Sunday Mail Column - Rudd loves to watch

Fuelwatch, grocery watch, childcare watch? Where will it end?

It is impossible not to hear Kevin Rudd talk about the economy without him mentioning inflation, but this week in Parliament he stumbled on his favourite topic:

DrNELSON(2.30 pm)—I ask the Prime Minister… could he quickly remind the House of the published budget forecasts for inflation for the next two years and the projections beyond that in his budget this year?

Mr RUDD—…When it comes to the period ahead, we expect that inflation will moderate, from memory, to 3.75 and for the year following I do not have those figures in front of me.

MrRudd was wrong. The rate of inflation for the year ahead is expected to be 3.25% according to the Government’s own budget papers, and the figures he didn’t have in front of him were to be found on page one of his first budget.

But that is not the end of the show. Before the election Kevin Rudd promised to do much to tackle inflation, and thus far has done nothing.

You may recall he travelled the country accusing the Howard Government of being out of touch with working families when it came to petrol prices and grocery prices.

They were going to instigate inquiries and investigations and do something about these problems, where the previous government was supposedly doing nothing.

“…the explosion in mortgage interest payments, the explosion in rents, in grocery prices, petrol prices, child care costs…I think it’s important that we have a Government which understands those pressures and is prepared to do something about them.”

Kevin Rudd 15 October 2007

And now, having won the election, seven months into his first term in Government petrol prices have steadily risen peaking at $1.71 a litre.

According to post election Kevin Rudd there is no silver bullet. According to post election Kevin Rudd:

“We have done as much as we physically can to provide additional help to the family budget, recognising that the cost of everything is still going through the roof; cost of food, cost of petrol, cost of rents, cost of childcare.”

KevinRudd, 22 May 2008

KevinRudd has thrown in the towel six months in.

His Government, it seems, is obsessed with watching prices go up.

For example, we have seen the ongoing saga of FuelWatch. It is an internet site, supposedly to help the elderly, the disadvantaged and working families to find the cheapest petrol station in their area. Talk about out of touch – older Australians may be increasingly active in their use of the internet, but pensioners and disadvantaged Australians who currently rely on cheap Tuesday to fill up will gain little benefit from a website if they don’t happen to have a computer. And the RAA and other respected analysts have confirmed cheap Tuesday will disappear as well.

Working families with an internet connection may benefit from being able to see fuel prices in their area, but the price fixing component of FuelWatch, according to the Department of Finance, the Department of Industry, the Department of Energy and Resources and the Government’s own Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, may well increase the price of petrol as a result of introducing FuelWatch.

It seems like all of the Labor Government’s policies to combat inflation eventually amount to establishing internet sites.

After FuelWatch, we now find that Kevin Rudd’s great plan to combat rising grocery prices and the pain that causes to the family Budget, is to establish GroceryWatch, which the Government claims will again assist pensioners and the disadvantaged – well the ones who have the internet at home anyway.

Julia Gillard recently has revealed that ChildCareWatch is just around the corner.

I wish that I was kidding – that this was one big episode of Yes Minister down under. But it is not – it is the practical outcome of “new Leadership”.

Sir Humphrey Appleby, the perennial public servant in Yes Minister said “We don't measure our success by results but by activity.” Kevin Rudd, a former public service mandarin himself seems to have taken a leaf out of the Appleby book of governance. Frantic activity, with no results, to the point where senior public servants are anonymously calling talkback radio to complain that their hours of hard labour are coming to nothing.

Meanwhile Rudd and Labor ponder what other internet sites might continue to keep the populous mesmerised while nothing substantial happens. I have recently criticised the Rudd Government for putting off any plan to fix the Murray until yet another Ministerial Council Meeting in November this year. According to a report this week the Lower Lakes in South Australia have until October before the ongoing environmental catastrophe occurring within the Coorong is basically beyond repair.

With this trend towards voyeurism of the Rudd Government we might soon see “MurrayWatch”, with a live webcam watching the Lower Lakes dry up.

His Government and its policies are proving to be as insubstantial as cyberspace.