Uptick For John Howard In Polls - "Lazarus Stirs." Wrong - It Was Just The Flies Moving - SMH

[hatrack]

The end of the line. Remember that heading in the Herald a few weeks back, after one of the opinion polls bumped up the Government's lousy standing a point or two? "Lazarus stirs", it said optimistically of John Howard. Wrong. It was just the flies moving. Yesterday, in the nation's Parliament, with hardly a politician to be seen anywhere, we got some election realism. Three rows of recycling bins, whacking big green ones with yellow lids. More than 300 of them.

Where? In the basement corridor of the ministerial wing. The bins seemed a more apt commentary than all the desperate, last-minute Coalition windbaggery going on around the nation on what is about to descend on the Prime Minister after 33 years in public life and almost 12 years remaking Australia in his own miserable, disfigured image. They arrived two days ago and whoever they're for, 48 hours before a single vote is cast today, you felt somebody, somewhere, finally got it right. The end of the line.

Howard doesn't think so, obviously. "Everybody at some point has to retire and depart the scene," he told ABC Radio's Chris Uhlmann yesterday, "and what I'm doing is not to mislead the public, to lay out my plans , to say there will be a transition well into the next term. It will be Peter Costello, the second most experienced person in public life and who's been at the centre of Australia's economic strength for the last 11½ years. You see, we are a team …"

Uhlmann: "But if you're not done after 11½ years, when will you be done? When can Australians make a change?" Howard: "Well, it's a question of assessing what is good for the country. You keep focusing on the personalities. I just ask Australians, particularly those who haven't made up their mind, if they think our nation is fundamentally going in the right direction. I ask them not to change the government, because when you change the government, you do change the direction of the country." Indeed you do.

EDIT
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/recycled-rejected-and-right-off-the-rails/2007/11/23/1195753306675.html