I don’t know if I’m the only one who reads one of the outcomes of Saturday’s Federal election this way, but it seems clear to me that the Australian electorate has picked up the cudgel and is smiting the Democrats for their sins.

For those who may have forgotten, two elections back the Democrats rode a promise to oppose the introduction of a goods and services tax (GST) to their best-ever electoral result. Presumably power-drunk on their new level of influence, the Democrats then-leader Meg Lees negotiated a deal that allowed the GST to be introduced by the Howard government. It cost Lees her party’s leadership, her political career, and now the party seems to be poised on the edge of oblivion. Speaking as a voter who expressly changed his vote that year to support the Democrats and oppose the GST, I couldn’t be happier. The Democrats deserved then, and deserve now, to be removed from the Australian political landscape, and that seems to be happening. There’s a real chance they won’t even have the support to continue to be registered as a political party. Good. No retreat, no surrender and no forgiveness. Ever.