Funny to see all the rats desert King Rat!

[Zeke]

Yawn.

[Blanch]

Spot the baby boomer!!!

[rand corp]

Labor has its problems, amplified loudly and clearly by the electorate.

The factional system is flawed, the ideology, whilst often admirable, seems out of sync with the grass-roots voter. Which, incidently doesn't make that ideology wrong, it just makes it a platform that will not, in the numbers required, change the way people have voted for the last decade or so.

Ultimately, the economy is sound and people are most comfortable with that, they do not vote for change often in a stable economy. We are at war and people certainly do not like change in times of war. Whilst the war or an aversion to it, was certainly an issue for some, the vast majority of the electorate seem to support the 'war on terror' as the marketing term used goes.

Wheather or not it actually is a war on terror is highly questionable however, the fact is that for the Australians at least, it has been going rather well. I wonder how much it would have affected the vote if Australians had been forced to watch night after night of body bags being flown back to Australia bearing Australian casualties, or forced to witness Australian civilian hostages being be-headed on the internet.

Fortunately, for all concerned, this has not been the case but, it is the case for the people of many of those countries that are part of this so-called 'coalition of the willing' and could so easily have been the case for Australia. We are still at war and the lives of many Australians are still being put at risk.

Now we said we went to war because Saddam had weapons of mass-destruction, it has been proven he didn't. We said he had links to Osama Bin Laden, it has been proven that no link can be established. So, why did we stop going after Bin Laden with all our might and effort and go and overthrow Saddam? Did we simply go in their to overthrow a government we didn't like? Surely, there are plenty of those.

We must ask ourselves what we are doing there and is it for the right reasons whatever they could be. Is this really the way we should be conducting ourselves in the world.

North Korea is in an advanced stage of developing weapons of mass destruction and they admit it, but we certainly won't be barging in there anytime soon.

[Daks]

And here we go again - more political bullshit. Get off it Greg, it's politics for **** sake. Stp taking it so seriously.

[Joel]

Daks, nothing wrong with discussing politics mate. As long as people keep a level head about it. Obviously MG is passionate, and good on him for being so. Also, there are others with opinions completely different to MG who post on here, who are jsut about as passionate as MG.

I guess in the end, if you don't like politics, it's best to stay away from the threads discussing it.

[Daks]

Point taken. I probably should have worded it a little differently..
I don't have a problem with talk of politics, but everytime MG brings starts up a thread, it turns into a slanging match between Liberal and Labor supporters. He's passionate about it and that's fair enough, i just think he should lighten up a bit.

[Dr Alf Andrews]

Latham is a dud ... and the Labor Party needs to get rid of all the old duds and start again.

Rudd should become the new leader ... and Garret should be "groomed" for the future ... (bit hard with a bald head, I know )

Labor's only hope of ever being elected again is to just sit quietly and wait for the inevitable collapse of the economy when the housing bubble finally explodes in everyone's face.

That'll be pretty funny when it happens

The Australian electorate will suddenly be financially destroyed and will turn on Howard/Costello/Abbott like a pack of rabid dogs.

And that will also be pretty funny when it happens

[Joel]

Fair enough too Daks. I don't think these type of threads need to degenirate into slanging matches, but sometimes politics causes passions to boil over....unfortunately.

Atleast in Australia, we can actually talk about politics, and criticise our leaders.

[DidakinthePocket]

Rudd? You are kidding! Ild rather have Paul back then Rudd! Or better still Whitlam!

Whilst on Whitlam, i see his withdrawn the support he had for him as being the next Prime Minister of Australia... When the Goffa says that it, generally thats the case!!!

[Eunos]

[HAL]

I've been waiting for you.

[David]

I can't believe that people are saying that Labor can't win the next election. For heavens sake it's in three years time, anything can happen in that time. Once Howard goes, the party will have lost it's invincibility. Costello can win, but it would be 50-50 between Latham and Costello as long as Latham drops the Greeny thing.

[Eunos]

David, GW has stated it will take at least 6 years for labour to have a realistic chance.
Always hard to shift incumbents, no matter who is leading them.

[Dr Alf Andrews]

[snow24]

I can't exactly see the Bankstown faithful warming to Kevin Rudd. I think he'd be a good Shadow Treasurer though.

There seems to be this split in the ALP with the Beazley supporters and the non-Beazley supporters from the last couple of years. The trouble is the Beazley supporters(Steve Smith, Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan etc) are the ones with the talent to get the ALP into government and the non-Beazleys(Macklin, Gillard etc) are not.

The first thing they have to do is get rid of Macklin from Deputy Leader. People don't even know who she is or that she is indeed the Deputy Leader.

Second of all if Latham doesn't change his style abit and stop going for the dicky issues or the big issues in a dicky kind of way he'll have togo.

I think Labor's best bet in 2007 is Beazley as leader with either Steve Smith or Kevin Rudd Deputy Leader and Shadow Treasurer. Beazley Vs Costello in 2007 with a suspect economy would be very interesting to watch.