Mr Rudd has become our own financial historical revisionist. Apparently Mr Rudd’s problems are caused by the fact that the Coalition Government left him a $20 billion surplus and $45 billion in the bank. That is not a bad problem to have, being flushed with funds, when you come into government.
It is almost pythonesque that Mr Rudd is blaming the legacy left by the Coalition Government for Labor’s $256 billion dollars in gross debt.
It is very fortunate that his pets Abby and Jasper are not in the room or no doubt they would have collected some of the blame. For every problem he has got, Mr Rudd’s standard line has now become that Mr Howard, Mr Costello or ‘Chewy’ did it.
Unfortunately for Mr Rudd, Mr Rudd has caused Mr Rudd’s problems.
Many Australians would have collapsed on the ground laughing at Mr Rudd giving his advice on how everything would be fine by 2050. The reality is Mr Rudd that at the end of the day, quite unsurprisingly, a lot of us will be dead in 2050. If that’s your definition of things being better, then I’ve got some really serious concerns about where we are now.
It is unbelievable that he is talking about tightening the belt when he has orchestrated the greatest spending spree in the history of Australia. It is very similar to the town drunk giving advice to the Temperance League on healthy living.
Mr Rudd, you cannot blame the Coalition for balancing the books. That is not the problem; the problem is that you can not. You still have not provided an exit plan for now, beyond a wondrous desire that somehow things will get better in the future. You have to stop talking about what is going to happen in the afterlife and start dealing with the problems we have now.
You need to at least peg the debt to a point and show the path of how you are going to reduce the debt in believable and concrete terms that the majority of Australians will hopefully live to see.
Mr Rudd, I want to quote a very recent Australian Prime Minister to you ‘The buck stops with you.’