Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Kevin Rudd has only been Prime Minister for 7 months, yet today’s release of 3 separate job vacancy indices clearly shows that the economy is rapidly losing momentum.

Poor old Malcolm Turnbull. Made his millions in the “big end of town” and is now forced to dump on said end of town.

SHADOW treasurer Malcolm Turnbull has turned sharply on the Business Council of Australia, discounting its criticism of the former government’s budgetary record by saying it is just representing the “big end of town”. He said the BCA in its budget submission was “speaking on behalf of its own constituency”.

And then poor old Malcolm is forced to utter this utter lie and pretend he believes it.

Mr Turnbull said “you’ve got to remember the BCA… speaks for big business, the big end of town… . And it objects to the fact that a large part of that bonus from increased profits from the corporate sector was redistributed by the Howard government to the battlers, through lower taxes and through family tax benefits.”

“Redistributed”? That sounds positively Marxist, Malcolm. Too many lattes for you. And that’s on top of the fact that taxes rose in real terms under John Howard and family tax benefits are completely non-means tested middle class welfare.

Oh, and then there’s this.

LOW-paid workers are slipping further behind those on higher incomes, fuelling concerns about growing inequality in Australia.

[...]

In industries such as hospitality, wages grew 3.3%, while in retail trade they were up 3.5% and in basic clerical positions and sales the rise was 3.6% over the year to last September.

That compared with a 4.2% increase across all occupations for that period.

Over the past decade the gap has continued to widen.

[...]

Minimum wage recipients are now on about 54% of overall median weekly earnings, compared with about 62% a decade ago.

Just remind me again who was in government over the last decade?

I am really mad. That horrible Mr. Rudd let the interest rates go up and, you know, he’s been Prime Minister for TWO WHOLE MONTHS. That’s more than enough to change the economic forecast of the country.

I agree with this piece of well-thought-out-non-claptrap-that-didn’t-make-me-want-to-retch by intellectual and the soon to be knighted MK:

Prior to the election it was all John Howards fault, he lied, you paid, it’s all Howard, interest rates, he promised blah blah. But now that the elections are over and it’s Rudd the Dudd and his touchy-feely moaning treasurer running the joint, it’s suddenly you, you, you, you, you and oh yeah and you also, that needs to pull your weight. Sorry Swanie, if you need us to curb inflation, then so did Howard and hence he’s was not entirely to blame, which makes you a bit loose with the truth now doesn’t it. Anyway come on folks, get to it, your treasurer has kicked you in the teeth, it’s your fault now.

Exactly! It’s easy to change the economic tide in two months. Peter Costello was so good at it, he turned around our economy before he even became treasurer!

Take that Rudd. You’ve lost my vote.

We already know the Coalition spin-doctors will hammer away the ‘interest rate button’ because the ALP is, like, economically incompetent and stuff. If Rudd is elected then mortgage rates will hit 20+ percent, we’ll all be in soup queues and Channel Nine will bring back Hey Hey It’s Saturday. All a gigantic furphy, of course, since external factors dictate interest rates to a much larger degree than domestic management. The cash rate was 13 percent when Howard was treasurer in the early 1980s, peaked at 17 percent in 1989 and declined rapidly thereafter (sitting under 8 percent during the last five years of ALP government).

Anyway, one of the Liberals’ campaign ads to debut on TV last night used this gem:

“If you don’t remember how bad things were under Labor interest rates, then ask your parents!”

Genius! What better source of informed political commentary could there be than asking your parents. Don’t listen to us, don’t follow the campaign, don’t look at Kruddy’s Myspace page …. just ask your parents. Makes campaigning easy when you just keep harking back to the past - and debt-bound, middle-aged parents are the Coalition’s natural fodder when it comes to interest rate fear-mongering, of course. I wonder though if they can go even further with this tactic:

“Don’t remember how Bob Hawke left Hazel? Ask your parents!”
“Remember how Chifley tried to nationalise the banks? Ask your grandparents!”
“Hey, the Great Depression was all Scullin’s fault! Ask someone really, really old!“