Piers Ackerman (full-time columnist and part-time Jabba the Hutt impersonator) is absolutely fuming at Labor’s campaign tactics:

IN line with its whatever-it-takes politics, Labor has been running an unrelenting - but highly misleading - campaign emphasising interest-rate rises under the Howard Government.

I’m right behind Piers on this: using interest rate scare-tactics in an election campaign is reprehensible. Especially when you do what the ALP spin doctors have done and DEFAME our wunnerful prime minister by GROSSLY INFLATING interest rate figures from when he was treasurer (back when STD was a phone call and Adam Ant ruled the airwaves):

The constant cry [from Labor] that the 22 per cent overnight cash rate in 1982 - when Howard was treasurer in Malcolm Fraser’s government - is a record, is an absolute furphy. [The RBA website] clearly shows the … monthly average in April, 1982 was 21.39 per cent. This may be splitting hairs … but if you’re going to toss a figure out you should get it right. Labor’s claim is just not true.

Quite right. That 0.61 percent is an appalling piece of political dishonesty that besmirches John Howard’s record as a fiscal genius. Labor should be ASHAMED!

Steve Fielding being a dick just now on ABC’s Insiders, jousting with the leaders of the Democrats and the Greens. He trotted out all the usual quotes about how evil the Greens are, including my personal favourite: “free heroin”. Fielding crapped on about petrol prices, grocery prices and bank fees, firmly positioning his “party” (let’s be honest about his “party” — it consists of one Parliamentary representative representing 1.88% of Victorians) as the consumer affairs micro party. Surprisingly, he only said the word “family” twice (excluding when he said his Party name) in contrast to Kevin Rudd’s now ad nauseum chanting of the “family” mantra. So maybe Steve Fielding should get in touch with the AEC and lodge an application to change his micro party’s name to the Today Tonight Party.

It was also revealed on Insiders that Family First in Queensland having been discussing a preference deal with Pauline Hanson which raises a very interesting question: is Pauline Hanson a Pentecostal?

And in a non-Steve Fielding aside about Insiders, Piers Ackerman said the Kyoto Protocol was “so 1990s” which was hilarious in the context of the 1970s haircut, shirt and jacket that cloaked his toad-like body.

Come and get me, laydeez