Labor members are becoming increasingly frustrated at their inability to cut through due to the continuing leadership speculation. They keep parroting guff to a media - and to the public at large - which long ago lost faith in the Gillard government and can't believe anything they say.
The main message they are trying to push is the so-called "strong economy". They actually believe that economic management is a plus for the government, and that this is a weapon to use against the opposition. Are they out of their minds?
Day after day we are hearing reports of massive job losses. Companies going bust, jobs disappearing or else being relocated overseas, companies pulling up stumps and heading to greener pastures, manufacturing industry closing down, it just goes on and on. We are seeing those headlines and hearing this terrible news day after day yet the government keeps talking about the "strong economy" as if nothing is happening. All of this just goes to show how out of touch the government is with reality and the disconnect between Canberra and the real world. The politicians are being fed a non-stop stream of happy talk from bureaucrats fearful of losing their jobs if they tell their bosses the truth.
All this has eerie similarities to the period between 1989 and 1991 - immediately before the declaration of "the recession we had to have" which extended till 1994. The Hawke government's Industry and Trade minister, the late John Button said on the ABC's 1993 documentary Labor In Power that during this period business leaders kept approaching him talking about how dire things were. Costs were going up, business confidence was non-existent and that they would have to make mass sackings. Button said that he asked the business leaders if they had told Hawke and Keating about this. "We've tried to but they're just not listening" said Button.
During that pre-recession period (when, in fact, the country was already in recession) Treasurer Paul Keating kept saying there would be "a soft landing". He had been told over and over by bureaucrats in Treasury that there would be no recession, that the economy was sound and in good shape - just like the Gillard government is now telling the public. In April 1991 Keating was forced to make his "Recession we had to have" speech when the figures finally caught up with reality and the recession was officially confirmed.
Fast forward to the present day. The economy is going south at a rate of knots. Job losses are escalating and the economic legacy of John Howard and Peter Costello - which kept us out of the Global Financial Crisis during the Rudd government - has been squandered. The spectre of the carbon tax is hanging over the country like a Damocles sword and is destroying the country.
Australia is the only country in the world which has deliberately bought its way into the Global Financial Crisis.
The companies which are shedding jobs and heading into receivership and administration are mostly saying that the carbon tax isn't the reason. They have to say that, don't they? The fact is they cannot blame the carbon tax because they are scared of being left out of any industry compensation from the government when the carbon tax comes in. They are being gagged. When you have a situation where the government has to keep paying out millions in compensation to the victims of its policies then you have to agree that something is terribly wrong.
All in all, the Labor government has created the terrible mess this country is in and is trying to pull the old smoke and mirrors trick by talking up the economy. Well, the public is just not buying it. They know this country has been destroyed by Labor, they know the economy is stuffed and they know that Labor is just a cheap-jack bunch of gratuitious liars and charlatans with the economic expertise of Mickey Mouse. No amount of happy talk about the so-called "strong economy" will ever change that.
