The economic stimulus package was almost certainly the main reason Australia escaped the GFC, a system failure caused by a financial market out of control i.e. inadequately regulated (and it still is).
Rudd made the mistake with the school building programme of putting a bucket of money in front of state governments. Even the money ripped out of the schools programme provided stimulus but in secondary markets rather than in the building industry as desired by the Federal Government. Instead of public schools having the full benefits of better educational assets and private homes good insulation, public service employees and private small business rogues have had some of the benefits.
I started pointing out to the Howard Government in 1998 that their policies would cause the younger generation to be priced out of the housing market and in January 2007 wrote to the SMH stating that economies were going to go over a cliff if the then policies continued.
Howard and Costello's policy of letting the financial market "rip" was wrong but they were only following the idiotic financial policies of the Thatcherites from Reagan to George W.

Julia Gillard has the perfect opportunity.

Kevin Rudd can be blamed for the failings of the last two and a half years, either implicitly or explicitly. All she has to do is suggest something different and that will separate her administration from his.

Her promise of an election in 2010 will guarantee a benefit from the honeymoon phase at that poll. She then has three years to consolidate her position.

We'd better get used to the idea of a long period of Labor rule.

The Sage, "We'd better get used to the idea of a long period of Labor rule."

Just as we have to get used to an opposition that is bereft of policies and relies on its tired old rhetoric of fear and jealousy. One of the few significant 'policy' statements by Abbott was that he is going to give disability pensioners a right flogging if he got in.

mikk,

You are wrong when you say, “He never could countenance negotiating with the greens(thats(sic) how we got Fielding)”. Kevin Rudd was not even Opposition Leader when Steve Fielding was elected in 2004.

We got Steve Fielding in the same way that we get every other state senator. He won a quota of 14.3 per cent of the vote. That he did it on preferences is neither here nor there. Labor preferenced him above the Greens because Family First preferenced a Labor candidate in return. Had Labor’s votes been higher, FF preferences would have elected an extra Labor senator. It was a perfectly reasonable agreement to come to. Anyone who did not like it was free to vote below the line - something I always do.

Intelligent Labor supporters understand that the Greens are not Labor’s friends but its rivals. Labor does not want to be dependent on the Greens in the Upper House. That is why it is pleased to have one DLP MLC in the Victorian Legislative Council as the two Labor parties voting together can defeat any Greens/Opposition motions.

It is quite extraordinary that many of those disappointed in Kevin Rudd’s deferral of the ETS have shifted their votes to the party that helped defeat it; i.e., the Greens.

Kevin Rudd had a good heart and a good vision for a better Australia. His government was a genuinely reformist one. However, his method of implementation (including all the spin), was a very big problem and this brought him down

Whatever internal conflicts were created, such as fighting the economic stimulus with higher interest rates, or worsening the housing shortage through the insulation program and the builder's early retirement program, it's fortunate Rudd didn't manage to follow through on what would have been his greatest triumph. Fighting the current global cooling with policies to stop global warming would have been the ultimate train wreck for the Australian economy.

Fair enough. I was wrong about Rudd being to blame for foisting Fielding on us. He still refused point blank to deal with the greens over the biggest environmental issue the world has yet seen. Silly silly boy. Labor will soon have no choice but to deal with them and the last three years will have been an exercise in wasted belligerence that cost Kevin his job.