"All of a sudden, hey presto - after 11 years of neglect, Mr Howard suddenly rediscovers education".

I could say exactly the same thing about the Labor party's newly discovered focus on responsible economic management.

Yep, my bulldust detector is working fine.

Mr Swan,

You say that "Education has been a core Labor value for over 100 years" and that your "Trades Training Centres" will adress the skills shortage. If this is such a core Labor value, why then has the Labor state government in NSW been closing down TAFE colleges?

Mr Swan, you also talk about housing affordability and refuse to acknowledge the state Labor governments' role in applying land tax and stamp duty. Stones and glass houses come to mind...

One wonders also how you can talk about a Labor government that would "invest the wealth of the mining boom" while blindly ratifying the flawed Kyoto protocols and adopting backwards looking IR policies that will help to destroy this very boom.

As for Chris C's breakdown of education spending by the Victorian Labor government, did it not occur to him that the increase in spending in 00/01 was due to the introduction of the GST revenue being passed on to the states?

Regards,
d

I don't think John Howard and Peter Costello have stopped listening. On the contrary, they're listening like mad.

They just don't understand what they're hearing. People have stopped sounding like economic units and started sounding like members of a society, and that's a language they don't understand.

Lies and spin
“extreme workplace regime that cuts penalties and overtime.”

Offset by negotiated increases to base rates !

“This is despite health and childcare costs that have spiralled on Mr Howard’s watch.”

It was Hawke who was first to introduce "Health Tax", with medicare levies, they put a dent in everyones budget.

It is peoples own responsibility to have children, if you cannot afford them, don’t become parents.

Of course, a lot of costs have tumbled since gst came in, from savings in the excessive sales taxes which Hawke and Keating perpetuated.

The liberal contention is interest rates will always be lower under the coalition than under a labor government. You should know the primary reason for inflation is government spending in excess of government income and the labor party is notorious for that. Hence the huge debt which the incumbent government worked down / retired from the dead albatross left by Hawke and Keating.

Let labor hold the steering wheel of the national economy and they will be smashing it within a year from government largesse for their union bosses and to employing more hopeless cases with tax payers subsidies and unrestrained indulgences on infrastructure which satisfies no social or commercial benefit.

As for “nation-building” that’s a nice unaccountable catch phrase but what does it mean?

Spend money on “nation building” and what is the real return?

Maybe a warm cosy feeling as we shiver, unable to afford food or heating due to excessive taxation in the socialist nirvana state which we built?

Margaret Thatcher had it right when she said

"There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and there are families."

And she also said

"We want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the state is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the state."

Leave us to build our own lives and through that effort a "nation" will be built.

Yes, Australians are equipped with the built in bull dust detectors since they know the nature of democracy.
They are also aware that a "new broom sweeps well for a while".
Thus an elected government becomes more and more arrogant with each passing year.
Just look at King Howard, he use to be a humble man before tasted real Power and now his ego is ready to eliminate him!
Power corrupts!
More power corrupts more!
Absolute power corrupts absolutely!
The ALP is out for POWER SWEET, SWEET POWER!

We all have our opinions, those who have expressed their opinions so far to the pollsters are Labor 57% Coalition 43% it is pretty clear the general public have had enough of the man Queensland Liberal Senator George Brandis once described as "the lying rodent" he has to go, it's that simple.