Counting cost of pennies from Kevin

A year in office and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's pre-election agenda is in tatters.

Australian schoolchildren don't have their promised computers, FuelWatch is dead, GroceryWatch is dying and the states are not enjoying a new spirit of co-operation. Signing Kyoto has done nothing but underscore the certainty that Labor's insistence climate change is man-made will increase unemployment beyond the levels expected from the global financial mess. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's modelling, on which the overblown, apocalyptic Garnaut report is based, has been shot to pieces. And the Treasury modelling on which the Government has based its planned emissions-trading scheme doesn't take into account the current economic situation. After condemning the Howard government for entering into unilateral agreements with other nations, and promising to concentrate on multilateral arrangements, it's pursuing a unilateral free-trade agreement with China even though its recent handouts to the car industry - more on them later - make a mockery of any free-trade credentials. As for Labor's preparation for government, the ludicrous 2020 rear-vision conference disappointed even the most loyal true believers when they found that Mr Rudd's team had pre-arranged an agenda to suit itself and that their participation was essentially to rubber-stamp a wish-list prepared to appease inner-urban ALP branch members and their academic acolytes. It's now apparent that when Mr Rudd or Treasurer Wayne Swan says the Government is being "decisive'', it actually means that they've made a knee-jerk decision unsupported by research and bereft of supporting documents. What the Rudd government demonstrably can do well is spend. Tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars are to be tossed at an electorate unsure whether to spend - and prime the economy - or save because times are, according to Mr Rudd, ugly and likely to get worse. Lacking any economic insights, the Rudd-Swan team have not only managed to confuse the nation with their mixed, shaken and stirred cocktail of contradictory comments, they have also presented Australia with a unique freeze on private funds invested in mortgages through their gross ineptitude. Not since the Whitlam government has an administration managed to politicise the most senior levels of the public service, but curiously those who once claimed the Howard government had strong-armed the public service have remained silent. Between now and Christmas, a $10.4 billion stimulus package will be delivered, some of it to pensioners living overseas where it will be of little benefit to the Australian economy. Last week, a beaming Mr Rudd flew back from the G-20 gabfest in Washington where it was apparent to all that the US has not forgiven him his grotesque characterisation of President Bush as someone who didn't know what the G-20 was. After visiting storm-hit Brisbane, he glad-handed the nation's mayors and invited them to nominate projects for pork-barrel handouts. Each received a minimum of $100,000 to spend before next September. Not a whiteboard in sight but the effect was the same, with councils in Labor electorates getting the lion's share of the largesse. Next Saturday, the states will be handed cheques, too, even though they have not delivered the new united co-operative approach Mr Rudd promised. The biggest windfall, however, has gone to the foreign car companies operating in Australia and, boy, have they been delightedly surprised. Toyota officials didn't have an inkling that they were to receive a $35 million handout from the Rudd government to build hybrid cars and the US owners of local Ford and Holden plants have been turning cartwheels over the $6.2 billion assistance package the Government announced earlier this month. Ford, which last week announced it would keep open the Geelong engine plant it said last year it would close, now expects to receive an additional $13 million from the Government it earlier had decided to forego, and it will invest $21 million to ensure that its engines meet European emission standards. To put these amounts in perspective, Ford chief executive Alan Mulally earned more than $US22 million last year. When he was asked last week whether he was prepared to work for $US1, as Chrysler's Lee Iacocca did in return for a government bail-out in 1979, he said: "I think I'm OK where I am.'' With the Rudd government effectively underwriting his salary, why wouldn't he be OK? Like the car industry, the Rudd government is not sure which gear to select when faced with a crisis, but it knows it doesn't want to let go of the wheel. The budget surplus that the Howard government left Australians will have been squandered in thoughtless government hand-outs by Christmas. When the turkey is finished, as unemployment swells, kindergartens close and the health system continues to collapse, voters should be in no doubt about who to blame.