This is the image I have as I leave Australia for two weeks in NZ.Wayne Swan,the Treasurer, sure has changed his tune. After months of planglossianisms he is now incorporating into his talk of tough budget and a protracted period of high interest rates the IMFs language of an 'unstable international outlook and inflation'; and that Australia would not be immune from the financial crisis.

Why Swan is even saying that no one at the IMF meetings in Washington he is attending believed that Asia was somehow de-coupled from the financial turmoil that began late last year with the subprime mortgage crisis in the US.

Spooner

Well, that sure sure contradicts alll the rhetoric about China's economic growth and demand for Australia's resources actiing as a firewall against an 'unstable international outlook and inflation'. It looks as if Swan needed the authority of the IMF to say the blinding obvious.