A few thoughts:
Kevin Rudd has been a very effective Prime Minister, probably in the top three of governments in the last fifty years. Very early in his term he faced one of the most severe recessions in decades: we forget in this country exactly how serious, and it's worth going back into it. A huge proportion of Australia's superannuation industry literally went bankrupt one day. American banks that also operate here were on the very edge of literally vanishing, leaving our economy relying on a bunch of worthless bits of paper. Kevin took the very unpopular decision to do something about it, rather than ignoring the problem. He was completely successful- it cost money in the short run, but in the long run it saved probably tens of billions, not to mention hundreds of thousands of jobs. Now, this decision was unpopular, largely because the government had to spend money. He did it anyway. This was one of the most important decisions, economically, in a generation. That we have kicked him out of office for doing so is not only outrageously unfair- but, more importantly it creates a terrible lesson for the next government: don't act, because we hate you spending money, even at the cost of our jobs.
Tony Abbott hasn't really been able to give an indication of why he should be in government. All (bar one) of his major talking points are criticisms of Labor, rather than alternatives to it. That's not illegitimate, I think, but he really ought to have spent at least some time outlining an alternative policy, rather than demonstrating Labor's faults. He has not done so- to the extent that he continued to criticise Labor's approach to budgeting even after indicating he intends to basically follow it.
This neatly leads into the other thought: you're all basically idiots. When told that Labor has "great big new taxes", why didn't you look it up, try to find out whether it was true? When Tony told you Labor was the "worst government like evah" why didn't you take his view, look up what they've actually done on the internet, and come to your own conclusion? Every single one of the LNP's major talking points are obviously false. Nobody forced you to believe Tony's bullshit, you chose to. A kingdom lost for want of a five-minute google search. This is, I think, the most troubling part of this election: people are mostly gullible fools. Obviously Labor didn't sell their policy well, but it shouldn't matter. You have brains. You should be able to work stuff out by yoursef. Sadly, there is no independent institution of skepticism standing between what politicians tell us and what we believe. We basically take at their word whichever party can best dress up their claims with the nicest trim. This is troubling.
My final point: this would all be pretty much alright with a strong senate. Obviously the megaphone press is on the Tories side, not an independent accountability body- but the senate should be able to maintain oversight. Scott Ludlam, for instance, is probably the single strongest accountability body on tech issues in the country.
But, of course, we've gone with the crazy-house instead of serious policy-making. Anti-intellectualism is deeply Australian, but it's also deeply irresponsible. People are going to die because of this decision. They will die.
