Are we at the starting blocks?

Get ready its going to be a bumpy ride and a long run.

In the wake of what seemed a somewhat elongated UK election (who is David Cameron anyway?), I got to thinking about our own political landscape here in Australia. For those of us in New South Wales at least, we can look forward to two general, compulsory elections between say July this year and March next year. The state one next year is a fixed date election, so we can see it coming and boy can we see it coming.

Those with an eye for politics are expecting our PM to call the Federal election before the end of this year. Before Federal issues start getting (more) mixed with State ones. It can’t happen during September because of Fathers’ Day and all the football finals. I think the latest in the year I’ve voted at that level is November. October elections are more common. I’ve even voted on my birthday. Some of the folks in the know here are predicting either August or October.

You can tell things are gearing up. Tuesday night saw the delivering of the Federal budget, an amazingly low-key low spend budget for a Labor government in an election year. In order to bring the budget back into the black. My guess is (as Peter Hatcher has proposed) is that the intent was to take the “Labor are financially irresponsible” argument away from the Opposition, something that appears to have worked:

THE morning after and Canberra awoke with a post-budget headache only to have Tony Abbott add to the pain by saying the Rudd government started out as Paris Hilton and ended up Uncle Scrooge.

I don’t think that’s much of a sting to come back with. Circumstances change. The economy has changed. It might be quite confident to not feel one has to spend but still.

That was yesterday. Today of course, leadership speculation.

Tomorrow?

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