John Linton ......Kylie Minogue looks the same on her 40th birthday photo as she did on her 20th; Alan Bond is one of Australia's richest men again, Kevin Rudd is channeling Bob Hawke with identical pointless 'consensus' discussion', "summits" and absolutely stupid and pointless decisions and addressing problems that don't exist and thereby creating new very real problems:
Signiing the Kyoto Protocol (just before it expires)- committing Australia to reach carbon emission targets it was already well under
Saying "Sorry" to Aboriginal Australian people - immediately escalating the legal climate for more unearned financial support that was a prime cause of him thinking he should say "sorry" in the first place.
Taking a world wide trip and making a total goose of himself in every place people were kind enough to give him a hour of their time while the decisions that neede to be taken by government in Australia were put on hold for six weeks.
Holding an "ideas summit" - that, like Hawke's, produced no ideas but only demonstrated that Rudd's Labor hadn't got any of their own.
Producing a first budget that addressed nothing that was needed to be addressed and pointlessly raising tax on teen mixed spirit cans - immediately teaching teens that you can make stronger drinks mixing your own; if you don't count appeasing his doctrinaire puppet masters by raising the luxury car tax, just as Hawke did - producing a frenzy of new luxury car buying before June 30th.
and.......
but why go on; the current prime minister of this country has comprehensively demonstrated himself to be inept, bereft of either ideas or even common sense and totally up himself in the six months a few misguided Australians gave him the opportunity for posturing to a wider audience.
If you remember 1988 the parallels with Hawke are almost eerie....right up to the looming recession that will make so many people's lives in this country so miserable by Christmas.
Looking at the communications companies there is a similar feeling of 'deja vu' - although some of the names have changed over the past twenty years. On the positive side, depending on who you are of course, Telstra and Optus shares keep trending upwards to their 52 week highs. On the negative side every other communications company's shares are at or continue to fall towards, their 52 week lows.
Pretty much sums of the telco market at the moment....right down to the uncertaainty of what a major change to "Telstra" would mean in the telecommunications supply businesses. (hard to realise now that today's 'telcos' other than Telstra didn't exist in 1998) Then - the major change was issuing carrier licenses and the 'privatisation of Telecom Australia. Now - it's the mooted FTTN and the considerations of whether that will reverse the 'privatisation' or wil it, after 20 plus years in fact bring about 'privatisation'?
No-one, at least no-one I know or whose opinions I read, is now prepared to make a call on that crucial, for many telcos including Telstra, way that will go or by when. Which I suppose is a good thing because up to quite recently the consensus, and it may well be a consensus of the uninformed, was that Telstra would re-establish its monopoly and consign Australia back to the 1980s in terms of access to new technology and affordable prices of communications services.
Roll on July - holiday time.