Seriously, what on earth in a budget that even you describe as “limp” could be considered so outrageous as to warrant the blocking of supply? I can’t see anything, so I’d love to be enlightened.

Besides, on current showings Labor have at least six years to pursue their agenda – maybe that’s why they’re taking it slow. Personally, I think they know that they were elected on being similar economically to Howard, but less venal/heartless/opportunistic/dishonest. So a bold budget full of big changes isn’t really what was politically called for (much as I would have liked to have seen one).

Maybe the ALP have decided they need a four year term – 2 years to work up the policies & implement them, 2 years to bed them down.
- Reforming health, creating a carbon economy, whatever – these are not matters to be bulldozed into place with the stroke of a pen and a slick marketing campaign.

Maybe what we saw last week was a pre-election budget complete with double dissolution trigger.

BUT… while you are right that a Costello-led coalition *could* have delivered much of what Rudd has, I doubt it actually would have (for example, I can’t imagine Costello implementing Rudd’s changes to broadband planning). In any case it wasn’t so much that Costello lacked the *guts*, it’s that he lacked the *numbers*, and that’s still the Coalition’s problem. Given the chance to choose, most of them would still choose Howard, just as they used their numbers to force Nelson into opposing the apology. That mindset has to change before things start to go better for them – it’s not just the leadership that’s the problem.

Consider, also, what might have happened if Costello had had the guts to seize the Liberal leadership halfway through last year … imagine if he’d ratified Kyoto and made an apology to the Stolen Generation and dismantled the Pacific Solution. What you’d have then is something very similar to the Rudd government now — a moderate centre/right government.

I went to the Green-Left comedy debate in Brunswick (Melbourne) last weekend, and a couple of the comedians there attacked Rudd in the same way as I did above. The crowd reaction was fascinating — half cheered, half sat in shocked silence. I suspect you’d be one of the latter rather than the former! So can I humbly suggest to you that you judge governments not on the name of their party, but rather on the ideology that their policies present?

Were they being careful in case the economy slowed heaps?

Or were they sending a message that more tax rationalisation is coming so big business can begin restructuring saalray packages?

Disappointed rich private schools got their huge subsidies renewed, that the healthcare rebate wasn’t abolished, the clean coal swindle continued etc. Can see the politics of it but still disappointed or maybe just impatient.

Wow, pretty much the most stupid statement of the day. The coalition has NEVER been FORCED to adopt hard-line right-wing politics… they breath, drink and sleep it on a daily basis.

And it’s not like Rudd had anything to fear from putting forward a grand vision in this budget. There’s two and a half years to the next election, there’s the Howard Government/international climate to blame for whatever you want (e.g. scrapping the tax cuts) and an opposition incapable of finding it’s own rear end to shove its head up. Rudd and Swan could have implemented any policy they liked and got away with it; yet they chose, instead, to do nothing.

Oh, apart from the tax cuts. Silly me, how could I forget? There was a vision there after all …

My prediction is that Rudd’s sole policy is to stay in government for as long as possible. And the means by which he will implement this is to throw enough token left-wing gestures to keep the left happy, whilst claiming the centre of politics firmly as his own. The coalition is forced to either adopt hard-line right-wing policies that will never get it elected, or gain the “me-too” label by trying to fight it out against Rudd in the centre.

The end result is that we have a government that fiddles while this country burns, with no opposition to keep it in check and no ideology to give it direction.

(p.s. How do you scrap the tax cuts and not get blamed by the electorate? It’s simple — you throw the money directly into superannuation. That way there’s no upward pressure on inflation, you’ve given people better savings for the future and you get lauded as an excellent economic manager into the bargain …)

What the OP days is that Rudd is reforming health through stealth, Isn’t that what Howard did, but in the opposite direction? Howard was not a policy wonk, but policy was oriented by his government toward the private sector. It’s still unclear where Rudd is going with this one, as he is a self-confessed pragmatist when it comes to the issue of private versus public provision of services. I would guess he’ll move health into a new type of private provision. If he were a radical he would have taken over the hospital system. He didn’t and he won’t.

Rudd’s election strategy was also the ’small target’ one chosen by Howard in 1996. Rudd is not Howardlite, but the fact is that he is a neo-liberal and a social conservative, as was Howard.

As Calrencegirl put it well:

it’s the Rudd Government’s feet dragging on addressing civil liberties, human rights, open government, protection of whistleblowers, water security and climate change policy etc., problems left over from Howard era legislation which keeps that charge alive.

She could have added same-sex marriage and a host of other issues.

The difference between Howard and Rudd is that Rudd has far more intellectual tools, but still no agenda for government. He’s making that up in government, as he goes along with all the reviews and so on. Like all policy wonks, he has no real ideas and hence the ideas summit that was a policy summit. Rudd is all tip, no iceberg.