“Lerderderg Gorge” Painting – Australia takes new turn?

Bush ally John Howard, is trailing badly in the vote count

Australia voted in the 2007 Federal Elections on Saturday November 24, 2007. The principal opponents, the Major Parties, were the incumbent, Bush-ite, Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Government versus the timid, “me-too”, unprincipled, poll-driven Labor Party Opposition. On the side-lines were Minor Parties, most notably the highly principled, pro-Planet, Pro-Humanity, pro-Peace Australian Greens and Australian Democrats.

Realistically, only the extreme right-wing Bush-ite Coalition or right-wing Labor could form the New Government. However Australia’s preferential voting system allows people with a conscience to vote #1 Green and give their #2 preference to cowardly Labor – when the Greens fail to get a majority in an electorate  their votes are transferred to the #2 preference. Decent, anti-War, anti-greenhouse gas  pollution, anti-racism Australians could thus “have their cake and eat it too”.

The result has been a crushing victory for the Australian Labor Party led by Kevin Rudd (see the reports in the leading Australian newspaper, The Age, , The key features of the election victory are as follows:

Labor had a national swing of 5.7%;

Labor will have a likely majority of 24 seats;

ex-PM, Bush ally John Howard, is trailing badly in the vote count for his ownseat of Bennelong  and may indeed lose his seat to former Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) journalist Maxine McKew;

for the first time Labor now holds government in every state , territory AND at Commonwealth level;.

for the first time a woman, Julia Gillard, will be Deputy Prime Minister;

there was a roughly 10% vote for the Australian Greens (indeed many Labor candidates won because of Green preferences) and there may be much greater Green representation in the Australian Senate. 

I have a personal stake in this Election because Australia has draconian Sedition Laws and I have actually been named by a very decent, humanitarian,  top linguist in a Senate Inquiry Submission as a potential victim of this legislation because of my resolute anti-racist, pro-Peace, anti-war humanitarian advocacy (see submission #84). I feel much more comfortable now that the grossly human rights-abusing and civil rights- abusing Bush-ites have been trounced.

Inspired by Polish hero Jan Karski who tried to tell an unresponsive world about the Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims) while it was happening (to the best of my knowledge it killed all but about a dozen members of my family), I have dropped most things and devoted a huge amount of time as a public service over the last 4 years trying to inform an unresponsive world (mainstream media, mainstream politician, alternative media, and alternative politicians) about the ever-increasing toll of "excess deaths" in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan.

The Silence has been Deafening – from both the Australian Mainstream media and from the Mainstream politicians. But will this continue under a Rudd Labor Government? – it very likely will unless Australians now  insist on the truth..