Ding dong the witch is dead!

I feel like there should be singing and dancing in the streets this morning. After 11 years of Howard the voters have come out in favour of something other than the economy. Finally social policy and progressive politics have been given a voice. Before yesterday my bottom line for success was that we return some balance to the Senate. That will happen. Neither the Liberals or the ALP will be able to ram legislation through the Senate without negotiation. It will return to being a house of review. My next criteria for success was the ALP winning the Lower House. this happened in record numbers in some VERY interesting places. Analysts are saying it is the biggest swing against a sitting government in the history of Australian politics. The icing on the cake for me was the fact that it is likely that Howard will loose his own seat of Bennelong. Ultimately his arrogance and ego have been his undoing. He could have retired 18 months ago at the top of his game, but the idea of one more victory was too much for him to resist. Pride goes before the fall Mr Howard and for those of us who have been wanting your fall for some time, it is sweeter that it has happened like this. The cherry on top of the icing for me came in the defeat of Mal Brough, Minister for Indigenous Affairs. His was considered a safe seat and the voters once again proved that theory wrong. I'm quite sure that Brough saw himself as doing the 'right thing' in the NT intervention and already he has talked about his 'fears' of the ALP undoing his 'good work'. Let me remind people that while many Australians living in urban Australia might have agreed that the intervention was a good thing, for those it most affected, the Indigenous people of remote NT, it was a disaster. And it was a disaster for one main reason. It was a one size fits all solution for a complicated context. Yes changes are needed in the NT but they MUST be locally appropriate, the MUST be achieved in consultation with the local people and they SHOULD reflect a contemporary philosophy, not one that is stuck in the paradigm of 40 years ago. So I am overjoyed that Brough is gone and his style of leadership in the area of Indigenous affairs has been rejected.

Rud and the ALP government are not the silver bullet as far as I'm concerned but it feels like the straight jacket i off for the first time in 11 years and now there is at least room to move forward.

Democracy is a wonderful thing!