Free Republic

The Results of the Australian Federal Election are starting to be counted now that the booths have closed. I will be live blogging the coverage of that count during the next 7 hours. The result of this election is delicately poised on a knifes edge, even though the incumbent Labor Government had a comfortable margin. This looks like being a cliff hanger, and if the Conservative side of politics does win, it could be an indicator that people have had enough of Big Government.

THE Australian Labor Party is challenging the federal election result in the Victorian seat of McEwen which the Liberal Party won by just 12 votes. ..... Liberal MP Fran Bailey forced a recount when the AEC declared Labor's Rob Mitchell the winner by six votes. After recounting more than 100,000 ballot papers the AEC determined Ms Bailey had won the seat by 12 votes, making McEwen the country's most marginal lower house seat. ..... "These votes were excluded by the AEC on the grounds that one or more of the numbers on those ballot-papers had been badly written, even though...

Kevin Rudd is on track to be prime minister of Australia. Labor powerbrokers, including deputy Julia Gillard, Tony Burke, Stephen Smith and Robert Ray said that they believe they have secured victory. 'I'm a cautious type, but on these numbers so far I think we have enough to form government,' Labor deputy Julia Gillard said at about 8.10pm EST. Ms Gillard made her declaration following strong swings in Queensland to Labor, further strengthening its grip as the polls shut in Western Australia. Early counting in the battleground state shows the Labor Party is set to pick up around six seats....

In about minutes, polling booths across the eastern side of Australia will close, and counting will begin in the 2007 Australian election. I - and anybody else - who wants to become involved - will be posting in this thread updates based on Australian TV concerning the count.

PRIME Minister John Howard has kicked off election day with his usual walk along Sydney Harbour. Dozens of people including journalists, film crews, well-wishers and protesters gathered outside Kirribilli House before Mr Howard emerged about 6.30am (AEDT) today. One Liberal supporter asked Mr Howard to sign a copy of his biography, John Winston Howard, as other supporters, holding a sign which read John Howard Forever, wished him luck today. One described Mr Howard as the Rocky Balboa of Australia, ``the comeback king''.

KEVIN Rudd and Labor are the frontrunners in the 2007 election race but a late voter surge to John Howard and the Coalition has turned the poll into a tight contest. As both leaders blitzed the key battleground of Queensland yesterday, the election became a real contest in the last 72 hours of a gruelling six-week campaign. The final Newspoll survey of the election shows the Coalition virtually equal to the ALP on primary votes, 43 per cent to 44per cent, which is the Government's best performance in more than a year. The Newspoll survey, taken exclusively for The Weekend...

THE 2007 election has become a real contest in the final 72 hours of a gruelling six-week campaign. After he was written off as a ‘has-been’, John Howard’s last week of campaigning will give the Coalition hope of pulling off a miraculous victory tomorrow. Labor is still in front and favourite to win the 2007 election but the latest Newspoll survey is showing a late surge to the Howard Government, particularly in Queensland and Western Australia. Newspoll’s two-party preferred figure, based on preference flows at the 2004 election, has the Labor Party in front by 52 per cent to the...

FINALLY, the contest -- between a man we barely know and a man we know too well -- is drawing to a close. ..... Australians don't like to eject governments; voters have done it only four times in the past 58 years. In each case there's been a very real sense that those administrations -- McMahon in '72, Whitlam in '75, Fraser in '83 and Keating in '96 -- had run their race; worse, that a continuation of their policies would actually do damage to the nation. We don't get that sense about the Howard Government. True, its fourth term...

A LATE swing away from Labor has put tomorrow's election on a knife edge, an exclusive poll shows. Labor's lead has closed to 52-48, according to the respected Herald Sun/Galaxy poll taken on Tuesday and Wednesday. A similar result tomorrow, with a uniform national swing of 4.7 per cent since the last election, would see Labor win 15 seats – one short of the 16 it needs to form government in its own right. This would leave Federal Parliament in turmoil and the prime ministership in the hands of "kingmaker" independents. The Galaxy poll shows the major parties level on...

PRIME Minister John Howard is still in the race to win a fifth term, but a new poll predicts Kevin Rudd's challenge will narrowly succeed in Saturday's federal election. An exclusive Galaxy poll conducted for the Sunday Herald Sun in the campaign's fifth week showed a tighter race for The Lodge. Labor would win 18 seats -- two more than it needed -- with a 5.5 per cent swing in 20 of nation's key marginal seats, the poll found. The surprising poll results emerged as the Opposition Leader revealed he would take advice from Mr Howard were he to become...

JOHN Howard enters the final week of his last campaign facing defeat as Kevin Rudd and Labor hold their election-winning lead in key marginal seats. According to the latest Newspoll survey, covering both parties' election launches this week, the Coalition has failed to peg back Labor's lead in the Government's 18 most marginal seats in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. On primary votes in the 18 seats, Labor extended its lead in the past two weeks to five points -- 47 per cent to the Coalition's 42per cent -- to give the ALP a two-party preferred lead of 54...

THIRTY-FIVE years in public life and Janette Howard has only ever been portrayed two ways. The less flattering is the portrait of a politics-obsessed woman pulling her husband's strings and urging him on and up. The flip side is that of a woman who has forged a strong marriage and raised healthy, normal children who seem to genuinely like their parents. But if Mrs Howard is frustrated by either portrait, she is not going to admit it. Not today, not in the middle of what is proving to be a particularly tricky election campaign. It makes her arguably one of...

JOHN Howard has fought back in key marginal seats in NSW and Victoria, giving the Coalition at least some new hope of winning the election, although Kevin Rudd has forged ahead in Queensland and South Australia. A special Newspoll survey of the 18 most marginal Coalition seats in four states reveals Labor can achieve its winning target of taking an extra 16 seats -- three or four in each of NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. But the survey suggests the extent of the Coalition's losses will be between eight seats -- which would allow it to easily retain government...

This evening, Australian time, in about two and a half hours, the only Leaders debate of the Australian Election campaign will be held between Prime Minister John Howard and Leader of the Opposition Kevin Rudd. The election will be held on November 24th. Back when I joined Free Republic in 2004, I was somewhat surprised at the interest shown in Australia's Federal Politics, and one of the earliest things I was involved in was a live thread on Australia's election night. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1239827/posts I intend to be involved in a similar live thread on election night this year, but I thought...

JOHN Howard has slashed Kevin Rudd's poll lead in a tax cut-fuelled fightback confirming the election will be a hard fought contest after all. The Herald Sun/Galaxy poll - the first conducted since the $34 billion tax cut was unveiled on Monday - reveals the Coalition has halved Labor's two-party preferred lead from 12 per cent to 6 per cent in just under four weeks. While a Rudd-led Labor Party would still be swept comfortably to power with a uniform 6 per cent swing, the poll confirms the early tax gamble has paid off, giving Mr Howard control of the...

Official announcement by Prime Minister John Howard on now. Parliament will be prorogued noon tomorrow, Parliament will be dissolved noon Wednesday, election 24th November 2007. It's on.

PRIME Minister John Howard has left Kirribilli House for Canberra, where he could finally head to Government House tomorrow morning to call the election. A spokesman for Mr Howard said the prime minister had left his Sydney residence a short time ago for Sydney airport and flight to Canberra. With politicians scheduled to return to Canberra for parliament on Monday, speculation was peaking that Mr Howard would call the election tomorrow. That would point to a poll on November 17 or 24.

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.

A new poll shows a slight narrowing of the Opposition's lead over the Coalition, but a majority of voters prefer Labor's leadership team over the Liberals' John Howard and Peter Costello. The Galaxy poll published in the Herald Sun newspaper indicates the Coalition has trimmed Labor's lead by two points. But the ALP is still ahead by six points in the primary vote and by 12 points - 56 per cent to 44 per cent - on a two-party preferred basis. Forty-six per cent of voters said they preferred Labor's leadership team of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, while 41...

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...