Beware the Rudd haters

All those people who accused anyone who dared criticise the Howard Government as “left-wing, latte-sipping Howard haters” have taken it upon themselves to spread their own hatred to the incumbent, for no other reason than that he is a popularly elected Labor prime minister.

The trouble with the whole Howard-hater tag is that it deflected the reasons why people disliked the former prime minister and his government.

Despite what the pig-headed conservatives who coined the term would have you believe, John Howard wasn’t hated simply because he was a Liberal prime minister. When he first came into power and toughened the country’s gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre, Labor voters (except those who hunt and vote) agreed with him, as they did his decision to send Australian troops into East Timor.

The so-called Left didn’t oppose Howard for the sake of opposing him. He had to actually show what a bastard he really was before people started sharing more than a passing dislike based on political or idealogical differences.

People became Howard haters:

• Because he hijacked the democratic process to push his own opposition to Australia becoming a republic
• Dismissed global warming and refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol
• When he not only failed to shoot down One Nation’s racist policies but adopted them
• For his refusal to say sorry to Australia’s Aborigines over the so-called Stolen Generation, thus stalling the Reconciliation process
• Because he resorted to demonsing refugees and Muslims for political gain
• Because he started destroying Australia’s benevolent repuation overseas through events like Tampa, Children Overboad and  blindly followed George W Bush into Iraq
• Stood by while the Americans denied justice to David Hicks
• After he declared war on unions and through the WorkChoices, not because the country’s economic viability depended on it, but because it was a long-held idealogical ambition.

At such as early stage in his prime ministerial term, Kevin Rudd is yet to deserve the hatred that is so evident in the sour responses to many blogs and internet news story comments – unless of course you hate any leader who, within weeks of taking power:

• Ratifies the Kyoto agreement
• Embarks on an education revolution
• Initiates an apology to the Stolen Generation
• Improves relations with the states
• Honours an election committment to give the states $150 million to assist in cutting hospital waiting lists
• Takes Federal Cabinet to the community
• Allows long-term Nauru detainees to get on with their new lives.
• Has Julia Gillard as a deputy.

If you do hate Rudd for these reasons, then I hope the next decade of Federal Labor rule and President Hillary Clinton is a miserable time for you, you cunt.