Desire for honesty and fair go

The threat of climate change is particularly acute in our home state of Queensland where destruction of the Great Barrier Reef threatens many thousands of jobs. Kevin Rudd understands this. Labor has committed to decisive emissions reductions targets and a range of positive strategies to help reach them.

Again, the community responds well to Labor’s climate change leadership, and hey presto, John Howard is suddenly talking climate change.

Don’t worry that he rejected a Cabinet submission on emissions trading four years ago - you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll be suddenly converted to emissions trading when his taskforce delivers its report in a few weeks.

But Australians have in-built bull-dust detectors. Australian don’t just ask what our leaders are doing. We also ask why they are doing it. We ask: are our leaders motivated by genuine values and nation-building, or are they simply saying, doing and spending whatever it takes to cling to power.

Mr Howard has been failing the “motivation test” quite a lot lately and when that happens people stop trusting their leaders. Australia deserves more than trickery and self-interest from its politicians.

Australia deserves fairness and honesty. It deserves leaders who will invest the wealth of the mining boom to secure our future prosperity, not politicians who squander it on their own re-election.

Labor has the positive plans to take our country forward into the 21st century.

If the Australian people elect us this year, we will repay that trust with fairness and honesty.