Glen Milne, the most intrepid anti-Rudd sleuth in the journo business, has written an account of the billion dollars that wasn't in the Murray-Darling deal.
After I blogged this issue last week i thought to myself, "maybe i should have mentioned the money". Now i'm glad i didn't. I seemed to know that there was much more at stake here than a billion dollars, as much as that is.
It was said the Victoria got an extra billion for bargaining hard. Not so, they stalled not out of want of money. They were in cahoots with the other state governments who also wanted that money. But every Labor govt in the country ended up getting something much more. Power. Untrammelled power. Wall-to-wall power.
The ALP's priority was always to dump Howard because he stood in the way of the unions. To dump Howard whatever the cost. Whatever the cost to the economy from protectionism and wage-regulation and intimidation of business large and small. And whatever the cost to the Agriculturalists of the Murray-Darling.
14 months of delays of vital works for crooked political gain. This is crime enough for any honest witness to condemn the ALP, but for them to stand there and allow us all to think they were more willing to negotiate than Howard is to add insult to grevious injury.
This kind of hypocrisy really burns my brisket.
Much needed comedy relief: Into this atmosphere of opaqueness comes the moves to make the budget more transparent codenamed 'Operation Sunshine'. Now THAT is scary. How communist can you get? It's double-think duckspeak par excellence. If you are going to nickname something like military operation take in to account that a military operation usually hurts people. Let's not pretend it's all sushine and rainbows and happy feelings. Let's be honest.
Oh, yeah. Forgot for a second i was talking about the ALP.
