RUDDSLIDE!!!

Well, it's finally happened! John "The Rodent" Howard is no longer at the helm of Australian government. After eleven long years, Howard and his conniving Liberal cronies were booted out in a landslide by Kevin Rudd and the Australian Labor Party. (story continues below photos)

It even looks like the smarmy git may lose his seat, which he has held since 1974. It would be such beautiful poetry if votes from Australia House in London were the ones that tipped him into oblivion. The unflushable turd* finally goes down the u-bend!

Katie and I played a part in yesterday's result, by hading out How to vote cards for Julie Collins and the ALP in Franklin electorate. By lucky coincidence, we were posted to the town of Franklin, in the Huon Valley. Mum was born there, and my grandparents owned the local store, so while not really a local, there definetly was some genetic connection to the town.

The Greens had a few people handing out there, as well as the ACTU's "Your Rights at Work" campaign, which was bloody handy, considering their preferences in the Lower House were the same as the ALP. Kind of a double pronged attack. There was one bloke handing out Liberal papers for a while, but he scarpered at one pm. In a real show of the conservatives' true regard for the environment, they attached a banner to a tree in the school yard (a giant Sequoia, almost 100 years old and listed by the National Trust) with ROOFING NAILS. Anyway, Julie dispatched her opponent, Vanessa Goodwin without too much trouble. Tasmania actually returned five out of five seats to the ALP in the House of Reps...awesome! Thanks to Mark, Lisa & Merlin for dropping some much needed refreshments and allowing me to go for a bit of a stroll in the afternoon.

In London, I hear that the party booked at the Pendrels Oak pub in Holborn was a raging success. Fifty off people were expected...apparently over three hundred turned up. Must've been some serious pressure on the bar when alcohol was able to be served at 9am! Does anybody have an pictures? Please send! Channel Four News led their Saturday night bulletin with a seven minute story on the election, including a studio interview with ALP Abroad President, Paul Smith.

After we finished in Franklin, it was back to Lindisfarne and the House of Comrade Tim for "Ron's Party". We watched the results come in on the ABC, ate pizza, sang, and drank much beer. I think I've only just sobered up now.

What a day, what a result, what a return to being able to be proud to say you come from Australia!

There's a full album of photos here.

*Quote courtesy Ivan Pagett

Murali is last hope for Wallaby wannabe.

Mike Ticher
Friday October 26, 2007

Guardian

Don Bradman was a total bastard, a grumpy, greedy tight-arse, who could not even score one run the last time he played.

This is not my view but that of a satirical TV programme that recently made headlines here in Australia with those lyrics in a song suggesting various dead celebrities were not quite the "top blokes" portrayed in their eulogies.

Bradman is the ultimate sporting hero of our prime minister, John Howard, who identifies as much with the buttoned-up style of the hypochondriac Adelaide stockbroker as with his cricketing achievements. In the middle of an election campaign, which Howard seems certain to lose, he has found time to announce funding of A$6.5m (£2.9m) for the museum dedicated to Bradman in his home town of Bowral - which is not even in a marginal seat.

So he took great offence at the description of Bradman, calling it "distasteful and despicable". Perhaps it was not just the part about being a grumpy, greedy tight-arse Howard hated so much but the reference to Bradman's duck in his last Test innings, since more than one commentator has suggested Howard's own career may be about to end in a similar deflating way.

If it does, international sport will lose one of its all-time great coat-tail grabbers and shameless opportunists, not to mention the worst bowler in the history of photo opportunities. Howard unwisely put his cricketing abilities on display when visiting Kashmir in 2005. As readers of the Clip joint on this page yesterday will know, his first ball, delivered with an unconvincing off-spinner's action, failed to reach - let alone trouble - the unimpressed local batsman. Worse, after he lets go, it trickles towards an onlooker at silly mid-off. From about a metre away he chucks back the ball, which Howard drops.

Undaunted by his incompetence, the PM has appeared at every possible sporting occasion in his 11 years in office, easily surpassing Tony Blair as a statesman capable of surfing on any national triumph and souring any setback. When England won the Rugby World Cup in Sydney four years ago, Howard stomped down the victors' line all but throwing the medals at them, in a performance that led armies of compatriots to write to the papers complaining of his "lemon-sucking grimace", "worthy of any discontented five-year-old at a birthday party".

Not that such ringing endorsements have prevented him donning national sporting garb at all times, above all the Wallabies tracksuits that adorn his daily pre-breakfast power walk. So iconic has the Howard style become that it recently forced a startling change of policy on the Chinese government through what can best be described as tracksuit diplomacy. When the premier, Wen Jiabao, went walking with Howard in Canberra last year he was humiliated by the contrast between his plain outfit and Howard's sparkling Melbourne Commonwealth Games get-up. Wen's advisers have since kitted him out in Beijing Olympics gear for his jogging commitments on a tour of Europe.

Howard's application of clunky cricket analogies to politics is as elegant as his bowling action. In the last election he claimed at one point his Liberal Party was "three for about 268 [in the campaign] but the right-hand opener is still there." This time it needs several hundred to avoid the follow-on, and is wishing it had dropped the right-hand opener before the series started.

Howard is struggling to turn round ominous opinion polls, secure a fifth straight election victory and, most importantly, make sure he will still have the use of his personal RAAF plane to take him to and from the Boxing Day Test at the MCG (cost to the taxpayer last year a mere £5,700). He needs a distraction, a circuit-breaker such as the Tampa refugee crisis he exploited so successfully in the 2001 election. And at this desperate late stage there can be only one contender for the sports-mad PM: Muttiah Muralitharan.

Murali has two Tests before the election in which to snare the nine wickets he needs to overhaul Shane Warne as the leading Test wicket-taker. Howard has form. The last time Sri Lanka visited, in 2004, he was instrumental in Murali's refusal to tour, when he branded the spinner a chucker with the words: "They proved it in Perth too, with that thing." That thing, to be more technical, was the biomechanics test that showed Murali straightened his arm to an extent that was then illegal when bowling the doosra.

Howard might have to bend the truth by only about, say, 14 degrees, to whip up a wave of anti-Murali sentiment. It is an edgy time. The visitors have already had anxious meetings about likely crowd reactions, and plain-clothes police are to be deployed inconspicuously (presumably dressed in body paint and watermelon helmets) to weed out the kind of troublemakers who have targeted Murali in the past.

If Howard could only harness that sentiment, then hold up Warne as the iconic national figure who represents everything good about Australia . . . no, you're right, he's a goner.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Howard under pressure after poll setback

By Kathy Marks in Sydney

Published: 18 September 2007

John Howard, the embattled Australian Prime Minister, was under intense pressure to consider his future last night as opinion polls predicted a crushing defeat for his conservative coalition in the forthcoming election. Mr Howard is the country's second-longest-serving premier, with four election victories under his belt over the past 11 years. But the polls and the public mood indicate that Australians have had enough of him.

For the full story, click here.