John Howard Just Doesn't Get It

In spite of Rudd's slipups and despite the largesse of Costello's budget and even 'finetuning' of Work Choices, the gap between Liberal and Labor does not lessen. Howard just doesn't get it that after 11 years many people have had a gutful of the trickiness and the lying - kids overboard; weapons of mass destruction; blind subservience to a zealot in the White House; IRAQIRAQIRAQIRAQIRAQ;the AWB scandal; Kyoto; coming late to climate change; coming late to David Hicks; coming late to water management; the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to sell their messages in the media; Peter Reith (phones); Herron (ABC); Heffernan (homophobia and misogyny); Santo Santori (share dealer); etc etc etc etc etc, and the spin, the bloody spin!
As Matt Price put it in The Weekend Australian: 'Long regarded as the nonpareil (unrivalled person) of guile and artifice, a perception of Howard as too-tricky-by-half seems to be embedding itself in the national psyche. Not least because Labor has been banging on and on about it for years'. Yes Matt, not just Labor but many of Howard's 'battlers' are sick of the lies and the shit and the arrogance with which the Government thinks it can get away with it.
NO MORE! Governments become complacent and arrogant after ten years and people get sick of it. We got sick of Fraser, then Hawke/Keating and now it's Howard's turn. Yes, poor performing and arrogant governments that have been in for ten years or more can get re-elected but only where the the opposition is about as useful as a lead parachute. This happened in NSW this year and in Qld last year. With Kevin and Julia and the team most Aussies think they will bring a breath of fresh air and some good things, (at least until they inevitably become tarnished with the ten year trance).