At his campaign launch, Kevin Rudd said that Australians "don't ask for a whole lot". Really? What explains $96 billion worth of election promises? Maybe it's just that we've stopped asking for things because we now expect them.
Or it might be that although we haven't actually asked for any of this spending, our politicians thought it would be a good thing to do anyway.
The Labor leader's highly debatable analysis of the national psyche was only one of the numerous dubious assessments he made during his campaign launch.
Rudd proclaimed himself "an economic conservative". What precisely this means no one knows. Given the behaviour of the parties at this election, it might merely indicate a desire to spend slightly less taxpayers' money than the other side wants to spend. We do know that he utters the phrase "economic conservative" almost as often as he says "working families".
A few years ago Rudd called himself "an old-fashioned Christian socialist". Yesterday, while refusing to disclose whether he believed the Labor Party was still a party of the left, he described himself as "progressive". So far the ALP leader hasn't explained how it is possible to be an economic conservative, a Christian socialist and a progressive all at the same time. Perhaps the best explanation of these various terminologies is that Rudd is engaging in some highly creative "product segmentation".
At Labor's launch, great attention was devoted to interest rates and the importance of controlling inflation. Rudd delighted in proclaiming that the "reckless spending" of the coalition must stop. Labor should be credited for its audacity in trying to seize the mantle of fiscal rectitude, but it is stretching the bounds of credibility.
Since the election was called, the coalition has made $50.5 billion of campaign promises. The ALP's promises amount to $45.6 billion. With one week to go of the campaign this could be the first $100 billion campaign in Australian political history.
It's unclear how Labor can argue that $50 billion of coalition promises are reckless and inflationary, but its own $45 billion of promises are not, particularly when the vast bulk of each side's commitments are nearly identical packages of tax cuts.
In the two days since his campaign launch the Labor leader has gone almost unchallenged on his boast that because the promises at his launch speech were a quarter of those in the Prime Minister's launch that therefore the ALP is better qualified to manage the economy. The fact that most of the media have swallowed Rudd's line demonstrates how often the media believes what it's told.
The test of financial responsibility is not what leaders say in one speech out of the dozens they deliver on the campaign trail. The test is what all of their promises add up to. And in the grand scheme of total government spending there isn't much difference between $50 billion and $45 billion.
Rudd used the nice line that "Work Choices has become the industrial relations law that now dare not speak its name". But neither party has dared to speak about what they believe the real economic consequences of Work Choices to be. This is the policy paradox of the 2007 election.
The coalition takes the credit that with a booming economy there hasn't been a wages breakout, and it says that this is because of Work Choices. On this logic, therefore, Work Choices must have produced wage outcomes less than would have been the case if Work Choices had not existed. But, says the coalition, Work Choices does not reduce wages.
According to Labor, Work Choices has lowered workers' wages. But Labor has also strenuously argued that if it abolishes Work Choices wages will not go up and inflation will not rise.
The coalition and Labor can't both be right. Labor hasn't answered the question of what will limit wages growth if Work Choices goes.
According to Paul Keating, what restrained wages in the 1980s was that the union movement decided to act in the national interest and stopped making unreasonable pay demands. For this, he says, all Australians should be thankful. But being grateful for what the unions did 20 years ago is like thanking your neighbour for not robbing your house while you're away on holiday.
If Rudd becomes prime minister, dealing with the consequences of the end of Work Choices is going to be one of his first major economic challenges. Then Australia will get to find out whether he really is an economic conservative.
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