Australian Election is on.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is in election mode. The executive will meet shortly and is expected to announce its candidates soon after. We still have some seats available so those who have not committed should grab the chance to be on the team.

Around three weeks ago Gillard was put in power by the unions and claimed that she would be the fixer and sort out the problems the government had caused which she blamed on Rudd, even though she had clearly been involved in every decision the government had made. Now she has panicked and decided that rather than try to fix the mess she and Rudd have left the nation in her best option is to go to the polls now before her reputation starts to really stink with voters.

She has had a fairly minimal media honeymoon largely owing to her inability to do anything right since getting the top job.

Her one success if it could be called that was when she did a sweetheart deal with three major mining companies on tax to the detriment of all others. In order to do this she was forced to reduce the rate they will pay and restrict it to coal and iron ore. Even the press was not impressed with the obviously falsified figures presented after the deal was made, and said so. It is difficult to tell why these companies agreed to ‘deal’ on having an additional tax placed on their profits, but it can be safely assumed that making it more difficult for competitors to raise investment capital would be high on their agendas.

Other mining companies now face an uncertain future, given that once the resource rent tax is in place she can extend it at will, increase the rate at will, include other minerals at will, and extend it to other industries at will. These three companies have been naïve at best and have sold out the mining industry, not saved it. Their shareholders should be calling extraordinary meetings and sacking their boards. The major coal and iron ore mining states of Queensland and Western Australia will bear the brunt of this in order to support the others.

Since then she has failed at a new attempt at a Howard style Pacific solution, to deal with the people smuggler problem, and caused a diplomatic row by announcing she was building a refugee detention centre in East Timor without consulting their government, preferring to do a quick ‘phone a friend’ to their President. Their government has voted the proposal down.

The last straw for her was the details of Rudd’s political knifing being leaked to the media. She has to have the election now, while she is only on the nose, instead of waiting until she is putrefying. She is managing to make Abbott look good despite his efforts to thwart her.