I have to agree that this has become Jetblast grist.
What surprises me is the number of 'intelligent, well-balanced' individuals* (see footnote) who appear to reserve a visceral, almost pathological hatred for John Winston Howard that's way up there with the feelings many 89ers reserve for one robert hawke (sic). Did Howard have as detrimental an effect opon these people's lives as hawke (sic) did on so many in the Aviation industry?
As I've said earlier in this thread, you don't have to like the individual or everything he does to deem him, of those offering their services, the more capable manager of your country. As much as I disagreed with many of the things Howard and his Party did, after experiencing the Whitlam years first hand, I feared before the 2007 election, and fear even moreso now, that we're going to pay an enormous price just so these intelligent, well-balanced individuals can feel good about having a more acceptable (to them) leader in place than John Howard.
It's scary to think - when you consider the enormous effect they had on the Australian economy - that there were only three 'Whitlam years'. I wonder if taxpayers in years to come, as they (attempt to?) pay off the huge debt the country is currently incurring, will be saying something similar about the Rudd years?
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*(I know they are 'intelligent, well balanced' individuals, because they've told us all that one automatically becomes so if one is not of the far right wing persuasion in one's political leanings)