Free Republic

We have had Live Threads here at Freerepublic for the count for the last three Australian Federal elections - in 2004 which ended in conservative victory, then again in 2007 which ended in defeat for the conservatives and a Labor government, and then again in 2010 which gave us a hung Parliament, where Labor continued governing with the support of the Greens and independents. This is the live thread for 2013 - polls close and the count begins in about 10 minutes. Polls and exit polls indicate a victory for the conservative coalition under Tony Abbott is highly likely. A...

LABOR won power in 2007 on a Ruddslide, but looks like losing power in 2013 in a Ruddbath. The popularity of Kevin Rudd, which won Labor a swathe of seats in Queensland, is turning into voter retribution that has the ALP facing a worse result on Saturday than Paul Keating's loss to John Howard in 1996. The "unelectable" Tony Abbott is now preferred prime minister, and the great campaigning "comeback kid" Prime Minister is more unpopular than he ever has been. With a primary vote of just 33 per cent in the last week of the election campaign, the legitimate...

LABOR may have finally bounced off rock bottom but Australia's oldest political party and its leader are still facing a historic loss of public confidence and electoral failure. A three-point rise in the Newspoll primary vote for the ALP has avoided the unthinkable for the Gillard government of going to 25 per cent or below to have less support than the combined vote for the Greens and various odds and sods, but the broader view of this survey of public opinion about Labor - as well as the personal standing of Julia Gillard - is devastating. The electorate has not...

OSLO (Reuters) – Jagged mountains the size of the Alps have been found entombed in Antarctica's ice, giving new clues about the vast ice sheet that will raise world sea levels if even a fraction of it melts, scientists said on Tuesday. Using radar and gravity sensors, the experts made the first detailed maps of the Gamburtsev subglacial mountains, originally detected by Russian scientists 50 years ago at the heart of the East Antarctic ice sheet. "The surprising thing was that not only is this mountain range the size of the Alps, but it looks quite similar to the (European)...

The ALP is risking its credibility over terror but the Coalition has its own voter gap, writes National political editor Dennis Shanahan THERE is a great disconnection in Australia between many of our politicians, academics, lawyers and journalists and what the Australian people believe and want. In part, it is a matter of declining trust in our leaders and institutions, but it is also deeper than that, with enormous ramifications for the political landscape. This week's arrests of terror suspects and the fierce political recriminations and allegations that took place before and after them are a stark example of the...

BRISBANE, Australia, July 5, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A university professor who has lived and worked overseas for 20 years, while on a return visit to Canada, described the Canadian misconception that the Conservative Party is “too right wing” as “disorienting,” when he compares the party to other conservative parties such as those in the UK, New Zealand, Australia and the US. “It was disorienting to return to Canada and to be met, continually, with this total lack of global perspective,” James Allan wrote in his op-ed, “It's time for a global perspective,” that appeared in Monday’s National Post. Allan explained...

FORGET Cinderella's career path - from humble hearth to royal palace. A greater fairy story is central to the American dream. "From log cabin to White House." Of course, presidents from log cabins were few and far between. Harry S Truman had a haberdasher's shop, George W. Bush a failed oil company and Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived at the White House in his jeep. In the case of Ronald Reagan, it was from the film set to the Oval Office -- via the governor's mansion currently accommodating Arnie Schwarzenegger. Like our own beloved Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Jimmy Carter had a previous...

Editorial: Anglosphere's leadership is singing in tune IN an analysis of George W. Bush's election victory in the current issue of The Economist, the magazine's acerbic US commentator, "Lexington", warns the Democrats against the self-serving view that the US President won by appealing to base instincts such as fear and hatred. The Republicans "clobbered them on hope". Mr Bush was better than John Kerry at "exuding optimism" and "addressing the aspirations of an aspirational people". This is always the winning strategy in a pro-growth culture such as the US, and shows the Republicans have turned themselves into the "party of...

MARK Latham will celebrate his first anniversary as opposition leader on Wednesday, but no one is betting on him lasting to his second. If Labor looked split when Mr Latham took over the leadership last December, the rifts are gaping a year on. He has been labelled a dead parrot by a former Beazley adviser, a narcissist who won't listen to anyone by anonymous frontbenchers, and a bully by a state Labor premier. He has allegedly had an angry bust-up with factional heavyweight Stephen Conroy, accusing him of leaking internal ructions to journalists, and says one journalist has been sold...

As a Jewish boy growing up in an Anglo-Christian country like Australia, I often reflected on my parents’ horrific experiences in wartime Poland. I remember being fascinated that, in modern times, in the heart of the civilized world, innocent men, women and children could be slaughtered by inhuman thugs while ordinary people looked the other way. However, what happened to my parents and their fellow European Jews never really frightened me, because I felt it could never happen in a place like Australia. “That could never happen here,” I would tell myself. “Australians are too decent. We’re all Australians here,...

So the Labor Party has decided to go in for another bout of bank bashing. This is a sport much beloved of the loonier elements in the party and the community generally, and it always goes well in the country. Fear of "the money power" has always been rife on the Left; and farmers and populists have always believed in the idea of cheap and unlimited credit, which is being withheld from them only by the profiteering owners of banks. It is surprising, though perhaps inevitable, that the Labor leader, Mark Latham, should have forgotten most of what he learnt...

'After Baghdad, Yangon'By Nelson Rand MAE SOT, Thailand - If George W Bush is wondering where next to take his "regime change" crusade after he's polished off Saddam Hussein, Saw Bawah has a suggestion: Myanmar. Saw Bawah is a medic with the Karen National Liberation Army. Recently he came across the border from his jungle base camp in Myanmar to this small Thai town to watch the US-led "shock and awe" campaign against Iraq on a television in the office of the Arakan Liberation Party (ALP), an armed ethnic group opposed to the ruling junta in Yangon. Saw Bawah's Karen...