Kevin Rudd, PR expert

Kevin Rudd (and his advisors) certainly know how to milk the media for some positive headlines without having to do any hard work or make any substantial changes.

It called symbolism. Yesterday was the epitome of symbolism. Saying "Sorry" to the aboriginal people for something called "the stolen generations" that happened a long time ago and which has bugger all to do with people today, who have not transgressed and done anything wrong.

Unless of course you are a bleeding heart socialist, and the existence of inequality is a crime in itself. In which case, we will always be guilty until you totally trample individual freedom and property rights, steal everything from every succesful and hard working individual and collectivise it - to make us all equal.

Back to the point of symbolism. First Kevin Rudd earned a few days of coverage when he went tosome climate change summit and he considered ratifying the Kyoto protocol, which never eventuated (for which I thank you Kevin !!).

After Kevin Rudd milked the headlines for about 7 consecutive days over this Sorry business, it seems the next item on the PR agenda is freezing politician's salaries for the next 18 months.

This might make Kevin seem like the squeaky clean PM, the man who is humble and won't use his position for privilege, and thats how the media is going to interpret it for us idiot sheeple.

But politicians salaries would not even account for 0.1% of government spending. And he isn't cutting it, he is only freezing it. Many politicians receive ridiculous superannuation and retirement benefits - usually millions. Its a great scam if you can get in on it.
But the real big bucks come at their spending power. Politicians can establish and operate massive bureaucracies that spend tens of billions. The Dept of Education, Centrelink and Dept of Health combined would eat up at least 1/4 of our GDP every year.

Is Kevin Rudd going to cut spending on these luxuries, especially given that spending has doubled under Howard ?

No way, too many teachers unions, civil servants, nurses and journalists would go insane with bloodlust. Just look at how teachers are going on strike yet again.

Come on Kevin, wind back government, you promised to reduce the number of public servants, when will you deliver ?

The first thing you could do is get rid of the portfolio of Minister for Bags of The Environment. Maybe stop funding the ABC and SBS, they can survive on its own. And stop feeding the state governments so much GST revenue, they are funding each city council in Melbourne with $200m to burn on things like fireworks, festivals, administrators, bigger facilities, light bulb exchange programs and public works projects.

But if you want to save a cool $100 billion PER FREAKIN YEAR .. close Centrelink !