To my mind their worst strategic mistake in pursuit of blind ideology was their elimination of compulsory student unionism in complete denial of the fact that the current generation of Liberal leaders had been immeasurably strengthened by their experience of being on the receiving end of the natural tendency for the young to be more progressive. They then compounded the standard conservative trap of wanting to protect their gains with a particularly Anglo-Australian determination to go soft on the next generation.

So Howard, having exhausted more tolerable members of his own generation like Vanstone, Williams and the best of the Nats, now anoints Costello to become the Libs' Beazley, left with only the perversely likable but accident-prone Abbott, Kev's mate Joe and the unscrutinised Turnbull adding a hint of humanity to take focus away from the horror rump of Andrews, the Bishop sisters, Nelson and Ruddock. (From where I sit, Coonan's increasing ineptitude with people's real and growing use of emerging technologies faded her faster than a passing comet and Downer was a lost cause long before Rudd's rise to prominence as effectively acting foreign minister.)

Now back to my usual program, Greening the Senate, but starting out with a homage to the underpublicised (outside SA) Nick Xenophon phenomenon, and after a disclaimer that I've only bothered downloading the Victorian above the line preferences (and read about Nick's on his website).

With Nick pulling just over a quota out of the SA pool, the "major" parties have dropped from close to 3 to around 2.5 leaving the SA Green with also around 0.5 to pick up enough from Nick's surplus and left wing minors to be ahead of Labor when the Libs get Family First's to take a short lived lead. So as well as getting himself in as an independent, Nick has opened the door to keeping the majors to two each in SA.

Something similar is likely in the West, but this time because the Libs held up well above 3 quotas with the West having lost its fantasy of a local boy in The Lodge compounding other parochial issues and their surplus likely to elect the WA Green ahead of Labor.

In Victoria the Greens actually polled much better than in the states further west, but with Labor still needing a handful of preferences to fill its third quote, the final spot will come down to a head to head between the Vic Green and the third Lib/Nat which will almost certainly go against the Greens by the narrowest of margins.

In Tas, the Green 0.25 quota surplus ensures a very clean 3:2:1 result while everywhere else looks certain to split 50:50, the only interesting detail being that Pauline appears to have crept over the 4% barrier that will keep her our of the poor house for at least one more campaign.

While I'd like to think Mal Brough's dumping by a 10.7% swing in his electorate reflected reservations about his misconceived "intervention", it is likely to be a lot more significant that Caboolture is midway between Nambour and Brisbane. Clearly enough locals have a fondness for Rudd and Swan to give us some confidence. Even more clearly, most everyone loves Julia.