Many people in Australia believe that Australia's involvement in Iraq has increased the prospect of Australia becoming a terrorism target. Howard is closely identified with this policy. Rudd must make sure that everyone is reminded of the fact that Dick Cheney said that if we withdraw it will have no effect on the alliance. Drop the "timetable for withdrawal" strategy. It plays into Howard's "don't cut and run" rhetoric. Chaneg the footing upon which the troops will stay. Replace them with "peacekeepers/consultants" channelled through AusAID or something similar. That way you can deaden Howard's attack on your position. If Howard then criticises you for backflipping et cetera, then given him a short lesson in international law, remind him that a nation the size of Australia must conspicuously adhere to international law, and that the only way to beat terrorism in the long term is to use international law and international peackeeping efforts. That is the difference between Afghanistan and Iraq, of course. And it explains, perfectly, why you would draw a distinction between Iraq and Afghanistan (a distinction Howard now seeks to blur). Then you can rake through the lies about WMD etc., and seriously question Howard's credibility as a person who can master the detail: ie. he's good at photo opportunities and spin, but lacked the capacity to lead Autralia at the right time. A real leader would have questioned the intelligence and waited until the right time to join in. After all, Australia's troop commitment has been minimal, and no one believes that our involvement at any point would have made a pivotal difference.

Attack Howard's economic credibility directly by drilling home the message that the Government has nothing to do with interest rates. Every time an ALP frontbencher opens their mouth they must say "John Howard doesn't set interest rates. The Reserve Bank sets interest rates. They have raised interest rates since the last election - even though John Howard lied and said they wouldn't - because John Howard has mismanaged the economy".

Calling Howard's reforms "subject of near-universal praise among the economics profession" might be an exaggeration.

Making the Reserve Bank independent of government was indeed important, but was the formalisation of a de facto policy under Keating, and a better charter for the Reserve Bank would have included the requirement to consider the impact on society of interest rate rises, and to give the Reserve Bank multiple economic levers it can use (rather than interest rates alone, often putting government spending in conflict with interest rate policies).

Keeping the national budget in balance/surplus is important as a general policy, however putting the budget into deficit for one or two years for major infrastructure investment is far different from chronic deficits to meet annual spending. The shortage of infrastructure/training investment is short-sighted governance.

Budget transparency is undoubtedly important, but the reform was incremental rather than revolutionary.

Needless to say the GST and industrial relations reforms are also the subject of conflicts in assessment, rather than universal praise.

"This repudiation, Labor realised after the devastating result at the polls, was a mistake. The party lost the last election in large part because voters decided Latham and Labor could not be trusted to run the economy. The party had done so much of the work of rebuilding the economy, yet had no credibility on economic policy."

That's because of the general stupidity of the electorate and FUD about interest rates. On the topic of interest rates, they were up worldwide. Anyone with any sense should know this and the rest of them will be ruled by the FUD.

Latham is long gone, he was a man who did not exist, by that I say he made many promises was never more than a shadow..
This ALP has found its leader and is far different than the party Latham miss lead.
John Howard may need more than tree planting advice from his wife.
His stay the distance speech this week ignored the fact it is unlikely the USA will do so.
Iraq miss handled from day one seems intent on self destruction and if Johny can not think of a better reason to stay than protecting American face he should get out now.
As it becomes clear this new policy is not the answer Howard may well get a late night call telling him our troops are needed more in Afghanistan, and withdraw them before the election.
History will highlight him as a man who would do anything to remain in office including lie.
It will also, even within his own side of politics give much time to his miss use of a mandate no other PM has had for many years.
Nothing can save Howard on election night he should go with grace now.

The Coalition Government has squandered millions of dollars on Iraq; and wasteful advertising programs, for example, IR legislation. Mr. Howard promised he would manage interest rates; he has not been particularly successful, judging by the mortgage sales Australia wide!!

The Coalition crows about interest rates under Labor, but while Mr. Howard was Treasurer interest rates hit 21% in 1982. Interest rates were high worldwide and it is somewhat disingenuous for Mr. Howard to pin that onto Labor.

Generally everybody now concedes that Climate change is a reality, even the Coalition Government is agreeing with the concept. It is also conceded by many that Climate Change is an economic matter; the longer it takes to begin taking action the more expensive remedying the matter becomes. While sitting on their hands the Coalition Government has cost the tax payer and industry dearly in relation to this issue.

What has happened our nations social capital resources?

People are struggling at ground levels, left behind in this so called economic “Boom”.

For example: I do not believe the employment statistics being prattled by the federal government. These figures are dangerously fudged if we undress their levels of misrepresentation.

I believe any government system that disguises these figures, is callous.

This is because you can not deal with fabricated evidence, if the goal is to truthfully problem-solve. This err alone, is disabling our nation.

It is shifting the burden, contributing wholesale to a distress that is hurting all sectors within society.

Here in Cape York for instance, our true unemployed statics were somewhere around 25% in 2003. These statics have risen beyond comprehension, as a result of human issues that are external, and which are being ignored by the regional three tier governments. I.e., a) Unaccountability. and b) Administered apathy governed through a ineffective culture of: No Response.

I believe our growing social ills both urban and inter-regional within Australia are growing dramatically. They display the reality shift of responsibility that depict causal elements in social, political, economic and cultural problems in recent times.

The pressure reflects a microcosm of dysfunction by governments, through a business, market and cultural health perspective.

The problem is a lack of community engagement at ground level and a lack of input into infrastructure, that supports health, education, housing and employment – where key issues clash, with issues around our environment.

What Howard and Costello have missed is the opportunity to invest, embrace and unite Australia’s human and cultural capital.

The value of Australia’s people has been largely omitted from their equation.

The result has fractionised our national electorate.

It leaves us disgruntled over basic unifying issues, which now present more problems to divide us, than ever before.

As for people like Paul Keating, Tim Fischer, Mark Latham, Linda Burney, Carmen Lawrence and Rosa Lee Long, we are all Australians who think differently and for that example, we are all valuable.

To say we are a "Bipolar nation" is truly, an understatement.

http://www.miacat.com/
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Workchoices just a part of Howard's sins against Australia, the very fabric of our culture.
But what a part! some tell us it is not that bad but have no true evidence to say that.
Some remind us quite rightly too that some on AWAs are better of, and they are too.
But how about the young or unskilled who are called into the office and told sign that now or you do not have a job?
Yes now instantly or out the door, do you truly think its not true?
Oh its true no time for dreams Australia has always had bad bosses, no I am not claiming all bosses are bad or even most but some are.
A country timber mill operator , many of them, once most of them gave you a mill owned house at a set rent to live in.
Paid bills you could not afford and took it back out of your pay, a sub from wages was every day.
It was the chains that kept you locked into the bosses wishes.
More unskilled workers than ever before live under those rules in rural Australia.
Even being ordered by the boss to vote as he says.
workchoices first target was kids and the wife and daughters of workers.
They are filled with fear to even ask why they an no longer have smoko or lunch.
Workchoices John Howard is your worst mistake Bob the man you love to follow would turn his back on you if he was alive today.

Belly,the worst part about "Work Choice" is that it is the bosses who have all the choices. It has the capacity to send workers back to almost the conditions of the 1890s. Those particularly with a lack of marketable skills are vulnerable to being made quite servile. The Coalition boast about the lack of strikes since their odious "Work Choice" legislation, it is because of possible consequences that workers are too frightened to go on strike. It doesn't take much to work out that in 10 years time that workers will be worse off than prior to "Work Choice" and conditions will continue to deteriorate.

Not all bosses are corrupt or mean, the same as the vast majority of workers are going to do the right thing. "Work Choice" provides a sledge hammer for employers to use on workers, and workers are not afforded protection. The arrogant Coalition governs for the big end of town only. There is more of a feeling of us and them since the Coalition has been in power Federally.

There is a bipolar feel about Senator Santoro's replacement who has also stumbled in relation to share deals; yet, no action will be pressed against him.

I ant agree, as a union official I see it daily, some are so focused on the lie unions are thugs and unionists not good workers they never know the truth.
Workchoices is the enemy of fair minded employers too, in civil construction wages are about the same for all using a skills matrix called wages classification structure.
Labor hire has two party's the fair paying type and the not fair paying type.
The fair minded boss always comes to unions for protection from those thieving his work, the grubs who do not pay fairly.
One real life war about to erupt is a labour hire group paying just over $2 am hour [this includes a 25% casual loading] less than CW1 the lowest paid full time employee on site to CW2 workers it employees.
And in an industry that has traditionally only paid weekly it pays fortnightly!
Those it employees are skilled workers with in some cases a lifetime of employment in the industry.
So all those union haters is this fair? less pay than ever before for the very same job?
Is this the way to prosperity for Australia?
One day I may just unmask this grub one of a thousand who use workchoices for profit from honest workers.
This bloke? from the far left! how can one Australian treat another so badly?
I wait for my phone to ring and the offer must start with wage parity and twice as many pay days.
John Howard's anti union campaign the fear tactics that we run Australia will not save him while he continues to use his mandate as a weapon against the Aussie fair go.

[Part 1]
Hawke and Keating's initiatives and legacy have in most part been tweaked by the Liberals with the exception being WorkChoices - which has more to do with union busting and short term profitability than long term productivity via investment in wholesome productive capacity.

Hawke had vision introducing a compulsory superannuation scheme. I expect the Liberals would have dragged their feet coming up with this impost on business. The Accord was a masterful exercise in politics by moderating and linking union demands to productivity increases. On the social policy front I will not forget the palpable emotion in Hawke’s voice in “no child will live in poverty…” speech. However unrealistic you might think it was at least the man had character and depth. Keating’s embrace of deregulation and globalisation grated with the population but his wit and incisive mind stands in sharp contrast to the slouching, smirking Costello who has all the strength of character of a piece of wet cardboard.

That productivity has slowed despite rises in income and profits is no surprise to me. Revenues generated from resources both to the state and business have not been reinvested in diverse productive capital, infrastructure or social capital. Australian entrepreneurs and businesses are notorious for the quick dollar that can mean a flight of capital (and expertise) to overseas locations.

The lasse fare, complacent, limp Liberal Government doesn't believe in pump priming - why invest in a new broadband network with a large public component when someday, just maybe in the future, the competing businesses in the industry might work out a way of sharing the risk and profits? And today Helen Coonan announces the Libs will get off their arses and cajole business into action – so free enterprise can’t do the job alone, policy on the fly.

However, on the point of broadband, the 'opening up' of telecommunications by Hawke/Keating has been a spectacular disaster, as has the Liberals management of the sell-off of Telstra.

[Part 2]
Inviting a foreign government controlled enterprise - Optus/Singtel, majority owned by the Republic of Singapore - that great bastion of free speech and democracy to our north, effectively stymied the prospects of fiber optic rollout to Australian homes that could have been efficiently and cost effectively achieved under public ownership of Telecom/Telstra and brought with it, through the wholesale of bandwidth to private enterprise, a significant return to the public purse as well as stimulating business.

So while Singapore is going gangbusters out flows Australian dollars to a foreign Government which unlike Australian governments isn't shy about involvement in the market. And still, in a metropolitan suburb of Sydney I sit here writing on a computer connected at 256Mb/sec and the prospect of getting ADSL2 is unknown, outside strung from telegraph poles is Optus cable - a fiasco of a technology that should never have needed to be installed.

However, it’s not only sloppy free enterprise, the investment and savings directions of ordinary Australians has not contributed to well-being and a sustainable economy. The Australian hobby of speculative investment in housing, spurred on by negative gearing, has resulted in a cannibalistic, regressive market resulting in reduced capacity for consumption - less available cash to spend after mortgage repayments.

While the baby boomers of the Howard/Costello generation will benefit from large superannuation pay-outs the propensity of Australians to buy foreign made goods is high and the amount of goods produced locally is diminishing. With the 'race to the bottom' of wages implicit in WorkChoices the capacity of younger Australians to save, invest in their own homes or contribute enough to superannuation to not burden the public purse in the future is diminished.

To tag HOward's statement that 'interest rates will always be lower..." as a PROMISE is churlish and incorrect. AS is Labors insistence that Howard's "never, ever" answer to a question was a PROMISE broken. I seem to recall an election campaign where this was mentioned once or twice-if we are a bi-polar nation then the ALP is delusional and its own worst enemy here too.
Labors unwillingness to embrace the Hawke-Keating years stems from its own schizoid nature. Who back in 1983 knew that we were voting for many of the changes we got? We knew we were voting to get rid of big Mal;but who can really say we knew we were voting for the beginning of the end of centralised wage setting or for privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank(etc) or for greater finance sector deregulation than even the Libs were promising?
Trying to alloy old Labour to Keatings Labour is a trick for an alchemist or a magician, and will no doubt be done on the backs of the 'rusted on'.Just yesterday we learn that a Ruddy government has no problem with the sale of Telstra shares-bi-polar,
schizoid and suffering from amnesia perhaps!

Labor first needs to win the next election. Workchoices will not do it alone. Telstra's sale is a done deal, Rudd I think recognises this and must drag the unions with him. Sure a a fair deal for the wage slaves are important but in a modern economy I believe it needs making it fairer, not scrapping it.
The union movement is a proud and traditional apprenticeship for pollitics, they need to become more transparent, secret ballots being one.
A seat in parliament is part of a career path and must be for those that see it other than a reward for long service to a union.
I confess while agreeing with Keatings fiscal policies I was glad to here the last of his mouth.
Rudds good, can't buy Telstra back, but can use the proceeds of it's sale from the future fund, as would have surely the coalition for it's nefarious reasons. Otherwise why the enabling clause in the legislation?
Broadband is a winner, fibre to the node I understand to be the first, if only an interim measure, re speed. It is just one in the list of infrastructure measures needed.
Leaders are important but credible ministers are the force that allow policy success. He has a few, he needs more.
fluff

[Part 3]
The prospect of reducing tax rates for the wealthy at the expense of a long standing lack of public investment by both State and Federal Governments while the poorest Australians have some of the highest marginal tax rates in the OECD strikes me as an absurdity given that real wages and conditions, are likely to fall under WorkChoices - for how are we going to compete with the low wages of our competitors, that’s the point isn’t it – work poorer not smarter?

Rudd has been on the ball showing his business kowtow skills in offering large chunks of our money to multinationals in the hope of attracting foreign investment in such things as hybrid car and geo-sequestration showing that he can dance the business tune and with a green melody, but in reality it is business as usual.

Then there is the curious Damascan conversion of our shadow Environment minister, Peter Garrett, who’s conscience must be gagging in his once songful throat, accepting that before geo-sequestration is or could be a commercial reality China can obtain as much coal as it can pay for and whatever uranium is in existing mines can go too. In a Lateline interview Garrett sheepishly tried to side step the issue of logging and wood chipping old growth forests in Tasmania, an issue where troglodyte parochial unions further unhinged Labors chances of winning the last election.

It will be interesting to see how a new Federal Labor Government manages. We've heard and seen a willingness to pump prime the economy and engage with the market place but I have yet to find out what if any tax changes there will be, what will replace WorkChoices and how far ranging their social policy will be.

I wonder why Peter Hartcher tries to deceive, by pretending that there is a true comparison to be made between the Australian economy now , and the economy in 1982, when he knows the true comparison is between now and the Keating years?
He knows that , before deregulation, the economy was a different kettle of fish altogether. He also knows the economy of 1982 had been sabotaged by the union bosses, with their strikes and wage claims for low productivity…their threats to ‘bring Australia to its knees’…and by Labor’s new best friend, Malcolm Fraser’s lack of stomach for reform….and by catastrophic drought and oil shocks….not to mention the 11% inflation left by Gough.
He knows that the 21% was not a mortgage rate, as Labor’s 17% was.
…. And that Labor, ( good Fabian Socialists all), stole the ideas for which he gives them credit , from the Liberal dries, and thought they could use them , and the Accord deals to entrench Labor in power forever…that’s why his mob lost faith…..they could see the scam wouldn’t work.
They knew that the deals stitched up between Labor and the union bosses would never keep inflation in check, and that was the key.
Hartcher knows that the economy was doing very well long before the present commodities boom , through the Asian downturn, overseas recessions, fuel price hikes, Iraq war, and that Rudd is lying when he says the prosperity is only due to the commodities boom. The record gives the lie to him.
He knows Labor fought all the reforms at every turn…he knows it would have been disaster for Australia if our waterfront were still the rort-ridden world’s worst practice , as it was under Labor.
So this latterday con trick by Labor to sanitize themselves, will only work if the media goes in to bat for labor, and flogs half-truths and lies to the Australian people.
Hopefully, the Australian people are not nearly as stupid as Labor and the media think they ar