I have just been sent a set of policy statements from the Liberal Party. Because this election is about trust, I was just wondering which of these policies are core promises and which are the promises they don’t intend to keep?

"Children must not be put in jail without just cause"- Malcolm FraserOne of the greatest ironies of the current Government came during budget week. We all remember Treasurer Costello telling us to go forth and multiply, claiming that our ageing population desperately needed young people to boost the economy. We needed workers to support the retirees. Of course, the first irony one notices is the fact that babies don’t usually work for an employer. But the real irony of this “bonk for the econ...

My good friend Rachel Williams wrote this to editors of broadsheet papers the other day and as she doesn't have a blog, I thought I'd post it here. John Howard is certainly spending up big for the election. And I know these promises are genuine. I know this from past experience. John Howard said he would protect Australia's borders and not let in any of those queue-jumping refugees. You know, the ones that were shipped at a cost of millions of dollars to Nauru and the like. Now I hear most...

Picture Max Gillies dressed as John Howard, running around a used car caryard. In fact this is much funnier if you read it aloud in a hysterical John Howard voice... Hi! I’m Craaaazy John from Craaaazy John’s Used Liberal Party Policies and down here in Canberra I’ve gone absolutely bonkers. Take a look at GP bulk-billing. It was at EIGHTY PERCENT under the Labor Government....SLASHED to a ridiculously low SIXTY NINE PERCENT. There’s no way Australian families can afford that! And ...

Madonna King launched a tyrade against Leading feminist Germaine Greer last week which can be found at: http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,10756473%255E27197,00.html In reply I say: Once, just once, it would be nice to read an article about Germaine Greer that actually bothers to refute her arguments. Instead we get the same old line about loony, unhinged crazy old bat and a few quotes out of context. I realise it must be upsetting for Madonna King that people...

Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson has been running the line (which by the way is quite a clever and humorous line, but it is not Anderson's creation) that the Greens are "watermelons": They're green on the outside, but they're very very red on the inside, if you know what he means. And I have this to say..... John Anderson is right when he says that the Greens are "very red on the inside". Inside them they actually have a heart that beats, and it beats RED blood. This is more than I can ...

“Australia Attacked”. That was the esteemed Courier-Mail’s headline this morning to announce that 8 Indonesians were killed, 160 Indonesians were injured and one Australian was injured in Indonesia . A bomb went off in the Australian embassy. The Courier Mail seems more concerned about Australian buildings than Indonesian lives. Many Australians responded with similar lack of concern for Indonesians in the wake of the Bali bombings. Despite the Indonesians being our closest neighbours, ...

Liberal Party Communication Minister Richard Alston recently lodged a complaint against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for left wing bias. If you want to read his letter, you can find it at www.abc.net.au/mediawatch. Dicky Alston, the same clown who supported David Flint as the head of the ABA until Flint recently retired in shame. That was after having written love letters to Alan Jones fawning over his broadcasting abilities, whilst he was supposed to be sitting in judgment on ...

John Howard’s Liberal Party recently announced its plan to have it so that public schools who do not display the Australian flag and do not enlist their children to mindnumbingly chant their allegiance to the national anthem will not receive equal funding. This is a Government who wants to punish our children for the actions of administrators. This is a man who thinks pieces of material and flagpoles should be higher educational priorities than resources for the classroom. Howard wants to...

Who really cares what the Senate Inquiry says about whether John Howard lied about children overboard? My concern then, as it is now, was how keen he was to use these innocent people for his own political gain. Before you could say "asylum-seeker", he was playing on our fears, stating that it was unquestionable fact. That certainly was not true. It is his arrogant lack of scruples that bothers me.

John Howard says he doesn’t know what Mark Latham stands for. We might have expected our Prime Minister to be a bit better politically informed, particularly if he is so intent on plagiarising Latham’s policies on politicians’ super, pneumococcal vaccinations, and the Free Trade Agreement. The rest of the time Howard has been highly critical of Latham. How can he criticise Latham so often if he doesn’t know what Latham stands for? I presume Howard just doesn't know what he's talking about whe...

Amanda Vanstone appeared on ABC TV earlier this year and I must say that in many parts of her performance I was impressed and I came to understand and appreciate better her stance on several issues. She also managed to summarise the conservative party’s economic policy.... “Well, I realised fairly early on that I was more to the Liberal camp … because I liked some of the things the Labor Party wanted to do, but they were always getting stuck into business, saying, "That's just for profit. ...

He's done it! John Howard has said the words that we and the Aborignal people have been waiting years to hear: "I'm very sorry..." - Prime Minister John Howard John Howard has taken the first step towards Reconciliation by finally saying Sorry. The next step is to say it to the Aborigines who were forcibly taken from their mothers and fathers by our Government, instead of just saying it to Opposition Leader Mark Latham. How is it that Howard can't find it in himself to say sorry for att...

This morning, the Australian reported that a senior person in the Defence Department has confessed that John Howard knew that the children overboard photos were a scam before the election was held. This morning Laurie Oakes was talking with Mr Howard... Oakes: Mr Howard what do you know about the allegations by a senior member of DFAT that you lied about children overboard? Howard: Well we are certain that he's a poo poo head LO: I'm sorry? JH: Yep. He's a schizophrenic too and he suffe...

Last week the Australian Labor Party agreed to vote in favour of a free trade agreement between Australia and the US that was the work of John Howard and George Bush. The Labor Party are the only party in Australian politics who officially admit to having members within their ranks who are Left wing, Right wing and Centre and who don’t always agree. The Labor Party’s Left Wing faction said they did not support the FTA, but that they would vote in favour of it in order to tow the party line. I...