Saunders' aricle was like a breath of fresh air, cutting through the breathless acclaim of the Oz staff writers. Clearly, someone (somewhere?) has decided that the paper's early approval of Rudd was misplaced and that Costello is the man. I can see that, if the Oz - my daily paper -has in fact committed to Howard in such a blatant form, I will have to learn how to do without the Times crossword and Bill Leak.

Runner

Did you notice that yesterdays unemployment figures were the lowest since 1974?

Who was PM in 1974? Who wrecked this and gave us 10% unemployment and 22% interest rates?

One was Gough Whitlam, the other John Howard.

Billie, your glimmer of hope re e-tax has just flickered out. This is not a new initiative either. Rather it has been in the pipeline for around 3-4 years, and has been made possible by advances in ATO technology rather than government policy. Oh well, I suppose they claim credit for anything that is popular. My concern though is that this system is fraught with danger of people simply accepting what the ATO have recorded - as a tax agent I can tell you that we get regular mini-audits from the ATO based on incorrect information held by them. Then you get the risk of people simply not thinking about legitimate deductions - the ATO cant fill this bit in for you. Oh gee, I wonder if thats the point. Discourage people from thinking about deductions and get more revenue as a result....

ruawake asks: "Did you notice that yesterdays unemployment figures were the lowest since 1974?" I don't blame posters for repeating what the media are parroting - after all, the media work off government-produced media releases and have little time for independent research.

The facts, however, are another matter. The Australian Patrliamentary Library gives the unemployment rate in 1974 as 2.6% (www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/histmesi/histmesi8.3.htm). That put Australia's unemployment rates below the OECD, the G7 and the EU averages for the year.

The first year that Australia exceeded those comparable rates was in 1977 when there was a Coalition government; and it must have been sheer chance that John Winston Howard became Treasurer in that year (and earned the nick-name 'the boy Treasurer').

It must be nice to be in power and be able to re-write history whenever you please. Maybe that why the boy Treasuere is so keen on compulsory history in schools - so long as it's his version that is to be taught!

The $5 billion endowment for universities sounds nice and it is... but it really is just a start.

Harvard University in the US has a $37 billion endowment. That's for just one university...

You can use numbers to prove anything! TRTL, I get what you are trying to say, but to be fair the US is both a lot bigger than us, and also quite a bit older in terms of western education. If you look at your figures on a per capita basis, the Harvard endowment fund (yes recognising that is it only 1 uni) is $12.30/head of US population. Whereas the new Aussie fund is $250/head - lucky we dont all need to go to uni! But still, when you look at it in that context, its not really too bad an effort.