In Australia, 'Liberals' are closest to what are viewed as conservatives in the US.
9/7/13, "Abbott’s Coalition Wins Australia Election as Labor’s Rudd Exits," Bloomberg, by Jason Scott & Michael Heath
"Tony Abbott’s Liberal-National coalition won Australia’s election and was heading for the biggest parliamentary majority since 1996, ushering in a government pledging to abolish carbon pricing and a mining tax.
“I declare the government is under new management,” Abbott said in a speech in Sydney late yesterday, consigning Kevin Rudd’s Labor party to the shortest stint in power in almost 40 years. “Australia is once more open for business.”
Abbott, 55, won power after spearheading the attack on Labor’s stewardship of the $1.5 trillion economy and infighting that saw Rudd reclaim the leadership just 10 weeks ago after he was ousted in a 2010 party coup. Rudd yesterday quit as Labor leader. Abbott, a former Rhodes scholar and amateur boxer, faces the challenge of governing as a China-led mining investment boom wanes, crimping tax revenue and driving up unemployment.
The coalition led in 91 of the 150 seats in parliament’s lower house, where government is formed, with 90.8 percent of the vote counted, compared with Labor’s 54, the Australian Electoral Commission said on its website late yesterday. That would give it the biggest majority since John Howard’s coalition won office in 1996.
“The Labor party should face up to the fact that this is a devastating result,” former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke, 83, said on Sky News. “The fact that it may have been even worse is irrelevant basically. We have suffered a very major defeat and we must learn the lessons from it.”
The coalition’s victory restores majority government to Australia after Labor ruled for three years with the support of independent lawmakers and the Greens party. Support for Labor never recovered after Rudd’s predecessor Julia Gillard broke a pre-election pledge in 2010 not to introduce a carbon tax in order to win the Greens’ backing.
It was also hobbled by three years of party infighting, which culminated in Rudd regaining the leadership on June 26, three years after he was ousted by Gillard in a party coup.
“It’s time for the party to further renew its leadership for the future,” Rudd told Labor supporters in Brisbane after conceding defeat and announcing he will step down as leader. “The Australian people, I believe, deserve a fresh start with our leadership.”
Labor’s stint in power followed almost 12 years of government by the coalition’s Howard and marks the shortest rule since the Gough Whitlam era from 1972 to 1975.
“This is a verdict on disunity,” outgoing Treasurer Chris Bowen, who was on course to hold his seat, told Channel 9. “The party going forward needs to build on the achievements of the last six years, but also remind ourselves of the importance of unity amongst the most senior members.”
While the coalition has led in opinion polls for most of the past 2 1/2 years, Abbott’s personal approval ratings were weighed down by voter perceptions of negativity and government attacks on his character. He closed the gap with Rudd during the campaign, eschewing major policy announcements to keep voter attention on the government’s failings, and overtook him as preferred prime minister in the final week.
“The fact that Tony Abbott has actually held together in opposition the same team for three and a half years speaks volumes,” Benny Ng, 38, said in the Four Seasons hotel in Sydney, where coalition supporters watched Abbott’s victory speech.
“Never underestimate the steely discipline and professionalism and effectiveness of Tony Abbott,” Howard, 74, told reporters at the Four Seasons. “He’s been a very, very good opposition leader, I believe he’ll be a very good prime minister.”
The coalition was on course to pick up eight seats in New South Wales state, including Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury’s district of Lindsay in Western Sydney, a traditional Labor heartland, and Banks, held by Labor since 1949. The coalition led in Eden-Monaro, a district won by the party that goes on to form government in all elections for the past four decades.
In Victoria, Labor was set to lose three seats to the coalition, including the nation’s most competitive district of Corangamite, according to preliminary results on the AEC’s website. Labor saw off a challenge in Queensland, Rudd’s home state, where results indicated it will hold most of its threatened seats.
In Tasmania, the island state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate, Labor was set to lose three of its four seats. The coalition led in Lingiari, the Northern Territory electorate where 1986 comedy “Crocodile Dundee” was filmed.
While mining magnate Clive Palmer claimed victory in the Queensland seat of Fairfax, the AEC said the district hadn’t been determined.
Carbon Price
Abbott has promised to abolish Labor’s carbon pricing mechanism, its 30 percent levy on coal and iron ore profits and lower the business tax rate, while funding a A$5.5 billion ($5 billion) per year parental leave program. The coalition plans to reduce the civil service by at least 12,000 positions, lower subsidies for carmakers and cancel handouts to parents of school children.
He’s also pledged to cut asylum seekers arriving in the nation by towing boats run by people smugglers out of Australian waters.
Central to Abbott’s success will be the make-up of the Senate, parliament’s upper house which has the final say on legislation. Forty of the 76 Senate seats were up for grabs in the election, and the coalition will be looking to curb the influence of the Greens in the upper chamber.
Abbott takes the reins of the world’s 12th largest economy after the Treasury last month forecast deeper budget deficits in the next three years and cut its growth estimate for 2013-14 to 2.5 percent from 2.75 percent seen in May. Unemployment will rise to an 11-year high of 6.25 percent by mid-2014, according to government estimates.
The coalition will inherit a record low benchmark interest rate of 2.5 percent as the Reserve Bank of Australia seeks to rebalance the economy toward industries including residential construction and manufacturing as investment in resources projects peaks.
The coalition has pledged a budget surplus equal to 1 percent of gross domestic product within a decade. Australia’s 2013-14 deficit will amount to 1.9 percent of GDP, according to the Treasury.
“The public will be happy to see the end of a hung parliament because of the political rancor it generated,” said Martin Whetton, an interest-rate strategist at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Sydney. “The equity market will welcome the return of a pro-business government with a parliamentary majority.”"
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9/7/13, "Australia liberated from their long national green nightmare," Anthony Watts, WUWT
"Today is a great day not only in Australian history, but also in world history. It marks the day when people of character and sensibility pushed back against an overwrought and pointless green agenda, and pushed back in a big way. They’ve had enough, and they’ve scraped the Krudd off their shoes and are moving forward.
Tony Abbot has won the Australian election in a landslide, and vows to abolish the carbon tax as a first order of business. Abbott has declared Australia is “once more open for business” in claiming victory in Saturday’s election.
It is a huge blow to the Rudd-Gillard labor party and their green goals, which were built on a lie foisted on the Australian people.
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In 2010 when Gillard said “no carbon tax” in a videotaped speech that has been seen as the key moment Australians lost trust."...
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A good summary of the climate industry and UN involvement in it by an expert on coral reefs:
"Signing away our sovereignty to inept and unaccountable UN bureaucrats with a demonstrable track record of failure in their own countries is worse than just stupid or spineless. It is treasonous."...(near end of article)
6/22/12, "UNESCO, butt out!" Quadrant Online, Walter Starck (Dr. Starck is an expert on coral reefs and has a PhD in marine science)
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James Delingpole on his 2012 Australia trip:
"The tide against the Great Global Warming Scam – the biggest and most expensive outbreak of mass hysteria in history – is turning and...Australia is the best place in the world to go for a beachside view."...
4/12/12, "Australia here I come," UK Telegraph, James Delingpole
"God, I'm looking forward to my Australian tour. (It's to promote Killing The Earth To Save It (Connor Court). Jo Nova has posted up the tour dates, together with the kind of generous panegyric not even my closest friends would give me over here....
But most of all I'm looking forward to doing battle on the front line of the great climate wars. Just because the Aussies are robust and blunt and full of commonsense doesn't mean they're immune to global warming drivel and eco-alarmism. Au contraire, as they say in the sheep stations. Your Melbourne green and your Sydney enviro-loon is at least as committedly wrong and fanatical as any in Britain. ABC and CSIRO – the rough equivalents of the BBC and the Royal Society/Met Office/Hadley Centre axis of evil – are at least as parti-pris and lefty biased. So I don't expect I'm necessarily going to have flower petals strewn in my path everywhere I travel.
Those who are sceptical of AGW alarmism, though, are going to like me a lot. The first reason for this is that, in common with many Australians, I have a rare gift for tact and diplomacy. Not for one second in any of my speeches will I dream of being rude about Australia's much-loved $180,000 a year (for a three-day week) "Climate Commissioner" Tim Flannery, let alone about Australian's even better loved Prime Minister, the flame-haired, pert-rumped temptress Julia Gillard. And I'm sure my audiences will respect me for my polite restraint."....
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