themadthinker wrote:
Now here's hoping Rudd isn't too bad.
Same old pile of shit but now with different faces. At least the senate is no longer controlled by either of the major parties.
BandMan2K wrote:
I forgot. You guys take the entire election season & compress it into 2 months from declaring the candidacy straight through to the election. I wish us Americans had figured out this instead of the long ass march of primaries, bullshit, mud-slinging & whatnot.
Actually, there's still party preselection crap for all the electorates, but it almost never gets any major level of publicity. There was some publicity for it this cycle tho cos the ALP were trying to get some candidates who were already reasonably well known instead of the usual obscure candidates that noone has ever heard of. And there's always publicity when the leadership for the major parties is up for grabs; you just have to look at the spectacle currently evolving around the Liberals now that Howard has lost his seat and Costello decided to take his bat and ball and go home. The nationals will probably be similar too, now that mark vaille has decided to resign as their leader as well.
All in all, while the official election campaign was only six weeks long, the unofficial campaign has been going since Rudd became leader of the ALP back in december last year. That is ten months too long in my opinion.