"From today I declare that Australia is under new management." - Tony Abbott
The Australian elections are over, and the Liberal Party Coalition (Australia's conservatives)ended up with a major victory, making Tony Abbott Australia's new Prime Minister. The Coalition could end up with 90 seats in the 150 seat parliament.
Kevin Rudd and the Australian Labour Party (ALP) are out of power after a strange saga a that saw Rudd ousted in a coup as leader of his own party by Julia Gilliard, then turning the tables and ousting her shortly before the election. Rudd, in his concession speech announced he will not contest new leadership for the Labour Party.
A big issue here was taxes, which have sharply risen under Labour's rule, pretty much as they always do. In particular, a sore spot was the ridiculous 'carbon tax' ALP put in place after promising not to. It not only spiked energy prices, but led to the loss of a great many mining jobs, one of Australia's big industries.Australia, like America, has a lot of coal and this attempt to bankrupt the coal industry didn't sit well.
Americans who are watching President Obama trying to pull the same nonsense had better take a lesson from this and remain watchful.
In any event, Abbott as PM will probably restore a certain amount of fiscal common sense to Australia, lower taxes, deal with Australia's illegal migration problem ( not near as bad as ours, but like any other problem of this sort, best dealt with early and decisively) and shrink government to an extent. He will also continue Australia's long time alliance with America, which seems to go on no matter which party's in power.
All in all, a fair dinkum election.
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