Liberal Vs Labor - 2010 Australian Federal Election Ramblings

The 2010 Australian Federal Election is going to be an interesting one. Both leaders are new to the lead post and although they have years of political experience under their belt, it could go either way. Gillard vs Abbott. Well, for the sake of the nation, i wish it was Gillard vs Turnball or even Gillard vs Hockey. But the Liberals decided to go into the election and now there are two fairly unappealing choices. I don't particularly want either Gillard or Abbott as the Prime Minister and representative of this country. The politicians always say "you vote for the party, not the person" but it has seemed that was not the case in Kevin Rudd's situation, or so Labor would make you think.

I really hope Australian's don't get 'girl power' and vote Gillard just because she is female - it seems more of a popularity contest than an actually political debate. Liberals have followed Labor in tactics in this 2010 election with high profile Australian tennis champion John Alexander who is contesting John Howard's old seat of Bennelong. This follows high profile Labor Federal politicians Peter Garrett (lead singer of Midnight Oil and high profile environmentalist and indigenous rights activist), Maxine McKew (former newsreader), Justine Madden (former AFL star) and Kirsty Marshall (ski jumper). Is it a good move the Liberals are following; only time will tell, but in the previous names mentioned, there have been some large blunders such as Garrett and the pink batts. I hope people vote on policies based on who they were in their past life and whether they were/are famous or not.

So, Abbot or Gillard. Well, I really don't like how Abbott brings religion into his politics. Australia is a multicultural society and politics based on religion should not exist. Abortion is one topic where he has lost a lot of votes. My housemate (female) said to me today that she was voting Gillard because she heard at work that Abbott was against abortion. No other reason. She actually didn't know anything about either of their policies. Why on earth did Liberal get rid of Turnball - it is the biggest mistake they could have made. Turnball is contrary to so much of what Labor voters dislike about the Liberal party. He cares about the environment, he cares about the workers, he is honest and good with the camera, but most importantly he gets respect from most people who listen.

Gillard to me is a bad choice. As Deputy Prime Minister, she fully supported Rudd and Swan in many of their decisions but somehow it has become all Kevin Rudd's fault. Just like Mark Latham, Labor has managed to have the public believe it was entirely their leaders fault and no one else was to blame. It is ironic really, Rudd was one of those who was so quick to dismiss Latham as a person and take the leadership off him, had a dose of his own medicine with Swan and Gillard stabbing him in the back and taking over. I just don't trust Gillard and although Australia fared well during the GFC, I don't put any of it down to Swan and think he couldn't run a small office let along the finances of the whole country. I actually think that Liberals best chance of winning this election is to bait Swan into such a financial blunder that no Australian could vote liberal. Something like what happened in the famous interview with John Hewson when he stumbled around trying to explain how mu!

ch GST would be involved in the sale of a birthday cake. If you haven't seen it, go youtube it, its is an absolute classic. It will go down as one of the greatest election blunders in Australian history. He lost the unlosable election. Ask him the calculation for simple interest or something like that.

It would be great to have a decent third party in Australian politics to, as they say, "keep the bastards honest". The Greens would be better without Bob Brown but who is going to do that, he is to the Greens what Colonel Sanders is to KFC. I reckon that if he wasn't head of the Greens then they would have won a few Federal lower house seats. His policies are poorly thought out and his rebuttals are weak. The Greens need a revolution. If It were my choice, I would have Turnball as head of the Greens and make it a conservative greens party.

So where does that leave us for the 2010 election. With 20 days to go, I have Labor winning but as they say in Politics - anything can happen.