The Labor Party, after being elected to a landslide victory in 2007 decided to call an early election which was just held a week ago. The results have been bad for Labor, but good for the opposition Liberals (conservatives). There is now no government in Australia as neither side got a majority of the seats needed and there is a mad scramble to curry favor among the independents and the Greens. The current count is Liberals 73, Labor 72, Independents 4, Greens 1, with 76 needed to form a government. Recent analysis of why Labor fell so far re-states the old saw, "over promised, but under delivered." More details and rough chronology below.
Note that this election has been followed more closely than usual by some in the US in order to forecast trends for the US elections. I make no attempt to say this or that it applies to the US, only to report what has happened overseas.
- Rudd elected in 2007 with many promises and a landslide
- Rudd enjoyed a honeymoon, had great success in dealing with the GFC via a stimulus package
- Rudd continued to govern well for the first year, improving the health benefits and kick starting a national broadband network.
- Rudd wavered on the ETS after surprise, surprise, the conservatives (Liberal Party)stabbed him in the back
- Conservatives continued to harp on Rudd for minor items, causing him to apparently lose his game.
- Rudd introduced a tax revision policy for the mining industry.
- All hell broke lose and Rudd was knifed and replaced with Gillard
- Early election called and elections held.
- Disaffection of many Labor voters to the Greens and to the Liberals.
- End result = No side a winner but the conservatives have more votes and more seats. PM'ship still in doubt as at this moment.
Lesson? Post mortems not complete but indicated that aside from the failure of the ETS the electorate:
- Was also worried about whether the Labor team stood for anything. I.e. they saw little to differentiate Labor from the Liberals.
- There was some grumbling that Labor had promised a lot, but actually delivered on a small percentage of this. There were a lot of quality problems with what was delivered
- There was also poor communication of successes with the Labor side not getting a coherent message out.
- Terrible strategy in removing a PM and expecting little or no repercussions
And my personal favorite losing the initiative to the opposition which is ultimately IMHO what caused most of the downfall