Ali Sanaei's Blog

Those Australian readers out there will probably be more familiar with this story than the rest of the world, but the election concerning the country’s Prime Minister John Howard has caused quite a frenzy in recent weeks.

The easiest way for me to describe the current political situation in Australia regarding Howard is to liken the current elections to a potential overturning of the (everlasting) Bush Administration that’s hung around the White House since the 80s. The possibility of Prime Minister Howard losing his cushy seat that he’s held for 11.5 years now is a big deal, as the race between him and Kevin Rudd of the Labor Party is a very close one. Sounds a lot like the 2000 elections between George Bush and Al Gore.

But I am quite confident that tomorrow’s election will end to a change of government here. The only question might the magnitude of the victory for the Labor party.

The economy is going well, there have been years of growth, the unemployment is low so why would voters vote against a proven economic manager? Well, it is partly the time factor that Howard has been the PM over a decade here and also the fact that people’s priorities are shifting from the economy. When the economy is running well, people perhaps take less notice of it in political terms, it is assumed to be part of the landscape so they turn their attention to other issues such as the environment, climate change, the war in Iraq, education and so on. These are the exact issues Labor has an advantage on in terms of public opinion.

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Iraq is one of the important factors. It was initially a popular move by the government going in to the war in Iraq with the US and the other members of the coalition, but over time that has became a less popular policy and Labor has played that fairly and carefully by saying that they would shift the emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, in other words they can not be accused of being soft on terrorism and not contributing to eradicate the cause of terrorism. At the same time they have made a clear point of difference between themselves and the government on what is now relatively an unpopular war.

The other important factor is Climate change which is quite important here in the Australian culture. The younger generation asks the government on the issues related to this subject and also the fact that Australia has not signed the Kyoto protocol, even though that it might be just a symbolic protocol.

Besides; Kevin Rudd is good-looking, young and he also knows Chinese!

It’s a funny political game going around the world. UK’s Labour party went to Iraq and now the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats parties will exactly use this against them in the UK general election 2009. I can say from now: the Conservatives will win that election!

However, tomorrow, Saturday 24th November 2007 is the election day and we shall probably know the definite poll outcome by Sunday.

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Update 26 Nov 07: Labor has won the election. See live results.

http://sanaei.com/blog/2007/11/23/australian-election/