Clueless leaders compound fear

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan do not inspire confidence when they attempt to reassure Australians about the current economic crisis.

As former NSW treasurer Michael Costa said bluntly in The Australian on Friday: "Listening to Kevin Rudd at Council of Australian Governments meetings as he tried to connect the global economic situation to the more mundane items on the national reform agenda was often excruciating. "Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of economics would have quickly concluded, as I did, that the Prime Minister didn't have a good understanding of these issues." Rudd tries to look grave and prime ministerial, and Swan does his best to look comfortable in meetings with international economic boffins, but both fail. They don't look natural. They look as if they're acting and, increasingly rapidly, the wider electorate is starting to see what too few saw before last November's election. The swings against Labor in Victorian and NSW by-elections, its near-death experience in the Northern Territory and its demise in Western Australia, all indicate a rising degree of displeasure. That trend continued in NSW in the recent local council elections and the polls indicate that voters are waiting to punish Labor in the by-elections again this weekend - as they should - given the level of corruption and incompetence which marks this 13-year-old government. Labor's problem is it's not just the economic times denting its popularity, it's the lack of plausible leadership. Before winning office and for much of their 11 months in power, Rudd and Swan talked down the economy. Now they are trying to talk it up. But why should they be believed when they have set in train policies which they know will increase unemployment and reduce opportunities for the economy? Rudd spends an inordinate amount of time ringing other leaders, but none of them has any ideas that will benefit Australia, let alone their own countries. In the real world, China has said it is cutting imports. This has been confirmed by Australian mineral exporters and even our Mandarin-speaking Prime Minister says that in yet another phone call to China's premier last week, he was told China's own growth projections were down by as much as 3 per cent. Another market is begging for the same sort of attention Rudd gives China - India - yet Labor prefers to deal with China even though the Chinese have repeatedly shown themselves unreliable. We sell China uranium but we won't supply India though the Chinese have not prevented rogue nations like Iran, North Korea and Pakistan accessing their nuclear weapons technology. Further, even though the Chinese Government is a player in every Chinese company, it didn't prevent the recently revealed distribution of adulterated milk products which poisoned some 50,000 children and triggered a global recall of various manufactured goods. China is the world's biggest dealer in illegally logged timber, and illegal timber-felling is one of the greatest contributors to the loss of the earth's natural carbon sinks. Has Rudd raised this with his Manchurian mates? He and Climate Minister Penny Wong persist in their bizarre claim that not doing anything about climate change is going to cost more than doing something, even though Treasury documents quietly released on the Friday before the recent long weekend clearly show that Rudd's emissions reduction plans will damage the GDP and create further unemployment. Australians, particularly older ones, have confidence in their ability to dig themselves out of trouble during tough times but they also have the ability to recognise shonks and phonies. In his address to the nation on Sunday, Rudd warned that the global financial crisis had entered a "new and dangerous" phase and that unemployment was likely to be higher than projected. As it has been acknowledged by all that his global warming program will have no effect on the globe - though it will cost Australians jobs - he should dump it to soften the impact of the economic meltdown. He could also permit the sale of Australian uranium to India and build new jobs. Both measures would help restore confidence. But at the heart of the Rudd Government is a great emptiness, a void between the rhetoric and the reality, the empathy and the action. Last year, he was going to stop petrol prices going up. Now he says there's nothing he can do, except introduce a flawed FuelWatch scheme his own senior ministers and departments say will reduce competition and put prices up. Last year, he promised a new era of co-operation with the states and an end to the blame game, he promised computers for every school pupil, he promised to do something about rising grocery prices and childcare costs. Eleven months on, Australians have confidence in themselves but every reason to have no confidence in the Rudd Government.