Spending your cash to fight Rudd's fight

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd apparently believes the fall in his personal popularity amounts to a national emergency and warrants a special exemption from Labor's own rules governing spending on government advertising. Or is Labor's introduction of the disastrous super rip-off tax, which has seen the Australian dollar yo-yo across currency traders' screens and put at risk Australia's reputation as a fairly secure, risk-free investment haven, the national emergency? And what of the report in The Sydney Morning Herald that Mr Rudd had hoped to spark a confrontation with the mining industry and had planned to make a new us-against-them class-war the cornerstone of his re-election campaign? Is it that Mr Rudd has engineered his own national emergency, devastating the value of millions of Australians' personal superannuation holdings, threatening the jobs of hundreds of thousands more as mining and engineering firms mothball future projects and freeze expansion of current operations, solely as a political ploy? Given the proven level of incompetence of Mr Rudd and his team, from his deputy Julia Gillard, through his goose of a Treasurer, Wayne Swan, his duplicitous Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen, Small Business Minister Craig Emerson, Climate Minister Penny Wong, Environment Minister Peter Garrett (the list goes on), almost every decision taken by the Rudd Government could be described as a national emergency under Mr Rudd's own loose definition. Be in no doubt that Mr Rudd and Mr Swan knew their mining tax would be unpopular; the proof is that they have made false claims about it since announcing its introduction on May 2 with the release of the dismal Henry Review on taxation. It is a matter of record that they claimed this big new tax was recommended in a submission from the mining industry. That's where truth first goes out the window (but not for the last time) in this sad saga of appalling mismanagement and grossly abused standards of governance. The mining submission was intended for a genuine committee of review which it expected would be taken seriously by a reforming government. Instead, the submission was received by a heavily politicised and loaded committee, which put out an ideological and politically correct series of recommendations, of which the Government accepted something less than two per cent and then distorted almost beyond recognition those which it deigned to acknowledge. The miners cannot be accused of hypocrisy in the matter, but the Rudd Government has nowhere to hide from that charge. In its customary contradictory fashion, the Rudd ministry, with the willing connivance of Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, claimed that its proposed tax was having no effect on the dollar or the value of Australian mining stocks. As recently as Thursday he said he had "demolished again by the facts" claims by Opposition leader Tony Abbott that the super tax was hurting the Australian economy. All the while, Mr Rudd knew that his government was preparing to spend nearly $40 million of taxpayers' money on what is blatantly political advertising and he knew that he would have to break the guidelines his government introduced to fulfil a promise made during the 2007 election campaign. During that campaign, Mr Rudd told the ABC he would ban all publicly funded advertising within three months of an election. This, he said, was "an absolute undertaking from us (the ALP). I believe this is a sick cancer within our system. It's a cancer on democracy." He was later asked whether he would deliver on a promise to return decency and probity to public administration, and whether he would he resign if he didn't deliver. "You have my absolute, 100 per cent guarantee," he replied. "And each of you here can hold me accountable for that." The actuality is this: within a week of the announcement of the huge 40 per cent tax on mining, Mr Rudd and Mr Swan started to look for ways to get around their own rules on advertising. The loophole was an exemption from a review of their planned advertising by their own appointed Independent Communications Committee granted by Senator Joe Ludwig on the basis of "a national emergency, extreme urgency or other compelling reasons". There is no national emergency requiring this suspension of good governance. There is no need for extreme urgency other than the falling popularity of the Rudd Government and there are no other compelling reasons beyond the Rudd's Government desire for re-election. This is another great big con by Kevin Rudd and he has again broken more of his own promises to foist it upon the Australian public. Unhappy with his inability to spark a class war, Mr Rudd (who is now cancelling press conferences) is going to spend your money fighting the sector which, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, generated more value during the depths of the financial crisis than any other part of the economy, overtaking manufacturing for the first time. This is grotesque. Mr Rudd is spending Australians' money fighting those who shielded their economy from the recession that hit other nations. It demonstrates again why the man who has broken more promises than any other in the history of Australian politics deserves nothing but the contempt of the electorate. His dishonesty, his disdain for openness, his disrespect for good governance, his condescension for ordinary Australians, are nakedly on display for all to see. In Canberra, once-loyal Labor apparatchiks now openly laugh at Mr Rudd having achieved four-Bs: batts, boat people, building education rip-off and backflips. From coast to coast, Labor focus groups are reporting an upwelling of deep personal disapproval for the once-popular PM, a visceral scorn that transcends any the trade union movement was able to muster for former PM John Howard. In breaching his own probity guidelines and wasting more taxpayers' money, Mr Rudd may finally have sealed his own fate.