Mr Rudd and Mr Swan appear to have come to the conclusion that the wish of the Australian public is to live in a taxpayer supported public housing project. It was very disappointing that when the proposed tax credit scheme was announced, it is for the benefit of the large business landlord rather than individuals purchasing their own homes.

Let's be honest, the big prize goes to the large businesses which will get the tax credits and the tokenism is the proposed saving account as an afterthought. The State Labor governments continue to be able to show their concern by fleecing those in the housing market with stamp duty and Ms Plibersek, the Housing Minister, did not even warrant this issue a mention on her Lateline interview.

What did the Minister offer for a critical housing shortage? 3 000 houses in the next financial year then 11 000 in the following, then 25 000 and, in a record early show of hubris, they assume they are re-elected. After that, surprise, surprise, 50 000 and the numbers become irrelevant for those out of a house now.

In a spirit of cooperative federalism and dynamism, Mr Rudd and Mr Swan were unable, incapable or scared of the State Labor governments who are fleecing their state constituents with State Government taxes from stamp duty through to land tax and, then to add insult to injury, collecting GST from the families who purchased the materials to build their houses. On top of this, the State Governments are restricting the supply of land so to extract every last drop of blood from Australians to prop up their own State treasury problems.

As Australian homeowners have to refinance their fixed rate maturities with the unfortunate reality being the increase in repayments is outside the family budget and this stress is compounded by a high consumer debt on personal items, will Mr Rudd then acknowledge he never so much as spoke a word publicly with the Reserve Bank of trying to dampen the interest rate repayment and rent escalation cycle?

One could suspect that he's raising interest rate expectations, knowing the US economy will go into recession, therefore demand for our resources dramatically reduce, Australia will follow into recession and demand for money will fall and interest rates go down and Mr Rudd will claim responsibility for that reduction prior to the next election.

If Mr Rudd and Mr Swan want to show vision in dealing with the housing crisis they could encourage the development of regional towns where a far more affordable house is currently available and, hopefully, land would be vastly cheaper. This could be done by the movement of some Government Departments to regional towns. Why can't we develop Roma, Cowra, Swan Hill, Murray Bridge and Merredin? This would be true vision. The inability of effect, the lack of courage and absence of vision is the policy direction of the current Government.

If Mr Rudd is truly worried about inflation, it's peculiar he hasn't dealt more effectively with the potential fuel crisis, with the price of a barrel of oil now in excess of $101 and our exchange rate in the mid 90's. I clearly remember being involved in locking in foreign currency when the exchange rate had a 4 in front of it so, if our exchange rate does fall, and it will, and oil prices stay where they are, and I think they shall, how is the Australian consumer going to deal with fuel in excess of $2/litre? Where is his plan for that or is it another group of people he's too scared to take on; big oil companies with their reticence to develop a bio-renewable alternative to the oil based fuel economy?

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