Right Pulse

Some voters couldn’t bring themselves yesterday to admit they got it wrong in 2007 and vote Liberal. It appears that not all of the Greens preferences went to Labor. Enough must have preferenced the Coalition to possibly get Tony Abbott across the line.

While the vote is still undecided what is clear is that firstly the next government will likely be a minority government. Secondly the momentum is with Tony Abbott. It seems my prediction of a late swing to the Coalition in the final night of the campaign was enough. I never believed the Galaxy 52-48 2PP to ALP poll. Given that Abbott has the momentum it would seem likely that he will be the person most likely to form government. Big call I know, but his speech last night was made by someone that realises they are in the driver’s seat.

Third and a big however. I don’t rate the three country independents at all. They are a trio of unprincipled players that will do what ever it takes to get their hobbies across the line regardless of the impact on the rest of the nation.

See what happens.

John Howard tonight at Chatswood said: “Real people don’t need to say they are real.” Aka Julia Gillard’s “real Julia” comment. Plenty of Chinese in attendance – probably Cantonese speaking democracy lovers. Good work.

John Howard noted that Julia Gillard claimed that the My School website was the shining decision of her career during the recent election debate – compare with the GST, national security decisions, etc…of the Howard era. The best Julia can come up with is a website. Speaks volumes of the government’s overall ineptitude.

Sky News just cut the live feed to John Howard’s address. They go straight to an old Julia Gillard address. It was shaping into an awesome Howard talk. Probably too hot for Sky News. Something smells wrong here.

Sky News is back. Howard’s address is over though. Suspicious.

UPDATE

ABC report called it ‘electric’.

Full address here.

I’m just putting it out there. Howard could stand for the Conservatives in the seat of Thirsk and Malton, which is due to hold its election on 27th May. Given that Cameron failed to deliver a majority, Howard would have cause for pushing him aside in a primary vote off. The sight of which would make Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg wet their pants. I’ve no doubt that the conservative newspapers would get behind him and the Premiership would then be his.

During the height of his powers Howard was consistently rated by UK conservatives as the best conservative leader in the world at 53 per cent.

With the way the political left are constantly going on about how Menzies supposedly wanted to take over from Churchill during WWII, you would have thought that they would have proposed the idea of Howard taking over from Cameron by now.

UPDATE

Fantasy aside, looks like bed wetter David Cameron is about to become PM. I don’t think he has what it takes to turn the UK around. Someone may have to stab him in the back half-way through the 5 year term, assuming the coalition  or minority government – which ever it ends up being – lasts that long.

Last year Rudd had this to say about Howard:

”indolent, perhaps not always opposing the great transformation reforms engineered by Labor during its 13 years in office but barely adding to that reform agenda”.

Charming stuff. However his treasurer Wayne Swan later in a less publicised moment came out against this claim:

”But decisions made in Canberra played a role too. I think of financial market deregulation, some of which began when John Howard was treasurer…

”We think of the continuation of financial sector reforms carried out by Peter Costello and John Howard when they were in office, in particular the prudential regulation that safeguarded our banking system during the global financial crisis. We honour John and Peter for that.”

Compare and contrast the maturity of opinion of the two men. Now Rudd is being thrown to the lions by his small business minister, who wrote the following in the Australian this week in the context of government socialist miss management in California:

It’s no coincidence that the government of the world’s seventh largest economy is almost broke and is strangling small business. When California’s politicians run out of taxpayers’ money to spend on their programs, they turn to regulation to indulge their social and environmental engineering obsessions. The attraction of regulation is that, unlike budget spending, its cost is usually hidden….

The Hawke, Keating and Howard governments, in adopting market-liberalising measures, effectively shunned the Californian model. During the deepest global recession since the Depression most of Australia’s small businesses were able to withstand a drop in sales while keeping their staff, albeit on reduced hours. Economic stimulus was vital to their survival, but so was their experience competing in open markets.

Thanks to classical liberalism we have avoided the worst of what the left has to offer.

Finally someone in the ALP fesses up to what they have known all along but been too insecure to admit:

Last night Mr Swan credited the Coalition with helping create a ”most remarkable run” in economic success. ”For those who may not know, who have somehow escaped being told several times already, we are now in the 19th year of uninterrupted economic expansion in Australia.

”Later this year we will begin the 20th year,” he told guests who included Mr Hawke, Mr Howard, Mr Keating and Mr Costello.

”This long run of prosperity … follows more than a quarter century of economic difficulty for Australians. The expansion of the world economy played a part, particularly the strength of the Asian regional economy.

”But decisions made in Canberra played a role too. I think of financial market deregulation, some of which began when John Howard was treasurer…

”We think of the continuation of financial sector reforms carried out by Peter Costello and John Howard when they were in office, in particular the prudential regulation that safeguarded our banking system during the global financial crisis. We honour John and Peter for that.”

Some though continue to be full of pride and just plain ignorance:

Rudd’s expertise in foreign affairs at work again:

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was expected to arrive early next week, but an Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman says it will not go ahead because of scheduling issues.

The Opposition says Australia’s relationship with Indonesia has been strained by the Government’s handling of a group of asylum seekers on board the Oceanic Viking.

Opposition Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is to blame.

Comes after Rudd was unable to secure a meeting with SBY at APEC. SBY has every right to feel angry at Rudd for dumping the ALP’s  illegal immigration problem on Indonesia. A problem of Rudd’s creation.

Well not quite. The Council has set-up some type of consultative process to air the views of a range of Australians, and of course  who gets the most publicity. Well you figure it out by the headline appearing the the SMH:

Identity crisis: our cross to bear

These tax-payer funded community consultative processes have become veiled attempts to air the views of the radical left – because they wouldn’t get an airing any other way. You know, Australians are just a bunch of racists and so are our national symbols. Everything from the Union Jack to the Southern Cross. And of course guess who is to blame?

…the Australia Day Council launched a campaign last week to ask which symbols and images best represent our country, opinion-makers and public figures were at odds on how to answer the question – variously describing the Southern Cross as everything from ”beautiful” to ”racist”….

Tim Soutphommasane, a first-generation Australian and author of Reclaiming Patriotism: Nation-Building for Australian Progressives, said symbols such as the Southern Cross came to be associated with a new wave of patriotism under the conservative Howard government.

”Many Australians have been content to regard all expressions of national pride as thinly disguised racism,” he said. ”The result has been a surrender of all things patriotic to extreme nationalists.”

It is a bit formulaic – ‘ we are all meant to question our current symbols because clearly they are inadequate, especially after JH’. However if the Australia Day Council wants to promote this tosh they might want to consider that the only people with the identity crisis are those on the PC and radical left.

Australians for Constitutional Monarchy national convener Professor David Flint disagreed, saying critics were out of touch with the Australian people and that it was a ”pity to undermine the great symbols of the nation”.

”The fact [the symbols] have been imported doesn’t make them any less Australian.”

Well I never thought it would happen, but it looks like the ALP has said no to John Howard being the Chairman of the NRL Commission:

The Herald can reveal that Mr Albanese was instrumental behind the scenes in lobbying the NRL against giving the former prime minster a role on the code’s new independent commission…

The minister rang the NRL chief executive, David Gallop, as well as other league officials to tell them it was ”a stupid idea”. Mr Albanese also marshalled officials from the Rabbitohs, of which he was once a board member, to help kill off the idea.

”Nobody I spoke to thought it was a good idea,” Mr Albanese said.

We now know who really runs the NRL. Seems they can’t keep politics out of the sport. Well, Rugby League is a dieing sport, especially since the rugger buggers won themselves a place in the Olympics. I don’t see where the attraction for Rugby League will come in the future – maybe ex-convicts looking for a good time.

Using 2007 data, the final year of Howard’s term in office, the UN has ranked Australia’s standard of living as 2nd best in the world. Before Howard took over as PM, Australia was ranked 15th on the UN’s Human Development Index in 1995. According to Rudd though, it was all good luck. So based on this logic there must be 179 countries - those ranked below Australia – with lots of bad luck.

Rudd’s recent accusation that the other side of politics dropped the ball on reform, and of being ‘indolent’, has been rebutted from Howard ‘Stirred from his sick bed’:

His analysis of the economic reform process in Australia since 1980 was partisan, inaccurate and lacked any semblance of objectivity.

Which is to be expected from Rudd, a PM that seems to have been asleep over the last 30 years.