Late Friday night, since all others shops were closed, I decided to give Woolworths "The Fresh Food People" yet another chance to prove my contention that their slogan was the greatest ever successful marketing con job in Australia's advertising history!As I tried to grab the very first mandarin my finger went through the rotten soggy back of it. Now I am embarrassed to confess I have a weak stomach! So in a reflex action I pulled my hand back & the mandarin flew in the air & splashed on the floor! (yes splashed!)
As proud as I was to yet again proving the might of Woolworths wrong & cursing their promise of "Fresh Food" as "Almost Rotten", I thought of our PM Kevin Rudd & how his continuous populist rhetoric totally contradict his now familiar major policy back downs or broken promises, and how similar that is to "The Fresh Food People" slogan of Woolworths!
Now please don't worry about me! No! The the political frustration of having had to put up with all the crap with Trapodi, Obeid & their cronies in the NSW Government & Kevin Rudd's self preservation obsession have not made me lose my mind! Not yet anyway!
This is my way of politely telling our PM, that as of today, even his most loyal left wing journalists such as Peter Hartcher & Ross Gittins of Sydney Morning Herald (Monday 3rd may 2010) are indirectly suggesting that Rudd is a self preserving political coward willing to pull back from any policy initiative in order to get himself re elected.
Ross Gittins even went as far as suggesting today that if john Howard, the climate change sceptic, had won the 2007 election, because of his political conviction & strong leadership, he would have most probably by now started the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) which would have been as diluted as the one Kevin Rudd postponed last week!
Overall, Kevin Rudd has led a Government which has given us many broken promises for self preservation purposes, policy failures & unpractical rhetoric to buy votes. On top of everything else, Rudd Government seems to be totally void of political skills in the Senate to negotiate the passage of any of its bills with the Greens & independents. And worst of all, it is too gutless to call a double dissolution election even on policy initiatives such as Climate Change which Kevin Rudd called "The greatest moral issue of our generation"!
Although many other blogs have already listed Rudd's back flips & broken promises, let me refresh your mind with some of the major examples of grandiose rhetoric & unworkable promises, policies back flips & lies Kevin Rudd is cowardly guilty of, all as it turns out introduced or dropped in order to get him re elected:
- Petrol price watch: Worked as a cunning election promise, but failed as a ridiculous policy & subsequently dropped as unworkable
- Grocery price watch: Yet again another cunning but shallow election promise which failed & Website closed down as unworkable
- National Broadband scheme: A $43 billion dollar scheme which so far has been a total mess & another unmet election promise. Besides a $25 million dollar "Implementation Study" and many angry ISPs, nothing substantial has taken shape as yet & not a single metre of fibre optic cable for the program installed.
- Home insulation Scheme: A $2.5 billion dollar fiasco of historical proportions & lost innocent lives. It must be notes that Kevin Rudd blamed everyone else in order to "insulate" himself from any political damage. He ended up dumping the program altogether after having promised honest insulation businesses assistance by June 2010.
- Boarder Protection: An absolute moral & political failure:
This is a major example of Rudd's cowardness. It also demonstrates what it meant to have leaders such as John Howard & Paul Keating who demonstrated political conviction as opposed to cowards like Kevin Rudd! Paul Keating presided over Aboriginal land rights whilst John Howard openly stopped people smuggler boats by diverting through the inhumane but effective "Pacific Solution" scheme. (I for one totally disagreed with that policy & was disgusted by the "Children Overboard" situation). But at least you knew where you stood with John Howard, and Paul Keating for that matter!
What is Kevin Rudd's level of conviction? Where is his promised "Humane" approach to asylum seekers? After a major failure to stop people smugglers sending more than 100 boats to our shores, Rudd stated "The situation in Afghanistan has stabilised, therefore we will not process refugee applications for the time being!"
OK Mr Rudd! If that is the case & all is stable in Afghanistan, please bring our troops back home ASAP!
- Health Reform: failure or success not determined yet. However, so far the obvious Labour Party "stage managed" disagreement between the Labour Premier of Victoria & Kevin Rudd made a mockery a policy which may turn out to be the single best achievement of Rudd's first term. Whilst the jury is still out on this policy initiative, many experts in the field are already claiming it will be yet another bureaucratic nightmare & not much else. nevertheless, we will have to wait & see
- Childcare Reform: The Government dropped its election promise of 250 additional new Childcare Centres recently claiming that the industry now had sufficient places available & there was no need for the program to expand the number of Centres!
- The "Fair Work Award Modernisation Legalisation"
As I wrote in one of my earlier posts at the time, ......"The legislation is overall a failure in that it missed a great opportunity to implement "real reform". Unions' bitterness towards "Work Choices" made Gillard & Rudd miss the chance to reform industrial relations & therefore leave a major legacy!"
I still stand by my comment that "if it was claimed "Work Choices" made it too easy to sack workers, then "Fare Work Award Modernisation" will make it too difficult to employ workers!"
- Which brings us to today & the Tax Reform: As I mentioned previously, even the staunchest media supporters of PM Rudd such as Peter Hartcher & Ross Gittins admit that the so called Tax Reform announced by the Government is a soft reform carefully designed to win votes by avoiding difficult decisions. Only 4 of the 138 recommendations have been taken up by Rudd & Swan! This makes Wayne Swan's grandiose announcement that ...."it's one of the biggest reforms in Australia's history" a joke!
Now you see why Kevin Rudd's policy back flips & monotonous populist rhetoric & repetative contrived phrases such as "working families" are beginning to be as annoying as Woolworths claim to the mantle of Australia's "Fresh Food People"?
Because they both use media spin doctors in order to fool us into believing they are true to their word!
