reign and has the most power he's ever had. I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to get some wildly unpopular motions through parliament and then retire before the next election setting his long suffering deputy, Peter Costello, up for a fall.

http://www.familyfirst.org.au/

Jaiph posted a few interesting things about them down the bottom of the first page. Basically, their policies are even uglier than their leader.

Such as wanting charge end users a levy for internet use in order to pay for a filter at server level that filters out all the pornography. They're out of their friggin' minds.

I was overhearing a conversation between two people on the tram the other day. One of them currently works for Tesltra. Apparently the full sale of Telstra will see 11,000 people being sacked.

....and also likely make the already ubearable Telstra monopoly worse. I was really looking forward to Labor's plan of splitting Telstra into seperate wholesale and retail entities. Fat chance of that ever happening now.

I guess we're just going to have to face it that our telecommunications industry will continue to be held back into the next decade.