I couldn’t believe it when I heard that Rudd would get a $600,000 pension for the rest of his life. How can that be? When any other Australian retires they’re lucky to get a pension. Imagine working all your life, busting your balls to make a buck all the while the Government is taking their cut to run the country. That’s cool you say because everyone has to contribute their bit right? And if you earn a little too much the Government will kindly tell you. “Sorry, you don’t deserve a pension because you’ve got too much in the kitty”.

Not so the politicians, those guys over at Parliament House live by a different set of rules. Look at Rudd, he couldn’t even finish his full term as PM, actually getting kicked out by his own party, and he’s guaranteed a huge pension for life, even if he was to leave politics tomorrow at the ripe old age of 52! Shit we can’t get a pension until 65, and only if we don’t put too much away. Not Rudd and his political cronies, which includes the Liberal and other parties. Shit, does he even deserve a pension when his wife is worth somewhere around the $56 million mark?

OK, maybe that’s a little harsh. Perhaps all politicians are not the same. It seems Senator Steve Fielding wants to shit down Fat Pollie Payouts, but I can’t see anything coming of this unless Aussies make a stand.

From what I can see most politicians think they are doing it tough and are looking for a higher salary and more allowances, as if they haven’t got enough perks. Yep, why shouldn’t they get more money and fringe benefits while the rest of the Australian public is doing it tough?

If you’re wondering what some of the perks politicians are getting you may find this expose of some interest. So, you see in this world of ours there seems to be two sets of rules, one for the politicians and one for the rest of Australians, and you know what, that’s a whole load of bullshit!

It seems the the Kevin Rudd’s political career has ended as dramatically as it started exactly 2 years 6 months and 21 days after becoming he Prime Minister of Australia. He would have had to have been the most popular PM we’ve had for a long time and his Labor colleagues couldn’t praise him highly enough.

Yet those same colleagues, especially the power brokers from the right faction, planned his demise. Almost Judas style they delivered the coupe in 24 hours not seven days after Kevin said, after asked about rumors of dissent from within the party, that he would lead the party to the next election. To say he was shocked about the whole thing would be an understatement.

And so we have two historical moments in Australia history. The first being that Kevin Rudd was kicked out by his own party before completing his first term and while still holding the lead. The second being that Julia Gillard is Australia’s first ever female Prime Minister. After listening to Mr Rudd’s very emotional final speech I must say it is Rudd at his best, probably because it was from the heart and not something put together for him.

Those of you who have been following this blog know that I haven’t been all that positive about the way Labor has lead this country over the last couple of years and most of that blame has fallen on Rudd, but that’s only because he’s the leader.

The real culprit is the Labor Party itself, and the only reason they ousted Rudd is because they’re hoping the Australian people will be fooled into thinking that having a female PM will make everything OK. It won’t because it’s still the same party, and let’s not forget that Miss Gillard didn’t handle her portfolio all that well, pretty dismally in fact, and a lot of the mistakes must be shared by her and the rest of her cohorts.

There is no doubt that Julia Gillard will have a honeymoon period, especially being the first ever female Prime Minister, but whether this is enough to win the next election remains to be seen.

What I find really amusing is how the Labor party in the last election said a vote for Howard would be a vote for Costello and here we are not three years later having a PM we didn’t vote for. Considering how the right faction has put someone from the left faction into power one has to wonder what it would take for them to knife her in the back, just as they did to Kevin Rudd, if she doesn’t act according to their wishes. And here I was thinking that as an Australian citizen I could choose who I want as a leader only to find out that I really have no saying the matter at all.

I remember well not so long ago when Kevin Rudd won the election how he was the flavor of the month. The guy could do no wrong because the Australian public was so forgiving. But there is only so much even a tolerant Aussie can stand and it seems that good old Kevin has broken one promise too many. Come to think of it I can’t think of any promise that he has kept.

Probably the only good thing he did was when he said sorry for the stolen generation, but that’s about as far as that went because as far as I can tell he hasn’t done anything to put the plight of Aborigines to right. It seems that even though he promised to do a yearly report on the progress in closing the quality-of-life gap between Aborigines and other Australians he as failed to do so.

The fact is that Kevin and the Labor party have really turned out to be a dud. He’s so unpopular at the moment that there’s rumors his party want to replace him. Funny thing is that without Rudd they never would have won the election in the first place. That’s gratitude for you.

In case your wondering how long the list of broken promises is it’s huge. There’s even a site devoted to keeping track of their broken promises. Don’t be surprised if it’s offline when you go to check because he’s breaking them so fast they may be in the process of updating the site.

I found this cartoon that highlights some of the more popular promises, one that I hope you will enjoy.

The thing that one has to remember coming up to the next election is not just the broken promises but the fact that a lot of their policies, like the latest super tax on the mining companies, is doing the country more harm than good.

Although the facts that most Governments have know idea how to spend money wisely the Labor Government seems to be worse at it than most. Just today I got a lovely glossy nicely folded colour brochure with the bold words “Someone who’s working for us” printed on the front.

Upon opening it I found it was from the Labor candidate, Nick Champion but for the life of me I couldn’t work out why this unnecessary expense when we’ve just had the State elections not that long ago. Upon reading it I noticed Rudd’s name all over it and so it all became clear, they’ve started early, leading up to the Federal elections.

Sure it could be because I lean towards the Liberals, but I found a lot of it to be full of crap.  There was one section where it proclaimed; “Working with Kevin Rudd to build a better future for families.” It then goes on to say, “Here are just some of the achievements of the Rudd Government in the last two years.” OK, let’s have a look at those shall we?

Acting decisively to support jobs, tradespeople and small business during the Global recessiom.

Yeah, they did that really well didn’t they? This no doubt includes Rudd’s massive insulation roll out which was done without the proper planning causing the death of several people and many house fires. Now it’s going to cost the tax payer billions.

Record infrastructure investment including the largest schools building program ever.

Yeah this is probably referring to his bullshit Education Revolution. This was so poorly planned that not only did we over pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per school many of them didn’t even get the buildings they needed, instead they received buildings that were of no use to them.

Funding 1000 new nurse training places and a 35% increase in GP training to address a shortage of GPs

This was a good policy on there part so I’ll give them that.

Investing in new cancer research and treatment centres

Another good move on their part.

Supporting investment in solar and wind power to protect our environment for future generations.

Sorry, this type of electricity does nothing for the base load and only works when wind or sun exists, not to mention that wind power is very costly. I would suggest we take the bold move of going nuclear.

Abolishing WorkChoices and restoring fairness to the workplace

Not sure how accurate this is. While it seems that the workers may get a fairer deal it would only be at the cost of the employer and may actually speed up the rate of employers moving their operations overseas. Once that happens where’s the jobs coming from then?

Honestly Nick, rather than wasting tax payers money perhaps it would be better to get off your ass and mingle with the community. Find out what they need and work toward it even if it means going against your cronies.

I know that after reading this post there will be some Labor supporters who will accuse me of being a Liberal who had nothing better to do than find fault with Labor. Come off it guys, is it my fault that they keep supplying me with ammunition to go target shooting? Besides, it’s not like I don’t publish articles when the Liberal party come up with bullshit, as can be seen from my Tony Abbott Gets Maternity Leave All Wrong post.

But this post isn’t about them, it’s about the mistakes the current Government is making. It’s been my experience that the Labor party loves to spend money and they have no control over it. Every time they get in power they put the country into a huge debt whcih the Liberals have to get us out of. Naturally that’s a painful experience for the populace and so the Liberals get kicked out and it starts all over again.

You may remember my post Kevin Rudd And Wayne Swan = Billion Dollar Debt where Swan tries to defend their position using the global recession as an excuse. When the world’s financial crisis came into being most Governments  panicked including ours. Instead of studying the situation properly they acted with a knee jerk reaction wasting millions of dollars. This can be seen in the first, and subsequent stimulus packages, where lack of planning saw them giving money to dead people, pets, people in jail and people overseas. How the hell was that supposed to stimulate the economy?

Let’s not forget the ‘insulation scheme’ fiasco, another of Labor’s attempts to stimulate the economy by stimulating the building trade. The trouble was they didn’t take the time to formulate the plan properly meaning that millions was wasted, but worse than that people’s lives were put at risk by shoddy workmanship. Even though there were warning bells the Government ignored them and it wasn’t until people started dying as a result that they reacted. Rudd punishes Garrett over the fiasco saying sorry, he seems to love that word, as if the makes it all OK.

The thing is that it actually is Rudd’s fault and he didn’t have a choice but to take the blame because he should have sacked Garret ages ago instead of protecting one of his ministers hoping that the whole thing will go away.

Enough of that, this post is about the latest fiasco which is to do with Labor’s so called education revolution. According to some the education fiasco is the cause of Labor’s lack of interest in monitoring the plan. They seem to just pull a plan out of thin air without any forethought of how to implement it or to check on the States to see that they’re going about it properly. Naturally this results in countless of millions of dollars being wasted, which seems to be the norm when Labor is holding the reins, or perhaps that should be noose around our necks.

Just one example of how the money has been wasted is the $2 million spent on a school hall at Wollongong that won’t even accommodate the students at the school.  Naturally the parents are furious at the waste of money and they want someone to be accountable.

Then there is the $250,000 hall for the remote Yulga Jinna Remote Community which was deemed a waste of money. They didn’t need a hall, what they needed was somewhere for the teachers to stay. Without proper accommodations it was extremely difficult in getting teachers to remain at the school. Does the government listen to the community, nope they’re more content in wasting money than in taking the time to spend it wisely.

What about the school that had one pupil but was given $250000 for a new library, shit, they’re even giving money to schools that are going to close down soon. If that isn’t a waste I don’t know what is. It seems that even shade costs money, but it’s not so much the shade as the fees structure in providing it. How can you put your trust in a government who can’t control how their money is spent. If a business was to do this they would have gone broke a long time ago, but the government seems to have a money tree that is forever blooming, that tree is called the Tax Payer.

This is just a few examples on how our money is being mismanaged and it has got to stop. I know there are many more examples and if you know of any others where the Governments BER (Building The Education Revolution) is being wasted please leave a comment with a link, if possible, to the relevant article.

OK, that’s not entirely fair because I reckon its safe to say that most politicians, regardless of the party they’re affiliated with, are not well known for their honesty. Before I get into the post proper I would like to set the scene.

Most people would probably agree that honesty and integrity is a very important quality. We look for it in almost everything we do in life from sport to business. That’s why people get so upset when they discover that the only reason their sporting hero or team won was because they took drugs. That’s why people who lie and cheat to profit from others usually end up in court.

Yep, most people get into trouble for being dishonest, unless they happen to be a politician. So, where the heck is all this leading to? Well, last Saturday, the 20th of March 2010, South Australia went to the polls to vote. As it turned out Labor pretty well won the election, and while Premier Rann called it a ‘sweet victory’ it turns out that it was marred by Labors less than honorable tactics.

What Labor did was to have members masquerade as Family First in the most marginal of seats so they could hand out their version of Family First how to vote cards. Where the legitimate family first cards gave their preference to the Liberal party, Labor’s phony how to vote cards gave the first preference to their own party!

This is bullshit because they cheated the voting public out of voting the way they had intended to. They went to a whole lot of trouble to defraud the public, from designing similar t-shirts to printing the phony cards. What is really deplorable is that I heard Kevin Foley saying on TV how that’s “what you do in politics.” This is from the deputy Premier, and he’s saying how it’s alright to rip off the public.

Although he and others in the Labor party are alright with getting votes dishonestly members of the public are really pissed off about it. Even today, four days after the election, people are still making their disgust felt. Apparently it’s even got the public in other states into an uproar. People want to make sure that this never happens again.

What amazes me is how Labor defends their actions, although Rann himself has been rather quiet. I’ve already mentioned how Foley felt about it, well it seems that two of his cronies, Grace Portolesi and Leon Bignell said that although they didn’t know it was going on they didn’t have a problem with it. Just goes to show how much they value honesty and integrity.

I must say that it’s unfair to tar the whole Labor party with the same brush as there were some members who knew of the tactics and decided they wanted nothing to do with it. Sort of makes you wonder how those others didn’t know what was going on in their own electorate though.

I’ve just come from watching an interview with Kelly Nestor and Michelle Chantelois on the Adelaide Now website. If Mike Rann is lying, and I believe he is, then I stand by my post Did Rann Screw The Labor Party By Having Sex With Michelle Chantelois in that his consistent lying to the public has more than likely screwed over the Labor party more than any other factor. Had he just owned up to it at the beginning it would have been all forgotten by now.

I read in comments on other sites that people think she’s doing it all for publicity and to derail the Labor party. She explains in this interview that the only reason she came out was to defend her husband after whacking the Premier, something I think he deserved, with a rolled up magazine. Had that incident not occurred it may not never have come to the public’s attention. I think it took balls to come out and say what she did, something Rann seems to be lacking.

I’ve also seen others saying it was a political stunt, and that is one of the reasons that Rann won’t take the lie detector test, but I think if he’s truly innocent he should take it. By not doing so it plants the seed of doubt into people’s minds. As to the political stunt aspect, the Liberal party certainly aren’t milking it for what it’s worth, and I’m sure if the shoe was on the other foot the Labor party would be having a field day.

One can see from their ads for the upcoming election that most of it is spin and negativity rather than coming up with half decent policies. Shit, only recently Rann has taken credit for the 490 billion litres that may flow into the Murray, something that I’m pretty sure would never have happened if it wasn’t for all the floods over in Queensland and NSW. Could it be that at the moment they have more water than they know what to do with?

Then I heard him, and Michael Atkinson , taking  credit for the reduced crime rate, as if it was all due to Labor policies over the last 8 years. Could it not also be attributed to technology such as car alarms and immobilisers making it harder to steal cars. I wonder what the stats are on robberies and violent crimes, have they gone down or is the reverse true.

Just a little over a year ago Tony Abbott said that paid maternity leave would create Second Class Mothers, those that decided to stay at home to look after their children. I’m left wondering why Mr. Abbott has now changed his view saying that if he was to win the next election he would slug big business a 1.7% tax levy to pay for a six month maternity leave scheme.

It’s not at all surprising that Australia’s business groups reject his plans saying that it is unfair to expect them to pay for what is essentially a social policy. Honestly I tend to agree with them. They’ve already got to pay for payroll tax, leave loading as well as contributing to employees superannuation. You would think with the amount of companies moving their operation overseas because the cost of producing the same product in Australia is getting too expensive that Abbott would re-think his plan of adding another expense to those who employ Australians.

Let’s face it, competition is rough and we have to compete not only with the local market but with overseas markets as well. Adding unwarranted costs to our companies only make it that much harder to compete. Sure they can lift the price of goods to cover their costs but that in itself could price their goods out of the market and then the only other option for them would be to cut costs, meaning the slashing of jobs, or as a last resort closing up shop and going elsewhere, something that those in Port Lincoln are aware of now that John West is moving their cannery operation to Thailand.

If the Government want paid maternity then they should budget for it and not put another cost onto Australian Companies.

I’ve done a couple of posts on how I think Labor’s gone around the bend in allowing meat from countries infected with the mad cows disease into Australia from March the 1st. Why I Think Rudd Is A Bloody Idiot and Has Kevin Rudd And The Labor Party Been Infected By Mad Cows Disease both stated my disgust at Rudd and his labor cronies as they make no attempt to put a stop to this stupidity.

What I find real upsetting is the fact that I’ve yet to hear Tony Abbott‘s stance on this. This would be a real vote winner for the Liberal party and yet they’ve been rather quiet. At least the Greens, Nationals and Independent senator Nick Xenophon have all expressed concern, Nick Xenophon going as far as to accuse the Government of doing a “backroom deal” with the US.

Honestly Mr Abbott, where the bloody hell are you on this important matter. There’s less than a week left and we haven’t heard a peep out of you. If you would only stand up for your fellow Australians and Australia’s clean meat industry I’m sure you would secure a lot of votes.

I understand that we should be trading with out overseas neighbours but we should be doing it on our terms not theirs. Anyone that wants to export products to Australia should face the same rigorous measures that our Australian farmers and manufacturers have to face. Anything less would put unfair pressures on all Australians.

Come to think of it you should also have a crack at changing our labeling laws. the way they are at the moment we think we’re buying Aussie products when in actual fact we’re not. That’s bullshit mate and you know it. If you want to win the next election then you’re going to have to toughen up and stand up for what is right for Australia and that means not bending over for all those countries trying to shaft us Aussies by exporting their crap with no quality control.

Rudd’s turning into a joke, don’t you get sucked into his wake.

This is just a quick post about my first Squidoo page. Although I actually started a lens almost two years ago, it wasn’t until I actually had the need to bring it to the final stage of publishing that I finally completed it. I’ve explained the reason for doing that in my Necessity The Mother Of Invention And How It Relates To Blogs where it explains how people find a way to do things when there is a specific need for getting it done. In my case the need was to help promote and market a new venture I was getting into.

I would dare to say that most of you may be familiar with Squidoo, but for those of you who aren’t all that familiar with it I would highly recommend that you check it out. If you take my lens, that’s what they call them, as an example you will see how I’ve used it to promote several of the posts on my blogs. This gives those posts extra link juice, as Squidoo is highly respected by the major search engines, as well as the good possibility of sending targeted traffic to those posts. We all know how important targeted traffic can be.

So, if you haven’t seen my lens yet why not go on over and have a look, if for no other reason than to see how handsome I am

So, go on over there, and if your feeling generous you can rate and fav it for me and I will do the same for one of your lenses. Just leave a link to your lens in the comment.