Birds of a political feather wreck economies together

The Australian public has now had more than six months to get a feel for new Labor opposition leader Kevin Rudd. Opinion polls have favoured Labor over the Coalition since he became leader and he still leads in the preferred prime minister stakes.

With the next federal election still six months away I do not believe that opinion polls provide an accurate forecast of the outcome. The polls are slightly higher than where Labor has been at the same time of year in the previous two election campaigns, one of which they lost narrowly and in the other they were quite rightly hammered when they somehow endorsed the mentally unstable Mark Latham as leader.

With the announcement that Labor will appoint a petrol commissioner it occurred to me that Kevin Rudd is quite similar to a former US president who caused chaos at the petrol pump by trying to control the price of petrol when supply was freely available.


Birds of a feather - Jimmy Carter and Kevin Rudd

From the press release on Labor's web site:

Increasing petrol prices have become a number one weekly budget issue for many families across the Australia.

In recent years, petrol price spikes have become the norm rather than the exception over long weekends, the Easter break, and school holidays.

While international oil prices are the dominant factor in price fluctuations, motorists need to know that prices are being set fairly.

That is why a Federal Labor Government will task an Office of the Petrol Commissioner - within the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) - with the sole purpose of ensuring Australian families are paying not one cent more to fill up their car than they should.

One shudders at the similarity with the policy of the USA's most incompetent President ever, Jimmy Carter.