It may not be the most popular stance at the moment, but I am really not a Kevin Rudd fan.

Even after he paid me $900 to like him (which I used to pay my tax bill – circular market or what?) I still think he’s an oleaginous little shit, far better suited to middle management at the parking inspector’s office than running a country.

Part of my dislike admittedly stems from an instinctive distrust of labour governments governing by committee and funding projects for more social workers, but mostly it’s based on the man himself, and his alleged government.

Rudd won the last election on three main platforms: Work Choices, greenhouse gases and everyone being completely over John Howard. Good points all of them. Work Choices was never going to happen in a country like Australia where there is (or was) enough money and space in the economy for the labour market to require a minimum level of fuck-off-don’t-push-me-around authority; whatever the truth of global warming, the popular feeling is strong enough to require governments to respond with direct action (a point the usually politically astute Howard completely missed); and even the most staunchly right wing of us were starting to agree that Howard had been around too long and it was time for a change.

The problem is that we didn’t get a change with Rudd, we just got less honesty. Yes, that’s right: less honesty. Howard and his Bushy eyebrows had totally lost sight of the fact that he governed by the will of the people, not in spite of it, but he was at least honest about what he was prepared to care about. Got a problem with global warming and greenhouse gases? Well Howard didn’t give a shit and wasn’t going to waste time or money on any direct action and if you didn’t like it you could bugger off to sob on Bob Brown’s already sodden shoulder.

Now we have Rudd doing a great line in sanctimonious speeches about global warming and what a tragedy it is, but he’s got about as much substance as Paris Hilton’s hair extensions. His so called ‘action on climate change’, the Emissions Trading System, is so bad that his own pet climate change expert Ross Garnaut, has said publicly that we would be better off doing nothing at all.

There’s a conga line from the Labor leadership dancing around the country, grabbing their ankles for the large scale emitters and scrambling to re-write legislation that may cause a power station to twitch its nose a little. But despite this, Rudd, in a breathtaking display of the most venal cynicism I’ve seen in a while, doesn’t hesitate to stake his pompous and self congratulatory claim on the global warming moral high ground.

Come back Johnny, all is forgiven.

When the white paper on the Emissions Trading Scheme was published all the big polluters heaved a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that the government had caved snivellingly to all their demands. No more worries about a labour government standing up to big business, no sireee Bob, not with Our Kevin at the helm. Thousands of public servants, who all got a little tense when Kevin first appeared on the horizon, relaxed, the ETS will create bucket-loads of pointless projects to over-manage, so they’ll be alright for a few more years. Phew. That’s a relief.

In the meantime, if the climate change scientists are right, global warming is going to seriously mess with the only planet we’ve got at the moment.

Never mind though, because Big Kev is going to give you really fast broadband and his mate Conroy will make damn sure you can’t accidentally end up googling any nasty dentists sites on it.

Having said all that, and because it would be terrible if anyone started throwing accusations of political bias at me, let me also say this about the opposition. YOU LOST THE ELECTION!! Get used to it. It means you are not allowed to set the agenda any more. It also means you are not allowed to enact legislation any more. The job of opposition is to act as a check on the government, it is not to stand around pouting and arguing and refusing to let the party that won the election do any of the things they were elected to do.

Sometimes the government has a good idea, or needs to take some workable action, but while the opposition refuses to do anything other than throw pies at them every time they stick their nose outside the door of the cabinet room it will be virtually impossible for any of those good ideas to become anything more than something else for the boys to shout insults at each other about during question time.

The solution to all this, apparently, is to put Justin in charge of everything and the rest of us can head off to the pub. I’m not sure I agree, but, hell, it’s got to be worth a try.

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