Weak grip on the rudder

BERNIE Banton, the mesothelioma victim, has been given the opportunity by the NSW Court of Appeal to pursue Hawker Britten client James Hardie for extra punishment damages as part of his compensation claim.

The Australian people will not be given another chance, however, if another Hawker Britten client, the ALP, wins Saturday's federal election. Hawker Britten specialises in sanitising the reputations of smelly corporate customers. Its work with James Hardie and the ALP has been nothing short of miraculous. With Hawker Britten's advice, James Hardie set up an under-funded compensation trust and moved its operations offshore, stonewalling claims from Banton and other asbestos victims and sidestepping questions from the media. Using the same template, Hawker Britten has sold Kevin Rudd and Labor to the nation, according to the polls. Rudd has ducked questions, avoided the tough interviews and done his best to gag most of Labor's calamitous candidates and keep hidden the details of the ALP's sell-out preference deals with the Greens. What exactly has Labor given the Greens in return for preferences from the radical front group? The Greens are opposed to the free market economy, they want to create government monopolies and remain opposed to the GST. The Greens also want to dump Capital Gains Tax concessions, abolish the Private Health Insurance Rebate (ensuring health costs rise) and reintroduce inheritance taxes. Which of these demands has Labor secretly agreed to in return for Green preferences? It has now emerged that the Mandarin-speaking Rudd is targeting off-shore Chinese-Australians with posters reminiscent of those used by Mao being erected in Hong Kong and through the use of his daughter Jessica and her Asian husband Albert Tse in Prime Minister John Howard's seat of Bennelong. Labor's candidate, the former ABC star Maxine McKew, has assembled a team of purple-shirted Chinese volunteers known as MSG (Maxine Support Group), who carry placards supporting the woman they call Mai Jiao which, according to The Age, means "pretty". MSG, a cheap food additive, was popularised during the famines induced in China under the murderous dictatorship of Mao Zedong. Serious chefs avoid it, just as serious voters should avoid McKew's policy-lite candidacy. Hawker Britten was, of course, never employed to airbrush Mao's image. Even if the company had been formed during his reign of terror, there were more than enough willing idiots in academia volunteering to preach his lethal message for him not to have needed a spin doctor. When not hiding behind Labor's campaign spokesman Penny Wong, Rudd has used the Sgt Shultz defence: "I know nothing." Though he claims to be a tireless worker, leaping out of bed at 4.30am to address the issues, he never seems to see those which occupy the headlines. Thus he variously claimed he hadn't seen, wasn't briefed, wasn't across or couldn't recall more than 30 issues ranging from Labor's two-step on the death penalty, the holes in Labor's climate change policy, Sheik Taj el-Dene Elhilaly's support for the ALP and an Iraqi minister's attack on Labor's troop-withdrawal policy. Labor's plans to remove some (not all) troops from Iraq, where Australian forces have fortunately suffered no casualties, and send them to Afghanistan where the nation has lost troops, seems particularly brainless, especially as the Iraqis are beginning to recover lost ground and positive results are being reported from the US troop surge. Perhaps Rudd finds good news from Iraq embarrassing, even when it is reported in the anti-conservative Bible The New York Times. At his campaign launch, Rudd claimed his experience as a junior in the Foreign Affairs Department and as Queensland's most powerful public servant gave him the credentials to run the nation, the lack of serious media scrutiny has let him get away with this meaningless CV. He earned the nickname Dr Death in Queensland when the health overhaul he masterminded triggered a disastrous budget blow-out. At the same time, average waiting times for hospital admission doubled. Rudd was instrumental in blocking the Wolffdene Dam, which would have given Brisbane an assured water supply, and the home ownership scheme implemented on his watch sent thousands of people to the wall. But whatever you may think of Rudd, positive or negative, consider the people behind him. There's Peter Garrett (who even Graham Richardson says is a goose), Julia Gillard (who attempted to derail the critically successful reform of the waterfront) and Wayne Swan (who has never run anything but will be put in charge of the economy even as storm clouds threaten). With wall-to-wall Labor governments and economic instability in the world financial markets, can Australia afford to risk a totally inexperienced Rudd Labor government and its baggage train of unrepresentative trade union hacks itching to get their hands on the surpluses the Coalition has carefully built?