Kevin Rudd has lost the plot

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has blasted the Howard-Costello government, saying that the Coalition had been "indolent" and could not claim to be partners with Labor in Australia's economic reforms of the past 30 years.

"The Liberals' failure to advance a framework for increasing national productivity is not a minor blemish on their economic record, it reflects a fundamental failure of long-term economic reform and casts legitimate doubt over the extent to which the Liberal Party can be regarded as partners with Labor in the great project of economic modernisation."

Even social reforms that "endured through long periods of Liberal rule" survived, according to the Prime Minister, only because of political expediency and not because of any genuine support or belief. 

This is what the Bachelor of Art (BA) holders do, they push the boundaries of history, are selective in their memory. Perhaps instead of criticizing his predecessor Coalition government of being "indolent", Mr Rudd should take some initiative and creativeness in formulating policies to bring the Australian economy out of recession. Mr Rudd was quick to claim that it was the government's stimulus package that delivered Australia with the highest GDP growth in the developed world, notwithstanding that his government inherited an strong Australian economy in surplus. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) recently embarrassed Kevin Rudd by ruling that more than 8000 signs being erected outside publicly funded school building projects are political advertisements. This was a part of the same stimulus package that purportedly delivered Australia with positive GDP growth; it is quite shocking that this money was actually being used for political advertisements to further promote Mr Rudd.

Indolence is the pumping of huge sums of money into the Australian economy, without considering the long-term consequences of those actions. I wrote previously about the excessively large Australian stimulus package which is estimated will sink the Australian economy into 6 years of deficit. Mr Rudd has consistently talked the talk regarding his government's stimulus package and what a great thing it has been for Australia, yet when posed with questions regarding a double-dip recession in Australia, Mr Rudd was tight lipped. What happened to his great economic stimulus package which delivered 0.6 GDP growth in the last quarter? 

Mr Rudd's comments about the Howard-Costello government were unacceptable and as John Howard said in reply, Mr Rudd has taken political mendacity to a whole new level. "His analysis of the economic reform process in Australia since 1980 was partisan, inaccurate and lacked any semblance of objectivity," Mr Howard wrote. Malcolm Turnbull described Mr Rudd's speech was "the most graceless" address he had ever heard. 

"It was extraordinary, it was as though he had erased every part of Australian history that didn't feature the Labor Party. It was like listening to a speech by a communist party general secretary extolling the virtues of the dictatorship of the proletariat at some rally."

Mr Turnbull had earlier described Mr Rudd's approach as Orwellian and "breathtaking in the audacity of its dishonesty". He told colleagues Mr Rudd had moved from spin into "a completely different territory" in which he was spreading "absolute falsehoods" as a political technique. And as all great politicians do, Mr Turnbull attributed Australia's current relative economic strength compared to other advanced nations to economic reforms put in place by the Howard government. Perhaps kRudd has merely forgotten about the Coalition's GST introduced by Mr Howard in 2000.