Demand concerns see oil price drop

Demand concerns see oil price drop	8.07.2008

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07/08/2008		No relief on rising credit costs
THE global credit crunch, which has helped drive up home mortgage rates in Australia, looks set to continue after an improvement in credit market conditions in May proved to be a false dawn

07/08/2008		Big IAG shake-up on cards
LEADING broking analysts believe that Insurance Australia Group is poised for its biggest restructure since it was spun out of the NRMA eight years ago

07/08/2008		Virgin Blue facing $75m loss
VIRGIN Blue could lose $75 million this financial year if a new report is correct

07/08/2008		Allco sells down property
ALLCO Finance Group has sold part of its Singaporean real estate arm and the company will use the money to pay down debt and review other property activities

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Little Kev may claim to have no "left-wing reform agenda", however the same cannot be said for Gilliard and her cohorts. Or is Kev just softening us up for a single party system by claiming that the future should not include left/right divide?
Posted by: AMS of Sydney 9:18am today

Of course what was not said is that there will be NO WAY that Rudd will move back into the right wing Anglocentric doctrine that Howard rammed down our collective throats ! How you like those banana's Matthew ...
Posted by: R Hess 9:04am today

If he ever banned pokies he would be alright with me.
Posted by: Paul of melbourne 9:03am today

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Secret left-wing reform agenda won`t be unveiled
Time to put leave arcane Right/Left divide behind
High point, low point in first 100 days

KEVIN Rudd has assured mainstream Australia he will avoid radical social and cultural change by resisting calls to broaden his reform agenda and by sticking to his election promises.

The Prime Minister warned that people had "elected the wrong guy" if they believed that once he was in power he would unveil a secret left-wing reform agenda or suddenly yield to pressure from sectional interests.

Calling for people to move beyond "the classical Right-Left divide", Mr Rudd said he had been upfront about his election promises and would focus on delivering them in full.

"There`s nothing terribly complicated about me," Mr Rudd said.

"If you obtain the people`s support, that`s what you go ahead and do."

The Prime Minister made the comments in an interview with The Weekend Australian to mark Monday`s passage of 100 days since he was elected.

He also said he had no interest in debating whether the private sector should be contracted to deliver government services, and foreshadowed plans to engage the private sector in his fight to improve the lives of indigenous Australians.

Tax-cut plans on track

He said that despite the threat to the economy of inflation, he would deliver his promised $31 billion tax-cut plan in full. And despite Opposition warnings of a possible wages breakout, he would also rewrite industrial relations laws as planned.

Mr Rudd will celebrate his 100-day landmark still riding a wave of public support for his formal apology to the indigenous Stolen Generations and his ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The latest Newspoll survey for The Australian, published last week, gave him a record preferred prime minister rating of 70 per cent.

In the lead-up to the election, the Coalition warned voters that Mr Rudd would be a captive of trade union leaders, state Labor governments and sectional interests, and that his pre-election claims of economic conservatism would quickly disappear after he was elected.

"Resume conversation"

The Prime Minister also faces a growing clamour from the Left for wider reform outside the promises he made in last year`s election campaign.

A collection of 20 essays written by academics and thinkers released last week and edited by Robert Manne calls for Mr Rudd to "resume the conversation between public intellectuals and government".

The essays urge him to consider some politically risky moves such as scrapping 99-year leases on indigenous land, overhauling negative gearing, limiting first-home buyers` grants and introducing punitive laws on electricity generation and car emissions.

Yesterday Mr Rudd said he had no secret plans and gave short shrift to the wish list.

"I think they might have elected the wrong guy," Mr Rudd said.

Move beyond Right/Left divide

The Prime Minister said he was not worried that his approach would alienate the left wing of the labour movement, stressing that politics had moved "beyond the classical Left-Right paradigm".

"It just doesn`t apply to the politics of the future," Mr Rudd said. "It`s time to put some of these classical, and I think arcane, divides behind us."

Clearly defined objectives

Mr Rudd, whose wife, Therese Rein, built a successful job-placement company by delivering Job Network services for the previous Howard government, said the quality of government service was more important than the delivery mechanism.

Citing the example of his election promise to lift indigenous life expectancy and literacy standards, Mr Rudd said: "It`s not who provides services to indigenous communities, it`s who most effectively provides those services to deliver what isthe agreed national set of policy outcomes.

"That`s where the real debate is. It`s not in debates about public or private ownership or classical divides between Left and Right. The key thing here is to have a clearly defined set of objectives for the nation. Then the legitimate intellectual and policy debate for the country, given that we`ve been elected, is how we best reach those objectives."

High point

The Prime Minister said the high point of his first 100 days was the fact that he could "look the Australian people in the eye" and declare he was keeping his election promises, such as the Kyoto ratification and the indigenous apology.

"Why I say that is a high point is that the public have become exceptionally cynical about `core promises and non-core promises`," he said, referring to his predecessor, John Howard. "I think we have to work incredibly hard, therefore, in order to maintain the public`s trust in order to do the things you will need to do into the future."

Low point

The low point of his first three months had been the assassination attempt on East Timorese President Jose Ramos Horta - a close friend.

Mr Rudd said he was surprised by the strong national and international reaction to his apology to the Stolen Generations. But he would not be truly satisfied unless he followed the apology with real improvements in indigenous health and education standards.

"I am also acutely conscious of the fact that to get effective local community buy-in, we`re going to end up with hundreds of different solutions on the ground across the 400 remote Aboriginal communities across the country," he said.

"But the ultimate policy effectiveness will be measured against the targets we`ve set."

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