Mate, I thought it was a hoot when John Howard and Peter Costello, who wouldn't punt up broadband in the bush for the farmers, set up myspace sites before the election: Howard probably wouldn't even know how to log on (and geez, I'm glad they're gone).

The headline the next day in The Daily Telegraph was a beauty:

"Space invaders"

That's good as gold.

Although, it feels really weird to have Howard suddenly disappear. Before the election results I remember Howard being all over the papers, radio, television... and now it feels like he only existed as a bizzare dream that we've all woken up to.

Had he not lost his seat, his disappearance would have felt more natural and gradual.

Perhaps he was just a hologram that appeared out of the gates of Kirribilli House every morning with his security detail, then vanished as the sun came up a bit and the angle changed, only to reappar later at a different angle, in say, Canberra??

I believe the real clue to this is that the former PM was never seen trying a risky second facial expression.

Just wondering, Jonathan and Stan: how much time are you going to give Rudd and his boys and girls to repeal the hated WorkChoices legislation before you all get pissed off with them and toss them out on their ears? How aware are they of the need to avoid sitting around Canberra with opposable digits inserted into colons with regard to this issue?

Well, I'm kind of expecting the legislation to go through by mid next year. The liberals have finally admitted that the legislation was a liability, and if they show any further support then the odds are they will remain out of power.

Of course if Rudd doesn't take sufficient action in the first two years, I'll consider voting against them. Whether I would depends on whether the coalition reforms itself.

That's where you and I split at the fork in the road Johnno ... I'll never vote for the bastards.

I voted for themonce - in a State election because the sitting member was a family friend and it was such a safe liberal seat that the Labor man was never a chance of getting up anyway, and it meant I could look him fair in the eye, and say: "Neil, if course I voted for you". This was even though I'd worked for the ALP.

My parents, though ... dfferent ball ganme. My father was an out and out Liberal voter, although my mother didn't like it when they moved too far to the right and quire often voted for Labor to, as she put it, send "those buggers a message".

I heard them arguing about it one night - hilarious. My mother had a bit more compassion, even though we were pretty comfortable in the great scheme of things.

I just don't trust the Libs though after Howard's WorkChoices pea and thimble trick. That really frightened people, and it frightened the people he'd courted as his so-called "aspirational voters".

Yeah, that's fair enough. I guess I take the approach that I would rather be a swinging voter than someone entrenched in supporting either party. I mean, my default is pretty much labour because Dad is in the teachers union and I cannot bring myself to believe in liberal values.

However, that said, I do worry about some aspects of social policy. The reason Howard was able to do what he liked had a lot more to do with a weak opposition. It keeps policy makers on their toes, and cautious about keeping in mind the stake holders in society.

* A strong opposition, I should say, keeps policy makers on their toes.

Ah yes, too true, but I do I think we get it right in this country: "Oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them".

I reckon that's pretty close in Howard's case. It wasn't the AWA contracts that frightened peopkle though. In plenty of cases, they are good - and everyone is sick of the unions and how they used to carry on. But that was a long time ago now, and well before Howard came to power. And the truth is, the unions are the ones who gave us ALL what we have now and it should be ours to keep even if we sick of their shenanigans.

In Howard's case, it was taking it that one step further - removing our rights altogether at a time of great prosperity. Even most employers (and most ARE honest) hated it because a happy workforce is a productive workforce.

You know how we both agree that Aussies aren't generally rights-driven like Americans because we just take it as a given that we have them - well, try taking away an Aussie's right to a minimum four weeks' a year annual leave, holiday loading, night and weekenmd penalty rates and the right not to be dismissed summarily except for sackable offences without it going through the courts, and the right to work overtime so you can pay your mortgage and see how rights-driven we are then.

As John Howard found out in no uncertain terms, we most certainly are rights-driven in certain areas - we just don't bang on about it all the time.

And as Howard also found out, you can't live in a country built on the notion of "a fair go for everyone" and then stamp on that notion and take away everything that's taken many decades to build without a backlash.

The greatest thing about modern Australia: No one is better than anyone else in this country (anyone can become a Prime Minister here, even if they had to live in a car when they were a kid, like Kevin Rudd after his family lost the farm), and when people start to think they are or begin trying to foster that notion by tipping a bucket of shit on it, they will have that shit returned in spades.

As Howard also found out :)

And that mate, is what I love about this country and why I think it's the best in the world (bar none, and apologies to our more fervent and patriotic American mates).

Jonathan, Stan - as our Down Under correspondents, what is your take on the internet filtering legislation the new guvmint wants to introduce?

As I understand it, it goes a lot further than just requiring ISPs to make filtering services available - they will HAVE to filter all pornographic and violent content, and customers will have to actually contact their ISP to get the filters removed.

Sounds a bit Chinese to me...

If it keeps absolute filfth from young kids, all well and good. I don't have a problem with it :)

Having had personal experience here (I needed to contact two mates who have a surf shop at Manly called Dripping Wet. When I googled it, guess what???? Dopey me. Then a friend's kid was doing a school project about Canada and googled "beaver", which as you know in Australia doesn't mean more than a dam-building furry animal. You can imagine what happened there.

I think the legislation applies to schools and to parents who want to administer it. Filtering isn't compulsory except in schools, as I understand it.

C'mon Doc, this is Australia, they can't make us do anything ... that's probably the real reason we have compulsory voting. If they didn't, everyone would be at the beach or the pub.

It's only a proposal BTW Doc, people are already jumping up and down about it because it barely addressed during the election. The papers have already slammed the government over the proposal today, which makes it K. Rudd's first crisis. It won't happen, but there will be blocks for schools and that's already in existence but will be upgraded.

And the plan - forget China - is based on similar stuff happening in the UK and Scandinavia. I think the real aim is to stop paedophiles. Still, censorship is censorship. In Scandinavia, people trying to access certain pages are redirected - to a police page.

Parental control filters are offered by just about every ISP worldwide. But what concerned me about this one was the reversal of the paradigm: the notion that to have the filter removed, you would have to ask your ISP to do so. You would, presumably, actually have to phone them or e-mail them and say, "I, Bruce McFlasher, customer number 88579, wish to look at porn, so could you please remove the blocks." That is an invasion of privacy and is why there's been all the hoo-ha.

Like I said though, Doc .. it won't happen. It CAN'T happen. Imagine that: a Labor government getting people to ring up their providers and say: "Excuse me, but I'd really like to look at p.rn". Everyone's already jumping up and down about it. We've had newspaper op-ed and editorials across the country going on about it, and nearly every letter in this morning's tele was about telling the "nanny state" to get out of people's lives. Fair enough too. We like you Kev, but start p.ssing us about like Little Johnny did.

I'm sure Rudd, having seen what happened to Howard when he ignored people's wishes, wouldn't be stupid enough.

Besides which, Canberra and the NT (I think) are the only places in Australia where you can buy p.rn (not the soft-core stuff, the proper stuff) ... even Howard let that one stay, despite his desire to take us back to the 1950s.

It could prove to be Rudd's first crisis though if he pushes on with it.

You know, we all voted for him because we thought he'd come up with a vision for the future, and in the first piece of major legislation (apart from WorkChoices=No Choices and climate change) they're proposing, they are taking us back to the Menzies era.

Like they say up your way, go figure ...

Nevertheless, I'd like to see paedophiles off the net - somehow. Don't know how you go about that one though.

Personally, I suspect the policy was cooked up to get a specific demographic on side.... paranoid parents who are scared of the internet. I ran into quite a few when I sold Optus door to door.

However, if they actually push it through... I will shamelessly campaign for the right to porn, and try to get GET-UP on my side if I can.

Of course, I honestly doubt it would get through the senate.