Howard has indeed left us with an enormous ecological debt.

But I disagree with David Ritter that the major issue is, or was during the Howard years, climate change. The major issue that Howard completely failed to address is that of peak oil, or the energy crunch, and its potentially catastrophic impact on our society and most other countries around the world.

The second issue is overall sustainability, which is obviously interconnected with the energy issue. Climate change, as real as it probably is, is a far lesser thing, which will probably be addressed more effectively by rising oil prices and shortages of supply and our efforts to deal with them than by anything we could have otherwise consciously done to mitigate it.

“Eyes turn to the Rudd ministry, faced with the solemn responsibility of redressing the decade of waste and neglect…”

Well, I still glance occasionally at them to see if they are actually doing something meaningful, but I have pretty much given up hope already. With the boost to immigration and the total pandering to the continuous human expansion paradigm even more so than Howard, Rudd is laying the foundation for an even bigger ecological debt, in a shorter timeframe and at a point in our history when it is even more critically contemptible.

“Progressives of the left (but hopefully also, within the Liberal Party, wet liberals and conservationist conservatives) must now seize the agenda…”

Absolutely! I don’t hold out any hope for the Greens, but I do hold some hope that the Libs will see the light and become the new sustainability party of Australia. Either that or a new party rising from the grassroots which can directly take on Rudd’s economic-rationalist record-high-immigration never-ending-expansion rush-towards-the-cliff lunacy.

Thanks David,

Notwithstanding Billie's pertinent point and in spite of the grave shortcomings of the Rudd government it is important that we remember the miserable despicable incompetent Howard for what it was, and let's also not forget who it was was who helped keep these people in power for so long, namely the Murdoch newsmedia, who now seem to be engaged in attempt to prepare public opinion for the return of a Liberal government.

No-one who ever served in that government (with the possible exception of one minister who fixed Australia's defamation laws so that they can no longer be used as they once were to stifle free speech) must ever be allowed near the levers of power again.

If Rudd does not prove equal to the task before him, let's move on to better alternatives and not allow ourselves to be conned into voting the Liberals back in again.

dear miner
how conveniant that 2004/5 figures are available
but not 2007/8 considering shortly it will be 2008/9

recall 06?
there was 36 billion of tax cuts then alone [mostly for the high earners [how ever you decide to lable them ,there suppression [unavailability [after years is revealing in itself]
]
same 07 [i cant be bothered to even try look up the egsact number

but howard promised late 20o7 36 billion

[thankfully cut to 30 billion by labour ,and alp changing the auto bias howard showed into low income earners tax cuts , yet tax cuts non the less]

thing is gst is on the rich and poor alike [it wasnt the cure all but did manage to get the cash back to the rich][taken from the poor.

but i note you couldnt respond to the other many points i made about income tax /fee burdon shift from the elites [and their trust funds][from death duties , nor the wholesale state and fed privatisationS, that the govt's now have locked up govt trust funds [noting qld's lost 1 and a half billion because of the bank mortgauge fiasco]

how much else has disappeared?[then how much disappeared from our compulsory super [used to prop up falling stock market returns every pay day?

[As for public servants using flexi time to give partial responses destracting away from the other issues [that will thus be distracted from rightfully serving the PEOPLE ]

its time to stop complaining and wake up to your civic duties ,lest we realise who 'pub-lic serve-ants' are really serving , but yeah we dont have the figures for that [YET]

Respond to all my previous points [dont just pick on one obsolete referance]
cheers eh

Agreed plerdsus. What you call Tampa Day was indeed one of the most significant milestones in Australia’s political history. Bringing the rapidly escalating onshore asylum-seeker movement to a rapid end was just about the only significant good thing that Howard ever did. And he did it in such as way as allow all those caught up in it to have their claims assessed, instead of just rejecting them outright… or accepting them all straight-up, which would have served to encourage the continuation of large-scale asylum-seeking.

I shudder to think about the magnitude of that issue if Beazley had been PM at the time. It would probably have been at least ten times worse.

The fifth vital thing that Australia needs to remain one of the best places to live is the development of a genuine sustainability ethic within all levels of government. Your other four points will not be sufficient if we continue on the mad future-destroying path that Rudd has inherited from Howard, and actually accelerated!

“There should be no doubt: the Howard government was vicious, complacent, smug, and in many respects, simply incompetent.”

Spoken with the arrogantly vicious, complacent, smugness of a third rate lawyer, cosily esconced in academia.

I guess if he were to, by some remote act of electoral lunacy, ever hold political power, we would all suffer the consequences of his incompetence too.

The great thing with Howard & Co is they respected the individuals who elected them sufficiently to not interfere in their individual lives, beyond the minimum.

The danger we now face is the twisted political philosophy of people who actually think they know better than the people who elected them.

Pull the other one David.Why don't you address all the Labor State Govt debacles?They are responsible for infrastructure,health etc.They squandered it on bureaucrats,incompetence and inefficiency.

Remember the $90 billion debt that Keating Labor left in 1995.Now what Govt had to clean up the mess?