Let's look at your list.

1. A fascinating statistic which you don't expand. According to Wikipedia, Savage was the architect of NZ's welfare state, which has been such a raging success that we now have nearly 20% of the NZ population living and working in Australia.

2. Is Australia really so highly regarded? The UN security council seat cost big bucks and I'm still not sure what we get for those bucks. Ditto for the G20, which is also costing mondo spondulicks and let's face it, the Pacific Island Forum is composed of nations who rely on Austrlia either directly in the form of aid, or indirectly through money repatriated by their citizens who live and work here. "Nanna, you can be chairperson".

3.Gillard got that ovation because she was a feminist woman leader of a country that has embraced feminism like no other and as a result is a consumer products marketer's dream, with 80% of all disposable income in the control of women and about 2/3 as many single parent families as couples with children.Nearly 20% of that income is derived from benefits.

4.Indonesia has pushed Australia around on every bilateral issue since the ALP (Rudd and Gillard, both) took over Government. It's not hard to be nice when you're in the box seat.

5.Not interested in live exports except as a source of export income. Less live exports means fewer people employed to make them happen. Not a good thing if that's your livelihood, but since if it is you're probably male, that's of no concern to our PM and those who keep her there.

6.Australia is beneath Hong Kong and Singapore and above New Zealand and Switzerland. Have you got a more salubrious guest list?

7.What is "optimum" about that range? Home ownership among 34-49 years olds has fallen significantly under the feminist model, in which she gets given the home then sells it because she can't afford the mortgage, even with a taxfree 20% of his gross income to spend on it and he's not got enough left to even think about buying a house.

8. The largest sector in the economy is now government. We had to do something with all those women who did vanity courses. In addition, your figures are rubbery. There is general consensus among those who collect statistics that the actual unemployment rate is over 10% and that underemployment adds another 20%+

9.Australia has had economic growth in the services sector, government employment and retail, mostly retail, as well as the Howard surge in housing construction due to subsidies to purchase.. The plot of retail spending and growth in female employment are almost isomorphic, while male employment has declined from around 85% to not much above 65%. At the same time female uni education has boomed, with around 40% of under 29-year old women now having a tertiary qualification, but less than 30% of their male peers doing so. Since women will have slightly more than 60% of the working life of men, it means we are paying far too much for education that will be largely wasted in many cases.

10. What drove that figure was the mining boom. A highly mechanised workforce producing a high-value product. Nothing to do with Gillard, and despite her and her Government's best efforts to hobble it.

11.I just don't believe you. The only sector doing well is government and related charitable sectors which rely on government for funding.

12.Because the metrics are poor. GIGO.

13.Mining, despite the best efforts of Gillard and Swan to destroy it as a contributor.

14.Strikes were largely abolished under Hawke, thanks to his much-trumpeted Accords and were finished off by Howard. Gillard's contribution to IR has been to accelerate the decline of manufacturing. construction, mining and logistics.

15.Biassed reporters cherry-picking is not news, perhaps?

Not much of a list, Alan, but representatively awful, at least.

Perhaps you could offer Ms Gillard somewhere to stay in France? Seems unlikely she'll be doing much in the way of work for some time after September, although she may have to brush up on her soliciting when the Vic Major Fraud Squad get in touch.

Alan Austin should definitely get a job with Saatchi and Saatchi or Mojo as a PR consultant. Trying to present catastrophic failure as success is a difficult thing to do, but Alan seems to be up to the challenge. The trick is, to find a dozen or more unknown issues that are either a matter of profound indifference to the electorate, or are more the result of circumstances rather than Labor incompetence, and with the use of creative thinking, present them as exemplary triumphs.

It is impossible to refute a 900 word spin doctoring article in 350 words, it would be more fair to OLO to give us 350 words to attack each point Alan has raised. But anyhoo, I suppose I can putt he boot into some of them.

"Australia is being urged to lead the free world.", says Alan. By whom? The ABC? The chardonnay sucking, social climbing Gucci socialist caste? Why on Earth any nation would want to lead the free world when it is full of Alan Austins who never tire of attacking its defenders, and excusing its enemies, is beyond me.

"What transformed relations with Indonesia?". Well, we are no longer urging their Catholic minority separatists to rebel against their own government. And we are forking over $500 million of taxpayer funds to save their trees, another $500 million to build schools, and God knows what other danegeld we are handing over to buy their friendship. Has it ever occurred to you, Alan, that Australian taxpayers are angry about that?

"What is the outcome of Australia's stand against cruelty to Australian exported cattle?" Simple, Gillard's knee jerk response to ban sales means that the Indos are buying someone else's cattle, torturing them, and our cattle farmers have joined the queue to toss Gillard out of government.

Look Alan. What the Labor party desperately needs, is more dysfunctional and unemployable people to migrate into Australia to create an ever growing underclass of crime and welfare prone people who will vote Labor. Then Australia can join the rest of the free world in social disintegration and insolvency.

Has it ever occurred to you, Alan, that Australian taxpayers are angry about that?
Lego,
Obviously no, perhaps Labor brought him in as a PR consultant because even from their viewpoint it can only get better no matter who they bring in.

Most of the time an author who writes totally out of touch with the electorate's sentiment, and blames the media, he or she does not really no that much.

I have asked AA to have a go at an academic piece with his arguments. I know he would struggle with his bias, even allowing for the fact that most humanities academics have a centre-left leaning. I know he would have to alter his thesis in a major way to get considered for any half-decent journal.

While AA and another has mocked my own attempts, I have actually been passed by qualified referees, even if my pieces appear to favour the conservative side (of which I am not one). Sure, I could do my pieces better, but I try my best and always take on board constructive criticism.

Even if AA was to test his arguments to Aust undergraduates, I suspect he would be laughed out of town.

I suspect that even religious institutions and charities wold have problems with silly arguments claiming just how good everything is here in Oz.

I think Labor is gone for along time if they ever choose to side with people like AA. These people have no commonality with the battlers that are supposed to inspire centre-left parties. That is my opinion; the ALP is influenced too much by a poor standard of supposed policy elites

AA thinks his pieces are scholarly because they throw a lot of data around, but most know that leading figures in the OECD do not mask the severe stress that more and more Austs are coming under, which will indeed rise in future years.

I am not saying the Coalition has the answers, but the Aust people do have it right if they decide that Labor has to go. I, as a longstanding Labor voter before 2010, do not find it easy to discard my gut sentiment, but poor governance and failure to anticpate the problems ahead is a valid reason not to vote Labor at the moment.

I am working on a couple of chapters now for academic publication which will qualitatively explain why Labor has been a failure. and they will be published because they make much greater effort than most to incorporate all the reasons why Labor is on the nose.

Unlike AA, I have respect for the public opinion. I do not feel that Aust's have been hoodwinked.