Where did it all go wrong? The Howard haters have his blood dripping from their fangs and the post mortems will roll on. The Coalition campaign was all over the place and featured several “own goals” including the performance of Tony Abbott, the destabilisation by Malcolm Turnbull over Kyoto and the final embarrassing and shameful Muslim how to vote card, orchestrated by stupid Jackie Kelly and her mates. Interspersed were criticisms of Kevin Andrews by some of his colleagues over Haneef and Sudanese refugees – all contributing to the reality of a government with internal problems. John Howard will regret his “the Liberal Party is a broad church” mantra.

The most damaging destabilisation of the Liberal Party was that embarked upon by Peter Costello some time ago which left him looking like a sulky school kid. The Libs’ leadership mess was manna from heaven for Kevin Rudd who was able to exploit Howard’s refusal to budge and the unpopularity of Costello. With the benefit of hindsight, Howard should have passed the baton and bowed out with honour leaving Peter Costello to show us how good he was. With Costello’s shock resignation we now know how pathetic he really is! Will Alexander Downer be next?

Labor’s deal with the dangerous Greens paid off in spades but there must be a price for supping with the devil! Fanatically parochial Queensland embraced the opportunity to have a PM and Treasurer and the demographic of the 18-29 year olds was ignored by the Coalition. Work Choices had a muddied history and it affected young people working in hospitality and the huge union campaign against it paid off but not in WA.

It is now very clear that more and more electorates are having their fate determined by ethnic minorities. How ironic that John Howard was held hostage by the ethnic make up of Bennelong and found himself unable to run any policy on refugees, immigration, multiculturalism and Muslims. As this trend develops, Australia will move inexorably towards the social chaos starting to bite in Europe and the UK. The Labor Party that saved Sheik Hilaly from deportation has form in ethnic branchstacking.

Rudd’s “me tooism” was breathtaking and it’s hardly worth getting steamed up by the pathetic failure of the media to subject him to scrutiny. The Libs may well try to use this strategy in reverse until they realise the futility of that. A shattered and ageing Liberal membership base will have no influence on its MPs. Where will the Libs recruit new blood to run its state and federal machines? – hardheaded men and women with real life experience who have been off the bitumen? How will the Libs make connection with the 18-29 year olds? I may well not live to see another conservative(?) government again – but I will never forget that our new PM said that he was so drunk that he couldn’t remember!