Well, it was certainly exciting watching the leadership debate, worm-free though it was. I must say that on the whole, I think Howard blew it big time - it is doubtful that he'll want a repeat closer to the election. Howard confirmed one of the most damaging perceptions of him and his government - stuck in the past, retrospective, with no new ideas. None of the policies he put forward did anything to displace that impression. His emphasis was on preservation, maintenance and restoration. The vision of the "future" of education was to restore "education standards" (bit hard to do, if you keep cutting funding), fix the mistake made 30 years ago of abolishing technical schools (what a novel idea!) and restore our teaching of history. There was nothing prospective about his plan.
On the history point, his "vision" of restoring the teaching of history was not one of development of analytical and critical thinking about history or of ways to make the study of history more appealing to students - it was to renew the "pride" in Australian history and in who we are - it is a good recipe for nationalism, but not a great one for learning from our past.
His vision on the economy was more tax cuts and that's it. The universal remedy to rising interest rates, rising food prices, rising education costs, decreasing housing affordability and increasing inflation! I'm sure a few hundred bucks will go a long way to alleviating the burden of an extra $10K in interest repayments on a $300K mortgage thanks to the interest rate rises in the last term of the Howard government.
Rudd performed better, although his emphasis on himself, constantly saying "I" rather than "we" (given that he is a spokesperson for the Labor party and a shadow front bench) was a bit disconcerting. Howard on the other hand placed a lot of emphasis on his new team strategy (which would have been more comforting if the various members of that team didn't stab each other in the back on regular basis).
I hope to do a couple more posts on what emerged from the debate, but it is hard to avoid the overall impression that the only thing that Howard was prepared to offer in terms of the future of Australia are more tax cuts (which are likely to increase inflationary pressures and most of which are, unfortunately, supported by Rudd), a rabid fear of unions and a lot of boasting of past achievements (not all of which can be attributed to good governance). There's going to be a lot of disappointment in the Liberal party circles tonight.
