... and so the Great Moral Challenge of our time will have to wait for some time in the future. Now, anyone interested in a cigarette Tax?

... leaks, disunity, incompetence, dog whistling, Nauru whoops East Timor. Hey look over here! No look over here now! THIS is Julia, forget about all that! The Real New Julia. Moving Forward. [Hey look another leak] NO! No come on don't look over there, here is a shiny new Julia!

Are you sitting on a horse Houlley. Give us all a bit of credit - we might pontificate to your disatisfaction but clearly comments so far reveal we are sick of the hype.

PM Poirot does have a nice ring to it. The seat of Griffith may be coming up for a bi-election pretty soon if you are a QLD'er.

Dear Suze, Poirot, Pelly, and others,

The next few weeks are going to be interesting.
It appears that many people may
change their views, and that public opinion
appears to be in a state of flux. I'm beginning
to think that an assessment of public opinion is
valid only for the time and place in which it
was made. Let's face it - opinions are not formed
in a vacuum; people don't necessarily get their
opinions directly from media sources. Information
and viewpoints are sifted through other people,
particularly family, friends, workmates and so on.

People are also influenced by "opinion leaders,"
people who spend greater time studying the issues,
form definite opinions about it, and interpret
the issues for others. Of course if opinions appear
to be swinging in one direction, some people
(particularly those who were previously undecided or
who had no very strong commitment to the other side) tend
to change their viewpoints. I guess that's why commercial
advertisers often stress an "everybody's doing it,"
theme and why we're seeing both Tony Abbott and Julia
Gillard trying to build that vital "momentum" in the
remaining weeks of the campaign.

As I've stated previously, for me, Tony Abbott and Co.
would be a return to the Howard past. And that's not an
Australia that I want to see returned. The Liberal slogan for
this campaign ,"Real Action," to me means cuts in
things that make our lives easier, like health, education,
medicine, infrastructure, and much, much more.
I've been accused
of being "one -eyed," well that's better than leaving
no room for social equity, compassion, or the idea of
an egalitarian society. When they scream about "save,
save, save," we need to ask - at whose expense?

pelican,

The hype is a means to an end. You lot are arguing the veracity of the claims about real Julia, when the announcement of the tactic is the tactic. You're all jumping and asking what does this mean, or lauding that you're 'onto them', but really they are pulling the strings to make you 'onto them' about something trivial so you wont be 'onto them' about anything important.

The subject needed to be changed, as the government is losing the campaign. Why do you think Gillard didn't more subtly change tactics? She would then appear less fake and less calculated in showing the real Julia. But, the announcement of all this has a definite purpose (to change the subject from the leaks etc and to somehow validate and announce the negative campaigning against Abbott) and I think people have missed that.

Dear Julia, having paid our taxes we trust our government to invest our hard earned contributions fairly and equitably for the future of all Australians. I can accept and live with ideological differences between governments and I fully accept the differing political priorities applied to the major portfolios.

All I ask of any government is to demonstrate the same fiscal probity in spending our taxes as we taxpayers had to endure to earn them.

Under the Hawk/Keating government we ran up a debt of $92bn, which made me sad because I knew we would all contribute to paying this off, and under Howard that’s exactly what we did along with leaving $20bn in the bank. This made me feel good because I knew this was a solid achievement by all Australians.

We have already spent the $20bn cash on hand and are now racking up debt at a rate of $100m a day.

Unfortunately we cannot find the business cases for the “reforms” in which you have invested. It’s good that when asked, “You are entirely satisfied” that there is a return on Australia’s investment and tell us about the social equity benefits.

You have started so many initiatives yet failed to deliver. Health reform is suspension, along with mining tax, border security, ETS, super clinics, NBN, Henry Tax Review, home insulation, BER, green certification, stop the blame game, whaling litigation, indigenous housing, hybrid cars, green jobs, child care “double drop offs”, trade centers and many more initiatives. You ask us to believe that all these incomplete policies will have positive impacts on our economy and will ensure a return to surplus by 2013?

This leaves us with no fiscal justification, only the social equity benefits which you articulate often, particularly when asked for the missing business cases. We can only hope that we get a great deal of “bang” from the ALP ideology for our $100,000,000.00 a day.

The ear lobes are fine, your magazine picture is good and I have no problem with Tim, now will the real Julia please tell us about the economy

Foxy,
You state "Real Action," to me means cuts in
things that make our lives easier, like health, education,
medicine, infrastructure, and much, much more."

Comon, you are spruking nothing more than Labor propaganda. Where has been infastructure under Labor? Unless you mean the massive expansion of facilities at Christmas Island! the other things you mantion are all state responsibilities and our state Labor government have shown their incompedence on these issues.

Where is the compassion for illegal entrants? When 170 have drowned in the past 2 years under Labor.

Don't forget the Libs paid off a massive Labor debt when they came to office and left with billions in surplus. Labor has blown all that and much, much more, with nothing to show for it. No infastructure and no projects that were done in a compedent manner.

No, working and taxpaying people cannot afford another term under Labor.

Gillard has shown herself to be a fake, hollow and a liar, who will say anything and do anything to get elected.