Time for a little change

But there won't be much change left over from a $100,000,000.00 spending campaign financed by the public purse for the benefit of the pollies whose noses are in the public trough.

This from Jack Waterford opining in the Canberra Times:

As the Auditor-General's report this week showed for the few for whom it had not long been obvious the [John Howard Liberal/National Coalition Australian] Government, particularly the National Party, has also long been using taxpayer dollars on scads of blatantly partisan local grants and bribes. The party's political machinery has also been closely, and improperly, hooked into the information and intelligence data properly gathered (for other purposes) by government agencies in a way that may be difficult for the new government to disentangle.

Never has so much been offered to so many.

The Government has made maximum use of incumbency, well into the zone of plain impropriety. It has spent more than $100 million of taxpayers' money on partisan political ads.

But the voters, it seems clear, are sick and tired of the Howard Government and want it out.

They do not, it seems, actually hate Howard as such; indeed, in many respects they hold him in a certain affection and respect. But they think he's had his day, it's time for change.

Howard has probably been more hurt by the perception of having slipped in workplace reform without consent, of being generally mean minded, and of seemingly being more and more hopelessly out of touch with public concern about the greenhouse effect.

There are signs as well that Coalition candidates recognise that Howard has no coat tails....