Do any of you find it quite concerning that Labor control all 6 states, both territories, AND the Federal Government, as well as many small councils around the country? This is quite concerning considering labor is favourable to unions and is full of unionists... if anyone knows back in the 1980's, Labor caused the dark days. Liberals are the people who actually fixed Labor's careless mistakes and a $98BILLION debt that took 11.5 years (1996-2007) to fix, and once they've fixed it, a labor show pony and 70% unionists get back in and stuff it all up! Is it me, or are we Australians just plain stupid to let these people back in? (BTW I support Liberals)

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well, first of all. All of us know that John howard is getting too old for this. Second, labor is going to put AUS in great dept by giving every year 9-12 student laptops (and I doubt thy are good, celeron 1.6GHz at best) and also I don't think suddenly upgrading all of AUS's broadband is going to be good.
Well, I'm neutral they both have their goods and bads and family first isn't even worth thinking of as an alternative, so the greens?

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Yeah the greens... probably :/ one thing I want to know is how they can afford an $800 education rebate for a laptop for every student between the grade of 9 - 12, thats about 2 million kids? 2mil x 800 = 1.6 billion. And then after a few years what will they do when the laptops get outdated? Just ignore the issue, or replace them all?

But I do agree Howard was just plain stale.. they should have put someone else in top job, Malcolm Turnball or Julie Bishop before the election to appear fresh but with experience, and kept Costello as Treasurer as he's definitely doing a good job (He managed to fix the economy and Labors $98 billion debt and we're now in surplus money... for now dun dun dun..!)

But we'll see how Labor go, especially in getting rid of workchoices and adding in all their new schmansy-pansy ideas. Apparently if Liberal (who control the senate until July 1) block the abolishon of workchoices, Kevin Rudd will dissolve Parliament and we will have another election early next year...

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I'm glad John Howard is gone.
Though, the broadband thing...I'm still wondering as to whether or not it's going to be a good idea...If they're thinking they're going to put in cable (which is $1000 per metre, by the way) then they're dreaming. I'm hoping that the 'world class broadband' will be something insignificant like ADSL 2+ or something...Which half of the people won't get because on bigpond and optus, it's too damned expensive and their plans suck.

Besides that, I'm pretty happy. Kevin Rudd has played his cards right, and unfortunately because John Howard was going to retire and Costello was going to take his place, I felt obligated to vote Labour. John Howard should've kept his mouth shut and spent more money on convincing Australia he's going to fix all of the mistakes he's made.

And the only reason why John Howard got us out of debt, was because he didn't spend any money. Taxes went up and so did our dollar.

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Thats the main reason I see people voting Labor, not that they like them, but because they don't like the current government, not because of their policies, but because of who's leading them, which really shouldn't matter anyway. Which would you rather govern the country, lawyers, business men and a variety of people, or unionists and ex-unionists? Well the vote depends on what you work as, employers are advantaged with Liberal, employees are advantaged with Labor... as the courier mail said... new couch or old couch?

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Oh, with all do respect...It's definately not the only reason I voted Labour. I was affected pretty badly by the employment laws. Also Australia and the U.S (though a lot of their states did) were the only countries in the entire world not to pledge to help stop global warming, I find that to be unacceptable.

There's a few other reasons, but I totally know where you're coming from when you say Kevin Rudd is going to put us in debt. But we'll see. If he doesn't do well then he'll last only 4 years.

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Yeah WorkChoices did go a little too far, but I liked the general idea of it though. Good to see a PM finally accepting the Kyoto Protocol, one of John Howard and Liberals main faults.

I just hope he doesnt destroy the economy... thats the main reason I don't like him.

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I guess sometimes you just have to take a chance. I don't think there'll be that much destruction considering he's only got 4 years to make a catastrophe, if he does he'll be voted out.

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Friend, if you're talking about these two countries not signing the Kyoto Protocol, please take some time and go read it. There's a very very good reason (actually many) for not signing it. Not signing it doesn't mean people don't want to do their part in cleaning up their air emissions and other pollution, it just means we don't want to sign on to something that does nothing for the environment, throws masses of funds at a huge bureaucracy giving up national sovereignty and getting nothing in return but higher taxes to pay for it all. Please read the trash we didn't sign on to. It's easily found with your favorite search engine.

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That, or eventually get overthrown by a leadership spill if things dont go their way, like Keating did to Hawke in the late 80s/early 90s.

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