If you become a citizen just before the election then you can vote if you like, but you won't be fined if you don't.

This happened to me with the Victoria state election in 2010 - my ceremony was 2 days before the election. When handing in my electoral roll form on the night, the electoral commission person told me that I wouldn't get fined if I don't vote - but if I chose to vote then I would need to fill out a form on the day and vote as if it were an absentee vote. I chose not to vote!

this 8-month torture is shit. why cant we have the election now before i become citizen. that way i wont have to be part of this circus until after 3 years!

Ahhhhhhh. Electioneering ads on BE.
Am I eligible for the school bonus? Probably not.

Is it me or does Gillard and her party seem to be increasing their blunders now that they've announced the election date? ...Or maybe it's just the chickens coming home to roost

It's you. Libs cannot seem to decide if the policy is a policy let alone whether it is costed. Both parties are under increased scrutiny.

at the rate my citizenship application is progressing, i may have no other choice than drawing smileys in boxes and writing 1 beside a handwritten ellen degeneres.

Nah, I don't think so. For now the libs are off the hook on that, given Julia's latest "scheme"" - the early announcement of an election date. Labor are looking far worse. They should have been "all hands on deck" but instead are even more disorganised and less united than ever. They're no better than Gordon Brown's rabble were.

Really? That move people ooooop north thing leak was a good screw up by the libs. The labour screw up reports have dropped compared to before. The carbon tax has not cause the world to collapse along with the contents of Abbotts speedos. Today's news is about how little policy the libs have and their previous policies have fallen into an uncosted heap. When the good denizens of BE reckon Gillard is now hot the writing is on the wall.

the difference is not the blunders, but how they are reported. Anything Labor orientated is immediately front page news on all of the main news sites and publications. Take a look at news.com.au 's current main story. It's not even a story, but it is a great opportunity to stick the boot into Labor and brainwash the populace into voting Liberal

I would

Yeah, I had noticed just how biased the news had gotten just after the election was announced. All the stories of disunity in labor are coming from the newspapers, then being reported by the newspapers as some kind of fact. Typical fox news type of behaviour. Somehow similar stories of the other side aren't being reported.

The question is when the counter attack comes. Its relatively simple to line up the evidence of biased reporting, but what do you do? If you go in hard the papers will bleat about press freedom. If you point out the failures of the other side, its situation normal. You need somehow to force the papers into unbiased behaviour, but without allowing them to act aggrieved.

Nice trick, but one that if there is a solution, is probably lined up.

+1

Swings and roundabouts really - before the 2007 election it was the other way around, practically every mainstream news report was pro-Labor and anti-Liberal/Coalition. Just something for the media outlets to grab onto.

Hopefully both sides will see sense and install Rudd and Turnbull as leaders again, as it seems the preferred situation.

Not News ltd media. They are an extension of the liberals campaign wing.

News includes the Telegraph, Fox, Channel 10 (who else would give that nob Bolt a program) , The Unaustralian.