3 years.. Labor is 50-50 with the public liking them I'd say.. People do like Julia Gillard more than Tony Abbott (dunno how you could like Tony Abbott unless you'd never heard of him before the election campaign kicked off) which is Labor's major advantage I'd say. 

Labor has started building a fiber optic broadband network, increased health and education funding and put a tax on the mining industry who up until now, haven't really paid anything and have been able to dig up the country. The problem was that it was a 40% tax which they needed to lower, so they got rid of Kevin Rudd so that could be changed (he'd already back flipped on a number of failed policies and really couldn't do it again).

Labor also kept Australia out of recession via economic stimulus which is why there is a debt. The coalition opposed the stimulus and had they been in power, Australia too would have gone into recession. All the people who are complaining about the debt now (who knows why, Labor have committed to getting rid of it by 2013) sure weren't complaining when they were getting there $900 cheques.

Now I'm going to leave this thread because numonex seems to have been brainwashed and it's annoying me.

EDIT: Thought I'd add that I'm voting Greens as they are the ones with the policies I really like. They also support the introduction of an R18 rating for video games which is a great bonus too. 

about 3 years. I don't see them being like much more than the previous government, but I really liked a little flicker series called "Kevin Rudd PM", too bad now he's gone, but I can still watch the ones they already made on youtube.

Work Choices, the baby bonus and up to 300,000 immigrants were engineered polices under the Howard government to bring  wages down. It may look like the Tories are trying to screw the workers over but there is a strategy behind the madness of their conservatives policies. 

Work Choices sounds like a feel good policy that would be good for workers. Flexible IR laws  to take the unfair dismissal monkey off the back off business owners.  According to Tony Abbott: Work Choices was good for jobs, good for wages and it was good for workers. 

The  1990's resulted in high debts, high deficits, high unemployment rates and high interest rates that plagued Paul Keating's Labor government. Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott and the other Coalition politicians do have some ammo to their arguments over Labor's economic credentials. Labor has skeletons in its closet in regards to mismanaging the economy at both Federal and State levels.

Labor's past form in Federal  government under Whitlam(72-75) and Paul Keating(91-96) in regards to managing the economy is very bad news for Australia.  Labor's record at managing State governments in Australia has been dismal. More often than not they Labor governments end up bankrupting States and rack up huge debts and huge deficits due to incompetence and corruption in government. 

High debt, high deficits,higher taxes, higher unemployment and higher interest rates are expected under a Labor government. The Coalition are putting all their eggs in a basket and hoping that the Australian voters will forget about Work Choices and give Tony Abbott and his team a shot at running the Australian economy.

Abbott is head of the Liberal Party. And yet he's centre-right.

WTF is this shit? Our Conservative leader is a liberal, and their Liberal leader is a Conservative. We should swap.

 Election campaigns these days are mainly targeted at marginal electorates, all of whose voters are considered as puerile, unintelligent, selfish conservatives who must be won over with masses of hand-outs and not mentally harassed by even a word of any substance. As for the rest of the electorate - all the safe seats: they can all go bugger off. When the rite of the election is complete and a victim has been immolated and a victor chosen, then whoever wins government can get back to the "real" job of governing, or further messing up, the country. I'm sure the reasons for it are manifold and varied - but one thing's for certain: Our representative democracy has become a total sham.

Marginal seats contain the swinging middle class voters who decide governments. Swinging voters must be won over through bribes and inducements. People vote according to their own self interests, not necessarily in the best interests of the nation.

Politicians target short term winning the election or re-election. Politicians rarely have a medium or long term plan, they often lack vision for the future. Politicians  use short one line slogans to win undecided swinging voters. Politicians are as honourable as snake oil salesmen: election pledges can easily be broken. Election pledges/promises are not considered the gospel or scripted truth. 

Yeah the way you spout the Liberal party rhetoric I can tell your in no way bias and have an open opinion so there is no point me telling you how stupid the statement "stop the boats" is... other than to ask why! Why is it so important that we stop them, worried they are gonna "took yur jorbs", live off welfair and have bogans and One Nation suporters worried they are going to make Australia look less like England and more like an Asian country. 

Everytime time I hear this bullshit xenophobic boat people argument I think back to what would have it been like if the Aboriginals saw the English boats first arrive off the coast and then told the English to "Fuck off, where full mate" or round up the Britsh and keep them in a cell for two years before shipping them off to England.

No I wont be voting for Tony Abbott, mostly because he's a religious zelot who panders to the fears of the lowest comman denominator with boogie man stories.

See, this joke doesn't work particularly well, because there aren't particularly many Australian users here, and few people outside Australia know about Australian politics. Thus, none of us have any idea whom Tony Abbot is, or that he's an over-religious, xenophobic, incompetent excuse for a leader (which is the impression I get from this thread, but then VGC is left-leaning on the whole).

Ohhhhhh... Its a joke thread... about Tony Abbot.

I personally would have made an Abbot and Costello reference to really drive the joke home. 

(Appoligies to everyone who doesnt get that)

I'm gonna chalk this up to a joke thread....

A very sad joke thread.