You're quite right Charlee. One of the greatest con jobs of the last decade is that John Howard made the general population believe that he was a "friend of the working class." What a joke.
I work in a part time position and it's not always easy to make ends meet. Some weeks, my pay rate is little above the aged pension, yet I earn just too much to get a low income health care card. I pay full rates for everything including medicine. In the latest budget, all I received was a lousy $1.88 per week tax cut and from the highest taxing Government we've ever known.
I've felt unwell for the past three weeks, yet a trip to the doctor will cost upwards of $40. A specialist will cost God knows how much, and then there would probably be medicine on top of that. I'll get some of the doctors cost back from Medicare, but specialists are out of the question, so I grin and bear the discomfort.
Howard has attacked everyone from workers and unmarried mothers, right through to people on disability pensions. From a recent date, you can no longer get onto a disability pension, no matter how bad your condition is (except in the case of blindness) and anyone who comes off a pension then gets unwell (as is often the case with mental illness) cannot get back on the pension again. This has effectively caused people on pensions to stop looking for suitable work and be instead committed to a low income lifestyle for good.
On top of that, unemployed people over the age of 50 are now forced to search for work until retirement age. 15 years of hell at the hands of unfeeling, computerised Centrelink staff.
Howard wonders just why the polls are looking bad for his outfit. Australians simply aren't that stupid, or at least, I hope they're not. The election is still some months away and old Howard will lie and cheat any way he can to win. I still believe it will be a close call either way.

There is something insidious about this whole concept of globalisation.Why aren't all countries allowed to have tarrifs to effect a balance of trade so no one has a trade deficit?Shouldn't all countries balance imports with exports?We have a trade deficit that is almost half our annual GDP.The US is in a worse situation.Where is the advantage in being in debt to countries that produce nearly all our consumerables?We are giving China and India power over our economies.

If being Globalised means we have relinquished power to the multi-nationals and big Govt,then we as a free thinking society,have lost the plot

Arjay
why on earth should countries seek to always have a zero trade balance. Does your household always have outgoings and income exactly balanced? Have you never borrowed – had a mortgage, perhaps? Is there a single business in Australia than neither borrows nor accumulates surpluses? There's nothing wrong with running current account deficits or surpluses as long as you generate enough income to pay your service costs. And there’s no way tariffs could be used to engineer a balanced budget.

Incidentally, our current account deficit is about 6% of GDP

I admit it! I am an evil trade unionist! there its out in the open, just maybe some of the reason is the intent behind workchoices.
So many of you would not understand laws already passed but not to impact until 2009 are just another wave of workchoices.
While secondary impacts would have been the destruction of the union movement John Howard had other wishes.
He wanted to cut financial support for the ALP from those unions.
But for all intents his main aim was and remains to cut costs via wage cuts, thereby cutting our standard of living.
John Howard lead a conservative party into place they will claim after the coming loss they did not want to go.
The greatest reviews of Howard's worth are going to come from within his own party and be hard for him to hear.
Already while Australia booms middle Australia is battling, we should all breath easier now that workchoices will not forever divide the haves from the have nots.
Australia is unhappy with this government because it has lost contact with them.

Rhian"Have you never borrowed to and eventually paid the mortage off." Yes good sense Rhian,however our balance of payments mortage just grows and grows;we seem to have no means of earning an income other than just flogging off non renewable resources.

A one way trading system only benefits the exporter.Have a talk to Dick Smith,he has been saying for years that we are selling our country down the drain and the chickens one day will come home to roost.Perhaps it will be sooner than we think.

Actually, a one-way trading system, if such a thing could exist, would only benefit the importer – what good is it to exchange our goods for Japanese Yen or US dollars unless we can use that money in exchange for something else that we can actually use. The nearest thing we have to a one-way trading system is foreign aid, and in principle it’s the recipient (“importer”) not the donor who gains most in that exchange (the reality might be a bit different, however).

Tariffs don’t necessarily improve the balance of payments. Sure, they make imports more expensive, but they actually operate like export taxes, increasing costs and prices in the domestic economy and adding to export prices too. And in a floating exchange rate regime, the exchange rate will tend to adjust in response to changes in demand.

see
http://www.ecom.uwa.edu.au/__data/page/36742/LookingBackwards.pdf

Dick Smith is a populist who profits from marketing his products under a mantle of patriotism. He’s also an economic illiterate - hardly an authority on these matters.