>I had a conversation with a family member the other night who,
>talking about his neighbours, said... just the devil you know when
>things seem uncertain. I don't know, but I'll say that my if my
>very-conservative-University students are any indication, HOward has
>this bizarre default status for them. They seem to almost uniformly
>despise him, but he's like an elderly relative you hate, they do
>rather seem to think they at least know his measure and place him as
>boringly wrong more than dangerously wrong.
That's true. There _was_ something unpredictable and dangerous about Latham I thought. Just as an example, his persistent declarations that the Government's recently introduced annual $600 per child family payment bonus "wasn't real". This based on the fact that about a third of those eligible wouldn't actually receive the full amount in cash, because many of them have been overpaid and thus have a debt which would be deducted from the bonus. This was extremely superficial at all levels, since those not getting the full bonus at the end of the financial year would would get it, in fact would have already received it in installments.
Yet Labor was proposing to cancel the payment, which would have made it the first federal government in my long memory to have actually _reduced_ Family Payments. While claiming to be increasing them overall on the basis of shonky mathematics.
There's something a little bit mad about a candidate for high office asking parents to believe that a $600 (per child) cash payment, that hundreds of thousands of actually existing voters all over the country had actually received only a few days earlier, is "not real". I know damn well it seemed pretty real to me and the missus (more real to her of course, since she actually got it.) True we lost nearly a third of it, due to overpayments that we had accrued. But with 3 kids under 16 we still got over $1,200 about a week before election day, not to mention the full $1,800 about 2 months ago. That's three grand cash money.
Sure, we all know its a bribe, but at least it wasn't an insulting bribe. My sister used hers to buy a car, so she doesn't have to spend 2 hours on buses getting to and from her new job anymore. The missus is hoarding her $3,000 and I get hostile glares if i so much as admire the bank statement. Its real allright Mark, you better believe it.
The only thing that seemed a bit unreal was this fellow Mark Latham, wanting us to vote for him on the basis of his earnest promise to cancel these annual payments from now on, and trying to convince us that the money was just a phantom.
How dumb is this bloke? He certainly thinks we're pretty dumb, and as you say perhaps dangerous out of touch with reality as well.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas