Howard is starting to channel the spirit of Joh Bjelke-Petersen:
"It's not smearing somebody to say all you ever announce is committees, all you ever promise to do is react to a review that you might get some time in the future if you are elected and after a process of consultation."
Actually, setting up committees and reacting to reviews sounds like a big step forward from the nobody-told-me stitchups and deliberate ignorance of the Howard years. But don't you worry about that!
"What the Australian people want to know from me and they want to know from Mr Rudd over the weeks and months ahead is how can preserve, expand and further deliver the prosperity of this nation for the benefit of future generations of Australians?'' he said.
"They're the sort of issues that need to be debated. Not stunts, not slogans, not American-style policy launches where you (use) the teleprompter or whatever you call those things that look like rear vision mirrors, which I've never used and I never will use. "
You can see him down at the Bowls Club on a Sunday afternoon, can't you? Dressed in starched white clothes, with his chest puffed up and his trembling bottom lip stuck out, resting an arm on the bar while he studiously listens to the cricket on the wireless (none of those tele-vision things or whatever you call 'em).
