Today's Headlines
an Aussie's viewpoint
Monday 4th March 1996
International:
Dramatic changes at top levels of the Canberra bureaucracy will follow Saturday's Coalition landslide victory over the Labor Party.
Almost definitely affected will be Foreign Affairs head, Michael Costello and Finance man Steve Sedgwick. Both worked in Labor
minister's offices before taking over the departments. Costello for then foreign affairs minister, Bill Hayden and Sedgwick for former
Prime Minister Bob Hawke.
The changes are expected to filter through all levels of bureaucracy as "Labor appointees" are weeded out by the Coalition.
Political:
Here are the stats related to the election on Saturday:
Two-party preferred vote: Labor 46.09%. Non-Labor: 53.9%
Seats claimed:
Liberal Party: 72 Seats - previously 50.
National Party: 18 Seats - previously 16.
Coalition (Lib/Nat): 90 Seats - previously 66.
Australian Labor Party: 46 Seats - previously 79.
Independents: 4 Seats - previously 2.
Undecided: 8 Seats. (Expected: 4 Lib; 3 Lab; 1 Ind.)
The new Prime Minister of Australia is Liberal Party leader John Howard.
The new deputy leader is National Party leader Tim Fischer.
Paul Keating has resigned as Labor leader and is expected to retire from politics. The Labor deputry leader, Kim Beazley awaits his fate
in one of the undecided seats. A few hundred votes is expected to determine his fate.
The most talked about issue following that of the Labor route is the big swings for the 4 candidates who were accused of making
"racist comments" - the biggest swing of over 19% to the Oxley independent member and fish and chip shop owner, Pauline Hanson.
Business:
Financial markets in Australia are set to sky rocket following the Coalition victory. The All Ordinaries index is set to break its all time high
with a rise between 80 to 100 points expected on the stock exchange. The Au$ is expected to pass 77US cents, having already risen 2
cents this month in anticipation of a coalition victory.
Sport:
The Australian Rugby League (ARL) has been pulling its weight since its historic legal victory over Super League last week.
The ARL lawyers threatened to issue writs for contempt of court against a number of players and Super League clubs who had
prepared to play "charity matches" last weekend. They were all cancelled. The great farce is that the Super League players cannot even
train under the judge's ruling as they will be in contempt of court!
Social:
Women have increased their representation in Parliament, but the Labor Party's quota system has failed to deliver
more female members. There will be 22 women in the House of Representatives compared with 12 in the last sitting.
Five sitting ALP women members were defeated leaving only 4. The Coalition will have 16 women members - 11 more
than they had during the last Parliament.
Global Gripe of the day:
Dishonesty in defeat:
It appears quite apparent now that the Labor Party knew from the start that they were going to lose power. Their private polling was
far more accurate than the charades dished out by the media.
The Labor Party have quite clearly tried to set the Liberal Party up for next time round. They made a grab-bag of promises that they
knew they could not keep but that the Liberals had to match. They refused to reveal the true state of the economy to the Liberal Party.
Early indications are that the budget will be between Au$6 billion to Au$11 billion in debt. A major blow out.
This will mean that promises will have to be revised to save the economy and give the Labor Party the opening to claim at the next
election that the Liberal Party broke their promises.
Personal trivia:
Nice quiet day yesterday sitting on the verandah overlooking the Brisbane River. The birdlife in this part of the world is quite
exceptional. We saw everything from egrets to sulphur crested cockatoos, kookaburras to mud larks, cranes to rainbow lorikeets.
We put up the story of Alex's visit to the Koala hospital on the Net yesterday.
Photos soon to follow!
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