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 hurt Buswell the most in relation to undoing the bra of one lady and sniffing the chair of another was the initial denial, where he either dodged the question, refused to answer, hid or did not remember.

He would have been better off acknowledging the incidents upfront, not after he was nailed dead centre after trying to avoid them.

It makes look like someone who will deny an incident unless there is positive proof.

I thought these Liberals are supposed to advocate Work”Choices” - ie the principle that any employee can be sacked for any reason (or even no reason) at any time with no notice needed.

They employ Mr Buswell (on publicly-obtained money). So why is he still there, after all the brown stuff that has hit the fan?

Doesn’t WorkChoices apply to one of their own?

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.

Obviously the OO journo’s are even more annoyed with you.

Found this link in Ads by Google on the OO piece Omnid 17. has pointed out. Cloud-seeding ‘a possum threat’

Hope he doesn’t move north poss.

And another thing that’s been shitting me to tears this morning goes like this:

Speaking of honeymoons being over - welcome back to the real world Poss!

We’ve blocked some bills
That made us look dills
We’ve done all the dumb things