Rory's Rambling
An Occasional Column from the Antipodes	by Rory Gordon, Australia

I have no doubt that you all were sitting on the edges of your seats, waiting for the result of the general election in Australia. After all, such an election in such a country can have a startling effect on the world political and economic conditions and may well have had an impact on the political and economic situation in your country, even to the extent of affecting your "hip-pocket nerve". For those few of you who have somehow managed to evade all and any knowledge of this critical election, let me run through a few of the salient points for you, just so you have an idea of what it was all about. In 1996, one of Australia's main political parties, the Australian Labor Party (ALP), lost the general election in a landslide to the Liberal/National Coalition (Libs), the other main Australian political party. In simplistic terms, the ALP is the social welfare party and the Libs are the business party - in political terms, the ALP is left-wing and the Libs are right-wing. [Before we go any further, I'll put my cards on the table, and tell you that, although I'm one of the pet hates of politicians in that I'm a "swinging" voter, I do tend to sympathise with and vote for the ALP.] The Libs got into power then on the strength of their economic plans, on the electorate's disillusionment with the perceived arrogance of the ALP's then-Prime Minister, Paul Keating, and also, I believe, on the electorate's idea that, after 10-plus years of ALP rule, it was the "turn" of the Libs. Since then, the Libs, under Prime Minister John Howard, have had a couple of small victories and, in my view (which is probably biased), a lot of failures. But I won't bother going into details here, because both parties have skeletons in their closets that they would prefer the voters forgot about. So to the campaign itself. Ummmm, what campaign? Errrr, what election? This was the campaign you have when you're having the election nobody - except the politicians it seems - cares about. Basically, it all boiled down to economics. Oh, there were some promises made by both sides, but the electorate learnt their lesson the last time when a soon-to-be minister said there would be no cut in money for the publicly-funded national broadcaster, the ABC. After the election, we learned that this had been a "non-core" promise, so it didn't have to be kept, and the ABC's funding was cut. The main issue was the (Lib) Government's intention to bring in a GST to replace the plethora of various other taxes and imposts. That's a Good and Services Tax. Known in many other countries around the world as Value Added Tax - the VAT. The (ALP) Opposition was against this, if for no other reason than being against a GST seemed like a vote-winner, it seemed. The Libs went into the election with a huge majority, needing to lose somewhere over 25 seats (in a 148-seat lower house) to lose power. In the end, it was close ... very close ... but the Libs retained power, even though more people voted for the ALP than voted for the Libs (that's a statement that could be interpreted in a number of different ways, but I'm trying to keep it fairly simple and not get into a discussion here about voting systems). Basically, the ALP didn't manage to gain votes in the seats where they needed those votes to gain the seat, but instead gained votes in "safe" seats. Oh, there were some other issues in the campaign, because no political campaign is ever as simple as I've made this one out to be, but that's what it all boiled down to. So now, you should all be "up to speed" on the election. For those of you who knew all this already - no doubt, the vast majority(!) - my apologies for having gone through it all. There are a couple of quirks to this election, however. The first one I've already mentioned: the Lib Government got 48% of the vote, while the ALP Opposition got 51% of the vote. However, because of where those votes came in, the Libs probably will have 92 seats and the ALP 49, with Independents another 7 with three by-elections looming on the immediate horizon, and the possibility that the Government might have a majority, presuming they lost every by-election, of 20 seats (think about it ... strange as it may seem, the mathematics does add up!). From this result, you might say that the Libs have a "mandate" (whatever that word actually means) to introduce their GST, and that is what Mr Howard, the Prime Minister, is saying. But... That was the result from the lower house, the House of Representatives. In the upper house, the Senate, the result was just a little bit different. Roughly, the Libs ended up with 37 seats, the ALP with 28, and the remaining 11 seats going to other parties and an Independent. So, while the Libs have a probable (the final results aren't through as I write) absolute majority in the lower house, and thus can push through any legislation they like, it's quite a different story in the upper house, where they will have to woo at least a couple of Senators over to their side. Where's the mandate now? Okay, I'll take my tongue out of my cheek now, stop rambling on about an election that most of you didn't even know about and probably care less about. What on earth does all this have to do with F1? Just in case you hadn't noticed, this season came with a number of fairly significant changes in the rules regarding chassis and tyres. While the primary idea was to improve safety, another idea was to improve the "racing" - whatever that actually means. Apparently, it seems that some surveys had shown that a large number of those surveyed wanted to see closer "action", more overtaking, and so on. So, the FIA, with its supposed mandate from these surveys, imposed (however you look at it) the rule changes. Ummm. Closer action? More overtaking? Hmmm. I don't know about you, but I haven't noticed a serious difference from recent previous seasons. I wonder where the FIA's mandate is now. But that's just me.

Rory Gordon	© 1998 Atlas Formula One Journal.
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