"Howard's End": bovver boys put the boot in

The Four Corners program on ABC1 last night, which detailed the Liberal Party response to the 2007 Coalition federal election loss, was a study of collective political denial.
It exposed a folie a deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six...... Abbott, Costello, Downer, Hockey, Minchin, McFarlane.

In Howard's End it is painfully obvious that the Liberals are still telling themselves that they lost the election because they had been in government for too long with the same leader and were not perceived as 'fresh'.
Only Andrew Robb came close to understanding why they lost when he articulated some understanding of the party's failure to listen to the electorate and it's abuse of Senate processes.

In their pathetic attempt to redeem themselves and distance the Liberal Party from its own failings, Abbott & Co. heaped blame on an intransigent John Howard as if he alone was responsible for loss of government.
The plain fact of the matter is that the Howard Government lost power because of the collective weight of SEIV X, Children Overboard, successive ministerial improprieties, its part in the Coalition of the Willing and war in Iraq, Immigration Department unlawful imprisonment and deportation of Australian citizens, AWB Ltd scandal, WorkChoices, failure to ratify Kyoto, abuse of parliamentary processes, excessive government spending on 'political' advertising, new sedition laws, the removal of habeas corpus from certain parts of the C'wealth Criminal Code, suspension of racial discrimination law in relation to the NT Intervention, and the sheer arrogance and insensitivity of its leader and his ministers.
This is by no means the entire list of the 'sins' which irked voters but it does cover those most mentioned in ordinary conversation.

The Liberal Party's ongoing failure to understand why it lost the confidence of voters is reflected in its current boast that it will use its Senate numbers to thwart the repeal of WorkChoices legislation and the abolition of Australian Workplace Agreements.

All in all, the bovver boys needn't have bothered - last night's foray into the media did nothing but confirm that the Liberal Party remains unfit for government.