I believe that Anna is starting to realise that our nonrenewable, non value added resources, is not as wonderful to our economy as we have been led to believe. The export trade requires reciprocal imports, and the excessive export of all this coal, iron ore, natural gas, uranium, ores of copper and lead and more, requires us to import an equivalent value of goods, and the foreign goods you see in the shops, whether they are cars, trucks, TV's, radios, MPS's, perfume, toys, computers – name it, if it is foreign made, it has been traded for something Australia has exported and while some of it is undoubtedly welcome, too many of these sort of imports have been the destruction of the industries we had in Australia previously, employing our workers. Apparently, John Howard brought in a rule, that as long as a person had regular work, even if it was only one hour a week, they were not unemployed, and although many are “unemployed” for two or three days a week, they are officially listed as not “unemployed”, if they were, the unemployment level would be 17% or 20%.
You won't find any agreement with me by the newspapers, as the wealth they get from the advertisements and promotion etc that they get from the mining companies, far outweighs the conscience of their management on any of my remarks

the beattie govt was elected in 1998. How do you get 22 years?

Shal,

Simple Shal ... you only have to have one eye, have it focused only on Labor and live in a pretend world.