From NSW Libs and Sundry

Garling Health Inquiry Moves To Nepean And Westmead Hospitals
Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today the Garling health inquiry is moving to Nepean and Westmead Hospitals this week.

Iemma Government Must End Overcrowding In Juvenile Justice
Shadow Minister for Juvenile Justice Greg Smith SC today called on the Iemma Government to urgently address issues of severe overcrowding in Juvenile Justice centres that are forcing young people into adult prisons.

Woman Waits A Year For A Wheelchair: Reba Meagher’s Incompetence Hurting Families
Coffs Crime Scene Gruesome Photographs. State Opposition’s Mandatory Code For Funeral Industry
Incompetent Iemma Govt Backflip Over Light Rail Proposal

Swan nesting with the RBA
Piers Akerman
WHEN he was treasurer Paul Keating liked to boast that he had the Reserve Bank in his pocket, but it appears the RBA has now captured Treasurer Wayne Swan.

Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens may be independent of Treasurer Swan but he is either echoing Swan’s views - or (more likely) - Swan is echoing his.

Since December, Swan has worked relentlessly to convince the public and - more importantly - the market place that “the inflation genie is out of the bottle”.

In fact the economy was, overall, in very good shape when the Howard government left office, except for pockets like western Sydney, where house prices were going backwards for reasons more to do with the State Labor Government than the federal.

The headline CPI in December was about 3 per cent, which was within the target of 2 to 3 per cent which the RBA had adopted before the Howard government took office in 1996.

Labor however had thrashed the Howard government with campaign rhetoric about working families suffering mortgage stress, working families suffering because of the skills crisis, the housing crisis and the infrastructure crisis.

Rudd, and Swan in particular, had to be seen to be doing something, meaningless as it might be.

Reserve Bank boss overdrawn
Andrew Bolt
Glenn Stevens, the Reserve Bank governor, has made a mistake. He has been frank and fearless in exposing the Rudd Government’s alarm over interest rates as, well, alarmist. There was this last week, for instance:

”Inflation should decline over time, provided demand slows as expected,”

governor Glenn Stevens said following the bank’s monthly board meeting, which resolved to keep official interest rates at their 14-year peak of 7.25per cent for the next month.

Fixed without fuss. And there was this, too:

REPORTS that more than half a million households are in financial stress because of interest rises are exaggerated,

says Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens.

Which cuts across the Government’s rhetoric for months that the wicked Liberals left the country with a “black hole” of an inflation demon that would force it to slash spending in the May Budget (and stock up savings for its mega-costly global warming plans).