Hmm, you could be right Hazel, I doubt it. John Howard would not have been elected by the Australian people time and time again had he not been such a popular Prime Minister. He was the 2nd longest serving Prime Minister, in Australia.
Am happy that he now has the time to devote entirely to his family and friends.Family values have always played a great part during his Leadership. His little Grandson sounds delightful. The choice for new Leadership of the Liberal Party will be tight, Deputy Leader as well. Whereas, Rudd (Mud according to a friend
) announced tonight he will make his own decision as to whom will form his Government. He fought his own campaign, apart from the ever nodding Julia Gillard, which indicates to me that he is going to insist on doing things his way. He may find himself not so popular a man within his own Party. I didn't watch the ABC on election night, was busy doing other things however when I saw Peter Costello interviewed, perhaps the following day? on TV, he maintained that he would never have contested the Leadership whilst John Howard was at the helm.
Rowan, we used to have 2 parties only. The Liberal and Labor parties. That was easy. Then along came the Democrats, have no idea if they are still floating around somewhere.
A lot of Independents, the Green Party, Fred Nile's Christian Party and so the list goes on and on and on. The Greenies give 80% of their votes to the Labour Party, 20% elsewhere as do the majority of Independents and Fred Nile, etc. It's not really a fair and just manner of conducting an election, i.e. the Liberal Party lost quite a few seats due to the distribution of preferences being directed to the Labour Party. The Libs grabbed at least 1 seat from Labour in Western Australia. In Mr. Howard's electorate, although the woman candidate is 2,000 votes ahead which is not a lot in reality, the Postal Votes have yet to be counted. The Postal Votes tend to favour the party who is governing the Country therefore Mr. Howard would have picked up a lot of additional votes, probably not enough to defeat the ex ABC jorno. I no longer watch the ABC, they are too biased, not supposed to be but they are. Lacemaker and I both live in the same Federal Seat, not only did the Liberal Party manage to hold onto this Seat, they increased their votes by approx. 8%. According to a neighbour, the people who live here are too sedate, am laughing at the thought. Don't think the druggos throughout the Sutherland Shire are at all sedate, propbably need sedating