Australia 2010 Federal Election: Cliffhanger Down Under! Hung parliament? Both parties have promised no new net spending in the campaign

Because of the time difference between Sydney and Miami, plus 14 hours, one more hour than D.C. to Tokyo, http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ this nail-biter of an election is even harder to follow than most because you also have to make mental calculations for each report you see and figure out how many hours ago it was actually reported in Miami time.
(Insert your own joke here!)

In case you didn't know, voting there is compulsory for every citizen over 18.

I am very hopeful to be talking to the Hallandale Beach Blog Australia 'expert' in a few days and will of course report her pithy and insightful comments here as soon as possible.

ten News: It's A Cliffhanger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNyebP_UCwo



Latest ten News video is at: http://www.youtube.com/user/ten

http://www.smh.com.au/

SMH Live Election blog: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/the-pulse

-----

Christian Science Monitor
Australian election is set to be closest in decades
Australian election analysts are forecasting the closest contest in decades, and say 'grumpy' voters may produce Australia’s first hung parliament since 1940.
By Kathy Marks, Correspondent
August 20, 2010

Sydney
Six months ago, the Australian Labor Party was basking in popularity and Kevin Rudd’s government seemed headed for an easy election win. Now his successor, Julia Gillard, will count herself lucky to scrape back into power with a tiny majority in Saturday’s federal election.

Most recent opinion polls have Labor and the opposition coalition – the conservative Liberal Party and its rural-based ally, the National Party – neck and neck.

Political analysts are forecasting the closest contest in decades, and say there is a real prospect of Australia’s first hung parliament since 1940.

Read the rest of the article at: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2010/0820/Australian-election-is-set-to-be-closest-in-decades

---------

Sydney Morning News
Behind the election stoush, the big issues they quietly agreed on
By Peter Hartcher, SMN Political Editor
August 21, 2010

Elections define nations. This one has already redefined Australia even before the first vote is counted. Indeed, the most important changes could well be the ones that aren't actually on the ballot paper but have already been agreed through political osmosis.

The main political parties entered the campaign with four big, freshly agreed points of concurrence, areas of bipartisan consensus for changes that will shape Australia's destiny for years.

For the first time since 1947, Australia has abandoned its bipartisan consensus in favour of a “big Australia.”

Read the rest of the column at: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/behind-the-election-stoush-the-big-issues-they-quietly-agreed-on-20100820-138v9.html


Reuters, August 21, 2010
Australia faces hung parliament



Christian Science Monitor homepage: http://www.csmonitor.com/

Julia Baird's excellent "Being Julia: Australia’s new prime minister breaks the glass ceiling"; while Alex Sink's campaign in FL flounders painfully

Well, despite the often very accurate knock about Twitter that it is the greatest tool for people to share their nonsense about their hum-drum life since Alexander Graham Bell did his thing with the telephone -see Our True, Tweeting Selves,Why historians salivate over Twitter

at http://www.newsweek.com/2010/04/21/our-true-tweeting-selves.html sometimes Twitter is actually very useful, as when I checked in on one of my go-to people this afternoon, Newsweek's Deputy Editor Julia Baird, courtesy of her Twitter account at http://twitter.com/bairdnewsweek .

There I saw that she'd just posted this: "My column for Newsweek on Australia's first female Prime Minister, the straight-shooting Julia Gillard."

It's excellent.
Baird shoots and she scores!

Newsweek
Being Julia
Australia’s new prime minister breaks the glass ceiling

By Julia Baird

What a gloriously surprising day it was when Julia Gillard became Australia’s first female prime minister.

The trumpets sounded, journalists roared, and Australian women updated their Facebook status to, simply, “Julia.” The circumstances were not ideal—she ousted a once popular prime minister, and she had not won a general election—but the significance of the moment was enormous. Finally, after centuries of bowing to queens while women were locked out of the highest echelons of political office, Australians watched a straight-shooting, unaffected woman seize the real reins of power.

Gillard, 48, the daughter of a coal miner and a former industrial-relations lawyer, has a pragmatic approach to politics and a record of fighting for better conditions for workers, and for greater numbers of women in Parliament. She is well respected and hails from the left of her party.

See the rest of the article at: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/24/being-julia.html

See her story on Gillard for the Sydney Morning Herald, her former newspaper for nine years, Lessons from sisters who fell on the way

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/lessons-from-sisters-who-fell-on-the-way-20100624-z3qr.html

Check out this SMH video: -I accept the anger: Gillard
Friday, June 25, 2010 4:33 AM
Julia Gillard tells Paul Bongiorno that she fully accepts the anger of the Australian people at the removal of Kevin Rudd.

Julia Gillard's first press conference as Australian Prime Minister.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXlUdSBOYk

For more from Julia Baird, see http://www.newsweek.com/authors/julia-baird.html

FYI: Not enough time to get into it here now, but back when I was at JFK Junior High in North Miami Beach, circa 1973-'75, my family was all set to move to Sydney. Typically, besides reading all the materials from the Australian Embassy from cover-to-cover, I made it my job to learn everything I could about Australian Rules Football, since I didn't want to show up at school and be odd man out. http://www.afl.com.au/

Not so easy in those pre-Internet days at the Lafe Allen Library in NMB. Actually, try impossible!