Paul Kelly’s column in today’s Oz is insightful and reasonably accurate.
If you haven’t read it, I suggest you do so, reader. Kelly has a decided conservative bent, but he remains the most accurate of observers in the MSM commentariat. His assessment of Rudd Labor is spot on, in that Rudd knows very well the standard Howardian tactics of divide and conquer. Rudd simply refuses to engage, and by doing so, robs Howard of any tactical advantage.
What Kelly doesn’t cover is the timespan this government has covered and the eleventh hour conversion to matching Labor in a last bid to win over the battlers with a massive spending splurge on social issues like education, childcare and health. As I stated recently in response to the Howardian campaign launch, claiming today’s Australia as a ‘Land of Opportunity and not a Welfare State’ while shovelling out $6.3b in education handouts is not only politically hypocritical, it’s transparently desperate. Howard’s alignment with Menzian dictates of the 1960’s proves beyond any shadow of doubt that political conservatism has no new ideas and can only draw from the past. A past which is forty years behind the times.