Rudd's logic is flawed

IT'S been a big week for the challenged believers of the socks-and-sandals brigade, culminating with the fevered revivalist commitments to climate change espoused at last night's Live Earth concert.

Let's hope that the music made it all worthwhile, because the cause has suffered a significant hit from evidence produced from Antarctic ice cores which have revealed that the Earth's temperature has swung by as much as 15C over the past 800,000 years and that the warmest period was around 130,000 years ago (when it was some 4.5C hotter than today), and there was not a capitalist, imperialist, war-mongering running dog of the United States around to take the blame. On other fronts, the True Believers have also been disappointed to learn that Central Australian Aborigines have welcomed the intervention of the federal Government in their remote communities following the failure of various state governments and the Northern Territory's piddling excuse for a parliament to effectively deal with the systemic dysfunction that has led to child and substance abuse. Not surprisingly, some of those who should be taking credit for the disgraceful situation, the Catholic bishops and other church leaders, have claimed that the initiatives are racist when they cannot bring themselves to admit that the two flawed reports - Deaths in Custody and Stolen Generations - tied the hands of the authorities so thoroughly that it was virtually impossible for any intervention to take place, let alone any imprisonment of those responsible. They should be abjectly ashamed of their role in perpetuating offences against children and blocking law enforcement, but that's unlikely to be the message preached by any of these hand-wringing clerics this weekend. Opposition leader Kevin Rudd attempted to take some credit for the carbon argument by seizing on the unremarkable revelation that Middle East oil may in some small way be important to the global economy, and deducing that the war in Iraq might be influenced by a need for reliable energy. His beat-up was seized upon by The Age newspaper which, along with Brisbane's Courier Mail, has firmly nailed its colours to the Rudd campaign wagon. Curiously, the media trumpeting Rudd's phoney rhetoric failed to recall that in a speech last August he said: "A failed war in Iraq produces a significant increase in global oil prices, producing in turn a significant increase in Australian retail petrol prices, producing in turn an inflationary pressure within the Australian economy, producing in turn upward pressure on Australian interest rates.'' The Age, the old Spencer Street Soviet, obsessed with the economic success of the Howard government despite all its predictions of failure, has prostrated itself before the Rudd machine, tossing any regard for responsible reporting out the window. The Courier Mail has enmeshed itself in a pathetically parochial cargo cult position through its apparent belief that a federal government led by Brisbane's own Kevin Rudd and Brisbane's own Wayne Swan will deliver for the good people of Queensland, as if it were dole day on the reservation. That makes as much sense as The Sydney Morning Herald backing Prime Minister John Howard on the basis that he is a New South Welshman, but logic has rarely been Queenslanders' strong suit (see Bjelke-Petersen, J and Hanson, P). Labor's flawed fuel argument is mirrored in its support for the fight in Afghanistan but not the struggle in Iraq. Like true flat-earthers, the Labor strategists cannot abide the notion that the jihadis in Afghanistan who wish to spread their campaign of hate and violence to their neighbour Pakistan and beyond, have identical goals to their brothers in arms in Baghdad. The oil story was grabbed by Rudd in the hope that it would distract the public from the Government's action to restore law and rescue children in indigenous communities, just as the housing affordability issue was peremptorily raised as a diversion. Rudd, not unnaturally, has not highlighted the reality that the Labor state governments control land releases, stamp duties and land taxes which primarily generate the problem with affordability. As the election moves into real time, Rudd's veneer of intellectual strength is looking ever more fragile.