King Kevin - The Great Pretender !

In Australia, people cheer Kevin Rudd (the new Prime Minister by default after ''knifing'' the standing PM (Julia Gillard) because they cannot believe he would trick them so brazenly. And never has Rudd - - a genius at ''seeming'', a disaster at doing - been as brazen as last week. King Kevin is a fraud!  He wants Australians to thank him for promising to fix what he's actually smashed. He' figured voters are too stupid to remember what he did, and too lazy to check what he promises to do now. And it's working. Thanks to two extraordinary stunts last week, voters now hail Rudd as the Savior who'll cut the Carbon Tax he in fact voted for, and to stop the illegal aliens in boats he in fact lured to Australia be smashing the previous PM's (John Howard) ''Pacific Solution'' that worked well.

Let's check the reality and not his habit of ''seeming'' to fix the two messes he's made:
NO, he did not ''terminate'' Labor's carbon tax.
NO, his planned emissions trading scheme cannot start next year, or not without spending billions he does not have to buy off the hostile Greens.
NO, he won't save families $380 per year.
NO, your electricity bills might in fact soar, not fall.

The Imperial Conga-Line of Ambassadors

In fact, Rudd will be the second prime minister to go to an election promising ''there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.'' If re-elected he will be the second Labor prime minister to claim ''changed circumstances'' made him break his solemn word.

So, to begin his week, King Kevin invited all the ambassadors, representing every Embassy, to the Prime Minister's residence for a cup of tea, a biscuit and an introductory chat. When they started arriving they weren't led inside but were told to wait until all of the ambassadors arrived and had them assemble on the front drive. It was then that he and his wife opened the door and each ambassador was led, one by one, to come forward and introduce themselves and shake Rudd's hand and then was shown inside. It suited Rudd's known imperial attitude and love of grandstanding.

Then last Tuesday, he made the following false claims or almost certainly undeliverable promises in announcing he'd move to an emissions trading scheme a year earlier than Labor planned saying that ''the Government has decided to terminate the carbon tax. By that, modelling from treasury shows that next year an average family will receive a cost-of-living relief to the value of $380 per year. We expect the change that we are bringing in will see the price on carbon fall from $25.40 a tonne by next July to $6 a tonne.''  Not one of those claims can be trusted. Some are outright fabrications. Rudd is dead wrong in claiming his change would save families $380 per year, as he stated FIVE times on Tuesday. Rudd is merely bringing forward by one year the switch to emissions trading, so any savings are also for just one year. Then the following year the EU plans to increase the carbon price to perhaps double the $6 and in a few more years we might not be saving but spending a more.

Next, let's remember, at his first go as Prime Minister in 2008, King Kevin scrapped the tried-and-true tough border laws by the previous Liberal government which had cut boat arrivals to an average of just three (3) a year. Since then more than 45,000 boat people mostly from lovely Muslim countries like the Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have come to Australia, and more than 1000 have been lured to their deaths. Last week another thirteen boat people drowned. With blood on his hands and an election coming up he finally stopped talking about fixing the lethal disaster he caused and put Australian's tax money where his mouth was. He's bribing another country to fix it.

On Thursday, King Kevin announced he has made a boat-people-deal with the Papua New Guinean government to open the Manus Island detention centre. The construction of the detention centre was announced last year and is still six months away with room for just 600 asylum seekers. Rudd boldly stated to the press with members of the PNG government ministers behind him, ''From now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees. Asylum seekers taken to Christmas Island will be sent to Manus Island and elsewhere in PNG for assessment of their refugee status.''  but the published ''agreement'' does not guarantee all what Rudd claims. The deal is for just 12 months. It does not oblige PNG to take all boat people sent from Australia. It makes such people only ''liable'' to being transferred to Papua New Guinea.

PNG even suggests there will be a ''cap'' on the number of people it will take. Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato told The Australian newspaper ''the arrangement'' was open-ended but he also signalled the potential to put brakes on its scope over time. ''We are not putting any cap on any numbers just yet, because we want to work through jointly to establish at what point in time what brakes Australia will put on and what brakes PNG will put on. The deal does not oblige PNG to resettle any boat people not to be actual refugees.''  If PNG won't resettle non-refugees, Australia may have to take them back--or find them some other home not yet identified. PNG made it clear that it was willing to resettle asylum-seekers who were given refugee status but for those that failed that test, they would be kept in detention if no other countries agreed to accept them. Of course they could always go back home on their own accord.

The Way I See It.....Kevin Rudd's supercharged ''Pacific Solution'' has all the hallmarks of an election quick fix...this solution...with an election looming is redolent of political opportunism. Somehow, amid his usual posturing and policy-changing, the most important human aspect is in danger of costing Australian taxpayers a fortune. This deal seems to offer life-time support from Australia for any refugees resettled in PNG under this arrangement, which could prove attractive to future illegal aliens. Kevin's description of this last obligation that slipped under the media radar was,  ''......the Australian Government, in support of the PNG Government, will provide comprehensive settlement services to ensure that these refugees can live safely and with security and in time, prosper within PNG.''

King Kev figures voters are too stupid to remember what he did, the first time around, and they now blindly backing him to deliver hasty, vague and massively expensive fixes. They're forgetting this is the same ''psychopath'' (as his fellow Minister's called him) who botched so many grand plans -- including his free insulation disaster (4 installers died), 8 billion dollars in the school halls blowout and the Grocery and Fuel Watch shambles. People with short memories may find it unbelievable that a prime minister could tell them such untruths with such moral conviction. The constant Cheshire Cat grin should've given it away, but Rudd has long traded on ''seeming'' something he is not. He is a genius at seeming to fix what he's actually broken and then the negative, not-well-thought-out consequences come home to roost. We have seen it all before where this King of Seeming was shown to be wearing no clothes.  Only morons remain blind to his phony personality.