Sheehan: a reality check on Rudd's rhetoric

July 28, 2008, Paul Sheehan:

Could someone point out to me where, in last year's election campaign, Kevin Rudd or his Labor cohorts announced they were going to commit Australia to a gang-busters immigration program?

Where was Labor's policy announcement that Australia, with its stressed bread basket living from winter rain to winter rain, was going to increase its population by 1 million people during the three-year term of a Rudd government? I can't find it ...

I'm coming to the conclusion that our new Prime Minister is both dissembling and disingenuous. He has certainly misled the Parliament and the people on some big issues ... and there is a growing disconnect between his soaring green rhetoric and pragmatic brown actions.

This disconnect was evident early, during this year's 2020 ideas festival at Parliament House. One notable attendee, Professor Ian Lowe, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, was struck by the divergence between rhetoric and reality, and by the foregone conclusions built into the process ...

How is increasing the population by a million people every three years going to contribute to lowering Australia's carbon footprint? Don't ask big business, or the ALP machine, both addicted to "growth" defined by corporate fundamentalism, which means higher per capita consumption and more consumers ...
Rudd looks like a dud.

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