Michael Gorey

I’m still tipping a Coalition victory in the Federal Election. I think a few seats will change hands in both directions for mainly local reasons. I don’t expect there will be a consistent nationwide swing, which is what Labor needs to win.

I think the Greens will replace the Democrats as the minor party with the most seats, but watch out for a strong showing from Family First in the Senate and Pauline Hanson.

Latham was slightly bolder than Howard in the vision stakes, but insufficiently so to shift people out of the comfort zone. The big downside for Latham was his inadequate tax policy, in which some of his target audience earning below $52,000 per year were shown to be losers.

Despite the left-leaning media suggesting otherwise, Howard played the Tasmanian forest issue just right. Green voters were never going to support him anyway, so it was clever to pitch for working class votes from the timber industry. It could swing at least two Tasmanian seats away from Labor.

These articles might be of interest:

• Election spin
• Clever John Howard
• Election outcome