Abbott won the unloseable election

Tony Abbott won an election he could not lose.  He was helped a long way by a Labor advertising campaign which saw fit to put Abbott's picture on billboards, leaflets and other paid advertising, thereby presenting the face of their opponent rather than their prime minister.

This was not their only reason for losing votes to the Liberal party, a marked difference between Labor in government and the Liberals is that under Howard, the Libs knew how to choose their words.

Howard for example said: We will decide who will come into this country and the circumstances in which they come.

This statement has succeeded in polarising the opinions of Australians to this very day, more than a decade after Tampa.

It is not that Howard didn't make mistakes, but if we compare, we find that he chose words that resonated with the constituency.  Who else would call his labour reforms "work choices", certainly not the disadvantaged employees.  He might have gotten away with it had it not been for the fake leaflets that stole his election campaign in the last week of electioneering.

Kevin Rudd was helped win his first term with catchy words like Kevin 07, he cemented his position with the constituency with popular actions as well as practical measures.

For example, he apologised to Indigenous Australians and did this in a masterful manner that won him much accolades.

He convened the 2020 Summit with 1002 participants from around Australia, apparently, to hear their views about the future.

He introduced the Building the Education Revolution program (BER), indeed a revolutionary program to improve education all around Australia to help Australia become the clever country.

Rudd also, contrary to trends in some other countries, stimulated the Australian economy during the Global Financial Crisis by funding school building projects and giving the ordinary Aussie battler a few extra bob to spend.

Muslims breathed a sigh of relief as we were no longer the topic du jour that intrigued the Howard ministry to the point of being constantly mentioned by a variety of top liberals sometimes on a daily basis.

Whilst the apology and the 2020 appear symbolic and perhaps hollow, they do go in Labor's good books because these did indeed appeal to the sentiments of the constituency and did show that Australians can and will be fair if their leaders favour that direction.  The BER and the economic stimulus on the other hand were genuine programs that did go a long way to help a very forgetful constituency.

Another genuine program was the Super Mining Profits Tax, it is difficult to say how many voters thought that this would be a tax on their Super(annuation) contributions.  This was a trigger for Gillard to make the mistake of toppling him not far from a federal election and thereby creating a salient swing against Labor, the loss of most of their Queensland seats and the creation of a barely stable federal parliament.

If the Super profits tax was Rudd's first downfall, the Carbon Tax was the downfall of the outgoing Labor government despite the fact that faith communities spoke out in support of this tax.  Rather than properly addressing the populace's concerns about this, they tried to focus on the negatives of their opponents and to buy votes in the South West of Sydney.

Will the Libs completely abandon initiatives to protect the environment, or will we see real effort to find solutions?  There may be a better solution than carbon tax, I hope they do work quick to identify it, because the 'erratic' weather pattern will impact on us and on our children and perhaps all future generations if we don't start rectifying our approach to nature and its resources.  It was very encouraging to see the Hon. Philip Ruddock MP campaigning to save trees in his electorate.

One of the first moves by Minister for Immigration Scott Morrison to protect our borders was to withhold information about refugee boat movements from the media/public.  At face value, this could have been the necessary stimulus to depoliticise the issue of refugees.  However, it did not take long for a refugee tragedy to take place and for the government to change the label again; from asylum seekers to illegals.  There are a number of possible solutions to the boats, these starts with ensuring an adequate number of Immigration officers at a few of our foreign missions.  Instead of looking to our poorer neighbours to accommodate them, I can think of many compassionate solutions that will help resolve the issues relating to asylum seekers and reduce the number of refugee boats that come to our shores.  After 12 years playing politics with the lives of human beings in need of protection, maybe we can learn more about their plight and demand a better treatment from our government so that our nation can comply with the refugee convention to which we are signatories.

Tony Abbott promised to protect the integrity of marriage, this certainly is very dear to the hearts of a tremendous number of Australians, as a religious person, I certainly pray that he will maintain this promise.

Another major concern I have as an Australian is the selling of public assets, the Howard government for example sold our airports (hence the gouging of prices) and many other assets as you can see from this list from the department of finance.  The simple problem with that is that asset sale is not an economic fix, assets will eventually run out, what do we sell then?

Under Howard, these asset sales were accompanied with a reduction in services, increases in taxes and very low spending on infrastructure.

Now the Abbott government has flagged the sale of $110 billion of national assets.  The continuing sale of assets to private interests means that any usage of these assets will cost us more as these private interests seek to profit.  The sale of the airports for example created a monopoly, the sale of Australia Post will do the same, these are assets that are not open to competition.

These sales invariably contribute to the increasing disparity between rich and poor as the population has to pay the increased prices for the same product so that the new owners can profit well.

There is a real concern amongst many Australians that the current Liberal government might take us back to the Howard Era of dog-whistle politics and Islamophobia.  However, the coalition's record since the September election has not produced any notable signs of minority scapegoating rather, Prime Minister Abbott, to his credit, seems to be disinterested in media grandstanding. 

In the few weeks since the election, the nation has seen some positive signs and some worrying signs.  It is incumbent on us as citizens of this great land to be vigilant and vocal on issues of public interest, maybe with enough communication, we can circumvent the asset sales saving ourselves and our children the resultant inflated prices.  We also need to improve our information processing with respect to the asylum seeker debate.