Exciting week

[gdt]

Let's review.

Dirty tricks. Pollies unable to simply show up. Slapping journalists. Liberal Party loses government, John Howard loses his parliamentary seat and thus leadership of the Parliamentary Liberal Party, Peter Costello does not nominate for leadership of the Party and intends to retire from Parliament. Worst of all, the journalist's journalist Matt Price dies.

My call about Nick X getting 1.5 quotas was spot-on. The ALP actually did poorly in South Australia, not picking up the southern suburbs of Greater Adelaide which they could have been expected to win. There's no national reason to explain that; local factors don't help either: one seat had a poor candidate, one seat had an excellent candidate; which leads to state factors. Maybe state factors do determine federal votes when all governments are the same party?

I think we're about to see the Mother of All Razor Gangs go through Federal spending. These new lads and lasses cut their teeth in state government administration. I think they've been appalled at "government spending like a frequent flyer programme" rewards for loyalty schemes of the late Howard era.