'Greg and Marsha' can't stop John Howard remaking Australia in his own image

Like the last one, this election was really about the blue-collar conservative vote. When it comes to foreign affairs it trusts Howard. It doesn't care too much about whether he lies, because they all do, don't they? It wants results, not fancy speeches. It does care about the environment, but it also cares about jobs (particularly its own), and sees water resources and dry-land salinity (where Howard's credentials are good) as more important than old growth forests or Kyoto.

Labor was always going to have trouble winning this election. Howard has locked up the strategic blue-collar conservatives very strongly. Labor performed poorly because it couldn't work out that this was the group it should have been appealing to. Instead it tried to win everyone’s vote. Labor was also obsessed with what a colleague of mine approvingly calls a “hegemonic” victory, so it ran a campaign for government rather than against the government.

Final images which voters took to the ballot box reinforced the confusion and the over-reach, including heartland Labor workers in Tasmania cheering John Howard, and Saturday morning's unfortunate newspaper photos of Mark Latham encroaching on Howard's personal space in a threatening way.

Howard stayed on his message and finished where he started - trust and interest rates. Latham failed to make out a case against the government, with the only message that has really cut through being that Howard lies. “Greg and Marsha” did move to Labor in a select few seats, such as the Prime Minister’s own, but not in sufficient numbers to make a difference. They were more than counterbalanced by many of the sorts of people Mark Latham grew up with ignoring his verbal conceit of "ladder of opportunity" and walk straight past it to the concrete safety of a Liberal how-to-vote card. As a result John Howard will most likely have control of both houses of parliament and will be in a position to remake Australia in his own image.