High interest rates!? You must be joking- 6.75% is pretty good compared to up to 19% during the Hawke and Keating years! And lets not forget the unemployment figures! Howard has it at 4.1% as opposed to Keating at @10%!!
Then this deceit issue-it seems Howard is constantly called a liar. But Rudd is so busy trying to spin Gillard, Swann, Garrett and McLennan that nobody has any idea what he actually stands for! At least Johnny is a leader.Rudd is running a campaign based on deceit if ever there was one!
Seriously, some of you have lost site of reality. We have never had it better! Rich or poor, we are are doing very well indeed.
The funny thing is, it won’t be the Howard voters who feel it most if Rudd and his incompetent bunch of ‘stand for nothing’ parliamentarians get in. It will be lower income ALP voters. So don’t expect sympathy!

John I liked your article.

Poor fella, my country!

Not sure that KRudd in power will be any different to Howard.

Skills Shortage won't take five years to fix. Much can be re-adjusted by demanding MORE ACCOUNTABLITY through the Centerlink's JOB-Net servicing administration framework.

A "no wrong door" business approach (delivering - integrated hands-on), targeting authentic action with a focus on barriers, will emancipate many, who wish to re-enter the work-force.

Having interviewed many and having my own case to expose, I tell you it is the inefficacious ability of service providers to inter-face and ID the actions (problems solve) the resources required, for those already skilled, to find work.

Many skilled have become the TOO HARD BASKET. Resented for our ability or intelligence. We encounter discrimination unintentionally because there is a lack of Human-Resource.

Often we are more qualified than the case manager, and the case managers are overwrought by the demand to do something constructive, for developing/engaging on a futures pathway. These people I have found, are many under-trained themselves.

It feels like touch window data-processing wrapped with invisibleness. It is in the statistics. If not shadowed by government, then by the "chain-of-contracts" set-up to solve the demand.

I lobbied HARD for a five-fold employment support package to come to Cooktown, Cape York.

However; PSP is TOTALLY wasted, NO resources. Training (low-skills) is beginning (this week) with CHR, but (given my expertise) I am still (ignored) standing, outside the loop. (Expats and fly-in always win the inhouse-contracts). NEIS they say is here, but I don't see it. AND, having almost tendered to run it as an NGO locally, I was forced tp back-off, once I did a "risk analysis" and found I'd have NO follow-up services to offer successful applicants, after they completed the course, which would/could/might set them up to FAIL.

Authencity and Accountablity is everything. Here it is about being culturally sensitive and savy, as well as MICRO - REAL.

Millions od Dollars have come into this Shire but much has failed, breaking hearts and produces the apathy.

Thank You John Tomlinson, YES this election is about TRUST.

I TRUST it is about having the ability and full-blown soundness to "Do the RIGHT THING".

http://www.miacat.com
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I am so sick and tired of affluent white Australia winging about interest rates and how its going to effect them after borrowing so much money. These same people gave Howard the mandate at the last election and now they are reapping the rewards for their greed, and from what we have seen of the other bloke he dosn't look like a rocket scientist either.

Look I bought my first house during the Hawk/Keating government and it was a dump that was when interest rates was around 17%, my wife and I ate toast most days and drove a bomb and both of us had several jobs that we used to pay the house off.

We didn't get any first home handouts or any other form of assistance, and we payed off our house early and then bought a business. So it shouldn't matter who is in government if you just work hard and spend only when neccessary and delay having children ( we waited 15 years)then it should work out fine.

Yindin, I'm with you on this one.

When I bought my first house my wife stayed at home to raise the children and I managed to earn enough to support us all. When she did eventually go back to work, it mainly was to get some extra cash for luxuries. Part of this period was during the dreaded "17%" period, when it was hard but not impossible.
If I was to buy the same house today, despite my increased income, my wife would have to work full-time and we would have no children.

I also recall the "dole-bludger" scapegoating and the deliberate social division created in those days and the subsequent "National Reconciliation" that followed. Typical Tory strategy.

This is progress? Are we really better off or have we become like the frog in the saucepan slowly coming to the boil?

It's also not a matter of "who do you trust". It's a matter of forgiving-and-forgetting all the past lies, deceptions and assett-stripping and actually rewarding the culprits who did it by re-electing them and not being surprised when they go even further next time.

A timely and very important article, Tom!

Meantime, I must say that I'm absolutely flabbergasted that media commentators haven't picked up on the patent disingenuity of Joe Hockey and the Workplace Authority in relation to AWA stats.

I have today raised this issue via various media outlets - for reasons which should become apparent from the comments below:-

For several weeks now, I have been waiting for someone in the media to challenge Joe Hockey (and the Workplace Authority), for cynically peddling old and irrelevant AWA figures - with obvious intent to confound and mislead.

Even Wayne Swan didn't take up the opportunity to challenge Joe Hockey's claims when they were presented to him on Lateline last night (see http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2007/11/07/2084781.htm?site=elections/federal/2007 or http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2084781.htm ).


Nor did Julia Gillard when she debated Joe Hockey on the 7:30 Report previously (see http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2023895.htm ) - nor any time since!


After the following seemingly untenable article extract was posted by an infamous Liberal Party hack, on the Yahoo Politics message boards in early October (at http://au.messages.yahoo.com/news/politics/62442 ), I checked for the relevant Workplace Authority stats posted at the links below:-

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,22535943-5005962,00.html

THE Federal Government's Workplace Authority has released figures showing workers on Australian Workplace Agreements (AWA) earn more on average than those on awards or collective agreements.

The data's release comes just days after a stoush between senior government ministers and academics who did a study which found the opposite for low-skilled workers.

The study by Sydney University academics found low-skilled workers on AWAs earned on average $106 a week less than those on collective agreements.

Senior academics from the university are threatening legal action after Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey questioned the study's credibility because it was partly funded by unions.

The workplace agreement data to September 30, 2007, released today, showed workers on AWAs had average weekly total cash earnings (AWTE) of $963.70.

This was 12.2 per cent higher than workers on collective agreements and 96.2 per cent higher than workers on awards, the figures showed.

http://www.workplaceauthority.gov.au/graphics.asp?showdoc=/news/researchStatistics.asp

(contd next post).