Nice opinion piece in The Age called 'Answer's please Mr Rudd?' shows how the left-leaning middle class are sizing up the realities of a potential Rudd premiership.
Their big unanswered question is 'So far we don't know to what extent Kevin Rudd will line our pockets with tax cuts'. Ummm ... let me answer that for you. You'll get precisely f*&k all. He's a Labor guy. Once he's in he'll spend everything he can get his hands on. He might hesistate to take more money because of the consequences electorally, although he won't shy away from exploiting stealth taxes and bracket creep Keating-stylee. He'll increase the GST to pay for health if he can manipulate the polulation into feeling guilty about not paying. The exact same thing happenned under 'New Labour' in Britain with the National Insurance contribution. Whether old or new, the very word Labo(u)r gives people away as tax-and-spend income redistributionists.
I can't find the name of the author. Presumably they wish to stay anonymous to avoid a barrage of Ruddite propaganda at the next dinner party they attend. Whomever he or she is you can tell the author is left-leaning, dispite the fact they want tax cuts, because they imply they want troops out of Iraq by calling to our attention the fact that Rudd has duped people into thinking he'll pull out now when he advocates one more full troop rotation taking the deployment to mid-next year.
I am greatly comforted by the desertion of lefties from the ALP, to the Greens or anywhere else. If Age readers are so worried about money from tax cuts, presumably for private school fees and piano lessons for kids Jonathan and Marjorie, they will be just as likely to desert Labor for the Liberals. The have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too crowd still have to make a real choice in the end. If they eat John Howard at the polls they can't stick their fingers down their thoat, bring him back up and have another go.
Mmmm ... bulemia.
