[SeaGypsy]

As others have commented over the years Shaved, our right wing is by American standards mildly left. Probably due to the fact of mandatory voting and the entwinement of the Trades Unions with the Labor Party. Both sides are effectively centrist populists.

[Shaved Monkey]

Sad thing is they are both further right than they have ever been in the history of Australian politics and both parties actually pitch further to the right of their core voters in order to not offend or attract the fringe swinging voter.
The true centrist party was the Democrats, since their demise there has been nowhere for the less conservative, conservative to park their protest vote, so the L/NP has been allowed to drift to the right un checked.

[SeaGypsy]

I don't agree with the axing of the Carbon tax and green energy fund, though I think we should have gone with a floating price and the policy should have been brought to an election- very clearly explained.

I do agree that Iranians etc buying their way to the front of our resettlement program had to be stopped- has to be stopped. Another policy area sorely lacking in explanation to the electorate, caught up in spin and rhetoric aimed at the lowest common denominator.

Labor really stuffed up big time in a few key areas. Mostly I take this right back to the corporatization of the party in the early 90's. Branch stacking, the shift of power in the party from local branches to the executive caucus which went on back then- IMO these were stupid moves not in the long term interests of the movement. The Greens made the same mistakes in the same times, largely forgotten now. I resent the Greens being railroaded by people like Sarah Hansen Young over the boat people issue (full of holes arguments with nothing much to do with the core business of the Greens- the environment).

[ROCKMAN]

SG - I wonder if yours has just been the normal rotation we commonly see as the party in power fails to fix problems and thus folks what a change just for the sake of change. Or as we stumble down the PO path and economies stagnate we'll see a more consistent swing to the right in many more centric systems. There seems to have been a historical pattern that as more proactive/harsh choices need to be made many folks perceive that us right wing bastards are better at the task.

IOW no one wants a hit man hanging around. Until, of course, you want someone wacked. LOL

[SeaGypsy]

Sure there is a major element of that Rock. I actually find it kind of weird here that the left is so concerned that the right has taken power as if it's some huge impacting social disaster when really our right is centrist by comparison to yours or Europe's. We will still have Medicare, a virtually universal health system, a state of the art welfare state, relatively high wages- in 3 years time when the next elections are held.

[sparky]

.
On " global warming "having no traction with the electorate ,
we have seen none for five years now , instead , record floods and miserable summers

I know I know , Oz is a land of erratic "weather" , a five years drought is pretty much normal
then the whole land is dead , only to flourish again when the rains come back

The carbon tax problem occurred because Julia "the goose" lied publicly during an election campaign
that's a big no no !
Here , politicians ( if elected ) have a mandate to carry out their program.
we don't vote for someone , we vote for something , she welshed on a deal !

[Loki]

One of my favorite economists, Steve Keen (formerly of University of Western Sydney), puts the recent election in economic and political context:

Kevin Rudd came to power for the first time on December 3rd 2007, just a few months after the global financial crisis commenced, and some time before its severity was truly appreciated by the political classes of any nation. On September 7, he lost office for the last time.

The first election he won was a bad one to win, not because he was blamed for the calamity of the GFC itself of course, but because his entire term was dominated by reacting to it.

That reaction had parts that could be rubbished (everything from the Liberal Party’s favourite farce of the Pink Batts program to my pet hate, the First Home Vendors Boost) but a simple comparison of Australia’s economic performance to that of the rest of the OECD over the last six years shows that his reaction worked – see Figure 1, which shows unemployment in Australia, the US and Ireland. Unemployment never exceeded six per cent here, and growth turned negative for only one quarter. The US, on the other hand, had its longest post-war recession ever, and Europe’s obsession with austerity turned its downturn into a genuine second Great Depression....

So could this election be a good one to lose? Not for Rudd, of course. Surely there’s no way he will emulate “Lazarus with a triple by-pass” and make a comeback from this electoral defeat. But the ALP will hand over the reins of government to the Liberals at much the time that luck is no longer playing on the Australian side....

Abbott could well find himself experiencing a similar double-edged sword of fate. He will take over when the deleveraging that caused the GFC has come to a temporary halt, and demand will be rising in the US (and maybe even in Europe, from the depths of its self-imposed Depression) thanks to rising private debt (see figure 7). But this rise could peter out even more quickly than it did for Fraser, leading to anaemic economic performance that will be blamed on the politician rather than the times....

Australia also faces the headwinds of a possible bursting debt bubble in China, something that is also beyond Abbott’s control. Our new prime minister may find that he lives in interesting times, rather than favourable ones.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/art ... n-election