Go to this page. Depending on how long after you read this it may show something different. At the moment it gives this message:

An election for the House of Representatives was held on 24 November 2007 at which the Coalition Government led by the Prime Minister, the Hon John Howard MP, was defeated.
A new Government led by the Leader of the Australian Labor Party, Mr Kevin Rudd MP, is expected to be sworn in by the Governor-General in the near future. In the interim, media content is available on Mr Rudd’s website. Any comments or messages to Mr Rudd can be made through the following form – Contact the Federal Labor Leader, Mr Kevin Rudd MP.
Mr Howard will remain the caretaker Prime Minister until the new Ministry is sworn in. Until this time any comments or messages to Mr Howard can be made through the following form – Contact the Hon John Howard MP.
Archived material from the former Prime Minister’s website is available on the National Library of Australia Pandora archive.

That’s not good enough. This may be the first federal change of government in the Internet era, but the sites should be left alone so that we normal mortals can do research. At the moment I can’t easily find out anything about the previous government’s official position on education funding. Sure, I can go to Pandora, but you try navigating it!

It’s a laugh a minute on the Flegg Punch and Judy show in Queensland.
CM journalists appear ready to accept any assertion by the Nicholls camp. Here are a few, dot-point style, with some more informed comment.

• There is a convention in leadership ballots that the leader not use their casting vote. Bit hard to work out where they got this one from. The only time I can remember a leader being in a position of needing his casting vote was John Gorton in 1971. Gorton refused to use his casting vote, and was widely derided at the time. I don’t think it creates a precedent, but if it does, Nicholls ought to be wary, because the successful challenger was Billy McMahon, arguably Australia’s worst Prime Minister
• The Liberal Party State Council can change the party’s constitution to give the Party President a casting vote in a tied parliamentary leadership ballot. Only state conventions can change the constitution, and there is a process that needs to be gone through first, including consultation and notice provisions. It would be a huge philosophical change for the party organisation to be able to dictate to the parliamentary wing, raising the spectre of the “bad old days” in the ALP when Arthur Calwell and Gough Whitlam had to wait outside their party’s executive for their instructions. “Never in our party” has always been the Liberals’ response to that.
• Bruce Flegg will be unable to vote in any State Council ballot becase of his “conflict of interest”. This would indeed be a breach of precedent if Flegg was prevented from voting on this matter. If this were taken seriously, then Warwick Parer should also be excluded because he obviously has a conflict of interest too, because this is about expanding his power.

You’ve got to give the Santoro faction full marks for front. But journalists should be well aware of this and be careful not to take their assertions at face value.

Kevin Rudd has sent his troops out to investigate the plight of the homeless living in shelters in their electorates. Here’s what they are likely to find if they are diligent.

• There are only about 20,000 homeless in Australia if you are talking about people sleeping rough, not 100,000 as regularly claimed by the welfare lobby.
• About half of those are aborigines sleeping rough in the Northern Territory
• Of the other 10,000 or so, most are suffering from mental illness
• In Brisbane the figure sleeping rough is around 400
• There is a desperate shortage of emergency places for women, but reasonable supply for men
• Many people sleeping rough want to sleep rough
• Many of the people sleeping rough are only sleeping rough because the deinstutionalisation of mental patients by state governments put them there

So, there is no crisis in homelessness, but there are some needs, most significantly for women (although women are a minority of those sleeping rough). If there is a problem it is largely the product of state government neglect, as are most of the problems that Rudd has been campaigning on. It is unlikely to be solved by supplying more beds, although that will help in some circumstances, because many on the streets want to be there.
Any local member worth his or her salt ought to already know all of the above.

No, not a radical unionist – I mean Santo Santoro.
The Courier Mail has run a highly misleading story this morning about the Nicholls challenge to Flegg. It portrays Flegg as a bumbler who walked away from a leadership contest with the unjustly spurned Nicholls. In fact it is Nicholls that is the bumbler who has been unsuccessfully and illegally trying to oust Flegg on terms convenient to him.
The meeting that Nicholls called for this morning was not legally authorised. He has no power to call a meeting of the state parliamentary party. That is the leader’s prerogative, and they generally occur at regular intervals dictated by the parliamentary sitting cycle.
So, Flegg called a meeting for yesterday, as is his right, to give Nicholls the opportunity to legally move a spill motion. Nicholls declined to attend. So Flegg adjourned the meeting until the time that Nicholls had nominated today. Effectively he was saying – well if you won’t do it on my terms I’ll give you a legal opportunity to do it on your terms.
Nicholls moved a number of motions, none of which were carried. No spill, no leadership challenge. Simple as that. Flegg effectively stared him down and exposed the stupidity of his position.
Now Nicholls wants to run to the state Liberal Party organisation to sort things out for him. Even though he is the challenger, and even though the party is evenly divided, he apparently believes that he has a superior claim on the position.
The organisation ought to leave well-enough alone. It has always been its philosophical position that the parliamentary wing is separate from the organisational wing because members of parliament are elected not just to serve the party, but to serve their electorates. It is not up to the organisation to pass a vote of no-confidence in a leader. Some of the worst times for the party have been when the organisation has been at loggerheads with the parliamentary party.
Originally I thought that the game plan was to shake one of Flegg’s supporters loose, but all that has been achieved so far is to antagonise Flegg’s supporters so that they are even more committed.
Now I’m revising my opinion. There is a larger factional game on foot. The federal election campaign in Queensland was so disastrously run, that the senior office bearers of the party should resign, including State Director Geoff Greene. That would be a body blow to the Santoro faction. By launching this unsuccessful coup attempt they have successfully diverted attention from their own (non)performance to the (non)performance of the state parliamentary team.
So, if you want to know what’s happening in the Queensland Libs it appears that you need to invert whatever the CM is writing, and keep your eyes skinned for Santoro apparatchiks maneuvering behind smokescreens to reassert their positions..

Breaking news – Tim Nicholls has announced that he is challenging Bruce Flegg for the leadership of the Queensland Liberal Party tomorrow. Who is Tim Nicholls? That’s something that plenty of people are bound to be asking as he’s failed to make any impression on Queensland politics to date.
A quick google search shows Nicholls doesn’t even have his own website, and is most likely to be mentioned by the media in the context of his ambition to be leader of the Liberal Party.
He’s already had one go at the leadership, but failed to challenge because he hadn’t actually mustered any support. Tomorrow’s operation is likely to be only slightly more successful. Nicholls has 4 votes, but even in the Queensland Liberal Party, that’s only 50%. Flegg will not be emulating John Gorton and voting against himself, so assuming that the numbers hold Nicholls is going to look like a big dill.
So, who is Tim Nicholls? He’s the Santoro faction representative in the Queensland Parliament. Originally a Brisbane City Councillor he won the seat of Clayfield at the last election. Despite his lack of experience, and his unsuccessful coup attempt, Flegg has given him senior positions on the front-bench. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anything he’s said in his portfolio areas of Public Transport and Traffic Management, even though Queensland’s infrastructure is a huge local issue as the state groans under the weight of immigration.
Nicholls main claims to fame are running a constant undermining campaign against his parliamentary boss, including suggestions that he’s not mentally fit for the job, and taking $3,000 from his campaign fund to pay for an overseas trip.
This challenge appears to be the first in a fully-fledged factional war in Queensland. In this morning’s Courier Mail, Ryan MP Michael Johnson was promising to clean out the party’s top echelons and make some key office holders “walk the plank”. Those key office-holders would be most likely to be behind the Nicholls challenge.
Nicholls is running with Gold Coast MP John-Paul Langbroek as his deputy. I’m not sure why Langbroek is doing this. He’s well-regarded by all sides, but if he wins, he and Nicholls will be subjected to a long counter-offensive which will most likely maim his political prospects.
Mesmerised by the hold that John Howard appeared to have over the Australian public, most commentators have missed just how ricketty the Liberal Party machine is. Undoubtedly the poor financial position and managerial ability of the Queensland Liberal Party contributed to Labor’s big swing in Queensland. Without Howard to glue it together, it looks to be about to deliver even more to Rudd.

Imagine if Peter Costello had become Prime Minister during the course of the last parliament. It’s one thing to have the heir apparent stump-off in high dudgeon – another to have the leader and defeated Prime MInister do so.
No wonder his colleagues were never prepared to trust him with the leadership.

There are only a very few things that I would count as real personal political achievements that have had national significance. One was obviously crafting the strategy that won the 1995 Queensland state election. Another, was making sure that Mal Brough won the preselection for Longman in the same year. I should add that I’m not claiming sole responsibility for either of these.
I thought Brough might hang on in this election. At the same time I picked his seat and Forde as ones that it was improbable that the Liberal Party held by safe margins, and which should naturally fall to Labor. My first judgement was sentiment, and my second has proved to be real.
Brough was one of the few people with the talent to go all the way that the Queensland Liberal Party has preselected in the 30 years since I have been a member. The proof is that even though his seat has never been safe, his rise was meteoric.
But Mal has more than talent – he has commitment, he has principal, and he has honesty.
Some thought he could be a future prime minister.
He proved his strength and integrity when he made his concession speech tonight a plea to the new federal government to stay his course on aboriginal relations. Most concession speeches were about the retiring member, and most victory speeches were about the new member. Mal’s speech was about others. It was about the federal government’s intervention in the Northern Territory.
Some saw the federal government intervention as a political wedge. I never did, because I knew that Brough was driving it, and Brough isn’t into wedges.
I could write a lot about Brough, and may well yet do so. At this stage I would just like to record my regret that he has lost his seat, and my hope that the Liberal Party can find him another one.
Australia needs conviction politicians now, more than ever.

11 days ago I blogged about the Prime Minister’s reaction to a woman being knocked down in front of him. I said it might have been a defining moment in the campaign, but I never expected there to be a book-end to the incident.

When school girl Rebecca Sanders fainted and fell over during a Kevin Rudd press conference, it was the future Prime Minister who knelt to help her – a clear contrast to Howard. These two incidents truly do define the campaign.

Now, I know this isn’t his fault, but when a woman is knocked to the ground in front of you and you just walk away, perhaps you owe someone an apology.

In this campaign this could be the defining moment that Mark Latham’s “muscle-up” was in the last one.