Howard is gone.
Not only have the libs lost the election, by an avalanche, but it's pretty certain that Howard has lost his seat as well. Fucking good riddance.
Not that Rudd will be much better. He's definitely got some things going for him over Howard, but his acceptance speech contained a few things that I'm definitely a bit uncomfortable about.
The first of these is his line about "leaving the old debates behind" - most of these arguments were pretty dubious, but one was especially worrying - the debate about "growth verses the environment". So we're going to leave that behind are we? And continue to blindly assume that continuous growth can be OK for the environment? It's not possible, Rudd, it's mathematically impossible. Simple equation. I wonder if any politician will ever understand it?
Another point - "I will be a politician for indigenous australians" - all well and good. If they want it. Have you asked them if they want a smarmy white guy as a leader, Mr. Rudd? Somehow, I doubt it. What about some autonomy? Aboriginal people don't need leadership, they need self detirmination!
At least he noted that climate change was the number two election issue (very close second to your-rights-at-work, a well run campaign, by the looks of it). With work choices out of the way (the liberals won't have a comeback to that), climate change will logically be the largest election issue at the next federal election (it won't be going away, and ratifying kyoto just won't be enough). Which kind of makes me think: Wow. the liberals are dead. Seems like the greens are the new opposition!
technorati: Election, politics, climate change, environment, Greens, indigenous
- Log in to post comments