You've gone... from me... oh, woah... Tra-ge-dy...

So John.
Today marks the 30th anniversary of you first becoming treasurer of the Fraser government, which I guess is also the 30th anniversary of your taking the seat of Bennelong. Coulda bowed out with [dis]grace, but no... though perhaps it would have been simply embarrassing to observe Peter Costello taking the helm of the Liberal party...



The Grey Men share the ideal traits of bureaucrats, accountants, lawyers, businessmen and other exemplars of the human fauna spawned by industrial capitalism. They are emblems of efficiency and procedure, to whom people are abstract quantities, and society a series of equations of greed and demand...It is not surprising, therefore, that we are witnessing a marked increase in these paranoid fantasies after the Liberal Party’s rise to power in 1996. It is not a coincidence either that patients are becoming fixated sexually on the figure of John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister – the living embodiment of Grey Man.
(From The Ballardian)



Lew Louthian tells it like it is:
Too little too late Messrs. Howard and Vaile: you have wrought havoc on the very substance and culture of this great nation, caused irreparable damage to Australia’s name as a fair and just society for all Australians’ and severely tarnished our International name as an ethical trading partner i.e. AWB.

When the Founding Fathers drew up our constitution they held the rights and wellbeing of all Australian citizens as paramount. Successive governments had upheld those rights, until this Howard/Vaile government removed those rights in favour of US style neo-con ideology and employer multinational corporations and business houses.

Under this Howard/Vaile Liberal-National Coalition - morality, integrity, compassion and common decency have been cast aside, whilst, the integrity and transparency of our Westminster System abused like never before under this autocratic government.

This Howard/Vaile regime introduced early after election, a 50% discount on capital gains tax that went straight into the hip pocket of rich investors causing inflated house prices resulting in higher rentals. Those same wealthy investors have been allowed to take advantage of the first homeowners’ grant to buy houses in trust funds for their young children, as this scheme was never means tested.

This resulted in increased demand for houses and rental properties, thus forcing genuine 20-30 year olds out of the property market. Today, housing is almost un-affordable to young Australians’ with median home prices spiralling out of control and LOAN repayments to INCOME never higher under any former government in my lifetime.

World interest rates are historically low, but in real terms, compared to other OECD countries, Australia currently sits among the top three highest rates in developed Nations around the world.

Quality researchers have been struggling for funding and the best of our scientific brains are now working overseas to obtain necessary funding. The Nation’s infrastructure, health and educational institutions are bereft of adequate funding and Wall St bankers dominate Australian stock market ownership and repatriation of profits overseas affects our current account.

Under this Howard/Vaile government: we now know that public funding to tertiary education, hospitals and funding to the States has been eroded as a proportion of GDP since 1996. This coupled with the selling off of valuable public assets, it is now abundantly clear where surpluses have been coming from and it has NOTHING to do with good economic management.

This Howard/Vaile government launched an UNMANDATED attack and abuse of the Australian workforce through its unfair WorkChoice Laws. Prior to Howard/Vaile slamming their unfair legislation through the Senate – our labour laws quite fairly assumed that inequality existed between the individual worker and the employer and were designed to prevent exploitation of both worker and employer.

People believing that employers do not take advantage of employees and that employees’ have equal bargaining power with employers are simply delusional.