Like Wow Wipeout
Posted by Rex Ringschott on Sunday, November 25, 2007
It’s a repudiation. It’s a rejection of Mr. Howard and much that he has stood for, and behold it is good.
The Labor victory is so emphatic that it makes a mockery of the conservative vanity that somehow they were more attuned to the pulse of the nation. Yesterday Mr. Howard turned from political sharpshooter with an uncanny sense of the electorate’s mood to Elmer Fudd taking an unsteady potshot at a waskally wabbit.
I had the pleasure of observing the Howard capitulation and the Rudd ascendency at a Labor Party electorate gathering here in Melbourne. The mood was, as you would expect ebullient. As Mr. Howard gave his last hurrah, and entrusted the keys to Kevin 07, there was (aside from many middle digits raised to the big screen), a grudging respect, especially in his acceptance of responsibility for defeat. But still, even in this final bow, the habitual pettiness poked through briefly as he struggled to acknowledge his replacement as Liberal Party leader, Peter Costello.
In truth I can’t blame him for that because Mr. Costello has proved himself over the last eleven years to be the most loudmouthed cocksure gutless wonder ever to walk the Australian political stage. Mr. Costello will be just as loudmouth and cocksure as Opposition leader, and just as piss-weak as he ever was in government. The sooner the Liberals discard him for someone with a heart (like Malcolm Turnbull) the better for them, and the better for us all.
The mood for change has been in the electorate for years and I would argue that it has been there since before the 2004 election. Mark Latham’s effort deferred the inevitable. Ever since the last election the pressure has been building. The pendulum had swung way beyond its natural limits, and the movement could only be one way. Toward restoring equilibrium.
All that is not to diminish in any way the achievement of Machine Rudd, and especially its obsessive, driven, leader. Yesterday in his victory speech Mr. Rudd gave a foretaste of what his staffers and the Labor cabinet can expect. He’s allowed them just enough time to have a cup of tea and an Iced Vo-Vo before they get to work. It’s a sure thing that Mr. Rudd’s expectations of his staff and Ministers in the years ahead will be extraordinary. Probably brutal. I for one, am glad I will be safely out of the way in the far less demanding world of private enterprise. My only concern is that Mr. Rudd at the same time can demonstrate that he does have a heart, and that he can deliver a bit of soul along with his Key Performance Indicators.
But back to the repudiation thing that I started with. There will be many claims as to why Mr. Howard lost. The union movement will claim that it was Workchoices. The Greens will claim that it was stupid dumb stubbornness on Climate Change, Others will claim that Mr. Howard’s manipulations on Iraq and Asylum seekers were finally acknowledged, or the ugliness of the self-serving culture wars exposed. Personally I’d like to think of it as a repudiation of the appalling political bias of our print media – especially of The Australian, who caved at the last and editorialised in favour of Mr. Rudd in a transparent attempt to save their reputation for journalistic impartiality, and to ingratiate themselves with the new leader. (Props to the Herald Sun by the way for eschewing sycophancy and for being open about the c**ts that they are. And as for The Age, well The Poll Bludger said it. “Ptuh”). I also fancy it as a repudiation of the whole RWDB thing which these days is reduced to getting it’s jollies and scoring political points through supposedly amusing variations on the spelling of “Global Warming”. But hey, that last bit’s just my jag.
The truth though is that it isn’t any one of these things. It’s all of them. To a greater or lesser extent all of these things have built up over the last eleven years to the point where the majority of Australians couldn’t lake it anymore. It was indeed “time”. And Mr. Rudd and his team harnessed that emotion and gave the people confidence that it was a safe bet.
The Liberal years have been no triumph. The Libs have just been lucky. They were lucky that the economic times were good to them, and they were lucky that the events unfolding during their tenure suited their bigoted nature. Yesterday their luck ran out.
Two day’s ago Mr. Howard warned us “When you change the government you change the nation”. Well, let me just say - Thank God for that!
ShareThis
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 1:54 AM and filed under Blogging - general.
Follow comments here with the RSS 2.0 feed.
Post a comment or leave a trackback.
Unfortunately it’s hard to see the key economic indicators doing anything but deteriorating in the near future, or flat-lining at best, thus reinforcing the myth that the Libs are the Keepers of the One True Wisdom when it comes to all things economic.
Highlight of the night was Costello boasting of how there’d been a swing to him in his electorate … and then spending a couple of minutes trying to force his mouth to utter words conceding that nationally, his party might not have … done as well … as it needed to … to form government … for a record-breaking fifth term.
But he was very consoling in a patronising kind of way to
Posted on 25-Nov-07 at 6:35 am | Permalinkthe idiots in the party who’d not been prepared to kick Howard out and install Costello last yearhis colleagues who had not been clever enough to match the personal swing that he had achieved.The question is how long until we can say the economic indicators, whether they be good or bad, are the effect of Labor?
Posted on 25-Nov-07 at 10:13 am | PermalinkYes, The economy may indeed turn. The always insighful George Megalogenis maps out Mr. Rudd’s strategy for insulating himself from such an event.
In other words a stitch-up job on Peter Costello, is not only strategically necessary. It is good for the country.
Posted on 25-Nov-07 at 11:00 am | PermalinkOf course, the stitch-up on Costello gets neatly avoided by Petey, refusing to play ball like a man.
Posted on 25-Nov-07 at 12:47 pm | PermalinkCaroline “The Slapper” Overington is not helping things with The Oz either.
Posted on 25-Nov-07 at 1:55 pm | PermalinkYes wilful. It is indeed a craven and cowardly surrender. Why can’t he hang around for a few years and take his humiliation like a man?
Posted on 25-Nov-07 at 3:59 pm | PermalinkLazarus, karks it at last.
Posted on 25-Nov-07 at 5:57 pm | Permalink“Yesterday Mr. Howard turned from political sharpshooter with an uncanny sense of the electorate’s mood to Elmer Fudd taking an unsteady potshot at a waskally wabbit.”
Posted on 25-Nov-07 at 6:23 pm | PermalinkActually watching their concession and acceptance speeches reminded me of the coyote and the sheep dogs toon- ‘night Ralph..night Ralph..good morning Ralph..good morning Ralph.
Ralph & Ralph? Wool the other one!
Posted on 25-Nov-07 at 9:06 pm | PermalinkWell if we’re getting into Warner Bro’s cartoons. I think the Liberal Party will be Planent X. And the leadership battle is between Marvin and Daffy. Marvin has claimed the planet in the name of Mars, but Daffy’s having none of that. Whilst trying to destroy each other they obliterate the planet.
The script is already written. We just need to wait to see whose playing in the roles.
Posted on 25-Nov-07 at 9:30 pm | PermalinkThat gave me so much pleasure to read. Especially liked this bit. Very apt.
It was such a lovely day today. Especially colourful, bright, hopeful.
Posted on 25-Nov-07 at 11:04 pm | PermalinkI hope you people realize that, in about a week from now, a million new political junkies are gonna run out of old newspapers! Rupert could drive us all crazy just by extending the honeymoon for a month. Psycho-semantic withdrawal from one’s grumble-bummery may require patented medicaments…
Posted on 26-Nov-07 at 3:41 am | PermalinkThe economy will continue just as it is currently. Booming. The RBA will be forced to apply the Monetary Policy sledge-hammer one more time causing anti-Labor business interests - read Helen Ridout and Peter Hendy - to again raise the spector of Labor incompetence. I’d say that one more belt around the lug’oles with Monetary Policy should cause the economy to head for a good lie down and a Bex. Flatlining is a good analogy. I’d prefer the term, ‘plateauing’. We’ll see a cash rate of 7% for quite some time to come, with an A$ oscillating between $0.85 and $0.90. It’ll be steady as she goes for the next twelve months as investor confidence paddles ankle deep in the newly rising tide of Labor governance.
Posted on 26-Nov-07 at 11:25 am | PermalinkThis was the election we had to have. Finally with volumes of scientific evidence on our side, grassroots action groups popping up left, right and centre, and the changing tide of public opinion swinging our way, the stars were aligned for a climate change election. This was an unprecedented campaign, where every party was forced to take a position on climate change. And in our two-party preferred system, Kevin Rudd with climate change policies significantly better than those of the Coalition, reaped the rewards.
While Labor got up big time, the climate change sceptics got the boot. And Howard, the most prominent sceptic of all, even lost his own seat. It’s clear Aussies care about climate change, and with the issue central to the ALP’s winning campaign, the nation will want and expect to see real action on the issue, and fast.
The Prime Minister-elect has committed to a renewable energy target of 20% by 2020 and has promised to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, a move that will change global climate politics and leave the US isolated. But the biggest challenge is yet to come – quitting coal in order to achieve the deep emissions cuts necessary to avoid dangerous climate change.
This election brings an historic opportunity to end coal-driven policy and it’s crucial ALP is not subject to the ‘carbon capture’ the Liberal Government suffered. Despite significantly better policies, emissions will continue to skyrocket under the ALP, unless Prime Minister Rudd starts phasing out coal-fired power stations and replacing them with renewable energy.
Ratifying Kyoto is a good first step. But the key indicator of the new
Government’s success will be if emissions begin to decrease during this
term, and the only way that is possible is to rid Australia of our filthy coal addiction.
While Kevin 07 was about winning the election, Kevin 08 will have to be about winning the battle against climate change, and this means quitting coal.
Posted on 26-Nov-07 at 2:39 pm | Permalink*Heather* Ridout. And I don’t think she’s particularly anti-Labor, certainly not a Tory stooge like Hendy.
Posted on 26-Nov-07 at 2:58 pm | Permalinkhoward hating is an illness…..please seek professional help.
Posted on 26-Nov-07 at 3:37 pm | PermalinkWe have Zap, from the Australian Electoral Commission.
Posted on 27-Nov-07 at 2:37 pm | Permalink“howard hating is an illness…..please seek professional help.”
Check your spam. I’m sure there’s a pill for limp snark by poor losers.
Posted on 27-Nov-07 at 11:06 pm | Permalink