Our Great Mendacious Prime Minister
John Wedge Howard is the most successful prime minister of Australia if we choose to measure success by how well one can fool the Australian people. These are his latest wondrous achievements, abetted by a docile press.

• His ex-minister Peter Reith who was warned by the Australian Navy no less than 14 times that there were no children thrown overboard has now been appointed Australia's representative to the EU Bank admin at a tax-free salary of $250,000 pa. Reith, of Telecard and Attack Dog fame, claimed that he did not pass on the Australian Navy warnings to Howard during the election. Well, as a journalist said, for $250,000 pa, most people could be persuaded not to publish their memoirs. Smells of hush money to me.
• The SMH, of all the papers (one expects this type of nonsense of the Murdoch Australian and Telegraph), a few days ago had the front page headlines "Howard To Bring Troops Home". On Saturday, it was revealed that 1,500 of them will actually stay on to help the U.S. occupy Iraq. Not that we should not do our best to re-habilitate a country so badly f**ked up by the Coalition of the Willing, but our expertise is best provided in the form of public health, education and other infrastructure. We owe it to the Iraqis, but not by using our troops. Clever Howard, the specialist in mis-information.
• Medicare is Dead. Little by little, Howard killed it by a thousand cuts. The technique is as simple as it is effective. First you starve it of funds. Then you say, "Oh, what a mess it is, how lousy are its services, and it's because it is in public hands". Then you subsidise its private health fund rivals to the tune of $2.3 billion a year, about the amout it will take to fix up our decrepit hospital system. Such genius!
• What he did to Medicare, Howard is now doing to the Universities. Did you hear the latest inspriration from his lot? They are now considering the public funding of private universities so that underperforming socialist hotbeds like UNSW, Sydney, and Wollongong can have the spur of competition! Gee, I guess we need Harvard/Oxford level institutions like Bond to frigtten us into really working rather than be the chardonnay and latte wimps that we so clearly are.
• But this is nothing very novel, if you had been watching Howard's trick with the Australian school system. How many of you have seen a local government school close because of "small enrollment", and therefore insufficient Commonwealth funding? "Small" can be 300. Then a year after it closes, a new Christian (usually evangelistic and fundamentalist, anti-evolution, right-wing) school opens with an enrollment of 100 -- happily funded by the Commonwealth. This was fine for many, because the kids who went there were mainly white and yellow. No brown, no black. But then other religions got the idea, and there are sectarian Muslim schools sprouting up too, also funded by the Commonwealth. And you know what, some of our Liberal Party chums are getting nervous about them! Delicious side effect! If you hear any of them complaining at a cocktail party (I don't get invited to those any more, for some unfathomable reason), I suggest you mumble and stammer something about sauces for geeese and ganders, that is if you wish to be invited back next time. They don't take too kindly to laughter -- mumbling and stammering is fine, as this is what the British upper class twits do.
• This year, the total Commonwealth funds for private schools will exceed the total funds for all universities for the first time.
• But don't despair. Democracy, unlike dictatorships, can sometimes force change. Just look at the Ethanol Affair. For a good year, despite the urging of the NRMA, GM Holden, Toyota, Ford, etc., Howard refused to cap the ethanol content in petrol to 10%. The evidence of engine damage at higher levels than that was overwhelming. Why his refusal? Hmmm, maybe it is just a coincidence, but the monopolistic supplier of ethanol is Manildra, a very generous contributor to Liberal Party coffers. But the rumblings in the marginal seats have now persuaded him to agree to a cap. If only Australians were as tuned to international politics and social equity as to their hip-pockets!