AFP goons? tsssk tsssk, Kevin!

You’re really willing to assume that I’m some kind of boot-wearing fascist, aren’t you Working Families.

You’re well wide of the mark. Take a look around at some other comments I’ve made on this forum before shooting your mouth off. But then, mindlessly spitting venom is so much more fun, isn’t it.

Calling me a “person without an original thought” really doesn’t stand up when I’ve seen nothing from you but poorly thought out student politician boilerplate. You’ve done nothing to defend Rudd apart from slag off Howard. Sorry, but he’s old news now – find a different target for your vitriol.

For the record, I’m glad to see JWH out of the lodge; and not before time. Parts of the Australian character took an exceptionally bad turn in the last ten years. But just because Howard is gone and Rudd’s arrived doesn’t mean that we’re automatically entering some kind of utopian age. The current government has done some positive gestures, but I’ll reserve judgement on their handling of the country till I see some substance. We probably won’t see any kind of substance falling out of their policies for a couple of years yet; so I shall remain a cynic till then.

BTW, thier obsessive pandering to, and lionisation of, the mythic “working family” is thoroughly getting on my tits at this stage. Pretty sure I’m not alone there. It’s every bit as nauseating as the dry-humping that the previous government gave “Howard’s Battlers”.

I was agreeing with you THUMPER!

THUMPER – What do you mean JWH didn’t have any new ideas. The strong economy, low unemployment…and strong economy, low unemployment. To use his own pearler or a phrase, it sounds like “duplicity” to me! And did you read the part in that transcript “policy is more important than people”. Not JWH, but WTF?!

Beware all Liberals who are poised to point the finger at K Rudd when interest rates continue to grow, and housing affordability gets worse. These wheels were put in motion years ago. Labor are currently in damage control, cleaning up the mess that was under the covers for many years.

While yes, I am a fan of Kevin Rudd, but formally a Liberal voter, I believe he has achieved more key important milestones that Howard arrogantly refused to during his entire tenure as the leader of this country. Howard didn’t even have the manners to rock up to one of the most important days for our native Australians. Regardless of the party you support, there is the point of manners and humanity. Little Johnny lacked plenty of both!

Yeah, he just didn’t have the wisdom left to fake the children overboard scandal. 😉

Mr Howard was a disgrace, and I’m glad he’s gone. but I’m also a bit disappointed with Mr Rudd so far. Not massively disappointed, but this “working families” thing is pathetic. I hate spin. His ministers so far have done well, I’m always interested to hear what they’ve got to say because they are actually saying something, not filling the air with meaningless words, avoiding questions. They still believe in what they’re doing. Nicola Roxon on 7.30 Report last night was quite good, her joke about sausage factories was pretty funny. I hope this gov’t doesn’t become cynical and hollow like the last one, but Mr Rudd has got to stop this ridiculous catch-phrase divisive style.

I for one would never have saluted JWH. Even the thought of that is repellant.

Haven’t saluted Rudd either.

In fact, im not sure I have ever saluted anyone.

Its fine if some people want to salute some other people, but surely it shows little about a persons character in this day and age.

It is really funny how easy the old liberal guard rise tothe bait isn’t it, how the wrap themselves in the flag “when I marched past on Anzac Day” what a joke you are, free thinking people dont give respect to liars like JWH, but I forget all the ideas they have must be approved by there leader first

careful people your old red under the beds crap is starting to show

Apologies, I didn’t intend to post that entire transcript. But Barrie…but Barrie!

Have a read anyway, and it’ll show you just how repetitive and unoriginal Howard was in his policies and interviews. Particularly look at the last 4 lines of the interview. He couldn’t even answer that simple question with gratitude or a humble note.

Bye Little Johnny. You won’t be missed!

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 04/11/2007

Reporter: Barrie Cassidy

With just three weeks to go before Australia votes on November 24, the Insiders panel is joined live from Sydney by Prime Minister John Howard.
Transcript

BARRIE CASSIDY, PRESENTER: And now with just three weeks to go before Australia votes on November the 24th, we’re joined from our Sydney studios by the Prime Minister, John Howard.

(to John Howard) Good morning, and welcome.

JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: Hello, Barrie.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Which frontbencher do you think created the most grief for their party this week? Was it Tony Abbott or Peter Garrett?

JOHN HOWARD: Well leaving aside commentary, can I just go to Mr Garrett? I’ll go to his defence that it was a joke, I’ll tell you why it wasn’t a joke, it’s not the first time evidence has emerged that he has said this. If you have a listen to an interview between Senator Bob Brown and Charles Woolley, on the 8th of October, you will find Charles Woolley saying, in effect, ‘You all know that Peter Garrett is saying to Greens and some journos, mate, don’t worry, what we say now and what we do in government will be very different things’.

Now I have, just a few moments ago, I have listened to the audio of that interview, Charles Woolley did not regard what Peter Garrett had been saying to his friends in the green movement and even to some journalists as a joke, and Charles Woolley himself said this. So you’ve got the evidence, the testimony, if you like, of two journalists, and I’ve read the Steve Price column in the Sunday Telegraph this morning, and he’s very direct and very explicit.

And what is interesting is that Peter Garrett has not denied having said it.

BARRIE CASSIDY: No, but Richard Wilkins was also there from Channel Nine, and he said he thought it was a throw-away line, and he thought he was joking.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, what do you say then about the Charles Woolley comment? I have listened to it not seven minutes ago, I listened to the audio of the interview, and it was very clear what Charles Woolley said, and no doubt some of you will now go away and listen to the audio yourself, but how do you explain that away? I mean I don’t think it was a joke, Steve Price didn’t think it was a joke, you don’t joke about things like this.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But if he has got a hidden agenda, why would he be revealing this to journalists? It doesn’t make sense.

JOHN HOWARD: But Barrie, stop trying to excuse him, and let’s concentrate on the facts. The facts are that you now have two journalists, both of whom I say enjoy a good reputation, and neither could be described as a Liberal Party or a government stooge, neither of them. They’re both as straight as gun barrels when it comes to both sides of politics, and both of them have said that Peter Garrett, in the case of Charles Woolley, he has obviously heard around the traps, and he is connected, and he would know what he was talking about, and in the case of Steve Price, he has the experience of a direct conversation.

And you do not joke about things like this.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Why would he be talking about it, if he had a hidden agenda?

JOHN HOWARD: But Barrie, that sounds like you’re struggling for an explanation. I mean I deal with the observable facts, and the observable facts are that two reputable journalists have now said, very explicitly, that Peter Garrett, who would be the Environment Minister, in a Labor Government, and would be negotiating in Bali in December, and making decisions about the future of our resource industry in the context of the Kyoto negotiations, the post-Kyoto negotiations, this man has said on now a number of occasions, not just to Steve Price but he’s said it to others on a number of occasions, ‘Look, forget about all of this me-toosim, if we get in, we’ll change it all.’

Now this is dynamite, because it reveals duplicity, it reveals a double standard, it demonstrates that the Labor Party has been saying one thing to try and calm everybody down. Peter Garrett is a radical, we all know that, the Labor Party has embraced him, he was brought into the Labor Party by John Faulkner and Mark Latham, remember in 2004, and he has spent more time at Kevin Rudd’s elbow in the last week than any other shadow minister, and he’ll be the Environment Minister in a Rudd Labor Government if he get elected.

The Australian public is front and centre on the issue of credibility for the Australian Labor Party.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Alright, let’s accept that it’s true, there is a template for this, isn’t it, because you went to the last election, you presented a policy platform and you didn’t mention WorkChoices?

JOHN HOWARD: That’s wrong. I read our policy last night, I read our policy in 2004. We committed ourselves to changing the unfair dismissal laws. We committed ourselves to making agreement making easier. We committed ourselves to pressing ahead with the creation of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. And we also committed ourselves to reducing the discrepancies between the different State jurisdictions.

So this idea that we went to the last election without saying anything about industrial relations is wrong.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Do you think that is a fair reflection of what you eventually did?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, I tell you what, the… I regard the greatest virtue of all of WorkChoices is the removal of the unfair dismissal laws. Because the removal of the unfair dismissal laws has been directly responsible for the creation of hundreds of thousands of additional jobs, and if Labor wins this election and rolls back those changes, which it undoubtedly will, that will push up unemployment and do great damage to small business.

BARRIE CASSIDY: OK. Three years ago, I asked you this question: what was the cut through issue of the 2004 campaign, and you said, ‘Undoubtedly apprenticeships and trade skills.’ Have you let the country down on that? Are trade skills demonstrably better now than they were three years ago?

JOHN HOWARD: Certainly we have a lot more apprentices now than we had when we came into power. We’ve made, in terms of practical policies for the future, we’ve made the 100 Australian technical colleges a centrepiece of this election campaign. It’s not the only issue. It’s part of our plan to keep the economy growing in more difficult economic circumstances.

BARRIE CASSIDY: You’ve done that this time; did you need to do that because you didn’t do enough in the previous three years?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, we started the surge back to technical education.

It was my announcement in the last election campaign of 24 Australian technical colleges, which in a single stroke transformed the debate in this country about technical education, and since then, and I give them credit for it, a lot of the state governments have come on board, and have started to put more resources into technical education because the greatest mistake this nation made in education in my lifetime was to move away from dedicated technical schools, which happened right across the board in the 1960s and 70s. And we embraced this foolish notion that every Australian person leaving school had to go to university, when people should have the opportunity of going to university, but many don’t want to and are unsuited for it, and we are now going back to a greater emphasis on technical education and I think that is a fantastic development.

BARRIE CASSIDY: What would you regard as the cut through issue of this campaign?

JOHN HOWARD: Undoubtedly, the capacity to manage the Australian economy in a more difficult economic environment. And this goes very directly to things like interest rates, it goes very directly to things like industrial relations.

The truth is that the Australian economy is growing very strongly. And that in itself presents us with some challenges. And what is coming out of the United States has not worked its way fully through the world economy. There will be further repercussions from the subprime meltdown in the United States and what I would say to the Australian people, at a time when there are inflationary pressures in the economy which put pressure on interest rates, is this a time to hand over economic management to a party that has an inflationary industrial relations policy? That has a policy which will lead to a potential wages surge, not based on productivity, but simply based on a new industrial relations system where higher wages which are affordable in one sector of the economy flow through to other sectors of the economy where they are not affordable, and therefore will put upward pressure on inflation and then on interest rates.

BARRIE CASSIDY: BARRIE CASSIDY: You say it’s about the economy. Can your campaign survive another increase in interest rates?

JOHN HOWARD: I don’t know what will happen on Wednesday. That’s a matter for the Reserve Bank. The Reserve Bank is independent. And the Reserve Bank will do its job. But I do know this: that interest rates now are lower than they were at any time under the former Labor Government, and at 8.3 per cent they’re less than half the notorious peak of 17 per cent reached under the former Labor Government, and I also know this: that if we are in an environment where there are, through inflation pressures on interest rates, people will have to ask themselves whether, in that environment, we are better able to manage those pressures than the Labor Party, particularly with its inflationary industrial relations policy.

BARRIE CASSIDY: When they make that judgement they will be thinking more of short-term history than long-term history. There have been nine successive increases since 2002. How many successive increases does it take before you accept that there has been a policy miscalculation?

JOHN HOWARD: Barrie, since the last election, which is the most immediate time that I put myself before the Australian people, interest rates have gone up by 1.25 per cent. Now I don’t like interest rates going up, but we have to ask ourselves: in the environment in which we now live, looking to the future, and this election is about to the future, it’s not about the past, which side of politics in this more difficult environment, where some inflationary pressure is unavoidable if you have a strong economy, you have high world oil prices and you have a drought, some inflation in the system is unavoidable.

BARRIE CASSIDY: So no policy miscalculations at all?

JOHN HOWARD: No well, I don’t believe, I think our industrial relations policy, for example, has in fact contributed to downward pressure on inflation and the Reserve Bank has said in its most recent monetary policy report, the Reserve Bank has actually said that in an environment of a strongly growing economy, wages have behaved extremely well.

I get back to my point: we are living in a more difficult economic environment. We can maintain strong growth. But in that more difficult environment, with some unavoidable inflationary pressures, does Labor say that world oil prices will be lower under its government? Does Labor say that the drought is going to disappear? Is Labor saying that it wants a slower rate of growth? No, they’re not saying any of those things.

So people will have to say to themselves, ‘OK, we accept that there is a bit more inflation in the system due to these external pressures, plus the very strong economy.’ Which side of politics is better able to contain that? And we will be putting very strongly, especially in the context of Labor’s industrial relations policy, yes, there may be upward pressure on interest rates, for the reasons I’ve outlined, but who is better able to manage that over the next three years? Do you really believe that the Labor Party with its history of budget deficits is better able to manage all of that over the next three years…

BARRIE CASSIDY: You talk about the next three years. You’re going to leave politics in 18 months to two years. Why put yourself up for such a short period? What’s the point when Peter Costello was available as a long term alternative?

JOHN HOWARD: Barrie, I’m talking about policy continuity. Policy is more important than people. Costello and I have been a great team. We are a great team. And I have a lot of great colleagues, but it’s policy, it’s policy capacity. It’s policy endurance that really matters…

BARRIE CASSIDY: But you say it’s policy. Quite clearly there’s a concept coming through, a time for a change. Now, primarily, that’s your responsibility. You insisted on staying beyond 11 years.

JOHN HOWARD: Barrie, I’m not getting into political commentary. I have precious moments available on your program to talk to your viewers and talk to the Australian people about the choice, and I don’t intend to lapse into commentary. I am saying to them, on the economy, which a strong economy is central to everything.

What I’m saying to the people in these more challenging and difficult circumstances, admittedly with upward pressure on interest rates through a strong economy producing inflationary pressures, a drought and the high price of oil, do people really believe that Labor, with its track record, with its inflationary industrial relations policy, is better able to manage that environment than the coalition? That’s the choice. That’s the cut through issue.

BARRIE CASSIDY: You say it’s choice…

JOHN HOWARD: Well, I agree. It is the big issue that people will have to focus on.

BARRIE CASSIDY: OK, you say it’s choice, you had a choice, you revisited the leadership issue during APEC. Are you convinced you made the right call no, regrets?

JOHN HOWARD: Barrie, I’m focused on the future. I won’t give commentary. I’m presenting a policy continuity. I’m leading a team that’s given us a 33-year low in unemployment. I’m leading a team where interest rates now are lower than at any time in the 13 years of the Hawke and Keating Government and less than half of the peak of 17 per cent for housing interest rates. And I’m leading a team that’s laid out a plan to maintain the strength of the Australian economy and I’m saying to the Australian people that in the more difficult and challenging economic environment we now have, that team is better able to contain the inflationary pressure, keep interest rates as low as possible and certainly maintain low unemployment, because our industrial relations policy does not involve bringing back unfair dismissal laws, does not involve clobbering small business and will maintain very low unemployment.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Leadership is important too. You said on The 7.30 Report you had an agreement with Peter Costello. What are the terms of that agreement?

JOHN HOWARD: Barrie, I’ve said that well into the next term there would be a transition to Peter Costello. I’ve made that clear…

BARRIE CASSIDY: That’s it, nothing more to the agreement than that?

JOHN HOWARD: Barrie, that’s the position. Unlike others, I’m up front about what’s going to happen.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Are there any other aspects to the agreement than that? Is that all that you have agreed upon?

JOHN HOWARD: Barrie, that’s a very simple proposition, because there’s policy continuity.

Peter and I have the same view of the world when it comes to the fact that a strong economy is central to everything. We believe in a wages system based on productivity. We want high wages based on higher productivity. We can maintain or contain, rather, the inflationary interest rate pressures in this new, more challenging environment.

The Labor Party’s demonstrated in the past that it cannot.

BARRIE CASSIDY: All of this of course the transition assumes a coalition victory but if you lose the election, will you stay in Parliament for the entire term?

JOHN HOWARD: Barrie, I’m not contemplating losing the election.

BARRIE CASSIDY: No, but the voters in Bennelong are entitled to contemplate that prospect.

JOHN HOWARD: No, Barrie, I have made it very clear that I’m focused on winning this election. And I have said that if we win this election, there will be a transition well into the next term to Peter Costello.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But the question was about losing the election. Surely the voters are entitled to factor that in and what would happen to their local member, and I’m asking this question to you as a local member.

JOHN HOWARD: Yeah, well, I’m answering you as a person who wants to win, and I don’t intend to hypothesise about loss.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Surely the proposition of being in politics for 30 years, 11 years as Prime Minister would be the humiliating to spend the last three years siting in the backbenches in opposition?

JOHN HOWARD: Barrie, I intend to win.

BARRIE CASSIDY: 30 years in politics, whatever happens, you’d have to says, politics has been good to you?

JOHN HOWARD: I’m not getting into retrospection. Good try. I’m focused on the next three years.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Thanks for your time this morning.

JOHN HOWARD: You’re very welcome.

working Australians said :

(Working families)… “so why don’t you crawl back under your rock and wait untill someone cares about your views becaue the majority of Australia doesn’t and even the ACT showed that veiws like yours are no longer wanted

Now if you would like to debate….”

Yes, a debate with you sounds productive WF. You seem very open minded….

.