Election by early December,says PM (John Howard)

news.com.au ^ | 3rd October 2007

[naturalman1975]

A FEDERAL election will be held by early December, Prime Minister John Howard says.

But Mr Howard said today he intended to keep governing and "doing things" before triggering the election.

"(The election) will be held some day between now and early December," Mr Howard said on ABC radio.

[naturalman1975]

This really just formally confirms what everybody expects - technically the last day an election could be held is January 19th 2008, but nobody expects a campaign over the Christmas period.

[Gay State Conservative]

So what happens if Labour wins? Are Australian troops withdrawn from from Iraq and/or Afghanistan? Does the new PM start spouting the old "the US is the source of all violence,death and destruction in the world".

You know...like the Majority Leader of *our* Senate!

[naturalman1975]

If Labor wins, they are committed to withdrawing most, if not all, of our troops from Iraq, sometime over the eighteen months after the election.

They will probably deploy more troops to Afghanistan.

The current Labor leadership is, generally speaking, pro-American, but they have been painted into a corner on the issue of Iraq by a previous leader, and, to be fair to them, when Australia went into Iraq in 2003, the commitment made at the time was that Australia would be involved in the invasion and war, but not long term nation building.

I don’t think Australia should pull out - but I do think we’ve done enough at this point that a pull out should not be seen as a rejection of the US alliance.