Day 24 of NaBloPoMo 2007

Today was the Australian federal election, and the day has brought a change of Government with the Labor Party achieving a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives.

Whilst the result was mostly expected, it didn't really turn out to the the landslide victory that many predicted. Probably the most surprising, but again not totally shocking result of the election was that the outgoing Prime Minister John Howard, looks set to lose his own seat - something that has previously only happened once since Federation.

The result also means that our local representative on this side of Brisbane is now the new Australian Prime Minister, which feels sort of weird actually...

I'm not really sure how i feel about this result: i'm saddened that the current Government is being replaced, because i think overall they've done a pretty good job over the last 11 years, especially economically. There have been things that I have completely disagreed with, Iraq for example, but overall my opinion of the outgoing government is mostly positive.

On the same note, i'm quite apprehensive about the Labor Party forming the new Government. Historically they don't have the best economic record (to put it lightly), and the amount of Trade Union influence definitely concerns me. The Unions have put a lot of money into the Labor campaign, and pretty soon they'll be expecting a return on their investment, and i'm not quite sure whether Kevin Rudd will have the balls to stand up to them.

So yeah, as you can tell i'm pretty anti-Union. I don't disagree with what they stand for, but the way they do it is definitely not something i support.

There are some interesting times in Australia ahead...