These liberal hardheads must do life tough.
It must be like loosing a grand final every day.
Don't you say, well thats the will of the people, and make informed scrutiny.
Back bitchin will get you nothing but a gut full of ulcers.
How can they be called refugees after spending years in another country,or even crossing another country.
I believe Mr Rudd made a little mistake by apologising to the indig;
It has closed a door of real help to the indig comunity, by now not being able to separate the young from their hard line elders.
That is why they still live in camps in squallor.

On second thoughts I mighht have been too critical of our Kevie.

His heart is in the right place, sometimes misguided, has tried to do too much too soon, hamstrung by some tired leftwing platforms, sons of earlier politicians, pre-bald rock stars and some ex unionists appointed as factional quotas.

Yet there is still time for such a talented individual to move in more sensible directions.

At least Labor isn't the fragmented hodgepodge led by that well-heeled, privateer or opportunity Mr Turnbull or happy go Hockey.

Rudd's party especially does not harbour that dark Darth Vader who exposes women's tax files while locking other's up. Abbott who strangely has positioned himself as the ideological elder statesmen of the thin Coalition is just biding his time until his more sincere Coalition competitors drop by the wayside.

Compared to the darkside that is today's Coalition Rudd and his people look pretty damn good.

Pete

It is quite easy to achieve things when one comes to power with 'money in the bank'. Now that it's all gone, the way forward may be quite different considering the bank balance is now in the red.

What about his promise to take charge of the state run, or should I say, states shamefull attempt to run, our hospital systems.

Did he just run out of money before he reached the H's on his 'to do list'?

Did anyone see the program 'Q&A' last night. All that most of the panel did when the subject of the 'boat people' came up was asked Joe Hockey what he would do about the boat people, rather than tell us what they planned to do about it. As Joe rightly pointed out, several times,'we are not in power, you are! They still have no answers.

Furthermore, again, as stated on that program, what vessel captain in their right mind will assist in this type of debarcle again.

Rudd's certainly been busy.

He created the Global Financial Crisis.
He invented Global Warming
He caused the escalation in violence in Sri Lanka that displaced 250,000 more people.

On the plus side, so far he hasn't gotten us seriously involved in two never-ending wars, flogged off most of our Public assets (mostly to overseas owners), brought in a regressive tax system, handed out disproportionately large tax cuts to a tiny minority, encouraged increasing personal debt, made huge cuts in essential services or stacked the Public Service with political cronies - because somebody else beat him to it.

He's certainly made some political mistakes but even at his worst, so far he's still better than the alternative.

Wobbles; encouraged increasing personal debt

Try explaning this to the hundreds of first home buyers he has sucked in to high debt levels just so they can have their dreams shattered with increasing interest rates.

As usual, they got it wrong. A much smarter approach would have been to provide first home buyers with a guaranteed interest rate of say 3%, locked in for 5 years and give an interest free loan of say $20K as a deposit to be paid back over say 10 years.

Now if one can't afford a home at 3%, then they can't afford a home period.

Now as for the selling of public assetts. I am assumming you are referring to Telstra.

Despite the fact that I did not agree with this, the fact remains that the sale of testra was only deemed neccesary due to labor's record debt levels they left behind the last time they were let loose with the keys to the safe.

Somehow, this effort appears to be heading down the same path, only, what will be left to sell next time?

Krudd is a mee-too experiment in marginal political appeal.

Like the writer said “At least Howard had conviction - Rudd just has robotic rhetoric.”

And as he summed up

“No vision. No conviction. No heart.”

I will never understand so many people think that, when 90% of what matters in our lives exists only in our individual mind set, giving authority over the remaining 10% to some parliamentary representative to manage on our behalf is going to make a hoot of difference to their lives; rather than using their personal efforts to improve their personal circumstances by administering that 10% for themselves..

The great thing which the Howard years gave us was stability of environment, where once the thugs of the wharfs and building sites had been curtailed, the rules of commerce and business were stable, the government withdraw from commercial ownership (through monopolies) and people could go on about their business without reams of regulations being continually added to, largely to appease the ego of some tax-paid functionary.

The reward for that stability was super growth, the paydown of public debt and creation of the budget surplus, which the incumbent Krudd government has promptly squandered on an ineffective dimulous package.

As Margaret Thatcher said, regarding debt financed socialist profligacy

"If one generation is expected to carry an excessive burden on behalf of another, it will seek by every means to avoid it. It will either demand that past promises are broken, or it will not work, or it will not pay taxes, or the most talented people will leave. Socialist governments which have tried to tax 'till the pips squeak' have ample experience of that."

Like runner said “'Fair-minded Australians voted for this Prime Minister more in hope than anything'

I would say gullible minded actually.”

Well lets hope they have learned the price of their gullibility, in believing the lies of any socialist promising utopia and cast their vote in a more sensible direction, behind liberal candidates