On the ABC John Howard comes across as a dispassionate, remote person while the Opposition is always warm, interested.
Howard is pragmatic, says the plain unvarnished facts and shuts up while the Opposition indulges in melodrama and finger pointing.
Why doesn't John Howard simply say the state governments have stuffed everything and he is not taking the blame!

Typical leftist clap trap to throw all the blame on to the Howard government. It is true that the Howard Government has used his power of both Houses to control much of the content in the media but this is highly due to journalists willing to scare people into handing over all freedoms of thought and speech.

It is the media after all that label people who disagree with them with labels such as 'white supremecists' solely for disagreeing with their agenda. Only today the Weekend Bulletin(Rockhampton) ran a deceitful story about so called flyers encouraging violence against non-whites. I have seen these flyers and nowhere do they label non-whites as sub-human, nor do they call for violence. Nowhere did they publish the flyers so peole could decide for themselves because the truth is opposite to the media lies.

Journalists must have ADHD for their concentration level on anything is extremely close and, their behavious is absurd as they roam from one lie to another making them compulsive liars.

Hate to tell you HobynH.John Howard does not control our water resources,mostly it is a state responsibility and most of them are Labor.

Hate to tell you Arjay, the federal govt is part of the UN Convention on Climate Change and has known about Global Warming for 10yrs.

Our PM is now saying we should pray for rain?

I would not single out one particular politician, nor one particular political party.

Each State has its own politics that controls media, and they happen to be held by Labor.

And each controlled media has its own Media Tycoon, who wants to be bigger than his rival tycoons.

It just ain't democracy - Neo-Economedia.

The Australian motto of a fair go in Politics appears to be flawed when major political parties are awarded $1.97 per vote.

The cost the Australian Tax payers is around the $60 000 000 dollar mark, paidout at the end of each election to those candidates who have received more than 4% + in the electoral votes.

Liberal and Labor normally pocket around $20 000 000 dollars each. With the outstanding amount going to other fringe parties such as the Greens.

It is disturbing to find that Corporate Media have already been given in advance a chunk of the presumed votes dividends for advertising the major parties.

It is then the media's job because of the large amount of future advertising contracts at stake, to push the political parties who has spent more advertising dollars with their business.

A communist agenda of mock and ridicule are part of the strategy to protect these lucrative contracts at the expense of anything remotely democratic.

There is NO media monopoly by polititians or by gambling and gaming interests in this country. ITS simply NOT TRUE.

And if you people keep saying it is true, we'll be WATCHING you.

You people DON't seriously think this is a democracy?