The two issues that dominated were Industrial Relations laws and the fact that the Coalition had been in power for nearly 12 years. Iraq and Afghanistan were hardly a blip.
You can rest assured it won't be portrayed that way here (U.S. & Canada) by the weenies in the liberal MSM. It will be Iraq & Afghanistan front & center ... guaranteed.
I'll bet it won't be played that way here in U.S.
Hmmm....would that mean that Rudd was saying something like "our workers deserve a 34 hour work week,six weeks holiday every year,a minimum wage of $40/hr,retirement at 50 and no layoffs" would it?
...and the fact that the Coalition had been in power for nearly 12 years.
Isn't the Australian economy running as well as it ever has before these days? If so,the voters must have said to themselves "things are going great.Let's try something completely different".
Does Rudd's win mean that Australia will not be going nuclear? If so, will it be selling off the uranium to China?
Change for the sake of change. Sounds a lot like to 2006 elections in the US.
I’d like to say that conservatives in the US love your former Prime Minister and will always be grateful for his assistence to the US when we asked for help.
God bless John Howard and the people of Australia.
They were covering the Aussie elections, and all they could talk about was Howard’s support for the Iraq war vs. the challenger’s non-support. Of course the BBC is a bunch of lefty twits, but at least they admit as much unlike the American MSM.
I'd say this was the main issue. For better or worse, people like to see a change after this much time.
In the usual pattern, the Lefties years in power are passed spending freely on idiotic social programs, over taxing the economy, and wallowing in corruption. When things get bad enough, the call goes to the Conservatives, who clean up these messes and get things rolling again.
But then, after things have been good for awhile, the electorate once again falls for that old siren song by the Left: "We'll give you a benefit, and make somebody else pay for it." Thus the cycle repeats.