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Hanley
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Thu, 01 Jul 2010

The week in politics - 21:17

Another great political cartoon 		I do not watch much tv, this includes not watching the tv news. I read two news papers almost daily, however that does cause a lag in my news acquisition. Last Wednesday night I was talking on the phone with my grandmother and she mentioned it looked like a big night in politics with a meeting in t he pm's office between Rudd and Gillard and news of a possible spill.

This news was indeed surprising, a first term prime minister and such a quick move against him. The change probably will not change my voting pattern at all, I think Abbott is a raving lunatic and generally ascribe that world view (being a raving lunatic) to the entire liberal party. There has been a disturbing move further right of the Labour party for years now which I am constantly concerned by. I have for a long while now voted Green federally and in ACT simply because my world views suggests we need to stop thinking about money and more about the planet and various other things that this party tends to come closer on than the rest of the parties.

It has been interesting to see that though he was the most popular prime minister Australia has ever had, many people never seemed to know what Rudd stood for, once they began to believe he is simply another politician and will sacrifice previously claimed beliefs (climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time) for political reasons many people it seems began to think much of what he said may as well be non core promises (to bring in a Howardism).

I have to say I thought Rudd's being in question time on Thursday last week was one of the bravest things I have seen a politician do, and I think it is upsetting and sad for him and we saw a lot of emotion in his final press conference. However from what I hear he was not a pleasant person to work with and could be quite offensive in high level meetings for various reasons, sure he worked his arse off (hence why I think the cartoon on the left is so good) and did do many good things for Australia it does seem like much of the reasons people did not stick by him in poor polling times was that he had closed himself off from the rest of the clever people available to him at large.

I think it is great to see a female PM and I think Gillard could do a lot of good things, I am happy to have an atheist PM (though it is upsetting that the right wing elements of the Labour party probably have enough influence that the government's God Bothering tendencies will remain, such as no gay marriage and the Internet filter stupidity will remain), however I really do hope that at the upcoming federal election the Greens hold enough power that Labour has to get them fully on side to create a good working government. So far I think the Green arrangement in ACT has been a good thing, the Stanhope government is still ignoring them more than I think it should be, however it has bought advantages to ACT so far I think.

Still it has been an incredible week in politics and there have been many awesome political cartoons to cheer us all up too.

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