Am an old retired wheat cockie who in his young days helped fight for the single desk way back in the early 1930s.

Thus us old cockies can still offer a smidgeon of thanks to for Labor because it was Labor PM Pollard who introduced agrarian socialism into our wheatbelt during the early 1930s. Hence knocking out big buyers like Bunge and Dreyfus.

As now a political scientist and historian, I wrote to Rudd before he was elected reminding him about us oldies still allowing certain tribute to Labor over the origin of single desk. And certainly I was surprised and pleased when he guaranteed to preserve the single-desk despite the more recent Iraqi sales schemozzle, etc.

But now we have Burke, virtually only a kid with apparently no knowledge of wheatbelt history - in charge.

So we have Barry Court boss of the Pastoralists and Graziers now smiling fit to kill - a crowd who like the old PPA, were tied in with the stock companies and big buyers, who even during the Great Depression were still imploring the cockies to grow more wheat, as signs said on the railway wagons.

Yep, Rudd in many ways, seems to the right of Malcolm Frazer, and so I finish from a lesson about economics learnt through a study of philosophical decisionmaking.

Certainly it is critical for our leaders to rememember, that while we may appear to have foresight to handle the future, it is logical that we must use historical insight to back it up.

Cheers, BB, Buntine, WA.

IF Rudd wasn't overseas at the moment I'd ask him why we are still paying $1.45 a litre and rising for petrol while the price of a barrel of oil has fallen 40% to US $91.00 a barrel and falling.

Considering his lies about petrol and inflation before the election and in light of the current gouging petrol pricing he's proving to be an ineffective small minded little twerp.

And why aren't the rest of you talking about this disgraceful oil and petrol pricing rort?

Examinator.

Show me why left and right is no longer relevant and I will respond. Have you an OLO article or any other from yourself to show me what you are on about. I look forward to reading your wisdom. I obviously have a lot to learn, as do the many leading journalists that use such terms (left and right) around the world.

Spikey
Fair call but put my words in context.

I said I try to be fair and balanced, so please excuse my apparent failure.

And you may have to forgive Monash University for awarding me a PhD. You will be pleased to know, I did not think much of my final product anyway.

But I will again uphold my right to express a personal opinion. Rudd is indeed a dud whose rhetoric in the Monthly (2006 if you read my article), has not been matched by his policies to help battlers, although he is aware of record home unaffordability and prices for food, petrol and and utilities. I mean why would one need a review with a $22 billion surplus. It is one of those easy opportunities to do something for battlers with bipartisan support from the Coalition.

And no I do not want another gig with Quadrant. I am quite happy writing for OLO (even for nothing) where they do publish many left and right wing views.

Sorry, here I go again with my class war mentality.

Chris Lewis

I'm not knocking your PH D. I'm sure that Brian Costar and Jim Walter would have seen to it that you were rigorous and relied on evidence to support the arguments in your thesis.

My point is to observe the remarkable slide from that level of scholarship to what is essentially an evidence-free absolutist over-the-top attack on a PM who hasn't yet finished one year in government.

Of course you have every right to to express a personal opinion on OLO. We all do that. But if you present a lead article you can't just say anything you like without producing either clear patterns of evidence or a reasoned argument - or both.

So phrases like “… the greatest con artist of all time in Aust politics…” and "a level of intellectual dishonesty greater that any Labor or Coalition leader of recent years” are OK in the local pub where no one lets the facts get in the way of a rough-and-tumble argument. But if you want to be taken seriously on a national forum you've got to respect your readers (who will return the honour).

I'd love to read an article from you on the non-government factors which influenced the coalition’s economic, social and environmental policy mix in the first term of the Howard Government. Sounds like you know something important about those years.

I am getting really irritated by upstarts such as this writer who are obliterating reality with half-baked analysis of Kevin Rudd's first 9 months in power, after 12 long years of the Howard government, who, indeed, were truly the party of spin without substance, if sober analysis were to be employed.
I see no analysis of the policies and programmes initiated already by the Rudd government, such as the Low Cost Housing Tax Offset, which has been oversubscribed by the building industry and super funds, and will see thousands of new houses constructed for rent at 20% below market rates.
Not a mention of the Prime Minister's Bonhoeffer-esque initiative to help the homeless and find housing solutions for them.
Not a word of support from an ex-building site worker for the abolition of AWAs.
No support given for the PMs initiatives wrt binge drinking, even though the evidence already suggests that the price signal on RTDs is working magnificently, with 3 million less standard drinks now being consumed per week, since the change.
And to top it all off, the writer sensoriously decries the PM for not giving Single Aged Pensioners an immediate $30/week rise. This when it has been shown that this increase will not apply to the 2 million other pensioners, who are also doing it tough, but will apply to Single part-OAPs who have hundreds of thousands in assets and a fully-paid for home.
All I can say is that Monash University appears to be handing out Political Science PhDs like jelly beans.
Suffice to say that it's this writer that's the dudd, not the PM.

BN wrote: "While I am no fan of Rudd, at least he's distanced himself from 'the Left' (using that term as loosely as possible)."

Depends which Rudd you're talking about.

Pre-election Rudd promised to be Howard Lite. Post-election Rudd, on the other hand, has wasted no time in resurrecting the old "three R's" - reconciliation, refugees, and the republic.

Kevin 07 is beginning to look more and more like Keating 96.