Published 20 January in The Punch - www.thepunch.com.au

Today Kevin Rudd will hold his first Community Cabinet of this election year, bringing his road show to Adelaide, no doubt with much fanfare and pageantry. According to recent news reports it also comes at not insignificant cost with taxi and hire cars fares alone clocking in at $10,000 plus for the Labor promoting talkfests.

First and foremost for South Australians and anyone who cares about the health of our rivers and river communities is our ongoing water crisis. It is clear that Kevin Rudd has not managed to ‘end the blame game’ on water as he promised. His so-called historic agreement reached in 2008 is riddled with so many loopholes and concessions to the States that he clearly should go back to the drawing board if he is serious about attaining real national management of the Murray Darling.

It is a travesty that many vital water-saving infrastructure projects Kevin Rudd described as urgent in 2007 haven’t been started, let alone completed. I would have thought urgent priority projects would be, well, urgent and a priority – not left waiting for years on end while our water crisis only gets worse.

I often wonder how Kevin Rudd expects to get 180 countries to agree to an international agreement to solve climate change when he can’t even get four state governments, run by his Labor mates, to agree to a workable solution to the problems in the Murray Darling Basin?

While Kevin Rudd has endlessly focused on an Emissions Trading Scheme that will send jobs overseas and do little to actually reduce global carbon emissions, he has abandoned real action on climate change by slashing solar rebates.

Worst of all he is actively blocking developing countries from taking direct action to cut their carbon emissions – why ban India from buying our uranium so they can develop clean energy sources and end their reliance on coal?

The boost to uranium mining would not only boost jobs and exports but would also deliver a tax windfall that could be used to start paying back the enormous debt burden Kevin Rudd has already racked up.

When Labor came to office they had billions in the bank and a budget position that was the envy of governments around the world. Kevin Rudd is now on course to rack up an even bigger debt on the nation’s credit card – and it’s the future of the next generation that he has put down as collateral.

Kevin Rudd has embarked on billions of new spending with waste and mismanagement par for the course. $200 million wasted on rorts and overcharging in the bungled pink batts program, millions wasted on the now abandoned grocery watch and fuel watch, not to mention billions wasted in blowouts, mismanagement and overcharging in the schools stimulus debacle!

All of that is money we will all be paying off with higher taxes, higher interest rates and less money for services in the future for years to come.

Health may be one of the areas where Labor’s debt cripples its ability to follow through on its election promises. In 2007 the state of our hospitals was so bad that Kevin Rudd promised to seize control of them by the middle of 2009 if they hadn’t improved, saying “Its time for someone to put up their hand and take responsibility. I am prepared to do it.”

Its 2010 now and our hospitals are more stressed than ever. Strangely, Mr Rudd’s hands seem to be firmly in his pocket – and his wallet is missing in action.

The much heralded education revolution has not reduced class sizes, improved teaching standards or fundamentally altered the way subjects are taught.

Instead we get the computers in school program that was meant to provide every secondary student with a laptop, but even with a budget blowout of $800 million we are nowhere near the promised result.

Then there’s the Building the Education Revolution debacle. Who ever would have thought a revolution would come in the form of standardised kit buildings offered on a take it or leave it basis? Knock down a gym to build barely bigger gym. Knock down 4 classrooms to build 4 classrooms. Contract expensive operators to build these projects when locals have quoted to do it for a fraction of the price? Funny kind of ‘revolution’…

Of course Mr Rudd has revolutionised border protection policies. He’s been so successful that he’s attracted nearly 80 illegal boat arrivals with 3000 plus people on board. He’s even done special deals with some of those intercepted to help attract more arrivals in future. Perhaps he could explain how he expects his open-door approach will maintain public support for a healthy immigration program?

Mr Rudd, when you address your hand picked audience at your taxpayer funded Community Cabinet tonight I hope that you will give some straight answers to these key issues. After two years of spin, mismanagement and delay its time for action. As you might once have said yourself, the buck stops with you.