Dear Mr Swan,

No, the Government has not stopped listening. They've just started listening, in earnest! The problem that they've had is that they stopped listening between the last election and about three months ago when they came back from the long Xmas break and your new leader was so far ahead in the polls. Now it's too late for them.

Stay on message, you've been the Opposition's leading performer in that respect.

"But Australians have in-built bull-dust detectors."

We sure do and they are ringing loud and clear. These half truths and statistical nonsense espoused by Swan are his modus operandi. There is so much bull dust in the air around this article that it is impossible to refute all the points......

"Added a staggering $114,000 to mortgage interest repayments on the median-priced home over the life of the loan. This translates to an extra $380 per month"
This assumes that the mortgage was taken out today for the next 25 years - therefore no $380/month can possibly be added to something that you don't have. And it also assumes that there is no CPI wage increases over the next 25 years (as this would cause the 2007 dollar value to go down). And who buys a median priced home? How about the average priced home - a much fairer comparison.

And "eight straight rate rises on Mr Howard and Mr Costello’s watch" what about the rate reductions Swany - or don't those work for your bull dust piece?

"Standing idle while petrol prices skyrocket."
And Swany, what would you propose to be done here? Would you lower the world's oil prices? What about all your spin on global warming? If you are proposing to lower petrol prices people would be encourage to use more petrol. They would buy more V8 powered cars (like the ones favored by our parliamentarians) and lowered airfares would encourage more airline flights to take on the increased passenger loads - or don't you think that far in advance.

With regard to climate change, stay on message but remember that climate change is a softened term introduced in the USA by conservatives to take the hard edge off global warming. The more important problem is resource depletion. Most people do not realise that the onshore oil resouces of the USA are virtually exhausted. There the peak in oil production was over 30 years ago. The North Sea resource is also well past peak production and current production is less than half of the peak. The world is using 8.5 billion tonnes of fossil fuel per year, mostly in the western developed economies with 2.5 billion people in China and India coming up fast. Total grain and sugar production is only 1.7 billion tonnes per year so growing fuel and ethanol production are at best minor help. Whoever wins the next election the problems will remain the same so the public needs some warning that permanent growth is not a possibility. I suspect that capitalism and "the market" will not be willing or able to tackle the problems prior to a major collapse.

Have the Government stopped listening? With all due respects it is a pretty dumb question. A more appropriate question is who is the Government or oppostion listening to? Are they listeneing to the unions and supporters? Are they listening to big business? Are they listening to the Global Warming scaremongers? Are they listening to genuine environmental concerns? Labour is no different to the Liberals. They pretend to listen wherever they think they will get the most votes. That is the form of demcrocacy we have. We have seen this with Mr Beazley, Mr Latham and Mr Rudd. This sort of article is an insult to thinking people.

I am listening very closely to the ALP. I do not like what I hear. I do not like it one bit.

It's interesting to see how pollies consider listening to a slightly different set of groups while ignoring others as somehow more inclusive than their opponents. The cuurent government has been slack when it comes to listening to groups they don't want to listen to, better or worse than Labor? That's hard to get an objective opinion on.

As a male and single dad who went through the family law system (mostly set up by Labor) a few years ago I've seen how disinterested pollies of all persuasions are in fixing the problems there. The Libs have at least made some attempts to look for solutions. Why is Labor silent about the widespread sexism in public handling of DV issues?

Labor does not listen or care about a fair go, they just have different priorities on who to "help" and who to screw over.

R0bert