Bazz! surely you understand the impact of your words!
Good Grief bloke you prove my point and scuttle yours under you!
It a lie if Labor does it but a mind change if Liberal does it!
Hugely funny but deadly telling too!
I begin to understand your refusal on many threads to even consider peak oil is not about to murder us in our beds.

Belly, you did not read carefully enough.
The difference between Howard & Gillard was Howard put the change up
to an election, Gillard did change after saying she would not do it.

I do not mind a change of opinion by either but Gillard did not change
it because she had a change of opinion, she did it because she could
not get power via the greens unless she did.

That makes a very big difference.
The silly thing on Gillard's part was the greens were never going to
support anyone else anyway, so she sold her soul for for power needlessly.

No peak oil need not be homicidal but if the dopey politicians will
listen to their own government reports, eg BITRE 117 they will make
it a lot easier on all of us, after all it is simple enough arithmetic.

Gillard was/is an evil sub creation that belongs in the dark ages.
She is the subject of so many investigations that her history is going to make Underbelly look like Disneyland.

The GST should be 15& on necessities including food and rent and 25% on luxury goods.

Non production should be taxed and productivity rewarded.

Anything we can make here should be subsided with increased protection tariffs.

Commenting on the bellowed refrain (Hewson I seem to recall) of "Broaden the tax base" Keating responded: "You mean the many pay more so the few can pay less?". This is precisely the purpose of indirect taxation. It's what it's for. And blow me down, it's just what the Libs went on to do. A GST introduced to fund a cut in the corporate tax rate from 36% to 30%.

Howard didn't propose the GST in the election campaign but wouldn't exclude it. Whether he lied is moot. But no liar can be more despicable, never again qualifying for a scintilla of respect from anyone with even the most equivocal moral compass, than one who as PM of Australia lies our country into war, and demonises Andrew Wilkie, the one spook with the common decency to speak the truth. Or who participates in a government that acts on that blatant campaign of transparent lies.

Bazz, the definition of a lie is;

"a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood,
something intended or serving to convey a false impression
an inaccurate or false statement"

Honest John Howard and his "Never ever a GST" statement fits the bill, it was in my view false, deliberately intended to deceive, it was in fact an intentional untruth at the time. You say Howard introduced his GST through the honorable method of putting it to the people, that might be so, and I may add at the time of elections politicians are putting lots of things to the people, some things acceptable and others unacceptable, Howard's grab bag of promises, on balance, along with other factors got him elected. Not withstanding any of that, the original statement in my view was intended to convay a false impression, a lie. Just in the way Gillard later claimed a change of circumstance was the reason her government introduced a carbon tax. I tend to feel her explanation was to a degree plausible unforeseen circumstances led to a change and her original "never ever" statement, unlike Howard's, was not deliberately meant to deceive at the time she made it.

Paul1405 I'm still searching the web for a fitting term to describe you. So far no luck, most are too lenient in their meanings.