Kev set to squeal all way to the Lodge (interesting read on the Australian election)

The Australian ^ | 22nd September 2007 | Matt Price

[naturalman1975]

SO that's it then. The wind-up of the 41st parliament of Australia, probably the end of the Howard Government.

No niceties, no faux goodwill. The Prime Minister's final address to the House of Representatives, which wound up at 4.11 on Thursday afternoon, accused Kevin Rudd of being weak, gutless, thin-skinned, brittle and hypocritical. The Labor leader's departing words pegged Peter Costello as "Captain Arrogance" and asserted, without a skerrick of proof, the Liberals had been hawking round Rudd's medical records to raise doubts about his health and durability.

Get used to these sorts of frenetic exchanges during the next two months.

The parliamentary denouement centred almost entirely on the notion of Rudd as victim, a wonderfully apposite metaphor for the rise and rise of Kevinism. Much of Rudd's success has been generated by avidly encouraging Australians to feel sorry for ourselves. Oh me, the price of petrol has increased. Oh my, the cost of eggs is on the rise. Alack, alack, our hospital system is run down. Mayday, mayday, there's far too much gambling. Rudd feels our financial pain, even though -- like Howard -- he has supped off the public teat for a couple of decades and, unlike Howard, his wife is a multi-millionaire. In Kevin World, replete with problems but thin on solutions, everybody is hard done by.

[naturalman1975]

Personally, I still believe the Howard government will be returned, but this is an interesting analysis despite my disagreement with Price on that one point.