Sir John Howard wrote:
> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23300075-601,00.html
>
> Rudd says no to Left agenda
>
> KEVIN Rudd has assured mainstream Australia he will avoid radical
> social and cultural change by resisting calls to broaden his reform
> agenda and by sticking to his election promises.
>
> [But weren't his election promises based on change? Apart from the "me
> too" ones that is.]
>
> The Prime Minister warned that people had "elected the wrong guy" if
> they believed that once he was in power he would unveil a secret left-
> wing reform agenda or suddenly yield to pressure from sectional
> interests.
>
> [Yes, we did elect the wrong guy.]
>
> Calling for people to move beyond "the classical Right-Left divide",
> Mr Rudd said he had been upfront about his election promises and would
> focus on delivering them in full.
>
> "There's nothing terribly complicated about me," Mr Rudd said. "If you
> obtain the people's sup****t, that's what you go ahead and do."
>
> The Prime Minister made the comments in an interview with The Weekend
> Australian to mark Monday's passage of 100 days since he was elected.
>
> He also said he had no interest in debating whether the private sector
> should be contracted to deliver government services, and foreshadowed
> plans to engage the private sector in his fight to improve the lives
> of indigenous Australians.
>
> He said that despite the threat to the economy of inflation, he would
> deliver his promised $31 billion tax-cut plan in full. And despite
> Opposition warnings of a possible wages breakout, he would also
> rewrite industrial relations laws as planned.
>
> Mr Rudd will celebrate his 100-day landmark still riding a wave of
> public sup****t for his formal apology to the indigenous Stolen
> Generations and his ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on climate
> change. The latest Newspoll survey for The Australian, published last
> week, gave him a record preferred prime minister rating of 70 per
> cent.
>
> In the lead-up to the election, the Coalition warned voters that Mr
> Rudd would be a captive of trade union leaders, state Labor
> governments and sectional interests, and that his pre-election claims
> of economic conservatism would quickly disappear after he was elected.
>
> The Prime Minister also faces a growing clamour from the Left for
> wider reform outside the promises he made in last year's election
> campaign.
>
> A collection of 20 essays written by academics and thinkers released
> last week and edited by Robert Manne calls for Mr Rudd to "resume the
> conversation between public intellectuals and government".
>
> The essays urge him to consider some politically risky moves such as
> scrapping 99-year leases on indigenous land, overhauling negative
> gearing, limiting first-home buyers' grants and introducing punitive
> laws on electricity generation and car emissions.
>
> Yesterday Mr Rudd said he had no secret plans and gave short shrift to
> the wish list.
>
> "I think they might have elected the wrong guy," Mr Rudd said.
>
> The Prime Minister said he was not worried that his approach would
> alienate the left wing of the labour movement, stressing that politics
> had moved "beyond the classical Left-Right paradigm".
>
> "It just doesn't apply to the politics of the future," Mr Rudd said.
> "It's time to put some of these classical, and I think arcane, divides
> behind us."
>
> Mr Rudd, whose wife, Therese Rein, built a successful job-placement
> company by delivering Job Network services for the previous Howard
> government, said the quality of government service was more im****tant
> than the delivery mechanism.
>
> [Oh? Now that's interesting!]
>
> Citing the example of his election promise to lift indigenous life
> expectancy and literacy standards, Mr Rudd said: "It's not who
> provides services to indigenous communities, it's who most effectively
> provides those services to deliver what isthe agreed national set of
> policy outcomes.
>
> "That's where the real debate is. It's not in debates about public or
> private owner****p or classical divides between Left and Right. The key
> thing here is to have a clearly defined set of objectives for the
> nation. Then the legitimate intellectual and policy debate for the
> country, given that we've been elected, is how we best reach those
> objectives."
>
> The Prime Minister said the high point of his first 100 days was the
> fact that he could "look the Australian people in the eye" and declare
> he was keeping his election promises, such as the Kyoto ratification
> and the indigenous apology.
>
> "Why I say that is a high point is that the public have become
> exceptionally cynical about 'core promises and non-core promises'," he
> said, referring to his predecessor, John Howard. "I think we have to
> work incredibly hard, therefore, in order to maintain the public's
> trust in order to do the things you will need to do into the future."
>
> The low point of his first three months had been the assassination
> attempt on East Timorese President Jose Ramos Horta - a close friend.
>
> Mr Rudd said he was surprised by the strong national and international
> reaction to his apology to the Stolen Generations. But he would not be
> truly satisfied unless he followed the apology with real improvements
> in indigenous health and education standards.
>
> "I am also acutely conscious of the fact that to get effective local
> community buy-in, we're going to end up with hundreds of different
> solutions on the ground across the 400 remote Aboriginal communities
> across the country," he said. "But the ultimate policy effectiveness
> will be measured against the targets we've set."
>
> Mr Rudd said in a press conference yesterday that his budget razor
> gang's efforts to reduce spending could lead to some public service
> departments and agencies offering public servants voluntary
> redundancies.
>
> "On the question of the razor gang and the 2 per cent efficiency
> dividend across government departments, we fully accept that that's
> going to cause some pain and dislocation across government agencies,"
> he said.
>
> "I'm sure when it comes to voluntary redundancies that will be part of
> the proposal in some agencies."
>
> --------------------------
>
> Ah, yes, voluntary redundancies. We all know what that euphemism
> really means.
Like what John Howard did in his early years,i.e the evangelical
community of Hillsong and the neo-nazis of Queensland of Pauline
Hanson's One Nation.
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