THE Olympics are over and it's back to the real world, with the Baulkham Hills Shire council elections just two weeks off.

Sonya Phillips will retire as mayor but will still run her party, Community First. Her fate is like that of retiring editors many will miss her, many won't.

Les Shore and John Griffiths go, after distinguished

community service over many, many years.

The Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party

are running as endorsed teams and will no doubt

polarise the vote.

Labor is up against it, thanks in part to a backlash from an incompetent State Government led by the hapless Morris Iemma. Labor's power-sharing deal with Community First that saw our mayor and deputies swap hats among themselves also outraged many in the community.

Two small teams that individually didn't have the numbers merged on policy by agreement and controlled the council. The lesson wasn't lost on Liberal Party wheelers and dealers.

Time and time again in the past eight years, I've heard people say: ''Where are the Liberal Party candidates?'' Well, they were posing as ''independents'' because many backroom kingmakers and politicians didn't want an endorsed party team in council elections. Some still don't.

That changed in The Hills when the right-wing

rolled the old guard and out-foxed the wily, long-term Mitchell MP, Alan Cadman. Now the hand of Christian right-winger Alex Hawke, 30, who replaced Cadman, is firmly on the wheel and the Liberals aim to take back the council from the infidels. And they should do it, too.

Meanwhile, there's been a sudden outbreak of

peace amongst the Lib factions.

As one insider said: ''The party has finally

concluded factional warfare was earning too many wrong headlines, so now it's a united ticket front.''

At the recent Liberal fund-raiser in the Castle Hill RSL, the factional warlords, ex-state MP Michael Photios (1988-'99, left-wing) and Upper House MP David Clarke (right-wing) sat down with a raft of MPs, state executive members and guests - 250 all up - at a $120-a-plate dinner.

State opposition leader Barry O'Farrell bagged

out Iemma - not hard to do - and raised $1000 singing for his supper in a duet with Pat Nattai, wife of the rose grower. A party stalwart paid $10,000 for a chopper flight over Palm Beach in the spirit of bonhomie. Ah, to be at peace, at last.

Let's see if the factional stand-off lasts beyond the council elections.