Shaun Carney has an insightful article in the Age, Greens are no friend of Labor where he points out that the Greens are keeping the ALP out and are stealing their votes.

Ross Gittins writes about how Howard's promises to working parents are bizaare and twisted politics that is only creating an ever more complex system in A win for mothers who go out to work

Over at Crikey Charles McPhedran trys and fails to make Australia fit into world patterns and yet again tries to equate John Howard with George Bush in A populist analysis of the Federal election

Shaun Carney argues that the Greens are taking Labour votes not Liberal ones and that they are causing damage to the ALP.

He makes am interesting point

It was the Democratic Labor Party, made up of ex-Labor people, that kept the ALP out of office for almost a generation after the 1955 split. In the late '70s, when three disparate groups drawn from the non-Labor side - the Australia Party, the Liberal Movement and disaffected Liberal voters led by Don Chipp - formed the Australian Democrats, it was the Liberals who suffered.

namely that the Democrats may have had a lot to do with keeping the Liberal Party out of office in the 1980s.

The problem with his analysis is that he doesn't say why losing seats in the Senate keeps a party out of office in Australia. He goes on to draw the usual false parallel between Australian and US politics (more of this later).

George Bush owes his 2000 election victory above all to one man: Ralph Nader, the unreconstructed leftie crusader who dragged precious votes away from Al Gore. And who did Nader represent in the presidential ballot? The Greens.

Certainly withouth Ralph Nader's successful 2000 campaign and Pat Buchanan's failed one Al Gore would now be President. But this does not explain how the Democrats kept the Liberals out in the 80s and now the Greens are doing the same.

But it does perhaps have some effect. Mark Latham would perhaps not have included Peter Garrett or made his forestry policy were it not for the Greens. The Greens pull the ALP to the left to a certain degree.

The effect on the Democrats in the 1980s is harder to establish. Perhaps they took some good people out of the Liberal Party in the 1980s. They did not appear to drag it to the centre.

Ross Gittins writes well about Howard's silly promises and their strange effects on families. It comes out fairly blatantly that Howard was just buying votes. Why didn't he just offer a tax cut to middle income earners rather than bizaare and amusing schemes? Perhaps it's because we like thinking that we are getting little things, rather than just one simple, sane thing.

Charles McPhedran's article about how populism is all it takes to win makes some bad points and misses out on a number of issues. He says that Howard is just a populist who cons the electorate.  This is similar to conservative pundits who paint Bob Hawke as mainly a populist. Both sides ignore the successes of these leaders.  

McPhedran appears to have forgotten that Howard ran an election on a new tax. It is hard to imagine anything that could be more anti-populist than that. To discredit Howard as a mere populist is to ignore his impressive record of pragmatism and successes. Just as Hawke introduced reforms that the Liberal party failed to introduce, particularly the floating of the dollar, and also
giving Australia industrial relations stability.

Certainly in this election the Liberal party went populist. They didn't push their agenda of changing industrial relations laws and selling Telstra. But that is just playing smart politics.

Latham will not win the next election if he is merely a slightly better populist. McPhedran writes:

Heading into another three years of opposition, then, Labor should take heart in finding the `big idea' that will win them elections in the future.

What were Howard's policies in 1996? Didn't his campaign center largely around one thing? That he wasn't Paul Keating and a Labour party that seemed to be tired? Howard also had an easy claim to being at least somewhat reliable. People knew he'd been treasurer.

If Mark Latham wishes to be Prime Minister he should avoid big ideas and instead convince the electorate that he and his team are competent. People are a bit sick of the Liberal party. They don't love them. But any leader who looks reckless and has little leadership experience is unlikely to convince people to choose them to manage the economy.

Australians should stop always trying to equate Australian politicians with British and American ones. Australia has been happily out of step with both and while there are influences there are bigger differences. Most big global trends spotted by journalists are nonsense. They are more coincidence than trend. As for Australia, it should be remembered that while the UK and US went  to the right during the 1980s Australia had what would later be known as a 'third way' government and then when centre left governments came in in the UK and US during the 90s Australia happily and independently elected centre right governments.