This election I've spent some time making fun of the tax-dodging gun nuts, but they make an excellent point about Howard's campaign launch yesterday. While promising $4 million a second, the Liberals really put the lie to their self description as "fiscal conservatives". The elephant in the room is that their tax and spend culture has contributed enormously to inflation, which has forced up interest rates.
A risky but potentially knockout option for Labor would be to promise less and attempt to force the narrative in the direction Lindsay Tanner's description of Costello's 2007 Budget: "a budget built on preaching abstinence and practising incontinence". I suspect the Labor hard heads will look at the polls and decide not to take the risk.
So on election day, just remember that it's your money they're buying your vote with! Of course, the difference between me and the libertarians is that I don't mind governments taxing and spending, provided the money is spent on something more useful than another Olympic sized swimming pool for a ridiculously rich private school.